Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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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.

Frequently Asked Questions:

• 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.
• The search index is often out of date, sometimes taking weeks before it's updated. Because of that, recent changes are not immediately reflected on the search.
• If all the links in the articles suddenly become underlined (or the opposite), it's probably because your browser failed to load one of the stylesheets. Do a forced reload or bypass your cache.
• If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Wikipedia:How to fix your signature.
• If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here.

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Checkuser

How can I use CheckUser on myself? I think this would be an important feature, so it is harder to frame people for sockpuppetry. Lapinmies 08:20, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

You can't access the CheckUser tool unless access is granted; on Wikimedia wikis, the policies state that this must be done with the approval of the Board, or the local project's Arbitration Committee (or similar), or via a request for permissions on Meta. This is due to technical and political (including legal) issues surrounding the tool's use.

Your question seems to indicate that you feel it is possible to "frame" someone for sockpuppetry. While it might be, in theory, we use more evidence than a mere IP check to state whether or not a user seems to be using abusive sockpuppets. Rob Church (talk) 14:46, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

You could log out and edit a sandbox with ~~~~, but there are likely easier ways to check your computer's IP address. -- Malber (talk • contribs) 17:57, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

There are indeed about a hundred ways to check this. FWIW, I have a little CGI script on my leased web host that simply dumps the environment information the web server sees. This is occasionally useful if you're not sure exactly what NAT steps might be happening between you and "the outside world". I.e. 'ifconfig' and the like will tell you what your computer thinks it looks like, but not what happens to all your packets on the journey out. It also verifies, e.g. the browser identification you are sending out. Sure, you can use 'traceroute', or even packet sniffers, and the like to dig out more information. But anyone who wants to is welcome to do a quick check with this little script: http://gnosis.cx/cgi-bin/simple.cgi (I suppose if I get a million people who do it, and clog my server, I might kill it; but that seems unlikely). LotLE×talk 18:09, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

100+1: Special:Version, last line. -- Omniplex 07:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Getting confusing text instead of edit-buttons

File:ParaDox 2006-05-16 screen shot edit window.png

• Any ideas what could be causing this effect? -- ParaDox 18:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

---

This is known bug #5747 in Wikisource. It was broken in mid-April. --John Nagle 18:56, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

A small handful of people have reported this, but we cannot reproduce the problem or guess what's wrong. It may or may not be a problem specific to your browser, configuration, computer, or network. --Brion 03:00, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Thnx :)  It worked fine on the identical system until about a couple of weeks ago, and no new hard or software has been installed that could be the cause. I guess it might have something to do with some JavaScript and/or CSS enhancements that have been installed recently in the Wikimedia environment. -- ParaDox 16:01, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Cloud of other lang wikis

In the main page, currently other language wikipedias are clustered on the number of articles into 1000+, 10000+ and so on. It requires manual involvment to update this list which is difficult particularly in other language wikipedias with a small number of users. Also, searching for a particular language is not easy here. An alternate system could be an interface similar to a tag cloud where each language is rendered in a font whose size is proportional to the number of articles it has. If you like the idea, vote for bug:6002. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 11:53, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Afrikaans · Albanian · Alemannic · Arabic · Aragonese · Arpitan / Franco-Provençal · Asturian · Azeri · Basque · Belarusian · Bengali · Bosnian · Breton · Bulgarian · Catalan · Cebuano · Chinese · Chuvash · Cornish · Corsican · Croatian · Czech · Danish · Dutch · Esperanto · Estonian · Faroese · Finnish · French · Galician · Georgian · German · Greek · Haitian · Hebrew · Hindi · Hungarian · Icelandic · Ido · Ilokano · Indonesian · Interlingua · Irish · Italian · Japanese · Javanese · Kannada · Kapampangan · Korean · Kurdish · Latin · Latvian · Limburgian · Lithuanian · Low German / Low Saxon · Luxembourgish · Macedonian · Malay · Marathi · Minnan · Neapolitan · Norwegian · Norwegian Nynorsk · Occitan · Ossetian / Ossetic · Persian · Polish · Portuguese · Ripuarian · Romanian · Russian · Scots · Scottish Gaelic · Serbian · Serbo-Croatian · Sicilian · Simple English · Slovak · Slovenian · Spanish · Swedish · Tagalog / Filipino · Tamil · Tatar · Telugu · Thai · Turkish · Ukrainian · Vietnamese · Walloon · Waray-Waray / Samar-Leyte Visayan · Welsh · West Frisian · Yiddish —Ruud 02:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks great! I presume that, for an illustration, you've used only two sizes. In an actual implementation this shall have font sizes proportional to discretised actual number of articles. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 05:34, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks awful. I've always hated those clouds. As it is right now, it's very nice to oversee what the important wikis are. —Michiel Sikma, 14:29, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Enabling rel="nofollow" outside the main namespace

I have posted a proposal for this at Wikipedia talk:Spam#Proposal: Enable rel="nofollow" outside the main namespace. Please comment there. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:05, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

This is now active. Note that old cached pages may continue to not including the rel="nofollow" until they are re-rendered due to edits or other updates. --Brion 21:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Adding words for redirection purposes

Hi. If I want to add words that are similar to the article's title, how do I do it without having to create another article.

For example:

for the article Husayn ibn Ali, I have been told that there are obviously many variations of his name because it is a word that has been transliterated from Arabic in to English. Potentially, for such articles there could be over 15 words that people would type in order to get to the article; in this case, they may type: Hussain, Husein, Hosayn, Hosein, Hossayn etc. How do I add possible words (that people would type in the search box) in order that they can be directed to the actual article, without having to create an article titled "Husein", and then redirecting people from it by writing: #REDIRECT Husayn ibn Ali. There must be an easier way. I appreciate your time. --- Alex 20:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid the many redirects path is the way to go. It's a problem for arabic (and, to a rather lesser extent russian) where there isn't an agreed upon scheme for transliterating into the english (or other latin-based western) alphabet. It gets combatorially horrible when one considers alternate spellings for first names, tribal names, patronymics, etc. But you can limit the work - a redirect is only sensible if there's a reasonable chance that someone would enter that term into the search box. And for most such arabic names, in practice that person has mostly been named in the english speaking media by only a few possible spellings (Saddam and Osama are notable exceptions, and as a result are the subject of many name-spelling redirects). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there is no easier way at the present time. You have to manually create all the links. Someone might be interested in writing a bot to do it, though—it should be fairly predictable (find all articles with some variant of "Hussein" in title, make redirects for all variants, rinse and repeat for all other common Arabic words). You could try asking at Wikipedia:Bot requests. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:55, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd be glad to write a quick script to do this for you. It's quite a bit more difficult to have to interpret every transliteration of the name, but it wouldn't be too difficult to have something where you would type in each variation of the name, hit go, and then it would create each redirect. Unfortunately, as stated above, there must be a redirect created for each spelling, but writing a bot to do this is not at all difficult. Get back to me if you'd like me to do this for you. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:16, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

See also the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Arabic)#Arabic names are a pain.21. —Ruud 07:44, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Related issue: Is there any chance we could get a script to look for article titles with diacritics and suggest redirects without them (Axel Hagerstrom is, and Axel Haegerstroem could conceivably be, a redirect to Axel Hägerström) whenever these are lacking? It would also be useful if it could identify every case where a possible redirect is a full article (or redirects somewhere else). In many cases these are probably articles on something completely different or disambiguation pages (Åmål, Amal) but in some cases these may be duplicates which should be merged and redirected. Tupsharru 08:37, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

My apologies for not noticing your question on the Village Pump earlier. I think that would be quite plausible and simple to implement--I can simply a table with ö → oe → o, etc., and then on each entry compose every possible combination of those. Let me work out the specifics of it, and I'll get back to you. My offer still stands to write the script to create redirects from user input as well, and we could likely merge these too ideas into one. AmiDaniel (talk) 06:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Ami Daniel, that's very kind of you to offer it. I don't know really. I think it's a good idea if it doesn't take long. But if it does, I guess there really is no problem doing it using the current method, i.e. creating the articles. It's up to you. --- Alex 16:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Contrasting Colors

I believe that it is too hard to read articles and stare into a white screen. It's like a light-bulb! I think Wikipedia should offer an inverted color scheme to make it easier on the eyes.

You're looking for a new skin. I don't think any of the standard ones are light-on-dark, but you can make your own. —Keenan Pepper 06:01, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Or turn your monitor brightness/gamma/contrast down ;) Your eyes will thank you. Without the ambient daylight, I have to turn mine down in the evenings. -Quiddity 06:10, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Go to the preferences or options in your web browser. You should find options there to override web sites' styles with your preferred color scheme. --Brion 21:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Making non-ISO-recognized national flag icons

I have read the instructions for flag creation, but I am still lost on how to make flag icons. For example, I am making a lacrosse team roster with one player whose has played on the Iroquois National team. I would like to use the Iroquois Nation flag to represent his nationality (as opposed to being American or Canadian), but since there is no IOC or ISO 3166 code for First Nations/Native American Tribes, I do not how to make such an icon. The flag is in the public domain.

This would also help in making a roster page for the World Lacrosse Championship, as well as in the future for the Indoor Championship in 2007.

Thanks.

--Paploo 20:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The .us top level internet domain has a subdomain "nsn" for Native Sovereign Nations in the US. For the Iroquois flag, I'd suggest US-NSN-Iroquois although I also recommend bringing this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Flag Template before implementing anything. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Checking new pages of specific user

Is there a way to check for pages created by a specific user along the line of the contributions page?Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 20:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

user:Interiot will create such lists on request. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

strange...

Earlier today, I reverted Sonic Youth to an older version after wrongly thinking that Tawkerbot2's version was vandalized as well. After realizing my mistake, I tried to revert my edit manually instead of using the rollback button. However, for some reason, something caused me to overwrite talk:Sonic Youth instead. Anyone know what might have caused this? --Ixfd64 01:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Can you describe the procedure you used to manually revert? --Brion 21:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Enhanced Watchlist?

