Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 70

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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As if not logged in

Sometimes when I'm loading Wikipedia (the English version, I haven't tried the other versions for a while), it looks like I'm not logged in. A "log in" link appears in the upper right corner of the side, and a "Try beta" link next to it. However, when I click the "Try beta" link, all the links that are displayed when logged in appears. So apparently, I am logged in after all.

I have noticed this bug for a few months now. I'm running Windows 7. And I'm using FireFox, which I always have updated to the latest version. --Kri (talk) 12:56, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

That was weird. So let's test some things:

1: What happens if you bypass your browser cache? (Perhaps your browser is caching some broken stuff?)

2: Also clear all cookies in your browser. I am using an older version of Firefox but to clear my cookies I click the "Tools" menu in my browser, then "Options - Privacy - Show cookies - Remove All Cookies". Then you need to log in again since you have then cleared your Wikipedia session cookie.

3: If the two above things don't help, then log in by using the secure server. Go to the login page, then in the text below the login box click on "secure server", then log in as usual.

If things work fine when logged in to the secure server but not when logged in to the normal servers, then I suspect that you are behind a caching proxy that messes with your page loads. Then you need to check your proxy settings in your browser: "Tools menu - Options - Advanced - Network - Connection settings".

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I never log out, and I visit Wikipedia quite frequently, so I assume that is not the problem. But I can try it the next time I get the same bug. --Kri (talk) 17:14, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The secure server uses separate login. Even if you are logged in to the normal servers, if you go to the secure server you are not logged but have to login there too.

And what I mean by "proxy" in this case is that you might be surfing via a proxy server that is shared with other users on the same Internet service provider. (If you are using a computer at school or at work or similar then proxies are even more common.) Then you would every now and then see page versions that other users loaded and now are cached in the proxy, instead of the page versions with your personal menu at the top. That can cause the exact thing you are describing. If it is that problem, then you should mostly see it on popular pages, since they might have been visited lately by other users from your Internet service provider. Using the secure server usually bypasses the caching in the proxy, or even bypasses the proxy alltogether. Thus trying the secure server is a quick way to diagnose if it might be that problem. But even quicker is to check your browser settings, it might be set to connect via a proxy server.

Another thing it could be is that you are using a buggy wireless connection that damages data in transit. Then you should every now and then get failed page loads (no page, or damaged page). Such a connection can also damage the data you send to Wikipedia, thus on some page loads Wikipedia might not recognise that you are logged in since the cookie your browser sent it was damaged in transit.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:30, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Auto-complete search through archives

Every so often I read through old posts and I often find links to discussions that have been already been archived. It would be nice if the anchor didn't exist it would be copied into the search box. — Dispenser 03:36, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

My God, do you have no sense of timing? We're all concentrating on being gripped by panic and you ask a question like that? LTSally (talk) 04:02, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Phew, crisis over. Sorry. Carry on! LTSally (talk) 04:20, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The browser doesn't tell Wikipedia what section it is trying to open, so I think this could be done only in JavaScript. Hopefully, LiquidThreads, that solve this problem and many others, will be deployed soon. Svick (talk) 11:42, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI, I believe that ClueBot fixes these links when it archives a page. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 11:48, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

document.getElementById(location.hash.substring(1))!=null would be able to tell. But I'm thinking that we should just copy it regardless to the search box. — Dispenser 15:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Searching User Contributions

We need to be able to search within our own, and other's, user contributions. Post this to bugzilla.174.3.106.27 (talk) 01:22, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

You already can. See Wikipedia:Tools#Page_histories. There are several third-party tools which can search through page histories and find specific edits, or find what users have edited what pages, basically anything you could want to do. --Jayron32 04:41, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:iw-ref

Can anyone see why {{iw-ref}} is generating the text "the equivalent article" instead of the article name where I used it in Martín Alonso Pinzón? A quick look at the documentation says I did this right, and a quick look at the code suggests that the intent is that it would show the article name. - Jmabel | Talk 06:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I suspect it's because it's seeing the vertical pipe just before 'the equivalent article' in {{#if:{{{2|}}}|[[:{{{1|}}}:{{{2|}}}|the equivalent article]] on}} as a renaming pipe in the link rather than as a false option in the if statement. you probably want to rewrite it as {{#if:{{{2|}}}|[[:{{{1|}}}:{{{2|}}}]]|the equivalent article on}}, though that means that 'the equivalent article' part won't be linked. --Ludwigs2 06:34, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

P.s. on second thought, I think that might be intentional (though I can't say as I like it). they probably always want the template to say "This article incorporates information from the revision as of ... of the equivalent article on ...", rather than specifying the precise link. the links are correct, it's just the link label that's generic. I'll ask a question on the talk page to see if that was the intention. --Ludwigs2 06:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem with that is when an English-language article draws on more than one article in a particular Wikipedia, or draws on an article with a broader or narrower scope. That is, material drawn from another Wikipedia is not always from the equivalent article. - Jmabel | Talk 21:37, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Database lag

Is there a hack going on because there was a 1,311 second server lag and then when I tried to click my username it said "Oh dear! Our JSON query went down the drain?" --macbookair3140 (talk) 02:24, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah something's going on. Lag is almost at 2,000 seconds now. Equazcion ^(talk) 02:29, 16 Jan 2010 (UTC)

My contributions page is over 2 hours late. Woogee (talk) 02:38, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

"Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 2,249 seconds may not appear in this list."

Is something going on that there is a database lag of 1407 seconds? Every time I mention a concern about tidying up unwanted odds and ends at bots, people assure me the servers are robust and nothing could ever slow them down. So, how do we go from there to a 12 minute database server lag? --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 02:26, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Try asking over at WP:VP/T. —DoRD (talk) 02:33, 16 January 2010 (UTC) Please don't copy my reply from AN/I over here. Thanks. —DoRD (talk) 02:59, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Panic Button

Um, this is WP:VP/T. So... What's up with the servers shitting themselves. My last watchlist entry is at 1:58, and checking a few articles histories, THOSE stopped being updated at around the same time. The recent changes page is perfectly up-to-date however... Any ideas? --Jayron32 02:44, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

This was copied from AN/I. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:45, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm... we could panic? Just brainstorming here. Equazcion ^(talk) 02:46, 16 Jan 2010 (UTC)

I vote we panic. Clearly the world around us is in meltdown. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I haven't panicked in a good long while. I could use a little. Panic it is then? --Jayron32 02:54, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Support panic and mass hysteria It isn't fundraising time so it's not like wikimedia is holding out for more money from everyone copying writing their papers from using wikipedia.--Terrillja _talk 02:57, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Panic it is! Now what. I've never gotten this far with the panic proposal. Any ideas on what to do next? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:59, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Support panic. --macbookair3140 (talk) 03:04, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Panic might be the solution, then. It's up to >3800 seconds now. Worst I've ever seen. —DoRD (talk) 03:06, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I've seen worse. This has happened before. Someone should probably be informed, I'm just not sure who. The devs? Equazcion ^(talk) 03:10, 16 Jan 2010 (UTC)

With a server lag over an hour and ten minutes, something is clearly up. Panic it is. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:11, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

It is over 4,000 seconds now. December21st2012Freak ^{Talk to me} at ≈ 03:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Just reading the manual and over 4000 seconds calls for a Won't somebody please think of the children!? FlowerpotmaN·(t) 03:16, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

It is approching 5,000 now, probably because the beta skin is going out of beta. December21st2012Freak ^{Talk to me} at ≈ 03:23, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Today is probably the end of Wikipedia because it has went over 5,000 seconds. December21st2012Freak ^{Talk to me} at ≈ 03:26, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I've seen a lag of 10,000+ seconds a few months ago when there was a routing issue between the database servers and the WWW servers. Bidgee (talk) 03:38, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Give it a couple of minutes, we'll be up to around 10,000. We're already knocking on 6k.--MrRadioGuy P T C E 03:41, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Is this the run around helpless screaming kind of panic?, or the rioting kind of panic, torching buildings and going vigilante and beating up criminals?--Jac16888^Talk 03:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The first one sounds fun. Equazcion ^(talk) 03:13, 16 Jan 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I think we should go around screaming. If we encouraged rioting, people and Wikipedia might get hurt. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:16, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

It's about time to give the DB server a three-finger salute, I'd say. —DoRD (talk) 03:26, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

• Strong support screaming panic. --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 03:29, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
• Strong support Actions are greater than words around these parts. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:31, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Support but the running around screaming is giving people exercise. --MrRadioGuy P T C E 03:33, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Panic some more? It's approaching 6,000 now, well 5620 something. Still no ideas?Heironymous Rowe (talk) 03:35, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Well I am going to go out grocery shopping and hope things are better when I return :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:38, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Quick jump into your lifeboats! We've hit the lag of 6,000 seconds. Bidgee (talk) 03:43, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Panic update: 6,000 :) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 03:43, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Strange not having a working watchlist. I feel all blind and naked. Equazcion ^(talk) 03:44, 16 Jan 2010 (UTC)

But not powerless! ;) Bidgee (talk) 03:46, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I know, who knows what kind of random craziness is going on right now? Heironymous Rowe (talk) 03:49, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

There is Special:RecentChanges which still works. Bidgee (talk) 04:02, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, now I have to check every page that I am kind of watching to see if there is anything interesting happening. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

It is approching 7,000, just wait until it is 2001 on Wikipedia. December21st2012Freak ^{Talk to me} at ≈ 03:53, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Just hit 7,000 seconds! Looks like we've got a new record, eh? Schfifty3 03:59, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps Wikipedia is working, but it's 'US that's moving backwards in time... (Sorry, but the manual says that 7000+ calls for a Star Trek explanation.) FlowerpotmaN·(t) 04:10, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

• Strong oppose any attempt to select one form of panic as superior to another. Per WP:NPOV, all different forms of panic should receive coverage which fairly reflects their prominence in reliable sources. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:01, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

If Panicking, don't forget your towels! ref.Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy!--220.101.28.25 (talk) 04:06, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Did someone accidentally the whole sandbox again? Throwaway85 (talk) 04:21, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Its nearly up to 9000 now, clearly the End of Days has come. We should all go join Conservapedia so that we get into heaven, rather than being sent to hell for being terrible left-wing liberals--Jac16888^Talk 04:32, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Why, is God only accepting sinners? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:37, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I think our final hours would be better served heading to Wikipedia Review, whereupon each and every one of us can confess their specific cabalistic ties and beg for absolution. Throwaway85 (talk) 04:38, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

If we've only got a few hours, it wouldn't be long enough for me to list all my activities on behalf of the cabal, so I'd still be doomed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:10, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Lag = 0. Go forth and sin again. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 05:14, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

"When in trouble, when in doubt,
run in circles, scream and shout."
per WP:CIRCLES. (Could be added to WP:PANIC... ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:10, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Voting is evil

• (What, you didn't see that coming?)--Father Goose (talk) 04:03, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Because we in Australia are closer to the international date line and see the New Year in before most other countries, I assume we'll also be the first to see this problem fixed. I'll let you know when everything's back to normal. LTSally (talk) 04:08, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Quickly heading for 8,000!--220.101.28.25 (talk) 04:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

8,000. Now accepting bets for 10,000^{[Must be 21 or older/void where prohibited/restrictions apply]} Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:15, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm going for the obvious; it will definitely be OVER 9,000!!! (you may thank me now for getting the obvious Internet meme out of the way.) Nate • (chatter) 04:24, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Betting is evil

Thought admittedly not as evil as voting, which is of course undisputedly the spawn of Satan. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:17, 16 Jan 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm for me the lag message is gone, but the watchlist still hasn't updated. Equazcion ^(talk) 04:20, 16 Jan 2010 (UTC)

Evil is evil

Nobody seems to have noticed--Jac16888^Talk 04:18, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmmmm. Server lag notice is subject to server lag/gone... :P Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:19, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

But my contribs and watchlist are still behind by a few hours. December21st2012Freak ^{Talk to me} at ≈ 04:21, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Holy ----. Can we get a final tally on the number of seconds? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

started a manual stopwatch. on my desk Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:23, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Nope, it's back. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:24, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Going down. Peak was 8,906 Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:33, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I saw 8,984--Jac16888^Talk 04:39, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Alright. Any higher peaks sighted? Let's give Nate some hope, his bet was 9,000 :P Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:41, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Ottava via IRC reported 9001. ITS OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!! --Izno (talk) 06:44, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess we might as well drop the pitchforks and torches now. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:42, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Um, slight problem, I accidentally dropped my flaming torch into a pile of tax-related articles. In about 6 months when someone notices they're gone I'm gonna be in trouble aren't I?--Jac16888^Talk 04:45, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

6,900↓ Could have used the exercise. Whew! Meltdown avoided. Wont need this either then. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 04:45, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Aeed. Back to worrying about that infanticimally minor incident... what was it again? right, Haiti...Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:46, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Good to see time catching up again. I'm about to revert that vandalism that'll occur 423 seconds from now. LTSally (talk) 04:48, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Damn, now I have to actually do something productive besides sitting on this page. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:49, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Please read WP:CRYSTAL Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:49, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks like I missed all of the fun!
— V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 23:02, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The pleasant and good-natured banter that results when editors can do nothing about whatever situation is 'teh dramaz' of the day, never ceases to boost my morale. It shows that we're never more than one (giant) step away from that ideal in the flaming drama-fests that are unfortunately much more common. Happy‑melon 13:17, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The CSS files

Which CSS are files are needed to properly render the contents of an article? Where are classes such as "printonly" defined? --Apoc2400 (talk) 08:32, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

In theory, all classe are cataloged at Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes. In practice, printonly is defined at MediaWiki:Common.css. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:29, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It seems the little arrow after external links is made by "external" in monobook/main.css. But if I include that one, it also puts the Wikipedia background image and changes the default font. Do I have to roll my own monobook/main.css with only the parts I want? --Apoc2400 (talk) 12:33, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Page title with nonprinting Unicode character at end?

Following a WP:AWB bug report I'm wondering if article List of characters in Fire Emblem: Fūin no Tsurugi‎ has a non-printing Unicode character at the end of it, because the C# system HttpUtility.UrlEncode function returns the name string with "%e2%80%8e" unexpectedly appended to it (plus the correct changes to spaces and accented letter). If I type the article name out by hand "%e2%80%8e" doesn't get appended, as expected. I don't know how to check the raw title of a page, can somebody help? Thanks Rjwilmsi 11:15, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I didn't find any strange characters by running javascript:alert(escape(wgTitle)) on that page nor inspecting [1] in hex-editor. I think the article title is okay. Svick (talk) 12:16, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Page table entry on the toolserver also looks fine. Happy‑melon 12:40, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

%e2%80%8e is the Left-to-right Mark. I am not sure why it shows up for you. --Apoc2400 (talk) 13:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I'll bookmark that Javascript code. No error in page then. Seemingly no error in AWB either. Question is how the character got into the user's settings file in the first place. Rjwilmsi 14:00, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Watchlist no longer showing articles

I asked this on the Help page but realised this might be a better place. While pruning my watchlist of watched user pages, I somehow deleted 3000 articles I'm watching. As the article names showed up still on the edit page I did a copy and paste, but although my watchlist now looks ok to my uneducated eye, it doesn't show any changes to articles. Is there a simple reason why? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 12:35, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Upon further scrutiny I realised that when I copied the names of the deleted pages, I was copying the names with {talk} after each name, which resulted, after pasting back in, names with {talk} {talk} after them, ie the Watchlist was seeing the article names as though they all ended in {talk}. Deleting and a new copy and paste without the offending {talk} fixed it. Dougweller (talk) 15:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Y2.01K bug?

Hi. Please see the discussion at the help desk and reply to it here as something strange happened on New Year's Day. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 17:29, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any actual problem, to be blunt. You thought that you waited till 00:01, but that's easily explained by differences in timekeeping between the local system and the remote site. Timing differentials < 1 minute, especially on systems such as this which are in no way technically reliant on accurate timekeeping, are very acceptable within design margins of error. Unless I'm missing what the complaint is actually about, here...
— V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 19:34, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

What about Wikipedia automatically posting my entry five times, although I pressed Save page only once? Please look at the diffs back to the first one in 2010 as well as after the one I linked. ~AH1^(TCU) 22:33, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

My guess as to what happened. You pressed "add new section" instead of "edit". Then you filled in the editsummary AND added a heading by hand. This created two headings in the post. Then you pressed Save twice, which causes that section to be appended to the current page (this is how "add a new section" and "edit" differ). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:36, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Green screen gadget/talk page problem

I use the greenscreen gadget to prevent the eyestrain I would otherwise get using Wikipedia. I have noticed that on a few usertalk pages (for example, User talk:The ed17, the text appears as black on a black background, which is rather less than ideal. Does anyone know what causes this, and how to fix it? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 00:02, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Yep, it's caused when the user uses CSS on the page to explicitly set the colour of the text. For example, on that page near the top, you see border:2px solid lightsteelblue;color:black;font-family:gill sans MT. It's bad practise to do that for exactly this reasons, but I'm not sure how much you can do about it... Ale_Jrb^talk 00:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, are you sure? When I removed color:black, it didn't do anything.[2] :/ —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 00:22, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you got the wrong one. I fixed it for you, and it now works properly with the gadget. If anything's messed up, feel free to revert, obviously. Ale_Jrb^talk 00:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd just like to thank both Ale_jrb and Ed for their help. DuncanHill (talk) 00:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Whoops, you're right. Silly me. Thanks!

Duncan: you're quite welcome. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 00:32, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Correspondence tools?

Sorry if this is a FAQ (it's not on the actual FAQ!) but are there any tools to scour the database to see what articles/pages two (named) editors have edited in common? Thanks, ^Bongo_matic 04:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

There was a question on the Help Desk about this very topic fairly recently. The answers were Wikistalk and Intersect Contribs. Intelligentsium 04:13, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much . . . should have thought to look there. Cheers! ^Bongo_matic 04:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

ref tags: long and short forms with variable details & keeping order through edits

If we reference one source except for minor differences, such as the same book but different pages in it, the normal solution fails if a later editor resequences the main text. More flexible reference tagging is needed.

Problem: Example (invented):

“New York is a city[1] and a state[2] with rivers.”

“1. ^ New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 4.”

“2. ^ New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 7.”

This has too much redundancy. It's generated from “New York is a city<ref>New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 4.</ref> and a state<ref>New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 7.</ref> with rivers.”

For more compactness, we try the name attribute:

“New York is a city<ref name="NYG">New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523).</ref> and a state<ref name="NYG" /> with rivers.”

“1. a b New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523).”

But that omits page numbers, so we go back to the longer form, only now we edit the shared part of references to be shorter after the first reference and add the page numbers:

“New York is a city<ref>New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 4.</ref> and a state<ref>New York Geography, above, p. 7.</ref> with rivers.”

This generates a nice result:

“New York is a city[1] and a state[2] with rivers.”

“1. ^ New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 4.”

“2. ^ New York Geography, above, p. 7.”

Until someone wants to change the order of the referents, that is. Imagine someone else decides that putting the city before the state is locally chauvinist and that from a worldwide perspective the larger and enclosing political unit should come first (never mind whether you agree with that, just suppose an editor decides that). So they edit the main text:

“New York is a state<ref>New York Geography, above, p. 7.</ref> and city<ref>New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 4.</ref> with rivers.”

Here's what'll appear on the article page:

“New York is a state[1] and a city[2] with rivers.”

“1. ^ New York Geography, above, p. 4.”

“2. ^ New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 7.”

Not so readable or accurate: the “above” becomes wrong. And while the editor probably should have moved parts of the references around, if in the main text they're moving not just words but entire paragraphs or sections then that editing of references is unlikely to be done and a bot probably can't be designed to catch it consistently.

Proposal: I suggest a new attribute for <ref>, group="", and two new tags to be nested within <ref name="" group="">. . . .</ref>. They're <long>. . . .</long> and <short>. . . .</short>.

Whenever reflist generates references from referents with the same group="" attribute, the first such reference in order of numbering would state whatever is within <long>. . . .</long> and not what's within <short>. . . .</short>; all other references based on the same group="" value would state whatever is within <short>. . . .</short> and not what's within <long>. . . .</long>; and whatever is within <ref group="">. . . .</ref> but not within either of the two new tags could then be unique, appearing perhaps only once.

In the edit field, both new tags would be simultaneously used, in the form of <ref group="">. . . .<long>. . . .</long>. . . .<short>. . . .</short>. . . .</ref>. Also acceptable would be <ref group="">. . . .<short>. . . .</short>. . . .<long>. . . .</long>. . . .</ref>; the order wouldn't change the meaning. Also acceptable would be <ref group="">. . . .<long>. . . .</long>. . . .</ref> and <ref group="">. . . .<short>. . . .</short>. . . .</ref>. Every ellipsis represents an optional fill-in, although normally nothing would appear for the first ellipsis or between the </long> or </short> closing tag and the subsequent <short> or <long> opening tag. If, for one group value, <long>. . . .</long> occurs more than once, all instances of <long>. . . .</long> in the group would be ignored. If, for one group value, <short>. . . .</short> occurs more than once, all instances of <short>. . . .</short> in the group would be ignored.

