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FAQ: Intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear, and cause the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. This is an ongoing issue we are working on.
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Unused accounts
Comparison of Special:Listusers and the Wikipedia Statistics show that we have 136000 accounts that have been used to make at least one edit but 630000 registered accounts. This implies there are ~500,000 accounts that have been created but never used to edit anything.
Assuming there was some easy way to write a query to the effect of "Delete all accounts with 0 contributions registered more than 60 days ago", would that be a bad thing to ask the devs to do?
It seems silly to have Special:Listusers full of unused accounts like User:! ! ! ! !. I'll admit "silly" is not a great reason for doing anything, but 500,000 is a lot of name real estate that someone might want to use someday.
Dragons flight 01:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
- there are legitimate reasons to have an account, but no edits. Broken S 01:46, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
- Such as? Dragons flight 01:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Doppelganger account comes to mind. --Allen3 talk 01:52, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
- Such as being able to customize preferences (date style, skin), to modify one's
monobook.css
, to not get alerted to messages left for others sharing one's IP address, to e-mail users, to watch articles you like for updates, and so on. — Knowledge Seeker দ 01:59, 4 December 2005 (UTC)- That's a good point. Of course, it would better if they decided to edit, but it's nice to think that we have such dedicated readers.--Sean|Black 02:04, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
- Just a small pedantic point: it's not technically (in more ways than one) possible to modify a page without, well, editing it. [[Sam Korn]] 17:08, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
- Such as being able to customize preferences (date style, skin), to modify one's
- Wikipedia:Doppelganger account comes to mind. --Allen3 talk 01:52, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
- Such as? Dragons flight 01:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
- OK, so it should technically be possible (via a database query or whatever means) to identify user accounts with:
- no edits
- no watchlist
- no talk page (i.e. never been edited, rather than possibly deleted)
- Would these conditions be sufficient to justify deleting such an account which was created some considerable time ago? —Phil | Talk 12:31, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- I would suggest leaving a message on the talk page saying that unless they make at least one edit within the next (30? 60?) days that the account will be deleted. Perhaps set up a {{reader account}} tempalte that basically says "the owner of this account primarily uses it for reading rather than editing" and encourage people who want to keep their account but don't want to edit the encylopaedia to add this template to their user page. I suspect that it would be best to combine this project with the rollout of the single user login system. Thryduulf 13:34, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Sigh, this frequently comes up and I have *no idea* why, unused accounts are a non-issue and there's no need to mess with them in any way. No really!, find some real problems to worry about;) —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- Well, here's one possible reason. Suppose someone wants to create a new account with a relatively short (i.e less than 8 characters) user name. It's more likely that such a name has already been taken (as I frequently find with my own preferred name at high-profile sites). If it hasn't been used since its creation and the creation date was more than 9 months (or some other acceptable gestation period) in the past, why not close that account and make it available to a new user? Slambo (Speak) 20:08, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- Existence of the account makes it impossible for a user to register the name they'd like, which is frustrating, since noone seems to use the name - and apparently some people would like to be able to actually use Listusers to find active people.. (perhaps there should be a Special:ListusersRecentlyactive). The result? Suggestions for a method of deleting such accounts get posted -- I think the reason for implementing expiration of accounts with 0 edits has little to do with load on Wikipedia, I think. :-) --Mysidia (talk) 09:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
- It absolutely is NOT a "non-issue" to people who want to use account names that have been wasted in this manner. I wanted "Waterboy", but that was registered long ago, but has never been used. I definately feel there should be some (automatic) mechanism to free-up unused usernames--EG something like if it hasn't been used to make an edit, and no one even signs into the account for six months, it should automatically be flushed and returned to the pool of available names. Waterguy 03:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- Currently there is a mad rush for new accounts too, for some strange reason. <innocent look>, some of those will remain unused as well I figure. Kim Bruning 05:18, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Anon page creation restriction
Jimmy's had me disable creation of new pages by anonymous users on en.wikipedia as an experiment. Any logged-in user can still create articles, and any anon can still create talk pages. Anons can still edit existing pages, but to create a new article page will require first logging in.
