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.

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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Firefox crashes

My regular Firefox browser (version 1.0, 2004) crashes whenever I try to access a Wikipedia page. Does anybody know what's happening? can this be fixed by changing the settings? (I asked this before, but the thread seems to have vanished.) Fremdh (talk) 16:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It's almost certainly worth updating your Firefox (2004?!), as this will help not only with the Wikipedia problem—probably—but also with the rest of the Internet! ╟─TreasuryTag►belonger─╢ 16:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I saw that thread not too long ago - it has since been archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 68#Firefox crashes (VPT gets archived pretty quickly, mainly due to the number of new threads that get started). However, it wasn't posted by User:Fremdh (who only has five contributions: the one above, and four to Roop Nagar), but by IP user 82.31.207.41 (talk) 18:26, 28 November 2009. See that thread for information posted by other users, but you should place additional comments here. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks everybody, but I'd have liked an answer to my question... Fremdh (talk) 11:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

We though we had... Firefox 1.0 is pretty much obsolete, so best to upgrade it. The most recent is 3.5.5, which (I think) was released yesterday. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

When asking about problems with quite obsolete software, especially free obsolete software, the usual answer is to update to the latest release, and try it again. With Mozilla Firefox, it is possible to upgrade to older versions than the current one, but I do not know why you want an older version, unless you are running on Windows 95 or another old operating system which (potentially, at least) has problems with the most recent Firefox, which is version 3.5.5. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Look: Wikipedia is supposed to be for everybody, not just those with equipment and software younger than their pet mice. Pretty clearly nobody knows what's caused the problem. I think it must be in a stylesheet change sometime in the last three months; I say this because if I copy a Wikipedia page to my own site, it loads perfectly well, though of course without most of its decorations. I don't believe that the change was in any strict sense necessary (did any of you notice a change in the general formatting of Wikipedia pages?), and I think Wikipedia should try to avoid such tinkering as far as possible. Fremdh (talk) 10:39, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Problem solved: block javascript. There is a downside to this, but I can live with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fremdh (talk • contribs) 20:24, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposed to be for everybody, but we would be doing the majority of our users a disservice as well as making software development unnecessarily difficult and slow if we continued to support old technology indefinitely for the sake of < 0.1% of users^source. I would also point out that even Mozilla doesn't officially support any versions of Firefox older than 3.0. Personally, I would be more concerned about unpatched known security holes than with sites not working properly. Mr.Z-man 21:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

actually, firefox crashes regularly when I go to wikipedia - it seems to hang on an editing cycle (hangs on a preview or save). I have version 3.5.5. It doesn't crash me anywhere else except on a wikipedia edit cycle. However, I have determined it must be one of my add-ons. It doesn't seem to happen when I bring up Firefox in safe mode. So.. if I figure out which add-on is causing the problem, I will post it here. The problem is that it doesn't happen all the time. It seems to take repeated views in the edit cycle for it to happen. So - I will just keep playing around with it until I can narrow it down. stmrlbs|talk 22:29, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Footnote markers

Some other language versions of the project use just a superscripted number to denote a footnote, but the English version uses a number in square brackets. Why is that? Using just a number would be far more pleasing to the eye and would improve readability. -Rrius (talk) 09:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

This has come up before (I think on VPR last time), but to cut a long story short, the brackets are used for two main purposes AFAIK: to increase the clickable area of the footnote, and to easily distinguish one from another when two (or more) are used in conjunction with each other, thus avoiding a "pileup" of numbers (^{1 7 12 27}). I don't think an obvious solution was found to either of those issues last time this came up for debate. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 13:02, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive 38#Turn off display of in-line cites by default from November 2008. If you want to see the cites fainter, off, or bolder when logged out and you have Stylish (or Greasemonkey if you prefer) see Salix alba's Wikipedia - hide reference links, or my amateur adaptation of User:Mzajac's idea at Wikipedia - fainter inline cites and its complement Wikipedia - bolder inline cites. The last time I tested these was a year ago, though. They should be easy to modify to make them appear how you want. -84user (talk) 00:14, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Copyright symbol

I've often found myself looking for the © symbol, and it's always a pain to have to go and copy/paste it from elsewhere. Is there any chance it could be added to the insert menu (unless I'm just being dim and it's already there)? PC78 (talk) 19:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not, but what would be the use? In any case, you can also type &copy;. — Edokter • Talk • 20:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Convenience, obviously. The same reason we have an insert menu in the first place. PC78 (talk) 20:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I think what Edokter meant was more along the line of 'What would be the use on Wikipedia?' Is this a character that editors are using in articles, and if so, for what purpose? I may be missing something totally obvious here, but off the top of the head I can't think of any place where we'd want to use it. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I tend to use it in fair use rationales when naming copyright holders. The insert menu is already loaded with a multitude of obscure symbols which won't be needed by most editors (I don't even know what many of them are). I'm not asking for much. PC78 (talk) 22:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The insert menu is MediaWiki:Edittools.js and MediaWiki:Edittools; you can discuss this on the talk page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:52, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, I'll move my request there. PC78 (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Annoying bug

Thread moved from help desk, as advised.

