:Ranking by number of edits is dumb. Some people make lots of edits when they don't have to (I won't name any names) and it certainly would skew such a count. Plus, it shouldn't matter anyway. [[User:Melodia|♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫]] ([[User talk:Melodia|talk]]) 23:53, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
:Ranking by number of edits is dumb. Some people make lots of edits when they don't have to (I won't name any names) and it certainly would skew such a count. Plus, it shouldn't matter anyway. [[User:Melodia|♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫]] ([[User talk:Melodia|talk]]) 23:53, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
:If you want it done, why not [[Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/How to generate the lists|do it yourself]]? [[User talk:Algebraist|Algebraist]] 00:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
:If you want it done, why not [[Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/How to generate the lists|do it yourself]]? [[User talk:Algebraist|Algebraist]] 00:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
:: Because I access Wikipedia from a library terminal. I can't load and run programs. '''''[[User talk:The Transhumanist|<font color="#880088">Th</font><font color="#0000FF">e Tr</font><font color="#449900">ans</font><font color="#DD9922">hu</font><font color="#DD4400">man</font><font color="#BB0000">ist</font> ]]''''' 19:38, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues aboutWikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.
If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.
I'm seeing atop every WP page viewed, a warning notification from Symantec Antivirus that "Your security settings do not allow Web sites to use ActiveX controls installed on your computer. This page may not display correctly." Is there some way to make my preferences such that no ActiveX is used?LeadSongDogcome howl17:52, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's most probably some gadget or the newly served jQuery, or the autosuggestions for the search box that try to use XmlHttpRequest, a web-2.0 way for Javascript to talk to the server it came from. (It does not allow Javascript to talk to arbitrary server, just the one the page came from, in this case to .wikipedia.org.) On Internet Explorer (at least the older ones, not sure about IE8), that XmlHttpRequest thing is available only as an ActiveX component. It's nothing evil. Does Gmail work for you? They also use it. Try configuring your virus software to allow the use of ActiveX for the domains .wikipedia.org and .wikimedia.org. Otherwise, try disabling autosuggestions in your preferences, and disabling gadgets. Lupo19:01, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I see it even before logging in from IE6 on a restrictively managed network where all external xml and AJAX is blocked, so yes, gmail is also blocked. The autosuggest doesn't work on this machine either, so you may be right that there's a connection. I didn't think it was evil, but it clearly is not very general either. Users shouldn't get error messages as their first contact with WP. I'd like to ascertain the cause of the behaviour. It seems to be the same not just on WP, but also on meta, commons, wikiversity, and wiktionary. Perhaps something around language support. Anyhow, it's ugly.LeadSongDogcome howl22:13, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You wouldn't have this problem on a current version of Internet Explorer, or on a default configuration of Internet Explorer, or on any browser other than Internet Explorer. If we could detect that you have the rare combination of an old version with an unusual configuration we would just disable the AJAX stuff for you, but apparently the only way to find out is to try it -- which throws the dialog box at the user. Thanks, Microsoft! :) --brion (talk) 22:28, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Yes, if I had any such option I would exercise it, but not everyone gets to change their configuration. Think public kiosks, libraries, corporate networks, etc. Lots of reasons to lock down a config. The tools at ip2location seem able to determine that I'm running IE6 on Win XP here, so that's clearly available info. But what is it that needs AJAX to work? Can't the basic UI functions of the main page at least be rendered in straight HTML? LeadSongDogcome howl23:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The problem isn't the version, its the configuration. The little bit of AJAX used in the normal interface should work fine with a standard installation of IE6. The problem is the security settings, and AFAIK, there's no reliable way to detect settings that would cause such conflicts. Mr.Z-man00:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I know this doesn't really answer your question, but maybe you could ask your Internet café/library/corporation to upgrade IE or install a different browser such as Firefox? If the organization you rely on knew that there is a demand, they'd be more motivated to make the switch. —Remember the dot(talk)01:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In my particular case, no, but that doesn't matter, it's just another nuisance notification banner to me and if I wait long enough it'll eventually get updated. To someone else it could be "OMG, this site is trying to infect my computer! I'm not going to risk going there (to wikipedia) again, it must be full of viruses! Good thing Symantec caught it." And