I'm operating from a Mac OS X Firefox install, and it appears that there's no enhanced watchlist. I don't see it in my preferences, either. Was the feature removed, or is there something specific to my install that causes me not to see the option in question? — WCityMike (talk • contribs • replies) 02:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

What version? Alphax ^τεχ 07:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

1.5.0.3. — WCityMike (talk • contribs • replies) 16:05, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyone? — WCityMike (talk • contribs • replies) 22:17, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Nothin', huh? I'm seeing the same absence of an enhanced watchlist on a Portable Firefox install on a Windows machine. — WCityMike (talk • contribs • replies) 16:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Got my answer from reading another thread (link), although I think this is a slight usability oddity. Turns out that turning on "enhanced recent changes" also enables the "enhanced watchlist." That may be a "no, duh" thing with some people here, but it didn't really occur to me. — WCityMike (talk • contribs • replies) 16:58, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

As I recall, "enhanced watchlist" was the old description for what is now labelled as "expand watchlist to show all recent edits" or something similar. 86.138.46.182 17:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Nope. Not what I was thinking of. You can see what I was talking about for yourself. Look at your watchlist. Then go to your preferences and either turn on, or turn off, enhanced recent changes, depending on your current setting. Now go back to your watchlist. Its appearance should've changed. — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 13:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

How do you revert to a previous version when you accidently deleted some material & notes?

I deleted some text and accidently deleted two notes plus more text. Can I revert to previous copy?KarenAnn 02:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

If you deleted some text and then accidentally saved that version, just click the "history" tab at the top of the article. You'll see all the previous versions of the article, so you can easily click on an earlier version and save it. Joyous! | Talk 02:25, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

See WP:REVERT for an explanation. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Javascript errors

I use Firefox as my main browser, but sometimes I'm in IE, and if I use VandalProof that also uses the IE interface. I have my monobook.js set up perfectly for Firefox, and it works fine with no problems. The problem, however, is that when I go into Internet Explorer, I get tons of script errors everywhere. I was wondering, is it possible to automatically detect what browser you're using and then use a different js depending on the browser? —Mets501^talk 04:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. There's an article on it at Devmo:Browser Detection and Cross Browser Support (http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Browser_Detection_and_Cross_Browser_Support until the Interwiki map gets updated). Alphax ^τεχ 07:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Great! Thanks so much. —Mets501^talk 16:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion: direct editing interface

Would it be feasible to write a user interface to allow direct editing, without clicking on an "Edit" link? This would have a number of advantages. First, the directness would be much more inviting for anyone to edit. Second, it would be much easier to use. The current interface requires me to load an entire article or section to edit its introduction, and introductions are very long, making it difficult to find the particular sentence I wanted to change. Third, the interface would probably reduce server load. Currently a page is loaded once to be viewed, then a section of wiki text is loaded to edit, then again to be previewed before posting, etc. The new interface would show the edited page without sending it to the servers, and only send the changes (not whole sections) once the user clicks on "Save". The interface could be implemented as in AJAX, and atuomatically load into the web browser together with a wikipedia page, and not require separate installation. It could be cached by the browser, so that it is not loaded every time. Having only one mode would probably require making it semi-WYSIWYG. I would be happy to design the interface and the implementation, but I cannot actually implement it on my own. -Pgan002 07:55, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about that: it seems almost too easy to edit, like it could just be done accidentally. —Mets501^talk 16:22, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

You're volunteering to write this? It sounds like a rather large undertaking, so you may want to check in with Brion or Tim on IRC first to discuss it (although Brion will probably be responding to this here as well, since he does keep an eye on the VP technical). In my opinion, it would be a fantastic feature, although probably only for registered users, and best as a toggleable mode so that nobody accidentally erases articles. Anyway, the general procedure for this is that you submit the code as an attachment to Bugzilla, in this case , and then a developer with Subversion access can add it to the codebase for you once they've reviewed it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

See m:WYSIWYG_editor — Omegatron 19:39, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Will editing Wikipedia ever be anything but hellish?

It has just taken me half an hour to add/amend three references to Greg Norman due to multiple edit failures. Frankly, editing Wikipedia is a gruesome experience all too often. I don't know how many types of error I have seen, but they seem to effect about one edit in four. ReeseM 09:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

What kinds of failures did you encounter? User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Editing failure reports have been at pretty much an all time low the last couple months. If you can provide some details, we'll take a look. --Brion 21:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

æ ligature in <math>?

Is there any way to get the æ ligature inside of <math> tags? æle ✆ 2006-05-21t13:28z

I don't think so for this wiki software. When using LaTeX in general, "\ae" will do it, but it won't work here. Not even using "\mbox{æ}" will do it. —Mets501^talk 16:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The m:blahtex extension can handle ligatures like that inside math tags, but sadly the developers do not seem to have time now to try it out. Dmharvey

Proposal: striped table CSS class + JS

I think that sometimes, wikitables are hard to read and would benefit from having so-called "striped" rows. It's possible to do this pretty easily with some JS and CSS. I've tested this in my own CSS space and found that it works quite well.

Here's an example of how a table should look like with some small JS and CSS additions:

Example of striped table rows

You type...	You see...
{| class="wikitable-striped" |+ Table tags ! Tag ! Description |- | <table> | Defines a table |- | <th> | Defines a header |- | <tr> | Defines a row |- | <td> | Defines a cell |- | <caption> | Defines a caption |}	Table tags Tag Description <table> Defines a table <th> Defines a header <tr> Defines a row <td> Defines a cell <caption> Defines a caption

I think that this would make new tables that use this CSS class much more readable. Since it uses a new CSS class rather than the old one, it also won't break any old tables or cause discontent for those who don't like the stripes.

To get this to work, you'll need the JavaScript:

var stripe = function() {
	// This function will add stripes to all tables that have the "striped" rel attribute.
	var tables = document.getElementsByTagName("table");
	for(var a = 0; a != tables.length; a++){
		var table = tables[a];
		if (!table) { return; } // If there are no tables, abort.
		if (table.getAttribute("class") == "wikitable-striped") {
			var tbodies = table.getElementsByTagName("tbody");
			for (var b = 0; b < tbodies.length; b++) {
				var even = true; // We start with an even stripe.
				var trs = tbodies[b].getElementsByTagName("tr");
				for (var c = 0; c < trs.length; c++) {
					if (even) {
						trs[c].className += "even";
					} else {
						trs[c].className += "odd";
					}
					even = !even;
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

// Perform the striping.
window.onload = stripe;

... and the modified CSS:

table.wikitable,
table.prettytable,
table.wikitable-striped {
  margin: 1em 1em 1em 0;
  background: #f9f9f9;
  border: 1px #aaaaaa solid;
  border-collapse: collapse;
}

table.wikitable th, table.wikitable td,
table.prettytable th, table.prettytable td,
table.wikitable-striped th, table.wikitable-striped td {
  border: 1px #aaaaaa solid;
  padding: 0.2em;
}

table.wikitable th,
table.prettytable th,
table.wikitable-striped th {
  background: #e8e8e8;
  text-align: center;
}

table.wikitable caption,
table.prettytable caption,
table.wikitable-striped caption {
  margin-left: inherit;
  margin-right: inherit;
}

tbody tr.even td {
  background: #eee;
}
tbody tr.odd td {
  background: #f9f9f9;
}

Note: the CSS was also changed slightly to make colors with the striped tables more visible. Normal wikitable headers would also get a background of #e8e8e8; with this change, although we can of course always change that if this is not desired. Anyway, if there is support for this, please let me know. I, for one, think this is nice. It would be best to do it in PHP, of course, but this will do for now. —Michiel Sikma, 14:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Maybe you want to move this discussion to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) though. —Mets501^talk 16:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Or MediaWiki talk:Common.css. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll move it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and leave a note about it on MediaWiki talk:Common.css. —Michiel Sikma, 05:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Tables: Headings: Shading

How do I change the background colour of a table done with pipes when the cell is a heading on a line staring with ! ? I know how to do it for cells starting |. See Talk:Monthly events, 2006 for an example. -- SGBailey 22:25, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Using style="background-color: #xxxxxx;" seems to work. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)"

 
|- style="background:silver;"
! ''[[Wikinews:2006|Wikinews]]''
|[[Wikinews:Wikinews:2006/January|  ●  ]] 
 

where would I put it in this sample from a table - the silver only gets applied to the | cell, not to the ! cell. -- SGBailey 07:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this is browser dependent. Both (applied to the row)

Wikinews	Wikinews:Wikinews:2006/January

and (applied to the cell)

Wikinews	Wikinews:Wikinews:2006/January

affect the background (of the row and just the header, respectively) for me using Safari (and Mozilla, and IE 6.0). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:02, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. The first bit of code displays as desired here, but not on the page I'm trying to put it on (XP & MSIE). Using both bits of code gets the job done, so thanks. -- SGBailey 22:00, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

This is because the table is declared to be of class "wikitable" which has a CSS stylesheet that sets the background color of the TH cells. Setting the color of the row affects any cell that does not otherwise have a background color specified, the TH cells do (via the wikitable class). To override this, you have to specify the color per TH cell. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:49, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

What to do about CopyRight Stuff

I have found an article, that from the looks of it has been completly copied out of a US Naval Historical Database, and then slowly edited to be what it is now. What should be done about it. I can be reached here or better thorugh my usertalk Rekov 03:27, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the US Naval database in the public domain? If it is just put a notice at the bottom of the page saying that the original version came from that database. BrokenSegue 03:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

