Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

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

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MediaWiki could use an update

I've been having to edit-war ClueBot III [1] over an API bug, and I happen to know that a lot of API bugs have been fixed in the 100 or so revisions since Wikipedia's version of MediaWiki has last been updated (or "scapped", as it apparently is called). Could someone get Brion or Tim to scap the servers or at least do it sometime soon? Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 05:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I know Brion was on vacation, then he was sick after he got back. He might not have finished reviewing all the commits since then. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 03:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, we try not to dump updates to the server that we haven't at least looked at. :) --brion (talk) 18:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

You have quite a few revisions to look at :) Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 01:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Reducing default history page size to lessen workload for servers

Has anyone suggested reducing the default article history from 50 to 25 or 20 to reduce the server workload? How much of an effect might this have on such a popular website? — BRIAN0918 • 2008-09-11 17:06Z

Not a lot. Listing out some metadata from the revision history isn't really an expensive operation. --brion (talk) 17:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Reducing the default watchlist size would probably make a greater difference. — CharlotteWebb 03:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

People with big watchlists are probably going to manually set it higher anyway, so I expect not. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist data comes out of recent changes, not article histories. --Random832 (contribs) 15:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes, and? This thread was an alternative suggestion. Neither one is probably going to help at all.` —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:45, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Re Brian: unless there is evidence that serving page histories is significantly increasing the server load, speeding up that part of the software won't make much difference overall. I don't know what percent of requests are for page histories (the server admins probably do). But as an abstract example: if something is taking 5% of the total server time, and you make that thing much faster in a way that doesn't affect the changing the remaining 95% of the server time, you won't see much overall speedup. For this reason, optimization is usually done in response to a demonstrated bottleneck. There is a lot of profiling code in mediawiki that the server admins already use to detect these bottlenecks. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Background colour in articles

I only wanted to suggest that the default background colour for the articles can be changed by the reader, preferably to another very light non-white colour. Me and other frequent readers spend hours reading articles, and the white background is really tough for the eyes even after changing the monitor settings. An option to change it to e.g. cyan,(or other really light colours) would be very useful for readers that spend a lot of time on the site, or readers with eyes sensitive to intense light. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.9.125.223 (talk) 17:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

If you register an account, you can change your Monobook.css file so that the background color can be anything you want. In most other scenarios (such as readers with light sensitivity), the best option isn't to tweak the background color (which could cause readability issues), but to either turn down the brightness on the monitor or to customize the colors as I pointed out. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:27, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

With an account one can choose green text on a black background. I find this much easier on the eyes. DuncanHill (talk) 22:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Your browser should also give you the option to override site styles in some fashion even if you aren't logged in. Firefox does, at least, and I expect so do all other non-IE browsers. This is not a discoverable or easily-used function, though: you have to know what CSS is to know about it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

. . . #ffffec . . . Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. . . . #ffffff . . . Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Support off-white as a sitewide background color for mainspace. On my own MediaWiki wiki, I've set #ffffec as the background color for all pages and it does a great deal to lessen eyestrain. Indeed, I've set a similar background color in my email client and text editor. This is not a user-specific issue, although some users may complain while others suffer silently. Did you ever wonder why slide rules are yellow? Light of different colors is refracted differently by a lens, for example that in the human eye; this is chromatic aberration. People with entirely normal eyesight will see a slightly blurred image when black text is displayed on a pure white background. This is true even when the display is homogenous, such as ink on paper. A lightly colored background reduces this effect. Some people may feel less annoyed by chromatic abberation than others but then, there are people who are comfortable reading a book next to an operating jackhammer. That's not an argument against quiet living rooms. Nor should we expect casual readers to tinker with technical details; the project should be as presentable as possible, by default. The current fashion of black-on-white pages is in part a reaction against the excesses of the early web, with magenta text on animated GIF backgrounds; in part it is related to the demand for white kitchens, white carpets, white sugar, and Wonder Bread -- the perceived superiority of pure whiteness. We're coming to realize that white homes are hard to keep clean and white foods hard to digest. We should also realize that white web pages are hard to read. — Xiong熊talk* 12:20, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Xiong: I took the liberty of making your whole comment use your off-white colour to make it a better example. If you don't like it just remove it.

Everyone: Since this talk page has slight blue background these examples look more yellow than they really are. They will not look as yellow if/when used for the whole article background.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Regular white #FFFFFF, currently used in articles. Off-white colour #FFFBF0 that David uses in his computer. Support - We can make this as a user friendly menu choice even for IP users, see explanation further down. Books and newspapers are on purpose printed on off-white paper, since that is easier on the eyes. (While for instance brochures are usually printed on full white paper since that does look better, but you are not supposed to spend as much time looking at them.) I have good eyesight but sensitive eyes, so already many years ago I set my computer to show all "white" areas as a slight off-white. See my colour example to the right. I even get that colour in the Wikipedia edit window! However I know many of my friends find the colours in my computer slightly strange. Many seem to prefer full white. (In spite that they complain they get tired eyes from the computer and can't understand how I can spend 15 hours a day 5 days a week in front of the computer.) I am no JavaScript expert but I think we can do the following: We probably should keep the full white colour in articles, but add a menu option in the sidebar to the left that says something like "Off-white background". That menu option can activate a JavaScript that changes the background to off-white. And it can set a JavaScript cookie so the same background is shown the next time the user visits. I think that should work even for IP users. --David Göthberg (talk) 14:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC) Clarification: Oppose default change, support user option if technically viable - If what Simetrical states below is true (that such IP user cookies would ruin the Squid caches) then we can not have such a menu choice. Unless of course it is added to the MediaWiki software in a smarter way. If the default should be changed then it should of course be a much lighter tint than the one I suggested above for the user option. But I don't think we should change the default colour since my experience is that most readers prefer the full white, in spite that it is bad for them. So could the devs perhaps at least think about if they could add this option in some way that wouldn't ruin the caches? --David Göthberg (talk) 18:57, 17 September 2008 (UTC) I can't think of any way, offhand. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

See below. --Splarka (rant) 07:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

IIRC the developers have objected to (and intervened to revert) use of cookies for IP users in the past [dismissable sitenotice], and I believe it is technically not allowed by the privacy policy (which idiotically says "There shall be no cookies" instead of something more sensible like "We won't track you") --Random832 (contribs) 15:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I doubt there's a privacy policy issue. Maybe there is, but that would be fairly idiotic, I agree. But the Squid caches use Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie. If you give out cookies to half of anons, Squid can't serve pages generated for one set to the other. You're fragmenting the cache. This is the reason a number of proposals related to customizability for anons have been nuked in the past. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikimedia Squids now use X-Vary-Options headers, which is a custom patch by Tim Starling. This allows anonymous cookies (not matching important ones) to not invalidate cache. --Splarka (rant) 07:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

