User talk:Davidgothberg

David's talk page

Archives

Archive 1 (2005-2006) Archive 2 (2007) Archive 3 (2008 Jan-May) Archive 4 (2008 June-Oct) Archive 5 (2008 Nov-)

I dislike seeing only one side of a discussion on a page. If I put a message on your talk page, I will be watching that page for a reply. If you leave a message here, I will reply here. If you want me to leave you a short notice on your talk page when I have responded here, then just tell me.

Put new messages at the bottom of this page or under the appropriate heading if there already is one. And don't forget to sign with your user name!

    .../David Göthberg

Protect search link?

Hi David. I believe you are an admin, so I was wondering if you could protect {{search link}}? I am planning to deploy it on WP:list of common misspellings, and before I do so, I think it would be best to have it protected. If some bug should arise, I can always have it unprotected to fix it, but it appears to be working well. Thanks again for all your help! This is going to make those pages much more readable. Plastikspork (talk) 00:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

 Done I was able to solve my own problem after my RfA passed. Plastikspork (talk) 17:07, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I made a new template

I made a template {{Monthyear+1}}, showing the name of the month and the year as they will be in another month. I checked it, and it's working fine. I made a small documentation page to go with it. Since you had a look at my previous templates, {{Currentdaymonth}} and {{Currentmonthday}} and their documentation pages, perhaps you'd care to have a look at this one as well. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 09:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you just use {{#time:F Y|+1 month}}? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:13, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Now implemented (by MSGJ). Very nice edit! I updated the remark inside the template. I also created {{Monthyear-1}} analogously. Debresser (talk) 11:12, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I also created {{Monthyear}}. See User_talk:MSGJ#Time_parser_function for a discussion about the use of these templates over using the time parser function itself. Debresser (talk) 11:32, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I updated those two old templates with this time parser function now. Debresser (talk) 14:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I knew randomly looking through user pages would eventually pay off! I'm in need of some expert assistance and you seem like the right editors to ask. I've been a registered user on en.wp for about 5 months because I'd had enough of looking at pages with spelling mistakes and other errors. Anyway, Tomorrow has a bit of code that tells you the day tomorrow. I think it's a bit of fluff but people keep adding something back, but it doesn't always work. Could Debresser, MSGJ/Martin or David himself please have a look at the page and insert some code that works for all browsers at all times, as looking through the page history readers are still having trouble with it... Thanks in advance, sorry to interupt your work! Bigger digger (talk) 21:04, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Script documentation

This discussion has been moved to MediaWiki talk:Clearyourcache#Script documentation. --David Göthberg (talk) 05:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

You ok?

You've been away for quite some time, without any sort of announcement it seems. Are you ok ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, where are you? Just having a nice holiday, I guess! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I also looked for some notification about a wikibreak. You are highly valued. Debresser (talk) 22:23, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Amalthea's message above would seem to indicate David's on a break, but my being unable to find any mention of it here or on Amalthea's talkpage/archives (not that I searched very hard =) ) would suggest that perhaps David told him on IRC or email or something...? I dunno, I'm just throwing ideas out there. ;) To David: I echo the above people's concern; where you at? =D 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 05:14, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

No, just a reasonable assumption, David has gone on unannounced wikibreaks before. I guess those are the ones that work best. :) Amalthea 23:47, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Who authorised this holiday? That's what I want to know. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:25, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes I am on a wikibreak. I don't know when or even if I will come back to Wikipedia. But I might come back at least temporarily to tie up some loose ends. The main reason for this wikibreak is:

1: I had too many incidents lately where people made my work here on Wikipedia unnecessarily hard. There are too many naysayers and fools around here. The latest incident of many is this one: Template talk:Pgn#Titleparts

There are also some additional reasons:

2: I should probably get back to the work where I can be of the most good for humanity. The last two years here on Wikipedia has really just been a break from my work in serverless p2p networking. I needed a break from that since one gets pretty dizzy when researching randomised algorithms.

3: I have a new girlfriend.

4: It is summer here, which means there are a lot of nice outdoor activities to do. My female friends keep my fully booked this time of the year...

And thanks for the concerns guys. And as always: Feel free to help out and answer any questions that people put on this talk page, since I might not be around answering them or I might not even know the answer.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Aww David, we do miss you, hope you come back in the future. MBisanz ^talk 11:58, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Lol, I felt sorry for you when I read #1, but after reading 3 and 4 I don't anymore :) Good luck and come back if/when your girlfriend allows it! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

It will always be a pleasure to see you around. Have fun and lots of success. Debresser (talk) 17:01, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Good to hear you didn't drop off the face of the planet; enjoy your break! =) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 17:16, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Defined parameter testing template

Hey David, when you get back (if you ever do ^_^ *fingers crossed* ), you might like to have a look at {{ifparadef}}, a template I just cooked up that takes a parameter and returns whether it's defined or not. It can also differentiate between an empty defined parameter and a nonempty defined parameter, although I'm not 100% sure on whether the logic there is correct. Enjoy your wikibreak 'till then! =) (and to everyone else watching this page who has the slightest clue what I just wrote, beyond talking about a template, you may like to play around with it too ;) ) ···「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? Talk to Dinoguy1000} 07:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Just thought I'd drop an update to say I got the functionality for its intended use working correctly, but there are some uses that are specifically not supported (direct use on articles and other "top-level" content), or simply not tested yet (used with two or more template levels between itself and the top-level content, or used to test unnamed (numbered) parameters). I've also successfully deployed it on {{Infobox animanga character}} to test for some bad parameters, if anyone wants to see it in action (not much to see, though ;P ). --Dinoguy1000 (talk · contribs) as 66.116.12.126 (talk) 05:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

*poke* After seeing how efficiently you (and others) have done some of the things you have with templates, it wouldn't surprise me if there were a more efficient implementation of this template... Thoughts? 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 07:47, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I just wanted to take a look and change the way it handles an empty fourth parameter, but seems like I was late to the party. :) Amalthea 11:20, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops, I had forgotten to answer here. I already checked the code of your template some time ago, and at first look I thought: "Hey, good code, seems to do what it should."

But since you poked me, now I took a second really hard look and saw two minor issues. So I wrote up a longer answer with new code over at Template talk:Ifparadef.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I saw, and wrote up a decent-length (though nowhere near as long as your initial explanation! =) ) reply. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 11:54, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Vertical Lines sometimes missing from Template:Filmography table head

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		your Template:Filmography table head is a great idea! 74.178.249.77 (talk) 07:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Vertical lines are sometimes missing from tables. Fixed Template talk:Filmography table head by the way.

It only happened if: row 1 cell 1 is linked to BOTH row 1 cell 2 AND row 2 cell 2, as shown below. The fix does NOT negatively affect tables with one row to one cell correlation.

Something to cheer you up?

Template:Bug got fixed. We have subpages in Help, Help talk and Category talk now. Woot! Happy‑melon 22:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

DavidClock modification

I just added your clock addon, and I gotta say it's pretty neat. I've got two questions, and I'm sure you must get them a lot:

• If I wanted it to be in a different timezone, how would I accomplish that?
• If I wanted the static clock only but I wanted that to be the edit section 0 link, how might I do that?

Much obliged, it really is a nice script. ~ Amory (talk) 22:15, 6 June 2009

Feel free to make changes to meet your objectives or remove. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.151.112.37 (talk) 03:35, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

For others who read this: Here is the DavidClock documentation and the DavidClock source code.

The above unsigned comment wasn't left my me (David). No, don't edit my scripts in my user space. I made those scripts primarily for my own use, but documented and shared them so others can use them too. But if you want other functionality then anyone can of course copy my scripts to for instance their own user space and then modify their own version. By the way: All .js pages are protected so they can only be edited by the user himself and by admins, so most users could not modify my script anyway.

Amory: The whole point of the DavidClock and other similar Wikipedia clocks is that they do not show your local timezone, instead they show UTC time. That is the same time as the Wikipedia servers use. That is the time shown by default in your watchlist and in user signatures and so on. These Wikipedia clocks help us keep track of that time.

If you want the static clock only but want that to be the edit section 0 link, then you have to copy the script to your user space and modify it, sorry. I might of course sometime in the future add an option for that, but at the moment I am on a long wikibreak. However, a better option is to enable "my preferences - Gadgets - User interface gadgets - Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page". That gives you an edit section link that is shown the usual way right at the top of section 0.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:39, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikibreak

Does this mean you are back? I thought your reasons for taking a wikibreak sounded quite healthy, so I hope there weren't any problems. All the best. Plastikspork (talk) 17:05, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Based on his above comment, it sounds more like he's just dropping by to check his messages. Still, it's nice to see he hasn't forgotten about the rest of us poor, deluded blokes doing all this work for free... =D 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 19:01, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Public-key cryptography diagrams

Thank you kindly for the beautiful diagrams. An anon has pointed out something in the diagrams. Please see here. Thanks, Skippydo (talk) 20:18, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Women's Project

David,

Could you please look over the Women's Project page again. We have made changes, added links, and made it seem like less of an advert. Looking forward to hearing back from you. Thank you!

-Julia M

Template

Hi Dave. Would you have time to please assist me in creating a new template for the African Movie Academy Awards? I'm rather reluctant to use the already existing Academy Awards template, since that template is reserved for the American Academy Awards. The new articles I want to create are similar to this one, and will be about the various past AMAA ceremonies from 2005-2009. Any tip, help or advice on how to create the template for the African Movie Academy Award will be highly appreciated. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 17:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Cascading protection

I have anthologised your protected items page to Wikipedia:Cascade-protected_items, to do this job centrally rather than in disparate user pages - thanks for the work yo put into creating it. Unless there's a good reason your user page should be unprotected now I guess. Rich Farmbrough, 22:32, 15 October 2009 (UTC).

I have copied this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items#Cascading protection and responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:27, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikibreak 2

This section was cut out of the section above. I somewhat edited my first message below for clarity. --David Göthberg (talk) 11:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

A note to everyone: I am still on my Wikibreak. I do check my messages here from time to time, but don't expect any answers or work from me.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:27, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Nice to see you're still around a bit, I'd started to miss those totally-comprehensive edit summaries :D Best of luck with whatever is keeping you away. Happy‑melon 13:19, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It is hard to hide from the all-seeing eye. XD 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 20:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

May I also say how good it is to see you back. Maybe you would like to remove the wikibreak notice now ;) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:33, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Guys, I am not really back. I am just back for some days to handle some things. I do watch my messages here, and I noticed that some things I care about needed some assistance. And I happened to have the time this week.

However I am still very annoyed with Wikipedia. I left because people made my work here way harder than it should be. I spent much more time defending (arguing about and explaining) my code than actually coding templates. For instance, the final incident that made me leave was that Happy-melon stopped me when I was coding meta-templates we could have used to make the talk page archiving much better. Meta-templates are just tools, if you don't like how I make a tool, then code your own variant instead of wasting my time in days of arguing. I had only just started out those templates, just coding for 5 hours, when Happy-melon tied me up in days of arguing.

