Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 35

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Village pump (technical) archive  
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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Contents

[edit] Special Pages: External Links

It would be nice if we could organize the link search by namespace as we can do with what links here. Oore (talk) 00:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

This was implemented before but found to be too inefficient. See Bug 7804 for more details. Graham87 05:21, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another round of thanks

Sometimes it's the little things that make the biggest difference. To whoever added the code to break Special:Whatlinkshere down into links, transclusions and redirects, with independent hide/show toggles for each, please step forward and receive eternal adoration (or at least until something more interesting comes up :D). Seriously, big thanks for that (even if it does make TangoTango's tool redundant!). Happy‑melon 21:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a great idea. But atm, it doesn't seem to work?
Wikipedia:Userboxes - When I click on "hide links", I have no other results. When I know that there are over a dozen redirects. Am I missing something? - jc37 21:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I figured it out. The reason it was blank is that you have to go "next 50" (a lot) to finally see some show up. It doesn't actually collate them. (Changing the page address to 5000 allowed me to at least see a few of them : )
Is there any way that this can be "fixed"? - jc37 01:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, yes, there do seem to be some (ie several :D) bugs with this system. I've also just noticed that the links to change the number of links displayed (or to go to 'next 50', 'previous 50' etc) do not retain the hide/show settings. Still a great idea though. Happy‑melon 11:53, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
This is due to VasilievVV, in r33163. I fixed the issue with the "next 50" links not working right in r33425 just now; the issue with returning no results when there actually are some looks to be trickier. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Allow me to join Happy-Melon in the congratulations. I noticed the change yesterday, and cannot begin to say how much it has pleased me. And it rids us of the requirement of using that off-Wiki tool... I don't have anything against it (quite the contrary), but prefer to keep things inside Wikipedia. In any case, it seems to have been mostly refined now. Once one disables links, clicking on, say, view 500 now keeps the links hidden (as it does when one clicks on next X, but this was there yesterday as well). The problem now focuses on pages (like templates) with thousands of links. One must know about the tool to make do until that is solved, I suppose. Waltham, The Duke of 20:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
A fellow editor has proposed a rather interesting addition to the system: the enabling of the option for each editor to specify in their preferences whether they wish to have one or two link categories hidden by default in the "What links here" window. Would that be possible to implement? And if yes, would it be desirable? Waltham, The Duke of 09:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Unless it could be separated by namespace, it would be almost useless. For Whatlinkshere in the template namespace, for instance, I'd want to see transclusions only. For pages in Wikipedia: or talk: space, links only. Code up a matrix for the three options in each namespace, and you've suddenly got 50 separate preferences for one trivial detail. I'd say it would be completely unnecessary. Happy‑melon 09:32, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Some editors do highly specialised work, however, or at least undertake projects of specialised nature. Perhaps it would not be so useless. Waltham, The Duke of 10:08, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
This is not worth a preference, IMO. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:36, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How to extend logged-in session time?

I am frequently annoyed with the way Wikipedia logs me out silently when I've been idle for some undefined period of time. I expect that I should be able to stay logged in for at least 24 hours following my last login, especially when working on very long and complex edits.

I cannot find a way to extend my idle session time in my preferences. Anyone know how to do this?

Also is there some way for me to retroactively "claim" edits that Wikipedia wrongly attributed to my raw IP address rather than my account? For example, I am 216.56.12.98 for the edits to Uninterruptible Power Supply. Can I have them reattributed to DMahalko like they should be?

Also it would be nice if Wikipedia could at least inform me that I have been silently logged out and that what I am about to post will be unattributed, similar to the way it blocks a save if I've got my account set to require an edit comment but I forgot to put a comment in there. It should also give me the opportunity to log back in without losing my long complex edit.

