Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 40

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[edit] Minor Bot Edits "mb"

Resolved.

I was recently told that my bot's minor edits should be marked as "mb" instead of just the "m". I only see the option to set the edit as minor and not as "minor bot edit". Am I missing something, or is this an outdated concept? Thanks! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 17:41, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

To get the "b" you need a bot flag. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The bot does have a bot flag see [1]. Then see edit: [2] where it just has an m instead of an mb. Did I miss something? Thanks. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 20:39, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Happy-melon answered my question.

[edit] IE won't display tables properly.

I don't know why it does this, but IE renders the small infoboxes a huge tables or very small ones and ignores the minimum width. The text and images are not usually much larger than the minimum width. You can see all kinds of differences here. I don't know why the last table renders somewhat acceptably last table, but it expands once you remove the ≤ from the last row. Other tables with that character act differently, however. I don't know how to fix this.Potapych (talk) 19:41, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] some problems on mediawiki

I intstalled mediawiki.

but. in my wiki,

<source lang="python">
</source>

This syntax is error.

And,

#if{{{sdgsdg}}}

if syntax is error, also.

And, I can't use cite tags. :(

So many errors. :(

I want.

Exactly same en.wikipedia's extentions, configure, etc.

HELP!! :( -- WonRyong (talk) 22:38, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The wikimedia wikis use a large number of extensions in addition to the standard mediawiki software. A list of all extensions installed on a wiki is visible in Special:Version#Installed extensions - you need to download and install any extensions that you think you might need to emulate wikipedia successfully. To fix the problems you've described above, you need mw:Extension:Cite, mw:Extension:ParserFunctions and mw:Extension:SyntaxHighlight. Happy‑melon 22:53, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Static HTML dumps

I asked here and here about the static HTML dumps being broken since April 2007, but I'm not getting any response. I'd post to the wikitech mailing list, but I can see other people asking the same question there, again with no response. Is there somewhere else I should bring this up? Thanks, Bovlb (talk) 23:26, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikitech-l or #wikimedia-tech. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Everyone who needs to know about it knows about it. In practice it's probably not going to get fixed until someone with access to run the dumps does some extensive troubleshooting, unfortunately. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I'd be happy to assist in the troubleshooting, if I can be of any use. If it's just a question of scale (a reasonable guess, given that we're getting stuck on en), then maybe it would help to restrict the dump to namespace 0. Bovlb (talk) 17:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pages in namespace

Is there a way to know the number of pages that Wikipedia has in a certain namespace? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Benito Sifaratti (talk • contribs) 14:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The closest thing I could find was Special:AllPages, which shows all of the pages in a specified namespace. It doesn't give a number, however. Gary King (talk) 15:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Subsection headings heavier font than parent headings?

In my browser (Firefox 2.0.0.9, on an Asus Eee PC running Ubuntu), subsection headings have a heavier font than section headings they belong to, and it looks quite strange. In other words, subheadings look more prominent than their parent headings. What I'm referring to is constructions such as the following where my browser shows "Subsection" as heavier (although smaller) than "Section":

== Section ==

=== Subsection ===

Have section fonts been changed somehow? --87.252.35.199 (talk) 17:06, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. In my memory it has been like this for at least a year or so. Note that the larger heading (level 2) has a pagewide underline though. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:45, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks TheDJ. You mean you too find that "Subsection" has a heavier font than "Section"? If so, I suppose I've just not noticed it until now..--87.252.38.216 (a,k,a, 87.252.35.199) (talk) 19:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

h1 and h2 are for some obscure reason not bold in Monobook; h3 to h6 are. You can fix this with the following additions to Special:MyPage/monobook.css (taken from my own monobook.css):

/* Non-bold headers look ugly on Ubuntu Firefox */
h1, h2 { font-weight: bold; }
.editsection { font-weight: normal; }

—Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template calculating days passed since given date

Resolved. Gary King (talk) 15:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello! Is there something like that? --Tomeczek ^Message 21:08, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

See {{age in days}} or something in Category:Date mathematics templates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly what I was looking for. Thx. --Tomeczek ^Message 22:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist crashing browser

Hi all. I keep finding that when I use IE7 on Windows Vista, clicking on "My Watchlist" causes the browser to crash. Has anyone else noticed such a thing? --RFBailey (talk) 22:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC) PS. Will try to stick to Safari in future....

Same thing here. If I do it a second time though everything works. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 14:31, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] button to edit only the lead, aka section=0

I was making a change to the infobox on Hong Kong, and the form is loading all 74KB worth of text everytime I want to preview it, which causes slowness and problems to scroll accurately to the end of the lead on the edit box. I have similar problems editing the lead of long articles.

Can we have a little button that lets me edit only the stuff that is before the first section header? I see that it's already implemented by using "&section=0" on the URL, but I can't find any nicely placed button to access it easily with one click --Enric Naval (talk) 13:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Check the box that says "Add an edit link for the lead section of a page" in the gadgets section of your preferences. Graham87 13:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Temporal histories - feature request

I've made a bugzilla report here: [3]

This feature request is simply to allow users to view article histories by time rather than number when they choose. So one could view a list of all the revisions to an article in the last day, week, month, ect. on one page.

Any thoughts? --ÐeadΣyeДrrow (Talk - Contribs) 07:14, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wth?

How comes now that i login here it seems to log me in to other areas of Wikimedia? Simply south (talk) 11:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

This should be happening if and only if you have activated your global account at Special:MergeAccount. Algebraist 12:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist notice undismissal

How does one undismiss the notices at the top of the watchlist? I tried to dismiss the notice about the bot article-creation proposal, and it dismissed the notice about the elections too. DuncanHill (talk) 18:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Try pasting the following JavaScript into your address bar:

javascript:void(document.cookie = "hidewatchlistmessage-17=no; path=/");

That should undo the effects of your dismiss click. (You may need to use higher numbers than 17 if the watchlist was updated since I wrote this.) --ais523 18:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that worked (shame we can't dismiss individual messages though!) DuncanHill (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think that both of them should have been clustered like that. The board stuff is in the sitenotice everywhere else; sticking it on the watchlist doesn't make much sense. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Having multiple dismiss buttons is being discussed at Template talk:Watchlist-notice. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 01:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Navigating page with hidden portions

The references on the photovoltaics page are hidden. When you click on a ref it doesn't take you anywhere. I can see the benefit of hiding some things on a page (navigation templates etc.) but the dead refs are annoying. I don't know if these suggestions are workable but here they are: 1) The link should take you to the ref section even if it's closed. This gets you in the neighborhood at least. 2) Clicking on a ref should automatically open the hidden ref section and take you to it. That's it. Ciao for niao... Mrshaba (talk) 03:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I've unhidden the refs. Hidden refs are worse than scrolling refs, about which see Wikipedia:CITE#Scrolling_lists. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 04:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWiki anti-spam measure disables BlackBerry edits

The anti-spam check measure added to the html source code on May 22 has resulted in a problem for BlackBerry users attempting to edit. Now, the edit screen (when using the BlackBerry's browser), produces just the anti-spam editform box and legend "Do not fill this in!". The rest of the screen is garbled/unusable.