This may be a long shot, but I'm wondering if anyone who has any influence in such matters could press for a long-standing bug (and, for me, regular irritant) in Wikipedia's "diff" generation to be fixed. This is a typical example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nonsuch_Palace&action=historysubmit&diff=328327302&oldid=283689391

You can see that several paragraphs that are identical or substantially identical are flagged as completely different, due to the software getting confused for some reason that I do not fully understand. I believe this is logged as a known issue, and has been for some time, but is seen as low priority and appears unlikely to ever be fixed without a prod from someone. If there is a more appropriate place for me to post this request then please let me know. 86.146.46.190 (talk) 21:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC).

Yes, it is known. One of the Village Pump sites, probably technical is the best place to discuss it further.--SPhilbrickT 22:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, this is not an easy problem to solve, and there are no free diff software packages available that perform any better than the one we have now. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Login while editing

Hello fine folks. I was think whether it would be possible to provide a login-while-editing option in wikipedia pages. That is, suppose you are not logged in. You want to edit a page, and you want to do it under your ID, not anonymously. Currently you have to first click login which leads you to the login page. Then you enter your login info and click login which leads you back to the article page. Then you click edit and you can edit under your ID. What I am proposing is, can't we provide a system in which you don't have to first login and then click edit. Instead, you simply click edit, and provide the login information on the edit page itself (kinda like what livejournal and blogger do when you want to post a comment). It saves two page-loads (three if you include logging out). This can be very useful for users who want to make a quick edit but don't because they don't want to go through the process of logging in and then logging out. just for a single edit. Such people may either not want to use thet "stay logged-in" option or may be using a different computer. I don't see any problems with protected pages etc. that can't be easily solved while using this scheme. What do you think? --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 03:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you can already do something similar. Clicking login while having an edit window open takes you back to the edit window when login is completed. Intelligentsium 03:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Whoa! Yeah it does now - when did this happen? Uptil the last time I edited clicking login while having an edit window open always took me to the article page, which I is the thing I found nonsensical, and a major motivation for this messge. I guess that's still one extra click but certainly more tolerable than before. Still what do you think of the idea of adding a couple of textboxes for login info right on the edit page? --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 06:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

If that is too visually distracting, you can also open a new window, log in, then preview your edit before saving it. Strictly speaking, preview is not needed but it's one way to be certain your signature line works as intended. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Still, do you see any downside to adding a couple of textboxes for login info right on the edit page - which make the whole thing simpler? ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 06:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, more elements to a page makes it harder to understand. We are actually in a process to make the edit page visually more lean atm. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There are some tips for ensuring you are logged in at WP:LOGGEDOUT. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:29, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Question about templates and page loading time

Hi, I'm trying to write something up about citation templates and page loading. It appears that when an article contains lots of citation templates, it becomes increasingly slow to load. I don't know whether that's because of the templates directly, or whether it's simply that longer articles may have more templates and the length also happens to make them slow to load. Does anyone know the answer? SlimVirgin 12:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Citation templates likely use a lot of parserfunctions. That adds complexity to the page, which causes it to take longer to parse and render. Especially when you are logged in, you will notice this, because then you are often not served with a cached copy of the page. You can see the complexity and rendertime of a page when you look at the page's html source. There are the following comments:

<!-- 
NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 3144/1000000
Post-expand include size: 64735/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 32961/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 1/500
-->

This says how many parserfunctions and wikicode elements are used. The first number of the line is the usage, the last number is the maximum allowed.

<!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:5554932-0!1!0!mdy!!en!3 and timestamp 20091206124419 -->

After a page is parsed (but before it is rendered to HTML), it can be stored in the parsercache. This line says WHEN and with which number it was stored. This cache is updated when the page changes (or it's templates, categories etc). Things like {{CURRENTTIME}} might be bad for the parsercache I presume... Not sure actually.

<!-- Served by srv173 in 0.912 secs. -->

This is the last important comment in the page source. It tells you which server rendered the HTML and served it to you. When you are not logged in, it is likely however that this is an "earlier" result that was cached by one of the squid servers. It might be given to you significantly faster then.

