Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot II (talk | contribs) at 01:36, 16 March 2007 (Archiving 5 thread(s) older than 14d to /dev/null.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Village Pump - Archive

DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.

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

Post replies at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), copying or summarizing the section you are replying to if necessary.

Note: Please add new material at the bottom of the page and remove any duplicate sections.

MediaWiki talk:Anonnotice#It needs to be moved up or over:

MediaWiki:Anonnotice is clashing with many of the top-right-corner icons for anons at the moment (see the thread linked in the section title for details). So it probably needs to be moved to the left. Per discussion in that thread, I'm taking the matter here for dicussion. --ais523 10:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Change all previous signatures

Is it possible for me to have all of my previous signatures changed to my current signature with little effort on my part? Sanchom (talk) 03:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, sorry. You will have to use AutoWikiBrowser or something similar to make it easy, but even then, it will be hard. -- ReyBrujo 03:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would also be a bit uncool. While you're allowed to change talk page text you wrote, there's an expectation that you do it soon after you wrote it, not days or weeks later. If someone has responded to what you wrote, it's important to preserve what they responded to. Also, for those watching thousands of articles, someone updating every one of their signatures would be somewhere between alarming and time consuming. —EncMstr 03:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ya... I probably won't do it. It would have just been removing my last name from all of the signatures. It's just that all of my wikipedia posts are turning up in Google when you search for me now... Sanchom (talk) 06:42, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Checking it's safe

Hello again, it's me, the only guy who is determined to learn CSS and java through Wikipedia alone! I just wanted to double-check some CSS before saving it, can someone please assist me with this as I don't want to find the page breaks after I've saved it. Obviously I've borrowed this from elsewhere, and I've previewed the skin and it looks moderately okay, but, given my previous form, I would like to know if this is all "grammatically correct", as it were. 

/* standard link colors */
a { color: #F0F0F0; }
a:active, a.new { color: #00FF00; }
a.interwiki, a.external { color: #F0F0F0; }
a.stub { color: #F0F0F0; }

/* put scrollbar on pre sections instead of ugly cutoff/overlap in firefox */
pre { overflow: auto; }

/* make a few corners round, only supported by moz/firefox/other gecko browsers for now */
#p-cactions ul li, #p-cactions ul li a {  
  -moz-border-radius-topleft: 1em;
  -moz-border-radius-topright: 1em;
}
#content { 
  -moz-border-radius-topleft: 1em; 
  -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 1em;
}
div.pBody {
  -moz-border-radius-topright: 1em;
  -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 1em;
}

/* same following the css3 draft specs, any browsers supporting this? */
#p-cactions ul li, #p-cactions ul li a {  
  border-radius-topleft: 1em;
  border-radius-topright: 1em;
}
#content { 
  border-radius-topleft: 1em;
  border-radius-bottomleft: 1em;
}
div.pBody {
  border-radius-topright: 1em;
  border-radius-bottomright: 1em;
}

/* don't use a smaller font */
td.diff-addedline, td.diff-deletedline, td.diff-context { font-size: 100% ;}

/* underline just the text that's different */
span.diffchange { text-decoration:underline; }

div { line-height: 1.2;   font-size: 10pt }   /* number */
div { line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 10pt }   /* length */
div { line-height: 120%;  font-size: 10pt }   /* percentage */

/* default skin for navigation boxes */
table.navbox {
    background-color: #f9f9f9;
    border: 1px solid #aaa;
    clear: both;
    font-size: 90%;
    margin: 1em 0em 0em;
    padding: 5px;
    text-align: center;
    width: 100%;
}

There is one final change I want to make to the skin and that is to alter the Navigation, toolbox, and interwiki link bars in the sidebar to #000000, and the text to #F0F0F0, but I don't know how to do this. Any help would be very much appreciated. Bobo. 05:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You had one typographical error, a transposed } and ; (fixed above). The W3C CSS validator says the rest is fine (except it doesn't recognize the border radiuses, but you can ignore that). One problem is, you are making *all* links very light grey, which makes it hard to use a wikipage (be aware).
Anyway, to make the portlets white on black, try:
.pBody { background-color: #000000; border-color:#444444; color: white }
.pBody a { color: #f0f0f0 }
.pBody a:active { color: #f000f0 }
.pBody a:visited { color: #f0f0f0 }
--Splarka (rant) 08:24, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Once again Splarka, thank you very much for your help, especially after the relative debacle of last time. I will ensure that I alter the links to a sensible colour given the brightness of my computer screen. It's nice to realize I'm learning something! And thank you for the link, that will be useful for bookmarking for the future. Bobo. 16:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Defaulting show preview and edit summary prompt upon account creation

In this discussion at WP:VPP, a user suggested that we make show "Show preview" mandatory before saves. There is no apparent support for that change. However, this sparked in me a far less drastic idea that a few users have supported involving modifying the default preferences setting upon account creation in a way that would address this issue as well as the perennial proposal that users always be automatically prompted for missing edit summaries. I am seeking second opinions, as well as a feasibility report from you tech gurus, for the following:

The options in user preferences under the editing tab allow a user to choose "show preview on first edit" as well as to "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary." Currently these default to unchecked upon account creation. I imagine it would not be difficult to change the software so that upon account creation, these options would instead default to checked.

For "Show preview", I am betting this would lead to a not inconsiderable reduction in error-filled edits, and for the edit summary prompting, not only would it serve to teach new users what an edit summary is, but go a long way toward getting them to use them from the get-go. Many new users might get used to those defaults before they ever realize they have a preference page, and never uncheck them after because they are used to that state of affairs.

To be clear, I am not proposing any change making these two options automatic, just that the two existing preferences default to checked upon account creation (as we already have for other options in editing preferences, such as Show edit toolbar, etc. It would not force anything on anybody; all users would still have the option of changing their preferences, but many will I am hoping, be gently and invisibly guided by starting with these defaults.

