The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues. Bugs and feature requests should be made at BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.
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The search index is often out of date, sometimes taking weeks before it's updated. Because of that, recent changes are not immediately reflected on the search.
If all the links in the articles suddenly become underlined (or the opposite), or red links instead end with a red question mark (or the opposite), or paragraphs are fully justified instead of left justified (or the opposite), it's probably because your browser failed to load one of the stylesheets (or the server sent you a wrong one). Do a forced reload or bypass your cache.
If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
It has been reported that the Google Toolbar extension for the Firefox browser is the source of some strange problems (including blanking part of a page when editing it). If you have that extension, try turning it off.
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compare version function in 'history' too very wide for actual practical use -- see what I mean?
On some pages, when I select two versions on the history tab, I get two very wide blocks for the compared versions. So wide in some cases that I've already acquired CFS (carpal finger syndrome) from jockeying the box contents back and forth. I'm using Firefox 1.05, and do not have this trouble with all articles, and not always with particular articles. This being so, this looks very much like a Heisenbug (and if we don't have an article we should). On the general principle that ignorance or incompetence shared is dissipated, does anyone have an idea what's going on? ww21:25, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That is just long lines (often urls) of text failing to wrap. It is just how tables work. If a specific diff has a such a line in the changed text, or in the paragraph before or after any change, the table cell (and the table) will be quite wide. You might be able to limit it in your css. I'll investigate later. --Splarka (rant) 08:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I tried every css trick I knew (ok, I spent 10 minutes at 5am on it), and I could not get it to wrap long unbroken strings of text, nor to get the tables to squeeze into the page under all cirucmstances (except with table-layout:fixed which screws up everything massively, as the table widths and heights are not specifically defined). It'd probably have to be done with the javascript fix gadfium mentions, or one like it. That, or ask the devs to rewrite the table to be more customizable via css (give every type of cell a specific class, wrap the whole thing in a div and the contents of each cell in a div too, etc). --Splarka (rant) 02:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Adding copyright tags
How do I upload a newer versions of the images to add the copyright tags correctly?
2006-6-6
Hello, I'm new to Wikipedia so I'm not so sharp when it comes to making links. I am working on a page for Navagio and I have found that Βικιπαίδεια currently has an entry for it. On the Navagio page I would like the word "Ναυάγιο" to link to el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ναυάγιο_(Ζάκυνθος). How do I make an external link like that, without making a footnote? --Skyscraper19:22, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to add some images to Hornussen but they don't seem to work. The images are on the German page so I don't know why they won't work on the English page as well. Hope someone can help. Thanks--CharlieP05:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Wikipedians:
I, like you, am an editor; I create articles and make edits.
But, many, I am sure many other people out there, are tired, frustrated and angry with the behavior of many Administrators. I am certain that it is appallingly easy to revert and article, that someone has undoubtedly spent allot of time and effort writing. I have, in the past spent hours, researching, planning, writing, checking and revising an addition to an article only to have the whole lot deleted forever three minutes afterwards.
I know that deletion of material is essential in a free-to-edit encyclopedia, but if you see an article that someone has anonymously devoted their time to writing, why could you not revise it, change it or give a reason for you action? They deserve one.
I know all Administrators are not all Drunk-With-Power-Trigger-Happy-Nazis, many of you do an excellent job and you know who you are.
In closing: Create, don’t Destroy. Make a distinction between “what is right, and what is easy”. Be enriched and enrich others with the knowledge of other people.
And keep that finger off the trigger.
(If I don't cop flack for this one, I will climb the Reichtag Bulding in a Spiderman outfit).
This may sound silly but I can't get a my redirect at Del Monte to work. I've tried hard to get it to go to Del Monte Foods but it just won't work. I someone could fix this for me I would be Eternally Greatful. Thanks Samuel15:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I only put this here becasue the script that links to the media wiki autoblock page on template:AOLdos is thiiiiiiis close to working correctly, which would cut down on vandalism a lot IMO, so, one more question... PAGENAME gives " " and PAGENAMEE gives _ so is there a 3rd variable out there somewhere that inserts + signs in place of spaces? otherwise the mediawiki link is never going to work correctly without being manually subst'd and debugged--205.188.116.6514:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The only way I know of to get something like 'User:Conrad+Bertrand+Dunkerson' (if I correctly understand that to be what you are looking for) into a template is to pass it in as a parameter. There is no 'magic word' (like 'PAGENAMEE') for '+' separators and no way in MediaWiki to parse sub-sets of a string. --CBD20:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What about {{urlencode:}}? That makes it so if you do {{urlencode:{{PAGENAME}}}} it will make it "Administrators'+noticeboard/Incidents" --GeorgeMoneyT·C20:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is an horrible name. PAGENAMEE stands for "pagename encoded"; what the swearword does "PAGENAMEEE" stand for? --cesarb23:31, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then feel free to move it. I simply stuck it there as that was what was requested here. PAGENAMEEE I suppose would be pagename extended encoding or something, dunno. If you have a better idea for the name, then put it wherever you want. AmiDaniel (talk) 04:14, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Loss of session data, intrusion attempt via exploit of MSIE script overflow
Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still doesn't work, try logging out and logging back in.
Every time I try to edit a page, the above message comes up. I've tried logging out and back in again, but it still appears. I can edit fine and preview fine so it's not a big problem, I'm just wondering why it keeps coming up. — FireFox • 13:29, 06 June '06
Um, prior to my first change, yes. It automatically shows the preview. It's not happened before though. — FireFox • 17:55, 06 June '06
There's a setting in prefs to show preview on first edit. Try unchecking that. Also try a different browser or two - some have issues with losing session data prematurely. Deco20:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It fixes the problem when I uncheck the box, but when I re-check the box the problem is still there. I've never had the problem before - it just appeared out of nowhere... no change of preferences, no change of browser or anything. — FireFox • 21:13, 06 June '06
I am having the same problem, but only when I try to edit pages in my user pages e.g. this page, not when I try to edit my user talk page or other user talk pages. I did try logging out and back in. I don't recall ever having experienced this kind of error before (been here about a year).---CH21:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Brion, Im getting the same problem. Can you tell me what the fix was? Can anyone help? Thanks.
Are you getting the same problem? The same problem means that all of the following are true:
You have "preview on first edit" enabled in your preferences
It only happens when you first click the edit link, not when you click 'save' or 'preview'.
It does not cause any problems with saving pages, it's just a confusing display of the message when you first click 'edit'.
I can confirm that this bug is indeed fixed, and I'm not seeing it when I test it now.
It's possible that you're encountering the actual session failure problem. The symptoms of this are:
Error message about loss of session data does show up when you click 'save'.
It does not show up when you click "edit" or "preview".
It makes it difficult or impossible to save any pages until resolved (usually by logging out and logging back in, possibly with an explicit clear of cookies in browser preferences).
I get that error when I click 'save' but not when I click 'preview' ONLY when I am logged in
All browsers (Opera, FFox, IE, Safari) have had their cookies and cache cleared out, I am suspecting this to be a bug?
--Previous Poster 09:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I get this error when editing large talk and article pages, even when the section I am editing is a reasonable size. Logging in and loggout seldom helps. I am using Internet Explorer, and going to tools->general tab->settings->files and deleting all wikipedia and wikimedia related files, sometimes works.
I have a fix or workaround however. I am running Sygate firewall and each failure is associated with an intrusion detection message in the security log, with this description
"Remote Overflow in MSIE script action handler attempted".
Disabling the Sygate firewall completely and reliably resolves the issue. With this information, does anyone have info or a theory as to why this is occurring? Are other firewalls also detecting this problem? Please assist, because disabling the firewall is not a satisfying workaround. I had to disable the firewall to edit this section by the way.--Poodleboy12:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I will list the IP addresses that these attempts to intrude via this overflow are being made from as logged by sygate.
The overflow would be in Internet Explorer. Here is a description I found on the net:"This vulnerability can be triggered by specifying more than a couple thousand script action handlers (such as onLoad, onMouseMove, etc) for any single HTML tag. Due to a programming error, MSIE will then attempt to write memory array out of bounds, at an offset corresponding to the ID of the script action handler multiplied by 4 (due to 32-bit address clipping, the result is a small positive integer)." Perhaps Sygate set their detection threshold below a "couple thousand". Do we have a legitimate use for a large number of action handlers? Perhaps Sygate could not forsee such a use (due to lack of imagination?).--Poodleboy11:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki doesn't use thousands of script handlers on the same tag. ;) It's theoretically possible that a buggy custom JavaScript could have added such a tag, of course. Check your monobook.js. --Brion15:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) The only place I know of where Wikipedia uses any of these is on the MediaWiki:Edittools, which appears on edit pages. However, while there is a large number of onclick handlers, there's only one for each tag; the overflow can only happen when there is more than one for each tag. So, if that's what Sygate is detecting, it's wrong and it's a false positive (probably it triggers on a number of onclick close together, without considering that, as long as they are on different tags, it cannot trigger the overflow). In other words, it's not lack of imagination, it's a bug; complain to Sygate. There's also a proposal to completely change the way it works, which would not hit Sygate's bug; however, that proposal depends on having editable JavaScript for all skins, which we currently don't have. --cesarb15:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have "upgraded" to IE7 beta 2. This also works around the problem without disabling Sygate or Sygate logging the security threats. I was at a completely updated IE6 before. -- thanx for your assistance. If it is easy to file bug reports with Sygate, I will.--Poodleboy06:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My report was premature, I now reproduce the problem on IE7, I now suspect that the buffer space within IE is shared, and that the problem is cumulative if you have several web pages open at once. I generally have two dozen or more open for later reading. Of course, it may be sygates detection mechanism which is cumulative.--Poodleboy08:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I ran into this issue, and in my case I fixed it by opening up the permissions on the /var/lib/php/session/ directory. session/ had root:apache ownership and a 770 permissions. chmod 777, restart httpd, and now I can make edits. Hope that's useful to someone.
I think the browser is doing a search after the name lookup fails on http. If you google http, you get www.w3.org as the first link. —Bradley21:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that's correct. IE figures it's a bad link and says so. Firefox, irritatingly, just does a silent Google and returns the first hit, which is not good behavior. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Open firefox and go to the URL about:config. Type keyword. in the search box. You can disable the feature with keyword.enabled and modify what it does by changing keyword.URL. You can set it to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q= if you want, and it will act like IE. Apparently in firefox it defaults to Feeling lucky search, whereas in netscape and mozilla suite it was a verbose google search. Shame there isn't a GUI for this, but that's how to change it back. // Kevin_b_er07:34, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Redirects
Hi, I'm having a problem doing a redirect. I've done a number in the past but for some reason cannot seem to get this one to work. The redirect in question is getting this to redirect to this. What am I doing wrong? --Wisden1721:37, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thanks Brion, for pointing that out (and sorry for troublin Mr. Vibber himself, I think this is my first interaction with you, but also my first interaciton with a 'developer')!:) I left a helpme and User:Pilotguy responded, and I pointed out to him that the problem seemed to have solved itself. Brion is there usually a lag in redirects working, i.e. after creating them should they work instantly? This has been the case in the past when I've created them, hence the problem caused with this one. --Wisden1721:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, they should always work immediately. If you find it not working again, please take a screenshot for reference; I'm curious just what happens... --Brion02:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you're on page A, going through A?action=edit and A?action=submit to create the redirect, returning to page A, then browsers might use what they have in their cache for A no matter what you do on the server side. Guessing: -- Omniplex07:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well you see I sort of thought that, Omniplex, so you can see from the page history that I tried blanking the page and then adding the redirect. That didn't work immediately and there was a good 2-3 mintues between my final edit to the page and the redirect actually working. I tried searching 'Gay Games VII' a number of times to test the redirect, and each time it would take me to the page with the redirect format looking like this:
#redirect Gay Games (notes how the redirect is in lowercase, whilst when I typed it I used uppercase). I'll let you know Brion if I have any further problems, and get a screenshot off to you. Many thanks for your quick reply. --Wisden1712:32, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This "new" oddity just hit me elsewhere. IIRC #redirects with variables like BASEPAGENAME never worked, and [[../]] also fails (that could be new). For the ordinary case it can take minutes until a new redirect works, action=purge apparently doesn't help. Coming from another page adding ?redirect=yes might have an effect. Or it's a placebo burning time until the redirect works anyway. Was your observation also at a subpage, or anything with a slash in it?-- Omniplex16:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
1) What does "take me to the page" mean? Is that the extract listed in the search results, or what you saw after clicking the link?
2) What exactly *was* the link? Did it have "&redirect=no" on the URL?
Hi, sorry Brion, that wasn't as clear as it could have been. Right, to test the redirect I tried searching "Gay Games VII" a number (about 7/8) times. Every time it would take me to a the "Gay Games VII" article page, with the text as described above (namely #redirect Gay Games). Every time I edited the "Gay Games VII" page I would get a correct formed redirect, however when searching in another tab (Firefox tabbed browsing) I would be taken back to the "Gay Games VII" page, as described above.
I'm not entirely sure which link you are referring to in the second question. The redirect that was trying to be achieved was "Gay Games VII" redirecting to "Gay Games". I came across the redirect whilst on new-page patrol, and could see that the editor was having difficulty creating the redirect. When editing the redirect I made sure to add "&redirect=no", so I got the right editing screen up. Every time I would save the edit, and each time on saving it would take to me to a correctly formed redirect page. However, if I refreshed the page, or searched for "Gay Games VII" in another tab (as described above) I would get the incorrectly format page (with the "Gay Games VII" page display #redirect Gay Games). I hope this is clear and answers both your questions above. --Wisden1716:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Individual IP detection via X-Forwarded-For
My ISP (westnet.com.au) says they would be able to track the repeat wikipedia vandal who keeps getting one of their proxy IPs (202.72.148.102) blocked if wikipedia could provide the X-Forwarded-For information sent with the HTTP request for the relevant edits. Is there any way to retrieve that from our logs? — JEREMY07:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You'd have to ask the devs, its not possible (as far as I'm aware) for users or sysops to retrieve that info. In the meantime, you might want to point your ISP to m:XFF project to get their proxies listed. --james(lets talk)08:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've done the latter. Once they're listed, we'll be able to precisely block the vandals and fix the problem. Thanks! — JEREMY09:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We don't actually need the ISP's involvement to list their proxies, as long as the proxy IPs are known and have an appropriate reverse DNS entry. In this case, unfortunately, reverse DNS for 202.72.148.102 just returns NXDOMAIN. If you could get them to fix that, that would be great. If it was something like "cache1.westnet.com.au" then we could be sure that IP really is a dedicated proxy. -- Tim Starling07:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The ISP in question, westnet, now tell me "The PTR's for our IPs have been updated. This should allow Wiki[pedia] to confirm that the source IP is in fact a dedicated proxy." Is this in fact the case? If so, is there anything more I need to do for the problem to go away? — JEREMY17:25, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This has been discussed many times, and we can't do it. This would severely damage the functioning of the wiki by destroying the ability to follow back a redirect chain. In particular this change would be welcomed by disruptive vandals who wish to make it difficult to undo their insertion of bogus redirects. --Brion16:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! I do not understand the methods discussed :
How to use HTTP for a redirect, and
How to follow back a redirect. Then why the ability to do this should be impaired. Is there an easy explanation, please ?
