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 because 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 needs immediate attention).

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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Page move throttle: already implemented?

Is this true? Happy‑melon 16:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Been there for years, yes. --brion (talk) 16:46, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

What's it set to? Because the fact that we get so many pagemove vandals would seem to indicate that it's not low enough :D. Perhaps we need Special:UsersAtTheirPageMoveLimit?? Happy‑melon 17:22, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

See config files, and particularly here. New users (I guess that means non-autoconfirmed? not sure offhand, would have to check) get 2 moves every two minutes; others get 8 moves a minute; sysops, bureaucrats, and bots are not limited. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:20, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if there's any chance of getting it lowered a bit? Just reducing the burst size to, say, 2 moves in 15 sec would help, since most of the vandal socks get blocked well within one minute of going active. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:10, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Get consensus and file a bug report asking for the change. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:58, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Single user logon

I don't understand how this works. I just went to the Simple English Wikipedia and tried to login with my account here at en., and I was told that I don't have an account there. Isn't SUL supposed to automatically create an account? Is there something I need to do first? Corvus cornix_talk 20:42, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Go to Special:MergeAccount and then it will work :) -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 20:44, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks, Cobi.  :) Corvus cornix_talk 20:52, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou very much, I had no idea about this.  Asenine  08:19, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Information displayed below the edit window

Could someone point me to where the stuff below the edit window is controlled in Mediawiki and help me in filing a request (Bugzilla?) to get more information displayed there, or at least reasons why this might not be possible? Thanks. At the moment, the information displayed seems to be limited to a list of templates transcluded on the page and a list of the hidden categories used. What I would like to see added to this is the behaviour produced by each template, which could be listed next to the template in the handy list under the edit window.

ie. Template X contains Category A and Category B (with piped sort keys S and T), and also calls the DEFAULTSORT (value P) and PAGENAME magic words, and also contains Template W (which would be listed elsewhere in the template list anyway, but it would still be good to have each template list where it comes from). The entry for Template W would also say "transcluded from Template X". If the template behaviour was fully explicated below the edit window, it would be a lot easier to work out some of the effects being produced by those templates. Non-hidden categories can be shown by hitting preview, but for completeness it would be good if all categories on a page were listed also (with the ones produced by a template annotated with the name of the template they are coming from). All magic words in use on a page could also be listed as well, plus anything else that can be difficult to find when looking through a large page of wikitext.

Finally, double instances of a template, category, magic word could be listed as well. In particular, I am thinking here about DEFAULTSORT. Ideally, an error message would show at some stage if a page had more than one DEFAULTSORT on it (only the lower one on the page is actually used). That is really a separate request, but related to the above (the general case would be for conflicts to be listed somewhere - for example, failure to close a formatting or reference tag could be flagged up).

Ideally, I would like:

• (a) Comments and advice on the above.
• (b) Some friendly person to file something at Bugzilla (or point to an existing report).
• (c) A friendly developer to take this on (well, if you don't ask!) - it does seem rather simple - only listing a bit more than what is already displayed about what has been done by the software to actually generate the page (in short, extend the current display to explicate all template behaviour listed by each template, and to list categories, templates, and magic words in use on a page, plus anything else that could be usefully listed - maybe a list of all pages linked from a page?).
• (d) Pointers to existing pages and previous discussions and Mediawiki pages (if relevant).

Can anyone help? Carcharoth (talk) 07:59, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride (talk · contribs) know a great deal about this function. Maybe ask him? MBisanz ^talk 08:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

At a guess, I would expect that implementing all of what you've suggested would be a prohibitively high increase in the computational power needed to display each edit page. It would be nice to have a toolserver tool that does something like that, however; and some of what you've suggested (eg links from a page) are already efficiently compiled and could be fairly easily output (you can get LinksFromPage from the API IIRC). Happy‑melon 11:53, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

My guess is that it would double things. But surely if the software is interpreting the templates, categories and sortkeys it sees on a page when generating the display (which the reader sees), how much more effort is involved in also outputting the result in a logical order below an edit window? I don't know, but if the software already has to do something along the lines of "display template X - include Category tag A and Category tag B - display Magic word PAGENAME, and also transclude template W (which is inside template X)", then can't it just do the same thing twice? Admittedly, the sort keys are not needed until someone loads the relevant category page: "piped sort keys S and T" and the "DEFAULTSORT (value P)" (incidentally, the magic word PAGENAME can be used as a pipe sort key, as a DEFAULTSORT value, or just a normal display magic word). What could be done there is to have a tab or alternative display that allows people to see the sort key values - imagine a version of the category pages with the sort key values displayed alongside the title (eg. George W. Bush (piped sort key "George" in Category:Bush family, or George W. Bush (DEFAULTSORT sort key "Bush, George W." in Category:Presidents of the United States, or George W. Bush (DEFAULTSORT sort key "Bush, George W." called by Template:Lifetime used in Category:Presidents of the United States). My point here is that some people want to use sortkeys (recently) and categories (been done for a long time) in templates, and it is sometimes difficult to work out exactly where a category or sortkey has come from if there are lots of templates in an article. Helping people see where stuff has come from can only be good. As for LinksFromPage - you say that can be done from the API. Why then is links to a page (Special:WhatLinksHere) done by the software? The only reason seems to be that the latter (whatlinkshere) has to be done server-side, whereas links from a page can be handled by parsing the display. If you are saying that all the stuff I mentioned can be parsed from the display, why then is a list of templates used in a page provided below the edit window? That is useful, so why not other similar stuff as well? Carcharoth (talk) 12:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The thing is that the parser which renders pages for display works systematically: it goes through the wikicode looking for a template call, which it replaces with the wikicode of the template with parameters replaced. Then it goes back to the beginning and starts again, and keeps looping round until there are no more templates to replace. The thing is, it doesn't keep a record of what it's done at each stage, and it would require a considerable allocation of memory for it to do so. Complicated pages like WP:LOCE/R or even the main page might require hundreds of parser cycles to fully render; and don't forget that we get dozens of edits every minute and thousands of page views. Compiling all that information every time the edit window is brought up, whether or not it's actually used, would be prohibitively expensive even if it only doubled the processing time. However, something like special:ExpandTemplates which performed this more rigorous analysis would be tremendously helpful in the instances where such a detailed summary was really necessary.

