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 (How to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported to securitywikimedia.org.

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

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Problem displaying wikipedia content in iPad application

I'm seeing Wikipedia mobile content not sized correctly when displayed within iPad apps using UIWebView. It is as though the mobile version has the page width fixed to the size of the iPad device, not the actual view it is displayed in. This is what I'm seeing: [1] This is what I want to see: [2] This used to work correctly. I suspect Wikipedia has become smarter in detecting it is displaying on an iPad and adjusting the frame size assuming it is being displayed with the iPad Safari browser. Is there any way to specify the content width along the lines of http://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jupiter&device-width=320.0 (which doesn't work by the way)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.87.55.100 (talk) 02:03, 22 February 2012

Issues arising from rollout of mediawiki 1.19

Could you please record any issues with Wikipedia since the rollout of 1.19 here, so that we can keep them all in one place, please. Thanks in advance,  BarkingFish  00:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Any way to get the green back in diffs?

Resolved

I see the new diff system was implamented, possibly in the last few minutes. It's nice being able to see tiny changes better but I really like the old green color of the right column a lot better as it's much easier to read. Any way to get it back? I assume it'd have to be css but if so, then so be it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

If you want to change only the background color of the right column, add the following code (adapted from MediaWiki:Gadget-ClassicDiff.css, which should be implemented as a gadget soon) to your monobook.css:

td.diff-addedline { background: #CFC; }

Goodvac (talk) 23:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to do anything. Is it the right color? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:30, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

My mistake. I've modified the code. Goodvac (talk) 01:52, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks anyway. I'll note it if it changes back. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

The diff color change has been reverted, and the reversion has been synchronized to the Wikimedia servers. The yellow/green coloring should be back now. PleaseStand (talk) 02:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

HistoryNumDiff problem...

Resolved

I assume the change in colors in diffs has broken this somehow. I have HistoryNumDiff enabled in my preferences and now it's showing the changes double, like so:

• (cur | prev) 22:58, 29 February 2012‎ The Bushranger (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (+234) (+234)‎ . . (→‎Unfounded sanction and possible admin tools abuse: arbchive) (undo)

...I can haz fix plz? Kthx. Just as a note, in the watchlist the HistoryNumDiff displays fine, it's only in page histories where it's redundantly redundant. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:25, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The gadget HistoryNumDiff adds the net diff change to the history. MediaWiki 1.19 has just been rolled out to the English Wikipedia and has this feature built in (see mw:Special:Code/MediaWiki/111800). I would recommend disabling HistoryNumDiff in your gadgets. Goodvac (talk) 23:37, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Aha, so now we can see total size and change. Nifty. And that did the trick! - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 00:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I've had an issue with this, I have always had HistoryNumDiff unchecked in my preferences, but suddendly today, coninciding with this apparent software change, now it has started appearing without having checked it. When I check the option, the HistoryNumDiff figures appear in duplicate, while unchecked it appears only once; there appears to be no way to get it to sling its hook and shove off. Any suggestions on how to get it to vanish, not to appear once, twice, or once again, but no appearences at all? Kyteto (talk) 01:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.19 automatically includes the net diff change and the total bytes listed in the history. If you want to get rid of the net diff change, add the following to your skin.css:

.action-history .mw-plusminus-pos, .action-history .mw-plusminus-neg, .action-history .mw-plusminus-null { display: none; }

Goodvac (talk) 01:47, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the best thing would be to rewrite HistoryNumDiff to provide a "±" switch between size and dif size. — AlexSm 01:53, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Well I've pasted that line of code at the location provided, I'll wait and see if it makes a difference, no change so far even with a cleared cache. But doesn't it suggest that there's a deeper flaw, what could be the possible point of 'doubling up' on the figure? And shouldn't the GUI box to switch off feature A...actually switch off feature A, rather than turn on and off a redundant/pointless duplicate? If that how it's supposed to work/is it working like that for other people/am I simply stupid? Kyteto (talk) 03:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Add the code to your common.css. The link above was supposed to "redirect" to your monobook/vector.css file (not sure why it did not happen), your User:Kyteto/skin.css is not executed by MediaWiki. — AlexSm 03:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Please remove the gadget from MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition and then mark this as resolved. — AlexSm 03:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Done. Killiondude (talk) 06:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Function akeytt disappeared

Apparently there was a function named akeytt() in the site javascript, which has disappeared. I had to delete a call to it from one of my user scripts to make things work again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

User:Animum/easyblock.js is one commonly used script that calls the function, and I suspect that it is the cause of a report that one of my scripts was not working. It took me a while to identify it as a problematic script because it does nothing for non-admins like me. PleaseStand (talk) 02:02, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T35836

The function akeytt is deprecated since MW 1.17 if I remember correctly.

See mw:ResourceLoader/JavaScript Deprecations#wikibits.js and watch bugzilla:33836. Helder 02:20, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually akeytt has been deprecated a little longer, since 2009. See also mw:RL/MGU#ta[] Tooltip and Accesskeys. Back then this tooltip/accesskey feature has been integrated into core MediaWiki for all wikis to use and to enjoy localization as well.

Since MediaWiki 1.16 (or earlier) we've replaced the deprecated variables (the global ta object and akeytt function) with dummies to avoid scripts from throwing exceptions for undefined variables. After 3 versions they were eventually removed in MediaWiki 1.19. Note that the errors appearing for scripts still using them are not breakages of functionality. The scripts currently referring to ta and akeytt haven't done anything since 2009.

The addPortletLink function takes a parameter for 'tooltip' and 'accesskey' for scripts that add new links and want to use tooltips and/or accesskeys. To modify the default tooltips and accesskeys for portlet links outputted by default (e.g. "What links here", "My preferences", "View history" etc.) change the interface messages in the MediaWiki-namespace (tooltips / accesskeys. Krinkle (talk) 03:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... it does seem a lot of scripts still reference it. Mark Hurd (talk)

Edit section for old revisions

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36841

I'm not 100% sure if this is due to MW1.19, but I think it might be. Anyway, when I'm looking at an old revision of a page there are edit section links available, however when I click on one it takes me to editing the same numbered section, but of the current revision, not the old revision that I was looking at (does that make sense?). So, is this a new thing or has it always been like that? Jenks24 (talk) 01:37, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

It's new. It occurs for all sections on all pages I tested but an example can be good anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&oldid=478913156#Article_counter currently has a section edit link saying http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&action=edit&section=50. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:23, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah, I think the proper behavior is to not have section edit links there. You should file a bug about this at <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org>. If you need any help filing a bug, let me know. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:52, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Filed a bug. Use "Enable tracking bugs on Bugzilla ..." in Gadgets to get it to get better tracking here. -- ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 04:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Mark. Jenks24 (talk) 10:39, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

See also bug 33671. Helder 12:23, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

HTML validation

We are now up to four endemic HTML validation errors per page. See W3C markup validation for User:Gadget850/blank for the validation of a blank page.

• there is no attribute "class"
• end tag for "ul" which is not finished; two instances
• value of attribute "dir" cannot be "auto"; must be one of "ltr", "rtl"

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:28, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Please file a bug about this: <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/>. I'd offer to do it for you, but I don't want to mess up any details. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the second bullet (about <ul>) is covered by bugzilla:24500, bugzilla:25366, and bugzilla:23026.

Roan thinks the other two are probably also issues with not using HTML5 yet, but you can file bugs if you'd like. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:17, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

This is indeed just a note in the validation report. The HTML5 standard does allow it, and afaik browsers never had a problem with it. These empty portlets are also (albeit being invisible anyway) additionally hidden through CSS so screenreaders shouldn't have an issue with them either (note that this is not new in MediaWiki 1.19). Krinkle (talk) 03:32, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

You are right: these error are not detected if Doctype is set to HTML5. But three different errors are shown. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:52, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Setting MediaWiki to HTML5 does a bit more than only changing the doctype, but that still leaves one minor error result of Mediawiki in HTML5. The meta is actually only a marker, I think it will be removed in 1.20. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

FYI: MediaWiki offers a Special:BlankPage by default =) Helder 12:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I seem to recall a very similar problem just over a year ago (1.17), but at the time there were three errors: the <html class=> and the two </ul>. I remember commenting that you couldn't use a class= attribute until some classes had been defined, and that classes can't be defined earlier that the <head>...</head> section, which is always enclosed by <html>...</html> and so any classes are invisible to the <html> tag.. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:33, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

It's valid in HTML5 though. It also does have a function, it's used by a javascript that (in theory) will actually run before the body might be in the dom model. Anyway that is something that have to be further tested, but the ResourceLoader is complicated enough, i'm not touching it ever :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist time (in the box area) shows UTC