I also think it might have at least a mild vandalism reduction side effect. Some vandals must hover over the submit button for a moment thinking "do I really want to do this?" Now they get a second chance to turn back, and may be more likely to after seeing their changes right up there on the screen in preview mode. It is even more likely this would cut down on test edits of the "can I really edit this page in real time" variety. Those new users will see the red-colored "Remember that this is only a preview; changes have not yet been saved!" at the top of the page and will be more likely to not hit save because they realize from that, that it [really] will save to a live change.--Fuhghettaboutit 06:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You have to remember that anons can't change their preferences, so they'd be stuck with whatever defaults were set until they created an account. There's some worry, I think, that anons might be put off editing by having to save twice and by having to enter an edit summary. --ais523 11:20, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Is there some technical reason why the default preference settings upon username account creation necessarily must also be the default setting for anons? If the answer to that is a categorical yes, it could be one or the other. If only one is a better choice because of this, I think "show preview" would have more good effect than would the edit summary prompt.--Fuhghettaboutit 13:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you want anons to be able to edit without previewing but not new users? Anyway, it seems that there's precedent for something like this; go to fr:Special:Random (a random page on fr:) and go to the editing screen; you'll find that that the 'save' button is disabled for anons unless they've previewed first, which I think is what the thread above refers to. 'Show preview on first edit' loads the article up on the edit screen as if you'd clicked 'Show preview' without making a change (I've just tested), but lets you save immediately. --ais523 13:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
No. It's not a matter of wanting different things between the two. It's a question of choice. If anons can't access preferences, and changing the preference default for new accounts necessarily affects them as well (which I don't know is true), then anons would have this change forced on them while new accounts would always have access to their preference settings, notwithstanding the fact that many new users will not discover they can change their preferences for a time. If anon and user account default preferences are slaved together, and cannot be divorced, then the consideration of whether to implement this becomes different because of the choice issue. It may be that making all anons have to preview before saving without choice would have too much of a chilling effect--Fuhghettaboutit 14:19, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The preferences for anonymous users and the default preferences for new users should always be the same, else it's confusing (new users should be able to expect that nothing will change when creating an account for themselves). --cesarb 14:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: on the French Wikipedia, anons always have to preview before saving. GracenotesT § 14:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I mentioned that above. I wonder what sort of chilling effect it's had on anon edits to frwiki, and how well it's prevented anon vandalism to frwiki. --ais523 14:54, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Ah, so you did mention it. My apologies, I just saw the general content of this discussion and wanted to add something in case it wasn't mentioned. I guess that it was :) GracenotesT § 18:16, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Points well taken. Both would be too much and anons shouldn't see a change in their preferences when they create an account, which could have a different chilling effect, on account creation itself, i.e., new users going back to editing under their ips because they don't like the "change." It probably would lead to a flood of "what gives" posts when first signing up too. So I guess this discussion must shift to only the show preview default, "French option" for all. How to explore the actual effect this has had on the French Wikipedia is not clear to me.--Fuhghettaboutit 15:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IPs and the new-message bar

See Wikipedia:Help desk#IP address. This probably needs to be brought to wider attention, so I'm posting it here. Does anyone know whether the developers are aware yet? Can anyone reproduce the problem easily? --ais523 15:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Happens to me occasionally (i.e., the orange bar gets stuck there, viewing the diff. page appears to make it disappear however). thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That happens to me all the time when browsing Wikipedia when not logged in, at school. The orange box remains there even when I go to the talk page. There is one IP address and hundreds of computers. GracenotesT § 18:19, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm getting the opposite problem. On another MediaWiki wiki running version 1.10, I sent my own IP a message, but the new-messages bar didn't come up, not even when I bypassed my cache. --ais523 18:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
If you wait long enough the new messages flag will appear, but won't go away, this seems to take anywhere from several hours to several days, during which time new messages will probably go unnoticed --VectorPotentialTalk 19:02, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've alerted the developers via BugZilla: bugzilla:9213. --ais523 16:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Edit problem in List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

If the first section of List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (the Chief Justice part) is edited, editing seems okay. If you try to edit the section below that, for Seat 1, what actually comes up in the edit box is the section for Seat 8. If you attempt to edit lower sections, all you get is a blank edit box. This was reported as a problem on the article's Talk page over 6 months ago, but hasn't been addressed. I'm using IE 7. Corvus cornix 18:49, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem is that {{start SCOTUS clerk table}} contains headers, which are available to edit (so are counted), but do not actually exist in the page text. If the headers are removed from that template, I think it would work. A few tables were not closed (and probably some still are not) - it can be difficult to follow when some tables are started inside templates but closed outside. Gimmetrow 19:14, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that fixed the immediate problem, but the names are not listed in subsections. At least you know the cause; you're welcome to revert. Gimmetrow 19:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Translations of episode names

The translations of the titles/names of a TV episodes of a serie (for example), have some kind of copyrights for the translator? Is necessary to request permission to the translator to use this titles in wikipedia. I'm taking specifically of no official translations. (Sorry about my english) 64.237.177.229 00:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Highly doubt it. If you are still worried, it might actually be better to go to another language Wikipedia and get a "free" translation by asking - for example, fr:Wikipédia:Oracle or if you wish to stick to English, perhaps Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. x42bn6 Talk 01:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Very Simple Question

How many hits does Wikipedia get daily, monthly, yearly? If any of this data is available I would be grateful. Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulmath (talk • contribs)

Check WP:STATS. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox keeps downloading Javascript scripts

I'm running Firefox 1.5.0.9, and have loaded two fairly large scripts into my monobook.js page as follows:

importScript("User:Lupin/recent2.js");

importScript('User:Lupin/popups.js');

They both run fine (thanks Lupin!), but every time I reload a page (using the buttonbar or F5 - not Shift-click), both scripts get re-downloaded (nearly 400kB). This slows things down and also causes unnecessary load on the servers, I guess. Does this happen to anyone else and is there any way I can persuade Firefox to always use the cached copies? TIA

--Smalljim 23:31, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Check if your browser.cache.check_doc_frequency setting is something other than 3. You can access it by typing about:config in the URL, and then searching for it. -- ReyBrujo 23:43, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And remember to do one hard refresh (with ctrl+f5, not shift+f5) at least to update your cache stamp. -- ReyBrujo 23:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the quick reply, ReyBrujo. Just checked that setting - it is default - integer - 3. I have done several hard refreshes, and even cleared out the whole cache, but it still happens. Should say I'm running Windows XP Home. When I reload a page I can see, with Explorer, the files being re-downloaded into Firefox's cache. The odd thing is that it doesn't happen when I open a new page - only when I reload one that's already opened. It's as if the Reload button has been reprogrammed to do a full refresh.
Thanks for the pointer to about:config, which I'd forgotten - I'll have a browse around in there and see if there are any settings that change the behaviour of the Reload button. I do have a number of Extensions installed, so perhaps it might be a clash with one of them?
Failing everything else, does anyone know if can I store the scripts on my hard disk (as .js files) and get monobook.js to point to them somehow? --Smalljim 00:21, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't tried it, but it might be possible to convert the popups.js to a greasemonkey script. That way the script will always be on and you wouldn't even need to be logged in! — Ambuj Saxena (☎) 05:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I can look into greasemonkey scripts - but it may be a bit beyond me! Incidentally I've found that the same thing happens with Opera, so I guess it actually happens to everyone and I'm just particularly fussy about download times!
I have found that a partial workaround is to click the article tab instead of the Reload button. This seems to update the article without re-downloading all the .js files. --Smalljim 12:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you can call scripts from your hard drive if you install a web server on your computer (any small webserver will do). Put into your monobook.js 