we've lost another potential contributor. Lots of underfunded public libraries and schools are using old hand-me-down machines that are memory limited. They lock down these machines because there's a new and often careless user every few minutes. I'd be amazed if the problem isn't showing up there too. LeadSongDogcome howl16:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, Firefox uses less memory than IE: [1]. Old hardware is not the problem, in fact, until recently I was browsing quite happily with Firefox on a 7-year-old old Pentium III with 512 MB of memory. And really, it's not hard to lock down machines without going security-paranoid and popping up warnings about Wikipedia. —Remember the dot(talk)16:35, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Could the problem be avoided by providing on IE an XHR facade that used hidden iframes instead of the ActiveX component for the transport? (Of course, IE6 also has a "security" setting "Launching programs and files in an IFRAME": disable/enable/prompt... it just sucks.) Lupo07:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Getting back to the original problem, I have the same issue. My corporate network was making the error come up twice for each page. After disabling the auto-suggestions, I'm down to once per page. Anyone know what I can disable to get rid of the last one? Dismas|(talk)02:51, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's from IE. At my work, we run IE 6 (outdated, I know) through Citrix MetaFrame (which, after looking at the article, I see is discontinued *roll eyes*). You'd never know that I work for a Fortune 500 technology company... Dismas|(talk)09:32, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I don't know why, but the warning banner has disappeared! I note the footer that proclaimed the MediWiki version as 1.16(alpha) has also gone, though WP:about says that it's still alpha.LeadSongDogcome howl15:57, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I added a gadget MediaWiki:Gadget-vectorskin-thunks.js, conveniently ripped from zh.wp that can deal with some of these issues. If people want to use the Vector skin, then this gadget may be useful until the scripts or skin are adapted. For compatibility, see the list above. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This skin was rolled out a bit prematurely it seems to me. The most apparent problem I believe is that the tabs are apparently hardcoded? They are always showing the anon-version of the tabs, which for users of additional rights is missing the watch and move tabs, and for admins of course a lot more. And hmm, why does it introduce messages specific to that skin, e.g. uses MediaWiki:Vector-view-edit instead of MediaWiki:edit? The tabs could of course all be added back via compatibility gadget, but ... Amalthea09:25, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is just a preview though. I mean, you would have to have read the techblog to know about this atm, most people will never find it. It is there so that everyone can test and check more easily in real world situations. I think that is a good thing. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A preview is certainly good. All those script incompatibilities wouldn't have been found without it. To me, it appears to be pretty final though, it's just as accessible as all other skins, and is going to be listed in the next Signpost. Amalthea11:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The next release of wikEd is compatible with vector, but I hope the unnecessary id changes in this skin that break so many scripts will be undone. Almost all monobook scripts could then also work under vector without any changes. Please see the bug report asking for that. Cacycle (talk) 03:02, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly want to know why any of the ids were changed, seeing as a new skin is simply a difference in CSS and JS... --Izno (talk) 04:07, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A new skin is more than just CSS and JS, there's also pesky details like document structure, headers, footers, sidebar construction and layout, etc. :) However I have advocated on not changing IDs unnecessarily, and some at least are going back. --brion (talk) 22:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That seems inefficient to me. Why wouldn't MediaWiki deliver the same page structure and let CSS/JS do the rest of the work (simply curious)? --Izno (talk) 20:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The one big change that is going to be made is the separation of namespaces vs actions in the top of the page. This is not something you can do with just CSS. To do it well, you have to do it in the page structure. Also note that many of these changes that were breaking compatibility with monobook have been undone in the past few days. These changes just are not live yet. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Login problem
