Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug is exigent).

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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This page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

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]

[1]

This link is very worrisome to me. Perhaps someone could fill out a bug report. I won't, because I'm leaving. However, when I even hover over the contributions history of the user in popups, it really screws up my screen, let alone just going to the page makes it impossible to delete. The Evil Spartan 18:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Already deleted. Also, get a better browser :-) Just teasing :-) -- ReyBrujo 18:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

templates with span style="display:none"

I'm getting some curious behaviour with {{Mathematician data}}. Its used to record data about mathematicians in {{Talk:Blaise Pascal/Data}} which are themselves templates, and allow extraction of the data. For instance

{{Talk:Blaise Pascal/Data|key=dates}} gives 1623 – 1662
{{Talk:Blaise Pascal/Data|key=sortname}} gives Pascal, Blaise

And with no parameter a longer description is produced

{{Talk:Blaise Pascal/Data}} gives This subpage contains data about Village pump (technical) which is used by the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics to produce tables of mathematicians. Edit this page to add or update the sortable name (sortname), date of birth or death (dates) and field (contribs) of Village pump (technical).

Name: Pascal, Blaise
Dates: 1623 – 1662
Contribs:

{{Talk:Blaise Pascal/Data}} looks like

{{Mathematician data|{{{key}}}
|dates= 1623 – 1662
|sortname= Pascal, Blaise
|contribs= 
}}

Everything works fine, until we have tried to work with BCE dates. To get these to sort properly in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Mathematicians, we have include a working sort key inside span tags. For instance

{{Mathematician data|{{{key}}}
|dates= <span style="display:none">*615</span>384 – 322 BCE
|sortname= Aristotle
|contribs= 
}}

Extracting the date field works fine

{{Talk:Aristotle/Data|key=dates}} gives 384 – 322 BCE

but no output is produced in the no-parameter case.

{{Talk:Aristotle/Data}} gives This subpage contains data about Village pump (technical) which is used by the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics to produce tables of mathematicians. Edit this page to add or update the sortable name (sortname), date of birth or death (dates) and field (contribs) of Village pump (technical).

Name: Aristotle
Dates: 384 – 322 BCE
Contribs:

I've been scratching my head trying to workout why the span tag causes problems. Any ideas? --Salix alba (talk) 13:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, anything with its display set to "none" will never show up in any circumstance; saying as the span tag is properly closed, though, that shouldn't be an issue (I tried adding the closing semicolon at the end to Artistotle, but that didn't do anything). Are the quotes (in the span tag) throwing it off, maybe? EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not showing the *615 is the intended action. What we would like is for blah...384 – 322 BCE...blah to appear, but for the full text to be there for sorting purposes. Whats curious is that no text appears even in the html source. --Salix alba (talk) 15:38, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) What I've noticed is that the text won't show up at all, even when looking at the page source. I think it's the equals sign that's causing the problem, since removing it causes it to display correctly and adding it in other locations to other parameters causes a blank output. This would probably therefore indicate a problem with the template parameters or perhaps the #switch: ParserFunction, rather than the formatting. Tra (Talk) 15:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did experiment to see if it was the equals sign. Changing the span to <span foo="bar"> while still having a = sign actually displayed correctly. --Salix alba (talk) 19:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing that might be because MediaWiki doesn't recognise foo as a valid HTML tag parameter and consequently strips it out before evaluating the wiki-code. If you change it to <span style="display:inline"> which is valid, then it doesn't work. Tra (Talk) 20:34, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Urgh, not HiddenStructure again. display: none does show up in several circumstances; text browsers, plaintext rendering, search engines, and anything else which ignores either CSS or its display property. It would be better, if possible, to use a separate field as the sort key, defaulting to the date if it's not available. --cesarb 18:32, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The problem, for sortable tables, is that there is not currently other way to customize the sorting of certain cells. For example it is common to see things like:

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
| <span style="display:none;">Bush, George W.</span> [[George W. Bush]] || 2001-present

If we can get a built-in way of doing this, it would be easy enough to convert all the display:none's at the same time. Until then it's better than nothing. — CharlotteWebb 19:32, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I'm coming to that conclusion about having a sortdate key. Hidden structures seems to be the only way to get the table to sort right and display sensible dates, indeed they are discussed extensivly in Help:Sorting. None of the files are in main space, so the associated problems are minimised. --Salix alba (talk) 19:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've now implemented a more elegant workaround. An extra sortdates key is used for pre 1000AD dates. The table code in wraps this up in the hidden span, sort sorting works and dates display correctly. Thanks for everyones help. --Salix alba (talk) 20:32, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weird bits of text in various places

In the last couple days, I've been getting weird chunks of text in random parts of pages. I'd say it's happened maybe 10 times. Looks as though some database field is getting randomly included in an article, or parts of HTML tags are getting stripped out. Refreshing the page usually makes it go away. For example, here are a few lines from my watchlist; look at the second line:

20:07 Hanford Site (diff; hist) . . (+500) . . 70.20.190.160 (Talk) (fire balloon attack)
20:05 torial_elections%2C_2010" title="United States gubernatorial elections, 2010">United States gubernatorial elections, 2010 (diff; hist) . . (+7) . . 67.162.154.78 (Talk)
m 19:55 Pierce v. Society of Sisters (diff; hist) . . (-4) . . Davidwr (Talk | contribs) (→Background - wikilink fixup of Supreme Court of the United States)

-Pete 06:30, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That looks like part of the start of an HTML tag is missing; you're seeing the second half of an <A> tag there, for instance (it's exactly where the A tag should be, it's just that the first half of the tag is missing). I'm not sure what's causing it. --ais523 09:53, 21 May 2007 (U T C)

Yes, I think your analysis is correct, but when I refresh the page, the problem goes away. It's only been happening in the last couple days.

Not sure if this is related, but I've also been having random chunks of text appear in my edits, also in the last few days. It's the kind of thing I might assume results from a stray "paste" keyboard shortcut on my part, except that it's happened several times, in areas of text I haven't even been editing. For instance, the following weird text showed up after this edit; I hadn't even cliicked in that paragraph. (I bolded the extra text below to draw attention to it.)