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="http://localhost/my.js"><\/script>');

and the scripts inside my.js will be executed as if they were inside monobook.js. Also, this seems to be the best way to develop new scripts without all those extra edits. — Alex Smotrov 00:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion log entry not showing up

I deleted Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics as an empty category and it isn't showing up in the deletion log. Is this a bug? I'm guessing it has to do with the length of the category name. VegaDark 01:09, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When did you delete it? -- Tim Starling 02:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
About two minutes before I posted that message. VegaDark 03:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So, any word on this? Any admin can click on the above link and see the "one deleted edit" thing, and then if they click on it they will see that there is no deletion history. I have a theory as to what could be the reason. It could be the length of the category was too long, combined with the fact that my edit summary was somewhat long. The two combined may have screwed something up to make it not show up. A way to test this would be to recreate the category and delete it and see if it does the same thing, and then create a category with an almost identical name and delete that and see if that shows up in the log. If you want to test it with my edit summary, it was "WP:CSD#C1 - Empty category that has been empty for at least four days". VegaDark 21:18, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would guess it has to do with the fact the category had a colon, which may have confused the software. -- ReyBrujo 21:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
At first I thought it might be that, but Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: University of Copenhagen shows up in the deletion log and that has a colon. It may be a combination of having a colon and a comma, however. VegaDark 21:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

html

I am currently trying something and would like to find out how I could insert html onto a page - I am not planning on adding any to any articles, this is a pure expreiment

For security reasons, you can't insert just any HTML tag but there are a few that you can insert and there is also the basic wiki markup that you can use. What exactly are you trying to do? Tra (Talk) 13:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A list of allowed HTML can be found here. --MZMcBride 01:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to Extract text from Wikipedia to Display in another WebSite?

Hi. I have a web site that lists various scholars and their writings. All the links there currently go to Wikipedia articles, but I though it would be nice to provide some kind of "preview" of the Wikipedia article in a DIV (or OBJECT or IFRAME) on the web page itself. Does Wikipedia offer any (API) method by which an article can be embedded into another web page without the navigation bar and other space-consuming paraphernalia. I would just want the "contents" of the Wikipedia page to show up, since there will be very limited space, and it's just a preview anyway. I see that other sites (like Ask.com) seem to be able to do this, but I don't know if they use some elaborate back-end engine that parses and reconstructs the Wikipedia information. I don't have time to program something like that; I'm looking for the easy way! Any ideas? Thanks a lot. —Dfass 18:59, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You could maybe Special:Export the page and parse the XML, I don't know if automated mass queries are permitted however. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 19:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Actually, the "print" version is pretty close to the stripped-down version I want. So I can link to a page as, for example, "Zoroaster preview", and I think that will be good enough for my purposes... I hope. —Dfass 19:42, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Could also try Zoroaster&action=render — this parameter gives you exactly what you asked for; you just need to apply some CSS cause it doesn't look good without it. — Alex Smotrov 05:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images

I've been having some trouble seeing images I've uploaded to commons. Photos display fine, but when I've tried to add plans which I've coloured up in photoshop and then saved as jpg's they don't seem to display - I just get the X at the top left of the screen. Is it just my browser (IE7) or is there something wrong with them - the image I've just uploaded is Image:Royal Palace Monaco plan2.jpg. Cheers. --Joopercoopers 03:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I do see an image, but the colors on the thumbnail are all mixed up. Might be corrupted. Try uploading again, and preferably in PNG format. Jpegs are a bad choice for images like that. --Sherool (talk) 04:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see a red cross - just like you said, could be corrupted, try reuploading. Af648 07:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. Right, I think I've got it sorted now. PNG seems to result in too large a file size. I switched the mode from CMYK to RGB in photoshop before saving and that seems to have done the trick. Regards --Joopercoopers 13:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OGG

Hi. I was going to play a video from an article and I was wondering: are these OGG files automatically scanned for viruses when they're uploaded? Thanks.--Ol' Blue Eyes 07:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The server does not sanitize anything. Not even Javascript, as far as I know. -- ReyBrujo 08:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
ok. Thanks.--Ol' Blue Eyes 08:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Provision for showing a reason for redirection?

People have been having a lot of fun at Conservapedia's bee in its bonnet about British spellings in Wikipedia. Nevertheless, there is a real issue here, or two issues. First, a redirect does not show the user any reason for the redirection. Second, we don't know what inference an average user makes when they notice that a redirect has occurred.

Many redirects are mistakes and misspellings. When you type in paralell and get a page on Parallel it is reasonable to interpret this as "you misspelled it."

It does not seem impossible that a user who types in phonograph record and gets an article on gramophone record could interpret this as "Dummy! it's called a gramophone record, not a phonograph record." Or, conversely, someone who types in sulphur or colour could feel chided (even though all of these articles open by giving both versions).

I don't think you'd have to be totally paranoid to get that impression. That impression would be wrong, and experienced Wikipedians know this, but a redirect does not give a reason or link to an explanation. And it should.

It seems to me that it would be feasible and wise to expand the redirect mechanism so that a redirect could include a reason. Most reasons would probably be stock reasons from templates. I

I don't know whether the target page should give the full reason following the "redirected from" line, or where it would just say something like "Redirected from Sulphur. Why this was redirected"

Some examples of typical reasons might be:

"Redirected from Phonograph record, because "Phonograph record" is the U. S. term and the editors of this particular article have chosen to use the British term. See style policy."

"Redirected from Lady Mendl, the term by which Elsie de Wolfe was commonly known after her marriage, because "Elsie de Wolfe" is the form commonly used by her biographers."

"Redirected from Paralell, because Paralell is a misspelling." Dpbsmith (talk) 14:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did some poking around, and what do you know. Some explanatory mechanism appears to be already in place, although it is subtle (perhaps far too subtle). For example, Help:Magic word is a redirect to Help:Magic words. The redirect page shows the text: "(Redirected from Help:Magic word)", with the text after "from" a link to the redirect page without redirection. Clicking that link, and then clicking the edit tab on the resulting redirect page shows that the redirect page transcludes the template: {{R to plural}}, which, if the hapless user could actually see it, explains the reason for the redirect. Thus it appears the explanation you seek is buried, or could be buried, in the redirect itself, but the odds appear to be remote that a new Wikipedia user would be able to find it. MediaWiki allows the user to customize some aspects of its appearance, through skins; wouldn't it be great if, in addition to being able to make frivolous cosmetic adjustments, a user could select an actually different functionality? For example, a beginning user might select a "Beginner" skin, with a "What's this?" feature that would pop up explanatory text over every mysterious GUI object. --Teratornis 18:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with template vandalism?