With HTTP redirects, the server asks the browser to fetch the resource at a new location. If that were done on Wikipedia, it would lose the line which says "(Redirected from Example)" below the header (which links back to the redirect page), since the server would be unable to know the browser had been redirected when serving the second request (it would look identical to a non-redirected request). --cesarb22:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another problem with using HTTP redirects is firewalls that do not allow URL's with ".exe" in them can be bypassed because of the way wikipedia uses redirects. But, a bad thing that is always a hassle to me is if I wanted to get a URL, and I want the url that is not the redir, I have to press the "page" button again, and then copy the url --GeorgeMoneyT·C22:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why pressing the "page" button? Just right click on it and chose "Copy Link Location" (or something like "Copy Shortcut" on a certain popular browser). --cesarb01:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I didn't mean copy the url, I meant if I want to create subpages. For example, if I follow a link to WP:UPH, and I wanted to create a subpage just by adding the subpagename to the url, I would have to press the page button and then add /subpage. --GeorgeMoneyT·C01:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well basically, with the templates ENGf and ENGf2 another user wanted to use a bordered version of the england flag, but me and another user kept reverting it back, as the flag wasn't showing up for some reason, now the image displayed fine at full size or any size including 19px and 21px, but did not show up when the code recquired it to be at 20px. Most annoyingly after looking at pictures of this for a long while, it has started showing up, almost nullifying the value of finding the answer to this question. However I am still curious.
Also on a different point, when people say, maybe its your browser, do they mean, my type of browser, or specifically the program on my machine. PhilcTECI23:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is in fact a FAQ, and a problem in the server; as explained at the FAQ at the top of the page, the solution is to purge the images until the thumbnails get lucky and start working. I would also like to know the reason the server misbehaves that way. --cesarb01:43, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See Mediazilla:5463. The issue should now be fixed. (And as for your side note, they could mean either; literally they're suggesting problems with just the browser, but they could be talking about your computer generally too.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When you do section editing, it gives a summary " → section - summary ", and the arrow links to page#section. That only works half of the time. Sometimes, if the section title has a link in it, the arrow would link to page#[[section_with_link]], but that doesn't work. It should just link to page#section_with_link without the link, because that's how the TOC does it, and that's the only way for it to work. Also, if you link to a category or image in an edit summary, it shows the colon at the beginning. Even though you don't need the leading colon (for edit smmaries), sometimes section titles have it (for example if you had a section title that linked to a cat or img, it would show the ugly colon at the beginning of the link in the edit summary) --GeorgeMoneyT·C03:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
hello,
i would like to present wikipedia with my new idea/ design of the above, would they be interested?
thanks,
o,
r,
paul
Editing toolbar does not appear in Opera, but appears in Firefox.
I am using Opera 8.5 on a Windows XP Home PC. The toolbar, which contains the buttons for common formatting such as bold text and links, does not appear when I am editing Wikipedia. I have tried editing a whole page, adding a new page, editing an existing section and adding a new section - all across several namespaces - and the toolbar does not appear in any of these cases.
I tried editing Wikipedia - both anonymously and using this account - using Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7. with Google Toolbar extension installed, as well as Adblock and SessionSaver. The toolbar did appear, and the buttons were fully functional. I have installed the NoScript extension, and it previously prevented the buttons from functioning, but the buttons are functioning properly now in Firefox.
I tried making Opera identify as Mozilla, but that did not help. The toolbar only disappeared a few days ago, around the time I noticed several changes to the MediaWiki software, including a warning about advertising. I will try to recreate this problem on another computer.
Hit F12 and make sure you have not disabled JavaScript. I'm using Opera myself and have not seen any problems with the edit toolbar. --Sherool(talk)09:50, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. Thanks for your quick reply. I just checked and JavaScript is enabled. I will try using Opera on another computer to pinpoint the problem. What version of Opera are you using? --J.L.W.S. The Special One10:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Opera 8.51 on Windows XP seems fine. What are the "changes to the MediaWiki software" you refer to? In particular there is no "warning about advertising" of any sort; perhaps there is some problem with your computer or a firewall application you are using? --Brion18:10, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any metrics to determine the quality of a user's edits? The editcount tool leaves much to be desired, and I was wondering if there are any alternatives available. --Folajimi17:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's no quick fix, as quality is measured by different, sometimes conflicting, standards that are subjective and often impossible to measure. You can't use bytes uploaded, because some users may upload entire articles in one blow, and others may add hundreds of kilobytes of gibberish that must be deleted, to pick just one example. Titoxd(?!?)05:54, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Background image on a table
How can I create a table with a background image instead of a background color. The MediaWiki software is sanitizing my every attempt. --Jared W18:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That is by design. Images should not be placed (in wikicode) except with a valid [[Image:]] tag, so that the description of the image is the image's only link. You can edit your personal css to display them as backgrounds on specific class/ID tables, or try to convince the community of a wiki to add to the MediaWiki:Common.css (see MediaWiki_talk:Common.css for requests, but it is unlikely such a request would be adopted). --Splarka (rant) 23:29, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. That at least allows me to setup some <div> and <table> backgrounds from my own MediaWiki project. --Jared W05:26, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if you have full access to the install (in which case, why are you asking here ^_^), you could enable external images, or even remove the background-image attribute from the sanitizer ("whitelist" it, as it were) - I think you can do the same for <a> and <img> too. --Splarka (rant) 10:29, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How do I locate and upload this image for use on Wikipedia?
Ever since the 2006 FIFA World Cup began, I've been forced to go through so many edit conflicts when editing that page. I think that for extra-frustrated people who can never get their version in, there should be "force save" button to paste in their version no matter what. However, since two people might both press "force save", causing another conflict, then perhaps make the "forced save" option available to only those who have gone through at least three edit conflicts. How's this idea sound? -- King of♥♦♣♠21:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. I really get tired of having to go through multiple edit conflicts when I just want to save. Because of this, sometimes I edit in a hurry to not get into edit conflicts, and sometimes make mistakes. --GeorgeMoneyT·C21:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Crap, to be frank. The whole point of an edit conflict is to ensure that stuff doesn't get overwritten and lost. Allowing people to force their version through could result in a lot of harm on pages with a high edit volume. robchurch | talk15:28, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I created some "In Use" templates more than two years ago — November of 2003 — to take care of just this issue, so that you could save a page with a flag to ask people to give you a short period of time - say 5 minutes to 1/2 an hour - to make a change and not cause a conflict. Some people have even improved on them to make the message work better. There are two forms, {{Inuse|5 minutes}} or {{Inuse|5 minutes}} or {{Inuse||for=|until 3:20 PM EDT 6/26}} in which case you get either of the following:
5 Minutes:
This project page is actively undergoing a major edit for 5 Minutes. To help avoid edit conflicts, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed.
This page was last edited at 00:15, 16 July 2006 (UTC) (18 years ago) – this estimate is cached, update. Please remove this template if this page hasn't been edited for a significant time. If you are the editor who added this template, please be sure to remove it or replace it with {{Under construction}} between editing sessions.
Until 3:20:
This project page is actively undergoing a major edit for . To help avoid edit conflicts, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed.
This page was last edited at 00:15, 16 July 2006 (UTC) (18 years ago) – this estimate is cached, update. Please remove this template if this page hasn't been edited for a significant time. If you are the editor who added this template, please be sure to remove it or replace it with {{Under construction}} between editing sessions.
Some users (incl me) won't know what EDT is. UTC might be slightly better, but is there a better way? The 5 minute one is fine, except without checking the history page I don't know whether it was posted 1 minute ago, or 4 minutes, or 3 days. (btw, although I'm nitpicking, I do think it's a good idea).
It might be worth adding - you can do draft edits in a text editor.
And when editing the introduction section, it's possible to edit just the section (which should reduce the chance of an edit conflict) - just click on the [edit] link for any other section, then go to the url and change the number on the end to 0, so it reads section=0 --Singkong2005(t - c - WPID)14:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
National football team kit
Am I the only one seeing the Portuguese national kit in white, green and grey? Can someone fix it please? (I work with Internet Explorer, maybe it's something that doesn't happen with Firefox). Joaopais23:41, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I recently made a search (in Wikipedia) for acaraje. No results turned up, so I made the page that I linked to in the previous sentence. However. When I, through other articles, find an article named acarajé, I'm baffled.
How come the search engine didn't pick up on the word without the accent?
This must be a major flaw, as most people (I think) do not always use accents in searches.
Yeah, but the question is how long before someone discovers the problem with every single article that is affected, and then actually redirects the page. It would be better to change the search engine, wouldn't it? --Qwerty qwerty03:21, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
and another thing thats annying, is if you search for something, and it comes up with a major article which you dont want, I find then next 100 or so hits after than are redirects to that page. PhilcTECI23:57, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
AutoWikiBrowser requests are piling up...
There are at least 4 days' worth of sign-ups on there, of users who have requested to be approved for use of this special editor. This requires the attention of an admin. Here's the link: Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage
There have been problems with this recently. Try thumbnails of various sizes - small sizes seem to work more often. It might also be that the renderer Wikipedia is configured to use doesn't support some of the stuff used in your SVG. Deco13:48, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've finally got this problem resolved. If you see similar files blanking, purge them -- it should be the last time you have to. --Brion05:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ASCII
How can I get a table to appear is ASCII, i thinks thats the correct term,
like this basically
as when you put a space infront of it nothing happens.
I was having a look at whether linkspam is an issue on talk pages and noticed the following things:
External links on talk pages are marked with "rel=nofollow".
Google does indexes very few "Talk" pages, but does index "User Talk" and "Wikipedia Talk" pages, as witnessed by the query talk utc -user -template, or a direct search for a heavily discussed page: Talk:George_W._Bush.
The robots file robots.txt does not exclude talk pages
The links from article pages to talk pages are not marked with 'rel="nofollow"'.
Number 1 is a good thing, but I don't understand number 2 in view of 3--5. Is there anyone with a clue? My hunch is that Google gives a very low priority to pages that are only linked to from one other page (i.e. from the accompanying article page), while user talk pages are typically linked to from many other user talk pages through the signatures.
Han-Kwang17:32, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Does MediaWiki allow direct editing of history pages?
Not that I think it's a good idea for Wikipedia, but I'm wondering if my memory is failing. I used to be involved in another project that used the MediaWiki software and I swear I remember the ability to directly edit history pages, such as adding a forgotten edit summary. I don't think it was a local modification because we rarely used edit summaries and I doubt anyone would have gone out of their way to add this feature. I don't want to go install and configure the software just to satisfy my curiosity. Am I losing my mind? Opabinia regalis17:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Rather, yes, you are losing your mind. ;) We don't have such a feature. Under limited circumstances entries may be removed from the history, but they may not be altered in any way. --Brion17:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No. How would it? Without subst: the template is not even called until the page is loaded, so nothing happens on save. --Splarka (rant) 00:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I went ahead and just moved it to where it was obviously intended to go. I just wasn't sure it would work properly. Circeus00:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Determining a page's popularity
Is there a way to look at a certain page's stats, like how many times it has been viewed, and how regularly, etc...? Pacian23:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's switched off on Wikimedia wikis, but normally, the numbers would show up in changes lists and under the "page last edited"/page view counters at the bottom. robchurch | talk03:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Categories
Is there some method that can be used to change one instance of a category to another - my specific example - I'd like to change all instances of "Category:Live-bearers" to a new category "Category:Ovoviviparous fish" - is this possible to automate? ThanksHappyVR14:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way to insert section headings in tables, such as at the page Harry Potter cast? It would be much more convenient on that page to edit only the section of the type of cast rather than going to the top of the page. I'm pretty sure I've seen this done before, but I don't remember where or know how. Thanks. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 17:43, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, simply taking information buried on the “History” page and making it more public would enhance Wikipedia—for example, the “Article” page might say, “This article has been edited 350 times since it was created on May 5, 2002, including 30 times in the past week.” It could even add that “very active Wikipedians” (those with more than one hundred edits this month) contributed 52 percent of those edits.
”
Currently, MediaWiki:Lastmodified has room for one variable, it being the last modification date. How feasible would it be for the article creation date to be there, as well as the number of revisions in a page, and the number of revisions in a given time period? The suggestion sounded like a good thing, but I can't find in the Database layout whether it is possible without running expensive queries on each page view. Would it require db schema changes, or I'm just not looking at the right place? Should it be something we do anyways? Comments? Applause? Angry lynch mobs? Titoxd(?!?)18:34, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is an excellent idea, and one that might go a long way towards increasing transparency and confidence for the reader who doesn't know our inner workings. If it's not possible now, perhaps it can be added to the database in the future. — Catherine\talk13:02, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As it seems it is a good idea, and other editors agree, can it be done? I personally think that it could be done by adding a char(14) page_creation field to the Page table, defaulting pages to blank and filling it by invalidating the page's cache, and filling the value on the first page view with the first edit's rev_timestamp value. The number of edits in history is available at Special:Mostrevisions, but I don't know how expensive it is to generate that data. As for the number of edits within a week and the number of active Wikipedians, I have no clue how to actually do it. Is it feasible? Titoxd(?!?)03:56, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Side-by-side sidebars
In English verbs, the {{Grammar series}} sidebar was just added after the {{IPA notice}} sidebar. Rather than being stacked, the two sidebars appear side by side, pinching the top of the article. (In preview only) I tried inserting {{clearright}} between them with no difference on my browser (IE6). I also tried enclosing the second sidebar in a div tag with style="float:right;clear:right"; that stacked them, but the top of the article was still pinched adjacent to the second sidebar. What's the solution. --teb72819:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But I think a better way would be to add a "clear:right" to the 'Grammar series' template since it is unlikely you would ever want it to be side-by-side with any other template. —Mike00:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Table colors
Is this possible? I would like to make a table like the ones at Utah-BYU rivalry#Results or Army-Navy#By_year where the row is colored by the winner of the event. Currently, the way this is done is by specifying the bgcolor for each individual row.
What I really would like to do is have something like this ...
... where the row could infer its color from the name of the winner and {{start game list}} could define the colors for the teams involved. Is such a thing possible? BigDT19:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I added the parsing functions ... unfortunately, you're right, it doesn't inherit the variables from template to template. I can only get it to work if I specify the teams and colors on every row (as I do in the last two). It won't inherit the variables from the parent template (as I attempt in the first two).
