The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.
If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.
These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.
DELETE MY ACCOUNT
I am Eapos and find is SICKENING that I can do everything under the sun here EXCEPT delete my account! Can someone please tell me how to delete my account! I do not want to be apart of this kind of sickening and prejudicial online community. Princess Elisabeth Vantar 09:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I also want to delete my account, After a certain time of not logging on does wikipedia remove your account? Someone help. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by You05 (talk • contribs) 06:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Just stop editing. No one's forcing you to.-gadfium 09:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's no way to delete your account. This is because if you did, someone could create an account with your name, causing all sorts of legal issues for Wikimedia. Like gadfium said, just stop editing. PyrospiritShiny! 13:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
fix vandalized page?
Hi folks -
I tried to fix the vandalized page for the featured article (on Sly & TFS)... but it looks OK on the edit page.
Sorry if this is a FAQ, but could someone jump in and fix it & lock it temporarily?
THX -
-CC
added question about navframe
<br clear="right"/> and other undocumented features
I saw an article use <br clear="right"/> to force whitespace so that text stays aligned with corresponding embedded images (see User:Ideogram/how to avoid jammed up edit links for an example). I also seem to recall seeing another way of accomplishing this, but I can't find it now. I looked on Meta for documentation of this and other potentially useful tags, but I didn't find this or anything new. Is there a complete listing of all tags MediaWiki accepts? --Ideogram 01:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A list of allowed HTML is available here, although it doesn't go into the different options for each tag. --MZMcBride 02:18, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
{{-}} is the other way to do it. GeorgeMoney (talk) 05:13, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Or {{clear}}. Or anything with style="clear: both". You can do lots of cool things with the style attribute; read the Cascading Style Sheets specifications for more information. Check also Category:Formatting templates, which has lots of useful templates. --cesarb 00:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
According to my personal notes about wiki editing, I learned about this use of the <br clear="..."> late last year, by following some link from Help:HTML in wikitext:
10/12/2006 1:01AM: I managed to control how much text floats next to
the table, by using the <BR CLEAR=all> tag I read about here:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/tables/table.html
The deprecated ALIGN attribute suggests the horizontal alignment of
the table on visual browsers. Possible values are left, right, and
center. Browsers generally present left- or right-aligned tables as
floating tables, with the content following the TABLE flowing around
it. To prevent content from flowing around the table, use <BR
CLEAR=all> after the end of the TABLE.
I am trying to use Vandal's RC Patrol and when I put it into my monobook.js, my toolbox does not change. Is there something I could be doing wrong? I tried refreshing m brower's chache, and adding action=purge onto monobook.js?
Which browser are you using? And please sign your posts with ~~~~ Dvyjonest·c·e 15:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
tags using "header=1" are screwing up the edit section links
See User talk:Cthorntonjr for an example of what I mean. I used {{subst:nonsensepages|Bud Brothers|header=1}} there, and it leaves behind a section header like this: {{#if:1|=={{{header-text|[[:Bud Brothers]]}}}==}} ... when clicking on the section edit, it won't take you to that section. I suspect Mediawiki doesn't parse the #if statement in a section header properly. This is a problem of all speedy notification tags that I've encountered so far that use the "header=1" parameter, and possibly others besides CSD notifications. — coelacan — 03:29, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe this could be fixed by changing the innards of the templates to have a couple of <includeonly>subst:</includeonly> tags. I think this would work:
It's pretty ugly, but the result should be that only the wikitext for the header ends up in the page, without the parser functions. Mike Dillon 03:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see that the templates had these, but ais523 removed them.[1] I'll ask that user to take a second look. — coelacan — 04:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that with the old coding, the header appeared even if header=1 wasn't used. I'm not sure that I know a solution to this; ParserFunction/subst mixtures have always acted unusually in my experience. If you can make the change and it makes it possible to use the template without the header, please feel free to do so. (I was unaware that the new coding had a problem.) --ais523 13:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Tidy upgraded
Our copy of HTML Tidy has been upgraded. This has apparently caused some minor changes to the way wikitext is rendered, such as in the user page in the village pump section above. These changes are probably here to stay, unless someone can identify clearly broken behaviour in the new Tidy that we can apply to have fixed. Also posted to wikitech-l here. -- Tim Starling 15:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I notice as of today, a number of very small html coding errors in signatures and templates are causing major issues on large pages. Particularly templates/signatures lacking closing tags are causing a lot of trouble. Has it stopped autoparsing html tags?--VectorPotentialTalk 18:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed a strange behavior in HTML ordered lists that have code examples between list items. A code example now renders before the list item it is after in the source. See my Help desk question for a complete example, along with the temporary work-around I've been using:
Could there be a link at the top-right of each TOC, to "skip to end of TOC" (or somesuch). That would be useful on pages with long TOCs, like Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents. Likewise, a "skip to end of article" link at the top of each article? Andy Mabbett 23:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you can always use the "hide" link on the TOC to get that out of the way (or use the Page Down key), and the "End" key on your keyboard to go to the end of the page. Incidentally, I can't think of a reason why going to the very end of an article is of use; the only time you might do that is to add a new section to a talk page, which can be done with the "+" link at the top of every talk page. EVula// talk // ☯ // 23:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hiding the TOC won't help, if it's the last item(s), in a long TOC, which a user wishes to reach. Jumping to the end of a page finds the last additions to a talk page, or the end of a long table or list, or the categories, or external links, or... Andy Mabbett 23:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, the End key still works. Not trying to be a dick, I'm just pointing out that, if there isn't a serious need for a system-wide change (which adding a function to the TOC would count as), the developers just won't do it. EVula// talk // ☯ // 06:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"the End key still work" - How does the End key take a user to the end of the TOC? And you know that all user have systems with end keys how, exactly? In any case, the end key requires the user's hands (assuming they have hands...) to be on the keyboard. What if they're using a mouse?
I mentioned the End key in regards to your "how does someone get to the bottom of the article" comment. To get to the bottom of the TOC, you can still use the Page Down button. I'm 99% sure that all keyboards have those buttons, so I'm not particularly concerned about that. :) *sigh* Look, I'm just saying how you can achieve the same functionality you're asking for without a change to the system. There might be a legitimate need for a "skip TOC" function for non-traditional browsers (ie: screen readers or people who use a Blackberry to surf, etc), but for what I suspect is the vast majority of Wikipedia users and editors, I think the current system is sufficient. If they've got their hands on the mouse but not the keyboard (ignoring the fact that it isn't difficult at all to move your hand back and forth between the two), then the mouse-enabled user can just click in the scroll area of their browser. EVula// talk // ☯ // 16:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm just saying how you can achieve the same functionality you're asking for without a change to the system." The functionality I'm asking for is for a single-click solution to take a user to the last entry in a TOC or the end of a page. All of your comments seem to assume an able-bodied user with a typical PC/ mac system. Andy Mabbett 11:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Erm, not stating the obvious, but there already is this function... Just try clicking the first link in to TOC - this will take you right to the end of it ;)
If you had read the FAQ section above, you would have known that Wikipedia does have spell checking as a feature, but that it has been disabled because of the strain it would place on the servers. Harryboyles 12:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Links
I'm just wondering how you can change what inter-wiki links say, yet still lead to the same place e.g: To make Buckden Towers just 'the tower', yet still lead to the Buckden Towers article. J S Firefox 09:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Use the pipe character, e.g. [[Buckden Towers|the tower]] produces the tower. Jayden54 12:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And if you want to learn more about this syntax, have a look at m:Help:Piped link. Jayden54 12:02, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks man, that helped a lot! :D J S Firefox 13:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if this is the right forum for discussion, but I wonder if there is any specific project aimed at resolving issues between different browsers showing templates etc. differently. For example, this template is practically illegible in FF but fine in MSIE. I want to have a go at resolving it, but wonder if there is a place where I can get assistance?