User talk:BostonMA has been gone for some time now but his page remains. Today I noticed that the template (guess that is what it is) on his user page has been vandalised by two inserts of User:Essjay/Clickthru/3 into the template formating the top of his page. Since he is not here to fix his page, please would someone look into it? (It must be a vandalised include as I understand these things.) Sincerely, Mattisse 16:07, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No vandalism. User:Essjay/Clickthru/3 was deleted per request of User:Essjay (a user can request deletion of all of his userspace pages). There seems to be a replacement at User:Llama man/Clickthru/3. You can use that instead, if you want. --Ligulem 16:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps a redirect should be instated, if permissible, due to many inclusions of all of Essjay's clickthru templates? Of course, Essjay did request a U1, so this seems murky. See this. That's what my user box would have looked like if I didn't, by pure coincidence, switch to imagemaps a couple of days ago. Of course, we could switch to {{click}} in most cases (or even better, to imagemaps, although this would take much work). GracenotesT § 16:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand. Why is it in the box at the top of User talk:BostonMA's page (in two different places where previous there were no such links at all)? Could you look at User talk:BostonMA to see what I mean? He never had any links there before (only images) or ever had contact with User:Essjay Sincerely Mattisse 16:30, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know how to do as you are suggesting above. (There was an edit conflict when I posted.) I just think it needs to be fixed. Sincerely, Mattisse 16:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That template is transcluded to dozens of pages, so it won't be a quick fix--VectorPotentialTalk 16:35, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That is called transclusion, the template is at User:BostonMA/Nav. I suggest substituting Essjay's template in all needed places. -- ReyBrujo 16:37, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed that particular example, but as I said above, it's used in dozens of transclusions--VectorPotentialTalk 16:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Someone should probably contact a pywikipediabot owner to change all instances of User:Essjay/Clickthru/3 to User:Llama man/Clickthru/3, the same thing should be done for User:Llama man/Clickthru--VectorPotentialTalk 16:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Thank you so much for fixing it. (I feel protective of his page as User:BostonMA is a good guy and hopefully will return.) Sincerely, Mattisse 16:49, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've gone through all pages that transcluded to User:Essjay/Clickthru and User:Esssjay/Clickthru/3 with AWB and changed them over to the User:Llama man/Clickthru versions. The Special:Whatlinkshere lists seem to be a bit lagged, but I'm pretty sure they're all changed —Krellis (Talk) 00:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Need some assistance

Probably the end of my time here... :)

I just deleted Jimbo's talk page in order to delete a revision (at the request of a user concerned with personally identifying information inadvertantly revealed.) Now I'm unable to undelete it--I just get a blank page instead of a list of the 13,000+ revisions. Any help appreciated. —Doug Bell talk 05:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which revision is a problem? --Aude (talk) 05:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For a page with massive edit history (13,000+ edits), I think oversight is better. --Aude (talk) 05:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe true, but I saw before I did it that Slim Virgin had done it when there were more than 11,000 edits...so I figured I would be OK. I can email you which version if you think you can help. —Doug Bell talk 06:01, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think I know which revision. The undelete page is loading. --Aude (talk) 06:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The page is coming back now. --Aude (talk) 06:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The page is back. You can look at Special:Undelete/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales and see if I got the right one. If not, try oversight. --Aude (talk) 06:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
THANK YOU! I sent you an email with the details of the request. And no, it wasn't that one. —Doug Bell talk 06:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Customise interface messages just for myself

As it pretty much states above, I want to be able to customise MediaWiki messages just for myself. I get annoyed when I come across userpages that imitate the "You have new messages" message, and I want to change the text so I can easily tell whether it's a joke or whether it's real. Obviously I can't change the style as intelligent people would just use the CSS class for formatting. Harryboyles 11:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You could probably tell the difference between a real message and a fake one using JavaScript, and change the formatting that way. But you can't change the HTML before it comes out of the server if that's what you're thinking. -- Tim Starling 12:20, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that idea. I'll work off that. Harryboyles 12:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would personally love to have my own MediaWiki pages (that is, replacing the text of the messages with my own; in the same vein as having "contributions" instead of "my contributions", or "stalked pages" instead of "my watchlist")> I suppose that this also is not technically feasible. GracenotesT § 13:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Gracenotes: it is possible with Javascript:
addOnloadHook(function(){
 var portlet;
 if (portlet = document.getElementById('pt-mycontris'))
   portlet.firstChild.innerHTML = 'contibutions';
 if (portlet = document.getElementById('pt-watchlist'))
   portlet.firstChild.innerHTML = 'stalked pages';
})

→ your monobook.js (unless you changed your skin from the default Monobook). — Alex Smotrov 14:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki messages have a div/span id? I should've known (aka checked the source code). Thank you. GracenotesT § 15:11, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, MediaWiki messages do not constantly nor consistently have div/span IDs or classes. Also unfortunately, the class on a usermessage div can be emulated in wikicode (as the opening statement lamented). What you can do is specify the css more specifically. For example:
#siteSub + #contentSub + .usermessage { border: 2px solid red; }
...Would give real usermessage notes a red border (only if they were preceeded specifically by the siteSub and contentSub divs). It could still be spoofed, but not as easily. --Splarka (rant) 08:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Diff function screwing up

See [1]. This edit looked like vandalism, as it was changing comments in the straw poll, so I tried to undo it; it was marked 'conflicting intermediate edits', so I reverted it by hand, preserving the comment in between. This, however, demonstrated that there was no comment-reattribution going on in the original diff after all, so I reverted myself. (I've checked the resulting state of VPR; it seems to be fine in the current revision.) What's confusing me is why the original diff shows reattribution going on in the first place. Does everyone else see this? Does anyone else know what's causing it? --ais523 17:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The diff seems to look fine when viewed through popups, so it must be something wrong with the server-side diff rendering. I'm guessing that maybe an oversight or something has taken place, and something might still have been cached. Interestingly, the URL [2] (note that %28 and %29 have been replaced by brackets and diff=prev has been used) does seem to work. Tra (Talk) 17:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, the diff you gave is the edit after the one I'm talking about. --ais523 17:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Whoops, sorry. I still get normal results through popups though... Tra (Talk) 17:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see it. There's definitely something fucked up with the diff engine. Either that, or something's feeding the diff engine broken revisions, but I rather suspect the former. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sig won't link to user page