User:BigDT/Sandbox2
Any ideas from here? Another thing that would work is if there were some kind of iterative function ... for example, if I could have Year1, City1, Winner1, Score1, Year2, City2, Winner2, Score2, etc. That wouldn't be a spectacular solution, though, because of the nightmare of what happens if you have 100 games in the series and you leave out the second one ... oops ... any thoughts? BigDT20:53, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can indirect the color selection through another template, see for example:
Yeah ... I thought about that, but then there has to be an extra template every time the table is used ... BigDT23:54, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that, in the tables above, some rows are now very difficult to read on some browsers. I had to open this section in an edit window to see what was written on the dark maroon bars. You might want to use paler forms of the colours rather than "full strength". Grutness...wha?04:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah ... the colors were as an example. (Orange and maroon are Virginia Tech's colors.) The problem I was hoping to solve was a way of making the colors generic (meaning, to not have to specify them for every single row) without using a child template (which would necessitate a template for every page using the table, negating the usefulness).
For some reason, Image:Binary tree (letters).png appears to simply be a black box to me. Is this a browser issue? (I am using IE6). I have not noticed issues with any other .png files. I don't really mind that I can't see it, but I suspect that it might be a problem that others could have as well. Thanks!--GregRM00:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's an IE thing. It looks fine for me in Firefox, but I see the same black box you do in IE. I brought up this problem a month or so ago with respect to another picture. Go here and look at "Background colors for svg images". The solution for that image was to remove the corrupt local version of the image (there was a commons version that didn't have the problem). I know that this situation doesn't particularly help solve your problem, but it at least tells you it's an IE thing. BigDT01:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, as a workaround, if you make the image any size other than the natural size, that forces Wikipedia to generate a temporary copy of it. I have set the image to 231 px so now it displays in IE. That's a workaround, though - I don't have a clue how to fix the underlying problem. BigDT01:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks BigDT and GeorgeMoney. The 231 px modification seemed to fix the problem in the article, although as would be expected from BigDT's explanation for the workaround, it still displays as a black box on the image description page. Of course, GeorgeMoney's jpg version appears fine on the image description page. Thanks again to both of you.--GregRM01:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The reason for the problem is that an alpha channel was used instead of transparency. This is unnecessary; someone should edit it to change it. (Saving it as a JPEG isn't a good solution.) I'll do it if no one else does, but tonight I don't really have time. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I tried a second time and the article has now gone. But, for future reference, a pointer to the procedure would help. BlueValour02:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, my question is how to use the align paremeter when grouping user boxes using {{useboxtop}} {{userbox}} {{userboxbottom}}(just right/ left isn't good enough).Tal :)11:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
All content is far from being accessable in the most efficient form. Even for direct human consumption the information could use more rigid and meaningful markup. More over for the use in automation and to be of true use to a modern individual the information needs to be easily useable by the simplest of programs possible. That means the actual data needs to be stored seperate from it's presentation wherever possible and there needs to be far more defined and enforced structure to the information. Even more the raw data needs to be accessable to anyone and everyone by allowing the entire (including all revisions, posters, etc) knowledgebase to be obtained and kept in sync. This also needs to be done in such a way that the most simple of programs possible is capable of doing it. A modern source of knowledge can't simply be a novel new way of obtaining and publishing information, it needs to be formated and published in a modern format.
Don't repeat yourself / MediaWiki
I'm not really sure where to get started on this, so I guess I'll start here. I've contributed to Wikipedia for about a year, but more and more I'm finding that it's suboptimal for storing certain kinds of information. I've documented one concrete example of what I mean at Don't repeat yourself and have some other musings at User:PhilipR#Content_versus_presentation.
I'm sure that if MediaWiki doesn't currently have a module for conventional row-and-column kind of data -- and yes, i realize that even Wikipedia as we know it still has an RDBMS backend -- that something like that could be created. In my view this sort of thing would enhance Wikipedia immensely.
No, I'm well aware of templates. In that regard one of the discussions about possibly setting up a template for each squads list, and why that discussion didn't seem to attain consensus, might be instructive. Even if that proposal had been adopted, it doesn't answer all my points -- for example, you can't sort a squad list by different fields just because it's templated. In general, it doesn't seem that one template for each bit of information (for example, templating Draman's name because we haven't yet resolved whether it's Draman or Dramani -- see my example on don't repeat yourself at User:PhilipR#Draman) is the right way to do things. - PhilipR20:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the question to ask is: If PhilipR is right that Wikipedia has an RDBMS backend, do (or should) editors have access to it? --teb72822:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, plainly there are some things in the DB that editor-users shouldn't be accessing, like changing the history of a page. But that's a helpful starting point -- I'm envisioning that, for example, we might have a "virtual table" where the data in the table can get edited with the same audit trail that presently happens when someone edits an article. Only it's not a textual article -- it's just data, that can be presented a million ways in textual articles.
Simple example: suppose there were a "person" table with personal name, family name, date of birth, date of death, etc. etc. Then each time the person's name gets changed, that change propagates to all articles that use that name (that's the enhancement from the present setup). Another table might be "football scores"; another might be "Presidents of Brazil". I'm just blue-sky dreaming here; if necessary I can work harder to give a good example of what I'm envisioning. - PhilipR22:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One word. Wikidata. OK, a bit more than that. :) There's been discussion relating to this for a long time, but as far as I know, no particular time schedule for making it all happen. robchurch | talk23:04, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Rob, I figured someone else had probably been thinking about this problem, but had no clue where to turn. Now I do. - PhilipR23:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Importing dumps from meta
I recently downloaded a xml dump of Meta. I tried uploading it to my localhost wiki, running the same version, and when i try to upload it, it says something like "import source unknown". I have tried using the maintenance script, but it still has the same error. Is there something that I need to do prior to importing it, or is there a way to fix this error? Thanks, Shardsofmetal[ Talk | Contribs ]19:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just wondered what happened to the Peterborough entry - it is missing, the page does not load in properly.
It worked fine on sunday and I have not done anything to my browser, the rest of the site works fine.
Shortpages, Ancientpages, etc. - how are they run? The schedule seems to be erratic, now once in 3-4 days. Can they be put on a schedule? Once daily, perhaps? If not so frequently, at least on a known schedule. Thanks. - CrazyRussiantalk/email01:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
They're run on a regular schedule, twice a week. By amazing coincidence, this comes out to once every 3 or 4 days. --Brion03:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
User talk:Phaedriel appears differently on the secure.wikimedia.org server - everything after Joshbuddy's signature at the bottom of section 65 ("Asimov") is struck out, at least according to K-Meleon on Windows XP. After Phaedriel's signature at the start of section 90.1, everything becomes struck through and red. Accessing the page via en.wikipedia.org, everything looks normal. Kimchi.sg01:57, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Admins protected highrisk templates because editing those templates could cause DOS and highload servers. My question is: since Wikimedia servers also handles other Wikipedia projects (is this correct?), can somebody make this kind of problem (dos/highload/outage) on en.wikipedia by changing other Wikipedia projects unprotected highrisk templates? or viceversa. sorry for bad english. :) borgx(talk)03:55, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As interwiki transclusions are not enabled, that shouldn't be possible (unless a high-risk template somewhere is automatically periodically propagated by bots (copied) from a central location to other projects or languages and is vandalized moments before such a copy, but that doesn't seem very likely). --Splarka (rant) 07:35, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Last time it happened (a high-risk template on en: was edited in one of the worst possible ways), IIRC the whole cluster went offline. However, that specific case shouldn't happen again, since the software and the server configuration were changed to avoid it. --cesarb14:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not; it was removing an image from a template. {{Album}}, if you want to look at the history. The fix was some changes in the way the job queue runs. --cesarb18:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In general, DOS is not a concern with high-use templates at the current time, to my knowledge. The templates are mainly protected because you don't want a vandal inserting penis images into 200,000 articles at once. On other, smaller wikis, DOS certainly isn't an issue, because templates aren't used enough times to be an issue. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is the introduction of pseudo namespace C: in addition to CAT:
relevant wrt the future Namespace manager? In three RFDs
I claimed that it's a bad idea, but it could be also irrelevant, e.g. if there are no plans to introduce this feature on Wikipedia. -- Omniplex04:45, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's no such thing as a pseudo namespace. Those pages all exist in the main namespace. The namespace manager exists in an incomplete and unmerged branch of the code at present. It's worth pointing out that CAT doesn't categorise pages; MediaWiki will not recognise anything other than the local and canonical namespace names for Category as category namespaces. robchurch | talk18:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, "pseudo" means "not really", it's in the main namespace. The mentioned help page apparently offers to transform "pseudo" into "real"... at some very distant time, if I got your drift. And sure, CAT's no category like T's no template, theyr're used as shortcuts. I'm not defending this, quite the contrary looking for a good technical reason to at least limit it. Sounds like "namespace manager" isn't that magic wand. -- Omniplex16:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think I can say with a high degree of confidence that there is no good technical reason to limit it. At most, there are aesthetic or ideological reasons. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:47, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't share that confidence wrt some hypothetical ISO language codes or Interwiki prefixes. The ideology is KISS, C / CAT, or P / WP, one letter's shorter, "Project" works on all projects, that could be a reason to use one letter. But other ideologies are "if it ain't broken don't fix it" and for consistency just stick to it. -- Omniplex08:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'll admit, I hadn't thought of that. In principle, all two- and three-letter prefixes should probably be reserved for language codes; cat is actually the three-letter code for Catalan in ISO 639-3. (Wikipedia, however, uses the two-letter ISO 639-1 code, namely ca, so in this particular case we can let it slip.) And I'll agree a c shortcut to some future wikiproject is entirely plausible. So I'm with you on killing C: in favor of CAT:, at any rate. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:54, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we need a statement in this direction in the WP:SHORT guideline, for starters I added links to Special:Prefixindex/CAT:, P:, WP:, and WT: on the relevant lists, so folks see what's accepted wrt "cross namespace redirects". The RFDs for the three C:xyz failed. -- Omniplex17:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Problems with cite
On Ladakh article, I'm getting the following error with some cites:
Cite error 4; Invalid call; no input specified
I think I'm doing all the right things, and the exact same syntax works sometimes, and doesn't work the other times. Could someone please check what the problem is? deeptrivia (talk) 04:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Try this: Insert 1 citation per edit. Whenever you get an error, post the code in question here, so we can analyse it. It's pretty hard for us to try and replicate the error with the information you've given us. --Lord DeskanaDark Lord of YOUR OPINIONS07:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You entered the code <ref name =Crossroads></ref>. This is incorrect; use <ref name =Crossroads/> (strictly <ref name="Crossroads"/>, but MediaWiki isn't so picky). In the XML standard, these are identical, but not for Cite.php. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Tossed a little bit of code up there today that adds a "User logs" link in the toolbox whenever you visit a User (or User talk) page. I'm proposing its inclusion into monobook.js, or if you like it but don't want it included, the code is available there (or in my userspace as User:Kylu/userlog.js) for use. ~Kylu (u|t) 04:36, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've tried to change the edit textbox fonts by changing the IE font but this is not working. What is the best way to change the edit textbox font in IE form Times New Roman to Comic Sans MS? ...IMHO (Talk) 04:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You should be able to edit your monobook css to do it. Try adding this:
textarea {font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size:110%;}
It's not possible. It's also not recommended to try to sign with an alternate date format (by hand, for instance) on pages such as this one which are archived by a bot (which ignores alternate date formats). --cesarb14:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On this wiki, don't. To have another wiki's behaviour corrected, open a feature request explaining what the correct date format is for that language, so we can have MediaWiki output the appropriate format. robchurch | talk17:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify: everybody's signature dates are inserted with the same style and time zone so you can reasonably compare them when looking at a page full of different people's comments. Since they're part of the text they can't be customized for each viewer. --Brion23:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To my knowledge, the best you can do is modify how the date appears. You can't change anything else beyond that. See {{User:nathanrdotcom/Sig}} (by doing this, you'd have to sign with three tildes rather than four). — Nathan(talk)/ 00:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I did not need to customize everyones else signature dates, i just needed to modify my own signature date (it is converted to normal text, anyway, when saving page), and Nathan described how to do it, and it works. Date is still the same, only now there is possible to change, how it looks. Time is still in UTC, too. -Yyy04:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm thinking about using this kludge. The verbose timestamp has sp instead of nbsp between its components, causing ugly line breaks. Adding "(UTC)" everywhere is also dubious, what else should it be, server local time with load balancing surprises to make it as interesting as expressions using MOD? -- Omniplex20:43, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Two Bots and a thing
I wasn't really sure where to ask this, so I decided to post here, where a broader audience may see it. I am in doubt about this edit. As you will see, this is a user talk page, and it's a situation where a bot added an automated message regarding the Signpost (which I'm not sure should be done, but it could be that the user signed up for this...). But then, five hours later, another bot removed the message from the talk page, calling it an automated archival. I'm not sure that we can have bots adding and removing messages from talk pages like this. Perhaps one of those bots, or both, is malfunctioning? Or is everything just fine and I'm overthinking this? Thanks, Redux13:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The first was not an automatic bot, and delivered the signpost on request, the second archived old discussions (also on request), but apparently did not do it properly, as the discussion was not old, that is where the problem lies. Martin14:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Update: Actually there is no problem, the message it removed was a different one than had just been placed there, so all is good. As to whether bots should do this kind of thing, both were done on request so I guess it isnt really a problem (though I don't know why they don't want to do it themselves). Martin14:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad to hear it. Thanks, Martin. Indeed, I missed that the message removed was not the exact same one that had been added earlier by Ralbot — as it turns out, one message about the Signpost was added and another message about the Signpost was removed later; and, although I knew that it was a very tangible possibility, I was not certain as to whether or not the actions had been requested by the user himself. In any case, all is well, then. Redux17:58, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
TOC modifications
Is there a page that enumerates the TOC-relates flags (__TOC__, __NOTOC__, etc.)? I'm looking for one that will cause the toc to be hidden by default. ~ Booya Bazooka15:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When you click the "hide" button, it doesn't disappear — just collapses to hide the contents, and still retains a link to expand it. That's what I'm looking to do. ~ Booya Bazooka16:23, 27 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way to specify the subheading-depth that the TOC should display. For example, if I have an article that has a lot of level-3 headings under each level-2 heading, how can I tell the TOC to list only till level-2 headings and not the level-3 ones? 203.81.221.6823:30, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
how to keep track of the number of visits a certain page gets
I recently added a few articles on terms that my professor and his colleges have been using and wished to be used correctly by others. It would be helpful to know if people have visited the articles and how many have done so.
I was wondering if Wikipedia had the ability to keep track of the number of visits that these articles have received, and if this is in agreement with the ethics of the Wikipedia site. If someone could post a sample code, which could achieve this task, I would appreciate it. I am a amateur programmer and don’t have the ability to write a script on my own to accomplish this task. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tiasusnmt (talk • contribs) .
What determines the summary for a Wikipedia entry that describes the Google hit?