The values of group="" and name="" would be independent; coincidence would not be required.

From the example above:

<ref name="NYG" group="NYG"><long>New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523)</long><short>New York Geography</short>, p. 4.</ref>.

<ref name="NYG" group="NYG">, p. 7.</ref>.

Result, in a display:

“New York is a city[1] and a state[2] with rivers.”

“1. ^ New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 4.”

“2. ^ New York Geography, p. 7.”

If an editor reverses the referents without editing their content:

“New York is a state[1] and a city[2] with rivers.”

“1. ^ New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 7.”

“2. ^ New York Geography, p. 4.”

If <ref name="NYG" /> is in the main text, such as if a third referent was added, the short form would be implied, based on a <ref name="NYG" group=""> somewhere, e.g.:

“New York is a state<ref name="NYG" group="NYG"><long>. . . .</long><short>. . . .</short>. . . .</ref> and a city<ref group="NYG">. . . .</ref> with rivers and has been written about again<ref name="NYG" /> and again.<ref name="NYG" />”

“New York is a state[1] and a city[2] with rivers and has been written about again[3] and again.[3]"

“1. ^ New York Geography, by Suzanne Chin, Trafalgar de Nueves, Billy Smith, and Christine Embers (N.Y.: Porterhouse Celery Publishing, 3rd ed. 1523), p. 7.”

“2. ^ New York Geography, p. 4.”

“3. a b New York Geography”

For the empty tags, the group attribute is unnecessary, but the name and group attributes must occur in at least one ref tag somewhere so the tag sets can be associated.

The only anomalous bit is the end-of-reference punctuation: depending on what an author does, a final period would sometimes appear and sometimes not, so, for consistency, an author might omit final periods in all cases where possible.

In the technical implementation, the tags would be meaningless if they appear outside of ref group="" ref or if the group attribute is absent or its value is null. The content of the tags would be treated as if the meaningless tags just weren't there.

As name="" serves a different purpose, it's optional.

Thank you.

Nick Levinson (talk) 03:04, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

There's no real need to do this. See articles like Plymouth Colony, where the bibliography is segregated from the footnotes, so you don't have to worry about the order of refs changing, and you can use shortform footnotes with page numbers. There are reasonable workarounds for the problems you note, without having to further complicate the referencing system. --Jayron32 04:36, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the two-part system Jayron describes is my experience of the solution to this problem, especially on more weighty articles. Or, where a fully separated bibliography is not so appropriate, I have used {{rp}} in the past, but I gather that's a much rarer option. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 10:38, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Plymouth Colony uses a mix of long and shortened footnotes. For a good example of shortened footnotes, see Chaco Culture National Historical Park. See also {{Sfn}} and {{SfnRef}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:11, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

OK. I'll drop the issue. I like the separation. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:23, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Printable version suggestions

Resolved

I'm not sure where to suggest these changes, but I'll make them here. At the bottom of the page for "printable version", is there a need to put "Contact us"?Smallman12q (talk) 17:23, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I'll take care of it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:32, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

History Tools

Is anyone else missing the external tools links at the top of a history page, bizarrely its only happening in firefox, they're still there in IE--Jac16888^Talk 22:14, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Isn't your language in preferences set to British English? That would cause this. Also, are you logged in in both browsers? Svick (talk) 22:36, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

No not logged in on IE, only changed the language pref yesterday, changed it back, they're back now. Thanks. How did you know I'd set British English btw? And also why does it affect something like that?--Jac16888^Talk 22:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

If you change your language, the Wikipedia interface is translated. And the translation for that section (MediaWiki:Histlegend) is empty in British English and probably all other languages. This isn't the first time this came up, so I was pretty sure it's the language settings. Svick (talk) 23:14, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

The British English “translation” is changed now, so that it contains the history tools. Svick (talk) 00:16, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Great, thanks--Jac16888^Talk 02:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Pic of the Day hacked?

{{POTD}} includes the text "We are specialized in mobile software development provide new technology software in mobile, such as e-learning mobile software, mobile clips, festival theme etc." and the link http://www.microxsolutions.com/mobile-development.php --Ronz (talk) 05:56, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's the edit in question. It was reverted 16 minutes later. Gary King (talk) 05:59, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Good work catching that quickly. I guess I was seeing some cached templates. --Ronz (talk) 06:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

PrefixIndex transclusions seem a bit funny

I noticed at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Bwilkins 2 that {{Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Bwilkins}} doesn't seem to bold the circular link (i.e., there is a link to the Bwilkins 2 RfA within the Bwilkins 2 RfA, but it shows up as a regular link instead of as bold). This is different than what normally happens (e.g., [[Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)]] on this page yields Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) instead of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)). Anyone know why? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:59, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK, if you are referring to the list of previous RfAs, this is what's meant to happen - it's because of the template. You can see any previous RfA (2nd/3rd) where the link to the page in the list is not bolded. If you meant a different link, lemme know. Ale_Jrb^talk 00:04, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure...I just don't get why the link to Bwilkins 2 is not bolded on its own page. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:09, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

It's because you're including a link to a special page. When transcluded, Special:Prefixindex returns a list of pages with that index (i.e. all pages starting with Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Bwilkins) - but these aren't normal links, and don't bold themselves on the page they're on. Ale_Jrb^talk 00:13, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, ok. I had just assumed Special:PrefixIndex worked like transcluded templates (navboxes, etc.) but I guess it's Special. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:18, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

The secret is in the title :P Happy‑melon 10:58, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

NY Times content

The New York Magazine is reporting that the New York Times is going to cease providing free content and will install a "metered" payment system. Please see Wikipedia:Using WebCite for information on how to archive NY Times articles in Wikipedia before they disappear behind a paywall.--Blargh29 (talk) 22:36, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course NYTimes articles are still valid references whether they are online or not. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:20, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. So long as references contain enough information to check the reference elsewhere (other news sites carrying the NYT story, microfilm archives, etc.), it is still perfectly valid. Also, it's not clear if this will apply to the historical archives or only very recent content. There aren't many pre-1900 newspaper archives available publicly on the internet, so I've actually gotten more use out of them in that regard than for current reportage. — Gavia immer (talk) 04:28, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Just because the references are still valid doesn't mean that we ought to let them WP:LINKROT to oblivion. Also, bare NY Times URLs will become all but useless.--Blargh29 (talk) 08:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed about the linkrot. However, if they use the same system they're using for their archival articles, you'll still be able to see a summary of the article (and its title) at the URL of an article behind the paywall.--Father Goose (talk) 09:26, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Imagemap causing page rendering problems - How does this simple change cause such a huge problem?

Apologies in advance if this had already been covered before, but I just noticed that a small change can cause hundreds characters and sections to display text like: "?uniq216fca307a11cbc6-nowiki-00000015-qinu?" in otherwise normal pages. The problem happens in both IE and Firefox so I don't think it's browser dependent.

As an example: look at this old version of a help page. All of the sections below Easy template problem appear to be effected, with their titles turning to all lowercase letters, with section editing disabled, and with massive deletion of data in some of the sections. For example, look at how short this section is (with its new lowercase title) despite the fact that a long conversation is still visible in edit mode - compared to the correct version (note - no changes to this section, but now everything is visible and the title is propercase again). You can see the offending code which was added by someone over the last 6 months in my last edit which seemed to fix the problem. (strange part is that this code is in a section which was added long before my affected conversation took place)

What's really scary is that this data is so completely deleted that if the missing sections included a link to another WP page when you go to the "what links here" section on that other page it won't even know that the hidden text in the Help article has a link there. Perhaps that's unclear - and I could go on and on about how strange this seems, but I want to start the topic first so that the experts can calm me down if this is no big deal.  7  04:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

The "uniq...quinu" strings are strip markers: placeholders that the parser inserts to say "more complicated content will go here". Exposing strip markers, which is what is happening here, occurs when badly-formed code in MediaWiki causes the parser to be reset, and lose its memory of which strip marker corresponsds to which piece of special content. There is an open bug about exposing strip markers which you could post this to, if you can work out precisely what caused the error. Happy‑melon 10:27, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Happy-mellon - seems that it was just the imagemap code (perhaps in conjunction with some of the other tags) which caused the problem. Can you point me to an appropriate buglist and I'll mention my findings there. Thanks again.  7  23:41, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Server time

I have no idea where to ask this question so I thought I would try here.

As far as understand the server time is set to the time at its geographical location (ie Florida?). Now isn't this a little geocentric?? WP is global so does it not make sense to set the time as GMT, or better still the time of the international date line. Here in New Zealand we are one of the first countries to see the Sun consequently, I cannot create date related pages with with MY date!! I have fallen foul of a bot on occasion because of this difference. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 06:48, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm assuming you already have your timezone set in Special:Preferences - this will at least help your logs and talk page signatures show in your local timezone. But I am having trouble where you are being blocked in creating date related pages. Can you give an example of something you are currently being blocked from doing? Thanks.  7  07:16, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

It was a while ago and it was a maint category if I recall correctly. I was not block as such but I think my edit was modified. My Preferences is set to +12.00hrs. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:49, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

The servers areset to UTC, which is similar to GMT. Wikipedia has servers all over the world, so they cannot all be set to their local time. Graham87 10:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Edittools: a proposal to improve the order of the Latin characters

Editors may like to have their say on this proposal to rationalise the rather long list of Latin characters (the one that now starts with Á á Ć ć É é Í í Ĺ ĺ Ń ń ...).

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 07:36, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

reccomended javascript debuggers?

I am trying to debug a monobook script (JavaScript) using Firebug - not having the best of luck. Are there any other reccomended javascript debuggers for Firefox?

thanks, Harry DarkStarHarry (talk) 14:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Firebug is one of the best. You could also try Venkman, which is also good and comes directly from Mozilla. Gary King (talk) 18:32, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Need help with some template code

I've tried to add support for a ref parameter (as is used in the other citation templates) to {{cite thesis}}. However, my code does not appear to work:
{{#if {{{ref|}}}|id="{{anchorencode:{{{ref}}}}}"}}
Could someone take a look at it and fix it if possible? Thanks. Kaldari (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

A colon after the #if would help. Algebraist 18:04, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Yay! Thank you! Kaldari (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Help fixing archive

So I recently archived a big list of links from the WP:DERM:MA talk page to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Dermatology_task_force/Missing_articles/Archive_1#Required_Redirects; however, the archived discussion has a "content" index at the beginning. How do I remove that? Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed Gary King (talk) 18:30, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

wikEd^beta

Test wikEd^beta! Featuring powerful template and reference hiding and the new image preview, powered by a real wikicode parser, and with WYSIWYG table editing soon to be rolling out! Experience next generation editing today while others still wait for the main release after the upcoming Firefox 3.6 release.*

Simply disable wikEd as a gadget in your preferences, add "importScript('User:Cacycle/wikEd_dev.js');" to your skin.js page, push Shift-Reload, and enjoy. And leave your comments on the wikEd discussion page. Don't forget to try the button...

(*The Firefox 3.5 bug 519076 slows the addition of long highlighted texts somewhat down. wikEd does not work under Internet Explorer or Opera. Also, I just noticed that 'new section' editing has a bug...) Cacycle (talk) 23:13, January 19, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming the problems, they have been driving me nuts all day! – ukexpat (talk) 02:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Bot to automatically fix some URLs?

Sometime in the past six months, one Hong Kong newspaper changed their content management system URLs slightly without bothering to leave behind redirects, so all the old links to them are broken. I'm thinking this could be fixed automatically by a bot, but I don't know if anyone already has/runs a bot which could do something along these lines.

Basically links in the old format

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/archive_news_detail.asp?pp_cat=&art_id=35072&sid=&con_type=1&archive_d_str=19970806

Become:

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=&art_id=35072&sid=&con_type=1&d_str=19970806&sear_year=1997

I.e. archive_news_detail.asp becomes news_detail.asp, archive_d_str becomes d_str, and you need a new parameter sear_year which is just the first four characters from d_str. See here for an example of me doing it manually. Any pointers? Thanks, cab (talk) 06:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot requests page may be helpful. Josh Parris 07:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If there are no other takers I could do this. Rjwilmsi 11:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Alt Gr not working as it should

This may be a problem at my side, not something wrong with Wikipedia, but some solution is still welcome. When I try to sign manually, I get ´~´~´~´~ instead of ~~~~. Similarly, I get ´{~} instead of {} This only started today, I have never had this before. I am using an Azerty keyboard, Belgian layout, and Firefox 3.0., and everything works as it should in e.g. Microsft Word. Any ideas? Fram (talk) 12:30, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

What happens if you log out and edit Wikipedia? What happens in Firefox outside Wikipedia? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks like you might have your keyboard layout set so as to have dead keys accessed via Alt Gr. For example "Belgian Extended". If you're in Windows then this can be a per-application setting. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. Logged-out editing doesn't help. Firefox editing outside Wikipedia (e.g. Google search) gives the same result, so it is not a Wikipedia problem. I'll experiment some more with my keyboard and language settings, probably inadvertently changed them somehow. Fram (talk) 14:09, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Allright, changed default language, restarted, problem now solved. Thanks! Fram (talk) 14:29, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Missing Page Size tool

Resolved

I am copying this from my talk page as it seems like somethiung that people here may know more about than I do. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

For some unexplained reason the "Page size" tool has disappeared from my left-hand toolbox. It reappears as a deadlink when I am in edit mode, like now, but otherwise it has vanished. Can you advise me how to get it back? I find it a pretty essential tool. Sorry to trouble you. Brianboulton (talk) 10:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It's still there and working for me, and it's in your monobook.js. Maybe you switched from the old monobook to the vector skin recently? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 13:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Brian reports the issue has resolved itself now. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Tools for analysing user contributions

Hi, I'm in the process of redesigning my user page. I am aware that there are some tools that analyse contributions by a user. In the mid-term I may want to request the admin tool box once I hit 10K edits later this year. It would be nice to be able to lay out on my user page some analysis of what I have done beyond what is there already. The important analytical dimensions I can think of are:

• to which articles and accompanying talk pages have made most edits or the most substantial edits,
• what proportion of my edits are in mainspace, article talk space, user talk space etc.
• under which projects do the greater proportion of my edits fall.

What tools would people recommend for these purposes? Are there any others you can recommend for things I haven't thought of. Thanks--Peter cohen (talk) 23:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• http://toolserver.org/%7Esoxred93/count/index.php?name=Peter_cohen&lang=en&wiki=wikipedia –xeno^talk 23:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• • Oo that looks good, thanks. ANy tools that record more articles?--Peter cohen (talk) 00:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• • • Ah I've now spotted how to do that. Thanks.--Peter cohen (talk) 00:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

TOC keeps collapsing

This probably has some simple answer, but recently my TOCs keep showing up as collapsed by default instead of open by default. Is this something that I've done? I've asked around and most others aren't seeing it. Gigs (talk) 05:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If you collapse a TOC, then they will all appear collapsed afterward. If you expand one again, then they will all be expanded once again. If you tried that and they no longer stay expanded, then try clearing your browser's cache and cookies. Gary King (talk) 05:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Move-tool Rdr option

The move-tool page includes an option to suppress creation of a Rdr for the moved page, or of one for each of the two being moved. Usually an article worth moving has a talk page, but the main-namespace page that will take over the moved page's title is unlikely to initially need any talk. I've responded to this situation in various ways. The full range of choices that occurs to me is:

1. Leave all three boxes checked, and delete the talk-page Rdr that results.
2. Uncheck create-Rdr (wincing at the red-tinged warning msg saying you're recreating a de-facto "deleted" page), and create the new Dab page, new primary-topic article, or presumably needed Rdr, thus starting the history of the new main-namespace page.  * 
3. Uncheck move-talk-page, then separately move the talk page, copying the same "reason for move" and unchecking create-Rdr
4. Leave all three boxes checked, and immediately edit the talk-pg Rdr to convert it to a soft Rdr
5. Leave all three boxes checked, and count on someone, when talk on the talk-pg commences, to edit it to start with a soft Rdr.

* ^{Note re point 2 above -- the No-Move-tool-Rdr option}
BTW, once the new main-namespace page is created, its edit history shows no sign of a deletion, but its public-logs page does show e.g.

moved Outgroup to Outgroup (cladistics) [without redirect]

If (per option 2) the talk page is left uncreated, the first edit page of a session that (if saved) will create it has a similar red-tinged warning msg (only similar, bcz "Talk:" appropriately appears in both this one's links). The same msg appears (along with "There is no revision history for this page.") on its history page, which can be reached by editing a URL, or by using Pop-up tools from the edit page; a third route is via pop-ups, from a link (other than one on a page's tabs) to the main-namespace page, by hovering "talk" on the pop-up menu and clicking "history" when the talk-page's menu pops up.

Note that only the last 2 avoid breaking any existing links from other talk pages, in ways whose repair probably require (brief or extensive) consultation of edit histories.
On reflection, i'm inclined to think that immediate soft Rdr is the right approach (soft-Rdr only-when-needed will not occur to many discussion-starting editors, especially the non-signing IPs who often initiate on a page's talk; hard Rdr as talk page content -- for a main-namespace page that was only briefly a Rdr -- violates the principle of least astonishment, and in fact can create complete frustration on the part of the user: Rdr'n to an article is often unsurprising & the "Rdr'd from..." notice can go unnoticed without harm; in contrast, Rdr'n to a talk page that is only tenuously and perhaps cryptically related to a corresponding un-Rdr'd main-namespace page can be "indistinguishable from [evil] magic", and very off-putting to a non wiki-editor.
I came to VPT intending to suggest changing the move to so that creation of main-namespace and talk Rdrs become separable from each other. If others support my new insight abt soft Rdrs, i suggest that the move tool at least to have a red-tinged message drawing attention to something like WP:Soft redirect, whenever a combined main-namespace/talk page move is requested.
It might in fact be a good idea, whenever a talk page is moved (even separately) without explicit suppression of Rdr (ands without explicit request for a "hard" Rdr), for the move tool to leave behind a soft Rdr rather than a plain "hard" one.
--Jerzy•t 23:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Tl;dr, just leave the redirects behind. They're cheap. –xeno^talk 23:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Color this
  X UNRESOLVED
  -- tho i've probably already given too much detail, and will simply reiterate: Tk pgs should discuss their accompanying articles & Rdr'g to discussions of other articles considered harmful.
  --Jerzy•t 18:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  

I'm not trying to be difficult, but I still don't understand the problem. Redirects to articles have the talk pages of the redirect redirected to the talk page of the article. So? –xeno^talk 18:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

problem with clicking on PDF file

Clicking on File:Apollo 11 Tapes Report.pdf and then "open PDF" brings up Adobe Reader with a blank page and an error message. If I enter "File:Apollo 11 Tapes Report.pdf" into the search box it works. Is this a bug? Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 00:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah something is wrong with the document or the conversion process. When I download it, the text is blurry. I don't understand what you mean by "searching" for the file though as it would just bring you back to that page. Gary King (talk) 02:25, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If I enter "File:Apollo 11 Tapes Report.pdf" in the Search/Go box and click "Go" it works as it should. If I click on it from there and click "open PDF" it works and the text is clear. The error is when clicking on File:Apollo 11 Tapes Report.pdf and then "open PDF". Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 02:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I went to the file via the search box as you said, downloaded the file, and the text still appears blurred. I don't understand why that method would return a different result, anyway. Gary King (talk) 02:38, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking at it on File:Apollo 11 Tapes Report.pdf, the text looks blurred, but not so much when downloaded. The problem, however, is that (foe me at least) it doesn't show anything when clicking on File:Apollo 11 Tapes Report.pdf and then "open PDF" - just a blank page and an Adobe Reader error message. Do you get the error message? (It might only be me.) Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 02:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Did you click http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Apollo_11_Tapes_Report.pdf? It is not blurred. Regards, —mattisse (Talk) 02:46, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Bubba, I did not get an error message but that's most likely because I am using a different computer setup than you are (I'm on a Mac and using Preview.app to read PDF files). Anyway, when I open the PDF file directly from the link above, the text is still blurred. No error message though. Gary King (talk) 02:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Clicking on the link above works. I have the problem with Firefox but not with IE. The Beta version of WP has no effect on the problem. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 02:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If clicking on that link gives you a readable PDF file then something is wrong with your setup, as that is the exact same link that your browser goes to if you try to download the PDF from File:Apollo 11 Tapes Report.pdf. Gary King (talk) 02:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I have the problem with Firefox and I am using some sort of add-on for PDFs in it. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 03:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Hm, using Firefox, and it looks pretty clear to me. Woogee (talk) 22:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Then the problem is most likely with the Firefox PDF add-onm I have. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 22:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