But that would mean that the cookies wouldn't actually work, wouldn't it? Or are you thinking something like having the color change be achieved by some JavaScript that checks for the cookies, which Squid is instructed to ignore? Slightly evil, but that might work . . . —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:55, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. It could even be done before page loads. A simple check of if(document.cookie.indexOf('mediawikicontentcolor')) that would then get the value and appendCSS(#content {background-color: something}). Wiktionary does this heavily, IIRC. --Splarka (rant) 05:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd very strongly support a change of default background colour. Whether to a noticeably different buff tone or just a subtle change, unnoticeable without side-by-side comparison, it's a quick accessibility win, and should hurt no-one. Please remember that many people don;t or can't have javascript enabled. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support the change (i like the yellow, but support other good colours). After looking at the yellow backgrounded (is that even a word?) text, I truly reckon that it is less of an eyestrain than white. And of couse, since Wikipedia's main slogan is something along the lines of making knowledge more accessable, the colour change could help in a small way. — ^.^ ^{[citation needed]} 12:15, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose default change. Turn your damned screen brightnesses down if white hurt your eyes. Newspapers don't have brightness controls, monitors do. High-contrast backgrounds aid significantly in the readability of low-resolution text, which is what most of our readers are lumbered with. Setting an off-white in addition to green-on-black as an easy option in prefs might be welcome, but changing the default isn't. Yellow would be an act of insanity. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. This would make Wikipedia look clowny. We're not MySpace; if someone want's a different color, they can easily edit their preferences or their monobook.css. This would not only be ugly, but probably scare off readers looking for reliable information. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 13:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose per thumperward and Admiral Norton. D.M.N. (talk) 13:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Now I have a new problem: Save doesn't work

I have to click "Save" about three or four times before it "takes". It just keeps returning the edit box back to me as if I had clicked on "Show preview". Corvus cornix_talk 21:06, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Does it actually show you a preview, or just return you to the edit screen? Algebraist 21:21, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I quit after running into problems yesterday, so I don't know if it's still going to give me problems. It was just returning me to the edit screen. Corvus cornix_talk 19:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Similar problems, unanswered questions

This reminds me of a peculiar incident back in May; it's both relevant and irrelevant, so I've branched it off into its own sub-section. It was during that long debate on moving the search box to the top, over at the Proposals section of the Pump. When posting in the main section of the discussion, I often could not save until clicking on "preview" (I normally use wikEd's previewing function). If I remember correctly, it blanked out and I had to go back from my browser. I'm not sure what caused it, but I've always suspected a custom-made search bar in the section in question. There simply wasn't anything else that looked like a probable cause to me.

Does anyone know what could cause an effect like this, namely not being able to save unless hitting "preview"? Waltham, The Duke of 23:15, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Logging out after 30 days feature

Hello, this post is about the Wikipedia feature that logs out registered users after 30 days. I apologize if this question has been asked before. I checked the main FAQ and the technical FAQ, but did not find anything about it. Also, the archives are simply too large to check more than a few archives back. Anyway, I was wondering if it would be possible to change this feature so that it only logs users out after 30 days of either not visiting or editing Wikipedia (I say "either" because it might be easier to implement one versus the other). If there is a concern that someone could take over an account permanently as long as he or she visits or edits every 30 days, then perhaps the site could log you out no matter what after somewhere between 90 to 150 days.

If this is not feasible, then perhaps the time before being logged out could be increased to 60 or 90 days. While having to enter a single password once a month is a very small burden, with all of the other passwords I have to enter on other websites, it adds up. Also, while I have not written down when Wikipedia logs me out and cannot be certain, I think that it may be logging me out every two weeks or so rather than every 30 days. I made a note that it logged me out today and I'll see when it happens next.

Finally, if no one can tell that the account has been taken over, then the impersonator is probably doing a decent job (if a takeover is suspected, then the account can be blocked until the person's identity is confirmed, or whatever the current policy on such things is). I do not see much of a problem, other than the possibility of misplaced blame, as long as the account does not have bureaucrat status or higher (perhaps special requirements could be made of those accounts, although I think that the danger is small because they make up so small of a percentage of accounts). Admins can do significant damage, but almost all of it is easily and quickly fixed by other admins. Also, once the impostor has revealed him or herself by causing damage, then he or she can be quickly blocked. For these reasons, I see little danger in either increasing the amount of time before being logged out to 60 or 90 days or only logging out if the account has been inactive for 30 days, with the option of forced logout after 90 to 150 days regardless of activity.

I edit sporadically these days, so it may take a while for me to reply to any responses. Thanks, Kjkolb (talk) 06:08, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It really shouldn't be a horrible pain for you to have to log in once a month. You could try manually changing your cookie settings to make the cookie last longer, if you like. --brion (talk) 18:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Kjkolb: I think 30 days is about right. With 90 days you would only need to use your password four times a year, I think many users will forget their password if they only get to use it that seldom.

And if you forget to log out of a computer, say at your friends house, and the cookie is invalidated after 30 days, then there is a decent chance that your friend will not even discover that his browser is logged in to Wikipedia before the cookie is too old.

Of course, for a public computer like at a school then 30 days is way too much. But you should not click the "Remember me" option when at a public computer. Well, you shouldn't even use that option at a friends house. And it can be wise to use a secondary account when not at home. It is allowed and even recommended to create "sockpuppet" accounts for this reason. (Choose a similar name and link between then so people know it is the same person.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:43, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I view forced timeouts of cookies as saying "Screw you, occasional visitor!" I happen to visit Wikipedia every day, but there are other sites with forced timeouts that I don't. What inevitably happens is that when I happen to visit the site, I've been logged out, and have to try to figure out what my password was, often using the password reset process (since I use a different password for unrelated sites). More than once I've decided that it wasn't worth the effort to remember or reset my password, for the little post I was going to make. This isn't logging in once a month, so much as logging in every time I use the site.

I would like to be logged in until I decide to log out. If someone compromises my account, this can probably be detected and rectified quickly. At worst I'll lose some unprivileged account on a website I (in most cases) don't really care much about, in the extremely marginally likely event that anyone cares enough to steal it. More likely, I'll be able to prove my identity and recover it, to no one's loss at all.

This isn't a banking site here, it's just some website, where moreover even the privileged accounts can't do anything that's not easily reversible. When convenience and security are at odds, the balance should tilt heavily toward convenience for us. Even if it's technically possible to fiddle around with your cookies, and I'm sure I could figure it out given twenty minutes, it's kind of silly to say that it's okay to inconvenience users because they can work around it by . . . hmm, inconveniencing themselves to figure out how to manually adjust cookies. If anything, it's the security nuts who should be told to adjust their cookies manually.

Are there any justifications other than security for this behavior? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:59, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty much it. If we were a bank we'd be logging you out after 10 minutes like assholes, though, not after a month. :) --brion (talk) 20:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

A month is still every visit for me to some of the smaller domains. I have to log back in on mediawiki.org like every third time I want to make an edit. If I weren't so entrenched in the community here and didn't remember my password very clearly, I could easily see myself just not bothering. As I said, I have chosen not to bother on other sites that do this, because it's too much of a pain to log back in all the time. The risk to the project here is really very marginal. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, logging out after 30 days is even more lame as a security measure these days as most browsers have features that save entered forms data. And that data isn't going to expire even in one year's time. I personally disabled these feature on my PC, but whenever you use an internet cafe, or edit from work, or from friends, you can't be sure that their browser won't save your password, even if everyone's logged out after 3 minutes. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 16:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that auto-logouts are highly annoying. A more user-friendly alternative would be an option to invalidate cookies stored on other computers (just encrypt a date into the cookie). Cacycle (talk) 03:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

30 days is wrong for all purposes: anything longer than "session cookie" is too long for a public computer, and anything shorter than "indefinite" is too short for a private computer. --Carnildo (talk) 03:57, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Interlanguage Extension

There's a MediaWiki extension called "Interlanguage" that is designed to make the maintenance of interwiki links much easier. For more info see:

• mw:Extension:Interlanguage
• meta:A newer look at the interlanguage link (and its talk page)

I tried it in its test wiki. It worked very well and seemed very useful.