This is one in a series of experiments on cutting vandalism without cutting too much into the ability of people to get things done; with a hojillion articles already, creating new ones is less of a priority than it was two or three years ago, while tuning up existing articles is quite important.
The message shown can be edited at MediaWiki:Nocreatetext and MediaWiki:Nocreatetitle. -- Brion 19:07, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- Interesting. It should probably say "by users who are not logged in" on that page, though - if someone wants to create a page, they can log in and do it.
- I don't entirely see the motivation. Someone else said -- and I agree -- that new pages really aren't as much of a problem as vandalism to existing pages. People just get more upset at new pages because they have such a high profile on AfD. If page creation could be "reverted" without five days of discussion, like vandalism can be, this kind of option wouldn't be necessary. rspeer 19:49, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- One minor detail: creation of talk pages for referenced-but-as-yet-uncreated articles (e.g. Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife) produces confusing results (see Talk:Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife). You are able to create the new talk page, and in the default skin the discussion tab (for the article) reflects its existence, but clicking on that tab produces the 'We don't have an article called "Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife"' message. You are still given the option, but when you start it, you discover that the talk page had been created after all. 66.167.253.134 20:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC).
- I've answered this on your talk page in case people feel this is off-topic. 66.167.253.134 22:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC).
- How about allowing unregistered editors to create an account right from that page? I also think it might be a good idea to allow unregistered editors to create an account right from the standard edit page, so they can create an account and submit any edits in one click. I think it will encourage more unregistered editors to get accounts. Sortan 23:36, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- That would fail to prevent and deter vandalism, while hiding vandals' identities behind CheckUser. — Phil Welch Katefan's ridiculous poll 20:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- An EXXXXCELENT idea Sortan! Now let's hear why it is not..(unworkable...must not change sacred Wikiware etc). Oh and Leithp, bro, you meant NOT badger of course, right :) Badger Badger Badger! --R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 23:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- You are correct, of course. Editing by ip is in fact probably less anonymous, and I've changed my wording accordingly.
- The idea is to "hook" people by getting them invested in their edits... little bit like those websites that allow you to take a quiz, but you have to register to see the results. Once people have taken the time to edit/create a page, they will usually want to see the fruits of their labor, even if it means registering an account. Sortan 23:36, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
- Anonymous users can't create their own user page. Can this be fixed? -- SCZenz 02:10, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Erm... IP users rarely, if ever, create userpages.--Sean|Black 02:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Who's angry? Splash, you impute emotions to me that I'm not actually exhibiting (that thing about irritating you over on User_talk:Titoxd is another). Turn down the troll-voice in your head when reading people's comments to you. You've got it turned up to 11. As I said, I saw all of this coming. No need for me to get worked up over the inevitable. 216.237.179.238 03:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
What a horrible idea without some major discussion. To just implement this as a fait accompli is just simply wrong. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:58, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- I agree. And yet, it seems to be working. Ben Aveling 07:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- I think so too. This is just a mild form of disabling anonymous edits all together, with milder forms of the negative consequences that would have. Most users start out anonymous, and the less appealing we make their experience, the less likeley it is that they will add information to wikipedia, or even become registered users. Wikipedia has grown quickly so far because of its open policy, so let us keep it that way. Pages are corrected at a rate corresponding to their visibility, so any page many people actually see should be able to maintain a certain quality. A couple of problematic but highly invisible pages should not be enough for a major change like this. Amaurea 11:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- I think it is a good idea. Deleting crap pages is much more difficult then crap content in an otherwise worty artucle. It should be logical then that to creat crap pages you should go to a little more trouble then with crap content.