That's possible, I don't have that add-on. Woogee (talk) 23:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Need help with a table

I created a table that works fine in my Sandbox, but when I go to put it on the article it's intended for, it screws up. The problem is that I want to keep a background color in the table (a soft pastel green), and also have a dark green border. But when I save it to the article, it surrounds everything below the table with the dark green border, and fills the whole lower part of the article with the light pastel green color. I've tried to do everything I could think of, and have been working on it for hours, all to know avail. Does anyone who knows about table design have time to look at this? I would be so grateful! Here is my Sandbox (to see how it's supposed to look): User:Saukkomies/My Sandbox

And here is the article where it isn't working right: House burning of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture

You'll see the table when you get there, you can't miss it. It's entitled: Periodization table of Neolithic cultures that practiced house burning Thanks! --Saukkomies ^talk 06:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem is in your original code, so it's actually "broken" in both your sandbox and the article. I fixed it. Gary King (talk) 08:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much Gary! I deeply appreciate your help. :) --Saukkomies ^talk 01:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Extra line added when transcluding a template that begins with a line enclosed in curly braces

For some reason, an extra line is added immediately before {{NYinttop}} wherever it's used. Similarly, this revision of {{Jcttop}} did the same thing until I came up with a workaround this morning. This is probably a MediaWiki bug, but does anyone know of a workaround that can be used to eliminate the extra line in the meantime? (As a side note, the presence of the extra line is only noticeable when the template is preceded by another blank line separating the template from a paragraph; however, I'd appreciate a better workaround than removing that line.) – TMF 12:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Well known problem. It's not really a bug as a line with a template and a newline character would, well, have a template and a newline character. Any two newline characters in a row creates a new paragraph in MediaWiki. So this is really just expected behavior. You'll just have to remove one of the newlines to "fix" this. If the software were to fix this for you, then it would have to "trim" the text, which could return undesired results since sometimes people WANT newlines but then cannot create them, and therefore the software instead acts the way it is now. Gary King (talk) 17:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

But the template doesn't have a new line in it, which is the issue here. The only new line in {{NYinttop}} is where the documentation is, and since that's enclosed in "noinclude" tags, that shouldn't be transcluded. – TMF 17:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

It looks like you fixed it with your edit. Gary King (talk) 17:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

For {{Jcttop}} yes, for {{NYinttop}} no. See List of county routes in Erie County, New York (225–256) (which is a horrible article, but that's beside the point), where two new lines are present before both uses of NYinttop, even though there's only one new line preceding the template in the article and no new lines in the template. – TMF 18:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you may be referring to the bug or feature documented here: Meta:Help:Newlines and spaces#Automatic newline at the start: "Templates starting with *, #, :, ; or {| automatically get a newline at the start" (and similarly at Help:Newlines and spaces#Automatic newline at the start: "Templates starting with *, #, or : automatically get a newline at the start"). In which case, obscuring the start character(s) with a dummy template may help. — Richardguk (talk) 18:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that would definitely explain it. How would I go about obscuring the start character in this case? – TMF 18:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

One way to sidestep the bug/feature would be to use <table><tr><td>...</td></tr></table> HTML syntax instead of wikitable syntax, as this is not senstive to line breaks in the code.

Looking more closely at {{Jcttop}}, I think the problem may be related to the optional "The entire route is in..." text preceding the table as plain text. So the template can begin with text (inline or paragraphed depending on where the template is placed) or a block element (the table), according to the arguments sent to it. One simplification would be to move the text to follow (rather than precede) the table. But this might be too complicated given that you are using multi-part templates to build the table. Another option might be to incorporate the text into an optional row prior to the table heading (taking care to make it span the appropriate number of columns), so that the template generates only tabular output.

The template currently includes the code: ...<LINEBREAK>{|{}}| class="wikitable"... This seems to translate to if the optional text applies, end it with a linebreak and the opening brace of a wikitable-start; otherwise just have the opening brace of a wikitable-start; then close the pair of braces from the opening #if; then add a pipe to turn the table brace (from either the true or false part of the long #if) into wikitable markup "{|"; then apply the 'wikitable' class.... It's not clear to me why the {| wikitable markup has been split across the closing pair of braces rather than falling entirely within or (more simply) following the initial conditional code. Maybe changing the code to ...|}}<LINEBREAK>{| class="wikitable"... would clarify things.

I won't pretend to understand all that is happening here, but those are the options I would consider.

— Richardguk (talk) 19:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, {{jcttop}} is fine, it's {{NYinttop}} that has the issue at the moment since all the latter template is is a call to {{jcttop}} with state=NY specified. – TMF 21:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Experimenting with Special:ExpandTemplates, it does seems as though the template-within-a-template is leading the bug/feature to add a double linebreak rather than a single linebreak before the table. Given that, the only other option I can think of would be to copy (or subst) the relevant code from {{Jcttop}} into {{NYinttop}} and amend it there instead of double-transcluding it. — Richardguk (talk) 22:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This is T14974. Happy‑melon 00:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Great, a bug that's been open for two years with no fix in sight. *sigh* @Richardguk: I think what I'll just do instead is call {{jctint}} where the extra line is an issue, i.e. where {{NYinttop}} is used following prose and not starting a section (where the presence of the extra line doesn't matter). It's a shame that this is for all intents and purposes an unresolvable issue, but I appreciate everyone's help anyway. – TMF 01:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

E-mail User gone from Toolbox?

I can't seem to find "E-mail User" on the toolbox (or anywhere) on the left side of the page on user pages and user talk pages in which I know they have e-mail enabled. I can always use Special:Email but I'm confused as to why I cannot find it in the toolbox where it always has been. There's no reason that I shouldn't be seeing it as I'm an admin and definitely not blocked and I haven't heard anything about a developer changing the coding to remove the Email User link. Thanks, Valley2city^‽ 15:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm still seeing it (at least, I saw it on your page!) in Firefox... ╟─TreasuryTag►directorate─╢ 16:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The "E-mail user" link on your user page works for me, too. First thing first: try blanking your monobook.js page, then do a hard refresh as explained on that page, to see if that fixes it for you. Gary King (talk) 17:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe it's a Google Chrome thing. As a Dell Tech is currently working on my laptop I'm on another computer and it worked for one refresh in Firefox and then disappeared and it did not work in IE. There possibly is something in my monobook as I have a lot of administrative and other tools run from it. I'll take a look and see if I can figure out if anything is wrong. Thanks. Valley2city^‽ 18:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Transcluded related changes feed breaks section headers

At Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom, the transcluded feed of related changes started distrupting the headers for all the sections on the page: [3] . This had been working fine before, but today the page headers went wacky and the only thing that has been able to restore them is removing that transcluded feed. Halp! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.26.235.126 (talk) 19:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This is know problem bugzilla:16129 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Can I change the link color by style attribute rather than setup a CSS?

I want to make a parameter in the template which will control the text color. The text entry isn't linked by default. Rather I prefer to make it optional to modify link color along the unlinked text because the default background is quite deep, making the default linking color scheme to hard to read. Can I change the link color by style attribute like style="(link-color):white" or something like that? -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 04:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Not without sticking span tags with style attributes within every link, off the top of my head. --Izno (talk) 06:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

"nowiki" inside "pre" problem

Why this code:

<span style="white-space:nowrap;"><nowiki>[[File:{{PAGENAME}}|thumb|Legenda]]</span></nowiki>

inside <pre></pre> result in this:

<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[File:{{PAGENAME}}|thumb|Legenda]]</span>

See for example this in edit view:

<span style="white-space:nowrap;">[[File:{{PAGENAME}}|thumb|Legenda]]</span>

It's not the same. Isn't something wrong? Mosca (talk) 23:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Not sure what you're trying to achieve, but how about using one of the following instead of "pre"? - Pointillist (talk) 23:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

<span style="white-space: pre; font-family: monospace; display: block;"><nowiki>[[File:{{PAGENAME}}|thumb|Legenda]]</nowiki></span>

result= [[File:{{PAGENAME}}|thumb|Legenda]]

or just

<code><nowiki>[[File:{{PAGENAME}}|thumb|Legenda]]</nowiki></code>

result= [[File:{{PAGENAME}}|thumb|Legenda]]

Try:

<span style="white-space:nowrap;"><nowiki>[[File:{{PAGENAME}}|thumb|Legenda]]</nowiki></span>

That is, doubling the nowikis. Look at it in the edit window to see what I mean. Happy‑melon 23:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for you answers. I'm not trying to find solutions. What I mean is: "nowiki" really works inside "pre" while other code (<ref></ref>, <includeonly></includeonly>, <blockquote></blockquote>, tables, wiki code in general...) is shown like plain text? Mosca (talk) 00:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Back in the old days we had to use <nowiki> tags inside the <pre> tags, otherwise all other tags were interpreted by MediaWiki. So for that reason <nowiki> tags were not shown, since they were not supposed to be seen. I am pretty sure that behaviour was kept for backwards compatibility, otherwise lots of old <pre><nowiki> ... </nowiki></pre> usages out there would suddenly have shown their old <nowiki> tags.

If you want to actually show a <nowiki> tag then we usually code the tag like this: "<nowiki>". Here's an example, check it out in the edit window too:

<nowiki> Some text. </nowiki> 

Of course, it is now some years since the <pre> tags were updated to also have the functionality of the <nowiki> tags, so it is probably time to update MediaWiki to show <nowiki> tags inside them.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for you explanation. I though <pre> worked fine unless it had another <pre></pre> inside <pre></pre>. It's strange since I never saw this problem. Always learning. Mosca (talk) 02:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

You probably haven't seen it before since it is so rare that we need to show <nowiki> tags inside <pre> tags, and the editors that write such examples are usually very experienced and already know how to handle that.

By the way, if you want to show <pre> tags inside <pre> tags, then you escape them the same way: "<pre>". The "<" part simply is the html code for the lower than "<" character. So here's an example with that:

<pre> Some text. </pre> 

We use such escaping to insert all kinds of special characters that otherwise would be interpreted by MediaWiki, like hash "#" = "#", space " " = " ", pipe "|" = "|", and braces "{ }" = "{ }" and so on. We mostly use this in template code. Wikipedia of course has several articles about this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Category intersections

Is there a way to generate a list of all articles that fall in the categories:

• Category:All unreferenced BLPs, and
• Category:India (and all its subcats)

That would help the India wikiproject review the unsourced BLPs that fall under its purview (at least the ones that are sorted into a India category). Abecedare (talk) 15:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Category_intersection —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

A pity. I was hoping that someone would at least have a tool available to generate such lists on request, even if it's not a feature of mediawiki itself. Any volunteers ? Abecedare (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

You mean like WP:CATSCAN which is linked from the category intersection page? Nanonic (talk) 15:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I just found out about it. Am trying that and Intersection search tool. Abecedare (talk) 15:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Update for anyone interested: Intersection search tool worked for me and was used to generate this list, which is now being reviewed by members of India wikiproject. Abecedare (talk) 23:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Cross referencing two categories

Is anyone aware of a tool which lets an editor see pages with the same two categories, like, for example,Category:Unreferenced BLPs and Category:American songwriters Ikip ^{Frank Andersson (45 revisions restored):}_{an olympic medallist for f**k's sake} 22:45, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Have you taken a look at WP:CI and Wikipedia:CatScan? – ukexpat (talk) 22:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Ikip, see above. Abecedare (talk) 22:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

You folks are wonderful, god bless you. Ikip 23:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Download all Templates (Having issues)

I've spent the better part of three weeks trying to figure out, on my own, how to download the templates for Wikipedia to Upload to my own site (which has the Wikimedia engine installed) and I am at a loss. I have already asked for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates and Wikipedia:Help desk the WikiProject Templates sent me to the Help Desk which sent me here... can someone help me out? Does anyone know how to do this? Quando Omni Flunkis Moritati - ( When all else fails, play dead ) (talk) 19:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I sincerely doubt you want all templates on the English Wikipedia on your own wiki. But if so, there are database dumps available that contain pages in the Template namespace. If you just want a particular template, use Special:Export on this site and use "Special:Import" on your own site. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I know it sounds ridiculous... but I really do. Whether or not I use them is irrelevant to me. I am putting together pages right now, and I just put together a page with references. I used the and the Reflist template. It didn't work. There are other entries I've tried to make that I discovered were apparently handled by Templates on Wikipedia. Not being able to just use my Wiki as if it was part of Wikipedia is frustrating, especially with templates that are reliant on templates. Rather than have to research every template to see if it requires other templates, I would rather tap up to 5-6GB of space on my own server for templates alone to avoid dealing with THAT hassle. So yeah, I really would rather download ALL templates. I've tried to dumps. I cannot get a single dump to give me an actual file. And I've tried to get them from pc's at work, home, and even from a Mac laptop. Nothing. I'm so beyond frustrated... Surely someone has directions for grabbing ALL WIKIPEDIA TEMPLATES in one easy swipe. I don't have the time to study each template I want and make sure it doesn't require more templates... this is just plain easier. I know I repeated myself... I'm frustrated. HELP! Quando Omni Flunkis Moritati - ( When all else fails, play dead ) (talk) 20:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the process of setting up something that functions, looks, and feels like Wikipedia is bad. I'd really like to see Wikimedia publish a version of Mediawiki that provides a relatively comprehensive set of template, extensions, and other things to provide people who want it with an experience that mimics Wikipedia. But wishing for that to happen isn't going to help you now. Of the dumps, the smallest one you could use is pages-articles, which includes all the templates, but also includes all the articles and image descriptions. It is 5.4 GB with bzip compression and would expand to somewhat more than 100 GB uncompressed. I just verified that the file is present and you should be able to downloaded it. Browsers sometimes choke on very large downloads, but if you have a Linux style server with shell access, I've found that wget from the command line seems to always work. That said, assuming you get the file you still have to either load lots of unnecessary article content (which I wouldn't recommend unless your database is backed up by a lot of RAM), or you will need to filter the dump to extract only the template pages. Overall this approach is a lot of work, and far from an easy solution. But it can be done if that's what you really want.

An alternative I've used (more or less with success) is whenever you find a template you don't have but that you want, create similar wikicode on a page in your userspace, e.g. something like User:Randomblink/dummy. After saving the page with the corresponding template calls in it, head to Special:Export. Add "User:Randomblink/dummy" (or whatever you called your page) to the big box of things to download and then make sure to check the box "include templates". When you hit download it will then include not only that page, but all templates that were needed to render it (up to 1000 per export). You then take that file over to Special:Import on your site and it will load the necessary templates for that specific application. This way you avoid having to track down the dependencies yourself. It is still likely to take many such downloads before you have copied all the templates you might want, but it is probably still less trouble than trying to copy all of Wikipedia's templates via dump. Dragons flight (talk) 21:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, it took me a couple hours but I have collected ALL the Wikipedia Templates into an Importable XML file... ugh! NEVER want to do that again... ah well, it's importing now. Thanks anyway one and all. Reverend randomblink - Ask and you shall believe. (talk) 23:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

It might be worth posting that somewhere (don't know where though) so others can use it in future. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 15:16, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Edit box - symbols, IPA, etc

That thingy under the edit box where you can select symbols, IPA, Greek letters, etc doesn't seem to be working for me. I clisk on the relevant bit in the drop-down menu, but the symbols or whatever don't come up. I'm using IE8 on WinXP. DuncanHill (talk) 23:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Blank User:DuncanHill/monobook.js, see if that works. Then remove all gadgets. Then try a different browser. Gary King (talk) 04:24, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

But first of all, bypass your browser cache to reload the javascript that adds the "edittools". And if/when you do changes to your personal /monobook.js, then you normally need to wait one minute, then again bypass your browser cache to see the changes.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:54, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Bypassing the cache did nothing. DuncanHill (talk) 14:19, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• There was a thing called "wikimarks" in my monobook, which has never worked properly. Removed that and Ctrl+F5, and it let me select the symbols, but now I can't change from those. DuncanHill (talk) 14:24, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• • Then I tried blanking my monobook, I could change which symbols/alphabet but only when in the edit screen for my monobook, and whatever I chose their stuck for other pages. Then I restored everything to my monobook apart from the wikimarks thing, and now it all seems OK. Thanks everyuone for the help :)♥æЖ DuncanHill (talk) 14:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

What happened here was probably that DuncanHill didn't wait one minute between editing his /monobook.js and bypassing his browser cache. It often takes 30-60 seconds from the edit until the new versions of javascript and CSS pages are available at all Wikipedia servers. So reloading before that usually gives the old version. While in the edit preview of your /monobook.js the current version is loaded so you see the effect there immediately.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:54, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• It's now stopped working again, I haven't done anything more to my monobook or gadgets since I got it working :( DuncanHill (talk) 01:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

No images when searching

When I search anything in wikipedia no image will show with text, this problem has been occuring for last few weeks, I have cleared my cache but still I am facing problem —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.20.19.18 (talk) 04:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Web browsers have a setting where you can choose if images should be loaded or not. You might have unset that setting. Do you see images on other web sites?

Another possibility is that you might have adblocked upload.wikimedia.org, since that is where our images are loaded from. If you have an "adblocking" plug-in in your web browser check there. Such blocking can also be done in the firewall if you are using one, so check there too.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Or are you talking about images in the results ? In that case, you might be looking for Google instead of our own search feature. Or you have to select one of the different searchmodes in the results page, because by default not all namespaces are searched I think. See also Wikipedia:Searching. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki/interlanguage links not changing to secure

Why isn't {{sec link auto}} behavior by default? Its incredibly annoying when you're using a secure connection, that whenever you click on an interwiki/interlanguage link, you get taken to the insecure connection. For example:

• Wikinews (without sec link auto)
• Wikinews

I don't really see the convenience in not making it default to a secure link if you're currently using a secure connection.Smallman12q (talk) 19:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

because {{sec link auto}} is a rarther new template, introduced because the bugzilla bugticket to actually SOLVE this issue has been stale for over 3 years. Much of this has to do with the parsercache btw. To introduce this feature, would mean that the entire set of pages of the Foundation has to be stored in two modes in the cache. Once with normal links, once with secure links. That requires an investment in resources. There are clientside scripts btw that can help with this. One is a greasemonkey script, the other is a script on en.wp but I can't find it right now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:15, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I did use the greasemonkey script a while back. But greasemonkey only works on firefox, and not IE which is what most windows computer have. I do realize that the pages would have to be stored in 2 seperate caches...why doesn't the wikimedia foundation instead use javascript. It wouldn't be difficult to create a javascript solution...or perhaps offer a gadget to solve it.Smallman12q (talk) 20:46, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict... Hehe, I see Smallman and I have the same idea.)

As far as I know and can see from my testing: Only pages that have been visited by a user on the secure server are cached with an extra copy. This already happens when we use {{sec link auto}}. And that copy is probably as usual just cached for a week. The number of users on the secure server is low, so the number of pages cached by them probably won't be that high.

I have tested the other script: User:Anakin101/alwayssecurewikipedia.js. It works splendidly. (But it lacks handling of some rare kinds of links.)

TheDJ: You said "clientside", that gave an idea: We could make it so all users on the secure server automatically load that script. So we could make this entirely clientside, no need to change the MediaWiki software. And that wouldn't cause any extra caching. The script should of course first be copied to an official location and updated/checked by some of you javascript experts. (I don't know enough javascript to understand that script.) And it would be nice if the script understood some kind of escape marking (a <span> with some class) so we could prevent the script from auto-changing some links, since sometimes we want to on purpose show normal links to users on the secure server.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes I was thinking something similar. Though I think it would be best to test that on the English Wikipedia first. I also wonder what happens when Greasemonkey and the Anakin script are both active..... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:53, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

So is anything going to be done?Smallman12q (talk) 20:00, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki_talk:Common.js#Always_secure_Wikipedia —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:48, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the link.Smallman12q (talk) 17:26, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Common.js/secure.js is now automatically loaded when you use the English Wikipedia from the secure server. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

So is there a need now for {{sec link auto}}? Should that template be marked obsolete?Smallman12q (talk) 23:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

First we should wait a while and see how well the new javascript fix works. Secondly, not all users have javascript enabled, since many schools, workplaces and libraries etc have javascript disabled on their computers (since many of the ways to hack browsers need javascript), and it is often exactly those users that need to use the secure server. So we should probably continue to use {{sec link auto}} on the main page (sections "Wikipedia's sister projects" and "Wikipedia languages") and the few system messages where we are using it now.