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36835

While the times in the list itself is fine, the part in the box (following "in the last 72 hours, as of") shows UTC time now. I have to hope this is a bug, not a feature. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks like a bug. Please file a bug in Bugzilla: <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org>. If you need any help, let me know. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:04, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Filed a bug. Use "Enable tracking bugs on Bugzilla ..." in Gadgets to get it to get better tracking here. -- ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 03:26, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Bug fixed. Will deploy later on Hashar (talk) 12:07, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I have deployed the bug fix. Please note that on enwiki UTC is intentional, see the MediaWiki:Wlnote. Any sysop can replace it with the default MediaWiki message by just deleting that article. Unlikely I will come back here, so please follow up on Template:Bug Hashar (talk) 12:51, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Didn't it always show UTC time? But I've taken Hashar's suggestion and deleted the message to use the MediaWiki default that uses the users local time. Anomie⚔ 23:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

It most certainly did not use UTC time. I have to wonder why the hell it'd be "intentional" on enwiki. I've been using it ever since I started using my watchlist to see when I last checked it, based on my own time. I see it's be half fixed, as it now appears AFTER the date instead of before. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:23, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I found it! In 1.18, the watchlist used MediaWiki:rcnote for time periods over 1 day, and that message behaves just as you describe. In r102284 the watchlist was changed to use MediaWiki:wlnote only; you may also notice that the watchlist is now displaying "in the last 72 hours" rather than "in the last 3 days". Anomie⚔ 04:21, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah it seems to be normal now, outside the 72 hours instead of 3 days (why the change? Not a huge deal though). On a side note I see the missing edit button when viewing diffs issue has finally been taken care of as well. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 05:03, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Broken script

Resolved

User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css, at least, is no longer working since the change. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

"No longer working" isn't very descriptive. What exactly isn't working? Where are you importing this? What browser are you using? What behavior do you expect? --MZMcBride (talk) 03:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I had used using('mw.util', ...) instead of using('mediawiki.util', ...). Script is fixed now. Anomie⚔ 03:43, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I didn't give more details because "everything" wasn't working and "normal" was the expected behavior. ;) But it's fixed now. :) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:53, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Any way to remove characters added / removed from Contributions pages?

It's super unsightly and makes the article titles, the far more important item, form a ragged edge. Especially for lists of my own contributions, I do not care how much I added or removed; I wanted to be reminded of what pages I've been looking at lately. Is there a way to hide them just from Contributions pages? Or, at the very least, align them in their own columns, and return to aligning all the titles (perhaps with a "minor" marker) together? SnowFire (talk) 03:07, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, might be a reasonable idea for a JavaScript gadget (under "Gadgets" section of Special:Preferences). Requests for new gadgets go... somewhere. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:19, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals or Wikipedia_talk:Gadget is where requests go according to MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition -- ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 03:29, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

You can also add the code .mw-special-Contributions .mw-plusminus-pos, .mw-special-Contributions .mw-plusminus-neg, .mw-special-Contributions .mw-plusminus-null { display: none; } to your skin.css page to hide them, though the dots around the count and a space appear where it would be. - Purplewowies (talk) 03:35, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

That works. Thanks a lot. Truthkeeper (talk) 04:11, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, not that familiar with skin.css or the required format. Do I need to create a file called skin.css (in addition to monobook.js), or should it be monobook.css (which is what appeared when I clicked the link above)? Also, does the CSS code need to spread across several lines, or entered on one line?

Like SnowFire, I don't like the bytes changed disturbing the alignment of the article names. Could they be moved to the end of the line? Astronaut (talk) 11:47, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

The link Special:MyPage/skin.css is to a special page that should redirect within a second or two, and for you it ends up at User:Astronaut/monobook.css, because you have MonoBook set as current skin in Preferences → Appearance. You can put the code in Special:MyPage/common.css (which for you should redirect to User:Astronaut/common.css), and it should then continue to work should you decide to change skin.

Yes, it can go all on one line, or you can use a few line breaks instead of some or more of the spaces:

.mw-special-Contributions .mw-plusminus-pos,
.mw-special-Contributions .mw-plusminus-neg,
.mw-special-Contributions .mw-plusminus-null {
  display: none;
}

--Redrose64 (talk) 14:18, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

That works, thanks. Astronaut (talk) 13:11, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Missing toolbar buttons?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T33511

Is anyone having issues with the older toolbar? When I go to the edit window, sometimes some of the buttons are missing. The only button that has appeared every time is the "cite" button (which, when I'm having this problem, is often the only button to come up). This just started happening tonight. I'm using IE8. - Purplewowies (talk) 03:41, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

IE8 "developer tool" shows some errors in MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js (on the line document.getElementById('citeselect').appendChild) so that might be the reason. — AlexSm 04:02, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

This is a known issue. Use "Enable tracking bugs on Bugzilla ..." in Gadgets to get it to get better tracking here. -- ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 04:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

So... is there a way to fix this other than refreshing a couple times? - Purplewowies (talk) 18:18, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

There is currently no fix, other than disabling the ref toolbar, or refreshing till it works. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:35, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

This is not limited to IE. I'm using Firefox (versions 9 and 10, on different machines). I'm consistently seeing only about half of the buttons on the older toolbar. --Orlady (talk) 03:50, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I've had it on various versions of Safari for more than a year. The best thing to do is to chose "show edit toolbar" in preferences and swap out the old toolbar. Truthkeeper (talk) 04:00, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Revert button on move page feature doesn't work

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36887

Firstly, I don't really like the new namespace selector in the move page function. I don't see the benefit of it and it'll confuse newer users who don't know what a namespace is. However a more serious issue is that the revert button in the move page feature doesn't work at all; it produces a "No such target page" error message. I just tried it at User:Graham87/test, but it also didn't work at User:Malcolm Farmer, where I was trying to use the move page feature to import old edits from the Nostalgia Wikipedia. Graham87 05:59, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

The change was necessary to fix bug 29454 and the reasons are explained on rev:110209.

See also bug 34848. Helder 13:07, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Since you have admin flag at least you could remove the link from MediaWiki:Movepage-moved until someone suggests a solution. — AlexSm 15:33, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 15:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I've reported it as bug 34887. Graham87 07:34, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this error is related to the new namespace selector because the (old) url parameter for full title still works fine (example) Krinkle (talk) 00:53, 12 March 2012 (UTC).

I've added some additional test results and information to bugzilla:34887. New title: "$3 and $4 are not being substituted in {{urlencode:}} in message "movepage-moved"". Krinkle (talk) 01:49, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Contributions lists for truncated IP addresses don't work anymore

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36873

The contributions lists for truncated IP addresses used in old versions of Wikipedia's software (e.g. 62.253.64.xxx, which made this edit that I just imported to Malcolm Farmer's user page), and 11.105, which is used as an example at User:0, do not come up with any contributions. This is also true in the former case at the Nostalgia Wikipedia. Interestingly, the deleted contribs lists for these addresses come up fine. Graham87 05:59, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Popups (which I assume work via AJAX API calls) provide the full list, which is suggestive of a problem with Special:Contributions itself rather than the underlying functionality. But that would be weird in a sense, because you'd have thought it was a problem handling "unusual" usernames in general. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 10:32, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Filed in bugzilla —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Incredible slowness

Resolved

Is it always going to be 5 times slower than the old software or will the speed eventually increase? DrKiernan (talk) 10:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? It's not being any slower for me. But yes, it's only something to worry about if it lasts. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 10:43, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'll assume it's an coincidental issue for the moment. DrKiernan (talk) 13:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit conflicts: Not the new text at all

Hey all. I was wondering if someone could replicate an edit conflict I just had, where I swear the intervening edit didn't display on the page at all, so when I copied my addition from the bottom box to the top, I obliterated it. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 10:43, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Can't replicate, but a very similar thing happened to me a few days ago. Ended up making a right old mess what with edit conflicts. Astronaut (talk) 11:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

When I get an edit conflict, I don't attempt to amend the upper window; instead I mark and copy my new post, back out and edit the section again, paste in my new text and save (as I advised to somebody else on 26 January 2012). --Redrose64 (talk) 14:01, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, well either way it's clearly defective to have diffs that claim to display one thing but actually display another (thanks for restoring the other edit I managed to lose, btw). - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]}

Editing old revisions: Wrong "changes"

Resolved

When editing an old revision (such as this) and checking the changes to the current revision via "Show changes", what is shown is the changes to the old revision, not to the current revision as claimed. Huon (talk) 15:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

== Unexpected results using [Show changes] ==

Profile

• Chrome 16.0.912.63 m
• Monobook

Upon logging in for today's session, I noticed a number of stylistic changes while editing... most are welcome. When editing an article from an older page-version however, the [Show changes] button no longer shows the live-dif. Is this something that can be tweaked?  -- WikHead (talk) 13:58, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it was deliberate change or not but for now you can use my script User:Js/ajaxPreview that still shows changes compared to the current version. — AlexSm 16:43, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Fixed (reverted to old behavior) and deployed live: bugzilla:34849. — AlexSm 20:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Short Pages report's talk page link

Resolved

The changes to the Short Pages report are quite awesome IMHO. But I do have one, in comparison minor, complaint. The report has lost it's header. The header, among other things, gave a link to the report's talk page. Now, there's no way to get from the report to its talk page. An example of how this header used to look can be seen on some of the other special reports like Special:DoubleRedirects. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:39, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the "header" was before but right now ?uselang=qqx points the the message MediaWiki:Shortpages-summary. — AlexSm 15:45, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