Can the developers take a look at this so that us crackberry/wiki addicts aren't deprived of the ability to edit/reply to Talk pages using our BlackBerrys? JGHowes ^talk - 19:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

This issue is not affecting all blackberries, I just made an edit from one without an issue, as long as I didn't put anything in the "dont fill in this box" section. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

What BlackBerry version are you using? Mine is the fairly common 8700 with the factory-preloaded 4.2 Browser. JGHowes ^talk - 13:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

This is what comes of relying on CSS to hide things, I guess. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sort user contributions

How do I get a list of a particular user's contributions sorted by the number of characters they added in each contribution? Thanks! --Pascal666 (talk) 17:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Ask someone with toolserver access to run a query. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:43, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Strange behaviour with "what redirects links here"

I was checking the list of redirects that link to an article, using the filters that had been added recently to the mediawiki interface for Wikipedia, and I came across some strange behaviour. It seems that if you use a template on a redirect (for instance, the "unprintworthy redirect" template), and the template has a link in it, then if you use the filters to generate a list of "what redirects link here" for the article linked in the template, then all the redirects with the template on them show up in the list as well. Is this a feature or a bug? This also happens if a page contains wikilinks elsewhere on the page as well as the redirect markup. For examples, see User:O'Malley II, Talk:The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis and User:Viper1928374/Sandbox. All three of these redirects were redirected without blanking or archiving properly first (edit them and you will see what I mean). Because they have "The Lord of the Rings" linked on the page somewhere, they are showing up in the list of redirects pointing at 'The Lord of the Rings'. Again, is that a feature or a bug? (And a side note - can I 'fix' those pages, or is that not acceptable?). Carcharoth (talk) 21:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems like a bug, I guess . . . —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Internal error

Resolved.

I get a strange error on my main account user:stefan since now, when clicking on a diff link, history or edit button I get a page called internal error with the following stack trace

Detected bug in an extension! Hook CentralAuthHooks::onGetUserPermissionsErrorsExpensive failed to return a value; should return true to continue hook processing or false to abort.

Backtrace:

1. 0 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Title.php(1156): wfRunHooks('getUserPermissi...', Array)
2. 1 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Title.php(1055): Title->getUserPermissionsErrorsInternal('rollback', Object(User), true)
3. 2 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/PageHistory.php(268): Title->getUserPermissionsErrors('rollback', Object(User))
4. 3 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/PageHistory.php(621): PageHistory->historyLine(Object(stdClass), Object(stdClass), 1, false, true, true)
5. 4 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Pager.php(270): PageHistoryPager->formatRow(Object(stdClass))
6. 5 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/PageHistory.php(138): IndexPager->getBody()
7. 6 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(503): PageHistory->history()
8. 7 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(59): MediaWiki->performAction(Object(OutputPage), Object(Article), Object(Title), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
9. 8 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/index.php(92): MediaWiki->initialize(Object(Title), Object(Article), Object(OutputPage), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
10. 9 /usr/local/apache/common-local/live-1.5/index.php(3): require('/usr/local/apac...')
11. 10 {main}

Special things with this account are 2.

• It is not a unified account and another unified account exists
• and I did this edit yesterday day, now impossible for me to revert it, looking at the logs it looks to have something to do with user so is probably SUL related but you never know. If any sysop sees this please revert the edit, not sure how to prove I'm that user since I can not do any edits, but most edits on this users userpage is done by the user stefan so it should be a good indication :-) email is confirmed for the user but I might not answer so soon. StefanBot (talk) 01:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I blanked your monobook.js, so see if that helps (I doubt it will, but you never know). Happy‑melon 09:31, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but did not help. StefanBot (talk) 09:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I am also having the exact same issue. I cannot edit or view histories without getting that error. I have never edited my monobook file and pretty much all my account settings are left as normal. This just started yesterday. My user name is User:APL. Any help would be appreciated. 72.10.110.107 (talk) 13:10, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Reported to bugzilla: bug 14391http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14391. Happy‑melon 13:43, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

A dev fixed it (so simple!) - you should be able to get back online as soon as 1.13alpha (r36195) reaches 35780. Happy‑melon 14:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey it's fixed. Thanks all. (Especially the dev who will probably never see this) APL (talk) 16:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, works for me also, thanks a lot!!!! --Stefan ^talk 00:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Submit To Bugzilla

Wouldn't it be great if we could have a page where we could see ALL the changes made to the document, including redirects, moves, and creation, from all the user who contributed? There could be a separate sub page, or function, where you have the Revision history page on one side, but only taking half (or whatever porportion) of this proposed page, and then lines to from the users who contributed (in bluelinks) to their changes! Please submit this idea to Bugzilla, since I don't have an account. Thank you!68.148.164.166 (talk) 05:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe you want bug 639http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=639. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] system messages issue

Resolved.

This question is asked by a hindi wikipedia's sysop

When a user is not loged in then in upper-right part of wikipedia a message "Log in / Create an account" (in hindi :"सदस्य प्रवेश करें / नया खाता बनाएँ") ,which is displayed by hi:MediaWiki:Userlogin, should be displayed but unfortunately in Hindi Wikipedia , "user Log in" (in hindi:सदस्य लॉग इन) message ,whish is displayed by hi:MediaWiki:Loginpagetitle, is displayed .Why this problem is arising. --hi:user:sumit sinha59.94.154.63 (talk) 07:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The two pages are supposed to display different content; compare our own MediaWiki:Userlogin and MediaWiki:Loginpagetitle. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The message that's displayed in the upper right is now MediaWiki:Nav-login-createaccount, not MediaWiki:Userlogin (which is the title for Special:UserLogin). You can fix it by editing. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. The problem is now resolved--hi:user:sumit sinha59.94.133.116 (talk) 04:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Post On Bugzilla

Wouldn't it be great if we could search within our own contributions (or whatever, (or changes)) for say, all things we replaced with "{{main|". Please post this on bugzilla since I don't have an account, thanks!68.148.164.166 (talk) 19:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

This would probably be too resource-intensive for it to happen at any time in the foreseeable future. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Log in aborted

Resolved.

