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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.

Coordinates are overwriting the top line

This was brought up on 27 March 2008 but not answered and is still a problem. I believe from earlier discussion that the coordinates are located a fixed number of pixels from the top and end up being right over the Article name when there is a fund appeal. Did someone tweak the number of pixels recently and get it wrong? 199.125.109.88 (talk) 22:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC) [reply]

I noticed that recently as well. It's rather annoying. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This can be fixed with the following CSS:
#coordinates {
  top:4.5em;
}
Just place that in your monobook.css. — Bob • (talk) • 04:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but IPusers don't have monobook.css pages. Howabout just fixing the glitch? 199.125.109.104 (talk) 17:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would if I could. You can see if someone else is willing to make the change, elsewise I suggest creating an account if it bugs you that much. — Bob • (talk) • 22:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that no one has figured out so far WHY this suddenly started happening. Without understanding the problem people are a bit reserved about fixing it. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the horizontal rule, the line, got moved down, or I guess that would be up, no down, no up, no down making them collide. Maybe the size of the graphic at the left got changed, or something else that contributes to the location of the horizontal rule? 199.125.109.88 (talk) 02:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Somehow the space allowed for the page title seems to be wider than it used to be, so the bar is lower than it used to be before. There must be some other images of Wikipedia pages that could be looked at to count pixels. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 02:39, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yikes. 743 of them in no particular order at Category:Screenshots of Wikipedia. The width of the space where the page title goes seems to be the culprit though. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 02:53, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • OK there are 2 issues:
    1. When the sitenotice is present, it messes up the alignment for coordinates
    2. When coord is included from a table that has "font-size: 90%" for instance, then this value is inherited by the coordinates element. On this fontsize the top alignment is based (3.5em) An em is directly proportional to fontsize, so the offset of the top will be too small and the element will not be "low" enough. I'm looking into some ideas that could be used to solve this issue. However, this is not a new problem really and it seems that almost every potential solution has its drawbacks. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:37, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As I feared there is little that can be done to improve this. If we use monobook, we want to use that specific location and not rewrite the main monobook skin or the way coordinates are included, the only way to properly fix this is to use Javascript to move the DOM HTMLelement. See template talk page for an example of how that would work. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused. You've got about a centimeter of blank space to drop the coordinates into and still get it right. It's like saying, well when it is lined up perfectly when it is in a template it misses slightly when it isn't in a template. But you have the broad side of a barn to shoot at! How can you miss? Just move it down a bit. 199.125.109.64 (talk) 23:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But I still think that what caused the problem is that the space where the title goes got wider. 199.125.109.64 (talk) 23:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That wouldn't work when the sitenotice is active. You see, there might be a whole barn to shoot at, but as long as superman is randomly pushing the barn around on your farmland, you can still miss quite easily. This is the only way to guarantee where the element is drawn all the time, even when scaled and even when there is a (hypothetical) page long sitenotice. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. One thing I will say it that it is better below the line than it was above the line - which looked all fine and good unless you had a really long place name, which happens a lot of the time, and it clobbers the coordinates. I would just like to see it tweaked just a little bit lower. Like 4.0 em or 4.5 em instead of 3.5 em. Also since the title space got bigger it could possibly even be located above the title - for some odd reason there is a new space above the title, and would mostly be above a long page title. Another thought, if sitenotice (whatever that is - is that the donation beg?) is active would that just mean that there are two locations that have to be aimed for, sort of like the side of the barn or the roof of the barn? 199.125.109.64 (talk) 01:03, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've been working on an extension that should make adding little icons up there more uniform and less buggy - hopefully we can convince the devs to install it when it's done. :) krimpet✽ 00:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another better idea to fix the problem of the coordinates getting covered up - just make the horizontal line only go half way across the page - problem solved. 199.125.109.64 (talk) 01:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Whoever just moved the coordinates up a tad (to 3.0em?) moved them in the wrong direction. I just did a comparison of the space for the title between Wiktionary and Wikipedia, and Wiktionary has about the same code but has only a 34 pixel space while Wikipedia has a 45 pixel space, which like I say is I believe larger than it used to be. 199.125.109.131 (talk) 04:47, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding SimpleTable Extension

I propose adding SimpleTable extension to Wikipedia.

