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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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)

Thanks, I'll remember that if this comes up again.-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 16:09, 10 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

Resolved

 – Tagged link is now listed as safe. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:41, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

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)

Watchlisting is not a practical solution for long-term, high-edit-count editors like me, who have tens of thousands of edits across thousands of articles over a period of years. With that many articles, it's not practical to review every single edit every day to see if it's a PROD or AFD. —Lowellian (reply) 19:46, 11 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)

If User:Erwin85Bot is supposed to be notifying editors of deletions, then it's not working properly, because I've had experiences of articles I've started or edited getting PRODded or put on AFD or even deleted without my ever finding out about it until months later. —Lowellian (reply) 19:46, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Do either of you have specific examples of missing notifications? The Erwin85Bot task notifies editors with a minimum number of edits (the request specifies 5 non-minor) to the article nominated at AfD. Recent examples would be better, as the task was approved July 2009 and was offline for some time due to Toolserver problems. Flatscan (talk) 03:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

"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". OTOH, we also want editors who actually know something about the topic, as they are likely to also know whether sources are available and such. The past contributors to the article and the members of associated WikiProjects are probably the best way to find these people. Anomie⚔ 15:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Twinkle

I have a question about Twinkle (user, TW). I am tagging articles for CSD but the tab for CSD doesn't work. All of the other menu in Twinkle does work, but CSD doesn't. This was the first time happened since I start to use Twinkle.--JL 09 _^q?c 15:51, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

"Doesn't work" is not a good bug report. What are you doing, and what happens when you do it? Algebraist 15:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sorry for the choice of word. Whenever I click the CSD tab, nothing pops out, just, nothing. Unlike the XFD tag, prod or rpp where a menu pops out to let taggers choose what kind of criteria should be applied.--JL 09 _^q?c 15:57, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Why not add Wikimindmap support in wikimedia?

Hello, Please check out http://www.wikimindmap.org/ is a very good application, isn't it? for example: http://www.wikimindmap.org/viewmap.php?wiki=en.wikipedia.org&topic=Wikimedia_Foundation&Submit=Search If every wiki page add onebutton to generate the mindmap, is that cool?

so,,,,Why not add Wikimindmap support in wikimedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Litingjun (talk • contribs) 16:31, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's giving out false licensing information, it's on a site written by an illiterate, and to cap it all, it doesn't work. What would I be seeing if I wasn't seeing just a Flash oval with "undefined" written in it? Algebraist 16:45, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, it sort of fans out, mind map style, with (+)Cats and articles (everything eventually leads to an article!). If you (+) you fan out a level and so forth. I don't like it much mind. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:38, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks like an interesting tool, kind of alternative navigation of categories, wikilinks, etc. Could it be an 'External Tool' like the ones listed onthe history page?Cander0000 (talk) 23:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

At present, I believe that would violate our copyright policy, since the site falsely claims that all the Wikipedia material it provides is available under the GFDL, which means some stuff there will be violating copyright. Algebraist 00:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Talk pages not archived correctly

Resolved

 – Fixed. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 23:13, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

The talk pages of KAL007 have been archived. The problem is two-fold:

• Only 5 archives are listed on the current talk page. But, there are actually 6 of them. The only way to get to number 6 archive, is to click the link to number 5, and then change the "5" to "6" in the URL box, after number 5 is displayed, and then "enter" again.

• Part of the archive 6 is missing, if you read the page in the normal way. However, if you open the edit box, and read the html, the missing parts are there, but with a light orange background color.

I do not know if that page (number 6 archive) was done automatically by a bot, or if someone did it manually. Either way, I think the situation needs to be repaired, so that the entire talk history of KAL007 is fully preserved and accessible. I am reluctant to try to fix it myself, because of the admonition that archived pages should not be edited.

Here are the links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007/Archive_5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007/Archive_6

Can someone fix it? EditorASC (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• That is a manually generated archive box used on that page, you need to manually update it by looking for the {{Archive box}} on the talk page and add the relevant information. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 23:13, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Search page help links

The help links on the search page got removed (without any discussion) when the new search interface was deployed some time ago. There is a discussion about adding them back. See MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-exists#Renewed request.

