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.

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« Archives, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214

testing templates (continued)

for anyone interested in commenting bugzilla:22135. I would have posted this the previous discussion here, but the discussion has already been archived.

Image display problems

Can someone please look at Thomas Baker (aviator) in IE8? I (finally) downloaded Safari (which I hate, old dog, new trick) because I'm having this problem across numerous FACs; it's not only Baker, I've seen it on dozens of articles. They display fine in Safari, but not in IE8. Also, the problems seem random; in the case of Baker, it's the infobox, but in other articles, I see it on some images, and not on others in the same article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Also Bodiam Castle. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:14, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a repro of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 69#Layered images often not displaying in IE8 which is still hugely annoying and, as the archive shows, has gone unanswered here at least twice recently.

I'm getting the problem with lots of infobox maps. That said, I can't reproduce the problem with the Thomas Baker article. Is it the infobox photo that disappears? Do you use the Wikipedia:Navigation popups extension?

I wish there were a way to bring this problem to the attention of some IE8 CSS specialists as it seems to be a bug with a browser that is used enough to deserve a server-side fix, and I'm sure the bug is limited enough to have a workaround if we only knew what.

One possible positive is that Microsoft apparently intends to remove Wikipedia (or maybe just Wikimedia) from its compatibility-mode list shortly, so IE8 browsers may default to standards mode where perhaps the bug will not exist. But that's only a hope!

— Richardguk (talk) 22:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

They're not disappearing ... I'm getting a line or two of text, with a right-aligned image, and then a big chunk of white space, no text, until the bottom of the image, with the rest of the text forced under the image. It happens with infoboxes and with images within sections. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

No problem here. The image appeared just fine.

File:IE8-maps.png

--Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 01:21, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

You do realize that you mislicensed the above image? Given how clearly the IE icon is being displayed, this would qualify at best as a {{Non-free software screenshot}}? It'll probably have to be deleted once this gets resolved.Smallman12q (talk) 18:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I added that template so the image won't get deleted because of incorrect license BEFORE the case is closed. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 22:02, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

But I still have the problem, on many articles :) And I still hate Safari. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused @_@. I don't have anyproblems as you can see. Are you having problems with Safari or IE8? What happens when you run IE8 in NO-Add on mode? In Win7 or Vista search for "no add" and click on Internet Explorer (No Add-on). In XP, go to start, all programs-->Accessory-->System Tool-->Internet Explorer (NO Add-On). IF the page loads properly, one of you add-on is giving you problems. IF the page load correctly when you are logged out, maybe one of your gadgets and/or tools is broken and interfering with Wikipedia. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 09:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) SandyGeorgia: Sorry to throw back at you, but do you have a screenshot or a more precise description? The map problem sounds familiar but from what you've described so far of the rendering problem at Thomas Baker (aviator), I'm not sure whether it's the same IE8 issue as has previously been (unsuccessfully) raised. (I'd still love to know of a forum where more people with IE8/CSS knowledge can advise on a workaround for the problem(s)!) — Richardguk (talk) 09:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Plus, my version of IE8 renders the article. Even with compactability view mode. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 10:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Tyw7: Do you have intermittent display problems with map overlays, such as the pages referred to at /Archive 69#Layered images often not displaying in IE8? Do you use navpopups (I do, but I got the same problem when logged out)? — Richardguk (talk) 10:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes I use navpopups. And no I did not experience maps dissappearing. What are see is in the screenshot above. One question. Is inprivate filter switched on? Only with the filter switched on (not default) did the wikipedia images disappear. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 11:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

See:

File:IE screenshot.png

--Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 11:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, but not using InPrivate here. I can see how that might prevent images downloading because they use a different server, but the problem I have (and I think SandyGeorgia has described this too) is a frequent but intermittent one. In my case, maps and their overlays, including text overlays, fail to show, as though their z-order has sunk. Resizing the page, or sometimes just hovering over a link, often makes them appear, and there seems to be no correlation with whether the image or page is already cached, so it is bizarre! — Richardguk (talk) 11:22, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

So the map on my browser is rendered properly? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 11:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