And this week I again got several harsh reminders of the terrors of trying to be a Wikipedia template programmer: For instance, I was going to continue with some coding and testing of my suggestion for a much more user-friendly and more robust editnotice system. But Cenarium had deleted many of the pages I was working with here in my user space, and edited some of the rest. He left no message about it, so it took me several hours to figure out what had happened. I often code and test things in my user space before I show them to others or deploy them. (Or in template space but marked with a big message box saying: "This template is still in development, don't use it yet.") And after I built them I document them properly. Then I usually give others time to check them and test them before I deploy them. I find that much less disrupting and much more professional than doing test editing to already deployed things. That's a habit I got when I worked as a programmer for a major TV company. We didn't do test edits on running code that would affect millions of TV viewers, we instead tested off-line first. I can only guess why Cenarium deleted my test pages: Perhaps he is a fool, or perhaps he doesn't like that I was building a different solution than the one he is building, or perhaps he wants to hide the fact that features he is now adding to the editnotice system was already working in my demo-system a year ago. I wasn't allowed to deploy my editnotice system back then, for reasons unclear to me. But now they are adding pretty much the same features one by one. But they still haven't added the features that would make it much more user-friendly and more robust.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Well that is a great shame. I've made my apology for that particular incident, all 666 words worth; if you don't wish to accept it, that's obviously your prerogative, but I'm not going to repeat it. Working on Wikipedia is not like working for a corporation or company; one is not working with people universally as skilled and experienced, but with a much broader and, IMO, richer body of people with a wide range of interests, skills and personalities. Being successful here requires more than just technical proficiency. I guess it's an environment that suits some people more than others. Happy‑melon 12:07, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Hu? What apology? Where? I haven't seen one.

/me goes searching.

Ah, found it. It is the last message on Template talk:Pgn#Titleparts, signed "Happy‑melon 14:43, 21 May 2009". And it literally is about 666 words according to my text statistics tool in my editor.

Well, I missed that message since you didn't mention it here on my talk page. And I was already on my wikibreak since one month then, thus not watching my watchlist.

Anyway, that's just one of many incidents. To illustrate my reasons for going on wikibreak, here's a quote from what I wrote on that talk page back in May 2009:

I don't want to go back to what I did in the old days: Develop my templates in secret pages in my user space, without any links to them from anywhere. So people wouldn't deploy them before they were ready, so I wouldn't have to answer a zillion questions about them since their documentation wasn't ready, and so admins wouldn't delete them "since doesn't work" or so admins wouldn't protect them before I had finished them. And even that didn't always help, since some people checked my user contributions and found my user-space test-pages. There have been cases when admins blanked pages in my user space, since they didn't like (didn't understand) the templates I was developing there. At some points in time I considered getting a secret account that I would only use for template development in that account's user space. But I decided that if it would go that far, then I'd better leave Wikipedia instead.

That text is still very valid. Sadly it seems I might have reached that point. So I am on a wikibreak while pondering this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:19, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

This is all very disappointing. It seems you prefer to work alone, and while the evidence of how well you work in this way is plain to see, Wikipedia will never be like this. However I have also witnessed countless times when you have successfully collaborated and reached a solution to a problem through discussion, so I really don't understand what went wrong this time. Happy-melon can certainly be pig-headed; hopefully he won't mind me saying this ;) (Perhaps the reason this occured is that you're both quite similiar in that when you know you're right, you won't back down!) But his qualities far outweigh any shortcomings, and you have to look for the best in every editor here or you'd go mad with all the foibles.

Regarding Template talk:Pgn, I do think you might have been more gracious and accepted the olive branch, as the message did seem to be sincere and heart-felt. It is a shame that you seem to be still annoyed by this relatively minor incident six months on. Surely it is time to move on?

Regarding Cenarium's deletions, I would have thought that the best person to ask would be him ;) Although I note that it was pages in the MediaWiki namespace and not in your userspace as you seem to suggest, and I suppose it is reasonable to assume that a page not edited for several months is no longer being used for testing ...

There is nothing I would like better than to see you back editing here actively. Just looking at what you've achieved in the past day seems to be more than I do in a whole week! I just hope you can be a bit more patient with other editors, and remember that we're all trying to make things better; otherwise you are going to keep getting frustrated. Kind regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Aah, I am sorry to hear you are still aggravated from old wounds, David - in my own (very limited) experience working with you, you always seemed to be quite amicable and level-headed; just generally a very enjoyable person to work with. Insofar as your testpages being blanked or deleted before you are finished with them is concerned, perhaps you could create a template in your userspace briefly explaining that the page it's transcluded on is a testpage of yours and that if an admin wants to blank or delete it, he should first consult with you on your talk page. One last minor point, I never actually welcomed you back from your break, but merely commented in response to Happy-melon's own comment. I do hope you find the time and determination to return sometime soon, though! =) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 17:45, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

MSGJ: You are misunderstanding me.

Cenarium left no message explaining what he had done, so it took me half a workday to figure out what had happened. And it will probably take at least as much time to restore. Not a very nice thing to experience on the first day when I thought I perhaps was coming back from my wikivacation.

And the Happy-melon/{{pgn}} incident was just one of a long row of incidents. I had similar incidents on an almost weekly basis, costing me several workdays a week. And that had been going on for years. So I don't blame Happy-melon in particular, it was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

And no, I don't usually prefer to work alone. I love to cooperate with people. But fairly often I have a complex hard-to-explain template system idea, often involving a whole set of templates. But I don't want to spend time writing 5-10 pages of examples, explanations and motivations before I start coding and testing if the idea works. In such cases it is much quicker and easier to first code and test the templates, then document them, then show them to people so they can test them, discuss them and come with suggestions for modifications and improvements. Note that I usually wait to deploy things until others have had a chance to test and comment, especially since people often do suggest very nice improvements.

{{pgn}} was meant to be a part of such a system, involving perhaps 10-20 templates with very differing and very complex functionality, which would simplify talk page archiving and fix many of the current problems in talk page archiving.

I often discard many of my ideas after testing them. And the final result often differs a lot from the initial idea. So writing long explanations and motivations before coding and testing would be a major waste of time. I don't mind waiting for people to test and comment, since I can do other things during that time, I'm not in a hurry. But I do mind wasting man-hours that could be better spent.

I hope there isn't some policy that we have to first ask some committee for permission before testing (not even deploying) some code ideas? If there is such a policy, please point me to it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:26, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Dinoguy1000: I don't think I should have to mark pages in my own userspace with a notice box saying: "This is a test page in David's userspace, please first consult with David if you feel the urge to delete this page." Especially silly since my test pages are named like this: User:Davidgothberg/Test3. But I usually do mark pages in other namespaces, such as in template space, with a yellow message box saying something like: "This template is still under early development and testing, please don't use it yet. --David" See for instance {{pgn}}.

The pages that Cenarium deleted was the standard MediaWiki editnotice pages for my userspace. Marking MediaWiki pages with message boxes is much harder, especially when one is tinkering with the editnotice system. (Well, in this case it might be possible, but might cause whitespace problems in the editnotice system I am building, causing hard to debug situations.) But since Cenarium had been discussing editnotices with me before, he very well knew I was testing and developing an improved editnotice system. From what I can see of the modifications he did to my other related pages he understood exactly what those pages were and why I used them.

And it's not just old wounds. I had three different incidents this week alone. Well, one big and two minor. These things just keep coming... (But I don't want to waste time discussing them, okay?)

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:26, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Aah, of course there should be no reason for you to have to tag pages in your own userspace just to keep them from being blanked or deleted. If worse comes to worse, maybe an editnotice would help some, though (yeah, I realize who I'm talking to about using an editnotice ;P )?

You mentioned that it took you some time to run down the pages Cenarium had deleted; forgive me for asking the obvious, but did you try looking through your deleted contributions to find the pages? And since you pointed it out, I could see why tagging those pages is difficult or impossible; the MediaWiki namespace just doesn't work the same way as any other directly editable namespace.

And yes, that would be my fault for not paying close enough attention; you did indeed come back just to face more of the same, and I don't blame you for not wanting to waste time having metadiscussions about your discussions/incidents. =) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 18:44, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I had more or less forgotten about the "Deleted user contributions" function. But that wouldn't have helped much, since it seems to list the pages in the order I created them, so it is hard to see what have been recently deleted. Instead after some poking around I found and checked some of the deleted pages and thus saw who had deleted them and what day he had done it. So then I checked his "User contributions" and "logs" for that day and could see that he had deleted several more of my pages, and also edited some other of my pages. But then I also had to spend time to figure out what those edits meant.

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:45, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I deleted those mediawiki pages - among others - because they were for testing and not used for more than a year, it's not because I disliked your alternative approach or anything else. The mediawiki namespace is more strictly maintained that template space and regularly cleaned up for performance/usability reasons, so it shouldn't contain test pages indefinitely. You helped to develop edinotices and I thank you for that. In case you want to use them again, there are listed here, I also created Template:Editnotices/Group/User:Davidgothberg and made this edit so that your group editnotice still work. I apologize for not letting you know. Regards, Cenarium (talk) 19:11, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

They were used much more often than that. But I didn't need to edit them since what they contained was a {{transclusion}} of an editnotice loader template. So what I was editing was that template, and its helper files, which are stored in my "User:" space and in "Template:" space. Thus I was only using a handful of bytes in MediaWiki space, probably around 100 bytes in total or so.

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Editnotice groups

This discussion has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Editnotice#Flexible editnotice groups. Please continue the discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 16:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't suppose there's any way of defining a Group, for editnotice purposes, in a completely flexible way? What I'd like is to have, say List of pages with editnotice X, and somehow pages listed there get that editnotice. This would make it much easier to apply editnotices (eg to notify of an ARBCOM restriction). Obviously, the list would have to be fully protected. Anyway, there isn't currently anything like that, is there? What do you think of the idea? PS editloader seems like a good idea. Rd232 ^talk 15:08, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

First of all, in case you don't already know it: We already have a simple group function in place, that can load the same editnotice for a page and all its subpages. For instance on "Wikipedia:Example" and Wikipedia:Example/Test" and so on.

But to answer your actual question. Assuming we code it with template programming only, then:

Technically we could make such a centrally loaded list, that gets checked when you edit any page. Actually very easy for me to code up. But that would have to run on every page edit, on every page. And if we put in many page names in the list it would cost some work to do the list check each time, and thus too much server work in total. We could limit the function to for instance only the "Wikipedia:" namespace and some more namespaces, but not article space, then maybe it would be reasonable. (But I think our server admins/devs would veto it.)

But if it is a limited number of pages, then you can make a template with the message, then put that template in the editnotice for all those pages. Thus you can update the message in one single place by simply editing that template. We could even very easily make that template smart, so you can select which of the pages with the template shows what message. (Basically by putting that list into the template itself, in the form of a #switch case.) But as I said, it would only be reasonable to have that template on a limited number of pages. I hope this would be good enough for your needs?

But what kind of pages are you thinking of? That is, in what namespace would they be? And how many pages do you expect might end up on that list?

