to remove any headings below level 3 (assuming level 1 headings aren't used, which they shouldn't be on most pages), etc. Does anyone object to me making this change? --[[User:ais523|ais523]] 14:04, 18 April 2007 ([[User:ais523|U]][[User talk:ais523|T]][[Special:Contributions/Ais523|C]])
to remove any headings below level 3 (assuming level 1 headings aren't used, which they shouldn't be on most pages), etc. Does anyone object to me making this change? --[[User:ais523|ais523]] 14:04, 18 April 2007 ([[User:ais523|U]][[User talk:ais523|T]][[Special:Contributions/Ais523|C]])
:Seems like a good idea to me, and as long as it doesn't break anything, I don't see any problems. [[User:Jayden54|Jayden54]] 14:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.
If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.
These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.
DELETE MY ACCOUNT
I am Eapos and find is SICKENING that I can do everything under the sun here EXCEPT delete my account! Can someone please tell me how to delete my account! I do not want to be apart of this kind of sickening and prejudicial online community. Princess Elisabeth Vantar09:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's no way to delete your account. This is because if you did, someone could create an account with your name, causing all sorts of legal issues for Wikimedia. Like gadfium said, just stop editing. PyrospiritShiny!13:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
fix vandalized page?
Hi folks -
I tried to fix the vandalized page for the featured article (on Sly & TFS)... but it looks OK on the edit page.
Sorry if this is a FAQ, but could someone jump in and fix it & lock it temporarily?
THX -
-CC
added question about navframe
<br clear="right"/> and other undocumented features
I saw an article use <br clear="right"/> to force whitespace so that text stays aligned with corresponding embedded images (see User:Ideogram/how to avoid jammed up edit links for an example). I also seem to recall seeing another way of accomplishing this, but I can't find it now. I looked on Meta for documentation of this and other potentially useful tags, but I didn't find this or anything new. Is there a complete listing of all tags MediaWiki accepts? --Ideogram01:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
According to my personal notes about wiki editing, I learned about this use of the <br clear="..."> late last year, by following some link from Help:HTML in wikitext:
10/12/2006 1:01AM: I managed to control how much text floats next to
the table, by using the <BR CLEAR=all> tag I read about here:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/tables/table.html
The deprecated ALIGN attribute suggests the horizontal alignment of
the table on visual browsers. Possible values are left, right, and
center. Browsers generally present left- or right-aligned tables as
floating tables, with the content following the TABLE flowing around
it. To prevent content from flowing around the table, use <BR
CLEAR=all> after the end of the TABLE.
I am trying to use Vandal's RC Patrol and when I put it into my monobook.js, my toolbox does not change. Is there something I could be doing wrong? I tried refreshing m brower's chache, and adding action=purge onto monobook.js?
tags using "header=1" are screwing up the edit section links
See User talk:Cthorntonjr for an example of what I mean. I used {{subst:nonsensepages|Bud Brothers|header=1}} there, and it leaves behind a section header like this: {{#if:1|=={{{header-text|[[:Bud Brothers]]}}}==}} ... when clicking on the section edit, it won't take you to that section. I suspect Mediawiki doesn't parse the #if statement in a section header properly. This is a problem of all speedy notification tags that I've encountered so far that use the "header=1" parameter, and possibly others besides CSD notifications. — coelacan — 03:29, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe this could be fixed by changing the innards of the templates to have a couple of <includeonly>subst:</includeonly> tags. I think this would work:
It's pretty ugly, but the result should be that only the wikitext for the header ends up in the page, without the parser functions. Mike Dillon03:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that with the old coding, the header appeared even if header=1 wasn't used. I'm not sure that I know a solution to this; ParserFunction/subst mixtures have always acted unusually in my experience. If you can make the change and it makes it possible to use the template without the header, please feel free to do so. (I was unaware that the new coding had a problem.) --ais523 13:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Tidy upgraded
Our copy of HTML Tidy has been upgraded. This has apparently caused some minor changes to the way wikitext is rendered, such as in the user page in the village pump section above. These changes are probably here to stay, unless someone can identify clearly broken behaviour in the new Tidy that we can apply to have fixed. Also posted to wikitech-l here. -- Tim Starling15:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I notice as of today, a number of very small html coding errors in signatures and templates are causing major issues on large pages. Particularly templates/signatures lacking closing tags are causing a lot of trouble. Has it stopped autoparsing html tags?--VectorPotentialTalk18:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed a strange behavior in HTML ordered lists that have code examples between list items. A code example now renders before the list item it is after in the source. See my Help desk question for a complete example, along with the temporary work-around I've been using:
Well, you can always use the "hide" link on the TOC to get that out of the way (or use the Page Down key), and the "End" key on your keyboard to go to the end of the page. Incidentally, I can't think of a reason why going to the very end of an article is of use; the only time you might do that is to add a new section to a talk page, which can be done with the "+" link at the top of every talk page. EVula// talk // ☯ //23:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hiding the TOC won't help, if it's the last item(s), in a long TOC, which a user wishes to reach. Jumping to the end of a page finds the last additions to a talk page, or the end of a long table or list, or the categories, or external links, or... Andy Mabbett23:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, the End key still works. Not trying to be a dick, I'm just pointing out that, if there isn't a serious need for a system-wide change (which adding a function to the TOC would count as), the developers just won't do it. EVula// talk // ☯ //06:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"the End key still work" - How does the End key take a user to the end of the TOC? And you know that all user have systems with end keys how, exactly? In any case, the end key requires the user's hands (assuming they have hands...) to be on the keyboard. What if they're using a mouse?