No, The font itself is different, and the settings for my browser show no change is the font settings. --Smokizzy 22:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea - is this on every page? It could be that your monobook (your 'skin' settings) is somehow corrupted, perhaps by a bad syntax on a page which has rendered an error which has not been resolved. If this means absolutely nothing to you, though, I'm sorry! Just a stab in the dark
It appers to only affect the "monobook" and "chick" skins. I'm now using the "Cologne Blue" skin, and everything is fine. Where can I get more help for this problem? --Smokizzy 22:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would start here. A bit technical, but I don't know where else
Never mind. Turns out I had messed with the fonts folder right before the problem started. Used System Restore, now everything works like a charm. Thank you guys for your help. Cheers. ;) --Smokizzy 01:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Copied the following here, because the devs may be interested, and I don't think they read the Help desk... Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 19:32, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
en.wikipedia.org dns problem
Dear wikipedia!
Please review situation with your zone file wikipedia.org especially in part of
en.wikipedia.org.
Your current practice:
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
en.wikipedia.org. 3600 IN CNAME rr.wikimedia.org.
rr.wikimedia.org. 600 IN CNAME rr.knams.wikimedia.org.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Multilevel redirect 'A' request is poor and do not improve reliability,
more useful using easy 'A' record for manage moving webservers between IP, if need.
Some time I do not resolve en.wikipedia.org, see for instance:
host -v en.wikipedia.org 145.97.39.158
Trying "en.wikipedia.org"
Using domain server:
Name: 145.97.39.158
Address: 145.97.39.158#53
Aliases:
Host en.wikipedia.org not found: 2(SERVFAIL)
Received 34 bytes from 145.97.39.158#53 in 44 ms
rr.wikimedia.org is a virtual hostname for geographic load balancing. It resolves to rr.pmtpa, rr.knams or rr.yaseo depending on which is closest. This has nothing to do with the brief downtime in DNS service today, which was due to a configuration error in the wikipedia.org zone file. -- Tim Starling 21:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikisource link
The wikisource: prefix leads to the English Wikisource. However, is there an interwiki link prefix that leads to a page on the multilingual wikisource (eg, this page)? GracenotesT § 20:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I thought I saw that page somewhere! Now bookmarked. Thank ye. GracenotesT § 22:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Use of the + tab or "new post" link versus using an existing section link
I almost always use the + tab when adding new sections to talk pages, but I wondered whether doing so always succeeds in avoiding edit conflicts when someone else is contributing to the last existing section. Recently, I have been on the receiving end of a few edit conflicts on the Help Desk when answering the last question (thus having to go back, copy my post, refresh the page and try again) and in every case, it was because someone had posted a new question. Of course, I can't say for sure that they failed to use the + tab or "post" link, but I suspect that this might be the case. I would like to post a polite and helpful suggestion on the user's talk page when this occurs, but I don't want to do that if they did in fact use the correct method. AdrianM. H. 20:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You might be able to tell by the way the headings are set up. The + button to add new posts always sets them up the same way.
== Heading ==
Text
There are always apaces between the == and the heading title, just as there is always a space between the heading and text. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 22:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't noticed any differences (but wasn't looking out for them). Thanks for the tip. AdrianM. H. 22:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A more telltale sign might be the edit summary. If you created a section called "Kittens", your edit summary would be the text "Kittens", with nothing else after that. (Those that create sections with + have no choice with regards to edit summaries.) Combined with other factors, you may have a good guess. GracenotesT § 20:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, with regards to the help desk question: you know, whenever you get an edit conflict, the edit box containing your intended version is down at the very bottom of the page, after a diff between the two versions. So you only need to copy the text from the second textbox to the first, and click save. GracenotesT § 21:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The submitter of this question, Adrian M. H., surmised that one could avoid edit conflicts by using the + tab. I don't believe this is true. (The '+' button gives you the illusion you are editing a 'sub-article', but there is one single edit history for the entire article, so the sections don't get saved back to the database independently). EdJohnston 00:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Patrol log
What exactly is the Patrol Log for? [2]Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 22:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What has to be done to get special pages updated? The one I'd like to see updated is Special:Ancientpags. Thanks. --Montchav 23:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Titoxd has pretty much stated it all. The Wikimedia Board of Trustees has approved a resolution to purchase more servers (link) which once it comes to fruition, could mean that we are able to enable these features. However money does not grow on trees and we will always need more donations. Harryboyles 08:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Problems uploading .svg images
I have created some images using inkscape and I save them as both plain .svg and inkscape.svg but neither uploads. I get no error message, but when I go to look at the image, I get the red X. Any advice? And if this is not the right place to get help for this, please suggest another forum. Thanks in afdvance. Argos'Dad 18:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I took a look at Image:SimaVasileionEllados.svg and it appears to embed a PNG file located at C:\Documents and Settings\Steve & Brian\My Documents\Steve's Pictures\Wikimedia\SimaVasileion4.PNG. Since we don't have access to your hard drive, it doesn't work that well. ;) As for how to fix that, I wouldn't begin to know how to tell you except to just upload the PNG directly. --BigDT 01:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You need to use Inkscape's "Trace Bitmap" function if you want the PNG to actually be converted to SVG. It looks like all you did was import the image which left the reference to the file on your local disk. Another option is to use "Effects -> Images -> Embed All Images", but then your SVG is not really a scalable vector graphic, since it contains an embedded raster image. Mike Dillon 03:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Skin
I want to alter the monobook skin (for personal use) to resemble the ones used on fr and es Wikipedia. Please see more detailed question at the Help desk and answer there. Any help is greatly appreciated. - Mgm|(talk) 11:12, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
articles for deletion
Hi: Today's Articles for deletion log [3] is somehow munged up. I (and a few others before me) added new articles and they're stuck inside an archive box for a different discussion. I can't figure out what the formatting problem is. Could someone help? --nathanbeach 15:20, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
for example, Mark Driscoll, Gavin Spittle, etc (at the very bottom) shouldn't be inside that box... --nathanbeach 15:21, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to whoever fixed it... --nathanbeach 15:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Talk Page Glitch
Can somebody take a look at User talk:Jeffhardyfan*17 and see why it is acting screwed up. When you click each edit section, it opens actually opens the section below it. When you click edit section for the last section, it gives you a new section (i.e. an empty section). Is this a system glitch or what? -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 17:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's probably something in that massive welcome kludge which is causing the problem. I don't want to tangle with trying to resolve that, though. Maybe delete the whole welcome? Corvus cornix 17:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just swapped it for a straight {{welcome}} message; Bobs your uncle and Fannys your aunt - problem solved! Ryan Postlethwaitetalk/contribs 17:24, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rtl-lang, please review
