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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla.

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« Archives, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213

Inline template wikitext formatting

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Citation discussion#Inline template wikitext formatting and comment, when you have a chance to do so. Thank you. 08:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC−5)

Do I live near San Francisco? No I bloody well don't!

There's one of those annoying "help us" messages popping up occasionally at the top of pages, no option to hide or dismiss it, doesn't shew up on every page, and doesn't always reappear when I return to a page it was previously on. How can I get rid of it, and where is it coming from? DuncanHill (talk) 22:12, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adware? ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's a Wikimedia usability survey thing or something. And apparently nobody can be fucked to include some geo IP code, so it shows to a lot of people unnecessarily. Such is life. Such is Wikimedia. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, and even if you click on it there's no option to contact the muppets responsible to complain. DuncanHill (talk) 22:22, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, I just got it https://ethnio.com/remotes/56415/edit? ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've emailed Ethnio, the company responsible, to complain. DuncanHill (talk) 22:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

E-mailing Ethnio is utterly useless; it's just a platform we use to recruit participants for a usability study. guillom 22:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Who is this "we" of whom you speak, why do you subject people thousands of miles from San Francisco to this advert, why is there no "hide" or "dismiss" option, and why is the identity of those responsible hidden? DuncanHill (talk) 22:37, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This bit, merged from my rant at the pump misc, now redirected here Chzz ► 22:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Live near San Francisco, or in the US, and have an hour to help Wikipedia?" - banner has just appeared.

No, I don't live in the USA; believe it or not, some Wikipedians are not in America. You can tell by our IP address.

Why is this spam permitted, and why is there no 'dismiss' option? Grr. Chzz ► 22:29, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If it looks like spam and it smells like spam then..... When did the foundation go into the spam business anyway. –droll [chat] 23:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, it isn't spam - it's part of the usability initiative, like the one mentioned here. I had a look at the code, and it's being loaded through the central notice system. It should only ever display once, unless your cookie settings are overly aggressive and are being cleared at the end of each session. If so, or if the idea or ever seeing it really offends you, you should be able to disable it by adding this code to your javascript page:

hookEvent ( 'load', function () { if ( typeof Ethnio !== 'undefined' ) { Ethnio.set_cookie (); } });

Hope that helps. Ale_Jrb^talk 23:52, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've had it five or six times, without leaving Wikipedia in between. Thanks for the code, but editors really shouldn't have to resort to fiddling about with javascript (which most of us don't understand) to get rid of irrelevant and annoying banners. DuncanHill (talk) 23:56, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When you see it for the first time, it tries to set a cookie for like, several years. If it succeeds, it won't display again. Are your cookie settings or a third-party security program preventing Javascript set cookies? If so, my code won't help you... What browser/security software are you using? Ale_Jrb^talk 00:00, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Chrome on WinXP, and AVG. No special settings AFAIK. But that is irrelevant to my point that there should be a dismiss or hide option, and to the point made above that it shouldn't be randomly targetting people from all over the world. DuncanHill (talk) 00:09, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes there should, and no it shouldn't be... but it does sort of have a dismiss. If you see it once, you shouldn't see it again - you don't even need to click a dismiss link (when it's working properly heh). I'm not sure when or why this one was implemented though, and I had a little look. Hmm... Ale_Jrb^talk 00:12, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I shouldn't see it again, but I have seen it again, about 20 times (Vista, Firefox 3.6, AVG). Please just make the wretched thing hideable, because your javascript thingy clearly is not doing the biz. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The tagline is inaccurate; the Mar 30th date is for San Francisco views, while the Mar 31st is for online interviews. This is actually an issue for the interviewing company to fix. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:25, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cookies/javascript unblocked for whom? Ethnio.com?

And, my IP range is very firmly and consistently in Canada. Someone needs to update their geoIP listings. [pile-on-comment]

And, around 6-16 March 2009 we were also discussing ethnio! ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 00:48, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adblocking */centralnotice.js* should solve it for good. ―AoV² 00:30, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll point out that I am in no way related to the usability initiative, I did not write the code, and I have no control over its implementation. Did you try the code I posted above? If so, and it doesn't help and you don't want to block the whole central notice system, this should be a little more aggressive:

hookEvent ( 'load', function () { if ( document.getElementById ( 'ethnio_pitch' ) ) { document.getElementById ( 'ethnio_pitch' ).parentNode.removeChild ( document.getElementById ( 'ethnio_pitch' ) ); } });

Ale_Jrb^talk 00:33, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh. Perhaps people should demand less, and request more..... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, first things first. What are people thinking directly emailing ethnio ? This is Wikipedia and any technical issues should be filed in bugzilla:, any other issues should probably be communicated through the foundation, with which this company has a contract.

Secondly, I asked online. The banner should be online only for 3 days or so (1,5 have already passed). Also, there are currently requests for 2 studies (multimedia upload, and wikipedia usability) in 2 modes going on (San Francisco interviews and online interviews). The exposure is a bit higher than usual because of this.

And the bugreports. Please add your information there. Some browser config info might be useful to add to the 2nd bug. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:01, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why did I email Ethnio direct? Because there was no indication whatsoever in the notice that anyone else was involved. If the Foundation was responsible for the banner, then they should have said so in it. As for bugzilla - user friendly it isn't. I came to VPT because it's a very helpful place full of very helpful people. DuncanHill (talk) 02:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And further, re Bugzilla, I'm buggered if I'm going to post my email address publically on it, so I can't have a log in, so I can't report things there. DuncanHill (talk) 02:20, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If just any organization could hijack Wikipedia pages, then we would have a security issue and then you should definetly turn to the foundation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But we've got no way of knowing if it's the foundation, some wikichapter thingy or just a mad admin plating with sitenotices. DuncanHill (talk) 02:50, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We ? You might not know. But others clearly do. Don't make rash actions if you don't understand what is going on, just hang out and sit tight and wait for people that do understand what is going on. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:17, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Rash actions? You mean like asking what it is and who is responsible? That's hardly rash in my book. DuncanHill (talk) 03:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Or you can add some CSS and never see stupid sitenotices again:

#siteNotice { display: none; }

Done it and never looked back. Q ^{T C} 01:57, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. The ratio of useful information to rancid shit in the sitenotice dropped to near zero years ago; I've had it blocked for years and never missed anything that needed my attention. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:10, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering what this thread was referring to for a while, then started seeing the sitenotice, only within the last 5 minutes for some reason. No hide link? Since when? Not good. Not good at all. Yeah I know about CSS. Still, not good. Equazcion ^(talk) 02:24, 18 Mar 2010 (UTC)

It pops up a lot for me too (with Epiphany running under Ubuntu 8.04, and no bizarre settings for cookies). If I add

#siteNotice { display: none; }

as recommended above, will this also kill notices of arb elections and the like? (I don't think I've ever yet been bothered to participate, but one day I might surprise myself by doing so.) ¶ It's a quaintly pre-interwebs project, telling us: Remote interviews will be held online on March 31st with users throughout the US. Why not users outside the US? Email is email, no? (But then again perhaps only the opinions of US Americans are worth listening to.) -- Hoary (talk) 03:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the remote interviews are being done by phone. Mr.Z-man 03:37, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just a minor point, but for those who want to block the sitenotice, the CSS code you really want is