As for LinksFromPage, what I meant by the API note was merely that this information is already compiled by the MediaWiki software and stored in the database tables. Both LinksFromPage and LinksToPage are available through the API; it's just that only one (LinksToPage) has an equivalent human-readable special page (Special:WhatLinksHere). Adding Special:LinksFromHere would be a trivial exercise for a bored developer. Happy‑melon 13:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Where are these bored developers found and what bribes do they accept? :-) On a more serious note, how is the template and hidden category list below the edit windows generated? Surely by your argument, it must be prohibitively resource intensive to generate that each time? Which is why I am saying that careful extension of what is displayed there might not be impossible. Carcharoth (talk) 13:51, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The key thing to remember is that the way things are stored in the database has very little similarity to how they're displayed on a page: a fully rendered article contains information drawn from a wide variety of sources. Any information which can be found by a straightforward search of a database table is going to be relatively efficient, whereas anything that requires additional processing is going to have a high server load. For instance, the list of categories each page is in is generated by a search of the Categorylinks table for all links with a cl_from matching the pageid of the page being rendered. A search of the Page props table with those category names reveals which of them should be considered "hidden". The list of templates found on a page is constructed from the Templatelinks table in a very similar way, and the information about whether or not each template is protected is drawn from the Page restrictions table. As the Categorylinks table contains a field for the sortkey of each category link, displaying the sortkey of each page on the category listing (or even on the article itself) would be trivial in terms of server load; however, the table does not note how the sortkey was generated, so that information could not be efficiently compiled without a massive schema change (the field necessary for generating the "number of page in category" statistics was added last year IIRC - and look how long it's taken to update the database tables). So as I said, some of what you suggest could be implemented very efficiently, and perhaps it should. I'd oppose very much more being added by default to the edit page, because it causes said page to take much longer to load; but more of these statistics should be available through one or more special pages. It's just a case of looking through your wishlist above, browsing the various database tables listed at mw:Manual:Database layout, and working out which ideas translate easily into efficient database queries. Happy‑melon 14:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

There should be no performance problems in doing this. The lists you'd have to maintain are trivial in size, a couple of kilobytes maybe. As you say, the information is already available to the parser, it just has to be noted at each step. How things are stored in the database is irrelevant, since the page is being parsed on previews at least, and I imagine it would be no great ordeal to parse it when you first click the edit link as well (if that doesn't already happen).

It might be fairly involved to implement it, however. I'm not going to volunteer. Adjusting defaultsort to complain if it occurs multiple times would be simple, but I don't know if it's a good idea: you might legitimately want to set it in a template and then override it in the page's main text, or another template. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Ooh. Good. I should look around a bit more, but this does sound promising. About the category totals updating, I'm still waiting for Category:All non-free media to update. Did some process somewhere just give up on that one? Carcharoth (talk) 14:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

512 total: that's a laugh!! I stand corrected on the performance issues: of course, if the page is being parsed anyway, then anything that's a trivial addition to the parser is a trivial addition to the whole process. I'd maintain that doing anything to decrease the efficiency of the pageview parser is unlikely to be popular; given the pageview:pageedit ratio (what is it, 100:1 ? something like that, IIRC) I expect the hypothetical developer who implemented all this would probably write a separate, less efficient but more full-featured, parser to be invoked on editpages and previews. I'd start baking cookies, if I were you, Carcharoth :D. Happy‑melon 14:40, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The maintenance burden of maintaining two separate code paths to do the same thing would far outweigh any minuscule performance benefit from removing a few array pushes. Keep in mind that the parser isn't invoked for the vast majority of views, only for cache misses. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:26, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Well obviously that's your call - I don't have to work with it! I think that, all other things being equal, I'd still prefer to have a comprehensive Special:AnalysePage than more tacked onto the bottom of the edit screen, even if the only benefit is that my edit page loads faster. Happy‑melon 13:21, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

TOCs for major sections?

I'm keen on TOCs (Tables of Contents) in general, for several usability-related reasons. Unfortunately large articles sometimes wind up with a 2-level or 3-level TOC that's more than a screenful in length. Would it be useful and possible to have a multi-part TOC facility, e.g.

