Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

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.

FAQ: Intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear, and cause the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. This is an ongoing issue we are working on.

Details about the occasional slow speeds and deadlock errors: here

Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar).

Please add new topics at the bottom of the page.

« Archives, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212

Technical archive

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Problem: thumb for animated gif does not work

There is a problem with creating a thumb for animated gifs: The first frame is reduced in size, the follow-up frames aren't, and the image becomes a mess. Here is the sample code that I tried (for use in de:Charge-coupled_Device):

[ [ Image:CCD_charge_transfer_animation.gif|thumb|right|180 pxl|my_description ] ]

The image is from Wikimedia Commons.

IMHO, there should be an option to avoid animation on thumnails anyway, or maybe this should be the default. These flickering images are quite annoying when reading text. Currently, the only way out is a [ [ Media: ... ] ] link, but a thumb would be helpful for the reader. -Anastasius zwerg 17:41, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Resizing animations doesn't work. I think this is because the server that produces reduced-size images can't handle resizing. Cheers, [[Sam Korn]] 17:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I have found a workaround in the meanwhile, based on :en:User:Duncharris/playbox. I have created a non-animated thumb and uploaded as a separate image. The code is this:

<div class="thumb tright">
<div style="width:182px;">
[[image:CCD_charge_transfer_animation_thumb.png]]
<div class="thumbcaption">[[media:CCD_charge_transfer_animation.gif|Play animation]]</div>
<div class="thumbcaption">descriptive text...
([[commons:Image:CCD_charge_transfer_animation.gif|Source and more info]])</div>
</div>
</div>

Unfortunately, clicking on the thumb only opens the thumb, not the animation. "Play" animation runs the animation alone, "Source and more info" shows the Wikimedia Commons page with the animation. Better solutions are welcome. --Anastasius zwerg 18:42, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Signature

Hello. I have a question about my signature.

My wikiName is Serhiodudnic (12 characters). For the signature I use(in the field SpecialPages->NickName - I have checked "Raw signatures"): "[[User:UserName|nickname]] [[User_talk:UserName|(talk)]]", well there is like this "[[User:Serhiodudnic|nickname]] [[User_talk:Serhiodudnic|(talk)]]", but this is not work. I would my signature shows like this: nickname (talk), but in page it shows like this: nickname (talk)

Why?

Perhaps you are testing it on your talk page? If a link would link to the page it's on, it goes bold instead of linking as normal. --Ashenai 18:27, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, yes! Really! Thank you very much! :)

serhio ^(talk) 18:39, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Happy to help! *bings* --Ashenai 18:40, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Can I insert a image in the signature? (but the image links to my page)

You can, but it is suggested that you don't because of the load it causes on the servers. See: Wikipedia:Transclusion_costs_and_benefits#Emergency_measures and Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 04:43, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. If it is a servers question, I will not set a image in my signature; anyway, of "script point of view" I don't see in what way I can insert in the place of my nick name a image. I have tryed: " <a link="http://wiki/myWikiPage"><img src="http://mylocation/myImage.jpg"></a>" but this don't work...

serhio ^talk

11:29, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there's a way to include off-site images. — PhilHibbs | talk 13:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Due to copyright issues, remote loading/hotlinking issues, etc. the <img /> tag is one of those stripped out by the sanitising parser. Rob Church ^{Talk | FAD} 10:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

A very strange password/impostor problem

Today I created accounts, using my real name (Paul Klenk, just like my user name) at de.wiki, fr.wiki, ja.wiki, pl.wiki, it.wiki, sv.wiki, nl.wiki, and pt.wiki. (This is to protect/maintain my identity across these sites, and assist with a possible future project.)

At the exact moment I was creating these accounts, a vandal created an imposter account at the Spanish site, with my name, Paul Klenk (es:User talk:Paul Klenk). He claimed to be me, "Paul Klenk from New York". The vandal account has been blocked.

I am trying to figure out a way to solve this problem. I do have an inquiry at es.wiki, but because of the language barrier, it is a bit tricky to communicate.

How do we change this Spanish account's password temporarily so I can take over the account? Can the e-mail address be checked and or changed? (It is not set up to receive e-mail, or I would try to write the person.)

If you have expertise with this, please let me know.

paul klenk ^talk 23:38, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I have set up a temporary account, called es:User:Temporary Username, at the Spanish site. I do not speak Spanish. If a Spanish/English-speaking user would like to correspond with me at that site, that is fine with me. I am checking messages there. paul klenk ^talk

Try looking at m:embassyDunc|☺ 21:35, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

dunc, thanks for reminding me I left this here! I am working with several admins at es:wiki. They are considering giving me the account, but have not reached a consensus and are still waiting for other admins to weigh in. We may be able to take care of this solely at es:wiki, but if an admin here would like to just fix the problem and give me the page, I certainly wouldn't object!!! LOL. paul klenk ^talk 21:41, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

An administrator has no control over user accounts other than blocking and unblocking them. Only a developer can hand the account over to you; it would require modification of the entry in the users table.

Incidentally, there is no way for anyone to see your password; it's hashed one-way, and so even the developer team can't actually go and get it/decrypt it. Rob Church ^{Talk | FAD} 10:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

IIRC beurocracts could rename the vandal account out of the way allowing it to be re-registered though. Plugwash 22:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Example

Info	Play	help
	Play
This is my idea for how a play box should work and what it should look like.

	Play
This one is similar but without the text. Which is better?

There is a current problem with playing sounds. I have therefore devised a playbox which is here on the right. If it looks like an image box, that's because basically it is. It's not that pretty at the moment, but that can be easily fixed.

There are three columns each with a link and a button (which we'll have to get these made to look pretty but these placeholders are okay for the moment):

1. Indicates whether it is a sound file or a video file, e.g. be a copy of http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/icons/fileicon-ogg.png for ogg file. Clicking the link or icon takes you through to the image description page and more data about the file.
2. Clicking on the second play icon plays/downloads the file.
3. For help because these files are quite complicated.

The caption goes beneath the box, as with pictures.

There are also a few formatting issues that needs to be sorted out as all of it ought to be blue and there are white lines where the table is. I'm also not sure that the text and the icons are required, maybe just the icons with alt text would suffice.

Still, neat, eh?

Comments

Please comment here. If you like it vote for it and it'll get noticed. Please say whether you prefer the version with or without the text. I think I'm inclining towards the one without the text. Dunc|☺ 11:47, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

• I don't particularly like the example-image for the info, but the play button, could probably be included in {{listen}}. Also, I prefer a written example for people seeking help with their media. Why don't you like the current template? - Mgm|^(talk) 12:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the problem with the current system are:

1. That [[Media:example.ogg]] encourages linking through without going through the image description page first (very important for fair use copyrights), but also misses out on lengthy caption which is possible on such pages
2. That the template does not offer the option of a caption to appear on the page.
3. That template does not lead to
4. That use of a template is rather messy

I have template:soundbox which is perhaps a little better, but I'd like to do this automatically. Perhaps I should get some proper icons drawn, since the ones above are placeholders. hmm. Dunc|☺ 20:09, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think you need the help icon that prominent. Most of the content we have here is provided with little or no explanation of its mechanics. For example the image enlarging has this tiny little double-picture image. If you see it you can work out what it means, and yet it's not intrusive if you know what you're doing. This isn't like MS Office's Tip of the Day that can be dismissed forever at the click of a button, whatever design is chosen will be unchangeable so we need to think about helping new users without constantly insulting the intelligence of regulars. Perhaps the help icon could be of the same scale as the magnifying one, or at the most 32x32 (though that's probably pushing it).

Also, future-proofing. Some day MediaWiki will no doubt have the ability to extract a first frame preview from video footage. Where then does that image go? Alternately, if the contributor decides to manually take a sample frame to include in the media box (this is being experimented with for the Cookbook Wikibook) how do they define the thumbnail image and yet still keep the other formatting aids this design allows without manually creating a template that recreates the code of the automatic one?

Also, customisability. In the See Also section there's no text in the way so the media box could be as big as needed without disrupting anything. However for in-paragraph usage you'd want a more discreet version. There would need to be a way to define this.

I think this is a great idea, it just needs to be made as robust and discreet as possible. Garrett^Talk 18:09, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Is there an interwiki "You have new messages" feature?

I have a user page on es:wiki. Is there a way for me to receive that orange "you have new messages" alert, or to design/format one of my own, so that if a message is left at es:wiki, I get an alert at en:wiki?

Thanks.

paul klenk ^talk 17:22, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

No. ~~ N (t/c) 17:33, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Nick. paul klenk ^talk

If there's one wiki you use more than any of the others, you could simply redirect your other user talk pages to your user talk page on that one - say redirecting the usertalk:Paul Klenk at es.wiki to the same page at en.wiki. The only real drawback with that is the nuevo mensaje box wouldn't appear at all while you are working at es.wiki. Grutness...wha? 23:40, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, redirecting the whole page is a great idea. Thanks. paul klenk ^talk

It would be, if it worked. Sadly, cross-project redirects don't. Superm401 | Talk 01:23, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Strange - the redirect I have from my mi.wiki talk page to my en.wiki talk page seems to work fine AFAIK... Grutness...wha? 01:34, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Mmm. No - scratch that - it doesn't seem to work after all. A pity. Ah well, you could always leave a note at the top of your es. talk page saying "please leave any messages at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User talk:Paul Klenk]. No guarantee that people would read that, but it's worth a try. Sorry that my suggestion didn't do the trick. Grutness...wha? 01:37, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

That's what I do, but I rarely edit on other projects anyway. Superm401 | Talk 02:19, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

From wikibooks I did "#REDIRECT [[Wikipedia: User_talk:ParallaxTZ]]" on my talk page. And it works -- it doesn't immediately redirect, but puts a huge link at the top of the talk page that you can't miss. Go see. ParallaxTZ 21:36, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Edit history of former redirects

I would like to know of the edit summaries of former redirects are available to be viewed with special:undelete/. For example, if an article with the title Fooer was moved to Fooder, making the original title Fooer a redirect. The move would generate an edit summary in the edit history of Fooer, stating there was a move, and the reasons why it was moved. If Fooder is later being moved back to Fooer, would the previous edit summary at Fooer be lost? Thanks. — Instantnood 19:27, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes. ~~ N (t/c) 20:06, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Now if a page has been moved from Fooer to Fooder, and have been moved back from Fooder to Fooer, where can I find the edit history of the first move? Or is the edit history of the first move already lost? — Instantnood 18:20, 12 October 2005 (UTC) (modified 16:55, 13 October 2005 (UTC))

If A is moved to B then back to A. The edit histories are the same. Unless A was edited while it was still at B. At that point, goto special:undelete and you can select to restore the deleted portion (which was a redirect). ∞Who?¿? 17:00, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I am actually looking for the edit summary saying "A is moved to B: Reasons" for the first move from A to B. The special:undelete page in this case is blank. — Instantnood 05:50, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I thought you were gonna ask that :) See Move logs, and search for the entry. ∞Who?¿? 07:33, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks so much. :-) — Instantnood 19:30, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Where can I get assistance setting up a mediaWiki site

We are about to start using MediaWiki in our teaching at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia and I have a number questions. e.g.

