Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla because there is no guarantee developers will read this page. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug needs immediate attention).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

« Archives, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212

User-friendly editnotice system

I have done some thinking and experimenting regarding editnotices. (That's the header message boxes that are shown above the edit window when you edit a page.) I have figured out how we can make a much more user-friendly system. It will be easier to use and edit for both admins and users, and it can supply several new functions that the current system doesn't have.

I have coded up all that is needed for the new system. I have installed a fully working demo of the system over at {{editnotice loader}}. See also discussion over at Wikipedia talk:Editnotice#Slash style editnotices.

I would like some input from people what they think about the new system. Please discuss this at Wikipedia talk:Editnotice, not here.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't really understand what you've done, but most functionality should be written into software, not hacked together with templates. — Werdna • talk 03:25, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, several users have asked the devs to make this system but the devs said they didn't want to. One reason was that they thought it only fits for more mature Wikipedias such as the English Wikipedia. And then I realised I could do it in template code only. (And it won't cost much server load since it only executes in the edit windows. Compared to most infoboxes and navboxes out there this code is very lightweight, so compared to the page content in the edit preview this doesn't cost much.)

And another benefit is that there are many template coders here that can help out and fine tune this code. If/when we have had a stable version of it for a long time the devs might consider to copy the idea to system code instead. Thus they don't need to spend all the work figuring out how people want it to look and feel. But why should they? It's the same situation as navboxes. Why should we ask the devs to move the navbox functionality to system code when it runs fine as template code? We have many template programmers, but just a handful of devs.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:23, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Who are these mysterious devs and where are their reasons actually given? --brion (talk) 14:40, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

See Krimpet's comment at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 46#Custom edit messages. — CharlotteWebb 15:39, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Why should we ask the devs to move the [whatever] functionality to system code when it runs fine as template code? - So other people who use MediaWiki (smaller Wikimedia wikis, Wikia, other users) can use it without trying to figure out which CSS, JS, and half dozen templates to copy from us. Mr.Z-man 16:05, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

You haven't yet described what you've actually done. You've gone and given links to a zillion templates, but I still haven't seen a clear description of what you want to do, and what benefits it provides. I get this vague feeling from the reference to Krimpet's comment that it's got to do with using the namespace name rather than the namespace number. If you describe what the system is, then we might be able to work something out in the software end, instead of horrible template hacks. — Werdna • talk 02:11, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Werdna: My message above that started out this section was just an announcement. It has links to three pages that explains it all. I don't want to fill the Village pump with lengthy explanations. (Since it takes a rather long explanation, even though the system when used will be very user-friendly.) So for starters you can follow this link and read what you see there: Template:Editnotice loader. Then you can follow the two other links in my message above to learn more and discuss this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I read the template documentation, but it didn't make any sense to me. The discussion page describes what you're actually on about when you talk about "hyphen-style" and "slash-style". My apologies for not finding that earlier.

On the substantive matter, if developers have really refused to implement what you call "slash-style" edit notices, it was probably for a reason. Note that the comments of a random developer don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the entire development team, and functionality should only be considered "rejected" if a bug has been closed as WONTFIX. In this case, the problem is probably that slashes in the MediaWiki namespace (which is, after all, for localisation), are used for language selection. Perhaps the same problems apply to javascript/template hacks that you throw together.

I contend that MediaWiki-namespace is a bad place to put edit-notices in the first place. They should be put in their own table in the database, as we store other data like page protection, blocks, and so on. If you want something implemented in software, file a bug. If the bug is closed with the outcome that a feature is not likely to be implemented for some technical reason, perhaps it shouldn't be done in template, either. — Werdna • talk 02:54, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Chess pages will not load

I can't get pages that use Template:Chess_diagram to load. An example is checkmate, which I have not been able to get to load for two hours. Is there a way to get these pages to load, or is there a technical problem? Bubba73 (talk), 18:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Strange, they loaded just fine for me. Try these two section edit links:[1][2] The former doesn't use the template, the latter does. (I'm just trying to verify that it is indeed the template) EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

For me, the first oneloads in a second or two; the second one does not. Bubba73 (talk), 19:43, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, the second one does load in about 14 seconds. Bubba73 (talk), 19:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I waited 4+ minutes on the main article and it would not load, even partially. Over the last few months, the diagrams have been getting slower and slower. When it works, I can see each square of the board being loaded. Bubba73 (talk), 20:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The image on the Wikipedia main page doesn't load either, but the text does. Bubba73 (talk), 20:07, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Checkmate does not load in 14 minutes. Bubba73 (talk), 20:24, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Check (chess) will load in about 8 seconds, but has only two diagrams. Bubba73 (talk), 20:36, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Chess opening takes more than 50 seconds to load with action=purge (<!-- Served by srv134 in 54.371 secs. -->). Checkmate just dies with "X-Squid-Error:ERR_READ_TIMEOUT". The problem is probably just too many images on the page. Each chessboard is made up of 68 images (64 squares and 4 images for the sides), so on chess opening with 30 boards, there's 2040 images on the page. Checkmate has only 4 more boards, but that's an additional 272 images, plus a handful of other images. It would probably be best if these were done by an extension that generated just one png image per board, similar to the <math> notation. Some other options would be to just use one image for the chessboard, then position the images of the pieces (with a transparent background) over the board with relative positioning. Technically you could do it with no images at all with HTML tables and Chess symbols in Unicode, but the symbols probably aren't well supported and it would probably be easier to use an image for the board than a 10x10 table. Mr.Z-man 21:38, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