I think that the syntax of wikitable is not so easy, and feel pain when inputting wikitable. Persons who think similarly might be not a little. If this extension can be used in wikipedia, inputting tables will be easier. So adding this extension will help wikipedians. Please examine this positively. J8takagi (talk) 15:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This could be useful, but to me there is little reason not to go further and set up a separate table namespace, with a specialized WYSIWYG table editor. Other wikis have this, and there is already a precedent (the Image namespace behaves differently than other namespaces). Then editing tables would be very, very easy. (For more on this proposal, see the "Tables" topic in the editor's index.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the reply. I am interested in Wikipedia:Table: namespace and editor. it would be wonderful if this feature is added to wikipedia and editing tables become very easy. But adding it takes long time and there may be many problems when adding it, I think. Adding SimpleTable extension is easier and takes shorter time. Is this the major reason not to go further and adding SimpleTable Extension before setting up a separate table namespace? J8takagi (talk) 14:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any harm in the SimpleTable expansion, though I doubt that most editors will become aware of it, if implemented, and of those that do, relatively few will do so. It's really more a matter of energy - if you can get this implemented without much discussion, fine. But if the community is going to spend a lot of time and effort debating it, then that time would be better spent on a solution that would benefit the vast majority of editors who are faced with editing tables, not the small minority who are adding information already in CSV form. -- John Broughton (♫♫)

version of {{PAGENAME}} that shows redirects

It would be useful if there was a version of {{PAGENAME}} which gave the title of the page as based on the URL before any redirection was applied, i.e. in the case that you accessed the page via a redirect then it would give the name of the redirect itself rather than the page that it pointed to.

The reason for this is that templates could then be written which test for it, and produce different results depending on what title had been used to access the page. I am thinking in particular of use with some of the disambig link templates. To give just one example, template {{redirect}}, as used in article United Kingdom, will tell you:

"UK" redirects here. For other uses, see UK (disambiguation).

but this is essentially only relevant to you if you have used the title UK to access the page. If you have used United Kingdom in full, then you are very unlikely to be looking for other meanings for "UK". I am not very familiar with template syntax myself, but I presume that if the software were to provide a variable called {{PAGENAMEORIG}} or whatever, then it would be fairly trivial to modify templates such as {{redirect}} to make it so that these sort of disambig links only appear if you have actually gone via the redirect in the first place.

Many thanks, — Alan✉ 16:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This doesn't seem likely to be implemented. It would require fragmenting the parser cache unnecessarily. You'd have to cache the parsed text separately for every separate redirect, if someone used this, and inevitably it would get used everywhere. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:20, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Correct me if I am wrong, but the squids cache pages based on URLs, and mediawiki redirects are not HTML redirects, but content transclusions. So Oxford University (that redirects to University of Oxford), will have a URL of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University, while the destination page has a URL of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Oxford. There shouldn't be a squid-level problem with having separate versions of the page based on a magic word like {{NOREDIRECTPAGENAME}} (although... memcaches and other internal caches might be afllictified?). --Splarka (rant) 07:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I said parser cache, not Squid cache. The Squid cache would, as you say, not be affected. I don't know how bad the parser cache fragmentation would be, but I doubt it would be considered warranted for a feature like this. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, pity there had to be some issue like this. Many thanks for the feedback. — Alan✉ 07:31, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Monobook

I just used my account for the first time in two years and found a warning on my Monobook page. History seems to be clean, is there something else I should watch out for? --Yooden ☮