For some articles, it seems to be the opening sentence. For others, it is a selected piece of text embedded in the article. There seems to be no default, or if there is, how does one change it? In other words, how is the Google caption assigned within the article? Thanks. --PureLogic02:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I believe it's determined by Google's search algorithms based on the search term you enter. I'm no Google expert, though. --james// bornhj (talk)08:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As the originator of the question, I will describe the issue which led me to ask it. Googling "Winston Churchill" brings up a Wikipedia summary which is the first line of his entry -- probably the Wikipedia/Google default. But if you Google the Professor who has been questioning the US government's account of the 9/11 World Trade Center collapses, "David Ray Griffin", the Google summary finds a criticism of Griffin that is embedded way down in the article. It is very odd, is it not?--PureLogic00:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes, the summary (abstract) is far from satisfactory. If there's an infobox on the page, you might get a spattering of redundant and seemingly meaningless info. site:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion: "Neon Genesis Evangelion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Neon Genesis Evangelion. The Neon Genesis Evangelion logo. 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (Neon Genesis Evangelion). Genre, Science fiction, Mecha, Psychological", which at least contains some information, but other times is a run of numbers. --GunnarRene01:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
An easy newbie question, I hope. I have my preferences set to Expanded watchlist. Can you tell me, please, what the letter N means, when it appears in the left-hand margin against an entry? Sorry to be so stupid! --MichaelMaggs12:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can keep it general and put {{#if:{{{1|}}}| and {{{1}}}}} in the template, and call it with {{subst:pizza|anchovies|..}}, or {{#if:{{{1|}}}| and anchovies}}, and call it with e.g. {{subst:pizza|a|..}}.--Patrick22:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify what Patrick is saying, if you do not include an equals sign (=) in an argument, then the parameter has no name, only a number. Eg:
{{pizza|anchovies}} defines {{{1}}} as "anchovies" and {{{anchovies}}} as undefined.
{{pizza|anchovies=}} defines {{{anchovies}}} as null, and {{{1}}} as undefined.
{{pizza|anchovies|pepperoni}} therefore defines {{{1}}} and {{{2}}} so you must work with those.
Some examples of what you could do then:
Template:Pizza with contents: I like {{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{1|}}}|nothing}}{{#if:{{{2|}}}| and {{{2|}}}|}} on my pizza.
Which would produce:
{{pizza}}: I like nothing on my pizza.
{{pizza|anchovies}}: I like anchovies on my pizza.
{{pizza|anchovies|pepperoni}}: I like anchovies and pepperoni on my pizza.
However, to only allow specific arguments, like a predetermined list of toppings in any order, you'd either have to use a #switch for each argument (if you allowed 5 arguments, you'd need 5 #switch) and a number of cases in each #switch equal to the number of toppings. Or you can require equals signs in your arguments and use one #if for each topping.
Guys, I can't tell you how much I appreciate the help. However, after seriously thinking about how I need to go about this, I've realized that what I was asking for above wasn't a practical way to approach the problem in question. I'm very grateful for your assistance anyway, and hope you'll forgive the change of mind. — Mike • 04:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"<<<END" in PHP source
What precisely are the <<<END and END constructs used in the PHP source of MediaWiki? Like in this (from includes/ImagePage.php):
I can see the effect of the "tags," but where is their use defined? Are they built-in to the interpreter or are they elsewhere defined as > and <?php, respectively? I'm not fully familiar with PHP (if you couldn't tell) and I don't want to misuse these. —Bradley22:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That makes no sense. It is three less-than symbols and the left-shift and less-than operators are all binary operators. How does this entity effectively escape text in the middle of a PHP file? —Bradley03:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's called heredoc syntax [3], and I suppose it is a little odd. It isn't the only time PHP uses less-than and greater-than symbols for purposes other than comparison, though. Consider the arrows ( => and -> ) used in array and class syntax... ~ Booya Bazooka04:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I was looking for—difficult to find as the search engines don't index or simply don't work with "<<<". Thanks —Bradley16:19, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Page views?
Is there a way of seeing how many times a page has been viewed in a certain period? (And ideally, how many unique users/IP addresses). Thanks --Singkong2005(t - c - WPID)06:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll help you out. :) It's been disabled on wikipedia for performance reasons. Imagine having to run to a chalk board 20 feet from your mailbox and putting a tally every time you check you mail. Wikipedia has enough traffic that this would turn into a riduclous endevor. Hope this helps. JoeSmackTalk14:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't think so. I can't find the specific policy right now, but I know we discourage links to commerical sites (except in the case of an article about a particular company, like Amazon.com). Also, all those links are extern links in the main article. It'd be fine to wikilink to a few articles about specific brands, but not extern link to a whole bunch of commercial sites as it is now doing. — Frecklefoot | Talk14:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since writing the above I seem to be coming across more and more WP articles with blatant advertising links. I've read through WP:LOP and WP:NOT but I haven't been able to find any specific policy on this either. Surely purely advertising links that don't contain encyclopedic information should be removed? I would like to be able to cite WP policy before launching a purge.--Shantavira13:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How do I make my Userpage render properly in IE?
I really don't know very much about designing a webpage, and even less about designing a Wiki userpage. I was just told that my page (which I copied mostly from User:Jimbo Wales) doesn't render properly in IE. The box with my picture covers up some of the text of my description.
Looks okay now - just a width=100% which I deleted. Cool Cat helped me with user page formatting a while back so glad to now be able to help another user. Of course that's assuming I have actually fixed the problem you were talking about... --Singkong2005(t - c - WPID)14:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How do I make Main Page not show on top of the mainpage?
English Wikipedia has the main heading - Main Page removed (or not visible in the main skin). I'd like to do the same for Georgian wiki new proposed mainpage (see one version here თავფურცელი). Anyone knows how? If it had been discussed somewhere specifically, would appreciate the link. gmadlobt. Alsandro16:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done! we've actually copied all remaining javascript from english version (below this one) and got some other goodies as well. :) Thanx much. Alsandro01:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
External Image
Hello,
In the Transmitter article, I'm trying to add an example image of a transmitter circuit. But the image ("Emetteur.jpg") is hosted on the French Wikipedia, and I don't know to directly put the image in the article rather than re-import it in the English wiki and then link the image.
Thanks. I asked the question as it is possible to do so (directly link across wikis without reimporting) in the french wikipedia. Perhaps a feature to ask ? E-s-B∂Talkfr18:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You cannot use images from another project. You can use images from the shared upload repositories, i.e. the Wikimedia Commons. There isn't a feature that's "switched off" here. robchurch | talk23:15, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well some people on wikis that allow it use external image linking to drag in images from other wikis (that could be the switched off feature being reffered to here) but this isn't encouraged and is disabled on most of the bigger wikipedias as it doesn't result in proper attribution. Also different wikipedias have different copyright rules (thats why commons has to be so strict) so enabling ad-hoc image inclusing between them would not be a good idea. Plugwash01:30, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing too up-to-date. As a rough guide, though; the last time we had such logging enabled, the popular topics came out to be current affairs (and similar), sex, and something else which I'll have to dig through IRC logs to find. robchurch | talk23:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's a decent enough deduction for what's popular now, due to the World Cup...but that falls under current affairs. More stuff that's liable to be popular now; US and international politics (Iraq, Iran, et al.), tennis (Wimbledon), etc. robchurch | talk15:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia sometimes loads blank pages
Recently, I started getting blank pages when browsing Wikipedia. However, refreshing the page usually solves the problem. This happens with both Internet Explorer and FireFox. Has anyone else been encountering similar problems lately? --Ixfd6423:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As an afterthought, shouldn't the "Internal error" (deletion failed) page and the "Action complete" (deletion successful) page show the same set of "return to..." links? --Kimchi.sg00:44, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I changed it to {{fullurl:}}, because when I previewed it on the secure server, the server name in the links appeared to be omitted. Using fullurl there wasn't such a problem. Kimchi.sg15:23, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The first of these is one of the few messages which still use HTML. A workaround could be Brion configuring the non-secure server to redirect /wikipedia/en/wiki/ -> /wiki/ and /wikipedia/en/w/ -> /w/ (which would allow the use of the secure version of the URLs even on the non-secure server). --cesarb22:43, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Can't get to certain pages
Various pages from all over the wiki multiverse have suddenly become un-accsessible to me. This is particularly true of main pages. Cetain links load just fine, many other's just return the error message "Server not found" This includes all the main pages for wikipedia and its sister sites. Yet other pages are fully accsessible to me, this one for example. What on earth is going on? Is it a problem with my internet service provieder? I use a private local one. I am using Mozilla Firefox, and all the computers in my house suffer the same problem, though some are able to accsess pages others arn't. I am having no trouble with any other site on the web. Why is this happening to me and how can i fix it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.50.112.95 (talk • contribs) 21:41, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strange characters on a page
On the Weyland-Yutani article there are a couple (?) strange characters just below and to the left of the article tab. See screenshot below... Does anybody know if it is intentional? If so, what's the purpose? I haven't found any other page that has it, though I did not really look.
I was wanting to create pages for the band members for the English band Mansun, as they are only listed on the Mansun page. When you search for the band members, they are redirected to the Mansun page. How can I stop them redirecting, so that I can create seperate pages for them?
When the pages redirect to the Mansun page, you'll see a line at the top of the page saying "Redirected from [band member's name]". If you click the link to the band member's name, you'll be taken back to the original redirect page, which you can then edit as normal. --james// bornhj (talk)11:56, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How to purge an SVG?
Earlier I had problems with SVG not appearing, and it was solved by purging the image: [4]. I'm getting the same problem (this time at Image:Netscape-navigator-usage-data.svg), so I'd like to know: how do I purge an SVG?
Normally it should be the same process, but the .svg file (here) is giving me an XML error in Firefox 1.5.0.4/WinXP. That might have something to do with it. --james// bornhj (talk)11:52, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't encounter any trouble on the Wikipedia side, the original problem may have been a local browser cache that needed clearing? Anyway, I added the missing namespace to that SVG so that Mozilla browsers won't choke on it. --iMeowbot~Meow14:54, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Changing colour of text + difficulty uploading new version of pictures
I want to change the colour of texts that link to Wikipedia articles on a map that i made of the Roman Empire (see User:Daanschr/ Maptest). I think white would be good.
I can't upload new versions of pictures anymore. Wikipedia says that the picture has been uploaded succesfully, but the old piccture remains and it doesn't show on my user contributions.--Daanschr12:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be uploading fine. Also, uploads don't show in contribs, but in your user log.
I've set an example at User:Daanschr/ Maptest in white. However, you must define underline color too, because people with underline links enabled will see the default color (blue, red, purple, etc) under the color if you do not. It would be nice if we could edit the <A> (anchor) tag in a wikilink, where we could specify a color that would work for both underlined and non-underlined text, but as the anchor tags are generated by the wikicode we cannot. This method defines a span in the anchor which colors the text (crudely). You could ask for a class addition to MediaWiki:Common.css but that is probably futile. --Splarka (rant) 07:34, 1 July 2006 (UTC) Sidenote: There is a class="nounderlines" but as it does not use !important anyone set "Underline links: Always" in their Preferences will still see them.[reply]
Wrong. The declaration for .nounderlines a at MediaWiki:Common.css has a higher specificity than the declaration for a at the autogenerated CSS, so it always take precedence. There's no need for !important. --cesarb23:02, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Stopping google from indexing a talk page archive
Some talk pages I have been dealing with have what some participants consider personal attacks but others do not, and some particpants object to removing them altogether. The real objection is that the negative comments come up in a google search for one person's name. I had the idea that if the talk page was archived, and the archive was tagged with <nofollow>, or maybe <meta name="robots" content="noindex">, then the comments would no longer appear in google (after it updated, anyway. Will this work? More importantly, will it break some wikipedia policy? Thanks. Thatcher13115:16, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And what if someone wants to search for the attacks contained in this archive? I don't think it's up to anyone to decide what should and should not be pushed under the rug here. Before you go looking for the technical solution, I suggest first getting an answer to the policy questions, perhaps on the talk page of No personal attacks. ~ Booya Bazooka22:14, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Won't work. The correct method to prevent comments posted on a public web site from appearing in public archives and being made available to search engines...is not to post comments on a public web site. robchurch | talk15:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Editing an Article's Title
Well, I think I've made an error. I've added an article to Wikipedia that is titled "The Mayborn Museum Complex". After reading a bit more about Wikipedia I saw that using the word "The" in a title is discouraged. Is there any way I can change this?
Once your account is 4 days old, a 'Move' button will appear, and you can use that to move the page, along with its edit history to a new title. For now, someone else has already done this for you. The Wikipedia search engine only gets updated when a new database dump is complete. See the second bullet-point in the FAQ at the top of this page. Typically, however, Google picks up new pages within a few days. -Splash - tk16:13, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wiki Time
What is Wiki's standard "local time" for time stamping contributions? Is it possible to identify a user's time zone? Ptmccain18:27, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
:-) I needed two sites, GeoURL and World time clock, to find your timezone. Oops, already Monday for you, from my POV it's still Sunday for some hours. -- Omniplex15:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Log-in program is malfunctioning - BIG TIME !!!!
I log in as Martial Law, then when I sig. a edit, this mess appears: 66.82.9.59. This mess could cause someone to accuse me of using socks or worse. I log in, only to be logged out by some glitch. I've done what I could do on my end to rectify this problem. 66.82.9.5919:52, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In a discussion which occurred within the last month (I think in a section entitled "Death" on the science reference desk page or on the Half-life talk page) I have a record of the following submission. Can you help me find out it the section was deleted or what happened since I have been unable to find its location anywhere in the Wikipedia. The only date I have is the date that the record was created on Wednesday, June 21, 2006 11:57:05 PM. ...IMHO (Talk) 06:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay using your own criteria (above) of percentage remaining p=1/(2^(200/50)) consider this:
We want to know the percentage remaining after 200 years of any amount of anything that has a half life of 50 years.
We therefor apply the formula p=1/(2^(number of years/half-life)) or p=1/(2^(200/50)) or 1/16 or .0625 or 6.25%.
So it appears that since there is a percentage of 6.25% of the item left after 200 years that it does not matter what the item is or how much of the item there was to start off with. This is where your concept fails. For instance suppose that we start with only 10 items. How much will I have left after 200 years. That’s easy. I just multply .0625 times 10 and we get .625. Thus we have .635 items left after 200 years of the original 10 we started with. But what if the items are not divisible? What if there is not such a thing as .625 of the items we have and that any amount of the item that is less than one simply does not exist? Hummm... Since we can not divide an atom into parts by the method of Beta decay then sorry but even though we might have 6.25% of the original amount of the items left that percent is meaningless because 1.) we started with only ten items and 2.) each item is a complete and indivisible unit rather than a continuous value. If you apply half-life computation to the real world then you must take these facts into account.
The header line (USERNAME my talk my preferences my watchlist my contributions logout) on the main page does curious things periodically. When I move the mouse to any of the items on it, the whole header jumps from the right side to the left side of the screen. It doesn't jump back until the screen is refreshed, when it reappears on the right. This behavior has appeared intermittently over months... It's a little unnerving but there's no loss of functionality. Any ideas how to fix it? Hgilbert13:18, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As has been announced recently, Special:Import is back. En.wiktionary now has its import target synchronized towards en:wp so that Transwikis can happen directly, saving page histories, logging things automatically (for us, then) and converting {{templates}} into [[w:Templates]]. View wikt:Special:Log/import for two examples I tested. The newest feature I requested even allows imports to go directly in our Transwiki: namespace, which is another advantage over manual cut-n-pasting.