So, in theory, if I create a new "header" at the link you gave, it should display at the top of the report? That would work out nice enough, I would think. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:51, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

And a quick test shows that it does indeed work. I'll get on constructing at least a basic header for the report. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:56, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

And I have added a similar new header for the Long Pages report, which appears to have been updated similarly to the Short Pages report. - TexasAndroid (talk) 16:07, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Was the old header the rather generic one from Mediawiki:perfcached? Anomie⚔ 23:37, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Close. At a minimum I remember that it also had the timestamp of the last generation of the cached version, which I do not see on that generic one. Unfortunately, beyond that and it linking to the talk page, I do not remember exactly what was on it. - TexasAndroid (talk) 01:58, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Large template not transcluding

Not sure if this is a 1.19 issue or what, but if you go to WP:AFC/S, you'll notice there is a link to Template:AFC statistics. If you look in the wikicode, however, you'll see that it should be transcluded. The template is quite large, not sure if that has something to do with it. —SW— ^spout 15:46, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Likely. On the discussion for one of the PC RFCs that are being set up, there was talk that there is a hard limit to transclusion. I'll see if I can find the conversation. - TexasAndroid (talk) 18:51, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

And here's the link from the mentioned discussion, to the page that'll be useful, hopefully. Wikipedia:Template limits#Post-expand include size - TexasAndroid (talk) 18:55, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Moving saves username in edit summary

Looks like message MediaWiki:Logentry-move-move (and its variants) is now used both for logs and for history/contribs so pagemoves summaries are recorded like "U moved page A to B: some reason" (example). I think the username is really unnecessary in the edit summary, this does not go well with WP:Changing username and (probably) leaves less space for user added comment. — AlexSm 17:16, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

===Page move text summary===

I noticed that since the 1.19 deployment, the move summary is now longer. Prior to the update, move summaries used "moved <Oldname> to <Newname>: <reason for the move>". Since the update was deployed, the move summaries now use "<Username> moved page <Oldname> to <Newname>: <reason for the move>". With the old method, the username is displayed in the logs and in the diff, just not in the edit summary. With the new method, the username is displayed in the logs, the diff, and in the edit summary. By forcing the extra <Username> moved page, it is further limiting the move rationale. Is it possible to use the old edit summary? Alpha_Quadrant (talk)

In 1.18, it looks like moving used MediaWiki:1movedto2 / MediaWiki:1movedto2 redir for the edit summary and MediaWiki:logentry-move-move / MediaWiki:logentry-move-move redir for the log message. In r96847, it was changed to use MediaWiki:logentry-move-move / MediaWiki:logentry-move-move redir for both. And it doesn't seem that we can remove the username from that without also removing it from Special:Log. So it looks like the only solution is to file a bug requesting the messages be re-separated. Anomie⚔ 13:15, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Alredy done: bugzilla:34961. Jon Harald Søby (talk) 13:37, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Edit conflicts not being detected

I've experienced two incidents in which an edit conflict occurred, but the second user was not alerted to the conflict and wrote over the first change. This seems to happen when the one user is editing the whole page and the other is editing just one section. The first incident involved a series of edits to Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Sharks between 15:38 and 17:00 on 1 March -- I was editing a section of the article and the other user was editing the whole article, but for some time we weren't aware that we were edit-conflicting. In the second instance, my edit was to the whole page and the subsequent user's edit was to one section of the page. Ironically, in that second instance, the other user and I also conflicted on a talk page discussion of the item, but on the talk page we were both editing the same section, and I (as the second user) was alerted to the conflict. --Orlady (talk) 03:45, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T13922

I have updated an ancient Bugzilla report (interestingly, one originally submitted by me) to include this new issue. --Orlady (talk) 04:12, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Diff size differences in user contributions

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36981

I'm confident that this edit did not add 51,802 character and likewise I'm confident that this edit did not add 1,646 characters, both of which are currently being reported by my contributions (bottom of list). Either there's something counter-intuitive about what these numbers mean or there's a bug. Dpmuk (talk) 05:52, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Wow, the diff sizes for your contributions towards the bottom are totally borked. For this edit where you removed text, the diff size is +9,183! If you look at the diff from the history view, by itself, the size is still +9,183, but with a few other entries, the size is correct (-242). Someone should file a bug for this. Goodvac (talk) 06:05, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Never reported a bug before but now I've confirmed it's not me being an idiot I'm happy to do so. Would I be right in thinking mediawiki as the product and history/diffs as the component is the best place for this? Dpmuk (talk) 06:15, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I've never filed a bug either, so I wouldn't know the process. ;) After reading mw:Bugzilla#Reporting a bug, I think you're right about the product and component.
Also noting here that these inaccurate diff changes are occurring on older edits. The same phenomenon is visible at my earliest contributions. For example, this was a +4,250. Goodvac (talk) 06:27, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Reported. Hope I've done it right. Dpmuk (talk) 06:44, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what dates produce this behavior, but my earliest edits circa August 2010 seem correct. These ones appear ~2007. Chris857 (talk) 04:21, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I looked at some from early 2008: +23,509, +2,054, etc. But 12 April 2008 and after look alright. And it looks like somewhere in April 2008 is where the diff sizes become correct. This theory holds up after looking at Dpmuk's contributions: the 27 March 2008 edit has a wrong diff count, but by 20 April 2008, they're correct. Goodvac (talk) 04:36, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Looking at this, it seems that all borked values are positive, and they appear to match closely or identically to page size. Using User:Imzadi1979's history (as mine doesn't go back long enough), bounds of dates seem to be October 5, 2007 - April 7, 2008. It isn't absolute, as this edit on October 18, which is in that range, is negative and correct. Chris857 (talk) 04:43, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think that in the borked range, not all of the diff sizes will be incorrect, just some of them. Goodvac (talk) 05:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Diff size differences when filtering by tag

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36978

Check the recent history of Milton Keynes. In the usual history listing you can see an edit 30 minutes ago that removed 63,490 bytes and is tagged as "possible vandalism". OK so far. Now copy that tag into the "Tag filter" field and redisplay. The filtered history listing claims that the same edit added 6,881 bytes. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:37, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I've added this to the bug about page diffs. Basically it's not looking back to find the previous revision, but simply assuming there wasn't one, and it is a page creation. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 23:24, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

And moved into a separate bug. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 01:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Script issue

I sporadically get a pop-up that says (I'm paraphrasing) that a script may have (or has) stopped running, and it asks me if I want to stop the script. Only happens on Wikipedia, and just since the rollout. I use Windows XP and my browser is Firefox 3.6.27 Maile66 (talk) 22:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I also use XP and FF 3.6.27. The message is from Firefox, and is not necessarily related to Wikipedia: in Tools → Options → Privacy, I have "Remember my browsing history for at least" set to 91 days. The history does get very long, so periodically I open it (Ctrl+H), select View → by site, and zap those sites which I'm not interested in going back to (right click, select "Delete"). If I had visited a lot of pages in that site, then while zapping, it might throw the error "Warning: Unresponsive script A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete." which I believe is the one that you describe. I always go for "Continue", and it seems to complete OK. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:07, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

That's the exact message, all right. Except I have my browsing history set to only 10 days. I'll try cleaning out my history.Maile66 (talk) 00:32, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup category population

Can someone explain why Category:All articles with trivia sections is empty, but there are over 200 articles in the by-month subcats of Category:Articles with trivia sections? Shouldn't the former include all of the articles in the latter? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:12, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it should. In {{trivia}}, the code {{DMCA|Articles with trivia sections|from|{{{date|}}}}} should be changed to {{DMCA|Articles with trivia sections|from|{{{date|}}}|All articles with trivia sections}}. The bolded part is parameter 4 of {{DMCA}}. Goodvac (talk) 23:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

It was added back when the category was created, and was removed at the beginning of the year. — Bility (talk) 23:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I've notified Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs) of this thread. Goodvac (talk) 23:47, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes I reverted Drilnoth's bold adding of the category. We have enough of these categories as it is, they clutter the hidden category list, see picture. Rich Farmbrough, 09:38, 2 March 2012 (UTC).

...in some extreme cases, but most articles have only two or four of these (and they are hidden for a reason). Removing some of the excessive tagging from such pages is more helpful than removing the cat from all of them. Fram (talk) 12:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, do you patrol problematic categories? Do you even have the display of hidden categories turned on? Working with these categories day in, day out, the multiplication of categories is a problem, and the reasons for having "all" categories are largely or entirely obsolete. Rich Farmbrough, 13:52, 2 March 2012 (UTC).

Yes I do, and yes I have. That you don't have a use for these "all" categories doesn't mean that they are not needed or useful for other people. Fram (talk) 14:46, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I've undone the removal of the "all" category, until there is actual consensus that it isn't wanted. Fram (talk) 07:58, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Likewise I undid the addition of the "all" category until there was consensus that it was wanted. It's supposed to be BRD, not BRRD. Rich Farmbrough, 13:52, 2 March 2012 (UTC).