You might remember that when Michael Jackson died, the servers almost went down. The page was very large and very intensive to calculate (over 10 seconds i believe). It was however edited so often that the parsercache and the squids had to update several times a minute. That was putting an enormous strain on the core of the services, that they couldn't handle it anymore. We had never before had so much traffic on a single page before. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:55, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

An active followup thread can be found in Wikipedia talk:Citing sources #Making pages faster to load. Eubulides (talk) 04:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Bug for this?

Anyone know if there is a bug for this particular issue?

<div>[[foo]]<br>
[[foo]]<br>
[[foo]]<br>
[[foo]]<br>
[[foo]]</div>

outputs the following html

<div><a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a><br />
<p><a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a><br />
<a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a><br />
<a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a><br /></p>
<a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a></div>

which displays

foo

foo
foo
foo

foo

— RockMFR 18:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't find a bug that fit exactly. The behavior is somewhat similar to bugzilla:5718 and bugzilla:4780 but I can't immediately tell if the cause is the same or different. Dragons flight (talk) 19:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I ran this through HTML-Kit and invoked HTML Tidy. The breaks are certainly being converted by Tidy, but I don't see that it is adding the <p>...</p> tags. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:57, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Auto-playing audio

Is there any way to make the Greensleeves file in my user page start playing immediately as the page is loaded, without the reader having to click on it? --___A. di M. 22:21, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Userpages are not MySpace profiles. Auto-playing audio is bad. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Ditto above. If a user wishes to listen to it, they can click on it. Its fine if you use a visual to point out where the play button is, but don't make the decision for users. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:31, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Would there be a way to add this option to Preferences? I'm not saying that it's there now, but could it be an upcoming feature? Woogee (talk) 00:05, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I cannot foresee any encyclopaedic use to this. Most people would not wish immediately to hear a piece of music upon visiting an article about that piece of music; that some music cannot be played (for copyright reasons) also creates inconsistency in articles. Intelligentsium 02:00, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's any conflict between auto-playing music and copyright concerns (Fair Use sounds would just be small snippets is all, and it'd be odd to hear a random selection of a song.
Now, that said, even though there's no autoplay/copyright conflict, there's most certainly an autoplay/good taste conflict... EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:06, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

You could write some javascript which would cause it to autoplay, then talk people into including it in their personal .js. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that, though, since autoplaying music is the spawn of hell. Algebraist 17:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Sophisticated hacker vandalism to 2009 Flu Pandemic article -- unfixable by users

Resolved

 – Simple vandalism that was taken care of swiftly. No biggie. EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Sophisticated hacker vandalism to this important public health page,

2009 flu pandemic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

Instead of using hacking skills to puncture the ego of publicity-hound, a hacker has chosen to vandalize the "Vaccines" section of this page, by adding

"This is in strong contrast to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, where mass vaccinations in the United States caused over 1,000,000 cases where peoples heads fell off.[71]"

The attempt at humor is buttressed by coding that makes it impossible for an ordinary user to remove it, so that when one goes to the "edit" screen to revert the vandalism, the "funny joke" is not found there. If one prints a preview of the text on the edit screen, the text is not found there, either. Same results for the edit screens of either the Vaccines section or for the entire article.

Need to identify the hack and hacker, and take steps to remove both from the site.

MAIN ARTICLE CONTAINS THE VANDALISM

Vaccines

Main article: 2009 flu pandemic vaccine As of November 19, 2009, over 65 million doses of vaccine had been administered in over 16 countries; the vaccine seems safe and effective, producing a strong immune response that should protect against infection.[67] The current trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine neither increases nor decreases the risk of infection with H1N1, since the new pandemic strain is quite different from the strains used in this vaccine.[68][69] Overall the safety profile of the new H1N1 vaccine is similar to that of the seasonal flu vaccine, and fewer than a dozen cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have been reported post-vaccination.[70] Only a few of these are suspected to be actually related to the H1N1 vaccination, and only temporary illness has been observed.[70] This is in strong contrast to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, where mass vaccinations in the United States caused over 1,000,000 cases where peoples heads fell off.[71]

