Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug is exigent).

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

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Nested tables class="collapsible collapsed"

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

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

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

Here's what it looks like:

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

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

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

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

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

You can hide the nested tables by putting 3 NavFrames inside one collapsible table, e.g. {{Calculus footer}}. Even if you're nesting only 2 or less, you can add an empty NavFrame div to make them hidden. I don't know of a way to make the nested NavFrames expand by default though, unless you're nesting 2 or less. –Pomte 18:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

That is kind of the problem with using NavFrames, yes. In fits and starts I'm working on a change to the scripting to see if I can get it to work. Going's a bit slow though, as this is my first time working with either Javascript or the DOM. TCC (talk) (contribs) 02:07, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Help with uploading SVGs

I uploaded Image:Questionmark.svg, and is it just me, or is there a large white rectangle in the bottom-right corner? Just in case it is just me, I'm running Firefox 2.x and made the picture in Inkscape. Does anyone know how to fix it? I tried uploading new versions a couple of times with slightly different saved files, and this always happens. Here's the XML if that helps (I don't know if it does). I uploaded Image:Questionmarkblue.png as a bitmap alternative to it (that's what it should look like). — Bob • (talk) • 21:09, July 30, 2007 (UTC)

Hi there :) It's possible that the server doesn't have the font you used for the "?". You might want to convert the "?" to a path. -- JaeSharp 07:17, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Update: I uploaded a fixed version for you, in place of the old svg. I hope it helps :) -- JaeSharp 07:32, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks, JaeSharp. — Bob • (talk) • 07:38, July 31, 2007 (UTC)

The list of available fonts is at meta:SVG fonts. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 08:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

sortable wikitables and Safari

As some might know, there have been some issues with sortable wikitables left on Safari. I have found the cause of some of my problems. Some tables use a sortkey trick. Take the following tablecell: <td><span style="display:none">02005-06-02</span> <a href="/wiki/June_2" title="June 2">June 2</a>, <a href="/wiki/2005" title="2005">2005</a></td> The idea that the span is hidden from the reader, but is used in sorting. This was not working in Safari (2 and 3). The cause lies in wikibits.js in function ts_getInnerText(). This function retrieves the textual contents stripped from the html tags.

function ts_getInnerText(el) {
	if (typeof el == "string") return el;
	if (typeof el == "undefined") { return el };
	if (el.innerText) return el.innerText;	// Not needed but it is faster
	var str = "";

	var cs = el.childNodes;
	var l = cs.length;
	for (var i = 0; i < l; i++) {
		switch (cs[i].nodeType) {
			case 1: //ELEMENT_NODE
				str += ts_getInnerText(cs[i]);
				break;
			case 3:	//TEXT_NODE
				str += cs[i].nodeValue;
				break;
		}
	}
	return str;
}

The problems is in the line "if (el.innerText) return el.innerText;" innerText is an IE extension. on FF it is not used because it is undefined. On Safari the innerText call IS present but unfortunately, it is not the same as the IE version. On Safari it does not return "display:none" text. Therefore the whole sortkey is unusable on Safari.

There are 2 ways to deal with this issue:

1. remove the entire line. I'm not sure if it's actually that much faster on any platform, and the FF way seems to work just fine.
2. add "if (el.textContent) return el.textContent;" right before it. This basically is the FF variant of innerText and Safari supports it as well. Some very old browsers might not have it, but they can use our current FF for-loop. I tested textContent on Safari 2/3, FF 2.0 and Opera 9.

I'd file a bugticket, but i'm too lazy to register in yet another bugzilla system. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:46, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I guess we're too lazy to fix your bug. :) --brion 01:27, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not my bug. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Not our bug either. 86.133.208.191 22:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14805 --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:10, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

(Hopefully) fixed in rev:24647. Needs testing. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 09:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

When it goes live, I'll make sure to test it. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

A little help with javascript

What's a way to execute a function on page load? Thanks, — Bob • (talk) • 07:41, July 31, 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, I googled it. — Bob • (talk) • 08:01, July 31, 2007 (UTC)

Signature

Is there a way so when you click you get —~~~~ instead of --~~~~?

—Ignatzmice^talk_contribs 21:39, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

A userscript in your monobook.js page can probably do this. I'll take a stab at it for you. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:16, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

See script below ∴ Alex Smotrov 23:05, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

if (wgAction == 'edit' || wgAction == 'submit')
addOnloadHook(function(){
 if (mwEditButtons[9]) mwEditButtons[9].tagOpen = '—~~\~~'
})

Works, thanks! —Ignatzmice^talk_contribs 17:45, Monday 2024 (UTC)

Update: fixed sig expanding in monobook by adding "\" ∴ Alex Smotrov 21:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Sigdash also works. I may consider changing it to do something like your version (but without the hardcoded array index); I think the implementation of those buttons has changed a couple of times since I first wrote that script. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 08:11, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Microformat markup in article space

I have recently become worried of article modifications by Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats, which intends to introduce microformat html markup in wikitext as such, instead of implementing it inside the usual data entry templates. This unnecessarily obfuscates wikitext with keywords that are meaningless to most editors, making articles harder to edit. Examples of the damage can be seen here and as single purpose inline microformat templates (such as used on [1] and [2]). What could be done to keep the microformat features but not show the special purpose markup to article editors?

I have tried combining the semantic annotation and the microformat functionality of those special use templates into the standard templates to keep articles editable by proposing a change to add a name parameter to the templates, but a single editor keeps insisting on a minor aesthetic detail as a reason to keep using his own templates. The proposed change would make the obscure

{{hcard-bday|Firstname Lastname|birth date and age|1955|06|08}}

to

Firstname Lastname, born {{birth date and age|1955|06|08|name=Firstname Lastname}}

with both displaying as

Firstname Lastname, born June 08, 1955 (age 52)

The problem with the first example is not only its odd name and unnecessary template wrapping, but its attempt to force a specific wording to article prose over all the other possibilities from the Manual of Style. The proposals are at Template talk:Coord#Moving_microformat_markup_from_articles_to_coord and Template talk:Birth date and age#Edit_request (with a rerun at Template talk:Hcard-bday) to merge the microformat templates {{hcard-bday}}, {{hcard-geo}} and {{hcard-geo-title}} to the standard birthdate and coordinate templates. The discussion is currently going nowhere, and more comments would be appreciated to finally close the issue. --Para 14:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Having failed to obtain support for your campaign elsewhere, you appear to be forum shopping. Your claim of "[intention] to introduce microformat html markup in wikitext as such" is bogus. Your attempts at modifying these templates are, as explained previously, broken (and the issue is not a "minor aesthetic detail"). Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:17, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Requesting more opinions to a discussion where a single contributor manages to make it seem as if there's no consensus is not forum shopping at all, it's lack of participation, which apparently needs to be requested. People, please contribute, the editor's well known repetitive argumentation has repeatedly stopped admins from closing editprotected requests because on a quick look it may seem that he still has something new to say. The topics are on the long side, my apologies for feeding the troll. --Para 14:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Please read and understand WP:NPA and cease your ad hominem. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:39, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

There has been some more opinions to one of the microformat merge proposals, but so far nobody has commented on the issue of including raw special case HTML in articles directly. In its current form it seems to really be getting out of hand with edit obstructions such as here or here. How can the situation be improved to keep articles editable? Is there perhaps some semantic extension somewhere between the standard MediaWiki and a full blown Semantic MediaWiki installation? --Para 11:04, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The edits you describe as "edit obstructions" are, of course, nothing of the kind - the articles are still fully editable. I also note that you've previously opposed the kind of templates which would obviate the need for the in-line-class mark-up used in the examples you give. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 13:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Technically oriented people may still be able to edit articles with microformat html mixed in with the text, but it's total gibberish for most others. The whole point of wikitext is to make it easy for people to participate without having to touch the raw html, and these microformat edits are moving away from that principle.