There are perhaps thousands of diagrams in the chess articles. Can such a change be made without breaking the diagrams? Also the individual squares used to be PNGs, but they were changed to the recomended SVGs a year or to ago, if my memory is correct. Bubba73 (talk), 21:57, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

We should really be using an extension, not a template. — Werdna • talk 02:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Can that be done without breaking all of the diagrams? There are about 2,500 chess articles. Not all of them have diagrams, and there may not be thousands of them, but there are certainly many hundred diagrams in the articles. Bubba73 (talk), 02:07, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there are really that many distinct images on the pages. There are 6 pieces x 2 piece colors x 2 square colors + 2 colors of empty squares = 26 different images maximum. If both diagram sizes are used (Template:chess diagram and Template:chess diagram small) then this is doubled, but that's still only 52 images. I think this was just slow wikimedia servers. The chess opening page loads for me in just a few seconds right now. 165.189.91.148 (talk) 15:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

but it seems that the image for each square is requested from the server, even if it is the same as a previous one. I can see the individual squares filling in. BTW, the page is loading in less than 10 seconds for me today! Bubba73 (talk), 15:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Seems resolved, but I'm still interested in hearing what Werdna was talking about, with using an extension instead of the current set up. -- Ned Scott 04:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

In theory, Template:Chess diagram shouldn't be slow at all. It's not doing any fancy template processing, and uses only a small number of different actual images. It may be that use of individual images is being done inefficiently and this ends up being much slower than desired; this bears investigation. --brion (talk) 18:53, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem did clear up for me the next day. Some other people had the same problem, others didn't. Bubba73 (talk), 20:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, yesterday and today the image of white knights on a light square doesn't load in the diagrams. Bubba73 (talk), 17:54, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

That's an unrelated issue -- it looks like one web server didn't get its software updated properly and may have been propagating the "sometimes silently delete an image file" bug. I believe the file's been replaced by now. (The rogue server has been fixed.)

Note that MrZ-man has been poking at the issue and is experimenting with a tweak to the parser which speeds up multiple uses of the same image on the same page. Looks good so far, will probably get integrated pretty soon. --brion (talk) 18:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. The white knight on a light square still isn't working for me. Speaking of "silently delete an image file", the following three images quit working for me a couple of months ago. But it isn't too important because I replaced them by the equivalent svg files where I was using them. Bubba73 (talk), 01:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, now the white knight on a light square is back, both above and in diagrams. Bubba73 (talk), 05:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Canonical namespace change coming: Image: -> File:

Brion has just announced on the wikitech-l list that he's planning to (finally) change the canonical name of the "Image:" namespace to "File:". Please update your scripts and bots, and note that a lot of templates and MediaWiki pages are also likely to be affected. Please note that, if everything goes as planned, we'll only have about one week to fix things before the change goes live. More details in Brion's post and at bugzilla:44. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I probably should be asking this elsewhere, but shouldn't the change result in Image: being an alternative value, just like how WP: now results in Wikipedia: ? If so, then at least some things won't be broken by the change. -- Ned Scott 02:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I think this was answered before you asked it, in the email linked above. "This should go smoothly and transparently for most purposes. 'Image:' will continue to be an alias, and perhaps even recommended for inline usage.". Anyhow, this is a good change and it's about time... - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

The problems occur when a script expects to be handed "Image:Example.jpg" as page name, but instead gets "File:Example.jpg". --Carnildo (talk) 04:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Aaah, ok. -- Ned Scott 04:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, scripts that use the JavaScript variable wgCanonicalNamespace to determine the namespace will be given "File" instead of the expected "Image". Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 04:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

←Yes, this is excellent! The bots can be updated relatively painlessly, and the namespace's new name should be significantly less confusing to newcomers. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 05:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I read up on the links Ilmari gave above. Nothing is mentioned about template programming. So I really hope that the magic words and variables {{ns:6}}, {{ns:image}} and {{NAMESPACE}} will be updated to return "File", and that they will be updated at about the same moment in time. Or a lot of templates will break. Well, Brion mentions in his latest bugzilla comment that he has not yet fixed {{ns:image}}.

To prevent that literally almost 1 million transclusions of image related templates malfunction I have updated {{image other}} and {{namespace detect}} to understand both "image" and "file". To make life simple I recommend anyone that wants to do namespace detection in template code to use one of those templates.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:26, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

just glancing briefly at Help:Namespace. while I doubt that CSS namespace detection is used much outside of the skins and main css files, has it been accounted for? also, is there any way to check which templates use a given Magic Word (similar to the way we can check which pages a template is transcluded into)? I'm just imagining a few hundreds of minor templates with hand-written namespace detection code getting fouled up, with weeks or months passing before anyone actually notices or reports it. --Ludwigs2 07:48, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Since it was me who wrote that CSS namespace detection section in Help:Namespace I should probably answer this question. :))

Ludwigs2: CSS based namespace detection should not have any problems with this name change, since it uses namespace numbers, not names. In the Image case the CSS class to "detect" is "ns-6", and that won't change.