And a reminder: We now have a new central page for discussing MediaWiki interface messages: Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages. It is kind of a "Village pump (MediaWiki messages)". So if MediaWiki interface messages interest you, consider adding that page to your watchlist.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Disappearing source: Editor & Publisher

Wikipedia has over 600 links to the legendary publishing periodical Editor & Publisher, which is now ceasing publication. I suspect that the website will soon be shuttered as well. We need a massive effort to 1) preemptively archive (via WP:WebCite?) many of these articles as possible and 2) repair already dead links (via WP:WAYBACK?). The list is here Please see Wikipedia talk:Linkrot to help coordinate. --Blargh29 (talk) 03:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

They're not burning every copy they printed are they? Off-line sources are still sources. If they're that legendary I'm sure libraries will have them. By all means preserve useful on-line links, but remember it's not the end of the world. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:27, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Multi-user Contribution page

This is sort of a technical proposal, so maybe it's in the wrong place. I was thinking recently about a possible tool, essentially a Contribution page (like [2]) that you could add multiple users to. It would presumably sort edits chronologically- the purpose being to see all of a sock puppeteer's edits in-line with his socks, for a more complete overview of their editing style, and to spot 3RR-by-proxy, etc.

Would this be technically difficult to put together? And again, is this the wrong place? --King Öomie 15:33, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

You are in the right place. Many technically minded Wikipedians are reading this page so here you can get good feedback. Thus this page is a good place to start.

And yes, your idea seems very useful. I guess it could be implemented as a tool on the toolserver for starters, since I think the toolserver has access to the contribution data. Are there any toolserver coders here that can confirm that?

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:29, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver would work, though I'd been assuming it would be something more like User:Lupin/Monitor_my_watchlist, something on-wiki so Popups et. al would be able to function. --King Öomie 17:05, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I've seen a load of similar sock-related tools on the toolserver that sound similar. I'm sure someone will be able to provide the link in a minute :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

King Öomie: Right, having it on-wiki would be better. But usually it is quicker to get something implemented at the toolserver. Another option that seems possible is to code it using javascript and some ajax calls to the API. Although that is way beyond my javascript abilities, and it would anyway break popups etc.

Jarry1250: Yeah, I hope you are right!

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

A tool that can do this: http://toolserver.org/~erwin85/contribs.php. Not exactly what you want, since it's on the toolserver rather than on-wiki, but better than nothing. Maralia (talk) 19:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much. Looks promising. *Pores over sockpuppet conspiracy theories* --King Öomie 21:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Persistent time out errors at List of Wii games

I and other users have expressed persistent time out errors when comparing histories or previewing changes at List of Wii games. This problem seems to be specific to this article. Any help appreciated. Error message for reference:

Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wii_games&action=historysubmit&diff=330867755&oldid=330850001, from 68.14.224.197 via sq33.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE6) to 208.80.152.29 (208.80.152.29) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:47:57 GMT

Aether7 (talk) 19:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it's because that page is too big and complex. It uses almost half of the allowed preprocessor node count (Preprocessor node count: 493958/1000000). It could be caused by the extensive use of {{dts}}. I guess it would be worth trying to replace them with some simpler template or no template at all. Svick (talk) 19:28, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks alot. We are currently trying to find ways of condensing information on the list, so its good to know the dts template may be a problem. Do you know of any simpler template that can be used for date sorting? Aether7 (talk) 20:20, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

There is {{dts vgr2}}. I switched the article to this template, and it uses much less preprocessor nodes now, but I had to change dates like “Q4 2009” to just “2009” and dates that use {{TBA}} don't sort properly. The latter issue could be easily solved by not using that template, but I don't know how to solve the former. Svick (talk) 22:01, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. I'm not getting any more timeout errors. Aether7 (talk) 22:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Problems with showing PNG images?