What microformats seem to need are containers for fragments of data, and a wrapper to tie them all together. In most cases this requires the data to be clustered close together as overlapping wrappers aren't allowed. I am not expecting to see templates to wrap pieces of information together and as a side-effect create a microformat wrapper (like {{PoI}} for example does), as such meta-templates would make no sense logically, wouldn't be easily editable either as the syntax differs between meta-templates, and would take away all the editor freedom to format and order the content. I'm thinking more of something like an extension that 1) allows information to be tagged to tell what it is, and 2) reacts to a special keyword with some attribute syntax to explain how additional markup should be generated. The wikitext rendering module could then generate the microformat html and other similar additional formats that can be included in the standard html, based on the semantic markup. That way people wouldn't have to look at keywords of some obscure output format, but general semantic ones readable for anyone. SMW does something like this, but I feel it's bit of an overkill with all its query features. --Para 15:03, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

And when all that is possible (and you'll notice that it's written into the aims of the microformats project), everything will be fine and dandy. In the intervening months, or years, we must work with what we have. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:13, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

address element

Semantically, each page on Wikipedia should have an address element. If this were marked up with class="author" an hCard microformat, the hAtom microformat could be added to relevant pages, such as Portal:Current_events (everything else required is tested and possible). It seems to me that the page footer:

Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a US-registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity.

or part of it should be in that element, with "Wikipedia" as the hCard's class="fn org" property.

(I have tried adding an address element, manually, to a sandbox page, but it's not recognised by MediaWiki.)

How can this be achieved? I can advise on specific mark-up, if that helps. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 11:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Anyone?

I don't think you've made clear exactly what problem this change would help solve. What exactly are the benefits of this change, or the disadvantages of the current situation? Or, if you will, how do you answer the question of "Why?", in response to your first sentence above? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:41, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Repeated references

I notice that the same references (books, articles, etc) reoccur in many of the articles which I edit. To copy the text which defines a references, for example, in the form of a cite or ref tag, is perhaps not a big deal. But I also notice that different editors write the same reference in slightly different ways in different articles, with different styles, etc. Again, not a big problem, but it occurs to me that it could be nice to have a reference defined (author, title, etc) once and for all in one place and instead use pointers or links in the different articles to connect to the reference data. In the case of ref tags this could also mean that the edit text becomes less cluttered with the ref data and instead a short link can be used. --KYN 12:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

As a guide, footnote layout and styling should follow WP:CITET. No need to use the templates, obviously (they create extra typing/pasting anyway and can be more difficult to view subsequently) but they provide a good style guide. That does not include any variation in the availability of certain fields, of course; sometimes you have to omit certain fields, such a publishing date. To address your suggestion, some editors keep libraries of oft-used references; perhaps you would want to do the same for references that you use a lot. Adrian M. H. 14:31, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this input. But already from the WP:CITET guide it is clear from the two columns of examples that variation is possible. Also:

• Even with a guide like WP:CITET it is up to the editor to chose if a possible subtitle should be included or not, or if the page number to a journal article is added. This may lead to one and the same reference having inconsistent appearances in several Wikipedia articles.
• Minor error in one reference (e.g. ISBN number, page numbers, etc) are copy-pasted to new articles
• if such errors are detected, it appears to be rather tedious to find and correct all occurrences in copy-pasted references.

Proposal for reference namespace

I'm not suggesting that these are major problems that keep me awake at night, but from a technical point of view they appear rather straightforward to fix? Why not have a Reference name space where all references (used in WP) are given a single definition and we can link to there from the articles? This also make sense since it would provide the right place to describe and discuss a reference. This can of course also be made using an ordinary Wikipedia article, but a reference also contains metadata in the form of author, title, etc, which can be managed more easily in a separate namespace. --KYN 15:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The number of potential problems here is enormous. For example, many references include a link to an online source such as JSTOR. This is OK, but if we were to do it in a centralized way, we would need a way of also indicating any other sources. This is particular problematic for newspaper citations,which are available from a variety of free and paid services. Equally difficult will be obtaining agreement from the several hundred thousand individualists here about the exact standard form, considering we have been arguing for months about merely whether to included the period inside or outside quotation marks. This sort of service requires both a considerable number of dedicated staff and a way of making and enforcing decisions. A top-down organisation could do it. I've said elsewhere it would be worth the effort--but its an enormous effort. 07:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

reCAPTCHA

Currently we use a CAPTCHA on the sign up page. [3] Has anyone considered replacing it with reCAPTCHA to help digitize books? (Mediazilla appears to be down right now.) — Omegatron 00:31, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• I endorse this suggestion. You wanna help code it? ←Ben^B4 00:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The article says that "reCAPTCHA is a free service, except for users who would require a prohibitive amount of bandwidth." Since Wikipedia has a lot of signups each day, they may want to charge money. Tra (Talk) 01:02, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

We also use captchas whenever new accounts and IPs try to add a new external link to an article, or whenever a login fails. The load could add up to quite a bit. Dragons flight 01:05, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Their FAQ says to contact them for over 10,000 per day. I wonder how many per day we have. ←Ben^B4 01:12, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

That's ~7 / minute, we have a couple new account creations per minute on enwiki alone, so I'd be pretty sure that collectively there are more than 10000 captchas served per day. How many more I'm not sure. Dragons flight 01:17, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I've had a look at the log, and I estimate there to be approximately 7300 account creations in the last 24 hours. If we assume that only 10% of people who get to the account creation form actually sign up, that's 73000 requests to provide a captcha each day. Then you need to add in the number of people who get it wrong and need another captcha, plus the number of IPs adding links and the number of incorrect passwords. I think they probably will want to charge some money. Even if it was affordable, the foundation might not want to do it since they tend to want to use free software (bear in mind that these numbers are just estimates, and may be hopelessly out). Tra (Talk) 01:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

For us it would make more sense if to use our own re-captcha for helping out with our own OCRing efforts. Sadly our efforts are not organized enough to do that, yet. --Gmaxwell 14:20, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Would it make sense to help them in the interim to see how well this works? maybe if we get them a lot of digitization they'd put our own OCR stuff in as part of what gets done? ++Lar: t/c 14:23, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

The fact that they refuse to open-source the software is kind of a showstopper for us for being involved with it. --brion 01:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest they be asked. Given whom we are, they might be very willing to accommodate the load. But I would think the Foundation would want to be asked in any case. DGG (talk) 07:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Asked them months ago, was told no. --brion 11:25, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Reasoning? Link to discussion? — Omegatron 23:53, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant idea! Literally LOL! But if the meaning of the text is unknown, how is that a verification? (E.g. gobbledigook -> biteme. Sounds good. Welcome, bot.) Saintrain 17:57, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Saintrain: Follow the links! I first wondered how it worked too. But this is Wikipedia and if you look above you see that Omegatron did link to the article reCAPTCHA and it explains it. Pretty nifty idea actually. Although it is strange that they charge money from organisations (server owners) that help them digitize their texts... --David Göthberg 18:37, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Tracking use of magic words