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:14, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

That sounds impractical. I've created Category:Editnotice templates, and that helps a bit. But an Arbcom restriction on a topic could easily affect 1000 or 10,000 articles. Which makes me suddenly think, actually, you'd want to be able to add categories onto the editnotice's list, with every page in the category getting that editnotice. Or something - you see what I'm after. I don't think it's feasible without a software change anyway. Rd232 ^talk 21:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Ouch, 1000 to 10,000 pages in the same list would be way too much to process from template code. (I'd say a list with tops 100 pages in would be okay to process if we only did it for the non-article spaces. To keep the list short we could have one list for each namespace.) But you say "articles", thus meaning article space. So yes, a software change would be needed, since doing it from the MediaWiki software might be reasonable. And template code can not detect what categories are used on a page, so then it would have to be done from the MediaWiki software.

Of course, if you only rarely need to add and remove such notices, then you could ask a bot owner to add your notice (in the form of a template) to all those pages. The people over at Wikipedia:Bot requests are usually very helpful! They also do other things such as advanced searches on all pages, on off-line copies of the Wikipedia database, and so on.

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, a bot would work, actually, to do that! You'd have a protected list the bot works from, of pages/categories, and it adds a reference to the relevant template to the pages referenced. I'm going to propose that at WP:VPR. Thanks. Rd232 ^talk 22:27, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and I have joined the discussion over at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Flexible Groups for Editnotices.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, you can do a somewhat more sophisticated things in the group notices if you use parser functions. You can for example show an editnotice on all subpages starting with "Archive". There are even two templates to help, {{Editnotice prefixpages}} and {{Editnotice subpages}}.
I agree with you two though that for a collection of page titles without any identifiable and easily testable criterion, bot maintained editnotices driven by lists of pages would be best.
Cheers, Amalthea 14:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I have copied this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Editnotice#Flexible editnotice groups and responded there. Please continue the discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 16:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

New templates

Hi David, I see you have been busy creating new templates which is great. I am a little concerned however about the preemptive protection of these templates. You fully protected Template:If pagename, for example, two minutes after you creating it. I see this as problematic because it effectively denies other editors the chance the collaborate on the template. It could also be seen as protecting your preferred version of the template, an inappropriate use of the sysop tools. I know you have had problems with other editors "interfering" with templates before, but that is the nature of the beast here at Wikipedia. We have several skilled template programmers around here, and discussing different ways of tackling a problem can only be beneficial. If a template is to be widely used, I would like to see far more consultation and discussion about its implementation, and only when it becomes high-risk should it be protected. Regards, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:05, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

PS, sorry for messing up Template:Ombox/core. Not sure how I did that. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:10, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I personally don't see any problem with it if there are no transclusions, but that's just my opinion. On a somewhat related note, the primary reason why I wanted to become an admin was so I could edit protected templates (i.e., WP:AutoEd). Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 15:30, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Plastikspork: Yeah, I too became admin for that reason.

MSGJ: Regarding {{ombox/core}}: We all do mistakes, and that was a very minor one. You should see some of the things I have screwed up. :))

But regarding the protection: {{if pagename}} is a pagename detection meta-template, which is similar to the namespace-detection meta-templates such as {{file other}}. Some days after I had finished {{file other}} and announced it, people started using it. And literally over night (while I was asleep) that template went from a handful of transclusions to over 300,000 transclusions. The same thing then happened with several of the other namespace-detection templates, although for most of them it took some weeks to reach such numbers. I think it is likely that the same thing will happen with {{if pagename}}. Actually, one of the things I am thinking of using it for will make it instantly transcluded on a couple of million pages. But don't worry, as usual once I have tested and documented it properly I will announce it and give others plenty of time to check it out and suggest improvements before I deploy it. But I haven't announced {{if pagename}} yet, it is still in the "all seems to work, let it sit for some days to see if I come up with any improvements" phase.

Another thing is that those templates are part of a series of parameter compatible templates, which I am building. And if other start messing with them until I have built, tested and documented some of them, then it will cause lots of trouble. Since the other editors don't know how and why they need to be parameter compatible until I have documented it properly. A similar example is the {{talkspace detect}} which was built by another user. It's a well built meta-template, but unfortunately it is not compatible with the other namespace-detection templates, thus it is somewhat hard to use together with the others. And it is already deployed so it is now messy to change it.

But sure, I can do as I usually do with other new templates that I expect will become high-risk: Full move-protect, and semi edit-protect.

Actually, that was the protection I first wanted to apply to {{if pagename}}, but then I realised that the handful of template programmers I know who could understand its internal workings are either already admins, or way too busy with their own template projects.

But for the somewhat simpler {{basepage subpage}} then I admit, I should probably just have used full move-protect, and semi edit-protect.

So I will apply full move-protect and semi edit-protect to both of them. Is that okay?

I hope you and some others will put them on your watchlists, since I am going back to my wikibreak soon. So I will not be around watching them, and might not be here to update their protection level when they suddenly get widely deployed.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:18, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply and sorry for my late response. Things have been busy for me. Firstly let me apologise if my comment came across more strongly than necessary, but it seems you haven't taken it the wrong way, so fine. Secondly I would like to explain that my thoughts on this matter stem directly from two firmly held beliefs:

• This is a wiki and page protection should be used only when absolutely necessary. (I believe that the advantages of letting everyone edit pages outweighs the risk of vandalism in most cases.)
• Adminship does not confer any additional authority on editors.

I guess you might agree with those sentiments, so I wonder if you can understand the source of my concern about your actions in this case? Now, to respond to your points:

• I think that the responsibility for making sure that a template is adaquately protected lies with the editor who uses the template. Unless you have a crystal ball, how are you supposed to know how well used the template will become? Anyone who edits a template with 300,000 transclusions should be experienced enough to check that the components have the necessary protection. If they fail to do that, it is their fault and not yours. So I still think the "pre-emptive protection" argument is flawed.
• the ... template programmers I know who could understand its internal workings are ... already admins: we have several highly skilled template programmers. (One in particular writes code that just leaves me scratching my head.) So I find this argument totally unconvincing.
• About move protection - why? If people might have good ideas to improve the code of a template, they equally might have a better idea for the name of the template. I see no reason to fully move-protect these until they are in use.
• About semi-protection: my feelings are the same but the issue is less important. Admittedly I know of no skilled template programmers who don't have an account, so it will likely do no harm. However, if the template is not used yet, then leaving it unprotected will also do no harm.

I look forward to hearing your response. I'm not going to revert the protection of these templates again, but I would ask you to consider these points before protecting other templates in the future. Kind regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

0: First of all: You are wasting my time. Since English is not my native tongue it takes me a lot of time to write responses like this. Time that could be better spent programming useful meta-templates. Having to spend time arguing about every template I code, with people who don't understand what they are for, is very discouraging. With arguing I mean unproductive arguing. I like cooperation, and I love when people come with constructive ideas for improvements. And I like well meant questions. There's no such thing as a "dumb question" if it is well meant. On the contrary, such questions often lead to improvements, since they for instance show us what needs to be added or changed in the documentation. Unfortunately, the last year I have been forced to spend way more time arguing about templates than actually coding, testing and documenting them. And usually even before I finished coding and documenting them, and before I have announced them, since people like you are watching my every move here.

1: Regarding: "This is a wiki". What we are talking about here are two meta-templates. Meta-templates are higher risk than usual templates, and templates are higher risk than articles. And these particular meta-templates, {{if pagename}} and {{basepage subpage}}, are meant to be plugged into several MediaWiki messages. And the entire MediaWiki namespace is fully protected since it is considered extremely high-risk.

3: Regarding "responsibility for making sure that a template is adequately protected lies with the editor who uses the template" and "Unless you have a crystal ball, how are you supposed to know how well used the template will become?". Actually, I do have that crystal ball since I am that user. As I wrote above: "One of the things I am thinking of using it for will make it instantly transcluded on a couple of million pages." I hope you don't mean that I am not allowed to protect a template before I plug it in to a million pages? I would not like to first plug in, then protect. That would be scary, since also vandals are watching what we do here.

4: Regarding skilled non-admin template programmers: As I said above: They are "way too busy with their own template projects". And those skilled non-admin template programmers usually know how to use the unprotected /sandbox and /testcases pages of templates, and how to contact us admins to ask us to copy an improved version from the /sandbox to the deployed version. Actually, a much more common problem is admins who don't use the /sandbox pages and instead do experimental edits on deployed high-risk templates, often even with edit comments like: "Experimental edit, let's see if this works."

And you mention User:WOSlinker. I recognise his name, perhaps it is time he was nominated for adminship? Since we always need more skilled template programming admins.

5: We have a problem with rather nasty page move vandalism. And renaming templates is a fairly unusual thing, thus requests to move protected templates doesn't cause much work for us admins. And I prefer to protect before we plug in the template, not after. And I think that renaming a template should first be discussed on its talkpage (unless of course if one is the only contributor to that template).

6: Regarding that I use semi-protection: No, leaving a template totally unprotected does harm. Since we have a problem with people adding sneaky bugs that are hard to detect. Such bugs are added both by vandals on purpose, and by accident by less knowledgeable users. Thus if left unprotected, when we deploy that template to lots of pages it might contain such bugs.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Now this was funny. Two weeks after he unprotected these templates, MSGJ himself added one of them to 114,000 pages, without first protecting it again. He did this edit, which added {{cat handler}} that in turn uses {{if pagename}}. He probably wasn't even aware of that he added the unprotected {{if pagename}} with that edit. I think there's a lesson to be learned here...

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Other comments

I have copied parts of the below comments to the talk page of {{if pagename}}. --David Göthberg (talk) 00:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a drive-by comment: that template is insane. Insane in an "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" sort of way. That's an awesome piece of wikicode... again... :D Happy‑melon 17:32, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Yep, using parameter logic has gone a bit out of style with the advent of parser functions (Aah, qif ...). It's a pity that it's limited to only the 4-6-8 char prefix matching, but it's probably enough, and anything else would destroy the switch-like elegance. Amalthea 21:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Haha, thanks Happy-melon and Amalthea. Yeah, it is kind of "insane" code.

Hehe, {{qif}}. I had to indent that code and stare at it for about 20 minutes before I understood why it works. Well I think I understand why it works, but not absolutely sure. Scary stuff. :))

And yeah, it is a pity that we have to limit the number of lengths that the "prefix matching" can handle. We can add more but each length costs one line of code, and thus costs more resources to run. So using a handful of lengths like that probably is a good compromise.

And by the way: {{if pagename}} is just the regular version of that template, since I am planning a deluxe version. Probably named {{if pagename showall}} {{if pagename multi}}. It will have the same additional features as {{namespace detect showall}} has compared to {{namespace detect}}. The "showall" function isn't important, but being able to feed the same data efficiently to several matching names is needed.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

End comments copied to the talk page of {{if pagename}}. --David Göthberg (talk) 00:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Category suppression

This edit conflict threw me for a second. :-) Yes, {{tlx|[[Wikipedia:Blah]]}} does work. I prefer to use {{tlu|Wikipedia:Blah}}, which works with any namespace without the clunky brackets. I just hadn't noticed the linking problem until I tried to click through during testing. (I leave waaay too many tabs open with uncommitted edits.)

