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::I'm running FireFox 3 on WinXP. When I focus on the first box, tab takes me to the right box, then down left, right, etc. as expected. --—<i><b>—&nbsp;[[User:Gadget850|<font color = "gray">Gadget850&nbsp;(Ed)</font>]]<font color = "darkblue">&nbsp;<sup>[[User talk:Gadget850|''talk'']]</sup></font></b> - </i> 20:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
::I'm running FireFox 3 on WinXP. When I focus on the first box, tab takes me to the right box, then down left, right, etc. as expected. --—<i><b>—&nbsp;[[User:Gadget850|<font color = "gray">Gadget850&nbsp;(Ed)</font>]]<font color = "darkblue">&nbsp;<sup>[[User talk:Gadget850|''talk'']]</sup></font></b> - </i> 20:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

== Add a css class to the fundraiser notices ==

Please add a descriptive css class like "fundraiserNotice" to the fundraiser notice (the one that's wasting a huge amount of screen real estate on everyone's screens on every article in the entire project for months at a time), so that we can block it with adblockers. I know I can block class siteNotice, but I don't want to block ''every'' site notice; just the fundraisers.

Revision as of 20:36, 11 December 2008

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 
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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.

Re. Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_38#Preview_comments

I'm creating a new thread for that topic because it died out back then, but no one objected either. Do people think those ideas should be implemented? I think it would improve preview, which is already a very useful tool. -- Mentisock 16:30, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is about (re-)moving the "This is only a preview page" message as it allegedly interferes with the article rendering. I do not yet see a need for it as templates are substituted for previews and we do not care about pixel-exact positioning. Maybe you could explain your problems in more detail.Cacycle (talk) 00:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it's an entire heading and plain text... it's not about being pixel-exact but it takes space in the actual page (which should be just about previewing what the changes will really look like, and as it is even previewing the page without changes renders a differently-styled page because of the notice) solely to remind the editor (redundant with so many reminders - at least shouldn't there be an option to turn it off?). And about the templates - substed templates aren't rendered in the previewed edit box (like I can't just try to {{subst:test}}, preview it and then be able to preview the substituted code as well). Although I suppose there might be some technical restrictions on the latter one. -- Mentisock 17:42, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
{{subst:test}} expands as expected for me and I still do not see your problem - or is this a joke? Cacycle (talk) 03:22, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That template would only expand upon saving the page, thus necessitating test edits for experimentation. And... how possibly could this be a joke? O_o A minor problem maybe, but why would I post here if it wasn't real? -- Mentisock 13:25, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
They seem to expand on preview for everybody else... Cacycle (talk) 01:59, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
...
[1]. -- Mentisock 09:06, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see nothing wrong with the current preview. WP is not a text editor, it is an encyclopedia. If after saving you don't like what you get, just go to history and hit undo. 199.125.109.90 (talk) 16:27, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Neither do I, but then again, it works for me. – Alex43223 T | C | E 02:23, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Use of external data for internal calculations

In the discussion at Rupee-dollar conversion, I proposed copying the U.S. Government historical tables for the rupee-dollar conversion multiplier to be used in a monetary conversion template. However, it would be easier if Wikipedia could tap into free external conversion tables (such as available at U.S. Federal Reserve) for internal conversion template usage. Is there a way to do this with Wikipedia software? -- Suntag ☼ 14:16, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What, you want to put all us editors out of work? What would we do for income? 199.125.109.90 (talk) 16:31, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently we'd convert money for profit :-) Nyttend (talk) 23:03, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Help with database dumping?