The most famous and prominent example of TABOR legislation is in the state of Colorado.[1] In 1992, the voters of the state amended Article X of the Colorado Constitution to the effect that any tax increase resulting in the increase of governmental revenues at a rate faster than the combined rate of population increase and inflation as measured by the either the cost of living index at the state level, or growth in property values at the local level, would be subjected to a popular vote in a referendum, a process referred to as &quo<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/navpop.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css&dontcountme=s">t;de-Brucing" after Douglas Bruce, the author of the amendment. This applies to any cities and counties in Colorado as well as the state itself. Additionally, any "natural growth" in revenues that exceeded this rate was to be either earmarked for educational improvements or rebated to the taxpayers once an adequate reserve ("rainy day") fund was established. This has led to a decrease in actual tax revenue (relative to population and inflation) for two reasons. Because the law does not adjust for rising productivity, additional income from year to year among the same population can not be effectively taxed. Secondly, the law only looks at the previous year, leading to a "ratchet-effect", wherein if tax revenue temporarily lowers in a recession, revenue can not rise back to pre-recession levels without a referendum. In Colorado, these factors have led to a decreasing overall tax revenue in the state.

-Pete 19:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It looks very related; that's a chunk of text from the page you received being included in the information you sent (that's the styling information for navigation popups, as it happens, but given what you've said upthread it's probably just a bit of text plucked out from the page's HTML at random). One possibility might be network problems somewhere between you and Wikipedia, but I'm not sure what would case the symptoms you've seen exactly. --ais523 12:19, 22 May 2007 (U T C)

You are not the only one to experience this weird link popping up, see Shoulder_problems&oldid=133059167#Shoulder_structures_and_functions Root⁴(one) 05:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again for your thoughts. Network weirdness sounds plausible, except that there are so many error checks built into TCP transmission that it seems unlikely. Also, I haven't noticed this posting to sites other than Wikipedia. In case it's relevant, I have POPUPS installed...I've been thinking of ditching it though, and trying a different tool. Twinkle seems popular, I may give that a try. -Pete 20:03, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One more weirdness - this time an explicit error, upon trying to save an edit to the John E. Frohnmayer article:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
(SQL query hidden)
from within function "SiteStatsUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; Try restarting transaction (10.0.0.237)".

-Pete 22:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Still happening, getting worse

Sorry to be such a naysayer, but the random pieces of HTML tags scattered over Wikipedia articles seems to be getting worse. I hope somebody smart is looking into this! -Pete 18:42, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just some suggestions, no pro advice here...You need to isolate the problem by either removing pop-ups or disabling JavaScript in your browser. Any updates to how the server handles form data, update to your browser, or a change to the pop-up code could cause a problem. Are you including the javascript from lupin or did you copy the code? Take a look at the last change made to the script and when your browser was last updated. Look to see if there is a relationship between the change date and when the pop-up errors started. -- I already forgot talk 19:28, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good suggestion. I somehow immediately forgot about the Popups aspect - I'll disable it now, and report back in a few days on whether that solved the problem. -Pete 19:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so I haven't seen the problem at all since disabling POPUPS. So consider it isolated. I'll see about letting the Popups developer know. -Pete 00:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cross Vector Product "A x"

Hi

It is Abbas Naqvi.

I am creating a profile for the trajectory, in 3D.

The starting equation contains the "Cross-Product-Operator", as put by the Author...represented by (say for an arbitrary vector A) as "Ax", while "x" as the "Cross Vector Operator".

I am confused as it is the "A" is being used as a Rotation Vector, so if I put an arbitrary values to A's 3D components, what is meant by the "Ax" as a whole.....

SAbbasNaqvi 07:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please ask such questions at Wikipedia:Reference desk. This page is to assist editors involved in editing Wikipedia, or readers having problems reading Wikipedia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

History problem on DVD region code

Hello. I've some history problem with DVD region code, using this page: [2]. On firefox browser (logged), I see a lot of "Regional Coding Enhancement FAQ" external links in the diff, but not in the article. And If I check individually the changes, nobody did such change. In IE, WP mixes two articles, using the title "Viperidae, DVD region code". The old article start (after taxobox template ) with "Viperidae (Vipers) is a family of poisonous snakes found all over the world.", which is not in the latest Viperidae articles ("poisonous" -> "venomous"). FYI: Firefox: Served by srv75 in 0.360 secs., I.E. Served by srv128 in 0.274 secs.. Cate |_Talk 15:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How did you obtain that diff? The diff and oldid parameters link to revisions for different pages. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check this diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Red&diff=134404062&oldid=134339933 :-) Cacycle 04:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

hmm. It was in the history, with "current". But now that I check, maybe I copied wrong the URL (a missing final "1") into IE and in this request. But in the firefox I tried a lot of times, (also after an hour) and the problem remained: multiple repetition of text + link. Anyway, nice the last diff, I thinked that the revision was in unix epoch, without caring to much. Cate |_Talk 16:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is some sort of problem with the diff tool which sometimes causes this, which we haven't yet been able to isolate and debug. Any given instance should go away afer a few days at most, when the bad copy expires from cache. --brion 18:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Logo - errors

segment copied from archive, initially copied from end of Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia Logo.

There are at least 2 major character errors in the current Wikipedia puzzle-globe logo, and other minor problems.
User talk:Ambuj.Saxena/Wikipedia-logo is the most centralized discussion/link compilation that I know of. (There's even a petition at that link's projectpage)
Nohat has explained the problems with correcting the errors. But noone seems to have a solution.
Somebody with patience and brains (and either delegating or computer-graphics skills), needs to adopt this problem as a personal mission, lest it remain unsolved for another year. --Quiddity 02:53, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a trademarked image. You have to consider those implications as well. You may want to ask whether there would be any issues replacing the old logo with a corrected one. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:16, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This got archived before I had a chance to ask, Where else should I ask/suggest/prompt/prod for action/assistance with this issue? I don't want to spam everywhere potentially-relevant, but I'm unsure where to go next. It's been mentioned at various VPump pages, relevant userpages, and metapages. The only other places I can think of are image talkpages, and the various mailing lists (but which one/s?). Thanks for any help. --Quiddity 19:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Probably WikiEN-l (very high traffic) and Foundation-l (more relevant) would be the ideal. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:25, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

wikipedia-l would be more sensible than wikien-l, given the subject matter.

