Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer

Would there be any objections if I were to create this particular MediaWiki: page? Examples of its use can be seen on Meta and Wikisource (see bottom of here and here) —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:56, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I want it I want it I want it!! Happy‑melon 20:43, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

YES! Interestingly enough I was just thinking about this too after my recent editing on WB. - Icewedge (talk) 07:25, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nicely done. :) Is there a particular reason MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer and MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon use different images and css attributes? In particular, Image:Wikipedia-logo.svg (38px) and Image:Information.svg (40px)... and the tables themselves seem to render with slightly different widths, on my browser. I favor consistency, but have no particular preference regarding which style we keep. – Luna Santin (talk) 10:07, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Luna Santin: You are right. I'll update both to use our standard MediaWiki message box styles, thus they will look like the MediaWiki:Sharedupload. With 100% width, standard light grey background and so on.

I have coded up examples in my user space at User:Davidgothberg/Test30. I don't know which image to choose. I am leaning towards the Wikipedia logo (it looks good), or the icon tools image (since it says more about what content the boxes have).

Note! In my examples I also suggest a slight change in the MediaWiki:Sharedupload box. (The "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons" box.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. I definitely appreciate the consistency. As far as images, I believe I would personally favor Image:Information.svg or Image:Icon tools.png (though I believe you mentioned you liked Image:Imbox notice.png previously, which is also fine with me) -- they hint nicely as to the box's contents, as you said. – Luna Santin (talk) 09:09, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the two of us it seems the Image:Icon tools.png is the choice. But I think we need some more users to look at this. So please, can more people take a look at User:Davidgothberg/Test30 and comment here?

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I also prefer this icon; it matches the purpose of the links much better. I'd certainly prefer not to see the Wikipedia logo. Waltham, The Duke of 12:20, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any way I can add the template to the bottom of my user page? Thanks! SharkD (talk) 22:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SharkD: I see that you answered yourself by making the template {{sp-contributions-footer}}.

Everyone: I think I have found a much better image to use for these boxes: Image:User-info.svg

Perhaps we should use a more colourful version of that image, but you get the idea. But these boxes are interface messages so perhaps it is good that the image looks a bit neutral. See my example boxes at User:Davidgothberg/Test30 to see how it looks in the boxes.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I really think that "IP user" should be substituted for the three places that "anonymous user" appears, as everyone should know that most user names are far more anonymous than IP addresses. 199.125.109.90 (talk) 17:14, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree with the IP user 199.125.109.90, it is time we get rid of the misnomer "anonymous user" for the not logged in users.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The term "IP user" is terrible. It's incomprehensible jargon to practically anyone on the planet. Call them "unregistered users". —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:19, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not specific enough. IP user is fine, and it is well explained. It's not something that would ever be used out of context. I know I would much rather be referred to as an IP user than as an un-something. 199.125.109.64 (talk) 15:40, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IP user is not "well explained". It's incomprehensible unless you happen to be one of the tiny technical elite who knows what an IP address is, and even then it's incomprehensible unless you realize that MediaWiki names unregistered users by IP address (which is unheard of for web software). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like the new image; I don't mind the discreet blue colour (actually, I think I like it), and I agree that the image should look neutral. In the sandbox I notice two additional new suggestions... As I've said, I prefer this icon to one with more colour (in this case, the one wearing a red tie). As far as the black one is concerned, I get the meaning ("shady" members), but I don't think it will be appreciated much, and it stands out too much anyway.

Although I might consider it if it were stroking a white Persian cat. Waltham, The Duke of 22:16, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As most of you probably have already noticed: I have changed to the "user info" image I show above for all the related MediaWiki messages.

Waltham: Yeah, the black one looks scary. I bet some would like it for IP users! :)) The two coloured images were the only related ready made ones I could find on Commons. I have tried with softer green versions on my own computer, but didn't upload them since they didn't look as good as the grey-blue one we are using now.

Simetrical and 199.125.109.64: Both "IP user" and "unregistered user" sounds right to me. Both are way better than "anonymous user". I think we need input from more users to decide which one is best. So people, which do you prefer: "IP user" or "unregistered user" or something else?

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:15, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer IP user as it is both shorted and as 199.125.109.64 (I think) pointed out, unregistered could be seen as negative. —Atyndall ^{[citation needed]} 11:17, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am being pedantic about semantics, but maybe use "editor" rather than "user". All editors are users, but not all users are editors (some are just readers), and there is no purpose in having "IP user contributions" for IP readers-only. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 11:39, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Twas Now has a point there. Here are the first sentence of the message with the different namings. Version 0 being the old message:

0: This is the contributions page for an anonymous user, identified by the user's numerical IP address.

1: This is the contributions page for an IP user, identified by the user's numerical IP address.

2: This is the contributions page for an unregistered user, identified by the user's numerical IP address.

3: This is the contributions page for an IP editor, identified by the editor's numerical IP address.

4: This is the contributions page for an unregistered editor, identified by the editor's numerical IP address.

I think I prefer versions 1 and 2, but I am okay with 3 and 4 too. To me "user" sounds more friendly and welcoming than "editor". By the way, since these footer boxes are very visible I think that the naming we use in them is likely to become the standard naming we use here at Wikipedia.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have no preference, but I'd like to make two observations:

IP user/editor is more educational, as it makes the connection with IP address and shows the Wikipedian in question what an IP user/editor is without having to be a nerd or read any help pages.
As far as Twas Now's point is concerned, he is right in that only those IP addresses with edits are relevant here, so it makes no sense to refer to plain readers in the toolbox. Furthermore, I think we can say that editor is a title automatically bestowed on anyone who's made an edit, not least because the two words are obviously related.
- On the other hand, since only those who have made edits will have a contributions page (where the toolbox at the bottom appears), the IP user in question cannot be a plain reader anyway. The "this is the contributions page of an IP/anonymous user" message would only appear for editors, who do belong to the category of IP users.

Full circle. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 13:04, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So glad Version 0 is getting looked at. I much prefer "IP editor" to any other option."Hey look, you're already an editor. One of us. One of us". Seriously, it is much more personal, friendly and instructive than "IP user" (my second choice). Hopefully affording us the title will rub off on both IPs and those registered. Dream the dream. 86.44.24.10 (talk) 02:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC) is pimping his sidebar proposal[reply]

User is standard terminology on Wikipedia. Note: User:Dream, User:Duke, User:David. If Wikipedia had been using Editor:The Duke of Waltham then IP editor would be appropriate. Since WP uses User:The Duke of Waltham, then it should be IP user for consistency. 199.125.109.96 (talk) 06:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. Considering this, and Mr Göthberg's view, I think I'll also choose user over editor; I still agree with Twas Now's view, but I have already mentioned that I don't find it very relevant.

Additional benefit of IP user: it is the shortest available option (not a factor I considered in my choice, though).

Having said that, I believe we have consensus on the IP part. Waltham, The Duke of 15:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, 199.125.109.96 has a very good point when he points to that user pages are named "User:". Previously I only had a slight preference for "user" over "editor", but now my preference is much stronger. And yeah, it seems most of us prefer "IP" over "unregistered" (darn that is hard to spell!).

Waltham: Right, "IP user" is the shortest term we have that still is clear. And I believe that is a bigger benefit than you might think. Since when Wikipedians discuss things on talk pages they tend to use as short forms as possible. (They are way too lazy for their own good!) So it is good if we standardise around a short but still clear form, thus the same form can be used all over the place (including in documentation) and thus causing less confusion. So on talk pages using "IP user" is much better than the current all too common short form "anons".

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:14, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Advanced search is hard to find

I did not notice right away, but advanced search is at the bottom of the regular sidebar search results. Could a link to "advanced search" be put in the sidebar of all pages?

Or at the very least, at the TOP of the regular sidebar search results too, and not just at the bottom. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:05, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hitting the "Search" button (next to the "Go" button) takes you to that page; a link already is on every page. EVula // talk // ☯ // 13:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but very few people know that, I believe. I have been editing Wikipedia almost 3 years and have over 14,000 edits and did not know that until now. I have always entered a search term or phrase and then clicked either button. I don't remember clicking either the "go" or the "search" button without entering search terms. Or it was so rare that I did not remember where it sent me too.

Most of the time I use the Google toolbar to search the Wikipedia site anyway: the "Search only the current Web site" button. I would have liked to have used the advanced search more since there is more specificity in what it can search for in some cases. But I disliked the extra steps I had to take to hunt up the bookmark. So this is good to know. Many other people would probably like to know this.

No offense, but nerds who work a lot in an area (for example the Wikipedia sidebar and interface), tend to lose sight of how others perceive that area. They don't realize how unintuitive some things are. I have my areas I focus on in nerdlike fashion, and fresh perspectives have been very helpful at times. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:38, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just to say I second the suggestion to add a Special:Search link somewhere in the sidebar ("toolbox", I guess). Sardanaphalus (talk) 21:18, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, good idea to put it in the "toolbox" section of the sidebar of wikipedia pages. I hope it is named "Advanced search" since that is a search tool name people are familiar with. So the link could be in this form: Advanced search. That is also the name used on the submit button on that search page. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I too would like an Advanced search link in the toolbox since I want to be able to right click it and choose "Open link in new tab", and I can't do that with the [Search] button.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:42, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If this doesn't get implemented generally, anyone who wants it can easily do it with personal javascript. Algebraist 01:39, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If whatever you search for doesn't exist, the "Advanced search" thing is at the bottom of the search results page. Mr.Z-man 01:47, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the OP said that in his first sentence. The issue is whether it should be more visible. Algebraist 01:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Best solution would be to make the word "search" (above the search box) link to Special:Search rather than adding it to the bullet list. — CharlotteWebb 17:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I was wondering why there were 2 buttons, one labeled "Go" and one labeled "Search". I think one of them could be removed. Then a simple link labeled "Advanced search" could be put in its place. A link, not a button. A link can be right-clicked as David Göthberg suggested, and the advanced search page can be opened up in a new tab. I dislike having to open it over the original existing page. That wastes bandwidth and time if I have to go back to the original page. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:18, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They serve different purposes. "Go" (a.k.a. "I'm feeling lucky") loads a page with a title exactly matching your input, if one exists, and "Search" will give you a list of pages containing text similar to your input. I'm just suggesting that we change the text above the sarch box from:

<h5><label for="searchInput">Search</label></h5>

to

<h5><label for="searchInput"><a href="/wiki/Special:Search" title="Advanced search">Search</a></label></h5>

— CharlotteWebb 18:55, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK. That would work. Not sure that everyone will understand that the box below the link is not for advanced search though. But this idea of putting the "Advanced search" link just above the search box is much better than before. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:28, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear no! The Wikipedia:Manual of Style explicitly states that section headings in articles "should not normally contain links", since most editors think that is ugly. So please don't link the box headings in the interface. Also, renaming that box heading to "Advanced search" would be misleading about the box content, and not renaming it would be misleading about what the link means.