please note my comments in the "Usage" section at {{rtl-lang}}. Unless I am badly mistaken, the template is based on the flawed assumption that the "dir=rtl" parameter is needed for any string in a rtl-script, while in reality, it is only required for very esoteric stuff like Arabic letters as symbols in math or similar. If I am correct, the template should probably be deprecated, and a bot should be sent in to replace all instances with simple {{lang}}. dab(𒁳) 17:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here is filtered and alphabetically sorted list. I'll start from the bottom. MaxSem 08:32, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, why didn't I think about doing that? I actually started with the goal of converting Wikisource external links to interwiki links, but found this problem, which is more immediate. GracenotesT § 17:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In addition, some links may be valid, to more obscure languages. Those could be prefixed by "oldwikisource:", methinks. GracenotesT § 17:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Supressing reference tags
I've ran into a reader that finds the completion of each sentence with a link to a reference harder to read. As the best articles have the most reference links, they appear the hardest to read for that person. Would there be a way to add a feature that allows users to selectively suppress the reference links for an article as they read it? Sancho 08:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This might be possible. See Help:User style. You can make things go away with Help:User style#Non-display. Viewing the page source in a Web browser shows references have this in their HTML code: class="reference". You might be able to set that classname so it does not display. --Teratornis 21:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ya, it placing .references {display:none} in the monobook.css works, but it's pretty permanent and tedious to change back and forth. I was thinking of a tab that changed this on the fly. I suppose now that I figured out what class of element I need to hide/show, it's not much more work for me put this into a tab at the top of the page. Sancho 07:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Toggle sections in infoboxes
[copied from help desk]
Is there a way to create infoboxes with toggleable sections? I want to achieve that, so infoboxes will be able to contain more information, without taking more space. For example, a politician infobox, could contain all one's previous public offices, with only the 1 or 2 most important ones expanded by default. Here's a template I'm working on for politicians. It allows for unlimited offices to be put in. That creates the need of hiding the unwanted offices by clicking the title of the office.
I presume JS can't be integrated to the template in order to achieve that. Correct me if I'm wrong. Geva Zeichner 14:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
JS can be used in some form in templates (such as in Template:Hidden for example), but I am not familiar with the method. You could ask at the Village Pump (technical) help desk (link at the top of this page). Help:Template is worth a read, but only gives fairly basic info. AdrianM. H. 16:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
[/copied from help desk]
I've now tried using the Wikipedia:NavFrame thing, but with only some success. It works but the div finds its way outside of the infobox. Use of style="float: none" didn't help. I've also tried using the collapsible tables, but cascading the table breaks the larger table it's in. Geva Zeichner 09:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Look at the infobox at Neon Genesis Evangelion. Are those [show/hide] links what you're looking for? –Pomte 10:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It just happened to me as well, so I'm inclined to believe that it's MediaWiki doing something funny, and not your browser. I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows XP SP2. Jayden54 12:30, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Followup: At test.wikipedia I set up 9 redirects in a previously-redirect-free namespace ("Help:") with the following properties:
1-3: Normal
4: interwiki (Meta:)
5: null (#REDIRECT:[[]])
6: special (Special:)
7: loopback (self)
8: red page (MediaWiki:Blahblah)
9: multiline (category on second line)
After, I clicked Special:Randomredirect/Help about a hundred times, and #5 and #9 above never came up (but I did get a lot of vists to the Main Page). #5 is no surprise, but #9 is odd. I would hazard to guess then that the title parsing in this Special: page is not intelligent enough to handle multiline redirects? --Splarka (rant)
Actually, what's happening is that Special:Random and Special:Randomredirect will send you to the Main Page if they happen to pick a random number that's higher than the page_random value of any otherwise applicable page in the database. The average frequency (over all possible choices of the page_random values) at which this will happen is one in N+1, where N is the number of applicable pages in the chosen namespace, so for namespaces with few pages/redirects this will tend to happen fairly often. I've just fixed this in SVN as part of a general restructuring of the code, so this should hopefully stop happening soon. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strange corrupted Diff
[[5]] This shows as a corrupted diff brining in text from several months ago. What is causing this? SchmuckyTheCat 17:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Problems posting messages on talk page
There is a problem when I post messages on someone's talk page. Here the problem.
Example
Test test test test test test test. Jet123 (Talk) 21:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Test Test test test test test test. Jet123 (Talk) 21:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That is the problem
When I do this, the text looks like HTML. Maybe my account is like that. Jet123 (Talk) 21:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't done any sort of bug reporting yet, mostly because I haven't heard of anyone else having the same problem. Many (not all, though close) of the pages I've gone to won't display images if they're part of a gallery. Sometimes a few thumbnails are shown, sometimes all but one or two, sometimes none, and the number in the gallery doesn't seem to have any effect on how many are(n't) shown. When the images are just regular thumbnails within the [[Image:]] tags, they're ok (though I believe there've been one or two times when those won't display, either), as are images within infoboxes. I've tried purging and refreshing, but it doesn't help any. A few times it's even resulted in fewer pictures being displayed. Between all this, I'm seriously wondering if it's an issue with Wiki (in general, this issue isn't contained to Wikipedia), or with my computer (which is also why I haven't sent any bug reports). Anyone have any ideas what could be causing the problem, or how I can fix it? -Bbik 22:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Which images are they? I believe this note from the top of this page applies:
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page (if the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too). If it doesn't work, try again.
If you can point out an image you're having an issue with, we can see if the issue affects just you or others as well. Hope that helps. Mike Dillon 23:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That line (among others) is exactly why I specified that I'd tried purging already. However, as for specific ones I'm having issues with, most recently it's this page, and the specific pictures are (working across, starting at the first one after the panoramas):
Small Town: 1, 4, 5, 8, 10, 15
Big Town: 5-9
I can find other pages I've had issues with too, if it'll help. If the numbering doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll copy the specific pages from the edit box. -Bbik 23:52, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on this, since it's moved quite so far up the list by now, and no response to the listed pictures, either... -Bbik 07:54, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I was wondering, in the context of Special:Contributions/newbies what is meant by the word "newbie"? WP:NEWBIE and WP:NEWBIES don't define the term, and I initially thought that it may be the first edit of each user, but I've now seen people logged there after over fifty edits, and my 24hour theory fell through too — Jack · talk · 23:19, Saturday, 14 April 2007
Just speculation, but it may be users who have not reached the 4-day "autoconfirm" threshold (required to move pages and edit sprotected pages). Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, that's not it either. I've seen page creations by newbies show up there, and that's mostly why I use it, most of the fresh junk pages show up there. — Jack · talk · 00:09, Sunday, 15 April 2007
Page creation isn't actually restricted to established users. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 00:10, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean? AFAIK, page creation is restricted to only those who have held an account for four days — Jack · talk · 00:24, Sunday, 15 April 2007
Nope. Anyone can upload an image or create a non-talk page once they get an account. After four days (or more specifically, 345600 seconds), they can move pages and edit semi-protected ones. It can be reasonably inferred that software makes the differentiation between "newbie" and not based upon autoconfirmed-ness. GracenotesT § 04:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Tecnically, newbies are those who registered among last 1% of users. MaxSem 05:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Protection not functioning?
