Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

[[:|WP:VPT
WP:VP/T]]

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.

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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Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:Technical FAQ)

Click "[show]" next to each point to see more details.

If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache.
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 have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature.

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.

For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Wikipedia services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

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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]

Admins have access to Special:Unwatchedpages for pages with 0 watchers, but a recent-changes for it would probably be too taxing on the database without some serious reprogramming. --ais523 15:13, 20 April 2007 (U T C)

How about this: every time a watchlist is viewed, update a timestamp on every page on the list, and filter Recentchanges by that timestamp. That should be feasible to implement, and actually better than a watchlist count, since watchlists of inactive users can't affect the result. --Derlay 23:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is a good idea Derlay. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 00:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone going to implement this? Or do I need to mention it somewhere else? --Derlay 22:21, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Something like this would definitely help. I doubt you'll get anything implemented just by asking here though, I think you have to file a BugZilla report for that sort of thing. If there's some feasible way to make it apparent how many people are watching a given article it would help protect against vandalism that gets through the front gate undetected immensely. One could simply look at the talk page (or wherever) and see if it was watched or not. In fact, updating the data from recently viewed watchlists would give much more valuable feedback, as many users could easily be on a long break or totally inactive and still be watching an article. I could have sworn I inquired about this here only a few days ago, but upon returning I can't find the section here or in the archive. Richard001 07:12, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is now reported as bugzilla:9850. --Derlay 23:18, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bunched up edit links

Wikipedia:Meetup/London1 is vexing me. This is being done by the huge Wikimeetup template, not by images, so those fixes didn't help me. Is there any way to fix this? hbdragon88 06:28, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've made a change here that fixes the problem. The issue was that a few images were floating on the right below the template and they were pushing all the section edit links to the bottom. With a template that long also right-floating, just avoid any right-floating images after it. Jaksmata 15:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've a similar problem on Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics - I can't see any section edit links at all. --Salix alba (talk) 11:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can see edit links there. Maybe you need to check your preferences? Look in the Edit tab, first option is to enable editing sections - make sure it's checked. Jaksmata 15:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:BUNCH on how to fix these. -- Kendrick7^talk 20:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edittools problems on personal wiki

I have copied part of MediaWiki:Edittools for use on my personal wiki (thanks for making that box, by the way -- it's really handy) and installed the CharInsert extension. However, some of the characters that look just fine in Wikipedia turn up as diamond-enclosed question marks on my wiki. I have scoured the CSS on this site as much as I can, but couldn't find anything that fixed the problem. How can I make the characters work? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help. — Tuvok[^T@lk/_{Improve me}] 03:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like a character encoding problem related to copying and pasting. Is you wiki public? Mike Dillon 03:59, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately not. It's actually only local as of yet; I'm still looking for hosting. I can post the code from any pages I have in user subpages if it'll help (like LocalSettings.php or MediaWiki: namespace pages). Thanks for the quick response! Too bad I wasn't online :).

I actually tried copying and pasting a couple problem characters directly from Character Map, but it didn't fix the issue, at least with the character or two I tried it on. — Tuvok[^T@lk/_{Improve me}] 21:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You might try copying and pasting the contents with a different browser to see if you have the same problems. Mike Dillon 01:00, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And here I thought IE would be good for something... Wish I could say it worked. Thanks for the tip, though. I noticed that my edits copying from Character Map weren't actually saved. Since the characters didn't change (according to MW, at least), it didn't save the edit. I'll have to keep working on this... — Tuvok[^T@lk/_{Improve me}] 03:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't suppose anyone else has an idea? I've done everything I can think of, even changing the collation in the wikidb database to utf8_bin, but it didn't work. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! — Tuvok[^T@lk/_{Improve me}] 01:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I guess not. — Tuvok[^T@lk/_{Improve me}] 22:48, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Getting a partial source, with action=raw?

Is there a way to get the source (ie. raw wikitext) of a section of an article? I tried adding &section=x to the URL (as per how section editing is done) but it still pulls the whole article. If there is no current way to do this via a URL, is there a good way to parse the whole wikitext to split into sections (ie. a regex to split on)? —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 21:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the MediaWiki parser regex for making headings (converted to JavaScript):

       for ( i = 6; i >= 1; --i ) {
           var h = "";
           var r = i;
           
           while (--r >= 0) h += "=";
           
           re = new RegExp("^"+ h +"(.+)"+ h +"(\\s*)$", "gm");
           
           text = text.replace(re, "<h"+ i +">$1</h"+ i +">$2");
       }

You could a split/explode just before the regexp, and you'd have an array of sections. As far as I know, there's no current way to do this via URL. Datrio 07:37, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 13:49, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with Special:ProtectedPages

I was working on tabulating protected articles when I noticed some problems with Special:ProtectedPages. The list of fully protected articles doesn't seem to be complete - for example the redirects American West, Bubble hash, and many more are not listed. These pages do have nonempty protection logs. CMummert · talk 15:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It does not yet contain a list of all protected pages. See bugzilla:9386 for more details. --Iamunknown 16:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Is there any way via query.php, api.php, or any other public interface to actually get a list of all protected pages? CMummert · talk 16:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

None that I know of. --Iamunknown 18:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One problem is that when they are migrated in, they will show up as the newest ones. I'll probably change the (earlist/latest) links to reflect that then. Voice-of-All 17:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine - api.php can query log events to get the protection date, sysop, and comment; the problem is getting a list of protected pages in the first place. CMummert · talk 18:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At WT:PP, I've mentioned a script I've added to do that. Voice-of-All 20:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unexplained categorization

For some reason, Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, a redirect with no categories on it, is being categorized into Category:Wikify from November 2006. It's also not categorized according to alphabetical order, but as if a space were used as a sortkey. Anyone have any ideas? Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 02:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually an article with an initial space in its name that is categorized, but Mediawiki just quietly strips the space, so the link points to a completely different article. --Derlay 09:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the invalid article name was created by a page move: Special:Contributions/Dips_286. Mediawiki seems to handle leading spaces inconsistently; they are mostly stripped, but not in the target of a move, or in links like [1] and [2]. This can be quite confusing. --Derlay 20:46, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please file a bug report, to make sure it gets fixed. --cesarb 00:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That article should probably be deleted too (the "real" article by that name was deleted earlier). It's essentially unreachable. I would put a {{db-g6}} on it, but then it would categorize into the speedy deletion category the same way. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 00:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, don't delete it yet (It's an example on the bug report. (bug:9870) Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 00:20, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bug is now fixed; I'm running a bad-title check in the background which should fix up the page to be reachable. --brion 21:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

dontcountme=s?

Does anybody know why and where the "dontcountme=s" parameter for MediaWiki's index.php originated and what, if any, use it had (or has). This parameter can be found in many installation codes for user scripts, as in:

// install User:Cacycle/wikEd in-browser text editor
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="'
+ 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cacycle/wikEd.js'
+ '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

I have tried hard to find any reference to it, including the MediaWiki source code. It is also not listed under http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php. Cacycle 03:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've also wondered about this... Gracenotes^T § 03:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess it has something to do with access log processing for statistics and that it has always ignored by the MediaWiki software itself. Mike Dillon 05:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well "common selse" would suggest that it relates to MediaWiki's hit counting feature. I can't speak to wheter or not it actualy has any effect in the current MediaWiki version. I know hit counting is disabled on the English Wikipedia and probably most other MediaWiki projects for performance reasons so around here it defenently doesn't do anyting regardles. The way it's used would suggest the intention was to avoid having stylesheet and javascript pages like MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Common.js show up as the most viewed pages on the site. People have then just copied the syntax used to load those pages when they created theyr own user css and js pages, but I'm pretty sure it can safely be done away with seeing as the hit counting mechanism is turned off anyway. --Sherool (talk) 06:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It was a hack for webalizer, which considered all URLs ending in "s" to be JavaScript or CSS and therefore uncountable. Of course we haven't used webalizer for a few of years now. -- Tim Starling 11:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just to make sure: we can remove dontcountme=s from our script now, right? (And also from importScript() in MediaWiki:Common.js) — Alex Smotrov 13:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. -- Tim Starling 12:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an official guideline/recommendation for the use of class="wikitable"?

Hi, I am wondering whether class="wikitable" is to be prefered over other table layouts. I find that there are way to many lines in wikitable, but maybe there is some rationale behind this? Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jasy_jatere/Sinhala_tables for examples of what I mean Jasy jatere 13:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The second is much better. Use wikitable when it looks good to use wikitable. — Omegatron 13:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikitable is preferable in general, although there are always exceptions to the rule. Feel free to convert tables in articles to wikitable style if they're otherwise plain - they'll look better that way. Nihiltres^(t.c.s) 15:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect TOC formatting

==H2==
===H3===
====H4====
===H3===

==H2==
===H3===

H2
- H3
  - H4
- H3

H2

H3

This example of sections generates incorrectly formatted TOC: the last H3 does not have enough indent from the left. In HTML this means that <ul> tag is closed too early on preceding H2.