When I do the 4 tilde thing, my sig won't lionk to my user page

watch

Richardkselby 22:55, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Try unticking 'Raw signature' in your preferences. Tra (Talk) 22:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Richardkselby 23:02, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Tra, you are my new friend!!!! :)

Richardkselby 23:03, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IE Locks up

Recently, when I go to any wikipedia page my Internet explorer has started locking up. I have the new tabbed version, not sure exactly of which version it is but the only way for me to kill it is to ctrl+alt+delete and kill it throth task manager. When in task manager, it shows that iexplorer is using 99% of the cpu resource. It does not happen every time and after killing it in task manager it works again for an undetermined amount of time before it happens again. Is this a bug with wikipedia or my browser? It is starting to get realy annoying. Thanks! -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 20:59, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It might be one of your user scripts (maybe popups?). To see if this is the case, blank User:Chrislk02/monobook.js and try browsing the site. If it works fine, then you know it's one of those. You can then add them back individually until the problems come back, in which case, you've found the culprit. Tra (Talk) 21:45, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Happened to me, too. My advice: switch to Firefox. Most of the really good JavaScript for monobook.js is only compatible with Firefox. Pyrospirit Flames Fire 01:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question

Is it possible to make an image a link? I want users to be able to be directed towards The Godfather page when they click on the image at {{Godfather}}. Khoikhoi 03:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you can use the {{click}} template, but it is VERY discouraged. I would argue the Godfather logo is copyrighted and therefore the image must have a wrong license, though... I heard they were trying to develop a map extension for clicking images. In any case, just leave the template as is, or better yet, change the image for a wikilink to the article. -- ReyBrujo 03:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The ImageMap extension can be used for this. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:03, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but why is it discouraged? I also noticed {{Evanescence}} and its use of Image:Evanescence.svg. If its copyrighted, is it illegal to make The Godfather font? Perhaps its creator had permission, I'm not sure. I honestly think the template looked really bad with just a wikilink, and I can't think of any better font than this. That's just my opinion though. Khoikhoi 04:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Clicking on images should normally bring up the licensing information for the image. Using {{click}} and similar may be confusing given those expectations, may have exploits, and hiding the licensing info may not be OK with the GFDL. It also may have accessibility issues. Imagemap is better because it allows a link for the licensing info to remain in the image.
Copyrighted images are only "fair use" for articles, ie in article space, so use in a template means that template should *only* be used in article space. If one were really ornery, the template could be made such that the image only appears in transclusions in article space. Hmmm. Maybe there should be a template to make that easy... Gimmetrow 04:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If it's a fair use image, it shouldn't be used in a template at all. In this case, the image was created using a "Godfather" font and is not quite the same as the copyrighted Godfather logo (although it might be close enough that copyright infringement could be claimed). -- Rick Block (talk) 05:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If it's a fair use image, it shouldn't display outside articles where the fair use is claimed. Does that mean it cannot be linked in a template? A template could be written with an image inside an includeonly and conditional on article space, for instance. Gimmetrow 17:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fair use images cannot be used in templates. That's a violation of fair use. Corvus cornix 23:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how your response addresses my rather specific point about a rather specific scenario. Gimmetrow 02:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle script not working

I recently installed the Twinkle script to my monobook.js, and none of it works. I've already asked the script's creator, AzaToth, for help here, and he couldn't figure out what's wrong.

I use Windows XP Home Edition, my browser is Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.2, and my firewall is from Norton Internet Security (not ZoneAlarm, which breaks Twinkle).

I've already purged the server cache and bypassed the browser cache, and as I explained to AzaToth, none of the buttons work. (Note: If it's useful at all, my discussion with AzaToth also has some of the error messages I get when I try to use Twinkle.) Pyrospirit Flames Fire 02:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edit preview thingy somewhate broken

Take a look: preview, and this. I didn't edit out {{econ-stub}}, but the preview shows I did. WTH? --M1ss1ontomars2k4 (T | C | @) 04:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional (#ifeq and #if) not working in template

This is primarily about an external wiki site I'm working on - I'm trying to learn some of the more advanced functionality for Wikipedia.

  • The Parser extension is installed.
  • The owner of the server has apparently followed instructions to add the hash (#) symbol to the front of all the functions.
  • I discovered (after a looong time) that the pipe (|) symbol doesn't work within conditional statements, so I created a template (Template:!).

But here's the thing: the script I created in the template seems to work ok in Wikipedia, but not on the other server. I created a temporary template, Template:Temptest1 to test with and a page in my user space to check the results, User:Setanta747/temptest.

I also copied Template:Infobox Company to see if that would work, being a relatively simple template (or so I thought!). I had to remove the html code to start with, as the other server just didn't seem to want to know about it, so I replaced the tr and td and th tags with pipe templates and eventually got it to display all the fields.. but the conditional function is still not working - the fields are displayed as {{variable1}}.. {{variable2}} etc if the variables aren't included in the article.

The interpreter or compiler or whatever, seems to be extra-sensitive with regard to spacing - almost like COBOL - if I remove a line break, or add one, it seems to radically change the layout of the template. I had to do a lot of trial and error editing to get anything approaching a template that can be used at all.

Here are links to the relevant pages on the other site, if anyone is inclined to help out.. or if anyone is familiar with what I'm talking about.

Thanks in advance to anyone who is generous enough to donate some of their time. --Mal 10:02, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Mal, it's a complex table, and you might want to test a few simple things down at the bottom of the template, like printing out the variable values to see what got passed when the article invoked it:
              F1: {{{F1|undefined}}}; F2: {{{F2|undefined}}}; etc.

    When using variables that may not be defined, give them a default value, like {{F1|}}} (blank) or {{F1|no}}} -- because undefined variables cause trouble in conditionals.

    For instance, where you have:
              {{#ifeq: {{{F1}}}|yes|
    define a default value of yes or no, whichever way you want to jump when the variable doesn't get passed by the article:
              {{#ifeq: {{{F1|no}}}|yes|
    would default to no, don't invoke the next section, bypass it for the section after that.