While on vandal patrol, I've come across a couple of edits that were made to "semi-protected" pages by IP addy users. This shouldn't be happening, should it? Refer to the edit 22:51, 14 April 2007 172.129.232.152 on Microscope as an example. Sorry I didn't note the previous occurences, but I'll be sure to return and post notes of any others I find--unless there's a better place to be posting notice of this? Best Regards, Wysdom 00:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The article actually wasn't semiprotected. Merely having a template on a page, like {{pp-semi-template}} or {{pp-vandalism}}, doesn't make it protected or semi-protected; if a page has this at the top when you try to edit it:
then it's semiprotected. If not, then it's not. This is a good indicator. GracenotesT § 00:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How weird. Sorry to be a noob--I just assumed that things tagged semi-protected were. Why would someone put the tag up on a page that's not semi-protected? Or, I suppose, more to the point, why is there a 'semi-protection' tag which CAN be put up on a page which isn't? It would seem to give vandals the idea that they can actually flout Wiki's protections--i.e. that said protections do not work. The repeated vandalism of Microscope shows the vandal over-and-again replacing the page with "too bad I can't edit this semi-protected page" and "look what I can still edit!!!" etc. Just my thoughts--thanks for your time! Regards, Wysdom 01:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, it appears as though CJCurrie (talk·contribs) tagged the article as semi-protected, even though it wasn't. It is somewhat of a misconception that tagging an article as semi-protected will make it thus. Others might tag an article as semi-protected to drive vandals away (without asking for admin help), or to prevent others from editing the article. These generally don't work. On the other hand, administrators might protect or semi-protect an article without indicating it with a template. The templates that can be used are indicated here. If a page is semi-protected, feel free to tag it with the appropriate template at the top. It would be great if protection notices were built into the article interface: that is, if protecting an article automatically put the notice on that article, rather than having to make two separate actions. But this is not so. GracenotesT § 03:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Questions for Vandalism study
We are working on conducting our second vandalism study here Wikipedia:WikiProject Vandalism studies/Study2, and I had some technical questions that I thought someone here could help us with. Is there anyway to determine the amount of data added or subtracted from an article from a specific edit? I know that this is displayed on the recent changes page, but can you get that information for any edit? Also is there any way to easily measure the size of an article at a specific point in its history? If anybody has any expertise in these areas please let me know. Remember 02:44, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You might be able to get the content of two revisions, calculate their length, and then subtract the two values. Using api.php for this seems best, since it's quick. For example, take the following function in JavaScript, which returns the change in size between revisions using Ajax in Firefox (I should learn another programming language for doing this rather soon):
var XMLobj;
var XMLdoc;
var diffNum;
function getNumDiff(title, crevid) {
try {
XMLobj = sajax_init_object();
XMLobj.overrideMimeType('text/xml');
XMLobj.onreadystatechange = getDiffContent;
XMLobj.open('GET', wgServer + wgScriptPath + '/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&format=xml&rvlimit=2' + '&rvstartid=' + crevid + '&titles=' + encodeURIComponent(title), true);
XMLobj.send(null);
} catch(anError) {}
}
function getDiffContent() {
if (XMLobj.readyState != 4) {
return;
}
if(XMLobj.status != 200) {
alert ('There was an error.');
return;
}
var XMLdoc = XMLobj.responseXML.documentElement;
if(!XMLdoc) {
return;
}
alert(getRvData(XMLdoc.getElementsByTagName('rev')[0]).length - getRvData(XMLdoc.getElementsByTagName('rev')[1]).length);
}
function getRvData(rvObj) {
var rvNodes = rvObj.childNodes;
var rvString = '';
for (nodes in rvNodes) {
rvString += rvNodes[nodes].nodeValue || '';
}
return rvString;
}
Then try, say, getNumDiff('Kitten', 122843426). This alerts the difference in revision size—in this case, 39 characters—in .25 seconds. There is probably a better way of doing it... an actual programming language may be an option. Then there's always wget. GracenotesT § 04:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For the first question, you could wait until revision 20221 of MediaWiki is activated on Wikimedia Foundation wikis which will add the number of bytes add/removed to all edits in article histories. However this requires an update of all the rows containing edit information (over 127,000,000 on the English Wikipedia alone at time of writing), so it hasn't been activated yet. Graham87 12:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Have the background colours been changed recently? Articles are still white, but all other pages (special, discussion, project, etc.) have a slightly blue (annoying) tinge. I didn't see any changes recently in Common.css or Monobook.css, so I'm not sure what's going on (I've got a local Monobook.css copy but it only has one style rule which does not concern background color). I tried using two different browsers (Firefox and IE6), to the same effect. I have also tried purging the server cache and force-reloading. What is going on, and how do I fix it? Thanks. —Daniel Vandersluis(talk) 07:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's been like that for ages. I think you might have only realised that recently, but the non article pages have been like that for longer than I can recall. Harryboyles 07:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
edit conflict
It is defined in MediaWiki:Monobook.css and looks like it has been that way for almost three years. You can fix it with a little user css (take the .ns-0 stuff and define it for .mediawiki). --Splarka (rant) 07:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Huh, strange. I completely never noticed it until suddenly last night. Is .mediawiki the css class for the page backgrounds? Never mind, I figured it out. Thanks for pointing this out to me. —Daniel Vandersluis(talk) 14:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
time
Hi, I want to have my current time posted at the top of my talk page. I used this template: 03:09:51 but it does not always work - right now for example it is several hours off. Am I using it improperly, or is there a better template I can use? I know I can purge - but do I really have to purge every time I want to clock to update itself? Is there no alternative? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 13:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There probably isn't an alternative. I've got something similar; mine instead says the time the page was last purged or "refreshed". I know there is Javascript, but that would be for your personal use only; you can't have Javascript on normal pages for security reasons. Harryboyles 13:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
collapsing two css classes
having combined {{IAST}}, {{semxlit}}, {{ArabDIN}} and others into a new {{transl}}, I suggest that the "IAST" css class in MediaWiki:Common.css be removed, and the "latinx" class used generically for all romanizations of non-Latin scripts.
latinx at present suggests:
Code2000, "TITUS Cyberbit Basic", "Microsoft Sans Serif"
while IAST suggests:
"Arial Unicode MS", "GNU Unifont", "Lucida Sans Unicode"
note that this is a bit unfortunate, since it will be a matter of chance whether the result is in serif or sans-serif. Code2000 and TITUS are serif (TITUS has no cursive!). Microsoft Sans, Arial and Lucida Sans are sans-serif. The purpose of the class should be to render as much Latin Unicode as possible, but I think font suggestions should be ordered so as to prefer either serif or sans-serif. Maybe
Since most systems now come with reasonable Unicode support out-of-the-box, these classes will be largely redundant soon, anyway.