Is there a way to track the use of magic words on pages? I ask because it would be an immensely useful clean-up category to be able to find all the biographical articles (at a first pass, those with {{WPBiography}} on their talk pages) that lack DEFAULTSORT. Humans using AWB could then suggest a defaultsort based on the category pipes and/or article talk page. However, identifying those pages that lack defaultsort is a problem. Possibly the only way to do it at present is to use a bot to read pages and output a list of those lacking DEFAULTSORT. It would be preferable though to have a software solution. What is needed is a category inside the magic word, or a "what links here" type thing for to track a magic word like DEFAULTSORT. Is this possible? Carcharoth 13:29, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It isn't tracked. You could use a database dump to find them quicker and more efficiently than with a bot. However, I'm not sure what the urgency is. I'd say it's best to just tackle them as they are found since no user visible behavior is impacted by leaving them, assuming the sort keys that are in place are consistent. I have a user script that helps me replace the explicit sort keys with DEFAULTSORT and I usually check it whenever I edit a biographical article, but I don't think I'd go looking for them. Mike Dillon 06:39, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

You say "as they are found". I'm proposing to find them in one go, and start a clean-up project to try and ensure that all biographical articles are correctly sorted. If they are not correctly sorted, then biographical categories are a hopeless mix of articles sorted either by surname or by first name. There is little point in being able to sort articles if you cannot tell which ones are sorted without looking at individual articles. It is a bit like the categories Category:Year of birth missing and other clean up categories like that. This would simply be Category:Default sort key missing. If a category is too obtrusive, a "what links here" function would help. Another reason for wanting to track DEFAULTSORT is the point raised at this discussion, namely that DEFAULTSORT is being extensively used in talk page templates. This is silly because only the last occurence of DEFAULTSORT on a page will work. I suspect the vast majority of DEFAULTSORTs in talk page template are "DEFAULTSORT:PAGENAME", which is why the "only the lowest DEFAULTSORT works" behaviour is rarely spotted. And when a template tries to use a different DEFAULTSORT, it rarely works unless it is the lowest or only template on the talk page. But there seem to be strong arguments for deprecating the use of DEFAULTSORT in templates altogether (templates 'hide' the defaultsort, making it very difficult to tell what is going on when one template's DEFAULTSORT is over-riding the others), or limiting it to just DEFAULTSORT:PAGENAME. As I say in that discussion I linked to, it would be nice to be able to do a "what links here" for the DEFAULTSORT magic word, and restrict the results to template namespace. Failing that, the options seem to be a bot search, a database dump search, or a search like this. Now do you see why I'm saying that tracking magic words would be a very useful feature? Who do you think would be able to actually answer the question of whether this is possible? Carcharoth 10:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I guess I was assuming that most biography articles are sorted right, with or without default sort, since that's the case with most biography articles I've seen. In addition to what I said above about editing default sorts if I'm already editing a bio article, the other case that prompts me to do it is seeing something out-of-order in a category (it just doesn't seem to happen often). Given what you're talking about, I guess it would be useful to find the intersection of {{WPBiography}} articles and those that don't use DEFAULTSORT to check that they are actually being sorted correctly (since there isn't much chance of someone adding DEFAULTSORT in a biography article for a reason other than sorting correctly).

As for whether it's possible to do, yes, it is possible, but it would require changing MediaWiki to do it. Finding uses of magic words (or parser hooks for that matter) would be a lot like tracking uses of categories. The change would require some parser changes to keep track of magic word use and a new database table to track it. Whether or not this is something that will be implemented is another issue, but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard. Mike Dillon 04:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. You've answered my main question about whether it is at all possible. Taking other questions to your talk page. Carcharoth 15:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

My monobook

I'm unsure if I've done this correctly, see here. I hit the F5 button, but nothing comes up. I don't use FireFox or Modzilla, just Internet Exploror 6. Lord Sesshomaru 21:59, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

What you need to do is press Ctrl + F5 instead of just F5 so that the script is loaded. Tra (Talk) 22:18, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, which bits of Twinkle did you intend to use? I ask because you need more code than just the one line, it seems, unless you want everything. Adrian M. H. 22:22, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I would like everything. How do I have it all? Lord Sesshomaru 22:39, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

From the Twinkle page: "Will not work in IE". Just so you know... — Edokter • Talk • 22:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

If you want everything, you currently have it. Kind of the point of my question. What you end up with is a whole bunch of bits that you might not use and some bits (admin stuff) that you may not be able to use. Academic, though, because as our fellow editor has pointed out, IE is out. Adrian M. H. 22:46, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

You may have the same problem that I encountered. If you are using Internet Explorer, TWINKLE won't work - much to my annoyance! The same thing happened with the 'Admin-like revert function' with me aswell. After over 7 months on RC Patrol, I'm still going about the process old-school style! Lradrama 09:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Spam Filter Filters Everything . . . Including Speedies

Just recently I was trying to put up a {{db-copyvio}} for Iranians or Persians?. Unfortunately the spam filter decided to halt my attempts to add the url into the speedy. Is there any way of getting around this short of just posting db-copyvio and putting the link in the edit summary? -WarthogDemon 22:36, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Didn't see that one coming. That's a question for the devs to answer, I think, so I recommend a trip to Bugzilla (checking first to see if it has already been raised). Adrian M. H. 22:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Forgot to add that I think you would be OK to leave the URL in the summary (unless that gets caught as well). Makes Twinkle impossible though, because that requires the URL to be added to a popup box. Adrian M. H. 22:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Registering there seems to mean using my email as a username, something I would rather avoid. Would it be possible for you to, or is there someone else here on Wikipedia I could bring this to? -WarthogDemon 23:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't use Bugzilla either. But plenty of editors do, and one of them might either have the answer to this or know that it has already been raised or be willing to raise it. If the e-mail address is your only concern, you could just create one for that purpose. Adrian M. H. 23:57, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Did you try using <nowiki> around the URL? --cesarb 00:16, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Now why didn't I think of that? It works! Thanks! :) -WarthogDemon 00:28, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Can't use Alt-F in IE7?

When I'm at a wikipedia page, Alt-F doesn't work in IE7 (and previous IE versions too). Instead of bringing up the file menu, it takes me to the search box. Is there a way to disable this? I use alt-F pretty frequently. 24.17.110.223 00:05, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know of any way to disable this, but if you type "Alt", then let go, then type "F" you should get the file menu. Obviously, someone decided to designate "Alt-F" as "find" on wikipedia. Dragons flight 00:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey that works! 24.17.110.223 03:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Parser functions and Mediawiki?