The advanced search is mostly for us editors who want to search other name spaces. (Well, and for experienced readers who want to right click and open a new tab.) So put the link in the toolbox. There are plenty of vertical space in our sidebar, since most pages are far longer than the boxes in the sidebar. (And I have a very slow computer but loading and rendering some extra text is no problem, so it's not a performance issue either.)

And keep both the [Go] and [Search] buttons. They are both useful and I have seen my non-geek friends use them and understand them without problems.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:45, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can only hope your appeal to the MOS is a sarcastic one. — CharlotteWebb 15:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Maybe if the "Advanced search" link was put at the top of the "interaction" section then it would be close enough to the search box to be noticed right away by people who want to do a search. Or better yet, put the link at the bottom of the search box below the "go" and "search" buttons. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:40, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CharlotteWebb: No, I don't use sarcasm. I know the MOS doesn't apply to anything but articles. But it is still a good reference for what many Wikipedians think is good style.

Timeshifter: You got a point that it would be nice if the Advanced search link is put somewhere close to the search buttons. I tried it in my image editor and it doesn't look that good in the search box (below the search buttons). So I suggest either at the top of the "interaction" menu, or perhaps more fitting at the bottom of the "navigation" menu. (And adding it to any of those two menus is just a simple edit to MediaWiki:Sidebar, while adding it to the search box is probably more complex.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:24, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The sole commonality is the coincidental use of a <h[number]> html tag for each, so comparisons are tenuous at best. — CharlotteWebb 16:02, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the bottom of the navigation menu sounds good. Search is definitely a navigation tool. And the "Advanced search" link would be directly adjacent to the search box. I have another problem. When I enter a search term into the search box the popup suggestion box that drops down covers the "go" and "search" buttons. This makes it almost impossible to actually do a search! So putting the "advanced search" link above the search box is better. This allows people to go some place where they can do a less-encumbered search. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:45, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Timeshifter: When you type in a word and don't want to do an actual search instead of just clicking one of the alternatives that pop up in the drop-down list, then all you have to do is to click anywhere outside the box (on the page) to close the drop-down list, then you can click "Search". The word you typed will still be in the text field.

Everyone: It seems most of us want to have a link to Advanced search in the sidebar, and that some of us think the best place is at the bottom in the "navigation" menu. So I will add it there now.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! SharkD (talk) 03:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done - The Advanced search is now in the "navigation" menu in the sidebar. If you don't see it on a page you visit and feel impatient then you can purge the page. About a week from now all pages will have timed out in the cache and will have re-rendered and then everyone (including IP users) will see the Advanced search link on all pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:17, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I see it. Is there a way to make the dropdown menu (the one with search suggestions) open up so that it doesn't cover up the "go" and "search" buttons. Maybe make it open up a little to the right? Also, could the search results for regular searches open up in a new tab? --Timeshifter (talk) 07:00, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to add hotlinks for some of the more advanced function, like there is on edit pages? Or, at least provide a short key/legend? SharkD (talk) 04:13, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Which advanced functions? —AlexSm 04:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have to say I oppose this addition. So far I saw two arguments:

some users never find advanced search fieldset. Solution: add a jumping-down [[#powersearch]] shortcut to MediaWiki:Searchresulttext which is displayed above search result
some users need a direct link to advanced search. Solution: a bookmark in your browser.

By the way, a little tip: if you want to search in one particular namespace, just type it as a prefix, e.g. typing "wp:apple" and clicking "Search" will look for "apple" in "Wikipedia:" namespace. —AlexSm 04:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SharkD: I don't know what you meant by "hotlinks". But do you mean that on the Special:Search page you want to add some more explanations how it works? I looked around and there is at least the MediaWiki:Searchresulttext which seems to be the message that is placed at the top of Special:Search, so seems we can add more text easily.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:32, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the question was about insertable characters (aka edittools)? Certainly possible as a gadget. —AlexSm 04:39, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AlexSm: Your first suggestion above is good. I checked the rendered page code and there is an id at the advanced search box at the bottom of the page, so yes, we can add an anchor link from the message at the top of the page.

Your second suggestion does not help people who read or edit from public computers. And does not help people who don't know the link Special:Search in the first place.

Your third suggestion does not help the millions of people who don't read this Village pump page.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I want more of an explanation of how it works on the search page itself (a terse cheat-sheet with examples should suffice). And possibly the insertable characters like can be found on the edit pages. SharkD (talk) 05:08, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Benefit to readers?

I don't see the benefit to non-editors. The only people who really care about namespaces other than the main namespace are editors. If I was a casual reader and saw "advanced search", I would assume it was actually more advanced than the normal search in a way that actually matters to me. It's not. --- RockMFR 23:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree, the "Advanced search" isn't really useful for non-editors. In fact, calling it "Advanced search" at all is somewhat misleading. All it does is search namespaces that aren't the default one, or what you have set in your preferences, other than that its the same search, it really doesn't give any advanced options like Yahoo's or Bugzilla's. The only real advanced options (Boolean search and category intersections) are available via the normal interface. Mr.Z-man 23:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The most beneficial feature for readers is the ability to search Wikipedia using Google. Algebraist 23:37, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I dislike the addition too. It doesn't seem special enough for its new shiny home. Ian¹³ /t 15:57, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have you guys noticed that the Special:Search has a drop down box where you can choose to do a Wikipedia site search with Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, Wikiwix and Exalead? And there is much more to Special:Search than most people know, read all about it at Wikipedia:Searching. What that page currently lacks is some added explanations of all the advanced options there really is. Anyway, since the advanced search at the moment does not come with a proper explanation then you guys are right that it is mostly useful for our editors.

So, how would you guys feel about if we only added the Advanced search link for logged in users? (Disregarding the fact that many of our editors edit as IP users.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proper consensus?

I don't really think there is much use for it either, and I'd to get some kind of consensus from a wider audience. Per above, it seems only useful to editors who need to search for something they've lost in the Wikipedia namespace and such, not much use to the majority of our visitors. If we could have some discussion of what the community actually thinks of this, that would be perfect. [[::User:Byeitical|Byeitical]] ([[::User talk:Byeitical|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Byeitical|contribs]]) 16:02, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Is 'Random article' truly random?

I've been meaning to ask this for the last couple years; the 'Random article' algorithm isn't really random, is it? If I click it, say, 50 times, I get several communes in France, but no villages elsewhere. Or I might get several articles on genes, but no athletes. The next day, the situation might be reversed. The likelihood of this happening is very low, so I'm thinking it uses an article's ID number (given to it when it was created?), and since there are clusters of articles are created by bots in a short period of time, one draws "too many" from one these clusters. Please, don't comment on probability unless you happen to know the algorithm 'Random article' uses. Thanks, 129.252.106.201 (talk) 04:01, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Every article is assigned a random number between 0 and 1 when it is created (these are indexed in SQL, which is what makes selection fast). When you click random article it generates a target random number and then returns the article whose recorded random number is closest to this target. Any clustering by content that you think you see is purely in the eye of the beholder. Dragons flight (talk) 04:10, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Technical_FAQ#Is the "random article" feature really random? - Icewedge (talk) 04:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In simple English, it's not totally random, but it's not biased towards anything in particular. --Carnildo (talk) 05:09, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or rather, it is biased, but randomly so, if that makes sense. For example. if you had three total articles, and they were randomly assigned the numbers .5 .51 and .49, you would see the latter two far far more often. Prodego ^talk 21:25, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It actually picks a random number and then chooses the page whose preselected random number is the closest one greater than the random number chosen. In the event that there's no suitable number found (if the random number is larger than all page_random values), it wraps around to the lowest values since r21371. This is no less random, but more efficient from a database point of view. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 13:40, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've tested this and it seems to choose the one with the lower page_id if the page_random values are equal, which isn't implausible on large projects (see Birthday paradox). — CharlotteWebb 17:43, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I got the same article again when I re-randomed a few days ago (I set up the kids' browser with a random article as home page). At one point it was set to reject RamBot articles, as they made up too large a % of the article count. Rich Farmbrough, 01:57 27 August 2008 (GMT).

But Rich, that's our most reliable content... <sob> — CharlotteWebb 02:10, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

page_random is a double, which in MySQL apparently means 53 precision bits. The birthday paradox implies that you'd need on the order of sqrt(n) different articles to cause a collision, instead of the order of n. In our case, this should mean on the order of 2^25.5, or about 47 million articles, before you'd expect a collision. This is very rough reasoning, and is possibly off by an order of magnitude, but there are likely going to be few if any collisions even for quite large numbers of articles, even with the birthday paradox. This is good, because if two pages share page_random, one will never turn up using the random page feature ― although it's not like that cycles through all pages anyway, so it hardly matters.

Anyway, the actual sorting order is undefined when page_randoms are equal. Since pages will normally be added to the index in the order of page_id, it's quite likely that the database will store the page with the lowest page_id first in the index leaf, and will then incidentally return it first when it needs to return the first result with that page_random. Depending on implementation, it could also easily be in descending page_id order, or could randomly alternate between orders. There are probably cases in InnoDB where the higher page_id will be returned. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:44, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

2⁵³ seems to be about 9 x 10¹⁵ [1] but I only saw 12 decimal places (using phpMyAdmin), so maybe my test was flawed by copying and pasting a truncated value (oops?). — CharlotteWebb 15:24, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any conversion to decimal will probably lose precision in at least some cases. phpMyAdmin is probably truncating it. In any event, I did find a few thousand page_random collisions on enwiki, so my estimate was somewhat high (but not drastically). I didn't expect it to be good to within more than about an order of magnitude, and it was less than an order of magnitude higher than the number of pages enwiki has, so that's no surprise. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, it may be helpful to check for collisions like this every month or so and assign them new values for page_random so that they have a non-zero chance of being seen. — CharlotteWebb 13:43, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No point in doing it every month, it should be at page creation. But there's not really much point in it. No page has a significant chance of being seen anyway. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:07, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Move problem

Why can't I move 2004 Summer Paralympics medal count to 2004 Summer Paralympics medal table? When I try to do so it says "the title '2004 Summer Paralympics medal table' is protected from being created", but the protection log shows nothing. When I first tried this there was no article at the "medal table" title, so I tried creating a redirect there. It worked, so it's obviously not protected against creation. But I still get the same error message when I try to move the "medal count" article over the redirect. — jwillbur 20:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This appears to be a persistent problem. I have come across the problem today with Sugar Hill Historic District (Detroit, Michigan), which was "protected against creation", but I was able to create a redirect. JPG-GR (talk) 19:32, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And, again at Template Attribute Language Expression Syntax. JPG-GR (talk) 03:01, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. — Werdna • talk 08:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any idea which particular line on the blacklist is causing the problems? I couldn't see any, but then I'm not all that familiar with regexps. — jwillbur 15:22, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Confirmation

I suggest that there be a confirmation message that appears when a user is not signed in and trying to edit, to confirm with the user that he/she wants to edit without signing in. -- IRP (talk) 03:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is:

You are not currently logged in. Editing this way will cause your IP address to be recorded publicly in this page's edit history. If you create an account, you can conceal your IP address and be provided with many other benefits. Messages sent to your IP can be viewed on your talk page.