dab(𒁳) 15:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Question
Does anybody know why the indent wikimarkup in text ("::...:" or "**...*") doesn't work when there's a left-aligned pic? Is there a bug listed? NikoSilver 20:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone spare a few seconds to help me out with this please? NikoSilver 15:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to be because the <dl> and <dd> don't clear the image div on either side, but the indentation is compromised only on the left side (probably to let it wrap naturally. Breaking it down and adding borders, we see:
Thanks! I was supposing that this may be the case, but had no way of illustrating it as well as you did just now with the borders and all! It seems that the images displace bona-fide text, but they don't displace the indents as well, as evident if you continue your example sequence of indents (until they exceed the image width, which they do!):
So, shouldn't the wiki-markup (::: and ***) work around this html defect and force (somehow) the indents to be displaced as well (bypassing the html code in the resence of a pic)? I've worked on many articles with pics, and this is the most common problem that editors frequently face in format. To tell you the truth, I haven't noticed even one example, where the indent (if included) was actually intended to be omitted (why on earth would it be included in the first place then?). Shall we list a bug, or is there one already listed? NikoSilver 15:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is an interesting format issue here. I would like to ask again for input. Please don't be intimidated by the size of the section to participate, it's just examples of repetitive "blah"s to show the format issues. Should we list a bug? Is one already listed? NikoSilver 08:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Scroll Box for references
not sure where to put this suggestion, but on the bigger pages, a scroll box would look better for the references, then one whole screen full of references. Oldag07 22:42, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you think that it would be appropriate in an article, you can use the following code:
This is a scroll box with a height of 100. It may not work everywhere.
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
Filler text
This is an adaption from Beethoven that will work for all screen widths. You can alter the height; currently, it's 100px. Implementing this on every article with a large reference section may annoy some people, but please others. GracenotesT § 00:01, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The scroll box also appears in the Printable version, which probably causes only what is visible in the box to be printed rather than all the information to be printed. I did not test what happens when trying to jump to an anchor within the box. (SEWilco 04:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]
When the WikiMedia sites update the running copies of the software to svn (the working repository). Voice-of-All 15:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Pages being truncated
Have there been any complaints of this happeing again. The IP was trying to link in the article and it deleted 1/2 the page when they saved it. It appears that it's happend to them before. CambridgeBayWeather(Talk) 02:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand what you're saying correctly, I've seen it happen to the article on Good Eats before. It was caused by a reference that was improperly closed, if I remember correctly. --LuigiManiac 02:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Never mind, I just checked the diff and it didn't happen like that (the truncation didn't show on the diff in the case of Good Eats). --LuigiManiac 02:30, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There used to be a notice at the top of some longer pages saying something about that being caused by Firefox but I thought that it had been fixed. CambridgeBayWeather(Talk) 02:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I do use Firefox, but the thing with Good Eats was back on April 4th, so it might have been fixed since then. I still can't think of a reason for what I see in the diff. All he did was do some internal linking, and the links were closed properly. It's quite odd, to say the least. --LuigiManiac 03:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a link, but a parser function. It means if the value of the parameter "small" is "yes", then output "small" from the template, or do whatever with it that it's supposed to do. Otherwise, "standard" takes the place of "small". –Pomte 02:58, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, what Pomte said. Basically, if it's in [[double brackets]], it's a link, and if it's in {{double curly-brackets}}, it's either a template or a parser function. Oh yeah, but templates also have links. If you want to edit a template, type Template:templatename into the search box, replacing "templatename" with the name of the template. If you want to provide a link to a template, use {{tl|templatename}}, again replacing "templatename" with the name of the template. PyrospiritFlamesFire 03:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To make the parser functions work on another wiki, install the ParserFunctions extension. Mike Dillon 03:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Current recentchanges numbers only show net change?
For instance a green +1000 means that 1000 chars were added to the article, right? So let's take this, for example:
"I like pie."
If someone vandalized it into:
"I like egg."
It would be recorded as a zero change. Is there a way to change it so that it shows not just the net change, but the change components individually? That is, in the above example edit, it would show like this:
Is this significant enough to create confusion the other relatively new number? Do vandals ever count the number of characters in an article, then perform ROT13 to keep the overall change at (0)? –Pomte 03:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't seen it yet, but if that happens, we should just start looking at changes with net 0 character difference. - Mgm|(talk) 11:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That would be really helpful. In RC patrol I often encounter 0 changes that are vandalism of the kind that is hard to spot. ≈ jossi ≈(talk) 15:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just 0 change, it could be a major (±1000) change, but off by maybe ±20, so while over 1000 bits where changed, maybe 980 bits were added, so the change number won't show up as bolded in the recent changes.--Kirby♥time 06:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all - I spend 99% of my Wiki time on en:Wiki, but also occasionally hop over to meta and to one other language wiki (Maori). Since I only go to meta and mi:wiki every week or two, I often miss new things which are on my watchlist there. Is there any way of adding pages from Meta and mi:wiki to my en:wiki watchlist?
Grutness...wha? 07:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You'll have to wait for SUL to go live. MaxSem 07:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the meantime, Meta can be configured to send you an email whenever a page on your watchlist changes. --ais523 14:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
this will allow us to just use {{lang}} as usual ({{lang|grc|ἑλληνικὴ γλῶσσα}}) instead of {{polytonic}}.
see a proposed list here. dab(𒁳) 13:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Monobook scripts broken
Hey, my monobook.js just broke. I just made a few changes that I thought were purely formatting changes and wouldn't affect anything, but now none of my scripts work. Could someone take a look at the last few diffs and see what went wrong with the JavaScript? Thanks, PyrospiritShiny! 23:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
May I ask at what time you first noticed that it stopped working, for the benefit of other readers as well as myself? It will probably help if you add your changes one at a time, rather than all at once, going by the look of the diff between the latest version and the one on April 13. When I had problems about a week ago, I took the chance to go through all my scripts and weed out the ones I wasn't happy with. Start with one script at a time and test it before adding the next one. This should quickly identify the offending script(s). Harryboyles 11:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll go back and redo the stuff one at a time. The last diff where it worked (which I just reverted to) was this one. Anyway, if the problems persist, I'll ask again. Thanks, PyrospiritShiny! 15:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It works just fine now, but I have another question. In my monobook.js, what is the difference between this:
Also, in the second example, do spaces at the beginning of the line change anything? PyrospiritShiny! 15:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They both do the same thing, but the former calls a function that AzaToth (talk·contribs) wrote (you can see it at MediaWiki:Common.js) to make the code a bit cleaner... GracenotesT § 00:21, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The spaces at the beginning are purely formatting. The interpreter uses the ; character to determine the end of a statement. Harryboyles 09:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Is it possible to use a script of some sort to hide a specific lengthy caption until the reader clicks "show caption"? This is suggested for the long caption at Atheism#Rationale. Something like what is used in {{hat}}, for example? Thanks! — BRIAN0918 • 2007-04-17 00:45Z
I've moved your request here as being the more suitable forum
I've had a similar problem. The Wikimedia renderer that converts SVG into displayable graphics apparently cannot deal with text elements created as "flow text" in Inkscape. You need to change all text items from "flow text" to simple "text" elements.