James F. (talk) 15:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote to Wikipedia-l and Foundation-l on Friday, June 1. If there is still no reply/feedback by Thursday, I'll CC it to WikiEN-l and inquire further at the 1st two. --Quiddity 19:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just a quick question

Hi Do wikis save each revision as a full text, or they just save the current version, and store the differences for previous revisions additionally. (HUN)Villy 12:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it's full-text. --Golbez 12:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thaks :) (HUN)Villy 13:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep; although I'm not that knowledgeable with MySQL, I believe that every edit that is made adds a new row to the revisions table consisting of the user that made the edit, the edit summary, the timestamp, the full text of the revision, and other goodies. Gracenotes^T § 13:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are variations, including multiple compressed revisions in a block. --brion 18:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Automated?

Hey, can anyone who's knowledgeable with javascript confirm that the code at User:Gracenotes/Sandbox (run on an api.php page) is semi-automated (that is, each edit requires human intervention)? This issue was brought up at my RFA, and I would appreciate if someone could actually go through the code. Thanks, Gracenotes^T § 13:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what I see:

Each edit requires a click on the article name in the returned API results
If {{R from shortcut}} is found, the edit is aborted
Otherwise, {{R from shortcut}} is added to the end of the article text and saved without further intervention

I probably would have written it to submit the edit with wpDiff so that the third step required confirming the diff and an explicit click on save, but I can confirm that every edit requires a click to initiate and it doesn't just run through all results without intervention. Hope that helps. Mike Dillon 15:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just took a closer look at the API results and since the revision text is shown before making the click, the value to be added by a diff is minimal. The only reason to diff would be to make sure no intervening edits were made since the API results were generated, but the chances of that are pretty small, so the no-diff workflow seems fairly safe in this case. Mike Dillon 16:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thank you. I appreciate your opinion on the matter. Gracenotes^T § 01:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Downloading User Contributions

Is there a way to download all of my user contributions and import them into an excel spreadsheet? I have over 5,000 but can only get 500 at a time. Thanks! JodyB_talk 14:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the MediaWiki API could be useful here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=usercontribs&uclimit=500&ucuser=JodyB Far as I see, still limited to 500 entries, and you need to feed the ucstart parameter from the previous page to the next page in order to traverse the list, but you can select a machine-friendly output format, and it's at least a start. Femto 15:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you could request a bot flag to get 5000 entries at a time... uh... I don't think that it would pass, though. :( Gracenotes^T § 17:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here is your contribs set to show 5000, or if you tell me what format you would like the api to give you, I will get that for you (sysops can search 5000 at a time too). Prodego ^talk 21:15, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I saw that being suggested at the talk page of the API page on meta. That's good. Gracenotes^T § 21:22, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User:Voice of All's RC patrol tool lets you view 5k at a time. --əˈnon gahy ♫Look What I've Done!♫ 21:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

en.wikipedia.org

I tried to access WikiPedia through the english prefix, but I get this page. However, yesterday from 16:05 - 16:23 GMT, that address worked. I think the site is trying to kill WikiPedia. Wait---I just got WikiPedia. I found the bad site at 17:50 GMT, but WikiPedia now works. Does anyone know why this happened?

^^ Don't delete! --Cricket Boy 17:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This site is en.wikipedia.org. -- brion 18:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It may have just been the internets borking. Nothing to worry about. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Did you misspell something? Gutworth 02:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

varargs for parserfunctions?

Is there any technique for parsing a variable-length argument list for a named parameter? For example, parameter foo can have any combination of 7 options. CMummert · talk 19:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe this could be of assistance? --əˈnon gahy ♫Look What I've Done!♫ 20:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CMummert... hm, what do you mean? I'm a bit confused. Gracenotes^T § 01:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Example. I want all these to work (maybe with different syntax, since I don't know how to do it).

{{template|foo=bar}} foo has argument bar

{{template|foo=baz}} foo has argument baz

{{template|foo=bar,baz}} foo has arguments bar and baz

This would be useful for categorizing using templates. I could do it if StringFunctions were active but apparently they aren't. CMummert · talk 03:43, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{{#switch:{{{foo}}}|bar=result1|baz=result2}} As far as I know, one parameter cannot take 2 values. To have both bar's result and baz's result, use two separate #if:'s. –Pomte 04:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The switch you had before would work (you need the fourth option as baz,bar as well). But in the application I have in mind there are 10 or so possible parameters, and so it isn't feasible to include every possible list of options. I can use different ifs, certainly. But that makes it harder on the template users, since they have to say baz=true|bar=true. CMummert · talk 04:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can reduce that to baz=|bar=, if that's still intuitive for template users, with {{#ifeq:{{{baz|}}}|{{{baz|anystring}}}|result|}} or some more efficient comparison.

{{template|bar|baz}}, {{template|baz|bar|bay}} etc can be done with the same #switch on each of the 10 numbered parameters, like a for loop, but that seems to require a lot more checks and I don't think it's worth it. –Pomte 06:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

watchlist - permanent watch for Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines ?

I have an entry for Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines in the *article* section of my watchlist. It looks like it is stuck there... Bug? or Feature? (I don't know for how long it is there, for months for sure) - Nabla 20:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check that it's spelt correctly; a misspelling in the namespace might cause it to count as article-space. Unwatching and rewatching should hopefully solve the problem otherwise, but this is just general advise as I'm not sure what else could cause it. --ais523 12:09, 31 May 2007 (U T C)

No... It is spelled correctly. (un/re)watching have not solved either. - Nabla 16:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it's the redirect Policies and guidelines that is actually on the watchlist. --Derlay 21:56, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not that either... - Nabla 16:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've proposed that redirect for deletion. –Pomte 00:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I used Watchlist/clear... It was needing a cleanup anyway. It worked. Thanks for trying to help! - Nabla 16:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Print screening a page

Are Wikipedia pags allowed to be print screened, then the image uploaded onto Wikipedia? If so, what license would i put up? E.g. C or GDFL-self? Simply south 10:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{{Wikipedia-screenshot}}. (Choose 'None selected' in the licence box and type the tag in manually.)