#siteNotice { display: none !important; }

Which is almost identical in the usual case but gives you at least some protection against the inevitable "lots of people block the sitenotice, but this usability survey is really important, so we'll override blocking in the sitewide CSS" banner code that will probably get rolled out eventually. — Gavia immer (talk) 03:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These merely will hide it after it already has loaded. Barring a user-preferences option to disable it completely (uh-huh), the best approach is ABP or some other way for your browser to ignore “centralnotice.js” outright. ―AoV² 05:00, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm that the notice appears repeatedly using Firefox 3.6 on Windows XP. I never did anything about the cookie settings, so I am confident I have either the FF 3.6 factory defaults or those of an earlier version (max. about a year old) over which I installed. Hans Adler 22:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it was my bad - I was tired and the code is sh-... not very tidy. It only disappears permanently if you click on it. That does mean the first code I put up will hide it for you (without you having to click on it), AFAIK. Ale_Jrb^talk 23:13, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So far, every single thing I've seen that the foundation has paid for has been completely unusable. Thank goodness I perma-blocked the sitenotice after the fundraising banner fiasco. Glad to see the money's being well spent on these web-designers from 1994. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 23:03, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why not use Wikipedia:Geonotice?--Pharos (talk) 03:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because we needed to recruit logged-out users as well; the real solution would be to fix bugzilla:21295. But honestly, I think the community of the English Wikipedia is way too touchy, and I would like to ask you (in the general sense) to give us some leeway. I mean, the banner was up for only ~6 hours, and that's all we needed. Is it too much to ask, when our goal is to make MediaWiki better and to perennially improve the user experience for everyone (including experienced users like those posting here)? guillom 14:38, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since the "we" behind the message was not identified, it is too much to ask for any leeway. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:49, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is this very useful thing called a "user page". My sincere apologies for assuming you knew what it was and how to use it. Just click on my signature and you should be able to identify who the "we" is. guillom 16:15, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also nice to see WMF employees resorting to childish personal attacks so quickly. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:05, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Guillom, what Jc3s5h meant was it was difficult to tell who was behind the notice, from the notice itself. Not that it was difficult to identify who you were, or who you were referring to (I believe) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The advert wasn't signed by you. It was only after I complained here and you made a comment that anyone would have been able to deduce that you were responsible for adding the advert. You still haven't explained (as asked above) why there was no dismiss option. DuncanHill (talk) 16:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm all for giving you good folks leeway on this, but please work on bugzilla:21295 too, because if implemented it would really be a tremendous boon to the Wikimedia movement in so many ways.--Pharos (talk) 15:47, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since when does the WMF do these things properly? And, yes, Adblock Plus and/or NoScript (it's the only script I know of hosted on upload.wikimedia.org) is the best way to permanently kill off crappy central notices, including awful fundraising banners. I blocked the central notice after the marquee fundraiser and I've never looked back. MER-C 05:49, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly Agree I dont live anywhere near 'Cisco (im on the east coast) so these messages sometimes do nothing for me. But.. the latest one had a opt in for an online interview as well.. so.... but i see what your point is Evenios (talk) 07:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Category depopulation

Depopulation over at this category has stalled. Two and a half weeks ago, it was having issues depopulating, but it hasn't moved in two days. I'm all for removing the stub template and adding it back in, but if anyone else has any other ideas, I'm all for it. Thanks. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Question was originally raised here. I left other messages on this page which were fruitless, such as here (I did not raise a bugzilla ticket, because to do so requires me to publish my email address, which I object to), and also at Help talk:Job queue#Stuck queue, where I periodically tallied the progress.

Category:Skiing stubs appears to be clear now. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:12, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect someone nulledited all the pages to force the category to clear ? If someone can confirm that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:05, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maximum references

Is there a maximum number of references that can go on a page? I'm trying to add lots of references to the page List_of_chess_grandmasters, but it just times out when attempting to preview/submit, giving the Wikimedia Foundation Error message. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:40, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is yes. Going to split it up. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The flag icon templates and sort templates don't help either. I suggest you use {{scref}} and {{scnote}} in lists where the same reference is used multiple times. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:17, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Same reference being re-used multiple times is the issue. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 16:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is no hard limit on the number of <ref> tags that you can have on a page. However, there are length limits on pages, while you'll hit if you use too many complicated templates like {{cite}}. And even if you don't actually hit the length limit, you might make the page so complicated that the rendering times out on some level. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 17:30, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I found once you exceed reference zz after 702 references(27*26; 26 letters combined together) of the same occurrence using cite then errors and failure to save occur. It's not appropriate to use so many references of cite, so the technical side is fine. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 16:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Parenthetical_reference doesn't have those technical limitations. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:17, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Transcluding includeonly

I want to create a template which allows an <includeonly> to be transcluded, rather than parsed.

This is so that I can build a series of lists using a standardised template. Those lists will be transcluded into one larger list. One column in the sub-lists is currently tagged with <includeonly></includeonly>, because it is needed only in the combined list ... but I can't figure out how to do this through a template, or even if it is possible.

As a simple illustration of the problem, I have created User:BrownHairedGirl/xtemplate, which contains the words hamster and giraffe. The word giraffe is wrapped in <includeonly>

User:BrownHairedGirl/x1 transcludes the template, and User:BrownHairedGirl/x2 transcludes x1

If everything worked as I want it to, x1 would display "hamster", and x2 would display "hamster giraffe" ... but obviously, that's not what's happening. x1 says "hamster giraffe", because the <includeonly> is being parsed.

Is there any way of getting the template to do what I want? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If only one article needs to contain the column(s) in question, the easy approach would be for the template to contain conditionals like these instead:

<table>
<tr>
<td colspan="{{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|That one page|4|3}}">whole-row cell</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>column 1 cell</td>
<td>column 2 cell</td>
<td>column 3 cell</td>
{{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|That one page|<td>column 4 cell</td>}}
</tr>
</table>

I′m pretty sure resolving the include-or-not tags right away (without negotiation or deferral) is what allows /doc-pages to be something other than a fire-hazard (that and the “WP is not paper” meme). ―AoV² 17:24, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, AoV²! That's a nice piece of lateral thinking.

It's a slightly inelegant solution, in that relies on the page not being moved ... but it's massively clearer than the {{subst:subst}} stuff that I was experimenting with after reading m:Help:Recursive conversion of wikitext and m:Help:Advanced templates. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:40, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another possibility is use of parameters. snigbrook (talk) 19:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly a {{PAGEID}} variable would solve that, if it existed. I don′t see why it shouldn′t, as the number is available for Javascript purposes as wgArticleId, and as a cgi parameter for page look-up—This is how you bookmark a page which may move. ―AoV² 21:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like you could use empty pairs of includeonly tags for this, e.g. <inc<includeonly></includeonly>ludeonly> for the opening tag. This is done in the {{afd2}} template, although that template should be substituted and not transcluded. snigbrook (talk) 18:21, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to be different when transcluded, this is possibly a bug. snigbrook (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

well, the thought that occurs to me is to play games with tags - e.g. wrap your INCLUDEONLY in NOWIKI tags, but wrap the NOWIKI tags in INCLUDEONLY tags in such a way that they only appear in the right place - but I'll confess I can't quite see what the result you want is. can you point to the nested templates you're working on so we have an example to play with? --Ludwigs2 18:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but no. I haven't bothered trying to create the templates until I know whether what I want to achieve is doable. Apart from this issue, they will be very simple, but they will be no use without this feature. An example of where the template would be used is in User:BrownHairedGirl/nm2/Dublin: I would like to replace each row of the table with a template to simplify maintenance of the list, but as you can see there, each row needs one column to be wrapped with <includeonly></includeonly>, so that it only appears when transcluded into User:BrownHairedGirl/nm2/Fully sortable list. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:17, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

well, you could futz with the INCLUDEONLY stuff, but the little bit I've played with it, it doesn't do what's expected. I'd suggest you use a trickle-down parameter: in the row-level template have a conditional table cell like so: {{#if:{{{x|}}}||{{!}} cell contents }}. This cell will show up in the row template. when you call the row template from the county template, call it like so: {{row template|x={{{x|}}} }}. that will pass a blank to the row template and the cell will get transcluded into the county template. When you call it from the full template, however, call it like {{county template|x=1}} the x=1 will percolate down and keep the undesired cell from being transcluded up into the full table. will that work for you? --Ludwigs2 02:06, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Ludwigs2, but I think you misunderstand how the template would be used. The template call would only ever be coded in User:BrownHairedGirl/nm2/Dublin. The combined list User:BrownHairedGirl/nm2/Fully sortable list does not explicitly call the template; it transcludes User:BrownHairedGirl/nm2/Dublin, and so there is no opportunity to alter the parameters with which the template is called. The only way of making the template do what you suggest is to build a test intoi the template, as suggested above by AoV². --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:20, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are you subst:ing '/nm2/Dublin'? Because if you're not, I don't think what you said here is correct. When '/nm2/Fully sortable list' calls the template '/nm2/Dublin' it parses the wikitext again with any new parameters. for example, I've made test pages at User:Ludwigs2/test-BHG1 and User:Ludwigs2/test-BHG2 (I've had to add noincludes on the table definition elements - maybe that's where the confusion lies). At any rate, look at those two templates, and look at this result:

{| class="wikitable" style="width:30%"
|+ This is a full table made from transcluded subtables
|-
{{User:Ludwigs2/test-BHG2|x=1}}
|-
{{User:Ludwigs2/test-BHG2|x=1}}
|}

gives:

User:Ludwigs2/test-BHG2 User:Ludwigs2/test-BHG2

Note that the x=1 propagates down to prevent the first column cells from showing, even though it shows in the two other templates. that is the effect you're looking for, right? --Ludwigs2 16:13, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I see what you are doing. (Sorry, I had slightly misunderstood you first time around).