It's a boilerplate warning so unsuspecting editors don't get lured into trouble. You've done your due diligence and it looks fine anyway. Franamax (talk) 18:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the quick response! --Yooden ☮
We like using four tildes to sign nowadays, so the date of your posting shows up with your sig btw. Franamax (talk) 18:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's not new, I'm a signature rebel. Thanks for the tip anyway. --Yooden ☮
Oh yeah? Well maybe I'm a wrong-answer-on-VPT rebel, you never know ;) Franamax (talk) 19:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have full trust in the decent and respectable VPT users to point out such follys. --Yooden ☮
If signature rebels (like yourself) post comments to Talk pages archived by MiszaBot, like this one, it will probably not be able to archive the threads in which you participate. Misza depends on seeing a date on *every* comment to know whether the whole thread is stale enough to archive. EdJohnston (talk) 04:46, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Won't it just archive slightly sooner, as if Yooden's comments weren't happening? It doesn't strike me as a huge problem. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, I assumed that the bot would use the actual change dates, not the one found in the page. Let me think about this. --Yooden ☮
I've seen before, not sure where, advice to not-date a post to prevent archiving by MiszaBot, I'll be interested in the answer. (And I'll try 3 tildes now to see what happens :) Franamax (talk) 06:30, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, try again, counting one-two-three tildes! Franamax (talk)
Thinking about it, relying on the dates within the text would be pretty difficult. Every paragraph would prevent archiving if only the date would matter. Or the bot would have to recognize signatures but avoid archiving if they are undated. Using actual change date is much more straightforward.
Anyway, I just activated archiving on my /Talk, and I have threads with only dated messages. Let's see what happens. --Yooden ☮
The bot does not search the edit history to find the dates for anything. It merely scans the text looking for signature and date strings. It can't remove unsigned comments, and I understand that undated comments, or those that have dates that don't use the '(UTC)' date format, will hang around forever until someone manually archives them. The closest to an online explanation of this behavior is at [1], at the bottom of the page. EdJohnston (talk) 13:21, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As long as there's at least one timestamp in the thread, though, it will get archived. --Random832 (contribs) 14:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Right on the mark, only threads entirely without date were unmoved. So only monologues are affected, I can live with that. --Yooden ☮
I'm a signature rebel. No, you're not - your an inconsiderate editor. You don't care that omitting the time and date makes it more difficult for other editors to follow the discussion, or to decide whether to respond or not (because old comments often aren't worth responding to). If omitting a single tilde somehow benefited you significantly, I could see the rationale - but it looks like you're just after attention, or that you get some sort of perverse delight out of irritating other editors. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
At least you make it easy to decide whether or not to repsond to your posts. Thanks! --Yooden ☮
Obviously, you have decided to respond to Mr Broughton's posts, if I am to judge from this first case.
I have to agree with him, though; this is a collaborative project and one needs to be civil and helpful to one's fellow editors. We shouldn't have been where we are now if this were not the prevailing spirit on Wikipedia. Waltham, The Duke of 05:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Logs appearing on watchlist

Hats off to whatever developer (group of developers) pulled this one off.--VectorPotentialTalk 23:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks :D Voice-of-All 01:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good job, I agree. However, in enhanced expanded watchlist (imho, the only type of wathlist worth using) log entries are inconveniently grouped by log type, like 03:43 (Move log) (Page history) [User1; User2; User3]. Since I'm not really interested in users who made the moves, I'll have to uncollapse this pretty much every time. Also notice useless «page history» part. And last thing: I understand that logs entries are shown the same way as in Special:Log, but having article name first would be more convenient and more consistent with Watchlist/Recent Changes look. I hope this can be somehow improved later. —AlexSm 04:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I had them grouped by page, but someone changed it. I'll bring it up. Voice-of-All 16:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes thanks tremendously. Can I ask what triggers the display of user-right entries? I assume watchlisting the user's talk or userpage? Happy‑melon 17:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. The "target" field of userrights is just the user page, basically. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion log missing

Copied from WP:AN

Has this image been deleted or not? It looks like it has, but no entry in the log! Issue complicated because the italics ('') markup appears in the filename. Carcharoth (talk) 23:37, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the user's upload log, I'd say that it has... I have no idea why there's no entry in the deletion log. Black Falcon (Talk) 01:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Would the italics markup thing have confused the log. I would have thought not, as it should represent it as %27. I'll drop a note over at VP:T. Carcharoth (talk) 20:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone have any explanation for the above? Carcharoth (talk) 20:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I just tried it myself here - deletion log appears. So the existence of '' in the title alone is not enough to cause an issue. Or it might be an entirely different cause altogether. --- RockMFR 23:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to be the same problem shown some topics above. --Oxymoron83 23:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Undelete acts funny - The following consists of deleted revisions of [[:Image:South Park - Major Boobage - time 03'03.jpg]]. - but the deleted revisions show up and can be accessed. --Random832 (contribs) 23:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does it show up in the deleting admin's log? Do we have any idea who the deleting admin is, or when it was deleted? --Random832 (contribs) 23:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Occasionally events are not logged as they should be. I have yet to hear of any smoking gun that anyone has found for this phenomenon. It's not reproducible, so it's kind of hard to track down. There's a bug open on it somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:56, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with rollback script

This is most likely some annoyingly simple error on my part, but I'm having an issue with JavaScript. I'm trying to write a modified version of a rollback script; my modified version is located at User:Pyrospirit/rollbacksummary.js. What I'm trying to do is have the string $u be replaced with the username of the editor being reverted, whose name is found in the &from= part of the rollback link. Here's where I run into problems. To get the username of the editor, I use the following code: 

var from = this.href.match(/&from=[^&]+/);
var user = from.replace(/&from=/, '');

The problem is, that line generates the following error (from the Firefox 2.0.0.13 error console): 

Error: from.replace is not a function
Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3APyrospirit%2Frollbacksummary.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript
Line: 22