I was told to come here after asking elsewhere. Apologies if I'm in the wrong place yet again. I was wondering if someone could help me, or point me to someone or somewhere that could, convert a database dump to multiple, non-treed base-raw html pages. I've already followed the somewhat bland instructions at Wikipedia:Database but never get quite the results I needed.
I have http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20080724/enwiki-20080724-pages-meta-current.xml.bz2. I want to convert the uncompressed code (using ANY programs) to multiple html pages. The result I'm looking for at the end is to have pages the equivalent of going to every page and clicking save:as... and just have a bunch of html files in a folder. Am I missing something? Lostinlodos (talk) 03:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Those database dumps are in wiki code and not HTML - you're looking for something like static.wikipedia.org/downloads/2008-06/en/wikipedia-en-html.tar.7z (14 GB, example page). Unless you feel like splitting the dump into individual pages and running them through an offline version of the parser as required it looks like you're in for another long download. MER-C 09:43, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mer-c, is that going to give me the complete en wikipedia site in html form? I wouldn't mind another download if it's what I was looking for initially and saves me the time of converting code. Lostinlodos (talk) 18:56, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, you'll get a big tarball of (HTML) pages like the one I linked to. The problem is that they are six months out of date. MER-C 01:03, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it would be useful if you gave some background what you're hoping to extract from the dump and for what purpose; and then we might be able to point you to the easiest/most suitable format. —Sladen (talk) 01:27, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For lack of better way to put it, I plan to read, from a frozen snapshot, wikipedia. Page by page. Lostinlodos (talk) 04:45, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just in one language? That could take a while. At five-minutes per articles, it would take 24.5 years; if you were planning to sleep each night, it would could be 37 years—and with the weekends off—52 years! Did you have a specific area you wished to focus on? —Sladen (talk) 04:56, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But it doesn't take five minutes to read a stub. ;-) Meanwhile, a featured article on a complex subject could take two hours to get through. And are we factoring in the distraction variable? :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:59, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I guess this is not the right path either. I'm not looking for "stubs". I'm looking for creating a mirror in HTML format.
I'm looking for an alternative to: I type in en.wikipedia.org and click ctr+s. If I were to type in SLI in the search box and then do a ctr+s. Then type in carpet and do a ctr+s, then type in pencil and do a ctr+s. To be clear, if wikipedia had only three articles, I would have downloaded wikipedia. I'd like to download 'something' and then end up with all of wikipedia's articles likewise in a single folder of many individual HTML pages. Does that make more sense? As for 5 minutes per article, I do read a bit faster than that. ;) Lostinlodos (talk) 14:59, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To echo MER-C, it sounds like http://static.wikipedia.org/downloads/2008-06/en/wikipedia-en-html.tar.7z is what you're looking for, but to be honest, I'm not sure what use it really is. Its a 14 GB compressed file. I don't feel like downloading the entire thing to test, but a test with the much smaller Abkhaz Wikipedia gave nearly a 7.1-fold increase in size on decompression, so the full en.wikipedia one would be more than 98 GB, and the dump doesn't include images. Most computers capable of handling that probably have an internet connection. Mr.Z-man 02:16, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Many thnks, It appears that is exactly what I'm looking for, no images, no nonsense, raw HTML that I can read as pure text files. Thanks everyone!Lostinlodos (talk) 02:57, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

6 Tabs For All Projects

I don't care how the tabs are arranged, be they 3 by 2 or 6 by 1, but 6 tabs, instead of 4 needs to be implemented.

What I am talking about is that, say, for this page, we have "project page", "discussion", "edit this page", and "history", at the top. These are for navigational, editing, forensic, and learning purposes. Now, this isn't very user friendly, and people have argued that having 6 instead of the 4 we have now would make it more clumsy. And that if anons made an account, they could use CSS to implement this. Well some anons don't like making accounts. And it is more clumsy right now, and confusing, where by pressing the discussion tab, and then edit, it is counter-intuitive. People also lose thoughts, depending on their connection speed, by having to wait for extra pages to load. It's even hard to understand with the 4 tabs switch over system that is used right now.