• how to setup templates for different types of pages that people can use to start the page
• how do I put users into different groups which will be used to control access to certain pages

Where can I ask these types of questions or find answers or documentation?

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l. kate.

Although, it sounds to me like you don't want MediaWiki, you want a conventional document management system; MediaWiki certainly isn't designed to restrict users from certain pages, it being built on the wiki philosophy, which is free and collaborative editing by anyone. In addition, we don't have the template features you're after, although you could theoretically use {{subst:XXX}} to achieve this. For more information, see Why should I use MediaWiki? on Meta. Rob Church ^{Talk | FAD} 10:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Cross-namespace links

Is there any easy way to see a list of pages with cross-namespace links out of article space--for instance, pages that link from article space to User, Talk, or Wikipedia namespace? For the most part they shouldn't exist, so it would be good to have an easy way to monitor for them. --Aquillion 20:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

It would be reasonably easy to do a database query on this - looking for strings like "[[User:" or "[[Talk:" - but the current database dump is a bit old and may not be much use (since many of them will have since been changed) Shimgray | talk | 00:49, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Here's a list for you to work on: http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~avar/tmp/crossns —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 00:18, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we would all love this feature

All editors have reverted a vandal, looked up his contributions, and found dozens of other edits. Sometimes not all of the damage has been undone by other editors, forcing a careful checking of the history of all the articles the vandal recently edited. Whenever I follow a link from the a vandal's contributions profile, the instance of vandalism may be the current version or another edit may have follow. Not wanting to allow an instance of vandalism to be buried, perhaps, by legit edits, I click the next edit link just to be sure the edit which follows is a revert. Doing this adds up if I am check 10+ edits. Wouldn't it be great if in the contributions profile, there could be a mark next to any edit that indicates an immediate rollback? lots of issues | leave me a message 23:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

• This is an excellent idea! It would be easy to implement (either by check if an admin clicked Rollback, or if the article that was edited and submitted was a version that predates those edits). — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-7 11:45
• It would be easy to detect a rollback because they have a distinctive(though forgable) edit summary. However, it would not be reasonable to have the software compare the latest edit with every previous version every time you load a contribs page. Do you have any idea how big a use of resources that is? It would be reasonable to check whether the latest edit was the same as the page two versions ago. That requires only one comparison. Superm401 | Talk 01:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
• everytime there's an edit, check against the version two records ago. if they're the same mark it as a 'verified' revert (to stop forgers). then you only have to do the check once for every edit, instead of once for every history view. --71.112.11.220 01:33, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Subst current date with a template

Is there already a template to subst the current date via another template. (Confused?) Ok, if I use a template {{test template}} and do NOT subst it, is there a way, to have it show the date that it was used? I created Template:Log date to use inside the other template, but every way I have tried fails. Ie.. subst:Log date, using noinclude, etc. Basically I need to be able to use template 1 w/o subst, and have it subst the date it was used.

Any ideas? Thanks. ∞Who?¿? 08:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm guessing that you're looking for a way to respond to Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_deletion#templates_need_updating. Unfortunately, I don't think there's an easy solution. One possibility would be to create new versions of the cfd, etc. templates that MUST be subst'd. These could use {{Log date}} as it exists, assuming the link to the WP:CFD entry should use today's date. Another approach would be to require the spelled out date be provided as an argument to the cfd, etc. templates. WP:AFD's approach to this problem relies on creatng a separate article for each AFD discussion (the link from the article goes to its AFD page whose name does not depend on the date and the AFD discussion page is then transcluded in a "by day" log file - this breaks down when a given article is renominated and requires 3 edits to make a nomination). -- Rick Block (talk) 19:32, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Pretty much yea. I do not want to change the way the {{cfd}} tag functions, but want it to link directly to the day page. I thought I seen a template that did this awhile back, subst the date when used, but couldnt find one. So far all I have is User:Who/Test1, which shows the current date. ∞Who?¿? 01:34, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Silly idea, but have you tried using includeonly in the template? As in <includeonly>{{subst:{{CURRENTMONTH}}</includeonly>? It should just subst on the page using the template only, and the substitution would of course be permanent, thus showing the time it was placed on the page. -- Ec5618 17:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Nope, not a silly idea, but one I did try though :) thanks. It didnt like it too much. ∞Who?¿? 17:56, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's of any use to you, but you might try using five tildes (~~~~~ : 19:00, 10 October 2005 (UTC)). I realise that you are constricted by the format used to log the discussions. Since I've noticed similar problem before, I suggest we file a bug report (feature request) or something - Ec5618 19:00, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I've considered it, but it's not necessarily a pressing matter. ∞Who?¿? 00:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge

I submitted an article on Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge that is indicating possible copyright problems. As the manager of this Refuge, I wrote all of the text that is on www.fws.gov/lowersuwannee site and it was put on the web as public domain for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The main goal of listing this information on Wikipedia is to facilitate spreading word about the Refuge.

Can you assist? Please reply to me at

canoekat (at) earthlink (dot) net

Copied to talk page and Copyright problems page. — Catherine\^talk 03:18, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok, now I've gone and cleaned it up, complete with pretty public domain pictures! — Catherine\^talk 13:22, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Slower in Asia?

Hi, I live in Seoul and haven't been back in North America for quite some time. Just wondering if things are any faster over there or in Europe. When adding interwiki links from our Wikipedia I usually open up fifteen windows at a time right away just in case something weird happens and no pages open for ten minutes or so, which is what happened all day today. And for some reason Opera started turning up blank pages so I switched to Firefox which was a bit better even though pages only loaded properly for about 15 minutes at a time all day today. For some reason metawiki never had any problems though. Anyway, I was wondering if any of those problems have anything to do with being in Asia. I've seriously been considering having a bit of a presentation of Wikipedia over here because I live right in the centre of Seoul in an area just perfect for that sort of thing, but the thought of having to tell someone to wait and come back 15 minutes or maybe 30, maybe more...that scares me and I wouldn't dare try that until I was sure that things were going to work. Mithridates 18:44, 10 October 2005 (UTC) / io:user:mithridates

Wikipedia speed varies. As you can't control it, perhaps you should save the pages used in your presentation to local disk and do the presentation from there. For some of the same reasons why it is a good idea to store your other presentation graphics on your local disk. It also may be a factor that your timezone may tend to try to use Wikipedia during periods when low-demand-period maintenance is done. (SEWilco 20:00, 10 October 2005 (UTC))

It should never be taking 15 or 30 minutes to load a page. If that's happening, I guess something else is wrong. However, we've just installed over 20 new servers in South Korea, and the Korean Wikipedia is now running on those, so those you should find that wiki very fast. Other Asian language wikis will be moved there if no problems occur during this trial period with the Korean Wikipedia. Angela. 23:28, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

If it happens again, please contact a system administrator on the #wikimedia-tech channel on irc.freenode.net. -- Tim Starling 03:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I only have experience of UK. Generally response is attrocious (Bad = >10s, Attrocious = >30s), often being 2 or 3 minutes. Saves are worse and not guaranteed to work (This is why my major gripe with the AfD process works - you can't guarantee to succeed in editing 3 pages in quick succession). One thing to note is that in UK daytime response is better by a factor of 2 or 3 than in the evening (when the US is awake). -- SGBailey 09:05, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, actually I did notice that the Korean Wikipedia was amazingly fast yesterday. I do some work there but I'm primarily a sysop on the Ido Wikipedia which is much less fast. The past few days have benn all right, however. Mithridates 01:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Restoring all revisions except one or two

Recently, I noticed that when restoring a page, there is no "select all" button or something of that sort that allows admins to select all the boxes automatically and then choose which revisions of a page not to undelete. It would be pretty useful for removing particularly bad edits that should not be kept in the page history (e.g. Jimbo Wales' personal info). I was wondering if was at all possible to add such a function? Sasquatcht|c 03:09, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like something that should be easy to implement in Javascript. If you send me the raw html for the undelete page (for an article with more than four or five deleted revisions), I'll see what I can put together. —Cryptic (talk) 10:09, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Proper functionality would be nicer, but it can be done without getting RSI: Delete everything, then undelete only the revisions you want to get rid off. Move those revisions to a dfiferent page name and delete them again. Then undelete all the good revisions. Remember to turn off "move talk page" when moving the bad revisions. --fvw* 20:28, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Yea, I'm aware of that trick but it kinda seems like a pain... anyways, just throwing some ideas around =) Sasquatcht|c 04:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Placement of successive right-justified tables

Could someone take a look at Template_talk:Catalan-speaking_world#Usage_remarks? We seem to have a problem, and I'm sure there is a general solution that works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox (and, one hopes, everywhere else), but the two solutions we've tried so far have failed. The problem basically arises when we have two successive, large, right-justified tables or images. There might be a problem specific to how {{Catalan-speaking world}} is implemented. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:24, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Other templates to fix IE6 Unicode font bug.

When the font lists of Template:Unicode and Template:IPA were moved to MediaWiki:Common.css, it somehow broke Template:PIE and Template:IAST. These were apparently just copies of (an old version of) Template:IPA with different title and class parameters (and italicization in the case of Template:PIE). The templates had worked previously; broken they did not fix the IE6 Unicode font bug.

I was able to fix the broken templates by deleting the style parameters and changing the class parameters to either class="Unicode" or class="IPA". But now it occurs to me that this may prevent someone from customizing class="PIE" or class="IAST". Is it possible to specify Template:PIE with class="PIE" so that class="PIE" is by default the same as class="Unicode" (or class="IPA")? --teb728 08:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

You can simply use class="PIE Unicode" and class="IAST IPA". --cesarb 02:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

strange...