BRD hardly applies anymore when you revert a change that's over two years old (from October 2009) ... I presume you somehow missed this one when you removed the same type of "all" cat from many other maintenance categories in October 2010, and got swiftly reverted then? If you want some precedent to show that there is no consensus for your actions, you can check two CfD's you participated in, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 December 12#Category:All articles with unsourced statements and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 December 13#Category:All articles to be expanded. You've had the "D" part of BRD already, and it didn't turn out in your favor. Fram (talk) 14:46, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

You can presume what you like, and doubtless will. The reasons you gave for keeping them then are as wrong now (or more so). Rich Farmbrough, 20:09, 3 March 2012 (UTC).

These still don't add up - 102 pages in the "all" category, but the by-months add up to 173. I've tried purging the cache and the numbers stay the same. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:54, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Two reasons - (i) if an article has two {{Trivia}} with different dates, it will appear in two by-month categories but will be in Category:All articles with trivia sections just once; (ii) {{multiple issues|trivia=date}} doesn't populate Category:All articles with trivia sections but only the by-month cat. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:16, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

File Subpages

Just wondering, is there a reason why the File namespace doesn't allow subpages?--Octify27 (talk) 00:28, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

The developers probably saw no reason for them to have subpages. They are files, after all, not pages of content. This subsequently allows files to have slashes in their names if necessary; I don't know exactly how common that is, though. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:18, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh, maybe there's a way to override it then?--Octify27 (talk) 01:24, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

It's set with mw:Manual:$wgNamespacesWithSubpages. Wikipedia's setting is in http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. It requires a system administrator (not the same as a Wikipedia administrator) to change. File talk allows subpages. Change requests can be made at bugzilla: but I see no reason to allow it for File. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:45, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Alright, cool, I was just wondering why that wouldn't work, but it's no big deal. :P Thank you!--Octify27 (talk) 01:51, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Slashes cannot be part of a filename because they separate directories from filenames. So, if an image were named File:Foo/bar.jpg this would actually be a file named bar.jpg residing in a directory named Foo. You can see how Mediawiki uses directories to manage files by right-clicking on any exposed image and selecting "Copy Image Location". Then paste that into any plain text editor (such as a Wikipedia edit window). You might get something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Kate_Webster_filtered.jpg/77px-Kate_Webster_filtered.jpg - here, 77px-Kate_Webster_filtered.jpg is the filename, http://upload.wikimedia.org/ is the base URL, and wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Kate_Webster_filtered.jpg/ is a chain of six directories, the path through the directory structure. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:33, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Removing a page from the search box

Is it possible to remove a page from the search box? For example, when you type something into the search box several options are shown to the page that you may be looking for, is it possible for a page to be 'invisible' per se? Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 02:24, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I really doubt it. What's the point of making secret pages? Sounds like something that could be easily abused. Gary King (talk · scripts) 03:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

There's the behavior switch "magic word" __NOINDEX__, intended to prevent search engines from indexing a page. But I don't know whether it affects Wiki's own search results. — Richardguk (talk) 04:31, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm familiar with __NOINDEX__. I'm just asking because users have pages like twinkleoptions.js and huggle.css and people could mess up the code by searching it up in the search box. Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 18:02, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Not sure how that could happen? You can't edit another person's .js and .css pages, only your own. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:45, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Really? Okay. Thanks :) Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 21:19, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

How Are Non-Logged-In Users Able to Make Any Edits

How in the world can users that aren't logged in able to make any edits? When I'm not logged in, I don't see any way to make any kind of edits (read "View source"). Thanks! Allen (talk) 03:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

You are only supposed to see "View source" on the relatively few protected pages. Here is a random unprotected article: Jashwant Singh. I see "Edit" when I log out. There once was a bug where unregistered users sometimes saw "View source" on unprotected pages. They could click it and edit the page anyway, but I haven't seen reports of this bug in a long time. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Could you be editing from a softblocked IP (i.e. school)? — Train2104 (talk • contribs) 00:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

What no redirect button?

The redirect button appears to have disappeard from the list of buttons above the edit window. Can we have it back please? Mjroots (talk) 05:15, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

It's there for me, are you using the new, or the 'old' edit toolbar ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:37, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Click Advanced and then the right-pointing arrow. It's also among the options when you select Wiki markup in the drop down box below Save page. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:38, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I use the old toolbar, and the redirect button indeed disappeared after the upgrade to 1.19. But just a few hours ago, it reappeared. Goodvac (talk) 05:52, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

When I've got the edit window open, there is no "advanced" feature that I can see. Where should I be looking. My browser is Firefox, BTW. I've not changed any settings, so I don't know which toolbar I'm using. *sigh* If it ain't broken... Mjroots (talk) 06:58, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Then you must be using the old toolbar, which looks like this.
When I enter the editing mode, the redirect button does not appear; when I hard-reload the page, then it appears. To see the redirect button, I have to hard-reload every time I go to an edit window, so there is something broken, but I don't know what. Goodvac (talk) 07:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

That's the toolbar I'm familiar with, but I've lost everything after the horizontal line button. Mjroots (talk) 11:01, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it is Bug 31511? Helder 11:11, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be related to #Missing toolbar buttons? further up among the MW 1.19 bug list. Anyway, the straight row of 23 buttons is RefToolbar 1.0, which doesn't have the "Advanced" thing. That is in refToolbar 2.0: you can see which you have, and see how to switch between them, by checking these features. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:45, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I've now turned on the 2.0 version, and got the redirect button back. That doesn't mean that the original issue raised has been fixed though, Mjroots (talk) 17:18, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Über slow deletion

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36717

Currently hitting the delete key on the image does not return anything for over 20-30 seconds, often resulting in "wikimedia foundation error..." The tech details are oft similar to "Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Logo_FEPLP.jpg&action=delete, from 208.80.154.8 via cp1007.eqiad.wmnet (squid/2.7.STABLE9) to 10.64.0.140 (10.64.0.140) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:09:30 GMT". The 208.80 is familiar, but the 10.64 isn't (Durham, NC?). A ping from me to 208.80 is consistently 99ms, so it doesn't seem to be a timeout from this end. Skier Dude (talk) 06:17, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks like that one has already been reported by a commons admin. Adding your comment there. -- ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 18:27, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Visited external links are not changing to purple

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36901

Would someone find out what's going on at Wikipedia:Help desk#HOW TO CHANGE WIKIPEDIA'S FONT COLOR SETTING? Section 2? Thanks, Goodvac (talk) 07:55, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the problem, what skin are you using ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:36, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah wait, you want to change it yourself. The advice on Wikipedia:Link_color#Making_links_appear_a_different_color_just_for_you is no longer up to date. The stylesheet includes a more specific definition now, so you now need to add ".mw-body" for all the statements with a: or a. otherwise they won't take affect. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:40, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

As I said (just a moment ago, after you said this), I'm trying to change it for myself because it seems that the default for clicked and unclicked has now become the same color. See the "Color doesn't change for links when I visit them; is this an update-related problem?" section above, which I posted recently; I went to the Help Desk because that other thread has been completely ignored here. Skin is Monobook. Nyttend (talk) 13:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm using Monobook, but the default CSS already has .mw-body a.external:visited{color:#636; }, which should take care of it. The problem is it isn't working, even if I add the same code to my monobook.css. Goodvac (talk) 18:50, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, maybe the problem is specific to Monobook. If I go on Meta, where I use Monobook, clicked external links do not change color. On other wikis, such as French, where I have the default Vector, the links do change. Goodvac (talk) 18:54, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

This is indeed a monobook issue. Investigating and reporting. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:34, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Goodvac (talk) 19:35, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

"Jump to" accessibility links have vanished from the "Chick" skin?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36893

I am using the ‘Chick’ skin, and with this skin every Wikipedia page used to have two links ‘Jump to: navigation, search’ at the top. I don't see these links anymore, and I cannot make them to appear even by explicitly setting the option ‘Enable "jump to" accessibility links’ in my preferences. (For a description of this option see meta:Help:Preferences#Advanced_options.) I have tried this with Firefox 10.0.2 and Internet Explorer 9. I have cleared the browser cache, with no change. Is this something that was removed with the recent rollout of MediaWiki 1.19? — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 08:54, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't seem that was intended. Filed a bug about it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:32, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

As a workaround one can use some custom CSS to make the links show again, e.g. by adding #jump-to-nav { height: auto; } to Special:Mypage/common.css or Special:Mypage/chick.css. — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 09:01, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Counting infobox transclusions

I'm after a list of our infoboxes, sorted by number of transclusions; specifically the low end, so I'd settle for a list of those with, say, fewer than 250 instances. Do I need to ask on BOTREQ, or find someone with toolserver account, or is there a better method? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:31, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like a Toolserver request. If you drop a note on my talk page, I can probably help you out. It's a fairly simple query. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:28, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Here are some with under 100 transclusions: User:Bility/Infoboxes. — Bility (talk) 19:38, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Internal link being rendered as external link