What is the right way to ask to enable it in Wikipedia? I filed a request in MediaZilla:

• https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15607

Further comments are welcome. If you think that it's useful, vote for it or something (although I don't know how important those votes actually are.)

Is there anything else I should do?

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 06:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I took a look. It seems that technically it is fairly sound, but only fairly. There still are some issues:

1. The central interlanguage.wikimedia.org wiki has to be deployed and tested.
2. There still is the grand discussion about how the articles on the central interlanguage wiki should be named. Should they be in English (but some things don't even have an English name), or in the language of the first article on the subject (well, that would make many titles just ??????? for many of us and I can't even cut and paste the names of articles in some of those languages), or should they perhaps simply use numbers (perhaps not as user friendly but at least works technically)?
3. There are some other issues how to describe on the interlanguage page what it is about. Should for instance the interwiki links on that page be put in small templates with link + short description? Or should we instead (or perhaps as an additional option) use such a template on the Wikipedias? That is, interlanguage link + description, then a bot can copy that to the interlanguage wiki page.

The interwiki system seems to be very new, just some month. So I think it needs to be discussed and thought about a bit more. But it is good that you announced it here Amir, so more people get to know about it and can take a look.

Now please don't discuss these issues here, those were just examples. Go to the pages that Amir linked to above and their talk pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the best place for discussion about the implementation in Wikipedia is meta:Talk:A newer look at the interlanguage link. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 16:58, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

As for the cutting and pasting—most likely you are copying the text properly—you're simply not using a Unicode font and/or the correct encoding. UTF-16 is the native encoding of Windows and Java, so it should work in Notepad, MS Word, Open Office, etc. I've run into the problem, though, where some third-party text editors encode text in ANSI by default, and have to be reconfigured to use UTF-16 (or UTF-8 if UTF-16 is not available).SharkD (talk) 17:03, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

You may find this site to be helpful. SharkD (talk) 17:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no format called "ANSI". ANSI is the American National Standards Institute, which may or may not endorse any character standards, but if it does I haven't heard of them. As I recall, Notepad calls ISO 8859-1/Latin-1 "ANSI" for some reason, but the names I just gave are its proper and specific ones. I seem to recall that it also calls UTF-16 "Unicode". —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:43, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggested something similar to this a year ago in a de-railed mailing list thread, see [2]. — CharlotteWebb 17:09, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Redirect Fixer

Just an FYI:
Someone had comited page move vandalism on the 2008 Chatsworth train collision page, and the User:Redirect fixer bot retargeted the following pages to the vandal page.
Chatsworth train crash
2008 Chatsworth, California train collision
Chatsworth Metrolink Train Crash
2008 Chatsworth train accident
2008 Chatsworth Metrolink collision

These pages sat this way for several hous before I found them and reverted them. Not sure what can be done about this, perhaps the bot should go back and double check for red links?

Just thought I would bring this to your attention. -Brougham96 (talk) 20:16, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

See bug 15622. MER-C 03:55, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Three dimensional tables

I was wondering if we might brainstorm how we might extend the sorting behavior to three-dimensional tables (i.e., tables where each cell contains a linear list). What I'd like to be able to do is be able to determine which item in the list appears at the top. In this way, one could sort a column and be able to determine which item in each cell is considered when doing the sorting. Are there ways of achieving this? SharkD (talk) 06:55, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

login page oddness

in case no one has commented on this before: I've noticed that when I get logged out of wikipedia (which happens sporadically), if I happen to get a User Talk message while I'm offline, the 'you have new messages' banner appears on the login page, before I actually click the button to log in. not a huge problem, but it is odd that somehow wikipedia is recognizing my identity and fetching notifications even though I haven't 'officially' told it who I am, and it might be problematic if other information is available before login as well.

this may be browser specific - I'm using Safari on a Mac, which automatically enters my username and pass into the login fields via keychain (though it does not automatically log me in). could someone with more knowledge of the system I have figure out why this is happening, and whether it represents a deeper problem? --Ludwigs2 16:42, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Someone has probably left a message for your IP address, not your username. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a recurring fault, in which you appear to be logged out, but when you go to the login page you are actually logged in - your watchlist, contributions etc tags appear at the top and if you click on them you are logged in. DuncanHill (talk) 17:03, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

ah, ok. as long as it's a known problem. --Ludwigs2 20:38, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Maybe you're somehow getting a Squid-cached page despite having cookies? Is this reproducible? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

What's with all those A's in the dropdown menu?

I've asked this before and so have other people, but nothing has happened to fix it.

Right below the Do not copy text ... material is a box with a menu (Insert, Wiki markup, Symbols, etc). Next to it, where there used to be a whole collection of clickable items is a long collection of A's and a's plus some boxes. This, of course, is completely and utterly useless.

I am using a Mac iBook, running on Mac OS 10.3.9, and I'm using Safari.

Now, when I switch to Firefox, I get the expected items in the menu, but not with Safari. Safari is my preferred browser, though if I get annoyed enough, I'll switch to Firefox to get the symbols I want from the menu. Having to switch browsers just because the code is cockeyed seems counterproductive, don't you agree?

Can someone actually do something about this, or will the issue get swept under the rug?

Timothy Perper (talk) 17:24, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I use Safari (under both 10.4 and 10.5), and I've got the usual symbol selection table. What version of Safari are you running? EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a font problem at your end. See Help:Special characters or Help:Multilingual support for help.

Check MediaWiki:Edittools to see the full set in raw. (Even with some of the unicode fonts installed, you might still get a few "unknown character" placeholder symbols (question marks, squares, etc). The warning template {{SpecialChars}} is often used in articles. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be at least one other user with this problem. Can some Mac-head do an FAQ on how to fix it? I use Microscrap Internet Exploder myself and don't have the problem - but I might tip off that PC guy in the commercials that he should challenge "Mac" to a WP-editing contest. ;) Franamax (talk) 22:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

That's me Julia. I went to the Help links but being totally untechie, can;t figure it out. I hope it gets fixed somewhere... Julia Rossi (talk) 22:45, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Timothy and Julia, click on this: MediaWiki:Edittools - do you see the full set of symbols? That may give people a clue as to where the problem lies. Franamax (talk) 23:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Yup, I get the full text when I click on MediaWiki:Edittools. No A's nor a's. But I do not get the full text from the drop down menu. I'm using Safari 1.3.2 (v312.6). In brief, it doesn't work. Timothy Perper (talk) 01:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Me too because that's what it used to be like. There is good news: I reported to Apple about Safari, then I downloaded an update for my computer (max os x 10.4.6) and all this time later, when I open to edit, the drop down now has the proper fonts. *big sigh* -- hope this helps you too. Thanks for your support Franamax and others. (now little red underscores appear when the word is not dictionary -- gah!) Julia Rossi (talk) 02:22, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Text rotation

This article uses an interesting technique of achieving vertical-orientation of column headers by replacing text with SVG images. I was wondering if there were a means of achieving this using only CSS? Creating SVG images for each and every heading isn't viable in every circumstance. SharkD (talk) 18:49, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