It looks like a Mediawiki bug to me. Or did I miss something? — Alex Smotrov 15:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm editing with FireFox, Windows XP, and agree - it looks like a bug (I pasted your six headings above the heading for this section, then did a preview; the final heading (2.1) should be indented in the TOC (like 1.1) and isn't. Odd. Definitely something the developers should look at. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I just came here to file a similar report (wished I'd checked, could have saved myself a lot of time). Someone should definitely file a bug report. Paul August ☎ 22:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I think it might be this problem [3]. Paul August ☎ 22:29, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Someone filed it today and it's already reported as fixed: bugzilla:9764 — Alex Smotrov 22:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't seem to be fixed. United Kingdom corporation tax and WP:FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We will see it fixed when Mediawiki software on Wikipedia servers gets updated. The bug says fixed in r21814, Special:Version shows only 'r21778'. Let's try to relax and do something else for now ;) Alex Smotrov 23:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Relaxing is fine; in the meantime, it's very hard to get anything done at WP:FAR, with the TOC in complete disarray, and the backlog increases. Can anyone inform us of the next step needed to get this addressed ? This isn't territory I normally deal with. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strange TOC bug?

Just did some editing to Los Angeles Police Department, and cant figure out why the TOC wont collapse fully, instead in hide mode it hides the first main header only. The page's infobox appears to be working normally. -Ste vertigo 09:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I too ran into this bug since the weekend: if there is a subsubsection heading in the TOC, it won't "hide" sections after that one properly but will only partially collapse the sections which preceded it. — Athaenara 10:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, just ran into this one on YouTube as well. Probably the same thing as this, which apparently should be fixed soon. WarpstarRider 10:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this occurs when there is a ===subsection=== heading which follows a ====subsubsection==== heading, and I've been able to duplicate it. I almost copied my test here but then realised what it would do to the TOC for the entire page. — Athaenara 10:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone is following or working on this, I removed the level 4 headings from one FAR review, and this semi-corrected the TOC, although now there's a new error at the TOC in WP:FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update with the fix has been applied. --brion 21:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I fried my monobook! (again)

I did it again. User:Pupster21/monobook.js. Please rollback to last version. --Pupster210 20:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It will crash IE. --Pupster210 20:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just do it yourself, turning off javascript in your settings. Prodego ^talk 20:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Settings restricted here at school. --Pupster210 20:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry you're having trouble with your monobook, but I just don't think any of these scripts are going to work in an IE based browser, at least not without a lot of bugs--VectorPotential^Talk 20:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that in order or use most javascript codes on WIkipedia you will need Firefox. The code I use for warnings is WP:TWINKLE. -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 23:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That will only work in Firefox. I (think I) know that popups works in IE for vandal reversion, but it's not as elegant. Gracenotes^T § 13:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki skin change?

Has there been some higher-than-user-level Wikipedia:Skin change of page background colours in the past few days?

When I first saw this about 48 hours ago, I thought it was because of a new hard disk and Mac OS X 10.4.6 and Safari 2.0.3 installs on my own computer, but colour changes appeared only on Wikipedia (including MediaWiki) pages while off-Wiki webpages (google, etc.) continue to display normally.

Anomaly: page margin, Table of contents background, quoteboxes background, the categories box, "Save page" "Show preview" "Show changes" buttons and small "This is a minor edit" and "Watch this page" checkboxes below page edit areas are now pale pink, while the background of the main portion of any Wikipedia page is now ice blue.

Second anomaly: very few fonts display properly now. For example, perhaps ten of the seventy or so formatted examples of fonts on Wikipedia:WikiProject User Page Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting Text#List of Fonts display as they should. — Athaenara 07:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can corroborate the font problem (but not the other problem with the strange background colors). I've tested the page linked above (the one with the font table) on three browsers - Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 5.2 (mac) - only around 1/3 of the fonts display correctly. Most of the others show up as san serif (looks like Verdana) and a few of them show up as a serif font (I think it's New Times). The text of the code on that page seems to correctly define the font names, but they are not showing up properly when rendered. Parzival418 _Hello 08:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does the problem persist if you bypass your cache? --ais523 08:31, 3 May 2007 (U T C)

No, bypassing or emptying my cache does not affect this. I've tested it on two computers and multiple browsers, same result. They are all Macs, though, I don't have a Windows machine.

I also tested the &action=purge method of requesting re-rendering of the page. Also, no change to the problem.

I uploaded a screen shot of the incorrect font table, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Font_problem.jpg --Parzival418 _Hello 08:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What happens if you view the table with a skin other than Monobook? (For instance, [4]). --ais523 08:53, 3 May 2007 (U T C)

I can't answer the larger question about monobook, but I can tell you my own monobook.css page is empty and always has been. I looked at ais523's link and saw the same examples not displaying the fonts they'd been formatted to display. Purge: no change. Bypass your cache: no change. I've emptied my own browser cache daily (as usual) this week: no change. — Athaenara 09:21, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been looking through what's effectively Recent Changes for the software. There were no changes connected to the skin 'about 48 hours ago' that weren't reverted almost immediately, but it's possible that there was a typo in some code elsewhere that's causing this. (Sometimes, extra whitespace is left at one end of a file; for reasons I don't understand, this sometimes corrupts the data that the servers send out, causing it to display in 'quirks mode' and interpreting the page differently, if I remember correctly, although I've never checked this myself.) What happens if you load up the page in Firefox, and then type 'javascript:' in the URL? (It opens a box explaining errors and warnings that came up on the page; the only expected one would be about 'column-count'; anything else may be what's causing the problem.) (By the way, thanks for the info so far, it's really helping to narrow this down. I see no problem on IE6 for Windows, by the way.) --ais523 09:28, 3 May 2007 (U T C)

OK, I checked the javacript in Firefox, I'll paste the resulting text below. I have to sign off for tonight and will check in tomorrow. Please let me know if you need me to check anything else. Thanks for your help. --Parzival418 _Hello 09:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Error: Warning: unrecognized command line flag -psn_0_54788097
Source File: file:///Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/components/nsBrowserContentHandler.js Line: 655
Error: syntax error Source File: javascript:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 1, Column: 109 Source Code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts
Error: syntax error Source File: javascript:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 1, Column: 109 Source Code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts
Error: syntax error Source File: javascript:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 1, Column: 109 Source Code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts
Warning: Expected end of value for property but found '3'. Error in parsing value for property 'font-family'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 0
Warning: Expected end of value for property but found '2'. Error in parsing value for property 'font-family'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 0
Error: syntax error Source File: javascript:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 1, Column: 109 Source Code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts
Warning: Expected end of value for property but found ' '. Error in parsing value for property 'font-family'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 0
Warning: Expected end of value for property but found '93'. Error in parsing value for property 'font-family'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 0
Warning: Expected color but found 'width'. Error in parsing value for property 'border'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_Page_Help/Do-It-Yourself/Formatting_Text#List_of_Fonts Line: 0
Warning: Unknown property 'cohttp://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_sig.pnglumn-count'. Declaration dropped. Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=2678400 Line: 42

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIWebNavigation.loadURI]" nsresult: "0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)" location: "JS frame :: chrome://global/content/viewSource.js :: viewSource :: line 141" data: no]

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. I'll take a look at it myself later (I have to go offline for a bit too, not sure if it'll be minutes or hours). --ais523 09:55, 3 May 2007 (U T C)

Just to follow up on ais523's link: the page with the list of formatted font examples as viewed with each of the seven skins listed and linked for preview in user Preferences: chick, standard (Classic), cologneblue, monobook (default), myskin, nostalgia, simple.

Identically with these seven skins, all but the same few examples do not display as formatted when I view them. The twelve exceptions: Arial Black, Arial Narrow, Arial Rounded MT Bold, Brush Script MT, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Gill Sans MT, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Webdings. — Athaenara 10:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The fonts which end with numbers don't work for me either (they all produce error messages on the JavaScript error console), using Firefox on Windows, but all the rest work, so this seems to be Mac-specific. I still have no idea what's causing it. (Are the fonts you can't see installed on your system? There seems to be nothing in the source that would suggest one skin over another.) --ais523 10:32, 3 May 2007 (U T C)

Edwardian Script ITC was the one which first caught my attention, because I'd used it for my sig since last year. It was never installed on my computer but always (until this week) displayed as it should. — Athaenara 10:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On my system, around half of the fonts are installed - but that's only explaining part of the issue. Of the fonts not displaying properly, some of them are not installed, so that makes sense. But of the fonts I do have installed on my system, only around half the ones in the list display properly. For example I have all three webdings fonts installed and working fine, however on the Wiki page listing the fonts, all three webdings examples show up as if they were all using the basic webdings fonts. Webdings 2 and 3 show the same list of symbols, even though those symbols only exist in basic webdings and all three are installed. Very confusing!