DMahalko (talk) 19:22, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

If you click "Remember me on this computer" (or whatever) when you log in, you should get many days of login persistence. Log out when you're done to remove the cookie from your hard drive. You can't "claim" IP edits, how could you possibly prove definitively that you're the one who made them? Agree though, it would be nice to know if you've been logged out when you preview, and what I would like is to see when I preview that I will be saving into an edit conflict. Franamax (talk) 19:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Might be an issue with your browser; I get logged out every once and a while, but that's after a few months, not hours. Strange. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
  1. When you log in, make sure the "Remember me" box is checked. If you don't check it, you'll be logged out after a short while of inactivity (which might mean making a large edit without hitting preview or show changes or anything for a while). With the box checked, you won't ever be logged out automatically by Wikipedia.
  2. Make sure you have nothing set to clear cookies automatically. This behavior may be caused by browser settings, firewalls, antivirus software, adware cleaners, etc. If you have some software on your computer that's doing this, we can't stop it, you have to fix it on your computer.
  3. When you're editing anonymously, there will normally be a notice at the top of the page warning you. If you mean that you get logged out while in the process of writing an edit, so that you open the edit screen when you're logged in but submit when you're logged out, and that doesn't raise a warning, you're right, that would be a good warning to have. You may want to file a bug.
  4. If you're logged out and want to log in without losing your edit, first of all, you can just use some browser other than Internet Explorer. All other browsers I know of will preserve what you've entered in forms when you go on to a new page, so you can just log in, then hit back a couple of times and your edit will still be there. So it's a nonissue then. If you don't want to do that, open the login page in a new window or tab, by middle-clicking or Shift-clicking the link in the upper right. Log back in there, close the newly created window/tab, and hit preview to ensure that you're correctly logged in. Or of course you could copy and paste the text somewhere, etc.
  5. For reasons of integrity, edits will not be reattributed without a really excellent reason. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:46, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Wikipedia is experiencing technical difficulties"

I've been getting these errors a few times in the past few hours of editing. Is anyone else getting this? Does Wikimedia have a status page for the servers that I could keep an eye on? Gary King (talk) 20:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I've been getting "Wikipedia has a problem" almost every edit, at least twice each. It's not just you. And there's two for this comment. Hersfold (t/a/c) 20:21, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Closest thing to an official status page is probably http://nagios.wikimedia.org/ - that's probably only useful to serious geeks though - http://www.thewritingpot.com/wikistatus/ is a user-maintained status page that's a bit more readable to us mere mortals. --Random832 (contribs) 00:57, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
also http://ganglia.wikimedia.org/ https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Server_admin_log --Random832 (contribs) 00:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Viewing source text for special pages?

For example, how does one view the wiki-markup for Special:SpecialPages?

I can't find its source text page anywhere.

The Transhumanist    21:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

You can't. It's hardcoded into the MediaWiki software. Gary King (talk) 21:17, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Can the sourcetext for that page be copied and pasted from the software? Who would I need to post the request to? The Transhumanist    21:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
The pages aren't static or even pages that can be normally edited - they are dynamically generated from the database tables, either in real-time (Special:RecentChanges or Special:Log), daily (Special:Mostlinkedtemplates, etc) or very occasionally (Special:Unwatchedpages (admin only)). Other special pages don't display content at all but permit interaction with the database (Special:BlockIP or Special:UserRights, for instance). None of these pages could be described as having a static "sourcetext" - they are regenerated automatically by the software. Happy‑melon 21:27, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
The source code for these pages is freely available. Download MediaWiki. It's free and open source. It helps if you know PHP (I'm a PHP programmer, and as a side note, helped develop PHP to WP:GA so know a bit about it) because MediaWiki is written in it. May I ask what you need the code for and maybe we can help in another way? Gary King (talk) 21:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I need the links at Special pages (and the way they are formatted with colored headers and white background is nice too), for communication and documentation purposes (such as documenting the syntax for each special command that supports variables, and adding links to the table to the documentation on each command), and I don't want to have to painstakingly transcribe them all by hand from the popup text you get by hovering the pointer over each link. Very time-consuming. I've been messing around with HTML to wiki converters on the HTML page source (in Firefox's "View" menu), and so far I've gotten the conversion this close using diberri's converter:

This page contains a list of special pages. Most of the content of these pages is automatically generated and cannot be edited. To suggest a change to the parts that can be edited, find the appropriate text on Special:Allmessages and then request your change on the talk page of the message (using {{editprotected}} to draw the attention of administrators).