The vandal account TheVillagePumpIsOkay,ButImNot (talk · contribs) appears to have vandalized the Village Pump twice, but his contributions show that he only edited the Village Pump once. What's going on? --Ixfd64 09:19, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

• Extreme db lag. I got a request to look at history of a page earlier, and the IP didn't even show up, but it was in the IP's contribs. Only thing I can think of. ∞Who?¿? 09:56, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Blocking anons only

My ISP (202.180.83.6) has been blocked three times today because of an anonymous vandal. Twice, I have lost work that i was doing because of it. If this keeps up, I may have to quit wikipedia until such time as I can get another IP (and given my financial lack of resources, that may be a considerable time). Surely there must be some way that anons can be blocked from using an IP while allowing registered users to continue using the same IP address? Please? Grutness...wha? 12:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow, people are going to think you are my sockpuppet! See Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal. thanks - Martin 14:40, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, a sockpuppet with tens of thousands of edits is pretty impressive :) I note a similar comment re blocking anons only at proposals, BTW. Grutness...wha? 23:22, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Can't make new pages with IE

Here's another strange one... ever since the block I mentioned above was listed, I've been unable to make any new pages with IE. Every time I try, I get "HTTP Error: Resource is not found". I can still create pages OK with Safari and Mozilla, but I don't always have access to them. Editing existing pages with IE seems to be fine. It's got me stumped - anyone got any idea what's going on? (I haven't changed my preferences at all, so it's unlikely to be anything to do with that). Grutness...wha? 14:22, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting - sounds like it may be related to the recent change to make non-existent pages correctly return 404 Not Found. When exactly do you get this message (steps to reproduce)? And do you know if you're using a proxy server? Tom- 15:31, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, my bot has been getting the same error. If I create the new category, it runs fine, but if I dont' I get the 404 error. I thought it had to do with using this link en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=NON-existant-article&action=edit instead of en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=, but I got the same error with both. This is only when trying to create a new file. ∞Who?¿? 15:38, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

You use Macs, don’t you? There is special processing for Mac IE now, see bugzilla:2676. Susvolans ⇔ 15:42, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh yea, no, no proxy server for me. Windows XP btw. The page works fine with Mozilla, but shows up different in IE. When my bot runs this command:

GET http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Category:Bosnian_football_managers&action=edit

It gets this in return response. I think the new changes send a 404 code with the page, IE sometimes will igonre the server side 404 page and use its own, Mozilla will use the server 404. Perl on the other hand just sees the 404 and dies. ∞Who?¿? 15:50, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm also having trouble creating new pages. Will try another browser and let you know the results. paul klenk ^talk 22:48, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it's an IE thing. Just created a new page with Mozilla. paul klenk ^talk 23:09, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, I do use IE and Mac (IE5.2.1 and OS10.2.8), but creating new pages was no problem at all up until yesterday. As I said, it's fine if I try to create new pages with Safari or Mozilla, but not IE. I don't know if I'm using a proxy server (sorry), but the step in the process is identical to that mentioned above. If, say, I tried to load either [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mippity-moppity-moo] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mippity-moppity-moo&action=edit] it would try to load but would be unable to, coming up with the message as mentioned above. Grutness...wha? 23:32, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I have the same problem. When I click on a red link, I get a 404 error instead of an edit page. And I'm on Windows Me. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:11, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Yep, it works fine with Firefox, but I've been having problems with Firefox lately and hate to use it. BTW, with IE I also get the 404 error when I try to "delete" a page that somebody else has already deleted. 172.184.238.193 03:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Whoops, that was me. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:26, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Windows ME? Egads! Which version of IE? android79 03:28, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

6.0.2800.1106. I can't afford to upgrade my operating system.  :( User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:51, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Our article on the 404 error says IE will ignore a 404 if it's less than 512 bytes. A quick look at the sample Who's linked to above shows it's almost 25 kilobytes, so it shouldn't be a problem. We really need to do something to reduce the bloat. --cesarb 03:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

A quick look shows more than 10 kilobytes are used by the <charinsert> bits on MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. --cesarb 03:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Works fine for me in IE 5.2.3, Mac OS X 10.4.2. --Brion 22:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

strange - still no go in IE5.2.1/OS10.2.8. Grutness...wha? 01:12, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Still happening for me. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:53, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Zoe, I had this problem before, but have since been able to create new pages. Now I just tried it again, and was unable to. paul klenk ^talk 05:13, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I've switched back to Firefox in order to access Wikipedia, though I hope it isn't going to hang my computer up like it has been doing. But this is unacceptable for people who have no choice but to use IE, the largest browser in the world. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:47, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I cannot find any report on bugzilla about this problem. If it is still happening, someone should file a bug report there. --cesarb 23:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay. (Embarrassed silence) So... erm... how do you do that? Grutness...wha? 00:17, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/, you have to register with your email (which is visible to anyone, unlike here), chose "Enter Bug", "MediaWiki", and enter the details. I'd do it (I already have an account there), if not for the fact that I do not have a computer with MSIE, and so the bug report would end up like "someone said somewhere MSIE has some problem with something related to 404s on the edit pages". --cesarb 00:29, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Did you already report it? It's not necessarily an IE issue, as perl's get function is now receiving the 404, where as it didn't before. I have a temporary workaround, but think they must have changed something in the response headers for this to happen. I don't think it has to do with a Microsoft update because it effected people with Macs too. «»Who?¿?^meta 10:07, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I found this report bugzilla:3161, it deals with the Special:Export function, but it discusses 404 header on the GET function but not with post. I am not sure this is the same issue or not. «»Who?¿?^meta 10:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Now submitted as bugzilla:3730

This is still happening. This needs to be fixed now. Not only does it make it impossible to warn vandals before I block them, I can't create new AfD entries, I can't see the contributions of users whose edits I see on Recent Changes, and it's going to drive away new users who will almost surely be using IE. 22:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Since Tom hasn't made any further response on this I've gone ahead and reverted the change for now. Please let me know if it's all working properly now. --Brion 02:48, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Now works fine using PERL using GET, described above. Thanks. «»Who?¿?^meta 03:46, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! I can now make new pages in IE again! Whee! Grutness...wha? 11:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Me, too! Huzzah! User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:29, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Username with Unicode right-to-left override character

Usernames with U+202E (Unicode right-to-left override) should be disabled. To see why, check out Special:Log/newusers at 15:57, 16:07, 16:21, 16:26, 16:32 for today, October 13. -- Curps 16:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

U+202B (Unicode right-to-left embedding) might not be such a good idea either. -- Curps 16:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Or if you need to see a slew of usernames using them really quickly.. see Category:Wikipedia:Suspected vandalbots. ∞Who?¿? 16:46, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

"What if" vandalism question

What would happen if a vandal reverted as many pages as possible to their starting point in history? Is MediaWiki designed to deal with that threat?

Eje211 21:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Same as any other vandalism; they'd get blocked and the pages reverted. --Brion 22:00, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

That's reassuring. I was afraid it was not technically possible to revert reverts. Eje211 14:23, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

It is impossible for any vandal to remove the revision history. They can blank, but only sysops can delete, and even that can be undone all the way back to the first edit. ∞Who?¿? 14:29, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Template bug

Hi, i was editing the article Huainan and using the template "{{Anhui}}" when problem occurred. No matter how i tried, the template wouldn't appear properly but instead appeared plainly as "{{Anhui". The same template has no problem on other pages (such as Ma'anshan or Lu'an). Please help. Great thanks! -- the baffled Plastictv 03:09, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

As I expected, it was an unclosed template somewhere else in the page. Fixed. --cesarb 03:38, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh so that's what's been causing the problem! Thanks a lot mate. :) --Plastictv 04:41, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Page history - Diff

When you click the Newer edit / Older edit links, it ends up as a diff between the next version (older newer) and its neighbour. Would it be possible/sensible to rig it so that you can step the left version and the right version independently. I often want to step through versions comparing them to one particular version. Thus we might end up with 4 links: Left older, Left newer, Right older, Right newer. -- SGBailey 08:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Edit page not "on top" option

Due to the speed of page dispaly and saving, I often edit several pages in parallel. When mid sentence on one page, having another page pop-up and steal my typing is a pain. Is it possible to set a preference to stop "new edit window on top" behaviour? -- SGBailey 09:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

This is hardly a specific Wikipedia question. Perhaps you should take this issue to the Reference desk. -- Ec5618 09:59, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I beg to differ. This is very wikipedia specific. It isn't a bug, so I don't report it at bugzilla. It is a wikimedia software configuaration issue (I assume), so I request the ability to configure it in WP:VP Technical. -- SGBailey 15:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

No, it's your browser. ~~ N (t/c) 16:14, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not our fault, but rather IE's. Wikipedia is not sending a z-layer command like pop-under ads do, it's just that WP edits are submitted using POST whereas Google etc. use GET, and IE seems to like giving focus to POST results pages. But anyway I do have a solution! I take it this is happening under Windows XP/2003? OK, first of all you need the handy-dandy Tweak UI, download and install it here. Once you've done that, you'll find "Focus" under the "General" tree. Merely check "Prevent applications from stealing focus" and then configure the flashing options as you like. Personally I find the repeated flashing annoying so leave it at 0 or 1 (3 is the default IIRC). Anyway, there's the solution. If you're not using XP/2003 I'm not sure the 9x Tweak UI has this option. Actually I don't remember if pre-XP even had focus-changing... Garrett^Talk 16:29, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

The original writer didn't actually say anything about what browser or platform he/she was using. I would, however, suggest that if you like doing multiple edits in parallel, a browser with tabbed browsing capability (e.g., Mozilla or Firefox) would be a good choice. *Dan T.* 16:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

True, but I can make sweeping assumptions! :) I've never known a non-IE browser to do this, and focus-stealing is most commonly programmed into (? or exclusive to) Windows programs, so that narrows it down quite a bit. But yes a tabbed browser is a good suggestion. I downloaded Firefox almost solely to see what the tabbed browsing was like, and I've never gone back. Garrett^Talk 17:53, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Changes to monobook.css (underlining)

Today, suddenly and with no warning, all links on Wikipedia pages were no longer underlined in my browser (Firefox 1.0.6 on MacOS X). I immediately suspected a browser issue, maybe corrupt preferences, restarted it, no change; rebooted the machine, same. I tried a different WP skin, and the underlinig was back. I don't know a lot about CSS or the way WP does style, so I started reading, and found that apparently an editor changed the Monobook.css file and removed one line,

a { text-decoration: underline }

with the edit summary, "don't force underlining". Unfortunately, it appears to have broken underlining in my browser; even with "Underline Links" checked, Wikipedia links are not underlined after this change.

There is some discussion on the Monobook.css talk page, but it's from months ago. I posted on the talk page, and the user's talk page. I would have reverted pending discussion, but that's beyond my technical chops, since the Monobook.css page appears to be generated elsewhere and I can't edit it directly.

Does anyone have any idea why that change would have prevented underlining, rather than just making it default to what's set in the browser? Did underlining disappear for a large number of other Firefox users today, or is this just some glitch in my configuration?