There are safety concerns for people who are allergic to eggs because the viruses for the vaccine are grown in chicken-egg-based cultures. People with egg allergies may be able to receive the vaccine, after consultation with their physician, in graded doses in a careful and controlled environment.[72] A vaccine manufactured by Baxter is made without using eggs, but requires two doses three weeks apart to produce immunity.[73] As of late November in Canada, there have been 24 confirmed cases of anaphylactic shock following vaccination, including one death. The estimated rate is 1 anaphylactic reaction per 312,000 persons receiving the vaccine. However, there has been one batch of vaccine in which 6 persons suffered anaphylaxis out of 157,000 doses given. The relatively few remainder doses of this batch are being held pending investigation. Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, has stated that even though this is an adjuvanted vaccine, that does not appear to be the cause of this severe allergic reaction in these 6 patients.[74][75]

EDIT PAGE DOES NOT CONTAIN THE VANDALISM

Vaccines

Main article: 2009 flu pandemic vaccine

As of November 19, 2009, over 65 million doses of vaccine had been administered in over 16 countries; the vaccine seems safe and effective, producing a strong immune response that should protect against infection. The current trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine neither increases nor decreases the risk of infection with H1N1, since the new pandemic strain is quite different from the strains used in this vaccine. Overall the safety profile of the new H1N1 vaccine is similar to that of the seasonal flu vaccine, and fewer than a dozen cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have been reported post-vaccination. Only a few of these are suspected to be actually related to the H1N1 vaccination, and only temporary illness has been observed. This is in strong contrast to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, where mass vaccinations in the United States caused over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome and led to 25 deaths.

There are safety concerns for people who are allergic to eggs because the viruses for the vaccine are grown in chicken-egg-based cultures. People with egg allergies may be able to receive the vaccine, after consultation with their physician, in graded doses in a careful and controlled environment. A vaccine manufactured by Baxter is made without using eggs, but requires two doses three weeks apart to produce immunity.

As of late November in Canada, there have been 24 confirmed cases of anaphylactic shock following vaccination, including one death. The estimated rate is 1 anaphylactic reaction per 312,000 persons receiving the vaccine. However, there has been one batch of vaccine in which 6 persons suffered anaphylaxis out of 157,000 doses given. The relatively few remainder doses of this batch are being held pending investigation. Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, has stated that even though this is an adjuvanted vaccine, that does not appear to be the cause of this severe allergic reaction in these 6 patients.

THE EDIT PREVIEW PAGE ALSO DOES NOT REVEAL THE VANDALISM

Editing 2009 flu pandemic (section)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Preview

Remember that this is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved!

Vaccines

Main article: 2009 flu pandemic vaccine

As of November 19, 2009, over 65 million doses of vaccine had been administered in over 16 countries; the vaccine seems safe and effective, producing a strong immune response that should protect against infection.[1] The current trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine neither increases nor decreases the risk of infection with H1N1, since the new pandemic strain is quite different from the strains used in this vaccine.[2][3] Overall the safety profile of the new H1N1 vaccine is similar to that of the seasonal flu vaccine, and fewer than a dozen cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have been reported post-vaccination.[4] Only a few of these are suspected to be actually related to the H1N1 vaccination, and only temporary illness has been observed.[4] This is in strong contrast to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, where mass vaccinations in the United States caused over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome and led to 25 deaths.[5]

There are safety concerns for people who are allergic to eggs because the viruses for the vaccine are grown in chicken-egg-based cultures. People with egg allergies may be able to receive the vaccine, after consultation with their physician, in graded doses in a careful and controlled environment.[6] A vaccine manufactured by Baxter is made without using eggs, but requires two doses three weeks apart to produce immunity.[7]

As of late November in Canada, there have been 24 confirmed cases of anaphylactic shock following vaccination, including one death. The estimated rate is 1 anaphylactic reaction per 312,000 persons receiving the vaccine. However, there has been one batch of vaccine in which 6 persons suffered anaphylaxis out of 157,000 doses given. The relatively few remainder doses of this batch are being held pending investigation. Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, has stated that even though this is an adjuvanted vaccine, that does not appear to be the cause of this severe allergic reaction in these 6 patients.[8][9]

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.165.11.37 (talk) 00:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm? It seems to now be fixed. Perhaps you should try refreshing your browser cache? Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 00:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes it is more dangerous to overestimate one's enemies than to underestimate them. There is no "hacker vandalism". It was only simple vandalism which was reverted so quickly that between the time you loaded the page and click the edit button, it was removed. Intelligentsium 00:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal - replace minor edit box

I have found and seen a lot of people comment that the minor edit box is misused a lot. Many people, even some veteran editors, simply do not know or bother to follow the guidelines as to what is considered a "minor" edit. They use it to lazily not explain a more major edit, or attempt to slip by a controversial change.

An idea I came up with to solve this problem is to replace the minor edit box with several other boxes that could be checked in lieu of one called "minor edit." Anyone who is making any such minor edit would check the appropriate box. All others would be compelled to explain.