    I hope these little thoughts are of some help to you. Good luck! -- Ben 12:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • P.S. When debugging a template -- rather than save each change and go over to the article to invoke it -- try giving all your variables the default values you'd want the article to provide, then hit the "show preview" button to see the results right away. Something of a timesaver! And then if you later get different results when the article invokes it, you know the problem's got something to do with how the variables got passed. Maybe the whitespace is getting included, and |F1=yes|F2=yes| (without the spaces and linebreaks) would pass the right values. That being a different system, with possibly different flags set, just such an insanely simple problem (and solution) may apply. Again, good luck! -- Ben 12:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ben thanks so much for your insights. I've not got the time to try out your suggestions just now, but it looks like you've given me some fresh direction to go in. Thanks again. :) --Mal 13:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I found out that the problem was the PHP version on the server. My friend has PHP version 4.x installed, and apparently the conditionals work properly on version 5.x and above. Change of server for us then. ;) Thanks for your help again Ben - its still useful to bear in mind what you'd said. --Mal 20:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Something else to keep in mind: Wikimedia uses HTML Tidy ($wgUseTidy in the settings) which allows html to be broken and later fixed by parserfunctions and transclusions (something the built in HTML sanitizer doesn't allow). On a MediaWiki install without Tidy enabled, many templates from here will break. --Splarka (rant) 08:08, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist stuck

Is it just me or is anyone else's watchlist stuck as of about 25 minutes ago? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 17:48, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

←*It appears as though it has started to catch up again (but posts of mine fro 20 minutes ago are just starting to show up). -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 18:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On browsers that can display XML, this link is probably a more readable workaroung for the time being. --ais523 18:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
  • The watchlist hasn't totally stopped; mine seems to be updating every half hour or so as well, and it only registers some edits. Does anyone know exactly what the problem is? Acalamari 18:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • It is catching up pretty quikcly it seems. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 18:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, whatever the problem is, it's not as bad as it was: my watchlist is now displaying edits from 7 minutes ago. Acalamari 18:08, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mine is working fine now. Acalamari 18:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Does anyone have any missing edits because of this? Cometstyles said that they are missing ten minutes of edits. Anyone else have this problem? My edits are all fine. Acalamari 18:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • All of mine showed, I watched them update after the fact and it all looked good to me. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 18:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Seems to be working now--VectorPotentialTalk 18:48, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And let the vandal-fighting begin once again. x42bn6 Talk 18:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Uh oh

Now there's a Special:Contributions lag--VectorPotentialTalk 19:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Along with the perpetual database locks and error messages recently, I'm guessing servers are suffering from the load. Xiner (talk, email) 19:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The contributions sometimes take a minute to update; I've had that before. I'm more worried about that watchlist delay, and the "server overloaded" warnings. Acalamari 19:59, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Come to think of it

Could this problem also be related to server lag?--VectorPotentialTalk 20:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please enable JavaScript

Is anyone else getting a red notice saying "Please enable JavaScript to access the extended special character edit tools" at the bottom below the edit box, even though JavaScript is enabled? I'm using Firefox 2.002 on Windows XP and under Tools>Options...>Content "Enable JavaScript" is checked, yet I'm still getting the message. Any suggestions? —Angr 21:12, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, me as well. Matthew 21:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's this change, this admin probably tested this in only one browser (IE7?). Quite surprising. This will be reverted back quickly and then I hope will be discussed cause the idea itself might be good. — Alex Smotrov 21:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I wondered what was going on. I tried to sign my name with the ~~~~ button but I couldn't, so I had to type it out. Acalamari 21:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First of all, have you purged your cache? (WP:CACHE) It may repotedly require a few tries, since this change is a combined effort of .js, .css and a modification of Mediawiki:Edittools. And it should work fine on Firefox. Миша13 21:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to be fine now anyway. However, not everyones uses Firefox. Acalamari 21:41, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's their fault, not ours. ;) --Golbez 21:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I cleared my cache multiple time with no luck. I tried multiple browsers (one with a freshly cleared cache) too. It is possible that there may have been a lag in the software. I reverted your change to MediaWiki:Edittools. Since you are here, I'll let you sort everything out and revert me as necessary. Thanks. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 21:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The changes have been reverted. I suggest discussing this further at MediaWiki talk:Common.js. —Ruud 21:56, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Donations Progress Bar

I'd like to take a look at the format and source-code of that progress bar / guage that appears when Wikipedia asks for donations - you know, the one that appears at the top of each page to say what percentage of their donations target has been reached.
Do you know where I can find that progress bar in a template or something? I've done a bit of searching, looked up template:progress, etc etc and can't seem to find it.
Thanks in advance.
60.227.97.79 15:34, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Me too, it was very slick. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:01, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a template, it's a static image generated by the fundraising system. The source is here. -- Tim Starling 03:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Great, looks like a php script. Darn I gotta start learning PHP properly cos the syntax isn't singing to me. But I worry that even if it did, I still wouldn't know how to implement it - how do I transclude it in a page or feed it the variables it needs to generate the image? But kudos for the answer. Rfwoolf 03:48, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We use another extension for that, FixedImage. 164.11.204.56 08:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

User's groups tab

I used to have a small tab with a '$' in it that showed a user's groups (i.e. Admin, Bureaucrat, etc) when clicked. I'm sure where I got it or where it went, but does anybody know of a script that does this? John Reaves (talk) 01:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have that in my monobook, but it is part of something else, so it would be very hard to rip out just that part. I could probably figure out how to make it from scratch if you would like, or someone with more JS experience could. If you want to see it, try User:Prodego/User/monobook.js and(required) User:Prodego/User/monobook.css. (Needs Firefox for best results) Prodego talk 16:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Article size

How do I find out the size of an article, please? TerriersFan 03:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:SIZE. One way is to search for the article (use "search", not "go") and the last cached size should be listed. If an article is over 30k, the raw size is shown above the edit window. For smaller articles (or to be more precise on "prose size"), you could go to the "printable version" of the article (it's a link in the toolbox on the left), remove the references, and check the resulting file size. (There are some javascript tools which do the same, but if you only need to know for one article, it's probably easier to do it by hand or ask someone rather than install the tool.) Gimmetrow 03:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, very helpful. TerriersFan 01:34, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Another method, not necessarily more convenient, is to click the edit tab at the top of the article, select all the wikitext in the edit window, copy to the clipboard, and then paste into an external text editor that has a function to show the file size. This measures the size of the article's wikitext, and does not account for the size of images the article displays, the size of any transcluded templates, nor the expanded size of any magic words. If you want to know the size of the downloaded HTML of an article, you could use your Web browser's file information function. If you want to count the words in an article, you could use Unix commands such as lynx and wc. For example, this counts the words currently in the Village pump (technical) page:
lynx -dump \
'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29' \
| wc -w
which at the moment returns 18169. --Teratornis 17:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to archive entire Wikipedia at once in several languages?