On a different note, you should fix the image description page on commons, it says something entirely unrelated to your graphics.
hi, last thing first: aaahhh! thx, didn't notice that. I copy and pasted it from my previous upload. okay, I will do it right now. --Andreas -horn- Hornig 11:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
so, done.
now for the svg problem. I am using inkscape, but I am a real newbie in it. Do you know, where to change it from flow text to text, which button I have to push, or what parameters have to be changed in the xml editor? greets, --Andreas -horn- Hornig 11:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In my German edition of Inkscape it's "text->Fließtext aufheben (Shift-Alt-W)". Contact me on my talkpage if you need further help (in German if you prefer.) And I really don't think you meant to be suing Inkscape, right? ;-) Fut.Perf.☼ 12:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
hehee, nope, just scrabbled the word and mixed using to suing ;).okay, I will cantact you on your talkpage. cya, --Andreas -horn- Hornig 12:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Byte count feature (Page History / Contribs vs. RC / Watchlist)
Hi. I've been wondering: Recent Changes & my watchlist display those handy red or green numbers showing the net contribution of bytes an edit makes (+1 for adding a period; -20,000 for a big archiving; etc). I think that info would be equally useful in specific page histories, on User Contributions pages, and even on diff pages. Any reason that hasn't happened or can't happen?
I guess this could amount to a feature req for MediaWiki, but I clicked that link at the top of the page & couldn't make heads or tails of the site. Plus I can't be the first person to bring this up. Thanks, —Turangalilatalk 13:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So, will it ever be activated? It sounds like it could come in handy. --LuigiManiac 13:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's a matter of when, not if. Brion Vibber in this mailing list post has stated that it's not fully implemented on the Wikimedia servers. Part of the reason is, as stated, it's running in the background. Harryboyles 14:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd much rather see a short snippet of the diff itself than some meaningless numbers. I think this would really help cut down on vandalism and make it a lot easier to go through our watchlists. — Omegatron 14:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. On my page, User:The Behnam, I want the Iranian flag to be small like the US flag. How do I do that? The Behnam 16:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I replaced "[[Image:Flag_of_Iran.svg|88px]]" with "[[Image:Flag_of_Iran.svg|40px]]" to reduce the size of the image. Tizio 17:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm looking to make a template that will display a custom page when sent data - specifically to illustrate the position of a certain time in the geological time scale.
I've written a template which will perform as I wish, and whilst I can include the template in a page, I hoped to be able to link a date using Template:Ma so that clicking on the year would take the user directly to a timeline with the specified year marked.
I've spoken to a couple of experienced editors who are unaware of a solution to this problem. Is there any way I can carry this out?
(I hope I've explained what I want clearly enough...)
That does not seem possible. We would need Template:H:mlm - instead of including a page for given parameter values, this allows linking to a page for given parameter values.--Patrick 00:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
While we were using this template on 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs, we noticed that there was a large gap being inserted just before the table created by this template. After looking at the HTML that was generated, I realized that something was adding three paragraphs that contained a single line break each. The resulting HTML looked like this:
I asked User:Mecu and User:Nmajdan to look at it, but neither could find a reason for it. Both then suggested that I ask here. The original of the template is here, though there is a sandbox with the code here and another with test data here. Previous discussions of the problem can be found here and on the above mentioned user's talk pages. z4ns4tsu\talk 21:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think I fixed it. Let me know if there are any other problems. Cheers. --MZMcBride 23:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Are any of the vandal bots running? I've been seeing lots of vandalism having to be reverted manually today. Corvus cornix 01:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
MartinBot was down for about three hours, but is now back. It's beaten me to reverts a bunch of times in just the last ten minutes. Antandrus (talk) 01:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sidebar issues
After some recent updates to MediaWiki:Sidebar, there are a few problems that I'd like to see fixed. I've written up an analysis at User:Mike Dillon/Sidebar. None of these issues are too critical, but I think they stem from an incomplete understanding of the way that the sidebar works. I put an {{editprotected}} tag on MediaWiki talk:Interaction and made a note at MediaWiki talk:Sidebar, but I was asked to post at the Village Pump for more input. From my perspective, the more involved fixes discussed at User:Mike Dillon/Sidebar don't really change anything critical for a normal user's experience, but they integrate better with the built-in handling of the sidebar. As far as user impact, I've detailed the few cases of users who would be impacted on my analysis page.
I'd prefer to discuss the changes at MediaWiki talk:Sidebar, but feel free to respond to me wherever you think is appropriate. Mike Dillon 05:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How frequently is the Wikipedia software updated?
Just cuirous. I noticed none of the changes that where anounced in the Signpost on April 2 where actualy "live" (yeah I know the page says they may not be implemented here yet). I'm just curious. That namespace selection option on whatlinkshere would be quite usefull just about now. Also why "tease" us with news of updates before they are actualy implemented on this Wiki. Those that are intetested in the state of the MediaWiki software in general are probably watching it's project page and/or the SVN tree rater than the enWiki signpost. Meh, anyway hurry up already ;-P --Sherool(talk) 08:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Usually the software stays pretty current with the fixes and feature additions coming live. However, recently a change was implemented in regards to having the "bytes changed per diff on recent changes and watchlists" feature implemented on all revisions that have been made. This required a change in the underlying database schema meaning all 128,000,000 or so revisions need to be updated. It's being done in the background so as not to disrupt the site. This mailing post by Brion Vibberis related to the change. Harryboyles 09:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
query page protection
Is there any way to determine the protection status of a page without screen scraping? CMummert · talk 12:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Right now, the current api appears not to offer such feature. -- ReyBrujo 13:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
query.php can determine whether the currently logged-in user can edit a page: [6]. However, this information is kind-of useless if you happen to be an admin (a bot might find it more useful). --ais523 13:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I was afraid of that. I can get around the admin problem, but what I really want is to query the date that protection was placed and the date it expires. Special:Export doesn't seem to include it and neither does query.php. Too bad. CMummert · talk 13:34, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This feature has been requested at meta:Talk:API#Protected pages, but the programmer who maintains API has not been very active recently. Tizio 14:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes, it's desired to remove very-low-level section headings from the TOC. (This could be useful in some project pages with low-level subheadings used for edit-section purposes; there are probably list-like articles that would benefit (e.g. ones which have a long list of sections each corresponding to a different country, and this sort of thing would also allow section headers to be used at RfA without noinclude tricks). The code to do this would be
(I have tested this in my own userspace, and it validates according to W3C); it would allow
<div class="toclimit-3">__TOC__</div>
to remove any headings below level 3 (assuming level 1 headings aren't used, which they shouldn't be on most pages), etc. Does anyone object to me making this change? --ais523 14:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea to me, and as long as it doesn't break anything, I don't see any problems. Jayden54 14:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me, so long as it's only used in mainspace sparingly (if at all). Yet another CSS class doesn't affect anything that currently exists in the wiki. Although, I'm not that fond of having both classes toclimit-x and toclevel-x. GracenotesT § 20:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
editing a redirect
I am wondering what the policy is on editing a redirected page? On the help topics it mentions when it is ok to create a redirect and gives technical assistance, but it wasn't clear when it was ok to change the page that is being redirected. The specific instance is Swami Ramdas. I want to add a biography of him, but when you enter in his name you are automatically redirected to a page talking about the ashram that he founded. Is it acceptable to change that orignial page on Ramdas and expand on it, linking of course to the ashram somewhere in the text?