thanks will do Rekov 03:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

get current user name

Does anyone know, is there a template/variable/special page that when subst'ed returns simply the username of the currently logged in user? Thanks! --Charlie^{( @CIRL | talk | email )} 05:39, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

~~~. Splarka (rant) 07:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Nope, according to m:Help:Magic_words :( dewet|✉ 07:40, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

No, there is no such variable and requests to add one have been closed. The reason for this is that such a magic word would harm our ability to cache pages, and caching is one of our main defences against the 12,000 hits per second we receive. 86.138.46.182 16:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I recognize the ability to cache is very important. However would it be possible to create such a special object that when not substed returns a static message, but when substed returns the username of the currently logged in user? Or perhaps a parser extension that would automatically subst such a magic word like the ~~~ for signatures. (I was wanting to extract a username, which is why the tildes doesn't exactly work here). --Charlie^{( @CIRL | talk | email )} 00:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

12,000 hits per second? Is that peak or average? If that's an average, Wikimedia really gets a billion hits a day? (okay, that's slightly off-topic) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

External editors

Hi, I just got in trouble by using the option "use external editor". It would offer to download index.php when I clicked edit. Is this supposed to happen? If so, how can I then upload the edited content? Also, is there a vim language file for wiki markup? Thanks VladDogaru 13:24, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, what ends up being downloaded is a control file which tells a helper application (which has to conform to a certain specification) how to obtain the content and how to replace it on the server. See m:Help:External editors for more information. 86.138.46.182 16:49, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Edit section links missing

On my userpage the edit section links are missing. Another user suggested that I ask here, so here's the post. That user was able to see the edit section links.

BTW, I've tested it with XP Home SP1 Firefox 1.5.0.3, XP Media Center SP2 Firefox 1.5.0.3 and IE 6.0, and with all 3, no edit section links. I also tried removing all of my userboxes, but to no avail.

Thanks, -Reuvenk_{T C E} 14:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Do you have section editing turned off in your preferences? -- Rick Block (talk) 14:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

No. I checked my preferences. There was already a checkmark next to "Enable section editing via [edit] links." I see them on other pages. -Reuvenk_{T C E} 14:30, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

This could be another incarnation of bug #6037, which is causing some users to receive the cached CSS files reserved for other users with different preferences, leading to some interesting (but apparently non-critical, although we're still going to look into it) interface "glitches". 86.138.46.182 16:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Accommodations for the blind

User:PierreLarcin2 on Talk:Rotary International has voiced that "Wikipedia is not accessibility-compliant" for blind users. Specifically he claims that long lists are difficult for readers to handle and that the links in lists are not indicated correctly. He also states that reader software is unable to parse the Village Pump making it impossible for blind users to access this part of the site. Does anyone know of any solutions as this is the first time I have heard of such problems? Thanks. -- 127.*.*.1 16:02, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Huge discussion pages like the pump are pretty hard for anyone to deal with. There may be improvements on that coming in the future (but this will be some months away).

I would prefer to hear something specific, though. What kind of problems are there? --Brion 21:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Directory of Pages in a User Space?

Okay, this is driving me nuts. Yesterday, I found a "Special" page (I think it was Special) on Wikipedia that basically gave you a directory of pages in a userspace. I used it to find a few strays I had never deleted. Now, I can't figure out what the heck that command was. Any advice? Much obliged in advance. — WCityMike (talk • contribs • replies) 17:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the one you mean, but it works just fine: Special:Prefixindex/User:WCityMike/ will give you a list of all subpages in your userspace (the slash excludes the userpage itself). Use Special:Prefixindex/User talk:WCityMike/ for talk subpages (you have some, it seems). -- grm_wnr Esc 17:19, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Yup, that is what I was thinking of. Great! Thanks very much. — WCityMike (talk • contribs • replies) 17:22, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and if you drop the {{subpages}} template on a page, it will create a link to a list like the one above automatically, see here: all subpages of this page -- grm_wnr Esc 17:24, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. :) — WCityMike (talk • contribs • replies) 17:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

What links here

Is there a way to make it so that a page does not show up in another page's "What links here"? I wonder, because some people link various things on their userpages, which results in a mix of namespaces in the What links here, which in my view makes it a less useful tool. In addition, many are flooded with recent changes from date links included only for preferences, rather than being contextually relevant. I've tried prefixing links like this with a colon, not sure why that would help, but I tried it. Does anyone know if there's a wiki-fix? Mak (talk) 18:26, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

If a page links to another page, then it's counted in Special:Whatlinkshere for that page. Because, y'know, we want to keep track of what links where, etc. So no, we won't be allowing you to suppress that information from our link tables, because we need them for various important functions. 86.138.46.182 20:22, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Example link: Oroshigane. But that breaks all sorts of normal conventions, so it should be used sparingly. Alternatively, vote for Bug #4624, and then it won't be a big deal if people spam whatlinkshere. --Interiot 23:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah! That bug was really more what I was thinking of. I'm sorry, robchurch (if it's you), I really don't intend to break your wiki. Please accept my pleas of ignorance. Mak (talk) 23:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

It's extremely useful having all pages that link from something show up in whatlinkshere, irrespective of namespace, so I'd be against this. it would be nice, though, if there was some way to sort whatlinkshere in the same way as sorting user contributions (i.e., have a toggle at the top that allows you to pick a namespace). Grutness...wha? 03:08, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Side note: WP:AWB can create its list of pages from the What links here of a page and filter out non-main pages. The list can be stored as a text file (and thus edited and read back). --Ligulem 07:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Links inside <gallery> tag descriptions are not included in Whatlinkshere, but that's just a bug. Also, going through the interwiki map with the "w:" prefix supresses it: w:stuff, but that's also most probably not a cool thing to do... -- grm_wnr Esc 13:46, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

That bug should have been fixed some time last week. It won't magically fix existing pages with galleries until they've been null edited (since the link tables won't be updated) though. Rob Church (talk) 19:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I like the current "What links here" as it is. PS If you can add a count to each page to show how many people have it on their watchlist, you'll be very popular with me. This is quite a good rule-of-thumb guide to the accuracy of an article. Stephen B Streater 19:43, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

That seems like a security risk, but something admin-only like Special:Wathclistcount/Pagename or Special:Mostwatchedpages would be partially useful (like Special:Unwatchedpages ... TINC!). --Splarka (rant) 07:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I slightly see your point. Well a point anyway - that it could be used by vandals. Perhaps I'll become an Admin just in time to use the Admin-only version ;-) Stephen B Streater 12:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Image but no history?

The page Talk:Ascension includes Image:Grängsbo Lillkyrka Sweden.JPG. But that the image page, there's no history, and no ability to delete the image. The image has a tag for unknown copyright status, but I can't tell how long it's been so tagged. According to the CheckUsage tool, the image is used on a handful of other Wikipedias. Can someone who knows what's going on take a look? -Rholton 18:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The image originates from the Wikimedia Commons. The first template on the image page takes you to the description page at Commons where the image and page histories reside. You should alert a Commons admin to the copyright issue, as the template appears to have been there since October 2005. -- Michael Warren | Talk 19:13, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Why are all of the links underlined now?

Seeing all links/wikilinks underlined anywhere I go on Wikipedia doesn't make it look as good as it did before. Does anyone else notice this or is it just me? How can I fix it? Can the devs change it back? --Shultz IV 06:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

You need to reload the style sheet. Ctrl+Shift+R does it for you in Firefox. It is a known bug that happens occasionally. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 06:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

If C+S+R doesn't work, you can also view the source of any page and grab the line that looks like:

@import "/w/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=#######&ts=##############";

Where ### are numbers (a timestamp, so that when you change your preferences, the page isn't cached). Go to that link and reload and your underlines should return. Also, thanks for shrinking my link below, I didn't think of prettyfying it ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 08:46, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Feel kinda stupid asking this...

Wikipedia is so huge, I can't find the userbox category. Also, is there a link to searck the wikipedia:blah pages? --Kargath64 07:39, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

You mean Category:Wikipedia_userboxes? And to search one namespace (when the search is working) go to Special:Preferences and the [searching] tab and edit Search in these namespaces by default:. Or go to google and use creative operators (inurl: for example), eg: [1] --Splarka (rant) 08:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Parser change for tables

I've changed the order of operations in the parser so that some weird interactions with tables and prevented. Although this hasn't broken anything in my testing, it's possible that some less conventional or more complex table layouts now render differently. If you find such a page, and it's clearly incorrect, please file a bug report with a link to the page and I'll take a look. --Brion 07:52, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

A bug affecting TOC generation on pages using <ref> or <references/> has been fixed. Edit or purge any affected pages to repair them. --Brion 10:08, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

linking to new species url

I feel that I should know the answer to this. How to I link to the new wikispecies url (species.wikimedia.org) as an internal link? I'm responding to a request about fixing the sisters link on the Main Page, which sends the user through species.wikipedia.org. wikispecies: links to the wikipedia.org, but commons: links to wikimedia.org. (Not sure why species: isn't the link.) Thanks - BanyanTree 12:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Just continue to use wikispecies:. The interwiki table will be updated after a bit, and the URLs are 100% compatible. --Brion 17:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

"Start New Talk Section" bookmarklet?

I have a feeling this could be done -- and could be useful -- but I'm not competent enough in JavaScript/bookmarklet programming to handle it myself. It'd be nice to have a bookmark that could transform the current URL, say, from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman (or) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neil_Gaiman

to

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Neil_Gaiman&action=edit&section=new

Basically providing the functionality to start a new section on the article's talk page with a single click in your browser.

Perhaps I should pop this over in proposals, though? Nothing earth-shattering, just thought I'd bounce it off y'all. — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 13:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Note that in the older skins, the "post a comment" link does this (unless the page has a __NEWSECTIONLINK__ tag, in which case things get interesting). Rob Church (talk) 19:20, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Right. And the little "+" sign does it with Monobook, I agree. I was just looking for a way to streamline it from the editor viewpoint ... got a little hogwild with making things efficient for myself via some Firefox keywords and thought, "I need a way to do this." — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 19:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

How to delete a single revision?

I recently had need to delete a single revision from an article (a vandal had added a phone number). The only way I could figure out how to do this was to delete the article, then restore all the other revisions by laboriously clicking on each checkbox except for the one I wanted to keep deleted. Is there a better way? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