I also tried to override this with a monospace.css file as a user sub-page, but weirdly, adding that one line as the monospace.css file only works inside the edit/preview cycle (underlines return), but not after I save the page (and purge browser cache, etc.). Ideas? Thanks, MCB 01:38, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

The correct name is monobook.css. ~~ N (t/c) 17:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Just a typo on my part (here), the change to monobook.css did not work. On the advice of ABCD who made the change to the system Monobook.css, I had to check "Underline links: Always" in my WP misc preferences, but I should not have to do that; "Underline links: Browser Default" does not work after this change. MCB 18:01, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I also use Firefox (on Windows XP) and have noticed this problem. But I also checked Wikipedia on Internet Explorer and this problem occurs on that browser as well. --FlyingPenguins 20:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Same thing here, Penguins. It's actually getting quite distracting. Bobstar 20:56, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I just added the following to my user monobook.css (User:Ilyanep/monobook.css) and I think it makes wp a lot more readable...

a {text-decoration: none;}

It still underlines on hover, and that's how my own personal webpage works. I think it makes just reading a lot easier. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 21:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

And someone just changed this again. Look, if you want to change your personal stylesheet, go for it, but please stop screwing with things that affect the user experience of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who did not ask to have it changed. As far as I'm concerned, this is tantamount to vandalism. The question marks are very annoying. They must be even more so for anyone using any sort of assistive devices. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:27, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Images/media and red links.

Is there a reason why text links (the prefixed with a colon kind) to the Image: namespace don't produce red links? Sure you can use Media: links but why the distinction? Image:SomeRandomFilename.jpeg looks just fine while Media:SomeRandomFilename.jpeg does result in a red link? The main reason it's bugging me is that the watchlist use the Image: kind of link so it's hard to weed out deleted images when editing the watchlist, and also image links on various maintainance lists and talk pages also use the Image rather tha Media "namespace" causing you do end up on non-exsisting pages quite often (closed IFD pages also look "wierd" without any red links). --Sherool 02:30, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Access to edit histories

Apparently (some?) users have access to other users' edit histories. Is this privileged, or may any-one see other users' edit histories?

All edit histories are publicly visible. For the edit history of an article, click on the history tab at the top of the page. For a user's contributions, go to their user page and click user contributions in the toolbox at the bottom-left of the screen. --fvw* 06:29, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

What is the use of copper cathode?

Please Kindly assist me with the above question Also how can I get the copper cathode for industrial supply purpose.

Thanks, Charles Benjamin

This is hardly a specific Wikipedia question. Perhaps you should take this issue to the Reference desk.

Also, please clarify your question. What is it you want to know? -- Ec5618 13:34, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Zombie stub cat

The stub category Category:Business bio stubs though deleted seems to be as well populated as Category:Business biography stubs. Is this just major DB lag or is it some kind of technical problem? Would all the stub notices need to be removed and re-added to get them in one place? MeltBanana 14:34, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

The articles need null edits, since the template was changed to the new category. I'll take care of it. —Cryptic (talk) 17:23, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah - this should have been caught when the category was changed in September - someone must have slipped up. If you find any more like this, please report them at Wikipedia talk:Stub types for deletion. Grutness...wha? 00:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Is a redirect log (similar to page-move log) technically feasible

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Redirect and un-redirect log.

Redirecting a page is fundamentally a different concept than editing it... actually, it's exactly like a page move, except the "page move" target already exists. It should be logged in a different way than ordinary edits, more like the way Pagemoves are logged (in Special:Log/move and in Special:Recentchanges).

The question is, is this technically feasible? When does Mediawiki recognize that a page is a redirect... when it is saved after an edit, or only later when it is clicked on?

-- Curps 04:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirecting a page is exactly like editing it; it *is* editing it. Previous versions are still in the history at the original title, etc. --Brion 04:26, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but the log could still be generated. It'd just be a bit of work. Superm401 | Talk 07:15, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Disabling the new skip to navigation and skip to search links?

Is there any way to disable the new links at the top of the page that take you directly to the search and navigation sections? I don't need them because I can already use keyboard shortcuts to access the sections, and the links are a distraction for me. Also, was there a discussion page for this change, and if so, where was it? - Graham/pianoman87 talk 04:21, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

They are hidden in the CSS, and are designed for text-mode and voice browsers. If you're seeing them unexpectedly, can you provide details of your browser configuration and preferences? --Brion 04:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I am using a screen reader to navigate wikipedia, so I guess it means I should be expecting them. I'm using internet explorer 6 with windows xp Service Pack 2 and jaws for windows. - Graham/pianoman87 talk 04:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm also using the monobook skin. I only started seeing them today. - Graham/pianoman87 talk 04:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

See User talk:Tom-#Jump links. --Brion 01:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi there, I'm now back after a week away in sunny Edinburgh, going to look into this in the next few days. May well make an option to disable these, but they really need to be enabled by default. Tom- 15:58, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It would be best if they were enabled by default, for novice users of accessibility products. As I can use shortcut keys to accomplish the same function, they are not needed. How is it determined whether or not I am using a screen access program? Graham/pianoman87 talk 11:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

These can now be disabled with a new preference: Enable "jump to" accessibility links. Tom- 00:42, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

New editing form

Somebody changed the edit form to put a left-margin on the Save page button and minor edit checkbox, I dislike it, please change it back. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 06:11, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. No amount of tinkering in MediaWiki:Subject can fix it. It's specifically centered around something strange with the CSS labels of (span id) "wpSummaryLabel" and (label for) "wpSummary" and maybe the (div class) "editOptions". --AllyUnion (talk) 10:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I fixed it. Blame Tom- (talk · contribs) for the change to MediaWiki:Monobook.css (edit | [[Talk:MediaWiki:Monobook.css|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) that caused the new comments form to look all funky. --AllyUnion (talk) 10:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

And I thought it was Firefox being screwy. Alphax ^τεχ 11:45, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Newbie error or vandal?

Someone from IP 129.234.4.76 (talk · contribs) (not me) just tried logging into Wikipedia using my username: I got bounced from the system (logged out) and the system has changed my password, and sent me an email informing me of this. What is going on? -- Francs2000 15:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

This happens all the time. Someone thinks they had a particular account but fail to log in so of course request a password. The new password is sent to the owner which isn't always them. Both passwords, old and new, should now work when you go to log in, unlike some forums where the old password is deleted upon request of a new one. So don't worry, your account is still safe. Whew. :) Garrett^Talk 16:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Underlining

Ok, I may be imagining things wildly here, but weren't all the links on article pages underlined until just recently? 159.92.111.238 17:19, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

See section, Changes to monobook.css (underlining) above. I think the change was ill-advised, but don't know how to revert it. MCB 18:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, just to support that I don't like those changes. It bothers me quite a lot, it kind of makes wikipedia outside of the "internet link font" Janarius 13:25, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Bulk upload

I plan to upload a bunch of images soon since I'm working on articles on each Metro station in Mexico City. Each station has its own logo and we are still missing many of them (~50) all of them fair use. I was wondering if there is a bulk upload tool for EN similar to the one someone created for Commons. Thanks! -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 19:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

surely it shouldn't be too hard to modify the existing tool to upload here rather than commons Plugwash 20:31, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course. If I only knew how to program... ;-) -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 20:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

It is harder getting help for mere "fair use" images rather than free ones. (SEWilco 20:53, 16 October 2005 (UTC))

I thought so, but still wanted to ask anyway. The thing is, having the logo of each station in an article is just as important as having the article itself (read Mexico City Metro to see why). As far as I know the designs belong to the city and there may be no easy way to get free versions of them. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 00:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Have you taken look at m:Pywikipedia. It's a bot, and it's upload.py program (if that's what you call it) could be helpful. The description for upload.py: "Script to upload images to wikipedia...". I'm pretty sure it will work for en, but not certain. Oh, and you don't need to be Boris Grishenko to get it going either.--Commander Keane 07:12, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I didn't know it existed. I'll have a look at it. Thank you! -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 21:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a list of allowed bots in Wikipedia somewhere. I have seen it. There is one specifically for uploading a lot of images. The author(and user) of the bot said on his user page that he is willing to upload a lot of images if he is asked. Go, find it, it should be pretty fast (there are no more than about 20 bots allowed in wikipedia), and ask the author. He seemed pretty freindly on his talk page. --Msoos 12:45, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Are generated map images from www.planiglobe.com acceptable?

www.planiglobe.com allows users to create maps that carry a Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which appears to boil down to, "do whatever you want, just give us credit." Is that acceptable, or still too restrictive for Wikipedia? - Dcfleck 20:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

{{cc-by-2.5}} is listed as "free" (well, "free enough for us") on the ever-helpful Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. Shimgray | talk | 20:42, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

It's less restrictive than GFDL or cc-by-sa. cc-by allows someone downloading it to distribute altered versions without distributing them on the same terms as the original. If my understanding is correct, I could upload a cc-by image (it's one of the licences in the drop down box on the upload page). Someone else could then alter that, and they wouldn't be required to release it under the same licence. That doesn't appeal to me, but if planiglobe doesn't have a problem with it then I suppose we don't either. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:53, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Great! Thank you all very much for the quick replies. - Dcfleck 23:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

working toward watchlist rss feeds ( bugzilla #471 )

Have been attempting to dig a bit toward this as it seems long coming and increasingly important.

• Bug 471: Basic XML Feed support for watchlist (implementation idea: token)
• discussion on meta: and links to wikitech-l threads at Meta:Talk:Syndication_feeds#.

Here 07:58, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Download and setup of wikipedia

Ive read the download wikipedia article in the help section and I don't understand exactly how you set it up. I wish to download the whole of wikipedia minus the images if possible so I can look through if offline. Could you possibly provide a step by step guide to downloading and installing wikipedia? I read about file 'dumps' and xml but am confused as to how it all fits together as the help section article seems to be oriented to people already familiar with that type of software and files.

Wikipedia is database, not set a regular web-pages, so just simple downloading (with offline browsers httrack, TeleportPro or similar) I suppose will not work. In short You have to:

1. Install WAMP/LAMP (for MySQL to work no your PC)
2. install wiki
3. load database with data of desired language 'dump'
4. periodically update database (if You like)

any help? --AndriuZ 11:56, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

where do i get WAMP/LAMP from? so i install that, then sql, then I download and install mediawiki. what im confused with is the next part. when i navigate to index of wikipedia it has a list of 30+ different files ranging in size from a few bytes to 30gigabytes. If i just want the whole list of wikipedia articles in english with no images is that where I download it? if so, which one is it?