Another problem are the templates: going to Template:Navbox Province of Italy, at its top left corner, you will see v • d • e. This too needs the 3 other analogs. You can put them in 3 by 2, or 6 by 1, but for the same reasons above, specifically for server resource times/loading times and userfriendlyness/navigational ease.96.53.149.117 (talk) 12:46, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

These are two separate issues. The tabs at the top of the page are controlled by settings in the MediaWiki software. The vde links are within the {{Navbox Province of Italy}} template and are a function of the {{Navbox}} template it is based on; other templates may not have vde links. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 13:40, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I really would never want someone to add a comment on the discussion page without seeing what was there already. As to losing your thoughts, keeping a notepad open for those works well. 199.125.109.90 (talk) 16:37, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Own Wiki

I would like to set up my own Wiki site (not to create an encyclopedia!) and wonder what is the best way. I would anticipate that, at most, it would have 1,000 contributors and perhaps 50 concurrent users. Should I have a company host the MediaWiki software for me? Is there a company that allows you to "spawn" a whole new MediaWiki installation? Any advice on the best way to go, would be appreciated. Twotinsofbeans (talk) 16:08, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This page is for technical questions about Wikipedia. Try Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing. Algebraist 16:10, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to run your own MediaWiki-based wiki, you (or someone who works for you or on your behalf, such as a system administrator) should read everything linked under WP:EIW#MediaWiki. The more you know about what you're doing before you start, the easier it will be. Setting up your own wiki, and making it work, is a nontrivial task. It's relatively easy to download and install MediaWiki, but what you get is a very bare-bones wiki, which lacks many features you will sorely miss if you have much experience editing on a well-developed wiki such as Wikipedia. So you have to learn about how to port features from Wikipedia to your own wiki. Then the software is only half the challenge - the other half is to build your user community. Wikipedia is by comparison an online paradise because here we have thousands of skilled, motivated, and benevolent users. When you start a new wiki from scratch, you face a chicken and egg problem - your wiki will suck until you have an established community of expert users to make everything nice, but until you get that community, few people will want to join your wiki (because it will suck). It's very hard for a new wiki to get over that initial hurdle. Obviously it helps if you already have a few dozen expert wiki users who want to join your project, but if you did, then I suspect you would not need to ask here for advice. But don't let this discourage you, lots of people have faced these problems and overcome them. You just have to be smart and determined. Perhaps the easiest way to get started experimenting on your own is to set up a Wiki on a stick, for which you only need your own computer, without the complications of working on a server. (You can also use the wiki on a stick method to make local working backup copies of your wiki, when you get it running on a server. This protects you and your users against catastrophic loss of data.) This type of question comes up on the Help desk from time to time; you can read some previous answers with this search:
--Teratornis (talk) 18:49, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I notice that your contributions under this account are not extensive. If you don't have much editing experience on Wikipedia, you might consider gaining experience here before starting your own wiki. The Wikipedia community has worked out the whole process of how to build a wiki better than almost anyone else. If you accumulate a few thousand edits here, you will have absorbed many subtle lessons that you will need when you run your own wiki, and on your own wiki there might not be anyone there to teach you. It would be much harder to reinvent on your own all the wheels that Wikipedia has already invented. --Teratornis (talk) 18:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with you Twotinsofbeans I like Wikipedia, and helpful people like Teratornis; but I also like the feeling of not having people hovering over my shoulder, waiting to huff an article the moment I create it, or argue and argue over some little edit or link. You can learn by following examples and getting tips, like the useful ones here, but you also learn by doing. Good luck on your Wiki and your time here. :-) Yartett (talk) 01:03, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What's up with the invisible graphic on the Wikipedia homepage? [SOLVED]

There's a non-showing graphic (new, I guess — I've seen the little box for it for about a week) at the very top of the international Wikipedia home page. It doesn't show up on either of my browsers (AOL or IE6, on a PC). What's the problem, and when is it going to be fixed? Thanks. Softlavender (talk) 05:10, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You mean http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/thumb/7/7c/Wikipedia-word.png/174px-Wikipedia-word.png? It seems to be another 0 byte image. Algebraist 05:13, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's it. I can't even see it when I click that link. What's up with it, and when is it going to be fixed? Softlavender (talk) 05:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Is that image one of those that got lost in that image server wipe-out a bit earlier? Or do we have a different problem? Calvin 1998 (t·c) 06:08, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, the problem is that the image is supposed to contain something, but for some reason it doesn't, probably because it got deleted server-side. Calvin 1998 (t·c) 06:09, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me, though this is what it is supposed to look like. MER-C 11:36, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me now as well... Calvin 1998 (t·c) 20:26, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At {{LGV Est}} there are a couple of external links that contain spaces; what can I do to make them render properly? ChrisDHDR 13:21, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Try replacing the space with the entity %20 (example: http://www.example.org/URL%20with%20spaces)
-=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=- 15:03, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the help though shouldn't this be put somewhere for people with the same problem? ChrisDHDR 15:35, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It and other character conversions are at Help:URL. See Special:WhatLinksHere/Help:URL for pages which currently link to it. Maybe some others like Wikipedia:External links also should. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:21, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The easiest way to convert links would be to copy and paste them from the browser URL field after you've visited the site. I don't know of a browser that leaves the space as-is. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reviving topic (Optimize template code)