I don't know what is going on, but I am a Wikipedia administrator trying to log into the site. I can log into my Wikimedia Commons account, but I can't log into my Wikipedia admin account for some reason. This is why I'm using this IP to post this message.

Every time I click the Log in/create account tab, I get a pop-up that says Internet Explorer can't open the internet site, and the operation is aborted. Is this a problem with Wikipedia? Because I'm having no trouble with Commons... 86.154.115.237 (talk) 19:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The user below seems to have the same problem. 86.154.115.237 (talk) 19:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes that is definitely true. But I was able to get in through Commons. I have not tried the other Wikimedia projects to see if I could get in through them however. I have only tried Commons, where I had no problem, and English Wikipedia, where the login page generates some sort of error. --Filll (talk | wpc) 19:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Can I just ask how you've managed to get into your account then, if the log-in won't work? 86.154.115.237 (talk) 19:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Logging in to another wikimedia site (e.g. wikt:Special:Userlogin) will log you in to Wikipedia. Prodego ^talk 19:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] English Wikipedia login problem with internet explorer

I just tried to log in on English Wikipedia from internet explorer and the login page fails to load properly, so that login fails. I was able to get into Commons and came here that way with the unified login however. This just started in the last hour or so.--Filll (talk | wpc) 19:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Fine here (IE 7.0.5730.11 on winXP). Algebraist 19:42, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

IE 6.0.2900.2180 on XP SP2 here.--Filll (talk | wpc) 19:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It's not fine here, the login page on the English Wikipedia is not working for me. I'm on product version 7.00.6000.16386. I suggest, Fill bringing it up at WP:AN to try and direct more people to this discussion.(D.M.N.) 86.20.54.64 (talk) 19:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking into it. --brion (talk) 19:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

"If there are any Javascripts running inside the body tag or inside a table which is directly a child of body, then most of the times this error is bound to happen. The solution is to move the script to the top or bottom of the body tag or even moving it after the body. The script can also be put inside a function and then calling it from window.onload. Another solution to this problem is to add defer=”defer” in the script tag." [4] Prodego ^talk 19:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well it's never happened to me before. (Lradrama) 86.154.115.237 (talk) 20:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It is only an issue with the monobook skin, you can login this way: [5]. Prodego ^talk 20:05, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'm still wondering why the problem was caused, though... D.M.N. (talk) 20:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

brion is working on it. Prodego ^talk 20:10, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

For info, I've been approached for help by an inexperienced user who has been having the same problem. I would not know how to advise him to log on by another route. Helpdesk told me the problem had been reported here. Discussion is on my talkpage. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem was an unclosed <span> in MediaWiki:Loginend. This bad HTML triggered fatal JavaScript errors on the new anonnotice code while silently failing on the old code. With the fixed HTML, the new code works fine -- and should avoid triggering the "blank page except for fundraising link" error which we get lots of complaints about. --brion (talk) 20:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for sorting it. :-) Lradrama 21:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Seems fine now.-Filll (talk | wpc) 21:24, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Templates/Div boxes messing with section headers

So I've noticed that certain templates (specifically, stub templates) or other items sometimes shift over the start of all section headers below by about an eighth of an inch to the right (on IE7, at least). The former comes a bit on AFC, and the latter I just noticed caused by a div box in here. Does anyone know why it does this, or how the templates/boxes can be modified to not do this? The only solution I ever found on AFC was to comment out the template. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Strange talk page problem

Resolved. Gary King (talk) 05:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

A user edited my talk page. So far, so good. The problem is that it has a "Newer Edit" link. When you click it, you reach this empty diff page, which also has a newer edit link. But clicking it takes back to the same empty diff page. Continuing to click the newer edit link takes back to the empty diff page.

It can be reproduced by going to User talk:ReyBrujo, clicking the history tab, and making a diff between the two consecutive edits by Useight from May 16 and June 3. Note that it is as if it were doing a diff against the same version of the page.

Since I guess the bug is interesting, and that it will disappear as soon as someone edits my talk page, I am fully protecting it (WP:IAR) through cascading by transcluding it at User:ReyBrujo/Sandbox. If it is not deemed interesting, it is fixed or cannot be reproduced, feel free to unprotect the sandbox. I am doing just a couple of edits per day, so there is low risk of anyone actually wanting to write anything in my page. Cheers! -- ReyBrujo (talk) 02:55, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm seeing this on every diff to the current revision. —Cryptic 03:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Yep. Seems to be everywhere. I first noticed it around 02:00 UTC. Gimmetrow 03:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, you are right. As I said, I am rather inactive and don't check my watchlist anymore, or would have noticed that. Unprotecting my talk page since it can be reproduced anywhere. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 03:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I'm seeing it everywhere also. That's the only reason I wandered in here in the first place. I don't think it's actually doing any harm, it's just sort of annoying. --Bongwarrior (talk) 03:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I have the same problem, tested on two different pages --Enric Naval (talk) 03:30, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems to have been corrected, I think. --Bongwarrior (talk) 03:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Does not appear anymore. Gary King (talk) 05:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Diff bugs?

Resolved. Gary King (talk) 05:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I still see the "newer edit" link on the most recent diff. Is this a problem with MediaWiki? Alexius08 is welcome to talk about his contributions. 03:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Resolved, per above discussion. Gary King (talk) 05:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GREAT REQUEST

I am welcoming everyone warmly very much! I am a Polish Wikipedian. I would like to ask you for help very much in convincing my countrymen from Polish wikipedia so that they send the correct official name of the state of Nepal, following the example of you. Repeatedly I tried to implement updates, but they all the time for her aren't accepting. They are undermining the credibility of your information. Please compare both versions and pay attention to the official onomastics of the country: english version, polish version. Could you help it?