Do parser functions work in Mediawiki space? Dragons flight 00:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It depends on which message it is and how MediaWiki is using it. Parser functions are currently used in MediaWiki:Noarticletext, for example. Mike Dillon 06:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Parser functions and server variables (e.g., "$1") do not mix well, however. Gracenotes^T § 20:51, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Special:Unusedtemplates

Is there any way to get this list to extend beyond the first 1,000 entries? --MZMcBride 01:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

For everyone? Because if it's only for yourself, I do know a way to do that. Just click 500 so you get that in the url like this: [4]. Leave the offset alone but for the limit just type the desired number and that'll work. :) -WarthogDemon 01:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to go beyond the first 1,000 entries, not limit them. --MZMcBride 01:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

No ... a lot of those special pages only go to 1000. --B 06:16, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Lack of notification of edit conflict

I have been finding recently that if I try to add a comment to the bottom of a discussion (only seen it on WP:RD/s and WP:ANI), but someone else comments before I finish, instead of informing me of an edit conflict, my comment just gets tagged onto the end of whatever the thread looked like when I hit the "save page" button. Is this a bug, or is it supposed to happen? Someguy1221 07:28, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

That sometimes happens with me too. To be honest, I can't stand that blasted edit conflict thing, I much prefer the way you just mentionned! Lradrama 09:58, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure but I think it was changed to like that on purpose. You only get an edit conflict when the system is unable to resolve the conflict. If it can, it just adds it based on who edited first or something. Most of the time, it works well IMHO Nil Einne 12:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Changing "header" section on collapsible tables - can it be done?

Given that a standard collapsible table works like this:

non-hidden content
hidden content

...is there any way to make a table where the non-hidden content changes when the table is not collapsed? - 52 Pickup 10:19, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd think you could if you used {{#ifs}} or something to that degree. ~ Wikihermit 18:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

You could do something lame...
like this Will not work properly in all browsers.

To do what you want properly would probably require changing the javascript (at MediaWiki:Common.js. --Splarka (rant) 07:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I can see the problem there. Unfortunately, what I want to place in the "header" has a variable height. If-functions don't appear to help either. I wasn't sure if this was possible, so thanks for the confirmation. - 52 Pickup 08:02, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Spacing issues

On my user page, there is a long space between the "Identity" section and the "User subpages" section. I can't find what's causing it. Is it the userboxes, transcluded at the right? There doesn't seem to be anything noticeable that's causing this. Thanks. (I have a wide screen, BTW, so if you aren't seeing a huge space, it may just be because your screen is skinnier than mine.) --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 15:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It is due to style="clear:both;" in Template:User committed identity.--Patrick 16:11, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Substitute the template and you can remove the problematic declaration from your page. Adrian M. H. 21:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Creating a special page for names

I have been working hard on the Anthroponomy wikiproject and I was interested in trying to set up a special page similar to that of the Book Sources special page that would allow users to search through the various government and private databases on the use of a particular name within a area. Any information related to this would be welcome. Remember 16:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

(External) link colors

In a template, I have an edit link to the current article. It's a full URL so it's not a wiki link. By default, these (technically) external links have an arrow and have a different color the wiki links. I lost the arrow by using .plainlinks, but I can't seem to find a way to change the link color to behave like wiki links (instead of the always pale blue-ish external link), at least not without overriding the stylesheet. And I don't want to do that.

So, how do I create a full-url link without arrow and wiki-link colors, without overriding the current stylesheet? — Edokter • Talk • 17:05, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Like this Unless that's what you mean by overriding the stylesheet default (which is essentially what you're doing, but there's no other way). Adrian M. H. 21:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly the thing I'm trying to avoid. I was hoping I could somehow invoke the regular a.link and .plainlinks class at the same time from whatever stylesheet is active; my CSS knowledge is quite lacking in that respect. — Edokter • Talk • 22:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

But link is a pseudoclass, like html. Adrian M. H. 22:15, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Bug ID 9213

Any news on this bug Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/Bug ID 9213? Nil Einne 18:23, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The bug still has not been fixed. See Category:Wikipedians_who_are_terribly_frustrated_about_Bug_ID_9213 for more info... --_Hdt83 ^Chat 04:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Rounded edges

I just made Template:Rounded that creates a box with rounded corners. It's a bit of an experiment. It uses 10 divs to give the rounded corners effect. My question is: are there any foreseeable (technical/webdesign) disadvantages of the usage of this many divs for creating only one box with rounded edges? Freestyle 21:15, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

If you want IE compatability, that's the only way. Otherwise, use moz-border-radius declarations. Adrian M. H. 21:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately it looks really ugly in IE6 (SP1 6.02800.1106 on Win2000). So I guess you could use it on your user page… ∴ Alex Smotrov 22:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay thanks for the info, If I can find a computer with IE6 I might try to fix that. P.s. Don't forget that most things look really ugly in IE6 :P .Freestyle 22:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Um not this ugly Image:IE6-rounded.PNG (I purposely didn't put a license since the image is not fair use nor is it free) Nil Einne 12:09, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

There, I think I fixed it The keyword here was adding "overflow: hidden" to the divs. I also added an extra line of rounding, but it may seem a tad too much? Someone please check if it still works under Firefox. — Edokter • Talk • 16:49, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

It's fine in Firefox 2. --ais523 16:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

It works in Safari v3 AndrewJDTALK -- 22:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Category activation

Talk:Standard penetration test says that it is in Category:Unassessed CE articles, but it is not displayed on the category page. I have tried purging and refreshing the pages, but I can't get it to show up. It has been about one day since the category was created. Does anyone know what is going on? -- Basar (talk · contribs) 00:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Problem solved. It was due to the use of a template redirect, which has now been replaced with its correct title. Adrian M. H. 00:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

"Upload file" link broken on secure proxy

When using the secure proxy, the Upload file link points to a non-existent page. Can we get this fixed, please? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 18:30, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, that should point to https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Upload — Edokter • Talk • 18:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be a sideeffect of the setting of $wgUploadNavigationUrl on 5. Aug. I have filed Bugzilla:10843. --Raymond de 07:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Will take a peek at it in a bit. --brion 11:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Exporting pages

I tried exporting the MediaWiki:Monobook.css and MediaWiki:Common.css using Special:Export today to my personal wiki, but couldn't - why?? Is there a limitation on pages being exported from certain namespaces?? Thanks, --SunStar Net ^talk 19:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I have no trouble with exporting the monobook pages, though I haven't tried importing them. Where are you having trouble? Prodego ^talk 20:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Image metadata

I was directed here from the Help desk. Here's my question: Does anyone know how to go about fixing the links in an image's metadata? I assume there is a script that does this automatically which means an admin will most likely have to take care of it. If you look at the metadata for pictures taken by a Canon camera, the link points to Canon, not Canon (an example of a pic I uploaded yesterday is here - scroll to the bottom). Thanks. ♫ Bitch and Complain Sooner ♫ 02:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

No, we can't do anything about it. Whatever the camera says is automatically linked, and we can't add exceptions. Prodego ^talk 02:52, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

D'oh! Oh well, just thought I'd check in case it was an easy fix. Thanks anyway! ♫ Bitch and Complain Sooner ♫ 03:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

(another view) Hmmm...

Statement of the problem:

Some common brands of digital cameras place metadata in digital photos which identify the camera manufacturer, camera model, etc. However, they may use specific metadata values which are not compatible with Wikipedia article names.

Statement of the proposed solution:

There is no solution. We (Wikipedia) can't do anything about it. (Implication: Camera manufacturers are expected to provide Wikipedia-article_name-friendly metadata values)

This strikes me as unreasonable.