As another(albeit proprietary) option, see Wikipedia:TomeRaider. The steps are much less simple, but the updates slower. Superm401 | Talk 03:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

You should read the section about this in Wikipedia. I am not going to seach for it, but there is a *complete manual* for it (I have seen it). It helps you more then we can help you (and wastes less of our time answering something that has already been answered). On top of that, I would not advise you trying to do it, since it is A. very technical B. very resouce intensive (not only gigabytes and megahertzes but also human time).--Msoos 12:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

four tildes don't work

When I type the four tildes, it makes my name come out as SoothinR, instead of SoothingR and doesn't redirect to my profile page anymore. It worked a week ago, however suddenly stopped working today. Does anyone have an idea how this can be fixed? --SoothinR 20:49, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Go to Special:Preferences. what is in "Nickname"? Have you got "Raw signatures (without automatic link...)" checked or not? Try changing these things and see if it helps. --rbrwr^± 21:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, it works now --SoothingR 09:17, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

incredibly wide diff pages under firefox

I recently moved to firefox and found that the diff pages' width didn't adjust correctly: I have to scroll horizontally to see both the removals and the additions :( Anyone knows how to fix that? (Btw, that also sometimes happens with my personalized google homepage when it reloads automatically, if that's any help...). Thanks, Jules LT 21:25, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

That happens to me too sometimes. The only good fix I've found for when this happens is to reload the page. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 21:59, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a fix for that by adding horizontal scrollbars to oversized sections. I don't have a link handy but it's in my user JS. You only need the "cesarb_fixDiffOverflowLoadListener" section. It works wonderfully, even enormous URLs won't make you scroll the whole page horizontally. Garrett^Talk 04:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Except when it doesn't work, which causes one of the columns to get incredibly tiny. I am the one who created that function, and gave up using it because of it. If you find somewhere that bug happens, and manage to fix it, please tell me (some of the problematic diffs can be found at User talk:CesarB/monobook.js). Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one to whom that function doesn't work well :( --cesarb 17:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I'd be glad to know too... Thanks anyway, Garrett; reloading hardly ever fixes it, but sometimes at least... Jules LT 19:21, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

god mode lite

Not sure where to post this, but just to warn anyone who uses this script to be careful. I've been having a few problems with it exchanging characters on reverting (e.g. [1], [2], [3].) I'm not sure but it could be since I started using Firefox 1.5 Beta 2, so keep an eye out. I've notified the author Sam Hocevar. the wub "?!" 23:28, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually I think this is more the fault of MediaWiki 1.6 Alpha (or whatever it is we're running at the moment). All the browser does is send a username and a special ID and tells the server to replace that user's contributions string. I don't think it has any direct control over the content. Garrett^Talk 04:46, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Vanishing rvv

I'm pretty sure I've had at least four rvv vanish today; I'll pay more attention to future ones. The updated page was redisplayed after Save, but the vandalized version still showed in "My watchlist" and "History". (SEWilco 05:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

Being logged out of WP

Is this only happening to me, or is it happening to other people? Every now and then I'm just being logged out automatically, and its starting to happen very frequently now. Is this some kind of bug? 213.122.126.156 13:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Happens when the servers are slow. Try clicking the "remember me" box on the login screen. Lupo 13:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try it. 213.122.67.9 08:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Probably not related, but no matter what permissions I allow for wikipedia.org in Zone Alarm, I can only stay logged in if I shut down Zone Alarm. Any recommendations from Zone Alarm users who don't have this problem would be welcomed. --Craig 12:56, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

No TOC

Table of Contents seems to be missing today. (SEWilco 13:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

...and has now reappeared, at least in this article. (SEWilco 14:47, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

Alt language

This has happened to me in the past, and it is happening to me again now. When I hold my cursor over a link (either the ones on the left, or the tabs at the top of an article, or the ones at the top right corner) the alt descriptions appear in another language. I always have my language set to English, and never change it. It looks to me like Norwegian. Take a look. Does anyone else experience this? Is it a known issue? --Daniel Lawrence 15:33, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Template behavior changes: Default and arg transclusion

Someone named 'avar' in #mediawiki says that we now support syntax like {{{arg|default}}} and {{template|arg = {{template2}} }} (SEWilco 16:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

That "someone" is probably Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, one of the developers. --cesarb 16:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I haven't seen any details. For example, although {{{URL|{{{url}}}}}} allows both spellings for an arg I have not tested {{{URL|{{{url|{{{Url}}}}}}}}}} nor do I know how deeply it can be nested. (SEWilco 19:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

Didn't this break a bunch of templates last time it was implemented? ~~ N (t/c) 23:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

probablly how else do you think this stuff gets debugged? ;) Plugwash 23:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

btw i just put this to use on {{DB Character}} so i could put the template back into the Mr. Popo article. Plugwash 00:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

IIRC the breakage was a bug; I'd suppose he has tested against the cases which broke last time before going live with it again. --cesarb 00:54, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Okey, what it does support now is {{{param|default if param is not specified}}} and {{template|paramater = {{woo, a template inside a paramater}}}}, and for the record, this code is not mine (unlike the previous one), which is why it's working;) —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:47, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

---

For those interested this means that we can now have optional sections as well as optional values in templates using some hacking, for instance say you wanted to create a mointain template as I've done on User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason/Mountain and always wanted to specify the height and name of the mountain but not always the mointan range (as it might not be in one) then you might call it as:

{{User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason/Mountain
| name = Mount Everest
| height = 8844
| rangeoff = 
}}

Which would yield: User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason/Mountain

But if you wanted to specify the range you might do:

{{User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason/Mountain
| name = Mount Everest
| height = 8844
| range = Himalaya
}}

User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason/Mountain The downside of this is that you always have to specify what you want to omit when calling the template so adding new optional values to it means that you have to change all the pages that call it, but it's better than nothing. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 19:36, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

This was already possible using {{If defined call1}} (see Template talk:Peru region table for instance). However, it becomes now possible to have optional sections which won't appear if the parameter is undefined. This means you can introduce optional sections without having to modify the pages calling it. Demonstration :

{{User:Rorro/Mountain
| name = Mount Everest
| height = 8844
}}

yields:

Mount Everest
Height	8844

If you want to specify the range,

{{User:Rorro/Mountain
| name = Mount Everest
| height = 8844
| range = Himalaya
}}

yields:

Mount Everest
Height	8844
Range	Himalaya

You can see the code in User:Rorro/Mountain and User:Rorro/Mountain/range._R_ 23:00, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Great, that's much better! —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:24, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Minor problem with the new syntax

Previously, a parameter value could contain (text)]](text)[[(text). Now, this prevents the template from being recognised in the code and the raw code is output. Is this fixable? _R_ 13:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Nothing in what has been mentioned indicates such a change in behavior. Whatever changed should be documented. However, I don't know whether this change should be called a bug or a feature. (SEWilco 19:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC))

I don't know either, but some templates on fr: relied on the old behaviour (and I bet some here do, too). That's the reason why I'm asking. _R_ 22:25, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not very good at this, yet, but here is a very good help page on it. m:Help:Template. Assuming you haven't already read it. «»Who?¿?^meta 05:29, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

As we're discussing changes and announcements of changes, the changes to that page are in [4]. But I did not notice mention of changes affecting behavior of argument content. (SEWilco 06:30, 22 October 2005 (UTC))

Blocks

I have no idea if I have put this in the right place, but I was wondering what the point is in not being able to edit articles when logged in, if the IP address you are using is blocked. Is it because of technical limitations? FireFox 18:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

So that you can't vandalize as an anon, get blocked, log in, get blocked, create a new account... —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 18:22, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah right. I asked because I can't log in at school anymore which is annoying, ah well. Thanks, FireFox 18:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I have proposed a patch to work around this problem, take a look: bugzilla:3706. --cesarb 23:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

see also Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal. Martin 23:15, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Template Help Needed

I run a wiki at www.youthrights.net, one aspect of that project is a law library for laws that affect youth. It is organized by state and by issue/law. I'm trying to use a template to better organize the index/table of contents page in the law library.

For example, this is the current Boating Age Law page that links to the boating age laws in all 50 states: http://www.youthrights.net/index.php?title=Boating_Age_Law

I'd like to use the basic template here to better organize it: http://www.youthrights.net/index.php?title=Template:StateLaw

The issue is that I'd like to use that same template for all the various issues/laws the law library will cover, and use variables to customize it for each. So I'd like the template to have the state name (i.e. Missouri) as standard in the template, and the issue be a variable (i.e. boating age) that can be customized per page. Its tricky in that each of these is also an internal link.

I'm probably not being clear, but that's just how clueless I am on this, I don't even know the proper language to describe it.

This is basically what I wanted to do, but it doesn't work: [[Missouri {{variable like Boating Age, or Curfew}}]]

Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about and how to do this?

See any of our city infoboxes, but the basic idea is: you call the template like {{Missouri|age=18|curfew=none}}, and on the template you use {{age}} and {{curfew}} to get the value of the parameters. --cesarb 00:49, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict, what I said is mostly duplicated) Yes. What you need to do is make the parts of the template you're going to customise be filled only with {{{<name>}}}, where <name> is a tag you can call.

For example if my template "Ingredients" contains {{{chocolate}}} and {{{coffee}}} I can then call them like this...:

{{Ingredients|chocolate = 2.5g | coffee = 1.2 L}}.

To see this in use see, for example, the source of Template:Infobox CVG and the source of a page that uses it.

I hope that made sense. :) Garrett^Talk 00:52, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Please check out those links, cause you can see the level I'm at I guess and what I want to plug these things into. I know how to call a variable from the template, but I want to drop that variable in a link. For example I want [[Missouri {{variable like Boating Age, or Curfew}}]] as an item within the called template, to function just like a regular link such as [[Missouri Boating Age]]. Does that make any sense? - KPalicz 01:26, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, kick ass, I figured it out. Go here to see the template, and here to see it used. The error (seemingly) on the template page is what threw me off. I thought it wasn't working the whole time, when it really was. Damn I'm dumb. KPalicz 01:45, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

It may be a factor that templates use two braces, {{ }}, while template variables use three braces, {{{ }}}. (SEWilco 03:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC))

can't view images

I can't view images inside Wikipedia.

My setup: G4/450 AGP, OSX Panther9, 896MB RAM, Firefox 1.0.7

What do you see instead of the images? ~~ N (t/c) 14:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

You haven't blocked images from this server have you? preferences|web features|images|exceptions. It's easy to do by accident Ojw 21:14, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

XML Output of Logs

I am requesting the log pages such as Block Log, New Users and Recent Changes be made available in XML format. This not only reduces server load but also is much easier for programs to interpret than standard HTML. 67.60.52.155 14:53, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

see m:Syndication_feeds ∴ here…♠ 19:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Crediting the author of articles

Hi.