If grammatical mistakes are appearing in the text please to forgive me, because I am not knowing the English well. ; -)

83.31.142.53 (talk) 15:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that editors of the english wikipedia have absolutely no influence over foreign-lanaguage wikipedias. You will have to discuss this issue with other editors of the polish wikipedia. Happy‑melon 15:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Subpage moves

Resolved.

According to the latest Signpost technology report, subpages can now be moved during a page move. I have been testing this: when you do a move, you not get a checkbox for " Move all subpages, if applicable". When I try this with a user subpage with a subpage, I get:

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 "1062: Duplicate entry '2-Gadget850/movetest1' for key 2 (10.0.0.235)".

The main page gets moved, but not the subpage. Any thoughts? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

See bug 14258. MER-C 03:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

This worked for me on my test wiki. I don't know why that error would occur. A shell user needs to look into why it's failing on Wikimedia projects. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed now. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ChipIn for Wikiprojects

I like the Wikipedia:Bounty board, but I see WikiProjects as not having the same support it affords to articles. If, for example, someone wanted to set http://www.chipin.com/ on a Wikiproject, there would be no way to mark that up. Does the Foundation have the technical capability to fund WikiProjects as well as particular tasks? 76.240.230.195 (talk) 17:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

In case that was not clear, such money would be apportioned into bounties, for example. 76.240.230.195 (talk) 17:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

The Foundation isn't funding particular tasks; individual editors are. And it's not unheard of for several editors to jointly fund a particular bounty. It isn't clear what the question here is - if it's whether the software can or will be modified to allow a chip-in widget to be embedded on a Wikipedia page, the answer is no - Wikipedia isn't Facebook. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:05, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is it possible for an expression to return a user's last edit date & time ?

User:SoxBot V was indefinitely blocked today, sending us back to the dark ages as far as status updates go. Is there any expression that will return the date and time of a users last edit? Could this possibly be implemented? (Having this would allow a workaround for status indication that did not require a bot). xenocidic ( talk ¿ listen ) 23:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Since this is a WP:PERF issue, any ideas that come up really should be run by a dev before someone implements it. MBisanz ^talk 23:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• The status bots were helpful, and since they have been shutdown by the dev's having another method to query this information would be helpful, but seems to beg for the perennially denied request for user variables... — xaosflux ^Talk 23:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Writing a simple MediaWiki extension to provide this information via parser functions shouldn't be too difficult. Making it update reliably without totally ruining page caching is a little bit trickier, but not much. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

My Qui friends/status system is able to tell you when a user last edited (does API queries). --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Cobi has worked on a mediawiki extension : [6] (bugzilla:14384). Thanks for the input all. xenocidic ( talk ¿ listen ) 12:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you DJ, I will use this in the interim/if the bugzilla doesn't get accepted. Good work. xenocidic ( talk ¿ listen ) 13:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The bugzilla request was closed as WONTFIX, however there is an extension that sort of does the status thing --Chris 10:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Extension

With the fate of User:SoxBot V, I have been constantly looking for an alternative. After looking at mediawiki.org, I found an extenstion that automatically does it: mw:Extension:OnlineStatus. While some users may not like it, i believe it could be a benefit to Wikipedia, especially at WP:HAU. Before filling out a bugzilla request though, I would like community consensus. What do people think of this extension? Soxred 93 22:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Just did a quick read, but it looks like you have to manually turn this on and off? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd personally first like to know what the developers think of that extension. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

One would set their Online/Offline toggle in their preferences, so one could log on, set this to online, getting ready to log out, set this to offline. There might be some code to add to a monobook file to do this automatically. 209.244.31.53 (talk) 18:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ID duplication

This is a problem I've run into before: pages with more than one stub marker or navbox (read: not one of each, at least two of either) generate XHTML errors because IDs cannot be called multiple times. The fix is to change the "id=" statement to "class=", which is simple enough, however Wikipedia has countless templates. Is there a solution to this other than trudging through the templates and changing everything manually?·· TVO_talk 05:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

This should not happen. Do you have some articles that have this problem ? The fix is not to change id= to class= btw. That is a bad way to solve this problem. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Ouch, actually this does happen exactly like he said, because all stub templates (conforming to current standards) will contain a table wrapped inside a <div class="boilerplate metadata" id="stub">. The other two options would be

• Run a bot to change all stub templates to use id="{{subst:PAGENAME}}" i.e. the name of the template e.g. id="Latvia-bio-stub" or whatever.
• Change the software to prevent duplicate id attributes by numbering them sequentially after the first. Note that this is already done for section headings with duplicate names to keep the TOC working properly:

If you have these the same page	You get something like:
== Foo == == Foo ==	<p><a name="Foo" id="Foo"></a></p> <h2><span class="mw-headline">Foo</span></h2> <p><a name="Foo_2" id="Foo_2"></a></p> <h2><span class="mw-headline">Foo</span></h2>

Latter option is probably better as it will fix more scenarios than have been identified, and it won't make the job queue go over 9,000. — CharlotteWebb 16:00, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Probably closer to a million actually - we have 850,000 stubs assessed through WP:1.0 quite apart from those that haven't been bannered. So the second option is considerably more elegant than the first and, as you say Charlotte, this problem occurs with more than just the stub templates. Happy‑melon 20:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, this is bad. Suggest a bot fixes it all. Having duplicate ids is not something that mediawiki should handle in my opinion. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

See bug 4515http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4515. One problem (which is why Tidy doesn't fix this automatically) is that renumbering id's will basically break them: any styles or links to that ID will just break. People will have to stop abusing id's for things like stub templates in any case. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Simetrical, I only suggested renumbering id's after the first... wouldn't any link intended to point to them would already be broken? — CharlotteWebb 20:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right, it causes no problems with links (which probably go to the first anyway). It breaks styles, however (#stub may be styled), and possibly some JS. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Software tor handling

Just a quick note to let everybody know that the TorBlock extension has now been enabled on Wikimedia sites. All Tor blocks are now overridden by a Wikimedia-wide system. It will forbid unregistered users from editing through Tor. I realise that a lot of problems are caused by pagemove vandals using sockpuppets through tor, and this is why, in the extension, I have subjected all tor users to much stricter autoconfirmed requirements. Users editing through tor will now require 100 edits and a 90 days to become autoconfirmed. I hope that this addresses the objections to my extension (I've spoken to a few checkusers, stewards, and other developers, and they seemed to think this was a reasonable compromise). If not, you know where to find me. — Werdna talk 08:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like fun! Any chance of you putting a few lines at mw:Extension:TorBlock so we have more of an idea how this extension actually works? Happy‑melon 09:02, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea, I wish it would hardblock the tor nodes, but I know some places like Chinese Wiki wouldnt work if that was done WMF-wide. MBisanz ^talk 09:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I haven't actually looked at the extension, but it might be possible to have a hardblock configuration variable. Mr.Z-man 23:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problem maximising Wikipedia images in IE7

Resolved.