Somewhere along he way I had considered a pass-through technique like that, but rejected it because it would complicate the markup of the entries in the list, which would have to include something like county = {{{county|}}}. Not a big deal to you or me, but the idea of using the templates is to simplify the markup for non-technical editors, and entering

county = {{{county|}}} will seem like gobbledygook to many of them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:27, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

[reply]


This reminds me of something. Vote and add some comments here:[1] to promote this. As for the temp workaround, I believe the prod template has managed to do that. I think that it cannot be trancluded though, it can only work through a substitution. --JokerXtreme (talk) 19:23, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That is correct. If an &lt;includeonly&gt; tag from page A is visible on page B, it is because page A escaped it as &lt;includeonly&gt; (for literal rendering) before forwarding it to B for transclusion. Using “subst” is different from that, doing pre-save replacements with raw (un-sanitized) wiki-text.
While I can think of potential uses for an “includeonce” tag, for this she actually′d want one that says something like “includeonlyafterthefirst” and does the opposite thing. ―AoV² 21:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would probably be more useful than <includeonce> as there does not appear to be a consistent workaround; an "expand" tag would also be useful.  It's understandable for &lt; and &gt; to have the effect it does, what is less understandable is that <noinclude> tags have an effect on pages they are transcluded in. snigbrook (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A <noincludefirst> then. All these tags should be created instead of us trying to do it the alchemist way. --JokerXtreme (talk) 22:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, <noincludefirst> would be just the ticket. But I get the impression that the developers aren't exactly racing away to create new features. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would be better to give includeonly, noinclude, and onlyinclude some parameters, for example :<includeonly wait=3>Wait 3 pages before transcluding</includeonly> It would have worked if {{#tag:includeonlyworked. #tag should support the include tags and nowiki. I know includeonly's a core tag and not an extension (#tag sanitizes XML extension tags, like <source>), so it doesn't fall under #tag's scope, but still... I've asManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:22, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions.  I have now finished the lists, using the {{#ifeq: {{PAGENAME}} technique suggested by AoV². The lists are at Category:Lists of National Monuments of Ireland, templates at Category:National Monuments of Ireland templates. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
[reply]

title-only search?

This seems like an obvious thing, but I can't see how to do it.  is there a way to search only page titles?  for instance, if I'm looking for every page that has the word 'dog' in the title, how do I find that?  the search box tooltips will give me pages that start with the word dog, and the main 'special pages' search will give me every page that has the word 'dog' somewhere in the content, but the first is too restrictive and the second is way too expansive.  what am I missing?  --Ludwigs2 21:04, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You would search the term preceded by "intitle:", for example, if the term were "airport", the search intitle:airport would give all pages with "airport" in the title. Cheers, Intelligentsium 21:11, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah! I knew I was missing something. thanks. --Ludwigs2 21:13, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just out of curiosity, would it be possible to get a link to help:searching (which I suppose I should have looked at first) from the Special:search page?  I think that's normal for search sites, but there doesn't seem to be anything like it here.  --Ludwigs2 21:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
After an unsuccessful search (i.e., no matches to the criteria given) there is a statement, "For search help, please visit Help:Searching.". Is this what you were looking for? Intelligentsium 21:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
actually, no.  I was thinking about on the main search page (what you get initially if you click the sidebar search button with an empty field).  or at least in the modified page you get when you click on the Advanced link. --Ludwigs2 22:50, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We have requested this to developers but as usual bugs take ages to be processed. Cenarium (talk) 17:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is also http://toolserver.org/~nikola/grep.php?lang=en <- pagename search (accepts regex input). –xeno^talk 17:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Stacking images

I was attempting to fix a bunching problem on Cisco, Utah, and I noticed that if I use {{stack}}, that the images stack to the left of the infobox, rather than below the infobox.  To do a bit of experimentation, and created {{stack images}}, which uses the "infobox class" in the table definition.  The result is something that stacks the images below the infobox.  My question is three-fold, (1) Is this the best way to achieve this?  (2) Is there a reason why not to make this default behavior of {{stack}}? or (3) Should I just add this as an option to {{stack}}?  The default behavior of {{FixBunching}} is to stack them to the left of the infobox as well, so I suppose there is some consistency.  To see examples of the behavior, see stack image, stack, FixBunching.  I suppose it might also be achieved by stacking the infobox with the images, but that seems less desirable since the start and the end of the template are quite spread apart in the wikitext. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 22:43, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The normal solution would be to put each image in the section to which it is relevant, rather than stacking them all in section 0. I believe to use FixBunching with any success, you′d start the invisible floating table at the beginning of the page so that the infobox is in the first cell, but I doubt this is ideal. Honestly, given the dearth of text in this case I′d just use a &lt;gallery&gt; tag to arrange the photos horizontally. You′ll notice also that the interwiki-linked articles fr:Cisco (Utah), it:Cisco (Utah) avoid this problem completely (by using an ugly javascript/css work-around for bugzilla:11555). ―AoV² 00:08, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree that in this case, a gallery is the best solution.  I will probably just add this alternative stacking option to {{stack}}, just in case it is of some use in another situation.  Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 02:44, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I added a "clear" option to {{stack}}, just in case someone wants to force the stacking to the far right.  My experimental template is now redundant, so I redirected it to the main {{stack}}, just in case anyone is interested. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 17:07, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lupin's tool doesn't work properly?

When I was in the "Filter recent changes" section of Lupin's anti-vandal tool, I saw an edit by Bottleofjag (talk · contribs) appear as an "Admin" edit. True? No way, that edit doesn't look like something an admin would do at all, and a quick glance at my User:PleaseStand/userinfo.js script reveals that he is not even a rollbacker, only "A user, 13 hours old, with 5 edits." Why is this? I am using Firefox 3.6. PleaseStand ^(talk) 02:58, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. See User talk:Lupin/Anti-vandal tool#Issues under Firefox: another editor has noticed the same, but the issue is far worse than he thinks (see above). PleaseStand ^(talk) 03:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The tool builds a regex of all admin names and tests usernames against it. However, the regex doesn't have boundaries on it, so if your username contains the username of an admin, it will be marked as admin. As we have an admin called 'B', any username with a (capital, the regex is case sensitive) B in should be marked as an admin etc. I'll fix it at some point, unless someone beats me to it. Ale_Jrb^talk 13:37, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Working on that fix right now, as well as changing/removing some unnecessary code that is now in site-wide JS. The script dates back to November 2005. PleaseStand ^(talk) 16:50, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oops - I just came here to say that I've fixed this, and then I saw your comment. I have in fact fixed it, but if you think you can make any significant improvements, I say go for it; Lupin is no longer active (if you're making big changes, though, I suggest forking it). Ale_Jrb^talk 17:16, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, here is a a small but significant update,  update to Lupin's tool. You can see a diff of the changes as of this post. Changes include changing the words "non-admin rollback" to "'fake' rollback" in the settings section, checking the Huggle whitelist, adding an option to hide rollbackers' and whitelisted users' edits, and removing the user warning links (in favor of a new link that is made to work with Twinkle). As there are many rollbackers, though, this version takes longer to load (four times as long, at least the first time, since there are three times as many rollbackers as admins). It also checks the Huggle whitelist. Many bugs are still left, including that the word filter matches text that is not in red. PleaseStand ^(talk) 00:05, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

air dye technology

 Resolved
 – PleaseStand ^(talk) 12:45, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

hello sir, can anyone assist me to know the principle used in the air dyeing technology?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rameshkaruppiah (talk • contribs) 09:10, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to Wikipedia. The information is in the article AirDye. Any further questions should be directed to the reference desk, as the page you are on is for discussion about technical issues of Wikipedia itself. PleaseStand ^(talk) 12:45, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Geotagged EXIF information Wikipedia understands, { { Location } } for Wikipedia?