(headings removed by request)

(end of example)

Note that the links above are external, and not internal, so the conversion isn't complete. It would be nice to be able to grab internal links off of special pages, but so far, I haven't found a way. I also haven't discovered yet how to recreate the page using converters while retaining the links and the page formatting. I can convert the page formatting successfully, but then all the links are broken in the conversion.

The Transhumanist    23:19, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

You want to look at the MediaWiki namespace; Special:AllMessages would be a fun page to look through. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:30, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I contacted Diberri. Problem solved (see #Converter problems below):

[edit] Converter problems

I tried using your HTML to wiki converter on the "page source" (via Firefox's "View/Page source" feature) of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SpecialPages, and it came out looking like this.

Just thought you'd like to know.

The Transhumanist    21:57, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you didn't enter values for the "base URL for relative links" and "URL for wiki links" fields. When I use http://en.wikipedia.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/, respectively, I get this gem, which looks decent to me. --David Iberri (talk) 22:11, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Nice! Thank you!!! By the way, it isn't clear what "URL for wiki links" and "Base URL for relative links" means (I've been here for over 2 years, and I still didn't know what you were referring to; "Encode HTML entities" is also unclear to me). Where is the documentation that explains these and how to use the converter? The Transhumanist    23:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

You could also use my version of Special Pages grouping at meta:Help:Special page which is imho a bit better. Hopefully the automatic list will be improved later. P.S. Please remove your obsolete example above since it takes a lot of space. —AlexSm 02:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

The User:Cacycle/wikEd gadget converts this nicely if you simply copy the page content (and not the HTML code) and press the [W] button. Сасусlе 12:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
So that's how that works. I'll try it. Thank you! The Transhumanist    16:08, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Naxbox collapsible collapsed

Take a quick look at Template:Archive box collapsible. For me, the box is right-floating (like it should) in IE and Safari, but it's center-aligned in FF. Nothing has been changed in the template markup, and it used to work. At least one other user has reported the same issue, with the same setup of FF running on Windows. Another user, using FF on a Mac, says it's correctly right-aligned. Dorftrottel (criticise) 22:57, April 16, 2008

I am using FF and it looks center-aligned to me as well. Tiptoety talk 23:08, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Fixed now? –Pomte 23:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
It was centered for me in FF/Win and now it is flaoted right. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 23:18, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

It's right-floated now, but the div layer introduces a line-break and makes the navheader display two-lined. Dorftrottel (troll) 23:51, April 16, 2008

I've tweaked it now. Centering the title line within the box is not as important as right-aligning the box itself in the page. Dorftrottel (vandalise) 23:55, April 16, 2008
  • Issue resolved. Didn't know FF has difficulties resolving padding/margin:none as padding/margin:0. Thanks a bunch to Pomte! Dorftrottel (ask) 00:04, April 17, 2008
    padding/margin do not accept "none" as a value. See the standard on valid values for margin widths and padding widths. Firefox was correctly rejecting the rule as malformed according to the rules for parse errors: "User agents must ignore a declaration with an illegal value." I'm not surprised by IE's wrongness here, but I had hoped Webkit would be more correct. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:05, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template:University debating

Can anyone figure out why {{University debating}} is forcing all text below it, rather than just floating to the right? See for example Irish Times National Debating Championship. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:30, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly what {{-}} (located near the end of the template) is supposed to do. —AlexSm 04:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Should work now. --- RockMFR 05:41, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia needing help with technical difficulties?

Half the edits I've tried to do today fail because the database is locked, or they just fail for no apparent reason. Clearly there are some major technical difficulties.

Not to worry, though, as I have a hammer, some pliers, and both a phillips and a flathead screwdriver, and I'm heading on down to Wikipedia headquarters to straighten this mess out. If things really get bad, I can bring some duct tape in from my car as well. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 09:53, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. They forgot to ask for duct tape at foundation:Fundraising. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, servers seem real spotty today. Pastordavid (talk) 15:20, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Delete and Move

I just had some erorrs when trying to process this action at Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia talk:Verifiability after page move vandalism. I got an error that was a big green screen about things being down please donate and go to IRC several times and once I got:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

(SQL query hidden)

from within function "Article::insertOn". MySQL returned error "1213: Deadlock found when trying to get lock; Try restarting transaction (10.0.0.235)".