Here's another strange thing - on my system the font Athaenara mentioned as a problem, Edwardian Script ITC, is displaying correctly on that chart. --Parzival418 _Hello 17:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to fix it by quoting everything; it probably would make a difference only in the ones which end in numbers. I cannot test it, however; looks like I have none of the fonts on that table installed on any of my computers (the table doesn't include fonts like Bitstream Vera or DejaVu, which I do have installed). --cesarb 23:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for giving that a try. The quoting did not make a difference on my system. This has not been a problem in general using Wikipedia, though it is kind of strange, especially since it happens only in MediaWiki software but regualr HTML pages are displaying fine. I can't think of any other tests I can do, so unless you have further questions for me I guess I'll just let this go for now. If you do have questions, I'm willing to do some more tests, but please let me know on my talk page, I need to un-watch this page for a while. Thanks again. --Parzival418 _Hello 18:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Any way to display an archived image?

Is there any way to display an archived version of an image? Any way at all? (I don't mind how wordy the code gets.) Thanks.--Pharos 14:25, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On the image page, just click the time and date of the revision you want in the file history section on the image description page. Harryboyles 14:31, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Let me clarify. I mean, is there any way to display an archived image inline on an article page?--Pharos 14:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's disabled on this Wiki, see here. Matthew 14:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't my desire to link to display an external image per se, but rather an archived image on our servers (really, just I want to link to a 'stable' version of an image). I don't suppose there's any way around that?--Pharos 15:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not as far as I'm aware. Otherwise there'd be no point to the whole image version system. You can't display inline an old version of an image. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 00:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The other day I was thinking this would be an excellent idea. The graphics lab and featured picture candidates frequently need to show two versions of an image with minor differences between, just so the edit can be discussed and reviewed. The way these groups do this now is to create completely separate filenames, which seems pretty unwiki, insofar as we usually use the built-in versioning system to collaborate on small changes, except for this one odd area. I also hope this is a new feature that can be implemented at some point. --Interiot 01:19, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, for what it's worth I was looking into this to try to simplify the process of protecting MainPage images, which can be quite a chore right now with downloading and uploading images from Commons. Well, I guess there are no magic shortcuts, then. Oh well.--Pharos 05:58, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is one magic shortcut... sitewide css (or js). You can set any URL (even old images) as a background image on an element with MediaWiki:Common.css. This has a bit of a caching issue though (unless you plan about a day ahead). --Splarka (rant) 07:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid css is a bit beyond my experience. Could you possibly give an example code of how this would work? Thanks.--Pharos 08:06, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Testwiki:Old_Image_Demo (requires site css change, like this; inline background images are not allowed. Also, you can't resize them, nor can you link to a 'permanent' version unless it is not the top version (I think) --Splarka (rant) 07:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

stub --> article

HOW TO TURN A STUB INTO AN ASSESSED ARTICLE? I can't figure out how to do this. I turned a a stub on the Victorian Church architect Thomas Garner into an article (using historical documents recently found). It remains a stub - what is the next step please? Thanks May 2. Keoghse 05:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thomas Garner doesn't seem to have a {{stub}} template anywhere, and as far as I can tell it's also a good length, I don't think it is a stub--VectorPotential^Talk 13:19, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you're talking about the assessment in the banner on the article's talk page, that is changed by hand based on an editor's best judgement. Just change {{Architecture|class=Stub|auto=yes}} to {{Architecture|class=Start|auto=yes}}, or whatever class you think is appropriate. WikiProject Architecture's assessment guidelines are located at Wikipedia:WikiProject Architecture/Assessment, you can also make a request on that page for someone else to assess the Thomas Garner article, if you want. jwillbur^talk 16:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Get rid of |auto=yes. auto means it was previously assessed by a bot. –Pomte 22:31, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, yeah. I don't know how I missed that. It should be {{Architecture|class=Start}}. jwillbur^talk 16:22, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

TOC Indent issue

In Virginia Tech massacre the TOC seems to only indent the first header's subheadings. In all the other header's sub-headers in the table are not indented. Thanks, Monkeyblue 10:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See above. Harryboyles 10:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm as blind as a bat. Monkeyblue 10:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A grain of SALT

Wikipedia:Protected titles/May 2007/List contains two images (Image:WinXP_exclamation.png and Image:Stop_X_XP.png) that were nevertheless recreated. Does this process not work on images, or is something else wrong? >Radiant< 12:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps setting ns=image may help? Gracenotes^T § 13:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Watch List

Is it possible to "watch" only a Section of an article, as opposed to the entire article? If not, can some one with technical expertise here at Wiki make that happen? I can imagine instances (say, in very long articles) where I would want to see new edits and changes to SECTIONS of an article only, yet not to every single edit in the entire article itself. Thoughts, comments, suggestions? (JosephASpadaro 21:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Not a direct answer, but if an article is long enough for that to be an issue, perhaps it should be split up into subarticles. —EncMstr 21:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

True ... but that's not the real issue. An article can still be of appropriate length (i.e., not "too long"), yet I can still be concerned with only one aspect (or Section) of that article. My point is: in longer articles, there can be many, many, many edits / changes in any given day. Most would be irrelevent to the one particular section of concern. Thus, the watch list -- as currently set up -- would be useless if it keeps notifying me of edits and changes that I am not concerned with. (JosephASpadaro 21:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

The section can be made a separate page that is transcluded. That way it can be watched separately (and it has its own page history). However, other people may like to have the whole page as single watchlist item with a single history.--Patrick 00:40, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See e.g. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2007_May_5: every section is a separate page.--Patrick 12:16, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The only problem is that sections are ridiculously mutable. You can change the title, add one here and there, move 'em around, etc. Maybe you're looking for a script that checks for a certain title in the edit summary: /* Title */, and removes sections without the title. Would that work? Gracenotes^T § 05:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I asked the same question on the watchlist page recently. I haven't received a reply yet. Ironically, it was because I asked another question here, but while waiting for a reply on this page, I was bombarded by huge amounts of traffic, and hence stopped watching. It would be a handy feature, especially for high traffic talk pages. Is there any way a 'watch this section' or 'watch for a reply' feature could be implemented, so as not to force the user to view all changes made to both the article and talk page? Is there any way to watch simply an article page or talk page, but not both (for example if an editor wanted to watch an article but not the very busy associated talk page)? Again, I won't be watching this page because the traffic level is just ridiculous, so I'll hopefully remember to drop by some time and search for an answer. Richard001 06:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is simply "no". In the future there will be better systems for the talk pages, however. --brion 14:44, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bronze Soldier of Tallinn

There is some technial problem in the article Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, at least when viewed with IE6. The section Political reaction is not limited by the page width, text flows without line breaks. Also, some text is bolded where it should not be. The problem does not seem to be in the page itself, as the same effect appears on older versions, that used to work before. The issue may be related to the {{flag}} template. -- Petri Krohn 00:33, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like Template:Country flag2 is broken. It has a stray <noinclude>, specifically the first one. It is protected, so it needs to be fixed by an admin. Mike Dillon 01:41, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to make some parameters as a template?

For example, a complicated template:

{{MainTemplate
|parameter1 = 1
|parameter2 = 2 
|parameter3 = 3
|parameter4 = 4
...
|parameterN = n
}}

Some parameters (for example, parameter 1-3) are always in common in some articles, so I want to make a template {{ParaTemplate}} as

|parameter1 = 1
|parameter2 = 2
|parameter3 = 3

And use it as

{{MainTemplate
{{ParaTemplate}}
|parameter4 = 4
...
|parameterN = n
}}

But it doesn't work.

Only if I change it to

{{MainTemplate
{{subst:ParaTemplate}}
|parameter4 = 4
...
|parameterN = n
}}

it works. But since I would might change the ParaTemplate some time, I don't wish to unfold the template. How can I do it? -- polyhedron(古韻) Leave message 09:57, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Paratemplate can contain a call

{{MainTemplate
|parameter1 = 1
|parameter2 = 2
|parameter3 = 3
|parameter4 = {{{parameter4}}}
...
|parameterN = {{{parameterN}}}
}}

Thus one can call Paratemplate as follows:

{{ParaTemplate
|parameter4 = 4
...
|parameterN = n
}}

while some articles can call MainTemplate directly.--Patrick 11:41, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Search

I have been latently upset by the search function ever since I first came to Wikipedia. My slight discontent concerns the facts that (i) there seems to be no fuzzy logic (i.e. you have to be very precise when searching), and (ii) a specific search will return all redirected pages (e.g. [5]).