Make sure that there are no fair-use images on the page you take the screenshot of, give links to any other images on the page (because they'll have their own copyright status), and crop off the logo if it doesn't add to the image (because it isn't under a free licence). It's probably also advisable to link to the history of the page it's a screenshot of, to make sure that the GFDL part of the licence is fulfilled. --ais523 12:07, 31 May 2007 (U T C)

The very last option in the dropdown box at Special:Upload is "Wikipedia web page screenshot". Use that. --Quiddity 23:42, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Make a feature

I want to send a massage to all my group members. wikiproject or etc.

For example:

I participate "wikiproject A"
I want to send a massage to wikiproject A's all members's talk pages.

Make a template, please! -- WonYong (talk • contribs • count • logs • email) 12:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What do you want to put in the message, and how many people do you wish to send it to? Tra (Talk) 12:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

nothing. I only suggest a new feature. -- WonYong (talk • contribs • count • logs • email) 13:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried the talk page of the project? ^(H) 13:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm... massaging template... er, sorry, was distracted. For a fairly large WikiProject, it is standard to request an AWB bot to spam a message onto the talk page of all participants of a WikiProject (don't remember if it's opt-in or opt-out). For a relatively small WikiProject, the spamming could probably be done by hand. Gracenotes^T § 19:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to translate system message?

some system messages are korean

some system messages are english

How to translate english system message to korean? -- WonYong (talk • contribs • count • logs • email) 13:23, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you're talking about English Wikipedia with your language set to Korean in your user preferences. In general, system messages are translated on-wiki by editing a page in the MediaWiki namespace that has the same name as the message being translated with the language code appended with a slash. For example, to update the Korean translation of the message that shows at the top of the watchlist (MediaWiki:Watchdetails), an administrator would edit MediaWiki:Watchdetails/ko.

If you're talking specifically about the sidebar, it would take a little more work to make it translatable. I brought it up for discussion at MediaWiki talk:Sidebar#Sidebar labels and elsewhere, but I can't seem to get anyone interested in fixing it. Mike Dillon 14:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If people want to see what this looks like without changing user preferences, the uselang parameter can change the language for a single page view. For example:

//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&uselang=ko
//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&uselang=ko

As you can see, some of the interface is in English and some in Korean. Mike Dillon 14:49, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you make them all, I will move them into the mediawiki space for you, but this is the English wikipedia after all. Prodego ^talk 17:45, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request

following is curruent status:

navigation -> 둘러보기

Main page

Contents

Permanently delete articles

How can I permanently delete an article in mediawiki so that not even an admin can retrieve it? ie, totally purge it from the database. This is for a mediawiki server at my workplace on which someone posted sensitive material. Thanks.Rlevse 16:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~You should look at WP:OVERSIGHT and make a request via e-mail from Wikipedia:Requests for oversight.~~ Oh sorry, for your own server - you will need to look at m:Extension:Oversight. Warofdreams talk 17:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, you can remove the edit directly in the database. Prodego ^talk 17:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you delete an article the normal way then wipe the archives table in you database, you'll leave almost no trace (the delete log will still be there). Gutworth 00:57, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above link doesn't work. This is the correct one. mw:Extension:Oversight. Harryboyles 10:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to completely purge the article from the database, you'll have to do it manually. Not even the Oversight extension will help there (it still stays in the database). Jayden54 18:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can manually delete it and then truncate the archive table. However, that takes out every other article that you have deleted as well. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:26, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, if you're going to be messing around with the database, it is better to look at the page table and delete the particular record for the page. There's no way to do this completely cleanly; Oversight (or if you wait a bit, bitfields for rev_deleted) are the better way to do this. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks guys. Let me know when bitfields is released. Rlevse 21:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images

I can't get images to display on Wikipedia, Meta, Commons etc. It works fine on other websites using similar images, using Firefox 2 and Windows XP. Thanks, GDonato (talk) 19:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From the FAQ at the top of this page, "it's surprisingly common for people to accidentally block the image server (upload.wikimedia.org) on Firefox." Could this be the problem? Warofdreams talk 01:08, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so as I'm having the same in IE, and I don't see anything to indicate image blocking. GDonato (talk) 09:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mistake

I'm not quite sure if this is the right place for this, but I was making my Simple English Talk page, and when tramslating my wikipedia talk page to my Simple english talkpage, I ended up translating the talkpage on Wikipedia, instead of my talkpage on Simple English, so I was hoping someone was able to git undo my mistake|edit. Please §→Nikro 22:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've put your talkpage on the English Wikipedia back to how it was before. For the Simple English Wikipedia, you will need to create a separate account there and then create your talk page. Tra (Talk) 22:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ecotheme for Wikipedia

Hi,

The current default theme 'Monobook' and other themes use white colour.

Inline with Blackle for Google, can we have a theme for Wikipedia that can help save energy?

Regards,

Harshal 05:35, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does it really save enough energy to be worthwhile? Particularly with LCDs, where the big use is the always-on backlight? --Carnildo 06:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In developing countries like India, CRTs outnumber LCDs and the situation might remain same for at least next few years.

In either case, having an option of Ecotheme is a good idea. Making it default theme is a separate issue.