Main TOC:

1. Major section 1
2. Major section 2

etc

and then

Major section 1

1.1 Section 1.1

1.2 Section 1.2

etc.

or

Major section 1

1.1 Section 1.1   1.2 Section 1.2   

etc.? Philcha (talk) 12:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

You may find that {{toclimit}} works in some cases, but that's only a partial solution to the problem you describe. --ais523 12:22, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Surely this is un-needed? Perhaps it is just me, but I would find what you are proposing as a problem, and not the current thing. As it goes, surely you can cope with a 1. before your titles in the TOC? On the other hand... I feel I may have misunderstood the question. ¬¬  Asenine  08:16, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Infobox table help

There's an issue with an important template for another project. IE is rendering the tables drastically different from Firefox, etc. I need a lot of help redesigning it so it will look good in both browsers. I have a sample at User:Potapych/Sandbox that's stretched out to its maximum width (The spaces around the images were supposed to be even, but I chose this example because its one of the few instances where this breaks.) I don't want the last line to wrap, and I would like to get it closer to 300px across. The layout also has to stay the same so I can add it back to the template. Potapych (talk) 18:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

It looks the same in FireFox 2.0.0.14 and Internet Explorer 7.0.6001.180000 to me. What is the problem?  Asenine  08:17, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

The two colored rows are too thick in IE. IE also seems to ignore the set width and sizes it to however it wants. I added an extra sample, but the difference is really best seen in an article such as this. I don't know why the real infobox in the article is so much wider than the sample I made. Potapych (talk) 14:53, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Infobox width is a minimum. Normal text will wrap within the defined width, but images force the box width to expand to fit. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:04, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

IE's now rendering tables at different widths, regardless of the text. Someone added new images to the article yesterday and a new problem showed up. I don't know why this table is different from all the other ones, but it would be fine if they all looked like it. (Maybe the row headers should be a bit thinner.) The code in the template is identical until the color and text is selected, so it shouldn't be doing that.Potapych (talk) 22:07, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

ETA, it only does that when the parameter Prepressure is used. It can be found at the end of the template code. For some reason, IE doesn't like it.Potapych (talk) 22:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there somewhere else I can ask? I don't know the difference between toccolours and infobox classes, and I don't know where else to look.Potapych (talk) 20:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Typographical Problems with Wikipedia

I looked through Wikipedia's CSS today. It says that the size for body text is 11 points. I think that we should increase it to 12. I noticed that a line of text displayed at a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels is about 115 characters long without spaces. Next to an infobox, it's about 77 characters long. The ideal length for a line is about 40 characters. Anything over 75 is really hard to read. The most legible sites either use a larger font size or narrow the text block by placing columns to the side of the text. We should also use a serif typeface like Times New Roman for body text. San-serif type styles like Arial are hard to read and are usually reserved for headings.

On another note, I noticed that superscript numerals used for citations here are set in a scientific style. For example, if I wanted to square x, I would type x². But if I wanted to cite a source for x, I should type x.² In Internet Explorer, the former style increases the leading (line spacing) for a line. If we increased the text size, we could also shrink the superscript numerals. I posted these comments on the talk page for the Manual of Style, but was told that I'd need to post them somewhere else to achieve action. So, here I am.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 23:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I can only point out an error, as I'm not sure about the typographical stuff which you have mentioned. The way you stated that you cite sources is incorrect, it should be done with <ref> tags surrounding an entry.  Asenine  08:13, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has several skins available under your preferences, which address your concers. You can also customize your personal CSS through your own monobook.css file. — Edokter • Talk • 11:54, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I think what you say about serif vs sans serif is true for print, but not for reading on the screen (at least not on my screen!), especially for small fonts and/or low resolutions. --Itub (talk) 13:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

You're right. But I still think we'd benefit from increasing the font size by a point and by decreasing the size of superscript numerals. I squared a number above, but it I use a <ref> tag, it is rendered like this: x. It still changes the spacing.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 18:27, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Because Internet Explorer is broken.  :) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:32, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

If you find the text line is too wide (and I agree that 115 is outrageously wide), then don't run your browser full screen, and narrow it to a size you find comfortable.  Randall Bart   Talk  04:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Overlapping letters with HTML or LaTeX

Image:NLC-STL-Insignia.png I am told in Would a text-based recreation of a logo be illegal? in the Policy portion of the Pump that a text version of the image shown at the right would be legal in a user box. So how do I do that? I don't care if it looks exact. If it has red letters on a white background or visa versa with the letters in the correct positions, I will be happy. Will (Talk - contribs) 00:11, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Only way I can think of doing that would be by using the position:absolute div style. But that would be downright awkward and impractical. It also, now I think about it, probably wouldn't work. I am still posting this, as it might give someone else an idea of what to do with the div tag. Also, remember that what you read there has not been through any sort of consensus.  Asenine  08:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

If you could upload the text as images, Template:Superimpose will work. -- penubag  (talk) 08:20, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Anything that would be legal if you uploaded it as text encoded in HTML would be equally legal if you uploaded it as text encoded in SVG. SVG easily allows overlapping letters. For that matter, anything legal in either one would be legal if rasterized to PNG.

On the other hand, the text would also not accurately represent the logo of the team, and so would probably not be useful for encyclopedic purposes. Misrepresenting the logo of a team may not be a copyright violation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it violated trademark law (since it would be a misrepresentation), and anyway it doesn't serve an encyclopedic purpose since it misinforms readers. Moreover, while text alone is not copyrightable, precisely-positioned and -colored text could reach the threshold of copyrightability. In any event you almost certainly shouldn't try to dodge the copyright policy this way; accept the fact that the logo will only be present on a few key pages, don't try to make up pseudo-logos. But that's a separate issue. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I can't use the actual image as I want to use it in a user box. Also, {{Superimpose}} won't help as the text is text. Will (Talk - contribs) 01:48, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you can upload individual type-faces as images licensed as {{PD-font}} and superimpose them over each other to make a composite of what you want. -- penubag  (talk) 05:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I created this image, but I question that {{PD-font}} could be used with it as the image wasn't created to demo characters. Rather, it is meant to reproduce a logo. Please note that the official logo has characters whose outlines are merged — not overlapping. Will (Talk - contribs) 05:53, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia images issue