I also just noticed your Wikibreak's Wikibreak. Too funny. And I've been there before myself. :-) Or maybe I still am? —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 07:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know about or had forgotten about {{tlu}}. There are too many tl-something templates to keep track of... Anyway, I updated that link since it linked to the old redirect from template space. That's the redirect you requested deletion of, and that I had just deleted for you.

Yeah, I was on a long wikibreak until some weeks ago. But I am supposed to go back to my wikibreak any time now, perhaps next month.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:52, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

{{tlu}} is a template I spent a fair amount of time "improving" (which then I rolled back into some of the other tl's). Many hours spent staring at its code. That's why it sticks in my mind so well. :-)

I replied on Template talk:Cat handler#Arbitrary break.

You're an admin, so I guess doing what I do isn't really an option. I just kind of fade in and out around here. Actually it's more like drift from one project to another. I've been neglecting Wikibooks for a looong time. And Meta's getting kind of neglected too. So mostly it's been here, Commons, Flickr, and the wikis that I run (that I hope will one day bring in some money to support my wiki addiction!). Anyway, I did go on Wikibreak for many months in 2007, but now I just tune out when I need to and tune back in when there is a reason to. It makes me feel less guilty than when I checked in while still on Wikibreaks. Glad you're here right now though. You're a great templater and it seems we have a lot in common. :-) —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 08:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am also slowly getting used to "tuning in and out", instead of seeing it as wikibreaks. I just have to figure out some good message to put at the top of my user pages so people understand I might not always be active, but might pop in every now and then.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:02, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I use a prominent e-mail link to encourage people to use it if things are time-critical.

Sorry about adding you to the WikiProject list. That was meant to be a demo while I was mocking up the page for inclusion. Since it is hidden below the bottom part of the scrolling DIV, I didn't see it and forgot to remove you. You're certainly welcome to join, and I'm glad you're friendly to the project. I saw your edit summary in my watch list, and I thought "oh crud!" and instantly realized my goof. No hard feelings, I hope? :-) —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 12:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

No worries. And sorry for making you stressed about it. I still am the biggest fan of your category suppression stuff, and you are still very much in my list of very nice people. (That's a list in my head, not on the web.) I actually hesitated to remove myself from the participants list. Even though I do understand your reasons for wanting to have a WikiProject for this, I still think it might be unnecessary. That's the main reason why I don't want to be listed as a participant.

Is it okay if I add myself under a new heading "Friends of the project" at the bottom of that list? That would feel more correct for me. And thanks for popping in, I had forgotten to ask you about adding myself as "Friend of the project". I wanted to ask first since that's an unconventional thing to add.

And is it okay if I start to "market" your how-to guide and your WikiProject? And I think I should start asking people to come look at {{cat handler}} and say what they think, since it feels ready.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Nice to know I'm a "nice person" in your list. :-) Also nice that you find CatSup so cool.

As far as marketing things, sure. But I am actually thinking that a slightly different name might be better. It's not just category suppression that we are discussing, but all things to do with automatic categorization and the suppression thereof. It broadens the WP scope a bit, and that's probably good. If so, then the WP name should probably be changed or tweaked. Any suggestions? Any other related topics that should be included? I don't want to tread on WP Templates, but if there are any other template-category related things that should be considered, it would be better to do so now than later. Once that's all figured out and any rename/moves are taken care of, then certainly any "marketing" you want to do would be appreicated.

Friend of the WikiProject or something like that would be fine. I just copied the headings from WP:MIX, which is the other group I developed. The copy and paste brought over some overkill, but it looks cool. :-) Jeremy (of WP:FOOD) is pretty much responsible for the formatting and many of the templates.

Got to get some sleep now. It's been a really rough past 72 hours or so off-wiki. Time to catch up on my lost Zzzs. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 02:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree about the scope. I have copied that part to the talk page of the project and responded there.

Ehm, I have to admit I got impatient and did a little marketing. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories#Templates that auto-categorize and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates#Templates that auto-categorize. You are probably going to dislike my comment about your WikiProject there, sorry. But with the new larger scope the project is perhaps okay, so I have just edited my marketing comments to reflect that.

And yes, the design of the project page looks very nice.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

str len

I reverted your changes to {{str len}}, they were breaking {{Wide image}} for some reason. (a user of {{str find}} and {{str sub}} —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, good that you reverted. I did test the white space handling, and I ran some more tests now, but I can't see any differences when just testing {{str len}} and {{str len/sandbox}} themselves. And I stared at the code of {{str find}} etc for a while, but I can't find any obvious reason. This is weird. We'll have to investigate further.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Animated GIF scaling

Hello. I know from previous interactions that you might be able to help with this. Could you have a look at this:

• commons:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard#Animated GIF resizing bug. Fix awaits implementation by admin

Do you know where CommonSettings.php can be found for the Commons? You can reply at the Commons thread if you want. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Timeshifter. Sorry for my late answer. I see others have already given the correct answers over there. And this was a thing I couldn't have helped out with, since I am not a Wikimedia Sysadmin. I am just a regular admin here at enwp, and not even an admin at Commons.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:55, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Archive template reworking

Hi David,

You said back in April that you were working on an overhaul of the archiving system. Do you have any plans to start working on this again? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure. I might continue doing that overhaul, but it depends on if I will have the time and if I am allowed to do it this time around. Back in April I was prevented by other users from doing that overhaul, and forced to go on a long wikibreak. Now I am back for a while to fix some other things that were on my to-do list.

But I am going to finish some of the meta-templates needed for that overhaul. That's actually the work I have in mind for this week. But I don't know if I will try to do the overhaul of the archive template system. But I might perhaps do it piece by piece, but over a longer time.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Olá David

Hello David, you did a wonderful job and I'm not copying, I'm translating to my language so that it is also seen in Portuguese and can understand what they say, I think it should be translated into all languages as a model and show work to the world, should also have your signature so that everyone could know who was the author of such fine work. In fact I see the Wiki is unique in several languages. I do not speak English only translate gloogle in order to communicate with you. Please excuse me if I'm doing something wrong, please tell me if I should stop. Jurema Oliveira (talk) 06:27, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I like that you are translating my templates to the Portuguese Wikipedia. And Google translate is fascinating, I can understand perfectly what you are writing. So have a nice day, and happy editing!

(Google traduzida: Eu gosto que você está traduzindo meus modelos para a Wikipedia Português. E o Google Translate é fascinante, eu posso entender perfeitamente o que você está escrevendo. Então tenha um bom dia e boas!)

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:02, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I have much to thank you, in five years in wikipedia I have learn a lot, learned a little of the English language and I'm still learning to make templates, and I am learning many new things. I am a Brazilian grandmother of 61 years who likes to learn everything, I think it is never too late to learn. thank you, I learned a lot with you and with your work. Jurema Oliveira (talk) 07:08, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

And I am a 40 year old Swedish computer programmer. But still I find template programming hard. I too am learning a lot from my Wikipedia work. In my free time I dance samba and tango. And sometimes I work at our carnival here in my city, so I almost feel a little Brazilian / Argentinian. (Oh, and my dance partner is from Buenos Aires! :)) So, keep up the good work!

(E eu sou um programador de computador 40 anos de idade sueco. Mas ainda acho difícil encontrar modelo de programação. Eu também estou aprendendo muito com meu trabalho Wikipédia. No meu tempo livre eu dance samba e tango. E às vezes eu trabalho no nosso carnaval aqui na minha cidade, então eu quase me sinto um pouco brasileiro / argentino. (Ah, e meu parceiro de dança é de Buenos Aires!:)) Assim, manter o bom trabalho!)

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

File:Ambox style.png/doc

Hey, I came across File:Ambox style.png/doc on Wikipedia:Database reports/File description pages without an associated file. Interesting idea you have there, but I don't think it will work very well with that namespace because of the way the software handles it, and how sweeps (like that database report) interpret it. Even while linking it, I have to prefix it with a colon, otherwise I'm given a redlink and asked to upload a file to that page if I click the red link. Maybe the costs outweigh the positives? I don't know. Is there any sort of prior discussion about doc pages for images? I just ran across it right now, and haven't done much research yet. Killiondude (talk) 09:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops, I forgot to restore that. It was a test and demonstration for a discussion on some page. It was only meant to be there like two weeks or so. I'll fix that right away.

We have the problem that non-admins can't update the image descriptions of protected images. So such pages usually lack links to other similar images, and they lack categorization etc.

But yes, using a subpage directly under the image page didn't work as well as I hoped, since as you say there are tools and other issues that interferes with it. So I have now moved that /doc page to be under the image's talk page instead, I think that should fix it.

Anyone interested can read more about this at Wikipedia talk:Template documentation#File pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:12, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I heard that images can be protected while the file description page remains unprotected these days: bugzilla:6579. Doesn't appear to be live yet though. Amalthea 11:19, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for the link to the bugzilla bug. And right, it could be nice if they fix it in the software. But I hear people saying that it nowadays takes ages before they deploy fixes, even when the code has already been written for it. (But I don't know from personal experience, since the one time I asked for a fix some year ago, they fixed it and deployed it in 12 hours!!! :))

I think we should start using /doc pages for images, since we don't know when the fix will be deployed. And the /doc pages could still be useful in some cases, even after the fix has been deployed, if we admins want to protect parts of the image description.

Note: I'd like any further discussion on this to be held at Wikipedia talk:Template documentation#File pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:55, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Notes about hard limit of 50

David, could you please revert your changes to the interface messages stating the hard limit of 51 results? Around 99.99% of our queries are for 20 results, so you're showing something that might be useful to couple of users to everybody, which is exactly the kind of thing that is likely to annoy our users instead of being informative. Cheers, --rainman (talk) 18:34, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-exists.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Advice on navbox template

User:Debresser said you may be able to help... See the two templates below.

I just started the Yar'Adua template, but much prefer the more compact format and simpler mark-up of the Obasanjo template. The difficulty is that the Obasanjo template does not really work. It goes up to group20, then stops. I can't find documentation, but suspect that 20 groups is the maximum supported. Both sets have just over 20 entries. I suppose I could figure out a way to format a table that looks like the Obasanjo template, but don't want to clutter up the content with mark-up that would be forbidding to a new editor. This must be a problem that has been solved by others. Any ideas or advice on where to look? Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 14:44, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Aymatth2,
navboxes can be nested in each other. A template that already nests two is {{Navbox long}}, but it can be done manually as well. For help with it you should probably best ask at Template talk:Navbox.
Amalthea 15:31, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Perfect! I knew there had to be a simple solution. I tried it with the Obasanjo template and it works - the last two entries show. I will format the Yar'Adua template the same way. Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 15:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Unblock

Hello, some days ago my bot did some strange edits in template namespace. I was contacted about this error, and because it was because of wrog interwiki on cs doc page, I stopped work on templates [1]. Now, several days ago you blocked my bot. It does not takes sense... Please unblock... JAn Dudík (talk) 13:25, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Additonaly I reported this bugs: [2] [3]. JAn Dudík (talk) 13:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I have unblocked your bot now. I didn't think of checking the archives of your English talk page, since it was empty and so clearly links to your Check talk page. I only checked on your cs talk page and I didn't see this problem mentioned there. So as we normally do I blocked the bot until you the bot owner stated it has been fixed. And since you state it has now been fixed I have now unblocked your bot.