Hello, recently I've been unable to maximise about 75% of Wikipedia images. I get the error message

"Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abd_el-Krim.jpg

Operation aborted"

After doing a bit of searching around, I came across these two links that show the same problem but don't help solve it: http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/718305-cannot-maximize-wikipedia-images.html and http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20587288-IE-Error-Message-While-Browsing-Wikipedia

Most of the answers that I've found mention something about fiddling with Java code, something I don't have any knowledge of. I've tried running IE with no add-ons and the problem still persists. This isn't happening on any other website, and I'm not sure why it's just started up today!

I'm using IE7.0.5730.13 on XP Pro SP2. Thanks for any help! 78.143.205.7 (talk) 11:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

There are bugs in Internet Explorer which trigger this behavior sometimes, when some (but not all) JavaScript operations are performed in a certain order when there's some bad HTML code (or sometimes maybe for no particular reason). Some recent changes to English Wikipedia-specific custom JavaScript which fix a separate bug can sometimes trigger this one, but that is fixed by a slight change to the HTML layout.

So, it's possible for the moment to encounter the second error with the new JavaScript and the old cached HTML:

• If you use any browser but Internet Explorer, you won't encounter the bug.
• If you visit pages updated since yesterday, you won't encounter the bug.
• If you log in, you'll get all newly rendered pages and won't encounter the bug.
• If you wait for up to 30 days, all the old cached HTML will fall out of the system and you won't encounter the bug.

We might poke a bit to see if we can tweak the JavaScript in a way that doesn't trigger either bug, but no guarantees. --brion (talk) 16:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I just installed Opera anyway, which seems a lot better so far. No bugs or crashes as of yet! Cheers 78.143.205.7 (talk) 17:51, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The trigger here was an improperly-closed <span/> in MediaWiki:Shareduploadwiki-desc. While technically that's valid XHTML, Internet Explorer gets confused by it, and its HTML parser freaks out when the JavaScript gets run. It's now fixed, but isn't a problem with the moved JS trigger anyway. Old cached pages with the bugs will still apply unless we can find a workaround at the JS. --brion (talk) 19:37, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I found a tweak to the JavaScript code which doesn't trigger the "operation aborted" error even when the bad HTML is present. You _might_ have to clear your local cache if you've already got the previous version, but new visits shouldn't have any problems. --brion (talk) 20:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] underground nuclear explosions

In an attempt to convert from amateur to professional writer, I am in need of an important answer. A hypothetical cache of nuclear weapons, set off simultaneously a mile or so underground, what would the effects be? Massive earthquakes? Eruptions? Nuclear fallout of any kind? Keeping in mind the necessary pipelines, elevator shafts, and all the whatnot... would the surface get much of anything? Thanks in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.201.115.120 (talk) 21:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

This is not a Wikipedia technical question. You want Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science. Algebraist 21:44, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but it could be. What if the underground nuclear bomb is set off one mile away from the location of the WikiMedia servers? How much would the normal operation of Wikipedia be affected? ;-) Waltham, The Duke of 01:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Delete confirmation

This one might only be understood by admins who delete pages or those more familiar with MediaWiki than I am =D. When I delete a page, there's a page for confirmation in which I select the reason (A7, G4, G8 or whatever). Until about two weeks ago the delete reason was fed automatically from the CSD template. The content also didn't show up in the "other reason" box, which it now does. I don't know if this was changed by consensus, but is there a script or something that will stop it doing that? It makes CSD (currently with a +100 backlog) patrol more tedious because I have to delete the content first. Thanks, PeterSymonds (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Might be best to bring this to WP:AN, just to get their attention. If you got cookie problems, though, then this is the right place! :p Gary King (talk) 19:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Heh, embarrassed now.:) Thanks, over to AN I go...Thanks Gary! PeterSymonds (talk) 19:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Orsilochus ordered incorrectly in category

Can anyone figure out why Orsilochus shows up incorrectly in Category:Characters in the Odyssey? It appears first on the category page, as if it was defaultsorted as an asterisk, even though it's not, and I can't figure out why, and it's driving me absolutely nuts. The article appears sorted correctly in all other categories. Ford MF (talk) 22:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

It is because {{Characters in the Odyssey}} has the * sort key in it. I just manually added that category to the page, so know it sorts like the rest. I am guessing the sort key should be removed from the template though. - AWeenieMan (talk) 22:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Ahh. Now I see what was going on. Someone wanted the template to be in the category at the top, but their way of doing it added a sort key to all the articles. Anyhow, I fixed the template, so going forward there shouldn't be problems. - AWeenieMan (talk) 22:50, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Terrific, thanks. Ford MF (talk) 22:56, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Looking for more input on user script suggestion

I recently suggested a method for avoiding script incompatibility at wt:WikiProject User scripts. Since that page isn't especially active, I'd like to bring it to interested editors' attention and hopefully get some input on it. The discussion is at wt:WikiProject User scripts#Suggestion to avoid script incompatibility. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 22:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Please Post On Bugzilla, Thanks!

I would be great if we could click on the version instead of having to have to click on the 2 radio buttons just to get to the later version. Please post this on bugzilla, because I don't have an account, thanks!68.148.164.166 (talk) 02:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

If you click the (last) link next to the revision you want to diff, you will be able to see the next change. Nakon 02:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] m:WikiMiniAtlas disabled?

Resolved.