On MediaWiki:Moodbar-feedback-description the Learn more link is written up as an internal link; however, it is displayed at Special:FeedbackDashboard as an external link. Any ideas? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 19:00, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

It looks fine for me. See screenshot. Goodvac (talk) 19:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, I just realised it was a language localisation issue. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 19:41, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

User talk page apparently borked

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36903

I was trying to leaving a welcome message on User talk:Kerev HaEmet via Twinkle. After a fair amount of time, it ended up at the techical error page. Now, every edit I try on the talk page is resulting in an edit conflict (including adding a new section), yet there's nothing in the history for the page. I suspect something's messed up (database?), but it's beyond me. Any ideas on this? Ravensfire (talk) 19:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I deleted the page, so it should be editable now. It must have been some kind of glitch, since there was no history for the page. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Great, appreciate the help! Ravensfire (talk) 19:21, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

There was some downtime a few minutes ago. I have a slight suspicion that the create+edit trough the API as issued by Twinkle was not atomic, causing the api to do the create, but not the edit and then not rolling back. That would be a bug in the API of MediaWiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:24, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting ... when I'm mentoring new developers at work, transactional boundaries are one of the first things I hammer into them as far too many schools skip on that and it's really easy to miss something. (Especially with an older app that's still using EJB 2.1 ...) Dealing with boundaries with web services / api's can be a nightmare though - I've spent enough of the past 2 months dealing with those (rolled out the first major service at my company) to feel some empathy. Ravensfire (talk) 19:29, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Heavy load time for deleting files

For the past month or so, Mediawiki has been so slow in deleting files. What happens is the file will be deleted immediately, but the confirmation isn't returned form the server for a very long time. Sometimes it just takes a long time and it works; sometimes it will fail altogether. This is a huge pain for me because I do Twinkle deletes of NowCommons files by the hundred, and it can take a half hour or longer now for a set of images.

Asking around IRC, it appears the issue doesn't exist with regular pages, just files. Anyone with administrator privileges can verify this by deleting an image in CAT:NCT.

Example error code for reference below.

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Matchtosample.png&action=delete, from *REDACTED* via cp1005.eqiad.wmnet (squid/2.7.STABLE9) to 10.64.0.138 (10.64.0.138)
Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:27:48 GMT

Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:31, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Most likely related to the report a bit higher Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#.C3.9Cber_slow_deletion and the bugzilla ticket mentioned there. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:53, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Double redirect templates

I just redirected {{Infobox Asiad}} and {{Infobox Universiade}} to {{Infobox games}}. Unfortunately, this has left some double-redirects, which of course fail. Do we have a bot that cleans them up, and if not can I get some help from someone with AWB or suchlike? (I cant run AWB on my netbook). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:45, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

See Special:DoubleRedirects: "It is usually not necessary to fix these by hand. Bots will go through the entire list periodically and fix all of the double redirects, except for protected pages." One bot that fixes double redirects is タチコマ robot (talk · contribs). Goodvac (talk) 00:51, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

That's a relief, Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 01:01, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

There aren't that many redirects involved, and when I first went to that list only one was a double redirect, which I have fixed without any fancy tools. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:16, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

CSS pages not loading

Resolved

This is a strange problem I've just been having now (on Monobook). Some parts of the page fail to load completely. The top bar is on the side, the big globe doesn't show up, and the page looks strangely stripped. This used to just happen in the article space (Main Page and VPT were OK), but nwo it's happening on the "new section" VPT page. hbdragon88 (talk) 05:29, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, nothings happening with me in monobook. Have you tried removing all the scripts in your script files and adding them back in one-by-one to see if it is one (or the combination) of them causing the problem, as script files have caused several things not to display properly for me in the past.--Gilderien Talk|Contribs 22:02, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Got it. It worked fine in Firefox, so I cleared the cookies and cache in Opera, and now it renders correctly. hbdragon88 (talk) 00:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

New Page Triage

Hey guys! Just a note to say we've put the first bits of material about New Page Triage, the new patrolling interface, live. This includes a dedicated plan for engaging the community; if you have questions, suggestions or ideas, please get involved :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Accolades ??

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Accolades ?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnnyMrNinja (talk • contribs) 17:50, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Templates for Displaying Military Ribbons/Medals as Worn?

Are there any templates for displaying a user's military ribbons and medals as worn on his uniform? If not, how can I do it? User:Gadget850 said that he uses the template "Quote box" to place ribbons into. Is that good, or is there a better way? Thank you. Allen (talk) 17:27, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Aggregate pageviews for 10 different articles

I'm trying to compile a small dataset of the total pageviews articles I've created have received. I know I can use stats.grok.se, but it only pulls individual months (or 60/90 day periods) at a time. Is there a way to get more comprehensive data that doesn't involve querying the entire database? I'm not a coder. Thanks! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:34, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Does this help? Try changing the URL. No data is available before December 2007, unfortunately. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 22:54, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Look at the URL for a monthly stats page — you can see both the year and the month number. Simply delete the month number from the URL and it will give you stats for the whole year, as long as the servers were working without hiccups. Nyttend backup (talk) 04:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

You mean on Grok? Shouldn't this work then? I've never managed to get the whole year in one go, hence the creation of the script I linked to above. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 11:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips, folks. The 'removing the month' from the url trick doesn't work; it returns a 404 error. Jarry, I'm checking out your script. I think it could save me a lot of time. Ocaasi ^{t | c} 13:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Interlanguage links

fr:Personne physique seems to have correct interlanguage links, but the linked articles (including English and German until I fixed them) link back to fr:Personne morale. These wrong links seemed to have been inserted by a bot. Is there a way to get a bot to fix all of them instead of making them wrong? —teb728 t c 21:37, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

See a relevant entry in this FAQ. Graham87 09:39, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Based on that the change I made might work by itself. However, the toolserver account for the linked tool has expired. —teb728 t c 10:22, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Just me or is Commons really slow right now?

Is it just me or is the Commons and all media on it really slow right now? And it looks like images not on Commons but on Wikipedia are slow as well? And when I Google "commons" the first result is this? Gary King (talk · scripts) 02:44, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The Google results are weird. Can't figure out why that particular file is first... Rehman 06:35, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Does it appear as the first result for you as well, or is it just me? In all my years of using Google, I don't think I've ever seen a result so irrelevant... (even though it's obviously related in being on the Commons). Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:38, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Disabling Javascript

Is there code I can enter into User:All Hallow's Wraith/monobook.css in order to disable Javascript on Wikipedia? (without having to to so for my whole computer). I have a sinking feeling Javascript is behind why Wikipedia turned into a soul-suckingly slow monstrosity around roughly February 2011. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 03:07, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

CSS won't be able to do that. If you use Firefox, however, you can install YesScript or change your prefs.js (harder). There are probably extensions that can accomplish what you want for other browsers as well. Goodvac (talk) 03:27, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Opera has a toggle for turning on and off js in its quick preferences menu, and chrome was, last I checked, less annoying than firefox when it comes to its preferences (probably has addons too, but I dunno about that stuff), if you use either of those or are shopping around for browsers. — Isarra (talk) 08:37, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Only half image in en:Wikipedia

Hi,

in en:WP/Falklands War appears only the half of the image File:Stanley.falklands.war.svg (search for "The road to Stanley"). Is it only my browser?. Can you see why isn't working?. --Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 11:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the report, should be fixed now if you refresh. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 12:05, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

S u p e r !! It's working. --Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 14:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Cannot view some edit filter triggering events

It seems that some of Special:AbuseLog's entries are no longer visible to everyone, because some simply say "<IP or user> triggered an edit filter on <page>", without the "details" or "examine" links. It makes it a hassle for me to review reports at WP:Edit filter/False positives/Reports.Jasper Deng (talk) 19:47, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm an admin and don't see entries like that in the last 5000 entries at Special:AbuseLog. If I log out then I see it for some entries, for example the most recent at [3] but not the 4 others. The hidden entry is for a filter which enables "Hide details of this filter from public view". This feature is for example enabled in Special:AbuseFilter/384 and disabled in Special:AbuseFilter/432. I don't know whether non-admins used to be able see more in log entries for non-public filters. Wikipedia:Edit filter has said for a long time: "Log entries are viewable by all users, and while filters are by default publicly viewable, others are set to be private. For all filters, including those hidden from public view, a brief, general summary of what the rule targets will be available, and displayed in the log, the list of active filters, and in any error messages generated by the filter." PrimeHunter (talk) 21:58, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that I can't see filter triggering; should I just apply to be an edit filter manager to be able to view those entries?Jasper Deng (talk) 02:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

May be related to this. Sole Soul (talk) 03:56, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Remember password - 180 days from 30 days?