Maybe somone knowlegeable can look into this. On the wiki my "Delete" was processed with the "Move" lagging behind. Leaving a bunch of redlinks for a minute or two. I never got a "Sucess" message for the process even though it eventually happened--BirgitteSB 20:03, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

It's quite routine to get these issues. Vandals moving around large pages causes database locks and other server issues. Often moves to fix it don't work or time out. You're going to come across this sort of thing quite a bit - good work on clearing up after that vandal though. WjBscribe 20:11, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! I guess it is one those scale issues I have not encoutered at Wikisource before.--BirgitteSB 20:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Page views

Does anyone consider themeslves capable of giving me a ballpark figure for the percentage of mainspace pageviews that are directed to featured or good articles? A very rough figure would be acceptable, but I need it ASAP (for a speech tomorrow :S). Happy‑melon 19:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Based on playing with http://stats.grok.se , it appears that between 0.3% and 2% of all Main Page views lead to visiting the Featured Article of the Day. I surely would have guessed a higher number, but apparently there is so much content on the Main Page that people end up at a lot of places. Dragons flight (talk) 01:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Out of 2,337,524 articles, about 2,014 are FA and about 3,979 are GA. Most of the most viewed articles are not FA or GA. Out of the 100 most popular pages, only a few are FA or GA. It's interesting that far more people are curious what a Wiki is than any other subject. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 06:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Rank Article Page views February, 2008