Couldn't articles somehow be tagged with appropriate keywords in all relevant permutations (including typos)? Incidentally, this would simultaneously solve the problem with all redirect pages being listed as results. Where would I propose such a change to the software (if it's at all possible)? —Alde Baer 18:20, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone? —Alde Baer 04:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think some bots in other Wikipedias do that, create redirects with permutations. Note that you need to click the Search button, not the Go one, in case you did not know. For the most time, I prefer using Google search on Wikipedia. A change could be made to select whether redirects would be returned in searches, though, which seems useful. -- ReyBrujo 05:12, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also use Google a lot, but new readers may not find that option immediately, that's why. For my example, both the Search and the Go button lead to the same page of results with the redirect pages: Search, Go. However, where should I go with this proposal of not including the redirects? —Alde Baer 05:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I posted it on Wikipedia_talk:Searching#Redirect_pages_in_search_results. —Alde Baer 06:01, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My User Page

How come there are white spaces in between the templates in my user page, and does anybody know how to fix them? Also, does anybody know where I can find a complete list of user templates, and where I can request new ones? Kris 01:18, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The spaces are there because a couple of your templates are a pixel or two taller than the rest of them. You can find a list at Wikipedia:Userboxes along with instructions on how to create your own. If you still need help creating one, ask for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Userboxes. Mike Dillon 01:26, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks! Kris 01:28, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I adjusted some image sizes on the userboxes you were using to make the sizes more standard. Mike Dillon 01:40, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Kris 03:05, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What links here problem

I'm busy creating internal links for the recently created (and still under construction) Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade, and thought I'd see how progress was coming along. However according to this there's slightly more links than I'd expected, including talk pages of articles and categories in Category: WikiProject Irish Republicanism articles. Any idea what's going wrong please? One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 06:35, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's linked on the talk page template Template:WP:IR. Is that the problem? Gimmetrow 06:47, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I already checked all the code in the template, and there's no use of the word "Belfast" so I can't see how the template is linking to the article. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 06:50, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically in Template:Irish Republicanism tasks, the tasks listed in the other template. Gimmetrow 06:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, just seen that myself. Any ideas on how to stop the tasks showing in what links here? Thanks. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 06:53, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, remove it from the tasks template, and wait for the "links here" to regenerate. Gimmetrow 06:55, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I knew that much. I meant is there a way to stop the transcluded tasks template being included in the links all the time? One Night In Hackney₃₀₃

You can restrict "What links here" to the main namespace [6]. With hide/show hidden links count as links. If that is not desired, use an ordinary link to more info instead of "show".--Patrick 11:47, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does this do what you need, One Night? Gimmetrow 23:55, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, but I don't think there's any way to prevent the bigger problem without transcluding the template. Thanks anyway. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 03:30, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Warnings for removed named references?

I am sick and tired of finding empty footnotes in <references /> because someone, usually well-meaning, deleted the first occurrence of a named <ref> without checking to see if there was another <ref name="..." /> following which depended on the now-removed reference.

Is there any way to produce a warning when someone saves a page with a <ref name="..." /> which can't be expanded because the corresponding <ref name="..."> doesn't exist? Please?

This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't so difficult to find the deleted original reference by going through the history: For most deleted passages, you can just do a manual binary search. But for these kinds of missing references, if you want to search through the history you need to "edit" each version and search in the page source for the missing reference. 75.35.109.153 07:48, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what you mean by manual binary search. Here is how I find deleted references: look at diffs between revisions made over a period of time, say the diff between the current revision and the 50th last revision, do this page by page of edit history until I find one in which the ref disappears (it appears on the left side but not on the right). Then keep closing down chunks of the time interval until the single diff is discovered. –Pomte 09:42, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See binary search. --cesarb 09:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the "search space" can be reduced by a factor 3 each step, see Template:Mlm.--Patrick 22:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do blocks work?

Is it possible for an IP/user to be blocked from editing designated (Main) space articles but still be allowed to comment on said article's talk page? I'm trying to think of ways to solve a breakdown of WP:NPOV caused by WP:COI, and I'm not asking for this to be done. To make my intentions clear, mostly to anyone involved in said issue who may come across this, is the software capable of that? Anynobody 09:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, at the moment the only page that a blocked user can edit is their user talk page. It's either that or a full unblock. Graham87 09:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for answering, I appreciate your time. Anynobody 10:16, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Font changes

Before if I went on wikipedia the font would be arial as normal. Now it's changed to this cruder looking font. It still displays every letter and number and everything - but, for lack of a better word - it's different. Is there a way I can change the font back to arial on wikipedia? 70.58.33.98 16:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean "went on Wikipedia", did you register an account? And does the change affect all or most websites or only Wikipedia? —Alde Baer 21:11, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is the second person complaining of something strange happening with the fonts; see #I can't read the Wiki font above. Could you post some screenshots? --cesarb 21:59, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Curious. I was going to ask for the browser next thing, but it sounds as if accessing Wikipedia caused a changed font to be used on all websites, so I firstly enquired for clarity on what had happened. Unfortunately, both IPs have not returned. —Alde Baer 04:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Created Pages

Is there any way to find out what pages you've created (if any)?daniel folsom 17:34, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Go to your contributions. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 21:13, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The contributions page doesn't have an indicator as to whether the article was newly created or not. The reason that this information is available for the watchlist and recent changes views is that they use an additional table that has an rc_new flag on it. Mike Dillon 21:34, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I don't think that there is any practical way of determining which pages you've created except to cross reference every page in your contribution history with the revision history of each page. Mike Dillon 21:35, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ask User:Interiot to run a query to find out what pages you've created. Graham87 00:14, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can check with this tool provided by User:Interiot. Gimmetrow 00:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I forgot. I've been RC patrolling too much. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 12:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Includeonly

I was attempting to show some WikiText code as an example, and I haven't figured out how to have includeonly show up as example text on a transcluded page. See Wikipedia:Userboxes#Syntax for including categories, and the source page Wikipedia:Userboxes/Design and construct#Syntax for including categories.

I've tried nowiki, pre, and leading space(s) and so far none seem to work.

Any help would be great : ) - jc37 23:46, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You want the tag to appear only in transclusions? You could split it into pieces:

or, if you just want to disable the tag, it might work to replace one of the letters with an ascii code (with space removed):

<includ& #101;only>

Is that what you want? Gimmetrow 00:21, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm looking to disable the tag, and merely show the text code. I was surprised that nowiki/pre didn't disable it. I'll try your solutions. Thank you very much : ) - jc37 00:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A variant of the above is to use nowiki twice, with the nowiki ending and restarting in the middle of the troublesome word. (SEWilco 03:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

<includeonly> for a more aesthetic solution. –Pomte 02:55, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Calculations in Tables & Charts

When you create a Chart or Table in Wikipedia, is there a way to perform mathematical operations on the numbers in certain columns, much like what can be done with Excel?

For example, Column 1 + Column 2 = Column 3?

Is this possible? If so, how? Thanks! (JosephASpadaro 05:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

None as far as I know, unless you use a template to generate that. In example, at m:User:ReyBrujo/Dump statistics table the last two columns are generated according to values in other cells. However, to do that I had to create a template, m:User:ReyBrujo/Dumps/Row, which generates the code of the row. Again, I am not sure if there is an easier way of doing this, and don't think it will be a good idea to implement in an article unless it is standardized (it would be awful if every article needing such tables generate them with their own template instead of a standard one). -- ReyBrujo 05:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. (JosephASpadaro 06:06, 7 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

If multiple tables have a uniform format a table row template can be shared, but even for a single table it can be worthwhile to have such a template. See also Template:Mlm.--Patrick 15:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, a Table cannot even perform a simple calculation like the TOTAL of a column? (JosephASpadaro 16:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

No. One could make a template for producing a table, with the data as parameters. This template could add the numbers in a column. Or with JavaScript, like we have already code for sorting the rows of a table.--Patrick 21:42, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For the first see m:Template:table 1 (backlinks edit).--Patrick 22:09, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the replies. (JosephASpadaro 23:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

You have new messages STUCK

I recieved a bunch of warnings that I didnt have anything to do with. Now the new messsages bar is stuck up there. I tried clearing the cache but its not working. Its annoying and I didn;t even make those edits. What do I do? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.113.1.126 (talk) 05:50, 7 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Usually, going to your talk page and clicking the links in the table of content will do the trick. If you're annoyed by messages that were meant for others, you may want to register an account. 87.78.155.235 06:06, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, you can register via the secure server. 87.78.155.235 06:15, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See also: Bug ID 9213--VectorPotential^Talk 12:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Project Gutenberg

I recently found a eBook of Project Gutenberg that has some images that i could use in some pages. The disclaimer of the ebook stated This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net. Does this mean that we can use this material as free-use?