I'm sure this used to be flagged at 30 days, but now it's 180 days. Why? Lugnuts (talk) 07:48, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it was one of the changes in MediaWiki 1.19, as noted in the release notes under the section Configuration changes in 1.19. Looks like the reason for the change was Bumped $wgCookieExpiration to 180 days, we were one of the sites with shortest cookie lifetime for too long. This was discussed at lengths about a year ago on wikitech-l, however nobody cared to implement the suggested alternative solutions. Probably because they were overcomplicated and solved only parts of the problem[4] - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 08:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks KP. Lugnuts (talk) 08:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikitable class

I've created my User:Sameboat/vector.css to change the look of the wikitable class table. But no matter how many times I purge and refresh, the look of the wikitable just won't change. Is there something wrong with my css? I'm using Vector skin really. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 10:26, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried !important? Ruslik_Zero 12:22, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I see you're trying to change the color of the borders. The rule for changing the border of the <table> element is correct, but has no effect since the borders are set to 'collapse' which causes the border colors set on the individual cells override it. The rule changing the color of the border for the cells is not working because the selector for the cells, table.wikitable td, table.wikitable th, has a lower "specificity" than the rule in the site CSS, table.wikitable > tr > th, table.wikitable > tr > td, table.wikitable > * > tr > th, table.wikitable > * > tr > td. Your best bet would be to copy that selector. Anomie⚔ 12:25, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Thx you guys. The !important works which I didn't know it before. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 12:48, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

!important is also something to be avoided however; it is a last resort. The proper way is to use the proper selector to target the part of the layout that needs to be targeted. For instance, your definition might also override certain inline CSS styling in articles which you would like to see and normally expect to be applied, even with your changes. It will target more parts of the layout than wikitable would otherwise target. The reason the selector of wikitable is so specific is exactly to avoid such unwanted behavior. just so you know.... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Thx for the knowledge. I tried the selector and works for me too. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 01:18, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Strange HotCat bug

I reported this several months ago, but do not recall receiving a response. After making an edit, saving it, and then removing a category using HotCat, the previous edit I made is reversed, as can be seen in this diff. Does anyone have any idea why this happens, and, more importantly, how it can be corrected? Thanks! ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 19:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Invitation to help test the new MediaWiki extension for the Education Program

Our developers have been working hard to integrate certain elements of the Wikipedia Education Program into MediaWiki. If anyone is interested in helping test the new extension, click here to get started.

Thanks, Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Can we get talk archives to point to the main?

Check out this archive page. Note that the "Article" link in the upper left does not point to the main article page. Is this fixable? Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:52, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Fully agree - when on an archive page and wanting to check back to what the article currently says it leads to an article creation page for Subject:Archive. I cannot envisage any instance where we would want an article page solely relating to the archive - archive pages should link back to the actual article to facilitate checking archives against the current version. - Arjayay (talk) 21:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Technically, there currently is no such thing as an archive page. Technically, there is only a talk page that functions as an archive of discussion that took place on another talk page, which might or might not be bound to a specific "non-talk" page. Which is why you observe the behavior you describe. Options; Status quo, Javascript hack, Liquid threads or changes into the core software (of which most developers will probably say: "better wait for LQT-nextgen"). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:49, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

How crazy is the JS option? I've never personally considered LT to be a solution for anything. Maury Markowitz (talk) 01:02, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

How about just using a bot to create a "nonprintworthy" redirect to the actual article, for each missing mainspace page that corresponds to a talkspace subpage? — Richardguk (talk) 02:19, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't that cause the search box to autosuggest non-articles likeCANDU reactor/Archive 1? That's not desirable at all. Reach Out to the Truth 02:50, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

JS would be something like this:

if(mw.config.get('wgNamespaceNumber') == 1) {
  if($('#ca-nstab-main').hasClass('new')) {
    $('#ca-nstab-main').children('a').attr('href', '//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/' + mw.config.get('wgPageName').split('/')[0].replace('Talk:', ''));
    $('#ca-nstab-main').children('a').css('color','#002bb8');
  }
}

but I'm a JS novice and this is rather verbose, so there's probably a better way to do it. Goodvac (talk) 05:52, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

And where does the link go when you're on Talk:Article/sandbox? This isn't something that needs to be fixed, because it's not broken—just follow the breadcrumb links back to the main talk page. — Bility (talk) 16:31, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it is. A non-expert user clicking the button will be left in a blank editor, with no "breadcrumbs". Only those with some a posteriori knowledge of the layout will be able to know what to do. After all, it confused me, and that's saying something. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:10, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

If we really wanted to deploy a JS hack, it would have to be a bit smarter that this. I'd propose loading on all talk pages. I'd add a recognizable classname to all archive page headers and then conditionally upon that change the link. The below code is untested, and not working, but it's an adequate representation of the idea I have. There are probably some JS functions in the new RL core to better deal with these page titles, and the talk -> nontalk page switch. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:27, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

if((mw.config.get('wgNamespaceNumber')%2) == 1) {
  if($('#ca-nstab-main').hasClass('new') && $('.mbox .archiveheader').length > 0) {
    $('#ca-nstab-main').children('a').attr('href', mw.config.get('wgArticlePath').replace('$1', encodeURI( mw.config.get('wgPageName').split('/')[0].replace('_talk:', '').replace('Talk:', '')) ));
    $('#ca-nstab-main').removeClass('new');
  }
}

Or the user will hit the back button in their browser, follow the breadcrumbs and realize how talk pages work. If it's a gadget or userscript that's fine with me, I just wouldn't personally want to add to Wikipedia's already bloated JS. — Bility (talk) 00:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Infobox public organisation

I've made {{Infobox public organisation}} into a wrapper for {{Infobox organization}}, but they handle images differently (see Historic Scotland). Is there a fix, or is the only solution to edit the markup on each article transcluding it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:04, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

There's only 49 to fix, shouldn't take you long. Or you could add code similar to that in {{Infobox military person}} into Infobox organization to handle both image formats. -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:05, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Problems with display of titles

A very strange problems has arose for me on Wikipedia. On every page the title displays as Page Title, where page title is the title of that page. It has been going on for about a week and a half now. I didn't bother coming here until now, because it hadn't annoyed me enough. This problem occurs on every page, including my watchlist, preferences, and contributions pages. I checked on article pages and there is no span tags around any titles at the top of the page or the bottom. Don't know how to fix it or what is going on, and looking for a little help.--NavyBlue84 14:01, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

See the section #Odd article headers, further up. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:23, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

This has come up several times before, so I've added an entry to the FAQ. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:24, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Sent a tweet about this to StumbleUpon. Might help, you never know these days. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:06, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Wow, an actual answer: "@dj_hartman Hello, this is a known issue and we are working on a fix. Thanks for writing to us." —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:44, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

embedded blank

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T37016

There is a problem with an embedded blank showing up where there should be none. Look to the 2nd paragraph beyond the one you are reading, then back up one paragraph to learn how I arrived there.

I didn't think I should use the "Talk -- Main Page" for this, but there is no place I can comment about a format problem turning up when I go to a "Special Page". When I enter "groer" (no quotation marks) in the search prompt on the main page, I get taken to a special page which says there is no page called "groer" (that's OK), and provides some possible entries, including the one about the now-deceased Cardinal from Austria which is included below (at bottom of message you are reading) with some line breaks lost when I copied and pasted.

THE REASON I AM WRITING is that I have been noticing an embedded blank (in the example included here, it turned up in the word "Austrian") on such Special Pages. Why is that embedded blank showing up? Here is the output I am asking about:

Hans Hermann Groër Hans Hermann Wilhelm Groër, OSB (1919-2003) was an Austria n Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church . He served as Archbishop of Vienna ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.82 (talk) 17:15, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

It's a typo. Feel free to correct it in the article. Welcome to Wikipedia, by the way. I hope you like it and decide to stay! Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:05, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not a typo. It's related to the way wiki links can be made. If you look at the wikitext of the article in question you'll notice that the relevant bit of text is [[Austria]]n which displays in a page fine like so: Austrian. It would appear that search strips the square brackets and adds a space. As such I suspect this is a minor bug in search. Dpmuk (talk) 18:17, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

To clarify where the space shows, see here. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:58, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Ticket filed in bugzilla. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:58, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

• Suffix gaps in Search are a feature not a bug: Wait a minute, I like seeing Wikisearch results show "Austria n" for "[[Austria]]n", and an editor could write "[[Austria|Austrian]]" to avoid the suffix gap at "n". One's man's bug is another man's special feature. I worry that changes to Wikisearch will also hide "abbr=on" in searches to detect "{{convert|2|km|mi|abbr=on}}" where a new "bugfix" would prevent searching for "abbr=on" in that manner. Be sure to consider a new option such as "Classic Wikisearch" to retain the old "features" because too many things have gone wrong in efforts to drop support for old browsers, or jump-start new gadgets that few editors use. I wish Wikipedia still worked like it did back in January 2011, and BTW, I do not need autocompletion of words entered for Wikisearch. However, if the developers are bored, I would like them to write a WP:Parser function to insert a real &minus sign in "-50.0400" or "-5,000,200,000,000" and retain the trailing zeroes and not reformat as scientific notation, -5.0002E+12 and such. Also, everyone knows we need "{{set:xk|45}}" to set a parameter "xk" to have value "45" during the evaluation of a transcluded template. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
  • http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:42, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