It looks like InPrivate is blocking all your images, which is different from an intermittent problem affecting (only?) overlaid images, if I understand correctly. So, not "properly", but "differently"! — Richardguk (talk) 14:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Richard, see the screenshot above. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 15:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Twy: Sorry but I don't understand your point; your first pic renders OK and the second one is not rendering the images; the IE8 prob I had only affected overlaid images, and then only intermittently. I was going to put up a screenshot too, but have just tried many pages here and failed to reproduce the problem. So, for no apparent reason, my problem seems to have gone away for now. How odd! Thanks for your interest though, and wishing SandyGeorgia all the best with what may be an unrelated problem. — Richardguk (talk) 16:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The second screenshot was the is this what you are seeing? screenshot. In addition, maybe a Microsoft update/patch fixed the problem? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd have seen the photo but not the map if the problem were still occurring, though I don't have image-placeholders switched on so wouldn't have seen the image outlines and alt text that your second screenshot shows. But I agree that a Microsoft patch is the most likely explanation if the problem remains absent; perhaps the January IE8 security included an unannounced fix for the layout bug. — Richardguk (talk) 17:43, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Update: I don't have time to explore right now (Drs app't later), but 1) I don't know how to get screenshots, 2) I'll look at the Add on thing later today, and 3) the problem in IE8 was gone last night but is back this morning. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

To take screenshots, click on the application window you want to take the screenshot. Then press alt+PrtScn. Open up paint and then press ctrl+v to paste the image. After that save it and upload it to Wikipedia. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

ummm ... sorry to put y'all through this, but I also don't know how to upload it to Wiki. And I haven't been to the eye Dr. yet. And I've been distracted by issues on my talk page. Is there someone I can email the jpeg to once I get to it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

You could always upload the image to imageshack... then paste the link here. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 18:07, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Plot thickens. The problem is gone now on Bodiam Castle, but still there on HMS Calliope (1884) and Thomas Baker (aviator). I logged out, re-loaded pages, cleared cache, have same problem when logged out. I removed all add-ons, re-loaded, cleared cache, still have problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

A screenshot would be helpful. I have no idea what problem you are discribing. All pics load fine for me. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 06:06, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I got sick and lost track of this; will work on screenshot. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Strike that ... the problem is gone now (???). Thanks to all for the help, not sure what changed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's count that as a success then. Hope you're feeling better. — Richardguk (talk) 18:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Automatically adding articles to an editors watchlist?

The easiest way to deal with the unreferenced biography of living people backlog is to assign it to volunteers to at minimum add them to their watchlists. I don't know if there's any way for the system to add pages to someone's watchlist fully automatically, but there are ways to create links to automatically watch a number of pages.

Is there a system to add articles to an editors watchlist automatically? Ikip 06:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Not that I know of. BTW, wouldn't it be invasive and malware-like? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 11:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I think he meant in some kind of opt-in system, where users explicitly request to have future articles added to their watchlists. Equazcion ^(talk) 11:52, 1 Feb 2010 (UTC)

Would it be reasonable to require new page patrolers to add new BLPs to their watchlists? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The idea was that, in the wake of the big hoo-ha over unreferenced, unwatched BLPs, volunteers could sign up to be assigned a certain number of these articles, so that their names could be publicized in the hopes of getting the community to either source or hand-nominate for deletion these articles. The question is, could something be implemented whereby a script (run by an admin) can add a bunch of articles to a different user's watchlist. ^Bongo_matic 06:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I was going to say "mw:Extension:PovWatch, see also bug 20523" but that extension is no longer maintained. MER-C 02:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any facility within the MediaWiki software that distinguishes a "watched" article from a "watched by an editor who is still alive and gives a damn anymore" article, although perhaps the external (toolserver) software makes that distinction - however a "watcher count" is always interesting if it is zero. Ikip - MZMcBride, vicious devil that he is, possesses this data. Why not approach him? Ask for a random or structured sample of 100 or 1000 unwatched BLP's in a format that you can paste into your raw watchlist. I've been thinking of asking for the same thing, I could very easily absorb an extra 100 articles to watch. Franamax (talk) 03:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The concern is disclosing the article names to a non-admin prior to them being watched (chicken / egg). However, doing it, say, 100 at time could be a reasonable approach, provided the admin is willing to watchlist a batch if the volunteer fails to add the articles to his/her watchlist when expected. ^Bongo_matic 04:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Canned text in new sections on a page?