Regards,

Harshal 07:06, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So you want a skin that is as dark as possible? If you wish, I'd be able to write one, so that it can be put into "myskin.css". Gracenotes^T § 01:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think Harshal probably wants it to go into MediaWiki itself so that other users can select it through user preferences. Otherwise, there isn't really much argument for the energy saving thing, regardless of how much it actually saves on an individual basis. Mike Dillon 01:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, hacking a skin is not trivial, while cloning Monobook and modifying its CSS is much easier. If the devs have it in front of their eyes, they may potentially add it. (No promises, though.) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thankfully, one could merely copy main.css and modify some of the colors; doing this via myskin.css (and Special:Mypage/myskin.css) seems easiest. I'm just wondering what specific ways to implement an energy-saving skin Harshal has in mind. Gracenotes^T § 05:23, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Making the background darker, text a bit off-white, I would presume. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:30, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Table of Contents/Sub Sections

I have a very strange question. Is it possible to have one section (==Section==)where no sub sections (===Sub-Section===) show up in the table of contents - but then for every other section they will? Really would appreciate some help here - I'm having a problem with some of my pages. daniel folsom 21:12, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can demote all the subsections you don't want to level 4 or above and then use {{TOClimit|4}}. There'd be discrepancies with the font sizes of the titles, but I don't know of any other way. –Pomte 22:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One method

You could use the semi-colon method of creating a heading that will not show up in the table of contents, but it will not have an edit button either.-gadfium 01:36, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

hmmm - I'm not sure any of those would work for this scenario. The problem is I'm working with my talk page - and I have a wierd archive system set up, but I'm trying to put it at the top of the page because if people click the plus sign, their thing won't show up in the toc.daniel folsom 05:19, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This should work: change all your archived sections from level 2 to level 3, and get rid of that level 1 "Archive" heading from the top. –Pomte 22:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Google

Just to clarify, am I correct in saying that we have no way of forcing Google to update their cache of a Wikipedia page (e.g., when vandalism appears in their preview)? This question stems from a discussion on my talk page. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:15, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, we can. This was recently discussed on WP:AN/I due to a pretty-embarrasing preview of George Washington. Let me dig through the archives... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:18, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I found the thread here but it doesn't seem to provide any advice other than waiting. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is google's form to request removal of a page. Prodego ^talk 01:41, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Christopher Parham (talk) 01:57, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another search engine

Someone had proposed to me the addition of a search engine to the drop-down list at Special:Search. If you have the time, please comment here. Thanks, Gracenotes^T § 01:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Transclusions list wrong?

When I view Wikipedia:Today's featured article, the text for today's and tomorrow's FA appear as expected, but when I click edit, the transclusion list for "the current version" says:

Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 23, 2007 (protected)
Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 24, 2007 (protected)
Template:FCpages
Template:Fapages
Template:Shortcut (protected)
Template:TFAfooter (protected)
Template:TodaysFABar2007
Template:Tomorrow

But the FAs for 23rd and 24th can't possibly be the ones I'm viewing. Resurgent insurgent 14:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have purged the page's cache; the dates now appear updated to me. Gracenotes^T § 17:06, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now the list is stuck at June 2 and June 3. I purged, then hit edit, and Ctrl-Shift-R'ed the edit page (all steps using Firefox), and lo and behold the list is stuck again. :( Resurgent insurgent 12:10, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I messed up the page title of one of the transcluded pages, previewed Wikipedia:Today's featured article, fixed the page title, and made a null edit. [...] Gracenotes^T § 21:44, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Messages Bar

I have heard of this problem before, but don't know (and possibly can't) fix it. Anyways, the You have new messages bar will not go away from my browser. Isn't there something you have to put in my monobook.css file? Can you do that on an IP address? Is there another way to fix it? Thanks, 24.4.25.168 20:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This problem has been affecting IP addresses for a while on Wikipedia. Some IP addresses never get the new messages bar while others have the bar "stuck" there. There is currently no fix to the problem except to register an account with us. See Category:Wikipedians_who_are_terribly_frustrated_about_Bug_ID_9213 & Wikipedia_talk:Administrator_intervention_against_vandalism#Bug_ID_9213 for more info. -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 20:14, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tags found in Gene Autry

What is the meaning of this set of tags embedded in Gene Autry ? {{{11907|}}} {{Ifndef|1907|}} {{{21998|}}} {{Ifndef|1998|}} - Bevo 01:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The tags are a result of substituting {{lifetime}} and some manipulation through AWB. See this edit and this edit. I've removed the tags as they are useless now. Graham87 10:25, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to request a deletion of a misspelled redirect page?

I accidentally created http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CKX.&redirect=no How do I request to delete it? - Bevo 18:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{{db-r3}} works. -N 18:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Place {{db-redirtypo}} (for a misspelled redirect) or {{db-author}} (for a page you created by mistake) on it. --ais523 18:46, 3 June 2007 (U T C)

Kennedy Family Tree template

{{kennedyfamilytree}} I have a problem with this template while using IE. Either on my computer or my sister's. Another editor suggested I change browsers, but I do not think that is fair. As there are many others who use IE. I don't know if everyone who uses IE, as their browser, has a problem with it. But when I attempt to edit these articles, my browser hangs, I lose control of the mouse, and becomes very frustrating because I can't move out of the page. It's very frustrating, that I have to change browsers to FireFox just to edit these articles with this template. Even just accessing them is probmatic.

While I believe the template is very interesting, but the frustration caused by it over-rides the interest. Anyway, the articles already have the geneology information and adding this template, that is huge, and does not fit the screen without having to scroll, with a mouse that won't work, BECAUSE of the template, it is frustrating (have I said that before?) My preferred browser, IE, has all my "stuff" on it, and I, nor anyone else should not be told or made to use a specific browser to view or edit articles on Wikpedia.

This is the ONLY template I have a problem with. There is something wrong with it, IMO, that is causing this problem. It is not my computer, I do not have a virus, as I was told by this user, who insists on reinserting the template after I asked him not too. Thanks for any help with this. - Jeeny ^Talk 21:33, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a peeve of mine too, things that only work in IE or only work in FF. Templates should definitely work in both. Rlevse 21:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yay. Reason! Thank you. Okay, so what should I do now? Yell at him for reverting me? lol Or just remove the templates, or just wait here for more input? I'm lost. ugh. :) - Jeeny ^Talk 21:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, a template like this does not belong in individual biographical articles. It is ridiculously large and mostly irrelevant to any article except Kennedy family. That article actually has a textual version of the genealogy, not a tree. Having a large genealogical template like this inevitably runs into sourcing problems, since genealogy is very often a matter of educated guessing based on ambiguous or unreliable sources.