At this writing, I have gone back to the article itself (about Hans Hermann Gro:er), where I see "Austrian", with the cursor showing that it contains a pointer to "Austria" article. When I go into edit mode in that article (with no plans to change anything), I am seeing "Austrian". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.82 (talk) 16:41, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is correct, see Help:Link#Wikilinks (third example), also the comment above by Dpmuk 18:17, 6 March 2012. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:57, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Collapsible Sections

Hi. Is there a way to have collapsible sections without using the navbar? i.e. be able to collapse the text underneath == Heading 1 == so only the heading is visible unless you click the [Show] link. Thanks, Jhfireboy Talk 01:29, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Not sure, but isn't it Template:Collapse you're referring to? Rehman 06:30, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

If you intend to use collapsible sections on an article page, please observe MOS:COLLAPSE. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:15, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

You can also try the "new" plugin jQuery.makeCollapsible from MediaWiki 1.18. See:

• mw:Manual:Collapsible elements#jQuery.makeCollapsible
• mw:RL/DM#jQuery.makeCollapsible

Helder 01:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Template help

Please assist There are a variety of English variant templates (e.g. {{British English editnotice}}, which links most, if not all of them at the bottom) and they are themselves composed of templates within templates and transcluded documentation pages. The problem is that the doc pages produce text of the sort (e.g.) "Placing this template will also add the page to Category:Articles which use British English", when in reality, the proper categories are of the sort Category:Wikipedia articles that use British English. I can't figure out the byzantine architecture of these templates to fix this. Help? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:31, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Also fixed some link errors in your post. Goodvac (talk) 07:41, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Burrington, Herefordshire

Can somebody fix the infobox?♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:39, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done, see here. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:46, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for implementation of search=yes in Template:Talkheader (consensus support apparently achieved)

Could someone please take a quick look at Template talk:Talk header#RE: New feature for Template:Talkheader? Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 14:17, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Template:UK SI list/sublist

Hi. I can't seem to get the references working on this template. I have set up an #if decision where is there is no reference written then it won't show the reference at all. That works, but the reference is blank when you view it on an article. Many thanks, Jhfireboy Talk 20:31, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

 Fixed You can't use variables in parser tags. You can use #tag:ref, or more simply {{refn}} which implements it more easily. You really need to use a group name, else you risk mixing the table references with the main references. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:45, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

How many of these weird little "I can't figure out <ref> or {{#tag:ref}}" templates do we have now? {{r}}, {{refn}}, {{sfn}}, {{sfnm}}, {{sfnp}}, {{efn}} etc.? And they all break scripts and bots that deal with refs in wikitext, and are liable to confuse editors who have managed to figure out that references are in <ref> but aren't familiar with these myriad templates. Anomie⚔ 23:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

See the categories at Category:Citation templates, especially Category:Footnote templates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:36, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

How is wiki markup stripped from search results?

I've noticed that in Wikipedia search results, most wikitext markup is stripped in the text that provides context for the search hit. For example, if I'm searching for "Dog", on the entry for Dog in the search results I'll see something like "The domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris is a subspecies of the gray wolf" in the search results, but the wiki text says something like "The '''domestic dog''', '''''Canis lupus familiaris''''',<ref>{{Cite|...}}...</ref> is a subspecies of the [[gray wolf]]". How do all those templates, tags, brackets for links, etc. get removed? When I search on many other MediaWiki wikis, I tend to see a lot of that markup in the search results, but in Wikipedia most of the markup is removed (I occasionally see some template parameters, but that's about it). Is there an extension or hook or something else that cleans up the search results? Or is there a way to configure MWSearch to return cleaner results? --Llarq (talk) 22:06, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The lucene backend does that, but I'm not sure how. It's 'somewhere in here' http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/lucene-search-2/ —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:56, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Problem with Wikipedia:Database reports/Broken redirects

Can anybody work out why the bot keeps listing Hexxen, Hexen, and File:Star.jpg as being broken redirects (redirects to red links), despite all three appearing to be perfectly functional? It's been doing it for a few days, so I suppose it's not impossible that it's related to the 1.19 rollout. Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:11, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Your best bet is probably to ask User:MZMcBride, since the entire DBR thing is pretty much his baby--Jac16888 ^Talk 02:23, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, kept getting distracted on my way over here. I've just posted to toolserver-l about this. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:00, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I posted again: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-l/2012-March/004795.html>. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:16, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

As for Hexen, those things redirect to Hexen: Beyond Heretic, which has pageid 13612. But on Toolserver, I get this:

mysql> select page_title from page where page_id = 13612;
+-----------------------+
| page_title            |
+-----------------------+
| HeXen:_Beyond_Heretic |
+-----------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

I'll try to fix it by moving the page to the form with X capitalized and back. Ucucha (talk) 12:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, that seems to have fixed it, at least in the Toolserver database. Ucucha (talk) 12:36, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

What's up with the "Special:Export" links?

I looked at the Top Ten list at Wikipedia:Reader (source [5]) which is bizarrely topped by two rather obscure people, Robert L. Bradley, Jr. and William Kurtz Wimsatt, in a "Special:Export" mode. The pages themselves are viewed 337 times/30 days and 6 times/30 days. Was this some kind of DDOS attack with a random target, or can the export feature be otherwise abused by specific people? Wnt (talk) 20:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what happened there. Not that this addresses what those guys are doing on the list at all, but from the content it looks like a December 2010 list, rather than May 2011 as Wikipedia:Reader says. --SubSeven (talk) 22:19, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Page width in browser

Until recently I used to have an old 4:3 aspect ratio laptop. I permanently ran IE in a maximised window; and I think in about ten years I needed to resize it about three times. Now I have one of these 16:9 ratio screens, which are stupidly unergonomic for anything other than watching videos, and I seem to spend half my life fiddling around with window size and zoom adjustments just to get something I can read comfortably. Some websites seem to need a big width to avoid the need to scroll horizontally (which is horrible and to be avoided), and yet when a Wikipedia page is displayed in the same window, the lines are ridiculously long and very hard to read. Which brings me to my point about Wikipedia. Given the ubiquity of these stupid 16:9 screens, should we have a preset maximum width of a Wikipedia page, so that you can maximise the browser window and have an article displayed, perhaps centred, at a reasonable size, with suitably-sized blank margins either side? [6] is an example of what I mean. IMO this is a better idea than letting line lengths extend indefinitely. 86.146.109.211 (talk) 00:01, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Search for extension?

I want to clean up some timelines, but I need to learn how to use the legend attribute. I thought it would be easiest to look at some existing examples. I tried searching for <timeline>, but search will look for the rendered text, not the code. Is there a way to search for articles using the WP:TIMELINE extension?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:02, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

It also searches the code but timeline and legend are common words. Search legend in combination with a special term used in timelines, for example ScaleMajor: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=legend+ScaleMajor+&fulltext=Search. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:21, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that was quick, I see some examples which will help.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:28, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

AWB screen-size bug

Do we have any coders who might be able to assist in resolving this frustrating AWB bug, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:49, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Unicode font access

Does anyone know (or know how to find out) what proportion of users have access to Unicode fonts built into their operating system? Such users would, for example, be able to see this: ფირცხალაიშვილი as Georgian script without doing anything special. Wikimedia has access statistics for 2011, including breakdown by operating system, but I don't know which of those will be able to display the script, so I can't produce an overall figure. Thanks, Rd232 ^talk 21:25, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I am not an expert, but isn't "access to Unicode fonts" too vague to be useful? I have "access to Unicode fonts" in the sense that most scripts (including the Georgian above) display OK, but I still sometimes see square boxes because the fonts do not have that particular character. In fact, I think few fonts would support every single character defined by Unicode. 86.146.109.211 (talk) 23:40, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

There are varying combinations too. For example, Chinese, Japanese and several other Asian fonts render just fine for me; but a frequent contributor to this page has ⚔ as their talk page link, and for me that's a square containing the numbers 25 and 94. My mother's laptop, on the other hand, cannot produce Chinese or Japanese script, but renders Anomie's talk page link just as it's supposed to look. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:10, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I see. Well, the background to this is that there is an issue on Commons on whether there are circumstances (if so, what) where text in image form can be kept because it's useful for some people. Generally, it's assumed that people can see (most?) Unicode text, and that therefore text in image form is completely unnecessary, and it's subject to deletion. I'm just trying to get a bit more information about how widely that assumption holds. Rd232 ^talk 16:27, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

New Page Triage

Hey guys :). As previously mentioned in a few places, the Foundation has started work on our new patrolling software: New Page Triage. I'm posting updated specifications in a few hours, and I'd really advise everyone who is interested in page patrolling to head over to the talkpage, comment on the suggestions on the page already and the additional ideas the community has come up with.

We've also got an office hours session next Tuesday, the 13th, at 19:00 UTC (that's 12:00 PST, for the west-coast Americans around ;p). If you can make it, it's on IRC in #wikimedia-office. If you can't, drop me a line on my talkpage and I'm happy to send you the logs once we're done :). Regards, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki logo missing

It seems like ages since I've last seen it at the bottom of a Wikipedia page. The Wikimedia logo is there, and an invisible rectangle of the same size linking to the MediaWiki website is right next to it, but the logo itself is nowhere to be seen. At first I thought it was a glitch, but it's been months since then—probably more than a year, in fact. It could date back to the switch to Vector, but my memory isn't of much help here. (I use version 10.0.2 of Firefox, though the specific version seems irrelevant given the nature of the problem.)