I'm here to mention an archived topic that nobody seemed to respond. It's about simplifying a template code, which has obvious repetitions. I wonder if that issue is a bit too "technical" for the guys here. Hytar (talk) 22:15, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CSS for lists without bullets

Templates like {{Mozart operas}}, which currently use <br /> to separate list items, should be marked up as proper lists, with the bullet styling removed to preserve the current appearance.

I've created a sandbox version at User:Pigsonthewing/scratchpad, using list-style-type:none on the parent wrapper, but that doesn't work and I can't figure out how to use styling in wiki mark-up to remove bullets. Can anyone assist, please? (Feel free to edit my scratchpad page.)

Once the style is perfected, I intend to ask for it to be moved to the main stylesheet, and applied with a class. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 00:29, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can't really do it with wikimarkup, as the square bullets come from a style applied to the <ul> rather than the table. So to do it, you'd have to make the table with HTML:
<ul style="list-style-type:none; list-style-image:none">
<li>''[[Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes]]'' (1767)</li>
<li>''[[Apollo et Hyacinthus]]'' (1767)</li>
<li>''[[Bastien und Bastienne]]'' (1768)</li>
</ul>
produces:
--Mr.Z-man 01:14, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, but there is definitely a way to do it. It's done on {{flatlist}}, but I can't recall, or work out, how. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
{{flatlist}} uses class="horizontal". If you want to go that route, create a new class and propose it gets added to MediaWiki:common.css. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You could also simply use ":" (which outputs a defenition list using <dd>):
Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes (1767)
Apollo et Hyacinthus (1767)
Bastien und Bastienne (1768)
Only drawback is the slight indent. — Edokter • Talk • 21:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Search results "stuck"

I have put some time into removing every instance of the string "United World Chart" from Wikipedia, and, so far as I can tell, there is only one occurrence left (legitimate, because it's in quoted text inside a reference). I got rid of the remaining 1200 last week. However, when I use MediaWiki search to look for "United World Chart" to make sure people don't add references back in, I consistently get 40 results, day after day. How long will it take for the search function to catch up to reality? On the flip side, how long between the time that someone adds it back and it showing up in the search?—Kww(talk) 03:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good question, same happens for me. How long does it take? – Alex43223 T | C | E 09:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can see, all of these are valid hits. Remember that the search searches the wikitext not html. So if you look at the wikitext, you'll see "United World Chart" as a template parameter. The index is updated daily (early morning GMT), and you can see the date of the indexed page as Date: on the search results. --rainman (talk) 11:03, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'd swear I checked for that five times, but there it is, plain as day. Thanks.—Kww(talk) 11:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Search results "stuck" redux

Worked for 39 out of 40 articles. However, a search for "United World Chart" in quotes still returns World as a result, and I cannot see why.—Kww(talk) 12:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You mean UWC? Some data (like links to the page) are cached with the article in the index for performance. I've made a null edit to this article, that should clear it in next index update. --rainman (talk) 18:25, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Entering "wiki:" into search box redirects to http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?