  1. Main Page 136,036,288
  2. Wiki 4,264,295
  3. FA Barack Obama 2,749,178
  4. Valentine's Day 2,082,274
  5. GA Wikipedia 1,980,274
  6. FA Lost (TV series) 1,353,023
  7. John McCain 1,250,044
  8. Portal:Current events 1,248,112
  9. Sex 1,221,250
  10. GA United States 1,174,571
  11. Chinese New Year 1,133,130
  12. Kosovo 1,129,177
  13. Deaths in 2008 1,127,534
  14. Cloverfield 990,778
  15. Naruto 921,059
  16. Edison Chen photo scandal 917,054
  17. Muhammad 875,290
  18. Zacarias Moussaoui 826,241
  19. Edison Chen 803,499
  20. GA YouTube 759,661
  21. GA The Economist 746,972
  22. Lunar eclipse 687,772
  23. GA Hillary Rodham Clinton 683,540
  24. 2 Girls 1 Cup 682,954
  25. MySpace 677,961
  26. Portal:Featured content 675,223
  27. World War II 674,737
  28. GA Super Smash Bros. Brawl 658,095
  29. List of songs in Rock Band 636,257
  30. Miley Cyrus 618,331
  31. GA London 615,575
  32. Penis 614,870
  33. India 608,438
  34. Canada 606,162
  35. FA Global warming 605,566
  36. Amy Winehouse 595,267
  37. Internet Movie Database 569,688
  38. Abraham Lincoln 560,552
  39. GA United Kingdom 559,205
  40. FA Japan 556,036
  41. Love 555,990
  42. Vagina 543,156
  43. Super Bowl XLII 537,695
  44. Sexual intercourse 536,505
  45. Leap year 535,513
  46. Masturbation 534,274
  47. Adolf Hitler 532,760
  48. FA New York City 532,532
  49. Superdelegate 528,340
  50. GA George W. Bush 528,177
  51. Fidel Castro 526,792
  52. GA Facebook 516,102
  53. FA Germany 515,970
  54. Scientology 515,558
  55. World War I 515,533
  56. FA Australia 509,077
  57. Eli Manning 505,099
  58. 80th Academy Awards 503,134
  59. Super Smash Bros. (series) 502,874
  60. Anal sex 496,347
  61. Hotmail 495,982
  62. Pornography 494,691
  63. Heath Ledger 489,278
  64. List of sex positions 486,609
  65. GA Britney Spears 486,353
  66. France 481,276
  67. Hannah Montana 481,117
  68. United States presidential election, 2008 472,364
  69. Ash Wednesday 469,143
  70. There Will Be Blood 461,579
  71. FA William Shakespeare 452,016
  72. Super Tuesday 448,485
  73. GA Michael Jackson 439,048
  74. Gillian Chung 438,285
  75. China 436,387
  76. Cecilia Cheung 435,780
  77. Waterboarding 435,733
  78. List of Naruto: Shippūden episodes 430,285
  79. Blu-ray Disc 426,498
  80. Dubai 426,418
  81. FA Ronald Reagan 425,117
  82. Lost (season 4) 424,378
  83. GA Russia 424,059
  84. Lent 423,317
  85. Rihanna 423,202
  86. Tupac Shakur 418,519
  87. GA Tom Brady 413,857
  88. Eminem 410,317
  89. List of Presidents of the United States 410,022
  90. List of songs in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock 409,577
  91. Martin Luther King, Jr. 409,567
  92. GA Bill Clinton 406,999
  93. John F. Kennedy 406,354
  94. President of the United States 404,288
  95. Oral sex 402,606
  96. GA Daniel Day-Lewis 400,824
  97. Lil Wayne 400,666
  98. Kim Kardashian 397,647
  99. List of female porn stars by decade 396,854
  100. No Child Left Behind Act 392,315
  101. GA The Beatles 391,358
  102. FA Rosa Parks 390,428
  103. England 390,231
Out of the above, 32.8% of the page views are articles, the remaining being portals or the main page. Out of the articles, 12.5% of the page views are Feature Articles, and 16.6% of the views are Good Articles. Not too shabby, I would say. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 07:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Just in case anyone is wondering, 8.5% of the page views are sex related topics. This is a very small sample of articles though and the page views tapers off very very slowly, so I would not use it as hard and fast statistics. Although, didn't someone say that 90% of all statistics are made up on the spot 50% of the time? 199.125.109.88 (talk) 07:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Thankyou very much - that's far higher than I expected it to be (my placeholder was 1%/99%!). That's actually rather encouraging, and very interesting. I think I might (if I'm ever bored) run some analysis on those tables and get a more accurate picture, for the benefit of future speech-writers :D. Happy‑melon 11:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I omitted Special:Search, which was viewed 453,219,819 times in February, and anything known to be invalid; there is a list of odd anomalies at Wikipedia talk:Web statistics tool. I failed to remove Resolution, unfortunately. I also combined duplicates where I could, including Lost with Lost (TV series). 199.125.109.88 (talk) 13:28, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
So if I take out Resolution and add England 390,231 the stats change slightly: Out of 204,875,862 page views, 66,916,239 or 32.7% are articles, and of the articles, 10 are FA and account for 12.6% of the article page views, while 17 are GA and account for 16.7% of the article page views. 8.6% of the article page views are sex related. So taking out the anomaly of Resolution only changed the stats by 0.1%. I think if you added the rest of the top 1,000 you would get a pretty good number because you will notice that we have already accounted for almost half of the total searches, in only the top 100 articles. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 13:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
If you like fractions instead of percentages, one third of the views are articles, and of the articles, one tenth of the top 100 articles are FA and account for one eighth of the articles viewed, and one sixth of the top 100 articles are GA and account for one sixth of the article page views. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 13:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Correction. I was double counting Lost, so I reduced it by 368,672 so the new totals are 204,507,190 with 66,547,567 of those being articles, and FA accounting for 12.2% of article views and GA for 16.8% of the most popular 100 article views. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 17:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Keeping user-pages off Google?

Hi,

When I google my own name, one of the first hits is my Wikipedia user page. Is there any way (template?) I can flag this page so that google ignores it?

Cheers and thanks, pedrito - talk - 18.04.2008 06:39

Unfortunately, the MediaWiki search feature is so useless that many people use google to search for things on Wikipedia, including stuff outside the mainspace. Google has excluded the User Talk: namespace of its own accord, but all the other namespaces are indexed, and will continue to be so for a while yet. I think we'd all like to modify Wikipedia's robots.txt to exclude everything apart from the mainspace from google searches, but that can only be done when the devs improve the search feature (which is pretty low on the priority list). As for case-by-case exclusions, no, there's currently no method for excluding single pages from google searches (although it could be fairly easily implemented with a magic word), and it would not be a good idea to allow one, as it would create holes in Google's coverage which would reduce its usefulness as a replacement for the MediaWiki search engine. Happy‑melon 11:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Google indexes the user talk namespace just fine. rainman has actually been making some fairly impressive improvements to search lately, including "did you mean" and other much-requested features; I don't know when they'll go live (I think some already have). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:28, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Article talk is the only namespace not indexed by Google. Maybe mw:Extension:NoRobots should be allowed in user space? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, sorry, I did mean Talk: rather than User talk: (long day :D). It's good to hear of any improvements to the search feature. I maintain that creating holes in Google's coverage while it's still such an invaluable tool would be a big mistake. Happy‑melon 21:08, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWiki hates my images.