Is there a way to add some code to a page so that a new section created with the new section / + tab would come pre-populated with some text? Thanks, ^Bongo_matic 06:16, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

That could be done, but what would be the purpose? Equazcion ^(talk) 06:17, 1 Feb 2010 (UTC)

Lots of pages have sections all of the same format—arbitrations, various reporting noticeboards, and individual users' projects. Can this be done using existing tools? ^Bongo_matic 06:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, by using the InputBox extension with the comment type and using preloaded text. The InputBox at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Nominate doesn't do exactly what you're after, but it's a good example. Graham87 08:18, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Wizard-Redirects is an example of what you are looking for. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone—exactly what I was looking for. Is there any way to tie this to the new section / + button? ^Bongo_matic 13:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think so. The magic word __NONEWSECTIONLINK__ can remove the button but I don't think that should be done without very good reason on a discussion or report page where we want new sections. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I figured as much. But generally, what happens when a user clicks the new section / + button? Is there any way to override the behavior either for oneself (e.g., by changing your monobook.js or something), or for a particular page? ^Bongo_matic 16:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Problem viewing new edits

Whenever there is new edits to pages that I watch, I can't view the new edits when I click on the page. When it lets me, I'm only able to view new edits by going to the editing history to compare diffs. Joe Chill (talk) 12:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried to bypass your cache? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

HOw about purging the page? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 13:34, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Problem with my template

I was wondering if someone might assist me with a user space template. It's basically an image of an "End of correspondence" stample that I created in the Gimp. I've managed to get it to float over the text without much of an issue, however for some reason it's leaving a large amount of space down the bottom of the image. Does anyone have any ideas why this is? The template is User:Tbsdy lives/EndOfCorr and a test page is User:Tbsdy lives/EndOfCorr/Test. You can see what its doing there. Thanks! - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 20:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Fixed: needed a negative margin-bottom. Though I'd be willing to bet this template has cross-browser compatibility issues. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and fixed the horizontal scrollbar issue as well by setting a width explicitly. "border:1px solid black;" is invaluable in debugging these issues, for reference. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

MZ, you are an absolutely legend! Thanks :-) Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 23:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

How to extract image with metadata from pdf

How does one extract an image from a pdf and still have that image retain its original metadata(if it had any)?Smallman12q (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

If you've access to a sane OS (or emulation of one*): pdfimages -j foo.pdf prefix ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Pdfimages comes with the xpdf build for windows so one doesn't necessarily need an emulation/cygwin. Does it keep the metadata though from the original image? I ran it on a few pdfs, and it doesn't seem to keep the metadata...am I doing something wrong?Smallman12q (talk) 13:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

CSS :target on headings

span.mw-headline:target { background-color: #fbe54e;}

Adding this to common.css will highlight the heading of the section when clicked from the TOC. A more advanced example with permalinking in the heading is given on the Toolserver, which could be implemented here with javascript. — Dispenser 23:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Rescaled fairuse images older than 7 days not going into subcategory?

Category:Rescaled fairuse images contains all images that have been tagged with {{Non-free reduced}}, to help us get rid of old versions of images that have been shrunken to help us comply with nonfree content criterion 3. When this template is applied to these images, it has a timestamp attached so that it will automatically go into Category:Rescaled fairuse images more than 7 days old; all files where the old versions are more than 7 days old can be deleted. However, I just went through the parent category deleting images that were well over a week old, including some that were tagged last year. Any reason why these images wouldn't be showing up in the subcategory? Nyttend (talk) 01:24, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Most likely because the date was added incorrectly or not at all ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

That's probably not it. For example, description page of File:Bucklive.jpg says that it is member of Category:Rescaled fairuse images more than 7 days old, but the category doesn't list it. Purging both didn't help. Svick (talk) 14:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems there was a rather large database failure earlier this week. It might be that the system is still backlogged from that, and has not had the time to reparse the pages tagged with that template. It is strange. If it keeps up for too long, perhaps the template needs a nulledit to force the pages with the template on to the job queue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

noinclude tags and load times for page with transcluded subpages

I raised a brief proposal at WT:Featured article candidates#Template:la to add a <noinclude>ed template to subpages of WP:FAC. I believe such an addition wouldn't affect the load times of WP:FAC (where the subpages are all transcluded) because of the noinclude tags, but could someone familiar with load time stuff take a look at it to make sure? Thanks, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

harvnb-style citation

When SteveMcCluskey fixed the Sarton citation in History of science I decided to cast it into the harvnb format. Unfortunately, when one uses Author|Year in the citation the software links are very picky and insist on the format yyyy instead of 1927-48 which would be the real citation. Is there now a better way? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about a better way, but I always felt this template would fall apart when used in a complicated article. For example, some style guides call for using a short version of the title instead of the author if the author can't be determined, or if it is a corporate author. That won't work very well in these templates. --Jc3s5h (talk) 04:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

How does the software insist on that format? The following {{harvnb}} citation seems to work correctly.