Something Rdunn (talk · contribs) discovered[2]: When you type "wiki:" into search box, it redirects to http://c2.com/cgi/wiki instead of showing the "bad title" message. Anyone have an idea why that happens? Oo Regards SoWhy 12:51, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's listed on meta:Interwiki map. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I knew someone here was quick to know. Thanks for the info :-) SoWhy 13:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Placement of deletion drop down bases is broken

The drop down link menu for deletion bases when performing deletions is no longer automatically choosing the bases associated with the deletion tag, i.e., when you attempt to delete an article tagged with db-bio, the reason for deletion field no longer automatically places, "A7 Bio: No indication that the article may meet guidelines for inclusion". Anyone know what's causing this?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:38, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely cause is something you've changed in User:Fuhghettaboutit/monobook.js recently, breaking MediaWiki:Sysop.js. Check your error console or try another skin temporarily (like action=delete&useskin=myskin ). --Splarka (rant) 08:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist to show most recent edit tag - "top"

Is there any way for the watchlist to add the "top" tag as is done on the other similar lists such as "my contributions" and "user contributions" It would be a great help to see at a glance that the edit was the most recient edit on a page

Examples:

Dbiel (Talk) 19:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It only shows top edits anyway. They may not be top by the time you get to them, but since the watchlist is static until you refresh, there's nothing it can do about that. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:04, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The static point is no different that the other lists ie "user contributions". That is not a problem, as you said, all you need to do is refresh. I just do not see what would be so difficult to make the watchlist function the same as the user contributions list. Dbiel (Talk) 22:57, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly are you asking for? Your watchlist will show ONLY top edits, which isn't the case in the 'user contributions' list. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:19, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What are you talking about? I will outdent and post a small section from my watchlist
It definately shows a lot more that just the top edits, which I happen to like. It just does not include the top tag on the most recent edit, which is what I would like to see changed. Dbiel (Talk) 23:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is only if you have "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" enabled in your Wikipedia preferences (Watchlist section) --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am aware of the "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes". What I would like to see is the (top) [rollback] which appears on the user contributions" list, but not on the watchlist. Dbiel (Talk) 01:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But you failed to inform the others of having enabled this, which confused them, because they were assuming the default behaviour, in which the (top) marker makes not sense. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the confusion; so I guess the correct question would then be: With Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes enabled, is there any way to display the (top) marker (tag) to identify the most recent edit? It would then be consistant with the "user contributions" page Dbiel (Talk) 05:58, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure this has probably been discussed before somewhere, but would it be possible for the section title that is automatically generated in an edit summary to be a link to that section header? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 21:06, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What's wrong with clicking on the little arrow thing? Algebraist 21:08, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's a little indistinct. I assume JohnnyMrNinja had just never known about it, as I didn't for a good month or so. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the information. I have over 8,000 edits and I never noticed that the arrow was actually a link. Dbiel (Talk) 23:01, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, hey, there's an arrow there... I guess that answers what's wrong with it. I know most people just edit from their PC, but I actually can't see that character from my smartphone. Linking the text instead of a non-standard character might make it useful for everyone. I don't know how it does with a screen-reader. Also, I just think that if the text were linked it would be much more intuitive. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 19:23, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Which articles are in a non-existent category?

It's easy to find out which pages link to a non-existent article, but how do I find out which pages are in a non-existent category? Specifically, I went to category:Coordinate geometry and clicked on "edit" and then on "what links here" and found nothing, although there was an article that bore that category tag. (The article was law of tangents, from which I removed the tag because it doesn't fit even if there were such a category.) Michael Hardy (talk) 23:45, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

...OK I figured it out: just use the "preview" button. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:51, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I asked this question mid-November at Wikipedia talk:Colours but to no response. Maybe it will get better reception here: What are the hex codes for the colors shown in Wikipedia internal links?
-What color is the link to this unvisited page?
-What color is the link to this non-exsistant page?
I noticed these colors are different from <font color="blue"> and <font color="red">. Also, what are the colors to visited, existing pages (they're more of a purple color)? Thanks for your help, Arbitrarily0 (talk) 03:01, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Somewhat skin dependant but some of the defaults are:
A standard wiki link you have not visited yet = 002bb8
A standard wiki link you have visited = 5a3696
A non-exsistant page you have visited = a55858
An external link = 36b
See Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes for links to all the information And more specificly to the default skin see http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css which was used to find the above color codes Dbiel (Talk) 05:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Dbiel! I placed a copy of your note back at Wikipedia talk:Colours. Arbitrarily0 (talk) 21:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And we have a help page at Wikipedia:Link color. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 20:36, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"New external links" that do not exist

When I edit Wikipedia articles, I often do it from a text-only environment using lynx. Because I do not have an account with Wikipedia (and have no intention of having one), this prevents me from posting any new external links because I cannot pass the anti-spam captcha test.