Some possible boxes would be as follows (though the number should be reduced to simplify it):

• Spelling correction
• Caps
• Punctuation
• Minor word correction (addition/removal/change of words without changing meaning, such as a to an when needed)
• Formatting fix (e.g. italics, headings)
• Spacing (e.g. more or less white space)
• Image resizing
• Linking a word/phrase already in page to another Wikipedia page
• Addition of a template (e.g. a navbox)
• Removal of vandalism
• Removal of spam
• Removal of inappropriate external link(s)

With this proposal, there would be the option of checking multiple boxes.

If the edit summary is left blank, what is in the checked box would automatically become the edit summary.

I am not saying all these examples have to be listed, or that other suggestions can't be added. But one thing for sure is it'll stop the incorrect use of the minor edit box. Sebwite (talk) 05:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

How would these options foul up users that are abusing the existing system? If someone wants to "slip by a controversial change", they could still just mark it as "formatting". EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a degree of honor. But a list of what is considered "minor" will have the psychological effect of others knowing what a minor edit is without having to click any further, and would segregate boxes for different types of minor edits. It would also specify what certain types of minor edits are and automatically fill in edit summaries when not used. That way, if, for example, one was adding a new navbox to numerous pages, they could do it more efficiently. Sebwite (talk) 14:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily. They'd have to check a single box several more times (one for each page), versus just a single box each time. (and they could copy and paste their edit summary for each page; that's what I do when I do mass edits) EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:06, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

For me, I don't really notice misuse of minor edits, but then, I don't think I notice whether edits are marked as minor to begin with. I use the minor box myself, but I don't really pay attention to the marking all that much on other edits. Nevertheless, if there is a problem, it's not major enough to warrant a software change; I also doubt any software change would occur that made the edit page more complicated than it is. Equazcion (talk) 17:15, 8 Dec 2009 (UTC)

How about simplifying the above list to the following four boxes:

• Spelling, punctuation, caps, or grammar fix
• Wiki-format fix
• Addition of new template
• Removal of vandalism, spam, or external link(s)

Sebwite (talk) 17:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Please take note of the fact that the usability team is considering moving the "minor edit" part into a "publish dialog" in the future. See experiments here (Choose the Publish button). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

merge proposal that is redundant and unremovable

I was looking at the Charles Cullen article and noticed a merge template that seemed redundant but it does not appear in the edit page. I am not sure how to remove it Matt (talk) 11:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting this. The problem was a merge tenmplate added to Template:Infobox serial killer. I have wrapped it in "noinclude" tags. If you refresh the page (e.g. Shift+F5 in Firefox) the message disappears. - Pointillist (talk) 11:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I think template merges should be on the doc page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

SVG refreshing

Hey, I've had this issue before and I can't remember how I solved it, or if I really did, but a SVG file that I updated with a newer version yesterday refuses to appear updated in the PNG files. Here's the file, and Here's how its supposed to look. I've checked around, and I don't think its just my machine. It doesn't usually take this long to fix itself, so is there something I can do?-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 19:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I purged the page. If you bypass your browser cache, it should appear fine now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

WP's CSS stylesheets

I'm thinking of making something similar to the special characters input tool (underneath every edit window) for a site of my own, and I've been snooping around the page source trying to figure out how it works. Specifically, I'm looking at this part of the page's source code:

<div id="editpage-specialchars" style="margin-top: 15px; border: 1px solid #aaaaaa; padding: 2px;" class="edittools-text edittools-version-019">
<p><b>Copy and paste:</b> – — ‘ ’ “ ” ° ″ ′ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · §   <b>Sign your posts on talk pages:</b> ~~~~
</p>
<hr />
<p><small>
{{}}   {{{}}}   |   []   [[]]   [[Category:]]   #REDIRECT [[]]   &nbsp;   <s></s>   <sup></sup>   <sub></sub>   <code></code>   <pre></pre>   <blockquote></blockquote>   <ref></ref>   
{{Reflist}}   <references/>   <includeonly></includeonly>   <noinclude></noinclude>   {{DEFAULTSORT:}}   <nowiki></nowiki>   <!-- -->   <span class="plainlinks"></span>