But for most other places it from now on is mostly overkill to use {{sec link auto}}. I will update its documentation and Wikipedia:Secure server so they explain that.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, every change that needs to be made to a page adds execution time to the script (much more than just "looking" at the url in the page). As such every link that is fixed with sec link auto, won't have to be fixed with the script and that will make usage of the site simpler. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

But using {{sec link auto}} has other costs as well the human time cost (very high) and an increased in page rendering time since the wikiparser isn't typically efficient. And don't forget the whole thing is a workaround until the dev fix the bug (i.e. implement the script server side). — Dispenser 21:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

There's a bug with dumps with this link http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20091128/
it becomes https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/dumps/wiki/
For those on the secure server, observe: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20091128/ Smallman12q (talk) 23:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Added to the ignore list. You might have to purge your browser cache however. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll let you know if any other bugs come up.Smallman12q (talk) 02:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Special Page Problem

There's a major problem I've noticed. If this doesn't belong here, please move it to where it does belong. Anyway, whenever you type a special page that doesn't exist, it always says "Return to Main Page". Now, the problem here is that it always says that, no matter what page you were on before (so if you were on the page Wikipedia, for example, it would still say "Return to Main Page"). Please fix this as soon as possible. Thank you. --Hadger 04:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The question is whether or not the wiki software keeps track of what page you were just viewing. Typically this is done by adding an extra parameter to the URL. There's also the JavaScript method, but that's not always reliable as some people have JavaScript disabled, etc. I don't think this feature exists in the software and will be implemented any time soon, which is why it just suggests that you return to the Main Page. If you really want, you can just use your browser's back button to return to where you were. Gary King (talk) 05:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The login screen offers the correct "return to" link. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

That's because the Login/register link explicitly contains the "returnto=" option. You would have to add that to each and every special page link. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If the feature already exists in the software, then yeah it could be done for Special links, too. Depending on how those links are constructed, it doesn't have to be added to each one, of course; it'd just have to be added to the function creating the links. If that's the case, then this could be a legitimate suggestion to be added to MediaWiki's Bugzilla. Gary King (talk) 17:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Why not just use the HTTP referer to determine where the viewer came from? Isn't that what it's for? --Thinboy00 @076, i.e. 00:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Search Bar is too inconspicuous!!

My name is Christopher Kelly. I'm just a wikipedia reader, like the millions out there. And I have just ONE suggestion to make. It's about the search bar. I would prefer that Wikipedia place it more boldly in the upper center rather than inconspicuously 1/4 of the way down on the left hand side. Is it just me, or do others agree?

1/24/2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kellyc01 (talk • contribs) 07:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

well, personally I happen to like it where it is. but if you click the Search button while the search box is empty you'll get a much bigger search field.. You might try some of the other wikipedia skins, as well; they have different layouts for the page content. see wp:skin to learn how to do that. --Ludwigs2 07:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

In the beta version the seaarch bar appears at the top, new users expect to find it there like in other sites. Sole Soul (talk) 08:38, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Not attempting to complain about the style that's obviously existed as-is for this long for a reason, but this does kind of seem like a common sense sort of change for exactly the given reasons. I'd entirely forgotten that it's a beta thing since I can't even remember the box over on the left. One minor consolation-- recent versions of Firefox have this (English) Wikipedia as one of the pre-set "search engine options" in the top-right. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 09:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The new Beta (see link at the top of your window), has the search bar at the top right, mainly for this reason. But most of all http://www.wikipedia.org if you want a searchfield, or just use google of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Template Tidy? like HTML tidy?

Is there by any chance anything like HTML Tidy for templates? If you are not familiar with HTML tidy, and want to see what it does, here is an online tool for HTML tidy [4]. Is there any tool that helps to make template logic more visually intuitive - and cleans it up - checks for missing braces, etc? Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 22:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

wikEd has several features that help when editing templates.

And the bracket matcher user script is also useful. Its description on Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts says this:

Adds a 'parse' link that shows a copy of the edit box with matched curly braces highlighted, for help in tracing complex nested expressions.

It works fairly well. Here's the code to put in your personal /monobook.js to load it:

/* Colour matching brackets in a copy of the edit box.
   [[User:ais523/bracketmatch.js]]   */
importScript("User:ais523/bracketmatch.js");

As usual, after editing your /monobook.js you need to wait one minute, then bypass your browser cache, to see the change.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! This is a big help when trying to figure out some of these templates - and when checking my own changes. stmrlbs|talk 02:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

missing references

Hi! I've been working on the Linda McMahon page recently, and the page is up to about 70 references right now. I'm not sure why, but due to some technical problem, the only references that show are up to number 31 and that's it. The other references are still there, but when you click on them, they don't lead to anything in the references section. I use the <ref></ref> tags, and the references section is marked with {{reflist|2}}.

I appreciate your help. Thanks! --Screwball23 talk 03:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Found the problem; it was in ref 27, where a bad template was screwing up the next 30 or so references. --Golbez (talk) 03:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I've put a nowiki tag around some of the text in your message, so the raw text is shown, rather than an actual reflist template or ref tags. Graham87 04:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorting tables with ordinal numbers

At a current FLC, it has been brought to light that ordinal rankings such as 1st, 2nd, 19th, 24th don't sort properly in standard tables like this one. Instead of sorting in descending order of rank as 1st/2nd/19th/24th, it sorts as 19th/1st/24th/2nd, as shown here:

Year	Nominated work	Category	Result	Notes
2001	First entry		1st
2002	Second entry		2nd
2019	Nineteenth entry		19th
2024	Twenty-fourth entry		24th

Is there an elegant way to solve this? Any help appreciated,  Skomorokh  18:46, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

You need to use a sort template like {{ntsh}}.—NMajdan•talk 19:19, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Like this:

Year	Nominated work	Category	Result	Notes
2001	First entry		1st
2002	Second entry		2nd
2019	Nineteenth entry		19th
2024	Twenty-fourth entry		24th

Although it doesn't appear to work with the {{nom}} template, so you may just have to format those cells individually.—NMajdan•talk 19:23, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, looks like you can put the sort template inside the {{nom}} template like this: {{nom|{{ntsh|19}}19th}}

Year	Nominated work	Category	Result	Notes
2001	First entry		1st
2002	Second entry		2nd
2019	Nineteenth entry		19th
2024	Twenty-fourth entry		24th

Hope that helps.—NMajdan•talk 19:27, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

To avoid duplicating the number, you can use something like {{nts|19}}th. Svick (talk) 19:35, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Haha. Yeah. Didn't even think of that. That would be cleaner.—NMajdan•talk 19:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the workaround chaps, very helpful. It would seem preferable though, given the likelihood that charts will become more common, for there to be tables or templates that "understood" ordinal sorting, as in "table class:ordinal" or similar setting. Mahalo,  Skomorokh  23:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I was asked this question at a wikipedia meetup. After some thought, why can't we force a numerical sort? We have class="unsortable", just add another that force numerical sort instead of using this template hack. — Dispenser 03:04, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that the Image Annotator gadget be installed for Wikipedia.

I suggest that the Image Annotator gadget be installed for the Wikipedia site. This is a gadget that allows people to comment on portions of a picture. The gadget is active over at WikiCommons and I find that it's useful. Installing the gadget on Wikipedia would not only make this functionality available there, but would also allow Wikipedia readers to see comments attached to Wikicommons photos. Without the gadget Wikipedia readers will not even realize that there are notes attached to a Wikicommons photo.

Here is an example of a Wikicommons photo that has notes attached. By hovering your mouse cursor over the photo you can read the notes. Also notice the "add note" button, that's the entry point to using the gadget. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnus_890_electric_chord_organ.JPG

Here is a Wikipedia page that displays the above photo from Wikicommons, but the notes are not visible because the Image Annotator gadget is not available on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_organ

If a reader was to find the photo interesting and click on it to get an enlarged view, s/he would get to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Magnus_890_electric_chord_organ.JPG

If you hover your mouse on the above photo you will see that the notes do not get displayed. The reader would not even know that any notes are available. To see the notes, the reader would have to be really persistent and also lucky enough to click the correct one of several links on this page to get to the source page on the Wikimedia Commons page, where they would finally be able to see the notes. Few readers would be that persistent.

The gadget can only be installed by an admin. I have requested the admins install this but three different ones have vacillated, with one calling for some sort of vote/consensus. That's installed on my talk page.

The help file for installing the gadget is here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator/Installation

TheLarryBrown (talk) 04:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Those admins are correct, Larry - You need consensus for any changes to the page involved, since it effects *everyone*. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Boribori!)} 04:45, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I can see this appropriate for free content that can be built on (eg commons licensing) but I don't see this working for non-free content - if it is not as controlled as regular text edits, I could see malicious users "vandalizing" images with these tags, and possibly get us in trouble with copyright owners. --MASEM (t) 04:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I have also told LarryBrown over at the Commons that there would need to be a demonstration of consensus for having it enabled here. However, Masem, the edits made through this thing are regular text edits: notes are stored on the image description page, using normal edits. Furthermore, this thing can be configured extensively. At the Commons, we have it running now allowing adding/editing/removing of image notes only for autoconfirmed users.

Also, there should be some compatibility testing with widely used other scripts, such as Popups or Twinkle, before an installtion here at the English Wikipedia was attempted. Lupo 22:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

My experience with this at Commons is that it's very useful for a small class of images (those that have both enough detail and enough history to warrant annotations) and that having it available on all images leads to a visible quantity of "Hi Mom!" lameness being added as annotations and sticking around. That's on Commons, where people actually watchlist image pages, as opposed to here where they mostly don't. Before we enabled annotations here, I'd want to see evidence that we can avoid that trouble - but also I'd want to see evidence that it's worth it in the first place, given that free images can already be uploaded to Commons to enable this functionality. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The main advantage would be that annotations made at the commons would become visible here directly on image thumbnails used in articles. Lupo 08:07, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I looked at the annotations to the organ photo. I think Wikipedia editors would object to the unsourced PoV expressed in there. However if the annotations are at Commons then there wouldn't be anything that could be done about it, short of enforcing en.wp standards there.   Will Beback  talk  08:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Or switching off the inline display of annotations for particular images (can be done with a template at the place the file is included), or configuring the extension such that it doesn't show notes for thumbnails that come from the Commons (either not at all, or by just showing a little icon indicating the presence of notes, which would then be visible on the local image description page), or improving the annotations. The annotations on that particular image are not typical. There are many good examples of uses of the feature at the Commons. There are also many bad examples. But this type of discussion is perhaps leaving the scope of the technical VP and enters the realm of consensus building (or demonstration of non-consensus, as the case may be :-) about whether the feature might be desirable at all. Lupo 17:26, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Unusual undo results?

A few moments ago, I clicked the "undo" button to revert revision 339578635 at Discover Card. I also manually edited the undo to restore the Sears Tower link (which had been changed to Willis Tower in revision 339011701). When I saved this edit, I noticed the bytecount inexplicably dropped from 13,223 to 11,388; I then checked the diff and saw that various citations and prose were removed through my edit. I then attempted to simply undo my edit, without making and manual changes (until I figured out what was going wrong), which did not restore the material that went missing in my first edit. I'm at a loss for figuring out what's going on here. Anybody? jæs (talk) 00:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI I've manually rolled back to before the undos, so the article right now seems okay. That doesn't, of course, address your very valid question as to why this odd thing happened. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Finlay! I did a couple of tests, and have narrowed down the culprit: the official Google Voice extension for Google Chrome on Mac. I can't explain why, but when that extension is enabled, it has a nasty side effect of removing anything between (and including) reference tags. The only "feature" of the extension that I can think of that would be interfering is that the Google Voice extension is designed to transform ten-digit telephone numbers on any page into clickable "dial" links. I can only guess that something about this feature either utilizes or devours reference tags? I'm really at a loss here, but, needless to say, I'm going to keep the extension disabled for now. I'll also check, momentarily, on how I can forward this issue on to Google. I apologize again for the mess. jæs (talk) 01:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

• The first diff given by jaes above takes me to a very old revision of Hypatia of Alexandria, even though the address bar says I'm on a difff on Discovery Card. DuncanHill (talk) 01:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

That's how diff works – it ignores the title parameter and shows the revision from oldid parameter. The correct link is probably this one: [5]. Svick (talk) 01:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I've corrected the link. I realize I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I believe the link error had something to do with the extension, as it was altered inexplicably in a revision I made earlier to this post, before disabling the extension. I guess this is what I get for using beta software, and I think I may take more advantage of "Show changes" in the meantime. jæs (talk) 02:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I would recommend that you let Google know if you haven't already done so. --Thinboy00 @082, i.e. 00:57, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

In fact, that was one of the first things I did! Someone from Google got back to me right away, collected some information, and earlier today the pushed out version 2.0.1 which I was able to confirm does indeed remedy the problem I encountered at the Discover Card article. jæs (talk) 01:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Move page using url coding

Is there a preloadtitle code in http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php which allows you to move one page to another, simply by entering a url?

In the alternative:

1. Can I preload the title I want to move the page too?

   Something like: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MovePage/ORIGINALARTICLE&preloadtitle=NEWARTICLE

2. Is there a keyboard shortcut to move down to the new page title box?

   In Wikipedia:Keyboard_shortcuts , (comma) which Jumps to the edit box, does not work.

Ikip 04:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

You can preload a target, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MovePage/ABC&wpNewTitle=Thispage for example. (You can preload a reason and all the checkboxes too) If you want to actually move the page automatically you should use the api. Prodego ^talk 05:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh remind me again what the api is. Thanks :) thanks for your response. Ikip 11:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

api and API documentation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:59, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

We're never going to make a URL so you can do something automatically just by following a URL. If we allowed that, it would be easy to trick a sysop into clicking a link to move Main Page to Main Page ON WHEELS!!!!. You can't do things like edit or move pages without clicking an actual button, or running a script. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:15, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

thank you, so much it worked very well. Ikip 05:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Printable Version suggestions

I have two suggestions for the printable version.

The first is with references/notes. Could we remove the "^" and a, b, c...etc from the printable version? You can't click on the ^ or a,b,c,etc in the printable version. However, I would still like for there to be a counter of how many times that reference was used...maybe something like (#) in small font.

The second is that I'd like to request that you add a small icon next to the printable version so that more people know that there is a printer friendly page.Smallman12q (talk) 23:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I also would like to ask that you put the type of time such as UTC, GMT, EST, etc on the printable version, and on the bottom of the website where it says "This page was last modified on 24 January 2010 at 23:25".Smallman12q (talk) 23:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Your suggestion of removing the ^caret in printed footnotes is, I think, good. The caret is a screen navigation thing (although we disable that for refs that are used more than once). The print code is very good about removing other navigation; this seems to me to be an oversight. But Mediawiki doesn't generate an HTML object to wrap just the caret, so there's nothing for the stylesheet to disable for the print view. So doing this would need a change-request on the software. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

"printable version" isn't very important, and I don't think we need to emphasise it. It's there mostly for people with rubbishy old browsers that can't handle the CSS stuff; even IE6 does the print media stylesheet stuff fine. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The printable version is basically the same as the normal version, but with the print stylesheet activated for viewing. Mr.Z-man 00:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I was surprised to read Finlay McWalter's last point, which is confirmed by Help:Printable and my own experiments with Firefox/Firebug. I had always thought (well, assumed) that the "Printable version" link pointed to a different version of the page with all bitmap images at original resolution, and vector images rasterized at 1200*1200 or higher. It seems I was naïve: despite all the advice to upload high resolution images and use vector graphics for tables and diagrams, this seems to make no difference for printing. So presumably if you are donating images you own to Wikipedia, there's no reason to upload anything better than screen resolution. Is that correct? - Pointillist (talk) 00:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Sure, you download the images separately and do your own layouting. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course, I know that if I want to make money out of WP content I can write a script to import it into my CMS using the original SVGs, JPGs and PNGs, and then pump out my own InDesign, Flash, Silverlight etc. I was asking the opposite question: if I own images that I'm happy to contribute to Wikipedia, why should I upload a high resolution version that Wikipedia won't use? - Pointillist (talk) 00:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Why do you assume people only print Wikipedia articles ? I click on thumbnails and download images all the time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Back to the point

1. Remove ^ and abc.

   This is currently not possible, because they are hard to identify in the content of the ref. You cannot CSS style them atm. We would have to change MediaWiki:Cite_references_link_many and MediaWiki:Cite_references_link_one, to identify this elements (making pages bigger and more complex once more).

2. Count references

   The printable version cannot do things that the normal webpage does not already do. So counting them in any other way then a, b, c. just for print, is not possible.

3. Add an icon

   We could add an icon, but it's not needed. People should just choose print from their menu. Only IE 5.5 really needs the printable stylesheet, and IE 5.5 support is being deprecated so we don't really care.

   Opened bugzilla:22256 on this issue.

4. Add UTC

   I'll open a bugreport on that one. bugzilla:22257

Hope that answers your questions. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:57, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Ye, it does. Thanks for opening the bug reports. I'd ask for a printer rendering solution, but the server/coding cost just wouldn't be justified. On a side note, I did find a bug with the new secure linker...see Wikipedia:VPT#Interwiki.2Finterlanguage_links_not_changing_to_secure.Smallman12q (talk) 01:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Well we have the "Download as PDF" option, which basically is just that. But that can't help folks that simply use "Print", which is rather common. So I don't think that at this time those resources should be directed at something that will basically be of little use to many people, for just a few corner issues. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Back to the point (II)

Why do you assume the "Printable version" link should be limited by CSS? It could point to a printer-oriented page rendering system using different logic to handle citations and embed high resolution images. After all, we already render thumbnails at user-preferred sizes. Given that the current printable version offers no benefits (except for old browsers) Featured picture criterion #2 ("is of sufficiently high resolution to allow quality print reproduction") is misleading. Contributors should be made aware that screen-resolution images are entirely sufficient for Wikipedia's purposes and they don't need to GFDL/CC3 high resolution versions of their IP. - Pointillist (talk) 01:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I had always taken that to mean that it was for people who wanted to print just the image. Given how expensive ink can be, I'd be somewhat annoyed by larger pictures in the printable version. IMO the printable version should stick as closely to the web layout as possible, minus the stuff around the edges (sidebar, tabs, sitenotice, etc.). Mr.Z-man 01:26, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

And I think that the relatively few people that have actually READ the featured picture criteria, almost all will agree with your interpretation Mr.Z-man. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Printed resolution comparison - click to view

Perhaps I'm not explaining this very well. When a reader clicks the "Printable version" link of an article (e.g. Helix-turn-helix), an HTML page is prepared and downloaded to the browser for printing. Currently the page embeds screen-resolution images (e.g. src="200px-Lambda_repressor_1LMB.png" class="thumbimage" height="294" width="200"). Instead, the page could embed the original image (e.g. src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Lambda_repressor_1LMB.png" class="thumbimage" height="294" width="200"). Either way, the image will be scaled to the same height and width, the layout doesn't change and no more ink is used. But... using the original image, which contains more data, will show more detail when it is rendered to a printer. This is a simple change ...all that is needed is to use the filename of the original bitmap (or best rastered SVG) image rather than the screen-scaled version. If we aren't prepared to do this, why should contributors upload print-resolution images? - Pointillist (talk) 02:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, obviously I wasn't explaining this at all well, as the functionality I was looking for is already part of "Download as PDF" (as TheDJ says above). I've updated the sample image accordingly. I still wonder why the "Printable version" link doesn't use this approach, though.... - Pointillist (talk) 03:07, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

If the printable version used the full original images, then users on connections slower than DSL would not be able to print Wikipedia pages...