I mentioned the End key in regards to your "how does someone get to the bottom of the article" comment. To get to the bottom of the TOC, you can still use the Page Down button. I'm 99% sure that all keyboards have those buttons, so I'm not particularly concerned about that. :) *sigh* Look, I'm just saying how you can achieve the same functionality you're asking for without a change to the system. There might be a legitimate need for a "skip TOC" function for non-traditional browsers (ie: screen readers or people who use a Blackberry to surf, etc), but for what I suspect is the vast majority of Wikipedia users and editors, I think the current system is sufficient. If they've got their hands on the mouse but not the keyboard (ignoring the fact that it isn't difficult at all to move your hand back and forth between the two), then the mouse-enabled user can just click in the scroll area of their browser. EVula// talk // ☯ //16:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm just saying how you can achieve the same functionality you're asking for without a change to the system." The functionality I'm asking for is for a single-click solution to take a user to the last entry in a TOC or the end of a page. All of your comments seem to assume an able-bodied user with a typical PC/ mac system. Andy Mabbett11:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Erm, not stating the obvious, but there already is this function... Just try clicking the first link in to TOC - this will take you right to the end of it ;)
I would like to notate music in SVG format. I downloaded LilyPond and successfully created some notes on a staff in .ly format, but when it came time to convert the .ly files, the LilyPond program gave me a PS (PostScript) file even when I asked the Command Prompt (DOS) for -fsvg. Then I went on a search for PS to SVG converters and found pstoedit and Ghostscript, which produced an error message in Command Prompt that pstoedit was not a recognized command (lilypond, which converted LY to PS, was recognized though).
Does anyone know of a free program that can create music in SVG (preferably directly)? Make sure the SVG file can be opened in Inkscape! Otherwise, is there a way to convert PS to SVG or PDF to SVG? Thanks in advance. -- King of♥♦♣♠06:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Have you tried using ImageMagick to convert. I have not looked for th answer to this problem specifically but am reasonably certain that if lilypond cant do it, then nothing else will. Conrad.Irwin18:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like you want to use the --backend=svg option, not --formats. Just downloaded a couple of example scores and successfully converted them to SVG. The strange thing was that the weren't viewable in Inkscape, but they were viewable with rsvg-view (albeit with some graphical issues). I'm not sure what it takes to make these SVG files viewable in Inkscape. Mike Dillon01:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There seems to be a couple of issues:
Lilypond creates multipage SVG files, which are not supported by Inkscape (at least in version 0.45.1)
The font stuff is a little bit tricky
It's possible to work around the multi-page issue with a little hacking by splitting the pages into their own SVG files. I found a few references to getting the embedded font support to work, but I didn't take the time to actually do so. Mike Dillon02:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also, if you do decide to convert PS to SVG, I believe that Scribus can do this with varying levels of success. I've used it to convert a few EPS files to SVG in the past. Mike Dillon04:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Inputbox
Does the "editintro=" parameter work for comments added to an existing page using the inputbox function? The Help:Inputbox page seems to suggest it does, but I can't get it to work. Mr.Z-mantalk¢01:06, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you had read the FAQ section above, you would have known that Wikipedia does have spell checking as a feature, but that it has been disabled because of the strain it would place on the servers. Harryboyles12:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Deleting a chapter
Is there a way to delete whole chapters in a long article, without having to go line by line? I'm trying to fix a long article part of which must go to Wikipedia, part to Wiktionary.Makaokalani12:09, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This question is difficult to understand, because WP:LAYOUT says nothing about "chapters" in Wikipedia articles. Perhaps you refer to large sections. What browser and operating system are you using? The ones I use let me select large blocks of text with the mouse, and then cut them to the clipboard or delete them. It's also possible to delete a whole section quickly: click the edit link for the section, then right-click in the edit window, select "select all", press the delete key. If you need to make large-scale edits that are inconvenient to do in a browser, copy the whole article into an external editor, then paste back the result. --Teratornis17:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Links
I'm just wondering how you can change what inter-wiki links say, yet still lead to the same place e.g: To make Buckden Towers just 'the tower', yet still lead to the Buckden Towers article. J S Firefox09:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if this is the right forum for discussion, but I wonder if there is any specific project aimed at resolving issues between different browsers showing templates etc. differently. For example, this template is practically illegible in FF but fine in MSIE. I want to have a go at resolving it, but wonder if there is a place where I can get assistance?