According to recommendations one should mention five major editors of an article when one is to print it or reproduce the article elsewhere. My question is how to value major contributors since this is hardly practically possible in most cases?

Fred-Chess 15:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Usually the "credit" requirement is satisfied by linking to the history page, but if you really need to know who the biggest contributors are, try the Wikipedia Page History Statistics site. — Catherine\^talk 18:24, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

"Save page" showing a preview instead

Lately, I've been having a recurrent problem with page editing. I'll make the changes I want, then click on "Save page", but instead of the changes being recorded I get a preview, like I would if I had clicked on "Show preview" instead. Sometimes this will happen four or five times before I can get the changes to register. Is this a known problem, or something on my end? —Josiah Rowe 17:21, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

You're not the only one; I get this a lot, and others have said the same thing. Don't know what is causing it, but if you keep trying eventually the page will save. Antandrus (talk) 17:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Still doing it -- SGBailey 15:34, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

It happens when the servers are slow. I'll venture an educated guess based on my understanding of how this whole thing works, but without having looked at the sources and the configuration: when you click "save", your request goes to a front-end server handling HTTP requests. It sees that you want to save and contacts a database server to store the new text. If the database servers are too overloaded and can't fulfill that store request, the front end server gets a time-out. It knows it couldn't save the text and does the next best thing: it treats it like a preview. (A preview is essentially just a save without storing the changes in the database.) There you are. Maybe someone truly knowledgeable will pipe up now and correct all the errors in this description... Lupo 18:55, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

And yes, it's a known problem, and yes, retrying will eventually succeed. Lupo 18:55, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

The Mystery of the Disappearing Watched Page

I've noticed that some of the pages in my watchlist occasionaly get removed. In particular, I have to add Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism to my watchlist on an almost weekly basis. Has anyone else noticed this? - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 00:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I've had this same problem with a couple of the pages on my watchlist. Wikipedia:Templates for deletion seems to be the most often one to disappear from my watchlist. BlankVerse ∅ 02:30, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if it's at all related to Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Watchlist weirdness... —Cryptic (talk) 07:09, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Image display problem???

Can anyone figure out why the first image at Great Lakes Storm of 1913 won't display? It does exist, if you go directly to the image page, but it won't show up in the article, just as a red link. It also doesn't show up at Gallery of 1913 Great Lakes storm images/Other images. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-21 03:15

The problem is that it's a PNG which is over the 12.5 megapixel limit. Please reupload it in a format that won't kill the servers, e.g. a JPEG or small PNG. -- Tim Starling

Way to break our shit. --SPUI (talk) 21:42, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Same to you. You crash the site, I'll break your shit, fair deal? -- Tim Starling 18:31, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Recursive template calls

I've got some template coding issues that I hope someone can help me with, or direct me to where I should ask if this is not the right place. First question; are recursive template calls possible – e.g. can a template call itself with different arguments based on which link inside the template you click? How would you code it? Typically the template would be a front page menu, and you want to stay on the same page even after selecting some menu options. Say, by default the template {{menu}} is called without arguments and it displays some text and some links, and two of the links are something like [[{{menu|1}}]] and [[{{menu|2}}]] (I know the syntax is wrong, but bear with me), which conceivably leads back to the same URL but with different behaviours, i.e. the text displayed is different depending on the arguments 1 and 2. Second question; are there other, simpler, ways to solve such a front page menu task? Thanks a lot. --Eddi (Talk) 09:43, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

To make a template do something different, you'd have to pass it something which is different between two "same URL"s. (SEWilco 12:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC))

Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates recommends against templates calling other templates. A recursive call sounds like a potential server-stopper. —Michael Z. 2005-10-21 20:07 Z

As far as I read the guidelines they recommend against templates calling other templates in cases where the calling page and/or the called page are frequently edited and/or they are linked by many other pages. This may or may not be the case, depending on what is the "front page" as I call it. I'm basically looking for the right syntax to achieve the task but still not be "too recursive". – Or a completely different approach altogether providing the described menu behaviour. Hope I'm not too greedy... --Eddi (Talk) 21:33, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

RSS for watchlist?

Is there a way I can make an RSS feed for my watchlist? Sorry if this has been asked before, I couldn't find anything. It would be a really nice feature. Pojo 19:12, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Not yet. See m:Syndication_feeds#Watchlist feeds and add any further info you can find. Thanks ∴ here…♠ 19:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Usernames with "$ + digit":

Weird things happen:

See [5]

Note the discrepancy between the first field and the second field. It seems $4 is interpreted as a parameter and substituted with the empty string.

I think this is just a display issue, the $4 appears to be correctly stored in the database, nevertheless, it displays incorrectly in Special:Log/block: [6] and in Special:Contributions (here) (not that there are any contributions for this user, or ever will be). Note mouseover shows that it was indeed the correct $4 version that was blocked.

I haven't checked if this applies to articles with a $+digit, or other places where the display discrepancy occurs other than block log and contributions history.

Can someone perhaps report this to Bugzilla?

-- Curps 20:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow. You're right. That's a disturbing bug. What you described is bad enough. However, when there's a username with just $, then a number, like "$4", it doesn't show up at all in many places.

Block log fixed (and in general, most such that didn't save bogus version of text to db should be fixed now). New user log recorded the bogus text to the database at the time, but any new ones should be correct (eg [7]). --Brion 23:10, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Furthermore, this does apply to page names as well. I created a sandbox page called User:Superm401/Sandbox/$5Test. When you edit it, for example, the $5 doesn't show up in the Editing ... header. I'm sure the article name version of the problem extends to many other places as well. The best solution is probably to ban it in article and usernames. Several other characters are already banned and people make do. See Wikipedia:technical limitations. Superm401 | Talk 21:25, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

As you found out the hard way when you created User:$4, any accounts with $+digit are now getting automatically blocked on creation. The dollar sign followed by a non-digit should still be OK. -- Curps 21:32, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Works fine; presumably the fix above fixed that as well. Please don't run around declaring entire categories of things to be banned for technical reasons just because nobody bothered to tell us there was a bug so we could fix it. --Brion 23:27, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

This is identical to a bug with a dollar sign in the title of an article. This comes up quite often in WikiNews. I was told they intentionally strip out the dollar sign due to some security concern. However, the inconsistent way it is stripped out, taking the following character with it, is certainly not intentional. StuRat 21:56, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Could you describe this "bug" and report it at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org please? We can't fix things nobody bothers to tell us about. --Brion 22:28, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Interwikilinks

They aren't working. Example 1: ko:Municipality of Strathfield. Example 2: Korean version of article. Can anyone explain why? - Ta bu shi da yu 00:53, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

It appears that if you don't want the link to activate, you format it [[:ko:Municipality of Strathfield|Korean version of article]]. You had [[ko:Municipality of Strathfield|Korean version of article]] Superm401 | Talk 01:37, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Added colons and hey presto! You can see the links now. Alphax ^τεχ 04:39, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Er... why?! Why would anyone want to hide an interwikilink? - Ta bu shi da yu 23:39, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

For all those cases when you only want the link to appear under "In other languages" and not explisit in the text, maybe? Shanes 23:50, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

You're confusing interwiki links and interlanguage links. Interwiki links link to other wikis as part of the text. Interlanguage links link to the same article on another language edition of the same wiki and appear in the sidebar (on the default skin). If you want an interwiki link to the Korean Wikipedia, use :ko:article or w:ko:article (or [[wikipedia:ko:article]] from most non-Wikipedia wikis), not just [[ko:article]]. Angela. 00:18, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah. That explains it! Silly me. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:21, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Printing GFDL-text

Hello again. I asked a question above, and am grateful for the answer I got there-- to follow the thread:

When publishing an article in a book, or other printed publication, is it necessary to list all contributors? In many articles, there are 2-3 people that have made 90% of all edits. Would it be sufficient to just mention those? And can users only making minor edits be disregarded? I am referring to the legal issues here, not just recommendations/suggestions. // Thanks, Fred-Chess 11:32, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Section 4b reads:

List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this requirement.

So I personally take it to mean you need to credit at least five people. Ink and paper being cheap, I don't see why you wouldn't credit everyone. That's my recommendation/suggestion - but if you want a definiative answer, you'll need to hire a lawyer. The technical matter of figuring out who those five authors are, and rejecting any contributors whose edits fall below the threshhold of copyrightablility (reverted vandalism, fixing a simple typo, etc.) is not a problem that the mediawiki/wikimedia community has chosen to solve for you. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 11:41, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Cardiology category not working properly

I tried categorizing the brain natriuretic peptide article under cardiology. However, for some reason, it's categorized uncer the cardiovascular system category! Is this a known problem? Andrew73 19:53, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

You seem to have figured this out ([[ ... ]] rather than {{ ... }}). -- Rick Block (talk) 22:49, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirects such as WP:NP

Anyone else noticed that these don't work? Chris talk back 18:20, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirects to special pages and other wikis have been disabled since they're much harder to revert than normal redirects and commonly used for vandalism. Angela. 00:35, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Bad Section Edits

A few minutes ago, I made two section edits that went awry and erased everything but the edited section. It may have happened to others; I'm not sure. The diffs I could find, all showing the trademark "section edit" summary, are http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Superm401/Sandbox&diff=26228979&oldid=26228910 and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk&diff=26228252&oldid=26228181 --Superm401 | Talk 01:59, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Can you describe the editing and submission process for these edits? On both, you had made the previous edit shortly before. Was there simultaneous editing going on? Back/forth clicking? etc --Brion 02:22, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I didn't ever have either open for editing in more than one tab(or window). I also didn't use the back button in these cases. First, I edited the RD talk and posted a section(I think manually, not with the new section button[I don't think it matters, but...). Pretty quickly I realized I had a typo, but I am confident that it was after the page had fully loaded. I clicked the section edit button and added the "?". I think I previewed it, just because I hate to have to make two (or more) minor edits after a meaningful one. It previewed fine; the rest of the page wasn't there, but that's normal for section edits. I then saved, and everything vanished but the section. I then modified my sandbox page to have a few sections. I saved, and I'm pretty sure waited for it to load completely(though I'm slightly less sure about this one), clicked the edit section button again, made a nonsense edit, then saved. I was very careful to pay attention to what I was doing, so I know I didn't click preview(why would I). However, it forced me to preview 3 times, the most I've ever had. Finally, it saved and erased the rest of the page, as expected. In both cases I definitely used the edit section button. I'm sure some of that detail is extraneous, but I hope I've clarified. Superm401 | Talk 03:34, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Numerous times on a very old, slow laptop I have found that if I don't wait for the entire page to render in Firefox (any version) then the submit button will act like a preview button. It's very annoying. - Ta bu shi da yu 10:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