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Some anonymous users may take exception to this new rule, and simply start using http://www.bugmenot.com to bypass it... 68.220.219.232 04:10, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Sigh. Shared accounts are blockable on sight, and if it comes to it, we can blacklist the entire site and block all the traffic coming from it. Titoxd(?!? - did you read this?) 04:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- I once used bugmenot on one particularly clueless wikimedia site. "If you don't respect me, I don't respect you". Why do we think that stopping anons from creating new pages is a good idea? Kim Bruning 04:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- I don't know that we do. There has been no real discussion, so there is no way of knowing what the community thinks. It is, however, a done deal, at least for a few months. It is interesting to look at Special:Newpages and see the number of redlink user accounts there. Filiocht | The kettle's on 14:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- By my count, over 2500 new user accounts created today so far. Filiocht | The kettle's on 14:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- So were there over 2500 new articles created today so far? (SEWilco 15:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC))
- 987 just now, which is a bit strange. 1400 people creating accounts to edit existing pages? Maybe a Chinese whispers effect? Filiocht | The kettle's on 15:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- It seems that creating accounts is much more popular than asking on WP:AFC (while busy, the page isn't exactly swamped with requests). But the frequency of account creations was astounding even when anons could create pages - I count 2826 new accounts for December 4. -- grm_wnr Esc 17:45, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- 987 just now, which is a bit strange. 1400 people creating accounts to edit existing pages? Maybe a Chinese whispers effect? Filiocht | The kettle's on 15:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- So were there over 2500 new articles created today so far? (SEWilco 15:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC))
- Not a few months, but only a day, I think - see Jimbo post, he writes "Today, as an experiment". I think it's a worthy experiment and the results which I am sure we will be discussing over the next week or so will lead to the estabilishment of this rule as a policy. Actually I'd recommend running this experiment for several days, a week perhaps, for more data - and for the people of the RC patrol to develop a 'feel' how this affects their work.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Se here, where the period mentioned is a few months. Filiocht | The kettle's on 09:02, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
- IMO this serves no good. Before, pages created by anons could easily be spotted and reviewed; now, we can't tell if the page has been created by a long-time contributor or newly registered anon. --tyomitch 19:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Yes we can. Click the username and click on contribs. Also, if the username is a redlink, he might be a newly registered anon. — Phil Welch Katefan's ridiculous poll 20:12, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Doing all of that takes extra time. When patrolling new pages/RC, it is helpful to be able to scan for IPs, as they are easy to differentiate from logged in users. IMO most of the vandalism/CSD/AFD candidates come from IPs. I realize that this shows inherent bias against IPs and resembles a lack of assumption of good faith but many new page/RC patrollers use it. That said, using redlinked usernames will work as well; it's just extra to wade through. --WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 22:55, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- (man that's a lot of :'s...) the true correlation is, "edits from users who have done very few edits are more likely to be grot". I'll admit that I myself started out (a long long time ago; longer ago than most here) playing around rather than contributing. If there were a mechanism in the recent changes page to show the number of contribs in an editor's history, that would probably be the best "profiling" key. 216.237.179.238 23:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Doing all of that takes extra time. When patrolling new pages/RC, it is helpful to be able to scan for IPs, as they are easy to differentiate from logged in users. IMO most of the vandalism/CSD/AFD candidates come from IPs. I realize that this shows inherent bias against IPs and resembles a lack of assumption of good faith but many new page/RC patrollers use it. That said, using redlinked usernames will work as well; it's just extra to wade through. --WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 22:55, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Yes we can. Click the username and click on contribs. Also, if the username is a redlink, he might be a newly registered anon. — Phil Welch Katefan's ridiculous poll 20:12, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- By my count, over 2500 new user accounts created today so far. Filiocht | The kettle's on 14:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- I don't know that we do. There has been no real discussion, so there is no way of knowing what the community thinks. It is, however, a done deal, at least for a few months. It is interesting to look at Special:Newpages and see the number of redlink user accounts there. Filiocht | The kettle's on 14:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Doubtless THIS was a decisive factor in Jimbo's mind also. Wierd situation we have here- a founder of a First Amendment protection center and retired newspaper editor, is looking for his pound of flesh and berating the Communications Decency Act, not for violating the 1st amen, which it has done, but for protecting his online defamer who was merely exercising his 1st amen rights, albeit in an