</small>
</p>
<hr />
<p><small>
<b>Symbols:</b> ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶   # ½ ⅓ ⅔ ¼ ¾ ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞ ∞   ‘ ’ “ ” «»   ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ № ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥   ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦   m² m³   ♭ ♯ ♮   © ® ™<br/>
<b>Characters:</b> Á á Ć ć É é Í í Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ó ó Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ú ú Ý ý Ź ź   À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù    â Ĉ ĉ Ê ê Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Î î Ĵ ĵ Ô ô Ŝ ŝ Û û Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ   Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü Ÿ ÿ   ß   à ã Ẽ ẽ Ĩ ĩ Ñ ñ Õ õ Ũ ũ Ỹ ỹ   Ç ç Ģ ģ Ķ ķ Ļ ļ Ņ ņ Ŗ ŗ Ş ş Ţ ţ   Đ đ   Ů ů   Ǎ ǎ Č č Ď ď Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ľ ľ Ň ň Ǒ ǒ Ř ř Š š Ť ť Ǔ ǔ Ž ž   Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū Ȳ ȳ Ǣ ǣ   ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ   Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ğ ğ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ   Ċ ċ Ė ė Ġ ġ İ ı Ż ż   Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ǫ ǫ Ų ų   Ḍ ḍ Ḥ ḥ Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ Ṃ ṃ Ṇ ṇ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ Ṣ ṣ Ṭ ṭ   Ł ł   Ő ő Ű ű   Ŀ ŀ   Ħ ħ   Ð ð Þ þ   Œ œ   Æ æ Ø ø Å å   Ə ə   {{Unicode|}} <br/>
<b>Greek:</b> Ά ά Έ έ Ή ή Ί ί Ό ό Ύ ύ Ώ ώ   Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ   Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ   Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ   Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π   Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ   Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω   {{Polytonic|}} <br/>
<b>Cyrillic:</b> А а Б б В в Г г   Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ   Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж   З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і   Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к   Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м   Н н Њ њ О о П п   Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ   У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х   Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш   Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь   Э э Ю ю Я я   ́ <br/>

<b>IPA:</b> t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ   ɸ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ʝ ɣ ʁ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ   ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ   ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ   ʙ ʀ ɾ ɽ   ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ   ɥ ʍ ɧ   ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ   ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ   ɨ ʉ ɯ   ɪ ʏ ʊ   ɘ ɵ ɤ   ə ɚ   ɛ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ   ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ   ʰ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ   ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪   {{IPA|}}
</small>
</p>
</div>

I assume the important thing here is the class="edittools-text edittools-version-019". I looked around the 6 or 7 stylesheets that are linked at the top of the source code, but I couldn't find this object anywhere. Does anyone have any idea where it might be located?

Thanks, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Edittools for the basic version. For en.wp's version, you also need MediaWiki:Edittools.js and the "Edittools javascript loader" code that we have in MediaWiki:Common.js/edit.js (which you can put in MediaWiki:Common.js for your own site). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The edittools-version-* class is checked by the Javascript, to see if the javascript might be outdated. Javascript is cached, so if it's own version is 18 and it sees 19 in the classname, it knows that it is outdated and should force a reload of itself) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we need [[Help:Edittools]] to explain all of this. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:09, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Or just an expansion/addendum to the info given at the top of MediaWiki talk:Edittools. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, guys! rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia virus

Norton Safe Web from Symantec has tagged wikimedia as having a virus at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/AVMeiyappan_young.jpg . Perhaps Norton should be notified of an error...or is there really a virus sitting on wikimedia?Smallman12q (talk) 00:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Since the detected threat is "Trojan.Maliframe!html", which "is a generic detection for HTML files containing malicious code", I'd say this must be a mistake, since the address is an image file, not an HTML file, and contains no code. Equazcion (talk) 01:00, 9 Dec 2009 (UTC)

There was actually a comment at the end of the jpeg file that had an HTML iframe tag, which is presumably the trojan detected; I don't know whether any browser would actually have been affected by that. If an admin wants, they could delete the old version of the file. Anomie⚔ 01:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I posted to ANI about this. Hopefully an administrator will delete the old version of the file. In any case, the Foundation is the only one with the authority to ask Symantec to review their claim, but that shouldn't happen until after the image is gone. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:48, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Why should any authority be needed? Of cource, in practice, Symantec would probably take more notice of a formal request from the Foundation, but I don't see why any concerned reader shouldn't report this, and I see that 16 people have already done so. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:12, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

To click on the "Site owner? Click here" button and initiate re-checking procedures, you have to own the site. The comments are open to all, as you noticed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Edit toolbar citations / Access date format

I noticed that the "insert citation" feature in the edit toolbar now automatically inserts access dates as "8 December 2009" instead of "2009-12-08" as it did previously. Why has this been changed? I thought the consensus at Wikipedia:Mosnum/proposal on YYYY-MM-DD numerical dates was to keep the YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes (especially for access dates). Another reason why this change is bad is that the previously inserted access dates are still mostly YYYY-MM-DD and the new ones are not, which creates inconsistency (which is a major problem.) Can this change to the toolbar functionality be reverted somehow? Offliner (talk) 03:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