Wanted to know if any change has gone in to the login page. I'm unable to login using Opera since the last 2 weeks. Clicking on the "Log in" button does nothing, also the same with hitting the Enter key. I had been using this browser for Wikipedia without any problems for years. My opera version is 8. Jay (talk) 10:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The only thing that I am aware of is that our servers newly serve jQuery with every page (which apparently causes alerts about ActiveX on IE6 with strange "security" settings). Maybe that causes problems on Opera 8, too. Opera 8 is a browser not supported by jQuery, according to their Website, they limit themselves to IE 6.0+, FF 2+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.0+, Chrome. (I wonder about other older browsers. IE5.5, IE5, Konqueror? We recently had someone using IE5.01 commenting here...) Using jQuery is all fine and dandy, but if this breaks the site for users using older browsers, that's not good at all. (Yeah, I know... "update your browser"... that's maybe not an option for some people?) Lupo11:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I can confirm this problem. It doesn't seem to be jQuery though. There are no errors on my console at least (perhaps Opera 8 is confused because of my Opera 9 installation). Weird. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
jQuery was just disabled because it was causing a few more troubles, and wasn't being cached. It might return later, so the bugreport is NOT closed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:49, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
FYI. like I already mentioned above, jQuery was causing some problems, and the usability extension (which includes the new experimental toolbar) have been disabled. In case anyone wonders where it went. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:06, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is an issue with selecting en-gb interface language; some messages don't fall back to the version you expect. --brion (talk) 14:54, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how long this has been happening, but I don't remember seeing it before so it must be fairly new. Every page title is now followed by the phrase "From Wikipedia", in the slot that used to be empty and only used for "redirected from..." notices. Why has this been added? To me, it seems superfluous and distracting. Modest Geniustalk01:40, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
@Primehunter, no, I'm referring to the title at the top of each page. For example, for water I see: Water <edit button> <horizontal line> From Wikipedia <article starts> Modest Geniustalk03:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. When I log out, I get the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". But logged in, I just see "From Wikipedia". I'm using monobook, with no custom .js, on Firefox 3.0.11. I have the "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" gadget enabled, but I tried turning that off and it didn't make any difference. The only other gadgets I have on are "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page." and "Open external links in a new tab/window". Modest Geniustalk17:01, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, that explains things. But why is the en-gb version different? I'm not sure, but I don't remember seeing anything there before. That article has no history, so I can't check if it changed recently. Modest Geniustalk23:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
All system messages are done separately by language. No-one seems to maintain the en-gb ones much, so they're mostly stuck on MediaWiki defaults. Algebraist23:56, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(unindent) What I suspect that has happened, is that previously, this system message was not "translated" and empty. Since a recent update however, it was translated and started showing up. This brings an interesting point btw, we shouldn't rely too much on these languages specific site messages.... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:47, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aaaaand I notice the en-gb version has been synced to the en version, and has acquired an article history. Now I think I'll disable it in my JS... Thanks for your help all! Modest Geniustalk01:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not that odd. I just found out that that page uses {{Topic by country}}, which if the page is not cached, brace yourself, will take 48, yes FORTY EIGHT, seconds to parse, and it then times out, instead of finishing. This is just not acceptable. I will put this thing up for deletion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:26, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Generally speaking, if you're having technical issues with a Wikimedia site that you're fairly sure are not your fault, you should try to join the IRC channel #wikimedia-tech on freenode and ask in the channel. If problems persist and you're not able to find anyone, file a bug (<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org>). This page isn't usually closely monitored by sysadmins. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:44, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Toolserver is a separate entity from Wikimedia. You should contact the tool's maintainers. The convention is username <at> toolserver.org For that particular tool, it would be river@ or dab@, I believe. Though it seems to the tool is now working again. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:42, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Probably VLC. As far as I can tell, all MediaWiki does is run some JavaScript to change the player. But I wouldn't know, as I'm using Firefox 3.6apre1 (aka Minefield) without VLC. For me, all the options (native, cortado, quicktime) all work. Does the Cortado player work too, or are you stuck on the native player? Calvin 1998(t·c)01:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to hard-code alternate text for images, i.e. at the File: description page?