Any suggestions on how this could be done? I'd like to have a Padd type device using a tablet PC. I realize I could use a spider but maybe someone has experience with this. I'd also like to have archives in several different languages. I realize this would be quite large and I would also like to cache all related images. Thanks --70.106.252.247 04:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See m:Database dumps. Dragons flight 04:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!--70.106.252.247 04:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also see WP:WAP, meta:Wiki on a stick, Wikipedia in your Pocket, and TomeRaider. Disclaimer: I have not tried to implement Wikipedia on a Tablet PC. --Teratornis 16:51, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalizations

Why does putting in Prestige Oil Spill into the Search/Go bar yield the Prestige oil spill page, but when put in Wikilinks yields a redlink? Shouldn't there be some way to make the alternate capitalization systems the same, rather than having to go and create redirects? Logical2uReview me! 16:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • That is an interesting idea, the only catch I could think of is if there were two separate articles that differed only by their capitalizations, it might cause a potential conflict. Of course there probably aren't supposed to be article titles that differ by so little, since that would be confusing--VectorPotentialTalk 16:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • OTOH... there are Some few, which are deliberate-- see WP:WC, and WP:Wc, making for a one character change in the resultant url if one gets a memory fart. The one is a resource page for the newcomers, the other the project, such as it is. I would think system software could be written trying the expressed version first and successive capitalisations sequentially until a match is found whilst ignoring prepositions. Maybe a filled in wrong case could be represented by a violet link color--combining red and blue! <g> // FrankB 22:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:Wc and WP:WC redirect to the same page for me. I also like the violet idea, if it can be applied to all wikilinks, and if its codable. If it IS the Gobar checking capitalizations for pages, this makes me suspect it is somewhat codable. I wonder who we bring it to then? Logical2uReview me! 22:52, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Bugzilla -- see link at page top, submit as "requested features".
    • Can post on the village pump at Mediawiki too, but the Bugzilla route has 'procedural handling' in place for such requests, so will at least get 'kicked around' on the email circuit. // FrankB 23:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:Wc and WP:WC both redirect to the same place. either:
    a. frankb is mistaken
    b. frankb is correct, but the explanation is hard to understand
    c. frankb is correct, and i am not smart, and misunderstood. this seems the most likely.
    offhand i can't think of a situation where there should be two articles that differ only by capitalization. --barneca (talk) 22:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Sigh... yet another case of being edited unmercifully, I fear! "Alas! Alack, Oh woe is me!" WP:WC (edit | [[Talk:WP:WC|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) used to go to this page (diff shows being moved) and this diff (shows a shortcut reassignment) both recently, and proves my assertion-- or would have, or 'whatever' and something like that, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. <G> Q.E.D. - Both pages existed on Feb 9th, or that last edit made no sense whatever. Sniff. So pick E none of the above! Oh thou mocking 'Barneca', but be assured when the FrankB speaks there be something behind the statement! (It really doesn't come off very mature either, dude.) The situation in question arose back when they were discouraging subpages except in all but user spaces. So that being settled, moving the page makes some sense. But I'll have a stern talk with The Transhumanist on keeping consistency with shortcut links! Maybe even spank 'em with a wet noodle! Cheers! // FrankB 23:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    (Edit conflict)

    Wikipedia is case sensitive indeed. However, when you click "Go" the search box looks for alternate capitalizations. Thus, if you type Prestige Oil Spill, the search will search for Prestige Oil Spill, Prestige Oil spill, Prestige oil Spill, prestige Oil Spill, etc, and since it finds Prestige oil spill, it will show that page. Using common sense, you should not create two pages that differ only in capitalization (in example, Virtual console and Virtual Console should both redirect to the same page, because the difference between both words is trivial, and not to different pages, as it is currently). Redirects that differ in capital letters should use the {{R from other capitalisation}}. -- ReyBrujo 23:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Good point... any editor earning their munificent salaries here needs to back check any redirect link they come across for the proper {{R from ... } tagging. The Category:redirects links to the reference page so you need not remember that or it's shortcuts. There are maybe five or six common ones. // FrankB 23:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    So, realistically, we need to check each article on the Wiki for multiple capitalization schemes of the same article before any "Capitalization Fixer" is implemented? Logical2uReview me! 01:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    This is now part of Bug 453, Make page titles case insensitive, I guess. Logical2uReview me! 20:44, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Contributions of IP range

    Accourding to Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-03-05/Technology_report we can now see the contributions of an IP range. But Special:Contributions/217.230.0.0/16 comes up empty, despite of Special:Contributions/217.230.13.252. Any ideas? Agathoclea 07:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Perhaps the new version of the software is not yet running on this wiki. When I delete a page that has been deleted before, I don't get the old deletion log entries either. Kusma (討論) 07:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Special:Version (as of this posting) says we are on r20145, and the change in question (r20075) was a week ago, so it should be working.... --Splarka (rant) 08:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Soon, it was reverted due to an SQL error for newbie contribs due to a mistake. I've committed it again with that issue fixed. Voice-of-All 00:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    It doesn't work for me. Did it get reverted again? --Akhilleus (talk) 04:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    always return http response code 403 (forbidden) when access wikipedia page

    does any one know why i always get http response code 403(forbidden) when i try to read wikipedia page?

    i develop my own mobile browser for browsing wikipedia article using folowing code (written in java) 

               String urlstr="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia";
           URL url=new URL();
           in=url.openStream();
           buffRead=new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
           while (true){
               nextLine =buffRead.readLine();
               if (nextLine !=null){
                   content+=nextLine;
               } else{
                   break;
               }
           }

    the URL are fine when it use in common web browser. do i miss something here? i know that wikipedia article are under GNU Free Documentation License, so didn't think i violate any rules, did i?

    regardsDidito132 10:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    The servers may be rejecting your request due to the user agent string of your request; try customizing it to something unique to your own mobile browser. --ais523 10:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
    ais523 is correct; the server has banned certain user agents, so you will have to change the user agent to something else (e.g. MyMobileBrowser/0.1). Jayden54 12:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Erm, try passing urlstr to new URL()? -SpuriousQ (talk) 10:43, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Dear all, thank you so much for your kind suggestion. What you have say is right, indeed i have to specify a unique user agent on my request header. By the way, i did some mistyping on the code i write in this post, my real code is truly passing urlstr to URL(). regardsDidito132 04:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Moving MediaWiki et al to another server

    To solve the problem we encountered here regarding the PHP version on our server, the server owner is wanting to migrate to a different server.

    I'm unfamiliar with the installation process, and what he needs to know is, basically, the best order in which to do things. We are running Mediawiki 1.69 at the moment and we want change to another server and upgrade it to the most recent version at the same time.