Last 1927–48

• Last, First (1927–48). The Book. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Svick (talk) 11:04, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for looking. My method for checking whether the link works is two step:

1. Click on the ref to see if the page re-positions on the ref.
2. Click on the Last yyyy to see if the page re-positions to the actual bibliographical line

When I tested this on your template just now, (I moved the ref up several sections to see the re-position, and have restored it.) Voila!

I will try the | ref = harv part of the secret formula. Many thanks. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 18:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Not so fast- there area few mysteries still unsolved. I have just been on Royton, I thought sorting out a silly sp that was preventing the harv citations from working--- well none of them worked so I added the magic powder ref = harv. Most now work! I zapped a few by changing the ref to ref=CITEREFBigEars1947 format- then remembered this post and stopped. Why? Why doesn 't Lewis work or McPhillips but Reid_ does?--ClemRutter (talk) 23:04, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Because a year isn't a date. fixed.LeadSongDog come howl 02:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Umm- that solves that one. Rule:There must be a year= x field in the citation, for ref = harv to hook onto,

The second mystery is where did date= X come from- is is just a manual entry, or is there a citation generator out there that needs reeducation. Are there any help pages that would benefit from a tweak to warn User:BeingHelpful of this bear trap? Using the standard wikipedia editor- there is a nice little button and form to generate cites. Would it be helpful, to have a field to tick that added a ref=harv. Indeed a full citation form would be helpful- and the word year in not used on any of these forms. I prefer to stop the problem rather than have to fix it later. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I was just a bit flip above. Either |year=YYYY or |date=any form of complete date should work, but |date=YYYY will not. If provided with |date=3 Feb 2010 the template should populate |Year=2010 by itself. When enabled, user:Citation bot corrects this common error, but it is presently blocked largely because it doesn't compensate correctly for {{cite book}}'s anomalous behaviour, which differs in some regards from most of the cite xxx family and from {{citation}}. LeadSongDog come howl 17:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

No offence taken- the problem is fully understanding the nature of the problem- then making the information accessible to others.--ClemRutter (talk) 18:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There is lots of articles with broken Harvard references, part of there errors was created by requiring ref = harv in {{cite *}} templates, the rest is broken from different reasons. If anybody is interested in fixing them, list is available at [1]. Svick (talk) 10:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I will keep an eye open for the offending Greater Manchester area articles. My technique is to copy the whole Bibliography section into gedit and globally replace }} with |ref=harv}}. Is this foolproof? Will it break anything if it meets a *citation where I understand that this is auto generated or just be ignored? Presumably I am missing a bit of politics where all this was decided?--ClemRutter (talk) 14:52, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

{{Citation}} has default setting ref=harv, so setting it explicitly doesn't break anything. Your approach could cause that Harvard citation links to the wrong book and also invalid HTML in the rare case when there are two books from the same author and with the same year. Invalid HTML was the main concern when this was decided at Template talk:Citation/core#We should never render invalid HTML. Svick (talk) 15:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

But a workaround could be 1927-48 idea from above, with the physics convention of disambiguating in the citation, viz.

Einstein 1905a, p320

Einstein 1905b, p1

Einstein 1905c, preface

Einstein 1905d, more info here

in his Annus Mirabilis of 1905, with corresponding refs and citations a b c d, respectively

• Template:Cite article
• Template:Cite article
• Template:Cite article
• Template:Cite article

Haha, you got me! I see what is wrong the with Einstein article: no citations, just refs. OK, I am signed up to fix that article.