G'day guys!
I'm trying to find out information on what way (if at all) Wikipedia is able to automatically understand and translate information geotagged into the EXIF data of a JPEG image so that a) it displays properly in "Show Extended Details" and b) Wikipedia is able to automatically add this to the metadata of the image (i.e. where the summary et al is displayed).
Take this image for example, one of my own. Originally it was on Wikipedia but I've since decided to move it to the Commons for the benefit of other projects. Still needs some fixing though. If you'll notice in "Show Extended Details" where the EXIF data is displayed, The last four entries are the geotagging details, though the actual coordinates don't show, just 'South latitude' and 'East longitude' respectively.
I've used Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 to process it and used Jeffrey’s “GPS-Support” Geoencoding Plugin for Lightroom to geotag it. While I used Google Maps to geotag this image, I usually use my Nokia N78 and Nokia Sports Tracker for the GPS data. Maybe this will shed some light on why the EXIF data displays so? I have a feeling it might be Jeffery's plugin. I'll drop him an email and see.
Also, is there a Wikipedia version of { { Location } } (apart from coord) so that GPS data (if manually added) displays in a much more user friendly fashion in the image summary? Coord doesn't seem to work, only adds 31°57′12″S 115°48′25″E / 31.95333°S 115.80694°E / -31.95333; 115.80694 and not the self contained box.
Thanks heaps!!
DeltaFalcon ^{talk / contribs} 16:44, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is a bug in the way the "Extended details" parser displays EXIF information, that is causing the location info not to be visible. This is detailed in bugzilla:13172 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:19, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I operate a bot [2] on commons that analyzes the EXIF data of newly uploaded images and automatically adds a Location template. --Dschwen 15:36, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Abnormally fast GIFs

 Resolved
 – not a problem with Firefox, but rather with all other browsers and some GIF creation programs. A Greasemonkey script has been created to fix affected files. PleaseStand ^(talk) 20:24, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]


GIFs like the one left have been animating abnormally fast lately. Is there a reason why? NERDYSCIENCEDUDE (✉ msg • changes) 22:41, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the Earth is spinning faster. Carcharoth (talk) 23:39, 20 March 2010 (UTC) Clearly I meant your computer is 'spinning' faster, not the Earth... (see below) Carcharoth (talk) 01:10, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have in the past made animated gifs that chundered along at a suitable speed and found to my horror that they raced on other machines. The reason was that I'd specified a frame rate that was faster than could be rendered at  the clock speed of the machine I made them on. So they bumped along at the maximum speed they could be rendered which looked fine.  On running them on a faster machine, the true speed that I'd  set in the frame rate became evident. Reediting them to reduce the specified frame rate brought the animation speed to the same in all machines that were fast enough.  The effect was particularly noticeable on large pixel-dimension images; length of animation didn't  slow them much. Relevant?   Trev M   ~   00:58, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can't help with the precise technical issue (other than "oh dude, you're blowing my mind, it's actually the screen revolving around the image" :) but to touch on a pet peeve: why don't we have a Stop button for animated gif's? They're like an over-talkative dating partner - really interesting to start with, but eventually intensely annoying. Has some backing software for a kill-switch ever been mooted? Franamax (talk) 01:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe because many (most?) browsers stop GIF animations if you hit "escape"? --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 02:17, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Eek! The Earth stopped moving. <phew> I hit refresh and things started spinning/bouncing again! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 12:21, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Firefox can stop animated GIFs by hitting escape. Also, the  has also been bouncing abnormally fast. NERDYSCIENCEDUDE (✉ msg • changes) 03:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Firefox and IE have the esc control for gifs. Chrome doesn't. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Pressing Alt in Chrome pauses them for me. But only until you scroll or do something on the page. Not sure if this is an intentional feature by Google. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 14:07, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ooh thanks! ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 14:57, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like alt pauses everything, including mouseovers, hovers, tooltips, and flash. Really useful! Thanks again! ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 15:01, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
They already have a key-sequence? Nice. :) I suppose I'm just prejudiced against animated GIF's, seeing as how one animation on Red blood cell  would take a dial-up user around 7 minutes to load. Franamax (talk) 03:49, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Huh, now that I'm editing on an iPhone, the GIFs animate normally. Maybe it's my computer. NERDYSCIENCEDUDE (✉ msg • changes) 03:59, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In SVG animations, such as [3], timing issues are easier to correct. Unfortunately I can′t display it here as a non-moving PNG conversion would appear in place of it, but if I wanted to slow it down, I′d need only change the dur="3s" attribute to a higher number using a text-editor.
One also could manipulate it with javascript. Pasting something like this in the address bar while viewing the SVG directly will slow it by 5×:

javascript:for(i = 0; i < (a = document.getElementsByTagName("*")).length; i++) a[i].setAttribute("dur", "15s");

However, javascript cannot access the frames of a GIF or otherwise its animation. Sites which appear able to do this are in most cases changing the src attribute of the <img> tag (causing the browser to load pixels from a different file), or otherwise aren′t using GIFs at all. ―AoV² 04:34, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Viewing the above Bouncy Wikipedia Logo on this page in Chrome 4.1.249.1036, Firefox 3.6, and IE 7.0.5730.13 show that Chrome and IE7 are both 2.6 sec per bounce, but Firefox 3.6 is 1.1 sec per bounce. More than twice the speed. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:01, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's Firefox that's causing the problem. The animations view correctly in Safari. NERDYSCIENCEDUDE (✉ msg • changes) 14:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I also think it's Firefox, so I reported it to Mozilla as bug 553968. PleaseStand ^(talk) 03:26, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
At least I got a quick response since it turns out that the problem had already been reported (six years ago). (And I thought that I had discovered yet another Firefox 3.6 bug.) Firefox is actually behaving correctly, while others are not and treat delays less than 5 cs as 10 cs delays. So the Firefox developers are basically saying that for compatibility, websites should not use animated GIFs that have delays less than 5 cs (greater than 20 frames/s). I wrote a Greasemonkey script which you should be able to use to make any other files that are too fast the same speed in all browsers. Use the script, right-click the image and do Save Image As, and upload the new version to Wikipedia if appropriate. I just updated the two images shown above and these should now run at the same speed for everyone who sees them. PleaseStand ^(talk) 20:24, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note, I much prefer the Bouncy bouncing along at 1.1 seconds per bounce. --Izno (talk) 03:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note also that someone uploaded a faster version in January (but not sure what time scale was being referenced). --Splarka (rant) 08:29, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I also noticed that, but nevertheless, the animation should run at the same speed in all browsers. Remember that the bouncy logo is included in the widely used welcome template {{w-screen}}. I find the faster bounce to be annoying and distracting. PleaseStand ^(talk) 10:53, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Transclusion History

See this discussion
Sometimes editors involved in disputes want to see an article as it was a while ago, and then look at the changes made. If the article transcludes content from another article, they will see the old version of the article but the current version of the transcluded content, which is confusing. Is there a way in which they could see the old version of the article with the transcluded content as of the date/time that version was created? This could be a big improvement. Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 23:28, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It′s not possible as the software is currently written, though I agree it would be a useful feature. Designing a “gadget” which re-parses from old template revisions using javascript and the API might be (remotely) feasible (albeit madness—yet I′m not above attempting a proof-of-concept if/when I find the time). ―AoV² 14:21, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't seem that difficult (easy for me to say). The change would be: "when transcluding content into a historical view of a page, select the most recent version of the source page that was created no later than the date of the target page". That way the historical view would show the page as it really looked at that time, rather than a jumble of past and present. Many editors would be deeply grateful for the improvement! Aymatth2 (talk) 16:13, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Posting a summary of this and links at the wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org mailing list, see what interest appears from those with their finger on the wiki software pulse.   Trev M   ~   19:47, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Flagged Protection: ready for more testing

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Flagged Protection: ready for more testing --MZMcBride (talk) 00:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bengali wikipedia [[show/hide]] at collapsible table template