obviously WRONG way. If we are going to use this as a test case, the Tabloids should shut down now. Personally I'm divided on this issue. IP's do a lot of good and we all pretty much started out and fell in Wiki-love thusly. At the sametime they are also responsible for the vast majority of vandalism and a significant proportion of crap edits/new artys. Most of the ones who really matter end up registering eventually anyways. I'm not part of the "Cult Of Jimbo", but I can see where he's coming from on this. And I don't blame him...I blame the mainstream, old guard media-ocracy and of course lawyers (cherche les avocats :). If they have their way, I can imagine a future where these pages will be chock full o Google ads, or worse pop-ups and spyware. Our project must be protected from this...so something has to give. "Experiment" or no, Jimbo made a reasonable decision this time.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 03:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
- I can't get your point... THIS regards anons editing pages, not creating them, right? --tyomitch 16:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
- No. That page was created by an anon, with its wrong content. It was not vandalism on an existing article, simply vandalism from scratch. -- user:zanimum
- I can't get your point... THIS regards anons editing pages, not creating them, right? --tyomitch 16:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
- I once used bugmenot on one particularly clueless wikimedia site. "If you don't respect me, I don't respect you". Why do we think that stopping anons from creating new pages is a good idea? Kim Bruning 04:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
- Is the any special reason why User space pages are also restricted? 132.205.44.134 01:38, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
What's a user space page? Whatever it is, it doesn't sound good. Why would anybody want to ban anonymous users? They shouldn't because:
1)Some anonymous users contribute greatly.
2)Wikipedia is supposed to be the free encyclopedia.
3)There are many good articles started by anonymous users that may have not be created at all without them.
4)Logged in users vandalize just as much as anonymous users.
5)It is not a good first experience and would not encourage people to log in and use Wikipedia regularly.
6)People should have the right to choose whether to get a username or not. Wikipedia shouldn't force people to get a username to make articles.
7)When you ban out the anonymous users, you ban the good ones as well.
8)It doesn't take much work just to erase vandalized info.
Therefore, this policy should end! Or you could:
1) Whenever an anonymous user wants to make an article, they have to go here (or some other place) to debate whether they want it or not.
2)If an anonymous user vandalizes more than five times, ban that person from making articles.
These are better, but I rather have no policies at all. So, if you can, please get rid of the policies. If not, please do either number 1 or number 2. --anon
How to transfer watchlists
Hi. I just changed my username from Hottentot to Khoikhoi. Is there any way to transfer my watchlist from my old account to my new one? Thanks. --Khoikhoi 02:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- Never mind. I just did the whole thing manually. --Khoikhoi 05:08, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Access to APIs
The help desk has received a question from Harman regarding access to APIs.
He asked: Just like Google API’s, are Wikipedia web service API’s available to be integrated in other products? We would like use them in our product.
I advised of the Wikipedia:Copyrights but I could not find any reference to API's. If you can assist, I would greatly appreciate it. Capitalistroadster 07:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- I didn't think we had any web service APIs... a better place to ask this might be wikitech-l. Shimgray | talk | 11:49, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- We don't have any at this time. --Brion 20:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/newbies
I've been wondering about this page for a while. How long until you're taken off? Is it edit count-based, age of account-based, or percentage-based? Do we have a help file for it? etc.... basically, how does this work and what does it do, exactly? Thanks to anyone with any info. Blackcap (talk) 08:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
==New users==
- Since almost 3 new users are created every minutes and it is impossible to figure who is a vandal and who is not plus it is getting impossible to keep track of as many ppl as 600k user. Could there be a cleanup in the list Special:Listusers, meaning some removal of unused names and blocking indefinitely of others. Thank you
- There should also be a zero tolerance policy, you vandalize once and your out of here (blocked) to fight the insurgents that come to our door on a day-to-day basis. Lincher 12:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- You're a loose canon McLincher, you're off the case. Hand in your badge and gun. 65.27.76.238 00:14, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- Seriously, though, it is impossible to remove user names from the list of users for GFDL reasons. Also, we don't have a zero-tolerance policy - such a policy would do much more harm than good; we have four {{test}} templates for a reason. However, I'm not saying that some people don't deserve immediate blocking - it's all administrator discretion. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:16, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Watchlist problem?