I opened this page López and it looks ok. But if I opened Lopez, which redirects to the same page, the PNG image is not scaled, it occupies all the screen. Tried in Firefox, IE, Chrome, it acts the same. Weird, now after 2 minutes, in Firefox looks ok, but not in IE and Chrome. Maybe depends on the way you link it? test Ark25 (talk) 22:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks fine to me, using FF 3.5.5 ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Fine in IE8 and Safari as well. Intelligentsium 23:10, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Reason field in moves: lack of limit on characters leads to botched edit summaries

In edit summaries we are limited to a certain number of characters from on high. We know what can fit because it's WYSIWYG; you can only type up to the number of characters that will show when you save (which can be increased by 50 characters in your preferences [in Gadgets → User interface gadgets: editing]). When moving pages, by contrast, you can apparently type an unlimited number of characters into the equivalent "Reason:" field which provides an edit summary when you perform the move. I sometimes go over the limit without realizing it and get a botched edit summaries, being cut off in midsentence à la here, which resolved on three more words. Of course, there's also no preview for a move, so you can't simply click a button to see if you've gone over the limit. Any possible fixes for this?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

HTML textareas are unable to hardcode a maximum number of characters, as opposed to text fields, which is why it's like this. However, JavaScript can be implemented to do this. Gary King (talk) 07:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

A "preview move" might be good enough. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 07:43, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Why don't we change that textarea to a text field then? Svick (talk) 11:25, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Why is that a textarea, anyway? The only effects I've ever noticed are the above and the fact that pressing return makes a useless newline rather than submitting; there doesn't seem to be any benefit. Algebraist 12:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

rev:45571. I disagree totally with Brion's reason, but that's the cookie trail to the discussion. Happy‑melon 22:17, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Strange edit history

Could someone take a look at the edit history of Talk:Jack Sarfatti (edit | article | history | links | watch | logs)? The two edits made by 98.234.144.82 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) recently have been greyed out and the logs give no indication of what has happened. __meco (talk) 08:41, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Those edits have been oversighted. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 08:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I see. There ought to be something one could click on to get that explanation right away. __meco (talk) 09:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm.. yes it should, maybe a letter bit that features a tooltip (perhaps the letter "O" (eg: O)) or put something like "(Oversighted)" at the end off the edit summary area like the edit filters do with their automatic tagging. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 10:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Another confusing thing probably limited to administrators (who cannot see oversighted edits): I see the unlinked text "(del/undel)" to the left of the edits at Special:Contributions/98.234.144.82 (but not in the page history). PrimeHunter (talk) 10:37, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

param name capitalization in templates

Is there any way that we could make template parameter names insensitive to capitalization (aside from manually adding them to every template)? Even if only the first letter were insensitive, that would seem to be a big improvement.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This is bugzilla:4964. Algebraist 12:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

After all that discussion, is there any hope that template parameter names can be made insensitive to capitalization? I would like that to happen. For example, I see "Class=start" and "Importance=high" parameters, which mean that the Wiki project does not get a class or an importance when that mistake is made. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Improving Bugzilla

Separated from the above discussion Mr.Z-man 17:38, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

OK but, so what? Bugzilla is abandoned.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:50, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Hardly, Bugzilla is commonly used every day, please give some thought before making comments like that. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 13:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It looks like nobody's paid much attention to that bug recently. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:01, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It's used, sure, but there's never any action taken through it. It seems that it's only there as an outlet, which is then studiously ignored by... well, everyone. Linking to a bugzilla is essentially a way to politely say "STFU".
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

No action taken? (1) 36 bugs have been closed as fixed since the start of this week and 10 closed under different reasons, so you clearly can't state that nothing is ever done via it. Just because something is submitted into bugzilla doesn't mean people that can/want to work on know about it, it is easy to miss the emails sent to the mailing-list or someone that could work on wasn't around when it first filed, and it helps if the report was filed correctly as well. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 14:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