Anyone has ideas how this can change the Transwiki thing, balancing out the task between Wiktionary and Wikipedia volunteers? Special:Import is restricted to sysops, which means that the Wiktionary sysops could do the import while the Wikipedians could concentrate on getting the things logged and deleted, merged, redirected etc. here. Given the fact that WP:TL is considered to have a backlog, that should be considerd as a Good Thing™. It'll require some cross-project communication and cooperation, though.
Basically, everybody who uses the import function on Wiktionary should log it at Wikipedia:Transwiki log. Logs on Wiktionary shouldn't be necessary anymore since it's already logged automatically there. As long as it shows up on Wikipedia's transwiki log, we'll pick it up somehow and know what to do with the articles. If you're up to it and are familiar with Wikipedia's inclusion policy, you can help us figure out what to do with the articles once exported (paths are listed at the Transwiki log page).
I'd be very much obliged if those importing at Wiktionary could kindly keep a continual eye on CAT:MtW: it has a tendency to fill up rapidly. It would help me if I could be told who to bug when CAT:MtW backs up now, as I won't be able to proactively do something about it, not having sysop powers on Wiktionary. Also, if Wiktionary already has an entry to which a transwikied article on Wikipedia would not add anything, it can probably be proposed for deletion before it's transwikied, saving a bunch of work. theProject05:28, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Interface changes (fonts)
There have been various small changes to the interface recently, including the text styles for section headers. Is there any way for me to change them back? Ardric4723:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I want to do inline dynamic NavBars with variable toggle texts but could not figure out how to do it with the current NavBar code. I've posted some sample code to MediaWiki_talk:Monobook.js (Sample code passes toggle texts via a hack with the title attribute.) Seeking alternatives/comments. Gimmetrow05:23, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
www.alnaja7.org
I hope this is the correct board.
I am beginning to get seriously annoyed by links to www.alnaja7.org continously been posted in a number of programming articles, as these links have previously been discussed in the articles and decided to be of poor quality. These links were previously being placed by user:Alhoori, an now by User:Rehabe. Is there some standard system to stop this kind of behaviour? Also, why doesn't the search facility seem to find URLs in articles? Thank you Mrjeff10:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Came across this article the other day: Organic_lawn_management. It's definitely a how-to article. I'd like to transwiki it to WB where it can grow into a chapter or book (it has good information in it, but rather stubby), but not sure how to go about this.
I've tagged it for transwiki; this is the standard way of moving pages from wiki to wiki. æ²✆2006-07-02t13:30z
I've tried to figure out how this is done, but I really have trouble understanding the procedure. Would anyone be willing to tutor or mentor me on this? (Posting this on meta:transwiki as well). SB Johnny16:20, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
New Comment Section Using Internal Wikilink?
Is there a way to do via an internal wikilink -- as opposed to an external link -- the link that takes someone to the "new section" link for a talk page?
For example, right now, if I wanted to send someone to a link that opened a "new comment" section for them on my talk page, it would be:
You can use the CSS class "plainlinks" to get rid of the pointy-square-arrow, but that's lots of markup. Also, you can use {{fullurl:User talk:WCityMike|action=edit|section=new}} as the URL instead; it's shorter and more portable. æ²✆2006-07-02t21:56z
How to add structure to a list
Hello. I'd like to display structure in a hierachical list using wikipedia text markup
The result should provide the same infomation as this example:
What I want to know is how I can include the lines? (I am already aware of use of colons and asterisks.) Is this possible. Thank you.HappyVR19:40, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So far, when similar structure are needed (for sport event articles, notably), very complex markup has tobe used, so I'd assume the answer is "no". Circeus00:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you've got a link to any sport page that uses the complex markup I'd like to have a look at it - if it can be done I'll have a go.HappyVR01:49, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The easiest way to do this is using tables and images. It's not easy. A software extension could make it easy, but that's unlikely for such a narrow purpose. In short, it's probably best to forget about it. Deco00:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thats a shame - it seemed like all I might need was the 'codes' for two 'T' characters, 2 lines and a right angle? Maybe such characters don't exist.HappyVR01:49, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's what I was looking for, but know I need to check if everyone will be able to actually see them if I use them.├>HappyVR02:44, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if this is too obvious, but you might be able to do a rough approximation of what you want with <pre></pre> tags. older ≠ wiser02:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
All Things
|
|---Things without legs
| |
| |---Houses
|
|---Things with legs
|
|--etc.
Useful - not sure what it does?
Thanks to both of you. This really helps.
I've tried a combination of the two - (not sure about 'pre' but I used it anyway)- what I need now is a way to 'turn off' the box around the text...HappyVR02:44, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
All Things
│
├───Things without legs
│ │
│ └───Houses
│
└───Things with legs
│
└──etc.
Such a thing seems impossible at the moment. While the <pre> tag allows for HTML markup inside, the wiki doesn't permit wiki markup inside the tag. That leaves the question, is there any other tag that does preformatted text? Code sort of works:
That works though I don't know why, only there are gaps between the vertical lines on my browser, so I guess that all that needs to be done is change the line spacing - is this possible?HappyVR16:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello.
I wanted to edit my userpage by condensing my userboxes into two rows on either side of my userpage. What is the formatting for doing this? Also, the title of my userboxes is skills and interests. Do you know how to format one row skills and one interests? If you visit my userpage you'll know what I'm talking about. Thanks.
--Clyde Miller01:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is something like this roughly what you're talking about? If you look at Template:Boxboxtop, you can see all of the parameters for it — the one you're looking for is align to put one of the boxes on the left. I warn against doing this, though, because it uses up a lot of horizontal space; viewers with lower horizontal resolutions may have difficulty, because it leaves little room for text in the middle. ~ Booya Bazooka02:17, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I used the formatting you used on your sandbox demo and I like the way it looks. There isn't that much text on my userpage, so I'm not really going to worry about the horizontal space issue. If someone can't see my userpage I will either change it so they can, or just have them talk to me on my talk page. Thanks for your help.--Clyde Miller16:31, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to see who put it there, I went to the [history]. On that page, there are a large number of consecutive entries by Sam Vimes; all of them are broken. The template wasn't there before them, but it was there after, so it must have been included in his edits.
What is causing this? Is it a random glitch or could somebody be trying to hide something in those edits? -- kenb21503:05, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While I cannot find the revision where it appeared (the revisions are absurdly long, and there are way too many of them), I know what's going on. What you are seeing is not {{afd top}}, but {{afd}}. That article was part of an evil experiment by User:Jguk, which transcludedwhole articles within a larger article. This being highly confusing, it probably caused someone to put one of the component articles on AfD, and the damaged renmants of the tag remained within the article when the component pieces were finally merged into a sane article. If you can somehow find the original component article, you will be able to restore the contents of the section (even if it has later been deleted; it can be easily undeleted for that purpose). --cesarb06:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm repeating this question as I haven't yet had a useful response. I seem to be coming across more and more WP articles with blatant advertising links. I've read through WP:LOP and WP:NOT but I haven't been able to find any specific policy on this. Surely purely advertising links that don't contain encyclopedic information should be removed? I would like to be able to cite WP policy before launching a purge.--Shantavira09:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's not any normal one too - I may have made it incorrectly, but I am custom making that one to support the Template:Location map feature, so I am hoping to have the ability to add the lat and lon like;
lat = x.xx
lon = x.xx
Is there some reason template:Infobox City won't do (the map with a locator dot can be put into the infobox)? There's an effort underway to standardize on this template for all city articles within Wikipedia. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:08, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well the infobox I created isn't for city's as such - or at all really. It was created intentionally for use in articles for towns and villages and the like. Apart from anything I'm doing it for the education. --Dom080313:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Table conversion
I use Excel to create tables because of the may, many advantages using Excel provides. However, the HTML table that Excel builds is extremely large due to the details Excel utilizes. I need a way to convert some tables which are very sophisticated to Wikipedia markup. Is there a software available that I can use to do this conversion? Never mind found it! ...IMHO (Talk) 13:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Reporting a possible copyright violation -- can't figure out code
The instructions on the Template message say to go to go to Wikipedia Problems page and paste in:
* {{subst:article-cv|Template messages/Maintenance}} from [http://example.org]. ~~~~
However, after I do that, I don't know what else to do. I know how to substitute the URL for example.org. But after that, I get it wrong. I usually end up with Template messages/Maintenance in red. And the (history - last edit) is either missing or (if it is there) it doesn't link to the article I am reporting.
I usually end up having to copy someone else's entry and then figuring out how to substitute my own report into it.
Don't look at the code from the Templale messages page, copy it from the tag that you have placed on the article. Kotepho19:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
download bot
Is there a bot I can use to download the text of all my contributions - even those that have been archived? ...IMHO (Talk) 23:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
*In the alternative what is the best method of downloading or otherwise obtaining a copy of all contributions you have made? ...as above. ...IMHO (Talk) 05:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please at least trim the code first; it's currently FIVE lines long, with a huge amount of redundant code. --cesarb02:01, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've taken a crack at shortening it, but it still would be nice if you could shrink it down more. That sig code will get substituted into every post you sign, so it's irritating when it takes up that much space in the edit window. ~ Booya Bazooka07:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To change your signature, modify your preferences, choose 'Raw signature', and put the sig code in the 'Signature' box. Please take note of the size issue first, though. ~ Booya Bazooka07:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
NUMBEROF PAGESINNS
The syntax for the NUMBEROF variables was simplified, the "raw" qualifier is now separated with a colon instead of a vertical bar (aka pipe ).
See also Help:Variable with links maybe helping to find broken usages of the old format.
In theory this also affects PAGESINNS and PAGESINNAMESPACE, but these magic words were disabled, see Help:Magic words. The new magic word mentioned on WP:BRION
is not yet documented. The purpose of the old magic word raw: is still
Background here, if Template:H:mwg is relevant, how about "exporting" it to the MediaWiki namespace for easy access without "bug a dev" procedure? Or the opposite approach, kill that setting plus PAGESINNS if it's too horrible. At the moment it's in limbo, in theory nice to have, in practice not essential. -- Omniplex14:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Image doesn't show in File links section of image page
Is there any variable whose value is the name of the user? I'd like to generate it in Template:Prod in order to automatically produce the name of the user who tagged the article, and I'd prefer not to use ~~~ because the signature might contain a lot of extra code and might not close all its tags properly. (Liberatore, 2006). 11:55, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure this has been asked many tiems before, but...
A list article was deleted, with the major argument being that it was redundant to a category. This is untrue as there is no similar category. I'd be happy to create it, but I don't know what was on the list. Is there any way for anyone to see the deleted article? -Freekee20:13, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
admins can - but to redo a deleted article you need to go to WP:VFU first otherwise it'll be speedy deleted. also, if the argument was "redundant to a category" then it would make more sense to make the category than to remake the list wouldnt it? BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard23:13, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think Freekee means to undelete the article permanently, only temporarily so that he can add all the listed articles to a new category. If the list is very long, maybe there's a bot that could help him? SeahenNeonMerlin23:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I only need the text of the list article in order to start the category. There were less than 40 subjects listed, but I can't remember all of them, and it took a few weeks to find them all. I'd rather not lose that work, but it's not the end of the world if it's all gone. On the other hand, there's a question about the impropriety of the deletion, and it may get reinstated on those grounds. -Freekee03:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
t the Initial article, the examples do not render correctly in Internet Explorer 6 for Windows. Could someone please try to fix them so they render in IE the way they currently render in Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4? Also, in both browsers, there is an extra paragraph break above the drop cap, which I think was added by MediaWiki; could someone remove it please? SeahenNeonMerlin23:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ere's a screenshot showing the page in Opera 9, Firefox 1.5 and Internet Explorer 6. Perhaps the best way to ensure cross-browser-friendlieness would be to use images instead? Icey23:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Don't know which license to use for image
Needing a good portrait of the subject of a Wikipedia article, I e-mailed him personally with the request. He responded with a few high quality jpegs to use for this purpose. Now, I don't know which license tag to use for the images. Any help please? Thanks si»abhorreo»T02:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
He needs to state explicitly that he releases them under a free for any purpose license, including the creation of derivative works and commercial uses without further permission. Typically, on Wikipedia, this is the Gnu Free Documentation License, but images are permitted under the Creative Commons licenses as long as they are the kind that allow commercial use and derivation. This particular case is confused somewhat if you specifically asked for use on Wikipedia and he granted that without having been told about the terms required or licensing them himself. Probably, it is not good enough in that case, and another email exchanged would be better.
Once you have such an email, upload the images using whichever tag is appropriate to the free license used (probably simply {{GFDL}} or {{cc-by-sa}}, {{cc-by-sa-2.0}} etc), with an additional note regarding sourcing and licensing on the image page. Also, email a copy of his emails to the Foundation at permissions dot wikimedia dot org so that the Foundation has a piece of notpaper to wave around if it comes to it.
Unless the copyright owner has made this kind of copyright statement, then such a tag should not be used. The best that could be claimed is fair use in a relevant article. -Splash - tk03:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, he is a big enough star that all this talk of licensing and him forfeiting his rights and giving it away for free etc may very well scare him off. I know that if I was in his position and didn't know about this stuff, I would probably get nervous about doing something like this, worrying that it's something I might regret later. Is there any way for him to give (even more) explicit xpermission for it to be used on Wikipedia, which will let me use a tag like this Template:WithPermission? Thanks si»abhorreo»T15:51, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm afraid we no longer accept images with permission to use only on Wikipedia, because it limits reuse. You could try asking him to release just one of the images under a free license, or just low-resolution versions of the images. If this doesn't work, I'm afraid you can't upload them. Deco18:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Width of edit summary text field
I'm having some problems with the edit summary text field. Whereas the main text entry field adjusts size to accomodate the (considerable) size of my display, the edit summary text entry field doesn't. This simply isn't working for me. It's much too small, less than a third of the width of my screen. When I'm editing sections with long names I have to scroll over in the edit summary text field just to see the end of the section name. It's inconvenient, and worse, it leads to me not using edit summaries as often as I should. Does anyone know how to fix this on a per-user basis, and once we get that done, maybe we should consider making the change site-wide? --Cyde↔Weys03:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It works, but it's a little ugly (the "Edit summary" text link will expand to 100% of the screen and will appear above the edit summary box instead of beside it. --james// bornhj (talk)04:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This works great. What I've done is just use 80% instead of 100% — still allows a lot more width, without the ugly wrapping. ~ Booya Bazooka04:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The table solution doesn't seem to be compatible with the portal layout currently being used. I tried another solution: I put a div inside those both two boxes to force them to fill the available space (with 100% (of 49%) width and 10em height). It looks good in Firefox but not quite perfect in IE. --Splarka (rant) 07:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fully justified
Has WP all of a sudden decided to, instead of normal justifiication, put it to fully justified? I think it looks horrible, as the history pages to articles are all spread out everywhere. Iolakana|T17:33, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to add a new project to the sandbox. There are several there already by I dont know how to go about adding a new one. Is it even possible? Any help is welcome? Laurence 1 18:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
IMO a sandbox should be an almost clean empty page where users feel invited to edit stuff and see the effect immediately. More instruction creep, links to dozens of other sandboxes, etc. ad nauseam are most unwelcome. It also doesn't work directly as you say, this template is itself updated by the Sandbot from another source (no details, professional spammers probably read the pump). -- Omniplex12:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Template inclusion
Is there a way to list the articles that include a certain template? Like sort of a "What links here" for templates. I'm listing a TfD, and would like to see if the template in question is being used. ~ Booya Bazooka23:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
hello, I started a small wiki (is uses wikimedia softwrae) and want to know where to change the text which appears beneath the edit-box (currently on wikipedia this is Do not violate any copyright! You agree to license all submissions under the GFDL. Use verifiable sources for encyclopedia content.