The proposal on YYYY-MM-DD numerical dates failed; there was no consensus. Thus it can't be used to support the notion that we should "keep" the YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes. There has never been any agreement to use YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes, so it makes no sense to talk about "keeping" them, except in individual articles where they might be used. --Jc3s5h (talk) 03:32, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

All right, forget it about the RFC. But what is the reason for this change? It should be a good one, since it leads to a major inconsistency. Offliner (talk) 03:35, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

The default edit toolbar has no facility for entering references. You must have chosen some option in your preferences. I suggest you figure out which preference setting you changed to add the reference editing facility, and let that guide you to who made the change. --Jc3s5h (talk) 03:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I mean the User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar tool. Looks like the author changed on 19 November because someone thought the YYYY-MM-DD isn't allowed anymore: User_talk:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar#Date_formats. Offliner (talk) 03:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It all started here (sorry). OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:24, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Missing article

I am extremely puzzled by not being able to locate an article that I know for a fact existed. I once read the article myself and I have even found websites that quote the article :ORSAT Analysis

[redacted/possible copyvio] --RAM (talk) 04:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC) suspected copyvio removed davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 05:19, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I think I found what you are looking for, Orsat analysis. It was deleted as a suspected copyright violation. See WP:COPYRIGHT for information on Wikipedia and copyright. On that basis I redacted your text. However, this web site purports to quote the article as it existed in 2006. The text appears to be from this Excel spreadsheet with an internal date of 2000. It is possible that this date is incorrect and the Wikipedia page was created first. Other web sites containing the same text have dates of 2007 or later. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 05:19, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I have already had to deal with someone ripping off a Wikipedia article I have contributed heavily to, taking images I created for Wikipedia for plenum cable, putting the images in a PDF on their website, and then claiming copyright of the images. If it weren't for the fact that I retained my originals created in a weird way in a non-SVG format, there would be no way to prove that the article was not a ripoff of my work, and it becomes the word of the contributing editor against the person taking material freely offered and claiming as their own.

If the wikipedia article was the original, but someone takes it, makes PDF out of it, and backdates the creation/modification date of the PDF to before the article existed, and then the content thief posts a copyvio flag on the wikipedia article claiming it contains their copyrighted material, how can you prove the material on Wikipedia is not a copyvio? There appears to be no protection of and no defense for freely distributed content being subject to such abuse.

In such a case Wikipedia administrators are likely to bow down to the thief and just remove the article originally non-violating wikipedia content, since that is the easy route to dealing with the raping of Wikipedia's free distribution policy, as opposed to taking the thief to court or trying to get them to stop claiming copyright.

So how am I, a non-administrator, to determine if this deleted article is in fact not a copyright violation, if it has been removed from Wikipedia? It appears I have to accept the judgement of whoever deleted it and there is no option for a "copyleft activist" like me to review the deletion to make sure this wasn't a similar "theft and false claim of ownership of freely given content". DMahalko (talk) 05:43, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

In this case, the Internet archive page http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cheresources.com/excessair.xls shows that the text of the deleted article existed at http://www.cheresources.com/excessair.xls 5 August 2003. As an administrator I can see the deleted Orsat analysis. It was created 17 September 2005 by the IP 203.199.51.148. It contained an unformatted word for word copy of the "Description" tab in the Excel spreadsheet. Deleted articles will not be made visible to all editors. See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Deleted pages should be visible. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:26, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

To be exact, the spreadsheet starts "The Orsat Apparatus is used ..." while the Wikipedia article started "The Orsat Analysis is used ...". Apart from this, it was an identical copy including where to place double spaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Cant read Bengali articles on Wikipedia

Hi,

I am using Windows XP, Service pack 3 v.5512. Though I can operate the google toolokit, but I cant read the bengali articles that are uploaded in wikipedia. Kindly let me know how to go about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.43.57 (talk) 06:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Check out Bangla script display and input help on the Bengali Wikipedia, particularly the instructions related to Windows XP. Graham87 14:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Also see Help:Multilingual support (Indic) on the English Wikipedia. Graham87 15:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Annoying javascript bug(s) with banner

Resolved

1. Cookies/cache don't keep the fundraising banner closed, and I'm pretty sure that it should be based on the behavior of other such sitenotices...
2. Hitting [close] sometimes opens the fundraising page for some annoying reason