You can use the writing-mode: tb-lr CSS argument to render the text like the article in the link. Not too sure if this will work on all browsers though. Thanks AreJay (talk) 19:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see it listed here, so it must be a CSS3 property. I'll test later how broad the support is for it using browsershots.org. SharkD (talk) 20:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Hehehe I read that as "writing-mode: tl-dr". Seriously if we have a good reason to use vertical text, and if we must use images for it instead of rarely-supported css, it would be better to generate them in wiki-text than by upload. There are LaTeX extensions/packages which can do exactly this but the <math> tag does have them enabled. Talk to the devs. — CharlotteWebb 14:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, there is no generally-supported method of rotating content right now except rasterized images. There is a proposal to allow it, but it's still in formative stages. Firefox 3.1 should have at least partial support, but with various limitations, such as performance issues. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:49, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

There may be Wikipedia:Accessibility issues for users wearing a neck brace (shrug). — CharlotteWebb 17:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Rendering of LaTeX

Hello, I use a lot wikipedia to read math and science related articles and I am a bit disappointed by the poor representation of the mathematical symbols. When there is an article with some equations one reads the text and all of a sudden one finds these HUGE equations, that looks like they have been written by a kid using a giant font... The same is for matrices. On the other hand when the symbols are inserted in the middle of a sentence the symbols are for some stupid reason slightly smaller than the rest of the text, making the whole thing quite ridicolous. The result is that the articles are really difficult to follow because of the way they look. LaTeX is a powerful tool, and I use it a lot for my papers, but with a poor render is of no use! Does somebody think the same? Bye --Squalho (talk) 22:13, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

It could be made smaller but then other people might voice the opposite concern. Part of the problem is that it is impossible to guess the font-size at which regular text appears every person's browser. — CharlotteWebb 14:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Important technical question

Does anyone know the link for the image of a PC with a cat in the empty drive bay, caption along the lines of "Everytime someone creates a redirect, Brion kills a server kitten"? I need it to lighten up my otherwise drab and unbearable existence. Since it involves a computer and a dev, I thought this might be the best place to ask, it's probably too tough of an issue for regular users to understand. :) Franamax (talk) 22:38, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Could you be thinking of Image:Server-kitty.jpg? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:05, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one, thank you. :) Next donation drive, we should all round up stray cats and courier them to WMF. We need to get this problem with server lag solved!

Honest-to-god, I searched for that image for at least an hour. Here's another technical question: the Wikipedia search box sucks!! Franamax (talk) 23:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Would a Commons image be listed in Wikipedia search results? Mr.Z-man 00:09, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

See two sections down. :( --brion (talk) 01:22, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I wonder what he thinks of the picture...? 70.187.176.126 (talk) 03:29, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm considering getting a poster made for my office. ;) Oh wait, we have an open space plan, I don't *have* an office. :( --brion (talk) 18:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

So put it on the ceiling. 70.187.176.126 (talk) 05:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey, don't be using colour toner to print that image! Do you know how much that costs? Where's the board members? Let's get some discipline at this org. Anyway Brion, open plan means you already know about all the conspiracies against you. :) And everyone else's medical problems and disobedient children too! :( Franamax (talk) 10:18, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The caption would be much more sensible if it actually looked like a server. I mean, floppy drives, people? On the other hand, it might be harder to fit a kitten in a 1U server . . . —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Warn when blank lines in ref tag to help with unclosed refs?

Is a blank line (two consecutive newlines with only optional whitespace between them) uncommon enough inside <ref> tags that Mediawiki should warn when they occur upon preview and/or save, in order to prevent unclosed refs from missing </ref> tags? That is a very confusing situation for our less experienced editors. Would someone who has some experience checking bugzilla see if this request is already in there? Thank you. Orange Knight of Passion (talk) 23:25, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not just less experienced editors who find the unclosed ref situation confusing at times! I have no technical knowledge, but I do think anything which helps editors avoid making this very easy (and disruptive) mistake is to be encouraged. DuncanHill (talk) 23:29, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

How about a <ref> inside another <ref> (but not inside a {{#tag:ref|}}), or <ref name>, or <ref name="foo>, or <ref name=foo">, or <ref name "foo">, or <ref> </ref>, or <ref>Insert footnote text here</ref>, or even <ref name = “foo”> and <ref ...? Anomie⚔ 00:07, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed! Nested refs are always an error and should be refused, should they not? That seems a much simpler solution but I don't know if it would be simpler code to implement the fix. I must admit I do not understand the part of your comment beginning, "(but not inside...." Orange Knight of Passion (talk) 10:16, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

<ref>... <ref>???</ref></ref> doesn't work, of course; it just makes one reference with the text "... <ref>???</ref>". If you really need something like this, for example when you have a footnote that needs a ref, you can work around it using the {{#tag magic word: {{#tag:ref|This is a footnote with a ref.<ref>This is the ref inside the footnote</ref>|group=n}} Anomie⚔ 11:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

This should finally be more or less fixed in r40998 and r40999, if those don't get reverted. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Won't that fail if the article contains <ref name="foo"/>? Anomie⚔ 22:50, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Fail in what fashion? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:55, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

In the fashion of "give a 'Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag' error whenever an article contains one of those". Consider for example a page containing the following valid wikitext: This is a reference: <ref name="foo">foo</ref>. This is another: <ref name="foo"/>. Ok? Your inner regex will get the first ref tag but not the second, and then your outer regex will spot the <ref name="foo"/> and give the error.

Also, I'm not sure it'll work right for This is borken: <b><ref></b> blah blah either. In that case, the inner regex might eat the whole <b><ref></b> and make it not give the error when it should. Anomie⚔ 17:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, crap. I didn't look at the wider context, it's only scanning for a "<ref" inside the body of another ref. Sorry. The second (false negative) issue does exist, though. Anomie⚔ 16:20, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Special:Search does not tell people how to correctly search for images

Please see the main search page at Special:Search. A previous talk section asked whether Commons images are found with the search engine. I decided to test this and found that the search engine does not find Commons images even though those Commons images show up on Wikipedia.

There is a box to check off for "images," but there is nothing about the fact that this search does not search most images. Most images come from the Commons nowadays, I believe.