It also happens on newer desktops. I've been getting this every now and again - especially accompanying the "preview" glitch mentioned a bit further up this page. If I'm editing one section of a long page and press save and it comes back with preview, I've learnt to copy what I've written to clipboard, reload the article and re-edit the section - otherwise I'm liable to lose the rest of the page. This happens in IE, in Safari, and in Mozilla. Grutness...wha? 22:47, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Whitespace issue

File:Toomuchwhitespace.PNG

Too much whitespace

Far too much whitespace! what is going on? - Ta bu shi da yu 08:20, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe somebody inserted a <br clear="all" /> tag? Just for testing, I inserted that tag between your post and mine. Thue | talk 12:25, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I just came across this on another article (Hugo Chávez). The problem is the two images, one directly above each other, each "connected" to a different paragraph. The formatting, as it's given, requires that each of their tops be aligned with their respective paragraphs, and the only way for it to manage that is to add a bunch of whitespace and shift the lower image's paragraph downwards... Anyway, to avoid it, you can either move/remove/resize one of the images, or move one of them over to the other side. Or add more text, of course. Also note that one reason why this problem isn't usually caught is because you won't see it if you just use section editing on one of the two paragraphs involved; whoever added the image that "broke" it didn't notice because of that. --Aquillion 07:24, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I have seen the same problem on a lot of pages. They look fine in Firefox, but "spaced out" in MSIE. I have solved the problem, especially if the text to images ratio is low, by putting the images together at the top of the article rather than attaching them to paragraphs. Hard to explain, but if you look at the before and after results and look at the code you'll see what I mean. Sorry, the only page I've edited recently that I can remember had this problem deals with the vagina, so you have been warned:

• Before
• After
• Diff

If you look at these pages in Firefox, they will be identical, but in MSIE 6 on Windows XP you will see that the "before" look is spaced out and the "after" looks fine.

--Craig 10:21, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Red link causes 404

Forgive me if this has been raised already, but I'm increasingly getting 404s on many different machines whenever I try to create a new page. What could be the matter? JFW | T@lk 11:12, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

It's being covered above: here. JFW | T@lk 18:28, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Caterogy page elaboration

Sometimes a raw category page doesn't give enough information about the articles in a category to know if they're worth clicking on or how they are related. For instance -- you wouldn't have any idea what "Key System" means on Category:Streetcars_in_North_America Is there any way to add text to a category page for a particular item in the category? -Archier 18:00, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

No. --cesarb 19:48, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Back button not working

Has anyone else noticed this. Usually happens when if i'm trying to get back to the Watchlist. Just started in the last day or so. I'm using Firefox on Linux. josh 19:03, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's the same issue, but I just posted an navigation button issue at Back and Forwards Button Behaviour with Articles with Same Name and Different Capitalisation

Images and edit section fields

At Alliance 90/The Greens, I put some images into a row in the right side of the article. This results in all the edit fields of sections following the images (and displayed left to theme) now are stacked left to the last image in the middle of the text. Known bug? Is there some workaround? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 22:40, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Block link in the toolbox

There's now a block link in the toolbox for administrators when visiting user and user talk pages. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 09:10, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to work in the Classic skin, however. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:53, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Commons image problems

See User:SPUI/wtf. Image:Amtrak schematic.png exists on commons, and I can embed it full-size or in a frame, or even thumbed as part of the text. But thumbing it in a frame gives a red link. --SPUI (talk) 09:23, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

• See above, where I had the same problem. They no longer thumbnail images larger than 3500x3500. For you, your best bet is to make a smaller version and add a link to the larger version on its Image: page. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-24 11:50
  • Argh, what bullshit. A smaller version won't show everything. --SPUI (talk) 21:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
    • In this case it may be a good idea to adopt the scheme that was used before thumbnailing was implemented. Create a super-simplified fat-line version with no text (maybe with a simple US coastline - I can give you a vector of that if you need one) but the same basic scheme (colors etc.) as your mega-detailed version. Put that in an image-frame on the target page, and link to the full version from both the frame caption and the small image's imagepage. Even if the thumbnail code did work on your Amtrak map, the thumbnail would inevitably look spindly and blocky and generally nasty. It would be particularly cool if SVGs had adaptive level of detail, but (right now) one has to do that stuff manually. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:48, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
• I made a smaller version of commons:Image:Tectonic plates.png, so the thumbnail in Plate tectonics would work. It got reverted. Maybe that means more poorly-announced changes are about to take place. (SEWilco 20:42, 26 October 2005 (UTC))
  • Further activity no longer implies any changes. (SEWilco 14:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC))

reverting an image

A new user uploaded a new pic replacing the image "Resurrection.jpg". How do I revert the image? (I already told the new user about this and asked him to upload his image under a different name.) Thanks - Tempshill 18:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Click on the (rev) link next to the revision you want to revert to. ~~ N (t/c) 18:33, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Tempshill 23:35, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

what if the page i want to create is already created, but the already created page feautres a different definition/information?

i'm very sorry if this is mentioned somewhere else on the site, but i can't find it.

please help.

Say you wanted to make an article about "Joe Taylor", a baseball player. But there was already an article at "Joe Taylor", for a politician. Then you'd create "Joe Taylor (baseball player)" instead, and you'd put a little note on the top of both Joe Taylor pages pointing to the other, saying "For the baseball player, see Joe Taylor (baseball player)". More details at Wikipedia:Disambiguation. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:59, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

(the following post was written at the same time as the one above e.g. i got an edit conflict)

see wikipedia:disambiguation for details but you basically have 3 choices depending on the relative merits of the two topics.

add an inline disambig link to the existing article pointing at your new one.

move the existing article and put an inline disambig link at the top of your new one (be VERY carefull with this choice though you are likely to ignite flamewars but sometimes it is the write option)

move the existing article and put a disambiguation page in its place. Try not to do that if there are only ever likely to be two articles on that disabiguation page though that just means everyone has to navigate to a second page rather than a portion of them (and hopefully that portion should be less than half if you choose the primary topic correctly)

remember when moving articles always do so by using the proper page move feature. If you can't do it yourself go through requested moves or ask an admin directly. Plugwash 00:05, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Article not appearing in category

Article Ça Va has category Category:Avant-progressive rock albums, yet it does not appear in Category:Avant-progressive rock albums. What gives? --Bruce1ee 06:04, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

It showed up after I null-edited the article. I've noticed that sometimes "failed" edits go through on the article, but related things like category listings, whatlinkshere lists, and image links don't get updated. —Cryptic (talk) 06:37, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The last edit I did on the article (which was to add the cat) did give an error and it logged me out - hence the anon edit. BTW how do you do a "null edit"? --Bruce1ee 06:51, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Edit the article and hit "save" without changing anything. —Cryptic (talk) 07:08, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Internal Links

I'm curious, I made an article WITH internal links but without any categorization (I'm new at this), and then somehow the logger didn't record any of them and then the admin reinstated some (not all) of them, along with the categorization. I'm very curious as to why the logger would remove them? Is it because I didn't put a categorization? I'm just confused because I wouldn't want to go through all of it and put internal links all over again in another instance. And my friend doesn't believe me when I tell him I did indeed put them in.

• What is the name of the article? Joyous (talk) 01:37, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

• The reference to "the logger didn't record any of them and then the admin reinstated" suggests to me that perhaps "the logger" may be "my watchlist". As the watchlist only shows the most recent change, the person only saw someone else's edit which added categorization. The editor may be unaware of the ability to go to an Article and using the History feature to see all edits. (SEWilco 14:54, 27 October 2005 (UTC))

Non Isolated High Voltage DC Testing

Looking for procedures, experiences and practices on how to complete a non-isolated 24kv DC test placing a engineer/human at equal potential to the 24kv DC test object without personal protective equipment (PPE) utilized.

Please reply with any technical references, practices, references, etc.

J. Harvey

<email removed>

This question should be asked on the reference desk. --cesarb 15:14, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Missing entries in Watchlist

No matter how much I fiddle with my watchlist, some edits are missing. If I look at my contributions, all edits they appear, and the page history, they're all there too, but not in the watchlist. In fact, it seems like the most recent edit of a page is listed, but earlier edits aren't. If I edit a page, the listing gets updated to that edit, and any previous ones disappear.

I saw an old bug on bugzilla that was fixed, so its not that. I try Ctrl+F5, restart FireFox, restart PC to no avail. Also happens in IE. --K. AKA Konrad West TALK 03:34, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

That's not an error, that's normal! By design, the watchlist shows only the most recent edit. It's a short overview of what's been changed, not a complete list of all changes. --Brion 06:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Bizarre. I guess I never noticed that that's how it works. Anyway, I wish it would show all the edits; then I can monitor pages just with the diffs from the watchlist. Oh well! --K. AKA Konrad West TALK 06:29, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

HTTP 500 errors

I keep getting "HTTP 500 - Internal server error", over and over again, whether I want to view a page, edit it, delete it, whatever. I have to keep trying five or six times before the task finally takes.

Also, if I use my Back arrow to go back to the Recent changes page, instead of taking me to the most recent version of the page, it takes me to the first version of the page I saw tonight. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:49, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not experiencing any such problem, is it over? --Brion 06:16, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I've been getting this a lot for the last couple days. "Refresh" usually works though. What is interesting to me is that it is a new error; I'd never seen it until a couple days ago. (Occasionally I get the "sorry we have a problem" error on a refresh of an HTTP 500 error page.) Antandrus (talk) 15:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be happening tonight. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:27, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Back and Forwards Button Behaviour with Articles with Same Name and Different Capitalisation

I ran into an interesting thing when looking at two articles: ETA and Eta. I have duplicated the same problem in both Firefox and MSIE on Windows.

To see this problem for yourself you need to have visited some other page (anywhere on the Web) before going to one or other of the above pages. Then load one or other of these pages. If you load ETA first you'll see that there is a disambiguation link at the top to Eta; if you load Eta first, the first link in the second section is to ETA. Click through to the "eta" page that you did not load. Now click your back button. You will go back two pages; the back button will skip the intervening page. Then click the forwards button; with Firefox you will go to the first "eta" page you loaded, but the forwards button will then be disabled, not allowing you to go forward to the next "eta" page; with MSIE you will go to the second "eta" page you loaded, skipping the intervening "eta" page.

Actually, here's an even more straightforward demonstration. Open a new browser window (Firefox or MSIE), type in the address for one of the "eta" pages, then click on the link to the other "eta" page. Look at your back button; it is still disabled, so you can't go back to the first "eta" page you loaded.