And a simple way to find usage of a magic word or for instance a CSS class name is to use Special:Search. Try to select only template space, and search for NAMESPACE Image . I got about 170 hits, and some of those are cases of "{{NAMESPACE}}" compared to "Image" that needs fixing. To search for cases of "{{ns:image}}" you do a search for ns image . For me that gave about 230 hits in template space, but none of them was a "{{ns:image}}" case, although one was a switch case with "{{NAMESPACE}}" compared to "{{ns:0}}" and "Image" so it needs fixing.

But beware, Special:Search seems to have some oddities: It doesn't find all pages that has a word, since it often misses cases that we know exist. Even if those cases have been on a page for months. And different users get different hits. And even more oddly the same user seems to see the same hits when searching some day later. I can only guess, but perhaps there are several search servers, each with a different incomplete database, and different users get connected to different servers thus sees different hits, perhaps load balanced based on user IP or so. Some of the tech people in here can perhaps shed some light on what is going on? Anyway, this means it usually is a good idea if several users search for what needs to be fixed, to find as many cases as possible.

Another and more complete option is to ask the very helpful people over at Wikipedia:Bot requests to do a full search, on an off-line copy of the database. But since Special:Search works fairly well I only ask for such a search when I need to do a more advanced search that Special:Search can't handle.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

nothing like a neigh straight from the horses mouth. ok, now that I know how, I'm happy to pitch in looking for template problems once the transition is made. thanks. --Ludwigs2 21:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Several system messages that expect "Image:" as canonical namespace name (as in {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Image|...) also need to be fixed (like Confirmdeletetext and Noarticletext). The {{ns:6}} is a safe choice (now and later), but it's not very user-friendly, so I would wait for Brion to announce if {{ns:image}} would continue to work or maybe {{ns:file}} will start working some time before the switch. —AlexSm 15:00, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Would there be any way of tracking which templates/messages/etc would need to be updated? Maybe have a bot crawl through the template namespace and make a list (or just make the correction right then and there)? -- Ned Scott 04:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixing that so {{ns:image}} still works is a requirement before this gets implemented, so no templates will need updating for that issue. --brion (talk) 18:20, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Would it not be better to have Image and File as two separate namespaces, calling {{ns:file}}, so when people upload a file the MediaWiki recognizes which one it is - e.g. a png uploaded as image, PDF as file, OGG as file etc. That's my 0.02 cents --Walmwutter (talk) 13:03, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The wiki already recognizes the file type, there's no real need to separate things by namespace. If we made them *separate*, then all the existing uses of existing non-image files would break. If we made them *interchangeable in use* but distinct, then, well it'd just be kind of awkward. :)

There's been some thought of just tossing on some more aliases such as Video: and Audio: to make things prettier for embedding -- [[Video:Cool thingy.ovg]] -- but they'd all be functionally equivalent, there's no real benefit to separating them at a syntactic point. --brion (talk) 18:51, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

To make it easy for people to know when what works, here is a table with the variables in question:

Code	Renders as
	At 10 Oct 2008	At 24 May 2024 (today)
{{ns:6}}	Image	File
{{ns:image}}	Image	File
{{ns:file}}	Template:Ns:file	File
{{ns:7}}	Image_talk	File talk
{{ns:image talk}}	Image_talk	File talk
{{ns:file talk}}	Template:Ns:file talk	File talk

The table last column above shows what those codes generate when you see this (last time this page was saved or purged), not when I wrote this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:51, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks like you made a minor error with two of the table cells. I've corrected them; FWIW, the two columns look identical as of this writing. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:16, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Ilmari: Thanks for fixing the middle column.

Gah! I go away for two days and people edit my comment and break it? And they didn't even leave a comment here that they had changed my comment. My version of the table didn't look at all like that, others have edited it and inserted the static middle column. And as Ilmari noted that new column was broken. Although that new column might have some use, so I won't revert it this time. (But I did some clean-up for readability.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:06, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Display of difference of characters on watchlists

✓Created user script. Franamax (talk) 20:18, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I was unsure if I should have filed this under the proposal VP first, but here it goes. One of my main activities on wikipedia is merging abandoned fiction fancruft. I use my watchlist and Recentchanges to keep track of my actions. Now, whenever more than ~1000 characters are removed from an article (as often happens when redirecting after a merger), the character difference shows up in bold red, sticking out like a sore thumb on watchlists. However, when a fan restores the article (nearly always without preceeding discussion or warning, and no improvement to article whatsoever), the character difference shows up in a non-bold green, which is much easier to miss although it is way more disruptive than merging. Is there a good reason to not bolden ~1000 characters additions also? Or should I use a personalized userscript instead (I have never written one yet though)? – sgeureka ^t•c 07:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that the WediaWiki software is making the decisions. For a small negative change, it uses "<span class='mw-plusminus-neg'>(-84)</span>", for a large negative change it uses "<strong class='mw-plusminus-neg'>(-627)</strong>" ("strong" makes it bold), but for any positive number, it uses "<span class='mw-plusminus-pos'>(+19,269)</span>". This means that you can't do what you want by just changing your monobook.css styles.