Where is the talk page for Special:Search? Can an admin put a link to the talk page from Special:Search? --Timeshifter (talk) 00:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The base issue you refer to is bugzilla:5101; I've added a comment on the current state of the issue there. Special pages do not really have talk pages as such, but Wikipedia talk:Searching may or may not be an appropriate place for some non-technical-specific discussion. --brion (talk) 01:19, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I read bugzilla:5101 and all the comments. As a test I searched with the Commons sidebar search and found an image right away. Maybe a link to commons:Special:Search could be added to Wikipedia's Special:Search? Along with a sentence explaining that many of the images found in Wikipedia pages can only be searched for via the Commons search engine. Can any admin do this? This may be an interim solution until the Wikipedia search engine is adjusted to search Commons images also. Maybe with a checkbox for "Commons images." --Timeshifter (talk) 04:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Such text could be added to MediaWiki:Searchresulttext. --brion (talk) 18:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again. I copied this thread to the talk page for it, MediaWiki talk:Searchresulttext. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I very much like the idea of adding a "Commons Image" tick box to advanced search. This would entail a search in a cross-wiki db, which evidently can be done, since commons:Image is natively included here. The complication seems to be double results when there is a local image (or talk) page - and this could be either lived with if you ticked both boxes or done internally with "delete from <commons_result> where <img_name> in (select <lang:img_name> from <lang:img_results>)" (or some such, that may be a little Sybase-y). In any case, if people are clicking on the Image tick-box in advanced search, they pretty much wish to search the entire image namespace, which for en:wiki is (en U commons). Franamax (talk) 10:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

David Göthberg is an admin, and replied at MediaWiki talk:Searchresulttext. He is willing to include some how-to info at Special:Search if someone can write it up. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:01, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Coord not working

I have added a coord tag to the Queensbury, West Yorkshire article with the following contents

coord|53|46|06|N|1|50|43|W|​display=title|region:GB_type:city

However it appears inline rather than as a title. I posted this on the Help desk where Twas Now suggested that it could be an interraction between this and the {{Infobox UK ward}}, and that this would be a good place to post the problem. -- Q Chris (talk) 09:29, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. coord|53|46|06|N|1|50|43|W|​display=title|region:GB_type:city doesn't work, but coord|53|46|06|N|1|50|43|W|region:GB_type:city|​display=title does. Thanks for adding coordinates, and using {{coord}}! Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)​

History preferences

Is there a reason that my preferences to the number of edit lines displayed in a page history doesn't also apply to my contributions list (or to whatlinkshere)? - jc37 11:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Probably just a software thing; if you submit a patch then it could be addressed, perhaps. Gary King (talk) 19:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't it merely be a case of calling the same preferences classes that page history does? (In other words, to copy a section of code to another section? : ) - jc37 08:27, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me...

Can someone please tell me now how to use twinkle now that it is installed, please and thank you. HairyPerry (talk) 15:23, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you read the documentation at: Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Twinkle/doc? – ukexpat (talk) 19:57, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Help!

I would like to know how to make the following template {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Announcement-u}} always appear on the bottom of the talk page? -- Tyw7, Leading Innovations ‍ ‍‍ (Talk ● Contributions) 10:54, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

You wanted the whole template as well as the templates that it's calling to appear at the bottom of the talk page? You could use the position: absolute; bottom: 1.2em; (might have to play around with the actual positioning value) CSS argument, but there should be a good reason why the template needs to be located at the bottom of a talk page. Thanks AreJay (talk) 17:06, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

New templates for user page "trophy cases"

Hi all, I just created two new templates, which make it easier to make the sort of "trophy cases" editors often put at the top of their user pages (i.e., the string of Template:FAstar icons, Good article icons, etc., linking to articles the editor has worked to improve.

The templates are: {{FAstar-userpage}} and {{GA-userpage}}. To see how they're used, look at the top section of my user page.

I haven't made many templates with input parameters, so please feel free to fix 'em up in any way you see fit! Hope this is helpful, and thanks to Cirt (talk · contribs) for suggesting that I post here. -Pete (talk) 18:58, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks nice. Needs some documentation though, and maybe put the table in a parent template. — Edokter • Talk • 22:00, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Something weird in diffs

I made this revert - [3]. It clearly shows that I was removing "example.com". The editor who made the edit undid my revert with this - [4]. It clearly shows that what he's undoing is a link to www.bwvh.org. That's not the link I removed. Unless the undo was just a typed in edit summary and not really an "undo" how could he have "undone" an edit I didn't make? Corvus cornix_talk 20:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

You can click "undo" and then change the contents of the edit box before saving, while keeping the automatic edit summary. I guess that happened here. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, of course, I didn't think of that. Corvus cornix_talk 21:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

That would be the point where Goldsmith285 finally remembered to change the placeholder url that appears when you click the 4th toolbar button (the one which inserts [http://www.example.com link title]). I don't use the toolbar but maybe those who do would find a prompt box more helpful? — CharlotteWebb 15:01, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Namespace de-indexing

Please see the proposal at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Namespaces_in_Robot.txt to de-index some of the less used talk namespaces from Google. MBisanz ^talk 21:54, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Unwatchedpages rights?

I can understand why Special:Unwatchedpages is currently restricted to admins only - making it public would give vandals a roadmap to easy pickings. But how about giving access to trusted users who are not or do not want to be admins. Either make it a part of rollback rights (given that somone who has rollback rights is likely to be doing some sort of patrolling and Unwachedpages is yet another patrolling tool) or establish its own rights in a similar fashion. Of course anyone with access to it who vandalises an unwatched page should lose those rights. dramatic (talk) 22:31, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

This was proposed recently. You may be interested in that discussion. Mr.Z-man 04:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Links provided on edit pages

Why were the links provided at the bottom of edit pages (such as those for redirect, reference listing, etc.) removed? Their removal makes it more difficult to edit. At one point, even the citation link was removed, but quickly put back in its lonesome. How do we get all of them back? DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:23, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

They're all still available if you select "Wiki markup" from the dropdown box that replaced it. And Redirect and ref tags are in the edit toolbar as well. Mr.Z-man 04:11, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Template help (2)

I created {{-•}} which generates a line break followed by a bullet character and non-breaking space. I was wondering if anyone could think of a means of removing the line break when the bulletted item happens to be the first item in a container (such as a table cell). Currently, I switch back and forth between {{-•}} and {{••}}. The only other solutions I can think of require that parameters be passed to the template, but I hope to avoid this as it tends to ratchet up the parser node count. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 23:35, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism to some of the Greek Gods & Goddesses

I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this. Several of the articles on Greek Gods & Goddesses have been vandalised with "YOU ARE A ZEUS!!!!" added to the top. Some examples are Hera, Hestia and Demeter. There may be others. I've tried to correct this but I've failed, so it must be in a template somewhere which I can't find. Can somebody please help? Thanks! --TrogWoolley (talk) 10:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry! My browser went funny and I've posted my topic twice. --TrogWoolley (talk) 10:38, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

 Done Vandalism removed by various users. - X201 (talk) 10:48, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

 Done a bit pre-emptive on previous edit. There was other vandalism but the Zues vandalism was on the actual Diety template. Now cleared. - X201 (talk) 10:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki message based on editor, rather than page being edited

I have little to no experience in the MediaWiki namespace, but I just noticed that this: MediaWiki:Editnotice-0-Sarah Palin causes the edit window to look like this: [5].

It got me to thinking; is there a way to put a custom notice on the edit window of any page being edited, based on the editor, rather than the page? I'm just starting to think about this, so don't take the following example as a proposal, or even as a good idea (it probably isn't), just as a technical example so you know what I mean. Suppose I was under a civility parole; would it be technically possible to have MediaWiki post a message like "Remember, Barneca, be civil!" every time I edited a page? Or, more realistically, if IP 12.34.56.78 has been {{schoolblock}}ed many times, would it be possible for MediaWiki to post a message similar to {{repeatvandal}} at the top of any page the IP tries to edit? --barneca (talk) 16:06, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

This is related to a perennial proposal, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 22#CURRENTUSER. It probably will not be enabled due to the abuse potential (especially in the MediaWiki namespace where, as I understand it, certain pages are not limited to what is on the html tag whitelist in sanitizer.php—of course there's always javascript pages where the possibilities are limitless but unscrupulous edits there at least have a chance of being reverted before everybody's browser cache expires). — CharlotteWebb 17:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not really related to CURRENTUSER, because the proposed text is in the edit window, not the rendered article. We can put up custom messages just fine for logged-in users as long as they aren't parsed as part of the article text. We do it for the new messages thing, for instance. Whether this would be useful is dubious, but it could certainly be done. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The trouble with me asking questions at VPT is that usually the answers go over my head. Charlotte, thanks for the reply and the link to an older discussion, I sort of understand. Now that I know it's perennial, maybe I'll hunt through the archives.