I have no idea - is this on every page? It could be that your monobook (your 'skin' settings) is somehow corrupted, perhaps by a bad syntax on a page which has rendered an error which has not been resolved. If this means absolutely nothing to you, though, I'm sorry! Just a stab in the dark
It appers to only affect the "monobook" and "chick" skins. I'm now using the "Cologne Blue" skin, and everything is fine. Where can I get more help for this problem? --Smokizzy22:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would start here. A bit technical, but I don't know where else
Never mind. Turns out I had messed with the fonts folder right before the problem started. Used System Restore, now everything works like a charm. Thank you guys for your help. Cheers. ;) --Smokizzy01:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please review situation with your zone file wikipedia.org especially in part of
en.wikipedia.org.
Your current practice:
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
en.wikipedia.org. 3600 IN CNAME rr.wikimedia.org.
rr.wikimedia.org. 600 IN CNAME rr.knams.wikimedia.org.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Multilevel redirect 'A' request is poor and do not improve reliability,
more useful using easy 'A' record for manage moving webservers between IP, if need.
Some time I do not resolve en.wikipedia.org, see for instance:
host -v en.wikipedia.org 145.97.39.158
Trying "en.wikipedia.org"
Using domain server:
Name: 145.97.39.158
Address: 145.97.39.158#53
Aliases:
Host en.wikipedia.org not found: 2(SERVFAIL)
Received 34 bytes from 145.97.39.158#53 in 44 ms
rr.wikimedia.org is a virtual hostname for geographic load balancing. It resolves to rr.pmtpa, rr.knams or rr.yaseo depending on which is closest. This has nothing to do with the brief downtime in DNS service today, which was due to a configuration error in the wikipedia.org zone file. -- Tim Starling21:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Use of the + tab or "new post" link versus using an existing section link
I almost always use the + tab when adding new sections to talk pages, but I wondered whether doing so always succeeds in avoiding edit conflicts when someone else is contributing to the last existing section. Recently, I have been on the receiving end of a few edit conflicts on the Help Desk when answering the last question (thus having to go back, copy my post, refresh the page and try again) and in every case, it was because someone had posted a new question. Of course, I can't say for sure that they failed to use the + tab or "post" link, but I suspect that this might be the case. I would like to post a polite and helpful suggestion on the user's talk page when this occurs, but I don't want to do that if they did in fact use the correct method. AdrianM. H.20:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You might be able to tell by the way the headings are set up. The + button to add new posts always sets them up the same way.
A more telltale sign might be the edit summary. If you created a section called "Kittens", your edit summary would be the text "Kittens", with nothing else after that. (Those that create sections with + have no choice with regards to edit summaries.) Combined with other factors, you may have a good guess. GracenotesT § 20:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, with regards to the help desk question: you know, whenever you get an edit conflict, the edit box containing your intended version is down at the very bottom of the page, after a diff between the two versions. So you only need to copy the text from the second textbox to the first, and click save. GracenotesT § 21:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The submitter of this question, Adrian M. H., surmised that one could avoid edit conflicts by using the + tab. I don't believe this is true. (The '+' button gives you the illusion you are editing a 'sub-article', but there is one single edit history for the entire article, so the sections don't get saved back to the database independently). EdJohnston00:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Titoxd has pretty much stated it all. The Wikimedia Board of Trustees has approved a resolution to purchase more servers (link) which once it comes to fruition, could mean that we are able to enable these features. However money does not grow on trees and we will always need more donations. Harryboyles08:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Problems uploading .svg images
I have created some images using inkscape and I save them as both plain .svg and inkscape.svg but neither uploads. I get no error message, but when I go to look at the image, I get the red X. Any advice? And if this is not the right place to get help for this, please suggest another forum. Thanks in afdvance. Argos'Dad18:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I took a look at Image:SimaVasileionEllados.svg and it appears to embed a PNG file located at C:\Documents and Settings\Steve & Brian\My Documents\Steve's Pictures\Wikimedia\SimaVasileion4.PNG. Since we don't have access to your hard drive, it doesn't work that well. ;) As for how to fix that, I wouldn't begin to know how to tell you except to just upload the PNG directly. --BigDT01:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You need to use Inkscape's "Trace Bitmap" function if you want the PNG to actually be converted to SVG. It looks like all you did was import the image which left the reference to the file on your local disk. Another option is to use "Effects -> Images -> Embed All Images", but then your SVG is not really a scalable vector graphic, since it contains an embedded raster image. Mike Dillon03:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Skin
I want to alter the monobook skin (for personal use) to resemble the ones used on fr and es Wikipedia. Please see more detailed question at the Help desk and answer there. Any help is greatly appreciated. - Mgm|(talk)11:12, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
articles for deletion