Resolved

For some reason I am unable to display images this morning (but only on Wikipedia, other sites display them fine). I have tried purging my cache and clearing out all of my private data but to no avail, it still continues. This has only happened this morning - and it may be related to me performing a factory reset on my router, but I do not see why that would affect such a specific site. Strangely, even though all of the images in this image of the problem show no images to be working, the background image and the user image display fine. Any ideas?  Asenine  07:53, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I have just tried, and I can see them when I open them directly (ie. via a url, not a rendered image from the MW software). Strange. I think the two images that do display may do it because they are not resized. All images display normally in IE, but I am certainly not using that hunk of junk.  Asenine  07:55, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming you're using Internet explorer? If so, check to see if you have set a preference to block images from upload.wikimedia.org (if IE has this feature). On my firefox, I was able to get the exact scenario in your screen shot by blocking upload.wikimedia.org -- penubag  (talk) 09:17, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm using FireFox 2.0.0.14. As for blocking, it would have to be all sites because I have now noticed it is happening for any image which is resized via code, HTML or otherwise. Not in IE though, they work in IE.  Asenine  09:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I am going to perform a complete hard reinstall of FireFox. I'll update you when it is done.  Asenine  09:46, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

A hard reinstall with 2.0.0.14 or 3 RC1 still gives the same problems. That said, I think I may have failed to hard install - I might have missed some registry entries as it still had my bookmarks. Everything looks fine in Opera (which I am using now), but this browser is much too complicated to customize for my liking.  Asenine  14:56, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

It is possible that you have some ad blocker that is blocking the images. Check you computer for any software that may do this. But that being said, you claim that other browsers aren't blocking the images so most likely the problem is Firefox. Have you tried Add/Remove utility under the control panel to remove firefox (if you're using a PC)? -- penubag  (talk) 06:41, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

As I said before, I did a hard reinstall (ie. uninstall and then remove what the uninstaller leaves behind). I did have an adblocker on, but I disabled it and it still happens. The newly installed one does not have an ad blocker installed, but it is still doing it. 15:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Some broken anti-virus/firewall software tries to block ads, I believe. You could check for that. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:00, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Turns out it was something to do with a plugin for FireFox. Not sure which one, but I discovered this evening that my hard reinstall actually missed the main folder, and when I deleted that and installed everything was back to normal. Thanks for the help, everyone. :)  Asenine  22:24, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Parenthesis in the URL

Resolved

I recently edited the "Split (gymnastics)" article. Later, I googled "splits" and found this link near the top of the results list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_(gymnastics)

When I follow this link I see an old version of the article, yet when I click on "edit this page" I see my revised code, and then when I click "article" I see the revised page, which my browser shows as being at this url:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_%28gymnastics%29

What's happening here, and what can be done to get the google link to show the revised version?

Lambtron (talk) 13:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like a caching issue, try a hard refresh. xenocidic (talk) 13:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, xenocidic, you are right. I suspected something like this but got thrown off when a different browser showed the same problem. It appears that neither IE nor FF are smart enough to realize that these two urls point to the same target, so they cache two different pages. Lambtron (talk) 14:42, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem, happy editing. xenocidic (talk) 14:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Editing Login Cookies

When I tried to edit the expire date of the login cookies (usually 30 days from login) I experienced problems with some common Firefox-add-ons. For example, the tool Edit Cookies displays "NaN" instead of the current date in the "New Expire Date" fields (at least under Windows 2000; with Iceweasel/Debian it displays the current date correctly). But much worse, any edit will be forgotten after leaving the edit dialog. Cookies from other website (including Bugzilla) can be edited without problems. Could this be a bug or an intentional prohibition of editing these cookies? However, via Opera you can edit the Wikipedia cookies without any problems (and without the need of add-ons), therefore I would guess it's a but, not a feature.--SiriusB (talk) 13:47, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

You might check whether your cookie-editing tools have a known problem working with cookies marked HttpOnly, as our session & token cookies currently are. --brion (talk) 15:31, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure the syntax is right? NaN means 'not a number'.  Asenine  23:23, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Either the syntax of the cookies is buggy or the cookie editor itself, because the NaNs appeared even before my editing trials. But only in Windows; under Linux the date is shown correctly but cannot be edited.--SiriusB (talk) 07:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Single sign-on breaks old bot code

Unifying my bot account has completely broken my bot's login code. I can see how to fix it, but the fix is rather involved, since I would have to completely emulate the cascade of image-load and cookie operations associated with a new-style SSO login. Would it be possible for the SSO mechanism to still be able to recognize just the login cookies in the original domain I am logging into, even when an account is unified for single sign-on and the cross-domain cookies are missing? Otherwise, I'm going to either have to write a load of SSO bot-login code, or have to port it to a framework which already has this implemented. Either of these would be painful, and I'd prefer not to have to do either. -- The Anome (talk) 20:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, is it possible to dis-unify an account? -- The Anome (talk) 20:46, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

You shouldn't need to do any image loading. Just accept the cookies you get on that site you log in on and pass them back for subsequent requests. --brion (talk) 20:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm setting enwiki_session, enwikiUserID and enwikiUserName, which are the three cookies I get back from the login on enwiki. Are there any others I should be setting? -- The Anome (talk) 21:12, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

You should have centralauth_User and centralauth_Session cookies in there as well (and optionally centralauth_Token). Note they'll be set for the parent domain, eg "wikipedia.org" here. --brion (talk) 00:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take a closer look at my cookie-handling code to see how it handles setting cookies in parent domains. -- The Anome (talk) 00:25, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Update: yes, you're quite right, the cookies are all sent in the single HTML transaction. It's clearly a bug in my cookie store code. Thanks. -- The Anome (talk) 00:54, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

enwiki cookies alone not enough to keep a SUL account logged in?