You can restore the bad versions, move them to ArticleName/bad, delete the bad versions again, and then restore the rest of the article. It's less clicking and, when the same thing happens later, other admins don't have to worry if there is a previous deleted version that they need to look out for when they are restoring. - BanyanTree 14:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Please be sure not to do this on major articles as it can be very disruptive. Until I've got a more convenient system up (should be later today), e-mail me directly at brion@wikimedia.org with a URL to the revision(s) in question and I'll zap them in the DB. --Brion 17:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Why do we have images on WP and on Commons?

Why is it that we store images on both the :image namespace and on the Commons? Furthermore, why is it not a requirement to categorise each uploaded image into at least one category so it can be found?

I find it quite difficult to find photos which I know are there but can't remember what they're called. Most images are not categorised and doubling up of WP and Commons by both hosting media files is just confusing. Why can't they be centralised and effort put into their proper categorisation. That way every Wikimedia Foundation project has equal access to the files (the intended purpose of Commons) and WP can focus on its core business rather than categorising and tagging images.

I'm probably missing something here because it seems to confusing a system to be the way I described it, maybe that is the way things are moving and I've just not noticed the slow shift. Can someone explain or point me to the right policy page. Thanks, Witty lama 13:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Images on Commons are supposed to be sorted and categorised, and many of them indeed are. On en.wikipedia, not so (sadly). On the Commons/local duplicity, the most basic reason is that en.wikipedia accepts fair use images, and Commons most emphatically doesn't. So any fair use material must be uploaded locally. Since there's no easy way to distinguish between them (and the uploaders often are somewhat clueless), the local upload can't automatically decide to put the images directly to Commons based on the tag. So, lots of Commons-compatible images still get uploaded locally. Moving stuff to Commons is done, but not stringently, and deleting the local copy is done even more rarely (mostly because it's a hassle, since the images have to go through IFD per the current policy). -- grm_wnr Esc 14:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Is there a move afoot to create an easier local->Commons transfer (including easy deletion of duplicate image) or a comprehensive system of image categorisation on WP? If not, why not? Furthermore, can someone on, say, fr.wikipedia get access to pictures uploaded on en.wikipedia and vice versa. Witty lama 15:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

1. commonshelper makes moving images to Commons far more foolproof and hassle-free.
2. For easier deletions, various proposals have been made to make images duplicated on Commons speedyable, but none have stuck.
3. A really comprehensive image categorisation system on en is hampered by the fact that fair use images should not be put into topical categories, because galleries (which categories create) of fair use images are strongly discouraged - use in galleries is not usually considered "fair" on Wikipedia. Also, really, Commons is a project dedcated to hosting and sorting images, and if we start making grand category schemes locally we might just as well not bother at all.
4. To get images under a free license from en to fr, move them to Commons (with commonshelper), if they're fair use upload them to fr (fr, like en but unlike many other projects, accepts fair use images).

Hope that helps, -- grm_wnr Esc 15:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Is the total page count correct?

Is it true what is says on Meta here that all pages that have been deleted by admins remain in the tally of the total number of articles? If this is true, then the the English WP may not have more than 1M articles and we've all been thinking we're bigger than we actually are. Is it possible to fix this bug? Witty lama 15:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Deletion decrements the count for pages that would have counted. However the counts aren't 100% accurate, some errors do creep in. --Brion 17:12, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

It should also be pointed out that what MediaWiki determines an "article" to be is rather subjective. Our definition of a page in the main namespace, which isn't a redirect, and contains at least one wiki link, won't fit that of others. Rob Church (talk) 19:18, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Line Spacing After Super/Sub script

Using subscript or superscript on wikipedia introduces increased line spacing which doesn't look so nice. Why can't this be fixed? It doesn't do it in word processors. You don't find it in books. So why here? --Username132 (talk) 20:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to the web. --Brion 00:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, but I've been using the web for eight years. It doesn't explain the wikipedia subscript/superscript issue. --Username132 (talk) 18:31, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Web browsers are not word processors, and in fact they sometimes behave differently. You are reading Wikipedia with a web browser. The way that web browsers render text with subscripts and superscripts matches the description you give. --Brion 22:48, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll go and hassle Opera. --Username132 (talk) 23:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Given that web browsers are not word processors, Wikipedia should avoid the use of subscripts and superscripts unless absolutely necessary. The ref tags being added to so many articles make these articles unreadable. The template or style should be changed so that footnotes are not superscripted. -- FRCP11 14:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Linking to an edit page, but with the some content in the URL

I want to be able to like to a page that doesn't exist, and have it fill the edit box with a basic template. I'm sure I've seen it, but I can't remember where, so I can't see how it was done. So, how do I do that? --Lorian 22:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

m:Help:Inputbox —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:19, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok well I have got the code I need to make an input box, but how would I make this: somerandompagethatdoesntexist preload another page, if it doesn't exist? --Lorian 07:31, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

How to get an entry based on value or null (Revised question)

I want to create a template which is used to get either a specific entry or all of them depending on the parameter.

Let's say I have a list like this

• Item 01 - May
• Item 02 - Critical
• Item 03 - Exact

And I want to put it into a template, let's call it FUZZ so that if I simply use a macro call of {{FUZZ}} I get

• Item 01 - May
• Item 02 - Critical
• Item 03 - Exact

But if I use {{FUZZ|01}} I get

• Item 01 - May

But if I use {{FUZZ|02}} I get

• Item 02 - Critical

I know in some way this requires {{#if:}} or some macro, but I'm not sure how.

Is there a way I can do this? Second, is there a way I can have the macro generate text only if the parameter is null? So that I could put a header if the parameter is null but no header if the value of {{{1}}} is not null.

Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 22:53, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is exactly, what you want, but perhaps something like this?

{{#switch: {{{1|}}}
 | 01 = *Item 01 - May
 | 02 = *Item 02 - Critical
 | 03 = *Item 03 - Exact
 | #default = 
  *Item 01 - May
  *Item 02 - Critical
  *Item 03 - Exact
}}

You might want to check out m:ParserFunctions for a better explanation of things. In regards to null-parameters, {{#if: {{{1|}}}|do this if it is set|do this if it is unset (null)}}, is that what you're looking for? Hope that helps! Jude (talk) 02:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm already doing something like that now, what I think I want is something like this:

{{#switch: {{{1|}}}
 | 01,#default = *Item 01 - May
 | 02,#default = *Item 02 - Critical
 | 03,#default = *Item 03 - Exact
}}

or

I'm already doing something like that now, what I think I want is something like this:

{{#switch: {{{1|}}}
 | 01
 | #default = *Item 01 - May
 | 02
 | #default = *Item 02 - Critical
 | 03
 | #default = *Item 03 - Exact
}}

So that I only have to include each of the items once. For default, it shows all of them, for any one of the entries, it only shows that one. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 22:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

First article

Hi, I've included my first article, about John Crawford, the songwriter and musician.

It went okay but I ran into some glitches....for example, occasionally my paragraphs got pulled into these long rectangular boxes and spanned across the page.

Another concern: I was hoping to make a discography and a list of external links, but after submitting the article, I don't really see how to change the template. You might think I'm lazy, but there are so many forum topics sometimes I don't know where to begin to get the info!!!

Thanks for your help --

Keith Walsh Keithwalsh88 00:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Keith. Hm,long rectangular boxes...

You mean like this?

If you indent the beginning of a line, the software assumes you want to opt out of automatic formatting, so it does the long boxes. Make sure there aren't any spaces or tabs at the beginning of each paragraph, and you should be fine. I'm not sure how to interpret your second question. If you re-edit the article, it should be possible to change those things. FreplySpang 01:50, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Image tagging

Got a question on image tagging that wasn't made clear by the copyright tag page. If I find something like a photo taken by a user that doesn't make me question if it's a copyvio, but it's orphaned, should I mark it with source and license tags as I have here, or something else? And, same question, if it seems to be an obvious copyvio problem, is this correct? Thanks. Tijuana Brass^E@ 04:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Another one: how do I treat images that are only used for user pages, i.e. Image:Brady.jpg ? Tijuana Brass^E@ 04:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

1. All images must have source and license information, whether or not they're orphaned.
2. Obvious copyvio problems should be {{imagevio}}d and PUId, as you did.
3. All images must have source and license information. Images used outside of articles must have a free (not fair use) license.
4. Ask questions like this at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights rather than here. That way you're more likely to get answers from people who know about copyright. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:23, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Monobook

Is anyone else's Monobook skin broken right now? All the content is here, but the entire layout is gone. Angr (t • c) 14:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Hard refresh? --lightdarkness ^(talk) 14:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It was happening on every single page I was opening, including ones that couldn't possibly be cached as I had never opened them before, for about half an hour. It's over now, though. Angr (t • c) 14:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It was probably something with your css file not being loaded properly, which is why I suggested a hard refresh, not to fetch new content, but rather a new monobook :-) --lightdarkness ^(talk) 14:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Isolated database issue?

My WP is missing!

WikiProject Illinois State Routes

But the subpages are not...

WikiProject Illinois State Routes/Progress Reports

I'm assuming this is a scattered issue, but also temporary? I haven't seen this reported elsewhere. —Rob (talk) 15:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm also having trouble with bringing up diffs (of any article), as well as older versions of articles in general. What's goin' on? --Ashenai 15:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I've got 10.0.0.102 and 10.0.0.233 that return this error: (Can't contact the database server: Unknown database 'enwiki' (10.0.0.233)) —Rob (talk) 15:23, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Trying to go to WP:RFA hits this problem, at least for me. So far other articles I've tried are uneffected. Gwernol 15:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It's being looked into. No explanation yet. Rob Church (talk) 15:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

My guess (and this is just a guess): There are probably a few DB servers down. Due to the PHP errors which I have gotten (stating that the databases are not found or "undefined"), and the fact that this happened very suddenly, I'm guessing its a power failure (similar to the one in April, but this one isn't a complete blackout). Either that or it is a crash or network failure. Again, this is only my guess. I just wrote this so people have more of a clue of what the heck is goin on. WIKIPEEDIO 15:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I have received the same issue with my page, Green Hope High School - errors 10.0.0.102 and 10.0.0.233 as well as a few MediaWiki PHP stack-traces. Strangely, my co-editor who is located in a geographically different area did not receive these errors - I guess load-balancing is done regionally or something. Does anyone know if this is a temporary issue? 152.14.80.122 16:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I got above mentioned errors trying to access CSI:_Crime_Scene_Investigation --82.181.131.33 16:20, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