So, it's simply a scratch pad and apparently a poor man's version control for MediaWiki developers. Fine by me, that I can understand at least. That makes the encouragment for people here to go there and file a report even more of a mistake though, if not an outright attempt to shut people up. It's no wonder we have problems with communicating with the developers... MediaWiki != Wikipedia.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:57, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Wrong, and more wrong. Bugzilla's function is not version control, that is handled by separate tools. Bugzilla is for tracking bugs, their symptoms, the conditions under which they are reproducible, independent confirmation by other testers, the severity of their impact, etc. It allows for sensible priorities to be assigned to bugs when using the scarce resource of developer time. It has its own flaws, but so far it has worked out pretty well for Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, MediaWiki, Apache, many Linux distributions and many other collaborative developments. Don't blame the tool.LeadSongDog come howl 16:37, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Someone's obviously drinking the cool aid... Thanks for the (inaccurate and misleading) lecture on the precise meaning of VCS, but you've completely misinterpreted what I've been saying. The "don't blame the tool" comment makes it even more obvious that the misinformed groupthink continues. I don't blame the tool, especially since I use it myself for my own work; what I blame is you (and Peachey88 and Algebraist) for misguiding folks to believe that using bugzilla ourselves will have any notice or effect. I probably shouldn't lay all this on your shoulders though, since you folks are likely just misguided dupes, but there's no one else to blame, and you three have put yourselves out front to be blamed. It would be nice if someone would get off their ass and actually do some work on Wikipedia itself, though.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I feel I should point out that I didn't provide any guidance on the usefulness of bugzilla; I merely provided information relevant to your request which I felt you might be able to make use of. This is the last time I will try to help you, or indeed communicate with you in any way. Algebraist 03:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki != Wikipedia, but you're not asking for a change to Wikipedia, you're asking for a change to MediaWiki. Linking to Bugzilla is not a way to say "STFU" (and your unwillingness to WP:AGF here is frankly astounding) Its simply a way to say that its been requested before, or at the very minimum, a note so that a duplicate bug won't be filed. In some cases the bug may have reasons why it hasn't been done yet. Requesting on Bugzilla might be slow (please remember you're dealing with volunteers for the most part), but letting it disappear in the archives of the village pump is definitely a worse option. If you want it done faster, there are additional options to contact the developers. Mr.Z-man 17:03, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Who or what should we blame then? Something's clearly not working (grumble, alphabetical order still not fixed after more than 5 years and 100 votes, grumble). (Though on the parameter names issue, we'd have to be careful about fixing it, in case there are templates around that deliberately use case-differentiated parameters.) --Kotniski (talk) 17:07, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why someone needs to be blamed. Blaming volunteers for not working hard enough is not a very good way to encourage them. Mr.Z-man 17:35, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