More information re the previous: using a browser, instead of the bot, and using my main (SUL) account, instead of the bot account, and interactively removing all the other wikipedia.org/wikibooks.org/etc. cookies and only leaving the en.wikipedia.org cookies present, effectively logs me out. On the other hand, removing all but the wikipedia.org cookies leaves me logged in.

If this is the case, this would explain my bot problems.

Can anyone else reproduce this? -- The Anome (talk) 23:11, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. btw, you can get an account de-unified here. Algebraist 23:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

javascript in posts

This may be the wrong place to ask this (if so, I apologize) but why is it possible to add JavaScript to an article (or, presumably, any other page)? I noticed in a recent IP edit to The Sims 2 that valid JavaScript was posted; the code executed successfully (it was nothing more serious than document.write() adding an image and caption to the page). I'm no expert on JavaScript, but does this not present a security threat? Thanks, Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 01:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the attempt to add javascript to the page completely failed (it actually seems to have been intended to add some sort of flash ad banner); the javascript code appears as plain text in reference #1. The image comes from the <gallery> tag just above the javascript. Anomie⚔ 01:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see that, now that you point it out. (Don't I feel the fool now...) So the special characters in the code get replaced with HTML entities. I understand, thanks! Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 01:56, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Renaming ro.wikipedia.org into mo-ro.wikipedia.org (Moldovan-Romanian languages)

I would like to ask first of all whether this is the appropriate place on Wikipedia to start this discussion and if it is not, could someone please indicate where should one start it? Thanks--Moldopodo (talk) 01:07, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

This should be discussed on Meta-Wiki. [1] -- penubag  (talk) 06:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

You may want to start by asking at the language subcommittee's talk page (and while you are at it, read the Moldovan language project section). — Note that a Moldovan Wikipedia still exists, although it is locked (it can be read but not edited) following the proposal for closing it. - Regards, Ev (talk) 07:08, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much, I have just created the request on Metawiki[2]--Moldopodo (talk) 11:43, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Login problems

Did something change in the past few hours with respect to logging in and accessing the API? My enhanced watchlist program stopped working, and is now getting an error about not being logged in when it tries to query api.php. --Carnildo (talk) 08:57, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

You haven't just activated SUL, have you? If so, the threads above might be relevant. Algebraist 10:38, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I activated it several months ago, and haven't had a problem until now. --Carnildo (talk) 20:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Customizing a toolbox

Hi to anyone who could help!
How can I customize the “toolbox” we have just below the edit window. I do not need Cyrillic, Greek and IPA scripts and most of the Latin letters (I have non-virtual keyboards for this), but need e.g. mkhedruli alphabet and, most of all, those </br>, <small></small> and others.
Furthermore, is it possible to add to this toolbox templates and some infoboxes I often use?
Many thanks forward for helping! ✓ Kanġi Oĥanko (talk) 15:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Go to the template you are embedding and copy the code into somewhere in your userspace. From there you can remove parts of the code and add too.  Asenine  15:56, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

What about the "other alphabets" ? xenocidic (talk) 16:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Did I find a bug in the history?

Someone put something on this page, but the history shows no contribution [3]. They did not sign it either. I am mystified. Is this a bug? I have never seen this before.--Filll (talk | wpc) 17:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes, you are just seeing a cached version of a page and have to wait a minute or hit the "refresh" button on your browser to get it to update. I see two contributions when I look at the history you linked. --B (talk) 18:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow that is sort of surprising to me. But yes when I refreshed it did show that two had contributed. Even though my post to that page was a long time ago, so there should have been plenty of time for the cache etc to be updated. I feel like a moron.--Filll (talk | wpc) 18:18, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Something is definitely wrong here. Refresh [4]. Sometimes the oldest two edits appear, sometimes they do not. Same is true for [5]. --- RockMFR 18:44, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

This is happening everywhere. Seems to be affecting revisions made around 2008-05-25 and earlier on any recently created pages. --- RockMFR 19:16, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it wrong. I often see messages saying something like "this list may not include revisions in the last xx seconds" (minutes or hours?). I don't know how the servers work but I think you are just getting the history some of the time from a server that hasn't been updated and some of the time from one that has. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 19:21, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Some more examples: [6] [7] [8] --- RockMFR 19:23, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Domas is doing load testing with a MySQL 5.0 server, but it seems to have a damaged data set, which is causing these issues. We're working on it. --brion (talk) 19:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, it's de-pooled and things look stable again. --brion (talk) 19:38, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

m:WikiMiniAtlas disabled?

It looks like the m:WikiMiniAtlas has been disabled or is otherwise broken in the English Wikipedia. It no longer appears on any coordinate pages at all. There's no mention of its removal on the {{coord}} template talk page, the m:WikiMiniAtlas page, or the wiki project. Anyone know what's up? There's also a discussion on this at the help desk -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this change to MediaWiki:Common.js [9]. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:33, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Good catch! I didn't even think to look there! After looking at the talk page, it might well have this this change -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

It is the same change— we are just looking at it differently. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

No, they are different diffs, but I'll move it off of the secure server. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think either of those changes should be causing the problem: mine is to a completely unrelated part of the code, while Brion's shouldn't have any effect unless you're using the secure server. (And no, the globe icon doesn't appear on the secure server, either.) Besides, I think we can usually assume Brion knows what he's doing. :-) The problem might be in m:MediaWiki:Wikiminiatlas.js too, although that page doesn't seem to have changed since April. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I would guess that it may be related to the domain change of the toolserver, but I really have no idea. --- RockMFR 00:17, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Fixed it at least for the URL form I see at San Francisco. There might be others. --brion (talk) 00:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Gee, one week of vacation and suddenly something exciting is happening. Thanks for adding the new toolserver.org URL. That should be it. --Dschwen 16:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Static HTML dumps