74.130.10.192 14:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)temp07[reply]
Generally speaking, this is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, and even encouraged (the exception is in cases when the redirect was added because the subject isn't notable enough for an article; I don't know if that's the case here, because I'm unacquainted with the subject). You can edit a redirect by clicking on the 'redirected from' message near the top of the page. Hope that helps! --ais523 14:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Watchlist lag, again...
Anyone else experiencing a lag of about ten minutes?--VectorPotentialTalk 15:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
VPT is on my watchlist, and your post here is showing on my watchlist at the moment (substantially less than 10 minutes after your post), so no for me. --ais523 15:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Alignment problem
Hi. I've put a few userboxes on my user page, however, one of them refuses to align right along with the others. Can anyone tell me what the problem is?? Thanks. Pandora 20:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I got SVG working on my local copy of MediaWiki, but it doesn't quite render as well as I thought.
This is my template:
This user has left Wikipedia, and may not return or may well be inactive. They are not indefinitely blocked, or banned. The user can return at any time.See block log.
However, the SVG image of the stop hand has a white border, which it doesn't on Wikipedia - I'm using ImageMagick as the renderer.
If I used Inkscape would that work better??
All advice is appreciated. Thanks, --SunStar Nettalk 20:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If it looks okay in Firefox but not MSIE, it might be a transparency issue. Apparently there's a javascript hack somewhere that's enabled on Wikipedia? [7] --Interiot 06:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The SVG does not work in Firefox, the screenshot above is from Firefox. It's still rendering a white background with SVGs, doesn't do that with PNGs. Should I change from Imagemagick to Inkscape?? --SunStar Nettalk 09:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia uses a modified version of librsvg. You might try running it instead of Imagemagick. I don't have any experience using Inkscape in batch mode, only as a vector image editor. Mike Dillon 02:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Recent changes to unwatched articles
Would it be possible to add an option to restrict Special:Recentchanges to articles that only a few (maybe less than twenty) people have on their watchlists? --Derlay 22:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe so; the system doesn't store who has what watched like that (it's all tied through the account, not the article). EVula// talk // ☯ // 02:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The spell-checker SUCKS!
Why can't it be as good as Google?
There is a spell-checker in MediaWiki but it is disabled for performance reasons. x42bn6Talk 01:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No there isn't. --brion 14:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You're probably seeing a spell-checker in your local browser. If so, you should be able to add new words to its dictionary when it's lacking. --Interiot 06:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Because Google has billions of dollars of profits to spend on programmers to build a spell checker. Wikipedia has volunteers who do it in their spare time. Corvus cornix 18:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strange image behavior
According to the Mediawiki software, this image does not exist: Image:Willie-Wagtail-thumb.jpg. It has no history, no description, and the "image" link is red. Pretty strange, huh. —Remember the dot(talk) 02:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's no point in worrying about fixed bugs. -- Tim Starling 03:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Out of curiosity, could I see the information about this bug and when it was fixed? —Remember the dot(talk) 03:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
At the very end of the article, it seems to have an indelible "l". It won't go away as far as I can tell. Just a minor little thing, of course, but it's just odd. Anyone know what's up? Vordabois 02:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. Stray character in a category link.[8]EVula// talk // ☯ // 02:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Article patent_troll links to notes incorrect:1->2, 2->3, 20->22 etc
When you click a note, the page should scroll so that the note is at the very top of your browser window, and it should also be highlighted.
In article Patent_troll a higher-numbered link is the one that gets highlighted at the top.
Does anyone else get this on this article or elsewhere?
Works fine for me. Tizio 15:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How long has that "search for contributions" box been up on contributions pages? I don't think I've seen it before this morning. Is it some kind of new feature? --LuigiManiac 13:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And now we have the amounts of bytes showing in the page histories? Did we get an upgrade or something? --LuigiManiac 13:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We are often upgraded, we have expiries on protected pages now too. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 13:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After some delays, the database schema updates are complete and we've upgraded the software on the servers to the current MediaWiki code. There are a few cute little user-visible improvements, but mostly we've just got more bug fixes and things in. There might be a few new errors which crept in, too, so do give a shout about new oddities. --brion 13:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way to remove the bytes from your visible edit summaries? Not really a fan of them. Quadzilla99 14:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Having a quick peruse through the page source, I found the CSS class is history-size. Thus you could have something like
history-size{
display: none;
}
I think I've got the right code. Harryboyles 14:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The code should be .history-size{display: none;} with a dot. Alex Smotrov 15:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sure is utterly annoying to have to go through an extra page to get user contributions. What was the point of that? Making vandal-fighting more tedious? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 14:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean? From what I can tell and from what it seems you're after, nothing's changed. Special:Contributions/Jpgordon still gets what you expect. Harryboyles 14:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah -- for a few clicks anyway, I'd get just the radio-button choices, without data; but it fixed itself somehow. Or maybe I was hallucinating, I dunno. (Still seems like unnecessary extra stuff; newbie=contribs-newbie should be its own page, and not clutter up the regular contributions page.) --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 14:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's in the page history now. This is what we're referring to (the bytes) see here:[9]Quadzilla99 14:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, maybe I misunderstood you so. I just have to copy that to my css to turn off the bytes summary Harry? Am I understanding that correctly? Quadzilla99 14:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah copy it to your css file. Harryboyles 14:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ahhh, so much better. Thanks. Quadzilla99 02:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Bug: WHOIS no longer works off the contributions page of an IP editor. CMummert · talk 14:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Addition: It passes "Contributions" (the string) as the IP address to the whois pages. Harryboyles 15:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This looks like a change in the behavior of {{PAGENAMEE}} on Special:Contributions. Apparently it used to contain the IP address or username. The IP address isn't passed to the wfMsg call, so it isn't possible to use "$1" or anything else in MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext to fix this. Mike Dillon 15:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WHOIS is still broken. The point is that all the query strings use 'Contributions' as the parameter. Shenme 18:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Um. I don't think I contradicted that; I was just explaining why it is broken. All of the links in MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext use {{PAGENAMEE}}. Mike Dillon 20:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm interested in seeing two changes that I believe were announced but aren't in the deployed version:
Are there any plans to get these two things back into a future build? Mike Dillon 15:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Brion ripped that out, seems it was too slow. Actually he took a lot of VoA's features out, including Special:Checkuser changes, this, ect. Prodegotalk 20:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Is there some practical reason for lumping these two features together?
It's really annoying to go into the special contributions page for one particular user, and wind up with a multiple choice question about whether I want to screen for all new users, when I just want one--VectorPotentialTalk 15:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. I don't see the point in this new feature either. --kingboyk 16:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I presume it's useful for vandal fighting? - jc37 16:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Contributions/newbies is useful for vandal fighting, the above feature is just annoying and redundant--VectorPotentialTalk 17:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And it isn't useful for vandal fighting, since new vandalisms are not showing up. Corvus cornix 18:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to have returned to normal ...for now--VectorPotentialTalk 20:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not the end of the world but...