I have no problem with this, but I do get annoyed when I am told that my edit includes new external links but it does not.

Just now I tried to add a response to the current version of a Reference Desk item, WP:RD/E#NFL playoffs, and teams with 2 ties, and was incorrectly told that my edit included new external links. I then backed up, edited the item again, and tried saving it without adding or changing any content -- and I was still told that my edit included new external links.

What is going on here and can it be fixed?

In case it matters, the current oldid for WP:RD/E as I write this is 256982623; of course I can't post a direct link to that version of the page because a URL would be treated as an external link.

(Please direct any replies here and not to the talk page for my IP address, which is shared.)

--208.76.104.133 (talk) 06:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It just let me make an IP edit to the page without bringing up any kind of WP:EL warning. (Mac OSX + Safari.) Are you in a position to try making the same edit both with Lynx and with MSIE or similar and see if you get the same message with both? If not, we'll know it's a bug in Lynx and not in the MediaWiki software. – iridescent 16:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tracing templates from categories

Is there possibly no way to find out which templates (transclusions utilizing includeonly) are populating a particular category? -- Mentisock 09:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How does one influence the height of cells in tables?

Is it possible to use height the same way as one can use width to control the size of cells in tables?

For example, when using sub tables in a parent table, setting the sub table width to 100% will cause the sub table to be "evenly" spread across the cell in the parent table. However, setting height to 100% does not cause the sub table to be spread in any way up and down the cell in the parent table.

Setting the height of the sub table to a set number of pixels does cause the sub table to be a minimum height, but this does not cause the rows in the sub table to be spread at all over the full height.

Setting the height to a percentage does not seem to work at all, using either the deprecated height="100%" or using style="height:100%;".

Any ideas on how to get a table's rows to be spread evenly vertically over the available height?

Peet Ern (talk) 10:29, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thumbnail Generation Broken

Derwent river as seen from Poimenna Reserve, Austins Ferry

All of a sudden thumbnail generation for the attached image is broken. This isn't good etc. Any suggestions for a fix? Noodle snacks (talk) 12:20, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The image is 16.7 MB and and 12919x1892 pixels: quite a lot to process whenever one just needs a thumbnail :) The error message given is:
Error creating thumbnail: convert: Insufficient memory (case 4) `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Austins_Ferry_and_Derwent_River_from_Poimenna_Reserve.jpg'.
convert: missing an image filename `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Austins_Ferry_and_Derwent_River_from_Poimenna_Reserve.jpg/250px-Austins_Ferry_and_Derwent_River_from_Poimenna_Reserve.jpg'
So I uploaded a new one several times smaller, Image:Austins Ferry and Derwent River from Poimenna Reserve 1292.jpg, which is 1800x264 and 391 KB, and which MediaWiki seems to have no problem making a thumbnail of. You can use the resized version instead of Image:Austins Ferry and Derwent River from Poimenna Reserve.jpg in articles, since the former points to the latter in the image description, and thumbnail generation of the resized version is a lot less likely to fail. Alternatively, because the quality of the 1800x264 version seems poor, feel free to upload a somewhat larger resized version. GracenotesT § 14:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not keen to replace it with a resized version in the articles as there would be quality loss, and that version was voted as a featured picture. Has there been some server setting change to cause the problem? Noodle snacks (talk) 07:41, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Intrusion attempts on edit pages?

Resolved
 – Run liveupdate to download the latest updates.