A little warning: although I appreciate any replies which this may receive, I may be off-line for a few days and therefore fail to acknowledge them in a timely fashion. Waltham, The Duke of 12:29, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

It's showing for me, both in Monobook and Vector. I wonder if you have some sort of ad blocker on your computer that is blocking the image. Anomie⚔ 13:10, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

It's also showing for me. Can you see it at http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.19/common/images/poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png? Try to clear your entire cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:50, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I've already tried looking at the image file on my own, and could not. (And I've also looked at a page in Monobook, and the logo was still invisible.) I have now cleared my entire cache, and also added an explicit exception rule for Adblock Plus (though I couldn't see why it would block it). Problem's still there... Waltham, The Duke of 23:53, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

What exactly happens when you click on http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.19/common/images/poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png compared to http://bits.wikimedia.org/images/wikimedia-button.png? Can you try another browser? Can you see the copy at File:Poweredby mediawiki 88x31.png or displayed to the right in this section? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:36, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

While the latter image appears properly, the former does not appear at all; when I try to select it, I only see a tiny dot of a shade (which shows the absence of an image rather than, say, a white box). I can't see the copy either, and I didn't realise you had transcluded it here until I read about it. I've tried Internet Explorer 7 and the image remains invisible. This is utterly perplexing, especially considering that I am apparently the only one facing this problem (although I suppose it makes sense, because the issue would have been fixed a while ago if more people experienced it). Waltham, The Duke of 13:27, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps some image software used in your browsers is unable to display this particular png image. Can you download the image file to your computer by right clicking http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.19/common/images/poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png or http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Poweredby_mediawiki_88x31.png? They should be identical. It's 3605 bytes. If you get it to your hard disk then try to right click it and open it with different programs (not just browsers) to see if any of them can display it. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:50, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I ruined a userbox

This user assumes good faith.

It used to say "This user assumes good faith" but then I decided to add "inside and outside of Wikipedia". I worked, but the wikicode got all messed up. I'm hoping I'll get a message about someone reverting it. Any help?

30xelawalex03 (talk) 13:48, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I've reverted it for you. In general, you shouldn't really change existing userboxes that are already used by lots of people, as you might be changing them to something unexpected that the people using them do not want. If you want a variation on a userbox, it's better to create an entirely new one. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:51, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

List of The Annoying Orange episodes

I talked on the talk page a bit, and I noticed I pointed out this to another editor there. The conversation can be seen here. He saw my point, and if there are third-party reliable sources, then that age me the green light to go ahead and divide the episodes into seasons. So I made myself a preview, but it didn't work smoothly. If you clicked the link that said "here" you would even see I noted I couldn't work up the wikicode to do it. Any help?

30xelawalex03 (talk) 13:55, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

NewDiff gadget updated

The NewDiff gadget has been updated and is now based on r133098, designed by Trevor Parscal, which is currently in trunk, with some minor adjustments. Comments welcome. — Edokter (talk) — 14:54, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I noticed it this morning. So far, I like it. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:56, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Converting Spreadsheets Into Tables

Is there any way to convert a Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheets into Wikipedia tables? Allen (talk) 17:49, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

See Help:Table#Converting_spreadsheet_to_wikitable_format

I use Helferlein's macro regularly. (See first entry in external links). It works fine, but if someone has better options, I'm listening.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 20:09, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I have an OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet, and I want to convert it into a table that I can put on Wikipedia. However, I want to preserve as much of the formatting (font family, font size, text color, etc.) as possible. If not, I would like to know the wiki code for the formatting. If you know how to do what I would like, I would appreciate it. Allen (talk) 20:52, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Weird thumbnail errors

at Old Finch Avenue Bailey Bridge, the image thumbnail in the infobox seems to be only half loading for me and several others. The full size image loads fine, as does the File: page... It's just the thumbnail. A similar problem occurs for me at Ontario Highway 420, where the image on the right directly below the infobox appears slanted. I uploaded a rotated correrction to this image several months ago, but the image won't update. Any insights? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 18:06, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I purged both images, so the entire image should show. I think this is related to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 97#How to regenerate an image thumbnail?. Goodvac (talk) 18:45, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

According to Signpost the thumbnail stuff is being futzed with even now. Rich Farmbrough, 23:16, 10 March 2012 (UTC).

Adding a confirmation dialog to the watchlist rollback link

One too many times I've accidently misclicked a rollback link in my watchlist, either on my narrow mobile phone which makes each entry on my watchlist occupy several lines and can lead to misclicks, or because I am meaning to hit one of the links immediately next to it. Stopping your browser after clicking the link makes no difference if you have any decent-speed internet service. When viewing a diff, I believe twinkle or some other add-on introduces three rollback links (AGF and vandalism are two of these rollback links), and these all bring up a dialog box that makes you confirm that you want to rollback and allow you to enter a reason in one instance. Can this be added to the watchlist link to prevent misclicks? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 02:06, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Suitable as a js gadget if someone writes it. Prodego ^talk 02:07, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

There are several scripts listed at Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism/Tools#Rollback tools. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:14, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Dealy in updating Search Index

Yet again, the search index has failed to update for at least three days.
Help:Searching#Delay_in_updating_the_search_index says this should be reported here. 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. Any idea when it might be updated?
Arjayay (talk) 18:58, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting the bug! I have submitted it as bug 35160. --rainman (talk) 21:48, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

References Search

Is there any way of search Wikipedias references/citations for particular authors, journals, publications etc. as references seem currently to be excluded from the "everything" search option.--Gilderien Talk|Contribs 21:54, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

References are written in the main namespace which is searched by default, but if you put quotes around an author name then you may miss citation templates which separate the first and last name in the page source. I don't know a way to search only the references in the mainspace and not the normal article text. "Everything" means all namespaces so it will give you more "false" hits than the default search. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Changing font

How do you change font in a table? I am trying to import an OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet to use in Wikipedia. I want it to look the most like the spreadsheet as possible. Allen (talk) 23:57, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

[www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp CSS Font], at w3schools. Apply as "style="font: foo"" to the table element of the table. --Izno (talk) 00:05, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

You have already received advice at Wikipedia:Help desk#Changing font. If you go ahead and add a mainspace table with various fonts for no other reason than to make the text look different from normal articles then other editors may remove the fonts. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:12, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

First, what does the "www.w3schools.com" thing do?

Second, yes, I have asked this on the Help desk, but they haven't really given me any decent advice.

Third, you misunderstood me. The table is not in the mainspace. It is one of my user pages (User:Morriswa/Highways). The reason I use different fonts is to more easily identify each kind of highway in the list. I could upload a copy of it so you could see what I mean. Allen (talk) 00:49, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Izno posted an incomplete link to http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp. My help desk reply included the link <font> which isn't about Wikipedia and is deprecated as mentioned, but it currently works at Wikipedia for readers whose browser support it. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:10, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm still no closer to getting this done. I'm trying to go through the table manually, but that will take forever. Also, I don't know how to format some things, such as changing fonts. Allen (talk) 01:37, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Are you planning to move or copy User:Morriswa/Highways to a mainspace article? If no then why do you care so much about the fonts? If yes then have you read the guidelines I linked which are against changing the font? Here is the deprecated <font>: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789. Here is code going against Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Font family: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

You also posted at Help talk:Table#Questions; please see WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:07, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

And at the Teahouse.--ukexpat (talk) 18:59, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Cuisinart statistics?

Is there any way that http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Cuisinart can be accurate? Cuisinart was only edited four times last year, it has seven sentences, 1.7 KB, 2 refs, 2 ELs, a photo, and a navbox. How can it possibly get a million hits per month?

If it is accurate, where are those views coming from? If it's not, what is causing this? Npmay (talk) 11:00, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not consistent with the 5 AFT reviews the article's received. I've dropped a line at User talk:Henrik, better to watch there than here. Josh Parris 13:29, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Thank you. Since I discovered this in the squid log files which Henrik's software gets from Domas's software, I also asked at User talk:Midom#Cuisinart statistics seem wrong. Npmay (talk) 20:50, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I would not be surprised if it turns out some program somewhere is using that article to test network connectivity or something along those lines. Anomie⚔ 00:38, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Popups time zone

My history page is reporting the correct time, but Popups is an hour off. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:27, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

The banner

This is from the main page talk.

Hi,

I'm begging you, please, please, please in the name of the sun and the moon and the stars, stop using javascript to inject the banner into the DOM after the page renders. I'm so fed up with the page layout changing just as I'm about to click something because jQuery fired a callback and a banner appeared. Thanks. For now, I solved the problem myself with the below adblock plus filter

*.wikipedia.org/*BannerListLoader*

--76.18.43.253 (talk) 00:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)