One done. The 1905a citation now works after replacing the cite journal with Citation. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The hundred-odd replacements are done, except for one cite pmid which I do not understand, and which I have left for others to handle. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Just for fun, I changed 3 entries in urheimat which were not the IDs listed in the report, and the Mallory citations now work. It was unexpected. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that they worked before too, but my tool just incorrectly reported them. {{harvcoltxt}} used links like [[this article#CITEREFsomething]], when the tool counted only [[#CITEREFsomething]]. Because the second form is better (works as expected when viewing old revisions or when using preview), I changed the template. Svick (talk) 17:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

And in ancient history there was only one harv ref but a dozen or so cites. Just a mass replace of the many fixed the one ref, so that is understandable to me; its not one-to-one. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Your edit to this article contained some strange changes (look at the diff) and I also think that the style of citations shouldn't be changed without good reason, so I undid it. Adding ref=harv to the one citation worked fine there. Svick (talk) 18:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Looked at the weird behaviour- It is almost as if the article had been filtered to remove a series of letters that could have sexual meaning - panic until - becomes -> pani il and I would bet streets of Uckfield would street o field. (Genitives confused with genitals? )I think that one needs to be investigated. --ClemRutter (talk) 18:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

"What links here" after a move

There is a place to click for what links to the old page name on the page that says a move was successful.

I just moved an article and was told "No pages link to WOHS". I knew of some that did since I created the links in the first place, and no one had fixed the links yet. I went to the page that has the redirect on it and there was a list, and I discovered a template that was responsible for many of the links, but after I fixed the template, the pages still showed up as having links to WOHS. Except for sports networks (which the former WOHS may or may not still be a part of), supposedly I have fixed all the pages with actual links, but there may be others I don't know about.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

As the pagemove page says, that only gives a list of what redirects to the old title. Algebraist 19:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure where that is. I don't know whether I saw this particular page the last time I needed a db-move and didn't know how to request one, but the page I just looked at said "there may be a shortcut link on the page-moved summary screen to let you do this." In my case, there was not, but it did say "may".Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you no longer move to a redirect without deleting it?

I moved Charles Stanley to Charles Stanley (disambiguation) and Charles Stanley (pastor) to Charles Stanley. When I went to make the latter move, it would not let me do it until I deleted the redirect left behind by the first move. Is that an intentional new feature or a bug? You used to be able to move over top of a redirect without having to delete it first provided that it had never been anything but a redirect. Sorry if this is old news. Thanks. --B (talk) 22:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The redirect you're moving to must have one edit and it must point to the page you're moving. You'd be able to move Charles Stanley (disambiguation) back without having to delete the redirect. It's been that way for like forever. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

It's documented at WP:MOR. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

You know ... that makes sense ... I probably have never (or rarely) had an occasion to move A to B, then C to A. Thanks. --B (talk) 22:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Can't click wikilinks

In Geoffrey Eglinton there are links to the Wollaston Medal and the Dan David Prize, both of which appear normal but I can't click on them. When I point my mouse at them, the arrow changes to the giant capital I that it does inside edit boxes, instead of the little hand that it normally does on wikilinks. Anyone know what's happenning or how to fix it? Thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 13:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Browser/version? –xeno^talk 14:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

IE8 on WinXP. When I use the "view old version" the links work fine, even on the latest version (you know, when you have the "old version/this version/next version" links above the text). DuncanHill (talk) 14:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have IE8 so I can't help validate this. Any reason you're not using a decent browser? ;> –xeno^talk 14:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It works for me in IE8 and Firefox. Have you tried to bypass your cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Tried that, don't work. DuncanHill (talk) 15:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Just reporting that I do not have this issue with IE8 on Vista. That said, have you checked to see if IE8 is running in Standards mode (or whatever it's called), as I know that sometimes the mode the browser chooses causes issues (though I wouldn't know which mode would fix the page)? --Izno (talk) 04:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

"Random article" and soft redirects

I was clicking "Random article" and was eventually sent to Manteaux. Shouldn't the "Random article" feature avoid soft redirect pages? It's quite an unsatisfying article to send browsing readers to. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It is a softredirect. The software doesn't know that it is a redirect (otherwise it would not be a 'soft' redirect). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I don't really know what that means; but would it make any difference if I were to file a suggestion bug recommending that the "Random Article" link be modified such that it does know? Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Its actually an article (also counts towards stats) but used the wrong template it should be using {{wi}}. Excluding it from the list unlikely to happen as it would take more resources than justified and those resources could be put to much better use excluding disambiguation pages. I guess you just had some bad luck :-P — Dispenser 07:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Deletion log dump