You seem to have two options here:

• Ask for a change in MediaWiki. VPP is likely not the best place, since it will affect more than just en:wiki. You could try placing a Bugzilla request (don't ask me how) or hope that a passing dev will see this (oh, Simetrical, wherefore art thou?)
• Or you could try writing a user script to loop through the various elements in the document and change their style. I was going to describe how difficult it would be, but instead I just did it. :) You can look in my monobook script to see how I change any positive text addition over 999 characters to bold and fuchsia-coloured, or you can try it yourself for a greater challenge. Franamax (talk) 01:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Your monobook function works perfectly. – sgeureka ^t•c 12:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. For archive purposes, the permalink to my version of the script is here. I'll be disabling it now, that fuchsia colour is driving me nuts! Franamax (talk) 20:18, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Image not appearing

This was raised at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#List of Champ Car circuits but seems to be better suited here. In this edit Image:Detroit Grand Prix on Belle Isle route.svg is added but does not appear. In FF there is a blue link to the image and in IE there is a little box with an X. It seems to be related to the image size as an unsaved test at 73px caused the image to appear but another at 72px does not. Any ideas? CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 09:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I've asked this question over at Commons where the image specialists hang out. Let's see who comes up with the answer first! Franamax (talk) 19:42, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 04:56, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I did some testing. This seems to be a new kind of bug. Usually we just have to change the size 1px to get MediaWiki to render a new version that works. Since if it has rendered a broken version for say 50px then that gets cached almost forever in the image servers, so you simply have to stop using that size. Or of course upload a new version.

But as you say, in this case anything below 73px does not work. So I think you have to upload a new version of the file. Preferably with some minor change so it isn't identical. Then each size should render again next time you use some size. With some luck that will fix it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

However, from the commons discussion, it would appear that no cached version exists for the smaller versions, for instance the 72px PNG image version is not there, rather than being a broken cached version. Perhaps somewhere deep in the bowels of the commons servers, there is an rsvg error message logged somewhere? Franamax (talk) 02:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, MediaWiki+Wikipedia+Commons is not a bug free system. Although it runs surprisingly smooth considered its complexity. But it is a known problem that some images have disappeared lately. So whatever the reason is that your image is missing, you need to make the servers try again. That is, you still need to upload a new version of the image. And then wait some minute to give them time to do their job, and then purge the pages involved.

Note to everyone: Sometimes the servers get the hiccups. So don't re-upload images immediately when there is a problem. Try purging and waiting some hours and see what happens. (Yes, the guys that manages the servers are great, they usually fix most things within some hours.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia on small screens

I sometimes view and contribute to Wikipedia on small screens. Unfortunately, it isn't always easy because people seem to hard-code large screen designs into it (e.g. fixed rather than proportional layouts). Talk pages often use indents and this shoves the text off to the right. It isn't so bad if people use alternating indents such as:
Comment1

Comment2

Comment3

Comment4

But if people use increasing indents, less of the text becomes visible. I would strongly encourage people to use alternating indents and it also happens to be much easier to see when specific comments added later such as:
Comment1

Comment2

Comment5: Specific comment about comment2

Comment6: Another specific comment about comment2

Comment3

Comment4

Comment7

Comment8

Anyway, somebody told me that it might be possible for a change to the standard CSS to assist accessibility on small screens. Is this possible? Lightmouse (talk) 16:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure a change to the sitewide CSS would be a particularly good idea. How small of a screen are you talking about? Smaller than 800x600? Mr.Z-man 17:38, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about CSS so I am just going by a recommendation given to me on my talk page. I am thinking of 240x320 which is common on PDA and phones. Lightmouse (talk) 17:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a new global MediaWiki:Handheld.css and there is always a possibility for personal CSS. Simple body.ns-talk dd, body.ns-4 dd {margin-left:0.5em} should make that indent (2em in Monobook skin) much smaller. Also could try a skin without sidebar, like Myskin. —AlexSm 17:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

It's the server script's responsibility to detect the client type (e.g. PC, PDA, etc.) and use the appropriate CSS. Unfortunately there's no standard for "user identification strings", which are the only info available to the server. If you Google for "user identification string" followed by the name of your handheld(s) and post the string here, it might be possible make some progress. -- Philcha (talk) 18:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that's correct. Handheld.css is included as a <link> in every page load, its up to the device to use the CSS links with media="handheld" when available. Mr.Z-man 18:28, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I prefer alternating indents anyway. I hate the increasing indent style, as it's really really annoying, even on a big screen. — Werdna • talk 02:51, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

User monobook.css

Hi. I was recently reminded of the existence of my monobook.css page, so tried customizing how {{Navbox}}es appear by adding

.navbox-group {
  white-space:nowrap;
  text-align:right;
  font-weight:bold;
  padding-left:1.0em;
  padding-right:1.0em;
  padding-top:0.35em;
  padding-bottom:0.35em;
  line-height:1.1em;
}
 
.navbox-list {
  border-color:#fdfdfd;
  padding-top:0.25em;
  padding-bottom:0.25em;
  line-height:1.4em;
}

to it. Everything seems to work fine once I've bypassed Firefox (v2.0.0.17)'s cache except the .navbox-list padding. What am I missing? Sardanaphalus (talk) 19:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

The CSS looks correct (except for the leading zeros, which I never use but shouldn't be a problem). have you tried adding '! important' flags? (e.g. padding-top:0.25em ! important;)

• I think that's made the difference -- curious. Thank you! Sardanaphalus (talk) 01:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

An odd infobox problem

Hey, I've just been onto the page for Nile (band), and noticed that the "genre" section wasn't showing on the infobox. I checked the source code, but the genre part was indeed intact -- so I concluded that someone had edited the box and messed up the coding or something, meaning that the genre wouldn't show up. I then copied the infobox from the Cradle of Filth page as a template, and changed the fields to fit in with the band Nile - but alas, the genre still didn't show up.