Could somebody tell me how to do this on Wikipedia? I'm quite sure it's the same on my small new wiki. thanks Sacca02:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am total newbie. I have started a new article Gilbert Waterhouse I uploaded an image, but cannot seem to get it to link.Would appreciate help to tell me what I am doing wrong.
Secondly. it has become blatantly obvious to me that the amount of material I have in comparions to my time available to work on it means I will never complete this article. How can I enlist the help of a volunteer to send them the material - it would appeal to a volunteer interested in WW1 history
What happens when a blocked user trips the autoblocker, but thier IP is already blocked? I suspect that the autoblocker blocks the IP for 24 hours and the block expires even though the IP block may have been for much longer. Is this the case? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn10:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The blocking code checks if the IP is already blocked and won't add a new block unless the autoblock would extend beyond the existing IP block. Dragons flight11:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually as I look at the blocking code again, I think I had the sign of the effect wrong, that an autoblock is added unless doing so would extend the length of the IP block. If that is correct then the kind of conflict you suggest is entirely plausible. Dragons flight11:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I thought so. I've seen willy on wheels be able to edit despite the fact that his IP was long term blocked and i think this is the reason why. Is this easy to fix? Could we keep it simple and have the autoblock check to see if the IP is already blocked and if so do nothing? Because reducing an IP block to 24 hours if it's already been blocked for longer than this makes no sense whatever. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn13:19, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ideally, the solution ought to be to stop short blocks from cancelling longer blocks, but that is apparently hard to do. Simply stopping the autoblocker from issuing any block against an IP that is already blocked should be easy to do, and I can't think of any negative consequences. Dragons flight16:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
After running some tests, it appears that autoblocks can not be created against an account that is already IP blocked. However, the expiry of an autoblock that existed before any other IP block was issued will also kill the IP block. Dragons flight00:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How do I list article for deletion so community can comment on it.
I listed Clarity Systems because it seemed clearly a promotional piece. Within a few minutes, the author removed the template without making any changes to the article. I have been looking at the deletion templates and can't seen to get the code to work when I try to list this article.
Either I can't get the template on the page correctly, or when I try to list it on the page for comments, I make mistakes there and it doesn't show up.
This article Clarity Systems is one that I think needs more than just the author's judgment to decide whether it is a promotional piece. Sorry for not understanding the process! KarenAnn14:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be doing fine; I suggest you sign your name on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clarity Systems, but that's all I can see. That's one of the problems with prodding — tag removal is considered enough of a contention to require a listing on AFD. æ²✆2006-07-07t14:50z
For what it's worth, I just tagged that page as a copyvio. It's basically a copy of the corporate web site's "about" page. Left the AfD tag intact, which isn't usual, but it's clear that page has to go. --John Nagle17:25, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Help with deck template
I need help with finishing a template. It would probably take 30 seconds or so of a veteran templater's time to help me.NorrYtt16:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Requesting addition of a new HELP page and also...
In most cases, people use DIV and SPAN instead of tables on Wikipedia. But I couldn't find any info on it except some incomplete information on meta.wikimedia.org here. That same incomplete help article doesn't exist on this Wikipedia, but I don't know where to request it. In the requested articles categories, there are no categories for "help pages" or "miscellaneous." I also need the article (or the information elsewhere), because I want to know the various classes and styles you can use with spans and divs on Wikipedia and the specific syntax. --Robocracy16:43, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
IMO the m:Help:Cascading style sheets article is far from ready, at the moment it's just a fork of m:Help:User style with some of its worst parts removed. If you like it anyway just copy it, adding two dummy templates needed here (Wikipedia specific help and header) is simple, somebody will do it if you don't. But it would be more interesting if you start to work on this wannabe-master help page. You could be bold and start from scratch. If all you want are some technical details about <span> and <div> read XHTML or look into Template talk:-. -- Omniplex19:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be technically possible to sort the special page What links here by namespace, project space, talk, etc.? Or perhaps just namespace and non-namespace or any variation? I presume something like Interiot's contrib tree might be a source of code, but I know almost nothing about such things. The reason I bring this up is that many of the more linked to articles have this special page cluttered with links to talk pages, etc.--Kchase02T04:35, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Similar question: is there any way to exclude template transclusions from an image's File links list, to only show articles and templates in which the image is directly used? ~ Booya Bazooka04:47, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You have created some truly awesome tools, Interiot. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Is it linked up somewhere already? Perhaps I just missed it.--Kchase02T05:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I meant a wikipedia page like Wikipedia:Edit count, where I found your other tools, but if people know where the above pages are, that's obviously the important part. Why are the pages in English, but the website is German? Is that where the server is physically located?--Kchase02T06:01, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
An entry links to an incorrect article, how do I unlink it?
I think I know how to edit within an article. But on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Sacramento
there is a Horace Smith listed as a past mayor of Sacramento. The name may be correct however the Horace Smith artcle that comes up when I click on that name is a different Horace Smith. How can I edit the connection, in other words make the name not link to THAT Horace Smith article?
Thanks,
Jay
As there doesn't seem to be an article on that particular person (prefix search), your best bet is probably to change the link in that list to Horace Smith (politician) with [[Horace Smith (politician)|Horace Smith]] (even if he wasn't a career politician, it is apparently what he was notable for). Then, you should check Special:Whatlinkshere/Horace Smith and see if any of the other links point to him instead of to one of the other two, in which case correct the link. Note that they will be red until an article is created (but most of that list is).
Also, if you feel all three are equally notable (or semi-notable) you could contact the major contributor to Horace Smith (of which there seem to be few) or leave a note on the discussion page, indicating you'd like Horace Smith to be a disambiguation page to all three (example: Tom_Jones). --Splarka (rant) 07:11, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Help correcting interlanguage link
There is a problem with interlanguage links to the Aramaic Wikipedia. Currently, any interlanguage link to this wiki gives the text ܕܥܒܪܝܛ in the other languages box. This word is Template:Semxlit, which means in Hebrew. Obviously, this is wrong. How can I change the text of the link to say ܐܪܡܝܐ (Aramaic)? I'm a sysop on this wiki, but not on arc. — Gareth Hughes13:14, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Word has it they sometimes read this page too. A reference would be appreciated, we hate it when we end up changing language names to obscenities. -- Tim Starling04:15, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if you can find appropriate online references that ܐܪܡܝܐ is 'Aramaic'. I can tell you that it is upheld on p 29 of Payne Smith A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (ISBN 1-57506-032-9). Syriac is the variety of Aramaic that all entries have been written in so far. Is that OK? — Gareth Hughes13:25, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would someone with a Bugzilla account please add this comment to bug #4899 -- Thanks
I'm finding this too in the Wikipedia article Al Gore. If you go down to the
section "Mosaic" and click its "edit" link, you get the following two
sections (and not the correct section) in the edit window. This is the only case I'm getting two (wrong) sections for one edit link, but all of the edit links in the lower area of the page at least seem to be "off by one".
Note the long page size ("This page is 61 kilobytes long -- This may be longer than
is preferable"), complex sub-sub sections, and my archaic browser Netscape 7.02.
An entry FAILS to link to an the existing article, even though it exists
In the Symbology article, I tried to link Symbolic Anthropology, which there is an article for, but it becomes red.
It is now doing that for Victor Turner, as well, even though there is a correct article for that too.
People keep editing the links out (because they are red), even though these articles DO exist, and they are the CORRECT topic.
How do I get a link to connect?
Perhaps I cross-corrected it, and now it doesn't work again. 9 July 2006
It looks like you are trying to add the article to categories named "Symbolic anthropology" and "Victor Turner". There are no such categories, nor should there be. Symbolic anthropology and Victor Turner have already been added to the "See also" section of the article. I'll remove the inappropriate categories for you.-gadfium04:51, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
2:35 my time
O.k. I figured out what was wrong. Apparently (who woulda thunk it) in order to have a link in the category part, the topic has to be a formal "Category". So I found some relevant categories and put those in there. Some one else fixed the "See also" links that weren't connecting. I think the problem for those was I spelled "Symbolic Anthropology" with a capital "A".
I still wish people would check to see if an article exists before they erase it totally. People were taking them (Victor Turner and Symbolic anthropology) out of the "See also" section, too, just because it was spelled with a capital "A". And, I don't know why they took out Victor Turner...
I think it is much better now, thank you for your help! :)
Search Engine
I don't think the internal search engine is much good in wikipedia. A small error in typing can result in not finding the appropriate article. Maybe one of those internally enhanced Google searches would be good to solve the problem. Hobo04:49, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently the spam blacklist is not letting me make an edit. I just wanted to add a scrollbar to the page User:69.145.123.171/registering, adding the code
<div style="border: thin solid blue; background: white; padding: 7px; font-size: 10pt; overflowWWWW: auto; heighTTTTTt: 200px;">
text that was here already before I made the change
</div>
.
I made a different edit and added a period, and it let me. I looked at the show changes, and even it says all I am adding is the <div style="blah">. I don't know why it considers that spam. The only external links on the page are links that just link back to WP. It is not spyware, because it let me add the period. Any ideas? It won't even let me save this page. GeorgeMoney(talk)05:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just looked at the message, and it says "The following text is what triggered our spam filter: overflowWWWW: auto; heighTTTTt:". (remove the WWW and TTT). GeorgeMoney(talk)05:22, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Update from IRC (#mediawiki, quoted with permission):
<@TimStarling> Vyznev: the reason that string is banned is because wiki spammers were using it for a while to hide spam links
<@TimStarling> invisible divs
<@TimStarling> I gather they were already having trouble with display:none being blocked, hence the more unusual method
<@TimStarling> oh, actually I bet the search engines filter out hidden links
I know for a fact that googlebot will follow display:none links. I had been using that hack to modify some software, but ended up having to change my methods after google started grabbing up the hidden content. Dragons flight06:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The special characters box under the edit window had a nice redesign recently, organising it into sections like Greek and IPA. However, some of the most basic IPA characters are not there (unless my browser is at fault), the most obvious being schwa - ə. (Note that this is not the same as ɘ or ɚ which do appear.) Where can I put in a request for new characters to be added? I've searched around and can't find any discussion of this box anywhere. --Blisco13:02, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you search for the island Morro de São Paulo, and write "morro de sao paulo" in the search box, you are not directed to the article "Morro de São Paulo" which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morro_de_São_Paulo
This is not very good. The article should be found with this string, as most searchers will not bother with upper case letters or accents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.52.69.223 (talk • contribs) 14:28, Jul 09, 2006 (UTC)
I often do that for simple and common typos, but once you get used to Google's autocorrection of typos in search terms you get spoiled, so I also often use the Google site search when I REALLY want to find something within Wikipedia. Spalding15:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the point is not that it's a typo, but that it's a differently cased version of the existing redirect Morro de Sao Paulo. For most article titles, the hueristics "go" uses to find the article you're looking for makes it appear to be case insensitive. These heuristics don't work for some article titles, specifically ones where the words are not all upper case or not (except for the first) all lower case. You can fix this yourself, by adding a redirect matching the heuristics "go" uses (see Wikipedia:Go button). In this case, I'd suggest Morro De Sao Paulo (note the upper case "De"). I've responded about this enough times that I should clearly add this to a FAQ page somewhere. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:14, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Signature help
Can someone PLEASE tell me how to change my signature into a different font,color, size, etc.? Everyone but me seems to know how to change their signatures. HELP!-Andrewia19:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know the exact page, but WP:SIG should be fine. I actually made my sig from looking at other people's sigs and doing a whole lot of show previews to see what it looked like. Yanksox19:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! That helped a lot.-Andrewia 20:27, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Right now, your signature doesn't contain any links. It's considered good practice to link it to either your user page, your talk page, or both. Zetawoof(ζ)07:55, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Article protections temporarily 'removing' articles from watchlists
Ever since protections began appearing in page histories, there has been a problem to do with articles showing up on watchlists. Basically, when someone protects a page, the article is removed from your watchlist until someone makes another edit to it. Can we do something about this - either showing the protection in watchlists, or showing the previous edit? Thanks, — FireFox 20:08, 09 July '06
I am currently browsing using Safari 1.2.4, using Mac OX and a Hughes Net connection under the username Archaeo. However, whenever I log in, I am immediately logged out when I switch to a new page. I have tried to enable all cookies, and I've clicked on the "Remember Me" box. If this question has been asked before, I appologize profusely for wasting your time. Thank you. (N.B. I am not the vandalizing user that this IP address seems to be associated with.) 66.82.9.5321:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Satellite internet systems are notoriously unreliable for any web site that requires login sessions. Contact your service provider for instructions on disabling proxies (which may reduce performance) or switch to a network provider that is not gratuitously incompatible with much of the web. --Brion03:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki Password Unsecurity
Apologies if this is already known and/or being addressed, but here goes:
The "incorrect password" page mimicks the user's (incorrect) password in plaintext (in the HTML); if the user had typed an almost-correct password, it could become very easy for an attacker to guess the correct password (particularly if there was but one error and it was in a portion of the password that was a dictionary word or so). Given that the provided password is all but useless to a legitimate user, can it be omitted? --Tardis01:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You have to look at the HTML source, but he's right, it's there... hmm, interesting. I assume the way around this is to not return the failed password at this point, but just return the username and ask for a new password? Shimgray | talk | 01:34, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I am making a silly mistake, but I just looked carefully at the password dialog and it does not appear to be in SSL. Are we sending passwords in the clear? Robert A.West (Talk) 02:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since you're sending that text over cleartext anyway, this doesn't leak anything additional. It's still not a very good practice, and will go away under upcoming login system revisions. --Brion03:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What I am stuck on is how do I make a {{ #expr: {{User:GeorgeMoney/Wikibreak/Start}} + 1 }}, +2, +3, etc.. based on the days of User:GeorgeMoney/Wikibreak/Duration instead of having to add more +'s or removing some? I just want to make it so if the duration is 5 days, then it does +1, +2, +3, +4, +5. But if it is 2 days, then it just does +1 and +2. Is this even possible? Or is there a different way? GeorgeMoney(talk)05:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know how to do back ground colors the code is bgcolor but what is the code for text colors or the words you type. Thanks John R G06:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At Isaac Pitman there's supposed to be an image of him, Image:Isaac.jpg. The image description page shows the picture correctly, a black-and-white picture of a 19th-century gentleman. But, at least for me, the article shows a completely different image, one of a young man and woman talking to each other, squeezed into the dimensions of Image:Isaac.jpg. What's going on?