Is there any way I can get a copy of the complete deletion log of whole months or years? The data is publicly available at Special:Log/delete, but only a small part at a time. --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The file [2] (1GB) contains all logged actions before 31 January 2010, including deletions. The newest dumps are always available at [3]. Svick (talk) 20:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! --Apoc2400 (talk) 13:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Hiding in-line footnotes

Articles that are well sourced quickly become unreadable due to the overwhelming number of in-line footnotes. Is there any way to click a button/link to temporarily hide them for the sake of readability? If not, where should I request this feature for future updates? Many thanks! -- Clifflandis (talk) 04:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

How about List-defined references? – ukexpat (talk) 04:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Uk: Not the problem.
Cliff: References in the text apply a CSS class or HTML element, I believe (I haven't checked though). It should be possible to create a easily (Java)script which can allow you to show/hide at will, if one such does not already exist. --Izno (talk) 04:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Just as a reminder for anyone unfamiliar though, citation/reference formats on an article aren't to be changed without gaining consensus to do so, however (WP:CITE). Requesting features here is fine, Clifflandis. For editing mode, you may also be interested in wikEd, which can hide them there. You may find the Printable version view (side panel link) helpful to some extent, too. –Whitehorse1 04:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You could use a bookmarklet with the following code: (it probably won't work in IE)

javascript: var refs = document.getElementsByClassName('reference'); for (var i = 0; i < refs.length; i++) { void(refs[i].parentNode.removeChild(refs[i])) };

If you want, I could modify the code a bit so that you could put it in your monobook.js and it would create a link in the upper menu. Svick (talk) 14:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all the advice! I don't have a problem with in-line footnotes while editing, but it's good to know about all the extra tools. I was more concerned with everyday readers getting overwhelmed with footnotes that make articles somewhat illegible. I'm glad to know that I can request the feature here, Whitehorse1. Let me know where the discussion for this feature will take place, so that I can offer my reasoning to help reach consensus. Thanks! --Clifflandis (talk) 15:03, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You might want to know that might break the articles when they are being rendered in Bing. Bing's 'enhanced' version of the Wikipedia articles is not able to handle the current scheme of separated footnotes so inline footnotes are the only thing that Bing can currently handle. I documented this in the talk page of Signpost when they wrote about the then-new scheme of separated footnotes. Bing just gives up. When I went back to inline footnotes the Bing version worked. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:53, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I suspect that this is an annoyance for many people, and one which deters editors from adding useful citations. Since footnotes are already distinguishable by being in superscript brackets, maybe they should be made less visually intrusive by rendering them in a paler shade. I'm guessing there's a CSS class ("sup.reference a"?) that could be amended. We already have a (somewhat subtle) shading difference for links to other websites, so this would be an extension of an existing principle. — Richardguk (talk) 22:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

you know, it wouldn't be too difficult to create a snippet of javascript that would show just a single entry like so - ^[*] - but expand to the full inline list on click or mouse-over. Might even be able to do a version of it with current collapsible tables and divs, though I'm not sure if we can change the default 'show'/'hide' wording to a simple asterisk with the current setup. would that solve the issue? --Ludwigs2 22:30, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Context-related help and searching in a new window

Reposted from Help talk:Preferences#Add link from Special:Preferences:

Could a direct link be added from Special:Preferences to either Help:Preferences or meta:Help:Preferences? It must be a common page for people to want help on. More generally, should more Special: pages have a link to the relevant Help: page?

Also, would it be useful to have a direct link to Special:Search alongside the Go/Search buttons on each page? At present, if you want to search without losing the page you are reading or editing, you have to open another page and then click search; that's two clicks, or three clicks to submit an advanced search. This is annoying for such a common task. Alternatively, perhaps users could have an option in Preferences for the Search button to show its results in a new window (akin to one of the options in Google's interface). I'm using MonoBook and don't know whether this is addressed in other skins.

— Richardguk (talk) 21:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Javascript to edit a page

Hi, I've made a script which creates a tab at the top of the page, but how do I get it to edit a different Wikipedia page when I click it? Specifically, it's for WP:MOTD and I want it so that I can click the tab when editing a discussion, and it will automatically add the discussion to a different page. What is the code for creating a new section on a Wikipedia page that is different from the one which I am running the Javascript on? Thanks, Smaug123 (talk) 22:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You can just create a custom URL to do this. The URL is: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Article&action=edit&section=new ; be sure to replace "Article". This will create a new section on whatever discussion page you want. Gary King (talk) 01:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Ways to eliminate reference clutter?