I was stumped, so I instead copied and pasted the entire infobox from Cradle's page again, and placed it in the Nile page, and - using the 'show preview' option - noticed that the genre still wouldn't show up, despite the fact that I'd copied the exact infobox and not even changed any of the fields from the Cradle page. All the while, on the Cradle of Filth article, the infobox works fine.

This leads me to conclude that there is some error in the Nile article itself, and not the infobox. Any thoughts or ideas? ≈ The Haunted Angel 15:10, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

The field has been removed. See discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Music#Less_stringent_proposal_by_Rodhullandemu - X201 (talk) 15:18, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see - why then is the infobox on the Cradle of Filth page still displaying the genre? ≈ The Haunted Angel 16:58, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

It shows up in the template parameters on Cradle of Filth when in edit mode, but because the field has been removed from the template, it is not displayed in view mode. If you are still seeing it in view mode, then you may need to purge. – ukexpat (talk) 17:06, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

But it is appearing in view mode - at least it is on my PC ≈ The Haunted Angel 18:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

It isn't for me - have you purged? – ukexpat (talk) 18:35, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

It has been removed completely from the box code. So it doesn't matter if the field appears in edit mode it will never show up on the 'final product'. Right now its up to editors to just go ahead and delete the field. A couple of admins are getting ready to fire up a bot to steamroll whatever is left away so we won't have to look at them anymore. Albums are also being wiped clean of the undesired field and a hope to cut down on the useless edit warring. Songs are exempt for now... they will likely be voted on next week and then... fingers crossed... rm'd as well. The Real Libs-speak politely 18:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, now I have - problem solved, thanks! I was just a bit confused as to why the genre was showing for Cradle's page, and none of the other articles, despite me refreshing the page numerous times. Thanks again :) ≈ The Haunted Angel 18:41, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

What I was saying, Libs, is that it was showing up in the final product for me; but only on the Cradle page, strangely. Problem solved now, though. ≈ The Haunted Angel 18:44, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah. I am still seeing it show up in the odd page simply because I am viewing a cached version. As the day rolls on it gets better and better. The Real Libs-speak politely 18:46, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

<outdent I didn't expect this change to go through without some queries; however, for a major change, the outfall has been refreshingly small. If I had thought it would be majorly controversial, I would have put a global notice on the login screen. But as cached pages are refreshed, since it's not a subst'd template, I foresee that any disruption will subside in due course. --Rodhullandemu 23:35, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

detecting redirects in templates

does anyone know if there's a way to get the name of a redirect page in a template? I'm writing a template that will merge a bunch of foreign character text warnings, and it would be easiest if I could know where the redirect was coming from - otherwise I'd need to go back to all the original templates and add a parameter to specify its language. --Ludwigs2 17:54, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

problem with index.php in diff

I keep getting request to download index.php when I clicks on diff in history for past couple weeks, not sure what's going on there. Using Firefox 2.0.0.17 on Xubuntu. User_talk:TettyNullus —Preceding undated comment was added at 22:04, 8 October 2008 (UTC).

Make sure "Use external editor by default" is unchecked in the editing section of your preferences. Otherwise, I don't know. Graham87 01:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah it's only for diffs, so make sure "Use external diff by default", also in the editing section of the preferences, is unchecked. Graham87 01:28, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that fixed it, was a bit bizarre for me TettyNullus (talk) 22:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

What font is Wikipedia - I can't read it?

At home, Wikipedia is unreadable -- all boxes, numbers and characters. At work, it's fine. I've tried reinstalling some standard Windows fonts, searching the Wikipedia Help for "font" or "typeface", but if you can narrow it down for me and tell me what font is used for the majority of the pages here, I can try to get it reinstalled. Thanks! Nancywest (talk) 22:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Your character encoding is probably set incorrectly. I'm fairly sure it's in View -> Character Encoding in IE and Firefox; set it to UTF-8 and you should be good to go. As far as I can tell, Wikipedia only specifies when it wants a serif or a sans-serif font, so your browser configuration is actually what affects which font is displayed. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 22:34, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Bullet separators for page categories

Why did the bullet character (•) start being used as a separator for categories listed at the bottom of a page? It's much too black, and distracts the eye from across the page. Better to use a typographic middle dot (·), or the web's traditional pipe (|) as a separator for links.