I asked here and here about the static HTML dumps being broken since April 2007, but I'm not getting any response. I'd post to the wikitech mailing list, but I can see other people asking the same question there, again with no response. Is there somewhere else I should bring this up? Thanks, Bovlb (talk) 23:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikitech-l or #wikimedia-tech. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Everyone who needs to know about it knows about it. In practice it's probably not going to get fixed until someone with access to run the dumps does some extensive troubleshooting, unfortunately. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I'd be happy to assist in the troubleshooting, if I can be of any use. If it's just a question of scale (a reasonable guess, given that we're getting stuck on en), then maybe it would help to restrict the dump to namespace 0. Bovlb (talk) 17:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I added a track map and coodinates to Pacific Raceways but they won't appear

Resolved

 – My mistake, although I don't know why the image is now showing up. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Why not? What's wrong? Will (Talk - contribs) 03:06, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, Drdisque appears to have fixed it. I seem to have put a pipe before the call to {{Coord}}. I still don't know why the image didn't appear. Drdisque didn't change that. But now the image appears. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The image didn't appear because there was no pipe immediately before 'image='. I've changed the documentation to make this error impossible. Algebraist 17:00, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Pages in namespace

Is there a way to know the number of pages that Wikipedia has in a certain namespace? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benito Sifaratti (talk • contribs) 14:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The closest thing I could find was Special:AllPages, which shows all of the pages in a specified namespace. It doesn't give a number, however. Gary King (talk) 15:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Subpage moves

According to the latest Signpost technology report, subpages can now be moved during a page move. I have been testing this: when you do a move, you not get a checkbox for " Move all subpages, if applicable". When I try this with a user subpage with a subpage, I get:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

    (SQL query hidden)

from within function "Article::insertOn". MySQL returned error "1062: Duplicate entry '2-Gadget850/movetest1' for key 2 (10.0.0.235)".

The main page gets moved, but not the subpage. Any thoughts? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

See bug 14258. MER-C 03:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

This worked for me on my test wiki. I don't know why that error would occur. A shell user needs to look into why it's failing on Wikimedia projects. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Subsection headings heavier font than parent headings?

In my browser (Firefox 2.0.0.9, on an Asus Eee PC running Ubuntu), subsection headings have a heavier font than section headings they belong to, and it looks quite strange. In other words, subheadings look more prominent than their parent headings. What I'm referring to is constructions such as the following where my browser shows "Subsection" as heavier (although smaller) than "Section":

== Section ==

=== Subsection ===

Have section fonts been changed somehow? --87.252.35.199 (talk) 17:06, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. In my memory it has been like this for at least a year or so. Note that the larger heading (level 2) has a pagewide underline though. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:45, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks TheDJ. You mean you too find that "Subsection" has a heavier font than "Section"? If so, I suppose I've just not noticed it until now..--87.252.38.216 (a,k,a, 87.252.35.199) (talk) 19:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

h1 and h2 are for some obscure reason not bold in Monobook; h3 to h6 are. You can fix this with the following additions to Special:MyPage/monobook.css (taken from my own monobook.css):

/* Non-bold headers look ugly on Ubuntu Firefox */
h1, h2 { font-weight: bold; }
.editsection { font-weight: normal; }

—Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Minor Bot Edits "mb"

Resolved

I was recently told that my bot's minor edits should be marked as "mb" instead of just the "m". I only see the option to set the edit as minor and not as "minor bot edit". Am I missing something, or is this an outdated concept? Thanks! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 17:41, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

To get the "b" you need a bot flag. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The bot does have a bot flag see [10]. Then see edit: [11] where it just has an m instead of an mb. Did I miss something? Thanks. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 20:39, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Happy-melon answered my question.

IE won't display tables properly.

I don't know why it does this, but IE renders the small infoboxes a huge tables or very small ones and ignores the minimum width. The text and images are not usually much larger than the minimum width. You can see all kinds of differences here. I don't know why the last table renders somewhat acceptably last table, but it expands once you remove the ≤ from the last row. Other tables with that character act differently, however. I don't know how to fix this.Potapych (talk) 19:41, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Template calculating days passed since given date

Resolved

 – Gary King (talk) 15:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello! Is there something like that? --Tomeczek ^Message 21:08, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

See {{age in days}} or something in Category:Date mathematics templates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly what I was looking for. Thx. --Tomeczek ^Message 22:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist crashing browser

Hi all. I keep finding that when I use IE7 on Windows Vista, clicking on "My Watchlist" causes the browser to crash. Has anyone else noticed such a thing? --RFBailey (talk) 22:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC) PS. Will try to stick to Safari in future....

Same thing here. If I do it a second time though everything works. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 14:31, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

some problems on mediawiki

I intstalled mediawiki.

but. in my wiki,

<source lang="python">
</source>

This syntax is error.

And,

#if{{{sdgsdg}}}

if syntax is error, also.

And, I can't use cite tags. :(

So many errors. :(

I want.

Exactly same en.wikipedia's extentions, configure, etc.

HELP!! :( -- WonRyong (talk) 22:38, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The wikimedia wikis use a large number of extensions in addition to the standard mediawiki software. A list of all extensions installed on a wiki is visible in Special:Version#Installed extensions - you need to download and install any extensions that you think you might need to emulate wikipedia successfully. To fix the problems you've described above, you need mw:Extension:Cite, mw:Extension:ParserFunctions and mw:Extension:SyntaxHighlight. Happy‑melon 22:53, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

button to edit only the lead, aka section=0

I was making a change to the infobox on Hong Kong, and the form is loading all 74KB worth of text everytime I want to preview it, which causes slowness and problems to scroll accurately to the end of the lead on the edit box. I have similar problems editing the lead of long articles.