WP:RCU is down, as are a few diffs [2]. I think there may also be a problem with block logs, as at least one user has been able to evade a block.--Nema Fakei 16:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Looks like both the article and user namespaces are down, and the wikipedia namespace is up...--digital_me_{(Talk)(Contribs)} 16:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• Not seeing this... more like if you took the list of all pages and took a shotgun to it, that's about how random the database corruption (on the read side) is right now. Clearly writes are going through, but how well? —Rob (talk) 16:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm merely speculating curiously, and I have no technical information to base this on - but is it possible this is a DDoS or some other attack by a blocked user? Nimur 16:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I've run into this with Domestic AC power plugs and sockets, and got an error message of "(Can't contact the database server: Unknown database 'enwiki' (10.0.0.102))"Squigish 16:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Strangely enough, I can preview any page I can't view using popups. Does that use a different type of database lookup, maybe? Squigish 16:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I am experiencing these errors on several pages as well. I don't know if I'm imagining this, but it seems some users are still able to access the pages. Dancter 16:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Dancter, I can confirm your issue. The same pages that are giving me errors are correctly loading elsewhere by other users. I have received errors such as (Can't contact the database server: Unknown database 'enwiki' (10.0.0.102)) (10.0.0.103, ...129, ...130, ...131, and ...133). I also received a PHP stacktrace from mediawiki. I hope these are temporary issues. Nimur 16:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm getting this error on every page in the above namespaces, so I dunno.--digital_me_{(Talk)(Contribs)} 16:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The read- vs. write- issue doesn't seem to be a problem for me. If I can read a page, I can edit it (have not yet come across any that do not apply, although I don't recommend frivolous editing of pages to test technical issues :) In any case, it seems that the outages are not restricted to particular namespaces or any other systematic pattern - they are well-described as shotgun blasted. Nimur 16:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I just received my first on MediaWiki PHP stack-trace on my watchlist. Could this problem be progressing? Dancter 16:51, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• My user page has this problem with some revisions (other revisions are OK). A.J. 16:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
  • It seems this problem arises whenever i try to add new image to my page. A.J. 17:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
    • There is a technical issue at the moment, please be patient. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Internal IP address

I just got the message (Can't contact the database server: Unknown database 'enwiki' (10.0.0.233)). Shouldn't internal IP addresses be hidden from the outside world for security reasons? Piet 15:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

That is in a private IP address, not accessible from the internet in general. Notinasnaid 17:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a techical isseu at the moment, please be partient. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

mixed timezones

On my watchlist, there are two timezones displayed:

• the watched entries last edit time which use the local timezone as set in my preferences
• UTC for the as of displayed at the top

Why are different timezones used? It complicates relating the last refreshed time to the entries displayed. Why not display the as of using the preferences local time zone? How come it displays the as of as it does instead of my preferenced setting?

Below are the last 2 changes in the last 1 hours, as of 15:29 May 24 (UTC).

As long as I'm at it, why not display the timestamp before the article name to make them line up nicely (as it does on the contributions display):

• (diff) (hist) . . 08:25:54 Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) . . Pietdesomere (Talk | contribs) (Internal IP address)
• (diff) (hist) . . 08:20:44 Talk:United Airlines Flight 232 . . 68.255.30.189 (Talk) (Sioux City Memorial (Picture Anybody?))

instead of

• (diff) (hist) . . Wikipedia:Village pump (technical); 08:25:54 . . Pietdesomere (Talk | contribs) (Internal IP address)
• (diff) (hist) . . Talk:United Airlines Flight 232; 08:20:44 . . 68.255.30.189 (Talk) (Sioux City Memorial (Picture Anybody?))

Thanks in advance for any clues. EncMstr 15:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Flensburg article

For some reason, I cannot bring up the Flensburg article which I have been trying to improve. I variously get the "Page cannot be displayed" message or one that says "Wikipedia has a problem". All other articles seem to work as they should, but not that one.

This is too bad, as I have an addition ready about the town's politics. Can someone look into this? Kelisi 16:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a technical issue at the moment, please be patient. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Minor glitch in accessing pages

Community portal talk page, Original Research talk page, Expand articles listing and others all seem to be inaccessible. Is this merely a temporary glitch ("wrong sort of rain on the line interacting with the wrong sort of leaves on the line")? Jackiespeel 16:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I cannot get to my talk page. Some articles are loading while others or not. Any idea what is happening? - Ganeshk (talk) 16:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a technical issue at the moment, please be patient. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Filmmaking

Help, I'm experiencing problems accessing the "Filmmaking" article. Could somebody restore is back to it's latest version please?

thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Egrabczewski (talk • contribs)

There is a technical issue at the moment, please be patient.-Reuvenk_{T C E} 17:06, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Problem with certain pages

The following high profile pages are inaccessable (for me at least):

• Albert Einstein
• Mathematics
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Alexander the Great

Is there a pattern here?

Paul August ☎ 16:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

See | above. There seems to be a database outage.

The problem for the above pages now seems to be resolved. Paul August ☎ 17:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I am having trouble with these pages:

• Richard Nixon
• Nikita Khruschev

As this appears to be "a general and intermittent problem" can we assume that the problem is not just specific servers, has been reported and will be dealt with? (To avoid an outbreak of me-too ism) ;) Jackiespeel 16:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

These pages work for me now. Paul August ☎ 17:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Outage update

I can't access the following pages:

• CW Television Network
• Eurovision Song Contest 2006

--Desmond Hobson 17:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

These pages work for me now. Paul August ☎ 17:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Commons images not working

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the recent outages, but for some reason, recently uploaded images from Commons are not showing up in Wikipedia. For example, I uploaded Image:Major Hans Dominik.jpg to Charles Atangana, and it will not show up. The image is fine at Commons: [3]. — BrianSmithson 17:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Same thing with Image:Swedish-HKP4.jpg at Swedish Air Force. It works fine on sv:Svenska flygvapnet though. -- Jniemenmaa 18:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It appears there may be a problem between Wikpedia and Commons as two images I have uploaded to Commons today (Azure spring.jpg and Abyss pool.jpg are showing up fine on Commons but are not appearing when I try to add them to an entry on Wikipedia (Azure Spring and Abyss Pool respectively). An image I uploaded to Commons yesterday (Excelsior geyser in 1890.jpg) is showing up on the Wikipedia pages I added it to (Excelsior Geyser).

--Epolk 19:51, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be just the English Wikipedia that's affected by this. I uploaded image:Lancaster_Canal_Farleton.JPG at 18:59 UTC today and it still isn't appearing in the English wiki, but I've tried it in French and Spanish and it works fine. Glad it's not just me who's been having problems. Blisco 21:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

This is fixed, see #outage. --Brion 22:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

question about IRC

I have never used IRC before, but would like to finally see what the whole #wikipedia thing is all about. What client should I download? I have no idea on what basis to choose. I am a Windows user, have a crummy laptop, and am clueless is technology beyond Excel. Thanks for your help. - CrazyRussian talk/contribs/email 17:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I know it's largely a question of preference, but X-Chat is a good open-source program. ...no, not that kind of X chat. Tijuana Brass^E@ 18:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I second the X-chat recommendation. --Interiot 19:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Multilingual SVGs

This was originally posted at Commons talk:Transition to SVG; there has also been some discussion at User talk:Mysid.

I'm making a map of Sudan which will eventually be uploaded to the Commons. Ideally I would make it so that the map labels would show up in English when the map is used on the English Wikipedia, in German when used on the German Wikipedia, and so on. But it appears that such a thing is not possible.

My "plan B" is to include map labels in several languages. The English labels will have a class attribute of "en", the German labels will have a class attribute of "de", and so on; then I can use CSS to set the style of all but one language to "display:none". This way it will be easy to generate a German version of the map from the English version, by changing two styles.

Of course, in order to use the different versions of the map, it seems I will have to upload the different languages under different names. So the English version will be "Map of Sudan.svg", for example, while the German version will be "Karte Sudans.svg".

Does anyone have suggestions or comments about this? Is there a better way to do what I want to do? Is there a feature request on MediaZilla for this type of multilingual SVG capability? —Bkell 19:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

bugzilla:4702, and perhaps bugzilla:4689, bugzilla:4688 sound relevant. There's no activity on any of these currently. --Brion 22:45, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Fonts and Unicode support in SVGs

This was originally posted at User talk:Mysid.

Is there a list somewhere of the fonts that are installed on the Wikimedia servers, so that I know what fonts I can work with in SVGs? It seems that at least Helvetica is installed (although it might go by some other name). A list of supported fonts would be very useful to SVG authors.

In a related vein, it would be nice to know which Unicode characters can be put in text labels in SVGs. For example, I want to include an H with a cedilla in my text labels (as in AL BAḨR AL AḨMAR), but I've tried both U+1E28, which doesn't show up at all on Wikipedia, and an H followed by U+0327, which just shows up as a normal H (see Image:Bkell-test.svg). I've thought about converting the text to a path, but that destroys the editability of the label. Suggestions are most welcome. —Bkell 19:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

SVGs are currently rendered with rsvg. As for what fonts are available, that's a good question and we don't have the answer ready. --Brion 22:43, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I have created Image:Fonts.svg which uses a number of fonts (mostly those that with my Gentoo Linux installation and were not installed later). Some others are emulated (e.g. Courier New becomes Courier) but I think these are all that actually look like they're supposed to:

• Bitstream Charter, Bitstream Vera, Bitstream Vera Sans, Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Bitstream Vera Serif
• Courier
• Luxi Mono, Luxi Sans, Luxi Serif

This is probably incomplete, and I can't identify which fonts are actually used for the generic Sans and Serif fonts, but it's a start. —da Pete (ばか) 14:57, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

It looks as though Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Courier, Courier New, and Luxi Mono all refer to the same font, which appears to be Courier. (It's certainly not Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, since it's a serif font.) The same goes for Bitstream Vera Serif, Luxi Serif, Serif, and Times New Roman. Bitstream Charter appears to be a different font, though. So it appears that the only distinct fonts that actually exist are Bitstream Charter, Courier, Helvetica, and Times, possibly under different names. —Bkell (talk) 17:31, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

ref/note referencing system problems

Hi, I have a problem when using the ref/note system for citing references when several points in the article text point to the same source. I have been using ref label|XXX|No\a etc fine for a while on the Chew Valley page without any problem. I was then advised to rearrange the section & renumbered the refs to take account of this. Now, if you look at the geology section you will see several links to No [7] in the text which point to different resources in the list at the end. I (& several others) have fiddled with this but are unable to get this to work properly. Any help would be appreciated. Rod 19:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC) Possibly resolved by using User:Cyde/Ref converter Rod 20:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. Can you describe the problem? --Brion

• Something's up with footnote 7 when I looked at it 3 hours ago. It hurt my head too much to look at more... —Rob (talk) 00:38, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

SVGs on Commons not working