Anyone know where this was changed and where it is discussed? Thanks. —Michael Z. 2008-10-08 22:48 z

The great debate on this subject is currently at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Categories_at_the_bottom_-_Dots_instead_of_.22. Icewedge (talk) 00:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I've put in my 2¢. —Michael Z. 2008-10-09 05:42 z

Autoconfirmation

Is there any way to make an account have autoconfirmed status without waiting the four days and ten edits? J.delanoy^gabs_adds 23:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

There is no way to do this with out going to extreme lengths. An account would be for all practical purposes autoconfirmed if the user was made an administrator or a developer could change the accounts status by tinkering with the logs, but I doubt either of those options is a valid solution to whatever problem you have. Icewedge (talk) 23:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

If you can't edit a semiprotected article, you can always post suggestions on the article talk page. Similarly, if you want to move (rename) an existing article, you can suggest that on the article talk page. If you want to create a new article, you can start by writing a draft on a subpage that you can create in your own userspace. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:42, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks guys. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 23:53, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I suppose it is advisable to create an article draft in one's userspace first, but one can still create an article as soon as one is registered, no? Waltham, The Duke of 22:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Might be implemented soonish, as the ability to remove autoconfirmed status already exists in the abuse filter, and a generic mechanism might be good. — Werdna • talk 02:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

How to merge projects?

What methods can be used for merging two projects?

Scenario: Project A is a descendant of Project B. Project A is (long) inactive but has a number of subpages in addition to archives. You don't want to delete Project A because it has potentially useful material, and making it into a Project B task force would just create a dead task force. Is there an elegant solution available? Thanks for considering this! --Kleinzach 02:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Tag everything with {{historical}}. Keeps the pages around for reference, but everyone call tell that it's dead. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Much appreciated. --Kleinzach 23:24, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Newbie edit can't be undone

A newbie made a good faith edit to this page (at the bottom), but I can't see how to undo it. Weirdly, it can be edited, but its section header can't. Fee Fi Foe Fum (talk) 05:08, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

There's a manually inserted section edit button near the "Wikipedia-specific help" section, but since I'm blind and use a screen reader, I can't tell you exactly where it is. The Wikipedia-specific help part transcludes Template:Ph:User contributions, and I've undone the edit to that page. Graham87 05:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Current_daylight_saving_offset_in_Europe

Template:Current_daylight_saving_offset_in_Europe is reporting Expression error: Unexpected < operator and needs fixing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.179.66.147 (talk) 12:54, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Anomie⚔ 15:14, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Special:HideRevision

Although this is enabled at test.wikipedia, will it be enabled here for our oversighters?? It has some advantages, changing the revision visibility for logs that contain personal information so that developers don't have to delete a block log etc. but not rendering oversight as redundant.

I think it should be Wikimedia-wide enabled. --Walmwutter (talk) 13:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

A click produces "The action you have requested is limited to Oversighters." MER-C 13:13, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Special:HideRevision is oversight. You're thinking of single-revision deletion. — Werdna • talk 02:21, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Temporary password messages

On my alternate Simple English Wikipedia account, I recently usurped the English Wikipedia's username and have gotten sporadic "temporary password" requests. Since my SEW account is not active on the English Wikipedia, I suspect the original owner of that account is trying to get back into that account but doesn't know that the new username is now "xxxx (usurped)". Is there any way to change the login screen to redirect SUL-usurped usernames to their new account? Like, a general message like "If you have not logged into your account for some time, your username may have been usurped and is likely xxxx (usurpsed)." hbdragon88 (talk) 17:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

If there's a standard for the names, it might be possible to do that with some template tweaks customizing MediaWiki:Wrongpassword, but I'm not 100% sure offhand. --brion (talk) 18:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

David Irving

Ok, this is kind of weird. Take a look at Talk:David Irving. Look at the box for Wikiproject Crime. See the hammer and sickle? It's not supposed to be there and I can't find any code that puts it there. It's not there on any other talk page that features this project's tag. Now look at this link. This is what you get if you go to talk page history and click on the most recent version, in other words, the current version. It should be identical to the talk page except for the pink box at the top. But, it isn't; there's no hammer and sickle. I can't figure this out. I tried clearing my cache; same result. Any ideas?

Warning: David Irving is a holocaust denier and the talk page gets, well, heated. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 17:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a hammer and sickle - did you try a Wikipurge? – ukexpat (talk) 17:42, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Can't tell now because the page has been edited to compact the project boxes. Anyway, I guess it's fixed. Thanks. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 18:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

[3]. Gimmetrow 13:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

EasyTimeline is very very slow . . . why?

I've been experimenting recently with graphical timelines created using the EasyTimeline extension (see Wikipedia:Timeline and mw:Extension:EasyTimeline/syntax). However, it's very hard to get anything done, since the time to generate a preview of a new or revised timeline is many minutes, sometimes over a half-hour.

To see the issue for yourself, take one of the pages from Category:Graphical timelines and make a small test edit to one of the graphical timelines (like adding the text "TEST" to one of the names in the timeline), then hit "preview". The graphical timeline is now vanished, replaced by your browser's missing graphic icon. Hit "preview" again every minute or two, until eventually many minutes later (wow!!!) the newly revised timeline shows up, including the "TEST" text wherever you entered it. I just did such a test again right now while writing this, and it took over 10 minutes for the revised timeline to appear.

Why is it taking so long to generate the PNG graphics? I assume all other users dealing with EasyTimeline are affected by this issue, too. Is this a recent problem only (I just started creating or editing graphical timelines within the last week, and the slowness has been there all week)? Or has it been that way for a long time? Is it worth submitting a bug report on Bugzilla? This is not really a bug, it's just super slow.