Hi: Today's Articles for deletion log [3] is somehow munged up. I (and a few others before me) added new articles and they're stuck inside an archive box for a different discussion. I can't figure out what the formatting problem is. Could someone help? --nathanbeach15:20, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can somebody take a look at User talk:Jeffhardyfan*17 and see why it is acting screwed up. When you click each edit section, it opens actually opens the section below it. When you click edit section for the last section, it gives you a new section (i.e. an empty section). Is this a system glitch or what? -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider)17:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's probably something in that massive welcome kludge which is causing the problem. I don't want to tangle with trying to resolve that, though. Maybe delete the whole welcome? Corvus cornix17:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
please note my comments in the "Usage" section at {{rtl-lang}}. Unless I am badly mistaken, the template is based on the flawed assumption that the "dir=rtl" parameter is needed for any string in a rtl-script, while in reality, it is only required for very esoteric stuff like Arabic letters as symbols in math or similar. If I am correct, the template should probably be deprecated, and a bot should be sent in to replace all instances with simple {{lang}}. dab(𒁳)17:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, why didn't I think about doing that? I actually started with the goal of converting Wikisource external links to interwiki links, but found this problem, which is more immediate. GracenotesT § 17:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've ran into a reader that finds the completion of each sentence with a link to a reference harder to read. As the best articles have the most reference links, they appear the hardest to read for that person. Would there be a way to add a feature that allows users to selectively suppress the reference links for an article as they read it? Sancho08:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ya, it placing .references {display:none} in the monobook.css works, but it's pretty permanent and tedious to change back and forth. I was thinking of a tab that changed this on the fly. I suppose now that I figured out what class of element I need to hide/show, it's not much more work for me put this into a tab at the top of the page. Sancho07:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Toggle sections in infoboxes
[copied from help desk]
Is there a way to create infoboxes with toggleable sections? I want to achieve that, so infoboxes will be able to contain more information, without taking more space. For example, a politician infobox, could contain all one's previous public offices, with only the 1 or 2 most important ones expanded by default. Here's a template I'm working on for politicians. It allows for unlimited offices to be put in. That creates the need of hiding the unwanted offices by clicking the title of the office.
I presume JS can't be integrated to the template in order to achieve that. Correct me if I'm wrong. Geva Zeichner14:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
JS can be used in some form in templates (such as in Template:Hidden for example), but I am not familiar with the method. You could ask at the Village Pump (technical) help desk (link at the top of this page). Help:Template is worth a read, but only gives fairly basic info. AdrianM. H.16:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
[/copied from help desk]
I've now tried using the Wikipedia:NavFrame thing, but with only some success. It works but the div finds its way outside of the infobox. Use of style="float: none" didn't help. I've also tried using the collapsible tables, but cascading the table breaks the larger table it's in. Geva Zeichner09:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It just happened to me as well, so I'm inclined to believe that it's MediaWiki doing something funny, and not your browser. I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows XP SP2. Jayden5412:30, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Followup: At test.wikipedia I set up 9 redirects in a previously-redirect-free namespace ("Help:") with the following properties:
1-3: Normal
4: interwiki (Meta:)
5: null (#REDIRECT:[[]])
6: special (Special:)
7: loopback (self)
8: red page (MediaWiki:Blahblah)
9: multiline (category on second line)
After, I clicked Special:Randomredirect/Help about a hundred times, and #5 and #9 above never came up (but I did get a lot of vists to the Main Page). #5 is no surprise, but #9 is odd. I would hazard to guess then that the title parsing in this Special: page is not intelligent enough to handle multiline redirects? --Splarka (rant)
I haven't done any sort of bug reporting yet, mostly because I haven't heard of anyone else having the same problem. Many (not all, though close) of the pages I've gone to won't display images if they're part of a gallery. Sometimes a few thumbnails are shown, sometimes all but one or two, sometimes none, and the number in the gallery doesn't seem to have any effect on how many are(n't) shown. When the images are just regular thumbnails within the [[Image:]] tags, they're ok (though I believe there've been one or two times when those won't display, either), as are images within infoboxes. I've tried purging and refreshing, but it doesn't help any. A few times it's even resulted in fewer pictures being displayed. Between all this, I'm seriously wondering if it's an issue with Wiki (in general, this issue isn't contained to Wikipedia), or with my computer (which is also why I haven't sent any bug reports). Anyone have any ideas what could be causing the problem, or how I can fix it? -Bbik22:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Which images are they? I believe this note from the top of this page applies:
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page (if the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too). If it doesn't work, try again.