See, here's a huge part of this problem. It's possible that a change in the code base would be required to accomplish this (hell, it may even be probable), but that doesn't mean that MediaWiki itself needs to change! It's no wonder we have such an issue in this area. I don't care one iota if a change is made to MediaWiki... but anyway, I saw where this was headed 5 hours ago. It's not going to happen, so screw it. I'll just keep working around the problem, as usual.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:16, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(e/c w/ Chillum)I'm not sure what you mean, if a change in the code needs to be made (which it would), then MediaWiki would need to be changed. As I said, developers are mostly volunteers. If you're only going to criticize them, and expect them to do nothing, then that's exactly what you're going to get. Most new features proposed by someone who doesn't know PHP are generally require a little bit of work on the proposer's side to go on the mailing list or the IRC channel and find a developer willing to work on it. Mr.Z-man 17:35, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Umm, Mediawiki and the code base are basically the same thing. If volunteer development is not moving at a fast enough pace, one could always learn PHP, repair the problem, and submit a patch. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki and Wikipedia's code base being the same thing is just plain stupid. Shockingly stupid. (and, reading over the MediaWiki site, this idiocy is apparently intentional!) The admonition to leave the poor volunteer developers alone is just dumb, and misguided, as well. Besides, isn't MediaWiki OpenSource? Where's the forked Wikipedia specific code base? Is anyone actually running this site, or is WMF too preoccupied with fundraising to actually do any work? This is amateur hour stuff!
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The core is the same. There is a specific code base (branch, rather) lying around, but it only has things like the beta skin and extensions in it, I think. Could be more in there, but not much. Also, don't bite the devs. --Izno (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying "leave them alone." I'm saying the opposite really. If you want to get something done, find a developer and talk to them (i.e. convince them to work on what you want). If you just put it on Bugzilla, it'll eventually get done, but things like low-priority feature requests are going to take a while if you're just waiting for a developer to find it, as they tend to take a back seat in favor of actual bugs, more important features, and things that already have a patch. But just repeatedly insulting people is not going to get anything done. I fail to see how not pointlessly forking the codebase is stupid. A fork would just mean Wikipedia has fewer developers; we wouldn't get any of the work done by developers not associated with Wikipedia (Wikia, wikiHow, corporate users, etc.). MediaWiki grew out of the software used for Wikipedia, not the other way around. They just realized that if they didn't hardcode "Wikipedia" all over the place (as some ancient versions of MediaWiki do) that it would work as a good general purpose wiki engine. The branch used by Wikimedia is here. Its basically a snapshot of the trunk version of MediaWiki from a couple months ago, with a few bugfixes from more recent trunk revisions and a handful of Wikimedia-specific tweaks. Wikimedia runs hundreds of servers on 2 continents with a tech staff of 8 (only 4 do most of the sysadmin work), plus one advisory board member who does database work, its hardly "amateur hour." Again, your complete unwillingness to assume any good faith on the part of Wikimedia staff or developers is just shocking. Mr.Z-man 19:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The OP's complete ignorance of how Bugzilla, MediaWiki, MW development and the WMF developers interact, and no interest that I can see in either building a better mousetrap or providing any criticism more constructive than "volunteer, work for me", doesn't give me much confidence that the bugs he supports represent the best use of my freely-donated time. Which is a shame, because on its own merits the particular bug mentioned is perfectly reasonable, and useful. Code, editor, SVN. I'm aware that MW development does have a serious problem with patch review. You write a patch, I'll pledge to review it. No one would stand for you bitching about the content of an article when the edit button is right there. MediaWiki is absolutely no different, whether you deign to recognise that or not. Something's broken. {{sofixit}}. Happy‑melon 22:11, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Title problems

How can the title of I-Télé be changed to i>Télé? There must be a solution since it's i>Télé on the fr wiki: I've looked thru {{wrongtitle}} and the like but there seems to be nothing. ChrisDHDR 17:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The French really shouldn't be doing that. > and < are reserved characters in MediaWiki (and on the Web in general, I believe). The <h1> heading should always be copy-pasteable for creating links. It's not possible to insert >, <, [, ], |, and some other characters into page titles on this and most wikis, nor should it be. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, perhaps it should be (on the readers-before-editors principle), but English Wikipedia is configured so it isn't. (The French one seems to be using a hack that positions the desired title text so that it lies on top of the real title - I've seen this done here in user space, but it wouldn't be approved of in an article.) --Kotniski (talk) 18:07, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

PS. More info on these restrictions is at WP:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) and Help:Page name.--Kotniski (talk) 18:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't &gt; work? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:36, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

We could use a look-alike character, such as "˃" (U+02C3). However, the character entity &gt; would not work, as page titles cannot contain HTML character entities. (It is not possible to create the page [[>]]). Intelligentsium 01:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Import sources enabled on the English Wikipedia

It's now possible to import revisions from Meta and the Nostalgia Wikipedia to this site]]. It would be nice if that functionality could be extended to other language Wikipedias, but this is a very good start! Graham87 02:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent news! So, where do we file revision import requests? :) –Whitehorse1 03:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You can import pages from Commons, Foundation-wiki, Fr-Wiki, and the Czech-wiki to Meta, so if there is something very important to be moved here from one of those it could be done stepwise (it's also possible to import from De-Wiki and En-Wikibooks to Commons, so a three-stepper is possible, but would be annoying). MBisanz ^talk 03:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)