I can't take it anymore.

Twice, now, a bot has marked Image:WOTW-NYT-headline.jpg as orphaned. It is not orphaned, and never has been. It's in The War of the Worlds (radio)

But every time this happens, I look at the file links section and it's empty. Last time, after I added |upright to the tag, it appeared in the file links.

And now, I just removed |upright, and it's back in the file links.

Someone tell me what I'm doing wrong. Why is this page disappearing and then reappearing in the file links section? superlusertc 2008 April 18, 07:23 (UTC)

Was it responding to this version [1] or this version [2] by any chance? 199.125.109.88 (talk) 07:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The first notice happened three days after the page blanking, and the second happened 12 hours after it. Possibly related, but somewhat doubtful. Anyways, why would the file link stay gone after the page was restored? superlusertc 2008 April 18, 07:55 (UTC)

[edit] Category Pages

How come Category pages cannot be watched?Asdtf (talk) 12:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

They can. The only change monitored is to the page itself, but not to articles added to the category. You aren't notified when articles are added or removed, but you are notified if the category is marked for CfD or any other changes to the text of the page. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 13:00, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
«Related changes» on category shows recent changes on category members, see m:Help:Category#Applying "Related Changes" to a category. —AlexSm 14:16, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

(Related question): Is there any way to view the "containment" history of a category? --soum talk 13:16, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

No. See bug 4366http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4366. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Show Preview not working for me

After adding edits to any article and pressing show preview, I am not taken to the article I have edited but back to the edit page of that article. It doesn't show me a preview. After doing this, I can't even save the page. Juthani1 talk 17:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Javascript Freezing Firefox 2.0.0.13

Your javascript freezes my web browser--AGAIN! This has happened in the past, the problem disappeared, and has now reappeared.

If I navigate Wikipedia with javascript turned off everything loads fine. However, if I have javascript enabled it hangs my browser when I try to view an article.

You have a bug in your JS. Please fix. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.116.26.171 (talk) 15:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

There are no bugs in the JavaScript as far as I can see (it all parses correctly). Do you have any extensions that could be giving you problems? x42bn6 Talk Mess 15:48, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
What OS are you running? --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 16:18, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Some of the features in wikibits.js (sortable tables, specifically) can be very time-intensive on some articles. I've set ts_alternate_row_colors = false globally - this functionality has no effect with default styles, and users who want this feature can enable it in their own js files.--Random832 (contribs) 21:47, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Logs in my watchlist

A bunch of unwanted log entries (delete, move, protection) have started showing up in my watchlist, making the latter practically unreadable. I can't seem to unwatch these lists so maybe its a global technical glitch. Any advice on fixing this? Thanks. Twospoonfuls (ειπέ) 09:05, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

It's a new feature - logs now show up in the watchlist by default. I find it useful because I'd like to know if a page is moved or deleted. I don't know a way of removing the log entries though. Graham87 10:42, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree that it is a very useful feature; at least one can now know that a page has been deleted and not just realise it days or weeks after the event while editing the watchlist. (By the way, this is one of the easiest methods to remove pages from one's watchlist; one does not have to go directly to the (deleted) page.) Waltham, The Duke of 12:25, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