Very weird. I'm on a different computer now than I was when I wrote the above, and it's still wrong for me. I'm using Firefox on Windows XP if that's relevant. User:Angr17:04, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That makes it even weirder since I'm also using Firefox (1.5.0.4) on XP. http://img.waffleimages.com/img/7bec9da7f94b71a60cd309aea0c439cf7bf4ba90/Isaac.png is what I see when I load the page. Maybe a stupid question, but have you tried purging the cache (ctrl*shift+R)? --Daduzitalk17:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I have tried purging the cache, several times. Not that it really should have been necessary, since the "wrong" image was what I saw the very first time I ever opened the article on either of the computers that I use. What I see is at Image:Angr screenshot.PNG. User:Angr17:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then I have no idea what's going on, I'm afraid. Someone a bit more familiar with the inner witchcraft of mediawiki could probably be more constructive. Sorry. --Daduzitalk18:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Link colors
Looking at some of the FAQs, it looks like it may not be possible to edit link colors, but I haven't seen anything in writing. If I can, I'd love to know how as I've got something I'm working on for a page. --Bveale16:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
From WP:MOS#Color coding "Using color alone to convey information (color coding) should not be done. This is not accessible to people with color blindness (especially monochromacy), viewing articles on black-and-white printouts, older monitors with fewer colors, monochrome LCD displays (PDAs, cell phones), and so on." So unless there's a really, really pressing reason why the colors are needed it's probably best not to do it. I doubt it's possible with links, anyway. --Daduzitalk17:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's actually for more than just the color alone. What I'm working on is some extra accoutrements to the fixture list I created for the Nottingham Forest F.C. page to make each team they play represented by both their name and their colors so it looks something like this example for Yeovil Town, whose colors are green and white:
The reason it was hiding at the bottom of the page is that the table wasn't closed (it ended with a |- rather than a |} ) so I've fixed that. As for what you're looking for, the best way to work around it would be to use <span style="background-color: color;"> tags. So in the example you gave you'd change at [[Yeovil Town F.C.|Yeovil Town]] to at <span style="background-color: white;">[[Yeovil Town F.C.|Yeovil Town]]</span>. That would result in something like this:
I would stress again, though, that colours should generally only be used sparingly and only if they'd help users identify information, rather than for decoration. You might also want to consider letting the guys at Wikipedia:WikiProject Football know what you're planning to do as they're trying to standardise the layout of football related articles and could probably offer some feedback. If they like the idea it may even be included in their article templates. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Clubs is probably the best place to go. Hope that helps. --Daduzitalk22:42, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just to add that I've now realised you can change the color of links by adding a span in the middle of a piped link like so [[Yeovil Town F.C.|<span style="color: white;">Yeovil Town]]</span>. Using this technique you get the following:
Finding contributions from a range of IP addresses
Is there a tool to help look for contributions for a range of IP addresses? Or the ability to search based on only the first part of an IP address. For example, any edits from any IP that starts with "255.0". Thanks. --mtz206 (talk) 18:33, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On the Gregorian chant page, the lede image is a music manuscript, accompanied by a media file with a recording of the song in the image. Is there a way to anchor the media file to the lede image so that it always shows up directly beneath the image, with the text of the article appearing to the left of both the picture and the sound file? Thanks! Peirigill19:35, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
{{Auto}}, when placed on a user/user talk page, displays any outstanding autoblocks caused by that user, if included in a standard series of blocking templates, could allow easy detection of harmful autoblocks, without having to alert the vandal that anyone is aware of them--AOL user00:06, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And yes, I am aware that the current formatting is garish and written in giant sized font, someone may want to change that before incorporating into any blocking templates, or vandal templates--AOL user00:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a great idea, but made somewhat difficult by the current wide profusion of block templates. Adding this to {{unblock}} and related templates might help. --CBD22:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mass editing images
I've been working on several US military pages, and have noticed that there are at least two similar images for each rank's insignia in every force, and they're jumbled and named very hap-hazardly. Just look at Category:Images of military insignia! Is there any way for me to quickly and easily rename the images to put them in some sort of cohesive system? I would like to delete redundant images and refer the articles using them to the superior image, etc. It'll be a lot of work even with a quick and dirty approach, so any help would be appreciated! --Mordien06:48, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
From a quick browse through the category it seems that most of the images are locally uploaded (en.wikipedia). It is always preferable that free-content images be stored at Commons so that all other Wikimedia projects (and, in the future, non-Wikimedia MediaWiki projects) are able to use them. I'd go through the category, selecting all usable images and save them to my hard drive using systematic names. I'd then upload these to Wikimedia Commons and categorise them there. After this has been done, the articles should point to the Commons images and the local versions should be deleted. --OldakQuill08:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Gingerbread Toolbar
On occasion, the toolbar at the top of the page (the one with my user name and such) will float away from me to the other side of the screen when I put my mouse over it. Even though it stays there afterward, it is a little annoying. Anyone know what's going on? I use IE.
I used to get this problem with IE occasionally. I use Firefox and I never experience it. As to the technical cause, I have no idea. --OldakQuill08:36, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This may already be a known issue, but I have tried looking for some discussion somewhere and can't find any. In Internet Explorer, when you get new messages, on the Main page only, the orange background of the "new message bar" doesn't show, nor does the border. On any other Wikipedia page and in Firefox it's fine. I can provide a screenshot if needed. Sorry once again if this is already a known issue. — FireFox 13:55, 11 July '06
Could be related to the trick used in MediaWiki:Monobook.js to hide the <h1 class="firstHeading"> and other certain elements specifically on the Main_Page. Try disabling javascript and see if it still does that. --Splarka (rant) 08:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not quite sure how to do that in IE. Anyway, why would it do that in IE but not Firefox? — FireFox 10:51, 12 July '06
IE 5, 5.5, and 6 (I guess you are not using IE 7) are widely considered to be quite buggy (IE 7 isn't even finished, so there's no way to know how buggy it will be). See http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html for a list (complete with detailed examples, explanations, and workarounds) of some of the most annoying (and strange) of them. --cesarb15:53, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Problem with login/logout
Now it's doing the logout problem more. I go to a new page at times, and it says I'm logged out! I usually just go back to the page I was logged in at, and click the link again...and it usually works. I know my cookies and internet settings are set, so I'm constantly logged in at sites (unless I personally logout, which I haven't done). RobJ198117:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That didn't help. The user is still able to edit. I suspect that this issue somehow relates to the username, which appears to confuse the software to some extent. Blocking the account generates the following unusual (and partially broken) message:
You must include underscores to replace spaces in both Special:Blockip and that template. The user is currently blocked, however, since it won't let me apply another block. Perhaps there is a bug in the new blocking stuff. -Splash - tk20:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I liked the update for the most part, but the "feature" that prevents duplicate blocks can be very annoying. For example, consider the following scenario:
an administrator sees an AOL IP using a vandal bot
the administrator blocks the IP for one week
realizing that AOL IPs should not be blocked for so long, the administrator decides to shorten the block
with this new "feature", the administrator has to unblock the IP first
during the short time that the IP is unblocked, it vandalizes 10 more articles
Without this "feature", the administrator could have simply blocked the IP again using a shorter expiry time. This way, the IP does not have to be unblocked.
It would be nice if the MediaWiki software would automatically lift existing blocks, much like deleting pages to make way for moves, when an administrator wants to place a new block on a user. --Ixfd6420:41, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The problem appears to have been sorted now, but I'm at a loss as to why it ocurred in the first place, given that it was an issue when this edit was in place. Theoretically there should not have been a problem as there were <noinclude> tags present. --Daduzitalk01:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Safari browser
I'm using a Macintosh Safari browser, and when I log in to Wikipedia, the text gets larger and the page layout is all different. How come? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.52.69.223 (talk • contribs) .
I can understand the "larger" part, because Safari does draw text a little differently from other Mac browsers, but the part about a different layout is kind of puzzling. Things look pretty much the same to me across browsers (except for the font rendering). Got an example page and section? What skin are you using? --iMeowbot~Meow01:05, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Everything changes. I wish I knew how to make a snapshot in Safari, and then I would email the image to you. Let me check this.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Qwerty qwerty (talk • contribs) .
Press shift-apple-4 and the cursor will turn into crosshairs. Move the cursor over to the window you want to grab, and press the spacebar. The cursor now should look like a camera. Click and the screen grab (called Picture 1 and so on) will be saved to your desktop. --iMeowbot~Meow01:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The main two unusual things I can see are that you seem to have Javascript turned off in Safari's security preferences (because the "Main Page" heading appears) and your default font is rather large. While holding down the apple key, you can use + and - to adjust the text size. You may also want to look at the other Safari preferences to see if there is anything else that seems odd. --iMeowbot~Meow02:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh wait, that's the "chick" skin, isn't it? (checks) Yeah, looks like it. The "normal" Wikipedia skin is Monobook, if you want to change it back.
Thanks Meow, I didn't know about the skins, but the reason I noticed it is because the default used to be different in my case, even though I haven't changed anyting. But now it's like i want it. Thanks. --Qwerty qwerty02:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Two Images
If you go to Image:Trafford View.JPG you will see the picture is tilted. Click on it and you get the correct version that I fixed and uploaded. How do I get rid of the first version, please? TerriersFan03:20, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is an somewhat interesting situation, since the images are official logos, which we generally shouldn't alter. Of course, presumably there are official non-animated versions of these logos as well. Incidentally, neither of these images has been properly sourced; presumably they're from a website somewhere, but it's hard to tell. I've tagged both as lacking source information and notified the uploaders. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, here's an unoffical, unanimated one. As to the offical sites, I think that some of them don't entirely understand web design, or the people they hire to do it don't, or they did it back when more flashy things were fashionable. I've seen some governmental organizations who definately should've known better go down that road ugghhhhh... 68.39.174.23805:22, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hanging indent
Does anybody knows the easiest way to make hanging indent for lines below a bullet? (see example below, I use table tags which is too complicated and also with different bullet character/image)
■
Line one
Line two
Line three
The code is:
{|cellpadding=2
|-
|valign="top"|■
||
Line one
<br>Line two
<br>Line three
|}
I'd like to move into the magical realm of templates to add to my wikiskillset however I don't want it randomly deleted before i'm finished playing. Is there anywhere I can sandbox a template for personal play? can i create a functional template in a user sub-page?--I'll bring the food14:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have used the gallery tag but the thumbs produced are too small. Is there a parameter that I can use to increase the thumb size, please? TerriersFan17:03, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have just created a template called Template:EPC Article (see also Template talk:EPC Article for a user guide). This template contains an external link accompanied by an internal link to "European Patent Convention". I have just a small problem when inserting the template in the article European Patent Convention: the (self-)link becomes bold, which is not that nice. Can you help to insert some code to check what is the page name, and if the page name is "European Patent Convention", then add only EPC , and otherwise [[European patent Convention|EPC]] ? Cheers. --Edcolins21:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I created my entry wrong to begin with - I am sure I created it as an article, but my wiki-entry on google search shows up as (User:) and then the title. Also, if people search wikipedia for my entry, it doesn't show up unless they search for it with the word "User:" before it. How can I delete just the User: prefix title without changing the whole entry? thanks--Inky Dreadfuls21:55, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've created a version of the main page containing edit links for the five featured content sections (intended for use by admins). They're hidden via CSS (bypass your cache if they aren't), but this can be overridden by adding the following code to one's personal monobook.css (or equivalent) file:
#sysop { display: block }
I'm hoping that someone with better coding skills than mine knows how to relocate the "edit" links to the right-hand sides of the section headers (instead of below them). Any help will be greatly appreciated. —David Levy02:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It'd probably just be easier to make them visible by removing __NOEDITSECTION__, and then wrap the entire page in a <div class="mainpage">, and *then* add .mainpage div.editsection {display: none;} to Common.css, and *then* put .mainpage div.editsection {display: inline;} in your skin. --Splarka (rant) 07:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, now having looked at your page, I see that the edit sections you are using are referring to transclusions. Two things: You can't use ID tags as there should only ever be one ID of one name per page, use class="sysop" and .sysop { display: block }. To get the effect you are after, you probably want something like Uncyclopedia used to have on the main page (based on the same design): old Uncyc main page. View the source and enjoy. --Splarka (rant) 07:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the advice! I've updated the CSS code. (Please let me know if know if it's correct now.)
The Uncyclopedia source code appears to be based upon our earlier HTML (which was modified to accommodate users with screen readers). I don't know how to integrate the desired functionality into the current setup. —David Levy09:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I see that the style of those headers is appled to the <h2> tags. Ick! Putting a span or div into a header tag is a bad idea. So, if you cannot change those headers to divs, the easiest thing I can think of is (for example, I changed your test page thusly): <div class="sysop plainlinks" style="float:right;font-weight:bold;position:relative;top:-1.95em;padding-right:1em">[[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_article/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}_{{CURRENTDAY}},_{{CURRENTYEAR}}&action=edit edit]]</div>. It is a bit dirty (using a position hack), but if it is only to be viewed voluntarily, then it can't hurt. Note that I combined the div and span as you don't need both. Also, you should put display:none into the div style there rather than MediaWiki:Common.css (unless it is site policy not to, or unless there are widespread plans to use that class to hide stuff most users don't wanna see ^_^). BTW: If you wanna discuss this more I'll be on IRC in #wikimedia-tech for another hour or two. --Splarka (rant) 09:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a standard way I should cite a book giving the ISBN or a key only, something like {{cite isbn=1234|page=56}}, and then modifying a single entry for this book somewhere? Do you have to create a template yourself? -- Nils Grimsmo21:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but I don't think there is a way to specify a book by the isbn and have all the details come up. If you want to cite a single book, just use {{cite book}}, if you need to do the same book several times, you could create a page in your userspace, which contains the specific use of {{cite book}} you need for that book, and then wherever you need to use it, use subst:, eg {{subst:User:Nils Grimsmo/mybook1}}. AlbinoMonkey(Talk)12:51, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your answer. Keeping something like this in my user space strikes me as a bit odd. Would not others hesitate to change it then? I think it would be great if there was a standard "built-in" way of doing this, as some books are cited many hundred times, as for example Introduction to Algorithms. Assume that somebody would want to make a page about a specific author. Instead of finding all references by searching, and updating them by hand, she could just update the template. Having one instance of the {{cite book}} would also minimise the number of unfixed errors. Citing by ISBN avoids misunderstandings with mismatching page numbers in different versions and such things. Considering the amount of trafic on this page, I assume it was not the right place to ask. What would be? Village pump (technical)? -- Nils Grimsmo16:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It does not give the references using the {{cite}} templates though. And my main issue is not finding the information, it's just that I am allergic to redundancy :) Nils Grimsmo18:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Rollback summary
This has probably been asked before (maybe even by me, I can't recall), but is there any way of adding a way of making an edit summary when performing a rollback? It could simply involve one extra screen, a la "Delete page" or "Move page" asking for a reason - the standard "reverted edits by XXX to last edit by YYY" isn't always sufficient to let people know why rollback was done, and the only way at present of adding this sort of summary is going through the longer non-admin process. Grutness...wha?05:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, other than by using one of the many automated tools. However, some months ago, an edit link was added to the "diff" view, so you can click the edit link on the left-hand pane, tab to the edit summary, type something, and press enter. That saves a step over the old way of loading the old version, before pressing edit on it.-gadfium06:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That would do it...yeah - hadn't thought of that, thanks. BTW, mention of the "Delete page" function reminded me of something else I wanted to suggest... see below. Grutness...wha?06:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Did you delete the talk page?