Now, I am admittedly quite inexperienced with JavaScript, but replace() used on a string? I'm pretty sure it is indeed a valid function. So what am I doing wrong here, and how can I get this script to work? If you happen to notice any other bugs while looking at the script, please let me know as well. Thanks, Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 04:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:Gracenotes/rollback.js does do a $user replacement, btw. Check out the MDC documentation for String.match. That returns an array of strings if a match exists. Arrays don't have a replace method, but the members of that array (strings) have the method. You can use capturing groups to select certain parts of a regular expression, by the way: this guide (also from MDC) explains regular expressions in JavaScript. GracenotesT § 05:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that information helps a lot. I was looking for your script to see how you did it, but for some reason I couldn't find it. I guess I'll just do it the same way you do in your script. Now that you mention it, I think I've seen that technique before, but I just forgot about it. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 15:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Search result page text

This seems to be the right place. When you search something and no results come up it says:

unsuccessful searches are often caused by searching for common words like "have" and "from", which are not indexed.

This is incorrect, when you search 'have' or 'from', many results appear. Surely this needs to be changed? George D. Watson (Dendodge).TalkHelp 17:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

URLs going to wrong places

Just a second ago, I C&P'd a URL in a prot log purported to go to an old WP:AN revision into my browser window. I was instead taken to an old revision on HMS Hermes (R12). Out of curiosity, is this deliberate? -Jéské (v^_^v X of Swords) 19:36, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When you go to an oldid, the "title" field is actually irrelevant: it takes you to the page where the revision happened, wherever that may be. For instance, the last edit to this page is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28technical%29&oldid=205362565, but if you change it to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28technical%29&oldid=205362564 you end up at Agrostis capillaris. I suspect, therefore, that there was a simple typo on someone's part in the oldid value. Happy‑melon 20:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Linking [[:]]

I was wondering if it would be possible to link [[:|this]]. I know that it's not supported because it's an operational character, but would it be possible to redirect it to Colon (punctuation)? because most people are simply going to give up. I tried http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=:&action=edit but I got "Bad Title". I suppose we'd need a developer or at least an admin who knows css. Andrew Kanode (talk) 23:59, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean ":"? ([[Colon (punctuation)|:]], see WP:PIPE) – Leo Laursen – ☏ ⌘ 07:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, you can't link to ":" because it is used to make links to non standard namespaces. For example [[:Image:Nakai in Kanagawa Prefecture.png]] links to Image:Nakai in Kanagawa Prefecture.png. -- lucasbfr talk 12:00, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It'd be possible to "auto-redirect" (the way wiktionary does with capitalized titles) from attempts to navigate to or search for such titles via javascript. I'll get something coded up later this week. That won't make the syntax [[:]] work though. --Random832 (contribs) 19:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Green text & printing

I use the green text/black background gadget, and very good it is too at reducing eye-strain. However, when printing a page I get green text (when I would prefer black). Is there a way to make the printable version output black text, or do I have to switch the gadget off when printing? Thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 01:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I informed its author, I'm positive who will fix it real soon. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Login page

I admit I haven't researched it extensively, but would it be easily possible to have the focus on the Username Text box when you load Special:UserLogin? I'm pretty sure that would need a modification on MediaWiki, but why isn't it done already? -- lucasbfr talk 12:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess some site JS could be made. When HTML 5 is out, an autofocus attribute can just be given :) Voice-of-All 13:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Adding the following to MediaWiki:Common.js would achieve the desired effect:
if (wgPageName == "Special:UserLogin") {
    addOnloadHook(function() {
        document.getElementById("wpName1").focus();
    });
}
I don't mind either way. Nihiltres{t.l} 15:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In most cases we don't force focus, though perhaps it would be nice here. However we _do_ usually fix up the tab order on this sort of form; just hit 'tab' once and you'll be right in there. (Unless you're using Firefox 3.0 beta, which is broken.) --brion (talk) 00:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:DelvarMe

Can someone look at the script that is hidden on this talk page and advise what is going on, please? TerriersFan (talk) 19:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's mostly one big html comment. Looks like instructions for an interpreter of some sort (game? maybe Tcl or ruby?) But it doesn't do anything on wikipedia. —EncMstr 20:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sortable tables

Is there a way to disable sorting on tables over 100 rows? Or not run the calculations needed to prepare a table for sorting until after I click the sort button? Whenever I load a page with a large table, my browser freezes for some time. --Random832 (contribs) 20:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the table is sorted until one of the sort buttons are pressed. Until then, the table appears in the order written in wikitext. Large tables do seem to take significant time to load, but I've assumed it was due to the browser figuring out column sizes or something. Which browser are you using, and on what platform? —EncMstr 20:26, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at wikibits.js ... try to set ts_alternate_row_colors = false in your monobook.js and see if it helps. By the way, I fail to see what's the puprose of this ts_alternate() ... only if I wanted to highlight even/odd table rows with personal CSS, and that's it? —AlexSm 20:39, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This script shouldn't be doing anything on page load. If it is and someone would like to fix it, I'd be interested to see patches. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:58, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Serving SVG images themselves instead of rasterizations