But there are a number of good reasons to upload large images:

• The images should preferably be at least twice the size of what is used in the articles, so the resampling function have good data to work with.
• We are in it for the long run. Wikipedia, or at least some of its data, will be used far into the future. Over time people use computers with larger screens and higher resolutions. So some years from now we need larger images than we use now. When I started using computers 320x200px was a common screen resolution, now 1600x1200px is used by some users.
• As have been mentioned above: Many of us click on the images to go to the image page to see fullscreen versions of the images, and sometimes to download them. I am currently using one of the images from Götheborg (ship) as my desktop background. And images from Wikipedia can and are reused in other places. For instance, two of the crypto diagrams I have created have been used in a printed book about the security system of one of the biggest US banks. They sent me a copy, it looks very nice in my bookshelf. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you David, those are all very good points - especially the sampling issue, which I'd forgotten to consider. All the best - Pointillist (talk) 18:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Userboxtop template is breaking my user page formatting

The formatting on my user page is being broken by the 'userboxtop' template. Notice the huge gap in the section titled "Interesting Wikipedia Articles". Any suggestions on how to fix this? Jrtayloriv (talk) 22:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

It looks like someone fixed it for you but you made a edit that broke it again. So I added the {{FixBunching}} template, which kind of fixes it. Gary King (talk) 04:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Their edit didn't fix it for me (I'm using Firefox 3.5), so it was broken for me still before I made the last edit. The editor that attempted to fix it was someone on IRC, and the change that he made fixed it for his screen, but not for me and for other people on IRC at the time. {{FixBunching}} is not doing anything for me either. I still have the gap on my screen. Thanks for trying to help. Any other suggestions? Jrtayloriv (talk) 22:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems to have something to do with the {{top}} etc, templates for creating columns. That is the only noticable difference I can see between my page, and that of, say, User:Soxwon. Any idea why these might interfere with each other?Jrtayloriv (talk) 22:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed the box flow for you. {{top}} + {{middle}} + {{bottom}} creates a table. But that table uses "width: 100%", so in most browsers it flows below the right floating boxes on your user page so it can get that 100% width. The trick is to instead use "margin: 0;" in the table, then you get a box that uses all available width but doesn't flow down below the right floating boxes. So I hand coded a table for you with that setting.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch David! Jrtayloriv (talk) 23:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Viewing multiple categories

I have two questions about viewing multiple categories. (1) What is the best way to get a list of articles that are in two particular categories? For example, how can I get a list of articles that are in Category:All unreferenced BLPs *and* Category:American rock guitarists? (2) What is the best way to get a list of articles that are in a category or in any of its sub-categories? For example, how can I get a list of articles that are in Category:American rock musicians *or* are in any sub-category of Category:American rock musicians? — Mudwater ^(Talk) 12:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

For (1), ref WP:CI, you can use either the intersection tool (enter both categories in the bottom box without the Category: bit) or WP:CATSCAN. Nanonic (talk) 13:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

For (2), you can use WP:CATSCAN too. Svick (talk) 14:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Nanonic and Svick. This is exactly what I was looking for. "P.S." Interestingly, it seems that Intersection Search and Cat Scan can both be used for either (1) or (2). — Mudwater ^(Talk) 00:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Category intersection

It would be a good idea for a wikiproject to have a section listing the articles within its scope that are in need of some kind of maintenance. For this, it would be needed to make a category intersection between the category or number of categories whose articles are in such scope (like "Category:Foo", "Category:History of Foo", etc.), and the ones that include a certain template or are included as well at a certain maintenance category. I know of tools that allow to make such querys myself, but is there a tool that allows to make it automatically and place/update the results at a specific wikiproject page? So, someone would just see the list, choose an article from it and work with it, with the list adding new articles needing maintenance or removing those who don't (meaning, the template has been added/removed) without need of human intervention to do so. MBelgrano (talk) 15:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia:Article alerts that reports daily when articles enter certain workstreams (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Article alerts for an example output) and also User:WolterBot provides a similar monthly service (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Cleanup listing for another example output). There are probably others that do similar as well. Nanonic (talk) 18:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Issues with mixing LTR and RTL scripts

I'm encountering a problem with {{ug}}, which includes Arabic (right-to-left) script. In a few edits, such as this, things simply get really screwed up, the left-to-right script (the dates) after the template end up getting mixed up in the template if you use a regular space instead of a &nbsp;, and even when it looks fine in the edit window (using &nbsp;) the actual display is wrong, as you can see, the dates show up before the Arabic.

Interestingly, this template also includes Latin script, and when I added that after the Arabic everything suddenly became fine. I looked within the template itself and I didn't see any missing </span> tags or anything like that, so I'm not sure what's causing it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The characters you initially had after the RTL text are seen by the backhand as 'weak' characters, of which it doesn't predict the direction. Because of this, the directionality of the string is not switched back to RTL. See Bi-directional_text. You need Left-to-right mark or a Right-to-left mark characters to force direction. (We could experiment with having these added by the template at all times i guess ... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I hope that User:TheDJ/SandboxTemplate5 has it right now. Does it look good like this ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

To explain what (I think) it does. The marks say "This is a border between ltr vs rtl, and treat the character at the immediate left as 'left-to-right" if lrm and as "right to left" in case of rlm". The template could use some docs btw. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The &lrm; character is the marker? That seems to work, I'll fiddle around with it more. I'm just surprised that the <span> tag didn't already cover that; there should be a "rtl" attribute somewhere within Wikipedia's stylesheet, which I'm sure <span lang="ar"> includes and I'd be surprised if <span lang="ug"> doesn't include as well. I'm curious if any Arabic templates have encountered similar problems.

(btw, you're right about the documentation; the template never had documentation and when I updated it a few days ago I was being hasty and never got around to it, I'll try to remember to do it soon! :) ). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

As you can see from the source, this is exactly the same as what the template lang-ar does. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Annoying, constantly present invisible div.

There seems to be an annoying, ever-present div added via Javascript to the page, preventing me from right-clicking properly, as I have discovered with Safari's Inspector. It contains an empty iframe, and this image: . It is normally hidden using visibility:hidden, but that doesn't actually hide it, I think display:none should have been used instead?

What is it, anyway? --(ƒî)» 04:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

It is WikiMiniAtlas, and you are experiencing a bug in Safari, which I have recently reported. https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34042 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I have notified the author of WMA of the issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for mentioning it here, and thanks to TheDJ for the additional info! I'm glad I'm not going mad, and that it's not just me. I was starting to think all sorts of worrying thoughts about dodgy javascript injection or other malicious things, and it's hard to track down where it's coming from... gothick (talk) 13:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me. I guess it won't hurt to make it both visibility:hidden and display:none. --Dschwen 15:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, changed the code. Pleas clear cache and try again. --Dschwen 15:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

That seems to have fixed it, thanks! --(ƒî)» 19:10, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Etherpad for Wikipedia

Etherpad at etherpad recently became open sourced by google. It allows for real-time/simultaneous editing of a text document among several people. I wanted to suggest that wikipedia host and possibly integrate etherpad given that most wikipedia articles are just text, this would allow for much much much much better collaboration amongst several editors.

Any thoughts on this?Smallman12q (talk) 21:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

How would this integrate with the current MediaWiki editing software? Do you mean use this to edit existing articles, or for a separate system for writing drafts? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well I was looking to get a seperate "pad" active for every article. So a user would basically click "edit in etherpad" and it would take them to a pad with the article content preloaded. From there, other users could also click "edit in etherpad" and they too would be taken to where the first user went. It would be used for drafts/editing...it would serve far better than the current post/discuss/resive as all edits would be visible instantly to all in that pad.Smallman12q (talk) 22:14, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki book page

The book generator uses the term "layouting" during rendering of PDFs. But "layouting" isn't a word. I'd like to change it to "laying out", but can't find the relevant MediaWiki page. Anyone any ideas? Stifle (talk) 14:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI, I found this while looking for it, but no idea where the "layouting" comes from - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 15:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Geshi

Just spamming this. Pre tags have not been used in Geshi since long time. Locos epraix ~ Beastepraix 15:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Mediawiki API Cookies

Resolved

 – Smallman12q (talk) 22:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

For making post requests using the mediawiki api for editing , do we need to also send a cookie, or is the edittoken enough? Could we send just part of a cookie such as the edit token...Which information is required, and which is optional...the documentation is a bit lacking.Smallman12q (talk) 00:47, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

For editing, you need to send the login cookies as well as an edit token. In general you should simply keep all the cookies you receive at login and return them with each request. Otherwise, the API has no way of knowing which user is even making the edit... There are libraries available for most common programming languages that already include editing; see WP:MKBOT. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently writing a library in vb/c .net for the API. The current dotnetwikibot framework doesn't use the API. I'd like to write a library that strictly adheres to the API...plus some additional functionality. So I take it that the full cookie needs to be sent back right?Smallman12q (talk) 01:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

There are several login cookies, as discussed at WP:MKBOT. You should simply save all the cookies that the login command sets, and return them all with each edit. You need the cookies not only to edit pages, but also to get the increased bot limits on the number of results returned by other API queries. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:07, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!Smallman12q (talk) 22:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

truly minor edit merge issue

In case someone on the tech side is having a bout of insomnia, here's a puzzle to ponder. I was over at the reference desk and saw this thread Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#Flag_Ratios. the interesting thing is the small print comments at the bottom of the thread - when the wikimedia software merges two contemporaneous edits, why does it merge them in the wrong temporal order? that seems like something that would be really easy to fix if it could be tracked down (which might be a real bear). --Ludwigs2 07:17, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

My icon

how do I change my icon —Preceding unsigned comment added by Czimerman (talk • contribs) 18:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by “my icon”? The icon beside your user name? Svick (talk) 18:42, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Category for video samples of films

I am having a technical issue with categorizing video samples of films. Please see Category talk:Video samples of films. Thanks, Erik (talk) 21:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. (__NO GALLERY__) is what was needed (I've made a similar mistake before :D) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 22:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Excellent! Thanks! Erik (talk) 22:26, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Magic words for subpage names

Is there any magic word that lets you control which subpage you get, in the context of pages with several levels of subpages? For example, FAC subpages, where you might have Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Foo/archive1.

• {{BASEPAGENAME}} yields Featured article candidates/Foo
• {{SUBPAGENAME}} yields archive1
• Is there anything that yields only Foo?

rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, actually, maybe I've got it. It's a bit hack-ish, but it seems like {{SUBPAGENAME:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}} works, thanks to this. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You can use {{#titleparts}} - {{#titleparts:Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Foo/archive1|1|2}} returns Foo - Documentation for it is here. Mr.Z-man 06:14, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Page Statistics Void Since Jan. 23, 2010

Has anyone else out there noticed that hits have not been counted on articles since the 23rd? I visited many random pages from two different IP's and page statistics is showing zero hits. Anyone know what this is about? Thanks in advance! :) --Neon Sky (talk) 19:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Which page statistics ? Stats.grok.se ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Isn't it always few days late? A look into the Internet Archive seems to suggest this: snapshot of stats for Asia for March 2008 taken on 22 March 2008 ends with stats from 20 March. Svick (talk) 22:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Unresolved

en.wikipedia.org site. Seems to be working now. :) --Neon Sky (talk) 01:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I've raised the same problem at Wikipedia talk:Did you know#http://stats.grok.se/en/201001/Castle_Green,_London. How are the lost days accounted for and can they be recovered? Simply south (talk) 16:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I did a trouble ticket at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ and it was fixed relatively quickly (within 2 hours). I suggest trying there. :) Good luck!--Neon Sky (talk) 23:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The 23,24 of january 2010 seem missing. But it works after that...Smallman12q (talk) 22:17, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Some functionalities for eu Wikipedia

Hi, I'm collaborating with the basque Wikipedia and we are interested implementing new functionalities. New for us because you have them yet. I'm almost sure that the solutions might be related with Common.css or Common.js but as I tried I need help. Also we talked about this in our Wikipedia but nobody knows:

• Related to references. When the same reference is used (<ref name="A">) then it is listed in an alphabetical order. This is your case but in the basque Wikipedia the result is 1,0 1,1 1,2... I don't know how to explain better so please see this example: Helium#Notes and eu:Helio#Erreferentziak. If more details are needed please ask.
• What are the steps to follow to implement the "Download as PDF" button on the print/export section. "Create a book" is not interesting but the option of downloading an article could be really usefull.

Please, feel free to move this talk to a better place but I couldn't find it. I would appreciate any tip you give and sorry of my poor English. Thanks. --Inorbez (talk) 09:30, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

The references issue is bizarre. The only thing I can think of is filing a "site request" bug at Bugzilla. If you are not familiar with Bugzilla, maybe ask someone who is. The Download as PDF issue would need another site request bug - you need the "Collection" extension enabled on eu.wikipedia. Sorry I can't be of more help. — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, thank you. --Inorbez (talk) 09:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't know how but I reach this page and there is explained what changes must be done in order to use letters and no numbers with cites. If somebody knows or can give any tip related to PDF downloading I would appreciate it. --Inorbez (talk) 13:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Rarely exercised critical race?

I have a bad habit of starting an edit, getting distracted (perhaps by something more urgent, that that edit brings to my attention), and finishing it, say a day later. Occasionally this puts me thru a process of ed-conf resolution (which i've been dealing with for years and years, and flatter myself that i handle smoothly and responsibly).
It appears that i began a long edit -- presumably such an interrupted one -- on the 18th, not completing it until [mumbles indecipherably] later. It turns out that that explanation would imply that i started my edit in a 62-second window between two saves. (Most likely, the fact the first of them saved in the first second of a minute is mere coincidence.) It also implies what i am unwilling to admit, that i overrode an edit-conflict notice without the slightest adjustment, in light of the large and visible additions since i started, in what i saved -- unless, that is, a bug, perhaps -- accompanied by server anomaly -- prevented the usual edit conflict processing, so that i overwrote edits i'd never seen, without getting any indication that i was doing so.
I hasten to note that i don't expect this to be pursued unless it bears an uncanny resemblance to an earlier or later report: i firmly support the principle that "if it only happened once, it didn't really happen". But perhaps the developers have a virtual knick-knack shelf, where curious events are stashed away, and occasionally taken down and turned over until they evoke "Pffft!" or "Hmmph", and put back to sit there for another week or year -- but perhaps eventually earning a "WTF" or "Wait a sec, that reminds me of ...."
Thanks to any readers.
--Jerzy•t 23:18, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Of course, another watchword is "Look in the cockpit for the problem", and it could, very rarely [wink], apply when i am the pilot. Musing over it while driving, it occurred to me that two other bad habits, among those i occasionally do exercise, are
  1. copying the URL during an edit, and
  2. overwriting an edit pane with material copied from another edit pane.

The combination of the two is a recipe for defeating the ed-conf-handling system. And even in this case where there was an assertive template in the added material, copying an "action=edit" URL would have displayed the added template in the much less distinctive form of template markup. IMO, the combination of a (rare) 62-second window and a (very rare) multi-day edit was a red herring that encouraged me to consider the possibility of a very rare event. I've only one reason for suspecting i did that on this edit -- Ockham's razor, which IMO suggests precisely that.
--Jerzy•t 03:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

This happens occasionally on very busy pages such as T:TDYK; [6] for example. It appears the edit-conflict handling system does not always recognize edit conflicts. Ucucha 13:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion: Stub icon images can be 10x-100x oversized; wastes bandwidth; perhaps a bot-fix?

Looking for someone more experienced to suggest if this could be improved as I think it can (have searched Pump archives).

For a number of Stub Categories, an image is used as the icon next to the text "This xyz article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it." While many of the images are SVG or PNG of reasonable size, a surprising number are JPG. Some JPG stub icons (e.g. Abraham_Lincoln_small.png; Frederick_Jackson_Turner.jpg‎ ) are very reasonably sized at 3-15 kb, but there are a surprising number that are 200kb to 2+ Mb. They are shown at about 40x40 pixels, so that resolution really isn't needed.

Figuring that many jpg stub icons are 150 kb oversized, and some even 10 times that, we're not talking about it massive bandwidth for each use, but how many stub-views are there per year? Just serving three stub images (Trilobite-stub; Europe Archaeology-stub; Botany-stub) was a gigabyte excess for December (usage from http://stats.grok.se/en/200912). Multiply that by all .jpg stub images over about 50k and it might save some modest amount of bandwidth bill.

Since training users to not link stub-images of large size is probably not effective, and there are too many to fix by hand, it seems that the easiest solution would be for a better programmer than I to write a bot that posts a small version of jpgs linked in Stub templates, then relinks the stub template to the new image. I just don't have the programming skills to propose it myself, esp. not to make and shrink images.

Discussion and suggestions welcome. It was previously alluded to as a decent idea in principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DWAP addendum by Simetrical) but hasn't happened. Is it too hard, or not worth it, or perhaps I've actually had an idea? NotTires (talk) 01:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The images showed that are showed in the stub templates aren't the original, often several megabytes big, images, but their resized versions. I looked at the images in the stub templates you talked about: [7] that is used in {{trilobite-stub}} is 936 B, {{Europe-archaeology-stub}}'s image has 902 B and {{Botany-stub}}'s has 813 B. That's far from a waste, so there is no need to do anything. Svick (talk) 01:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The images should be scaled automatically by the software. Template:Trilobite-stub uses File:Kolihapeltis 01 Pengo.jpg. When the template is used in articles like Aayemenaytcheia I get http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Kolihapeltis_01_Pengo.jpg/32px-Kolihapeltis_01_Pengo.jpg (936 bytes). Try right-clicking the image on a page where it's used and click Properties (may be browser dependent) to check what you get. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks [User:PrimeHunter] and User:Svick. 900 bytes is a good size. When I checked the properties and linked images, I only saw the file name, which was the full size file. I hadn't noticed the fine print that said that showed the actual image was the resized one underneath the name and link for the big one. Too bad that I couldn't offer something useful, but I appreciate your quick and clear answers. NotTires (talk) 16:07, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Cat intersection

Hi. Wasn't sure whether to post here or at Help, but here goes.

I saw a Cat intersection tool recently, that looked great. No idea where it was.

I'm one of the many editors trying ref as many unreffed BLPs as possible, as quickly as possible. There are a number of us working through a list at the cricket WikiProject, but I've just realised that there's not many other active editors who are fans of Norwich City F.C. (that I'm aware of) and I'd bet there's a large intersection between the unreffed BLPs Cat and Category:Norwich_City_F.C._players.

If someone could produce a list for me and bung it in my userspace I'd be most grateful. --Dweller (talk) 14:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done but I only threw up two articles... someone may want to retry in case I made any stupid mistakes! ╟─TreasuryTag►stannary parliament─╢ 14:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

See above under #Viewing multiple categories. Ucucha 14:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Image upload--Browser discriminant

I was unable to upload an image using IE8 while a wikipedian with FF was able to. Please make Wikipedia image upload accessable to Wikipedians with IE8, which a majority of the people uses. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I find that very unlikely. Are you sure you didn't have an extension/gadget or monobook script that was interfering? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I haven't changed anything. In the past I was able to upload the image just fine. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

This is what I'm seeing: http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/6992/scrshot.png --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Was the problem the upload guide or the Special:Upload form ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

All three: replace with newer version, the Upload guide found in the toolbox, and Special:Upload form.--Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

bugzilla:22320 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:43, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I submitted that bug. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:47, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Google indexing user pages

Further to this message at the Help Desk, it appears that Google is indexing user pages. I thought all pages in userspace were noindexed? Mine also has {{NOINDEX}} on it, but has been indexed by Google. Anyone know what's going on - is Google ingnoring noindex for some reason? Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 22:04, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

No, indexing of userspace pages isn't disallowed, but {{NOINDEX}} should work (Google search of your user name did show up subpages of your userpage, but not the userpage itself). User talk pages on the other hand, are noindexed. Also see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User page indexing. Svick (talk) 23:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

{{NOINDEX}}-ing a page that has been previously indexed can sometimes not work well. Sometimes it seems that Google won't remove the old version from their cache for a while, but they won't add the new version. You can request a no-indexed page be removed from Google results here. Mr.Z-man 23:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

High Database Server Lag

I don't know why, but there is starting to be a high database server lag, and the time keeps increasing. Right now, it says "changes newer than 361 seconds may not appear in this list" on my watchlist. In other words, the database lag is up to 361 seconds right now. I'm pretty sure it's not just my computer. If an administrator can fix this, please do so. Thank you. --Hadger 02:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Now it's at 1,024 seconds... Is anyone else noticing this, or is it just my computer? --Hadger 02:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Worry not. It's not just you. I've got 1,536 seconds now. Hopefully it'll catch up soon. A few weeks ago we got up to around 9,000 sec lag. Could be worse! Rkitko ^(talk) 02:31, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, it stopped. --Hadger 04:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Really? I just got 8000 seconds, which is 2 hours and 13.3 minutes. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:28, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

See the section just below this. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:29, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Some template help

Resolved

 – ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢

I'm having a strange issue that I've never encountered before. Usually when you put a template onto an article, it doesn't matter if you use the horizontal or vertical method of assigning parameters... However, I seem to get different results on a template I'm making. If I assign a value to a parameter (say a number) in the vertical format (as in {{[[Template:template |template ]]}}, and then have it place that number in the middle of a sentence, it adds the line break after the number, effectively making it impossible to call a file name with that number in it.

How do I prevent a variable from holding onto that line break, instead of only the value? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

From Help:Template: “The leading and trailing spaces around the values of named parameters in the template tags are stripped by the template.” So I guess if you use named parameters, the problem goes away. Svick (talk) 22:23, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. That sucks, but at least I know. Thank you :) - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 00:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Which template are you talking about specifically? an example would help. --Ludwigs2 00:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Floydian's example above broke. Here's his example:

{{template
|param1
|param2
|param3=blah
}}

But that normally doesn't cause any line breaks when those parameters are used. So Floydian, as Ludwigs said, please link to the template you have problems with so we can take a look.

And you actually don't need to use named parameters to strip white space, there are other ways. But first let us see your template.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Ouch, I checked the user contributions of Floydian and found the templates: User:Floydian/Infobox Ontario road/test calls {{User:Floydian/Infobox Ontario road}}. I ran some tests, and he is right, he had two serious whitespace problems there. He fed the unnamed parameters like this:

{{User:Floydian/Infobox_Ontario_road
|Hwy
|401
|...

And the code called was this (slightly simplified example):

[[Image:Ontario {{{2|}}}.svg|100x100px|alt=A road sign with the number {{{2}}} in the centre.]]