One thing I've run foul of two or three times when deleting pages is forgetting to check whether there was a discussion page... sometimes leaving a lone talk page floating in the void. Is it possible to put a message in large friendly letters on the "page deletion complete" page which will come up if there's an undeleted talk page that needs dealing with? Grutness...wha?06:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki:Deletedtext could be modified, but I don't know how you'd parse (with wikicode) $1 -> Talk:$1 for any namespace but main (I tried {{#ifexist:Talk:$1|You may wish to delete [[Talk:$1|the talk page]] as well.}} but it does not parse). So, all you could do is add Something like "[[Talk:$1|talk page]]?" and it would only work for main article space. Other than that, it'd need to be a feature request most likely (either a parser function or edit to the mediawiki code to return a talk page as $3). --Splarka (rant)
Hmm, good idea, one could modify the current magic word (or make another) to take parameters, like {{MAKETALK:$1}}, where $1 is any string (if it contains a colon and if Namespace of Namespace:Pagename exists as a real namespace, insert _talk after it. If not, prefix string with Talk:). Ok, someone write it! ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 00:36, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Depending on the reason for deletion, you may want to remove [[Special:Whatlinkshere/{{FULLPAGENAME}}|links to this page]] and the [[{{TALKPAGENAME}}|talk page]].
This is sort of like CSD-R1 (redirects to articles that have been deleted). When I last looked, there weren't many CSD-R1, I presume that others are running queries on offline dumps and periodically cleaning them up? --Interiot12:36, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Brokenredirects shows them and some people run bots to delete them (redirect.py). On orphaned talk pages, someone has a huge list somewhere in userspace I'll try to find it. Sadly, people are rather overzealous in deleting them (and I'm not exactly sure why they need to be deleted?) and numerous pages with old VFDs or even talk page archives get deleted. User:R3m0t/Reports and User:Rory096/orphanedtalks, but they are a little out of date. Kotepho12:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If there are enough people going round cleaning up then it's not as urgent an iea, though it could still be worthwhile eventually. Grutness...wha?00:41, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What this feature would allow/force, though, is for the decision to be made when the subject is deleted. This would insure that most orphaned talk pages remaining would have some value (at least, in the eyes of the person who deleted the subject), and not 'accidentally' left over and needing cleanup. Perhaps, once a feature is worked out, a policy (excluding User space) of placing a template on spared talk pages like {{deletedsubject}}, allowing the non-deletor to briefly state why the page wasn't deleted, might be handy. Eg: {{deletedsubject|this page is continually VFD'd and recreated}} => The subject of this talk page was deleted, however, this talk page might still have value. The reason given: this page is continually VFD'd and recreated. 2 cents. --Splarka (rant) 07:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Update #2: Ok, after some consultation with gurus, there is a way to make parserfunctions work: as an include. This could be in a sub page like MediaWiki:Deletedtext/include or it could be in a template like Template:Delete_talk_check. It could be added to the top of MediaWiki:Deletedtextand/orMediaWiki:Confirmdeletetext (as a simple {{MediaWiki:Deletedtext/include}}). The contents of the include should be something like:
{{#ifexist:{{TALKPAGENAME}}|{{#ifeq:{{SUBJECTPAGENAMEE}}|{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}|'''Note: A [[{{TALKPAGENAME}}|talk page]] exists for this page.'''<br />}}}}
This checks if the talk page exists, and also checks to make sure you are not *on* the talk page of course (the inverse could be done too for subjectpage, but not really as useful). However as it is now technically possible (and more drastic), it isn't really a technical point and should probably be moved to the message talk pages, or to the proposals portion of the Village Pump ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 08:36, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Changing this table
I want to know where/how do fix the type of table, like the one i create in this post:
That is called a <pre> tag. You can find that out by viewing the html source of a rendered page and see that it is wrapped in pre. Now, to see where the CSS is, view the same source and look for CSS pages loaded. In this instance it is via this line:
Now, you could go to the skins directory and change that, but usually one doesn't have such access on a wikimedia wiki (unless you have a local install or direct access) so, one edits MediaWiki:Common.css (or optionally the default skin css which is usually MediaWiki:Monobook.css, but as this is an in-content element, Common.css is more appropriate, unless you are on an older version of mediawiki where it does not exist). Go to the editable css file you chose (probably Common.css), and copy that block of css in, and edit it as you wish.
If however, you are not an administrator, you'll have to a) be content to edit your user CSS, or b) edit the tag directly each time, example:
Thank you Splarka, you have given me greate advice, now i have one more question for you how do i,
without using the <br> tag or hitting enter, make the text wrap around, instead of continuing on the page, like your
pre box started to.
I think you completely miss the point of <pre>, the point being that it stands for pre-formatted text, meaning, it should never wrap text itself. If you want wrapping text with proportional spacing, you can use <tt> or <code> ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 07:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm.... then it seems to be because that template is actually a redirect to another template. This is apparently fooling the job queue in the image links department. What you can do is null edit all those articles. However, since that involves editing them anyway, you might as well change the template tags to the proper link like this. I'll leave a note on your talk page. --Splarka (rant) 00:19, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cross-wiki template
Is there any way to transclude something from one wiki to another? Clearly, the normal curly-brackets method does not appear to be working... ~ Booya Bazooka17:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Or, at the very least, can we please give it a CSS class so that people can dip into their monobook.css and display:none it? With all due respect to whomever made the alteration, for the majority of Wikipedians familiar with how a history page is laid out, it takes up a great deal of screen space and is closer to the center of the screen than the history data editors will be looking for. — Mike(talk • contribs) 18:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I ran into this problem over at Wikimedia Commons, but I have seen it here, also. In a gallery, some of the images do not appear, nor is there a workable link to them. I know the images exist, because I can copy and paste the script to the search box and it goes to the image page. I was told at commons that the problem is at my end because they can see my gallery without difficulty. I use Internet Explorer 6.0, and yes, I have purged the browser cache. --Joelmills01:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm encountering somewhat of the same problem. As of this writing, on New York State Route 131, the NY 131 and NY 37 shields will not display even though the images exist. I've tried everything, purging the images, purging the NY 131 article, with no luck. --TMFT - C 06:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC) The issue I described earlier has since been fixed. --TMFT - C17:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Problem with the Hendrik Wade Bode article
Hi,
I am the original author of the Hendrik Wade Bode article. I have noticed lately that the edit buttons of every section of the article now appear in German. So instead of edit they appear as bearbeiden . The problem is the article is in English and in English Wikipedia. Any idea why this happens? Thanks. Dr.K.02:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi,
I've been reading about some breaking news in which AOL has began using XFF headers or something like that. Now I've read the XFF article several times, gone to other resources, and it's still way over my head. So, what exactly is going on with these "XFF headers"? (Keep in mind that I know nothing about computers). Thank you for your help in advance AdamBiswanger103:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand it correctly, it means AOL users will be identified by their IP address, and not by their proxy address (which keeps on changing). In other words, AOL users will have the same IP address, at least for their login session. Again, I'm not an expert, so I'm not sure if this is right. -- Where04:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a non-technical explanation - every computer has an IP address which is sort of like your home phone number. Everyone has one, including AOL users. When AOL users connect to web servers (like Wikipedia), they connect indirectly through a bank of "outside lines" (proxy servers) which have their own IP address. There are fewer of these "outside lines" than AOL users, so each one is used by one user for only a very short period of time. Web servers (like Wikipedia) can always see the IP address of who is directly connecting, but for AOL users it's the IP address of the proxy server (outside line) rather than the actual user. If the XFF header is provided, we'll be able see both the proxy server's address (in the existing, normal, way) AND the actual end user's address. Unlike home phone numbers, most IP addresses aren't really permanent (if you use a dial-up connection your computer may get a new one every time you connect to the internet, if you have a broadband connection you might get a new one when you turn your computer's power on), but I suspect you get the general idea. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What it really means is that we now have the means to block individual vandals who are doing their dirty work from behind AOL proxies. Before, an AOL vandal might get a new proxy IP address every time s/he viewed a new page, making him/her almost impossible to block effectively. Also, any blocks that were put in place were almost guaranteed to affect innocent editors who happened to be assigned a proxy IP that had been previously used by a vandal. Therefore, blocks on AOL proxy IPs had to be given short durations to minimize collateral damage.
Now we can track and treat vandals from AOL like we do any other vandal, without inconveniencing all the helpful editors! This, combined with the recently added ability to allow registered users from a blocked IP address to log in normally, is removing the technical hurdles that have kept us from dealing decisively with some problem users in the past.
Hi. I'm trying to add a photo to the Susan Blackmore article but it doesn't want to work. It simply will not display and I can't see what I'm doing wrong. I've left the link on Talk:Susan Blackmore#Photo - help please. Can someone help? Thanks, A bit iffy 07:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)It's OK now. Obviously it was the same temporary Wikipedia image problem as reported further below. A bit iffy11:48, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
shortcuts
Is a shortcut the same as a redirect? I ask because we are told not to use double redirects from Wikipedia articles, but at the same time the WP namespace seems to be full of "shortcuts". The linked page then comes up with "redirected from [name of shortcut]", so these links to other WP namespace articles appear not to be formatted correctly.--Shantavira07:54, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Shortcuts are, indeed, just redirects with a particular form of name. However, these aren't necessarily double redirects unless the Wikipedia-space page gets moved and the shortcut isn't updated accordingly. Zetawoof(ζ)09:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Image won't show...
Hello,
I recently uploaded this an image to Bromo-Seltzer. All I see is a white box instead of the image. If I click on the box, the image appears. What might the problem be?
Thanks,
68.225.92.19707:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The wiki software seems to be having trouble generating resized images. I guess there's nothing we can do but wait for it to be fixed. ~ Booya Bazooka09:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Undeletion problems
A move war a few months back left Template:ASUE organisation at a different title. Somehow, when trying to move it back, the good version has been lost, leaving two redirects pointing at each other. I tried restoring the deleted page, but although it says the restoration has occurred, the histories have not merged, and the template seems to have been lost. Can I get it back anyway? smurrayinchester(User), (Talk)14:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I managed to get the source code back from Special:Undelete, but I still can't see where the history has gone. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk)14:39, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How do I make the caption appear at the center below the image? The caption usually appears at the left. If you know where I can find this help topic, please tell me. Thanks for your help.--Wikindian23:39, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A how-to article from WP was just transwikied to WB, where I'm working on re-wikifying and standardizing it for a WB chapter.
My technical question is this: The article's former namespace here (Proper_care_of_a_cactus, now tw'd to this page) just shows a deleted article, though the talk page is still there. Shouldn't there instead be a pointer to the WB chapter? After all, someone worked on the article to begin with, and might wonder where it went. SB Johnny01:05, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No. Cross-namespace redirects are denigrated, cross-project redirects would be howled down. Put a link in the Talk page, put it on the original author's Talk page, but don't redirect to the Wikibooks page. User:Zoe|(talk)01:37, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wasn't necessarily thinking about a redirect, just a different template for deleted pages that have been tw'd (so instead of saying "Wikipedia has no article...", it would say "Because (reason), this article was transwikied to (project), etc." and then have the redirects on the other project if needed.
The problem is that I can't find the original authors, because it was deleted. (I did leave a link on the talk, but I'm a little confused about how the talk page is still there even when the article has been deleted). SB Johnny02:37, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't show up on Eknudsen's contribs... why do you say that?
I suppose this might be more of a policy question after all, since this would involve leaving the article up (with it's history intact), but providing a pointer-link to WB, and locking the page. SB Johnny17:57, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Page deletions remove themselves from contributions. Gadfium checked the deleted page history with his admin powers.
Hi, I'm particularly interested in this one, but not due to the technical aspect. As the blocking admin, I'm wondering why this is the first I'm hearing of this. Additionally, as one of two checkusers who have checked the edits coming from this IP (you know, the ones you can't see with Special:Contributions/195.188.152.16 because they were done by logged in users with usernames like User:I vandalize using an Intel Core Duo, User:Stop giving google blowjobs you wikislut!, User:The admin raping championchips, User:Get ready for a WoW attack!, and User:Wikipedians are FUCKING BASTARDS, among others), I'm wondering why you're overtuning my checkuserblock without consulting me; surely the big template that says "This IP is blocked because it's being used to create vandal usernames" would indicate that perhaps I know something more about the situation that would be worth asking about. Could you indicate which of the legitimate users listed above (and it has to be one of them, because I just checked again and there are no legitimate users on this IP in the last month, period) emailed you and made such a convincing arguement as to warrant unblocking without discussion with the blocking admin or either of the two checkusers involved? Essjay(Talk)08:08, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Should be resolved now. There was a slight slave desync on the blocking table, and a different block record was listed for this IP. --Brion08:12, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
{{free screenshot}} Use this if the software itself you are screenshotting is under a free license, and note the software's license. Again, check out Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for more.
Nevermind, I figured it out. It was a redirect page, and the page that it was redirected from was on my watchlist. Learn something new every day! KarenAnn12:06, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thoughts? Can this be easily fixed (class="noprint"), or substituted with something like "citation not provided" in the printible version? Thanks, GChriss14:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if this is in the right place or not.
I've been developing the articles on Jonatan Cerrada, his songs are all in French. Is it worth adding English Translation of his song names? Tipexcom218:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC) tipexcom2[reply]
Hi. I think I may be posting this question in the wrong section but I was hoping you could tell me how to report another user for abuse? Thanks!Jack3049100:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:AN and read the "Are you sure this is the page you are looking for?" section to figure out where your complaint belongs. If you think that the complaint may be better described as a dispute than outright abuse, give WP:DR a look also. --iMeowbot~Meow00:15, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This article may be confusing or unclear to readers.
"Pump"
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2.jpg&action=edit&redlink=1){kind=link}
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