Using Firefox 3.5.5 on Vista on the beta skin. Are these supposed to be bugs or are they intentional? :x --Izno (talk) 08:42, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a glitch in CentralNotice script. Somehow the whole div.siteNoticeBig received onclick=goToDonationPage(), so naturally clicking on [hide] takes you to the donation page as well. — AlexSm 16:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Update: only banners with actual donation examples are affected, so (until this is fixed) just avoid clicking on those if you want to hide the banner. P.S. The problem is also apparent on this meta page. — AlexSm 16:32, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Trevor and Roan report that this should be fixed now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:31, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

"What links here" problems

Let's say template A contains a link to article B and is transcluded on article C, when checking "What links here" on article B, C is on the list. The problem I found is that if the link on the template is changed to point to D, C will still show up on the list even though there is no link to B, transcluded or otherwise, on C. Is this a known issue, does it take time to update, or am I doing something wrong? Keyed In (talk) 18:18, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I would assume it just takes a while to update. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. That's interesting though, because other pages (not templates) update immediately... I'll try again later.Keyed In (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It's a recurrent issue. See this discussion, for example. --AndrewHowse (talk) 20:59, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, and it's more obvious, because the job queue has been rather large lately. Special:Statistics puts it at 48 million jobs atm. It will take weeks to get that down again. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:25, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Do we know if it's growing or shrinking? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 22:22, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It was 56 million earlier this week, and I know that Tim and domas took a few "noop" jobs from the queue by applying queries on the database by hand. Other than that, i'm not really sure (Haven't been that many "heavy use template" changes in the past 2 days though, so that surely should help a bit) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to all for your help. Keyed In (talk) 22:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

IP blocking policy

Please see discussion at WT:Blocking IP addresses#Updates required? and respond there. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:26, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

How to enable Huggle on user page?

Resolved

 – config corrected  7  07:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

How do I enable Huggle? I have the (that I understand) correct values set here, but when I try to log on with Huggle it says "Huggle is not enabled on your account, check user configuration page." What am I not doing? Thanks. --Mike Allen ^{talk · contribs} 06:05, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried adding "enable:true" at the top per Wikipedia:Huggle/Download?  7  06:31, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that's the problem - not sure where "enable-all" came from but if you look at mine you can see it just says "enable:true" and mine works.  7  06:33, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I got it from here. Just tried what you suggested and it worked. Thank you. --Mike Allen ^{talk · contribs} 06:42, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

No prob - that's the project level config which is really meant for turning on and off huggle for everyone from Meta (don't worry - it doesn't do anything when users use it). Glad it works.  7  07:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Deletion notifications

I want to be notified whenever an article I have edited is listed for deletion (either PRODded or listed on AFD). Is there some bot out there doing this, and if so, how can I opt in to its notifications? —Lowellian (reply) 12:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK there's no bot with this sort of task (although, that's something worth thinking about). However, procedure clearly states that people adding a PROD or starting an AFD are supposed to notify authors. If that hasn't happened, that seems to be a good subject to bring up with the person who added the PROD or started the AFD.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you might want to check that procedure again. From Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#Notifying interested people:

...While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion.

In practice, this virtually never occurs, and the process page probably ought to be updated. At best, the article creator may be notified. As it turns out, going out of one's way to contact lots of people who have contributed to an article tends to generate a spurious appearance of support for the article's retention in the AfD discussion. At AfD, what we ideally want is a group of impartial individuals to evaluate the article's adherence to Wikipedia policy on its own merits; recruiting all of the people who have ever edited an article tends not to generate a disinterested, neutral pool of evaluators. (Indeed, there is an explicitly-noted tension between the suggestion that editors be informed and the risks of violating WP:CANVASS.) The instructions at WP:PROD better reflect the way things usually happen. Step 4 of the nomination process simply asks the nominator to "consider notifying the article's creator or significant contributors...".

There exists a reasonable presumption that editors will watchlist articles in which they have an ongoing interest, and thereby find out about any deletion nomination. (This is why it is absolutely essential to use a clear and unambiguous edit summary when making a deletion nomination. A clear edit summary is absolutely essential, and I believe that point has been reinforced in arbitration.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Erwin85Bot_8 currently notifies editors whose article they created is put up for deletion, and editors with signifigant edits to an article. At User_talk:Erwin/Archive/2009#Barnstar User:Erwin states that "The bot actually already notifies all authors with more than 5 non-minor edits." Here are the talk page edits of the bot: [1]

I have seen many editors be notified of an AFD with erwinbot, but a casual glance at contributors and creators talk pages seems to show that the bot misses some editors sometimes. Ikip (talk) 15:05, 10 December 2009 (UTC)