When a page is moved, what is supposed to happen to the watchlists which have that page on it? In some cases, talk pages are sometimes not added to my watchlist when a page is moved. For example, asperger syndrome was moved from aspergers syndrome on October 12, and changes in the article continued to show in my watchlist. However, changes in the talk page did not, and today I discovered that the talk page had been unwatched all that time. A similar thing had happened with the article War of the Worlds (TV series).
However, when Andreas Grassl had been moved from Piano Man (person), and the talk page continued to be marked as "watched", but no changes had happened since the move.
Has anyone else noticed this, and can it be fixed? It's just odd that it happens for some pages and not others. Graham/pianoman87 talk 12:45, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- I'm guessing that one of the talk pages was moved to the new location while the other one wasn't. When you move, there's a check box that allows you to move the corresponding talk page; that could be the reason. Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:17, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- This was an old bug, and should no longer happen since some weeks ago. --Brion 23:24, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks, I couldn't reproduce it in a test I did a couple of days ago. Those pages I mentioned were all moved a while ago, so they would have had that problem. Graham/pianoman87 talk 12:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Cannot revert, is this a bug?
I've tried clearing my cache, using Firefox and IE, nothing helps. If I go back into a page's history (And I've tried half a dozen pages), I can view the old version of the page...but then when I click "Edit" to revert to that older version, the edit box comes up with all the new vandalized text in it. (Or blank, when articles have been blanked by a vandal). Help? Sherurcij (talk) (bounties) 15:31, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- Please provide links to the particular pages and revisions you've tried, and if you're not using the standard preferences let us know what options you're using (eg a different skin, custom JS, etc). --Brion 20:53, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- I've been unable to revert Charles Whitman, Kent State shootings, Talk:Charles Whitman (was blanked) and User talk:68.187.194.251 (was blanked to hide repeated warnings). The only thing I'm using non-standard is my signature which I just updated yesterday. Sherurcij (talk) (bounties) 21:01, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- I just reverted User talk:68.187.194.251 with no problem. On the other pages I see no current need for reverts, but I am able to edit old versions with no obvious problem. DES (talk) 21:11, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- I definitely see different text at, for instance, and . I definitely do not encounter the problem described above. Are you clicking something other than the regular "edit this page" link? --Brion 00:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I'm going to Charles Whitman, clicking page history (500), and going back to the very first edit (which is only 3 paragraphs), and clicking , but unfortunately it brings me to which is the current revision's edit page. *frowns* Sherurcij (talk) (bounties) 01:33, 10 December 2005 (UTC) (Yeah, I've been more than a year, and done hundreds of reverts perfectly before, I just noticed this bug up yesterday)
Try going to history, click the version you want to revert to, click edit, put in an edit summary and save --Adam1213 Talk 12:35, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- It just saves the current revision. As I said, the problem seems to be that any "Old Version" I'm on, when I click "Edit this page" to revert it, it takes me to action=edit, not action=edit&oldid=######## Sherurcij (talk) (bounties) 15:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- Even when I just hover the mouse over the link, and check the status bar, it tells me the link leads to action=edit Sherurcij (talk) (bounties) 15:51, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- Yes, this is also exactly my experience. Using oldid=XXXXX&action=edit will edit the old version. However, the "edit" link on an old version does not link to the oldid=XXXXX part, only the action=edit part. A problem in the skin PHP file? [[Sam Korn]] 16:16, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- what skins are you guys using? Plugwash 16:52, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- Monobook. [[Sam Korn]] 16:54, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- It looks fine to me in every skin except Nostalgia. I'll fix Nostalgia in a moment. If you're still seeing this problem on any skin other than Nostalgia, I need you to:
- Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Whitman&oldid=427674 for an old version view
- Click the "edit this page" link in the tab bar at the top, which should have the URL
- Everything looks fine for me so far: "WARNING: You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page. If you save it, any changes made since this revision will be removed" bla bla
- If you're *not* seeing that happy stuff, I need you to:
- Log out and check again.