I use Firefox 3, and when I scale the images on a Wikipedia page, they become blurry and sometimes jagged. This happens even if the source image is SVG, because Wikipedia serves me a PNG rasterization instead. If Wikipedia served me the SVG file, Firefox could scale it much better, but I don't see any option to make Wikipedia do this. Will this be implemented in the near future? —Keenan Pepper 20:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are two main issues here.
  1. It might be much more efficient (bandwith wise) to transfer a small png thumbnail than a detailed SVG image.
  2. The client support for SVG is not "ubiquitous" enough yet to make this a default any time soon.
However, huge advances in SVG support (esp. Firefox and Safari) have been made over the past year. It is not entirely unlikely that we may see something this year where these clients will get full blown SVGs under certain conditions (although I doubt it will debut on en.wikipedia.org). More likely is however that the quality of the "thumbs" produced by the svg2png software will increase and that you are less bothered by the problem. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is Template:Bug. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have created a userscript that loads SVGs in Safari 3. Works pretty well, but beware of the bandwith, because it will actually download the PNG and subsequently the SVG. Not really effecient. :D Still nice if you want to get an idea of course. I also tried to implement this for FF and Opera. Unfortunately they do not yet support the img tag for SVGs. I tried loading SVGs with object/embed/frame for these browsers. This works, but you get the size as defined within the SVG. I could not find a way to "resize" the SVG to our desired "thumb" size. In the past you could apparently do this with some Javascript, but all these methods seem to no longer work (probably in order to fix security issues). Anyways, for those who want to give it a spin on Safari 3 importScript( 'User:TheDJ/svg.js');. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind that many SVG files on Wikipedia are *HUGE*, many times larger than the PNG rasterizations even if we did serve them compressed. Page loading and rendering is going to be a *lot* slower using inline SVGs. --brion (talk) 18:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rollback attributed an edit to the user being rolled back, not to rollbacker

I rolled back an edit that 12.207.160.191 made to January 13. However, now it appears that 12.207.160.191 him/herself reversed the edit.

Here you can see the feedback that my rollback was successful; the rollback token is visible in the URL of the image in case that's helpful. Also, here it is in pdf format.

Perhaps the user did reverse his/her edit at the same time as my rollback. But even then, I would have thought that my rollback would not have shown to be successful. Any ideas? Thanks. --Art Smart (talk) 23:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, here's how it would happen: the system would indeed roll the page back to the state before the other guy's previous edits, but because there was no change, it wouldn't actually get saved. As you say, it should probably detect this condition and explicitly say that this was what happened so you don't worry about why your rollback didn't get saved when the message was successful. If we don't get to it shortly, make sure it gets filed in bugzilla... --brion (talk) 00:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, that makes sense. No big deal. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't some new major issue with Rollback. Thanks for the answer. --Art Smart (talk) 12:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

misc

Hey is it just my computer but sometimes, in the search box, the line has a small horizontal bar extending to the right of it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rainboqer (talk • contribs) 23:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from T:MP by ffm 00:00, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's a text direction marker, indicating whether you're typing left-to-right or right-to-left text. If you switch your keyboard to Hebrew or Arabic input mode, you'll see the little dot/bar move to the left side. I believe it'll appear if there's some Arabic or Hebrew text on the page. --brion (talk) 00:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bot Malfunction for Sacramento, California

Several bots are incorrectly adding the category bpy:সাকরামেনটো to the Sacramento, California page. The category belongs to a small South American province rather than the capitol of California. Multiple bots make this mistake - which is probably based on a bad data file. What can be done to get the data file repaired?-DevinCook (talk) 04:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are dealing with an error in interlanguage links. See User talk:Yurik/Interwiki Bot FAQ for information on how to fix problems with these links. To remove a bad interlanguage link for good, it must be removed from all Wikipedia languages which contain it. Therefore I have gone to all the interwiki links from Sacramento, California and removed links to bpy:সাকরামেনটো. I have also fixed all the interwiki links from bpy:সাকরামেনটো, which should have gone to Sacramento, Minas Gerais. Graham87 06:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Your help is greatly appreciated. -DevinCook (talk) 08:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Something I noticed elsewere