And once again: Thanks for running that bot, it's services are much appreciated!

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Reply

I have replied to your comment at User_talk:Rich_Farmbrough#Please_leave_capitalization_of_template_names_alone. Don't think I was offended. I write for argument's sake only. With you, that is. Debresser (talk) 23:21, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Davidgothberg. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).
Message added 22:48, 30 December 2009 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Paul2387 (talk) 22:48, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Note to self: I have responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:34, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Follow up

Just in case you aren't watching that page any more after making the change, see Template_talk:Information#Bring_one_parameter_in_line_-_request. Debresser (talk) 06:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Note to self: I have responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Question about default template parameter

David, I meant to compliment you on your explanation of template default parameter idiosyncracies - especially since this bit me recently. However, the discussion has already been archived, so I thought I would ask you a question here that has me scratching my head. What was the reason for having an inner template pick up the literal string of a parameter if the calling template does not specifically define it? Let me give you an example - sometimes easier to understand: I defined 2 macros here user:Stmrlbs/Template/outer and user:Stmrlbs/Template/inner. When I don't specify var as a parameter in the outer macro, it passes it to the inner macro as the literal string "{{{var}}}"! example:
when I call {{user:Stmrlbs/Template/outer}} and I do not specify the named parameter {{{var}}}, I get this:

A. Call inner macro like this {{User:Stmrlbs/Template/inner|var={{{var_outer}}}}}
Results:

1. use inner variable with no default - {{{var}}} is "{{{var_outer}}}"
2. use inner variable with specific default - {{{var|innerdefault}}} is "{{{var_outer}}}"
3. use inner variable with null default - {{{var|}}} is "{{{var_outer}}}"

B. Call inner macro like this {{User:Stmrlbs/Template/inner|var={{{var_outer|outerdefault}}}}}
Results:

1. use inner variable with no default - {{{var}}} is "outerdefault"
2. use inner variable with specific default - {{{var|innerdefault}}} is "outerdefault"
3. use inner variable with null default - {{{var|}}} is "outerdefault"

C. Call inner macro like this {{User:Stmrlbs/Template/inner|var={{{var_outer|}}}}}
Results:

1. use inner variable with no default - {{{var}}} is ""
2. use inner variable with specific default - {{{var|innerdefault}}} is ""
3. use inner variable with null default - {{{var|}}} is ""

D. Call inner macro like this {{User:Stmrlbs/Template/inner|var= }}
Results:

1. use inner variable with no default - {{{var}}} is ""
2. use inner variable with specific default - {{{var|innerdefault}}} is ""
3. use inner variable with null default - {{{var|}}} is ""

E. Call inner macro like this {{User:Stmrlbs/Template/inner}}
Results:

1. use inner variable with no default - {{{var}}} is "{{{var}}}"
2. use inner variable with specific default - {{{var|innerdefault}}} is "innerdefault"
3. use inner variable with null default - {{{var|}}} is ""

what is the reasoning for setting {{{var}}} in the inner macro to "{{{var}}}}" when it is not defined in the outer macro? Why not have passed as undefined as it is in the outer macro? Is there some reason? Is this used some way / needed in another part of templating? Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 22:58, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I extended your example and renamed the outer var to make it easier for me to explain. So, here goes:

First of all, in template programming we don't really have "null", instead we have several other input states for a variable:

1: Not defined (as in not fed to the template at all, for the inner "var" example E)

2: Defined but empty, also called "fed an empty string" (fed as "var=", for the inner "var" examples D, and here also example C)

3: Has data (fed for instance as "var=text", for the inner "var" examples A and B)

Next thing is what a variable returns (renders) when it gets the three different kinds of input. If the the variable is coded as "{{{var}}}" with no pipe "|":

4: If input is not defined, as in not not fed at all, it returns a string with its own name: "{{{var}}}". This is useful since it usually means the variable name gets displayed and the users can see they are supposed to feed something to "var". For instance take a look at the template page for {{ambox}}, it displays "{{{text}}}" in its box, maiking it clear it wants the parameter "text" to be fed. And if the template is used on a page without the parameter it shows the variable name thus reminding us to feed it:

{{ambox}}   <--Called without the "text" parameter-->

I think that is the answer to your question. But lets go on with the other things a variable can return, to make things clearer.

5: If the variable is fed an empty string (is defined but empty, as in fed "var="), then the variable returns an empty string "". Note that that is not "null", it is a defined but empty string.

6: If the variable is fed some text, it returns that text.

Now let's look at a variable that is coded as "{{{var|}}}" with the pipe "|":

7: If the input is not defined, as in not fed at all, then it falls back to what comes after the pipe. And in this case it means it returns an empty string, as in defined but empty. It never returns "not defined".

8: If the variable is fed an empty string (is defined but empty, as in fed "var="), then the variable does not fall back to what comes after the pipe, instead it returns that empty string.

9: If the variable is fed some text, it returns that text.

The two above cases are the ones that usually confuse people: If a variable is not fed (not defined) then it does its pipe fall-back, but if it is fed an empty string it does not do fall-back but instead returns that empty string. That is, an empty string counts as data.

And feeding "{{temp|var=}}" means feeding an empty string, while feeding "{{temp}}" means not feeding anything thus var is "undefined".

And note that feeding "{{temp|var={{{outer_var|}}} }}" when the "outer_var" is empty or undefined means feeding an empty string, thus the inner "var" will return an empty string.

So a variable can never return "not defined", it can only return an empty string, or some string. (And in some cases that string is the variable's own name.)

Stmrlbs: I hope this makes things clearer to you?

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed explanation. I understand the concepts of undefined/empty string (as something defined) and the different ways that different languages make assumptions as to what is being passed or not passed in a macro, but the part that confused me with templates was where a variable that is not defined by the user is not passed as "undefined", but transformed to the literal name of the variable (and enclosed in triple brackets). Well, I guess in a way a variable can be tested for an "undefined" condition by testing if the variable is equal to the literal name of the variable; i.e., if var = "{{{var}}}". I just found it to be a rather odd standard. But, I guess it is all what you are used to. However, I did not notice the visibility of named parameters demanding definition in the templates before. Kind of gives me a different perspective! Thanks.

David, I was wondering if you could give me, or point me to some tips on internally documenting templates. I usually try to structure logic in other languages I program in so what I write is easier for someone else trying to figure out what I did down the road. But sometimes the newline/whitespacing in templates is tricky when trying to make a template more visually intuitive. I find using the "<!-- -->" sequence to get rid of whitespace ends up defeating the purpose of clarifying the code because it makes the code look too busy/cluttered when used more than a few times. Can you make any recommendations for internal structuring of templates? Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 03:59, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

No, you can't use a test similar to "if var == '{{{var}}}' ", since that would be testing for what the outer template was feeding its variable. So based on the template example above, with the new naming I added to it, you could be testing for "if var == '{{{var_outer}}}' ". But to do that test then the inner template would have to know that the outer template uses the variable name '{{{var_outer}}}'.

But we do have methods to tell the difference between an undefined variable, and an empty but defined variable. See {{ifparadef}}, {{ifparadef full}}, and their talk page for several techniques to do that. But really, my best advice is to not do that since it is very tricky stuff that only a handful of our best template programmers fully understand. Instead treat empty and undefined as the same thing. To do that simply use an if-case:

{{#if: {{{var|}}}
| Var has data.
| Var is empty or undefined.
}}

And always feed and use variables with the pipe "|", like this:

{{temp| var = {{{var_outer|}}} }}

And regarding making readable and well documented template code:

I usually put the technical code documentation in a section called "Technical details" at the bottom of the /doc page. Our experience is that naming that section "Technical details" prevents regular users from panicking when they see the über geeky stuff in that section, since they realise that is just extra info that they usually don't need to know.

If the "Technical details" section becomes too long, then I instead move most of it to a section on the template's talk page, and instead point to the talk page from the "Technical details" section. See for instance how I did that for {{sec link}}.

If the template has a sub-template (which we often name "/core") then I often put the technical documentation on the /doc page of the sub-template, and just mention in the "Technical details" section in the main template that the internal workings of the template is documented at that sub-template. See for instance how I did that for {{str len}}.

And right, using whitespace and comments inside code such as templates can help a lot in making the code more readable. But as you noted template code is very whitespace sensitive. Unfortunately no one has written a how-to guide about how to handle whitespace in templates, and it would take at least 10 full pages to explain the more important parts of it. But I use a lot of whitespace in my templates, so for now all I can do is to recommend that you go to my user page and take a look at the list of templates I have made. Take a look at the templates I have made the last 2-3 years or so, they use a lot of whitespace in ways that works in templates. Then you have to experiment to learn what not to do...

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:46, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

actually, I have been looking at your templates the last couple of days and they have been a big help. Thanks. The {{ifparadef}}, {{ifparadef full}} templates are clever - didn't know about them. However, as you said - treating empty and undefined as the same thing would cover most situations. stmrlbs|talk 19:26, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Cascade-protected items

I believe I've figured out how to have an editable lead. See WT:CASC. You are receiving this message due to the banner at the top of the talk page. If you don't want such messages, remove yourself from the banner. Thanks, Thinboy00 @234, i.e. 04:36, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the poke, I have answered there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Editnotice stuff

So, if I've read the discussions on WT:Editnotice and the various MediaWiki pages you've updated the past day or two correctly, those two links now show up for sysops, allowing for easy creation of an editnotice for either just that page or the entire group of subpages, right? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:18, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Almost, the group notice shows on the root page and all of its subpages. If you want an editnotice only to show in a subspace of that, you can use parser functions. For example, the group notice you find linked at is , which uses a helper template to show only on and its subpages. Amalthea 00:36, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah that's what I meant, sorry for the lack of clarity. Poor use of pronouns. Regardless, baller change! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:53, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Hello David, just stopping by to thank you for your work on the editnotices; I went to WP:VPT to ask for an explanation of what had happened and found your pre-emptive thread and talkpage contributions very helpful. Keep up the good work,  Skomorokh  20:41, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks guys for popping by. I was starting to wondering if no one had noticed the new links when they edit. And thanks Amalthea for helping out here by responding to Amory's question.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Auto-detection of user status

Hi, I was intrigued by the ability to detect if a user is an admin or account creator and display different things depending on their status. We have a similar wish on the article wizard and we would like to show a different option if a user is unregistered. (If they are unregistered then they can only create talk pages so a different method is employed.) Is there any possible way to do that? (Related discussion. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Any non-JS method to alter display breaks caching and should/will be disabled in MediaWiki. I'm a firm believer that we should load independent JS and CSS for each user group in the core software. But I expect David's JS can be fairly easily extended to unregistered users. Happy‑melon 18:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Right, I can easily show/hide/insert items based on any of the user types, including autoconfirmed or not. I have written a full answer over at Wikipedia talk:Article wizard 2.0/maintenance#Merge with AfC wizard.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Just to say that we would like very much, when you get the time, to implement the javascript to detect registered/unregistered users. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:02, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'll come there and discuss more when I get the time. (Perhaps next week.) I won't just implement it, I will first have to study what it is you guys are doing over there. Partly so I know exactly what it is you need (since there are several ways to do this). And partly since I need to see that you guys really need this. Since if we implement such detection then it can be abused in several ways in other places. And people are likely to use it the wrong way, they will code things that depend on it, when in reality it just works for users that have javascript enabled. So pages have to be written in a way that they make sense also when everything is shown.