As for browser problems, I don't think there is anything browser-specific in these templates, they're just really big. I've nominated this template for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 June 4#Template:Kennedyfamilytree. Mike Dillon 15:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up

Hi Jeeny. Could you tell me whether you see the same issues when you look at the template or a containing article if you are not logged in? I don't see any user scripts in your monobook.js file, so I would guess you see the same behavior whether or not you are logged in. Also, could you give some idea of the specs of your computer, particularly the amount of RAM (right click on "My Computer" and open "System Properties"). Mike Dillon 18:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User contributions not appearing

Recent edits from say the last half hour are not showing up on any User's User contributions page. Corvus cornix 22:37, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that too. The newbie contributions page stopped at 21:56 UTC. Rhobite 22:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My bot has been making contributions since June 1, but these aren't showing up on his contribution log. Example: [3]. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 23:26, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Due to severe database lag, contributions older than 6480 seconds may not appear on this list" hbdragon88 23:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lol! That ain't lag. Something's down. Oh well -- everything else seems to be working. :) – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 23:47, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have already explained precisely what the problem is: [4]. I hope that lays the question to rest. If not, we shall expand the experiment to include all threads similar to this one, and not just edits. Splash - tk 23:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware of the "intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear". According to this, the database lag is minor (few seconds). My watchlist is reasonably up-to-date. But, Special:Contributions is not showing edits I made over an hour ago. I have checked in a different browser, without caching issues, but doesn't help. ~~Is it just me?~~ or what's the problem with Special:Contributions. It's difficult to keep up with vandals if I can't tell what they have been editing. --Aude (talk) 00:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

hey, uhh, my contribs list doesn't include recent contribs.. the last one included is from hours ago... yes I am and was logged in; I went to the page that I had edited to double&nash; check... Ling.Nut 00:22, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See my post above. (combined the thread) --Aude (talk) 00:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Statistics list a job queue of 154,359 items right now. That is a pretty long queue. Someone may have modified a few critical templates, or the database is being hammered hard. -- ReyBrujo 00:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

newbie contribs on Commons are up-to-date. It's just enwiki. --Aude (talk) 00:27, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, it has been above a million before and nothing broke; 150,000 is not that high. —Centrx→talk • 02:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, who's been messing with critical templates? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 01:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At present time, it appears that all of the enwiki database slaves except for db2 and db4 are down. We are attempting to find anyone with root access on these servers to reboot them. Until such time as someone can be found, however, we're going to be shit out of luck--please try to be patient; we're doing our best to get these problems fixed. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:22, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At the time being, the job queue is getting smaller, but at a very slow rate. At the current load, it'll take about 24 hours to get through the job queue. ~a (user • talk • contribs) 01:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that it's lowering slightly, then jumping a lot. If just jumped about 6,000. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 02:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see a modification in the {{spoiler}} template, although users had been removing it from thousands of articles. Also, the other slaves are already out of synchro, so as soon as they are rebooted they will have to synchronize their contents. Will the main database be locked until they are updated? That may mean a several minutes wait until Wikipedia is open for writing... -- ReyBrujo 02:10, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update Alright, we got Brion and Tim on the case (poor Brion even got woken up as a result of this ...), so hopefully this will be repaired soon. May be likely that the database will be locked for a bit. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:12, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Everything seems to be faster than a few minutes ago. ---CWY2190^T^C 02:14, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a global watchlist warning should be issued when the databases are synchronizing. -- ReyBrujo 02:19, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The job queue is definitely getting bigger, not smaller. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:18, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ha! This: Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 14852 seconds might not be shown in this list just appeared atop my contribs list. (*doing mental math to figure out how long that is*...) K. Lásztocska 02:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, maybe we should calculate the minutes instead, not very useful right now :-) -- ReyBrujo 02:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And yet another update: Problem has been fixed. It's now just a matter of waiting for the slaves to catch up to the master. It will sort itself out naturally. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:24, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By my estimate it should be caught up in a little less than half an hour. Lag is decreasing about 400 seconds per minute (at least it was when I checked). Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 02:31, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Its down to 10,000 seconds. Were almost to 4 digits! ---CWY2190^T^C 02:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible to have at Special:Statistics the number of servers up and down? -- ReyBrujo 02:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like everything is back up. ---CWY2190^T^C 02:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, mine works now. Thanks! K. Lásztocska 02:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there really a diversity of date format preferences?

I suspect that wikilinking dates to allow for date format preferences is a waste of time and a source of ugly articles with links that can't possibly support understanding. Would someone with direct read access to the database please post a tally of users' date preference choice, if they have one? I suspect one of the choices will overwhelm all the others. BenB4 22:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You need to take this to MoS. This is an international encyclopedia, and one country's preferences should not be forced on people from other parts of the world. Corvus cornix 22:47, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) If you don't like wikilinking dates, feel free not to. But for those of us that were brought up with European English rather than American English, the wiki links are very useful since European English normally puts the digit before the name of the month. AFAIK, the latter standard is also used in several Commonwealth countries. Valentinian ^{T / C} 22:48, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly does the date preference do anyway? --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 22:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It overrides the format of linked dates with the format that you listed in your preferences. For example, if I type [[January 1]], [[2007]] you could change your preferences so that you see 1 January, 2007. Corvus cornix 22:55, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The European standard doesn't use the comma, so it is "1 January 2007" in this example. Valentinian ^{T / C} 22:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My uploaded images

How do I get a list of images I have uploaded, please? BlueValour 04:09, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

[5] --Deskana (talk) 04:09, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Splendid, thank you. BlueValour 15:50, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Heavy database lag

The probability of making an edit, let alone viewing a page, has dropped below 15% without getting an error message. RC feed shows edits being made at a greatly reduced rate. Have the database servers crashed again? MER-C 11:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, had another crash this morning. See this post by Brion. AmiDaniel (talk) 15:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Outage

We had a bit of an outage due to some problems at the data center. This is now mostly resolved (see details), but you may see database errors on some pages. --brion 12:53, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion log visible by default