If you can point out an image you're having an issue with, we can see if the issue affects just you or others as well. Hope that helps. Mike Dillon23:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That line (among others) is exactly why I specified that I'd tried purging already. However, as for specific ones I'm having issues with, most recently it's this page, and the specific pictures are (working across, starting at the first one after the panoramas):
Small Town: 1, 4, 5, 8, 10, 15
Big Town: 5-9
I can find other pages I've had issues with too, if it'll help. If the numbering doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll copy the specific pages from the edit box. -Bbik23:52, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on this, since it's moved quite so far up the list by now, and no response to the listed pictures, either... -Bbik07:54, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I was wondering, in the context of Special:Contributions/newbies what is meant by the word "newbie"? WP:NEWBIE and WP:NEWBIES don't define the term, and I initially thought that it may be the first edit of each user, but I've now seen people logged there after over fifty edits, and my 24hour theory fell through too — Jack · talk · 23:19, Saturday, 14 April 2007
Just speculation, but it may be users who have not reached the 4-day "autoconfirm" threshold (required to move pages and edit sprotected pages). Mr.Z-mantalk¢23:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, that's not it either. I've seen page creations by newbies show up there, and that's mostly why I use it, most of the fresh junk pages show up there. — Jack · talk · 00:09, Sunday, 15 April 2007
What do you mean? AFAIK, page creation is restricted to only those who have held an account for four days — Jack · talk · 00:24, Sunday, 15 April 2007
Nope. Anyone can upload an image or create a non-talk page once they get an account. After four days (or more specifically, 345600 seconds), they can move pages and edit semi-protected ones. It can be reasonably inferred that software makes the differentiation between "newbie" and not based upon autoconfirmed-ness. GracenotesT § 04:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While on vandal patrol, I've come across a couple of edits that were made to "semi-protected" pages by IP addy users. This shouldn't be happening, should it? Refer to the edit 22:51, 14 April 2007 172.129.232.152 on Microscope as an example. Sorry I didn't note the previous occurences, but I'll be sure to return and post notes of any others I find--unless there's a better place to be posting notice of this? Best Regards, Wysdom00:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The article actually wasn't semiprotected. Merely having a template on a page, like {{pp-semi-template}} or {{pp-vandalism}}, doesn't make it protected or semi-protected; if a page has this at the top when you try to edit it:
How weird. Sorry to be a noob--I just assumed that things tagged semi-protected were. Why would someone put the tag up on a page that's not semi-protected? Or, I suppose, more to the point, why is there a 'semi-protection' tag which CAN be put up on a page which isn't? It would seem to give vandals the idea that they can actually flout Wiki's protections--i.e. that said protections do not work. The repeated vandalism of Microscope shows the vandal over-and-again replacing the page with "too bad I can't edit this semi-protected page" and "look what I can still edit!!!" etc. Just my thoughts--thanks for your time! Regards, Wysdom01:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, it appears as though CJCurrie (talk·contribs) tagged the article as semi-protected, even though it wasn't. It is somewhat of a misconception that tagging an article as semi-protected will make it thus. Others might tag an article as semi-protected to drive vandals away (without asking for admin help), or to prevent others from editing the article. These generally don't work. On the other hand, administrators might protect or semi-protect an article without indicating it with a template. The templates that can be used are indicated here. If a page is semi-protected, feel free to tag it with the appropriate template at the top. It would be great if protection notices were built into the article interface: that is, if protecting an article automatically put the notice on that article, rather than having to make two separate actions. But this is not so. GracenotesT § 03:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Questions for Vandalism study
We are working on conducting our second vandalism study here Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies/Study2, and I had some technical questions that I thought someone here could help us with. Is there anyway to determine the amount of data added or subtracted from an article from a specific edit? I know that this is displayed on the recent changes page, but can you get that information for any edit? Also is there any way to easily measure the size of an article at a specific point in its history? If anybody has any expertise in these areas please let me know. Remember02:44, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You might be able to get the content of two revisions, calculate their length, and then subtract the two values. Using api.php for this seems best, since it's quick. For example, take the following function in JavaScript, which returns the change in size between revisions using Ajax in Firefox (I should learn another programming language for doing this rather soon):
var XMLobj;
var XMLdoc;
var diffNum;
function getNumDiff(title, crevid) {
try {
XMLobj = sajax_init_object();
XMLobj.overrideMimeType('text/xml');
XMLobj.onreadystatechange = getDiffContent;
XMLobj.open('GET', wgServer + wgScriptPath + '/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&format=xml&rvlimit=2' + '&rvstartid=' + crevid + '&titles=' + encodeURIComponent(title), true);
XMLobj.send(null);
} catch(anError) {}