Link: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11924/11924-h/11924-h.htm#CH_VI

Please let me know. --Kalyan 13:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks kosher for PD works, but not for copyrighted works that authors have granted permission to Gutenberg to distribute. Those may have a different license. --Golbez 13:22, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I gave the relevant file [7] a quick look. All images I noticed were old images that would fall under {{PD-art}} had the author been an American. Unfortunately, I can't find any biography of Mr. Archer, but many of his books list "London" as the place of publication, so I wonder if he was British? In that case, PD-art would not apply but rather British or even Indian law (for photos taken in situ in India). My suggestion would be to double check why Gutenberg has the book listed in the first place. If you can find some sort of specific permission, that would be a great help. Valentinian ^{T / C} 20:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On secure entry

To whom it may concern:

On entering Wikipedea some moments ago, I noticed that a new possibility is on offer, providing secure entery into Wikipedia, something which I wholeheartedly welcome. However, on trying this option, my web browser warned me that it is unable to check the validity/identity of the offered secure entry; the warning indicated that it may even be a false entry aiming at gaining access to personal information. May I request the person in charge of security matters (the Webmaster perhaps?) to inspect and see whether there is indeed a problem and if so whether this can be resolved asap? At the very least, the secure-web certificate must have some shortcomings, prompting my web browser to generate the above-mentioned warning. With thanks in advance for the trouble, Yours sincerely, --BF 14:42, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It is usual for your browser to say that. It is all safe. You may want to check the don't show this message again box though. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 15:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your prompt response! It is rather odd that one should disregard the security warnings of one's browser (it tends to make one complacent, something that certain individuals must surely delight in). I must add that this is the first time that I have been confronted with a security warning that appears safe to ignore; therefore I should like to insist that someone should correct the security certifacate (I have tuned the security options of my browser and therefore am confident that something must be wrong with your certificate --- never before has my browser misinformed me about certificates; sometimes they simply need updating). --BF 15:51, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It's an experimental interface. While you may use it, it is not yet meant for the general public. --brion 16:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your response. Perhaps I should add that the warning that my browser produces is the following: "Website Certified by an Unknown Authority." --BF 17:12, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

This is because CAcert.org is not recognized as a valid CA by the majority of the browsers, only some OSs include it. --Brownout (msg) 17:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see the option for just secure athentication. I like the SSL to login, but would rather not have it for all my editing. Morphh ^(talk) 18:51, 07 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Trouble

I'm having trouble for the userbox thing at User:Quatreryukami. Help is wanted! --Pupster21 Talk To Me 15:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind. (I'm done) --Pupster21 Talk To Me 16:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Languages

Why can't we use the same user account to edit pages in other languages? Andrew⁶⁴⁷ 16:03, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You need to create an account on those wikis. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 16:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Or just use the unified login... when it's activated :( Soon, hopefully. Gracenotes^T § 17:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I understood that we need to create accounts there. This unified login is what I'm interested in. Andrew⁶⁴⁷ 18:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The unified login would be nice, but it's not ready yet. Until then, you'll have to create different accounts for each wiki you want to edit (making them with the same username, password, and email address should help when/if UL is activated). Gracenotes^T § 18:51, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Display Images without linking to image page

How do you display an image but not link to it? For example, I want an external link but the content should be an image. In HTML you would do:

I looked at Help:Images and other uploaded files but couldn't find it. Please help! 71.191.103.235 18:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This works nicely:

<imagemap>
Image:Polarlicht_2.jpg|200px
poly 0 0 0 [[0]]
desc none
</imagemap>

Regards, «razorclaw» 19:06, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this will work better

<imagemap>
Image:Polarlicht_2.jpg|200px
poly 0 0 0 [[0]]
default [[The_link_you_want|What_you_want_to_popup_when_the_mouse_hovers_over_the_image]]
desc none
</imagemap>

Saintrain 19:26, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tables: Auto Numbering?

When you create a List on Wikipedia, you can automatically number the items in that list by inserting the # symbols. Typing in the # symbols relieves you from having to type in all 5 specific numbers (in this example, the 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 before the State Names) ... and it will also automatically re-number the list when new items are added to or subtracted from the list. For example:

Alabama
Connecticut
Delaware
Georgia
New York

Question: How does one get the same effect in a Table? Thanks! (JosephASpadaro 20:41, 7 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

There's no special symbol to automatically number a table column, as far as I know. You'll have to do it manually, like this:

#	State
1	New York
2	Connecticut
3	Alabama
4	Georgia
5	Delaware
6	Unless you want to put a list inside one cell like this: Alabama Connecticut Delaware Georgia New York

I also made it sortable in case that can help. –Pomte 20:46, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One can use a template like m:Template:table 1 (backlinks edit).--Patrick 22:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. (JosephASpadaro 23:14, 7 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Someone at work asked me to do this yesterday, so I made an implementation in JavaScript that worked off of class="autonumber". This would require code at MediaWiki:Common.js to work, but I don't think it's the sort of thing that would have broad enough interest to be used site-wide. Mike Dillon 01:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Security notices

Why are all these notices appearing at the user login page? Simply south 21:46, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:ANI: passwords of a couple of admin accounts have been compromised (due to weak password strength); either that, or those admins have coordinated an "admins gone postal" day (not likely). The text, editable by admins, is here, so suggestions can be posted on the talk page. Gracenotes^T § 22:16, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict):Following problems like this, a couple of admins have added more information to this system message to encourage better password choosing and the use of the secure server. --MZMcBride 22:17, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And also why do you now have to type in the letters you see in the box in order to log in? This sure seems like a very surprising and ableit unannounced change. Could it please be reviewed or explained? --24.44.158.33 23:34, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, you only get the CAPTCHA if you fail to type the correct password on the first try, presumably this is to stop automated password phishing scripts--VectorPotential^Talk 23:36, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Password visible while changing in preferences

Why is it all of a sudden that the passwords are visible in the input form fields while I go to change it in my preferences? It's certainly not standard behavior for password form fields on the interweb. Thanks --Strangnet _{(t, c)} 00:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It didn't used to look like that, the developers must have changed something by accident when they were reworking all of today's security updates--VectorPotential^Talk 00:14, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I figured something like that. I didn't experience that behavior a couple of hours ago on the Swedish Wikipedia when I changed my password, but now the preferences there are also "broken". It just doesn't feel right to fill in a new password with the contents of the fields visible even though no one is around to see it but me. --Strangnet _{(t, c)} 00:17, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

someone added broken code while reworking the prefs page (unrelated to the other password problems, funnily enough). should be fixed now. kate.

Watchlist password message

I don't think the [dismiss] button is working, I keep getting flashed by this ^ every time I hit my watchlist--VectorPotential^Talk 00:16, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it only dismisses per watchlist session, i.e when you leave and comeback it cames back too. One thing you can do is leave your watchlit open in a tab. John Reaves (talk) 00:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The watchlist dismiss code in MediaWiki:Common.js is supposed to dismiss for a week. Mike Dillon 02:24, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a modification to your monobook.css would do it. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 02:34, 8 May 2007 (UTC

I had planned on deleting it tomorrow any way, so don't worry. John Reaves (talk) 21:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

recent hacking?

What's going on? Has someone hacked into everyone's PW all of a sudden?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:02, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. There are several threads at WP:ANI describing it. Sean William 02:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The accounts hacked were admins and the main page got deleted a couple of times. -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 02:07, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, why are we sending messages to all of the regular users? We don't have any administrative tools. Admins are the most vulnerable to hackers, not normal editors.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:15, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the above "Yep" is "Nope". Some accounts had weak passwords, but not everyone's PW was affected. Just make sure you have a complicated password. (SEWilco 03:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Email text broken

In the preferences, the text explanation for the email field is broken. Currently, it reads:

E-mail (optional): Allows us to e-mail your password to you if you forget it. If you also "Enable e-mail from other users", then others can e-mail you from your User or User talk page by using the "E-mail this user" feature. Note that the sender's e-mail address will be visible to the recipient. If you change your e-mail address, you will need to <a class='internal' href="/wiki/Help:Email_confirmation" title="Help:Email confirmation">reconfirm</a> your address.

I tried purging cache, but it is still there. -- ReyBrujo 02:12, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

warning on preferences

What's up with this message on preferences?

If a message on your talk page led you here, please be wary of who left it. The code below could contain malicious content capable of compromising your account; if your account appears to be compromised, it will be blocked. If you are unsure whether the code is safe, you can ask at the appropriate village pump.

--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:39, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably there to prevent people being led off-site to a page that looks like the Wikipedia preferences page and divulging their password. You would be surprised at how many people don't know the first thing about the location/URL bar in their browsers (I even know people who don't even have it visible and type domain names into MSN/Google searches). Mike Dillon 02:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I guess a phishing site wouldn't have a message warning you not to compromise your account. I think the same message normally shows up on user JavaScript pages such as your personal monobook.js. Mike Dillon 02:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like that message comes from MediaWiki:Clearyourcache, which has a default value like this:

Note: After saving, you may have to bypass your browser's cache to see the changes. Mozilla / Firefox / Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload, or press Ctrl-Shift-R (Cmd-Shift-R on Apple Mac); IE: hold Ctrl while clicking Refresh, or press Ctrl-F5; Konqueror:: simply click the Reload button, or press F5; Opera users may need to completely clear their cache in Tools→Preferences.