The locator maps for Bor and Kassala aren't working for some reason (see thumbnails to the right), though the images exist on the Commons at commons:Image:Bor locator map.svg and commons:Image:Kassala locator map.svg. They were working fine a few days ago. —Bkell (talk) 20:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Since the problems from around 16:00 GMT, it has been impossible to add a commons image (and I presume anything else on commons) to en wiki (see also message above #Commons_images_not_working). Arniep 20:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

These images were uploaded 11 days ago, though maybe it's part of the same problem. —Bkell (talk) 21:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Did you just try and add the links today? As far as I can see images where the link was added before today seem to work. Arniep 22:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be working now. The images were actually added to the articles before they were uploaded to the Commons (I had uploaded them locally to the English Wikipedia first). They worked fine in the articles, until I noticed today that they weren't working any more. But I guess that whatever happened has been fixed. —Bkell (talk) 22:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

This is fixed, see #Outage. --Brion 22:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

No, wait, the image in the Kassala article still isn't working. —Bkell (talk) 22:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Use ?action=purge on the page. --Brion 22:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

"Protected deleted pages" not ignored with Special:Random

Protected deleted pages come up with the random article button. This is rather irritating, and probably doesn't send a good message about the quality of Wikipedia to the users who encounter them. Sarge Baldy 21:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, MediaWiki has no concept of a protected deleted page. As far as it can see, there's a page with content on it, which is fair game for Special:Random. robchurch | talk 21:51, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a wider problem for other uses, because MediaWiki can't distinguish between normal articles and stubs or disambiguation either. I would like to take this opportunity to beg the devs to find a way to develop such a capacity—though they probably are anyway, so I also offer thanks.

I don't think the 'deleted page' is such a major issue, however, since there are probably very few in existence. (Don't quote me on that.) Ingoolemo ^talk 22:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki does have a concept of stubs, but so few users have discovered the user preference required to make it recognise them, that few people know it. It also knows that any page containing Template:Disambig can be referred to as a "disambiguation" page.

One solution for the protection issue here might be to split protection data off into a new table, using namespaces and titles to keep tabs on it. This would allow administrators to protect pages that didn't exist. robchurch | talk 22:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

What we do at Uncyclopedia, to prevent them showing up in Special:Randompage, is make the pages a protected redirect to a Project: namespace page with a message about why the page was locked. This would solve the problem without changing the code. (see Uncyclopedia:Uncyclopedia:CVP). --Splarka (rant) 07:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

PS: It would also fix the pollution of Special:Shortpages discussed here. --Splarka (rant) 07:53, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Splarka's suggestion could do with presenting on the Village Pump for Proposals. 86.133.53.232 03:43, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Outage

In the absence of a better explanation from someone more senior, and since someone's asked me the question before, as far as I can tell, based on the log information available to me, the earlier intermittent problems with "unknown database" errors were due to the database for this wiki disappearing from four of our slave database servers.

We have no idea as to the precise reason this occurred, but those servers have now been pulled from rotation for this wiki. I expect a fuller explanation will be available once the matter's been looked into further. robchurch | talk 21:55, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The reason is well known. Some time ago we split English Wikipedia to its own database cluster separate from the others. A few hours ago, Domas removed the leftover stale copies of the English Wikipedia database from the other servers to clean them up and free up some space.

However the server cluster configuration was slightly incorrect; although they were disabled from use, the non-English-Wikipedia servers were still being intermittently connected to from English Wikipedia because they were listed in the server group. With the database now dropped, this produced an error instead of simply silently being ignored as before.

The server groups in the configuration were corrected briefly thereafter. --Brion 22:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Turns out that part was done incorrectly, thus breaking Commons images on English Wikipedia. This has now been corrected. Sigh... --Brion 22:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

For reference, the errors are still ocurring intermittently. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 22:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I love it when things are documented well. robchurch | talk 22:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

See also #Commons_images_not_working. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 22:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

and #SVGs_on_Commons_not_working. Arniep 22:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It's being worked on now. --Brion 22:19, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

And fixed. --Brion 22:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible a sysadmin could install the new <sort> extension?

Bug 4870: <sort> feature: automatically sort lists, e.g. on lists, dab pages has been kindly resolved by Rob Church, but when I emailed him to ask, he said it was not installed on Wikipedia. Is anyone here a system administrator? Could you get it installed? Thanks, --unforgettableid | talk to me 22:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it needs a little more work: the ordering is not ideal at the moment, and it should probably be profiled for performance on large lists before we consider it for Wikipedia. --Brion 22:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Brion and I had a brief discussion about it on IRC. I'll get some profiling sorted and improve the sort method a little better. Since it was a quick hack for a friend which also happened to fulfil a request, it wasn't supposed to be brilliant in the first place. robchurch | talk 00:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Just curious: how do you profile PHP code? Cheers, --unforgettableid | talk to me 03:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

There are various ways, but one which is quite nice is to use the Xdebug extension to output profiling data and load that up in KCachegrind for visualization and analysis. --Brion 22:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Link Button

I created a javascript link button for Wikipedia and would like to donate it to the cause. Where would I put it?

You can see the link button on the following page: http://www.geocities.com/boltbaits/magic/MagicCard.html

It is at the bottom of the orange box. Instructions for installation and use are below that.

--BoltBait 01:43, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia favicon in search bar changed?

Today I noticed that the Wikipedia icon in my browser's search bar changed from the stylized "W" to a tiny version of the Wikipedia globe logo. (This is the search bar in Firefox which allows you to pull down a menu of search engines; my default is Google, but I also have a number of others enabled including Wikipedia.)

Given the size of the image I assumed they were favicons; however, the favicon for Wikipedia in the URL field of the browser toolbar remains the stylized "W". Did something change to cause the search bar icon for Wikipedia to change? (Did the main Wikipedia favicon change, but I still have the cached old one?) Is there a way I can get the "W" back for my search bar? (I much prefer the "W" since it's distinctive enough to cue me that I'm searching Wikipedia and not Google.)

This is using Firefox 1.5.0.3 on MacOS 10.4.5. Thanks, MCB 01:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

That search plugin is maintained by a third party, who presumably changed the icon used. --Brion 02:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I just wanted to make sure something had not changed at Wikipedia. MCB 18:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

How do I find the list that is at the bottom of a page?

danct 01:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I have editied this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Camel_Died_at_Noon

and I borrowed the format from someone else becasue it looked great. But there is a box at the bottom with a list of the stories, and I want to edit that list, and I want to creat other lists for other topics I contribute to.

I see

at the bottom of the edit page, and it is the thing I want to edit, but when I click on the hyperlink, it just takes me to her page.

I don't even know what to call things so I can't look them up.

Thanks for any help

--danct 01:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

{{AmeliaPeabody}} is a Template, which means that it resides in template namespace (Template:, much like the Village Pump is in Wikipedia: namespace), so to edit it, you could type "Template:AmeliaPeabody" in the search box and click "Go". This should take you to Template:AmeliaPeabody, where you can edit it like you would any other page. Jude (talk) 01:56, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

This is caused by a feature called transclusion, which basically allows you to add the content of one page into another without copying the code. The form {{Templatename}} is used to translude a page. In this case the page Template:AmeliaPeabody is the page you want to edit. It is also possible to transclude user pages, talk pages, and even articles, using the same format. Normally if you do not include a prefix, it will use the template namespace, i.e. {{Pagetotransclude}} would put the text of Template:Pagetotransclude on the page. To use other namespaces you need to include the prefix (like {{User:Userpagetotransclude}}). Hope this helps, Prodego ^talk 01:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Just to add to the above. The templates used in a page can be seen listed as links at the bottom of the page (below the editable window) when you've clicked "edit this page". Shanes 03:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Image page links aren't picked up by "What links here".

Occasionally I'll take some image in Wikipedia that looks bad, bring it into Photoshop, and clean it up. Then I'll upload it under a slightly different name, so as not to destroy the original, and change the link to the image.

The article looks fine, but the original image is now orphaned. Even if I link to the old image from the page of the new image, "What links here" doesn't pick it up. So now the original image can be deleted, which isn't what I intended. See Image:Yellowstar.jpg for an example. Is there some way to avoid losing the original? --John Nagle 03:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

If the new image is a replacement for the old one, then just use the same filename. The old version will still be available in the history. —Bkell (talk) 06:31, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think simply being orphaned is enough reason to delete an image; it has to have some other problem, such as being unencyclopedic or not having a proper license. But if an orphaned image is licensed under a free-use license, and you want to prevent it from being deleted for being an orphan, you can always upload it to the Commons. —Bkell (talk) 17:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The really obvious solution to this problem is to add text to the old image's page linking to the new image. I like to put something like: "Do not use this image. It has been replaced by Image:XXXX." This is only really appropriate though for format changes - usually you can just upload the new version over it. Warning, though: if you're editing a JPEG, make sure you upload the new version at high quality, or you will risk eventual generational deterioration. Deco 09:07, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Suppressing images

Is it possible to suppress images, and only show the text that is associated with them? Sometimes my connection is slow, and I'd like to be able to load up the pages better. Is this possible? --HappyCamper 04:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

You should be able to tell your Web browser not to download images. Look in the preferences somewhere. —Bkell (talk) 04:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, is that the trick? Thanks! --HappyCamper 04:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Redlinked images

When I click on a redlinked article that's been deleted, the creation page that opens up includes a link to the deleted edits and deletion log at the top ('cause I'm an admin). When I click on a redlinked image, however, I just get the image upload page with that image name in the first field. Is there any way to have the deleted edits link show up on that page? The only way to get it seems to be to copy the name of the image into the search box. Thanks. Chick Bowen 05:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Quite possible. Open a feature request for it and I'll poke it if I get a moment or two. 86.133.53.232 03:20, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Word wrap around images