}
function getDiffContent() {
if (XMLobj.readyState != 4) {
return;
}
if(XMLobj.status != 200) {
alert ('There was an error.');
return;
}
var XMLdoc = XMLobj.responseXML.documentElement;
if(!XMLdoc) {
return;
}
alert(getRvData(XMLdoc.getElementsByTagName('rev')[0]).length - getRvData(XMLdoc.getElementsByTagName('rev')[1]).length);
}
function getRvData(rvObj) {
var rvNodes = rvObj.childNodes;
var rvString = '';
for (nodes in rvNodes) {
rvString += rvNodes[nodes].nodeValue || '';
}
return rvString;
}
Then try, say, getNumDiff('Kitten', 122843426). This alerts the difference in revision size—in this case, 39 characters—in .25 seconds. There is probably a better way of doing it... an actual programming language may be an option. Then there's always wget. GracenotesT § 04:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For the first question, you could wait until revision 20221 of MediaWiki is activated on Wikimedia Foundation wikis which will add the number of bytes add/removed to all edits in article histories. However this requires an update of all the rows containing edit information (over 127,000,000 on the English Wikipedia alone at time of writing), so it hasn't been activated yet. Graham8712:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Have the background colours been changed recently? Articles are still white, but all other pages (special, discussion, project, etc.) have a slightly blue (annoying) tinge. I didn't see any changes recently in Common.css or Monobook.css, so I'm not sure what's going on (I've got a local Monobook.css copy but it only has one style rule which does not concern background color). I tried using two different browsers (Firefox and IE6), to the same effect. I have also tried purging the server cache and force-reloading. What is going on, and how do I fix it? Thanks. —Daniel Vandersluis(talk)07:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's been like that for ages. I think you might have only realised that recently, but the non article pages have been like that for longer than I can recall. Harryboyles07:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Huh, strange. I completely never noticed it until suddenly last night. Is .mediawiki the css class for the page backgrounds? Never mind, I figured it out. Thanks for pointing this out to me. —Daniel Vandersluis(talk)14:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
time
Hi, I want to have my current time posted at the top of my talk page. I used this template: 23:27:47 but it does not always work - right now for example it is several hours off. Am I using it improperly, or is there a better template I can use? I know I can purge - but do I really have to purge every time I want to clock to update itself? Is there no alternative? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk13:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There probably isn't an alternative. I've got something similar; mine instead says the time the page was last purged or "refreshed". I know there is Javascript, but that would be for your personal use only; you can't have Javascript on normal pages for security reasons. Harryboyles13:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
collapsing two css classes
having combined {{IAST}}, {{semxlit}}, {{ArabDIN}} and others into a new {{transl}}, I suggest that the "IAST" css class in MediaWiki:Common.css be removed, and the "latinx" class used generically for all romanizations of non-Latin scripts.
latinx at present suggests:
Code2000, "TITUS Cyberbit Basic", "Microsoft Sans Serif"
while IAST suggests:
"Arial Unicode MS", "GNU Unifont", "Lucida Sans Unicode"
note that this is a bit unfortunate, since it will be a matter of chance whether the result is in serif or sans-serif. Code2000 and TITUS are serif (TITUS has no cursive!). Microsoft Sans, Arial and Lucida Sans are sans-serif. The purpose of the class should be to render as much Latin Unicode as possible, but I think font suggestions should be ordered so as to prefer either serif or sans-serif. Maybe
Since most systems now come with reasonable Unicode support out-of-the-box, these classes will be largely redundant soon, anyway.
dab(𒁳)15:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Question
Does anybody know why the indent wikimarkup in text ("::...:" or "**...*") doesn't work when there's a left-aligned pic? Is there a bug listed? NikoSilver20:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to be because the <dl> and <dd> don't clear the image div on either side, but the indentation is compromised only on the left side (probably to let it wrap naturally. Breaking it down and adding borders, we see:
Thanks! I was supposing that this may be the case, but had no way of illustrating it as well as you did just now with the borders and all! It seems that the images displace bona-fide text, but they don't displace the indents as well, as evident if you continue your example sequence of indents (until they exceed the image width, which they do!):
So, shouldn't the wiki-markup (::: and ***) work around this html defect and force (somehow) the indents to be displaced as well (bypassing the html code in the resence of a pic)? I've worked on many articles with pics, and this is the most common problem that editors frequently face in format. To tell you the truth, I haven't noticed even one example, where the indent (if included) was actually intended to be omitted (why on earth would it be included in the first place then?). Shall we list a bug, or is there one already listed? NikoSilver15:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Scroll Box for references
not sure where to put this suggestion, but on the bigger pages, a scroll box would look better for the references, then one whole screen full of references. Oldag0722:42, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you think that it would be appropriate in an article, you can use the following code:
This is a scroll box with a height of 100. It may not work everywhere.