It looks like the m:WikiMiniAtlas has been disabled or is otherwise broken in the English Wikipedia. It no longer appears on any coordinate pages at all. There's no mention of its removal on the {{coord}} template talk page, the m:WikiMiniAtlas page, or the wiki project. Anyone know what's up? There's also a discussion on this at the help desk -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this change to MediaWiki:Common.js [7]. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:33, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Good catch! I didn't even think to look there! After looking at the talk page, it might well have this this change -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

It is the same change— we are just looking at it differently. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

No, they are different diffs, but I'll move it off of the secure server. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think either of those changes should be causing the problem: mine is to a completely unrelated part of the code, while Brion's shouldn't have any effect unless you're using the secure server. (And no, the globe icon doesn't appear on the secure server, either.) Besides, I think we can usually assume Brion knows what he's doing. :-) The problem might be in m:MediaWiki:Wikiminiatlas.js too, although that page doesn't seem to have changed since April. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I would guess that it may be related to the domain change of the toolserver, but I really have no idea. --- RockMFR 00:17, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Fixed it at least for the URL form I see at San Francisco. There might be others. --brion (talk) 00:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Gee, one week of vacation and suddenly something exciting is happening. Thanks for adding the new toolserver.org URL. That should be it. --Dschwen 16:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Is this related to the fact that suddenly all coordinate URL's are now rendering as gibberish in my browser (Firefox)? Nibios (talk) 15:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Same thing on another machine using IE 7. Nibios (talk) 15:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What happened to the fraction "buttons"?

What happened to the fraction "buttons" (1/2, 1/3, 2/3, etc.) below the article text edit window? They were very handy to insert the symbols into an article. Should I take their removal as a Wikipedia WP:MOS "rule" they should not be used in articles? — X96lee15 (talk) 16:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the history for MediaWiki:Edittools, "Please don't use Unicode superscripts, subscripts, and fractions in article text - it creates accessibility problems. Use the <sup> and <sub> tags instead, or TeX for formulas." I don't see anything in Wikipedia:Accessibility on this, so I'm not sure what the problem is. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

And by doing this the editor has made it impossible to enter for example fractions of an inch, and suggests installing software (i.e. :LaTeX) to allow you to continue to edit. So much for the "Encylopedia Anybody Can Edit" - well anybody if they are willing and able to install software items on their computer and edit off line. The arrogance of some users is amazing.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

With superscript and subscript one can type 1¹/₂" and get 1¹/₂", but it is far from ideal - too many clicks. DuncanHill (talk) 17:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

No... LaTeX is software installed here, on Wikipedia. You can use it to insert formula using the <math> tags. See WP:MATH. — Edokter • Talk • 17:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

So typing 1<math>\frac{1}{2}</math>" gives 1", which looks crap. DuncanHill (talk) 18:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Or try this 1<math>\tfrac{1}{2}</math> which gives 1", which also looks crap. DuncanHill (talk) 18:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree. Pages like 1959 Ryder Cup would look terrible without the ½ character. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

They have been restored - ½⅓⅔¼¾⅛⅜⅝⅞woohoo! Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 18:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That was me, because there is clearly no consensus for their removal. This needs more discussion at WT:MOS or somewhere. Happy‑melon 18:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, thank you very much!!! — X96lee15 (talk) 19:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with 1+¹⁄₂″ ? --Random832 (contribs) 20:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks ugly (the 2 goes below the line), and where did you find out how to type it? DuncanHill (talk) 20:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

{{frac}}. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:30, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but how did you find it? DuncanHill (talk) 20:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That is a very good question. We have a lot of good templates, but the organization stinks. If I have a job that needs a template I've never used before, I use Special:PrefixIndex and look in template space for a logical name— this really works a lot of times. Other times, I use a template because I saw it used somewhere else. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, the template documentation page itself for {{frac}} shows problems in my brower (IE7), with truncated text. I stopped using frac for simple fractions (like ½) long ago for this reason. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Random832 asks, "What's wrong with 1+¹⁄₂?″ The apparent grounds for rremoving the fraction "buttons" is "Please don't use Unicode superscripts, subscripts, and fractions in article text - it creates accessibility problems". 1½ (Unicode) is a lot more accessible than 1+¹⁄₂ (using the frac template) because:

• Decent screen reader programs can handle Unicode, which has been the dominant character encoding since about a year after the launch of Windows XP.
• +¹⁄₂ (using the frac template) generates the following HTML (which I got by using my browser's "View source" facility on this page):

<span style="white-space:nowrap"><s style="display:none">+</s><span class="template-frac">¹<big>⁄</big>₂</span></span>

which produces an adequate visual representation of the fraction ½ but which no screen reader software is ever likely to interpret as a fraction. Philcha (talk) 21:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so sure about that, though of course real evidence can only be obtained by testing various screen readers, which I haven't done. Still, stripping away the HTML markup, that boils down to "+1⁄2", where the "⁄" is a Unicode fraction slash. I seems at least reasonable that a screen reader should read that as "one half", or at least "one slash two". Certainly it's less ambiguous that just plain "1/2" using an ordinary slash. (Oh, and on the other hand, "¼", "½" and "¾" are long-established ISO Latin 1 characters, so it seems at least misleading, even if technically correct, to label them "Unicode fractions".) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:39, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The only screen reader I am slightly familiar with is JAWS, and it seems quite popular. Checking their support page,[8] it supports all of the Unicode characters, including fractions. Not an exhaustive study. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 23:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

&frac12;, &frac14;, and &frac34; work if you don't want to scroll down for those three. --NE2 00:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC) (Ampersands escaped to allow the entities to display as intended. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:44, 3 June 2008 (UTC))

Sorry to be the cause of so much trouble...the fractions are fine really, and I shouldn't have removed them. My problem is with the Unicode superscript characters.

HTML superscript: E=mc²

Unicode superscript: E=mc²

As you can see the HTML superscript is much easier to read. Also, if you're trying to search for a number in a superscript, you can't if the Unicode superscript character was used unless you copy-and-paste it into the search box. Searching is easier if the <sup> tag is used instead because you can search for "2" instead of "²". —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes it's true that JAWS, the screen reader I use, supports Unicode characters, and has done so for a while now. The problem is that the pronunciation for almost all unicode characters outside Latin 1 and the users Windows code page is undefined because of memory limitations. The only Unicode characters that have defined pronunciations by default are some letters of the Arabic alphabet and arrow symbols. I use the default settings and only ½, ¼, and ¾ speak properly for me with JAWS 8 - not the most recent version but IMO a representative sample. Graham87 09:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Superscript 1, 2, and 3 are in ISO Latin-1 (8859-1) and available as &sup1; &sup2; &sup3;. In Firefox I find expressions like E=mc² or "g = 9.8 m/s²" more legible when they are used; HTML superscripts come out too large and cause the line spacing to be irregular. And all the more so when I use lynx, which I sometimes do. --207.176.159.90 (talk) 22:26, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Page move bug