As I've already said at the FAC thread, I strongly oppose this. The appropriate alt-text for an image depends on context; for example, this image of Lindsay Lohan wearing a Gucci hat would warrant totally different descriptions in its two different Wikipedia usages; in Gucci, the text would focus on the design of the hat and the person wearing it would be irrelevant, whereas in Lindsay Lohan it would describe the person wearing it with just a passing mention of the hat. – iridescent19:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Your analogy seems a little far-fetched (shouldn't we find an image of a gucci hat on its own?), and off, I think it would probably be refuted by users of screen readers (alt text should describe succinctly the entire image). That being said, if this solution were enacted, the default alt-text placed at the File: page could be over-ridden by explicitly providing it when calling the image. –xenotalk19:17, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Images may already take an |alt= paramater. The proposal is to provide some way of coding the alt text at the File: page itself, i.e., through a magic word, or template of some sort. –xenotalk19:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I know, but generally clever folks like yourself are better at writing those things than bumbling idiots like me. So I bring it here, so that either a) someone else files it at bugzilla or b) someone shoots me down and says no it can't be done, etc. or c) I get some direction on what to write in the bugzilla. =) –xenotalk19:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Here's an example on why this would be useful: File:Moh right.gif, used on just over 250 pages. Someone kindly provided a suggested alt text at File:Moh right.gif#Alt text. So if this could be wrapped in a template or magic word and then automatically provided (with option for override) when the image is called... it would save a lot of work. It would also preclude a bot task I recently filed to edit over 2800 stub templates. –xenotalk19:45, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We'd need a way to find out which images have alt text assigned to them, probably through a category. I can also think of serious WP:BEANS issues with this feature, unless the image pages with the alt text are closely watched. Otherwise, I support anything that adds making it easier to add alt text to images. Graham8706:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support, having the alt text in the file itself makes sense. It would also improve the accessibility of Commons (though I don't know if a screen reader has interest in going there, but who knows).
This would require an engineering effort of some sorts, and though i think the idea is nice, judging from the amount of years we are already waiting for any type of metadata to be coupled to images and articles, I don't think this is gonna happen any time soon. The translation issue for Commons files is also rather interesting. Though great stuff for a bugticket, I don't think we will see this implemented within the next 2 years at this time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:32, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You would need a way to define the alt metadata in the file page; lets call it {{{DEFAULTALT}}}. Then, when the image is displayed, it would use the default alt text unless it was defined locally with alt=. This will require a Bugzilla feature request; as TheDJ noted, it will probably be quite a while before it will be implemented, but that is not a reason to file the request. The short term solution is to edit every article with the image in question and add the alt text, or replace the image with a template; implementation of either would be an easy task for AWB. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk11:31, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Has Vector gone live?
Or is it just me and my prefs aren't working. It says Monobook in my prefs, but I see that simplified edit environment when I edit. I ask because I want to continue to use reftools. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:53, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The skin and the enhanced edit toolbar are separate preferences. You can turn the toolbar off in the "editing" tab ("Enable enhanced editing toolbar").--Eloquence*07:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Rollback issue
Did someone mess with Rollback function? It's now showing this in edit summaries:
<div id="mw-revertpage">Reverted edits by 68.117.184.120 (talk) to last version by Levineps</div>
Just came here to say the same thing. I can't navigate BugZilla, nor do I have an account. So could someone else please file a report if it's needed? Cheers - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:39, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed Oops, sorry that was me. I was trying to add an identifying div to the message that you get on the "action complete" page. Is it the same message as the edit summary? That's not very clever... Happy‑melon10:42, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
File:Cheshire Ring Schematic.png is easily converted to a svg using Inkscape. Each of the text objects (labels on the diagram) is the name of a valid Wikipedia article. All I want to do is click on the text object and wikilink to the article. The file will be found on commons. Can any of you graphics gurus tell me how to do it? --ClemRutter (talk) 13:37, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We're encountering exciting new issues with the upload fileserver which cause intermittent slowdowns on the site; see tech blog notes.