If I can't turn it off it's not a feature it's a bug, and bloody annoying one too. It destroys the utility of the watchlist if the pages I'm interested in are crowed out with cruft on XXXRussiangirls.com being deleted. Twospoonfuls (ειπέ) 12:52, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Enabling raw watchlist in your prefs shrinks each log to 1 line, it won't clutter it up too much then. ...... Dendodge.TalkHelp 14:23, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Correction: this option is called is "Enhanced recent changes (JavaScript)". In case you don't like it, I could give you a userscript that would also collapse log entries. —AlexSm 14:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
That is an improvement, thank you for that. It would still be preferable to turn the logs off altogether. Twospoonfuls (ειπέ) 15:10, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Surely the only reason you'd be notified if XXXRussiangirls.com was deleted would be if you'd expressed an interest in the future of the XXXRussiangirls.com page by watching it in the first place? It's not as if you're being spammed with the entire contents of Special:Log. Happy‑melon 16:04, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Not true. The spammers favourite trick is to make multiple redirects from established pages to a page with their link on it. A case in point was about five pages on my list all got redirected to something called HAGGERS?_____ (with many variations on the ____), add in move and deletion logs and the main and talk pages and that's a hell of a lot logging all about a piece of pointless drivel. Are you begining to see why this is a problem? Twospoonfuls (ειπέ) 16:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
It is not caused simply by redirects, but by pagemove vandalism. Mr.Z-man 17:36, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
At the same time, if you watch color and someone moves it to colour, you would want colour to be watched automagically. Also, if someone deletes color you would want to know about it. The HAGGER stuff showed up on my watchlist too and it was hardly unreadable. They were all done within the span of minutes and it took 5 seconds to go through and unwatch all of them. –Pomte 17:46, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

You got off lightly then, there were 59 separate entries for that HAGGER stuff on my watchpage today, and yes that did make it effectively unreadable. Moreover I didn't want to unwatch the legitimate pages that were moved. The bots and vandal patrol took care of the vandalism, for which I'm grateful, but like the drains I'm glad they're there I'd just rather not know about them. Changing the javascript is a useful work around, but it can't be beyond the wit of man to put an off switch on the logging? Twospoonfuls (ειπέ) 18:08, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Beyond the wit of a man to add an off switch? Not at all. A high priority? Again, not at all. It would appear that, judging purely by this thread, you are in the minority Twospoonfuls (I add myself to the "love it" crowd). TalkIslander 19:49, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Broken image

Have a look at Image:Flipside_logo.jpg. There's no image displayed, but the log shows an upload and no deletes. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 13:17, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's been deleted since by GDonato as "a corrupt or empty image". I'm not sure what was wrong with it (other than being a logo uploaded in JPEG format), though; Firefox shows the full-size image just fine, and jpeginfo doesn't report any errors in it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:18, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Messed up timestamp on my edit

Is it normal that an edit I did appears in my contributions to have been done 20 minutes earlier than it actually was? This diff was done between updating the dyk template and adding the hooks to recent additions, and you can tell the real time from what was pasted onto the template. Has anyone else noticed something like that, and why did it happen? - Bobet 14:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

See section #Backwards edittime? below. Seems a server has a broken clock that is drifting. I think I'll better try to report that somewhere.
--David Göthberg (talk) 17:50, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Y Done. I reported it and the dev Mark fixed it. He said: "Server 133's time was off."
--David Göthberg (talk) 18:18, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Monobook base font size

On MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#Base font size, I have raised an issue regarding the discrepancies between font sizes on different browsers in teh monobook skin, but haven't had any reply yet. So I'm bringing it up here in order to raise some awareness to the issue that has been bugging me for quite some time. — Edokter • Talk • 17:43, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] unstable page (bizarre)

Resolved. Thread starter posted on my talk page that issue is resolved Gary King (talk) 20:23, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Can someone take a look at the [page] recent edit history? After successfully making a dozen edits this morning, I have repeatedly tried to extend the text of the allogeneic sub-section. The previews look fine, and once confirmed, the text does show up, with citation. Unfortunately, a piece of subsequent section or sub=section disappear EVERY time (see the edit history), and the rest reverses up to my edit, without leaving a gap.io_editor (talk) 19:07, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is because you are using an opening <ref> tag rather than a closing </ref> tag. This makes all text after the opening ref tag part of the final reference. This is a common mistake that I sometimes make myself :) Gary King (talk) 19:52, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] onlineonslaught.com >> oowrestling.com