Thanks for any help you can provide. --Seattle Skier (talk) 21:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

My "skin" is persisting...

Any idea why when I try to change my skin on my user prefs, only the preference page changes? All other pages remain the same as before. I have cleared my cache and cookies completely, signed out and back in, and no luck. My current skin is one with a black background and green text and normal links. I forget the name of that skin when I selected it but I like it very much. I do have need to change it on occasion, but I must be doing something wrong... any ideas apprediated radiooperator 01:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radiooperator (talk • contribs)

Have you tried ? It probably won't work, but it's worth a try. =P Dendodge|Talk^Contribs 01:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Yep...no dice...any other ideas?

--radiooperator 01:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radiooperator (talk • contribs)

"Use a black background with green text on the Monobook skin" is under Gadgets and not under Skin. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I am such a twit... thanks

radiooperator 01:42, 10 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radiooperator (talk • contribs)

Special pages

[Taken from the New contributors help desk for a better response, hopefully]

Hi, when you click special pages on the toolbox, why is it that some of the features listed at Help:Special page are not available? For example there is no special:mypage or special:mytalk. I find this to be particularly frustrating because as an IP i am always changing and would like a quick way to see my contribs. I dont know why mytalk or mypage is not available on the special pages, was it ever there? If it was, why was it removed? Thanks, any help appreciated. 220.239.56.131 (talk) 03:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

They do exist, they just aren't listed there. Just enter Special:Mypage or Special:Mytalk into the search bar. Special:Mycontributions goes to your contributions. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 03:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Default table

I don't know if I'm putting this in the proper VP forum, but I was wondering if we could change the default table layout that appears when the table button is used at the top of the editing window. It usually gives:

{| class="wikitable" border="1"

|-

! header 1

! header 2

! header 3

|-

| row 1, cell 1

| row 1, cell 2

| row 1, cell 3
 
|-

| row 2, cell 1

| row 2, cell 2

| row 2, cell 3

|}

But I think it should be:

{| class="wikitable" border="1"

|+ title

|-

! header 1 !! header 2 !! header 3

|-

| row 1, cell 1 || row 1, cell 2 || row 1, cell 3

|-

| row 2, cell 1 || row 2, cell 2 || row 2, cell 3

|}

In my opinion, it's cleaner and takes up less space. Plus, it also exhibits the title function, which I don't think is universally known. --Wizard191 (talk) 18:51, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Leaving the quotation marks off HTML attributes is a bad habit. In XML and XHTML leaving the quotation marks off produces malformed documents, so it's better to just get in the habit of using quotation marks whether or not a parser will come by later to clean up the code before serving it.

Also, </br> is not valid HTML or XHTML, as br is not a closing tag. The correct form is <br/>. Other than that, I don't see much problem with your proposed changes. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 19:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the head's up on the quotation marks. I just put the breaks in for visual purposes; those don't need to be included in the actual code. I'm more concerned about the layout and title. --Wizard191 (talk) 20:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Why is border="1" needed for this sample? The wikitable CSS class already has border: 1px #aaa solid;. I'd suggest removal of that markup also. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Wikitable borders without CSS. Happy‑melon 22:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Andrwsc: The border="1" code is needed and should not be removed. See the link that Happy-melon gave above for the lengthy explanation and discussion about that.

Wizard191: I think I prefer the old table layout above since it is simpler to use. We don't need to show all the advanced options in the default layout that the table button inserts. Those double pipes "||" will probably only confuse beginners. They have no idea what CSS styles are.

Remember the dot: No, <br/> is not the correct form. The correct forms are either <br> or <br />. (Note the space between "br" and "/".)

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:40, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

My contributions under a different name

I don't know how this happened, but when I was renamed to "SchfiftyThree" on 4 August 2007, my old contributions under "Schfiftythree628" stayed under that name. My edits under my current username go all the way to 2 April 2007. My real first edit was made on 12 November 2005. I saw this sort of happen when User:RyanCross was renamed (having his first edit made on 4 October), but his has been fixed. So, how can all my contributions on Wikipedia be made into my current username? I figured I should have posted here, but if I'm in the wrong place, let me know. :-) SchfiftyThree 21:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

That sort of - glitch, you might say? - happens occasionally. My first example I noticed was Special:Contributions/badlydrawnjeff. After he was renamed, all he had was a null edit to preserve the username; and then, somehow, eight edits before then were reattributed to his original name rather than bdj (talk · contribs). hbdragon88 (talk) 22:47, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Checklinks

Can this tool be added in revision history?. This tool is very useful when it comes to checking dead links and adding this tool can help whole wikipedia community and make the wikipedia a better place. --SkyWalker (talk) 06:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia/Commons duplicate images

I suggest adding Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons to Mediawiki:Shareduploadduplicate. As far as I understand, this notice is automatically added to images which are present on Commons and are identical. The addition of category would remove the need to tag such images with {{NowCommons}} manually. At the same time, Category:Images with a different image under the same name on Wikimedia Commons (presently added with {{ShadowsCommons}}) could be added to Mediawiki:Shareduploadconflict. Conscious (talk) 08:52, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

If it works to add categories to such MediaWiki messages then this seems like a good suggestion.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:13, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

slow response

The Wikipedia servers are usually quite responsive, but just now I am seeing long wait times, like twelve seconds to display a common page like Community Portal or Signpost. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 08:59, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Log oddities with protection logs

I noticed this in the protection log today:

• USERNAME protected Test page ([create=sysop]) (vandalism)

when in the past the protection log used to be:

• USERNAME protected The weather in London ([edit=autoconfirmed]]) ([indefinite]) ([move=autoconfirmed]]) ([indefinite]).