I know that this is not a right place for this issue. I added in bn:MediaWiki:Common.js Default skin for navigation boxes of .collapseButton and bn:MediaWiki:Common.js Collapsible tables javascript properly from just copy/paste from this wiki. But bn:Tempalte:Collapsible list and other template not shown [[show/hide]] button. Are there any mistake? or add any js to create that or it is a bug. I don't know. Could you help us for this matter? Advance thanks.- Jayanta Nath ^{(Talk|Contrb)} 07:50, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's because bn:MediaWiki:Monobook.js already contains old, incompatible, version of the show/hide functionality, that overrides the new version in bn:MediaWiki:Common.js. If you use the Vector skin, it works. Removing the “Dynamic Navigation Bars” from Monobook.js should fix the issue. Svick (talk) 15:56, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you dear. Its working fine after removing “Dynamic Navigation Bars”. And another small questions about our bn:MediaWiki:Monobook.js which contents  /* tooltips and access keys */  may be not necessary now. (this /* tooltips and access keys */ section is currently use in all Indic language wikipedia). If I remove this. Is it effect the system?- Jayanta Nath ^{(Talk|Contrb)} 16:39, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Tooltips and accesskeys have been defined in the software for over 4 years now I believe. What you are describing is the old system that was used before and it can be removed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:36, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

toolserver is down

Is it just me or is toolserver.org down? I'm getting a "page not found/broken link?" error ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 14:53, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be working for me. --JokerXtreme (talk) 14:58, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Toolserver is alive and well. There's a bunch of lag happening on the Wikipedia servers right now. Josh Parris 15:00, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why is http://stats.grok.se/ not working though? --JokerXtreme (talk) 19:48, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me. I'm guessing it was the lag that Josh mentioned. That's a different tool by the way, separate independent of the toolserver. Reach Out to the Truth 17:51, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Show/hide

Is there a script (or gadget, or whatever) to automatically uncollapse everything collapsed in show/hide tables, like in {{Navbox}} and {{ArticleHistory}}? Ucucha 15:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

tr[style*="display: none;"] { display: table-row !important; }* ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:55, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]Thanks, that works. Ucucha 18:02, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Make it easier to submit edit requests

Currently, MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext (shown when users try to edit a page they don't have rights to) provides instruction on how to make an edit request for a (semi)protected page. Why not make it a bit easier and just give visitors a prominent button to push? We can use an InputBox to preload the necessary {{editsemiprotected}} / {{editprotected}} text, and provide an explanatory editintro too. The example below, using preload/editintro borrowed from the Article Wizard, shows how.

Good idea? It might encourage frivolous requests, but we'd only know the signal/noise ratio by trying. 
On a related note, I think it would be a lot friendlier if (a) the Edit button didn't become View Source when an editor doesn't have permission to edit - it's a missed opportunity to encourage people to find out more about editing and especially how signing up can have benefits and enable editing of semiprotected pages. (b) I don't really see that the average unregistered users actually wants to see the source wikitext; this is probably just confusing. Ditch it and use the space for a bigger, friendlier explanation of protection. Provide a link to the source for those few who really want it. Rd232 ^talk 21:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:CB-support2 I personally think this is brilliant! Thumbs up! Although, oppose the second idea about the view source button, which I have found useful many times. --JokerXtreme (talk) 21:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose the removal of the "view source" tab. Two reasons:
Sometimes, when explaining things to IP users, I have purposefully directed them to a given template, and suggested that they "view source", in order to see how something is done
I often use "view source" on protected templates to see what the actual parameters are, and what happens when certain combinations are used. The editors who maintain templates often forget to keep the documentation in synch. As a non-admin, if this were implemented, I would lose the ability to check why my template transclusions don't work as per the documentation.
--Redrose64 (talk) 22:37, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand it correctly, what he proposes isn't that you won't be able to look at the source code, just that it would require one more click. Svick (talk) 23:05, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. I'm not suggesting removing the ability to see the source, I'm suggesting hiding the source, because for most people it's a confusing distraction at their first point of entry. It could be collapsed on the same page (hidden by default), or there could be a link to the source on a separate page. Rd232 ^talk 23:07, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the argument applies mainly for articles. For protected templates, people who come along probably do actually want to see the source. Rd232 ^talk 23:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose part about hiding “View source”. I find it very useful, especially for protected templates. Also, the editnotice on semi-protected articles already explains that creating an account helps. Svick (talk) 23:05, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Well I think it would be useful if it was easy to propose, for instance, a minor change on a protected article, without going through all the fuzz of creating a section on the talk page. --JokerXtreme (talk) 23:15, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support adding an input box below the current text of MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext. Although users wishing to edit probably don't often get there in the first place, this surely happens from time to time and we should make it easier for them to request edits. Note that {{TALKPAGENAME}} should be used to make it work in general. Neutral on the rest; I agree with the general idea to make it easier to request edits on protected pages, maybe we should change the text which appears when pointing on view source from "you can view its source" to "you can view its source and request edits", though I think we'd need to ask devs for this. Cenarium (talk) 00:27, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Noting that the editprotected/editsemiprotected template should be contained in the preload. Cenarium (talk) 01:16, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Template:CB-support2 adding the inputbox. It will help new editors unfamiliar with our policies to submit requests. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} (continued below)
Template:CB-oppose1 "view source" suggestion. "View source" is a useful button, and anyways, an explanation is given on the view source page. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:32, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not talking about getting rid of the button, I'm suggesting making the button always say "Edit this page", to make it more inviting for people to click on and get an explanation that yes, they really can edit (but not this page right now). In addition, I'd try and make the explanation friendlier and more welcoming, and part of that might be not showing scary source text which you can't even edit: that seem offputting to me. In principle, there could be another Inputbox which uses the current article text to feed a sandbox, so that people can test editing (with a sufficiently clear explanation, this might work). Rd232 ^talk 08:06, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I knew that it wasn't removing the button. Anyways, we have a nice header explaining why it can't be edited. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 10:14, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext message isn't particularly nice for newbies (I might draft a redesign if I have time); and semi-protected pages often only have the small lock icon, so there's no nice message on the page itself. And "View Source" is not exactly reinforcing the "Anyone Can Edit" message. Rd232 ^talk 10:19, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We already have a tooltip on it which is quite helpful and it pops up immediately ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 09:23, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it pops up when you put the mouse over the button (also the tooltip just says "you can view the source" ...). What proportion of people do that? Why would they? The issue is sending a message that's right there. We do this as a matter of course with unprotected pages - I don't see we avoid doing this with protected pages. Rd232 ^talk 11:22, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See also #Proposed implementation design by Rd232
Endorse the inputbox for submit an edit request - great idea. Far too often IPs suggest edits without using the editprotected template, and are thus disenfranchised. –xeno^talk 17:54, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, this could also work where an article is fully protected too. Mjroots (talk) 19:20, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, a great idea.  Can't imagine any drawbacks to implementing the make-a-request idea, whether for semiprotected pages or for fully protected pages.  I have no opinion on the question of hiding the source-text link.  Nyttend (talk) 23:35, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, love the idea as well. Lets stick to the editform first, we can deal with the issue of the "view source" tab in a separate discussion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:56, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Template:CB-support2 And I make a mental note to give a hand on the design as soon as I have some spare time. Also, the source code should be in a collapsible box. It has to stay efficient and easy to use for us power users. But beginners should notice it only when they need it. It's a good compromise. Dodoïste (talk) 01:49, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good idea. Can it be done without changing the software? Rd232 ^talk 11:22, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto what Nyttend said. Seraphim♥ 02:15, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral - I might be interested in seeing how a temporary test implementation goes, because I'm worried that making it this easy will cause lots of trivial requests. Currently only people who are seriously concerned will go through the trouble of reading the instructions and making a request, and I think for protected pages only significant concerns should really warrant the attention and effort of an admin. So the commitment required to make a request, so to speak, was always sort of a built-in check against trivial requests. But with this button, anyone who wants to make any edit might use the button since it's so easy. So I'm not sure if this would turn out to be a good thing. Equazcion ^(talk) 22:33, 23 Mar 2010 (UTC)
It's a concern. It's fairly easy to keep an eye on though, because we'd see an increasing backlog in handling requests, at Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests / Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests. Probably we have to accept an increase in frivolous requests as a price for increasing worthwhile requests. Rd232 ^talk 22:44, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed implementation design by Rd232Please don't vote here on the idea in general, this is about collaborating on a specific design