Starting today, whenever I attempt to edit a page on English Wikipedia, I get an intrusion attempt alert from Norton Internet Security. (Commons and German Wikipedia appear unaffected.) The name of the "risk" is "HTTP Acrobat PDF Suspicious File Download". I suspect it's an error in the risk definition, causing it to by chance match something on the edit page, but I can't be sure. Nothing obvious on the edit page fails to work. But it sure is annoying. Any ideas? Powers T 14:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Wikipedia_triggering_Norton_Internet_Security_alerts --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:20, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not encountering this with my system, but we should get this concentrated in a single thread. Hiberniantears (talk) 15:36, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All relevant threads have now been pointed to this thread. seicer | talk | contribs 15:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I took no action hoping someone would make a sounder judgment on where to concentrate things. Hiberniantears (talk) 15:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Seicer. I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem. SMC (talk) 15:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
According security history on my computer, the similar attacks that I have received are from other URLs including nypost.com, eonline.com and even liveupdate.symantec.com! Makes me think that this is either overly precautionary or perhaps a bug. LeaveSleaves talk 15:50, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, didn't think to look on the admin noticeboard for a technical issue. Sorry for the duplication. Anyway, I tend to agree that this is not something serious (I'm still editing here after all!), but something changed, and if it's on our end we should investigate. Powers T 16:11, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hum! dido. But I fear the change is on our end! Most likely Nortons, but I'dd like to know why they implemented this protocol? (If this is the case) The reason I think it's on our end is because I get the same error at the following Xerox website. website http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/formeng.pl?form=online_6180_sweeps. Let me see... I still need to reboot my computer and modem. I'll do that now. --CyclePat (talk) 16:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, I got the same intrusion attempt when attempting to respond to a post on the official EverQuest II forums. It seems to be edit boxes that trigger it for me, somehow. Powers T 16:39, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Symantec info on this error. No idea why we are seeing a false positive here, I suspect they just borked their signatures for this type of attack. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:48, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This blog posting is a bit further in the research than us, and Wikipedia doesn't seem to be the only one affected (Google Maps). Seems like any "floating ajax" script can cause this signature to trigger. In wikipedia likely popups is the element to match the signature. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:51, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Norton Community Forum thread Symantec is aware of the issue and preparing a fix. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I still think this issue has something we should look into. The reason is because it appears to only be with English Wikipedia. Actually, it's funny. I just used the French Wikipedia, and Commons and, I don't get the error. Hence, I would like to know what is different between our English Wikipedia and the French Wikipedia which may be causing this problem? (Of course I should probably read the aformentioned blog posting. --CyclePat (talk) 17:04, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you use popups, or any other scripts here that you don't use on fr.wikipedia? It seems the problem is related to script loading, so if you have no user scripts on fr.wikipedia, it likely won't trigger the problem. Mr.Z-man 17:58, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah HA! Bingo! I logged in under my secondary account and no warning! Thank you. It must be something I installed a long time ago in my monobooks. --CyclePat2 (talk) 18:03, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oops! I think the monobooks may not be the issue. I just realized that the problem happens when I use Internet Explorer... I was using firefox (and still am without any notification error) when I logged in under my second account. (sorry! I forgot). IE give a bunch of errors. Perhaps yesterday's windows update touched IE? --CyclePat (talk) 18:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm using Firefox, so it's not that simple. =) Powers T 18:14, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Here I thought it might be Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista (KB958215) Installation date: ‎10/‎12/‎2008 3:08 AM. More information: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=133437. (Part of the recent update) But I guess I'll have to wait and see. No matter the case the above regarding Firefox not causing me any problems still stands. But your statement regarding the use of firefox and having the problem has me agreeing... It's not that simple! Weird. --CyclePat (talk) 18:36, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Probably best for those who don't *need* Symantec/Norton products particularly (i.e. non corporate standard operating environment) to go with their many competitors. As a former techie I saw its ability to completely finish off perfectly working machines. Orderinchaos 18:56, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't turn this into a Norton-bashing discussion. As a techie I've seen people who go with alternate products (usually AVG due to being egged on to install it by techie friends) have their machines completely ruined by all kinds of virii and trojan. It's enough for me to advocate installing it on every at-risk machine provided the *machine can run it*. It's good to see it's been fixed now, so I'll happily back out of this discussion. :) SMC (talk) 04:08, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I think they did pretty well. According to this post on page 6 of the community forum of Nortons from a symantec employee, the problem has been resolved. Simply run live update. --CyclePat (talk) 19:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) In fact Orla from Symantec stated in the afformention Community board: "Hello, I can confirm that the issues you've been seeing, where NIS erroneously triggers the detection "HTTP Acrobat PDF Suspicious File Download" on some legitimate websites, have been resolved. Corrected signatures have been created and are now available for download via LiveUpdate." They then appologized and indicated that they take these false reports seriously. --CyclePat (talk) 19:12, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work would have been to test their new signatures more througoutfully before putting them live. eBay, Google Maps are not 3rd class websites... -- lucasbfr talk 09:21, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pop-ups not working?