While looking for the external link search page, I noticed this comment by User:TSamuel at Wikipedia_talk:Searching/External_search_engines#Improper_Google_Define_linking_to_Wikipedia. He asks about Google searches for "define:topic"'s which result in malformed links, where the topic includes spaces. The links on the define: searches include '+'s in place of ' 's. Currently define: searches don't seem to be a prominent part of the Google interface to most users, although they can be very useful when you a) know about them and b)want a definition very fast. Is there any plan to correct this, either by a (higher-level) request to Google that they correct their behaviour where possible, or by the technical solution TSamuel proposes? John Nevard (talk) 04:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I am missing what you are saying, but I just did a quick search for define:United Nations and define:president of the United States (both of which bring up a wikipedia entry, amongst others). I then click on the wikipedia link and go to the respective page. I checked these in IE6, FF3, Opera9, and Safari3. I had no problems in any of them. Is there an example of a malformed link that you can point to? - AWeenieMan (talk) 03:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Linking to old versions of redirected articles

Something seems to be wrong when linking to old versions of redirected articles. I was trying to show someone what the pre-redirect version of Introduction to particles looked like, and when I linked to the pre-redirect version, it showed up as a redirect. See this for example. It is still possible to see what was there, but you have to click "edit". For example, click (but don't save!) this. Is there a reason for this change and was it discussed anywhere? Non-redirected articles work fine, as seen from an old version of subatomic particle compared to the current version. Carcharoth (talk) 06:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be a bug, otherwise these links should work. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Introduction to particles works properly when it is wikilinked. Look at your first link:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Introduction_to_particles&redirect=no Introduction to particles]
This is an external link, not an internal wikilink; the "redirect=no" means just that— do not process the redirect. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 12:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what he means; the problem is that the second link should render an old version of the page before it was redirected, but instead it displays the current redirect (even though the #REDIRECT[[]] code is not present in the old version. Happy‑melon 13:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have a bugzilla account. Could someone flag this up? I'm also sure this didn't happen before, so it must have been caused by a fairly recent change. Carcharoth (talk) 13:29, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This has happened with the history of Coachella, as well, so it's not an isolated problem. Probably it's an issue with redirects generally, but I,ve actually seen it in action with that (no longer redirected) page. — Gavia immer (talk) 15:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This was presumably an error in the fix for Template:Bug, namely r33133. It should be fairly easy to fix. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bugzilla:13754, should be cleared up now. --brion (talk) 18:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Carcharoth (talk) 23:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Link to Arthroplasty

Hi, I was working on the Hip dysplasia (human) page and can't get one of my links to work. The frustrating thing is that if I copy the word and paste it into the search window it works. (To rule out typos) But in the text it ends me on the Edit page instead of the article. At another place in the article the link worked fine. What am I missing?? This is the text copied out:

Hip dysplasia is often cited as causing osteoarthritis of the hip at a comparatively young age. Dislocated load bearing surfaces lead to increased and unusual wear. Although there are studies that contradict these findings. (see [1] [2]) Subsequent treatment with total hip athroplasty (Hip replacement) is complicated by a need for revision surgery (replacing the artificial joint) due to skeletal changes as the body matures, loosening/wear or bone resorption.Osteotomies are either used in conjunction with arthroplasty or by themselves to correct misalignment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lisa4edit (talk • contribs) 11:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did this help? Carcharoth (talk) 11:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks I had tried to correct that typo but somehow my edit didn't take. The last time the word showed up correctly but still redirected wrong. I hope no one has blocked me from editing that page because of some stupid bot rule. I don't have all the references in yet and the paragraphs on "history" and "development" are still missing. There may also still be more articles I can link to. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lisa4edit (talk • contribs) 11:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1-click infobox conversion

At WP:SHIPS and WP:MILHIST we've developed and been using a fairly painless way to do mass infobox conversions. In a nutshell, you develop a template T which takes the input for template A and converts it to a call to template B. Then you go to pages that have template A on them and replace A with subst:T. You click preview, then click save. No fuss, no muss.

An example of one of these "doggy-door" converters is currently available at User:Haus/9.

Since other projects are presumably doing conversions by hand, I thought it might be nice to share this technique. So my questions are: 1) has this method been used/documented elsewhere, and, if not, 2) what would be an appropriate place to post an essay on it.

Cheers. HausTalk 13:06, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We used something like that with {{Infobox Television episode}}. We took the old (show specific) box, filled it with a usage of the new box, but used the old param values as the new values. Then we subst all transclusions of the old box. Presto, you have the new infobox in place. Then delete or redirect the old one. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:25, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Section Shortcuts

Don't seem to be working properly. The Help desk has gotten a few questions over this recently. (Crossposting below).