    As we understand it, the MySQL databases can just be backed up and rebuilt on the new server, and other files can be FTPed, but what order is best for upgrading. Does he have to install most recent version of mediawiki to the new server first. or what..?

    Thanks in advance for any help. --Mal 23:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    See mw:Manual:Moving a wiki. The usual recommendation is to perform the upgrade just before or just after the move, to be sure that things work either side of it. 164.11.204.56 08:12, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    You might also try experimenting first with the move and upgrade on a workstation, using the m:Wiki on a stick method. That may be more convenient for working out your exact procedure, verifying that all your extensions work, that you have preserved all your image uploads, customizations, and so on. Be sure to document all the steps in your procedure on a wiki page, because you will need to upgrade MediaWiki repeatedly in the future, and because the available documents (mw:Manual:Upgrading, mw:Manual:Moving a wiki) are a bit vague and general (they don't list all the specific commands you will need for your setup). Once you have seen how the move and upgrade work on your workstation, you can be more confident when you repeat them on a full-blown server. --Teratornis 16:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    What an excellent resource, and a helpful bunch you lot are! Thanks yet again for going above and beyond the call of duty to help others out with their problems. :) -- Mal 19:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks for being one of the few to say thanks. (I think I forgot to do that when I asked some questions, and now my ingratitude is archived forever. I swear, I felt grateful.) Anyway, I figure we're getting this fantastic software to use for free, we might as well give something back. --Teratornis 08:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Serbian-style transliteration

    Hi, not sure if this appropriate place to ask, but we would like to create a Syllabics<->Latin converter for the Inuktitut wikipedia in the style of the Serbian Cyrillic<->Latin converter, but I've no experience with the actual MediaWiki software. Can someone point me to a guide on how the Serbian wiki accomplished this, or at least point me to the relevant source code? Thanks, Moszczynski 17:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    I made an inquiry at the Serbian village pump. Seems like the one who did this was sr:Корисник:Rainman, so you might want to contact him, also, they referred to zh:User:Zhengzhu as "the god of auto-conversion", I guess he made the auto-conversion between traditional and modern Chinese. --Johannes Rohr 17:30, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    DEFAULTSORT question

    Before reporting a bug, I want to make sure I am doing this right. According to DEFAULTSORT's help, you can have multiple defaultsort statements. However, Oliver Twist didn't do as I expected in Category:Big Read Books - it sorted under "Twist, Oliver" instead of "Oliver Twist." 

    {{DEFAULTSORT:Oliver Twist}}
[[Category:1838 novels]]
[[Category:Novels by Charles Dickens]]
[[Category:Serialized novels]]
[[Category:London in fiction]]
[[Category:Black and white films]]
[[Category:1909 films]]
[[Category:Big Read Books]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Twist, Oliver}}
[[Category:Charles Dickens characters]]
[[Category:Fictional orphans]]
[[Category:Fictional thieves]]

    Is this the correct arrangement? — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 17:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm not sure you're allowed to use more than one {{DEFAULTSORT}} key. --MZMcBride 21:05, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    The help says you can, which is why I am asking: Once this has been included in an article, the new default sort key will remain in force until the end of the article, or until a fresh {{DEFAULTSORT}} is used. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 21:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    The help page is ambiguous and misleading. What is actually means is that the last {{DEFAULTSORT}} will be used, no matter what previous ones might contain. You may want to make a feature request to do what you'd like to do. --MZMcBride 23:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, the help page reflects what the code should be doing, as far as I can remember when I wrote it. Looking into this. 164.11.204.56 10:18, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree strongly that it should be doing what the documentation says it can do, and the Oliver Twist example above is a perfect demonstration of why.  :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Anything new on this? — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 01:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    WP removing image metadata

    This is not an entirely technical question, but I can't see a more suitable section.

    If a user uploads an image which contains metadata that indicates that it is copyrighted and licensed under the GFDL, the first thing WP does is create and redistribute a copy of the image with this metadata stripped out. That would appear to be a violation of the GFDL by WP itself -- licensees are not permitted to remove copyright notices or license notices from copies. I'd argue that the image scaler should keep such metadata intact.

    I asked about this elsewhere and another user pointed out that a browser displaying the image file on a user's screen also constitutes making a copy without the metadata. That's true, but until the image file leaves WP's servers it remains WP's problem. If the user then does a screen capture and redistributes the captured image, it is the user violating the GFDL, not WP. Rling 21:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    The license information is available on the image description page instead. Tra (Talk) 22:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    It is, but I still think this is not enough. The purpose of having embedded metadata is so that it travels with the file. IPTC metadata was created for exactly this purpose, EXIF also. They would not exist if having the metadata in, say, an accompanying text file, was good enough. It's too easy for the two to be inadvertently separated. How many digital images do you have copies of? How many of those have (non-embedded) information saying where they came from? Rling 20:41, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    The image scaler (ImageMagick) probably does not know anything about the metadata, and thus fails to copy it (it's not stripped out, it's simply not copied). How is that metadata implemented? If it's not a critical chunk, programs are supposed to be allowed to completely ignore it when processing the image. --cesarb 22:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    This thread [3] suggests ImageMagick at least attempts to copy metadata, although this one [4] suggests it doesn't. I'll have another look. Note that the PNG specification includes the text "we strongly encourage programs handling PNG files to preserve ancillary information whenever possible"[5]. Rling 20:41, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    How do you Keep Track Of Changes/History?

    How do you keep history? I am curious about the feature which allows for people to be able to see the history of changes.

    What do wiki folks do regarding that? There can be two ways of doing this:

    1) store the ENTIRE article

    This is trivial and changes can be reflected easily but it is highly inefficient because you are storing tons of repeated data. So there has to be a better way ... maybe ...

    2) store the incremental changes?

    If you store the incremental changes how do you store these changes? How do you remember that a word in certain paragraph was modified? Is there an algorithm for this? Someone told me about "Levenshtein distance", is this used by wikipedia?

    would someone be kind enough to email a response to "atharshiraz" user id for a yahoo email account. Appreciate it! May wikipedia continue to grow and prosper.

    Pretty sure it keeps the full version of each revision, then uses a difference engine to tell you what changed in the diffs. --Golbez 21:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Since it is all text, it isn't too bad. But yes, I think the full revision is stored. Prodego talk 22:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Some answers may be here: mw:Manual:Database layout and mw:Revision table. A sufficiently curious person could set up a m:Wiki on a stick and poke around in MediaWiki's database. --Teratornis 08:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually m:Text table confirms it. Prodego talk 22:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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