Can we have a little button that lets me edit only the stuff that is before the first section header? I see that it's already implemented by using "&section=0" on the URL, but I can't find any nicely placed button to access it easily with one click --Enric Naval (talk) 13:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Check the box that says "Add an edit link for the lead section of a page" in the gadgets section of your preferences. Graham87 13:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

ChipIn for Wikiprojects

I like the Wikipedia:Bounty board, but I see WikiProjects as not having the same support it affords to articles. If, for example, someone wanted to set http://www.chipin.com/ on a Wikiproject, there would be no way to mark that up. Does the Foundation have the technical capability to fund WikiProjects as well as particular tasks? 76.240.230.195 (talk) 17:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

In case that was not clear, such money would be apportioned into bounties, for example. 76.240.230.195 (talk) 17:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki anti-spam measure disables BlackBerry edits

The anti-spam check measure added to the html source code on May 22 has resulted in a problem for BlackBerry users attempting to edit. Now, the edit screen (when using the BlackBerry's browser), produces just the anti-spam editform box and legend "Do not fill this in!". The rest of the screen is garbled/unusable.

Can the developers take a look at this so that us crackberry/wiki addicts aren't deprived of the ability to edit/reply to Talk pages using our BlackBerrys? JGHowes ^talk - 19:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

This issue is not affecting all blackberries, I just made an edit from one without an issue, as long as I didn't put anything in the "dont fill in this box" section. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

This is what comes of relying on CSS to hide things, I guess. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Temporal histories - feature request

I've made a bugzilla report here: [12]

This feature request is simply to allow users to view article histories by time rather than number when they choose. So one could view a list of all the revisions to an article in the last day, week, month, ect. on one page.

Any thoughts? --ÐeadΣyeДrrow (Talk - Contribs) 07:14, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Wth?

How comes now that i login here it seems to log me in to other areas of Wikimedia? Simply south (talk) 11:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

This should be happening if and only if you have activated your global account at Special:MergeAccount. Algebraist 12:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

sarju nagar karenti rod kunda p.b.h.

Saleem khan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.189.142.238 (talk) 16:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

What happened to the fraction "buttons"?

What happened to the fraction "buttons" (1/2, 1/3, 2/3, etc.) below the article text edit window? They were very handy to insert the symbols into an article. Should I take their removal as a Wikipedia WP:MOS "rule" they should not be used in articles? — X96lee15 (talk) 16:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the history for MediaWiki:Edittools, "Please don't use Unicode superscripts, subscripts, and fractions in article text - it creates accessibility problems. Use the <sup> and <sub> tags instead, or TeX for formulas." I don't see anything in Wikipedia:Accessibility on this, so I'm not sure what the problem is. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

And by doing this the editor has made it impossible to enter for example fractions of an inch, and suggests installing software (i.e. :LaTeX) to allow you to continue to edit. So much for the "Encylopedia Anybody Can Edit" - well anybody if they are willing and able to install software items on their computer and edit off line. The arrogance of some users is amazing.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

With superscript and subscript one can type 1¹/₂" and get 1¹/₂", but it is far from ideal - too many clicks. DuncanHill (talk) 17:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

No... LaTeX is software installed here, on Wikipedia. You can use it to insert formula using the <math> tags. See WP:MATH. — Edokter • Talk • 17:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

So typing 1<math>\frac{1}{2}</math>" gives 1${\frac {1}{2}}$", which looks crap. DuncanHill (talk) 18:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Or try this 1<math>\tfrac{1}{2}</math> which gives 1${\tfrac {1}{2}}$", which also looks crap. DuncanHill (talk) 18:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree. Pages like 1959 Ryder Cup would look terrible without the ½ character. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

They have been restored - ½⅓⅔¼¾⅛⅜⅝⅞woohoo! Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 18:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That was me, because there is clearly no consensus for their removal. This needs more discussion at WT:MOS or somewhere. Happy‑melon 18:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, thank you very much!!! — X96lee15 (talk) 19:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with 1+1⁄2″ ? --Random832 (contribs) 20:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks ugly (the 2 goes below the line), and where did you find out how to type it? DuncanHill (talk) 20:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

{{frac}}. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:30, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but how did you find it? DuncanHill (talk) 20:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That is a very good question. We have a lot of good templates, but the organization stinks. If I have a job that needs a template I've never used before, I use Special:PrefixIndex and look in template space for a logical name— this really works a lot of times. Other times, I use a template because I saw it used somewhere else. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, the template documentation page itself for {{frac}} shows problems in my brower (IE7), with truncated text. I stopped using frac for simple fractions (like ½) long ago for this reason. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Random832 asks, "What's wrong with 1+1⁄2?″ The apparent grounds for rremoving the fraction "buttons" is "Please don't use Unicode superscripts, subscripts, and fractions in article text - it creates accessibility problems". 1½ (Unicode) is a lot more accessible than 1+1⁄2 (using the frac template) because:

• Decent screen reader programs can handle Unicode, which has been the dominant character encoding since about a year after the launch of Windows XP.
• +1⁄2 (using the frac template) generates the following HTML (which I got by using my browser's "View source" facility on this page):