So I will only implement this if there is a real need for it. As you know I suggested another method (that remembers what the user choose on the first page), or perhaps you need both methods?

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:54, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposed enhancement for testing templates

This discussion has been copied to Template talk:Test-mode, please continue there. --David Göthberg (talk) 11:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

David, with your background in programming and experience on Wikipedia, I would appreciate any comments/insights you might have for this enhancement I've proposed: bugzilla:22135. stmrlbs|talk 19:51, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Ouch, I really dislike writing at Bugzilla. There is no preview there so I never know how my comments will look. And as far as I can see I can't edit my comment afterwards, so I can't fix them if they get mangled. So I don't know how bugzilla handles links, and what happens when we use examples with template code in etc. Bugzilla have mangled many of my comments so far...

Anyway, your suggestion over there seems to be pretty tricky to implement in MediaWiki, it would mean a lot of work for the devs. And we already have other well working methods to test our templates. So I don't think it would be worth the time for the devs to implement, they have more pressing things to fix.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Stmrlbs: Oh! I think I have come up with a method to achieve what you want by only using template code. I'll think more about it and test it before I explain it. (And it might be useful, since as you say it would be very nice to surf around and see how the new version of the template will look on pages.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:23, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

So, what did you come up with? Yes, it would be nice to be able to not have to dummy up so much to test - it is always better to try to keep the changes needed to test to a minimum, so that if there is a problem, you can assume with some confidence that it was the changes you made to the template, not the changes you had to make to dummy up a test in your userspace. I've done something similar for some other systems (not wikipedia), and it made it much easier to test. I understand what you are saying about the devs having a lot to do. I've looked at the number of enhancements submitted.. a lot! But then, wikipedia has a lot of users. So, I'm not surprised. However, I always try to submit an idea anyway, if for no reason other than to document it. stmrlbs|talk 00:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I have done some testing and thinking, so here goes:

(Mostly for others reading this talkpage:) As you and I know we need a method to live-test meta-templates and sub-templates that might be several steps away from the templates placed on the pages, so we can't call the test-version directly. So you suggested a "test mode" that makes our meta-templates display their test-version instead of the normal version, so we can surf around and see how our test-version behaves on real pages.

Stmrlbs: What I came up with is actually three methods, but I am going to package them all in one single template named {{test-mode}}. You use that template by placing it on the template you want to test, like this:

{{test-mode
| test version = 
   <!-- New code to test, or a transclusion of the /sandbox
        with forwarding of your template's parameters. -->
| current version =
   <!-- The currently deployed code that most users see. -->
}}<noinclude>

{{documentation}}
</noinclude>

My {{test-mode}} then normally executes the "current version". But if it detects one of the following three things it instead uses the "test version":

1: When a user with a name beginning with "Test-" views the page in edit preview. So you simply create a sock account named "Test-Your username" and then preview the pages you want to test from that account. This means you can view the pages as they are in one tab, and view them in test mode by edit previewing them in another tab. So it is easy to compare output, and your normal page reading is not affected. If you set your Wikipedia "My preferences - Editing - Show preview on first edit" then test mode is just one click away on every page!

2: If a user who is listed in my template's "/user list" views the page in edit preview. So you simply add your normal user name to {{test-mode/user list}}. Unfortunately that list will have to be protected since its a sub-template of {{test-mode}} which in turn probably will be used in several high-risk templates. So only admins can do the adding of people to that list. (And every time we add or remove a user from that list all pages that depend on it will be dropped from the cache servers.) But your name can be on the list more or less permanently, since as above: This means you can view the pages as they are in one tab, and view them in test mode by edit previewing them in another tab. So it is easy to compare output, and your normal page reading is not affected.

I can make it so that users in the "/user list" can toggle this mode on and off with a personal setting in their user space. I could give that option to all users thus no need for the "/user list", but that might be inefficient, I'll have to think and test more.

3: If the template is placed on a page beginning with "Test-" like "Test-Pagename". So if you want to test how the article "Example" looks in test mode you simply open up "Test-Example" and transclude "Example" onto it like this "{{:Example}}" and then click "Show preview". Note that to transclude articles we must use the colon ":", otherwise MediaWiki tries to transclude "Template:Example" instead. You normally don't need to save the page, but it can be convenient if you want to display the result to other users. Unfortunately we are not allowed to save test versions in article space, so you have to save it in another namespace. I will also make this work on subpages like "Example/Test-subpagename".

Methods 1 and 2 above uses {{REVISIONUSER}}, so those two methods will only work as long as they don't fix bugzilla:19006. Which really isn't a bug, just that some people don't want that magic word to work that way. {{REVISIONUSER}} normally returns the name of the user who last edited the page, but in edit preview it currently instead returns the name of the user currently editing the page.

But method 3 will continue to work. Unfortunately method 1 and 2 are the more practical ones when testing on many pages.

Testing with the {{test-mode}} should of course only be done after normal testing in the /sandbox and /testcases has been done. Since if you have missing braces or extra pipes "|" in the test version, then it will bleed through and become visible to normal readers who are not in test mode.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:48, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

David, I don't understand.. where does the user put {{test-mode}}? In the article calling the template to be modified? Is that why it is necessary to use edit preview? and can you tell me where Revisionuser is documented? I can't seem to find it (probably am not looking in the right place). Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 04:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

{{test-mode}} should be added to the code of the template you want to test, not the article.

{{REVISIONUSER}} is a "magic word", not a template, so it is documented in mw:Help:Magic words. But the documentation there doesn't mention that when in edit preview {{REVISIONUSER}} currently returns the name of the user himself. So in edit preview I can detect who is looking at a page. We have no way in template code to detect who is viewing a page when just viewing a page, only when editing a page. Anyway, I see that the devs now are dead set on removing that feature from {{REVISIONUSER}}, so soon we will not be able to get the user name even in edit preview. So I guess we'll have to forget about methods 1 and 2 above. So all that is left for us is method 3.

In method 3 you can save the result so others can view it too, then we don't have to use only edit preview. (But if only you yourself want to take a look, then there is no reason to save.) Unfortunately method 3 means some more operations for each page we want to look at, so it is not as convenient as methods 1 and 2 would have been.

Anyway, I will create and document {{test-mode}}, so you can just sit back and wait for the result, the documentation and the live examples.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

why do they want to remove the feature? Well, I'm looking forward to seeing your test template. I was thinking today that it is too bad there isn't some kind of template footprint on the page that would tell you what pages transclude what. But, I guess that would make some of the pages huge (especially with the multilevel nesting needed sometimes because of the language limitations). And I will assume there isn't an easy database method to check what templates are transcluded in a page. I don't know enough about wikipedia software to know that. If there was, you could add an option to check the database only for those users with the testing option on, and if the test template was found to be transcluded in a page they were viewing (by checking the database), then rerender the page and bring in the test template. or something like that.

I have another question. Is there any way to search for which pages call a template and set a parameter (as opposed to letting it default)? Say, you wanted to see all pages that call ambox with textstyle specified? Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 02:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

There's a minor security issue with being able to detect who is currently reading/editing a page. You can read more about that at bugzilla:19006. But there are other ways an attacker can get the same information, ways we can never really prevent, so I don't think we should bother about it. (But I won't tell more about that, for WP:BEANS reasons.)

Actually, the database knows exactly which templates are currently used on a page, since among other things it needs to update the "What links here" list for all the templates on a page if the page is deleted or modified. So implementing the test mode in MediaWiki probably isn't that hard. But still, it would cost extra server resources to run, and extra developer time to implement and maintain. And currently MediaWiki doesn't check which user is viewing the page area, it is only the front end servers that check who the user is to render the surrounding menus etc. The page area content is fetched from the cache servers and is the same for all users (with some exceptions). The reason that {{REVISIONUSER}} so easily can provide unique output for each user editing a page is that in edit preview the page content is not fetched from the cache, instead the whole page content is re-rendered on each edit preview. So edit preview is pretty much like doing a purge, but without saving the result of the purge.

Yes, there is a rough way to search for pages using "ambox" with "textstyle". Simply search for "ambox textstyle". But since ambox is mostly used as a meta-template, then that only gives you the templates that are built with ambox that are using "textstyle". (Remember to set your search so it includes the template namespace.) If you want to know which pages in turn are using those templates, then the only good way is to make ambox itself categorize pages that use textstyle into a maintenance category (as I described in section Page re-rendering below).

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

the problem with that is that you have to change a heavily used template, which means re-parsing all those pages, right? But, I do like the category idea - especially for error/abuse checking that leaves some kind of "marker" or report that you can follow later to the pages that has created the error/unique condition. I really think this is much better way of addressing these problems rather than saying "no, we can't create this function because someone might abuse it. stmrlbs|talk 08:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

We should not hesitate to add such tracking categories, since they usually lead to lots of pages being fixed. And often the editors who made the mistakes see our fixes or come asking about our fixes, so they learn too. So such tracking categories lead to improvements of Wikipedia. And if we just want to collect some "statistics" then we can make the tracking category hidden, so only experienced editors see it, thus it doesn't disturb anyone. And nowadays Wikipedia handles re-parsing of millions of pages very well, so occasional updates to our high-risk templates is no problem. (The problem is when some admins do test-edits to widely deployed templates, just because they are too lazy to use the /sandbox and /testcases pages.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

New test-mode template

I have now created and documented the {{test-mode}} template. I choose the name {{test-mode}} since {{test-template}} kind of was a name collision with an existing redirect at {{test template}}. I have edited all comments above to say {{test-mode}}, to avoid any future confusion.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

David, I ran a little test in my user space and it works great! Cool! I tried it calling a very simple (one line) test template directly, and calling another template that called the test-macro, and they both worked. You can see it here, by edit previewing User:Stmrlbs/sandbox#try_test-mode. David, I did not understand this in your instructions "New code to test, or a transclusion of the /sandbox with forwarding of your template's parameters." What is "forwarding of template parameters"? Do you have an example that I can look at? Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 03:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I see you are using the "personal test1-mode", and your test cases are very nice! :))

I perhaps should add some sub-pages to {{test-mode}} with some examples, and link to those examples from the documentation.