I'm not going to run an exhaustive survey of all the possible permutations and results, as I think I've made my point. It's also interesting that it happens in the latest versions of both Firefox and MSIE, so perhaps (since Windows is not a case-sensitive operating system) it's a Windows problem. Anyone out there running a desktop Linux system who can duplicate the problem?

Suggested solution: Perhaps the powers that be (forgive me; I'm new here) should restrict creating articles that have the same name, but are capitalised differently. Any thoughts, or am I missing something or the 50 billionth person to bring this up? :) I did look around but didn't see anything similar.

--Craig 11:03, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Another example: from any Wiki page (say Main Page), go to CAT, then from CAT go to Cat (another article). Now hitting the "Back" button takes you back to the Main Page and not CAT. This is in IE6 on WinXP. --Bruce1ee 11:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

These are simply bugs in IE and Firefox (not exhibited by Safari on Max OS X, BTW). The hostname portion of a URL is case insensitive (because DNS is case insensitive), but the rest is case sensitive. Instituting a naming restriction in Wikipedia to cater to software bugs strikes me as completely unnecessary. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:53, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I agree with you 100% from a technological point of view and am aware that the host name is case-insensitive by definition. From a practicality and usability point of view I disagree with respect to the URI; what is right in a perfect world isn't necessarily right in the real world. In addition to that, I think that having articles with identical names but with different capitalisation (ETA/Eta, CAT/Cat, and probably lots more) is just confusing, especially to the masses who have forgotten where their "Shift" key is, so I would think that would tip the balance in favour of avoiding the issue. That said, if there are thousands of such articles out there then perhaps it's more work than it's worth, but I do think it's worth the consideration of whoever would actually make such technical and policy decisions. --Craig 15:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry if my answer sounded overly flippant. I meant in this case, not in general, I don't see a reason to change Wikipedia for these specific bugs. I'm not sure how many sets of articles there are with names that differ only in capitalization, but I suspect it's at least thousands. In all of these cases I think it's important to include a link to articles with titles in other capitalizations to address the confusion factor. With the 1.5 version of the software, article titles can now even include non-ASCII characters - I strongly suspect moving to case insensitive from where we are would be very unpopular (there's even a subset of users unhappy that the first character of an article title is always converted to upper case). And, if you're wondering, technical decisions are generally made by the volunteer developers who work on the project (anyone who can help is more than welcome to join the effort) and policy decisions are generally made by community consensus. If you feel strongly enough about this to pursue it in either the technical or policy arenas, please do so. I'm a user, just like you (perhaps I've been around longer) - ultimately your opinion counts just as much as mine. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:41, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

No worries about the almost-flippant reply. :)

It's not a life-threatening issue (the browser bug, that is) and I will sleep well tonight... assuming I actually go to bed for a change. (Thankfully the weekend is coming and I'll get away from the computer for a bit.) By the lack of response it seems I'm the only one (or one of two) who was rather alarmed by the discovery -- more "Cool, I found a bug!" alarmed than "Oh my god!" alarmed, mind you -- because the structure of Wikipedia URLs is rather unique compared to most other Web sites, so it's not something you'd usually run into on other sites. But balancing usability, technical and administrative issues, based on what you say it makes the most sense give the most weight to the administrative issue of retroactively dealing with a whole lot of articles with the same name and different capitalisation.

I will clarify though that I wasn't implying Wikipedia use a case-insensitive system; I've seen that issue addressed elsewhere. Although I didn't elaborate, my suggested solution (using "ETA" as an example) would have been to make both "ETA" and "Eta" a single disambiguation page and then require the "ETA" article on the Basque terrorist organisation to have a different title, either the full name (in Basque, Spanish or English, depending on existing guidelines) or something like "ETA (Basque organisation)".

Finally, thanks for the reminder about the Wiki organisational structure vis-a-vis consensus decisions on technical and policy matters. You correctly noted that I am rather new, and one of the things I am still learning is how to participate effectively and where, besides the obvious task of editing and creating articles.

--Craig 03:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I reported the bug a few days ago and someone said it should be fixed in the next release of Firefox (1.5). -- Kjkolb 12:43, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Great! Now can someone let Bill know? :) --Craig (t|c) 13:57, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Works for me on Firefox 1.5 beta2, so the bug should already be fixed. --cesarb 15:11, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Slow, sluggish and database problems

I've noticed that, over the last three days, Wikipedia has been rather slow, and the database is down 30% of the time Sceptre 18:03, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, hop on #wikimedia-tech on irc.freenode.net and give us a hand. I see from your user page that you're a PHP programmer. Why not help out with some optimisation work? -- Tim Starling 19:15, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I figured out the problem, it was something with Greasemonkey, not with Wikpedia Sceptre 08:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I can't stay logged in

Sorry to re-open this question, but every so often I have difficulty staying logged in. When I go to IRC to check it out, I am informed that the problem is my side, even though when I am experiencing this it doesn't matter where I am logging on to Wikipedia from, it happens. It's just started happening again, I'm fed up with it, and I really don't want to go through the same "it's something wrong your side/no it's not" discussion all over again. What causes this and how can I make sure it stops happening? -- 86.134.201.199 21:07, 27 October 2005 (UTC) (Francs2000)

I experienced the same problem recently. Although I can't tell just what the problem was, it seems the cookies get corrupted somehow (just a guess); the problem went away as soon as I deleted them. Ddawson 12:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

would like to place a link

Dear Sir/Madam, I am representing my client who owns a website on "coins and coin collecting". We would like to place a link in your website,please let us know how we go about it. Thanks for sparing some time. sukumar

Sorry, that's not appropriate for Wikipedia. If you have an incredibly notable website that an unrelated person would feel inspired to write about, then an article would be appropriate. I know the article title is offensive, but see Wikipedia:Spam. Thanks - Tempshill 04:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

If the site is quite comprehensive then adding a link to it under "External links" in coin collecting might be worthwhile. violet/riga (t) 10:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Remove one licensing choice from Upload page

Hi,

On the "Upload file" page, can we remove the "Images copyrighted by Wikimedia" choice from the "Licensing" popup menu? That choice tags the image with "CopyrightByWikimedia", which says:

This image is copyrighted by the Wikimedia foundation. It is one of the official logos or designs used by the Wikimedia foundation or by one of its projects. Notwithstanding any other statement on this page this image has not been licensed under the GFDL. © & ™ All rights reserved, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc..

No ordinary user will ever use this tag, so it shouldn't be in the popup menu. Obviously the tag should exist, but anybody who will be using the tag will be familiar with using {{double brackets}}.

This came up when a user tagged Image:Le Marche.JPG with this tag from the popup menu because she wished to donate the photo to Wikipedia, and thought "CopyrightByWikimedia" would be nice to use. Thanks - Tempshill 04:04, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Help fixing a link

For the Reference desk, I'm trying to create a link that will help people ask their questions. To that end I've created a link, which is supposed to lead to an edit page with an special page at the top, to explain the rules.

The syntax is [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Wikipedia:{{PAGENAME}}/science|action=edit&section=new&editintro=User_talk:Ec5618/Laboratory/Dog link] or variations thereof.

The odd thing is that Wikipedia:Reference_desk/science does work (although it's useless as it points to a page named Wikipedia:Reference_desk/science (uncapped science). The correct link should point to Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science, but that one doesn't seem to work. The template that should explain the rules does not appear (and neither does the standard template).

Does anyone have any idea what I'm missing? Is it a bug or am I misusing something? -- Ec5618 10:14, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

It seems to have something to do with the fact that the page already exists, in which case there is no need for the standard Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.-banner. Is there any way this can be enabled/bypassed? It would help to be able to do this on pages such as WP:RD, WP:HD , WP:AFD and the like. -- Ec5618 10:22, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a great idea and could have many uses, but I think you've figured the problem yourself. Perhaps it's just a mediawiki tweak. violet/riga (t) 10:33, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Drat, I really wasn't looking to spearhear a campaign to change the Mediawiki software. How would I go about fixing this? Who do I see? - Ec5618 17:29, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

No Google search of Commons

Google searching for "Rosa Parks" in en.wikimedia.org search or commons.wikipedia.org search produces no results. A .wikipedia.org search only produces 40 results, many from "Kate's Quickview". (SEWilco 15:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC))

The English Wikipedia is at en.wikipedia.org (with a 'P' not an 'M': pedia, not media), Commons is at commons.wikimedia.org (with an 'M' not a 'P': media, not pedia). Adjust and re-search. - Mark 15:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Oops. I had started with commons.wikipedia.org search (produces no results) and forgot to change domains for wikipedia.org. So "en" still works, while "commons" does not. (SEWilco 15:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC))

Were there any Rosa Parks images on commons when google last spidered it (sometime in the last month, probably)? Searching commons for Monument Valley works fine. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 15:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Current SVG support?

What's the current state of SVG support in Wikipedia? The meta page m:SVG image support seems to be rather outdated. I've been trying to use SVGs for the first time (at polarizer), but the server-side renderer seems to have problems. Sometimes my images don't appear, and when they do render, the text (despite the glyphs apparently being properly embedded) doesn't use the correct font. My picture look ok off-line in the Adobe SVG renderer. I'd like to convert some of my diagrams (e.g.: image:Abbe-diagram.png) to SVG but not if the text doesn't render correctly. Is this as good as it gets at the moment, or am I doing something wrong? --Bob Mellish 16:57, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

subst: problems

There are two issues I have with subst; it is not exactly equivalent to simple template transclusion.

First of all, it doesn't process <noinclude> and <includeonly>, which means some templates will behave differently if they are used as {{subst:template}} instead of {{template}}.

Second, parameters with default arguments remain in the substituted text. For example, in {{{2|Blah}}}, if the subst'ed template did not have a second parameter, it will insert {{{2|Blah}}} in the wikimarkup instead of Blah. This isn't a problem (currently), but it looks pretty silly. I can't seem to get in BugZilla at the moment, otherwise I'd have put this there. — squell\^talk 22:34, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Both issues are listed on BugZilla. squell 23:29, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

editcountitis

I've noticed that the User edits counter doesnt work, which is a shame, because I want to see how much of a life I haven't got :) Sceptre 03:21, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

External Link Icon Problem?

I am using Opera 9 tp1 and it is displaying external link icons after internal links for all but the menu, tabs, and class .plainlinks. This didn't happen in 8.5 iirc. I can't find where this icon is put in (in the CSS) so I can't see why it's doing this. Please help me as this is getting really annoying. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 03:53, 30 October 2005 (UTC)