<span style="white-space:nowrap"><s style="display:none">+</s><span class="template-frac">¹<big>⁄</big>₂</span></span>

which produces an adequate visual representation of the fraction ½ but which no screen reader software is ever likely to interpret as a fraction. Philcha (talk) 21:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so sure about that, though of course real evidence can only be obtained by testing various screen readers, which I haven't done. Still, stripping away the HTML markup, that boils down to "+1⁄2", where the "⁄" is a Unicode fraction slash. I seems at least reasonable that a screen reader should read that as "one half", or at least "one slash two". Certainly it's less ambiguous that just plain "1/2" using an ordinary slash. (Oh, and on the other hand, "¼", "½" and "¾" are long-established ISO Latin 1 characters, so it seems at least misleading, even if technically correct, to label them "Unicode fractions".) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:39, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The only screen reader I am slightly familiar with is JAWS, and it seems quite popular. Checking their support page,[13] it supports all of the Unicode characters, including fractions. Not an exhaustive study. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 23:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

&frac12 ;, &frac14 ;, and &frac34 ; (remove the spaces; nowiki doesn't work here) work if you don't want to scroll down for those three. --NE2 00:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to be the cause of so much trouble...the fractions are fine really, and I shouldn't have removed them. My problem is with the Unicode superscript characters.

HTML superscript: E=mc²

Unicode superscript: E=mc²

As you can see the HTML superscript is much easier to read. Also, if you're trying to search for a number in a superscript, you can't if the Unicode superscript character was used unless you copy-and-paste it into the search box. Searching is easier if the <sup> tag is used instead because you can search for "2" instead of "²". —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Sort user contributions

How do I get a list of a particular user's contributions sorted by the number of characters they added in each contribution? Thanks! --Pascal666 (talk) 17:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist notice undismissal

How does one undismiss the notices at the top of the watchlist? I tried to dismiss the notice about the bot article-creation proposal, and it dismissed the notice about the elections too. DuncanHill (talk) 18:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Try pasting the following JavaScript into your address bar:

javascript:void(document.cookie = "hidewatchlistmessage-17=no; path=/");

That should undo the effects of your dismiss click. (You may need to use higher numbers than 17 if the watchlist was updated since I wrote this.) --ais523 18:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that worked (shame we can't dismiss individual messages though!) DuncanHill (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think that both of them should have been clustered like that. The board stuff is in the sitenotice everywhere else; sticking it on the watchlist doesn't make much sense. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Strange behaviour with "what redirects links here"

I was checking the list of redirects that link to an article, using the filters that had been added recently to the mediawiki interface for Wikipedia, and I came across some strange behaviour. It seems that if you use a template on a redirect (for instance, the "unprintworthy redirect" template), and the template has a link in it, then if you use the filters to generate a list of "what redirects link here" for the article linked in the template, then all the redirects with the template on them show up in the list as well. Is this a feature or a bug? This also happens if a page contains wikilinks elsewhere on the page as well as the redirect markup. For examples, see User:O'Malley II, Talk:The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis and User:Viper1928374/Sandbox. All three of these redirects were redirected without blanking or archiving properly first (edit them and you will see what I mean). Because they have "The Lord of the Rings" linked on the page somewhere, they are showing up in the list of redirects pointing at 'The Lord of the Rings'. Again, is that a feature or a bug? (And a side note - can I 'fix' those pages, or is that not acceptable?). Carcharoth (talk) 21:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible for an expression to return a user's last edit date & time ?

User:SoxBot V was indefinitely blocked today, sending us back to the dark ages as far as status updates go. Is there any expression that will return the date and time of a users last edit? Could this possibly be implemented? (Having this would allow a workaround for status indication that did not require a bot). xenocidic ( talk ¿ listen ) 23:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Since this is a WP:PERF issue, any ideas that come up really should be run by a dev before someone implements it. MBisanz ^talk 23:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• The status bots were helpful, and since they have been shutdown by the dev's having another method to query this information would be helpful, but seems to beg for the perennially denied request for user variables... — xaosflux ^Talk 23:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Internal error

I get a strange error on my main account user:stefan since now, when clicking on a diff link, history or edit button I get a page called internal error with the following stack trace

Detected bug in an extension! Hook CentralAuthHooks::onGetUserPermissionsErrorsExpensive failed to return a value; should return true to continue hook processing or false to abort.

Backtrace:

1. 0 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Title.php(1156): wfRunHooks('getUserPermissi...', Array)
2. 1 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Title.php(1055): Title->getUserPermissionsErrorsInternal('rollback', Object(User), true)
3. 2 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/PageHistory.php(268): Title->getUserPermissionsErrors('rollback', Object(User))
4. 3 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/PageHistory.php(621): PageHistory->historyLine(Object(stdClass), Object(stdClass), 1, false, true, true)
5. 4 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Pager.php(270): PageHistoryPager->formatRow(Object(stdClass))
6. 5 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/PageHistory.php(138): IndexPager->getBody()
7. 6 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(503): PageHistory->history()
8. 7 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(59): MediaWiki->performAction(Object(OutputPage), Object(Article), Object(Title), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
9. 8 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/index.php(92): MediaWiki->initialize(Object(Title), Object(Article), Object(OutputPage), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
10. 9 /usr/local/apache/common-local/live-1.5/index.php(3): require('/usr/local/apac...')
11. 10 {main}

Special things with this account are 2.

• It is not a unified account and another unified account exists
• and I did this edit yesterday day, now impossible for me to revert it, looking at the logs it looks to have something to do with user so is probably SUL related but you never know. If any sysop sees this please revert the edit, not sure how to prove I'm that user since I can not do any edits, but most edits on this users userpage is done by the user stefan so it should be a good indication :-) email is confirmed for the user but I might not answer so soon. StefanBot (talk) 01:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)