Simetrical, the new messages bar is what I was thinking about; I always thought the new messages bar came from some black box "deeper down in the code" than the MediaWiki stuff you and I can change, but after seeing the page-specific edit notice at Sarah Palin, I started wondering if that kind of thing could be effected in MediaWiki space too. The idea being, that an admin with access to MediaWiki space could decide to put a message at the top of a specific account or IP's edit window. --barneca (talk) 21:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

E-mail user broken

I have enabled e-mail, and have used Special:E-mailuser twice. However, everone tells me that they cannot e-mail me for some reason. Help? Your friend Eddy of the wiki^{[citation needed]} 19:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't send you emails either: "This user has not specified a valid e-mail address, or has chosen not to receive e-mail from other users." Are you sure you've set an email address? Gary King (talk) 19:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely positively. In fact, this is a copy of my Preferences up to the e- mail field:

Username: Editorofthewiki User ID: 6,114,512 Member of groups: Autoconfirmed users, Rollbackers, Users (User group rights) Number of edits: 11,694 Global account status: All in order! Your account is active on 35 project sites. (Manage your global account) E-mail (optional)* editorofthewiki@yahoo.com Your friend Eddy of the wiki^{[citation needed]} 20:04, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Check at the bottom of the page, under the E-mail heading. If you don't have the "Enable e-mail from other users" box checked, it doesn't matter what address you have in there. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks. Your friend Eddy of the wiki^{[citation needed]} 20:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Resolved now? If it's resolved then consider marking it as such with {{resolved}} :) Gary King (talk) 21:28, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Is there a way to search the archives of a talk page?

The archived talk pages for Wikipedia policies are extremely long and split in many sub-pages. Is there a way to search just the archives sub-pages of a given talk page? Thanks, VasileGaburici (talk) 23:51, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

{{Google custom}}, examples in the documentation. Preview it in your sandbox for easy use. -- Quiddity (talk) 00:30, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Deleting an undead "image"

This is odd. I came across this: Image:Us county list.txt. A media file with a .txt extension? And orphaned, to boot? I was going to speedy delete tag it under Images and Media SD criterion #10: "Useless media files. Files uploaded that are neither image, sound, nor video files (e.g. .doc, .pdf, or .xls files) which are not used in any article and have no foreseeable encyclopedic use." So far, so good. But the page isn't really there. I see a "create this page" tab on the image page, like for Commons images. Poking in the database (I have the July 28 dump), I see there is a row for Us_county_list.txt in the "image" table, but nothing for that title in the "page" table. So how to I get this purged?

It's a perfectly ordinary file (a text file, in this case) with no description page. If you think it's useless, add a suitable deletion tag. --Carnildo (talk) 04:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

It was mentioned that it'd been listed for deletion here, so it looks like it was deleted but the entry in the "image" table stayed behind. Now it acts like a Commons file even though there's no file on Commons by this name. So I created the WP page and tagged it for deletion again; maybe it will work this time. --JaGa^talk 04:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

There are no upload log entries for such a file. It was probably just an arbitrary page created in the Image: namespace. --Splarka (rant) 08:03, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Oop, or maybe it is so old, that it predates the restriction against .txt uploads and the upload log. --Splarka (rant) 08:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is (was) an old file: the only entry in the (deleted) file history is from 2003 by Conversion script, with the summary "(recovered file, missing upload log entry)". —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:03, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Half image

Resolved

Is anyone other than me getting only half of Image:Fdr-memorial.jpg? Does anyone know why? I've tried purging both the commons cache and my browser cache, to no avail. Chick Bowen 04:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems that that is all of the image there is, it is probably an error in the file. An administrator might want to check the deleted history of the image before it was moved to commons to see if that copy is free of errors. - Icewedge (talk) 04:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I should have thought of that. Yes, the deleted version was fine, and I've reuploaded it over the commons version--seems to be fixed. Thanks for your help. Chick Bowen 04:58, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Getting monobook script to avoid image links

I have a monobook script that several people use. It provides one-click functions like auditing dates on a page so that they are all in dmy format or all in mdy format. A known false positive is that can encounters things like a [date in an image title. I asked the good people at the AWB talk page and found that there is a method of getting AWB script to avoid image links. Unfortunately, nobody seems to know of a method for monobook script other than to suggest it might be possible. This issue is not, of course, unique to my script. Can anybody here provide any help? Lightmouse (talk) 10:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

A very simple way would be to use something like this: (untested, but should work)

// Preprocess to remove image links
var linkmap=[];
wikitext=wikitext.replace(/Image:[^|]+/gi, function(img){ linkmap.push(img); return "\x02"+(linkmap.length-1)+"\x03"; });

// ... do stuff here ...

wikitext.replace(/\x02([0-9]+)\x03/g, function(tag,n){ return linkmap[n]; });

It simply replaces every instance of "Image:..." with a unique token, and then replaces that token with the original text at the end. Just make sure not to save the page if the final line was never reached, or you'll end up with �s all over the place. Anomie⚔ 12:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Just an idea, what I've done before for something like this, is have the javascript corrupt the edit token <input> value temporarily, and then fix it when done, like by appending a tilde. This prevents the page being accidentally saved while in a transitory state. Note also this works if you leave the page (browser navigation) and come back, as form inputs remember changes, even from javascript. --Splarka (rant) 07:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a good idea. I mainly use this technique in my bot, and there the automatic change from U+0002/U+0003 to U+FFFD makes the md5 check in the edit API fail. Anomie⚔ 15:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the rapid and detailed response. I am in meetings today but will try it on the script and let you know. Lightmouse (talk) 12:30, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I tried it but it did not work. I tested it on the image in User:Lightmouse/sandbox. You can see my attempt and revert in the history of User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/script.js. What am I doing wrong? Lightmouse (talk) 19:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Could be my bug, I forgot a "wikitext=" (corrected above now). If that doesn't do it, I'll take a closer look later on this evening. Anomie⚔ 20:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Some of both, actually. Try making this change. Anomie⚔ 00:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I have only done one test so far but it seems to work! You have been very helpful. I see that it tests for 'image'. Can it be extended to references by testing for 'title=' and 'url=' and also for weblinks by testing for http?. Lightmouse (talk) 15:31, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Friendly / Twinkle

Hello. I recently translated friendly and twinkle into Romanian, but when the script wants to post the edit (for the both scripts), FireBug says:

form is null
if( !tagRe.exec( form.wpTextbox1.value ) ) {

The scripts are here: ro:User:Firilacroco/friendly.js and ro:User:Firilacroco/twinkle.js, but I think that the problem isn't here ... it's somewhere else. I installed this script on Wikia and it work fine.