On this site, it is doing double-duty as a warning about malicious script changes. The original message would have made sense on the preferences page since changing some of the preferences has effects that require a cache clearing. Mike Dillon 02:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So what does it actually have to do with the preferences? Only the users themselves can edit preferences.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 03:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that those changes were not made with Special:Preferences in mind. They were made for the case of that message appearing on pages like monobook.js. Mike Dillon 03:21, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It might be possible to put a conditional namespace check into MediaWiki:Clearyourcache to only add the extra warning in the User namespace. It looks like that message is only used on user JS/CSS pages and Special:Preferences. Mike Dillon 03:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did that 16 minutes ago, you may need to purge though. Prodego ^talk 03:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Access to passwords

I've been reading various discussions, so I'm wondering: Who on Wikimedia knows all of our passwords? Isn't it a possibility that those people could compromise our accounts?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 03:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Developers with shell access. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:09, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Passwords are stored in hashed and salt database tables; anyone with access to those would have a far easier time wrecking the project by running deletion queries directly on the database. -- nae'blis 03:11, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Heck, there's several ways to screw MediaWiki beyond all repair with shell access... but, oh crap, WP:BEANS. :P Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, anyone with shell access could access the password fields, but they would have to create rainbow tables for every salt value, which is extremely difficult. It would take all the computers in the world to even attempt this, especially if a lot of salt is used. They would have a far easier time simply watching for your password in the connections to the servers. mrholybrain's talk 10:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, what you're saying is that the developers aren't leaking out our passwords here, right? But it is possible...--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 23:03, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

validation error

Wikipedia is failing to validate because of the "Early registration for Wikimania 2007" message. Specifically the document.writeln() below (lines 86 and 87 of the HTML)

 document.writeln('<table width="100%"><tr><td width="80%">'+siteNoticeValue+'</td>');
 document.writeln('<td width="20%" align="right">[<a href="javascript:dismissNotice();">'+msgClose+'</a>]</td></tr></table>');

do not escape the / with a \. for example </td> should be <\/td>. see http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/problems.html#script for more information. Jon513 16:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It validates fine for me (using the W3C validator); these lines are within a HTML comment. --cesarb 01:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is inside a html comment that is inside a script tag, which is ignored. I am using Html Validator for firefox, which uses both OpenSP (SGML Parser) and Tidy. It indeed passes OpenSP (this parser is the same program than the one running behind validator.w3.org), but fails Tidy. Jon513 13:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Phishing warning

The logon screen now contains the warning "To avoid becoming a victim of phishing, please verify that you are currently viewing the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin". Actually, my URL window there says http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&returnto=Talk:Main_Page - I don't think it can be phishing but the warning should be corrected. Perhaps the conflicting URL's are synonyms to experts, but not to the rest of us. Art LaPella 17:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've corrected it. --ais523 17:13, 8 May 2007 (U T C)

I apologize; that was my doing. I'm afraid the current message is actually a bit more confusing, though--perhaps it can be reworded to say "Be sure you are viewing Special:Userlogin". AmiDaniel (talk) 22:29, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No good. Phishers would have control over the entire URL apart from its start; it's the wikipedia.org domain that distinguishes a genuine website from a fake one (any MediaWiki wiki can have a page called Special:Userlogin, and any other website can as well). --ais523 09:27, 9 May 2007 (U T C)

Unfortunately, this warning doesn't really do that much good. It's too subtle for most users to remember it, so if a phishing site copies the page, they can just drop the warning. If they're viewing it on our site, they aren't being phished. For this to be useful, users would have to notice that the real page has this warning and then notice that it is missing when viewing the phishing site. That just seems a little unlikely to me. That being said, the warning doesn't hurt anything and maybe it will raise awareness of phishing attacks in general. Mike Dillon 15:13, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong dash used in watchlist

In the watchlist, the changes in size of articles are shown. At the moment, it looks like this (-50), but (−50) would be correct according to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes)#Dashes and hyphens used on Wikipedia. It's certainly not a big deal, but I think that if the correct character has to be used in articles, it should also be compulsory for the watchlist. --Leyo 19:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The manual of style doesn't apply to watchlists. --Deskana (AFK 47) 19:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is not the question IMHO. It's a bad style and should be corrected. --Leyo 19:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's an interesting proposal. You mean using − instead of a plain hyphen (-)? Fvasconcellos (t·c) 19:39, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. I just used the minus from the "insert bar" below, which produces the same symbol as −. --Leyo 19:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not going to happen. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 20:38, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh come on! Don't be ridiculous, people. --brion 20:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, thought so. Oh well. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 21:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of related minor issues: The watchlist would look neater if the times are listed to the left of the article names, organized like (diff) and (hist). Special:Contributions shows (hist) (diff), whereas Special:Watchlist shows (diff) (hist); this can be confusing after getting used to clicking on either side. –Pomte 20:03, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(cur)/(last)/(diff)/(hist) interface problems

This has made me crazy for as long as I've been here:

The history of a page links to (cur) (last)
My watchlist links to (diff; hist)
My contributions page links to (hist) (diff)

Now, (diff) and (last) are the same thing, and I often want to see how a given edit differs from the (cur)rent version when viewing my (or anyone's) contribution page. And the semicolon thing is just inane. Does anyone have ideas on how to standardize these tools for a better interface? Obviously the (hist) link could be omitted on the history page, but there has to be a better way. -- nae'blis 20:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a bit of a quirk. But when you think about it "diff" is more general than "last". For RC/watchlists/contribs pages, there is only one obvious diff, and thats against the previous one. On history pages, all of the revisions are right there and can be diffed, so (last) is a bit more specific. Voice-of-All 21:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, "last" seems to me be fairly ambiguous. It could refer to the last edit made to the page (the "cur"rent edit), the last edit in terms of vertically scrolling through the history (the first edit), the last edit in terms of the immediately more-recent one (the next edit), or (what is actually the case) the edit that occurred immediately before this one, the "previous" edit. I think "diff", although a more general term, would tend to be far less ambiguous, as most people have come to expect it to mean the diff between this edit and the previous edit. Failing that, I think "prev" may also be more accurate. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'd like to keep (diff) over last - it's in the 'lingo' of the site and it shows up more often on the above interface pages. . I just want to see (cur) more often as an option. Do the semicolons make more sense, interface-wise? (diff; cur; hist) or (diff) (cur) (hist) ? -- nae'blis 12:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I'd prefer diff in all three examples, and non-semicoloned links. (Note that my watchlist doesn't use semicolons; I wonder why yours is different? (probably something in the preferences)) I use 'last' in one of my scripts to mean 'the diff for the most recent edit to this page, which may or may not be the one you want' (as opposed to 'diff' which is the one you want). --ais523 13:19, 9 May 2007 (U T C)

The appearance of your watchlist depends on whether you've selected "Enhanced recent changes" in your preferences. (Yes, it's somewhat confusing that an option for recent changes affects the watchlist too, but the two features share code internally.) As for the "last" link, if there was consensus for changing the text, this could be done by editing MediaWiki:last. The semicolons and parantheses, however, are hardcoded in the MediaWiki source and could only be changed by a developer. If you want the change made, it might be worth filing a request on bugzilla. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Secure Server

If you edited on the secure server, would it be the same as if you weren't editing on it? Esperanza Ortega 22:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How exactly do you mean this? When you edit on the secure server all of your POSTs are encrypted, and if you are logged into http server, but not the https, then your contributions will be attributed anonymously rather than to your username. Otherwise, there shouldn't be any differences. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:25, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and if you're using certain satellite ISPs, it makes it possible to log in without losing your login as soon as you navigate to a different page. --ais523 09:30, 9 May 2007 (U T C)

Automated Reversion giving the wrong username in Edit summary

I just reverted vandalism to an article by going through the page history -> selecting last good version -> clicking [Restore this version] (I have AzaToth's reversion tools in my monobook.js page). The reversion worked correctly, but instead of my username in the edit summary it inserted De.Spongo. This is the first time I have used this feature. Any advice as to why this happened and how to fix it would be much appreciated! Thanks EyeSerene^TALK 22:46, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see no evidence of this in your contributions page. Can you provide a diff? In addition, if this is related to TWINKLE, then contacting AzaToth is a better idea than posting here. --Deskana (AFK 47) 00:12, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deskana, you have to check these contribs. EyeSerene, can you point out which edit you're referring to?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 00:48, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure this is what's happening: It just means De.Spongo was quicker than you, and reverted to the same version a few seconds before you did. Then, when you saved your revert, the Wiki software said to itself "there's no difference between this and the current version. I'll just ignore it." Unfortunately, you don't get an edit conflict or a message or anything, so it looks like an error, but it isn't. This happens to me all the time, especially since I'm reverting the old fashioned way, and others are using quicker tools. Someone using Twinkle or Vandalproof or something can always do it 15 seconds faster than me.

Fair warning: I'm usually asking questions, not answering them, and this is my very first attempt at a technical answer. So take it with a grain of salt. --barneca (talk) 03:56, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the responses. The diff in question is here; obviously since I was not credited with the revert, it does not show up on my contributions. As I said above, it's the first time I've used the automatic restore tool - if Barneca is right, I suppose the best thing to do is try it out again next time I spot some vandalism and see what happens ;) EyeSerene^TALK 15:59, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think Barneca is right. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:01, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good call guys - reverts are working correctly now. It was just my bad luck that it happened the first time I used Twinkle (what are the odds of that?) causing me to think something was broken. Thanks all for the help! EyeSerene^TALK 16:09, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images "requiring attribution"

According to "Category:Images requiring attribution" — hey, why didn't that work? I mean, according to "Category:Images requiring attribution" — any image page is so tagged if it contains an {{attribution}} tag. That would make sense if {{attribution}} was the way to tag an image that needs attribution, but what the tag actually expands to is The copyright holder of this file [optional name here] allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed... In other words, depending on whether the name is provided, either the tag has nothing to do with attributing the image or else it provides an attribution for the image, the opposite of what seems to have been assumed by whoever set up the category.