I have removed the comment about "forwarding to the sandbox", since that can cause problems. Since anyone can edit the sandboxes, and if a sandbox is missing the end braces it will bleed through to the current version. And that might be nasty if it is a high-risk template.

But since you asked, below is an example of what I meant. The example is the code for {{mytemp}} which has the sandbox {{mytemp/sandbox}}.

{{test-mode
| test1 version = 
   <!--New code to test, calling the /sandbox version-->
   {{mytemp/sandbox
   | 1 = {{{1|}}}   <!--Forwarding parameter 1 to the /sandbox-->
   }}
| normal version =
   <!--The currently deployed code that most users see-->
   ''This project has {{{1|}}} users.''
}}<noinclude>

{{documentation}}
</noinclude>

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

ok.. I see what you mean. The bleeding issue, you would have that whether you made that mistake in the sandbox or copying the test code into the template. Hopefully, a person will test for that separately and correct any problem like that before trying this method. That is the only problem is that you do still have to modify the "public" template to be able to use the edit preview to test with article pages without having to dummy up examples. But if you are careful about it.. it is really nice. And, you could have it do this, right? (using your example for public template mytemp):

{{test-mode
| test1 version = 
   <!--New code to test, calling the /sandbox version-->
   {{User:Stmrlbs/Template/mytemp
   | 1 = {{{1|}}}   <!--Forwarding parameter 1 to the User:Stmrlbs/Template/mytemp-->
   }}
| normal version =
   <!--The currently deployed code that most users see-->
   ''This project has {{{1|}}} users.''
}}<noinclude>

{{documentation}}
</noinclude>

stmrlbs|talk 05:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you understand it correctly. I expect that people sometimes will be leaving the test-mode in templates for weeks while testing and discussing new versions of a template. I think you understand this part, but anyway: Say {{mytemp}}} is a high-risk template used on 300,000 pages. Then a vandal can go editing the unprotected {{User:Stmrlbs/Template/mytemp}} to damage that template for all users, by using the "bleed through" effect. And probably more common: If we forward to {{mytemp/sandbox}} some innocent user might go to that sandbox doing experimental edits, not knowing that his edits might become visible on all those 300,000 pages if he forgets the end-braces, or even just tries to use a wikitable in the /sandbox. (Wikitable markup breaks when fed as a parameter to a template. Then we need to use HTML table markup instead. I will document that in {{test-mode}}.) So to avoid these misstakes it is better to forward to some other page than the /sandbox, to avoid the "accidental" edits. (I usually use a /test1 subpage under the templates as my personal sandbox, so others won't mess with my sandbox versions.) And if the main template is protected then the test-template should also be protected.

By the way, I think we should copy most of our above discussions to the talk page of {{test-mode}}, since others will probably ask the same things.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

usually any template that is high risk and is used on that many pages is only going to be able to be edited by an administrator. Kind of a catch 22 in that the templates where you could really use this to do a lot of testing easily, is the type of template that a user like me won't be able to edit. But, like it will be great for the templates that aren't restricted to administrators. stmrlbs|talk 10:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, and that is one of the reasons why it would be better if MediaWiki had the test-mode built-in, as you suggested in bugzilla:22135.

But I think it can be okay to temporarily forward to say a /test1 sub-template that is semi-protected, when a user like you want to do some test runs. Since most vandals don't know how this works, and they won't know when we do such test runs. And that probably also stops most of the beginners from accidentally damaging the template.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

This discussion has been copied to Template talk:Test-mode, please continue there. --David Göthberg (talk) 11:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Page re-rendering

I also have another question about the rendering of wikipedia pages after a template change. A user posted this in a discussion on the U.S.Roads project talk pages. Is this true? That when a template is changed, that wikipedia reparses (or renders - I see the terms used interchangeably?) every page the template is used? Doesn't it wait until someone displays that page, then check to see if it has been changed and then reparses it? Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 04:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

You are both kind of right, although you are closer to the truth in this case. It works like this:

Short answer:

Right, the jobqueue doesn't re-render the pages, it just makes the cache servers drop the pages. The pages are then re-rendered the next time someone visits them. But Wikipedia is very popular, so most of the pages are visited every hour. Thus most of the pages are re-rendered within an hour. But just to drop that many pages from the cache servers is a heavy operation. And since most of the pages are soon visited also the re-rendering is heavy. So Imzadi1979 was right in some of his details.

Long answer:

Let's say our template is transcluded on 10,000 pages. The database has a list of pages that use the template. ("What links here" is a view of that list.) When you save a change to a template MediaWiki puts that list on the jobqueue with the order "Drop all these pages from the cache servers". Dropping a page is done by broadcasting a message to all the cache servers, and is a fairly expensive operation. So MediaWiki doesn't broadcast the whole list at once, instead it adds 10,000 commands to the jobqueue, one for each page in the list. (At least it used to add one command for each page. According to some sources it nowadays broadcasts the list in chunks, so perhaps it "just" puts 1000 commands or so with 10 page names in each chunk.)

Just adding that list to the jobqueue can take over a minute for templates that are used on more than 100,000 pages, so when we save such templates we usually get a big green error page since the web interface times out before the adding to the jobqueue has finished. It usually scares the shit out of new admins the first time. :)) But the adding to the jobqueue continues even after the web interface has sent us the error message, so no worries. But if the template only has 10,000 pages then it usually just takes a little longer to do the save compared to saving normal pages.

Then the jobqueue broadcasts those drop messages one by one, over some minutes. During those minutes, if you visit some of the pages you will see the old version of the template. (This often is very visible, since the template's own doc page often shows the old version of the template after you did the save.) To force an immediate re-rendering of a page you can purge it.

Then as I described in the short answer the pages are re-rendered if/when someone visits them. When a page is re-rendered the categories on the page is updated, and the "What links here" list of the templates on the page is updated. Note that this only happens when a page is visited (or purged).

This gets very visible if your template adds a category. Try this sometime: Add or change the category in a high-use template, then reload the new category page every now and then. You will see that most pages come to the new category within about an hour. But some pages can take weeks since they simply haven't been visited yet. And if a page never gets visited it never turns up in the category. I have done tests with secret pages that no one knew about, and they never turned up in the category, until after some months I visited them myself.

Note that categorization has some additional delays, so you don't see the pages in the category until some minutes after they have been re-rendered. (After a page has been re-rendered so a change in the categorization has been noticed, the order to add or remove the page in each category is itself put on a jobqueue. And the jobqueue for category updates run at lower priority than the queue for dropping pages from the cache servers.)

Another way this gets visible is if you add a new sub-template to a high-use template. Then you can check tools:~jarry/templatecount/ every now and then, and you will see the same thing. You can literally see the template count increase minute by minute at first, then it slows down and after some hours the sub-template has almost the same number as the main template.

My experience is that about 50% of the pages have been visited (and thus re-rendered) within one hour. About 90% have been visited within one day. And about 99% within a week. Most of the remaining 1% are visited during the second week. The cases we see coming in late are mostly user sub-pages and WikiProject sub-pages, so they rarely get visited. In the follow weeks we only see some rare cases, most of them are caused by additions of the template to new pages.

Stmrlbs, since template debugging is one of your interests: We often use categorization as error reporting. We use a parserfunction to check if people add the wrong parameter, and then we add a category. In that way we can easily find and fix such cases. When we do such runs it gets very visible how pages drop in over time.

Note that adding such an error category can confuse people and result in lots of questions, so I have a method to handle that. See my explanation of the method at Template talk:Tmbox/Archive 2#Deprecated ambox parameters, section break 1 and a real world example at Category:Wikipedia message box parameter needs fixing.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for a very detailed and clear explanation. I have a much better understanding (although I'm sure I have much to learn). And thanks for the examples. I have noticed what you were saying about the categorization, only it was a while ago and I can't remember where I noticed it. I went through the ambox template when I made some minor changes to the search archives template, so I am somewhat familiar with it. I will take a look at this "error category" Thanks! stmrlbs|talk 00:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

David, I think the category idea is something I will use on my new parameter for the infobox road template (if it every gets approved). There is worry about "abuse" - editors making huge signs. I guess there have been instances of this in the past from what some editors have said. But checking for a valid size, and putting it in a category for invalid parameters is a great way to point out when there is a problem with a parameter. Thanks for that idea.. rather timely! stmrlbs|talk 06:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I have by accident been following the discussions about the US and Canadian road signs. (As you probably know they are trying stop the Canadians from using their own road signs template.) The US roads people are the kind of people that is best to avoid, since they can't be reasoned with. It's people like them that scare away productive editors from Wikipedia.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

By accident, you mean like watching a train wreck? haha. Tell me about it. Well, I wasn't surprised at the outcome, but thought I would go through the process anyway. Sometimes things will go differently than you think, but not this time. But something came out of it - Floydian is going to see if changing the format of the shields to svg will make them more visible. And, frankly, I think it would be better for Floydian to develop his own template, which I think he wants to do - and now there is more grounds to do so. The Canadian project seems kind of dead at the moment, but here is a Canadian, trying to put together something about the roads in his area. I think it should be encouraged. Having someone work on an area of Canada might spur some other Canadian editors to follow suit. Wikipedia is very big, and I think sometimes it is easy to get so involved with the rules, regulations, standards, that you forget who you are developing these pages for - Joe Q. Public who doesn't know what Wikipedia standards are and just wants to have a page that is readable, informative, with some structure, and yes, maybe even visually appealing. So, I think part of the problem between the U.S. Roads and Floydian (since he seems to be the sole Canadian editor there) is the difference in goals - standards vs user friendliness. I think both groups have both as their goals, but the priority of each goal is different for each group. and there lies the rub. stmrlbs|talk 02:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, pretty much like watching a train wreck, I just happened to be in the right (wrong?) place at the right time. But watching a train wreck is much more exciting. I watch a couple of thousand pages and many user pages since I have communicated with many users over time, so I see discussions about all kinds of things. So I have noticed the discussions about the US road signs vs. Canadian road signs. I like to have many pages on my watchlist since then I see what's going on around here. Especially since I every now and then can step in with my technical knowledge and solve things. Or like when you came here asking about template testing, I had already seen some of your discussions about it so I had had some time to think about it. I need to know what needs people have, so I can get ideas to new templates to create. Your "template test mode" idea is just that kind of splendid idea, something I would not have come up with myself. You had the idea, I had the knowledge how to implement it. :)

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

David, I am sure that I will be coming back with more questions. I am trying to reorganize the couple of templates that I've written/changed to show the logic visually, as well as add comments. Floydian is developing some Canadian templates, and I'm helping him, although he is doing pretty well on his own. So, I might be asking for your opinion/advice/suggestions on what we've done down the road. Thanks for all the help you've given already. You've been great. stmrlbs|talk 08:33, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Retrieving articles

Hey Davidgothberg,

I am from Netherlands and I have a small query regarding retrieving article via Wikipedia. It would be really nice if you could help me! Kindly send me a mail : (Blanked email address so the spam bots won't get the email.) or tell me if I can post here?