Pretty much every page is taking 1-2 minutes to load for me today instead of the usual <5 seconds. Anyone else experiencing problems and/or know what is up? --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:06, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The IRC welcome message says: "Wikipedia is currently experiencing some server errors, and is slow or down for most people. This is being worked on and will be fixed as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience this is causing and thank you for your patience." I can confirm this. HansAdler15:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I was getting the same thing (lag). Seems much improved now, although (possible unrelated) the main picture isn't showing up. - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:03, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've been going on other web sites too during the past hour, but they've all been slow. I got a message that I needed to download new software. So ever since I clicked on that, everything is like dial-up access must be. Sites are slower when I go to them for the first time.
Although the file image seems to display lately, the Wikipedia logo globe is still disabled; at times I see an error message which I finally managed to capture. Here it is:
Proxy Error
The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical).
Yes I've experienced it too. The last few hours have been dreadul I'll click en.wiki and my modem will go crazy and nothing will happen,. ERvery other website is fine. I think the size and numbe rof users is placing serious strains on the server. I think an upgrad eis needed (not to mention a front page resign), its not 1996 after all. Dr. Blofeld White cat 16:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I for one have to agree. The slowdowns have been getting worse the past 6 months or so. For a top 10 website it's almost inexcusable. Not only does it prevent people from reading it also makes editors give up in disgust. --Brad (talk) 18:59, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome to either live with it, or donate us some money. While you were complaining, I've fixed it by disabling CentralNotice for now. — Werdna • talk19:19, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, does seem much better know. I agree - if people complain they should be donating $ or £ to help improve the hardware. Nothing comes for free. Smartse (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's still noticably slower today. Don't give me that BS about donating - I donate by improving the site's content. If anything, you should be paying me! Lugnuts (talk) 09:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The speed still isn't improving in English Wikipedia, where other Wikimedia site works fine. The Wikipedia logo on the corner and some images are loading very slowly. Can anyone explain the exact cause of the slowness here? The second time I encounter a problem in short period of time (see this page for another error I encountered before), looks like I got to donate to Wikipedia. --98.154.26.247 (talk) 20:04, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It got better around 16:00 GMT time but I totally agree with Brad, the server problem is getting worse and worse over the last few months. A lot of the time I blame my own computer but it seems that it affects others too so has to be the server. It is not good enough I agree.Dr. Blofeld White cat 20:14, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
From the devs: "ms1 started showing signs of overload at the daily peak; nobody cares, two weeks elapses, overload becomes critical, site goes down". In english: bad bada boom. There is a partial spotty echo of the log at twitter and identi.ca. --Splarka (rant) 07:46, 12 July 2009 (UTC) -- P.S., server admin log working again. 08:12, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we should start asking where exactly is the donation money being spent on. The slowdowns may be an indication that something is going wrong in this respect. Server operations should be priority nr. 1. Offliner (talk) 18:36, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Donate more money or live with it" is a really shitty response to legitimate technical problems and I hope not to see it posted here again. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:41, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The sysadmins (specifically domas) think they might have found the cause for the problem, and it is possibly the same problem as this one (quite technical). A few snapshots have been dropped and it seems that performance is improving again, though that is a temporary solution. Likely problems will persist, but with a bit of luck it should be considerably less than in the past two days. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There are indications that the problem is already returning. Most sysadmins are asleep, so it might be a while again before performance will return. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:32, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
All this back and forth about donations implies that this is merely a chronic high usage problem, but what's happening today is unusual. It's really slow today in a way that it wasn't slow before. I can't see the logo either, and I don't remember that happening before. Server load isn't higher than usual, is it? Fewer people use Wikipedia on the weekends, if I'm not mistaken (or is Sunday night different?), and Michael Jackson's death caused a big spike in usage but didn't cause problems like these. 146.151.21.117 (talk) 00:43, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We're encountering exciting new issues with the upload fileserver which cause intermittent slowdowns on the site; see tech blog notes.
I just posted a comment on this blog entry, and I will echo my request here. For those with the rights to do so, please consider posting a "We are aware of this problem and are working on it" type message in a prominent location in all wikis affected by the slowness. Whether this is a watchlist message for logged-in users, or something at the top of every page, I think it would go a long way towards helping with user frustration. I think a lot of people are confused by the symptoms and aren't sure whether it's something with their connection/proxy or on the wikimedia end. More information is always helpful. Thanks --Dfred (talk) 15:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As to the difference between contributions and donations, one of the biggest criticisms of highly compensated individuals who operate non-profits is when they fail to contribute to their own non-profit vs. the typical religious figure who assiduously tithes even though all the money is just being recycled - they pay him/her X, he/she contributes X/10, lives on 0.9X, as an example of do what I do, and what I say, or do what I say, not what I do or some variation thereof. It is often noted that if everyone chipped in a € or a ¥ there would be plenty of money to buy new servers, and if everyone waits for someone else to chip in there will be none. I would highly recommend both contributing and donating, and not pretending that your contributions in the form of edits are enough to make up for a lack of donations. I suspect that small donations of a penny would work too, except that Paypal will just say thank you very much for anything under about 30 cents, and the foundation will get nothing, so $1, 1€, etc. is probably the smallest practical donation: "If you haven't got a penny, a hay penny will do, and if you haven't got a hay penny, God bless you." Apteva (talk) 15:36, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone tell me what the page number citation template is? I recall there being something like "Jane saw spot run.[3][p. 41]". I think I remember there being a template like that, but I can't find it. Thanks, Oreo Priesttalk19:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Any idea how you can {{subst: a surname in the page title to DEFAULTSORT sort the categories? Its just I have a large batch of German politicians to transwiki and I want to do it more quickly. So basically when you create the page it automatically places e.g Fritz Baier as Baier, Fritz in the categories. If not I gather there is a bot that can default sort the categories by surname and fix it afterwards?
I'd imagine it is something like {subst:PAGENAME} but with a little programming to read the last word of the title and place it first. It would save a great deal of time anyway.Dr. Blofeld White cat 20:15, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The only way I know to do this would be with AutoWikiBrowser. You would insert {{DEFAULTSORT:%%key%%}}, and AWB will replace %%key%% with a best guess for last name, first name. I expect multiple word last names, such as those with "von", will not get parsed correctly, so you need to check before saving. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)talk13:25, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to request a user (IP) be blocked after repeatedly re-adding inappropriate external links after repeated reversions and warnings. User is IP 208.104.139.77. Edits have been mainly to Rock Hill, South Carolina but also includes Hampden, Maine and South Carolina. Constant edits to add external links. Most do not seem to be promotional spam, rather listing lots of businesses that happen to be in a city within that city's articles, plus adding lots of links to weather websites for each city, all of which is inappropriate external links. Also changes the population stats of different city articles without citations.
First I'd like to request a block of IP 208.104.139.77.
But I'd also like to know the correct process for what the proper process is to make a block request. Is the right course of action to just post here on Village Pump, or is there a specific place I should go to make this request.
WebCite, a popular on-demand web archiving service referenced by Wikipedia over 20,000 times, went down for a server upgrade on June 24th. WebCite is currently "on-line" but a few things were broken in the upgrade and it is currently not working properly - for example, returning error messages or blank pages for most previous archives. ThaddeusB has been in contact with Gunther Eysenbach throughout the process and would like to assure the community that efforts are underway to fix the broken links. In the mean time, please do not remove, or otherwise attempt to fix, "broken links" to webcitation.org. See this discussion for more information. --Blargh29 (talk) 05:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strange error...
I was in the middle of nominating a page for speedy deletion [2]:
Name: Cynthea Tan Former School : SJK(C Pui Ying) Current School : SMJK Kwang Hua Current Location: Klang Age : 13 As she is such a hater, You don't need to know more about her!