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this. Online Onslaught has changed it's name (along with all the sub-URL's) to OOWrestling breaking a lot of links. Is it possible for a bot to change all of the links that include onlineonslaught.com within them, and change them so that it goes to oowrestling.com . Is there a bot that deals with web URL changes? Thanks, D.M.N. (talk) 20:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I only see 59 - not a big deal to change by hand.[3] 199.125.109.88 (talk) 00:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
You have 136 links to deal with per the link search. It looks like the subpages are the same, so this could easily be done with WP:AWB. If you would make some checks to ensure that only the domain needs to be changed, then leave me a message on my talk page and I will run this for you. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 00:28, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I checked one and it was valid by just changing the domain name. I did not change the reference portion that says that the source is OnlinOnslaught.com, as that isn't important to change. If you look at the mainpage it seems someone hijacked the domain as a result of a dispute, and they responded by just registering a new domain. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 00:56, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Automatically sorting columned lists??

Didn't get an answer on the lists page. Can that be done in articles? ie words starting with these letters...

a   m   R 
c   n   T  
g   P   Z

Which would automatically resort to three columns if you added words starting with b,j, q and y?? Carol Moore 20:02, 17 April 2008 (UTC)Carolmooredc {talk}

Did you look at Help:Sorting? I'm not sure what you are asking. Where did you intend to add b, j, q, and y? Are you just trying to make a long list that is split up into three columns? If that is all you are doing, just put the list in one long list and wrap it with <table width="100%"><tr><td valign="top"> at the top and a third and two thirds of the way down add </td><td valign=top> to split it into equal columns. At the end add </td></tr></table> You have to put the list into alphabetic order yourself. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 15:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • apple
  • carpet
  • geography
  • mountain
  • nowhere
  • postage
  • Ragged
  • Toast
  • Zoology


199.125.109.88 (talk) 15:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Automatic sorting of such a list is not supported.--Patrick (talk) 15:30, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually, you can do it automatically, the same way it's done for references:
  • apple
  • carpet
  • geography
  • mountain
  • nowhere
  • postage
  • Ragged
  • Toast
  • Zoology
It should work on CSS3 browsers, Gecko-based browsers, and Webkit-based browsers. There probably is a template somewhere to do it that way for you. --cesarb (talk) 17:32, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Are you actually referring to sorting? The wikitext is already sorted. Test with unsorted wikitext:
  • carpet
  • geography
  • mountain
  • nowhere
  • postage
  • Ragged
  • Toast
  • Zoology
  • apple
Patrick (talk) 23:27, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
It looks like it puts it into columns but does not sort it, so the list needs to be sorted by some means and then do an insertion sort with any new entries (put them into proper sorted location). However, it is handy to just use a column count instead of manually trying to figure out where one third and two thirds comes (it's easy to see you don't have it right, but confusing to fix it quickly). 199.125.109.88 (talk) 23:48, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I added this to m:Help:List.--Patrick (talk) 00:13, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! Sorting isn't that necessary. help page clear. Carol Moore 01:31, 21 April 2008 (UTC)Carolmooredc {talk}

[edit] +/new section

What's with the + sign (which I like) turning into a big new tab "new section"? —TreasuryTag—t—c 15:53, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks like there was consensus. Happy‑melon 16:19, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
There is a gadget in your Preferences which allows you to change it back.
I think it does convey its function better to new users. To everyone else, it's just another tab on the top bar. The position has not changed, so people will still subconsciously move their mouses to that location, anyways. Gary King (talk) 19:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
It's probably better for new users, but for those like me who have a top bar already overladen with tabs for various cannot-live-without widgets, the extra width is a serious nuisance. So congrats to the developers for introducing it with a turn-it-off switch, thereby giving everyone what they want: good work :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't stand out as much now. It used to be the only small tab. ...... Dendodge.TalkHelp 10:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
At the moment it's missing altogether! Happy-melon's link doesn't appear to be correct. Is there a bigger discussion of this somewhere?(oops, I see it now) One objection that could be made to this change, is there are zillions of user pages with a request to click the "+" tab to add a new comment. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 17:20, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Can you give an example? If they are using a template, this is easily fixed. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 17:26, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I doubt they are using a template. Just for reference, I looked at the talk pages of everyone who replied to this section so far, to see if any are using this method, and most of them have text that says "click here to add a comment" which creates a new page. That's probably the best way to do it, and get around any future changes to the tab. BTW, the tab is back again. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 17:41, 20 April 2008 (UTC)