Section shortcuts such as WP:IDHT, WP:DASH, WP:HEAD etc. don't seem to be working at the moment. They only take the user to the top of the relevant page, rather than to the appropriate section. Any ideas? Jayen466 12:13, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Yikes, this is the third question on this topic today. See above. --Richardrj talk email 12:16, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Tx, indeed. (Probably not the last either, unless someone manages to fix it. ;-) ) Jayen466 12:29, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Any fixes / help? Best, --Bfigura (talk) 13:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to affect all redirects to sections, not just WP. For example, Infinitude of primes contains #redirect [[prime number#There are infinitely many prime numbers]], so it should go to Prime number#There are infinitely many prime numbers, but #There_are_infinitely_many_prime_numbers is not in the url generated by the redirect. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:15, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This seems to have been broken for at least a year. A great nuisance as it is often better to redirect to a specific section of an article rather than to create a separate stub. —Ian Spackman (talk) 14:37, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe these redirect issues were caused by revision 33133. It seems to be the most likely culprit. --- RockMFR 15:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My first bug - I hope it's not a duplicate :S Happy‑melon 15:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing we all have to wait until tomorrow for it to be fixed? 199.125.109.64 (talk) 17:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, was already fixed. --brion (talk) 18:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And thanks for this as well! Impressive service and speedy fixes. Carcharoth (talk) 23:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another round of thanks

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

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

What Links Here

There was a recent vandal on the Heath Ledger page [2] and now if you go to the Special:Whatlinkshere page for a link that is on HL, the HL page appears at the bottom, now? What the..? Did something go wrong in the move revert or does it take awhile to change?  Chantessy  23:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the user who did it looks like the same one behind User:Grawp, who has a history of vandal sprees on current event topics.  Chantessy  23:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand what you refer to. Is it something in Special:WhatLinksHere/Heath Ledger? Please use the precise names. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:17, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The results on the whatlinkshere page is ordered by the article's id number. If an article is deleted (as this one was while cleaning up the move), it is assigned a new id number, so it gets sent to the bottom of the list. --- RockMFR 03:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted articles have not been assigned new id's for something like a year, to the best of my knowledge. tables.sql says ar_page_id has existed since 1.11. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:47, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a music sample

i was wondering how i can add a 30 second sample of a song to the arcicle on Page 44? I've seen this done on other articles and still havn't figured it out. LukeTheSpook (talk) 23:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Music samples and Wikipedia:Creation and usage of media files#Audio. Graham87 04:34, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where to follow software/technical upgrades to Wikipedia?

I just logged in for the first time in a few weeks and I was surprised to see that the search results have a different format than I'm used to. The found terms used to be red and now they are bold black. I've been trying to figure out what update caused the change but haven't been able to find any info. What's the place to keep tracks of mediawiki and other software changes to wikipedia? Jason Quinn (talk) 01:00, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To get an overview of bug fixes and new features that affect Wikipedia, check out the technology report in the Wikipedia Signpost. To follow MediaWiki development more closely, use the MediaWiki SVN repository. Important changes are often announced on this page as well. Graham87 04:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And for more non-mediawiki updates, see the Server admin log. Mr.Z-man 04:27, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Post swallowed by Wiki software ?

I replied to a talk page post here, it stills shows in the diff when the next post was made here (but there is something wrong with that diff, it repeats some other text), but the text I posted is gone from the page. I've seen strange edit conflicts before where text was deleted by subsequent posts because of an edit conflict, but in those cases, the text showed as deleted in the diff. In this case, the text shows as if it's there in the diff, but it's gone. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're response is there. The post which added duplicate text added the section as it was before you responded. Is it possible that's what you were looking at, and not the other section of the same name? Or am I missing the problem? Gimmetrow 06:20, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm seeing it now (I think ?) ... the poster after me duplicated three sections above his, but chopped my last post from the second, so I need to revert to before his post and then restore his post, since he made several errors there. Is that what you see? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:25, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's it. What a strange thing he did. I reverted back to my last version and then re-added his post. Thanks, Gimmetrow. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

centrifugal fans

Dear Sirs

I am a design engineer and I want to know about centrfugal fans and its accesory parts like damper, couplings, vibration isolators etc.

plesae help me regrding these.

rgds Rakesh —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rcrakesh (talk • contribs) 07:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've answered on his talk page. —EncMstr 07:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Broken refs detection