I noticed this when I used the latest SVN build on localhost, does anyone know if this will be fixed because this looks a bit odd??

I know it's a small thing... but it probably would look good to fix it anyway. --Walmwutter (talk) 11:04, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

What's exactly odd about it, and about which entry? That we can now protect non-existent pages from being (re-)created or that expiry times can be set separately for move and edit protections? (Both of which are useful features.) Миша13 12:51, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Misza13, in response to your enquiry: it's the fact that the [create=sysop] or [edit=sysop] parameter has not been italicised, as it used to be when pages were protected. That's all it really is. --Walmwutter (talk) 13:09, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe it's this commit, which completely revamped the protection system and also the log entries themselves (the changes to LogPage.php) - the protection parameters are no longer treated as part of the protection summary. Regardless, it's in fact more consistent given that only true summaries are italicised. Миша13 14:32, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Still should be italicised, as it used to be... purely because it looks better. --Walmwutter (talk) 15:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

__NOCATEGORY__

I think a magic word removing all categories from a page would be helpful. For example, in order to remove categories from a personal sandbox, and even in Wikipedia sandboxes, since they frequently appear in mainspace categories. There are also certain maintenance pages that shouldn't contain categories (e.g. Wikipedia:Main Page/Protection). Cenarium ^Talk 15:31, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

On a related note, I have often missed a general way to say at a transclusion that the transcluded page should not be allowed to add any categories. I know a parameter for this can be added to the code of individual templates but that is sometimes complicated, template tinkering can easily cause errors, and many templates are protected. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:47, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The way to do it is to wrap the category code in <noinclude> tags. There isn't any other way to do it at present. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:51, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

It can't be used on the sandbox since the content changes often, while adding a magic word to Template:Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading) would be easy. And for personal sandboxes, they are many times included in templates or dispersed in the page making it longer to fix. Maybe we should create a bug for a magic word ? Cenarium ^Talk 16:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Carl's suggestion assumes the category should never be added to transclusions. I'm thinking of cases where a template should usually add a category but it isn't wanted at some transclusions, for example when discussing the template and demonstrating what it will produce with certain parameters, or when developing articles in user space (where the proposed __NOCATEGORY__ could also be used if no categories at all are wanted). Some templates have an optional parameter to say that a category should not be added but a general solution not requiring recoding of each template would be much better. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:09, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Err, PrimeHunter was referring to templates that put the page into categories (like {{unreferenced}} adds the page to Category:Articles lacking sources), and the {{{category}}} parameter available in many such templates for use to prevent things like Wikipedia:Template messages/Talk namespace's miscategorization. A __NOCATEGORY__ magic word wouldn't help with that because it would also prevent correct categorization of the page. It could still be useful for sandboxes though. Anomie⚔ 16:15, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

bug15941 filled. On the function, more precisely, __NOCATEGORY__ should remove the page from all categories. However, whether the categories on the page itself are showed is not very important. In the Wikipedia sandbox, it may help new users to see how categories work, on other pages it doesn't really mater. Cenarium ^Talk 18:18, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Just as a general note, when discussing magic words, please wrap them in <nowiki>, even if they haven't been created / implemented yet. If they are created or implemented in the future, the archive of this page will suddenly be using the word. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:03, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I too have been thinking about this problem. But I would prefer it like this:

<nocategory> Text and {{templates}} that won't categorise. </nocategory>

That would mean we could also prevent just parts of a page from adding categories. Thus for instance the pages under Wikipedia:Template messages could prevent the templates that they show from inserting categories, while we still can (manually) add categories to the page that we actually want to have there. If this is implemented the same way as the <noinclude> tags then this would also work for the sandbox case that Cenarium describes above. Just put a start <nocategory> in the sandbox header and the rest of the page will not categorise.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:32, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Spoken Wikipedia templates

Yo, something is screwed up with {{Spoken Wikipedia-2}} although it hasn't been edited for months. It does not seem to be closing properly, and sucks everything after it into itself. See Ayn Rand#External links for an example of the problem. the skomorokh 17:51, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed (unclosed div). Algebraist 18:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Grazi. the skomorokh 19:41, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Corrupted images

Could someone with more knowledge on the subject than me have a look at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Images_corruption. I think it is as a result of the image deletion a few weeks back. Thanks. Woody (talk) 20:16, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The ability to block vs. "no big deal"

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#The ability to block vs. "no big deal". - jc37 23:42, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

IP Addresses

Is this a valid IP address 222.198.50.265? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcollins37 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

No; IP sections don't surpass 255 (meaning the last valid IP would be 255.255.255.255). -Jéské ^{(v^_^v Kacheek!)} 00:18, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

You learn something new everyday :-) 220.239.56.131 (talk) 01:05, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

And we of course have an article IP address for people wanting to learn. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:14, 12 October 2008 (UTC)