When feeding unnamed parameters we often get leading and trailing whitespace, so the first usage of "{{{2|}}}" causes the file name "Image:Ontario 401 .svg", when we really want "Image:Ontario 401.svg". That is a known issue.

But the second whitespace problem was all new to me. In the "alt=" part we get a line break after the "{{{2}}}" when fed the 401 value! Very nasty.

Anyway, I tested to use my usual fix. We can strip whitespace from parameters by using "{{#if:x| {{{2}}} }}". So I changed the line to this:

[[Image:Ontario {{#if:x| {{{2|}}} }}.svg|100x100px|alt=A road sign with the number {{#if:x| {{{2}}} }} in the centre.]]

And thankfully that fixes both the whitespace problems.

Another way to "fix" the problem is to feed the numbered parameters like this:

{{User:Floydian/Infobox_Ontario_road
| 1 = Hwy
| 2 = 401
| 3 = ...

That makes them named parameters with the names 1, 2, 3 and so on, and they get the same whitespace stripping as other named parameters. Of course, that is not a good "fix" since this means the users of the template have to know that they can only feed the numbered parameters that way.

But as Svick said above, using actual named parameters is often the best solution. Named parameters are anyway often better than unnamed parameters since it is way to easy to add one to many or one to few unnamed parameters. And named parameters are more robust in some other ways too.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Thats actually pretty interesting. Would you mind explaining what exactly that if statement is doing that strips the whitespace? It would help me put it to better use. Thank you for the tip though. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, here goes:

As you probably know MediaWiki's if-case checks if a string has content. So "{{#if:x| }}" checks if the string "x" has one or more characters, and "x" is one character, so that if-case is always true. Another way to write it is perhaps clearer:

{{#if: Put some text here to make it always true
| true
| false
}}

Thus "{{#if:x| {{{2|}}} }}" will always return the "{{{2|}}}". The nice part is that MediaWiki's parserFunctions have a side effect: They strip away surrounding whitespace from their input.

But there is one big caveat: The parserFunctions have another side effect. They interpret leading "*" and "#". So if we feed "* Text." to the "{{{2|}}}" parameter and we have this code:

Alfa{{#if:x| {{{2|}}} }}beta

Then you will get this result:

Alfa

• Text.beta

While if we have only this code:

Alfa{{{2|}}}beta

Then you will get this result:

Alfa* Text.beta

Or if the input has whitespace, then you get this result or worse:

Alfa * Text. beta

So if there is any risk that the input will start with "*" or "#" then you can't use such whitespace stripping. Then you have to use named parameters instead, since they also strip whitespace but without interpreting the leading "*" and "#". As I have mentioned above, you can turn unnamed parameters into "named" parameters by feeding them as "{{temp| 1 = data }}", but better choose a name for the parameter so users don't get sloppy and try to use "{{temp| data }}".

Note that if the output (rendered result) starts with "*" or "#" then that always gets interpreted, and you still get the list output:

• Text.

Preventing that is a whole other story...

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Haha, now I feel slightly silly: I just realised that we can make a meta-template to strip whitespace from unnamed parameters. That template should take the input as a named parameter so it strips the whitespace. Then we don't need to use "{{#if:x| }}", and then we don't get the "*" and "#" problem. So I went looking for a good name for that template, and discovered another user beat me to it: {{StripWhitespace}} does exactly that. Very nifty.

Of course, calling "{{StripWhitespace| x = {{{2|}}} }}" for every unnamed parameter in our templates is inefficient, so better use named parameters from starters. But {{StripWhitespace}} can be nice to add to already deployed templates to make them more forgiving on the input.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow! Quite the explanation, but it certainly makes sense now. I think what it comes down to is that any parameter that is displayed in a string of text needs to be named, or else problems arise. Given that I've decided to name the number parameter so that it can be displayed and simplify things. Thats what documentation is for after all. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:55, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

IE7 peculiarity

There was a discussion regarding Template:Collapsible list which died out a couple months ago, but never came to a solution. Is there anyone that can figure out why the show/hide link displays differently in IE7 than every other browser? Assuming it hasn't expired yet, this page shows the screenshots of the different browsers. Thanks, MrKIA11 (talk) 16:48, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

template talk:collapsible list#Overhang_section_break^* ¦ Reisio (talk) 09:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

watchlist problem?

Is it just me or are watchlists not updating? mine's been stuck at 19:10 (UTC, I suppose) for a good long bit now. --Ludwigs2 04:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

They aren't. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Boribori!)} 04:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh no. I think it's time to make Wikipedia Database Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Data Loss (title parody of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones). But seriously, it's happening again! :( --Hadger 04:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It's a huge database lag... --Hadger 04:27, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

[EC] Noted, and fixed by TimStarling. There will be high replag while DB12 catches up. Prodego ^talk 04:27, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Yay!!!! The database is easing up. It went from 7,970 to 7,870!I guess now it's time for Wikipedia Database Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Wikipedians (An administrator just eased up the Database Lag XD). I think the first one would be Wikipedia Database Wars: Episode I: The Wikipedia Database Lag. But really, thank you TimStarling!!!! --Hadger 04:31, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It would be cool if we went back in time, though. Then we would be able to make Wikipedia Database Who (title parody of Doctor Who, a show I really like!). Then again, that would make my Wikipedia account not even exist yet sense I only made it last year... (just kidding, I know a database lag wouldn't do that... would it? XD) --Hadger 04:35, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

So the world didn't melt down this time? Darn. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:37, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Nope. The world didn't spin backwards, so we aren't going to start doing what we did years ago! (I have no idea what that is, but I may not like doing everything backwards). It would be cool to go back in time, though. P.S. I'm starting to see my watchlist update! :) --Hadger 04:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

We are going back into the present... I can see what I did years ago..... Just kidding (don't worry, we are going back to the present). --Hadger 04:41, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

You know, it would be funny if it said something like "changes newer than -1,097 seconds may not appear on this list". We would be going into the future! --Hadger 04:43, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

soon I'm going to start singing "My edits show up - tomorrow!" --Ludwigs2 04:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

That would be the perfect song for Wikipedia Database Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope for the Future Edits of Wikipedia! (Really, it would be!) --Hadger 05:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Now it says that edits newer than 743 seconds may not appear! We are going back to the present! Hurray! :) --Hadger 05:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Now it says 591 seconds. --Hadger 05:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It stopped! Good-bye, high database lag! :) XD --Hadger 05:08, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I guess we won't be going to the future. --Hadger 05:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Now all we have to do is find out how it happened.... Wikipedia Mystery Inc. (I don't think we have to, but can we try? It could've been some sort of hacker or someone who did it). --Hadger 05:17, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

You can usually see what's going on with the servers at the Wikitech server admin log, although if they're really busy (like last night) the log may not be their top priority. In this case it was a single balky server. Acroterion _(talk) 13:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

irc.freenode.net

Anyone else having trouble connecting to freenode for the Wikipedia IRC channels? I was disconnected just after a global notice mentioning some migration to newnet?? Maybe it's just temporary.. -- œ^™ 23:18, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Ahh it was temporary.. forgive my geeky panicking hehe -- œ^™ 23:20, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

WMF project pages footer issue

There's a problem with the footer on WMF project pages.

800px

The privacy policy text doesn't line up correctly. I'm using Firefox 3.5 on Windows XP. Does anyone know where to report this? Only minor, but still something that should probably get fixed. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 23:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

How is it suppose to appear? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 01:36, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The words "Privacy Policy" should be on the one line. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 01:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Like this? This was taken using IE8. I think FF breaks a lot of pages designed for IE.

900px --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 01:57, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

You know, it would have been a heck of a lot smarter if I'd provided a URL! Sorry... try this link. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 02:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It depends on your browser window size; you happen to have your window in a position where the "privacy policy" text is cut of. At any rate, "Privacy policy" should probably be replaced with "Privacy&nbsp;policy" in the source code to prevent this. Bugzilla? — The Earwig @ 05:23, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia article footers generate invalid HTML

A recent change to something in the footer caused all Wikipedia articles to generate invalid HTML. For example, the Wikipedia article A fails validation: if you visit the W3C Markup Validation Service, the report for the article on A lists 6 errors, starting with:

Line 540, Column 163: document type does not allow element "br" here; assuming missing "li" start-tag

…a non-profit organization.</li><br /><li class="noprint"><a class='internal'

Can someone who knows how Wikipedia article footers are generated please fix these errors? Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 04:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

See the history of MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright. Prodego added it, and as a result of this comment, I've removed it. I think it may have been a response to the above section complaining that the footer looked funny in some browsers, so the response should now be to check out the CSS, as that would be the cleaner way to fix the problem. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 04:54, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed and restored. Prodego ^talk 06:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Renderring error with 350px + svg

When rendered at 2000px, File:Alaska Volcano Observatory.svg does not display correctly. It seems that anything above the 350px does not display the outer letters correctly. Unfortunately the image is non-free, so I can't put up a screenshot, but I do believe this is an error with rendering/scaling.Smallman12q (talk) 17:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia has problems rendering some fonts in SVGs. If it was a free image, change of the font used would be a solution. But does it matter in this case? Shouldn't fair-use images be always used in low resolution? Svick (talk) 18:27, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It should be low-resolution, but being an svg, it can be scaled...for example look at File:Windows_logo.svg. So shouldn't a bug report be filed, or is there a bugzilla link you can give me?Smallman12q (talk) 21:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it's T5769. Svick (talk) 22:17, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Ye...that looks like the one...guess its not gonna get fixed.Smallman12q (talk) 01:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Flag template for Austria

What has happened with the flag template for Austria? When you look at Triple Crown of Motorsport e.g., there is only a rectangular next to Jochen Rindt where the flag should have been. John Anderson (talk) 18:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed Gary King (talk) 20:54, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Links red in images comment from wikipedia

The links in the "comments" section of wiki commons images are red if they link to a wikicommons page. Although the wikicommons page/category may exist, the links in the comments apparently relink to whichever wiki they are in rather than prepending "commons:". Is this a fixable bug, or would it require a bit of back end work?Smallman12q (talk) 01:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have an answer but just to clarify, the post refers to the "Comment" column in the File history section. For example in File:1882 Selbstportrait.jpg#filehistory versus commons:File:1882 Selbstportrait.jpg#filehistory. The former includes some blue links in cases where the English Wikipedia happens to have a page by the same name as the page linked at Commons. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Bug of SUB tag

The <sub> tag used in the barnstar template causes the words within it to be covered by the invisible border of the table in IE7 and reportedly in IE8 as well (Exmaple) What's the function and purpose for this tag? -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 02:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Most barnstar templates don't use that tag. What it does is it sets the text as subscripts, so that the text is lower than the rest of the text on the same line. Gary King (talk) 05:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to deprecate Template:City-region

Please see Template talk:City-region#Move to deprecate. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Canned text in new sections on a page?

Is there a way to add some code to a page so that a new section created with the new section / + tab would come pre-populated with some text? Thanks, ^Bongo_matic 06:16, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

That could be done, but what would be the purpose? Equazcion ^(talk) 06:17, 1 Feb 2010 (UTC)

Lots of pages have sections all of the same format—arbitrations, various reporting noticeboards, and individual users' projects. Can this be done using existing tools? ^Bongo_matic 06:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, by using the InputBox extension with the comment type and using preloaded text. The InputBox at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Nominate doesn't do exactly what you're after, but it's a good example. Graham87 08:18, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Wizard-Redirects is an example of what you are looking for. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone—exactly what I was looking for. Is there any way to tie this to the new section / + button? ^Bongo_matic 13:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think so. The magic word __NONEWSECTIONLINK__ can remove the button but I don't think that should be done without very good reason on a discussion or report page where we want new sections. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I figured as much. But generally, what happens when a user clicks the new section / + button? Is there any way to override the behavior either for oneself (e.g., by changing your monobook.js or something), or for a particular page? ^Bongo_matic 16:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Problem viewing new edits

Whenever there is new edits to pages that I watch, I can't view the new edits when I click on the page. When it lets me, I'm only able to view new edits by going to the editing history to compare diffs. Joe Chill (talk) 12:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried to bypass your cache? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

HOw about purging the page? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 13:34, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Problem with my template

I was wondering if someone might assist me with a user space template. It's basically an image of an "End of correspondence" stample that I created in the Gimp. I've managed to get it to float over the text without much of an issue, however for some reason it's leaving a large amount of space down the bottom of the image. Does anyone have any ideas why this is? The template is User:Tbsdy lives/EndOfCorr and a test page is User:Tbsdy lives/EndOfCorr/Test. You can see what its doing there. Thanks! - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 20:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Fixed: needed a negative margin-bottom. Though I'd be willing to bet this template has cross-browser compatibility issues. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and fixed the horizontal scrollbar issue as well by setting a width explicitly. "border:1px solid black;" is invaluable in debugging these issues, for reference. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

MZ, you are an absolutely legend! Thanks :-) Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 23:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

CSS :target on headings

span.mw-headline:target { background-color: #fbe54e;}

Adding this to common.css will highlight the heading of the section when clicked from the TOC. A more advanced example with permalinking in the heading is given on the Toolserver, which could be implemented here with javascript. — Dispenser 23:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

noinclude tags and load times for page with transcluded subpages

I raised a brief proposal at WT:Featured article candidates#Template:la to add a <noinclude>ed template to subpages of WP:FAC. I believe such an addition wouldn't affect the load times of WP:FAC (where the subpages are all transcluded) because of the noinclude tags, but could someone familiar with load time stuff take a look at it to make sure? Thanks, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

How to extract image with metadata from pdf

How does one extract an image from a pdf and still have that image retain its original metadata(if it had any)?Smallman12q (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

If you've access to a sane OS (or emulation of one*): pdfimages -j foo.pdf prefix ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Pdfimages comes with the xpdf build for windows so one doesn't necessarily need an emulation/cygwin. Does it keep the metadata though from the original image? I ran it on a few pdfs, and it doesn't seem to keep the metadata...am I doing something wrong?Smallman12q (talk) 13:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

"What links here" after a move

There is a place to click for what links to the old page name on the page that says a move was successful.

I just moved an article and was told "No pages link to WOHS". I knew of some that did since I created the links in the first place, and no one had fixed the links yet. I went to the page that has the redirect on it and there was a list, and I discovered a template that was responsible for many of the links, but after I fixed the template, the pages still showed up as having links to WOHS. Except for sports networks (which the former WOHS may or may not still be a part of), supposedly I have fixed all the pages with actual links, but there may be others I don't know about.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

As the pagemove page says, that only gives a list of what redirects to the old title. Algebraist 19:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure where that is. I don't know whether I saw this particular page the last time I needed a db-move and didn't know how to request one, but the page I just looked at said "there may be a shortcut link on the page-moved summary screen to let you do this." In my case, there was not, but it did say "may".Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you no longer move to a redirect without deleting it?

I moved Charles Stanley to Charles Stanley (disambiguation) and Charles Stanley (pastor) to Charles Stanley. When I went to make the latter move, it would not let me do it until I deleted the redirect left behind by the first move. Is that an intentional new feature or a bug? You used to be able to move over top of a redirect without having to delete it first provided that it had never been anything but a redirect. Sorry if this is old news. Thanks. --B (talk) 22:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The redirect you're moving to must have one edit and it must point to the page you're moving. You'd be able to move Charles Stanley (disambiguation) back without having to delete the redirect. It's been that way for like forever. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

It's documented at WP:MOR. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

You know ... that makes sense ... I probably have never (or rarely) had an occasion to move A to B, then C to A. Thanks. --B (talk) 22:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Image display problems

Can someone please look at Thomas Baker (aviator) in IE8? I (finally) downloaded Safari (which I hate, old dog, new trick) because I'm having this problem across numerous FACs; it's not only Baker, I've seen it on dozens of articles. They display fine in Safari, but not in IE8. Also, the problems seem random; in the case of Baker, it's the infobox, but in other articles, I see it on some images, and not on others in the same article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Also Bodiam Castle. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:14, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a repro of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 69#Layered images often not displaying in IE8 which is still hugely annoying and, as the archive shows, has gone unanswered here at least twice recently.

I'm getting the problem with lots of infobox maps. That said, I can't reproduce the problem with the Thomas Baker article. Is it the infobox photo that disappears? Do you use the Wikipedia:Navigation popups extension?

I wish there were a way to bring this problem to the attention of some IE8 CSS specialists as it seems to be a bug with a browser that is used enough to deserve a server-side fix, and I'm sure the bug is limited enough to have a workaround if we only knew what.

One possible positive is that Microsoft apparently intends to remove Wikipedia (or maybe just Wikimedia) from its compatibility-mode list shortly, so IE8 browsers may default to standards mode where perhaps the bug will not exist. But that's only a hope!

— Richardguk (talk) 22:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

They're not disappearing ... I'm getting a line or two of text, with a right-aligned image, and then a big chunk of white space, no text, until the bottom of the image, with the rest of the text forced under the image. It happens with infoboxes and with images within sections. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

No problem here. The image appeared just fine.

thumb||none

--Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 01:21, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

You do realize that you mislicensed the above image? Given how clearly the IE icon is being displayed, this would qualify at best as a {{Non-free software screenshot}}? It'll probably have to be deleted once this gets resolved.Smallman12q (talk) 18:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I added that template so the image won't get deleted because of incorrect license BEFORE the case is closed. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 22:02, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

But I still have the problem, on many articles :) And I still hate Safari. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused @_@. I don't have anyproblems as you can see. Are you having problems with Safari or IE8? What happens when you run IE8 in NO-Add on mode? In Win7 or Vista search for "no add" and click on Internet Explorer (No Add-on). In XP, go to start, all programs-->Accessory-->System Tool-->Internet Explorer (NO Add-On). IF the page loads properly, one of you add-on is giving you problems. IF the page load correctly when you are logged out, maybe one of your gadgets and/or tools is broken and interfering with Wikipedia. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 09:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) SandyGeorgia: Sorry to throw back at you, but do you have a screenshot or a more precise description? The map problem sounds familiar but from what you've described so far of the rendering problem at Thomas Baker (aviator), I'm not sure whether it's the same IE8 issue as has previously been (unsuccessfully) raised. (I'd still love to know of a forum where more people with IE8/CSS knowledge can advise on a workaround for the problem(s)!) — Richardguk (talk) 09:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Plus, my version of IE8 renders the article. Even with compactability view mode. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 10:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Tyw7: Do you have intermittent display problems with map overlays, such as the pages referred to at /Archive 69#Layered images often not displaying in IE8? Do you use navpopups (I do, but I got the same problem when logged out)? — Richardguk (talk) 10:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes I use navpopups. And no I did not experience maps dissappearing. What are see is in the screenshot above. One question. Is inprivate filter switched on? Only with the filter switched on (not default) did the wikipedia images disappear. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 11:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

See: thumb||none --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 11:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, but not using InPrivate here. I can see how that might prevent images downloading because they use a different server, but the problem I have (and I think SandyGeorgia has described this too) is a frequent but intermittent one. In my case, maps and their overlays, including text overlays, fail to show, as though their z-order has sunk. Resizing the page, or sometimes just hovering over a link, often makes them appear, and there seems to be no correlation with whether the image or page is already cached, so it is bizarre! — Richardguk (talk) 11:22, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

So the map on my browser is rendered properly? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 11:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

It looks like InPrivate is blocking all your images, which is different from an intermittent problem affecting (only?) overlaid images, if I understand correctly. So, not "properly", but "differently"! — Richardguk (talk) 14:31, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Richard, see the screenshot above. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 15:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Twy: Sorry but I don't understand your point; your first pic renders OK and the second one is not rendering the images; the IE8 prob I had only affected overlaid images, and then only intermittently. I was going to put up a screenshot too, but have just tried many pages here and failed to reproduce the problem. So, for no apparent reason, my problem seems to have gone away for now. How odd! Thanks for your interest though, and wishing SandyGeorgia all the best with what may be an unrelated problem. — Richardguk (talk) 16:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The second screenshot was the is this what you are seeing? screenshot. In addition, maybe a Microsoft update/patch fixed the problem? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd have seen the photo but not the map if the problem were still occurring, though I don't have image-placeholders switched on so wouldn't have seen the image outlines and alt text that your second screenshot shows. But I agree that a Microsoft patch is the most likely explanation if the problem remains absent; perhaps the January IE8 security included an unannounced fix for the layout bug. — Richardguk (talk) 17:43, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Update: I don't have time to explore right now (Drs app't later), but 1) I don't know how to get screenshots, 2) I'll look at the Add on thing later today, and 3) the problem in IE8 was gone last night but is back this morning. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

To take screenshots, click on the application window you want to take the screenshot. Then press alt+PrtScn. Open up paint and then press ctrl+v to paste the image. After that save it and upload it to Wikipedia. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 16:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

ummm ... sorry to put y'all through this, but I also don't know how to upload it to Wiki. And I haven't been to the eye Dr. yet. And I've been distracted by issues on my talk page. Is there someone I can email the jpeg to once I get to it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

You could always upload the image to imageshack... then paste the link here. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 18:07, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Plot thickens. The problem is gone now on Bodiam Castle, but still there on HMS Calliope (1884) and Thomas Baker (aviator). I logged out, re-loaded pages, cleared cache, have same problem when logged out. I removed all add-ons, re-loaded, cleared cache, still have problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

A screenshot would be helpful. I have no idea what problem you are discribing. All pics load fine for me. --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 06:06, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I got sick and lost track of this; will work on screenshot. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Strike that ... the problem is gone now (???). Thanks to all for the help, not sure what changed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's count that as a success then. Hope you're feeling better. — Richardguk (talk) 18:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Rescaled fairuse images older than 7 days not going into subcategory?