Have pop-ups stopped working for anyone else, or just for me? DuncanHill (talk) 23:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fine here. Algebraist 23:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, everything went painfully slow for a while, so I closed my browser and opened it again, and now it seems back to normal. DuncanHill (talk) 23:13, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Happens to me sometimes, and that always seems to work. – Alex43223 T | C | E 06:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete not deleting?

An IP just added a large "History" section to Mountainair, New Mexico, which I've reverted because it's a copyvio of Mountainair's website. Being an administrator, I decided to delete the revision (can't hurt), so I deleted the article and proceeded to restore it: before restoring I clicked just the copyvio revision to restore and then selected "Invert selection", so I know that I told it to restore all revisions except the copyvio. However, upon restoring it, I see the edit still there (done at 22:48, 10 December 2008 by 168.103.113.99), so I ended up reverting it instead. Can anyone explain why the edit didn't stay deleted, even though I told it to restore only the other edits? Nyttend (talk) 23:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to say that sometimes you need to wait a few minutes for everything to look right after deleting and restoring revisions (especially when merging histories), but I don't think that is the case here. I tried to do exactly what you said you did (invert selection and all that), and now it appears what I did has deleted the one copyvio edit. I cannot say why mine worked and yours didn't. Are you positive that one box was unchecked? The odd thing is that the deletion log says we both restored 39 edits. I can verify that yours did not work because before I touched anything, I did not get the "View or restore one deleted edit?" message on the history page (but now we do). Hmmm... anyone else with ideas? -Andrew c [talk] 00:11, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I'm certain that I checked the box. The answer to the 39 is that you undeleted my reversion of the copyvio. What I did was click the box, hit invert, type my rationale for restoring "Restoring minus copyvio", and hit Tab and then the spacebar. After a minute, I realised that nothing was happening (apparently spacebar doesn't select the restore button) and clicked the button, whereupon it restored the page. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention and accidentally selected the copyvio edit with the spacebar? Nyttend (talk) 00:20, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, this isn't it. Check the edit history for User:Nyttend/sssss, which I just created and deleted according to the process I followed with Mountainair; and the spacebar didn't work this way. Nyttend (talk) 00:24, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tabbing when using cite button

When using the "easy cite" button () on the edit screen and then picking a citation template, when one hits the tab key, it acts in a way that's less than intuitive. Currently, when one is in a field and then presses the tab key, rather than skip to the field immediately to the right (from the left field) or skip down and to the left field (from the right field), pressing tab moves the cursor to the main edit box. Thus to move between citation fields, one has to use the mouse - a colossal pain in the butt, in my opinion. Is it possible to change this to be more intuitive, to allow the tab key to move from one field to the next?

For what it's worth, I'm using Firefox 3 under Windows Vista. SchuminWeb (Talk) 00:12, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, seems to behave as expected (and as you would wish it to) in Safari on WinXP. DuncanHill (talk) 00:14, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm running FireFox 3 on WinXP. When I focus on the first box, tab takes me to the right box, then down left, right, etc. as expected. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 20:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Add a css class to the fundraiser notices

Please add a descriptive css class like "fundraiserNotice" to the fundraiser notice (the one that's wasting a huge amount of screen real estate on everyone's screens on every article in the entire project for months at a time), so that we can block it with adblockers. I know I can block class siteNotice, but I don't want to block every site notice; just the fundraisers.

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