Please do not save test edits. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox.

24.0.66.109 (talk) 03:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was suggesting a more noticeable popup message. -- IRP (talk) 03:18, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's a nice idea, but for those who choose to edit anonymously (and there are some people who have racked up enough Wikipedia experience to be admin material while on an IP address) it would get infuriating in a very short time. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:16, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How about making that message a bit more noticeable? A border or lightly colored background? WODUP 04:28, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's a balance between trying to get people who have inadvertently logged out to notice that they're logged out and scaring would-be anonymous contributors with a large notice about how they're not logged in. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One possible solution is to make your personal logged-in experience a bit different, so you can immediately notice when you're logged out. For example, #wpSave {background:#77CC77} in your monobook.css should make your "Save" button green. —AlexSm 05:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't we just have this discussion? Anomie ⚔ 10:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, how about this: The same message that already exists will not pop up in a popup message, but it should be underneath the 3 buttons: Save Page, Show preview, and Show changes. The message should be highlighted in a noticable color. -- IRP (talk) 20:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we already had this discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 32#Prompting an editor, before submitting an edit, if not logged in. And there were some good suggestions there. Some might even be good as gadgets. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:18, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information -- IRP (talk) 21:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How about having a different default skin color for logged in editors vs. editors who are not logged in? Corvus cornix_talk 22:13, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gadgets don't work for anons. — Werdna • talk 08:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: create MediaWiki:Wikibits.js

I propose that MediaWiki:Wikibits.js be created and serve as a central location for discussing this file. A page exists for MediaWiki:Common.js and probably other JS files as well. SharkD (talk) 04:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why you would want to create a useless and misleading "local system message" to discuss internal MediaWiki file. On the other hand, a separate discussion place somewhere on Meta or mediawiki.org might make sense, provided that you advertise it on MediaWiki_talk:Common.js, WP:US, etc. —AlexSm 05:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's nothing about the title of the proposed page that screams to me, "local system message!" However, if there is an existing benchmark for these sorts of things, then an alternative proposal would be appreciated. SharkD (talk) 05:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All «MediaWiki:...» pages are local system messages by definition, so creating MediaWiki:Wikibits.js would give some users the wrong idea that this file can be changed just for English Wikipedia. —AlexSm 05:18, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah! I see! For some reason I thought MediaWiki:Wikibits.js linked to a page on mediawiki.org (i.e., an interwiki link). SharkD (talk) 05:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with date formatting/sorting (described here) might be a good reason to make this file editable on a per-language wiki basis. SharkD (talk) 06:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there enough discussion outside of bugzilla to warrant the creation of talk pages for all files that fall under this category? Some of them? Lots of them? I'd rather see a systematic change than see a single talk page orphaned somewhere in space... SharkD (talk) 04:00, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We have a general discussion forum for software changes. It's called wikitech-l. It does not make sense to have discussion pages for wikibits.js, unless we also have them for User.php, Title.php, and so on. — Werdna • talk 08:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article sub-pages

Can pages in article space have subpages (such as Water melon/subpage), or are the forward slashes automatically converted into textual data? SharkD (talk) 04:49, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No real subpages in the mainspace, sorry. Subpage-enabled namespaces are marked as such here. WODUP 04:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can use slashes fine, it's just that the result is not considered a subpage. More info: Help:Subpage, mw:Help:Subpages. —AlexSm 05:05, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see that "hierarchical organisation of articles is discouraged." I was thinking this might be useful in cases where articles are too long, but the "split" articles don't meet notability requirements, and are instead supposed to inherit the notability of the parent article. Oh well. SharkD (talk) 05:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Years ago, this feature was enabled in the main namespace, and in Wikipedia's early years, it was a common way of organising information, but it led to awkward titles and the creation of article forks written from a particular POV, so it was decided to abandon the subpages system. Warofdreams talk 08:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have an example of an article where you believe "notability" is a concern? — CharlotteWebb 14:37, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not off the top of my head. But I remember the issue being brought up a couple of times in WikiProject Video games and in AfD discussions. SharkD (talk) 03:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems there's a new article on the topic. SharkD (talk) 04:31, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let me rephrase that, do you have any examples of sub-pages, or distinct topics begging to be split onto separate pages, which may be in need of a more canonical title? — CharlotteWebb 13:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to take the issue to the discussion page I linked to (also, see here). I haven't been following along, but the whole point of the discussion seems to revolve around whether some articles may inherit the notability of the parent topic (or, rather, whether rules can be bent in some cases). I don't particularly like the idea, but I am suggesting that sub-articles may potentially constitute a separate class (i.e., not a "real", self-contained article) where this is the case. SharkD (talk) 16:27, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Even if there was a consensus to use file-directory style titles, I don't see how the "notability" guideline would be interpreted differently. On the other hand "notability guidelines and common sense" go together about as well as "water and oil", "vinegar and baking soda", or "bleach and ammonia" (as opposed to "fish and chips", "peaches and creme", or "vodka and orange juice"), so really g-d knows what would happen in that case. Seriously though would this mean Christianity in the United States would be under "United States/Religion/Christianity" or under "Christianity/Places/United States", or under something else I haven't thought of? — CharlotteWebb 16:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Denoting subpages by using backslashes is ponderous and unecessary. I am not a database expert, but my understanding is that the hierarchical taxonomy being described by having subpages (e.g. Hamlet/Prince Hamlet) is already dealt with by categories such as Category:Characters in Hamlet. In my view, the proposal to have subpages is just a thinly veiled attempt to assert that a subject without reliable secondary sources inhertits notabiility from a more notable subject, which is just not the case.--Gavin Collins (talk) 09:28, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In this particular case Hamlet (character) would probably be preferable. — CharlotteWebb 13:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't quite see the connection in what you're saying. The existence of the article, Hamlet (the play, not the character), does not lend itself to the categorization scheme you suggest. I.e., placing the Hamlet article in Category:Characters in Hamlet isn't particularly sensible. SharkD (talk) 16:27, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alright so maybe you mean to use Hamlet/Act 1 instead of Act 1 of Hamlet, Hamlet: Act 1, Hamlet, Act 1, Act 1 (Hamlet), or Hamlet (Act 1). I don't see how this would make things any easier or why anyone would expect it to have any effect on "notability" guidelines. — CharlotteWebb 16:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One area where I could see such a thing used is in List-type articles. They're not really articles (they have no prose, and don't explain anything), yet they have some encyclopedic value. For instance, a list of things in Topic X could appear in X/List of Y in X. However, I wouldn't want to see this done, either. I'd rather see a separate namespace be used for lists (I think this would be a good idea) than resorting to this option. SharkD (talk) 19:30, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: add "my sandbox" link to top navbar

I propose that a "my sandbox" link be added to the top navbar, in between "my talk" and "my preferences". This might encourage users to work on articles in their sandbox before moving them to article space. SharkD (talk) 04:52, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a Gadget? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that would work too. Still, I'd like it if it were considered for all registered users. SharkD (talk) 06:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This would be a very good feature for all users. I like the placement of the link that SharkD suggests, between "my talk" and "my preferences". And I like the suggested name "my sandbox".

It should not be a gadget since this is exactly for the kind of users who still probably have no idea what a gadget is. Instead we can make a gadget to turn off the link for those who don't want/need it anymore.

We should probably make it so the sandbox link isn't red. (For instance by using my sandbox instead of my sandbox.)

What page name should the sandbox have?

That is, upper or lower case first character? And should we name it "/Test1" to make it clear that one can make more test pages? (When I tell people to "Please try it in your own user space first" then I link them to Special:Mypage/Test1.) On the other hand, that "/Test1" link kind of gets wrong once one has more test pages, so simply "/sandbox" is perhaps more timeless? For "/Test1" I have a slight preference for upper case. While for "/sandbox" I have a slight preference for lower case since that is our standard naming for template sandboxes.

This feature could also be good for IP users. But we perhaps need to think a bit about where the IP user's sandbox should be placed.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps IP users should just be pointed to THE sandbox with logged-in users pointed to their own?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Clubjuggle (talk • contribs) 12:23, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Sharks' original proposal and second Clubjuggle's IP suggestion - X201 (talk) 12:43, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with directing IPs to THE sandbox. I disagree with David Göthberg in that I don't think that the links need to be forced into blue links. Both the user and user talk pages start out as red links for newly-joined users until they actually get around to creating these pages. The same can be true for user sandboxes. SharkD (talk) 13:56, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think /Sandbox (upper case) would be fine. A custom message could appear there when starting the page describing how to create multiple (and sub-hierarchical) sandboxes, kind of how a custom message appears before creating any other aritcle. SharkD (talk) 14:02, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are some of us who have multiple sandboxes or other subpages. I have a couple of pages of notes for articles I want to create or develop, and several I use to test templates or tables. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gadget850: Well, there's nothing preventing you from having more sandboxes, and even from putting a link list on your "my sandbox" page to your other sandboxes and test pages. :)

Everyone: Linking IP users to Wikipedia:Sandbox might be a slight problem. Since already now that sandbox gets so frequently edited that I think those poor newbies must get edit conflicts all the time. But since we probably will be adding the "sandbox" link using javascript, then we can make it so it points to many different sandboxes. For instance we could have say 32 different sandboxes. (And we can increase that later if needed.) But we shouldn't choose the sandbox randomly, since the same user will expect to see the same sandbox the next time he/she visits it. So we could use the first byte in the user's IP address to choose which sandbox to use. That means the same user will usually see the same sandbox even when he visits some time later, since usually only the lower bytes in the IP address changes between sessions. I think that should be a no-brainer for our javascript coders to fix.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at my sandbox page: User:SharkD/Sandbox. It serves more as a directory for all my other sandbox pages, which are stored as sub-pages under the main sandbox page. SharkD (talk) 13:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where are we going to put the sandbox link for IPs? Algebraist 13:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The link could go in the same place, but direct to the wiki sandbox. SharkD (talk) 13:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Simple JS implementation:

addOnloadHook(function () {
    addPortletLink('p-personal', wgArticlePath.replace("$1", "Special:Mypage/Sandbox"), 'My sandbox', 'pt-sandbox', 'Your personal sandbox', null, document.getElementById('pt-preferences'));
});

Of course, if we added it to the sidebar instead, we could do it without JavaScript. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be great to have a "my sandbox" or (for (IP editors) a "sandbox" link on the navbar. I don't think it's so critical to explain to editors how to create multiple subpages; I'd much prefer the message box that shows up (when someone clicks on the red link) to simply explain that this is a personal subpage for testing of editing, with a link to WP:SUB for those who might be interested. But that's just details to be worked out later; the core concept seems really good.