Hey Need some information regarding retrieving Wikipedia Article. I need about 5 minutes of your time to ask a few queries. Thnka you very much in advance!

Mehaalrai (talk) 09:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Mehaalrai. I don't use email anymore, since all my email accounts get about 500 spams per day and whenever I get a new email account it usually just takes some month and I get 500 spams a day again. (That's what you get for being a public person.) So I just use telephone and this talk page. I removed your email address above since many spam bots come to Wikipedia to collect email addresses.

So feel free to ask here. But I am just one user and might not know the answer, so there are some better places to ask, I can point you to the right place when I know more what it is you want.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:01, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Help please

I see you are online. Could you possibly help me with MediaWiki:Edittools.js because it's not working, and I see you've edited there before. (Discussion here.) Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:59, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Phew, that was a tricky one, but I fixed it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

ifurl

Is there a parser function to test to see if a string is a URL? It seems like there must be some support for it since WP automagically highlights URLs. I could cook up a template to do it using say {{#ifeq:{{#titleparts: {{{1}}} | 1 }}| Http: | 1 }} which appears to work for http URLs, although its not entirely foolproof. But, I thought I would check to see if you had seen anything first. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 00:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Right, there doesn't seem to be any such ParserFunction or magic word. So one of the ways to detect it seems to be to use {{#titleparts:}} just as you say. But to avoid triggering on just "http:" without the "//" part I would feed "2" to titleparts. And we can also check the other common URL prefixes, like this:

{{#switch: {{lc: {{#titleparts: {{{1|}}} | 2 }} }}
| http:/
| https:/
| ftp:/
| irc:/  = <!-- Is an URL -->
}}

We can do some more checks, like check that there actually is data after the second "/" too, and check that the string has at least one dot ".", to make it even more sure.

We can also check if a string begins with "www." etc like this:

{{#switch: {{padleft:|4| {{{1|}}} }}
| www.
| ftp. = <!-- Seems to be a link. -->
}}

But as you say, that is clumsy.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

JS and {{test-mode}}

Thinking about that template, i think js could be used as a quick switch so people can view it in testing mode. (I put together a short script that does that - User:Bawolff/test-mode.js, by re-rendering the page but with a context title of either test1- test2- or test3- based on user input when they click on a link in the toolbox. Doesn't work that well currently in edit mode, but that could be improved if there is interest). Try it out and tell me what you think. Another thought, currently the template recommends using the show preview on a non-exisistant test1-pagename page to see test mode. Perhaps it should reccomend people use special:Expandtemplates to stop the accidental page saves, that are bound to happen. Cheers. Bawolff (talk) 21:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, your script is great! I have copied your message to Template talk:Test-mode#JS and ((test-mode)) and written a full response there. (When doing so I changed "that template" to "this template" in your message so it makes more sense when on that talk page.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The link to search help from search results

In spite of previous discussion at MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-exists and MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-new, I notice we still don't have a link to the search help page (I think it was decided it would be Help:Searching) from the search results screen. Should I revive my previous edit request for those two MW pages, or would you prefer to revive your suggestion of transclusing (some form of) the old Searchresulttext?--Kotniski (talk) 18:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, having just looked at Help:Searching I see that it's rather too minimalist to be of much use. Looks like the link ought to go to Wikipedia:Searching after all.--Kotniski (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Y Done - Sorry for the delay, and thanks for the reminder. --David Göthberg (talk)

How ironic

Let me quote you "It should not be up to one person to single handedly decide what gets displayed on the search page". --rainman (talk) 16:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

For reference, I disagree with this re-addition of information that no one reads. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I have moved this discussion to MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-exists#How ironic. Any further discussion should be done there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing User:Jrtayloriv

I appreciate you taking the time to fix the broken formatting on my user page. Thanks for being d r0x0rz d00d! Jrtayloriv (talk) 21:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The link= stuff

Hello. You have a new message at User talk:SMcCandlish#Image links's talk page. User:Xeno wanted to re-open that issue, so, there ya have it. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Note to self: I have responded there. But that discussion should be moved to Wikipedia talk:Copyrights.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Change you may be interested in

Hi David. I thought you'd be interested to know about a change I intend to commit to SVN sometime soon; probably just after MW1.16 is branched. It's in response to Template:Bug. I will revert the hack that forces every construct beginning with {{ to exhibit newline behaviour. I may include an exception for objects on the first line of wikitables:

{|
|-
| * This won't format
* This will
|}

So that both asterisks behave as bullets; but functionality such as

foo {{#if: yes | * List }} bar

will no longer format as a list. I'd be interested if you have any thoughts on the matter, and you might want to check your templates to see if any of them would be damaged by this change. Cheers, Happy‑melon 22:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

*Yay* :) Good work, I hope it goes live quickly! Amalthea 22:51, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh! Love it! I see there are some resistance at bugzilla:12974 so I'll write something there in support later today or so. Amalthea and anyone else reading this: Your support over at that bug would be much appreciated.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:40, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Blech

Sorry that usability stuff has turned into such an argument. I usually agree with you on stuff, and I'm not feeling argumentative today or anything. Weird. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:45, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Disambig

I saw you proposed merging Template:Meta disambig and Template:WP disambig. The best way to propose merging templates is not with {{Merge}} tags, but to put it up at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion with a {{Tfm}} tag. If you'd do that, I'd support that proposal. You could do the technical side of the merge if needed? Debresser (talk) 11:23, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It isn't necessary to take things to TfD to merge; it is usually overkill, not "the best way". TfD can be used to settle particularly contentious merge issues. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with SMcCandlish. Wikipedia:Templates for discussion is for larger changes or changes that might be controversial. While {{meta disambig}} is unused and has pretty much the same purpose and content as {{WP disambig}}. Instead we usually discuss disambig templates at Template talk:Disambig or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation, since those pages are watched by users that are interested in such templates.

I merely added the merge tags to those templates so those that watch those templates would be informed, and so I could link to the discussion at Template talk:Disambig#The other disambig templates, and to prevent anyone from starting to use {{meta disambig}}.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Request

Could you solve the issue at Template_talk:Userspace_draft#Include.2Fnoinclude_cleanup? We want to include the template on its documentation page without having that documentation page categorised by the template. Sounds like a case of category surpression. Debresser (talk) 20:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I had a quick look. That is messy code with several oddities in it. I might work it over if/when I get the time.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Somebody did it yesterday, see the history. It is messy, that is true. Debresser (talk) 21:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Searching

You may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Searching#Requested move. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Note to self: I have responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

thank you for being so nice ;) Have a great week, stay warm. Okip (formerly Ikip) 17:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Note to self: This is about my comment at Template talk:Not a ballot#Discourages new users from commenting?.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:15, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Hey, saw your comments, I am not going to make a huge deal about this now, but let me know if you pursue this further and need help. thanks again!Okip (formerly Ikip) 07:17, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

You broke Template:Spa

What's up with this edit? It broke Template:Spa. Quale (talk) 19:48, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I can't see that it is broken. I just changed the link to point directly to Wikipedia:Single-purpose account, instead of to a redirect. I double checked, it seems to work fine. See here:

{{subst:spa|Quale}}

{{subst:spa|Quale|13 February 2010}}

— Quale (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

— Quale (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. The preceding unsigned comment was added at 13 February 2010 (UTC).

In what way do you think it is broken?

My edit was done a year ago and no one has complained before, so I don't think I am missing something. We have had some server hiccups the last few hours, so if the link didn't work that might be because the servers weren't responding at the moment you clicked that link.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:48, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Dang, I apologize. Your edit was fine. I should learn the difference between Template:Spa and Template:ESP—sometimes I'm a little slow. Quale (talk) 22:28, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

No problem. Better one bug report too much, than one too little. :)

So, what is the problem with {{ESP}} ? Since I can edit protected templates I can perhaps be of assistance?

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Template:ESP seems to be fine. The problem was that the page European Team Chess Championship had used Template:SPA when the ESP template would have been appropriate. In looking into the odd effect this had on a 2001 table entry I misdiagnosed the problem. Although I don't know Spanish, I do know (or certainly should know) that ESP is the appropriate code for Spain. Although I try to remind myself that if I think an experienced person has made a mistake it is just as likely that I'm the one who is mistaken, sometimes I still don't realize where I've gone wrong as quickly as I ought to. Quale (talk) 08:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Test-mode template

David, I added a paragraph for the new test-mode template here. I don't know if that is enough. If you think I should add something else, let me know, but since the page was about test cases, I felt just mentioning that the next step could be setting up {{test-mode}} was enough. I also added a table entry here. However, looking at this table, I was thinking that maybe it might be a good idea to have the template display something in a template that used it. Not to the people calling it, but when you looked at the template page. That way, users would know when looking at the template page that the template had a test-mode version. What do you think? stmrlbs|talk 15:52, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I have responded over at Template talk:Test-mode#Documentation question.

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Your proper reversion of my edit to WP:SUBPAGE

[4] Thanks. Live and learn, I see I wasn't the first to be fooled by this. I think it's actually a software bug, if one wants to allow slashes in article names, (obviously a difficulty in the spaces where subpages are allowed, such as with Talk:OS/2), then some special handling should be arranged. But not at the top of my agenda. --Abd (talk) 04:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. I know from talking to a lot of people that they have a hard time understanding both the concept "namespaces" and "subpage feature", and that page uses both those concepts in the first sentence of that page. So that page is probably very hard to understand for those that don't already know something about how it works. That page probably should be reworked to become more pedagogic, but at the moment I don't have a clear idea how to do that.

And regarding "subpages" like Talk:OS/2: That's actually not much of a problem. People rarely check what subpages a page has, so that page is not a problem for Talk:OS. And the only difference really on Talk:OS/2 is that at the top left corner of it there is a small link to Talk:OS, which is slightly silly but doesn't hurt much.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

IE issue with {{documentation}}

Please see: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Template_documentation —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:33, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Request

Could you perhaps work some of your magic with categorising, and make the two pages in Category:Pages using deprecated templates disappear? Without removing the examples from those two pages, of course. Debresser (talk) 19:28, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:ACTOR and non-standard Filmographies (redux)

Hi. I saw your page notice; hope all is well, and best wishes. I've seen you about a few times and believe we had a chat somewhere about br-elements and html5.

I just read the long thread at:

• MediaWiki talk:Common.css/Archive 9#Header color in wikitables

I've stumbled into this issue during the last few days, having worked on maybe 20 filmographies attempting to clean-up poor markup and styling.

I think the time has come to sort the issue of non-standard styling in the name of a wikiproject. The whole initiative originating there reeks of article ownership, wikiprojects as "governing" bodies, and impeding site accessibility in the name of meretricious appearance.

I think the appropriate outcome is filmographies either implemented as bog-standard wikitables, or a suite of templates/css that allow central control of the styling (i.e. to site-wide conventions).

The current point of discussion is at:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers#Filmography

I hope to see you there.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:20, 7 March 2010 (UTC)