Typically with this software, words will wrap around left-aligned images but not right-aligned images. This always causes annoying blank spaces below pictures on the mainpage. Is there any way to go around this default setting?--Pharos 06:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Examples might help, but I think the wrapping works on both sides essentially the same (assuming images are floated either right or left). With a left floated image, text that starts a new line is obviously just underneath the image. With a right floated image, a short sentence that doesn't extend to the end of the line (or a series of these) may make it look like the text is not wrapping even though it is. Do the examples at Wikipedia:Picture tutorial exhibit the problem you're seeing? -- Rick Block (talk) 14:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Just look at the mainpage nearly any day on In the News or On this day or occasionally Did you know... for examples of the problem. I've been thinking of the exact way to describe it, and you're right that it really isn't a right-left issue. The problem is simply that one sentence, if it touches an image on its first margin-kiss, is also restricted to that width on its second and third lines. I think it's just more of a problem for these boxes because of the specific format of bulleted sentences.--Pharos 19:38, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean; look at User:Bkell/Sandbox for example. —Bkell (talk) 19:48, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

One possible solution is to put the floating image inside the bullet list. which will sort-of wrap multiple bullet items around it (this doesn't work good for left-aligned images however). See the section section in User:Bkell/Sandbox. --Splarka (rant) 02:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I've been considering it, and I think the solution would just be to graphically reproduce the standard Wikipedia bullet symbol through Unicode without the text of the following sentence actually being formatted as a bullet. This shouldn't be too hard to do, I think, for someone who is has just a little experience with Unicode.--Pharos 22:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The bullet image is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/bullet.gif (defined in .css via list-style-image: url(bullet.gif);). It is 5x13 pixels with a 5x7 area at the top and 5x1 area at the bottom set as transparent (white). The visible area is a 5x5 pixel box RGB: 99, 140, 156 (#638c9c). So it could be emulated with a crude div:

Test

The margins and padding could be adjusted as needed (like, in a template with editable defaults, eg: padding-right:{{{pr|5}}}px. Be good as Template:Bullet I guess. --Splarka (rant) 02:44, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

This seems like the most viable short-term solution so far.--Pharos 03:37, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Splarka and Pharos, what browsers are you using? —Bkell (talk) 03:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Firefox (the latest update), but I also have access to IE and I see your point about the differences.--Pharos 04:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Firefox (a very embarrasingly old version). --Splarka (rant) 06:10, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean the blank line before the bullet list starts? I don't know of a way to suppress this, if this is what you're after. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, upon further investigation this appears to be a Firefox-only issue (maybe Mozilla too). It looks fine in Internet Explorer and Opera. —Bkell (talk) 02:35, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Splarka, your solution where the floating image is inside the bulleted list doesn't look good in IE (it indents the bullet and the first line a little bit for some reason) or in Opera (the bullet appears next to the image, not next to the text). My guess is that a real solution will require some CSS wrangling, or maybe a Firefox bug fix. (I should also point out that I'm still using Firefox 1.0PR on Windows XP, not anywhere near the latest version.) —Bkell (talk) 02:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Yah, seems to be a problem in the different way browsers handle <img src> inside of <li>. --Splarka (rant) 06:10, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

It might be more direct to enter this as a bug report on Firefox. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:01, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I found the reason for the non-wrapping behaviour on the first example at User:Bkell/Sandbox; it's the -moz-float-edge: margin-box on resource://gre/res/html.css (the default rules for HTML on Gecko). Changing it to -moz-float-edge: content-box fixed the issue (see the third example I created at User:Bkell/Sandbox). Why is it set to margin-box, and what does it actually mean, I don't know. Since it's a Gecko-specific property, it will be ignored by other browsers, so it should be safe. --cesarb 21:21, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Taking a look at CSS3, looks like -moz-float-edge is somewhat similar to float-displace. That, however, still does not explain why it's the default on li elements. As an aside, it looks like -moz-float-edge is a cute way to avoid the problem where the horizontal line below a section heading "cuts through" a transparent float: just make the section headings (of which the horizontal line is the lower border) -moz-float-edge: margin-box, and they'll stop just before/after the float (since the headings are supposed to be a single line, wrapping isn't an issue). --cesarb 21:41, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Found a testcase at http://www.brunildo.org/test/floatFlow.html. As you can see there, using content-box with a left float can make the bullet be placed to the left of the image, which is probably why margin-box is the default. That shouldn't be a problem with a right float, unless you start worrying about things like bidirectionality. It also has a link to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=163110. --cesarb 21:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Translation of some symbols into squares.

My computer doesn't interpret correctly some symbols. For example "-1" (written in the original format as "& minus ;1" is shown as a square followed by 1. Can this problem be solved? Thanks a lot. Paolo de Magistris, Rome, Italy. demaag@simail.it

This is almost certainly a font issue, see m:Help:Special characters. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

"Pagename" magic word

Does anybody know what code to write in order to have the pagename magic word writing "page 1"'s name in it and then, if I put in, say, may talk page {{PAGE 1}} not rendering "User:Argantino/talk" but "page 1"? —Argentino (talk/cont.) 14:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

There could be a pagenumber template, to use instead of page name, which gives what it says.

However, pagination on the web is slightly different from that on a text processor. There are no page numbers that I could imagine. --DLL 21:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean {{SUBPAGENAME}}? On a page like User:Argantino/talk it would return "talk", or User:Argantino/page_1 it would just return "page 1" ({{SUBPAGENAMEE}} would return "page_1"). Or, are you trying to change the firstHeading on a page? Sorry, question is confusing. Rar. --Splarka (rant) 21:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, i mean: if i create put { Pagename } to an article X what do I have to do when i put in my userpage { X } to call the article put in the place where i had put {pagename } to get "X" and not to get "Argentino?. —Argentino (talk/cont.) 17:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Why do you write {{PAGENAME}} in article X instead of just writing "X"? —Bkell (talk) 17:21, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I just wondered, because i'm organizing the anniversaries for each day in Argentina for the Portal:Argentina and I think that writing { Subpagename } in every article is better than going to Portal:Argentina/Anniversaries and start making a header/day. I see i'll have to write down each day name, so it will take much more time (i cant copy & paste). Anyway, thank you —Argentino (talk/cont.) 17:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Zeitgeist

I posted the following on the proposals page I may have been looking in the wrong place but I couldn't find anything which lists which are the most searched articles. I'm thinking along the lines of Google Zeitgeist or eBay Pulse., and it was suggested I post here. Would this be feasible? I'm sure there'd be plenty of interest in such a feature. (Yorkshiresky 19:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC))

That question recurs periodically. --DLL 21:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Theoretically possible, but not set up at the moment. --Brion 00:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Special:Mostrevisions is a slightly different take on that (it's cumulative, not yearly or daily, and it counts writers, not readers), but with Wikipedia's exponential growth, it's weighted towards more current events. --Interiot 00:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

A while ago, I was writing an informal article about Wikipedia and wanted to illustrate it with examples of the most-read articles, and was surprised that this statistic was not kept. Oddly, there are obsessively exhaustive statistics about all sorts of things at WP:STAT and stats.wikipedia.org, but this is not among them, presumably for performance reasons. But given the frequency with which this is requested, I wonder if it might be a better priority for the limited CPU cycles on our servers that can be devoted to stats than some of the rather esoteric stuff that is kept. Since I'm not a developer, what would be a good way of communicating that? --MCB 00:11, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Link auto-capitalization

I'm sure it's been discussed before, but could someone point me to a previous discussion (or bug#) regarding whether things like FiNaL FaNtAsY could be automatically hooked up by mediawiki software, instead of redlinked? A new user asked me about why the links don't go to the right place, or at least go to Final fantasy, since that's what happens when you hit "Go" in the search box, and I didn't have an completely adequate answer. --Interiot 20:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I suppose it's because capitalization is important in article titles (Aid and AID are distinct articles, for example). So if I wanted to start an article about some FiNaL FaNtAsY that's actually capitalized that way, it would be more difficult to do so if I could never get a redlink to appear. —Bkell (talk) 20:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Redirection is a good workaround. --DLL 21:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

How to get an entry based on value or null (Revised question)

This is a revised entry of the original question so I can make it clearer.

I want to create a template which is used to get either a specific entry or all of them depending on the parameter.

Let's say I have a list like this

• Item 01 - May
• Item 02 - Critical
• Item 03 - Exact

And I want to put it into a template, let's call it FUZZ so that if I simply use a macro call of {{FUZZ}} I get

• Item 01 - May
• Item 02 - Critical
• Item 03 - Exact

But if I use {{FUZZ|01}} I get

• Item 01 - May

But if I use {{FUZZ|02}} I get

• Item 02 - Critical

I know in some way this requires {{#if:}} or some macro, but I'm not sure how.

Is there a way I can do this? Second, is there a way I can have the macro generate text only if the parameter is null? So that I could put a header if the parameter is null but no header if the value of {{{1}}} is not null.

Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 22:53, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is exactly, what you want, but perhaps something like this?

{{#switch: {{{1|}}}
 | 01 = *Item 01 - May
 | 02 = *Item 02 - Critical
 | 03 = *Item 03 - Exact
 | #default = 
  *Item 01 - May
  *Item 02 - Critical
  *Item 03 - Exact
}}

You might want to check out m:ParserFunctions for a better explanation of things. In regards to null-parameters, {{#if: {{{1|}}}|do this if it is set|do this if it is unset (null)}}, is that what you're looking for? Hope that helps! Jude (talk) 02:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I'm already doing something like that now, what I think I want is something like this:

{{#switch: {{{1|}}}
 | 01,#default = *Item 01 - May
 | 02,#default = *Item 02 - Critical
 | 03,#default = *Item 03 - Exact
}}

or

{{#switch: {{{1|}}}
 | 01
 | #default = *Item 01 - May
 | 02
 | #default = *Item 02 - Critical
 | 03
 | #default = *Item 03 - Exact
}}

So that I only have to include each of the items once. For default, it shows all of them, for any one of the entries, it only shows that one. So that for each entry, if it is that value OR null, then it shows the item. This way I can get both with only one entry for each item, as opposed to having to do them twice. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 22:45, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

There is one thing you might be able to do that, and have only one line per option, though it is a bit dirty:

 {{#switch: {{{1|}}} | 01 | = <br />Item 01 - May}}
 {{#switch: {{{1|}}} | 02 | = <br />Item 02 - Critical}}
 {{#switch: {{{1|}}} | 03 | = <br />Item 03 - Exact}}

This puts a switch on each option that only shows that option if the first parameter is either blank or matches the number of that parameter. This means of course you can only call one: {{FUZZ|##}} or all: {{FUZZ}}. There is probably a better way to do it though. --Splarka (rant) 23:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Streamlined the code a bit. | 01 | case with no = in it passes to the next argument, | = with nothing before the = assumes empty string, so | 01 | = basically means "case '01' OR ' '". And the default is not needed. The only problem I see with this now, is a line return added for the omitted lines. *shrug* --Splarka (rant) 00:05, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Complicated Image Request

I love the colored maps I find when searching different nations and states on Wikipedia I was interested to know if anyone can create or find a way to bring the State of Alaska and the Territory of Yukon together on one map. Kind of a supranational map for topics relating to North America's first-order administrative units. Any help I could receive on the matter would be great or a direction or a wikipedia image specialist I could consult. Thank you. 209.193.56.228 01:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

One option is to look for an online atlas. :-) Cheers, --unforgettableid | talk to me 01:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