As for IP editors, having their "sandbox" link go to one of 100+ sandboxes, depending on the first block in the IP address, has pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it minimizes edit conflicts that occur when lots of people are editing the standard sandbox simultaneously; on the minus side, it means that the bot or bots doing the cleanup need to cover 100+ pages. But again, I think this is a secondary issue; it would be great to be able to tell IP editors to just click the "sandbox" link at the top of their screen rather than provide them with a link to WP:SAND, and I think there is a reasonable chance that we'd have fewer "test" edits on real pages if there was a "sandbox" link visible at the top of screens. And maybe we'd even get a few more people to realize that they can edit Wikipedia. (On a lot of other wikis, if you click the "edit" tab, you just get a message saying that you have to log in first to edit.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

John Broughton: Right, the IP user sandboxes needs to be cleaned regularly by a bot, just like the current Wikipedia:Sandbox. And I can imagine there are cases when an admin has to delete the sandbox to get rid of especially nasty stuff from the edit history of the sandbox. And that was why I suggested using a fairly low number of such sandboxes. And by the way, I suggest naming them Wikipedia:Sandbox1 and so on.

Ilmari Karonen: Right, we could put the link in the sidebar. Although I think this is an important enough feature that it should probably be put on the navbar at the top of the page. (SharkD's original suggestion above.)

Ilmari and our other javascript experts: Does javascript have access to the IP user's name or IP number so we can use it to pick which sandbox to send the IP user?

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:38, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Mypage/sandbox seems to work just fine for anon users (lower case is better IMHO, in the same form as skinname.css/js) --Splarka (rant) 08:04, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@David Göthberg: JavaScript has no way of finding a user's IP address alone - one has to use server-side code (i.e. PHP) or (ugh) a Java applet. x42bn6 Talk Mess 04:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Splarka: Yes, Special:Mypage/sandbox works for IP users too. But that would mean after a year or so we would have perhaps a million IP user sandboxes, some of which might hold pretty nasty content. And some search engines do index all pages on Wikipedia...

x42bn6: Ouch, seems you are right. I checked around, the "wgUserName" javascript variable is only filled in for logged in users. And since those variables are set in the rendered page header it would probably destroy the squid caching if the user name (IP number) of IP users were set in the page header. So for now it seems our best option is to direct the "sandbox" link for IP users to Wikipedia:Sandbox.

For the logged in users I prefer we use lower case "/sandbox" for the "my sandbox" link. Since as Splarka mentioned above, we already use lower case for the user's own monobook.js and monobook.css. And we use lower case for the now standardised subpages for templates such as "/doc", "/sandbox" and "/testcases".

Then after some weeks if people like these things then I suggest we request the making of a special page named Special:Sandbox that links to Special:Mypage/sandbox for logged in users and to a numbered public sandbox for IP users. But let's leave that aside for now.

Since all comments above have been so positive I think we can declare a consensus to do this. The only thing that remains is to decide on upper case or lower case "/Sandbox" or "/sandbox". (Sorry to be picky about this, but we can not change that spelling later since then a lot of users will have a problem to find their old /sandbox.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:28, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am not even a javascript programmer, but I have figured out how we can do the numbered sandboxes for the IP users: When a new user visits we can randomly assign one of the numbered sandboxes, and then store the result in a javascript cookie. Then if the user comes back an hour later we can assign the same sandbox to that user. Of course, if the user has set his browser to clear cookies between sessions then he gets assigned a new sandbox. But at least the user will see the same sandbox in all open windows during the same browser session, which is more important than seeing the same sandbox some hours later. It seems simple enough that I could cut and paste some cookie examples I found on the web to do it. But to not break anything I should probably leave that to our javascript experts.

But I'll deploy a simpler code at MediaWiki:Common.js first. See the code I am showing at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#"My sandbox" link for the personal tools menu.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. SharkD (talk) 06:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This suggestion has met resistance over at MediaWiki talk:Common.js.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of changes to "wikibits.js"

I've made lots of changes to "wikibits.js". The edited version can be found here. The changes to the file are described here. You can experiment with the code by copying it to your "monobook.js". The changes include several improvements to sortable tables. I'd appreciate some feedback. SharkD (talk) 22:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I posted some feedback on User talk:SharkD/Sandbox/wikibits 4 as I could not work out how to test it. -84user (talk) 10:37, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback! I replied to your comments on the talk page. SharkD (talk) 11:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The bugzilla entries (including patches) for this(-ese) proposals can be found here: [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. SharkD (talk) 03:13, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One more: [11]. SharkD (talk) 16:17, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another: [12]. SharkD (talk) 06:00, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image category help

How do I place images like Image:FreeCol colony screen.jpg into a category? Will "creating the page" cause problems? Thanks! SharkD (talk) 11:42, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can do it, but I think WikiCommons would be a better place to created categories of images.--Appraiser (talk) 15:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the nice thing about having the categories be on Wikipedia is that they appear along side the articles when viewing the category. I.e., readers viewing the category may find images they hadn't looked for and be pleasantly surprised. SharkD (talk) 15:22, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can link to the commons categories, see {{commonscat}} (not "common scat" mind you). — CharlotteWebb 15:49, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If I use {{commonscat}} for category B (located on commons), will this cause all the images in that particular category to appear in category A (located on en:WP)? This is what I'm trying to achieve. SharkD (talk) 20:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is just the standard way of linking to a commons category from a project other than commons. Attempting to categorize commons images locally on each project is redundant and confusing (as there is no corresponding local content). — CharlotteWebb 13:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template/CSS help

I'm trying to achieve this effect in this article using this template. There are two problems: 1) it only works in Internet Explorer, AFAIK; 2) it screws up the alphabetic sorting of the table column. I was hoping someone here might have a solution. Thanks! SharkD (talk) 20:28, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It works fine in FF3, Opera and Safari. You could use a hidden sortkey to sort out the sorting. Algebraist 20:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, sorry I didn't specify the issue in better detail! It's been a few weeks since I actually worked on the article/template.

The problem in Firefox is when the cell's text is too long. In Firefox a line-beak occurs between the audio link and the cell text, causing the cell text and audio link to appear on different lines. In IE the cell text instead wraps when it comes into contact with the audio link. To see this problem in effect, take a look at the thirteenth row in the table. (You may have to decrease the size of the browser window first, as the problem will not occur if the browser window is very wide.) I'm not sure which browser is technically working "correctly", but the IE behavior is the one that is desired. SharkD (talk) 20:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

According to the template docs, if there are line-break/overlap issues you should specify the widths for each span using the optional parameters, lw and rw. Algebraist 23:02, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe. I wrote the doc. Anyway, I tried this and another user reverted it (it only works when the table column has a width specified for it), so I'm looking for a better all-around solution. SharkD (talk) 03:11, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why not just put the text and link in different columns? Algebraist 13:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Putting the links in another column is ugly, and would result in the table tabulating metadata instead of only data. That said, maybe the borders between the two columns could be collapsed, but I think this would be more trouble than it's worth. SharkD (talk) 16:56, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Excluding editors unlikely to vandalize from filtered recent changes

I often use Lupin's anti-vandalism tool to scroll recent changes for vandalism. The tool works great, but the feed is cluttered with perfectly legitimate edits and vandalism reversions that get caught b/c it operates with a bad-words list. One way I've often considered to exclude these is to create a whitelist of admins and others whose edits don't get picked up by the tool. The AWB checkpage and rollbackers would be a good start to such a list (this isn't by any means an effort to create a new "trusted" user class). Would it be possible to implement this somehow, as all Lupin's code appears to be in his userspace? (I would contact Lupin, but he or she hasn't edited in almost eight months.)--chaser - t 22:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The User:Lupin/recent2.js tool grabs data from the Special:Recentchanges RSS feed [13], which currently allows you to ignore bots, anons, etc. with &hidebots=1, &hideanons=1, etc. in the url. Adding more options for other access levels e.g. &hideadmins=1, &hiderollbacker=1, &hideboardvote=1, etc. would be the most efficient way to ignore certain user-groups, because loading only the diffs you want to see is less wasteful than loading all of them and telling the script to disregard many of them, and would require only minimal changes to the script (namely the url it grabs from). Talk to the devs about this. — CharlotteWebb 14:12, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Whether a change was made by a user who's anonymous or a bot is stored in the recentchanges table. Whether they're an admin, rollbacker, boardvote, etc. is not. It would require a join to the user_groups table and would be a lot less efficient. In some cases you'd probably have to scan the whole table, too: try searching for edits by developers . . . Bots and anons are "efficient enough" because you can expect a substantial but not overwhelming percentage of edits to be by each group. So at most you should have to scan two or three or ten times as many rows as you really need, not thousands of times as many. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:18, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, failing the first option, how about including the user-rights of each user whose edits appear in the RSS feed? Then the script would know which edits to assume good (ignore) without having to hit the API or whatever for each unrecognized name. — CharlotteWebb 22:34, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It could be done, sure, if there's enough demand for it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read Simetrical's reply above? He clearly says that, when generating the recentchanges table, checking for those things is not conducive to reasonable performance. It could, of course, be included in the recentchanges table, but it seems like a bit of a big ask for minimal benefit. OTOH, I'm working on some new fields for recentchanges, so it could be snuck in there, presuming there was sufficient demand/need for it. — Werdna • talk 06:20, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It would be an issue to filter by it. It wouldn't be an issue to just provide the data. One extra query on all the user_id's would do it. (Joining would be a bad idea because it would repeat rows.)

You couldn't include it in the recentchanges table unless you did something ugly like concatenating the group names, because users can have multiple groups, so it should really be in its own table. Plus you'd have to maintain it, if it were denormalized like that, which would be a pain. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If I'm the only person asking about this, there's probably not sufficient demand (unless there's a super-easy way!). Anyway, thanks everybody for your time.--chaser - t 07:04, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

template help

Can someone help me add a parameter to {{icu-saved}}? I'd like to be able to add "Nested=yes" so that it can be collapsed like regular WP tags. The WICU project has seveal tags but this one seems to be the one that stays on articles however they do more of a"treat and release" concept so the regular project banner doesn't seem as approprite in the cases of articles that have been "released". Banjeboi 03:44, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you provide an example of a template that features the desired behavior? SharkD (talk) 04:04, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:WPBannerMeta. Banjeboi 06:48, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Anomie ⚔ 11:44, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yea! Thank you!!! Banjeboi 02:38, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When editing a page, whitespace above editing box

When editing a page (that is, on the page you get to after clicking the "Edit this page" link), there is some whitespace above the editing box that wasn't there before today, which I think is caused by something like:

<div id="wikiPreview"></div>

getting changed to:

<div id="wikiPreview"></div><p><br /></p>

Where was this change made?