I noticed that I now see automatically the deletion log at the bottom in case of clicking a redlink (e.g. Pile_GeoCosmiche). Is this a new general feature? If so, the rest of the message should be adapted accordingly where it refers to and has a wikilink for the deletion log. --Tikiwont 13:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have made a edit request at MediaWiki talk:Noarticletext#Deletion log. –Pomte 17:53, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I took care of this. --MZMcBride 19:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Section watching

It would be nice to be able to watch a section of a page, rather than the entire page. Whenever I post a question or comment to a project page (like this one), I have to either face a deluge of changes on my watchlist, or keep the page open and periodically refresh it, to see the response when it's posted. I could request a response on my talk page, but threads on project pages are likely to be useful to someone other than myself. Is there a script for this possibly? Thanks, — Swpb ^{talk contribs} 13:25, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would create far too much server load unless this was coded into the software; a script would have to check the history of each page on your section watchlist every time you visited it to see when that section was last edited, and it would have to check the content of the change as well if the section-edit button hadn't been used. Also, sections can be renamed, etc., so it wouldn't work too well even if it were possible. --ais523 13:48, 4 June 2007 (U T C)

Section watching is not feasible. There will be improvements to the discussion system in the future which will give similar benefits for what you're talking about, however. --brion 19:08, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

m:LiquidThreads, for those looking for a link. -- Ned Scott 19:12, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image deleted, but still accessable?

This image was deleted in April 2006 but it's still available if you have the direct link to it, like this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/nap/thumb/0/05/SophiaLoren55.jpg/300px-SophiaLoren55.jpg While it does seem to be rare and odd that someone would have such information, knowing this, someone could upload an image, not care if it gets deleted and just use it having the direct link to it. I know "deletion" does mean the actual deletion of the image, but it seems the an image that's deleted shouldn't be accessible by any means. Anyone have any insight? MECU≈talk 15:50, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That image is on a different wiki. --brion 19:07, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

query.php

Does anyone know why the first of these two queries fails but the second one works? success error. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Replacing %20 with underscore works. –Pomte 16:37, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that is at least a temporary hack. Both of the queries have two-word continuations, and both of them have %20 in the URL, but only one works, so something more complex is going on. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:42, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the same error occurs for this query which has only one word in the continuation and is returned by this query as right one to fetch next. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that %20 is actually the right character to use, according to User_talk:Yurik/Query_API/Completed_Requests#Category_downloading. Was "Diffusion process" returned in a "category next" tag? Tizio 16:54, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, but this one is the first error I get using %20. That's the second continuation, the first is this. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have copied this section to User_talk:Yurik/Query_API#Categories (copied from VPT), as that seems the best venue to me. Tizio 12:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I like to post things here as a form of public notice, in case others are having the same problem. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User page not appearing

I went to check my user page but when i got there it had a plain wiki background and no toolbars. Later when i tried it was fine. What happened?

Oysterguitarist 18:13, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No idea. I doubt anyone can replicate the problem... I can't. --Deskana (talk) 19:31, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It happened to me sometimes when viewing other people's userpages. I'm guessing it was a cache problem. - BANG ! 01:57, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a slow internet connection? Sometimes this happens when your browser thinks the page data has ended but it really hasn't. Gutworth 21:09, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like it might be a bad cached stylesheet, or possibly the wrong preferences were sent out. Bypassing your cache will solve both problems. --ais523 15:51, 7 June 2007 (U T C)

Image lining up

Not sure where else to post this... but I just inserted an image into Amazing Grace - I'm convinced the image at the top makes the article much more asthetically pleasing. But I can't figure out how to get the lyrics below the image, not to its right. Does anybody know a way that won't mess up the page? Any help here would be great. The Evil Spartan 00:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You would embed the image within the DIV content and left-align it. - Bevo 04:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help Desk not having a plus button

All talk article, even ones in the Wikipedia namespace seem to have a + button at the top next to the edit button. This helps if you want to create a new section at the bottom. The Help Desk, however, does not have one. Is it possible to fix this? The Evil Spartan 00:20, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've added it in; you just use the magic word __NEWSECTIONLINK__. -Amarkov moo! 00:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Table syntax documentation?

I'm looking at the country infobox code and I see it starts with:

Where can I find documentation for this syntax? In particular, what is an "ex" and what other units can I use to specify a width? --Ideogram 04:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CSS Spec. –Pomte 06:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, really? I think the question has to do with specific CSS classes defined by Wikipedia…I also would like to know where they're documented. I use class="wikitable" and class="wikitable sortable" all the time, but don't know what else is out there. -Pete 06:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Common.css for those and other classes, and it leads you to the stylesheets for specific skins. –Pomte 06:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, thanks. That page links to Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes, which I think is what we're both looking for. -Pete 06:49, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ems and Exes explained: [6]. Adrian M. H. 17:07, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Web Page - Paper

Hello,

Does any one know about the best way to develop a webpage for a News Paper so the users do not duplicate efforts typping the same text twice. I'd like something like be able to easily upload the text file(s) where user place the Nedwspaper's information and automatically build the webpage using the uploaded text file(s).

Could any one help me on this issue please?

Thank you very much!

Radhames Lopez

You may be interested in a variety of content management systems. –Pomte 16:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image rendering

[[Image:Cities destroyed in Jericho TV series.svg|250px|thumb|right|Destroyed Cities in the USA]] renders OK for me, but

[[Image:Cities destroyed in Jericho TV series.svg|255px|thumb|right|Destroyed Cities in the USA]] doesn't. Only the size is different. I'm using the default Monobook skin. What's up with that? - Bevo 21:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There was some sort of problem with the upload.wikimedia.org server yesterday (I've had the problem myself and I've seen various reports), but all reported problems are gone, so I assume it's working again. --Dapete ばか 07:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Both sizes look OK right now. Thanks for the confirmation. - Bevo 08:33, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Missing pages?