- Try a different user account if you've got one, check again.
- Try a different skin, check again.
- Save the exact HTML that appears in your browser here and attach it to a bug report at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/
- --Brion 09:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- Nostalgia now fixed. (Incidentally, I did ask if you were using a non-default skin above. :) --Brion 10:03, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- Working now. Thanks, Brion. [[Sam Korn]] 12:32, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- Some folks spotted another one of these that was specific to editing CSS/JS pages, on any skin. That's fixed now too. --Brion 02:38, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
How do I find out if an IP is from an open proxy?
Hi, how do I find out if an IP is coming from an open proxy? E.g. 211.48.24.230
-- nyenyec ☎ 15:51, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- Our official proxy checker, I think, is http://www.au.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml. But googling the IP in quotes can work too. Broken S 21:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
lag?
Wikipedia loads normally for me, but I often get lag when I try to save a page. Anyone else experiencing this problem? --Ixfd64 20:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- Can you describe this in more detail? Does it just take a few extra seconds to save, or do you mean something else? --Brion 00:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- Sometimes, when I try to save, nothing happens for several minutes, until I get an error message. It's the typical "the page cannot be displayed" message. I don't know if it's still happening right now. --Ixfd64 01:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Article creations, deletions and undeletions
I made a chart of article creations, deletions and undeletions per hour, enjoy. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:40, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- Just FYI: From closer inspection it appears the horizontal scale of the above is from the 9th of November to the 9th of December. The two spikes are around "420" (creations per hour?) on the 30th of November. Stevage 02:08, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Mirror time lag
A user sent an e-mail to the Wikimedia Help Desk asking why the articles he had been creating weren't available yet on Answers.com. I advised him that there is a timelag before mirrors pick up our content and that the delay was approximately three weeks based on the time it took incorrect information to be removed from the John Siegenthaler article on Answers.com and Reference.com after it had been removed from Wikipedia. Could anyone advise what the timelag is for information to start getting onto our mirrors in general? Thanks for your help. Capitalistroadster 04:52, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
- They aren't "our" mirrors, we don't know when they update, ask the mirrors in question. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 16:10, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Multiple saves
when you post using "action=edit§ion=new", and there is a lag, you sometimes accidentally press "Save page" twice, two secions are created. There should be a protection against that →AzaToth 00:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- What do you have to push to get a "new section" like that? Stevage 02:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- its the + icon that appears in the talk namespaces only. Plugwash
- This is bugzilla:1600; I think I've got it mostly fixed now. A dupe submission should now trigger an edit conflict, which will either resolve itself silently or toss up a conflict screen. It's still possible perhaps for something else to come in between the first and second submissions which would break the detection, but that should be pretty rare I hope. --Brion 12:17, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- On a related note, I often just hit save instead of preview, and immediately correct any mistakes if there are any. I'm sure I'm not alone here. A good feature would be just to merge all edits made on a single article by a single person in less than five minutes into a single edit, assuming there is only one edit summary and no one else has made any changes in that period. Alex Krupp 18:39, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Problem - unable to edit
A fellow Wikipedian is having a major editing problem. As he reports on my user talk page:
- Since at least yesterday, I have been completely unable to edit pages on either Wikipedia or Wiktionary from the computer I've been using for the past two months. I can create new entries in Wiktionary, but cannot edit pages or sections on either site...even my User page! I have successfully logged in each time, so all I can figure is that the IP I'm using (128.32.154.69) must be blocked for some reason, though I can't think why. Each time I pull up an edit page and try to save the changes, the clock runs out and the "connection is closed by foreign host". Since I can't edit pages, I can't post to any page about the problem, though I have sent an e-mail to the help desk. I am using a friend's computer to try to get this message through. Without the ability to edit, I can't contribute. --EncycloPetey 08:23, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
The IP isn't blocked... so can anyone work out what's going on and help encyclopetey out? Grutness...wha? 09:33, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks to Grutness for posting my concern. I'm currently posting from a different location. It seems to be working from here, but I'm geeting an odd error message when I post:
- ERROR
- The requested URL could not be retrieved
- While trying to retrieve the URL: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?