While experimenting with my home wiki I noticed that if you add a category to system messages related to <ref> citations, such as MediaWiki:Cite error ref no input, all pages with such errors will be added to that category. I suppose that such measure could help us to detect broken formatting. MaxSem(Han shot first!) 13:34, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have all the ref errors documented at Wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting/References#Troubleshooting. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 13:43, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No I don't. Just took a look at my test page and I see that numeric errors are no longer used. Looks like an update is in order. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 14:03, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a good idea Max, just like we have a cat for pages that exceed the transclude limits, we should have a cat for this. And it's easy to do. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:57, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What would cause a Cite error ref no input? --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 16:51, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You need to list this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Inline Templates#New inline templates. You should look at {{dead link}} and see how it uses {{fix}} as a standard method for in-line templates. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 17:34, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's not an inline template. It's not intended to be inserted in articles. It's for MediaWiki: namespace only. And it shouldn't replace existing messages, only tag pages that use them. MaxSem(Han shot first!) 17:37, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Then I don't understand how this is used. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 18:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's to be inserted in MediaWiki:Cite error ref no input and so on. MaxSem(Han shot first!) 18:19, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. Where does MediaWiki:Cite error ref no input come into play? --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 18:25, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah- I see it now. Cite.php has an internal message "Cite error ref no input"; this is passed to MediaWiki:Cite error ref no input that then shows "Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content" in-line with the ref. If you add a category to the message page, then all error will be categorized. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 18:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How to extend logged-in session time?

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

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

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

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

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

If you click "Remember me on this computer" (or whatever) when you log in, you should get many days of login persistence. Log out when you're done to remove the cookie from your hard drive. You can't "claim" IP edits, how could you possibly prove definitively that you're the one who made them? Agree though, it would be nice to know if you've been logged out when you preview, and what I would like is to see when I preview that I will be saving into an edit conflict. Franamax (talk) 19:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Might be an issue with your browser; I get logged out every once and a while, but that's after a few months, not hours. Strange. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikipedia is experiencing technical difficulties"

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

I've been getting "Wikipedia has a problem" almost every edit, at least twice each. It's not just you. And there's two for this comment. Hersfold (t/a/c) 20:21, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Viewing source text for special pages?

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

I can't find its source text page anywhere.

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

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

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

Special pages for all users

Maintenance reports

Login / sign up

Recent changes and logs

Media reports and uploads

Users and rights

Pages in need of work

High use pages

Other special pages

Views
Personal tools

(end of example)

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

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

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

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

Converter problems

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

Just thought you'd like to know.

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

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

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

Blocks not being recorded in the block log...

I recently blocked this IP for 24 hours, and nothing showed up in there block log. I defiantly blocked them and did not pull the stupid mistake of only leaving them a blocked template and not blocking because the the bot at AIV picked at it up. I was looking through a few other recently blocked IP’s block logs and found that this IP also was blocked for (this time for one month) but again nothing was recorded in their block log. Tiptoety talk 22:22, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is an ancient bug, so ancient that I can't remember the reason for it. You can always find existing blocks by clicking on view existing blocks on the blocking page, at Special:IPBlockList, eg[3]. -- zzuuzz (talk) 00:46, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Naxbox collapsible collapsed

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

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

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

I've tweaked it now. Centering the title line within the box is not as important as right-aligning the box itself in the page. Dorftrottel (vandalise) 23:55, April 16, 2008
  • Issue resolved. Didn't know FF has difficulties resolving padding/margin:none as padding/margin:0. Thanks a bunch to Pomte! Dorftrottel (ask) 00:04, April 17, 2008

Special Pages: External Links

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

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

Extension:SpamRegex

A MediaWiki extension that may be helpful to us is the SpamRegex extension. We currently have the Spam-blacklist, but this only prevents direct links from being saved. It doesn't prevent URLs wrapped in <nowiki> tags or URLs put in edit summaries. Depending on how the regexes are written, it could also make combating spam slightly more difficult (harder to discuss) so it would only be used/needed in the more extreme situations. Just the edit summary blocking alone may make installation worth it. I asked Brion about installing it and he said it should be fine, so I'm proposing it here for community review before requesting it. Mr.Z-man 03:42, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a great idea to have on en.wiki. Fully support. In fact, perhaps all of the blacklists (title, username, spam, filename prefix) could be merged into a single extension. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:46, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a very good idea to me, too, so long is it isn't too CPU or memory hungry. SQLQuery me! 04:38, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds yummy. --slakr\ talk / 05:30, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:University debating

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

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

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

Wikipedia needing help with technical difficulties?

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

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

  1. ^ http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1010061
  2. ^ http://ard.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/63/6/621
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