Thank you in advance.  Daniel  Message  11:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

County template help

County templates throughout the USA are based on {{US county navigation box}}, which contains coding to wikilink the county seat: for example, for Logan County, Ohio, you simply type Ohio in the "state" line and Bellefontaine in the "county" line, and the finished result is a wikilink to Bellefontaine, Ohio. Seattle, Washington was just moved to Seattle after discussion on the talk page, but I don't know any way to cause the template to stop linking to Seattle, Washington; the same problem happens with Chicago on {{Cook County, Illinois}}. Could someone write code to get around this, perhaps an optional feature to make it avoid adding the state name to the link? The template is protected, so if you write the code, tell me and I'll add it. Nyttend (talk) 20:34, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with the current situation? The link goes via a redirect, but that's one of the things redirects are for. Algebraist 20:38, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Quality control

What are Wikipedia's main quality control measures/procedures/systems?

The Transhumanist    21:46, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Other people. Corvus cornix_talk 22:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

...and not doing people's homework for them. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Problem adding merge template

Try as I might, I can't figure how to put merge templates on (protected) {{Infobox Single}} and {{Infobox Song}}. Please do so, so I can see how you managed it. I'll follow up on their talk pages, confirming that it was done at my request. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:51, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Excluding userpages from category through template

Template {{underconstruction}} puts pages in Category:Articles actively undergoing construction. Is there a way to automatically exclude userpages from that category? True, userpages shouldn't have that template in the first place, but that seems to be a lost battle. Garion96 (talk) 22:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

done. You could probably also do a different category for each namespace, or just remove it from all but the main namespace. --Splarka (rant) 08:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that worked great! Garion96 (talk) 18:46, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Multi-paragraph quotations

I am all for replacing {{cquote}} with <blockquote> tags in articles, but the case of 1928 Thames flood puzzles me. I cannot replicate the effect of multiple paragraphs inside the tags; using <br> results in an unnatural appearance, with either no lines or entire empty lines between the paragraphs. Is there any work-around for this? Waltham, The Duke of 00:32, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Remarkable scenes were witnessed all along the Embankment. At the Houses of Parliament the water "cataracted" over the parapet into the open space at the foot of Big Ben. The floods penetrated into Old Palace Yard, which shortly after one o'clock was about a foot under water in parts.

Flooding was worst at Charing Cross and Waterloo bridges, where the river sweeps round. Water poured over the Embankment, and the road was covered in a depth of several inches.

At intervals along the Embankment stood tramcars derelict and deserted. Later attempts were made to tow them through the floods by means of motor-lorries. Taxicabs and motor-cars splashed along the far side of the road. The public subway, Westminster Bridge, was flooded to a depth of four feet. There were miniature waterfalls at Cleopatra's Needle and the Royal Air Force Memorial, and the training ship President floated at street level.

Have you tried simply inserting multiple paragraphs inside the tag as per above? You can use <p> in wikicode. --Splarka (rant) 08:05, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of this tag. Thanks a lot; it's just what I needed.

I think there should be some kind of documentation on blockquote; all I have found so far is some notes on the quotation templates' pages, which shouldn't be used in articles but, as it happens, are very common in the mainspace. It seems to me that editors don't see blockquote as an attractive choice compared with the familiar style and more impressive visual output of templates. Waltham, The Duke of 10:28, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the solution is to rewrite the templates, so that they use a suitably-styled blockquote, instead of a layout table? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

enlarging the font of gileki wikipedia

hi, i am Amin Sanaei, gileki wikipedia adminstorator. in gileki wikipedia, font of pages is very small and people can not read it!. if anbody can change it, please do that. the largest of font of farsi wikipedia is good for our gileki wikipedia. i try to do that but can not do that!.AminSanaei (talk) 06:30, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

They're doing it via the site-wide CSS. If you copy that to your Monobook.css it should work (although you don't need all of it). You can test it in your personal CSS first, too. --Splarka (rant) 08:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

template with a mind of its own

Hello - this Wikiproject user template could use some help:

{{User WikiProject Alternative Views}}

It seems to have a mind of its own - I've viewed it in several different browsers and it's different in each one. No matter where it's placed on a page, it moves to the far right, out of sequence with the other userboxes nearby, or sometimes creates a new column for itself.

I tried comparing it to other WikiProject templates but I wasn't able to figure out why that's happening. If anyone here could help with this, that would be much appreciated - thanks! --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 07:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, you wanted "Alternative Views"; that's what you're getting! ;-) Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:47, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Good one, you cracked me up!

I didn't make the template, I just noticed the problem with it and since it's used in various places it would be good if we could fix it. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 16:50, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Works just fine for me in Safari 3 and Firefox 2, both on a Mac. Nothing in the code suggests it would be floating on its own. Your userpage looks odd in Firefox (compared to Safari), but I'd wager it's more {{User WPMed}}'s fault than the Alt View userbox. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:56, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Most userboxen actually are floated left. That one wasn't for some reason; I've fixed that, does it work for you now? Anomie⚔ 17:02, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Works fine for me in FF3 and Konqueror (under Ubuntu Hardy); however, it does still seem to be floating right in IE6 under XP. I'm looking at this userpage where both this userbox and another look to be drifting right. AmiDaniel (talk) 17:50, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind posting a screenshot? They look fine in IE6 under Wine here, although some of the other formatting there is screwed up. Also fine for me in FF3 Linux and Safari 3.1.2 in Wine, FWIW. Anomie⚔ 20:15, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Strange error

What does all this mean? Carcharoth (talk) 07:39, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Unable to store text to external storage

Backtrace:

1. 0 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Revision.php(724): ExternalStore::randomInsert('mUMo?6?????????...')
2. 1 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Article.php(1501): Revision->insertOn(Object(DatabaseMysql))
3. 2 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Article.php(1355): Article->doEdit('Civil is someth...', 'add [[:Category...', 98)
4. 3 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/EditPage.php(1013): Article->updateArticle('Civil is someth...', 'add [[:Category...', false, true, false, )
5. 4 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/EditPage.php(2366): EditPage->internalAttemptSave(false, false)
6. 5 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/EditPage.php(454): EditPage->attemptSave()
7. 6 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/EditPage.php(339): EditPage->edit()
8. 7 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(494): EditPage->submit()
9. 8 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(59): MediaWiki->performAction(Object(OutputPage), Object(Article), Object(Title), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
10. 9 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/index.php(93): MediaWiki->initialize(Object(Title), Object(Article), Object(OutputPage), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
11. 10 /usr/local/apache/common-local/live-1.5/index.php(3): require('/usr/local/apac...')
12. 11 {main}

[END QUOTE]

I've just got the same while trying to first rollback, then undo this edit. D.M.N. (talk) 13:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep, just had the same error when trying to create a new article too. Lugnuts (talk) 13:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I also had several errors of the same kind when deleting, editing or moving, I saved one message here. And two trying to edit this page.... Cenarium ^Talk 13:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I strongly suspect this is related to bug 15656, in which duplicates are spammed over page histories. Most of the diffs are to do with II MusLiM HyBRiD II, who just complained about the above problem. MER-C 13:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

There's been a whole bunch of random RC feed dropouts too. MER-C 13:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

(6th try at posting this). Another pile of duplicate spam: [6] [7] [8] [9]. My guess for the cause is the mechanism for the storage of the actual revision text is broken. Sometimes the front end tries multiple times resulting in the duplicate revisions and other times it spews the "Unable to store text to external storage" error. MER-C 14:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It's a global error - if you refresh recent changes when it happens, nothing else has gotten through. --NE2 13:54, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