OK, so User:Rd232/protectedpagetext has a draft redesign, and includes a working preload/editintro for editsemiprotected. Rd232 ^talk 17:27, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looks nice, but what about fully protected pages? --JokerXtreme (talk) 17:32, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a problem. The same principles apply, I suggest we design them 1 at a time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:11, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Probably a good idea, but I've already drafted that too, at User:Rd232/protectedpagetext/sub1. Rd232 ^talk 01:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is a tad tall this way. I suggest a similar layout as the Help desk. Just 2 columns with text, and then a new row with a request button. 80% of the people don't read that other text anyways. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:11, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't quite get that. Can you draft it? Rd232 ^talk 01:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've improved the design a bit, not least using the trick from {{Feedback page}} where the inputbox parameters are plugged into a fullurl link, thus avoiding the format-scrambling inputbox. Rd232 ^talk 12:07, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The format is much better, but it still would be nice to have a button. The edit proposal option now gets kinda lost in there. --JokerXtreme (talk) 12:50, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How about an arrow icon (User:Rd232/protectedpagetext/sub1)? Or change things around more dramatically. Rd232 ^talk 13:47, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, I don't think an arrow there makes much sense. How about "you can submit an edit request by clicking the button on the bottom" or something? So that the more experienced users can find the button right away. --JokerXtreme (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why doesn't an arrow make sense there? It highlights the key action link. Your suggestion I think could be confusing. More showing and less telling would be helpful in this discussion - let's see what we're talking about; just edit my draft or create your own. Rd232 ^talk 14:15, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Something like that:User:Rd232/protectedpagetext/sub2. The text may need rewriting though, but the layout should look something like this (I think). --JokerXtreme (talk) 14:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I guess that's OK, but it slightly upsets the priority (unprotection should come last, I think). But it it's an improvement on the status quo either way, and it can always be revised later. What do people think? Rd232 ^talk 17:33, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I like JokerXtreme's suggestion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, that one is probably my favorite out of both proposals. I have a feeling the button will "click" better with new users who are trying to figure out how to edit the page. I really don't think it upsets the priority either, because it's separate from everything else - i.e., it's not a bullet point. That's how I see it. — The Earwig ^(talk) 20:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. Let's give it a bit little longer for comments (24hrs?), and then somebody implement it please. Rd232 ^talk 22:16, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I like it too. :) It's much better than the current one imo, well done people. Ale_Jrb^talk 22:25, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rd, what do you mean implement it? I thought it was already finished. It just needs the code from your "edit request" link. The templates probably need to change too. --JokerXtreme (talk) 22:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I assume he means putting it here, so it actually shows up. :) Ale_Jrb^talk 23:00, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Aaah, I see! Well, Rd, I guess you must have the honor :) Are those ok btw? {{editsemiprotected}}, {{editprotected}} Or do they need any change? --JokerXtreme (talk) 23:08, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'll do it then, probably tomorrow morning (probably better anyway that I do it since I split the code across pages to make editing easier, and it needs reintegrating). I don't see that those templates need any changes. Rd232 ^talk 09:07, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Add alt text to logo

How can I have the alt text changed on the wiki logo on the top left? Gnevin (talk) 23:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You mean to change the logo? Or to change the alt text for the logo(the "Visit the main page")?Smallman12q (talk) 23:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Change the alt text to "Main page" or something similar Gnevin (talk) 23:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think only developers can modify those texts (as in the section just above, about view source). A search in Special:AllMessages didn't return anything. Cenarium (talk) 01:19, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it is in MediaWiki:Tooltip-n-mainpage or MediaWiki:Tooltip-n-mainpage-description. Ucucha 02:16, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think he wants an alt text, not a title (tooltip) text for those who have disabled images. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:52, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And no, it isn't. Its at MessagesEn.php (search 'tooltip-p-logo'), changed in rev 55515. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Well, the logos not exactly something which you can add an alt to. The image is the background of an a element, which cannot have an alt attribute (You can easily see that the image is not directly shown by right-clicking the logo. The menu which will appear will not have options like "Save image", "Copy Image address", etc). The logo does have a title (tooltip) attribute, though, which can be changed through js. Here's how the HTML of the logo looks:

<div id="p-logo">
<a style="background-image: url(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Wiki.png);" href="/wiki/Main_Page" title="Visit the main page">
</a>
</div>



If you want to change the tooltip text, add this bit of js to Mediawiki:Common.js (you need an admin to do this):

addOnloadHook(function(){
document.getElementById()
document.getElementById('p-logo').childNodes[0].title="TOOLTIP TEXT HERE"

})
<BR/>

On a side (but related) note, the MW devs really should make the logo into an <img> in an <a> with alt text instead of an <a> with a background:

<div id="p-logo">
<a href="/wiki/Main_Page" title="Visit the main page" style="text-align:center">
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Wiki.png" alt="Some alt text here..."/>
</a>
</div>
<!--Yes, the image gets a teeny bit misaligned, but it's too small to notice unless the code is changed dynamically 
(On my comp, the image jumps a pixel or two to the left and three pixels up)-->



I've always wondered why the logo and the person in the personal portlet are backgrounds and not imgs with alts (I noticed this when I was trying to fix an error in the logo and was trying to find the commons page. The error has been fixed in some of the other wikilogos at commons, but this logo). Hope the devs can answer why they have to use a roundabout method which doesn't allow alt text... ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:52, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Using CCS background-image property allows people to use a different image in place of the official Wikipedia logo. I don't believe there's any way to change an img's src using CSS, so this is how they make it happen. Reach Out to the Truth 17:44, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
By 'people', you probably mean account holders, who can change src through js anyways. Anyways why would someone want to change the logo src for themselves? ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As noted, the logo cannot have alt text because it's a CSS background-image, not an <img>.  I don't know why Gabriel Wicke chose to use a CSS background instead of an image here.  It could be changed, I guess, but there doesn't seem to be any strong reason one way or another.  If I had to give it alt text, I'd give it empty alt text anyway, because you already have "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" on every page, and there's no point in asking screen readers to read it twice.
If it were an image, you could still change it in pure CSS by simply hiding the image and creating a new one with background-image.  So that's not a good reason.
If you want to change the tooltip (not alt text), currently "Visit the main page", you don't need to use JS.  The correct message to alter is MediaWiki:Tooltip-p-logo. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 18:22, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Like I said above, no it isn't (visit the page, its deleted). Its at MessagesEn.php (pagesearch 'tooltip-p-logo'), changed in rev 55515. This means that you need to be a sysadmin to change this inconsequential stuff. Easier with js. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That file contains the default messages. They can be customized on a per-site basis by editing pages in the MediaWiki namespace. Deleting a page from the MediaWiki namespace causes MediaWiki to use the default messages defined by the software and its extensions. MediaWiki:tooltip-p-logo was deleted, so it uses the default set in MessagesEn.php. That's how it works. Look at the text under the log snippet. That's the default message from MessagesEn.php. Reach Out to the Truth 03:33, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, creating MediaWiki:Tooltip-p-logo will override the default settings in MessagesEn.php OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:13, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Reach Out to the Truth and OrangeDog are correct.  Creating the page will change the message's contents as actually used on the wiki.  JS would be much more complicated. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 18:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

SVG renderer progress

Where can I go to be kept up-to-date on the development progress of the SVG renderer Wikipedia uses? Thanks. SharkD  Talk  02:55, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SVG_image_support ¦ Reisio (talk) 09:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That seems mostly unrelated and/or outdated.  Wikipedia uses rsvg last I heard.  It's open-source, so probably has development fora you can follow. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 18:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Help using CSS?

I'm trying to perfect my Monobook CSS skin, and I'm having some difficulty. The skin is located here, and I'm trying to figure out how to get things like templates, tooltips, etc. to keep their default background color. Right now, all the backgrounds are transparent, causing problems with tooltips and templates with colored backgrounds. Could someone who is good at CSS take a look at it? Hmmwhatsthisdo (talk) 23:54, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, as of now, I have a set background on all of them, but I don't know if something like "#default" exists. Hmmwhatsthisdo (talk) 00:35, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You just need to make *{background-color: transparent !important; color: lightgrey !important;} much more specific / less broad. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I figured out how to have them not blend with each other by using td {background-color: #313131 !important;}

, but this messes up the main page. Any ideas? Hmmwhatsthisdo (talk) 23:05, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

wikitech bad certificate

The interwiki link (wikitech:) to Our backstage tech site wikitech is linking to the https: version, while the link under the list of backstage projects leads to the http: version. That would be fine with me, except that the https: version is giving me an "invalid certificate error". I checked the certificate, and it seems that wikitech has issued itself a certificate, without being a certificate authority. THis means that a first-time user, when viewing it, will get an error:

"SSL Error-The site's security certificate is not trusted!" (in chrome)
"Certificate Error:Navigation blocked--There is a problem with this website's security certificate."  (in IE).

Shouldn't WMF get it signed by equifax like the secure server? Or change the interwiki mechanism so wikitech: leads to the http: version. 
Thoughts? ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Filed bug report. Please vote there. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 08:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
meta:Interwiki map is the place to get the interwiki link changed.  The bugzilla report will only consider the signing issue. Happy‑melon 13:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Prefs submit button accesskey

I'm quite used to using keyboard shortcuts, so when I pressed alt-s on preferences and nothing happened, I was surprised. I decided to  add keyboard shortcuts to prefs and watchlist edit pages. The js code for prefs is:

document.getElementById('prefcontrol').accessKey="s" //prefs

Somehow, the watchlist edit pages don't have ids, so I can't give them accesskeys. Could someone give me the code for accesskeying those pages? Thx, ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 09:00, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know the Special:Preferences page imports javascript only from bits.wikimedia.org, none local. A sanest thing would be to disable js completely on pages where a user may enter a password but I guess people like to have fancy tabs and dancing pigs on the prefs-screen.
Anywho the consequence is that one cannot customize the prefs page to add this access-key without using greasemonkey or something similar, because it will not load any js stored on a wiki page. The other option is to add the access-key for everyone through a software change, but then it would be immune to the script which removes access keys for those who have tired of invoking them by accident, again because the latter will not load on the prefs page.
Do you have greasemonkey? ―AoV² 13:47, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any way to not return to Special:IPblocklist after unblocking a user?

^^^ ? –xeno^talk 16:29, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could write a script in a few seconds that does it in the background. Do you mean that you stay on the unblock form after unblocking, or did you want an option from somewhere else? Ale_Jrb^talk 17:39, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe back to the user's talk page? Not sure why it sends us to the ipblocklist. –xeno^talk 20:26, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if this were a standard feature. Until then, though, I did write a small script - use importScript ( 'User:Ale_jrb/Scripts/unblock.js' ); // [[User:Ale_jrb/Scripts]] - it adds a new button to the unblock interface. It doesn't redirect you at all at the moment - it does the unblock in the background and provides you with some links, including to their talk page. I don't like redirects much, but I could make it if you'd especially prefer. Ale_Jrb^talk 21:56, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Works great - thanks. –xeno^talk 22:02, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is bugzilla:16835. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:45, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tag as a library

Not sure if we tag public libraries as we do schools, and I'm not sure what the template is, but this IP address is Toronto Public Library - 205.189.194.208 (talk) 21:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:SharedIP is typically only added when abuse is originating from the IP. –xeno^talk 21:19, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And for libraries, it's actually Template:SharedIPPublic. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:44, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with DYK sections in multiple portals

Does anyone that knows anything about portals know what is up with the Did You Know sections of various portals? See Portal:Film and Portal:Tanzania for example. They are dynamic sections, using {{Random subpage}} and the "seed" parameter. For some reason, eg. Portal:Film/DYK is trying to display pages of huge numbers like 627, even though it's set to a maximum of 28. As a result, red linked sections are showing up on the portal page. I'm hoping someone has a clue what's going on. {{Random subpage}} hasn't been edited since January, and this is a very recent problem, so I can't work out what's changed.--BelovedFreak 22:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There were some changes to {{Random number}} and {{mod}} that were causing this. I have reverted the changes and will ask MSGJ to look into the problem —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks.--BelovedFreak 22:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More CSS help needed...

So, I'm making a skin for Vector in addition to the one for Monobook, and I'm trying to change the image links for the tabs, etc. My code so far (or the relevant part) is here, and I'm trying to change the following things ATM:

1. The Tab border color.
2. The Logo.

However, only the leftmost tab border is changed using the theme, and the logo-changing bit only works if it's used in Stylish. It work in Monobook, It works in Stylish, but not in the Vector css. I'm practically going insane trying to figure out what's wrong with the thing. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Hmmwhatsthisdo (talk) 00:10, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are a couple of problems in your css.
The .vectorTabs line is missing a closing }
It appears the background image is actually attached to .vectorTabs li a not to the parent div vectorTabs
For the logo it looks like you meant to be using the shorthand background: declaration, but instead have used background-image:
Dr pda (talk) 03:20, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I posted the fix here. DON'T reply there, just copy the code and tag it with {{U1}} to delete the talk page. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:44, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh. OK. May I ask how you found this? I have probably less CSS knowledge than a small green fish, and I have no bloody clue what I'm doing. Essentially, I'm trying to modify the Vector skin to make it a red hue, as opposed to blue. However, the coding part is a lot more difficult than I thought. So far, I've tried just copying the lines of code containing the image paths I'm looking for, and just replacing the image names. I'm here now, so we can all guess how that turned out! So, would either of you be willing to give me some help understanding this? Hmmwhatsthisdo (talk) 06:00, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I made the changes according to Dr pda. Explanantion of the points:
Syntax error
The class .vectorTabs applies to sets of tabs. For example, The "Article" and "discussion" tabs are in one div with class .vectorTabs. Giving it a border would have worked, except that it would not have overridden the border of the individual tabs, as they cover the div. So only a part of the colored div was showing. The rest was masked by the tab li's. So, instead of applying the code to .vectorTabs, it should be applied to the li inside .vectorTabs (CSS code: .vectorTabs li {.....})
You were applying the percentage parameters to background-image, which takes only one parameter. You must have meant background:
Why not use Chrome? It has some developer tools (ctrl-shift-i) which give you the CSS properties and allows you to do js stuff, too. Hope this helps! ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:36, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So does FF, and Opera. (other browsers are available) OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:26, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
FF requires FireBug... But yes, others are availible. I like chrome best for dev'ing, though. For a multitude of reasons. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 13:46, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to the tokipona wiki

Sometimes I go to Special:MergeAccount just to see which wikis I've been on. This time, I noticed that there was a link: tokipona.wikipedia.org, which gave me a "wiki does not exist" page. If the wiki does not exist, how did I visit it and how did it become part of my global account. (toki pona seems to be a constructed language) ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:06, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note: I never recall visiting the tokipona wiki either. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:09, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
m:Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Toki_Pona_Wikipedia. I believe it might have been deleted from the Wikimedia Servers, but I cannot recall. It was closed and moved to a wikia server. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 03:10, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Been nuked at m:Proposals_for_closing_projects/Deletion_of_Toki_Pona_Wikimedia_projects User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 03:12, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While Special:MergeAccount is nice, I'd recommend checking out sulutil:Manishearth; a lot more information there than just a straight listing. Enjoy. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:32, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nice tool. Thanks! ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:38, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gallery tags

When galleries are automatically generated in categories of images, a text link to the file is automatically generated and displayed below the image. Is it possible to trigger this behavior outside category space, such as in user space? If not, is it possible to pipe code into the gallery tag via templates? SharkD  Talk  04:44, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You could create a template which renders a gallery/table of images up to an arbitrary maximum. However, I think using inline div elements would be better because unlike table cells they would wrap intelligently to the available screen-width. Examples available upon request. ―AoV² 16:41, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another Java applet request

Recently a page I've been involved with received a request, from WikiProject Physics, for some additional content.  As a result I spent a couple of weeks developing an interactive java applet.  This was based on some old published work and was designed to illustrate some of the physics involved.
However when I tried to upload the applet I was very surprised and a little disappointed to learn that Wikipedia does not support applets.  I made some enquiries and was directed to these pages.  On searching for 'applet' I learnt that there have been earlier requests, i.e. Archive 50/Question 16, but very little progress.
As far as I can tell resistance comes from:

1. Worry about security.  But Java applets are run in a sandbox for just this reason.
2. Worry about loading times and cpu use.  But this is the same problem as with sound and other media and could be solved in the same way via a javascript box.
3. The people involved in the discussion know little about java applets and that "people would have to know about java".  I do not see that this is any different from knowing how to create mp3 files, pdf files or whatever.  The wikipedia web pages on Java applet and Java (programming language) are a start.

There was also a suggestion of using Wikiversity which I followed up - but this turned out to have the same applet support as Wikipedia.  I then found a link to a wiki/applet project (which I thought was overkill for the changes needed) but even this seems to have run out of steam.
So I am wondering if the question should be put in another form i.e.:

1. Has the applet option been discussed at a formal meeting of wikipedia in recent years?
2. If so, is the written report of the meeting available?  Were experts on java applets and representatives of the physics community present at the meeting?
3. How can the question be raised officially at a future meeting?

Regards, David Webb (talk) 09:52, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Answering your questions in order:
I doubt it, I don't think there's ever been a huge demand for it.
See #1.
If you want a feature request in MediaWiki, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org. Granted, I don't see this getting implemented on WMF sites.
^demon^{[omg plz]} 10:16, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Mediawiki should atleast support flash (does it?)... You can make stuff ass good as Java in Flash, and its much easier, too. FLash would be a good addition. It should be sandboxed with no external file access... and maybe only admins can upload to stop people from uploading ads. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 12:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Flash is much more resource-intensive than Java, and doesn't come with built-in Java security. Plus, anything that can be made in Flash can be made more easily (programming-wise) in Java. There is a small need for Java, but no need whatsoever for Flash.
Comment: I'm a Java programmer and I used to do flash, and I personally feel that for and interactive thingamabob which has encyclopedia value, Flash makes for easy graphics and interactivity is much easier. In Java, graphics are harder and coding gets heavy for applets. But you're right about the resource stuff. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 15:03, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And most importantly, Flash is not an open technology. JAVA wasn't either long ago, but now it is (GPL now). Though there still might be some patent issues. Most of all though, it's a matter of who will do the work I think. jmol has been discussed many times before for instance. Last time it was seriously proposed User:User:Ilmari Karon found a JavaScript injection security issue within minutes. Those are the kinds of problems. Also, we have to remember a few other things. Applets don't print for instance, so there would have to be some discussion on that. And applets don't have thumbnails, so what do we present to users before something is loaded ? There is one general applet loader extension that could be used for this. We of course already use the oggplayer extension which loads the Cortado applet. Other extensions that load applets (though not installed here) are IRC chat, GeoGebra, RDFEditor, X3d and many others. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What's up with the geogrouptemplate?

Any ideas about what's going wrong with {{GeoGroupTemplate}}? In the last couple of days, any time I select "Map of all coordinates from Google", I get a "File not found at http://toolserver.org/~para...." message, while when I select the Bing option, I get a message of "This content is not available. It may have been deleted by the author." Selecting the other three options on the list, I get a "Can't download this page" popup for the GeoRSS option and the following error for KML:

The server encountered an internal error and is unable to complete your request at this time. If the problem persists, please contact the owner of the tool you are trying to use and inform them of this error, quoting the following information:
Request host: toolserver.org
Request path: GET /~para/cgi-bin/kmlexport
The owner of this tool is: para [at] toolserver [dot] org.

HTTP server at toolserver.org - ts-admins [at] toolserver [dot] org

Only the "map of all microformated coordinates" option is working; it brings up a proper map. Nyttend (talk) 13:49, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Technical question regarding mms://

Moved from WP:AN

My editing mostly covers radio and television stations and I and my fellow editors are finding that there are several stations (don't have an exact number) whose live stream links begin with mms:// which does not compute into a link on Wikipedia.  If it begins in http:// it links no problem, but mms:// does not.  How would one suggest what should be an easy change and only affect pages that link to webstreams (particually radio and television station pages).  Thanks...NeutralHomer • Talk • 09:11, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You'll need to get community consensus to add 'mms://' to $wgUrlProtocols and then file a request on Bugzilla for a site configuration change, linking to the consensus. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 10:22, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Or we can just change the defaults.  If it's useful, I don't see why we wouldn't add it.  The Wikipedia article on Microsoft Media Server says it's a Microsoft technology, but also that there's now a publicly available spec, and multiple open-source implementations.  As long as there are no scary side effects (there's at least one IM URL protocol where clicking a link can send a message with no further user interaction, IIRC), I don't see why we wouldn't add it.  worldwind:// and svn:// are supported by default, although both are non-standard. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 16:27, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm all for erradicating mms indefinitely, but it is relatively common, and I don't think it would hurt to add it to the defaults, possibly making a lot of people happy. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:19, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We link to the homepage of each station. How many stations fail to link to their live streams from their own websites? There is no encyclopaedic purpose to be served by linking to their live streams as well as their own websites, as far as I can see. Guy (Help!) 14:46, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

mysterious csd

User:NativeForeigner/Development is showing up in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user. Page does not seem to have been edited in three months, and I can't find any tags on the page. I cleared out this cat yesterday so I know it wasn't in it then. So, why is it showing up in this category? Beeblebrox (talk) 17:25, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added noinclude tags to the page and that seems to have fixed it, but I still can't figure out why this happened to begin with... Beeblebrox (talk) 17:29, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm betting one of the userboxes was put up for CSD, and it carried over. Several on the right have been deleted, though who knows when without checking the log. UltraExactZZ ^Said~ Did  19:32, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Downtime

If the admin log is unavailable to you, use Twitter.

Wikipedia is down for a lot of folks in Europe atm. A problem with the DNS entries or something. More news will follow on http://techblog.wikimedia.org and secure continues to to work for the obsessed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:45, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be affecting me too (eh?)... Another solution is to place entries in your local hosts file...

208.80.152.2	en.wikipedia.org
208.80.152.3	upload.wikimedia.org

...yes - I'm an addict. –xeno^talk 17:47, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
and the explanation: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/global-outage-cooling-failure-and-dns/ —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:55, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
...of course, attempting to communicate this to folks affected by placing it on the affected site is probably an exercise in futility... –xeno^talk 18:38, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Geek.
But you'll also need 208.80.152.118 bits.wikimedia.org
:) Amalthea 18:48, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well en.wikipedia seems to be fixed, but I'm not getting any css or js back yet. Or indeed, edit conflict notices. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:50, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
At least this means my computer isn't just going crazy.  All I can get is the article-frame, everything else has disappeared.  I've changed the header, though - I'm in the U.S. and affected.  :(  *sigh* --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:30, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Additionally, the secure server appears to be completely down.  --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:43, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt from the additional load. –xeno^talk 19:44, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, just noticed at the server admin log, it says the secure server got too much extra traffic, so they turned it off.  --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:48, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
...and en.wikipedia starts working fine as I switch computers.  Hmm.... --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} via alternate account 20:01, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Movement in the text box

I am encountering an issue (on IE8) while editing pages (and sections of pages) which contain enough text as to require scrolling the text box: the view (but not the text cursor) jumps around (one jump per action) when I move the mouse cursor over the edit summary box, the "Show preview" button, or the various links ("verifiable", "what's this?", "Cancel", "Editing help"), and when I click the "Show preview" button. I have no idea what could be causing the issue, but it must be fairly recent (I didn't encounter this when editing yesterday). Is anyone else having the same issue? Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 17:46, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am also experiencing this problem, starting this morning. It's not the first time it's happened, and it's usually gone away within a day or so. Pats1 ^T/C 19:01, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 679: / Line 679: @@
 :::::No doubt from the additional load. –[[user:xeno|<font face="verdana" color="black">'''xeno'''</font>]][[user talk:xeno|<font color="black"><sup>talk</sup></font>]] 19:44, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 ::::::Ah, just noticed at the server admin log, it says the secure server got too much extra traffic, so they turned it off.  --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]''&nbsp;<sup>[[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]]</sup> 19:48, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
+::::::...and en.wikipedia starts working fine as I switch computers.  Hmm.... --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]''&nbsp;<sup>[[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]]</sup> <small>via alternate account</small> 20:01, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 == Movement in the text box ==