Maybe this inconsistency was introduced by a change in the meaning of the tag or something; I can't say. In any case, it exists now, and it needs to be fixed somehow by someone capable of doing so. Thanks.

207.176.159.90 01:25, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder how hard it would be to rig it up so that {{attribution}} added the image to Category:Images requiring attribution only when the template's optional argument (indicating and attributing the copright holder) is absent? —Steve Summit (talk) 01:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But that would still be the Wrong Thing, if the attribution was given elsewhere. The real problem may be that the template name {{attribution}} is misleading. 207.176.159.90 03:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's the category name that's misleading: I believe it's meant to be understood as "images with a license that requires the copyright holder to be attributed". The fact the it's a subcategory of Category:Conditional use images would seem to support this interpretation. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Table / Table talk namespaces

Now, how come we got namespaces 106 and 107? And more importantly... what are namespaces 102, 103, 104 and 105? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also ask because pages are being created in these namespaces, and if they are removed, they will become inaccessible due to MediaWiki's database design. So, where was this discussed? What are we supposed to do with it? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:55, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the other numbers are still free. I have never seen anyone wondering where are namespaces 16-99 before. Is there any advantage in using Table instead of Template, or is it just being tested? -- ReyBrujo 02:57, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, digging deeper I think it is because of Bug 9304. However, that bug was to add a namespace to only the Spanish Wikipedia, so I presume this was some sort of miscomunication. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:01, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and templates 16-99 cannot exist. See Custom namespaces. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:02, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflictx2)The pages in the "Table" namespace are, you guessed it, tables. They actually look pretty nice, though. Just look at Table:Climate in Jerusalem. [[User talk:Sean William|]] 03:03, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But that can be replicated in the template namespace, or any other namespace (as long as they're not blocked by wgNonincludableNamespaces, by that matter)... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:06, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Then probably namespaces 102, 103, 104 and 105 are customs in other Wikipedias. I think I remember a namespace WikiProject in one, 103 I think... let me dig around... -- ReyBrujo 03:09, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, WikiProject is 102/103 in eswiki, and 104/105 are Référence in frwiki. So that part of the mystery is solved. Now, the question is, do we want these namespaces? This was created in the Spanish Wikipedia because lists and tables are usually not considered "articles", so according to them they should not be in the main namespace. That is not the case here, so do I need to poke anyone to revert this? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There was a discussion (on WP:VPR I think) about this here. from what I remember, the general consensus was to do it, with the hope of eventually having some sort of fancy table editor in the future. I didn't think this would happen so soon though. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 03:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, all I find is this archive of VPT, and the few users who commented there (me included) didn't like the idea. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:23, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gah, never mind. Bug 2194 has the juicy details. I still think it is an awful idea. Having a table namespace will not mean that a table editor will be created, and in fact, creates the illusion that it will, when the reality is the contrary. It won't be created until a MediaWiki developer is persuaded to do it, and there are many more pressing things to do right now than to do this. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I pretty much fail to see why we don't simply use templates for those tables. I was under the impression that we already do. >Radiant< 08:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- At the moment the main advantage in my opinion is that tables in that namespace are isolated from the rest of the article, so future tools will be able to manipulate them. The namespace provides a collection of tables to tempt developers into developing tools for them. (SEWilco 17:24, 9 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Ah. Managed to get a list. :-) 13 pages in the Table: namespace so far. Anyone know whether this namespace will be added to the drop-down list at Special:Prefix index, or indeed what number this namespace is (mainspace is 0 in the URL generated by the Prefix index, for example)? Carcharoth 12:19, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update: according to Ais253 over on AN, the contents of Table: namespace have been moved to mainspace, presumably to wait for the outcome of discussions. Carcharoth 12:38, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-May/031298.html for what happened. --ais523 12:44, 10 May 2007 (U T C)

‌

Table:Example

One advantage of the Table: namespace is that eventually image syntax can hopefully be used for thumbnailing tables. Even now it's possible to design a template to include tables the same way images are included. --ais523 12:48, 10 May 2007 (U T C)
info · edit

Personally, I like the idea. And I don't see why it's a problem to have namespaces that do similar, but different things. For example, now that any page may be transcluded, why do we need the template namespace? I think it's a circular argument. And if having this namespace is helpful in any way, we should do it. (But then, I also support having a List: namespace... Perhaps it's time to reopen that discussion as well.) - jc37 13:08, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I believe another reason for the creation of the table namespace was to make articles more user-friendly to new editors. A lot of times, new users that are unfamiliar with the wikitable syntax can get lost in an editing window that has a long and complicated table. I think it is a good idea personally.↔NMajdan•talk 13:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The table namespace was meant to be a WYSIWYG table editor; I'm not a fan of WYSIWYG, but that's not relevant! I personally think that a table namespace would be useful for taking massive (and possibly uninteresting, to some people) data, that adds to an article in some way, and putting it in an external namespace. Gracenotes^T § 13:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the WP:VPR discussion about this, dug up from the page history. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 18:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a GPL'ed Javascript interface would help[8], for the people willing to use it. (SEWilco 18:58, 11 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

JavaScript version of MediaWiki:Edittools

Please contribute to the discussion of a pure JavaScript version of MediaWiki:Edittools at MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Request. If there is agreement to move in this direction, the code will have to be moved to MediaWiki:Edittools.js or some such and imported from MediaWiki:Common.js. Mike Dillon 05:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Default style error:Larger than screen

This occurs in both IE7, and FF 2.0.0.3. Every page seems to run off the screen. There is a region, of about 700px to the right of every page(even this editor). The top blank region does contain the background image, but the rest is blank.

J - 83.147.166.23 19:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For this page, I guess it is caused by a lengthy line is unformatted so word wrap does not work for it. See #validation error. --Quest for Truth 19:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Airreg

This template is used to help automate links to external aircraft registry websites, taking the tail number as a parameter, incorporating it into the url, and creating an external link. The template is primarily used on articles about plane crashes, with the default option providing links to airdisaster.com. The problem with the site is that it provides few details (nothing above and beyond what we provide anyway in our infoboxes), yet overdoes it in my opinion on advertising with large banner ads and pop-up ads that sometimes disregard pop-up blockers. Users are interested in keeping the template, but I'm trying to figure out how to make the template link to some different default choice such as http://www.aviation-safety.net which provides more details and is a non-commercial site. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this template work with this website? Any ideas and help would be most appreciated on Template talk:Airreg. --Aude (talk) 19:48, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

superscripts arent "super" in Firefox

They appear below the text. See the screenshot of Toronto Raptors here: http://img95.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ffyg9.png —MC Snowy (Talk / contribs) 21:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is odd, but it can't be firefox that's at fault, because the page looks fine in my browser--VectorPotential^Talk 01:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Then what is it? It looks fine in IE7 and Opera 9.10. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.3 btw. —MC Snowy (Talk / contribs) 15:33, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Skin

I put this new skin on my screen but it's messing things up. The buttons are all on top of each other and stuff. Can someone help me. I originally just wanted a grey and red one like I saw someone else had but now I'd just settle for this one working correctly. Marcus Taylor 05:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why not just blank User:Marcus_Taylor/monobook.js and User:Marcus_Taylor/monobook.css and then purge your cache? --Splarka (rant) 07:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Marcus Taylor 07:56, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm saying is I want to keep the skin, but want it to work correctly, I use IE btw. Marcus Taylor 07:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone see what I'm talking about? Marcus Taylor 04:27, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

svg font issus

I made this .svg file, it displays properly on all platforms:	except on my home windows pc in mozilla, where it looks like this in full resolution:

Any ideas? --Knulclunk 14:19, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mozilla bug? Zsinj^Talk 15:29, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On other pc/Mozilla systems, it appears fine. It may be a font setting issue, but I want to create work that does not suffer this problem. --Knulclunk 17:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen this before, I think. The only reliable solution seems to be to convert text to a path before uploading. -- nae'blis 00:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Redlinks that aren't