Made a typo fix on Self-injury and (i was logged on) it changed it all ok, but when i look at my watchlist i see a random ip number (which happens to be mine!)... i suppose it's a bug but dunno what happened, i made a edit to my user page, and my it appaeared as a contribution with my name...Would this have to do maybe with what the above user posted or? Ps is there any actual place to report bugs? Here i thought was most suitable? Later. petze 14:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Could someone take a look at this page? I've been trying to add {{Schoolblock}} and {{Anonblock}} to the list of standard block descriptions. I'm running into trouble, though, because the templates are transcluding onto Special:Blockip. Thanks! alphachimp 14:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
18:55, 19 April 2007 VoABot II (Talk | contribs) m (7,843 bytes) (BOT - Reverted edits by H.olesea {vandalism} to revision #124091879 by "Indon".)
18:54, 19 April 2007 H.olesea (Talk | contribs) (7,934 bytes) (→Main goals of political agenda)
18:38, 19 April 2007 Indon (Talk | contribs) m (7,843 bytes) (Reverted 1 edit by H.olesea identified as vandalism to last revision by MaxSem.)
18:38, 19 April 2007 H.olesea (Talk | contribs) (8,468 bytes)
18:20, 19 April 2007 MaxSem (Talk | contribs) m (7,843 bytes) (rvv)
18:17, 19 April 2007 H.olesea (Talk | contribs) (7,957 bytes) (→Main goals of political agenda)
Number of changed bytes is different for every vandalism and its reversion, though diffs show that the reversions were correct. What's wrong? MaxSem 15:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's 7,843 bytes all 3 times, maybe you're looking at the wrong numbers? Alex Smotrov 15:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Added: the numbers show the articles sizes. Don't confuse them with numbers in Recent Changes and Watchlist (those have + or - in front). Alex Smotrov 15:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, my fault. MaxSem 15:53, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"restore this version"
Am I the only one whose "restore this version" javascript is missing form "differences between revisions" because it was there a couple of days ago but now its gone and it has only dissappeared for Mozilla Firefox...--Cometstyles 15:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thats impossible. Even I using Firefox but it works perfect for me. --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪walkie-talkie 16:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, most automated reversion tools are written specifically for Firefox or other non-IE browsers, so there are a number of instances of features not working on IE, but working for everyone else--VectorPotentialTalk 16:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually its hasnt disappeared from IE but I dont use IE because its too slow..--Cometstyles 18:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Language problem
I'm Swedish and therefore, I use Swedish even on the English wiki (i.e. I don't write in Swedish but I've chosen that language under "My settings" for all the menus and stuff). At the top of Wikipedia, where we all have the links "My user page", "My discussion page", "My settings", "My watchlist", "My contributions" and "Log out", they are and have always been in Swedish for me, until now. They're all still in Swedish, except for "My watchlist" which is (starting today) for some odd reason in English. I have checked the "System messages" under "Special pages" and there, it still no longer says "Min övervakningslista" but "My watchlist" for me. Does anybody else, who doesn't have English in their language settings, exeperience the same problem and does anybody have a solution? /Ludde23TalkContrib 18:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I only speak English, but after seeing this I got curious and switched my language setting to Swedish. It did the same thing to me. I don't know what is causing it, but it might be the recent upgrade. --LuigiManiac 18:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is indeed strange: in Italian it's "my watchlist", but in German it's not. Tizio 19:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is controlled by the MediaWiki:Watchlist system message. Since it has been customized on-wiki without customizing MediaWiki:Watchlist/sv, the Swedish version doesn't work. Since MediaWiki:Watchlist has the same value as the software default, deleting it should restore the cross-language functionality. I'm not sure about the difference between Italian and German, since neither one has been customized on-wiki. Mike Dillon 02:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After looking at the source, it seems that it issue is that the language files define "watchlist" and "my-watchlist", but not "mywatchlist". I still don't exactly understand how this works, since SkinTemplate.php requests "my-watchlist", but I'm pretty sure that the missing keys for "mywatchlist" are the cause of the problem. Mike Dillon 03:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
User contributions
What's the deal with the new boxes on the User contributions page? I see vandalism, I go to look at the IP address's page to see what other vandalism has been performed, and I don't see any contributions at all, even the vandalism I just reverted. And what are the purposes of those two boxes? Corvus cornix 18:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the reason the contributions aren't showing up is good old-fashioned lag. As for the boxes, they're a new feature on contributions pages. I think they're supposed to make it easier to go from contributions page to contributions page. --LuigiManiac 18:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Now when I try to see the contributions made by a user with an extensive history at Wikipedia, it's taking godawful amounts of time for the contributions page to come up. Only the newbie IP addresses actually show up in a quick amount of time, and they're empty. In fact, when I try to see my own contributions, I get the "The Wikimedia Foundation servers are currently experiencing technical difficulties." error screen, even though Wikipedia is up and running. Corvus cornix 18:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; the contributions are slow again, and I think the watchlists might be a bit slow as well. Give it a 15 minutes to half an hour; it should be fine by then. It normally takes about that long for the problem to go away. Both the watchlist and the contributions are taking some time to load at the moment. Acalamari 18:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Whew, seems to be fixed. Maybe it just needed a lunch break. :) Corvus cornix 20:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Heavy load?
I try to get up newbie contributions, but I get nothing... Is this very overworked, now? To many newbies, or what? Greswik 19:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I seem to recall that when editing a page that was deleted protected via the cascading protection, there was some warning somewhere in the edit form about the page being protected (like the red message you got when editing a protected page), and telling which page caused the protection. Can someone confirm this behavior? I don't see that message any longer. Tizio 19:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Non admins still get a message, but there is no longer a way for admins to tell if a deleted page is protected. Needs to be changed. Prodegotalk 19:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that was weird. The "protect" tab doesn't even say "unprotect" and the only way to tell that something's protected via cascading protection is to go to the Protect Page to find out. Kind of annoying. howcheng {chat} 22:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just discovered this the hard way when I mistakenly believed that the main page's protection wasn't cascading. (I assumed that it had something to do with the incident earlier in the day.) I immediately manually protected all of the templates and images that weren't already protected. Then I removed and reinstated the cascade. I thought that this solved the problem, because the cascading protection message appeared when I went to edit the On this day section. (This was strange, because MediaWiki recently was changed to have the manual protection messages—including the semi-protection message, annoyingly enough—override the cascading protection message.) So I removed the manual protection, only to find that the message (and "unprotect" tab) had disappeared. I then logged out and found that despite the fact that the "edit this page" tab was present, the cascading protection actually was in place all along.
Has anyone filed a bug report yet? —David Levy 00:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Anybody else notice that all recent edits in the history page now have the number of bytes? What's the use of this feature? -- Hdt83Chat 00:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. And on some pages, all revisions have the number of bytes, and other only have a few or one. --TeckWiz is now RParlateContribs@(Lets go Yankees!) 01:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like older edits made before the upgrade do not have the byte count. I think it was added for easier vandalism reverting. BANG! 02:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved – The Behnam 17:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
It's really annoying to go into the special contributions page for one particular user, and wind up with a multiple choice question about whether I want to screen for all new users, when I just want one--VectorPotentialTalk 15:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)