Screenshot of move confirmation page

While moving Talk:University of Missouri–Columbia to Talk:University of Missouri for a requested move, I checked the button to automatically move subpages. The subpages were moved to the User: namespace instead of the Talk: namespace. Please see the above screenshot. --B (talk) 18:23, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed about half an hour ago. rev:35870. Mr.Z-man 18:30, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it was a maximum of 25 minutes ago ... it happened at 14:05 eastern / 18:05 GMT. --B (talk) 18:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I installed the fix at 11:05 Pacific time, you got in just under the wire. :) --brion (talk) 19:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The issue I discussed at #Subpage moves appears to be resolved as well. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Anyone know if this bug is still outstanding? Should someone knock at bugzilla? Happy‑melon 21:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

bug 14356http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14356, WONTFIX. It's not a bug, it's completely intended. The feature would be nonfunctional if the throttle applied per page rather than per action. Restricting the action to sysop only would be the appropriate thing to do here if it's a problem. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Er, did anyone think about writing it such that the throttle is updated after the page moves are done? My thoughts were that if you've got at least one pagemove left in your allowance you're allowed to move the page, but then it adds however many pages to your count so the next time you try and move something it finds you're way over. Basically, you'll always be allowed to move all the subpages, but in many cases that will put you over the throttle limit so you can't move anything else. Is there a reason that wasnt' considered in the bug thread? Happy‑melon 10:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Why should that be treated differently, though? I explained my thoughts on the purpose of throttles in the commit message for r35897: "Rate limits should be applied per user action, not based on how large the effect of each action is. Note that moving a page with its talk page only counts as one move for rate limits; this is the same principle. The only point of rate limits (as far as I can think of) is to prevent unauthorized automated scripts from creating a mess in 30 seconds that it will take 10 hours to clean up by hand. Since a move with subpages is no harder to clean up (i.e., revert) than a move without subpages, they should count the same for rate limits." —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, is there a button to delete the hundreds of redirects left behind by page-move vandalism in a single click, too? —Cryptic 21:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Admittedly, no, not yet, as I mentioned in that revision comment. It might be a good idea to add an additional permission for this, and restrict it to only sysops on enwiki for the time being. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 13:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nie tłomačtie metek dla kratek do vypełniania na ięzyk narodovy

[edit] Problem description

Preferring a language different from English causes the labels of text input controls to be translated, which in turn causes the user thus solicited to fill the fields in the preferred language. As a result, the information entered there is unavailable to users whose preferred language is different, which disrupts the collaborative character of Wikipedia.

[edit] Recommendation

Please make these labels an exemption from localisation. See my talk page for an extensive discussion of the subject.

--Yecril (talk) 16:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

That would make it very difficult to log in and work with a site whose primary language is not one you speak, so that's not a good idea. --brion (talk) 00:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yecril's position is that, because the input fields for edit comments and section headers (see above) is in the user's localized language, he is obligated to enter that information in his language. Hence, he has insisted on going around making edits with comments in Polish, and adding Talk sections (like this) with headers in Polish, despite the fact that he is obviously capable of writing in English.

To me, this obstinate behavior defies common sense (and common courtesy) on an English-language wiki.

However, as far as the UI is concerned, it does seem like a reasonable (if minor) improvement to label input fields with the site's language if a response in the site's language is expected—if the user knows enough English to enter an English edit comment, they should know enough English to understand "Edit summary". (How is the user supposed to "work" on the site otherwise?) Other UI elements that are read-only should of course be localized.

—Steven G. Johnson (talk) 01:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

All in all, does this request apply to Wikipedia or to Wikimedia or to MediaWiki? I am not good at discerning the layers involved. I would like to file a feature request and I am not sure where to do it. --Yecril (talk) 11:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki. The proper place to request the change is Bugzilla. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 13:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki link, vandalism cleanup, style & layout comments and questions, etc etc. --brion (talk) 16:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tooltip mania

Is anyone else finding the tooltips with every wikilink excessive and annoying, or am I the only conservative fool? Whereever I'm placing the cursor a tooltip is blocking the text I'm trying to read. Is there a way to shut them off? Arman ^(Talk) 07:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if you're the only one, but I find them quite useful. OTOH, I have a script that makes the tooltip on redirects rather more useful (e.g. it tells me WP:DIE points to Wikipedia:No personal attacks). Anomie⚔ 10:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Format issue

The article on MARK STEYN display improperly but I cannot understand why that is. The "AWARD" section should follow that about the Canadian Human Rights. It seems correct in the edit window but, close the edit, and the article page shows the two sections running together. --Interactbiz (Norm, Vancouver Canada) (talk) 20:05, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. See Wikipedia:FAQ/Editing#Why does part of an article not appear, although it's there in the edit screen?. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GeoHack

GeoHack isn't working. That is, if you click the latitude and longitude at the upper right corner of Venice for instance, it shows a page of garbage instead of links to maps. The same problem occurs with other links to GeoHack such as The Bronx and Athens, and on both Flock and Explorer browsers. Art LaPella (talk) 22:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem also occurs in FireFox 2.0.0.14 WinXp. Algebraist 22:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Something is screwed up at Template:GeoTemplate. I reverted to an old revision and it's working now... still looking into what caused it. --- RockMFR 02:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

That was bizarre. There was nothing wrong at the template, but effectively null editing it fixed the issue. Whatever. --- RockMFR 02:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia logo font

What is the name of the font used in the Wikipedia logo?

Is it available anywhere?

The Transhumanist    01:00, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Try asking Nohat (talk · contribs) since he designed it. MBisanz ^talk 01:16, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Good idea! The Transhumanist    01:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

You can also ask User:Equazcion I know he knows, although I haven't seen him online for a few weeks. -- penubag  (talk) 01:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

It's Hoefler Text. (roman, smallcaps, italic, 13px, are all mentioned, at meta:Logo and this and this and this and this, but I'm not sure which style each element is). It's apparently available if you have an Apple computer (and possibly adobe programs?), or pay Hoefler & Frere-Jones US$299 for a single cpu licence. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:47, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tool for finding diffs

Are there any tools for finding the diff URL for a certain piece of text? It's really a lot of work to search through the history manually if there are many edits.