See bug 15657. MER-C 14:19, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I was getting this on the English, French, and Chinese Wikisources this morning. Definitely not a local issue.. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:58, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

All Wikimedia wikis run the exact same version of the software. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:00, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

So Yeah, thanks for Answering my question on my talk page. I just got on, after 5 hours of football practice. So, erm, is the bug fixed? O.o and, are you saying that most of these changes that we made, had to do with me too? O.o II MusLiM HyBRiD II 18:31, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Problem while using Firefox on Wiki

Every so often, while looking on Wikipedia using Firefox, I get this message:

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: chrome://global/content/bindings/browser.xml:0

What does this mean? D.M.N. (talk) 09:07, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It means a script is breaking. I've made a change to your monobook.js. Drop me a line if it doesn't work - the next step is to start disabling scripts and extensions to see what's breaking. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:05, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Not breaking (if it was breaking it would stop executing and add a message to the error console), just taking "too long" to run. You can adjust the time limit in the Firefox config [10], to make these warnings appear less often or not at all. On the other hand if you get caught in an infinite loop or something you would have to wait longer to regain control of the browser. — CharlotteWebb 17:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photo

Someone's asking here where the Image:WW2 Iwo Jima flag raising.jpg has gone. Could it be one of those that got lost in error a couple of weeks ago? As it's such a significant photo I think we ought to restore it somehow a.s.a.p.--82.148.54.182 (talk) 13:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I suspect it was one of the images lost in that error. Unfortunately those can't be restored unless someone has a cached version or some other way of reuploading it. Stifle (talk) 14:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It isn't on the original list of lost images, so that's probably not the case. Graham87 15:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

There's definitely something going on, I've noticed a few number of images with this same issue that aren't on that original list. In the mean time, I've rescued Image:WW2 Iwo Jima flag raising.jpg from archive.org. Anomie⚔ 15:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

"Internal error"

I keep receiving messages entitled "Internal Error" when I try to edit; it often takes several times of clicking "Save page" for the edit to be saved. Here's the message that I received when trying to edit Cedar Rapids, Nebraska:

Internal error [this is the page header, similar in size to the name of the page]

Unable to store text to external storage

Backtrace:

#0 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Revision.php(724): ExternalStore::randomInsert('}X?n?F?????????...')
#1 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Article.php(1501): Revision->insertOn(Object(DatabaseMysql))
#2 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Article.php(1355): Article->doEdit('{{Infobox Settl...', '[[2000 United S...', 98)
#3 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/EditPage.php(1013): Article->updateArticle('{{Infobox Settl...', '[[2000 United S...', false, true, false, )
#4 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/EditPage.php(2366): EditPage->internalAttemptSave(false, false)
#5 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/EditPage.php(454): EditPage->attemptSave()
#6 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/EditPage.php(339): EditPage->edit()
#7 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(494): EditPage->submit()
#8 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/includes/Wiki.php(59): MediaWiki->performAction(Object(OutputPage), Object(Article), Object(Title), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
#9 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/index.php(93): MediaWiki->initialize(Object(Title), Object(Article), Object(OutputPage), Object(User), Object(WebRequest))
#10 /usr/local/apache/common-local/live-1.5/index.php(3): require('/usr/local/apac...')
#11 {main}

Nyttend (talk) 13:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm having this problem too, here, on my talk, and elsewhere. Stifle (talk) 14:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I am getting this too, on William Tubman. DuncanHill (talk) 14:05, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm getting that too. First time I've seen it (on Wikipedia)! Gary King (talk) 14:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

+1.--Kozuch (talk) 14:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Me too =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:18, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

See above. MER-C 14:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The report looks like this:

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&action=submit, from 85.207.244.160 via knsq7.knams.wikimedia.org (squid/2.6.STABLE21) to 91.198.174.14 (91.198.174.14) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:15:41 GMT

--Kozuch (talk) 14:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Everything is back to normal for me again. It's faster, too; I'm guessing it's because most people were getting the errors and became frustrated so they haven't edited in the past few minutes :) Gary King (talk) 14:24, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The errors were due to the slowness. The core master server was bogged down with Special:Export queries, causing it to become slow, and then the connection limit was hit on the external storage servers, due to PHP threads holding a connection open while waiting for the core master. I fixed the master, and the site went back to normal within a few minutes. -- Tim Starling (talk) 16:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Logs in XML format

Hi all! Is there any way of getting the logs at Special:Log in XML format? Yours, Fernetic (talk) 15:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=logevents&format=xml - See mw:API:Query - Lists#logevents / le for more information. Mr.Z-man 16:56, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Another Bug?? O.O

Well, this never ever happened to me before. If i clicked rollback more than 1 time, it would show on the history part of the article, thats its been reverted by me, once. But earlier today and no, i found this strange thing. Click the Link Below . :)

Click Me Click Me Too

So, Yeah, Thanks II MusLiM HyBRiD II 19:15, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a triple by RyRy in the history of John Legend: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Legend&diff=239831003&oldid=239830976, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Legend&diff=next&oldid=239831003, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Legend&diff=next&oldid=239831004. Any higher? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Answering my own question, the second image by II MusLiM HyBRiD II shows the same edit by 76.90.190.119 on Neptune registered a total of 4 times. The 3 diffs between the 4 revisions are empty. If the IP actually clicked save 4 times then the last 3 should have been discarded as null edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Two reported from it.wikipedia: [11] [12]. I was also able to replicate this by clicking rollback a lot simultaneously (3 tries) on test.wikipedia: [13]. --Splarka (rant) 00:23, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Template oddity

Is Template:Abkhazia-stub meant to include the stuff about TfD when it displays on an article page? DuncanHill (talk) 20:18, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

While it is up for deletion, yes. This one is unusual in that the discussion (perm) has gone on long past the 7 day minimum. --Splarka (rant) 20:51, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I just hadn't seen that happening before. DuncanHill (talk) 20:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I have shortened the transcluded text [14] so it now takes up one line instead of four ugly lines on my screen, and reminds more of {{Tfd}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:02, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Unexpected < operator

Can someone look at Sticker, Cornwall and see what is wrong with it please? DuncanHill (talk) 20:39, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks ok to me...what seems to be the problem? AreJay (talk) 21:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It got fixed. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 21:44, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Also look at Boumba Bek National Park and Nki National Park. What is the problem? Your friend Eddy of the wiki^{[citation needed]} 21:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

In the template you need to set long_seconds & lat_seconds to some valid numeric value to avoid the error. I have set them to zero and that fixes the problem. Keith D (talk) 22:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Reverts are happening at the same time, but by different users

I was patrolling the RC, and I noticed that on a couple reverts, for instance on the United States Army history, ClueBot reverted a vandal, but very shortly after, at approximately 21:47 UTC, Iridescent reverted the same edit restoring the same amount of characters deleted (62,664). It is sort of related to the post by User:II MusLiM HyBRiD II three comments above, but I wonder how this can be fixed. SchfiftyThree 21:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

login screen?

Was a change made to the 'login successful screen that instead sends us back to the main page? ThuranX (talk) 22:32, 20 September 2008 (UTC)