What exactly are you looking for? A map of Alaska and the Yukon, and nothing else? —Bkell (talk) 02:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I got troubles reading characters correctly, although I...

Hello: I got in internet options enabled for East-European languages to make readable,I also downloaded Lithuanian fonts in my C:\WINDOWS\FONTS map /folder. Nevertheless, when not on original Lithuanian websites, I get always letters / signs not readable or not according the language. I tried all possible encodings of East-European fonts and the UHF-8, the problem is persisting.Do you or one of your colleagues know what I must do inorder to make it working 100% properly ? My e-mail address is: Kris_aus_Antwerpen@hotmail.de Thank you in advance, Chris.

Sorry, Wikipedia is not a tech support forum. You can get help at www.googlegroups.com. Cheers, --unforgettableid | talk to me 02:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a known problem in Internet Explorer. Use FireFox. —Ruud 22:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

"/ad/" in URL's of images is blocked by default in AD blocking plug-ins

Some URL's of images in wikipedia has the term "/ad/" in them (example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ad/MSdying.jpg ). the term "/ad/" is blocked by default in most commonly used AD Blocking plug-ins and programs thus blocking many images in wikipedia articles. It would be wise to stop using the term "/ad/" in the URL's to avoid that from happening. (btw, is this the right place to report this?) --TheYmode 06:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a known issue. At some point in the future we're going to change the way images are stored and referenced, and when we make those changes we will keep this in mind. In the meantime, you can fix your ad blocker's configuration. --Brion 07:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

JPEGs and generational decay: a solution proposal

As more and more users join Wikipedia, our forces of technically adept image editors is also growing. Wikimedia Commons is a thriving project. This creates the problem that soon, many of our images will be iteratively refined and edited over time, just as our articles are. For bitmap images, SVGs go a long way towards making this more convenient for many types of images.

For JPEGs, however, the problem of generational decay is inevitable: images repeatedly saved at 70% or 80% will acquire visible artifacts and all their edits will have to be repeated from the original version. Some images may have had older versions stripped for space under the mistaken impression that nothing of value was lost. We need to develop a solution now and implement it before this happens.

One partial solution, recommended by many users, is to just use very high quality JPEGs, such as 95% quality. Because thumbnails are rendered at medium quality, there's no problem with download times for readers. This staves off generational decay for quite a bit longer while keeping filesizes somewhat reasonable, but it does not eliminate decay. This is what I'd recommend in the absence of any software changes.

A bad solution: Use JPEG's lossless mode. This isn't a really good idea, as in Huffman mode JPEG lossless has unimpressive compression rates of about 49% on average, while the arithmetic coding mode is encumbered by patents. It also has poor tool support.

A better solution: Upload PNGs and render their thumbnails as JPEGs (ideally with the option to choose the thumbnail quality level). PNG delta compression does pretty well with continuous tone images, exhibiting an average compression rate of about 56.5% ([ref table in JPEG-LS paper), which isn't much worse than the best lossless formats (although this is after a rather slow pngcrush run). This would only require small software modifications to enable the selection of format for thumbnails, and would dovetail nicely with another important feature, specifying color depth of PNG thumbnails. This also has the advantage of extremely wide tool support.

The ideal solution: Use a specialized lossless compression format for photos such as JPEG LS or JPEG 2000 lossless mode. Average compression rate in the JPEG-LS paper is about 60%, and another study shows average compression rates of 66%. JPEG-LS outdoes PNG by about 10% on typical photos[4]. Unfortunately, tool support is currently extremely limited, with only an extremely alpha open source impl, and a single mature Photoshop plug-in distributed by HP Labs. The effort required for Mediawiki just to decode such files for re-rendering is prohibitive. These formats are also encumbered by a variety of patents (albeit freely licensed ones) and are relatively slow to decode.

So, in light of the above, I propose the middle solution. Let's add support to the parser and renderer for specifying the format of a thumbnail. We know convert will happily do all the hard work for us. Sound good? Deco 10:04, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

We also could do with divorceing the image description page name from the file format so that new versions can be uploaded in png format when the original is a jpeg. Plugwash 13:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

See also bugzilla:4421. —Bkell (talk) 17:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/newbieIP?

Special:Contributions/newbies shows contributions by individuals whose accounts are new. Is there an equivalent for IP addresses, i.e., people posting from IP addresses that don't already have a posting history to Wikipedia? — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 16:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Recent Changes has a checkbox to show only non-logged-in contributions. — Saxifrage ✎ 01:18, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Appreciate the answer, but it's not what I'm looking for. Recent changes by non-logged-in individuals might be longstanding editors on Wikipedia who've just chosen not to register. Special:Contributions/newbies reflects new users' edits -- basically, the system recognizes that the users are new and puts them in this category. Does it do the same for new IP addresses -- recognizing, say, that the IP address ##.###.##.## hasn't ever logged in here before and assigning those edits to a particular log? Newbie IPs, in other words? — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 01:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

No, there's no functionality similar to that which you describe at this time. "Newbies" is calculated based on the age of the user account...to look at the history of IP addresses, and grab every "new" IP address, we'd have to scan the entire revision table every time the page was viewed, which is an absolute nightmare from a performance perspective. robchurch | talk 12:00, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks.  :) — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 15:32, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, I would caution against drawing too many conclusions about whether an IP address is "new" or not, since many IPs are shared (proxy) or dynamic. --MCB 00:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

When do new articles appear in search index?

Having created a couple of new articles a few days ago, they still do not appear in the search index and you can only find them if you enter the direct name of the article or link to it from another article that links to them?

How often does Wikipedia update its search index to pick up new articles?

--Tompage 16:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Scroll to the top of this page and read the "Frequently Asked Questions" section. ~MDD4696 17:04, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Sound files

How do you add sound files to an article? I'd like to know how to create a sound file as well as how to wikify it. In order to avoid copyright issues, I'm thinking about recording some plainchant myself for the chant articles. (The music is centuries old, but the commercially available recordings are copyrighted by their performers.) What kind of copyright release or permission would I need to give, and how would I give it?

I haven't been able to find info in the help section. Thanks! --Peirigill 21:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sound_and_Wikipedia#Audio. --Splarka (rant) 22:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and to embed it: See {{Listen}}, {{Audio}}, etc. --Splarka (rant) 22:36, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

nowiki in links

To avoid all kinds of scary breakage (and potential security issues with broken HTML), <nowiki> and friends are now explicitly excluded from use in URL and wiki links.

It seems a few people have been using this little hack with <nowiki> to get around the way template parameters containing "=" get split up; alas this now will break your links. As a replacement, I've fixed it so that = (&#61;) and other standard character entities are properly decoded/normalized in URL links. (This had been special-cased for & previously, while any others remained broken.)

So you can write http://example.com/?foo=bar with &#61; and it should pass through a template parameter without breaking the parameter. --Brion 01:13, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Thumbnail rendering issues

I've been tracking down problems with rendering of thumbnails and SVG images; we're now logging all failures, and various sources of trouble are being poked at.

Temporary rendering errors should now be handled more gracefully as well; instead of embedding an ugly error message into the page, the error is logged in the background and the page will optimistically assume the image will be fixed in the future (which, likely, it will be when the page gets loaded). This should cut down on annoying "Image thumbnailing failed!"-type errors getting stuck in cached pages. --Brion 01:19, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Monitor

Can users ping Wikipedia, or is this just an admin function? Wallie

What does this mean? You can do a normal ping on en.wikipedia.org in the standard manner, of course. Your question is far too ambiguous to expect a targeted answer. robchurch | talk 11:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Printing underlined links.

None of the skins print them, and my attempts at editing User:Jeandré/monobook.css didn't work. -- Jeandré, 2006-05-27t14:15z

You have an error in your syntax. It should be:

@media print {
a:link { text-decoration: underline !important; }
}

. Notice the location of the semicolon. I haven't tried it so it might not solve your problem but that is the way the syntax should be. Jeltz talk 15:31, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Try removing the semicolon before the !important. Also take a look at common/commonPrint.css to see how they are removed by default. --cesarb 15:33, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to removed by commonPrint.css. At least not for "blue" internal links. Redlinks and external links could have their underlines removed by commonPrint.css, but I'm not sure. Jeltz talk 15:39, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

/* MSIE/Win doesn't understand 'inherit' */
a, a.external, a.new, a.stub {
	color: black ! important;
	text-decoration: none ! important;
}

/* Continue ... */
a, a.external, a.new, a.stub {
	color: inherit ! important;
	text-decoration: inherit ! important;
}

Looks like removing the underlines for all links (including internal links) to me. --cesarb 16:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

a:link, a:visited {
    color: #520;
    background: transparent;
    text-decoration: underline;
}

I'm referring to this. This is before the part you pasted here but I think that this one might have precendence. Not sure though about the rules of precendence in CSS. Jeltz talk 16:53, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

That does not have !important. Rules with !important always have precedence over ones that don't, irregardless of any other precedence rules. --cesarb 03:45, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. The following works in Ubuntu/Firefox:

@media print {
a, a.external, a.new, a.stub, a:link, a:visited { text-decoration: underline !important; }
}

Should it be added to the meta user style page, and if so can it be safely shortened? -- Jeandré, 2006-05-27t18:46z

Vertical space problem

Why is there a lot of vertical space at the top of this article? I thought it was the template being included there, but after removing several newlines in it, and trying both null edits and real edits on the article itself, I can't get the space to go away. - dcljr (talk) 19:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

It is the tempalte. I'm trying to fix it but I'm causing new problems. The problem was far too many table rows in the template. Jeltz talk 19:55, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that it is fixed now. What the fix was was removing all the "|-" in the table since there already were html table rows. I guess this made either the browser or Wikipedia go nuts. Jeltz talk 20:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

More template server load debate

Previously, Brion has said that we shouldn't worry about server load for templates. But he mentioned, as a caveat, that an exception should be made for signatures, since they're so insidious. What's the story with {{tl}}, then? It's transcluded on some tens of thousands of pages. Is this a problem, or should we be arguing over which wikicode is prettier instead of worrying about server load?

(Reference: Wikipedia talk:Template substitution#tl; and cl) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:12, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

About 70,000 pages, to be specific. --Rory096 06:50, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyone using such a template is a complete and total idiot and should be immediately booted out of the project. I'm serious. How freaking hard is it to type a damn link? --Brion 07:41, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

What is going on with this image?

Why does this image [5] display all screwy in the articles its in? can someone just delete the old one for me?--Deglr6328 06:27, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

The 250px thumbnail for that image is persistantly cached a bit, it looks like. "Fixed" (in quotes) by resizing slightly. --Splarka (rant) 07:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)