My guess is that there is a standard or a developing standard somewhere concerning the contents of the fields labeled "Camera manufacturer" and "Camera model" in Wikipedia Image pages such as this. It may be convenient to provide metadata redirects (e.g., for a "Camera manufacturer" field content of "Canon", to provide a Wikipedia page named Metadate_mfg_Canon or Metadata:mfg_Canon or Metadata:Camera manufacturer/Canon or somesuch which redirects (in this example case) to Canon (company). Then, wherever contents of the "manufacturer" field is extracted from an Image file displayed, and wikilinked wikilinked, it could be wikilinked with the appropriate indirection prefix ("Metadata:mgf_" or whatever. All that remains, then should be to manually maintain the indirection redirects according to published standards vs. Wikipedia article naming.) (that was just a top-of-the-head illustrative suggestion -- there are no doubt better ways to do this.) -- Boracay Bill 04:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

template show / hide (showing by default when should be hide)

I just noticed that many of the templates that I watch that have a show / hide function (that hide by default) are now all showing by default. For some reason, the show is expanded when it should be hidden on page load. Examples {{public finance}}, {{UStaxation}}. Morphh ^(talk) 13:12, 08 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a result to the NavFrame bug fix applied to Common.js. They used to collapse if there were three or more on a page, but now they are always open unless the NavContent style="display:none;..." (so you now have control over NavFrame's initial state.) Many of the NavFrames can be traced back to a protected template, many of which have {{editprotected}}s outstanding. I will fix all that I can see. If anyone sees more, list them here, or if you feel ambitious, add the display:none; to the NavContent style. ←Ben^B4 13:47, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Fixed the two above. Morphh ^(talk) 13:58, 08 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, you beat me to it! ←Ben^B4 14:20, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Taxation}} may also have this issue. Morphh ^(talk) 13:53, 08 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you give an example page, please? I can't find any NavFrame uses.  Done ←Ben^B4 15:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I noticed this issue on a couple templates (including some I created) as well. The thing about them is they are set to show if a certain parameter is set. Please take a look at {{Johnny Cash}}, {{University of Oklahoma}}, and {{University of Texas at Austin}}. For instance, for the last two, they have around 4 or 5 separate dropdowns. But if the "athletic" parameter was set, then the athletics drop down would be displayed where all others would be hidden. Don't know if this functionality has been affected by this change.↔NMajdan•talk 13:20, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot archival setup

The New Contributors' Help page desperately needs a better archival system, but I'm not 100% sure which bot to use and how to do it. Normally, when something needs doing, I just go ahead and fix it, but I would rather get this right first time. MiszaBot II looks like the best choice, but the instructions are a little too vague, particularly with regard to selecting the correct archive page (unless that is done automatically?). Can anyone advise someone who has never used a bot before? Adrian M. H. 17:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Before choosing a bot, it's best to see what type of archiving system needs to be automated. At the moment, the page is archived by month, but this could be changed. Some possible options are to archive every time the page gets to x sections/bytes long, or to have a weekly archive. Another idea might be to follow what happens in the Village Pump and remove completely any sections that are older than two weeks. If a bot doesn't contain any options in the interface to do what is required, it's possible to ask the operator to set it to do those functions. Tra (Talk) 18:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I think a bi-weekly archival would be suitable. Is the existing archive page sequence suitable, and does the process need any regular human intervention? Adrian M. H. 19:10, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I've had a look, and I don't think the bot has an option to do bi-weekly; it can only do monthly. However, you might be able to sort something out by contacting the bot's operator. Tra (Talk) 21:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

It has a field for days or weeks in the examples at User:MiszaBot/Archive_HowTo, so it should be OK. Thanks, Tra. Adrian M. H. 08:38, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Apache Error Log...

I'm getting this set of logs generated each time anything is run on my wiki:

[Wed Aug 08 14:49:59 2007] [error] [client (IP)] File does not exist: C:/[System path to wiki]/wiki/common, referer: http://sesdb.kareeser.com/wiki/Main_Page
[Wed Aug 08 14:49:59 2007] [error] [client (IP)] script 'C:/[System path to wiki]/wiki/missing.php' not found or unable to stat, referer: http://sesdb.kareeser.com/wiki/Main_Page

The second line I know says that missing.php is not found, because that's what I set ErrorDocument 404 to in httpd.conf. But the only reason why missing.php is being called is because of the first line, where it seems to look for the common directory?

Basically, I want to know how to stop these from being generated, as I think something's wrong...

If you need any more information, please feel free to ask! Kareeser|^Talk! 18:52, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia error

I believe an article called "What Do Christians Really Believe About Evolution?" was uploaded to wikimedia on or about February 7, 2007:[5]. However, this article is no longer present, or at least that address is wrong. Did it violate copyright or some other rule? Was it uploaded improperly? Thank you.--Filll 20:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

See s:Wikisource:Possible_copyright_violations/Archives/2007/04#Image:Masumura_1998.pdf.--Patrick 21:14, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Small problem that is bugging me

In the article Great Upheaval, under the the governors letter, just above the heading After the expulsion there is a link in the form of a footnote that redirects back to the same page. The problem is that I cannot find that note in the editing window to remove it. I cannot figure out where it is coming from. I would appreciate it if someone would clear up this mystery for me. Thanks! Regards, Mattisse 22:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

It is a footnote (in a form of <ref>…</ref>), but the page is missing <references/> tag (or {{reflist}} template), see Wikipedia:Footnotes ∴ Alex Smotrov 23:14, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

(EC) Go and take a look again, I added a "notes" section that displays the text of the reference ("ref" tag) that you will see if you edit that specific subsection of the article. If this doesn't quite make sense feel free to ask again or try the Wikipedia help desk for more detailed info. Wikipedia:Help desk. dr.ef.tymac 23:17, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I see it in the Footnotes but I still cannot find it in the text in the edit window. I understand about {{reflist}} and <references/>. Oh well. Thanks anyway. Regards, Mattisse 00:14, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

It's right at the end of the letter (scroll all the way down): <ref>Text of Charles Lawrence's orders to Captain John Handfield</ref> — Edokter • Talk • 11:20, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Which, as a citation of a verifiable supporting source, is very lame. See WP:V. -- Boracay Bill 13:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow! Have you not worked that out in over a years worth of editing on Wikipedia? Sorry if I sound rude, I'm only curious and can't word it any other way! ;-) Ah well, one learns something new every day! Lradrama 14:42, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Sod's Law says that it will be you who learns something new tomorrow... :-) Carcharoth 16:51, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Lradrama, are you addressing Matisse? and do you mean that the answer provided by Smotrov is trivial? It occurs to me that you "can't word it any other way" because you aren't actually saying anything. And Carcharoth, I think a typo somewhere prevents me from understanding your reply too. My policy is to employ complete, coherent sentences when flaming :-) Pete St.John 17:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Touché. I've corrected myself. Thanks. Carcharoth 21:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

My dear Pete St. John, I was merely indicating surprise at the question that was from a very experienced editor. I just didn't want to sound rude you see. As for the answer given by Smotrov, it is a very fine answer indeed, and exactly what I would have written. Lradrama 10:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Image doesn't display at 310px

The image Image:Waterhouse-sleep and his half-brother death-1874.jpg doesn't seem to display when scaled to 310px. This hasn't been a problem before though, the image has been displaying fine at 310px for some while now. Here is a revision where it was scaled at 310px and here is a revision where I changed it to 309px and it displays fine. This same problem appears to happen on all pages it is scaled to 310x at, but only seems to happen with this image. --Android Mouse 06:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine here. Most likely a problem with your local cache or the WP's caching server you are using. Clear your browser cache, then try viewing the revision with the 310px version by adding &action=purge to the URL. (PS, fixed first link.) — Edokter • Talk • 11:14, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine to me as well. It must be a cache error. Valentinian ^{T / C} 13:19, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

This problem happens a lot with SVG images, too. Some images simply refuse to display at certain sizes. - 52 Pickup

Now it's displaying fine for me aswell, probably something wrong with the server's cache as I've disabled caching entirely in my browser. --Android Mouse 17:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Anywhere to post occassional bug reports?