(And on a tangent, I wish we could just overhaul the entire talk page system into something more like a web forum - with full wikisyntax and communal-editable spaces in each thread, of course - but with thread formatting, usernames, timestamps, meta-links, archiving, and so on taken care of automatically.) — Omegatron (talk) 02:54, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you looking for WikiBlame?-gadfium 06:27, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

That looks like a really cool tool. Bookmarked! Regarding improvements to the talk page, it will most likely not happen because the whole point of a wiki is to be as flexible as possible, so it's how it is right now. Gary King (talk) 07:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, improvements to the talk page interface are in the works - see mw:Extension:LiquidThreads. Graham87 09:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

In the works does not guarantee implementation, however. It hasn't been touched for four months. Also, I'm sure there will be some disagreements over whether it should be implemented or not. Gary King (talk) 17:09, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've used WikiBlame. It's not that useful for this kind of thing. The user has made more than 1000 edits to the talk page, and it's about 10x as much work to find each individual diff and copy and paste it. I have the username and timestamp, but not the URL. — Omegatron (talk) 00:50, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Can the URL be generated directly from the timestamp of the comment? — Omegatron (talk) 00:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes! There is a tool, different from Wikiblame called wpW5. User:Franamax developed it. Look on his userpage, and ask him and he'll email you a copy. -- penubag  (talk) 01:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

This is an external software tool? For what operating system? — Omegatron (talk) 01:27, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's an external tool exclusively for Windows, unless you know of another operating system that can read .exe's. It is really useful and I recommend it. -- penubag  (talk) 01:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm in Linux, though I might be able to run it with WINE. Is it kind of the same functionality as WikiBlame, though? — Omegatron (talk) 01:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I haven't used wikiblame yet but what wpW5 does is searche for when a diff was first inputed and tells you who and when it happened. For example, I tell the tool to look on the article, Dog and then I input a sting of text from the article (or was) that I want the tool to find when it first appeared. It then tells me User:Example wrote that sentence on this date. -- penubag  (talk) 01:54, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what WikiBlame does, though the interface is kind of confusing. This tool goes through the edit history diff by diff to find it?

Does anyone know if there's a way to generate diffs directly from datestamps? It seems the diff URL is just a sequential number for every single edit on any page. — Omegatron (talk) 01:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

You can go to the action=history of the page and use the &offset parameter (which takes a timestamp of the format &offset=yyyymmddhhmmss) ... for example, if you know the timestamp of an edit made to the Main Page was "15:34, 20 March 2008" you could find the diff thusly: title=Main_Page&action=history&dir=prev&limit=1&offset=20080320153400. --Splarka (rant) 07:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that's helpful. Could probably write a javascript for that.

I was originally digging through the talk page's history, but discovered that it was easier to go to the user's contributions, list 500, and then Ctrl-F search for the time of the edit in question. — Omegatron (talk) 17:16, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sections generated by templates, and the section "edit" link

Can anyone tell me why User:Pharos/Sandbox doesn't have a section "edit" link, and how I can fix it so that it does have one? Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 15:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

There are no sections; see Help:Section. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:59, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there any way to fix it so there are sections?--Pharos (talk) 16:02, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

You create sections by using the "=" character, thus "==== Section ====" gives

[edit] Section

I'm not sure how this would work in your template. You can add an edit-like template with {{edit}}. What are you trying to do? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Well if a "section edit" link did appear, it would point to a section of the transcluded page (which in this case doesn't exist unless the parameter is filled in). There isn't any way to have a "section edit" link on a template properly link to a section of the page where the template is being used, unless you spoof the edit link and add an extra parameter for the section number (something like /index.php?title={{FULLPAGENAME}}&action=edit&section={{{2}}}, the last part being necessary because there's no way for a template to know how many times it has been used on a page, or how many sections are above it) if that's what you meant. — CharlotteWebb 16:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there any way to specify the section name rather than the section number?--Pharos (talk) 17:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I am trying to make a template that will create a new section if a certain variables are inputted, but that will create nothing if other variables are inputted. The name of the new section, if it is created, would be based on the inputted variable. I hope this makes sense. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 16:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)--Pharos (talk) 16:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I think this has to do with the (new) preprocessor. meta:Migration to the new preprocessor has more. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:05, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

The reason there is no link is because you are using <h2>. Soxred 93 17:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Nope. It's just folks playing in my sandbox (which I'm totally cool with).--Pharos (talk) 17:56, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've given up on the first idea. Is there any way to create a new section if certain variables are inputted, but that create nothing if other variables are inputted (supposing that the code was on the page itself, not a template)? So far, this seems to be impossible too.--Pharos (talk) 02:28, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tools: link target

When is the tools: interwiki-like link going to be targeted to point to toolserver.org instead of tools.wikimedia.de? — Dispenser 05:38, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Its been updated on the Interwiki map, so it will be updated once the script is run to update the database. Mr.Z-man 06:40, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] i have an illegal hacker block

i can not access to this talk page. i think a fascist Spanish hacker has blocked my access. Please, could some checkuser check it and see what is happening there with my IP?

i don't know where to leave this message so if anyone know what i have to do a little help i would thank it very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sclua (talk • contribs) 17:31, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I mediated a case involving you and this article a while back, and when I was dealing with it there was no mention of topic-banning you or anything - obviously this is worse than a topic ban (and is not permitted by WP policy). I doubt it's a hacker (remember WP:AGF) so it was probably a problem with your internet. We (Wikipedia) can't do anything so you could try again, or leave it...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 17:39, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Also suggesting that 'Spanish fascists' are responsible is disruptive, and makes your question much less legitimate. Please try to state your problems clearly and objectively, rather then blindly accusing 'fascists' for your problem. Thanks, Prodego ^talk 22:52, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem solved i would like to thank the anonymous expert for solving my problem. If he leaves a messsage like "hello" on my page talk i will call him if i have this problem again, if not, i will try to come back here (i am saying "try" because i was unabled to access to these Village pump sections too, only post. Many thanks. (i will try to moderate my vocabulary). --Sclua (talk) 11:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Baseball Card Adventure

This is really puzzling me. {{Baseball Card Adventure}} has the Category:Novel series templates cat with two noinclude tags wrapped around it. Yet despite this...on the article Joe "Stosh" Stoshack it still shows that Novel series template category. How can this be fixed? hbdragon88 (talk) 23:28, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

It didn't transclude the template; it was either substed or copied. Fixed now. —Cryptic 00:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)