Is anyone else seeing a lot of links to which the page actually exists showing up as redlinks? Just started happening for me, and a force-reload hasn't fixed it. For example, I'm currently seeing WP:3O as a redlink. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:20, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

me too. I had posted a message but lost it in an edit conflict. It isn't quite the normal redlink colour and sigs are still fine Nil Einne 15:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Same. --ÆAUSSIEevilÆ 15:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Me, three - whats the deal? PaddyM 15:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not only am I seeing way too many redlinks, but they're coming up as black text followed by a maroon exclamation point. Something is really wrong here. —mjb 15:23, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not seeing the problem anymore, it's working for me now. Are you still having it? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a different colour to that used for missing pages, this new one is a brownish colour. Missing pages are still red. SynergyBlades 15:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Same for me. What in the world is this? --Luigi Maniac 15:26, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, it's gone now. --Luigi Maniac 15:26, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. Still there. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Still there for me too. This flies in the face of usability testing, if this is how we're going to display links now. --Durin 15:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not, turns out it was probably a malfunction rather than an intended change. Orderinchaos 15:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the links (some of them) are marked as stubs. I'll let some people know. CMummert · talk 15:29, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And, now it's back again, for me. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:29, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, now it is back again. Weird. --Luigi Maniac 15:31, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The devs are working on it, be patient. CMummert · talk 15:30, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Several <a> HTML elements are being marked as class="stub". Your CSS settings for that class are the causes for the specific colour. Redlinks are class="new", for comparison. Uncle G 15:31, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What is class stub used for? —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 15:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fix. Go to Preferences -> Misc -> Threshold for stub display and change the 0 to a larger number, like 8000. That should fix the problem. CMummert · talk 15:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit conflict: Yeah, though changing it to 1 should put things pretty much back to normal. Zero is supposed to be interpreted as infinity for this feature, but it looks like something broke. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 15:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, it's fixed now; you don't have to change the threshold anymore. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 15:40, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I changed that number to 8000, and all links turned back to blue except for pages that were stubs, they are still brown. Kris 15:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Same situation here. I even tried to purge the cache but in vain.-- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

weird - it was fixed for a couple minutes, now it's broken again. 8000 (and 1) are both "fixing" it though. CredoFromStart 15:45, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to be a smart ass and tried 10000 and 20000. Problem fixed w/ 1 now. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:50, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problem now solved. If you are still seeing odd links, you may need to purge your cache (see instructions on "purge" for how to do that for a specific page). Orderinchaos 15:47, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see the problem if I don't log in (both IE and Firefox) but when I log in with my username, everything is ok (I use the value "0" btw). Valentinian ^{T / C} 15:53, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It still isn't working for me. I purged a page, (I also deleted caches and cookies) and it logged me out. When I was logged out it went back to normal, but when I logged back in it got all screwed up again. Is there any other way to fix this? Kris 16:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't only happen with stubs, either. It happens with regular articles just as well. 89.120.193.125 16:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can fix this temporarily by putting link.stub { color: #002bb8; } in your monobook.css file.

This was my fault, a bug I'd introduced in rev:22055. Sorry. Thanks to river for fixing it in rev:22065. (I thought I'd tested it, but apparently I forgot to test the threshold=0 case after the latest change.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:37, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It still won't go back to the way it was for me, can anybody help me out? Kris 20:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You wrote above that you changed your stub threshold to 8000 bytes. That's going to give you quite a few brown links even with the bug fixed. Change it back to zero and the links should be blue again. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Greek letters

I would like to know how to use Greek polytonic ortography on Wikipedia? Thank you. --83.131.143.135 19:35, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what "polytonic ortography" is, but if you check below the edit box, and below the "Save page" button, if you're using a java-script enabled browser, there should be Greek and other characters that you can click on to insert in your writing. —METS501 (talk) 21:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a {{polytonic}} template that's supposed to help in getting Greek polytonic characters to display right in various browsers (mainly IE). I've no idea personally how useful or necessary it is, but it's there and it probably doesn't hurt to use it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:22, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's needed in IE6, or you just get a small sequence of boxes rather than what's written on the page. --ais523 15:08, 11 May 2007 (U T C)

Main page view source

Resolved

The view source window of the Main Page seems screwed up. It's currently showing the full contents of the Notice template. My guess is that someone changed a system message. --MZMcBride 01:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I found the problem page in the recent changes log. A request is on RFPP right now. -Amarkov moo! 01:41, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I answered that RFPP request. It seems to work OK now. --ais523 15:07, 11 May 2007 (U T C)

Joining hyphens?

The hyphens used in this quote from the article on Trey Parker seem to have somehow been joined together--the dashes you see are actually 3 hyphens joined together...

"Basically...out of all the ridiculous religion stories---which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous---the silliest one I've ever heard is..."yeah...there's this big giant universe and it's expanding, it's all gonna collapse on itself and we're all just here 'just 'cause...just 'cause". That, to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lumarine (talk • contribs) 03:51, 11 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Please help

Can somebody help me? Someone had moved 411 to 411 (year). I tried to move it back, but I couldn't get the history moved too. Could somebody, who knows how to do it, fix it instantly? Is it only possible for admins to move a page back to its original name or can I, being an ordinary user, do this too? /Ludde23 ^{Talk Contrib} 08:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed this. User thanked me on my talk page and asked the above question. I will have replied on his talk page, but for the benefit of others, only administrators can move a page over an existing one. Harryboyles 09:08, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image file is actually PDF?

This image file is actually a PDF, and I, for one, can't even get to the actual wiki page to try to figure it out or flag it for possible deletion. Any help? [9] Not a dog 15:21, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can link an image like this: [[:Image:PRELIMINARY_LIST_OF_BOTANICAL_SPECIES_GROWN_AT_SOUTH_CENTRAL_(Final_draft).pdf]]. Any file type can be uploaded to the Image: namespace, as far as I remember. If you want it deleted, follow the instructions at WP:IFD. --ais523 15:23, 11 May 2007 (U T C)

Yeah, but when you click on that (at least for me), it just tries to download a PDF file. Can't seem to get to the actual wiki page itself. Can you? Not a dog 15:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check your browser settings: it may be insisting on treating anything which ends in '.pdf' as a PDF file. Click on any picture in a Wikipedia article; you should always get an 'Image' page with a WP frame, not the actual picture or PDF. EdJohnston 16:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious what the use is for PDF uploads. If a the content of a PDF is important to an article, I still don't see any advantage to uploading it rather than linking to its original location. I think transcribing it to Wikisource (if the content is GFDL, public domain, or otherwise free) would be a better option, as that would allow annotation and footnotes by Wikisource editors. Also, because the software does not it to be embedded like an image, and not everybody has Acrobat and the browser plug-in, I think PDFs are probably less likely to be looked at at all, let alone reviewed for correct license status. — CharlotteWebb 16:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been able to list it for deletion [10]. Seems almost like they intended to use WIkipediea as a hosting space. Not a dog 16:43, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know it was even possible to upload PDFs until recently. One bona fide use occurred recently in an AfD, where a relevant US court order was available on-line through a for-pay interface, known as PACER. It costs 8 cents a page to download orders this way. Since someone obtained the order and uploaded it to our system, other editors had a chance to look at it without needing to pay again. I suspect this PDF copy of the order might qualify as a 'convenience copy' of the real reference, which would be a legal citation including a pointer to the original for-pay location (at a court web site). EdJohnston 17:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, the federal government is billing us for ink and paper they aren't actually using? I'm totally shocked (not). It would be great if we could get someone to transcribe it to s:Wikisource:Case law. — CharlotteWebb 17:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Password recovery/change options?

I feel really quite dumb here. I am working on a bot proposal for ArkyBot and found that I am unable to log in under the bot account. I'm not sure what the problem is, I know what password I used on it but it's not taking it - while unlikely I may have made the same typo twice when creating the account for the bot. Whichever is the case, I cannot log in as the bot.

Further adding to the "duh" factor is that I failed to enter a user email for the bot and thus the standard password recovery/change feature will not work.

Do I have any recourse here? It should be fairly evident that the bot account belongs to me but I am willing to provide whatever extra information is required. Without being able to log in, I'm kind of at an impasse as far as the bot development goes.

Thanks in advance for any help. Not sure where to turn with this question but figured I'd check here. Arkyan  ^(talk) 16:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that you chose a password so weak that the bot was automatically blocked by developers. Otherwise, try logging in on a different computer, and try making sure your CAPS LOCK setting is correct (try it both ways round). Without an email address, creating a new account or asking a developer to reset the password on the old ones are your only options (it's possible you might also be able to persuade a bureaucrat to rename the old account so that you can create a new one with the old name). --ais523 17:35, 11 May 2007 (U T C)

Since I hadn't made any edits with the bot account, the simplest recourse then might be to just request an usurpation of the name. Hadn't thought of that till your response, thanks. Arkyan  ^(talk) 18:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image from commons not displaying

The image Image:Bill Cowher.jpg is not displaying properly, even though it's clearly uploaded at the commons: commons:Image:Bill Cowher.jpg. See Bill Cowher. What's going on? Could you replace it? Thanks. The Evil Spartan 18:15, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed it by adding a width to the infobox, so I'm guessing the NFLCoach template does something wrong when you don't fill in a width. All fixed now anyway. Jayden54

Interwikis for be-x-old

There seems to be a new problem with the old belarusian interwiki links (be-x-old:). For a while, it was working. But now it appears in the page instead of being listed in the language box. Robin des Bois ♘ ➳ ✉ 19:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should be working again, I've restored it to the interlanguage list for compatibility. Purge pages as necessary. --brion 19:32, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]