Category:Rescaled fairuse images contains all images that have been tagged with {{Non-free reduced}}, to help us get rid of old versions of images that have been shrunken to help us comply with nonfree content criterion 3. When this template is applied to these images, it has a timestamp attached so that it will automatically go into Category:Rescaled fairuse images more than 7 days old; all files where the old versions are more than 7 days old can be deleted. However, I just went through the parent category deleting images that were well over a week old, including some that were tagged last year. Any reason why these images wouldn't be showing up in the subcategory? Nyttend (talk) 01:24, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Most likely because the date was added incorrectly or not at all ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

That's probably not it. For example, description page of File:Bucklive.jpg says that it is member of Category:Rescaled fairuse images more than 7 days old, but the category doesn't list it. Purging both didn't help. Svick (talk) 14:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems there was a rather large database failure earlier this week. It might be that the system is still backlogged from that, and has not had the time to reparse the pages tagged with that template. It is strange. If it keeps up for too long, perhaps the template needs a nulledit to force the pages with the template on to the job queue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

harvnb-style citation

When SteveMcCluskey fixed the Sarton citation in History of science I decided to cast it into the harvnb format. Unfortunately, when one uses Author|Year in the citation the software links are very picky and insist on the format yyyy instead of 1927-48 which would be the real citation. Is there now a better way? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about a better way, but I always felt this template would fall apart when used in a complicated article. For example, some style guides call for using a short version of the title instead of the author if the author can't be determined, or if it is a corporate author. That won't work very well in these templates. --Jc3s5h (talk) 04:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

How does the software insist on that format? The following {{harvnb}} citation seems to work correctly.

Last 1927–48

• Last, First (1927–48). The Book. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Svick (talk) 11:04, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for looking. My method for checking whether the link works is two step:

1. Click on the ref to see if the page re-positions on the ref.
2. Click on the Last yyyy to see if the page re-positions to the actual bibliographical line

When I tested this on your template just now, (I moved the ref up several sections to see the re-position, and have restored it.) Voila!

I will try the | ref = harv part of the secret formula. Many thanks. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 18:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Not so fast- there area few mysteries still unsolved. I have just been on Royton, I thought sorting out a silly sp that was preventing the harv citations from working--- well none of them worked so I added the magic powder ref = harv. Most now work! I zapped a few by changing the ref to ref=CITEREFBigEars1947 format- then remembered this post and stopped. Why? Why doesn 't Lewis work or McPhillips but Reid_ does?--ClemRutter (talk) 23:04, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Because a year isn't a date. fixed.LeadSongDog come howl 02:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Umm- that solves that one. Rule:There must be a year= x field in the citation, for ref = harv to hook onto,

The second mystery is where did date= X come from- is is just a manual entry, or is there a citation generator out there that needs reeducation. Are there any help pages that would benefit from a tweak to warn User:BeingHelpful of this bear trap? Using the standard wikipedia editor- there is a nice little button and form to generate cites. Would it be helpful, to have a field to tick that added a ref=harv. Indeed a full citation form would be helpful- and the word year in not used on any of these forms. I prefer to stop the problem rather than have to fix it later. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I was just a bit flip above. Either |year=YYYY or |date=any form of complete date should work, but |date=YYYY will not. If provided with |date=3 Feb 2010 the template should populate |Year=2010 by itself. When enabled, user:Citation bot corrects this common error, but it is presently blocked largely because it doesn't compensate correctly for {{cite book}}'s anomalous behaviour, which differs in some regards from most of the cite xxx family and from {{citation}}. LeadSongDog come howl 17:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

No offence taken- the problem is fully understanding the nature of the problem- then making the information accessible to others.--ClemRutter (talk) 18:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There is lots of articles with broken Harvard references, part of there errors was created by requiring ref = harv in {{cite *}} templates, the rest is broken from different reasons. If anybody is interested in fixing them, list is available at [8]. Svick (talk) 10:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I will keep an eye open for the offending Greater Manchester area articles. My technique is to copy the whole Bibliography section into gedit and globally replace }} with |ref=harv}}. Is this foolproof? Will it break anything if it meets a *citation where I understand that this is auto generated or just be ignored? Presumably I am missing a bit of politics where all this was decided?--ClemRutter (talk) 14:52, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

{{Citation}} has default setting ref=harv, so setting it explicitly doesn't break anything. Your approach could cause that Harvard citation links to the wrong book and also invalid HTML in the rare case when there are two books from the same author and with the same year. Invalid HTML was the main concern when this was decided at Template talk:Citation/core#We should never render invalid HTML. Svick (talk) 15:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

But a workaround could be 1927-48 idea from above, with the physics convention of disambiguating in the citation, viz.

Einstein 1905a, p320

Einstein 1905b, p1

Einstein 1905c, preface

Einstein 1905d, more info here

in his Annus Mirabilis of 1905, with corresponding refs and citations a b c d, respectively

• Einstein, A. (1905a). "Photoelectric effect". Annalen der Physik. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Einstein, A. (1905b). "Brownian motion". Annalen der Physik. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Einstein, A. (1905c). "Special relativity". Annalen der Physik. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Einstein, A. (1905d). "Matter and energy equivalence". Annalen der Physik. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Haha, you got me! I see what is wrong the with Einstein article: no citations, just refs. OK, I am signed up to fix that article.

One done. The 1905a citation now works after replacing the cite journal with Citation. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The hundred-odd replacements are done, except for one cite pmid which I do not understand, and which I have left for others to handle. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Just for fun, I changed 3 entries in urheimat which were not the IDs listed in the report, and the Mallory citations now work. It was unexpected. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that they worked before too, but my tool just incorrectly reported them. {{harvcoltxt}} used links like [[this article#CITEREFsomething]], when the tool counted only [[#CITEREFsomething]]. Because the second form is better (works as expected when viewing old revisions or when using preview), I changed the template. Svick (talk) 17:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

And in ancient history there was only one harv ref but a dozen or so cites. Just a mass replace of the many fixed the one ref, so that is understandable to me; its not one-to-one. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Your edit to this article contained some strange changes (look at the diff) and I also think that the style of citations shouldn't be changed without good reason, so I undid it. Adding ref=harv to the one citation worked fine there. Svick (talk) 18:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Looked at the weird behaviour- It is almost as if the article had been filtered to remove a series of letters that could have sexual meaning - panic until - becomes -> pani il and I would bet streets of Uckfield would street o field. (Genitives confused with genitals? )I think that one needs to be investigated. --ClemRutter (talk) 18:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

"Random article" and soft redirects

I was clicking "Random article" and was eventually sent to Manteaux. Shouldn't the "Random article" feature avoid soft redirect pages? It's quite an unsatisfying article to send browsing readers to. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It is a softredirect. The software doesn't know that it is a redirect (otherwise it would not be a 'soft' redirect). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I don't really know what that means; but would it make any difference if I were to file a suggestion bug recommending that the "Random Article" link be modified such that it does know? Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Its actually an article (also counts towards stats) but used the wrong template it should be using {{wi}}. Excluding it from the list unlikely to happen as it would take more resources than justified and those resources could be put to much better use excluding disambiguation pages. I guess you just had some bad luck :-P — Dispenser 07:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Hiding in-line footnotes

Articles that are well sourced quickly become unreadable due to the overwhelming number of in-line footnotes. Is there any way to click a button/link to temporarily hide them for the sake of readability? If not, where should I request this feature for future updates? Many thanks! -- Clifflandis (talk) 04:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

How about List-defined references? – ukexpat (talk) 04:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Uk: Not the problem.
Cliff: References in the text apply a CSS class or HTML element, I believe (I haven't checked though). It should be possible to create a easily (Java)script which can allow you to show/hide at will, if one such does not already exist. --Izno (talk) 04:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Just as a reminder for anyone unfamiliar though, citation/reference formats on an article aren't to be changed without gaining consensus to do so, however (WP:CITE). Requesting features here is fine, Clifflandis. For editing mode, you may also be interested in wikEd, which can hide them there. You may find the Printable version view (side panel link) helpful to some extent, too. –Whitehorse1 04:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You could use a bookmarklet with the following code: (it probably won't work in IE)

javascript: var refs = document.getElementsByClassName('reference'); for (var i = 0; i < refs.length; i++) { void(refs[i].parentNode.removeChild(refs[i])) };

If you want, I could modify the code a bit so that you could put it in your monobook.js and it would create a link in the upper menu. Svick (talk) 14:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all the advice! I don't have a problem with in-line footnotes while editing, but it's good to know about all the extra tools. I was more concerned with everyday readers getting overwhelmed with footnotes that make articles somewhat illegible. I'm glad to know that I can request the feature here, Whitehorse1. Let me know where the discussion for this feature will take place, so that I can offer my reasoning to help reach consensus. Thanks! --Clifflandis (talk) 15:03, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You might want to know that might break the articles when they are being rendered in Bing. Bing's 'enhanced' version of the Wikipedia articles is not able to handle the current scheme of separated footnotes so inline footnotes are the only thing that Bing can currently handle. I documented this in the talk page of Signpost when they wrote about the then-new scheme of separated footnotes. Bing just gives up. When I went back to inline footnotes the Bing version worked. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:53, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I suspect that this is an annoyance for many people, and one which deters editors from adding useful citations. Since footnotes are already distinguishable by being in superscript brackets, maybe they should be made less visually intrusive by rendering them in a paler shade. I'm guessing there's a CSS class ("sup.reference a"?) that could be amended. We already have a (somewhat subtle) shading difference for links to other websites, so this would be an extension of an existing principle. — Richardguk (talk) 22:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

you know, it wouldn't be too difficult to create a snippet of javascript that would show just a single entry like so - ^[*] - but expand to the full inline list on click or mouse-over. Might even be able to do a version of it with current collapsible tables and divs, though I'm not sure if we can change the default 'show'/'hide' wording to a simple asterisk with the current setup. would that solve the issue? --Ludwigs2 22:30, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Context-related help and searching in a new window

Reposted from Help talk:Preferences#Add link from Special:Preferences:

Could a direct link be added from Special:Preferences to either Help:Preferences or meta:Help:Preferences? It must be a common page for people to want help on. More generally, should more Special: pages have a link to the relevant Help: page?

Also, would it be useful to have a direct link to Special:Search alongside the Go/Search buttons on each page? At present, if you want to search without losing the page you are reading or editing, you have to open another page and then click search; that's two clicks, or three clicks to submit an advanced search. This is annoying for such a common task. Alternatively, perhaps users could have an option in Preferences for the Search button to show its results in a new window (akin to one of the options in Google's interface). I'm using MonoBook and don't know whether this is addressed in other skins.

— Richardguk (talk) 21:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

{{*mp}}

This template, used all over the Main Page and elsewhere, originally came into use because of a Firefox bug that caused problems with word wrapping around images. The bug in question is detailed here. However, now that the bug has been marked RESOLVED FIXED and these demos appear to display properly (at least, in my version of Firefox), do we really need this template anymore? Sorry if I don't fully understand the issue, but what is preventing normal * bullets from being used now that the bug has been fixed? — The Earwig @ 03:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Probably best to leave it there as older Firefox versions probably still have that problem. No harm in keeping it. Gary King (talk) 04:56, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Feature request: User preference for styling citations

The following is redundant. Please see Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Feature request: User preference for styling citations]

Suggestion for user preferences After discussing the deletion of a redundant citation tag, I considered whether or not Wikipedia/Mediawiki software could have a user preference to style citations according to different standards (e.g. MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) Presently, sources are to be cited using {{Citation}} and similar templates such as {{Cite web}}, filling in a variety of parameters to generate a citation. An example follows:

*{{Citation |editor-last=Christoyannopoulos |editor-first=Alexandre J. M. E. |title=Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives |format=Hardback |edition=1st |date=August 1, 2009 |publisher=[[Cambridge Scholars Publishing]] |isbn=1443811327}}

will generate:

• Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre J. M. E., ed. (August 1, 2009), Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives (1st ed.), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ISBN 978-1443811323 {{citation}}: |format= requires |url= (help)

Every article on Wikipedia already has a "Cite this page" link that leads to a variation of Special:Cite (e.g. this example.) On these instances of Special:Cite, citations are given using the fields:

• Page name
• Author
• Publisher
• Date of last revision
• Date retrieved
• Permanent link
• Primary contributors
• Page Version ID

with the following styles:

• APA style
• The MLA Style Manual
• MHRA Style Guide
• The Chicago Manual of Style
• Council of Science Editors
• Bluebook
• Bluebook: Harvard JOLT style
• American Medical Association
• BibTeX (apparently a machine-readable version)

(Other styles that might be useful: A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations and ISO 690.)

It seems reasonable to me that Wikipedia/Mediawiki software could generate on-the-fly variations for citation styles in the same way that there is a user preference for dates. The same information is present to all users, but arranged in a way that the user chooses if logged in and with a user-defined setting. Unlike date linking in article namespace, there is no problem of overlinking, as this information is already present in the fields of {{Citation}} (or {{Cite web}}, etc.)

The bonuses to this approach are as follows:

1. No more competing citation templates. There will be no incentive to create or use any citation templates that are tied to a style.
2. Users can see citations in the manner that they prefer. Obviously, this is the goal of any user preference, but it has the added bonus of disincentivizing any bickering over citations, forking of {{Citation}}, or competing standards put forth by WikiProjects (e.g. chemistry style by WikiProject Chemistry), plus...
3. Encourage the use of {{Citation}} rather than text in articles. Presently, if a user wants to create a citation according to a style, he must type that in manually to ensure that it appears the way he wants. If this user option was available, it would encourage the use of {{Citation}} by allowing any user to see any citation how he wants.

Does this seem like a reasonable or desirable suggestion to anyone else? I wasn't sure whether I should post this here, to Meta, or to mediawiki.org, but I figured this would get me the most feedback. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Hehehe, funny you should come up with something like this right now. See WP:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Cite modifications and WP:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Demo of specific proposal, among the other discussion there. --Izno (talk) 06:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow Forget the above, moved to Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Feature request: User preference for styling citations. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:43, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Deletion log dump

Is there any way I can get a copy of the complete deletion log of whole months or years? The data is publicly available at Special:Log/delete, but only a small part at a time. --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The file [9] (1GB) contains all logged actions before 31 January 2010, including deletions. The newest dumps are always available at [10]. Svick (talk) 20:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! --Apoc2400 (talk) 13:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Toolbar and edit window woes

FireFox 3.5.7. Monobook, with advanced toolbar off.

When I edit, the toolbar is gone, except for a Cite button enabled by the refTools gadget. The font style in the edit window is different (monospaced?) and if I copy content from another window, the font style is retained. I'm guessing the devs are playing with the usability stuff again. See Wikipedia:Help desk#Lost toolbar for other editors with the same issues. -— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The disappearing toolbar problem seems to be an issue with the the navigable table of contents option (part of the Usability Beta), as my toolbar reappeared when I disabled this. It also seems to remove the copying issue as well. However, the navigable table of contents doesn't work for me when it's enabled anyway (Firefox 3.6). mattbr 10:24, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

That fixed it. Thanks. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Paragraph issues in Firefox

This morning, I noticed that some edits I made using Firefox did not insert paragraphs properly. In other words, I left a blank line between each paragraph, but when I previewed or saved the page, the paragraphs were not there. I switched to Internet Explorer, and the paragraphs seem to work. This was not an issue yesterday. Has something changed in the past 24 hours or so? Acdixon ^{(talk • contribs • count)} 15:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

See above. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Tool to compare contents of two categories?

Is there a tool/process that can compare the contents of two categories to see if there is any overlap between those two? --Blargh29 (talk) 20:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:CatScan. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!-Blargh29 (talk) 21:55, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

And Wikipedia:Category intersection and http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/intersection (toolserver seems to have a problem atm) --Dschwen 20:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Last time I checked this didn't work with more than two categories. Has this been fixed? Is there a way to gain SQL access to perform arbitrary (read-only of course) queries and intersections? SharkD  Talk  04:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Apply for a toolserver account. Mr.Z-man 06:09, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Automatically adding articles to an editors watchlist?

The easiest way to deal with the unreferenced biography of living people backlog is to assign it to volunteers to at minimum add them to their watchlists. I don't know if there's any way for the system to add pages to someone's watchlist fully automatically, but there are ways to create links to automatically watch a number of pages.

Is there a system to add articles to an editors watchlist automatically? Ikip 06:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Not that I know of. BTW, wouldn't it be invasive and malware-like? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 11:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I think he meant in some kind of opt-in system, where users explicitly request to have future articles added to their watchlists. Equazcion ^(talk) 11:52, 1 Feb 2010 (UTC)

Would it be reasonable to require new page patrolers to add new BLPs to their watchlists? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The idea was that, in the wake of the big hoo-ha over unreferenced, unwatched BLPs, volunteers could sign up to be assigned a certain number of these articles, so that their names could be publicized in the hopes of getting the community to either source or hand-nominate for deletion these articles. The question is, could something be implemented whereby a script (run by an admin) can add a bunch of articles to a different user's watchlist. ^Bongo_matic 06:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I was going to say "mw:Extension:PovWatch, see also bug 20523" but that extension is no longer maintained. MER-C 02:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any facility within the MediaWiki software that distinguishes a "watched" article from a "watched by an editor who is still alive and gives a damn anymore" article, although perhaps the external (toolserver) software makes that distinction - however a "watcher count" is always interesting if it is zero. Ikip - MZMcBride, vicious devil that he is, possesses this data. Why not approach him? Ask for a random or structured sample of 100 or 1000 unwatched BLP's in a format that you can paste into your raw watchlist. I've been thinking of asking for the same thing, I could very easily absorb an extra 100 articles to watch. Franamax (talk) 03:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The concern is disclosing the article names to a non-admin prior to them being watched (chicken / egg). However, doing it, say, 100 at time could be a reasonable approach, provided the admin is willing to watchlist a batch if the volunteer fails to add the articles to his/her watchlist when expected. ^Bongo_matic 04:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely, those are valid concerns. I would personally trust Ikip to treat those 100 names with due care and respect and would of course be willing to stand or fall based on whether my trust was misplaced. This is a named editor whose work I'm somewhat familiar with, I wouldn't necessarily respond the same way to someone who just got off the bus. Franamax (talk) 00:10, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Can't click wikilinks

In Geoffrey Eglinton there are links to the Wollaston Medal and the Dan David Prize, both of which appear normal but I can't click on them. When I point my mouse at them, the arrow changes to the giant capital I that it does inside edit boxes, instead of the little hand that it normally does on wikilinks. Anyone know what's happenning or how to fix it? Thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 13:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Browser/version? –xeno^talk 14:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

IE8 on WinXP. When I use the "view old version" the links work fine, even on the latest version (you know, when you have the "old version/this version/next version" links above the text). DuncanHill (talk) 14:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have IE8 so I can't help validate this. Any reason you're not using a decent browser? ;> –xeno^talk 14:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It works for me in IE8 and Firefox. Have you tried to bypass your cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Tried that, don't work. DuncanHill (talk) 15:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Just reporting that I do not have this issue with IE8 on Vista. That said, have you checked to see if IE8 is running in Standards mode (or whatever it's called), as I know that sometimes the mode the browser chooses causes issues (though I wouldn't know which mode would fix the page)? --Izno (talk) 04:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I second Izno; my IE8 in Vista works fine on that article. Nyttend (talk) 06:04, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Javascript to edit a page

Hi, I've made a script which creates a tab at the top of the page, but how do I get it to edit a different Wikipedia page when I click it? Specifically, it's for WP:MOTD and I want it so that I can click the tab when editing a discussion, and it will automatically add the discussion to a different page. What is the code for creating a new section on a Wikipedia page that is different from the one which I am running the Javascript on? Thanks, Smaug123 (talk) 22:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You can just create a custom URL to do this. The URL is: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Article&action=edit&section=new ; be sure to replace "Article". This will create a new section on whatever discussion page you want. Gary King (talk) 01:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Wonderful, thanks! Smaug123 (talk) 08:38, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Ways to eliminate reference clutter?