Sometimes an article will have four or five references in a row. This looks really ugly. Is there a way to fix this cosmetically without actually removing the references themselves? Or, is this not recommended. SharkD  Talk  03:20, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Check this out: Help:Footnotes#List-defined_references Gary King (talk) 04:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

If your issue is the number of superscripted/bracketed links, then the only solution is to remove cites. You should examine each cite to see how it relates to the content. -— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 05:18, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah yeah that's probably what he's looking for. Whoops. Typically you only need one cite at one spot; if you've got more than that, then yeah, just determine why there are so many cites. You might be able to shuffle some cites to be sentence-specific instead of paragraph-specific. Gary King (talk) 05:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Toolbar and edit window woes

FireFox 3.5.7. Monobook, with advanced toolbar off.

When I edit, the toolbar is gone, except for a Cite button enabled by the refTools gadget. The font style in the edit window is different (monospaced?) and if I copy content from another window, the font style is retained. I'm guessing the devs are playing with the usability stuff again. See Wikipedia:Help desk#Lost toolbar for other editors with the same issues. -— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The disappearing toolbar problem seems to be an issue with the the navigable table of contents option (part of the Usability Beta), as my toolbar reappeared when I disabled this. It also seems to remove the copying issue as well. However, the navigable table of contents doesn't work for me when it's enabled anyway (Firefox 3.6). mattbr 10:24, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

That fixed it. Thanks. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

{{*mp}}

This template, used all over the Main Page and elsewhere, originally came into use because of a Firefox bug that caused problems with word wrapping around images. The bug in question is detailed here. However, now that the bug has been marked RESOLVED FIXED and these demos appear to display properly (at least, in my version of Firefox), do we really need this template anymore? Sorry if I don't fully understand the issue, but what is preventing normal * bullets from being used now that the bug has been fixed? — The Earwig @ 03:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Probably best to leave it there as older Firefox versions probably still have that problem. No harm in keeping it. Gary King (talk) 04:56, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Feature request: User preference for styling citations

The following is redundant. Please see Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Feature request: User preference for styling citations]

Suggestion for user preferences After discussing the deletion of a redundant citation tag, I considered whether or not Wikipedia/Mediawiki software could have a user preference to style citations according to different standards (e.g. MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) Presently, sources are to be cited using {{Citation}} and similar templates such as {{Cite web}}, filling in a variety of parameters to generate a citation. An example follows:

*{{Citation |editor-last=Christoyannopoulos |editor-first=Alexandre J. M. E. |title=Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives |format=Hardback |edition=1st |date=August 1, 2009 |publisher=[[Cambridge Scholars Publishing]] |isbn=1443811327}}

will generate:

• Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre J. M. E., ed. (August 1, 2009), Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives (1st ed.), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ISBN 1443811327 {{citation}}: |format= requires |url= (help)

Every article on Wikipedia already has a "Cite this page" link that leads to a variation of Special:Cite (e.g. this example.) On these instances of Special:Cite, citations are given using the fields:

• Page name
• Author
• Publisher
• Date of last revision
• Date retrieved
• Permanent link
• Primary contributors
• Page Version ID

with the following styles:

• APA style
• The MLA Style Manual
• MHRA Style Guide
• The Chicago Manual of Style
• Council of Science Editors
• Bluebook
• Bluebook: Harvard JOLT style
• American Medical Association
• BibTeX (apparently a machine-readable version)

(Other styles that might be useful: A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations and ISO 690.)

It seems reasonable to me that Wikipedia/Mediawiki software could generate on-the-fly variations for citation styles in the same way that there is a user preference for dates. The same information is present to all users, but arranged in a way that the user chooses if logged in and with a user-defined setting. Unlike date linking in article namespace, there is no problem of overlinking, as this information is already present in the fields of {{Citation}} (or {{Cite web}}, etc.)

The bonuses to this approach are as follows:

1. No more competing citation templates. There will be no incentive to create or use any citation templates that are tied to a style.
2. Users can see citations in the manner that they prefer. Obviously, this is the goal of any user preference, but it has the added bonus of disincentivizing any bickering over citations, forking of {{Citation}}, or competing standards put forth by WikiProjects (e.g. chemistry style by WikiProject Chemistry), plus...
3. Encourage the use of {{Citation}} rather than text in articles. Presently, if a user wants to create a citation according to a style, he must type that in manually to ensure that it appears the way he wants. If this user option was available, it would encourage the use of {{Citation}} by allowing any user to see any citation how he wants.