I want to comment on a bug - see here, but I don't want to create a bugzilla account. I found Wikipedia:Bug reports, but that said to create a bugzilla account! Is there anywhere I can post something for people to move over to the relevant pages? In this case, I want to point out that the feature being voted on could disrupt the linkage between pages that redirects help to maintain. My point against a feature that allows users to suppress redirect creation can be summed up as follows: "unless the software checks for links to the page and alerts people "THERE ARE 500 INCOMING LINKS THAT NEED TO BE REDIRECTED, SUGGEST YOU DO NOT SUPPRESS THE CREATION OF A REDIRECT", then inexperienced, tired, careless, users and admins will use the feature when it shouldn't be used". If someone could post this over there, I'd be most grateful. Carcharoth 16:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

If you'd like, drop the bug #, description of what you want to add, and the severity on my talkpage, and I'll add the notes for you. ~Kylu (u|t) 00:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks. Carcharoth 01:07, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Commons image not displaying in a gallery

In Kentucky State Fair, the gallery image with the caption "Freedom Hall during Fair" isn't displaying. This image was recently moved to Commons. I purged the description page in Wikipedia, as well as the page in Commons, twice to no avail. Is there something I'm missing? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 02:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's a direct link to the thumbnail in question [6] --- RockMFR 18:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Template nowraplinks

Hi everyone. I got tired of handling word wrapping in long link lists, for instance in navigation boxes. So I have made a new template similar to {{nowrap}}, but that only prevents word wraps in links. That is, it allows wraps between links and in normal text. Thus one single {{nowraplinks}} tag can surround the whole link list instead of having one {{nowrap}} tag around each link or using lots of  .

I would like if some expert template editors (preferably with some CSS experience) take a loot at it to see that I didn't miss anything. I think this template might be used a lot once we deploy it.

Oh, I probably should mention that this template will need the addition of one line of CSS code to common.css. So I think this needs to be thoroughly checked and discussed before we deploy it. (And I am not an admin so I can not add that line of code myself.)

--David Göthberg 04:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

That would be useful. All you need in Common.css is this:

.nowraplinks a { white-space: nowrap }

I support that change. ←Ben^B4 09:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I have included the code inline in the template, you should be able to test it (I hope). — Edokter • Talk • 11:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

And removed it again... templates (or wiki for that matter) dont like inline style definitions. — Edokter • Talk • 11:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Edokter: Yes, I tried that too and Wikipedia just filtered the tags to text output. I even tried some nowiki tags etc to try and get it to stick, to no avail.

BenB4: And yes, that "nowraplinks" class can be very useful. If/when it is in the common.css it can be used together with pretty much any HTML tag or any box to prevent links to word wrap. For instance like this:

<div class="nowraplinks"> Lots of text and links </div>

Or like this:

<span class="nowraplinks"> Lots of text and links </span>

That span code is really what the {{nowraplinks}} tag is packaging in an easy to use way.

--David Göthberg 12:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

This is the place to discuss changes to Common.css, so if this section makes it into the archive without substantive dissent, you can put an {{editprotected}} on Mediawiki talk:Common.css to have it implemented. ←Ben^B4 13:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

And I just realized you can put the .nowraplinks class in your own monobook.css for testing. — Edokter • Talk • 13:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks BenB4, I didn't know that. I have read up on it now and it seems you are right about the {{editprotected}} procedure.

Edokter: Oops? I explain that in the talk page of the {{nowraplinks}} template, but I should have mentioned it here too. Sorry for being unclear. So, any one else reading this, go to that talk page for explanations and for some test examples.

--David Göthberg 14:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Help

• the following coed appeared on User:Highfields/monobook.js and I dont know what it does, can somebody help:

• var mpTitle = "Main Page";

var isMainPage = (document.title.substr(0, document.title.lastIndexOf(" - ")) == mpTitle) if (isMainPage) {window.location="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Main_Page_alternative_%28misty_breeze%29";}

• Highfields 09:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

It shows you this alternative to the Main Page layout. And, it looks like you just put it there in your monobook.js, didn't you? ←Ben^B4 09:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

JavaScript issues

I've recently been trying to clean up and simplify my user JavaScript (User:Pyrospirit/monobook.js), and apparently something I did broke everything; however, nothing I did should have done that. The problem occurred after this revision, where I replaced document.write functions with the importScript function, and also changed a parameter for popups and rewrote a few comments for clarity. The next revision after that was simply moving some code to user subpages (User:Pyrospirit/editintro.js, User:Pyrospirit/syntaxhighlighter.js), and the next 2 revisions were undoing and redoing in an attempt to fix the scripts being broken (so they cancel each other out). Could someone experienced with JavaScript explain why none of my scripts work and how to fix it? Thanks, Pyrospirit Shiny! 16:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

One error in the JS file is enough to disable all scripts. Use browser console (Firefox2: Tools → Error Console, Opera: Tools → Advanced → Error console) and track all the errors one by one. You could start with adding // in front of the category at the end and fixing addOnLoadHook with capital L (Javascript is case-sensitive) ∴ Alex Smotrov 16:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I've gone through it and fixed some bugs. The script at User:Pyrospirit/gmhelper.js seems to have one or more errors in it, so I've commented it out for now. Tra (Talk) 17:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Transcluding a template at Meta wiki into a Wikipedia Help page

Help:Section at Meta transcludes m:Template:peisl which currently reads,

Template:Mlww of 2,048,000 bytes

However, the Wikipedia copy of Help:Section has a red link {{peisl}}, because Wikipedia doesn't have a Template:Peisl. I could create it, of course, but then it wouldn't automatically update when the one at Meta is changed. Is there a way to transclude a page from another wiki? - Fayenatic london (talk) 18:57, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You could just copy the code from the meta template and make a local template. Just link to the original in your edit summary when you do so to ensure that you're not violating the GFDL. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:48, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, as stated, I knew I could do that. I assume the answer is "No", then. I'll follow your advice about attribution in the edit summary. - Fayenatic london (talk) 22:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

...heh, so I guess I should read a bit more closely before responding, shouldn't I? :) Sorry 'bout that. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:21, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

At present time there is no support for transwiki includes. This may be something that will be approached in the future, but for now, I would recommend simply copying (or, better, importing--which at present is not enabled on enwiki) the template from meta. AmiDaniel (talk) 10:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

How ot get rid of annoying yellow messages bar

Hello, there is that annoying yellow messages bar up there. Problem is the messages are about a couple months old (I didnt do it) and it stays there after reading the page. I tried clearing the cache , deleting cookies but its still there. How do I get rid of it? Does anybody else have this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.112.246.219 (talk • contribs) 21:50, 10 August 2007.

Sounds like Bug ID 9213. It's a known issue. Cheers. --MZMcBride 21:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

The only way I know of to ensure that the new messages bar goes away once it's appeared for an anon (thanks to Bug 9213), is to get someone to delete your user_talk page. Failing that, you can wait a few hours/days/weeks and it might go away on its own. However, you seem to have no messages on your user_talk page, so why you'd even see the new messages bar at all is a bit of a mystery. Presumably you're having this problem on a different IP than the one you used to post this question?--VectorPotential^Talk 21:58, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Yep, it was on a diffrent computer, anyway thinks for the quick response and I hope you get this fixed soon. I've managed to ignore that bar. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.112.246.219 (talk • contribs) 22:14, 10 August 2007.

Another option is to create a user account and log in. --David Göthberg 08:39, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I would recommend getting an accoutn as the above point states, as some IP addresses are operated by more than just one person, whether they know so or not, and messages may be recieved for what other people have done, and not necessarily you. Lradrama 10:32, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Transclusion

Why isn't Template:Infobox Cave/doc listed as transcluded on Template:Infobox Cave, when it clearly is? --MZMcBride 01:30, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

It's {{template doc}}'s fault. The name of the template is passed as a parameter to {{template doc inline}}. The same problem exists in wikiproject templates with the code {{{{{class}}}-class}}. Gracenotes^T § 01:49, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

That would make sense, except Template:Main/doc lists a transclusion on its What links here page. Very confusing.... --MZMcBride 03:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

What you won't be able to find, though, is Template:Main listing Template:Main/doc as a transclusion. (Or shouldn't; the list is a bit too long to check.) Template:Main/doc lists Template:Main because {{main}} is transcluded on the documentation, in the Example section. Gracenotes^T § 03:46, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I understand. Thanks. --MZMcBride 05:10, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Image overlapping text problem

Greetings! In Song Dynasty, I reduced the images to default size, per FAR rules. Now there is an image that overlaps the text on the right side, and no matter where I move it the same thing happens. The article is now in FA review. It is under the heading "Southern Song". Would very much appreciate any help and tips about preventing this sort of thing. It rarely happens but when it does......Thanks! Sincerely, Mattisse 02:08, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The map or the statue? Looks fine to me. ←Ben^B4 10:47, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks good for me as well (IE6), but I see the same problem on Yen sign, where a template overlaps the text. — Edokter • Talk • 11:23, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Yen sign looks OK to me with IE 7.0.5730.11, but it has overlaps with some window geometries with Firefox 2.0.0.6. Welcome to the wonderful world of browser & browser-version CSS compatibility weirdness. -- Boracay Bill 11:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Balthazarduju fixed it. I am not sure how yet. (I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.6) Thanks! Mattisse 12:24, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Download speed with Mozilla Firefox

The speed at which pages load has been significantly slower for me over the last few days, about 25-50% the speed they downloaded previously. This even happens when I use the forward and back buttons. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.6. I still get good speeds if I use Internet Explorer, but Firefox is my preferred browser.

Is this a known issue and is there a fix? Thanks. Grant | Talk 03:37, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I am having the same problem with Firefox 2.0.0.6. I was wondering whether it was my browser or Wikipedia. So it is Firefox? Drag, since it makes many tasks onerous. It's enough to make me consider changing browsers. Regards, Mattisse 12:28, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Different platform (Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Linux), same problem. With the occasional white screen of death, of course. It's a wikipedia problem, time to give the devs a bump. MER-C 13:42, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I think you are right as I just tried IE and have the same problem. Mattisse 13:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

So how do we "give them a bump"? Grant | Talk 13:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed now. Grant | Talk 01:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Common.css rendering problems

When viewing a diff with Firefox 2.0.0.3, the error console reports the following problems with the stylesheet:

• Unknown property "column-count" (line 43)
• Unknown property "-webkit-column-count" (line 42)
• (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/skins1.5/common/diff.css) Unknown property "word-wrap" (line 60)

Please fix. MER-C 13:53, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Are those IE columnizers? ←Ben^B4 06:22, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

The first is legal, but not recognized for some reason, not sure about the other 2, but at least the second is probably ok, and I imagine the third probably is. Prodego ^talk 06:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

The first is a CSS3 property, which is not recognized by Firefox yet; its Firefox equivalent (-moz-column-count) is also used, and has almost the same behaviour as the CSS3 stylesheet. The second is probably the WebKit equivalent of the first, and is also vendor-specific like -moz-column-count (it has a valid vendor-specific prefix), so it's actually valid (no matter what the W3C validator says). The third one, as the comment on the stylesheet says, is yet another CSS3 property not recognized yet by Firefox. So, all three are not real problems with the stylesheet, and there is nothing to fix. --cesarb 00:44, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Search box moved on home page

hey,

I just wanted to log my opinion on the new location for the search box on the home page. It used to be pretty far up on the page, quick and easy to find. Now you have to scroll *way* down to find it. I much preferred the old location. I use the search feature a lot, as I would imagine most users do - that's pretty much the point of wikipedia, isn't it?

I would like to see it moved back up, or even to the top of the page where it really should have been all along, IMO.

Just putting that out there in case anyone cares what users think. I looked at the bugzilla thing to put it in, but it looks like way too many steps to get into.

Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.226.81.59 (talk • contribs) 14:29, 11 August 2007.

To which homepage are you refering to? Both http://www.wikipedia.org and http://en.wikipedia.org still have their search boxes on the same spot. — Edokter • Talk • 19:55, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

hi Edokter, I usually use en.wikipedia.org. And it seems to me it was always at least above the "picture of the day," if not slightly higher. Now it is several screens down (5 screens for me on firefox), when really it should be right at the top next to the welcome message on all the pages. And yes, I do see the link at the top, but that just jumps downs rather than typing in the box there; plus that is only on the welcome page, not every article page too. Just MHO, thanks for your response. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.226.106.239 (talk • contribs) 02:01, 12 August 2007.

I still shows right next to Today's Featured Articel for me in Firfox, so it seemsto be a problem with your browser. Do you have any custom scripts (Mypage/monobook.js) or skins (Mypage/monobook.css) active? — Edokter • Talk • 11:15, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Userpage vandalism

Is it me or has there been a significant drop in userpage vandalism since the latter half of July? I've been looking at userpages which have been vandalised a real lot (mine being one of them) and there seems to be a significant decrease. I'm not complaining! Just thought I'd point it out. Have vandals taken a change of heart or has some sort of protection been inserted into the system? Lradrama 18:32, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Probably due to Bug 9213. This prevents anonymous IPs from getting that "New Messages" bar when you place a message in their talk page. SInce they are not getting warnings, they don't have user pages to vandalize. Maybe this is a good thing?? --_{Hdt83 Chat} 19:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Bug 9213 is not anything new, as far as I'm aware. The bug report merely presents the problem in the form of, well, a bug report. Gracenotes^T § 23:26, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the vandals are tired of vandalizing Wikipedia? --_{Hdt83 Chat} 23:30, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

We're running out of unblocked IPs for them to vandalize from. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it's the bots. The anti-vandal bots are getting better tuned, and the recognize the unique character of those likely to repeat vandalize (all caps, penis, etc.) and revert within a minute. Vandals new and old alike see that kind of thing and get discouraged. ←Ben^B4 06:05, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah well, it's a good thing! Just confused about one thing though - if vandals don't recieve the message alert, do they know if they've got a message then? If so is there point in sending them anymore? Lradrama 18:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

My userbar's gone amuck

My userbar is jumping around the top of the screen! Can someone tell me how to fix it? Here's my Monobook.js. I recently installed Twinkle and then deleted the text. I don't know if popups have to do with it, and I use IE and sometimes Firefox to edit. Thanks a whole lot.--Kkrouni/Ккроунл/ΚκρΩυνι 22:52, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Templates and "What links here"

When a page is linked from a common template, "What links here" will show a lot of pages that actually all include the same template. Would it be possible to group all those pages under the template name? The same goes for "File links" on image pages. --Apoc2400 00:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

That would perhaps be useful, but already you can select a namespace (e.g. Template:) in "What links here", and, if desired, then apply "What links here" to a particular template.--Patrick 00:40, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

"File links" on image pages: Sort Image Links script ∴ Alex Smotrov 03:04, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Getting a list of the most commonly done searches?