Sometimes an article will have four or five references in a row. This looks really ugly. Is there a way to fix this cosmetically without actually removing the references themselves? Or, is this not recommended. SharkD  Talk  03:20, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Check this out: Help:Footnotes#List-defined_references Gary King (talk) 04:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

If your issue is the number of superscripted/bracketed links, then the only solution is to remove cites. You should examine each cite to see how it relates to the content. -— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 05:18, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah yeah that's probably what he's looking for. Whoops. Typically you only need one cite at one spot; if you've got more than that, then yeah, just determine why there are so many cites. You might be able to shuffle some cites to be sentence-specific instead of paragraph-specific. Gary King (talk) 05:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Whenever I see a cluster of cites, I often find that some relate to previous revisions of the sentence or paragraph and have little to do with the current content. Other times, someone throws in a multitude of newspaper clippings with very similar content, and often from the same source, such as the AP. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. Yes, this is what I meant. Too bad there's not another solution. SharkD  Talk  04:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

There is one other solution... you can follow the "Claim #5" example at Wikipedia:FN#Separating_reference_lists_and_explanatory_notes. You can essentially then have one footnote at the end of a paragraph, then when you click on it it brings you to a list of more footnotes. Gary King (talk) 16:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Help

Hi, could someone help me fix the cluebot archiving on User talk:PrincessofLlyr, for some reason it keeps moving content to User talk:PrincessofLlyr2010/January, which makes it ownerless. I thought I fixed it before but it came back. Thanks--Jac16888^Talk 12:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, now it foes to /2010/January so at least it's not ownerless, but obviously, you can change the exact address. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 13:03, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, what?--Jac16888^Talk 13:08, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, saw what you did. Cheers--Jac16888^Talk 13:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Tildes

I am using beta and firefox 3.5.7 - whenever I click the java-applet to insert four tildes nothing happens. Any ideas?·Maunus·ƛ· 09:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this is related to updates to the Usability features recently deployed. If you are using the full Beta feature set, you can use the sign button in the new toolbar to insert the four tildes. Otherwise, you can 'Leave beta' or disable the 'enhanced toolbar' and 'navigable table of contents' options in the 'Editing → Experimental features' section of your preferences. Hope that helps, mattbr 13:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

It helped, thanks!·Maunus·ƛ· 13:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Experimental features

A notice has appeared above my watchlist from the Usability Team advising that experimental features can be turned off at Preferences → Editing tab → Experimental features. I don't seem to have an "Experimental features" tab under Editing. Does anyone know what they mean? SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 11:44, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

For me the Editing tab has 3 boxes with headlines "Size of editing window", "Advanced options", "Experimental features". If you don't see the last then try clearing your browser cache. The Experimental features box has 3 checkboxes for "Enable navigable table of contents", "Enable enhanced editing toolbar", "Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more". Enabling causes problems for many users. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I found it, and I switched off all the "enables." Thanks, PH. It was hiding under my nose. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 12:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The most recent usability release on February 4th introduced a bug that leaving the usability beta did not turn off all experimental features. The problem has been resolved now. So if you encounter problems or issues and wish to leave beta, you just need to click "Leave Beta" link and confirm that you are leaving beta. So sorry about this confusion. Bug 22402 Shuhari (talk) 20:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

General question, but 1) is there, and 2) could we have some kind of CENT-type page for updates on the features added with our settings page? I know it's possible to watchlist the half dozen or so I have on, but I speak for the lazy :) ...I totally love updates to Twinkle and whatnot but it always spooks me when something appears on the drop-down menu (like today, apparently). But hey, "experimental" sounds fun, except that, since enabling the things result in trouble and I should leave them off. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 00:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

...To expand on my own comment, a perfect example of why this would be nice is the thread higher up about why the edit box has gone to hell without warning, and no general notice about a bug a major as line breaks goofs in previews which resulted in much pain. Thanks to the development peoples for getting this fixed, though. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 00:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this would be the page to watch. Besides, you wouldn't want a page that told you of all the updates to all the gadgets and stuff that you can potentially use, it's just too much. ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Technical information needed about citation templates and load time

Help would be appreciated from anyone with solid technical expertise at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Citation templates#Israel_is_slow_mainly_because_of_citation_templates. It's about whether adding lots of citation templates to articles slows down editing and loading time. Some editors with technical knowledge are saying templates do cause slow loading; others are saying that's nonsense. Those of us without technical knowledge are left befuddled. Any help clarifying the issues would be much appreciated.

The particular article we're discussing is Israel, a featured article that is hard to edit, in part because it's slow to load (20 seconds to over a minute for some of us). Some editors are saying this is because it contains lots of citation templates (290 citations in all); others are saying no, it's something else. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 17:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

the page loads for me in under two seconds, both normally and in edit mode. are you having this problem consistently? what browser do you use (I'm on Safari 4)? --Ludwigs2 19:52, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you happen to have the page cached, Ludwigs2? It took me a solid 15 seconds to load it with Fx 3.6 on Vista. :/ --Izno (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

when I cleared the cache page load time jumped to around 6 seconds. still not too bad... --Ludwigs2 23:21, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, citation templates do slow down page rendering. See [11]. The main difference in time is whether or not there's a version in the cache that matches your preferences (date format, interface language, math settings, thumbnail size, etc.). If there is, the time is generally <1-2s and depends mostly on your connection speed. If there isn't (or you use action=purge) it can take more than 30 seconds to render (depending mainly on server load, for my test it took 39s). About 25 of those seconds are spent rendering references. Mr.Z-man 23:09, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

with a purge, render time jumped to around 18 seconds for me. are all of these citations required? 300 citations for (what looks like ) an 8-10 page document is extreme, even for ultra-fastidious academics. --Ludwigs2 23:25, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Mr.Z-man. If you restore default settings in your preferences, should you expect pages to load as quickly as they do for IP users? Where are the default settings documented, anyway? - Pointillist (talk) 23:29, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe, the cache is invalidated if you edit the page so you will still get long load times when saving the page or if you have different preferences from the person who edited it. Cached versions also expire after 30 days unless it uses certain magic words like {{CURRENTDAY}}, in which case it will expire sooner. Mr.Z-man 19:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for this information. The discussion continues at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Citation templates#Why this matters. A summary of the technical points is at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Citation templates (technical). Basically, we need both a technical and an editorial solution. I can't comment on the technical and what would be involved, or how it would be achieved. Editorially, I think we need to make people aware that they may be causing problems when they add too many of these templates as inline citations, because they are making articles that contain a lot of them very hard to edit. Per WP:ACCESS, I think we need to do something about it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 16:25, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem is not "too many citations," the problem is that the citation templates are so complex. I proposed a fairly easy fix a while ago, but no one seemed interested and I don't have the time to pursue it on my own. Most (probably 90% or more) citations don't need half of the fields offered by the citation templates. If a simple form of the common templates was created that only included the most commonly used fields (and didn't use the bloated {{citation/core}} meta-template), there would likely be a major increase in performance. Mr.Z-man 19:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

T:Vcite does that, I believe. A related conversation to the technical solution is occurring at WP:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style#Demo of specific_proposal. --Izno (talk) 20:46, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

FYI, when I opened the article, it loaded in just a few seconds. The article can't be cached, as I've not looked at it in months. Nyttend (talk) 20:55, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Its not cached per-user, but based on user preferences. Probably someone with the same set of preferences as you loaded it recently. Mr.Z-man 21:06, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Moving a redirect shouldn't leave a redirect behind

I fouled up recently and started a redirect "Sunburn cell" after running a search, when what I meant to make was Sunburn cell. So I moved it, creating the second redirect... but like other moves, it left a redirect behind, which now I've put up for speedy deletion.

While that works, it seems to me that a redirect should be treated differently from an article. I think when you move one, it shouldn't leave anything behind (it should however warn you of any existing incoming links that would be abandoned, or even cancel the move until they're fixed). That way the move is actually a useful feature distinct from just making a new redirect. It would avoid the need for admin intervention for typo redirects, which is a little embarrassing...

While maybe copying redirects via "move" could be marginally convenient when starting new articles, the move log left behind is probably more confusing than it's worth. Wnt (talk) 02:54, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, what if you move a redirect someone else made, and he doesn't know how to find it anymore?

This looks like a solution in search of a problem, frankly. So you left behind a redirect with unwanted quote marks in it. So? Is it bothering anyone? What's the actual advantage in getting rid of it? --Trovatore (talk) 03:09, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Normally when you move an article, the edit histories of the contributors are altered to match. But you're right that it's a minor detail. The advantage is to avoid needing an admin to do a speedy delete in each case. Wnt (talk) 04:09, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Except if the delete doesn't happen speedily, or indeed at all, who cares? --Trovatore (talk) 04:25, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The actual speed of deletion doesn't matter - in any case it's a chore we could abolish. As for whether it happens at all? The people at WP:redirects for discussion, I suppose. I can't really tell you why they care, but they do. Wnt (talk) 06:47, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Trovatore that you can just as easily leave the old redirect there. It does absolutely no harm. In the future, if someone stumbles on the redirect and thinks that it should redirect to a more appropriate article, then they will change it to reflect that. Redirects are really, really cheap. Gary King (talk) 07:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

infobox single

All the music single articles suddenly have the text begin after the infobox, instead of to the side. I use Firefox 3.6, and it was OK until a few minutes ago. Anyone else seeing it?—Kww(talk) 19:03, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

All straight again. Looks like someone goofed and fixed it pretty quickly.—Kww(talk) 19:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

And now all wonky again, along with AFD notices.—Kww(talk) 19:24, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I have no problems with either. Ucucha 19:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Straight now. Either someone is playing with the rendering code, or one of the servers is screwing up.—Kww(talk) 19:34, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

A CSS file was probably not being loaded. I don't think it was a template change. Gary King (talk) 20:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

In the same general category of "strange things happening": I got banners from the 2009 fundraiser a few times today. Ucucha 21:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

This problem (infoboxes on the left) lingered for me until I bypassed my cache.--Commander Keane (talk) 05:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Technical side of becoming a steward?

The recently-started steward election makes me wonder: how does someone become a steward? Rather than asking about the election process, I mean: when it's decided that candidate X has sufficient support from the community to become a steward, who presses what buttons to grant the permission level of steward? Nyttend (talk) 20:58, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Stewards assign the bit to other stewards. Gary King (talk) 21:03, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Really...I thought that all levels of permissions were granted by someone with a higher level. Thanks for the answer. Nyttend (talk) 04:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Bureaucrats can also grant bureaucratship. Ucucha 04:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

See more at Wikipedia:User access levels. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Functionality?

Is there a way to include a link with templates in it?

[[Pâtissier|{{lang|fr|Pâtissier}}]] does not work: Pâtissier

It has to be {{lang|fr|[[Pâtissier]]}}: Pâtissier

174.3.98.236 (talk) 04:54, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, by using {{tl}} and its related templates. Graham87 06:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that is what the IP is asking for. Rather, he wants to have templates in the piped part of a link. Contrary to his claim, his first example actually does work. Ucucha 06:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

{{Lang}} generates a span that doesn't make a difference to me but it may to others. Looking at the generated html source, the first code [[Pâtissier|{{lang|fr|Pâtissier}}]] renders as Pâtissier and produces:

<a href="/wiki/P%C3%A2tissier" title="Pâtissier" class="mw-redirect"><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pâtissier</span></a>

The second code {{lang|fr|[[Pâtissier]]}} renders as Pâtissier (identical to me) and produces:

<span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"><a href="/wiki/P%C3%A2tissier" title="Pâtissier" class="mw-redirect">Pâtissier</a></span>

I don't know enough html to say what the difference means. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:39, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

There is none, unless the css is configured to style anchors within spans differently to spans within anchors. Or if there's javascript operating differently on the same. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:22, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Changes to the behaviour of the edit box

There seem to be some changes to the wiki software which is making the edit box behave in strange ways. (I'm using IE7.) If I select text and right click, the context-sensitive menu that appears is different from the one that previously appeared, and no longer includes the option to copy text to the clipboard. If I want to do that, as I frequently do, I have to hit Ctrl-C. Also, if I copy some text to the clipboard from outside the text box, which happens to be in a large font (say, an article heading), then paste that text into the edit box, the text gets pasted in the same outsize font, whereas previously it would have been pasted in the standard size font. Finally, at the top right of the edit box there's an option to toggle "show contents" and "hide contents". I'm not understanding this functionality at all. It seems to be a way to navigate around an article in mid-edit using the section headers, but if there are no section headers (say, if you're just editing a section or creating a new section) then the toggle still appears but with nothing to show for it either way, which seems fairly daft to me. I saw something on my watchlist page about bugs in the latest release, didn't read it properly, just quickly hid it, but I don't think this is anything to do with that, it looks like intended behaviour. Any pointers gratefully received. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 11:16, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Whoops, just seen the discussion above which seems to cover most of this. As you were, --Richardrj ^{talk email} 11:22, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Weird bug which makes editor sign as last editor to sign

Edit URL: [12] Notice in this URL how the below comment looks signed by User:Jorge Stolfi who was the last editor to edit the page?

Edit by User:Fram:

:::No, no bot can do this. While many are indeed incorrectly tagged (at the time of tagging, or now), theer are a fair number of articles that use the <ref tag but don't have actual references, just some footnote without any source. Many also have empty references section, but have the reflist or references template in place. Just like no bot should delete pages, no bot should remove the tag either. ~~~~

I assume this has something to do with <ref tag?

Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 12:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The edit by Fram [13] had ~~~~ in an open <ref where it didn't expand. The text after <ref in Fram's edit was not displayed. The seen signature at the end of the section [14] (note the time stamp) was the signature from the preceding edit by Jorge Stolfi and was not caused by the unexpanded ~~~~. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict):All the text between Fram's unclosed <ref and the /> which was part of Jorge Stolfi's <br/> was hidden, this must have all counted as one humongous tag.   pablo_hablo. 12:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

weird, thanks for possible solution. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 17:04, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Google Chrome issues with beta

I use Google Chrome to edit, and I also use the beta version of Wikipedia, which I like better. A few days ago, something changed; now, if I copy text to place into the editing window, it fails to convert it to wikitext; rather, it remains in the same font as the original. This only started a couple days ago; prior to that, it worked fine. For example, if I copy a title of a website into {{cite web}}, it'll show up in the same font and size as it was where I copied it from. I haven't noticed this problem on any other browser, and if I switch out of beta it goes away. Any thoughts? C628 (talk) 14:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

See above. It's probably because the edit window in the beta skin has been changed to a rich text box. Graham87 15:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Wacky infobox placement

Is anyone else seeing infoboxes doing weird things today? It doesn't appear to be affecting all articles, just most. I noticed it last night, but haven't seen anything about this problem yet (and I so rarely report problems, I cannot find a reporting link anywhere). - Tim1965 (talk) 14:58, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I haven't noticed anything or seen reports from others so it may be something specific to you. Can you give example articles and describe what you see? Does it help to clear your entire cache, to log out, or to change browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#infobox single. It was happening sporadically to me yesterday, and was happening to infoboxes, AFD notices, and CSD notices. As I said there, I think one of the servers was doing something flaky, and it depended on which server you connected to.—Kww(talk) 15:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Crazy PDF output

Puifs!jttvft!

I am getting crazy printed PDF output when actually printing a PDF I generated from the Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories article. Check out the hi-res version of this thumbnail. (It is a scan of my printed output. Explanation why it's 2 pages: I had my printer set to output 2 pages per printed sheet.) Windows XP, updated to the latest via Windows Update; Adobe Reader 9.3.0; Firefox 3.5.7. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

For some reason your font is off by one letter (Convert D to C and so on to read it). But it gets the spacing right according to the letters that should be there. I wonder if that means the font file is corrupted somehow (has an extra letter stuck into it by some bug). I bet if you print a PDF from a text file that never touched Wikipedia it'd have the same bug, if it was in the same font... Wnt (talk) 22:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

secure.wikimedia updates not occurring

I normally use secure.wikimedia but in the last few days, my updates are not committing when I try to save my edits. On ordinary en.wikipedia my updates committed. This is a test. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 23:54, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

My problem seems to have occurred in this time frame. The commits that made it before this were on en.wikipedia not secure.wikimedia. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 23:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Possible search bug

If you do a wikipedia search for "one and the same", you get no results. However, there is a redirect at One And The Same since October of 2009. Is this a bug?Smallman12q (talk) 22:20, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It is because the four words "one", "and", "the", and "same" are all stopwords - very common words which search engines ignore. This is a problem with stopword systems - when all (or all but one) words of the search are stopwords, the search simply doesn't work. Maybe someone could make it so that if the majority of words are stopwords, then the stopword system be ignored and the words are included in the search. Now that WP is no longer using the basic MySQL fulltext search, this might be a real possibility. Bug time? — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:01, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

This works correctly when the search is on content pages (in the link it's on everything). Cenarium (talk) 14:11, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Searching for a lots of common words can take a bit of time on the backend as all of the articles that have them need to be intersected. Sometimes during peak times these searches can time out (esp when searching all of wikipedia) which is what is happening here. We do not ignore stop words.--rainman (talk) 16:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Forcing Unicode rendering in browsers other than MSIE6

I'm not really sure if this is the best place to ask, but here goes. This issue has been brought up multiple times at the talk pages of affected templates, but didn't seem to have resulted in solutions. The specific problem at hand is the incompatible font selection by Firefox 3.5.7 (and earlier versions as well, I assume; not sure about other affected browsers) for use with {{IAST}}. The template transcludes {{Transl}} for the display of the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (which uses Latin script with an extended range of diacritics) and specifies the language tags for the string of text as "sa-Latn". Normally the browser should detect the "Latn" subtag and apply an appropriate font, but due to a bug [15] Firefox fails to do so, and recognises the string of text as Sanskrit according to the "sa" tag, and applies a font incompatible with the range of Latin needed to display the IAST, resulting in an ugly display. The template, via {{Unicode}}, also specifies the Unicode class to the string, which declares Unicode-compatible fonts for IE6 (using a /**/ comment workaround). I'm not sure if there shouldn't also be a fix for Firefox? It's of course possible to extend the font selections to all browsers, but I don't think that's desirable. Previous discussions exist at Template talk:IAST#Font selection, Template talk:IAST#Font size, Template talk:Transl#Font for translated words and MediaWiki talk:Common.css/Archive 7#Ugly fonts for transliteration templates. --Paul_012 ^(talk) 12:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Note that Firefox 3.6 is out (I have no idea if it matters). Wnt (talk) 16:48, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, how big a problem is this ? In general CSS fixes that apply to just a single template with relatively few transclusions (compared to our 3 million articles) are best made by adding the CSS to the template itself using style="". Deploying CSS to all users of all 3 million articles and 19.3 million pages is usually not really necessary for something used in just 200 articles. So what is the scope we are talking about ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

According to http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/embeddedincount.py, {{Transl}} has 10022 transclusions; I'm not sure if this includes the 3734 via {{IAST}}.

This is all over the lang attribute? Does anything even utilize that in some useful way? Couldn't we just remove the attribute and everyone would be happy? Or use web fonts, which all browsers support now? ¦ Reisio (talk) 06:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, lang is used, and is useful. See also Lang. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not talking about potential usefulness. Obviously the more specific you can be about every bit of data, the more you can utilize it. The question is whether or not anyone is utilizing it now. ¦ Reisio (talk) 08:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The answer is again yes (screenreaders and browser fontselection). However, i'm not sure how well the *-Latn is supported by any of those systems. I know Safari+Mac OS X definetly don't have this problem. I think it might be a good idea to remove the -latn lang tags from this specific template. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The cause of this problem is that the lang attribute is supported, but only partially, causing the browser to incorrectly recognise the text as requiring Sanskrit-compatible rather than Latin script. Removing the lang attribute altogether will solve the problem for most browsers, but fails the point of having this series of templates in the first place and will break the display in IE6, which, unfortunately, is still used. Removing the -Latn subtag won't help, because that's the unrecognised part. Bypassing the {{Transl}} for {{IAST}} and directly transcluding {{Unicode}} will solve the problem while maintaining the IE6 fix for instances involving {{IAST}} but not other cases, and the potential functionality of lang will be lost. --Paul_012 ^(talk) 15:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I was suggesting to remove the lang tag for JUST the transliterations. That makes all behavior default, and there should be no issues. (because broken browsers don't recognize it as sanskrit, and working browsers already use latin as default for text). Alternatively it is possible to force a font on the user, but in my experience this can be rather annoying to have some text in a different font as the rest. I don't think the transliterations really NEED the lang tags, though it would be better if they did have them, it is not really detrimental when they don't have them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:20, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree that would work as a fix, but that also means effectively blanking the template. It would also be removing a potential feature to avoid a specific browser's limitations. Perhaps this discussion should be continued at the template's talk page. --Paul_012 ^(talk) 00:49, 10 February 2010 (UTC)