When Twinkle froze. When I opened up a new tab to see what happened, Cynthea tan had this on it:
The requested page or revision cannot be found
The database did not find a page or revision that it was expecting to find.
It appears it was deleted shortly before you nominated it in the same minute so your nomination created a new page. The nomination saved the text of MediaWiki:Missing-article. Maybe (just guessing here) Twinkle substed that page when Twinkle was used to nominate a non-existing page for deletion. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:28, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Twinkle didn't subst MediaWiki:Missing-article when you went to create a new page; MediaWiki does that automatically. I get that kind of problem sometimes when I'm doing history merges. I'll try to edit a page while MediaWiki is deleting it, and the text of MediaWiki:Missing-article will pop up in the edit window. Graham8716:00, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Can Google Chrome cope with image maps? With Firefox, Template:Talyllyn map has elements that are clickable (sorry if that's not the right technical terminology) to take you to the corresponding article. But Google Chrome doesn't seem to allow this.--94.196.254.170 (talk) 20:34, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me using the latest beta version of Chrome. It doesn't show the href at the bottom of the page, though. That makes it a bit difficult to use. --- RockMFR21:50, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oops! I started this thread in the wrong place. It was about operation of this page, not the subject of the page, so it belongs on Talk and I've moved it. Interesting paradox though, what happens when the technical operation of VPT, the page where technical operations are discussed, needs discussion? Franamax (talk) 01:44, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is related to a known problem with the image server. Twinkle kinda works for me, but most of my other tools that in any way depend on images are dead. MBisanztalk22:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Is it something to do with the last edit at 22:36 to Common.js ? My Firefox is showing a message in the error console abour area undefined in Common.js/shuffle.js -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
and the line before is probably not kosher as well. Also, iterating arrays with for (foo in bar) will break if arrays are extended with functions. Amalthea22:28, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It wasn't working because that whole statement is misuse (probably from misunderstanding) the getElementsByClassName, which is not a built-in function; it's defined in wikibits.js. It's just a function, in the form getElementsByTagName(document, 'tag name', 'class name'); - so it wasn't working. People need to test code before just activating it in common... Ale_Jrbtalk22:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Ah, I see it was supposedly guarded in Common.js. If that would have been if (document.getElementsByClassName( 'shuffle' ).length) it wouldn't have had issues. Amalthea22:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, as far as I know, the native (document.) version of that function is only supported in Firefox, Safari and Opera (and probably Chrome) - that is, not in IE. So it would still have caused issues for a lot of people. That's the whole point of the wikibits function, which uses the native implementation if possible, but works around it if not. Ale_Jrbtalk22:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
<trouts self/>. Sorry guys; I tested it on FF3.5 both with and without the elements on the page, but I think I only tested in IE and Safari erratically. And then by the time I'd finished it turns out it's not even wanted... :( And I should know better than to live-hack JS files... <goes to cry in corner/> Happy‑melon12:48, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ranking by number of edits is dumb. Some people make lots of edits when they don't have to (I won't name any names) and it certainly would skew such a count. Plus, it shouldn't matter anyway. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:53, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia's top left logo doesn't load for me until I visit a page where it's been stored in my cache. This has only been happening for these last few days. -- penubag (talk) 23:06, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You set the width of the second column to the same value in each row, but the value you chose (11.25em) wasn't large enough to fit the text in, so the cells expanded appropriately. I've set the widths to 15em, which is enough (with my settings and browser, anyway). Algebraist03:24, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. Just reporting. I use Opera 10.00 Beta and Friendly, but when I use the welcome or warning options of Friendly, I am unable to scroll down in the pop up (to select another template below of which I see.) Is this a Friendly known bug? Or should I reconfigure Opera? So far it is the only issue I've had with the browser. RUL3R*flaming | *vandalism17:35, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed Oops, sorry that was me. I was trying to add an identifying div to the message that you get on the "action complete" page. Is it the same message as the edit summary? That's not very clever... Happy‑melon 10:42, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