—Lowellian (reply) 04:15, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In EditPage.php: look at the comments to rev:40184 and maybe some other revisions as well. —AlexSm 04:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the info, AlexSm. But this is not cool at all; that unnecessary whitespace is very annoying and shoves the edit box down too far. As far as I can tell from looking at the revisions, under the previous code, the

<p><br /></p>

part was only generated when there was actually a Preview DIV with content in it (which makes sense, because if there is a Preview block, we want there to be some space between the Preview block and the edit box for visual clarity). But now, that whitespace is generated even when there is no Preview (that is, you haven't clicked the Preview button, so there is only a Preview DIV with no content). This is unnecessary whitespace that looks rather glaring. Any idea how to get the attention of the developers to fix this, or alternatively, how I can modify my monobook.css to get rid of the whitespace?

—Lowellian (reply) 19:36, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Saying "I don't like it, for the following reasons" would be sufficient to express your displeasure with the change. — Werdna • talk 07:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but who should I contact to get this changed? Or like I said, alternatively, how I can modify my monobook.css to get rid of the whitespace? —Lowellian (reply) 17:40, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems the extra whitespace has been removed by now, exactly by revision that I linked above. —AlexSm 15:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, okay, I see, the fixed revision just took a few days to take effect. That's great news. Thank you, developers; I really appreciate this. :) —Lowellian (reply) 23:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Global block overwrites local block?

Does a global softblock of an IP address overwrite a local hardblock of the same? --Oxymoron⁸³ 06:11, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. — CharlotteWebb 14:14, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No global block will ever "overwrite" a local block. To say this implies that the local block is somehow removed. The effect of both a global block and a local block is additive. — Werdna • talk 07:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BLPN

Something very odd has happened here. I did an edit[14]. and the bottom half of the page has vanished, along with its edit history from what I can make out. This is what it looks like now Ty 10:00, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now it's suddenly all reappeared again - the rest of the page and the related part of the edit history. Ty 10:03, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And now it's half vanished, along with the edit history related to that part. Also talk page is a red link. Here's the edit history with edits missing:

(cur) (last) 10:08, 1 September 2008 Tyrenius (Talk | contribs | block) (161,385 bytes) (→Talk: John Michell (writer): heading level from 2 to 3) (rollback | undo)
((cur) (last) 09:50, 1 September 2008 Tyrenius (Talk | contribs | block) (161,383 bytes) (rv self - something not working here) (undo)
((cur) (last) 09:48, 1 September 2008 Tyrenius (Talk | contribs | block) (160,083 bytes) (move post down to related post) (undo)
((cur) (last) 03:46, 31 August 2008 Privatemusings (Talk | contribs | block) (161,383 bytes) (→Ongoing WP:BLP-related concerns: add danny) (undo)
((cur) (last) 00:37, 20 August 2008 SageMab (Talk | contribs | block) (161,165 bytes) (Talk: John Michell (writer)) (undo)
((cur) (last) 00:30, 20 August 2008 SageMab (Talk | contribs | block) (159,865 bytes) (→Talk:living author: defaming continues) (undo)
((cur) (last) 16:19, 15 August 2008 Ciupicat (Talk | contribs | block) (158,721 bytes) (→Template:Lidia Matticchio Bastianich) (undo)
((cur) (last) 16:18, 15 August 2008 Ciupicat (Talk | contribs | block) (158,721 bytes) (→Ongoing WP:BLP-related concerns) (undo)
((cur) (last) 04:25, 15 August 2008 Edison (Talk | contribs | block) (158,356 bytes) (→Proposal for a vote) (undo)

There's too much that had vanished to show it all here, but here's a sample of what it looks like when it's working OK:

(cur) (last) 18:27, 15 August 2008 Wikidemon (Talk | contribs | block) (69,552 bytes) (→Mocking a BLP at Media Matters for America: evil steve jobs) (undo)
(cur) (last) 18:09, 15 August 2008 Noroton (Talk | contribs | block) (69,012 bytes) (→Mocking a BLP at Media Matters for America: wrong on all counts) (undo)
(cur) (last) 17:45, 15 August 2008 Gamaliel (Talk | contribs | block) m (68,332 bytes) (→Mocking a BLP at Media Matters for America) (undo)
(cur) (last) 17:44, 15 August 2008 Gamaliel (Talk | contribs | block) (68,331 bytes) (→Mocking a BLP at Media Matters for America) (undo)
(cur) (last) 06:36, 15 August 2008 MiszaBot II (Talk | contribs | block) m (67,987 bytes) (Archiving 1 thread(s) (older than 4d) to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive50.) (undo)
(cur) (last) 05:48, 15 August 2008 Wikidemon (Talk | contribs | block) (69,708 bytes) (→Mocking a BLP at Media Matters for America: comment) (undo)
(cur) (last) 04:25, 15 August 2008 Noroton (Talk | contribs | block) (68,971 bytes) (→Mocking a BLP at Media Matters for America: response to LaughingVulcan) (undo)

It is at the moment OK again.

Ty 10:23, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page text not found

While looking for potential image copyvios in an upload log, I encountered the following on two images (Image:Jericho rosales.jpg & Image:Kristine hermosa.jpg):

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Image:Kristine hermosa.jpg".

This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.

If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this, making note of the URL.

Well, it isn't a diff or a history link, and there's nothing in the image logs to suggest they've been deleted. So I'm reporting it here as advised. Thanks. --62.164.255.93 (talk) 10:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Might be relevant: Template:Bug —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:20, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Important RFC on Notability!

Note that Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise is now open for business and your comments would be very welcome. --Gavin Collins (talk) 10:43, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Custom edit messages

Per the August 11 Signpost, we can now add custom edit notices per page. This looks like a much better solution than using comments in the article. Does anyone understand how to implement this? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:47, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If MediaWiki:Editnotice-2 is created, it will appear when editing any user-page. If MediaWiki:Editnotice-2-Gadget850 is created, it will appear when editing your user-page. Try it

. — CharlotteWebb 14:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Check out template {{editnotice}}. It has documentation that explains how this works. (And no, I didn't make that template.) One thing worth mentioning is that only admins can create editnotices since they are placed in the fully protected "MediaWiki:" namespace.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah well thanks for that link. Now I feel stupid for going to read the source code

. On the other hand if the notices are being added through a template it would be possible to make certain messages editable by regular users (or at least auto-confirmed) by using a vivid array of parser-functions and template sub-pages. Strictly by the "it's a wiki, get over it" principle this wouldn't be a bad idea if the key intent is to at least partly replace  which can be added or removed by anyone. I don't see it happening though. — CharlotteWebb 15:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all. This will be helpful in maintaining list articles that have criteria for inclusion. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CharlotteWebb: Well, I too went reading the source code and figured out that the naming was something like "MediaWiki:Editnotice-Namespace-Pagename". But how to write the namespace and the pagename was not clear. So I decided to search with Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Editnotice to see if someone else already had tried the different spellings. And thus I found the existing notices and the template used on them. Now afterwards I feel slightly silly since it would have been much simpler to use Special:Search and search all namespaces for "editnotice".

Gadget850: Yeah, this will be very useful. But I think the devs have been a bit too fast in deploying this one. Even though I have worked a lot with namespace detection I find it confusing to work with namespace numbers. Sure, it makes the server code simpler, but it can't be that much code to translate between local namespace names and the numbers. Using namespace names would be much more user-friendly.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:55, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And the template is even more useful when I remove #talkpagetext {display:none} from my .css. I can't remember what I was testing with that. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:15, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the id from the template - I don't know why it was there. --Random832 (contribs) 18:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it would probably better to omit the namespace number and just use the {{FULLPAGENAME}} e.g. "Editnotice-Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)" instead of "Editnotice-4-Village_pump_(technical)". — CharlotteWebb 16:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If we want to have the naming convention changed it should be done now, not after we have thousands of these message pages. — CharlotteWebb 16:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would favour this change, assuming there's no technical problem with it. Has anyone posted it to Bugzilla yet? Algebraist 18:27, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure the impending response would be "but namespace titles might change, especially on foreign language projects with incomplete localization is incomplete (or at least needing better translation by a more fluent speaker)", however I doubt a project would reach the point where it needs Editnotice pages (certainly not in a level of bulk where renaming the namespaces would be a big deal) without already having high volume of editing and hopefully a critical mass of native/near-native speakers who have already straightened out all the L10n issues. But I could be wrong. Even so it would be easy enough to automatically rename directly from the database whenever namespace are changed.

I have asked Krimpet to comment here as she is the one who created this feature. — CharlotteWebb 19:14, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Could this be applied/adapted to the request at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Disambig editintro? I would guess not, from the implementation explanation [it looks page specific, not generalizable to page-groups], but someone who knows this might be able to help me with that. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:12, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Guessing not would be correct. — CharlotteWebb 19:15, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CharlotteWebb asked be to comment - I'm back after being away for a few days, so here I am. :) I chose this somewhat nomenclature for edit notices for several reasons. The foremost is that, indeed, namespace names can be easily altered by system messages. Due to MediaWiki's architecture, it's desirable to be as non-dependent on namespace names as possible. (Imagine, for example, if we decided to add an extension of some sort to deploy identical editnotices from a centralized location on different wikis with different namespace names.) Also, the name of MediaWiki: messages is already subject to some arbitrary limitations (slashes cannot be contained in messages, for example, hence messages for subpages must replace '/' with '-'); thus, the full page name cannot be used in the message name. For this reason, I adopted the current "Editnotice-#-TITLE" nomenclature. (If tracking down names of messages proves to be too confusing, perhaps putting all the notice in the per-namespace notice, along with a ParserFunctions switch to select the desired message per page, would be better?) krimpet✽ 18:22, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that mediawiki had standard namespace names (what we use here in english, but "Project" instead of "Wikipedia") that exist independent of localization. --Random832 (contribs) 18:31, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do we have a policy on letting users have edit notices on their own userspace pages? I've worked out a system for allowing a non-admin to maintain the editnotice without requiring a protected edit request every time and without allowing anyone else to edit it. (should this be allowed?) --Random832 (contribs) 18:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a new feature, so we don't appear to have any guidelines. I can't see any issues with edit notices on a user page that we don't already address, such as civility. Many users have notices of some sort on their talk page addressing centralized discussion and the like. I used {{UserTalkReplyhere}} before edit notice. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:30, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than condoning every man and his dog creating a new MediaWiki: page, why don't we put something at MediaWiki:Editnotice-3 that checks for a .js or .css subpage for that user and loads it as the editnotice if it exists? I think something like:

{{#ifexist:User:{{PAGENAME}}/editnotice.css|{{User:{{PAGENAME}}/editnotice.css}} }}

would be sufficient. It's a bit of a hack of the .css-page-edit-restrictions, but sensible under the circumstances. It's essentially what Random833 has already implemented. (also)Happy‑melon 07:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hacks are :-/ And having a parser function called on every &action=edit is not great for performance... --MZMcBride (talk) 08:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It would only be a parser call on edits to the User: namespace. On the other hand, given that the existing pseudo-editnotices are not protected, perhaps there's no need to make it a .css subpage. On the other hand, the who-can-edit-what-in-userspace system could do with a complete overhaul... (also)Happy‑melon 08:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Create protection failure

It was created at You me at six and moved by Deb (who is an admin). Algebraist 15:44, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Left a note with Deb pointing out her mistake.Kww (talk) 16:19, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please advise on tl-something templates

From what I know, we've got {{tl|, {{tl2|, {{tlx|, {{tlnull| - when are we meant to use one, and when the other? Please help! It Is Me Here (talk) 16:38, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Usage notes are provided at Template:Tl. –xeno (talk) 16:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I understand, but I don't find the instructions there very clear, to be honest. For instance, what is the difference between {{tl2| and {{tlx|? It Is Me Here (talk) 17:53, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tl2 is for linking to other langs/projects, Tlx is so that you can show some parameters. –xeno (talk) 18:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, and what about {{tnull|? I'm sure I saw it somewhere. It Is Me Here (talk) 07:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From Template:tnull - Tnull is used to nullify templates in the monospaced font. It's used for stuff like {{helpme}} after you've helped the user, you nullify the template. –xeno (talk) 10:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see - thanks! It Is Me Here (talk) 13:21, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Heading structure broken

Just a heads-up, as I've also been advised to take the following to MediaWiki. Per Wikipedia:Help desk#Heading structure broken:

The heading structure on every page appears to be broken. There is an H1 (the page title) immediately followed by an H3 ("From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" - which isn't even a heading, and should probably be marked up as a paragraph); and the page ends with a bunch of H5s ("Views", "Personal tools", "Navigation", "Search", "Interaction", "Toolbox") with no parent other than H1 (and the last headings in the article, which are not meant to apply to it).

Headings should follow a strict hierarchy, H1 > H2 > H3, and so on. WCAG says:

3.5 Use header elements to convey document structure and use them according to specification. [Priority 2]
For example, in HTML, use H2 to indicate a subsection of H1. Do not use headers for font effects. ([15])

and:

Since some users skim through a document by navigating its headings, it is important to use them appropriately to convey document structure. Users should order heading elements properly. For example, in HTML, H2 elements should follow H1 elements, H3 elements should follow H2 elements, etc. Content developers should not "skip" levels (e.g., H1 directly to H3). Do not use headings to create font effects; use style sheets to change font styles for example. ([16])

See also Wikipedia talk:Accessibility#Headings in page template. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 17:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Bug —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:45, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you - you beat me to it, because I am still waiting for my bugzilla registration confirmation e-mail to arrive. It's very disappointing to see that the bug was raised on 12 September 2004, just short of 4 years ago, and yet a fix has not yet been implemented. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 21:59, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You realize that there are 3087 unresolved bugs for MediaWiki and Wikimedia? What exactly makes you think that every problem is likely to get fixed within four years of being reported? This particular one doesn't cause any real problem that I've heard of, but fixing it would break all sorts of user scripts and custom styles. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It causes the real problem that you will have heard of, when you read the cited WCAG guidance, above. Where did I say that I thought that every problem would be resolved within four years? If your latter assertion is true, then the lesson is to be stricter in adhering to such guidelines in the first place. Andy Mabbett (aka Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 00:10, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Violating WCAG guidance is not a "real problem" unless people actually complain that in some way their browsing experience has been harmed by it. There have been no complaints I've heard except by standards purists, no complaints by anyone who actually felt that the dubious behavior was harmful to them in some way. I completely agree that it's wrong and should be changed at some point, but it shouldn't be surprising that it receives very low priority, since it would be a pain to fix (breaking some unknown amount of CSS/JS) and there are no concrete benefits. Nothing is "broken" here, we just don't completely adhere to relevant standards. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:51, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone whose browsing experience is mucked up because they use screen readers (which treat heading structures as they should be treated) will disagree with you that nothing is broken and that fixing the problem will have no concrete benefits. It is difficult to imagine any CSS that would be broken by fixing this, and I'm skeptical that any system-wide JS would be effected either. That user-created tools will need to be updated should not be a major factor (if one at all) in WikiMedia following basic web standards. If anything, by following them more closely it will make it easier for third-party developers and everyday JS-using editors to write tools for WikiMedia sites, since things will work as expected instead of weirdly and requiring exceptions. Argument to expediency is rarely a strong argument, and almost never a good one in a standards and development discussion, since every corner cut is very likely to lead to problems down the road that simply grow over time and become harder to resolve the longer they sit unresolved (i.e. the user scripts fixes you are certain will be required). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS: All that needs to happen to resolve this is changing the abused h3 to some other block element like a p or div, depending on the exact code context (I'd have to look at the source to be sure). It could even keep the same id, class and/or other CSS information associated with it, with only minimal if any changes to the .css files. The fix strikes me as almost ridiculously trivial to implement, and also trivial for script writers to update for. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Registered in Wikipedia English, how to post article Wikipedia French

I am registered on the English Wikipedia site and have translated an article into French from an article I posted in English.

However, the French Wikipedia does not appear to recognise my username/login. Do I have to register again? IanS (talk) 18:02, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See m:Help:Unified login. Corvus cornix_talk 18:31, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you IanS (talk) 18:39, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page creation and deletion by namespace

Is there information available regarding one or more of the following?

The total number of pages in each namespace;
The number of pages created in a given time period (e.g. day, week, month), broken down by namespace; and
The number of pages deleted in a given time period, broken down by namespace.

Since it's apparently possible to give an exact count of the number of non-orphaned articles (see Special:Statistics), it should also be possible to do the same with other namespaces. However, despite all my searching, I've not been able to find this information anywhere. –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See m:Help:Magic_words#Statistics for the first (seems to be disabled). I'm not sure about the rest. - jc37 02:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can get a pretty good idea of #2 via Special:NewPages for everything but articles. You'll have to set the feed high and then re-set it to get an exact count, but if you're just interested in the rate, dividing a given number of pages by the time period will give you that. It's no good for articles because there are so damn many of them and they get speedy deleted so quickly. I haven't done enough speedy deletion outside the article namespace to know how quickly that's done or what effect it would have.--chaser - t 06:22, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If there is a point to this question, you can ask somebody with a toolserver account to run a few database queries. — Werdna • talk 08:15, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some Usercheck fields have stopped working

I made a template fairly recently, {{Usercheck-full}}, which combines the fields for users from all other Usercheck templates. However, some of its links have stopped working of late. Namely, the total link has stopped working, instead linking to a page which informs you that "query.php is dead" (this also means that {{User11}}, where I got the code for the link from, has also stopped functioning correctly), and the summary link now just links to a page that says "Object not found!" (this also affects {{User15}}). Please advise. It Is Me Here (talk) 09:32, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The templates need to be updated to use api.php. Query.php was shut down a few days ago. Franamax (talk) 00:24, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I made a copy of {{User11}} and changed it. Does this work?

Franamax (talk) 00:41, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that seems fine, thanks. Could you update {{usercheck-full}} too, please? It Is Me Here (talk) 06:47, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done! Tested for normal case and error case (user unexist). Not tested for valid user with zero contribs. Implemented for {{User11}} (please test!). Implemented for {{usercheck-full}} (please test!). That is one heck of a user check. You missed the links asking me to take my shoes off and to discard any liquids I'm carrying. And how exactly did boarding an airplane come to resemble entering a rock concert anyway? When did my 77-year-old Danish aunt get suspected of terrorism? Anyway, I don't see a problem at {{User15}}, can you elaborate? Cheers! Franamax (talk) 09:20, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thanks, I think (sorry if my template didn't go down too well!). It's the summary link that doesn't work with {{User15}} and {{Usercheck-full}} for me: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~aoleg/wp/rfa/edit_summary.cgi?user=It+Is+Me+Here tells me:

" Object not found!

The requested URL was not found on this server. The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform the author of that page about the error.

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.

Error 404

www.math.ucla.edu

Wed Sep 3 08:57:23 2008

Apache/2.2.4 (Linux/SUSE) "

The total link is now fine once again, both in {{User11}} and {{Usercheck-full}} - thanks for doing that.

Now that we're on the subject, I've just realised that the UHx, UtHx and UtE links don't work in {{Usercheck-full}} (for me, at least; it interprets the spaces in my user name as + signs). If you could fix that too, then that would also be very much appreciated. This issue also affects {{User1 plus}} and {{User2 plus}} (the latter seems to have been completely broken by something).

It Is Me Here (talk) 16:12, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My comments on the comprehensiveness of your template were typical of my lame attempts at humour :) I actually like it and have added it to the list at {{User information templates}} to make it more visible.

Anyway, the "summary" field in {{User15}} and {{usercheck-full}} now uses mathbot's tool. I also fixed (well, "changed") the Uxx fields in {{usercheck-full}}. Also I changed UtE to create a new talk page section rather than edit the whole page - is that a better way for it to operate?

I'll wait for comments before making any changes to the Uxx-plus templates. I've got curly-braces on the brain right now after those last edits. :) Franamax (talk) 04:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice one! The only thing is, UtE has now become redundant as it does exactly the same thing as message; you might want either to revert its function back, or just delete it altogether (see the history for more duplicate categories that I had deleted). Also, the Online / Offline thing does not seem to work for me (see my user page) - do you know where the problem might lie with that? It Is Me Here (talk) 07:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I changed UtE back. As far as "Online" (I was holding back on this issue), I believe that StatusBot made too many edits and was shot down like a mangy stray dog that keeps chasing your sheep and ripping open your garbage bags. See SB's page - there are some alternatives there you may wish to consider. Otherwise that bit should be removed.

Another consideration would be to have hovering tooltips, see "page moves" for an example. This is done with the <span title="xx"> tag and lets you describe the link function rather than just show the link URL. This may violate our accessibility policy, I'm not sure on that. I'm minded now to go through all the Userxx templates and add tooltips and the {{User information templates}} extended documentation throughout. If anyone else is reading this thread, please chime in with your comments! Franamax (talk) 07:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Weird broken link.