- The following error was encountered:
- Read Error
- The system returned:
- (54) Connection reset by peer
- An error condition occurred while reading data from the network. Please retry your request.
- 10.34.6.6
- Generated 14/Dec/2005:01:08:21 +0000 by 10.34.6.6 (iPrism)
I do know that the computer I'm sending from is running a different OS (Win 2000 instead of Win 98), but the really odd thing is that from my usual location (on the UC Berkeley campus), I have the same problem whether I'm using the browser Opera on a Win 98 PC (2 different machines) or using the Netscape browser on a Mac OSX. Either way, the connection times out waiting for the Wikimedia servers to respond. I've also noticed that someone has posted regarding a very similar problem on the Help pages. He is unable to edit pages longer than a few lines, even sections, and his problem began almost exactly at the same time mine. It sounds as though whatever the problem is, it's the result of some specific change at Wikimedia rather than at our ends. --EncycloPetey 01:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
- It sounds like a networking issue, but I think it's likely to be your end (trust me: the vandals the last few days have had no problems at all connecting to wikipedia). You need to figure out what you have in common with your friend, and what the rest of us don't have. Some ideas:
- It's a whole UCB thing. Try another campus computer. Also I think User:Jiang is (or was) at UCB. Perhaps some part of the network is behind a bad firewall; perhaps a common network segment is saturated by others downloading pr0n.
- It's some piece of software you both run (some p2p thing, or chat client, campus-vpn thing, or, local firewall program (like zonealarm)
- Can you access other websites that require posting - can you post to slashdot or flickr okay?
- -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
The problem seems to have gone away (at least for the time being). I don't know what caused it, but it can't be specific to the computer I was using, since I tried three different ones (2 PCS and a Mac) and tried three different OS's and 3 different browsers. If the problem was a UCB thing, then I have no idea what it could have been. The MIS for our little corner of the campus hadn't changed anything at the time the problem began, and I hadn't had any problems at all for the previous 2 months. If the problem returns, I'll try some of your suggestions, though. Thanks, --EncycloPetey 13:25, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Blocking
The block user function is not currently operational. David | Talk 10:37, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- Should be working again. One of our folks made an ill-considered change in the middle of a code formatting edit and it got missed before going live. --Brion 10:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
New edit conflict problem?
See the history of Dimebag Darrell. Basically there was a minor act of vandlism, which myself and Novacatz both tried to revert at the same time. My revert went in first, but then Novacatz's revert ended up duplicating the article, with his edit summary as a subheading between the two copies of the text. We both then tried to fix the problem, and conflicted again, this time with Novacatz's edit winning, and mine causing the same duplication again! Has anyone seen this before? sjorford (talk) 13:40, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- I have not seen this before today. We have had similar problems in the past hour over at WP:CVU. FireFox 13:41, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
-
- We're having this problems on Wikipedia NL too. It seems to appear when normally an edit conflict would appear, and also sometimes when subsections are edited. Does someone know what's causing it, and if when it's going to be fixed? --Tuvic 15:04, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- For reference, this is not an isolated incident. Has happened a few times tonight to me now. Going to sleep and hopefully problem will go away ..... novacatz 15:14, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- This is fixed now, thanks to Gpvos -- Tim Starling 15:22, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- For reference, this is not an isolated incident. Has happened a few times tonight to me now. Going to sleep and hopefully problem will go away ..... novacatz 15:14, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- We're having this problems on Wikipedia NL too. It seems to appear when normally an edit conflict would appear, and also sometimes when subsections are edited. Does someone know what's causing it, and if when it's going to be fixed? --Tuvic 15:04, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- Yeah sorry, that was my fault. I committed a bug fix at 4am and it had a typo in it. --Brion 07:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
-
blue background
I would like to know, why your articles are written on a lihgt blue background. If I want to copy them, what goes freely, I have to print them with this background, too. May be, I am not fluent with computering, but I have tried to eraze that background with not any success. My email adress is jasibart@poczta.onet.pl Please let me know about the reason and if it can be changed in a way. Bartek