There would be many queries done on wikipedia which do not redirect to any page, and give a search result. If we had a list of the most commonly used searches which does not redirect to any articles, we can have list of pages where creating a redirect would be useful. Does something like this exist on wikipedia, or is sometrhing like this planned? Shabda 12:51, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Such a list would be possible to make, but it seems like it would result in too much server load. Roughly (very roughly) 7 searches are made every 2 seconds, and recording all that might be too expensive. Wikipedia used to have a list of Special:Wantedpages, but apparently it was abused, or something. Most redirects are created based on editors' initiative to do so, and this system works. Gracenotes^T § 20:00, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Wantedpages shows missing pages that have links to them (red-links), not things that people have searched for. Mike Dillon 20:23, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Yep, I know. (I remember when it worked, actually.) I was trying to mention that special page in the context of a possible substitute, although it's not active, so scratch that. Gracenotes^T § 20:26, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be done in a similar way to Wikicharts, where every nth search is recorded. Tra (Talk) 21:16, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, that would work perfectly, we just need a random sampling, not an exact break-up. And n can be set up in a way to achieve perfect balance between server load and accuracy of the sample. Shabda 05:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

It is a random sample. It works by running a piece of javascript on each page load which generates a random number from 0 to 6000, and if that random number is equal to 42, the toolserver is called to record the article view. This set-up could then be modified to record the text searched for, rather than the article name. Tra (Talk) 13:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, the answer, as always is 42 Shabda 14:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

3.5/s writes is not excessive for writing to a log file at all. ←Ben^B4 21:25, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

What is the wikipedia development model? If such a change is accepted, what is process to get it coded and hosted on the tool server? Shabda 14:13, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed proposel

this one needs views from a wider audience. Please feel free to go there and comment. Regards, Navou ^banter 19:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Template middot {{·}}

Expert template coders needed to double check a high risk template.

Template middot {{·}} is the dot used for most dotted lists in most navigation boxes here on Wikipedia. So it is used in extremely many articles.

Some day ago on that template's talk page I suggested an improvement of the code for the template, but I have received no responses at all. So before we add the code to the article I would like some experienced template coders to take a look at the code so I didn't miss anything. Because if I have it will effect a big part of the articles...

--David Göthberg 23:36, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I that assume no one had noticed it because you did not use {{editprotected}}. You don't have to, but if you don't, there's not that much of a chance someone will happen to find your suggestion (depending on the template). I've added it; hope this helps. I'll take a look at your comments. Gracenotes^T § 23:41, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

He, I guess I am to careful but I thought some double checking before asking an admin to "immediately edit" the template. Three minutes after I asked here you added the {{editprotected}}, and another three minutes later the admin TKD had responded and copied my code suggestion to the template. Things are moving fast around here! :))

Thanks for the confidence in my code. I checked some articles that use it and ran some more provocation tests. It seems to work perfectly. Now all I have to do is to update the documentation.

--David Göthberg 01:26, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Cape Filchner

I've attempted to add the geo coordinates of Cape Filchner to the upper right-hand corner of the article, but I can't seem to get it to work. What's wrong with it? -WarthogDemon 02:05, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

A quick glance suggests that you're missing the latitudinal coordinates (hence {{{2}}} being displayed). EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:08, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

numbering not working properly

I made a numbered list with four items on a talk page (old revision), and the items are labeled as 1, 3, 4, and 5, skipping the number 2! Is this some sort of bug, or am I doing something wrong? Anyways, I've already submitted a report on Bugzilla. --Ixfd64 03:03, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know why there is this extra list item with style="list-style: none", but it seems due to the span tag before the list.--Patrick 04:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

That's not it, look:

1. a
2. b
3. c

MediaWiki is out of 2s. WTF? ←Ben^B4 04:11, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

And oddly enough, the numbering is working just fine in RfAs (and in a test I just did in my userspace). Hrm. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:16, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

It's because of the unclosed <span class="plainlinks"> in Ixfd64's comment above. If you close with </span> then things return to normal:

1. a
2. b
3. c

That is certainly a bug though. Here is the HTML generated above:

 <p><span class="plainlinks">That's not it, look:</span></p>
 <ol>
 <li><span class="plainlinks">a</span></li>
 <li style="list-style-type: none; list-style-image: none; list-style-position: outside;"></li>
 <li><span class="plainlinks">b</span></li>
 <li><span class="plainlinks">c</span></li>
 </ol>
 <p><span class="plainlinks">MediaWiki is out of 2s. WTF? ←<a href="/wiki/User_talk:BenB4"

Weird. Someone who knows how to work bugzilla should report this. ←Ben^B4 07:57, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist

Earlier today, I went to add articles about Led Zeppelin (the bands article, article on there songs, etc) to my watchlist. I had no problem doing this, but to add all the articles to my watchlist, i had to go every article and add it. I want to watch similar articles on bands like The Who and The Rolling Stones, and was wondering if there was an easier way to add all the articles. Sasha Callahan 04:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

You can use "Edit raw watchlist" (at the top of your watchlist page), and paste in a large list of pages. Might be faster for you. --Splarka (rant) 07:55, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks I'll try that. Sasha Callahan 12:41, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

No. Featured and Good Articles

I swear something strange is going on here. Although a bot is counting the number of good articles on English Wikipedia, it appears to be undercounting. As of the time of this post, the number of GAs according to a bot count is 2,748. But if you go to Category:Wikipedia good articles and ignore the subcategories and first 7 listed articles which are all WP pages and count the good articles from there (by clicking next 200) you should find you have 2,760 good articles. The bizarre thing is if you count backwards from the end using previous 200, you arrive at a smaller number, the same number as the bot count. Now I looked into why there is a discrepancy...the reason is when you count backwards, an article that is between the first article of one page and the last article of the previous page disappears from the listing giving you the apparent smaller number.

This isn't an isolated incident. There are supposedly 1,531 featured articles when again by checking Category:Wikipedia featured articles there seem to be 1,537. But count backwards through the category and again the count is 1,531. What's I can show the larger figure is the correct figure in both cases by simply listing them all in Excel.

Please can someone else look into this matter and see what you make of it. Centy – – 09:41, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

There was a similar issue regarding featured pictures sometime ago, see WT:FP#Discrepancy in the featured picture count. It's probably due to lazy closers not updating the count or people deciding their article is now "featured(tm)". As for fixing it, you'll have to do it the slow way. MER-C 12:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)