Does this seem like a reasonable or desirable suggestion to anyone else? I wasn't sure whether I should post this here, to Meta, or to mediawiki.org, but I figured this would get me the most feedback. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Hehehe, funny you should come up with something like this right now. See WP:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Cite modifications and WP:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Demo of specific proposal, among the other discussion there. --Izno (talk) 06:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow Forget the above, moved to Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Feature request: User preference for styling citations. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:43, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit box & monospace style changes

Would whoever is playing with the edit box and monospace text please stop and revert all their changes? Ewwwww. The text is too big now. This edit box has no padding. Evil. How do you just up and make a drastic change like this? It's been fine the way it was for years. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not noticing any change in editbox behavior. Cleared cache and nothings changed recently. Might be browser related, Tried FF 3.6 and IE 8.0.6001.18702 but haven't seen anything weird. Q ^{T C} 07:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Nope, it's not browser related... just like I told you already on IRC.

• in Firefox
• in Internet Explorer

¦ Reisio (talk) 07:44, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be Enhanced Toolbar related. Q ^{T C} 07:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Why has someone made the edit area a rich text? The only difference is the bigger font and among side effects there's an issue with copying anything to it (like article titles to make a link, which copy now huuge and add a new line you need to delete manually). Lampak (talk) 09:45, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

There is a blog post explaining the recent changes at Deployment of Babaco Enhancments on the Wikimedia Technical Blog. The issue seems to related to the enhanced toolbar and navigable table of contents as part of the Usability Beta. mattbr 10:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

So the rich-text edit box is a foundation on which a WYSIWYG editor may eventually be built upon? Great. But shouldn't they build anything upon it first? Now in the transitional phase it seems to be just an extra difficulty with nothing to reward it. Lampak (talk) 10:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Everything has to start somewhere, and the features are part of a beta release which is for usability testing and can contain bugs. I'm sure this is something they'll look into and provide a solution for so that the foundation is in place so that further improvements can be made in the future. In the meantime, you can 'Leave beta' or disable the 'enhanced toolbar' and 'navigable table of contents' options in the 'Editing → Experimental features' section of your preferences. mattbr 11:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks :) I've tried leaving beta but forgotten about the table of contents. Now everything's all right. Lampak (talk) 11:17, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not part of the Beta — it says "Try Beta" in my screenshots. I think I might have tried the beta in the past, though. Did my preferences just not all get reverted upon leaving the beta? ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

You appear to have the enhanced toolbar enabled (either it wasn't deselected when you left beta or you have manually turned that option on). You can disable it by unchecking the 'enhanced toolbar' option in the 'Editing → Experimental features' section of your preferences. mattbr 12:02, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Meh :p Thanks for the links. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:16, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not using Beta, and I don't have the enhanced toolbar enabled. My toolbar was missing entirely until I disabled Special:Preferences → Editing → Enable navigable table of contents. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:21, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I definitely noticed an issue today when I logged in as well and I am not using the beta. I noticed my font size was much larger and I was missing a bunch of my editing links. I had made some changes to my gadgets, so I reversed those changes but it did not change. After reading this, I began playing with the experimental features and it appears the problem lies with the navigable table of contents. See this screenshot.—NMajdan•talk 14:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

This is the most user unfriendly modification. Pasting text between wiki pages now includes the line breaks of the original text, requiring manual fixes. Pasting the title of an article creates a rich text section header, requiring users to backspace the paste into place. And all paragraph breaks are automatically removed whenever you preview or save. I even reinstalled Firefox because it never even occurred to me that the Foundation would implement changes that would roughly double the time it takes me to do routine editing. If someone doesn't fix this I will likely make a note at MediaWiki:Watchlist-details so editors know an experimental preference setting has been changed to do something absurdly unhelpful. - BanyanTree 15:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Paragraph issues in Firefox

This morning, I noticed that some edits I made using Firefox did not insert paragraphs properly. In other words, I left a blank line between each paragraph, but when I previewed or saved the page, the paragraphs were not there. I switched to Internet Explorer, and the paragraphs seem to work. This was not an issue yesterday. Has something changed in the past 24 hours or so? Acdixon ^{(talk • contribs • count)} 15:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

See above. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC)