Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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

Why are diffs so inappropriately "inexact"?

Hi, I've been editing Wikipedia for many years. I'm shocked that the recognition capability for diffs is so lousy -- it's so rudimentary it seems like something from the 1970s or earlier. If you move one paragraph, everything under that paragraph shows up as completely new, even though it isn't. And so on. Why is the Wikipedia diff software unable to recognize exact text below a deletion, and so forth? Why can't this be improved? It's not rocket science, as they say. Word processors mastered this decades ago. And since diffs are such a vital part of any reliable editor's monitoring work, why isn't this a priority to reform? Text recognition capability seems to be a fairly easy thing to upgrade. Softlavender (talk) 10:13, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Which word processors have mastered diff calculation? I can't even think of any that provide diffs in the first place. Microsoft Word can "track changes" because it can watch you as you type - this is not the same problem as providing the difference between two texts. Unfortunately, rocket science is a lot easier than diffs. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 11:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I would repeat OrangeDog's rhetorical question - which word processors have mastered diff calculation? The "problem" with present-day diff calculation is that it is structural rather than semantic, meaning it looks at each text body as a linear batch of characters rather than as a group of hierarchically related expressions (doc, section, subsection, sentence, phrase, word). As far as I know, no commonly available application comes anywhere close to this treatment. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff is in my opinion much better than the mediawiki default. Rjwilmsi 14:48, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes wikEdDiff is definitely better. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:50, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Why doesn't Wikipedia use that, then? Sheesh, it's been around for over 4 years, and the current Wiki platform is dinosauric and awful. Softlavender (talk) 19:08, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Yet no one seems to volunteer to rewrite wikedDiff in C (programming language). Oh right, most of the software is volunteer work, so easy to forget. Anyone can submit patches. Have you considered trying to make the improvement yourself ? Apparently it is SO easy to do. Sheesh —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:54, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Good point, but MediaWiki is coded in PHP, no? —DoRD (talk) 12:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

wikEdDiff is a user script -- a piece of JavaScript code executed on Wikipedia pages. It executes on the user's machine (the HTTP "client" machine, vs. one of WP's "server" machines). There would be relative disadvantages to that with an implementation written in either C or php. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 15:16, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh (slaps forehead), I hadn't noticed that this is the tech-savvy vpt page. The talk of rewrite no doubt implicitlyv referred to updating the mediawiki diff code (no doubt written in php) to function similarly to wikEdDiff. Pls ignore the above statement of the obvious. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 15:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the diff code used on Wikipedia is written in C++ as a PHP extension. There is a pure PHP version, but it's too inefficient for use on such a high-traffic site. Mr.Z-man 19:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikidiff does resync in many cases. (Yes it can be better - there is a tool that marks moved stuff in blue - is that WikiEd? - but just wanted to defend the poor ol' native tool. ) Rich Farmbrough, 12:53, 1 May 2011 (UTC).

I lol'd at "dinosauric." --MZMcBride (talk) 19:28, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the edit diff's are an area that could use major improvement. Unfortunately, this requires a coder willing to do something about it. I think improving the edit diffs ought to be considered a high priority issue. It's something that the Wikimedia Foundation should pay somebody to improve. It's probably not that tough of a coding job but would have a major positive impact for editors. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:29, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The issue is less one of technical solution as of dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's on the deployment as it is such a central feature of Wikipedia. Whoever does this needs to have some really good code hygiene and business analysis skills. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:51, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

• Ultimately, a "difference-bracket" option is needed to determine how many matching lines would indicate a re-sync of the 2 texts. Currently, comparisons get out-of-sync when a blank line is introduced (which ain't rocket science to fix). The hardest texts to re-synchronize would be multiple short lists with items repeated between lists, and that is why a "difference bracket" line count is needed, to overcome confusion when thinking lines in another list are a match to a changed list (which would be viewed as an inserted list rather than changed). In a sense, a blank line is a one-line list which matches every other such list, as appearing to be the same blank line, further down. -Wikid77 16:24, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
  • One of the intrinsic problems of standard matching algorithms is their focus on the line as opposed to the matching text block. This line-centric analysis is inherently stymied by the blank-line issue as you've pointed out. Line-centric approaches are certainly suitable for typesetting situations and to situations where data is presented in short or non-wrapping lines of relatively consistent length. What we need is an evolution forward from the "difference-bracket" kludge you've proposed as a way around the line-centric behavior of most difference engines. Hopefully someone with text analytics and deep regular expression skills has time to consider this. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Setting difference-bracket line-count is typical: The consideration of the "difference-bracket" setting, as specifying a line-count bracket to re-sync the matching lines, is not a "kludge" but rather, reality of how people edit, IMHO. People edit in line-mode, splitting text into separate lines, to make editing easier, and almost all articles have multiple lines inside. An editor could treat the markup as following a "string grammar" with no split lines, as just one massive text block containing many "<br />" connected, internally, as a continuous stream of markup text; however, "everyone" splits the markup into lines. This is especially common in lists, where very few people put a list as "AA<br />BB<br />CC" but instead, editors put 3 separate lines (for "AA" then "BB" then "CC"). A continuous mass of text would be unwieldy, to most people, and that is why differencing, or markup-comparison, has been treated as a line-mode comparison for decades in other computer systems. By contrast, the WYSIWYG interfaces are severely hampered by the difficulty of showing before/after changes, without shifting the generated display window. A difference-bracket must be used in highly repetitive lines, such as tables of similar data, and the resync problem can go hundreds of lines unless a difference-bracket line-count is specified to logically resync the text. For very long paragraphs, editors could purposely split the text, with an HTML-style comment ("<--Text split for short diff-list-->"). Similarly, the category-links could be scattered across the article's markup, but putting them as separate lines, at the bottom, makes editing and additions easier (with fewer duplicates). A similar "search-bracket" could be specified for search-engine matches, with repeated search phrases, but as a "word count" because people are expecting words in most searches, rather than lines with strings of markup symbols. However, it is helpful to consider alternative schemes to see why they would be more difficult for users to control. -Wikid77 15:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
• I've been complaining about this for years (well, I've complained twice, I think, in four years, probably!). WP's diff generation is totally rubbish (in certain common circumstances) and full of basic schoolboy errors. Last time I mentioned it, I think I was told that the source was available, and if the errors were so "basic" and I should fix it myself! He-he, very amusing! 86.183.0.105 (talk) 12:02, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

My gadgets are gone most of the time

My gadgets are gone — not all the time, but most of the time. They happen to appear on this page while I'm editing this message, but not on any other en-Wikipedia pages I have open. No popups, no clock in the upper right corner of my display, no collapsing items in the navigation menu with vector skin, no "purge" link, page and user options no longer appear in drop-down menus on the toolbar. Even worse, external links no longer open in a separate window. It's as if all my advanced user preferences are being completely ignored!

Searching the archives, I found Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 88#Did something happen to popups?, but the advice there hasn't fixed my problem with popups, in spite of me adding lines to my common.css and vector.js pages. According to that discussion, there's a problem with a resource loader that has yet to be fixed.

In the meantime, what can I do to get back my normal Wikipedia functionality? This has been going on for about 4 days now. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:10, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and assume those are all gadgets (i.e. JavaScript stuff), in which case, one of your gadgets has an error in it that only triggers on some pages, breaking all the other gadgets. Do you get any errors in your browser window? What browser are you using? Regards, - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 19:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, those are all gadgets available in the user preferences. I am using Google Chrome. The odd thing is, sometimes everything works, like this morning, and sometimes I get none of those gadgets I set, like right now.

Here are the errors I get in the Javascript console window when I look at a page.

• load.php: GET http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?… undefined (undefined)
• index.php:7611: Uncaught ReferenceError: hookEvent is not defined
• index.php:8: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'wikiUrlencode' of undefined
• index.php:198: Uncaught ReferenceError: addOnloadHook is not defined
• index.php:19: Uncaught ReferenceError: importStylesheet is not defined
• index.php:7: Uncaught ReferenceError: addOnloadHook is not defined
• index.php:5: Uncaught ReferenceError: addOnloadHook is not defined
• load.php:1: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'addPortletLink' of undefined
• load.php:1: Uncaught ReferenceError: importScript is not defined
• index.php:369: Uncaught ReferenceError: addButton is not defined
• geoiplookup.wikimedia.org: GET http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ undefined (undefined)

Many of those errors appear to be related to general utility functions and unrelated to scripts I have. Particularly addOnLoadHook looks like it may be related to the resource loader. If you look at User:Amatulic/vector.js you'll see that I don't have much there. I've commented out all but what I consider most necessary, and it made no difference. What I have has worked fine until a few days ago.

If it matters, here are the gadgetrs I have set in my user preferences. None of these things are working at the moment:

Browsing gadgets:

• Navigation popups (also I added this manually to my vector.js to no avail)

Editing gadgets: None

User interface gadgets:

• Add a "Purge" tab to the top of the page
• Add a clock in the personal toolbar
• Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar.
• Allow /16 and /24-/32 CIDR ranges on Special:Contributions forms as well as wildcard prefix searches
• Display an assessment of an articl's quality as part of the page header for each article.
• Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page
• Open external links in a new tab/window

User interface gadgets: editing:

• Add an [edit] link to the lead section of a page (this doesn't work for me now)
• Allow up to 50 more characters in edit summaries.

Library compatibility gadgets: none

~Amatulić (talk) 01:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

What's really bizarre about this is the unpredictability. In the same browsing session, sometimes I get my gadgets including popups, and sometimes not. Actually, most of the time not. And this started just last week. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

...And the problem is not my scripts. I have no scripts running in my vector.js page. This happens on every browser I try (Chrome, IE8, Firefox).

I do notice that the browser spends a long time waiting for bits.wikimedia.org. It appears to generate an error 503 (service unavailable) rather frequently. It happens on Commons too: the file upload wizard fails to start, apparently because of a failure with bits.wikimedia.org. Might this be the source of my problem?

Try it yourself. Click on this link, which my browser attempted to access from Commons: http://bits.wikimedia.org/commons.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext!uploadWizard&skin=vector&version=20110510T164824Z

I pretty consistently get "Error 503 Service Unavailable" with a "Guru meditation" message below suggestive of the old Amiga computer. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:53, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Ha. Sometimes my gadgets work. And sometimes I can click on that link above. The content begins:

mediaWiki.loader.implement("ext.uploadWizard",function($,mw){(function($){function Tipsy(element,options){this.$element=$(element);this.options=options;this.enabled=true;this.displayed=false;this.fixTitle();}

which suggests my problem may indeed be the resource loader failing to load, on those far-too-frequent occasions (beginning just over a week ago) when the resource at bits.wikimedia.org generates a 503 error. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:12, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

It's been 2 or 3 weeks now since this problem started. Anyone have any idea what's going on? It does seem to be a problem with the availability of bits.wikimedia.org, as far as I can tell. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:12, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool

Cross-posted to wikien-l

Hello all,

This is a heads-up that tomorrow, we're planning to deploy the Article Feedback Tool, which is currently on 3,000 English Wikipedia articles, to a larger set of 100,000 articles. This initial expansion is intended to further assess both the value and the performance characteristics of the feature with an eye to a full deployment. As always, we may postpone the deployment if we run into unanticipated production issues.

Some examples of articles that currently have the tool (at the bottom of the article):

• Grassroots lobbying
• United States Constitution
• Israeli cuisine

The intent of the tool is two-fold:

• to gain aggregate quality assessments of Wikimedia content by readers and editors;
• to use it as an entry vector for other forms of engagement.

To assess its value in both categories, we've undertaken a significant amount of qualitative and quantitative research already. You can read an extensive summary of our work so far here:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback

The headline summary is that based on the data we've seen so far, we do believe that user ratings can be a valuable way to predict high and low quality content in Wikimedia, and we're especially interested in engaging raters beyond the initial act of assessing an article. We've seen very good conversion rates on the calls-to-action that follow a rating which we've trialed so far, suggesting that this could be a very powerful engagement tool as well.

Beyond our own research and these engagement experiments, our goal is to make anonymized data from the tool available regularly, and to also give editors a dashboard tool that they can use to surface trends in the rating data.

Please use the talk page for comments, questions and suggestions. We'll also set up an IRC office hour soon to talk more about the tool.

All best,

--Erik Moeller (WMF) 03:05, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the referral. There seems to be little response to inquiries on the page you've pointed people to. Could you look to addressing the questions and comments already posted there? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Howie, Dario and I have posted additional responses on the page.--Eloquence* 01:51, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

If the WMF think this will be useful to them, then that's fine. But now that "Rate this page" thing is on 100,000+ articles, it's become a bit irritating for me, personally. I have absolutely no wish to rate any pages and I'd appreciate it if one of the tech geniuses who watch this page could give me some code to put somewhere so I can hide this (I'm on the vector skin). Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 17:16, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Try #mw-articlefeedback{ display:none; } in your Special:Mypage/vector.css file. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 17:35, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Works beautifully. Thanks very much, Jenks24 (talk) 18:02, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Conclusion, the feature needs a "What is this?" link and a "turn this off" button as well as a good place to turn it on again. I suggest calling it Preferences. :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

It isn't just appearing on articles - the disambiguation page Royal London has a "Rate this page" section. Peter E. James (talk) 20:27, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

lol, that's funny :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:25, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a very good idea. It was about time. It is first release software, and as expected has some problems. But in time this is the only way to go. Eventually reliability and assessment in Wikipedia will be semi-automated and I see this as just the beginning. In 5 years there will be many more tools and many more features. The challenge now is to get the user feedback reflected and store the data in a way that it can be suitably queried, graphed, etc. Once there is a pile of data, the luxury of restructuring the data schemata will no longer be available. A minor issue: it asked me to rate an article I had written - so that should probably not happen again. And in time, a good design for merging this with something like Wiki-Watch will lead to good results. History2007 (talk) 22:48, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

• Is there a way to prevent this thing from appearing on disambiguation pages? It's kind of ridiculous in that context. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:20, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I think below here, the developers stated that they have now become aware of this and will fix it. History2007 (talk) 12:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Pages failing to load

Since about 6:30 am UTC, I am having severe problems getting the site to load. Pages load very slowly, usually waiting for bits.wikimedia.org, and in most cases timeout. Occasionally they load minus the skin. I'm running Win 7 (Home Premium) and Firefox just updated itself to 3.6.17 when I rebooted to see whether that would fix the problem. Other sites are loading, so it appears to be a Wikipedia problem. It's happening for me with de. as well as en. Apologies if this has been reported but I don't see it in the contents for the page and this edit screen still tells me it's reading en.wikipedia.org so I hope this posts! Yngvadottir (talk) 15:25, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm running XP Pro with Chrome and experiencing the same thing. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 15:58, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm using Windows 7 and not encountering any problems. IE9 Windows 7 X64 --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   → Shake 'n Bake 16:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The Operations team is looking into this now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiwooster (talk • contribs) 17:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

• I also had timeouts for more than 3 hours, but with Firefox 3.6.13 (not 3.6.17), and used IE for slow access (with fewer timeouts). The wide impact of today's slow response can be seen by observing page-view stats for the next few days, such as for article "blanket" (but don't view that article, to avoid "epistemic feedback"): stats May-2011 (averaged 208 pageviews-per-day in April). Some other articles can be used as "litmus test" articles, which have had steady daily pageviews as immune to the typical weekday-rises of many articles, such as "Beach" (which rises ~50% from weekend 950 to weekday 1,450 pageviews). Response seems better now. -Wikid77 17:42, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The pageview stats seem to indicate no hindrance to reader interest: whatever slow-down occurred for hours, on 10 May, did not cause many readers (world-wide) to stay away for the whole day. -Wikid77 16:24, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

• I have been having connection problems as described since at least 00:01 UTC on 10 May affecting only Wikipedia pages (i.e. not CNN/google etc). Some page configurations, such as simple diffs, load faster than others, timing out on quite a few, editing and saving are problematic; script-running is slow to a crawl too. I am Hong Kong based, have tried a public machine (IE on W7), my work (FF on NT) and home (Chrome on OSX) machines all give similar problems – not browser-related for what I can tell. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:05, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
• For what it's worth, I'm having consistent issues loading pages here. Something like a quarter of the time Wikipedia pages fail to load (general Internet connectivity is fine). RxS (talk) 18:30, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

• Me, too. I don't know about 25% of the time but VERY frequently. Sometimes on something as simple as clicking on My watchlist. Most annoying.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:34, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

25% might be a bit high but not by much. It lasts a couple minutes then is fine. It is annoying to say the least. Anyone have any idea what's going on? RxS (talk) 18:37, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

(smiling) I didn't say 25% was too high. Might actually be low. Annoying was a diplomatic word.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:42, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is no better today.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• It was much improved the day after my complaint above; it has deteriorated again today – noticeably slower, but tolerable. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:54, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• For me, it started on May 13 and has continued since with little change for the better or for the worse, although it comes in waves.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Bump. It does come in waves, but never goes away and is bad tonight for example. RxS (talk) 03:12, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I would describe it as intermittent but frequent and consistent. The phrase "never goes away" is particularly apt, although I might say "never completely goes away" instead as occasional clicks work fine. Is anyone investigating this? It seems lately it's just reports from me, RxS, and Ohconfucius.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:54, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I've had the same problem intermittently (using XP & Chrome). It seems to happen more on some specific pages, especially article history, although maybe my brain is just trying to find patterns in randomness. Hasn't happened in the last few hours. bobrayner (talk) 14:10, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

"Rate this page"?

What is going on with the weird "rate this page" box at the bottom of Joseph Elsner, Planet, and maybe other pages as well? This is not a template - it seems like it's coming straight from MediaWiki. Is this part of some proposed rating scheme? If so, where was that discussion? » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 04:32, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Found a relevant MediaWiki page via google, but I don't know what it means: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/86530. Wha?!... » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 04:49, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

May be related to [1] -- placing a bug on Bugzilla. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 05:00, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Look a few sections up, in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool. Prodego ^talk 05:02, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I see. Where was the Signpost on this?? I guess it came in after "press time". Well, Signpost ought to have something on it next week, at least: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 05:13, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-05-09/Technology report#In brief. You're just failing everywhere on this thread! :-) Killiondude (talk) 05:50, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:DBAD, Killion. As I'm pointing out at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool, that little Tech Report "In Brief" entry hardly does justice to the potential significance of this development. As one who reads News and Notes with interest but lacks the software knowledge to benefit (usually) from poring over the Tech Report, and then stumbles across this odd "Rate this page" feature, for which I was fairly certain there was no community discussion on WP, I think my response was perfectly reasonable. I think the failure here is with the people who were positioned to better inform the community of this major change. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 15:36, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

While I support the Article Feedback Tool (at least, for research right now), I agree that it was not a very good idea to suddenly add it to 100,000 pages without telling the community in a big notice beforehand ... people will be very confused for a while. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:27, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

There is also "Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool" as a discussion above. There just needs to be a "what is this?" button on the page when it starts, then people will know. Overall,k about time it started - a good idea, and just a beginning. There will be more in 2 years I am sure. History2007 (talk) 08:12, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

What I am wondering, however, is how these ratings supposed to keep up with the edits? If we have a lousy stub which is (rightfully) rated by a dozen people as lousy, and tomorrow an editor comes in and improves it to, say, B-class, are the old lousy ratings still going to carry over? And surely over time this kind of problems will only accumulate?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 12, 2011; 19:41 (UTC)

Good point. And this really means that this tool deserves more comment from the community at large, so suggestions such as yours can be included. As you stated, many of these ratings can become "stale ratings" that rate a snapshot of the article in the past and will lose validity over time, as the content changes. I will suggest a discussion the general Village Pump. History2007 (talk) 07:21, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi everybody, the extension of the AFT to 100K articles (about 3% of articles on the English Wikipedia) was announced on the Wikimedia blog and on wikien and you can find an extensive discussion of the rationale on this page. Feedback from the community is very much welcome as the feature is still experimental and we'd love to hear how to improve it. For other frequently asked questions, check out this page. --DarTar (talk) 19:13, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I like "Rate This Page". Maybe people don't have the time or inclination to provide detailed criticism. It works for me.70.125.135.72 (talk) 20:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that it is but a beginning and has a long way to go. But the journey has to stop with this step. I think we need an Rfc. History2007 (talk) 23:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

And when are these things going to disappear from the pages they've just appeared on? Surely they're not permanent? They're way too big and ungainly. They don't look like the small ones that occasionally appeared on pages before. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 10:24, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with All Hallow's Wraith. They are obtrusive -- way too big and ungainly. They interfere with viewing the Categories. And they make Wikipedia in general, and the article in particular, look very unprofessional. The thing has multiple problems and was very ill thought out. Please remove the things or allow us a way to remove them ourselves. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 10:58, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Assuming you are using the vector skin, you can add #mw-articlefeedback{ display:none; } to your Special:Mypage/vector.css file, which will make them disappear (works for me anyway). Jenks24 (talk) 11:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Why not make the "Rate this Page" panel collapsable (and collapsed by default) like some of the navigation boxes found at the bottom of some articles? [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 00:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Right, that's a great idea. I wouldn't mind them that much if they were collapsible. There should have been wider community input about their implementation. And like I said, is there a set date for when this trial stops? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:03, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

It just appeared magically in two redirects (here and here) I made today (in addition to the main article they were being redirected to). ¬___¬ Is there any way to remove them from those pages, they'd just be wasted sitting on a page no one ever sees (if the primary goal is to gather feedback, that is).-- Obsidi♠n^Soul 16:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

That's definitely a bug. We'll look into it.--Eloquence* 17:50, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Someone above also mentioned disambig pages. I assume those will also be avoided now. Right? History2007 (talk) 16:09, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

No it is still being added to random new pages. See here. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 06:35, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Where are the Ratings saved? How can one make changes? Bielle (talk) 18:00, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

That is a separate Pandora's box:

• Can the ratings be edited by the person who submitted them?
• Can they be edited/reverted by others if they are vandalism?
• What does it mean for a rating to be vandalism? X-standard deviations gap where X=...?
• Can ratings be edited by an admin if they are part of WP:Wikihounding of an editor by another?
• Can IPs/puppets repeatedly rate?
• Etc. etc. etc.

But these are policy rather than software issues, and they could not have possibly all been anticipated as part of a technical design. I do not have answers for them, but as any new feature/tool general suggestions by various people will eventually provide some answers. This is a new and interesting game with potential for a positive impact on Wikipedia, so we will just have to wait and see. But please do make suggestions ASAP because the sooner suggestions are fed into a software design as it undergoes testing the better. History2007 (talk) 21:34, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Here is the way the ratings logic is currently implemented:

• After a user rates an article, their rating appears pre-filled upon subsequent views of the article.
• If a user wants to change their rating, they can adjust the stars and click submit. They may also clear their ratings entirely by clicking on the trash icon next to the stars. This re-rating overrides their previous rating.

So at any point in time, an article has only one ratings set for a given registered user or IP address since subsequent ratings take the place of previous ratings. This mechanism makes it a little more difficult to game the ratings. For example, if ratings were associated by cookie, a user could easily rate an article, delete the cookie, and then rate the article again. Since the ratings are associated with IP addresses/accounts, a user would either have to find another machine with a different IP address or create another account.

Currently, there isn't a definition of ratings vandalism, and ratings cannot be edited or deleted by anyone but the rater. We should continue to monitor the ratings patterns to see if it would be useful to have this type of feature. It will be tricky since such a definition will have to be able to separate vandalism from true changes (e.g., if the article is vandalized and as a consequence receives lower reviews). Based on the limited averages we're seeing on the dashboard, it looks like the volume of well-intentioned ratings outweighs the volume of vandalism ratings, at least among the more heavily rated articles. Howief (talk) 22:44, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

By the way, I assume the ratings go into a SQL-based repository of some type. Do they? If so, what is the Wiki-protocol for editing that type of data? I have not seen an example of that in Wikipedia. Is there one? History2007 (talk) 00:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Embedly support for Wikipedia & Wikimedia commons thumbnails

At my request, Embedly now returns thumbnails for images on Wikipedia:

http://api.embed.ly/embed?url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BirdNotes-22-3.jpg

and Wikimedia Commons:

http://api.embed.ly/embed?url=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John-Madin.jpg

Cheers, Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:49, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Update: Also now for articles with images in infoboxes: http://api.embed.ly/embed?url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:03, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

after login redirect

Is there any possibility to autoredirect someone after login (to requested or previous page)? mabdul 18:23, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It already automatically redirects you to the last page if you click log in or log out from a Wikipedia page (adds &returnto= query parameter). If you're using a full URL for use elsewhere, such as a bookmark link or something, you can add whatever you want to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Special:Random. — Bility (talk) 19:09, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The reason this doesn't work automatically on Wikimedia sites is because of the Global login system, that needs to load the small images from the different wikimedia websites, to get you logged in there. To fix it would require a software change, putting onload checks on those images to make sure you are actually done with that process before redirecting you. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:40, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

And why wasn't this implemented with the global login last year? mabdul 11:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't find an article using the search box

Hi there! Yesterday I've created a new article, Liri Blues Festival, but I can't find it using the search box at the top right of the page. I mean, if I enter the exact words, I get the page. But it doesn't suggest the article while I'm typing "Liri Blue.....". Is there anything I/you can do to fix it? Many thanks in advance! Sardognunu (talk) 11:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I was able to find the article via the search box. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:08, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest this maybe takes time for the index to get updated (job queue perhaps?). Rich Farmbrough, 13:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC).

I've been noticing the Search Box issue for a few days myself, as it applies to anything relatively new. In addition, I've noticed that Talk Page article assessment changes, or initial assessments, earlier in the week took over 24 hours to show up on the assessment display on a given article's main page. Now, the Talk Page assessment changes don't seem to appear on the assessment display as having changed at all. (My "Display assessment" gadget is checked). On Sharyn McCrumb, I made an initial Talk Page assessment on May 14, which immediately showed up on the Talk Page. The article's main page still shows it as "Unassessed Article". Until the OTRS addition today, my initial assessment was the first item on the Talk Page - it should have showed up on the main page by now. Looked at the Help:Job queue, there does not seem to be a backlog there. Maile66 (talk) 16:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Email notification notification

After many requests, you can now get an email notification when your talk page is changed. [2] Turn it on and off from your preferences in the E-mail options section. Thanks ops team! the wub "?!" 11:14, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

This should really be an opt-in feature, and there should be a link in the email to describe how to turn these notifications off. I just got blasted with a bunch of emails that I didn't ask for, with no clear way of turning them off. This is bad. —SW— ^squeal 17:28, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. I actually check my watchlist much more often than I check my email, so I don't want to log into my email to suddenly see 10 messages for things I've already dealt with. E-mailing info to users should always be opt-in. Plus, as SW said, the links provided in the email don't make it clear how to turn of the email notifications (none of the links points to the preferences section)--they just direct you to your watchlist, not to your preferences. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:52, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I would just to note that elsewhere there is considerable support for having this feature as opt-out, given that only power users would want it off, while newbies appreciate it. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 18:25, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Who were the users who gave this idea considerable support? Who in their right mind would think that it would be a good idea to all of a sudden send dozens of emails to editors for no apparent reason, without them asking for the emails, and with no instructions on how to turn them off? Advertisements or not, unsolicited email is unsolicited email. The feature itself is a great idea, for those who want it (almost certainly a minority of regular users), but the implementation and decision to make it opt-out was terrible, as evidenced by the multiple threads popping up all over wikipedia from editors asking how to shut off these annoying emails. —SW— ^yak 00:43, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Surely the message is customisable? I was looking at the Email Notification extension documentation but that extension seems not installed (Special:Version), so I've no idea how. Rd232 ^talk 00:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we need to correct the email's instructions on how to turn this off, because it simply doesn't say within the email, only how to take my talkpage off my watchlist. I think most people would know how to do that if they put it on in the first place. GedUK  13:59, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Cool feature, but I agree that the default should be opt-in. What I'd find more useful is the reverse: my talk page automatically notifying me that I have an email. Rivertorch (talk) 05:27, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

CSD entries, many of which may be in error

The CSD list contains almost 2000 entries, most of which I believe are in error. For example, Ab-e Sefid is in the list. While the cat list includes both CSD and CSD by user, I don't see anything in the history explaining why it should be in the cat. A lot of the entries in the list are Dr. Blofeld stubs, my guess is someone managed to add the cat en masse without editing each article. Can someone check to find out whether they are legitimately in the list, or if it is a mistake?--SPhilbrickT 11:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I now see Deletion_required, which is related.--SPhilbrickT 12:02, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

The CSD notice is included in {{Geographic refimprove}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

This doesn't make any sense to me, but perhaps I'm missing something. The title "Geographic refimprove" implies that the article is acceptable but could be improved with the addition of some references related to geographic information. If we mean that the article should be deleted because it fails to meet minimum standards, the template title should be improved. As evidence that there is some confusion, I still do not know whether Dr. Blofeld added the template as a way to urge improvement of geographic references, or whether he wants the article deleted. Yes, I can ask him, but I think the template could be clearer.--SPhilbrickT 12:21, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

This may shed some light. Thparkth (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

redirected to https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page

Hi!

How come I get redirected to https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page when i access http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page in my browser (Firefox 4.0.1), i.e clicking on the link English on the welcome page?

In Internet Explorer this doesn't happen.

It's really strange...and the https connection is slower so it's a bit annoying. Is there anyway to get around this?

Viktor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.30.118.14 (talk) 12:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you installed HTTPS Everywhere ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:11, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Are you using Tor? – Allen4names 14:48, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you're right about HTTPS Everywhere, I had it installed. Should have checked that before I posted. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.30.118.14 (talk) 10:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit box stops letting me edit

When I start editing, in many cases, I am typing and don't realize that nothing is appearing in the edit box, even though I've already clicked inside the edit box. This happened just now. In many cases, the screen with the edit box also scrolls down for some reason. I have to scroll back up and click inside the edit box to start typing again.

Is this somehow related to the decision not to let the search box automatically let a search take place without the user clicking inside it first? In which case I guess nothing will change. I will say I was using Internet Explorer 8 and have just switched to Internet Explorer 9 and it's still happening.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:43, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

And this only seems to happen on Wikipedia.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Code for Logo

What is the code for that Wikipedia Logo at the top left of every page? I want to disable it on my vector.css, since it's malfunctioning. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:49, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I suppose this will hide it entirely, though I'm not sure what you mean by "disable":

#p-logo {display:none !important;}

[stwalkerster|talk] 19:15, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Am I doing it right? The logo still appears, and that pesky brown bar across the screen. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 19:40, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Corrected; logo should be invisible now. — Edokter (talk) — 14:11, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Blocking non-descriptive file names from being uploaded

Now at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:19, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I just uploaded File:IMG 00225.png and File:DSC 00225.png to test my ability to do so. I am sad to say that I could. According to the most recent lists, there are 2796 other files that start with IMG or DSC. Of them there are less than half a dozen that I would view as properly named, i.e. that would not be significantly improved with a renaming. There are perhaps an additional dozen or so that are borderline. Out of 2796 that is a batting average of 0.6 percent. When I uploaded those two images, I got a nice little all text message appearing right near the name field that asked me to reconsider. To be quite blunt, that is not enough. I am asking you all to form a consensus to this effect. Files should not be allowed to be uploaded under these useless names. Like certain other naming components, images starting with IMG and DSC should be preemtively salted. I estimate doing so will save the handful of file workers (myself included) hundreds of hours of work. Propose and Support Sven Manguard Wha? 03:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC) already being done via the title blacklist. ΔT The only constant 03:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC) Apparently not, as I uploaded those two about 20 minutes ago. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:51, 15 May 2011 (UTC) take a look at MediaWiki:Titleblacklist with the section labeled " GENERIC IMAGE FILE NAMES" your upload just misses the existing filers because you added a space before the number. ΔT The only constant 04:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC) Thank you for that. I'll go get an admin that's comfortable with that page. For the record, over 80% of the ones on the IMG page use a space, so I'd like to wrap this up quickly. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:04, 15 May 2011 (UTC) Support I see no reason to allow file names that have no change of being descriptive. --Guerillero | My Talk 03:52, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Making search bar for archives work

There is an archive box at the top of, for example, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pharmacology, but the search bar doesn't seem to work. How to fix it? Mikael Häggström (talk) 05:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I believe I fixed it here. The root listing wasn't correct (telling it where to search). Killiondude (talk) 06:18, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Mikael Häggström (talk) 10:00, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Collapsed infobox sections in books

67.182.237.57 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) has asked a tricky question at Help:Books/Feedback - Collapsed infobox sections / Book Creator / PDF downloads. Can anyone here help out? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Webcite

Resolved

Is it technically possible (by a script, bot,...) to have web references in wikipedia automatically archived by webcite? This could help with WP:ROT. bamse (talk) 09:14, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes I believe so, some digging in our own archives will help with answering this question. Firstly note that there is no guarantee that archive sites will be around forever, I can't connect to some of the old sites. (http://www.archive.org/ waybackmachine is still going strong.) Secondly IIRC one of them suffered severe loading problems when an "auto add" solution was tried here recently (in the last year or two). Having said that it's still an excellent idea to maintain an archive, either internally or externally. Both clearly present problems, of different natures. Rich Farmbrough, 13:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC).

Thanks for the reply. I had a look at the archives, and indeed there are lots of discussions on this issue, which gives hope that it will be resolved at some point. bamse (talk) 18:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Odd CSD stickiness

Resolved

 – Obvious when you know the answer. Rich Farmbrough, 14:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC).

Template:Sample infobox seemed to be stuck as a CSD G2 for a long time after the actual db-g2 was removed. Some new feature I missed? Rich Farmbrough, 14:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC).

OK... it was another db-g2 in a transcluded template, later deleted. Rich Farmbrough, 14:35, 15 May 2011 (UTC).

Presenting a text table as an image or as text

Two recent Featured Article candidates presented table text as images. This isn't ideal so we're looking for help and advice from people that know about how to configure tables. Hopefully, this will allow us to achieve the goals of all the article nominator.

Please see:

• talk:Featured article candidate: Nebular Science Fiction

Regards Lightmouse (talk) 16:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Mystery linebreaks at the head of an article

Please help 2011 Libyan civil war has a couple of linebreaks at the top and I can't figure out how they got there. As best as I can see, the templates aren't transcluding them, but what do I know. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the linebreak between the protection template and the infobox, this seems to have removed the space. Peter E. James (talk) 00:19, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Strange behavior within an article

I don't know who to turn to with this issue. If I look up "Priscilla and Aquila", all is well and I get the current edit. But if I go via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Epistle_to_the_Hebrews and take the first "Priscilla" link to the aforementioned article on Priscilla and Aquila, I get a previous edit with problems in the very first sentence. Anyone have an idea about this? Not sure if it's a bad tag, corrupt database, software bug, or all in my head. Thank you! Marc W. Abel (talk) 03:19, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

The first "Priscilla" in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Epistle_to_the_Hebrews links to Priscilla (Christian) which redirects (in the Wikipedia sense) to Priscilla and Aquila. However, Priscilla (Christian) has a different url (Wikipedia doesn't change the url for redirects) and an older version may be cached by your browser, or possibly by a server which hasn't updated properly. I see the same version at the two names. Try to bypass your cache on Priscilla (Christian). PrimeHunter (talk) 03:31, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

All images are gone

Since last week, all images on Wikipedia are gone, including the logo.
I don't know if this may have anything to do with it, but this happened while I was looking through the Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2010 photos. DirkvdM (talk) 05:50, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd guess that you have disabled the display of images in your browser settings. This is especially easy to do by mistake in Firefox; if that's your browser, look at "Tools > Options"; "Load images automatically" should be ticked; then click the "Exceptions" button next to that checkbox, and make sure that you have not blocked "upload.wikimedia.org". If that doesn't fix it, post again here giving your browser name and version. Can you see the yellow "Powered by MediaWiki" image at the bottom right of the page? I think that gets downloaded from a different server. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:30, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Does the page "completely load quickly and display with no images" or does it try to load images and after a while give up? I've had extremely high lag-time getting images to load ("sometimes"...maybe depends on which server I hit or if the image is cached?). DMacks (talk) 06:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thanks John, turns out I had blocked 'upload.wikimedia.org'. Btw, I use the Linux version, where that's under edit > preferences > content. How did that happen, though? Some keyboard shortcut? DirkvdM (talk) 10:36, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

At least in the Windows version of Firefox, if you right-click on an image in Firefox, one of the options you see is to block all images from the same site. Great for spam images, not so good for Wikipedia. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:42, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, I was copying images, for which I right-clicked and then hit 'v' for 'save image'. Instead I hit 'b' for 'block images'. Thanks. DirkvdM (talk) 06:39, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Heading issue in 'Documentation' template

There's an outstanding accessibity issue with header levels in {{Documentation}}; see Template talk:Documentation/Archive 4#Heading fix which still needs attention. Earlier discussion, with one dissenting voice, is at Template talk:Documentation/Archive 2#Heading fix.Could we get some extra eyeballs on that, please, and comments in the new section at Template talk:Documentation#Heading fix redux? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:19, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Layout Issue

Maybe one of you knows what is wring here. This is what I see when I open any page on wikipedia. Is it a website issue, a browser issue or an Internet issue. cheers. (I am currently running Opera 11.10 on a Windows XP SP 3 system) --Guerillero | My Talk 15:48, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

That looks like your cached stylesheets are broken. I'm not entirely sure how to bypass the cache with Opera, however. I'm sure its help can tell you how. — Coren ^(talk) 16:45, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Here are some instructions. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:53, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

That seems to be working. Thank you --Guerillero | My Talk 00:16, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Slow load time

Are Wikipedia pages painfully slow to load today for anyone else, or is it just me? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:25, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Not just you, REALLY slow... [stwalkerster|talk] 17:29, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Working fine for me and that's speaking as someone with a broadband speed that's a tiny 223kbps. AD 17:37, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I get time-outs partway through loading large pages (like WP:RD/S), or loading of the page but not the toolbars and frame decorations. Sometimes a quick hit "reload" resolves it...probably one hella-lagged (to use the technical term) machine in the pool. DMacks (talk) 17:44, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

It's been bad for several days now. See topic above for more complaints.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Echo the above. It's pretty awful. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:05, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Things are loading at a decent speed for me. No complaints at the moment; I haven't encountered any error messages yet. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

It's been midly irritating all day, but now it's painful. Difs and pop-ups are uber-slow, and many times pages only load half-way. Other times when they do load, the font is very tiny, or the page is disjointed. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 00:10, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Disjointed pages are always painful. You should seek medical advice. Seriously, for me it varies from irritating (actually rarely just mildly irritating) to painful. With the new buttons on Firefox 4, I often have to click on X to stop and then on the arrow to reload, and sometimes more than once. I just wish someone would let us know what is going on, even if it's just to say "we are still looking into it".--Bbb23 (talk) 00:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, it goes in streaks. I'm surprised it's not more of a topic of conversation. When it fails, it's gone for several minutes...RxS (talk) 03:27, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

We must carry on and we must keep calm.

I can't get into my watchlist at all; it just hangs. Diffs are bad, history is bad, articles very slow, talk pages are sometimes only half loading. Has been like this for a couple of days for me. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 13:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I thought this was just me. It's making editing a real pain. Some kind of news that someone knows what's wrong (and that it may get better at some point) would be lovely. --Dweller (talk) 15:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

It has been a real hindrance to my editing as well. It's frustrating when I have to wait literally minutes and then my browser finally just shows me a blank page, or even worse, a partially-loaded page. When a page doesn't load all the way, it can be difficult to tell, especially if it's a page I've never visited before. I might just assume that's all there is to the page. Then I reload, and all of a sudden the article is twice as big.

I have a suspicion that this slow performance may coincide with the decision to turn on email notification for EVERY editor on Wikipedia at the same time. Per the discussion below talking about the new email feature, that feature was available on smaller encyclopedias for some time but avoided on en.wiki because of performance concerns. Maybe those concerns were valid? -- Atama頭 16:40, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I highly doubt that. Sounds more like a caching server that is kaput somewhere. Other possibility is perhaps that the central notice for the board elections that is running right now ? I'm asking in the IRC channel of the system administrators for any ideas about the cause. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:56, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for doing that. Hopefully, they will respond and you can let us know.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:58, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I, too, wonder if it's a caching server problem. I've been having problems with loading time at work for about a week now (which is before the email notifications were turned on, by the way), but at home everything is loading in no time and with no problems...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 19:04 (UTC)

Can you please explain a bit more why there would be a difference between your work and home experiences? Is there something we can do at our end to mitigate the problem?--Bbb23 (talk) 19:29, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Because the connections are routed via different providers, so there's a good chance that my work connection is hitting a defective cache server whereas my home connection does not?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 19:45 (UTC)

Interesting. If that's true, then it would also explain why some people are complaining, why some are saying it's okay, and why more people aren't complaining at all.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:51, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I edit from work, and from home. From home it's a simple cable connection to a local ISP. From work, it's through a Websense proxy server that goes through who knows where, but nowhere close to here. I don't think this is a regional thing. Also, this issue is serious enough that I'm probably going to stay away from Wikipedia for awhile. This site is nearly unusable in this condition. It's like driving a car that breaks down every 5 minutes or so on the highway. -- Atama頭 00:09, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm now getting load times over at least a minute for pretty much every page. Timing a few, the shortest was 1m2s, Logic gate. It's getting ridiculous. [stwalkerster|talk] 01:16, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I have opened a ticket bugzilla:29034. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Users affected, and who know how to, might consider running traceroutes on en.wikipedia.org and/or bits.wikimedia.org. Might be helpful in figuring out if it is maybe a routing issue or something ? Link to them from here, or from the ticket. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:54, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

 Done, but it's not as bad now as it was last night. [stwalkerster|talk] 13:12, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Not one of those who "knows how to", I did want to note that it had eased up for me this morning, but has gotten worse as the day has progressed. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:21, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Local traceroutes and from an online service show no problems with either en or bits. —DoRD (talk) 14:17, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Is everyone of you from the UK per chance ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:50, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Not here, no. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:53, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Nope. Texas. It's been very slow for me, but has been running more smoothly today. —DoRD (talk) 13:54, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's slightly better for me today, but still slow and some pages are still only half loading. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 13:59, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm from the Southern east coast. I was on the west coast last week and had no issues there, but picked up problems as soon as I got back home. I tend to agree with Slim that it seems slightly better today. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:06, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Southwestern U.S. here. The problem continues. It may be slightly better this morning, but yesterday it got worse as the day progressed, so I'm waiting to see if it's really any better. Plus, it's still happening, so unless someone did something, why would it really be better? As for traceroutes, I'm suspicious as to their validity (with online tools). For example, I ran a traceroute from this site, and for both wikipedia and wikimedia, it showed slightly slow but not horrible timings. I then tried doing the same thing with www.cnn.com, and it timed out over and over until it aborted. Yet, when I access www.cnn.com, the response is instantaneous and complete. So, if someone can suggest an online tool that shows credible results, I'm willing to try it.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's already getting worse for me. I clicked on BLPN and it shows the title, says "transferring data" in the status bar, and just sits there. It's still sitting there as I type this message (it's been at least 2-3 minutes). Usually, I click on X and then refresh to push it along, but I'm curious what it will do if I don't do that. Should time out, but FF doesn't seem to care. :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 16:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's pretty quick for me at the moment, but it's been up and down all day. Usually it just hangs halfway through loading a page for a few minutes, then sometimes carries on, if I don't get impatient and refresh it. I must have left a tab open in that state for about 10 mins though, surprised Chrome didn't time it out... it's annoying though. [stwalkerster|talk] 16:15, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Western Canada on this end. Given the responses above, it definitely does not appear to be UK related. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 15:48, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Ohconfucius (above in earlier topic) is in Hong Kong. Don't know if he's still experiencing the problem.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:51, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

West coast of the US here and it's still irritatingly slow. Killiondude (talk) 17:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I cannot discern an obvious pattern here. Can someone use Firebug or WebkitInspector to at the very least pinpoint the transaction that is on hold for so long and the server that it is trying to reach ? Also, try using "View Source" of the webpage, and look for the '<!-- Served by line in the served out html of a request that takes this long. More detailed information is needed if we want to pinpoint the problem, cause the sysadmins don't see any reason for these problems. The status.wikimedia.org is also not having any issues from any of the locations that polls for access. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:36, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm willing to help, but I need more specific instructions from you. I use FF 4. I just added Firebug as an add-on (never used it before). I've enabled the console. I have the console in a separate window. It appears to log entries for each time I click on something (clearing what it logged on the previous click). It seems to create maybe 25-35 entries per click with columns as to what it's doing. What do you want me to provide here to be looked at? Are there any special settings you want me to use on Firebug?--Bbb23 (talk) 17:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's back to being very slow for me. Pages barely loading. I'm having to keep several windows open, and once I press save, go to another window to open the page if I want to keep writing there. In the meantime, I can see in the first window that it hasn't finished loading yet. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:58, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Me too, taken about 5 minutes to load just this edit page, after various attempts through getting Wikimedia errors - duly reported to the tech IRC channel too. Looks like they're having other issues right now though. [stwalkerster|talk] 18:28, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It just took me nearly 15 minutes to make one edit. Couldn't get the page to open, couldn't get preview to work, then why I tried to save I kept getting error messages. It's too slow to use now, so I'm giving up for a bit. Six error messages so far trying to save this edit. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 18:28, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Some more issues are currently playing up, possibly due to the deploy of the Google News SiteMap extension a few hours ago, or due to updated translated messages. It's not yet known if these new issues (which are much larger and seemingly affecting everyone) are in any way related to the issues that are being reported in this topic. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a error I just got, generally it's been very slow today (same as every other day this week)...and getting this edit done was like pulling teeth. Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical), from 208.80.152.88 via sq63.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to ()Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno [No Error] at Wed, 18 May 2011 18:08:47 GMT RxS (talk) 18:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Looks like the bugzilla bug has been closed as "INVALID". 3 mins it took me to load this edit page - and I highly doubt it's any of the issues Krinkle has suggested on the bug report, due to the number and the geographical distribution of people affected by this. [stwalkerster|talk] 19:15, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Given Krinkle's response that it may be caused "problems at your provider" and "anything on your computer", I have to doubt that this VP thread was even reviewed despite being linked to in the bug report. How frustrating for the editors who are affected. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 19:30, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorely tempted to reopen that bug report actually, with something snarky like "I'm pretty sure I've got a different ISP to other people whom this is affecting, given it's affecting people all over the world". So far I have restrained myself though, cos that sort of response isn't fair to them either. Seriously though, I think it should be reopened re-affirming this thread. I just don't trust myself to keep a cool head while doing it. [stwalkerster|talk] 19:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Aah, the old "user error" canard. It's nice to know someone cares. Fortunately, we're well-paid for all of our work here.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry, ops are working on it. Nemo 19:51, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you know, but I certainly hope you're right. My offer to DJ (above) to help still stands if someone explains what they need and what I should do.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:10, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes if we wish to retain and attract editors editing needs to be faster than it is now. We need to through everything we have at this problem. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

• I'm on the US South East Coast in Florida and it's been terribly slow the past couple of days and remains slow today. Pages half-load, they load slowly section-by-section, only load the header of the page then hang, happens on articles, talk pages, and even my watchlist...sometimes I'll have to refresh the browser to get the whole watchlist to load. Very irritating. Dreadstar ☥ 20:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

TheDJ and myself have done some poking, and we don't think it's an issue at Wikimedia, nor an issue with the users. We think the problem may lie with some server/router/rr somewhere in the middle, which we don't really have control over. I'm going to try re-routing my local traffic over an SSH link to a remote machine of mine, but I dunno what will work and what won't at the moment. [stwalkerster|talk] 20:43, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Good luck, but I must say that if it's a router, it seems odd it's not affecting other servers besides Wikipedia/Wikimedia. Network issues can be very complex to diagnose. I hope someone can pinpoint the problem.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:04, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

If it is something in the middle, it's odd that it's happening to users across a couple continents. RxS (talk) 21:16, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Could be something pretty close to Wikimedia - it'd go a way to explain the temperamental nature of the problem too, and also why it's only affecting some users. One network peering partner of many going bad, network decides to route a request through them, and suddenly a page is really slow to load. [stwalkerster|talk] 21:21, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's been happening Down Under too. Very frustrating. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

And here in southern Ontario, Canada, it reminds me of the first time I went on line about 15 years ago when the images scanned on the screen line by line. This is not a user or an ISP or a browser problem. 21:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, it'll do the old-school style line-by-line scanning down the screen, building the page slowly. Sometimes hanging on a section, wait for it, then draws the next section down... Dreadstar ☥ 23:11, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I've had a lot of trouble too here in California. Even at school where I have tons of bandwidth in both direction, uploads to Commons are proceedubg at an unusually slow rate, taking hours to upload 100 MB. Ordinary pages like this one are loading slowly and timing out too. Dcoetzee 23:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

You're a graduate student in computer science. Fix it! :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 00:17, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

It's really bad tonight...hard to do anything. Is there an update somewhere? I'm having a hard time believing that this worldwide issue is being caused by something near Wikipedia but not Wikipedia itself. RxS (talk) 03:55, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm in the Pacific NW. The site has been slower than usual on and off for the past few days.bllix (talk) 04:58, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Just so it's clear, the problem is still continuing for me. Tomorrow will be the first-week anniversary of this problem (for me).--Bbb23 (talk) 14:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I've asked on the Foundation mailing list whether anyone is looking into it; no reply so far. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 14:26, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Have you received any reply? The problem continues, and what is most troubling is the lack of any feedback from those responsible for fixing it except for a crappy response to the bug report. It's hard to believe anyone is investigating or working on the issue. I'd love to be proved wrong.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:48, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Erik Moeller posted a reply in the Bugzilla thread, citing a number of issues, one of which is a router problem in Tampa that can't be fixed until Tuesday at the earliest. But it looks like there's some hope coming. -- Atama頭 23:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. It's been dreadful this afternoon here.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:32, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Yet more page loading issues

For the last several hours, I've been unable to load pages either on en:wp or on Commons without logging in through the secure server: regardless of what page I try to load, it gives me a "cannot display the webpage" message similar to what I get if I go to a nonexistent website. Does anyone have an idea how to get rid of the "Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely?" message that I get from IE version 8.0.6001.19048? Or do I simply have to try a different browser? On top of that, does anyone know what's going on with the servers to make this happen? Nyttend (talk) 04:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I see discussions above with people's locations being asked: I'm in Bloomington, Indiana. Nyttend (talk) 04:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Bugzilla:29034 for reference. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:10, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Yep things are real slow now; however, refreshing once usually loads the page immediately. Gary King (talk · scripts) 14:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there is a problem. For about 3 days, intermittently. Pages don't load or load very slowly. Bus stop (talk) 14:32, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Agh, it's still happening and it's just unbearable. Dreadstar ☥ 15:59, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Last four or five days (in Australia) it as been slow but the last two it has gotten worse to the point that pages (articles, templates, talkpages ect) just don't load or half load and needs to be refreshed a few times to get them to load, whether I'm logged in or not. I've even used my Edu's computers and internet to see if my broadband ISP was the cause but still have the same issue there as well. Bidgee (talk) 03:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• Ok, just now my watchlist only loaded about a quarter of the way and hung, this code was at the very end of the watchlist: "<li class="mw-line-odd watchlist-4-" Dreadstar ☥ 17:01, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• I'm getting the same thing. My watchlist keeps loading only halfway, and often without the top part, and it's now happened a few times in preview too, where I can see only the top part of the article. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• In addition to the resource loader failure I've been experiencing for 3 weeks now (see "My gadgets no longer work" above), I am also experiencing flakey page loading for the last 3 days. My experience is the same as SlimVirgin's: The page loads part way and hangs forever. If I hit my 'reload' button the page reloads quickly and completely. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:08, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Watchlist emails

See also bugzilla:5220#c40, #Email notification notification, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#E-mails_from_Wikimedia [3], Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Question_about_Suggest_a_Bot [4], MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-details#Talk_emails [5]

When did watchlist notification emails get enabled for enwiki? I just received one regarding my user talkpage. And how do I disable them for myself? --Cybercobra (talk) 22:02, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Turn it off in My preferences. As per a discussion above, it was recently added, but it presumed we wanted to be notified, not necessarily a great presumption.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:05, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

It only notifies you for edits to your talk page. There's more information about this in your watchlist, at the top where announcements usually go. Gary King (talk · scripts) 23:57, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

LOL, I didn't even notice the announcement until you mentioned it.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:00, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Likewise; I hadn't checked my watchlist yet and thus seen the notice. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I received several of these annoying emails, and worked out for myself how to turn it off, well before seeing this announcement. May I state that I heartily disapprove of turning such a new feature on by default -- it creates a large amount of unwanted emails. The least-impact implementation would have been off-by-default. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk(P) 07:16, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

And I'm sure that there is a group of users who welcome finally being able to receive email notifications of their user talk pages, without having to even do anything for it. We should add a link to those emails on how you disable them btw. That is the very least we can do. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:22, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

bugzilla:29022. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:25, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that an assumption that the vast majority of users would want this was not necessarily a good one.

Furthermore, if you're going to switch something like this on, it'd be a good idea to mention in the text of the email that it's just been switched on - my first reaction to getting one of these was that my account had been hacked and someone was playing with my watchlist and preferences.

I presume that I missed all the debate and publicity before you switched it on. Debate: it's alluded above that there has been considerable support "elsewhere" for this, but no link is provided. Where was that debate? Was it properly and sensibly publicised so that many users could participate, eg at WP:CENT? And publicity: when the extensive debate concluded, I presume it was properly announced, in the Signpost etc - could you point me to the announcements?

I'll assume I missed all of these steps before someone pressed the green button. --Dweller (talk) 11:35, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there was any discussion for this. Per the mailing list post, it looks like it was just enabled immediately after a quick discussion among a few developers. Gary King (talk · scripts) 12:04, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

And to be honest, I don't really know why this crack team of developer-ninjas bothered -- I can't remember the last time that somebody posted something on my user talk that couldn't just as easily wait a day before being brought to my attention -- most of the time even the online alerts are simply a distraction from actual editing. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk(P) 12:30, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes i wonder why the crack team of developer-ninjas bother as well. Users seem so capable of implementing stuff themselves. They sure talk like they are capable. I propose we just hand over the project to the volunteers who see the need to complain about every little change, then they can endlessly discuss changes internally, while no one every writes any code or updates a server configuration. Seems like a much better plan. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:40, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia works through discussion and consensus. Implementing something like this without discussion and consensus was a bad idea, even if the idea itself was a good idea. This isn't "every little change", this was a big change - I repeat, I seriously thought my account had been hacked. --Dweller (talk) 14:11, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki is not Wikipedia, it is a very different community with a very different organisation, don't make the mistake of thinking they are more than loosely similar. Equally, Wikimedia is not Wikipedia, don't make the mistake of thinking that enwiki is anything more than the older brother of the 850 other Wikimedia projects. Had this change been specifically and solely on enwiki, it would be reasonable for there to be discussion here, although I am also fully in favour of reducing the inertia in this area. If it were a Wikimedia-wide change for social reasons, a WM-wide discussion on meta might have been appropriate, considering the magnitude (or otherwise) of the change. Since it was a change for purely technical reasons, it is no surprise that it followed only technical discussions. The only reason this feature was not activated when it was first added to MediaWiki many years ago were technical limitations; once those were removed, the software was set back to its default state. The default behaviour of the MediaWiki software is not defined by consensus on the English Wikipedia. Happy‑melon 15:02, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Dweller -- I do not consider Wikipedia suddenly and unaccountably spewing emails at me to be a "little change". My first reaction was 'how do I turn it off?' -- no answer. My second was 'why did they do this without asking me?' That something like this should be opt-in rather than opt-out should be blindingly obvious. The result was that something I neither needed nor wanted caused me a great deal of hassle. So I'm sorry, but I'm not feeling in the least bit grateful. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk(P) 14:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Just wanted to state that this is great news! I keep forgetting to check my talk page, and I often reply to messages 3 days late. Thanks for making this happen, guys. For those who aren't happy about this, it's just one click away. -- Luk ^talk 13:03, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

• Erm, this debate from nearly a year ago (thank you, my invisible friend) is when the idea seems to have been raised. It shows clear consensus that people liked the idea, but on an opt-in basis only. So, it's not that the developers didn't bother to gain consensus (though that would have been bad enough) - they ignored it, which is worse. Consensus has been ignored. Why? --Dweller (talk) 14:34, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Probably because the operations staff have beter things to do than go searching for such threads on all 850 wikis, most of which are in languages they don't even read. Happy‑melon 15:05, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. Were the developers not directed to that conversation when they were asked to make the change? Did someone misrepresent that conversation when asking the developers to make the change? --Dweller (talk) 15:14, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh for pete's sake, for those editors incapable of clicking on their preferences it might cause some inconvenience, but frankly there are far more important things to get worked up about. Oh noes! I got told that someone had left a message for me! Woe and gnashing of teeth! DuncanHill (talk) 14:42, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I dunno, compared to some of the things Wikipedians get worked up about, it's not surprising that this procedural fiasco or glitch (depending on your POV) generates controversy. I think we should have a straw poll. :-) And returning to my favorite sore point of the last few days, clicking on My preferences isn't as easy as it was before the major response time problem.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:59, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I know that I wasted a lot of time dealing with the slow-down, which caused all sorts of strange behaviors that I could not easily determine were on the WP end. Based on the threads here, it ppears that many of Wikipedia' most productive editors were likewise distracted trying to deal with the unannounced system problems. Who knows what the first-time users thought. Taken together, the total time wasted was probably considerable. Long ago admins were warned about deleting pages with long histories because of the impact on the databases. Let's hope the developers themselves don't loose track of that same requirement.   Will Beback  talk  09:24, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

These emails have been active on smaller wikis for a long time (e.g. commons). If I remember correctly they were disabled on enwiki for performance reasons. Apparently those have been fixed and the notifications have been re-enabled. You can turn them off in your preferences. It's not as if this is a new feature: it's an old feature that was disabled because of an old bug. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the checkmarks for boxes in Wikipedia Preferences are upside-down. Anybody else noticing that? Bus stop (talk) 15:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed: the checkmarks are upside-down elsewhere as well, such as in the edit windows, such as the check-boxes for "This is a minor edit" and "Watch this page". Bus stop (talk) 16:37, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

My checkmarks are right side up - on My preferences and everywhere else. Try rotating your monitor. :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 16:44, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

This is pretty interesting: the checkmarks are upside-down when using Opera, but not when using Firefox or Safari. Thanks, Bbb23, that got me thinking! Bus stop (talk) 16:58, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I just don't buy it. The change has been made because the developers have been asked to by enwiki (on two occasions), not because of their own agenda, Wikimedia's agenda or reinstating an old status quo. Both Bugzillas ([6]) and ([7]) clearly state the request is for default off/opt in. In the second of the bugzillas, Xeno even points out that it has been requested as default off, but is shrugged off.

So, that's the developers ignoring the consensus behind our request. Then, above, when the new feature is announced, it's wrongly stated that consensus was for it to be default on.

Even if I agreed that this is a small issue, it's been badly implemented, treading on consensus.

Moving forward, can someone who knows how to please now put some text into the emails that clarifies that this is a new feature so people receiving it for the first time are less likely to be alarmed. I'll notify the Signpost to get something in their next edition. --Dweller (talk) 16:05, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Dweller - you "just don't buy it"? Excuse me? Did you not read Tim's message and the resulting comments, are you saying he's lying, or are you just plain ignoring it? Alternatively, if he gave another reason somewhere else, I'd love for you to direct me there.

This was a Wikimedia-wide change to Mediawiki. enwiki doesn't have control over either of those things. Ale_Jrb^talk 18:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I've not seen a message from Tim. Where is it? --Dweller (talk) 21:50, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

My god the pointlessness of discussions like this. Can't people go write articles or fix bugs and be productive? Input: The mails were broken, they got fixed. Output: people don't like change, no matter what it is. Get some perspective already, there are so many things to do (like make suggestions on how to improve the information inside the email notifications) yet people seem to want everything perfect in one go. More and more the English Wikipedia community is stifling development instead of fostering it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:46, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem is the often poor quality of communication between community and developers. I did try and address this with the WP:DEVMEMO approach, but it was never going to work if both developers and community didn't get behind it. Rd232 ^talk 22:19, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

@Dweller, [8]. It is also linked on everyone's Watchlist. Killiondude (talk) 21:54, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd not seen it, thanks (it's not linked on my Watchlist, that I can see). I don't disagree with what Tim says - but the Bugzilla discussion does show that Xeno raised our objection to default on, and it was ignored. I have to say I'm surprised by the reaction I've had here. When a functionary even appears to ignore consensus, they're pilloried. Anyway, let's get on with it. The Signpost coverage has been and gone and I missed it four times, even when looking for it three times, so I'll concentrate on working on improving the email itself. I've already suggested making an improvement to the email notification, something that's been largely overlooked in the <shock, horror, he's criticising the developers> reaction. Where and how can I input into it? --Dweller (talk) 09:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The relevant system messages are here: [9]. {{editprotected}} on the talk page is (I think) the standard way to go about getting system messages changed, though changes to something reasonably obvious like this would probably be better discussed somewhere. [stwalkerster|talk] 11:33, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's great that this feature is now available, I'm undecided whether I'll personally leave it on. I do wonder if it would have been possible to notify editors a bit more in advance of it being enabled, so that those who definitely didn't want it could have turned it off early? Rjwilmsi 22:59, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Not as easily as just turning it on. The software has a switch - the feature is either on (notifications possibly sent, user preference option visible), or off (notifications not sent, user preference option invisible). Some software changes would have had to have been made to allow users to enable/disable this setting before allowing mails to be sent - a software change that would add a (at the time) preference option which did absolutely nothing - leading to users getting confused that it wasn't working. Whatever happened, there would have been some suggestions for "improvements" - there's no way to win this one. [stwalkerster|talk] 11:33, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Strong +1 on TheDJ and again, thanks Tim. Dweller, discussions are linked also from bugzilla:5220#c40, and contain answers to the objection you quoted, which by the way was not ignored, see bugzilla:5220#c38. Nemo 18:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment: this (default on) is the right approach for the long tail of occasional editors. The transition was not handled well - the first email sent by the system should have been preceded by a one-off "welcome to WP email notifications" type email, and obviously each email should include details on how to turn it off (which apparently they didn't, but this is now being addressed). In sum, a good idea, with an unnecessarily rocky transition. Let it go, it's done. Rd232 ^talk 22:17, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposed enhancement to email text

I'd welcome some eyes at MediaWiki_talk:Enotif_body#Proposed_amended_version, particularly as a) left out a bit of text b) I am not tech-savvy enough to be confident I've not messed anything around and c) I like working with consensus. Thank you. --Dweller (talk) 09:08, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Viewing all contributions from a range of IPs

Is there a way to view a list of the contributions from a range of IPs? There has been a spate of vandalism from a very wide range of IPs and I am curious to get a sense for the impact of a rangeblock. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 00:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, use the gadget entitled "Allow /16 and /24 – /32 CIDR ranges on Special:Contributions ...". Graham87 05:12, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Some items can not be removed from watchlist

When I try to remove some items from my watchlist, I am unable to do so. I do not have this problem for all entries, but there are about a dozen or so which I can not remove. The problem occurs both when trying to do this via "View and edit watchlist" and also via "Edit raw watchlist". The dialogs tell me that the titles have been removed, but when I view the watchlist, the pages are still there. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 01:02, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I assume you tried removing them multiple times? Have you tried bypassing your cache to see if your browser is just caching the watchlist or not? Or, try visiting the page itself and clicking on the "unwatch button on that page. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:09, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I have tried to remove multiple times over multiple days and have also tried bypassing the cache. It seems that the titles on the watch list are not the "real" titles. When I click on the links they take me to pages that are already not watched. The reason I think they are not the "real" titles is that for all of the pages that I have this problem, the watchlist edit dialogue shows them as red links, but the "real" pages really exist. So, for example, it tells me that the title "Wikipedia:Requested moves" has been removed as a blue link, but in the dialogue, "Wikipedia:Requested moves" still appears as a red link. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 01:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Are edits made to those pages still appearing in your watchlist? Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:21, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

No, edits to the "real" pages do not appear in my watchlist, but the "red" titles still show in the list when I go to edit mode. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 01:42, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Webcitation.org

Anyone know when webcitation.org will be working again? It's currently giving an error stating its full: "Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: No space left on device in /home/webcita/public_html/filemanager.inc.php on line 102".Smallman12q (talk) 01:26, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The Magic 8-Ball says "Ask again later". Delicious carbuncle (talk) 12:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

It's working for me. Perhaps it was a passing problem. If it continues, please post the URL you're using.   Will Beback  talk  20:29, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

trying to correctly inline format a map file with geodata

Hello I am trying to move a map, with geodata creating a dot layer, from an infobox into the article main body. However the standard thumb template is not allowing this. When I put the map syntax from the infobox into text sections, it displays correctly except the text wont wrap so it creates a ton of white space. This is a good map and this article needs it, but right now its only on the talk page because the formatting is so bad. I simply don't know the correct syntax to make it display as a normal thumbnail. Great East Japan Earthquake... 66.220.113.98 (talk) 18:54, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

 – The map has been moved -- John of Reading (talk) 07:52, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Firefox crashes with two column layout

I guess this should really be a Bugzilla issue or a firefox bug but here goes. The page Portal:Mathematics/Suggestions reliably causes Firefox on a Mac to crash (latest versions of both). The problem seems to have something to do with pictures in a two column layout. Safari also seems to have problems with the page placing the pictures incorrectly. Any thoughts?--Salix (talk): 21:25, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Works fine for me in Firefox 4 on a Mac. I don't understand why having pictures in a two-column layout would crash a browser. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:46, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Just crashed for me, using Firefox 4 on a PC. 216.93.212.245 (talk) 22:33, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

So [10] doesn't crash but the latest revision does? Does this always happen or only sometimes? And does it crash in a different browser? Gary King (talk · scripts) 14:25, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I just checked with IE8 and had no problem loading the page, though the last image took a long time to load. 216.93.212.245 (talk) 17:10, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we determined on IRC last night that it's a FF4 thing. FF4 on Win7 and Ubuntu both shut down when trying to open that page. Killiondude (talk) 19:31, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Works for me on FF4 on XP. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 15:23, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Watchlist/edit history not styled properly, page elements conflicting

I'm using monobook on a Mac, and twenty minutes ago, my interface became like this. The logo in the left corner does not appear, the "m" for minor is not bold, the section links are not gray, and the "powered by MediaWiki" image and CC-BY-SA release appears on the side rather than the bottom. None of my scripts work either. Goodvac (talk) 22:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia's CSS/JavaScript did not load properly. Try bypassing your cache. Graham87 04:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Everything's fine now. Goodvac (talk) 21:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Delay in updating Search Index

The Search Index has not been updated for 5 days. These backlogs frustrate us WikiGnomes in our tidying up, and we get a huge backlog of spelling, grammar and other mistakes to correct when it is eventually updated.
Help:Searching#Delay_in_updating_the_search_index says this should be reported here. If there is a better place to report this, please let me know where/how.
Arjayay (talk) 08:17, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

We had some problems with misbehaving servers during the weekend, but now indexing is back on track and should fully update tomorrow morning. --rainman (talk) 10:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Arjayay (talk) 10:47, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

logline-protect css class

Does anyone know where the mw-logline-protect element is defined? I'd like to customize it for myself by changing the color slightly. Thanks
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:45, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

No one knows where this element is defined? Really? I had trouble finding it myself, which is why I'm asking about it here, but... really?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:25, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Not saying that I completely understand the question, but you might want to add these to your stylesheet: div.mw-warning-with-logexcerpt {background: #0000ff;} li.mw-logline-protect {background: #33ff33;}. The first is in MediaWiki:Common.css; the latter inherits from the former. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:09, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

That's what I wanted to know... I think. I was interested in finding out what other similar classes exist as well, though (similar to logline, I guess). The problem is that I can't find mw-logline-protect anywhere. When I search through MediaWiki:Common.css, that string is nowhere to be found. I don't see where the relationship between div.mw-warning-with-logexcerpt and li.mw-logline-protect is established.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:45, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

The original styles for this element are defined in skins/common/shared.css, part of the default MediaWiki install and applied to all skins of MediaWiki. On english wikipedia it is here. But then of course it goes trough the ResourceLoader, compacting and joining it with other elements. You can override it in any of the stylesheets that are loaded AFTER this one (which are all the ones you can edit). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:32, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you!
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:20, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Hang on a sec... I still don't see the mw-logline-protect class defined anywhere. I do see where it was added in 1.14 here (from the release notes, at least), but there's apparently no other documentation about it anywhere. More importantly, there appears to be a whole set of mw-logline elements, which is the sort of information that I was really after. I'm willing to document them myself, if you (or someone) can point me in the direction of the SVN file where $logtype is defined.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:28, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Manual:$wgLogTypes?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:31, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Template Help

• Template:Basketball kit
• Template:Baseball uniform

Both of those templates need tweaked so that they will not spew red-linked files when the parameters given dont have a valid file. [11] was a similar edit in order to prevent spewing errors. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 03:13, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• click the edit tab, copy, paste, save, done!
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:08, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Its not that simple and templates give me headaches. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 13:58, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Gray bar

The gray bar that shows up at the top of the screen previously only showed up every once in a while. Now it has expanded its reach and shows up on every single page (and why not?). What is the magic code to get rid of it? For Monobook. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 12:46, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

You mean the centralnotice (the thing about board elections)? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 15:26, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

No, just a random gray bar that pops up and takes time to load, every time. I know other monobook users have had it appear since those technical "improvements" were made in February. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 22:53, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

No, it's the central notice, you have just hidden it, but the 'hidden' code doesn't seem to fully hide it on Monobook. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:57, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Preferences to suppress rulespam

Are there any more options in "Special:Preferences" to suppress all this extra "rulespam" which appears when someone tries to edit pages? Some of it comes from the "Page notice" blurbs, but the most verbose seems to be "View source" showing a long diatribe. I understand that new users, trying to edit a protected page, need to see the view-source rulespam, perhaps 6 or 7 times during their first week of editing, but I have seen the view-source rulespam "1,001 times" now. And, there's no "hide-this" button. Hence, I thought a preference-option could be set for "advanced user" to suppress most of the rulespam blurbs, and perhaps have "Page notice" read the "advanced-user" preference and reduce the page-notice rulespam, as well. -Wikid77 16:12, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

All those things have css classes and ID's just add the proper one to your common.css/vector.css with display:none; and it's fixed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:56, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Google Chrome inserts an extra line break when adding a comment to a talk page

I asked about this on our Computing Reference Desk and was told this is might be a bug in our JavaScript and that I should post something here. Google Chrome inserts an extra line break when adding a comment to a talk page. For example, when I typed this,[12] I had only one blank line between my post and the previous one. By the time I submitted it, it changed into 2 blank lines which I fixed in my next edit.[13] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:17, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• Most browsers would show an extra line there, when 2 blank lines are placed above a posted reply. The way the wiki-typesetting works (MediaWiki software), by default, is to ignore 1 blank line above a colon-indented line, but treat extra blank lines as if being "<br />". The Wikipedia markup text does NOT act as a "string grammar" and so split lines an more than 1 blank-line might affect the formatted text. However even some browsers have had bugs where they re-formatted text, differently, when the HTML markup was split onto multiple lines, even though, by string-grammar rules, line-breaks should not affect the parsing (and display) of markup text. Remember: wiki-text does not follow string-grammar rules, and it is sensitive to extra blank lines, which change the meaning of the markup text. -Wikid77 17:38, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Automatic edit summary for redirecting pages

Per Martin's suggestion I am posting here to ask whether or not it's possible to have the MediaWiki software detect redirect categorisation templates. The original edit request was here: MediaWiki talk:Autoredircomment#Edit request 2. —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 10:11am • 00:11, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Everything is possible, most isn't implemented, some things are not a good idea. This seems like a lot of complexity for a small problem so I doubt anyone will implement, but bugzilla: is for feature requests. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:54, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

regex problem redux

 Reopened (Previous attempt)

Weeks ago, I and others invested time confirming that a November 2008 addition to the English language spam blacklist, in response to "markets.com" spam by 98.219.81.190, had unintended side-effects. After consulting with the admin who had introduced the regex for the original problem, it was confirmed that the regex needed to change.

An editor who is part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam tried repeatedly to fix the problem, with no success. With the help of http://regexpal.com/ I came up with an idea, but my suggested didn't work. There have been other suggestions as well, but no one has come up with the fix yet. I brought the problem up at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#Discussion hoping for advice I could pass along to those watching MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#Troubleshooting_and_problems, but no one at meta bothered to comment. So I am hoping the village pump can help. Feel free to comment here or at MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist; I'll be watching both. Thank you in advance. 67.101.5.242 (talk) 05:52, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Different versions of same article appearing

Hi. I am hoping you can assist me with a question from my talk page that I have been unable to answer, in particular the bolded part.

On 17 May 2011, I made five edits to the Les Misérables page under the library IP 205.189.194.208. I cannot recall whether they got through the first time (I believe they got rejected the first time or it took a while to save) but according to the page's history, they got through. On May 18th, I did three edits (as you described above) under 170.170.59.138. From what I recall, they also had problems or took a while to save, but once again according to the history, they got through. Now, if I type the URL with the accent and no underscore(Les Misérables), it shows the updated page, but when I type the title without the accent (Les_Miserables), it shows a previous version. I also type it with the accent and underscore (Les_Misérables) and it shows another earlier version. It's only when I click on "Edit" and then click on "Save Page" that the recent edits show up on all versions of the title ( a null edit). Even just clicking on "Edit" and reading the text on the edit page itself, the updated text is present. But when I delete my cache/browsing history, the "Les_Miserables" and "Les_Misérables" versions goes back to a previous page. Also on your talk page (this page), when my browsing history is clear (or cleared), the IP 170.170.59.138 on May 20 shows up in your page history, but not the question I posted. It even says at the bottom of the page "This page was last modified on 16 May 2011 at 02:17." Once again, when I click "Edit/View Source" and then click "Save Page" that the page and page history is fully updated, and the correct date and time of modification is stated. As you can see in this page's history, I did delete the question a few times. I even tried another IP (70.25.99.236) and it also gives the same problem. 170.170.59.138 (talk)

Thank you. Jevansen (talk) 05:58, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

For 'readers'/google, redirects in wikipedia are not real redirects. They are more like copies of the same content with another title. As such when one article is refreshed in the cache, not necessarily all alternative copies are updated at the same time, often leaving you with entry points where outdated content is presented to IP users. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:50, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Reference desk pages still broken

Hi, there are still ongoing problems with frequent stale pages (often days old) at the Reference Desk. Everything is badly broken and urgently needs looking at, IMO. These problems have been outstanding for months, with no sign of anything being done. See, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Still_broken

If anyone can do anything to escalate this, it would be greatly appreciated.

86.183.0.105 (talk) 11:43, 21 May 2011 (UTC)