Can someone explain what was wrong with this edit? [17] I reverted it because it breaks the link on the "music" icon, but I can't figure out why. Thanks. APL (talk) 14:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The image has another original size so the coordinates only select the upper left corner which can be clicked. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:36, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! That did it. Thanks. I didn't realize it worked like that. APL (talk) 16:41, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for some listing tools

I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I figure the people here can point me in the right direction. Over at Wikipedia:Featured topics we've been having a hard time keeping in sync the articles listed on that page and the articled tagged as being in an FT using {{ArticleHistory}}. To keep these two in line with each other, I would like to find:

A way to see a list of all the articles in Category:Wikipedia featured topics all articles, its sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories in alphabetical order. This would let me see which articles are tagged with the ArticleHistory template.
A way to see a list of all the articles linked on Wikipedia:Featured topics in alphabetical order.

With these two lists I would be able to quickly find the disagreement between the two, which currently can take a very long time to track down. I have a feeling that someone has arleady devised tools to do each of these functions, so can someone please tell me where to find them? Thank you. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 18:00, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did this the hard way using the API, Excel and Access. I was able to verify that all 438 articles currently match up. Having gone through the procedure once, it would likely take me 20-25 minutes to do again, which I'll gladly do on request. No it's not a listing tool, it's a series of manual steps - but I kept notes. If you do find someone to write you a tool, give them a hint that some of the FT page listings are redirects (currently 18 of the 438 don't match exactly) - so they will need to resolve the true (normalized) article name when they get that info. Franamax (talk) 05:07, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

English Wikipedia Internal Account Creation Interface

Hi guys! I'm trying to create an account on the English Wikipedia Internal Account Creation Interface. I entered in all of the information, clicked the second checkbox, skipped the signature box, and hit submit. I got something that looked like:

"Query failed: INSERT INTO acc_user (user_name, user_email, user_pass, user_level, user_onwikiname, user_secure, user_welcome, user_welcome_sig, user_welcome_template) VALUES ('NuclearWarfare', 'EMAIL WAS HERE BUT I REMOVED IT', 'HASH WAS HERE BUT I REMOVED IT', 'New', 'NuclearWarfare', '0', '0', , 'welcome-personal'); ERROR: Unknown column 'user_secure' in 'field list' "

Can anyone tell me what is wrong? I've read Wikipedia:Request an account/Guide over and I can't see what's wrong. Thanks for your help!

(I was told to cross post this over to here, forgive me if I put it in the wrong place) NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 18:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm...that's interesting. I'll have to ask SQLDb or OverlordQ about that, as they run the SQL tables. X clamation point 00:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Give me a couple moments, and, I'll have it fixed up. SQL ^{Query me!} 03:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should be fixed now. SQL ^{Query me!} 03:43, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summary not working properly

When you change an edit summary to document changes to more than one section (as described at Wikipedia:Edit summary#Section editing), only the last section name enclosed in "/* */" will be properly parsed. See here and here. This used to work properly. I am using Firefox 3.0.1 with several javascript apps in my monobook.js (I don't think this would be the problem, but I don't know for sure). — OranL (talk) 20:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is an output issue, not really a problem with using summaries in that manner: I archive the steward permissions page regularly, and I'm seeing edit summaries with that issue going back to July. The problem is, I recall them working correctly at the time. I suspect there's been a recent change to mediawiki that's causing the output to not display the way we're used to. Kylu (talk) 01:54, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that too, and I liked the old way: sometimes I feel like adding replies to several section with just one edit. Look at the history of Linker.php, this was probably rev:39373 by Brion that broke multiple /*section headers*/. By the way, another recent change is rev:39600 do-not-escape-entities, so if you put   in some old edit summary now it is displayed as space. —AlexSm 03:58, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to try adding a bug to MediaWiki Bugzilla. Has anyone not experienced the bug? I'm trying to find out if all configurations are affected, or if it's specific to Firefox or Windows (both of which I highly doubt, but I want to make sure). — OranL (talk) 23:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's a bug in how mediawiki's rendering the output of the edit summary, not something that varying browser is going to change. Kylu (talk) 05:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I searched through the bugzilla database and was unable to find any bug logged on this yet. I have logged it as bug 15481. — OranL (talk) 20:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Move copyright warning on the edit page

Please move the 'Content that violates any copyright will be deleted...' message above the edit pane. As it is now, the edit pane and summary field don't always fit in the browser window. I have to scroll every time I edit a page. SharkD (talk) 01:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Try putting

 body #editpage-copywarn,
 body #editpage-copywarn2,
 body #editpage-copywarn3,
   { 
   display: none !important;
   }

in your User:SharkD/monobook.css file. Also check out mine. Hardly any boilerplate shows up for me anymore. Saintrain (talk) 01:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Software project

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in starting a software project. Basically what it would do is query CatScan and output the results in table format. The results would have multiple columns depending on the categories an article belongs to. It would be used for members of Wikipedia Projects to organize work. SharkD (talk) 01:28, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just created an account yesterday with a free web hosting service. The service supports ASP and has an ASP.NET beta program. Can I use the DotNetWikiBot framework on this system? I'm a complete newbie when it comes to server-side programming. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 15:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlisting rollbacks

On seeing this interesting question, I tried my (out-of-date) local wiki and it appears that when you use rollback, the article is not added to your watchlist. Can anyone shed light on whether there is a preference to enable this? Franamax (talk) 04:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is true even in the most current version. — CharlotteWebb 15:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One of the perks of rollback is that it doesn't add the article to your watchlist. It makes dealing with widespread vandalism (which is its entire purpose) that much easier. If you want to add the pages to your watchlist, use tabbed browsing and open each rollback link in a separate tab; then you can go through the rolled back pages and watchlist the ones you want. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bleaghh! Now that I know, I'll do that. I guess. I would rather have the preference - if I use rollback, almost by definition I want to watchlist that article to be sure the vandalism ceases. As far as "its entire purpose" - that was not exactly the way non-admin rollback was presented to the community, although there was much talk of its efficiency for automated tools. (Which I just cautioned a good-faith vandal-fighter for overusing) Franamax (talk) 04:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NavPopups problem

Hi there. I recently installed the NavPopups script in my .js and everything was fine after the first basic install, but after then adding customisation options they have stopped appearing altogether. Where have I gone wrong? It Is Me Here (talk) 15:54, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you getting any javascript errors (Tools/Error console in Firefox)? Algebraist 17:59, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You missed out the equals sign in the 'popupDragHandle' line. I don't know if that could be causing the problem. Algebraist 18:00, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that was it - silly me! Thanks for the help! It Is Me Here (talk) 18:02, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AOL XFF problem

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Can_someone_please_help_me.3F. It appears that XFF information from 64.12.0.0/16 is no longer trusted, so editors using AOL are affected by a range block placed to prevent anonymous IP hopping vandalism. My understanding is that if the xff headers were trusted, the edits would be recorded as coming from the editor's home ISP rather than AOL and they would not be affected by the block. Thatcher 16:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly from a layman's POV, AOL does own the whole 64.12/16 block but only 64.12.96/24 seems to be trusted-XFF. [18] I also note here that AOL was marked (long ago) as not sending XFF headers consistently. Seems like an issue with how AOL partitions its address space and forwards XFF headers. Don't know if that helps at all. The revision history of the XFF-trusted file would be instructive, but I see no way to figure that out from where I sit. Franamax (talk) 05:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And from the XFF page on Meta, it looks as though "Contact xff AT wikimedia DOT org for listing and delisting inquiries" is where you may wish to ask. Franamax (talk) 05:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

math rendering

Hi! What does this mean?

  <math>{\rm hp}</math>

"{\rm" appears to be a shortcut for mathrm?
If so, are there any more such shortcuts?
Thanks Saintrain (talk) 18:42, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

\rm stops the text from being rendered in italic like variable names (compare

xyz

and

{\rm {xyz}}

). You can try Help:Displaying a formula for more info. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 22:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That's what it looked like but it's not documented in Help:Math or Help:Displaying a formula, hence the 1st question.

Is "\" an abbreviation for "math" in this context? Does it work for \it (== \mathit), etc? Is it documented someplace? Is it a deprecated function or should the above docs be updated to reflect it's use? Saintrain (talk) 18:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is deprecated but still widely used within LaTeX. No idea what that implies for its status in the wiki renderer. And no, the backslash is not an abbreviation, it is the character used in LaTeX to signal the start of a formatting macro. \it and \mathit are two different macros that happen to have similar meanings. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:11, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Watchlist not working

At Special:Watchlist I keep getting a blank white page with html source:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"></HEAD>
<BODY></BODY></HTML>

I have MonoBook and IE7, and have not made any browser or account changes recently. It worked less than an hour ago. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:44, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, works for me. Indeed, I noticed your post on my watchlist. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there's no way Wikipedia should be sending anything in windows-1252; we do everything in utf-8 here. This feels very strange. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:53, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now it varies between the blank page and no page at all. I don't know how it works but I wonder whether my IE7 browser on Windows Vista could have made the quoted html when it couldn't get a correct page. I have a few thousand pages on my watchlist, I don't remember the count. Are others with large watchlists having problems? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:11, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just discovered it works when I change my watchlist preferences to only show 1 day. There are 2054 pages on my watchlist. It still fails when I choose 2 or my normal 3 days in preferences, and also when I choose 1, see a working watchlist, and then click the '3' at days to change the display without changing preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:20, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If I choose 1 day in preferences, view the watchlist, click "Hide logged-in user edits", then I can display both 3 and 7 days, but if I have 3 displayed and click "Show logged-in user edits" then it fails again. It definitely looks like some kind of size limit. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:24, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have about 2600 pages on my watchlist, and I can view the whole list for the last 30 days (which is how far back the recentchanges table goes). Takes bloody ages to load, but it works. I'm using Firefox 3 on Kubuntu Linux. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:35, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget that watchlist can be in quite different "modes": simple or expanded (all changes), simple or enhanced (changes grouped together). I mean, everybode has to mention what kind of watchlist the're using, and only then you can compare. —AlexSm 22:46, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can view 5000 edits at Special:Recentchanges without problems. I have no checkmark at "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes", or at any of the Hide's, or at "Enhanced recent changes" under Recent changes. But it now appears it's not a size limit but a specific (unknown) entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&days=1.274 currently works but http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&days=1.275 doesn't. The exact value of the working day count is slowly increasing as time apparently moves away from the mysterious entry. I can go back 7 days by clicking "Hide logged-in user edits", but it fails at 1.275 days if logged in edits are shown and all other are hidden. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:12, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have created an alternative account (had long considered that for other reasons). I copied PrimeHunter's watchlist to the new account and got the same problem which disappeared when most of the watchlist was deleted. I will now attempt a sort of binary search removing around half the watchlist at a time to look for a bad entry. PrimeHunter2 (talk) 23:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Got it. I now have a watchlist only containing Homat el Diyar. The watchlist currently fails at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&days=1.313 which is around this edit. Don't ask me why. Can anybody confirm the problem? Add a little to days when testing. PrimeHunter2 (talk) 00:06, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that breaks my watchlist on FF3, Opera and Safari. I get a blank page with blank source. On IE I get a blank page with the same source as you got. Algebraist 00:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the confirmation. Finding the cause had me scratching my head for a while. PrimeHunter2 (talk) 00:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(undent) Okay, testing shows I get a blank page and a 500 Internal Server Error. Specifically, the response headers are:

500 Internal Server Error
Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Connection: close
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:32:17 GMT
Via: 1.0 sq34.wikimedia.org:3128 (squid/2.6.STABLE21), 1.0 knsq28.knams.wikimedia.org:3128 (squid/2.6.STABLE21), 1.0 knsq5.knams.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.6.STABLE21)
Server: Apache
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/html
Client-Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:32:19 GMT
Client-Peer: 91.198.174.2:80
Client-Response-Num: 1
Set-Cookie: enwiki_session=[CENSORED]; path=/; HttpOnly
X-Cache: MISS from sq34.wikimedia.org
X-Cache: MISS from knsq28.knams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache: MISS from knsq5.knams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from sq34.wikimedia.org:3128
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from knsq28.knams.wikimedia.org:3128
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from knsq5.knams.wikimedia.org:80
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.5
X-Vary-Options: Accept-Encoding;list-contains=gzip

I think it's time to call in the devs and see what's causing it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed now. The invalid title which caused this will show up as unlinked instead. -- Tim Starling (talk) 04:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. My earlier diff was miscalculated because I forgot to set local time on the alternative account. It's this move which was reverted (to great anger of the mover by the way) before I detected the error. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:02, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Print and handheld style overrides

I've added support for MediaWiki:Handheld.css and MediaWiki:Print.css site-specific style additions for the handheld and printable styles. I threw in some quick sample styles to flatten the layout tables on the Main Page in handheld style; see my blog post on the matter for sample images in Opera's small screen mode. --brion (talk) 03:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sweet! --Splarka (rant) 07:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

javascript tools

What software do javascript authors use to develop code that interacts with wikipedia--without writing it online and needlessly creating hundreds of code-page revisions? Thanks, Whiskeydog (talk) 05:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Greasemonkey is pretty popular. You can also do a lot with just [preview] on an edit to a .js page. I personally like to save a page locally, add <base href="http://en.wikipedia.org/" /> to the head, insert my own <script>, and then load it via file:/// URI (you can't use AJAX without some serious security relaxing though). You can also (depending on security settings) use in some browsers a trick like javascript:importScriptURI('file:///c:/wikipedia/dev/somescript.js') in the location bar. --Splarka (rant) 07:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My favorite way is a local web server and a monobook.js that calls localhost (although Opera 9.5+ disallowed this). —AlexSm 14:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hundreds or thousands of javascript edits will upset no one if hosted off-site. You can store on and import from any wiki farm or even pastebin.ca or your blog or anywhere else where you have write-access. — CharlotteWebb 15:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all the responses. I hadn't realized that a script could be imported via monobook.js from another domain! Whiskeydog (talk) 02:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

media player doesn't work on Internet Explorer

The media player applet doesn't seem to work on Internet Explorer. This appears to be the case for both IE6 and IE7. When I try to play something on IE, the message "class com.fluendo.player.Cortado not found" appears and the applet does not load.

Does anyone know how to resolve this? --Ixfd64 (talk) 05:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

[Mark this page as patrolled] is not appearing...

I'm trying to mark pages as patrolled through Special:NewPages but the option to is not appearing on the articles. There is an rcid in the url and the articles arn't listed in Special:Log/patrol. Can anyone help me please? – Jerry^teps 05:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I dislike new list feature at "search"

Let me vote *against* the feature, new since several months ago, where a list of choices appears when one types in the search window. The list would be fine *except* that it blocks access to the Go and Search buttons underneath. If one wants to click Search, one must first click elsewhere (to eliminate the list and make Search button reappear) then click Search.

My objection would of course disappear if the list were relocated slightly. But this may be hard to achieve in Html.

I appreciate that the new list will often lead to time savings for the user, but in my opinion this slight savings should be balanced by the irritibility users will have when the interface seems to behave in an unexpected "I think I'm smarter than the user" way. On many occasions I've done a simple click (*usually* works as desired), but found that I have to backup, click to disable the list, click Search -- four total clicks to get where 1 click used to take me.

Jamesdowallen (talk) 09:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The quickest way to close the the list is the ESC key - it's what your left hand's for.

More seriously, I like the list and use it a lot. It's particularly convenient for editing, e.g. "I think article X has a useful citation" or "How does that template work?" - especially if the title of the article I'm looking for is one whose spelling or case I often get wrong.

Help with the spelling and case problems will also be useful to readers who don't edit. -- Philcha (talk) 09:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can turn it off with "Disable AJAX suggestions" under Search in Special:Preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:43, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As documented at WP:RFAQ#SEARCH. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 13:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And even when it's on, you can still access the search button by pressing tab twice. Algebraist 11:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I like the list, but I sometimes think the search bar would be better if it wasn't located in the sidebar, but was located right at the top of the screen (next to your username for instance). Aside from the annoyance of having to click elsewhere, or hit esc, to press "search", the list has the problem of not being wide enough. When you are looking for a page with several words in its name (which a lot of pages are), then it becomes virtually impossible to differentiate between similar names, unless you hover the mouse over each individual one, which is very inconvenient. Deamon138 (talk) 14:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was surprised when the list appeared recently. It is annoying in some instances, but overall I am indifferent as to whether it is removed or not. SharkD (talk) 15:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I should also point out that it's in the exact same place as the autocompletion drop-down built into most browsers, which is what usually gets shown there if you disable the search suggestions. Which is to say, a drop-down usually obscures the buttons either way. --brion (talk) 21:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It wouldn't obscure the buttons if the buttons were to the right of the box. DuncanHill (talk) 21:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well.. yes, you're right, but then it'd be horribly cramped. Just uncheck the appropriate box in the Preferences and viola, problem solved. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I think most of you are missing the point. I commented about this previously. I pointed out that I have over 14,000 edits on Wikipedia over several years, and that whenever I couldn't immediately figure out how to get rid of the dropdown list of suggestions, I didn't use Wikipedia search. So I rarely used it. Sometimes I think that the Wikipedia staff likes the fact that many people don't use Wikipedia search since it lightens the load on the already-overburdened servers. If the search form was put at the top of the screen to the left of the user name, then the go and submit buttons would be to the right of the search form. Then the dropdown menu would not block the go and submit buttons. Best of all Wikipedia could charge Google and Yahoo millions of dollars to put them as options for search as in the advanced search form at Special:Search. Then maybe the servers and staff here could be increased. See Wikipedia:Advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages. The 3 other search forms at the top of my browser have dropdown menus, and their menus do not block their search/submit buttons. The 3 search forms that I am talking about are the Google toolbar, the Firefox search form that comes with their browser, and the address form which doubles as a search form. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unsolved questions

In the article, the author(s) could formulate a link with unsolved questions. There he could put things he doesn’t know about the topic. Someone, who is reading wikipedia, could find the link and answer the questions. This would help to improve the articles and would be an excellent new tool for expanding wikipedia.

Hope you enjoy the idea.

Alexandre Lipski Gonçalves —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.83.217.113 (talk) 15:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Having a place to ask questions is a good idea but there are already places, the talk page of the article and Wikipedia:Reference desk. I don't think more is needed. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I believe there are templates that ask for particular help. They can be placed in individual article sections. I don't know offhand where those templates are. Anybody else know? --Timeshifter (talk) 23:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The closest I know is {{Expert}} which links to the talk page where specific questions might be asked. And then there is {{Unsolved}} but that doesn't ask for help and should only be used to indicate that nobody knows the answer. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{Expert}} is one I remember. Maybe some other templates need to be created. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:29, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trouble with parser functions

I am attempting to make a template (User:Someguy1221/AFC) that takes a single parameter to return a string of text, but no matter how much I fiddle with it, it only returns the default value. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Someguy1221 (talk) 23:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should work now. --- RockMFR 23:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Someguy1221 (talk) 23:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist individual sections of article and talk pages?

I would like to be able to watchlist individual sections of talk pages. I dislike having to check talk pages so often due to all the changes that occur in sections I am not interested in. I avoid a lot of discussion pages because of all the time wasted for this reason.

It would be nice if there was a filter that blocked anything showing up on my watchlist that is not from that particular talk section. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:23, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In theory some kind of tool could be written but it would be dependant on people properly using the "edit section" button... –xeno (talk) 23:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On clicking the "edit" button next to a section one sees the edit form for that section. At the bottom is a checkbox for "Watch this page". Maybe there can be an additional checkbox for "Watch this section".

Now that I think about it, this would be a good option for article sections too. Article editing can get busy at times too. And I am often interested only in watching one section of an article. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus seems to be that this would be too hard to do. See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Allow watchlisting individual sections of a page. Algebraist 00:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect counts from PAGESINCATEGORY function

This parser function seems to be returning incorrect numbers. For instance, Category:Wikipedia featured topics all articles has more than 0 entries. The page counts come from the category table and are presumably updated as cats get added to/removed from pages. This means that a server burp will leave the table in an incorrect state.

It appears in category.php that if the page count drops below zero, a recount of the contents is forced. As an extra piece of icing, this recount comes from the categorylinks table, so if referntial integrity has been lost between it and the page table, the count will still be wrong.

Just off the bat though, is there any way to force a recount of contents of a category other than depopulating it? Franamax (talk) 00:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, something's fixed it. Algebraist 08:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that something was me in the course of a long journey. The most comprehensive retelling is probably the links on this page. The problem is not solved though, in fact I think I may have also run into the "icing" problem I mentioned above. I'll update the pagesincategory discrepancies I've found a little later. See here and most of my latest contribs for the whole sad story.

It's quite late here, so I'm booking off for the night. Meanwhile, I'll ask again: is there a way to force a recount of contents of a category? This is crucial. Franamax (talk) 09:05, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Images

There's some kind of a problem with images at Commons. There's a discussion at WP:ANI. I first noticed it at Napoleon Marache. If you go down to the section titled "Game against Morphy" there are several pictures of chess boards. One of the images that makes up this image, Image:Chess zver 26.png, an image from commons,is coming up as a blue text link instead of an image and screwing up the whole layout of the page. I am using Firefox. The problem seems to be browser-dependent, based on the discussion at ANI. I have refreshed my cache and the problem persists. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 06:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Automated categorization

Can anyone advice of some tool or bot to categorize the english counterpart (if any) of the articles in sv:Kategori:Personer verksamma vid Uppsala universitet to en:Category:Uppsala University faculty? Many thanks, //Urbourbo (talk) 11:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]