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
This is an adaption from Beethoven that will work for all screen widths. You can alter the height; currently, it's 100px. Implementing this on every article with a large reference section may annoy some people, but please others. GracenotesT § 00:01, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The scroll box also appears in the Printable version, which probably causes only what is visible in the box to be printed rather than all the information to be printed. I did not test what happens when trying to jump to an anchor within the box. (SEWilco04:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]
If I understand what you're saying correctly, I've seen it happen to the article on Good Eats before. It was caused by a reference that was improperly closed, if I remember correctly. --LuigiManiac02:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I do use Firefox, but the thing with Good Eats was back on April 4th, so it might have been fixed since then. I still can't think of a reason for what I see in the diff. All he did was do some internal linking, and the links were closed properly. It's quite odd, to say the least. --LuigiManiac03:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a link, but a parser function. It means if the value of the parameter "small" is "yes", then output "small" from the template, or do whatever with it that it's supposed to do. Otherwise, "standard" takes the place of "small". –Pomte02:58, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, what Pomte said. Basically, if it's in [[double brackets]], it's a link, and if it's in {{double curly-brackets}}, it's either a template or a parser function. Oh yeah, but templates also have links. If you want to edit a template, type Template:templatename into the search box, replacing "templatename" with the name of the template. If you want to provide a link to a template, use {{tl|templatename}}, again replacing "templatename" with the name of the template. PyrospiritFlamesFire03:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Current recentchanges numbers only show net change?
For instance a green +1000 means that 1000 chars were added to the article, right? So let's take this, for example:
"I like pie."
If someone vandalized it into:
"I like egg."
It would be recorded as a zero change. Is there a way to change it so that it shows not just the net change, but the change components individually? That is, in the above example edit, it would show like this:
Is this significant enough to create confusion the other relatively new number? Do vandals ever count the number of characters in an article, then perform ROT13 to keep the overall change at (0)? –Pomte03:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't seen it yet, but if that happens, we should just start looking at changes with net 0 character difference. - Mgm|(talk)11:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all - I spend 99% of my Wiki time on en:Wiki, but also occasionally hop over to meta and to one other language wiki (Maori). Since I only go to meta and mi:wiki every week or two, I often miss new things which are on my watchlist there. Is there any way of adding pages from Meta and mi:wiki to my en:wiki watchlist?
Grutness...wha?07:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, my monobook.js just broke. I just made a few changes that I thought were purely formatting changes and wouldn't affect anything, but now none of my scripts work. Could someone take a look at the last few diffs and see what went wrong with the JavaScript? Thanks, PyrospiritShiny!23:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
May I ask at what time you first noticed that it stopped working, for the benefit of other readers as well as myself? It will probably help if you add your changes one at a time, rather than all at once, going by the look of the diff between the latest version and the one on April 13. When I had problems about a week ago, I took the chance to go through all my scripts and weed out the ones I wasn't happy with. Start with one script at a time and test it before adding the next one. This should quickly identify the offending script(s). Harryboyles11:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll go back and redo the stuff one at a time. The last diff where it worked (which I just reverted to) was this one. Anyway, if the problems persist, I'll ask again. Thanks, PyrospiritShiny!15:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It works just fine now, but I have another question. In my monobook.js, what is the difference between this:
Is it possible to use a script of some sort to hide a specific lengthy caption until the reader clicks "show caption"? This is suggested for the long caption at Atheism#Rationale. Something like what is used in {{hat}}, for example? Thanks! — BRIAN0918 • 2007-04-17 00:45Z
I've moved your request here as being the more suitable forum
I've had a similar problem. The Wikimedia renderer that converts SVG into displayable graphics apparently cannot deal with text elements created as "flow text" in Inkscape. You need to change all text items from "flow text" to simple "text" elements.