Hey, folks. I know that there was some issue with things disappearing from Commons, and maybe I'm missing something that should be really very obvious, but what happened to the mainspace page The Beatles trivia? The log shows the most recent action was a restore, so it should be there, but it's a redlink. WODUP 03:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It got renamed to The Beatles' miscellanea after the third AfD, then proposed for deletion for the 4th time at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Beatles' miscellanea. The WikiProject then decided to move it to the subpage Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/The Beatles' miscellanea, where it is supposed to be integrated into other Beatles articles. –Pomte 07:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That still doesn't explain why the redeletion wasn't logged. --ais523 15:53, 7 June 2007 (U T C)

Taxobox template assistance requested

Could someone knowledgable in template jargon assist on the protected {{Taxobox}} page? It appears in an update, someone removed a width restriction and taxoboxes that used to wrap text (captions, etc.; see Stylidium debile for an example) now don't, so we get large taxoboxes. The editor(s) that made the updates aren't available at the moment and the issue should be fixed ASAP. Didn't know where else to post this--hope it's appropriate for the village pump. Thanks! --Rkitko ^(talk) 06:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The template is protected, so I've made an edit request. –Pomte 07:05, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed.-gadfium 08:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --Rkitko ^(talk) 01:32, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Navigation bar

How to make the navigation bar hidden by default? I didn't notice the appropriate features in HTML elements at first sight. Thanks. --Brand спойт 12:43, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Navigation bar? --əˈnon gahy ♫Look What I've Done!♫ 13:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

E.g. Simeon's I family tree :P --Brand спойт 13:53, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They're collapsed on that page because when 3 NavFrame divs appear on the same page, they become autocollapsed. There are only 2 visible, but if you look at the second bar, there's an invisible empty NavFrame stuck under it to do the trick. There are other, more intuitive ways to hide something. One is {{hidden}}. Another is collapsible tables, which can become collapsed by default (see the bottom table in Template:Navigational templates for the comparison). –Pomte 14:36, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Missing image descriptions from Commons

What happened to transcluding the Commons image description page? What's up with the "This page left intentionally (mostly) blank"? howcheng {chat} 16:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They look transcluded here. Any specific pages you can link to? –Pomte 19:15, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the problem has fixed itself. Must be some sort of backup message in case there's some database/server lag or something. howcheng {chat} 20:26, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi

Can someone give me more picture options for my nav. bar? Gdk 41 1 17:58, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand, what image do you want to change? Prodego ^talk 18:58, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that he wants more images on User:Gdk411/Navbar. The files seem to come from [7], on the first download link. They seem to be GPL, which means they can be uploaded to Wikipedia (I think). If you look at one of the images on your navbar, Image:Exquisite-folder html.png, it has some details under licensing. x42bn6 Talk Mess 19:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I want to change the images. I took the idea from Chris's page, and I don't want it to look like I used the exact same thing. Gdk 41 1 20:05, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The icons come from commons:Category:Exquisite icons; you can find plenty of icons at commons:Category:Icons themes. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much!! Gdk 41 1 20:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Nuvola apps kcmpartitions.png

What happened to Image:Nuvola apps kcmpartitions.png? I can't see it anymore, the orginal upload specifies a size of "0×0 (15,194 bytes)", the MIME type is not recognized, despite being a png, and the file returns a not found error. Any idea what could be going on? Note: you can see the original image through Lupin's popups by hovering over the link. Prodego ^talk 20:20, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd ask this at commons:Commons:Village pump, as it appears to be a Commons-only issue (yes, it doesn't work, but the problem is on their end, not ours). EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:22, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I copied it there, but it is probably a server issue, possibly temporary, and there is probably a better chance a dev will read it here rather then at the commons. Does anyone know how popups generate image previews? Prodego ^talk 20:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See commons:COM:VP#Missing_images, as mentioned on the edit history of Template:NowCommons. --cesarb 20:59, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Page loading times

Consider a page like List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people/U-Z, which has ~100 refs. Would it take longer to load if the refs were all done using {{cite web}}? Or if they were all formatted manually? Just 'cuz I'm curious :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:33, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Free PHP hosts with mediawiki

Does anyone know of any free PHP hosts that have MediaWiki and you can add extensions etc. - this would be appreciated if someone could let me know. I didn't really want to use any of the free wiki farms as you can't really edit the Localsettings.php files. Thanks, --SunStar Net ^talk 10:22, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Throttling of watchlisting requests

I've written a script that allows the copying of a watchlist from one account to another. Importing a watchlist works by making HTTP HEAD requests to the URLs ending in ?action=watch (which watches the page) using AJAX (I replaced 'GET' in an AJAX routine someone else wrote with 'HEAD', so I think it's a HEAD request but something might be causing it to still be GET). At present, it AJAXs for the watched pages as fast as it can; is this too fast for the servers, and should I throttle it to some extent, or is this fine? --ais523 11:21, 8 June 2007 (U T C)

Perhaps setting maxlag, and looking for a response header (if it went through), will work. Gracenotes^T § 13:58, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cheyenne, Wyoming article history corrupted?

The talk page for Cheyenne, Wyoming has several mentions of people adding and removing information from the article recently, including this diff, this one, and this complaint today about "recent" edits removing a lot of information. However, the article history doesn't show any edits between October 30, 2006 and May 26, 2007. I'm beginning to think the history has been corrupted somehow.

Is that possible?
Is that likely?
If yes, can the history be restored?
Is it possible, instead, that everyone except me can see edits in the history between those two dates, and the problem is somehow at my end?

Thanks for any insight. --barneca (talk) 13:48, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems 130 edits have been deleted due to copyright violations. Cheers. --MZMcBride 13:57, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. Thanks for the info. Isn't that trying to kill mosquitos with a Howitzer? The first two diffs I show above seem to be edits by people who were improving/deleting material, and I have to believe a majority of the deleted edits had nothing to do with copyrighted material. If I understand correctly, someone probably added copyrighted material last fall, it didn't get taken off until late this May, and all intermediate edits, whether they related to the copyrighted material or not, just went down the memory hole? I know this much (imagine me holding my fingers 1 cm apart) about how we handle copyright violations, but I always thought they were just reverted or the offending material removed and that was the end of it. Or is this more a policy question now? Anyway, thanks for the explanation, and I'll welcome any additional info. Cheers back at you. --barneca (talk) 14:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]