On a different note, you should fix the image description page on commons, it says something entirely unrelated to your graphics.
now for the svg problem. I am using inkscape, but I am a real newbie in it. Do you know, where to change it from flow text to text, which button I have to push, or what parameters have to be changed in the xml editor? greets, --Andreas -horn- Hornig11:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In my German edition of Inkscape it's "text->Fließtext aufheben (Shift-Alt-W)". Contact me on my talkpage if you need further help (in German if you prefer.) And I really don't think you meant to be suing Inkscape, right? ;-) Fut.Perf.☼12:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Byte count feature (Page History / Contribs vs. RC / Watchlist)
Hi. I've been wondering: Recent Changes & my watchlist display those handy red or green numbers showing the net contribution of bytes an edit makes (+1 for adding a period; -20,000 for a big archiving; etc). I think that info would be equally useful in specific page histories, on User Contributions pages, and even on diff pages. Any reason that hasn't happened or can't happen?
I guess this could amount to a feature req for MediaWiki, but I clicked that link at the top of the page & couldn't make heads or tails of the site. Plus I can't be the first person to bring this up. Thanks, —Turangalilatalk13:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's a matter of when, not if. Brion Vibber in this mailing list post has stated that it's not fully implemented on the Wikimedia servers. Part of the reason is, as stated, it's running in the background. Harryboyles14:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I replaced "[[Image:Flag_of_Iran.svg|88px]]" with "[[Image:Flag_of_Iran.svg|40px]]" to reduce the size of the image. Tizio17:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm looking to make a template that will display a custom page when sent data - specifically to illustrate the position of a certain time in the geological time scale.
I've written a template which will perform as I wish, and whilst I can include the template in a page, I hoped to be able to link a date using Template:Ma so that clicking on the year would take the user directly to a timeline with the specified year marked.
I've spoken to a couple of experienced editors who are unaware of a solution to this problem. Is there any way I can carry this out?
(I hope I've explained what I want clearly enough...)
That does not seem possible. We would need Template:H:mlm - instead of including a page for given parameter values, this allows linking to a page for given parameter values.--Patrick00:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While we were using this template on 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs, we noticed that there was a large gap being inserted just before the table created by this template. After looking at the HTML that was generated, I realized that something was adding three paragraphs that contained a single line break each. The resulting HTML looked like this:
I asked User:Mecu and User:Nmajdan to look at it, but neither could find a reason for it. Both then suggested that I ask here. The original of the template is here, though there is a sandbox with the code here and another with test data here. Previous discussions of the problem can be found here and on the above mentioned user's talk pages. z4ns4tsu\talk21:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After some recent updates to MediaWiki:Sidebar, there are a few problems that I'd like to see fixed. I've written up an analysis at User:Mike Dillon/Sidebar. None of these issues are too critical, but I think they stem from an incomplete understanding of the way that the sidebar works. I put an {{editprotected}} tag on MediaWiki talk:Interaction and made a note at MediaWiki talk:Sidebar, but I was asked to post at the Village Pump for more input. From my perspective, the more involved fixes discussed at User:Mike Dillon/Sidebar don't really change anything critical for a normal user's experience, but they integrate better with the built-in handling of the sidebar. As far as user impact, I've detailed the few cases of users who would be impacted on my analysis page.
Just cuirous. I noticed none of the changes that where anounced in the Signpost on April 2 where actualy "live" (yeah I know the page says they may not be implemented here yet). I'm just curious. That namespace selection option on whatlinkshere would be quite usefull just about now. Also why "tease" us with news of updates before they are actualy implemented on this Wiki. Those that are intetested in the state of the MediaWiki software in general are probably watching it's project page and/or the SVN tree rater than the enWiki signpost. Meh, anyway hurry up already ;-P --Sherool(talk)08:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Usually the software stays pretty current with the fixes and feature additions coming live. However, recently a change was implemented in regards to having the "bytes changed per diff on recent changes and watchlists" feature implemented on all revisions that have been made. This required a change in the underlying database schema meaning all 128,000,000 or so revisions need to be updated. It's being done in the background so as not to disrupt the site. This mailing post by Brion Vibberis related to the change. Harryboyles09:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
query.php can determine whether the currently logged-in user can edit a page: [6]. However, this information is kind-of useless if you happen to be an admin (a bot might find it more useful). --ais523 13:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I was afraid of that. I can get around the admin problem, but what I really want is to query the date that protection was placed and the date it expires. Special:Export doesn't seem to include it and neither does query.php. Too bad. CMummert · talk13:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes, it's desired to remove very-low-level section headings from the TOC. (This could be useful in some project pages with low-level subheadings used for edit-section purposes; there are probably list-like articles that would benefit (e.g. ones which have a long list of sections each corresponding to a different country, and this sort of thing would also allow section headers to be used at RfA without noinclude tricks). The code to do this would be
(I have tested this in my own userspace, and it validates according to W3C); it would allow
<div class="toclimit-3">__TOC__</div>
to remove any headings below level 3 (assuming level 1 headings aren't used, which they shouldn't be on most pages), etc. Does anyone object to me making this change? --ais523 14:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Resolved – The Behnam 17:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