- Your easiest bet is simply to use your Internet browser to copy and paste the information into a notepad document, and print it. You'll also notice each article has a link (usually at the top, depending on your skin) that says Printable version which will do exactly what you want. You can get to manually by simply adding "&printable=yes" to the end of the article's url and hitting Enter or Go. Sherurcij (talk) (bounties) 15:53, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- What browser/operating system do you use? The printing style-sheet should be applied automatically. [[Sam Korn]] 22:20, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
"Whatlinkshere" link on page you get after moving a page
I noticed that on the page you get after successfully moving a page, you get a link to check if anything links to the old name of the article, but this link instead points to the "Whatlinkshere" for the new name of the article. Shouldn't it point to the old name, instead? --Spring Rubber 01:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
- The short answer is no. The point is to fix any double redirects (redirects to redirects) caused by the move, not every direct link to the old name. From "Whatlinkshere" for the new name, you can see which links are redirects (including the old name), and whether any redirects links to that name. Double redirects are a problem because the software only follows redirects "1-deep". If you click on a redirect, and it sends you to another redirect, you end up on the second redirect (not where it, in turn, redirects). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:33, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
- Okay, I understand now. I never realized there was a "tree" system to indicate redirects before. Thanks for the help. --Spring Rubber 02:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
- Incidentally, why don't redirects send you straight to the final article at the end of the redirect chain? This has been broken so long I can only imagine there must be some reasonable explanation. Deco 04:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- There isn't necessarily an end (redirects might loop), but arbitrarily cutting off the number of redirects that are traversed at a number a little larger than 1 seems reasonable to me. Do you know how to use bugzilla? -- Rick Block (talk) 05:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Yes yes, I'm just lazy. :-) Circular redirects really aren't a problem, as it's trivial to detect these. I searched now and couldn't find anything. There seems to be a running assumption that this is just the wrong thing to do, but I can't figure out why. Perhaps because it would necessitate database operations that are inefficient in the current relational schema. Perhaps I'll enter a bug and see how it gets resolved. Deco 05:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- There isn't necessarily an end (redirects might loop), but arbitrarily cutting off the number of redirects that are traversed at a number a little larger than 1 seems reasonable to me. Do you know how to use bugzilla? -- Rick Block (talk) 05:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Complaints of spam
Ernie has e-mailed the Wikimedia Help Mail list complaining of spam coming from Wikipedia IP addresses.
"I keep getting spam from what looks to be aol addresses, but the IP addresses are coming from you. I want this stopped, NOW. They range from 63.80.24.00 and up as well as63.80.31.00 and up. I would be glad to forward some to you. I recieve about 6 per day. AOL seems to not care, although they are probably phoney AOL accounts, I would like to forward these to you as I get them so you can shut these bastards DOWN.
I haven't heard anything about this. Is anyone else aware of such incidents?Capitalistroadster 09:51, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
- I suspect that Ernie may be confused. CIDR range 63.80.24.0/21 (IP addresses 63.80.24.0 - 63.80.31.255) are, according to ARIN's whois, part of a UUNet range which UUNet have assigned to a company called Lightspeed. These IP addresses do not have anything to do with AOL, nor do they appear to have anything to do with Wikipedia. Has Ernie shown any copies of the spam he says is coming from Wikipedia, or said which specific IP addresses assoicated with Wikipedia are the problem? -- AJR | Talk 02:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
- If they just have "wikipedia.org" in the *From: address* there's nothing we can do about it, as it has nothing to do with us. The way e-mail works, the contents of the 'From' address can be completely forged at will; they are not verified in any way at all. If he's actually got some reason to believe they're coming from our servers, please email me an example of the full headers to brion at wikimedia.org and I'll check it out. --Brion 18:52, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Category not working properly
I have created several navigational templates - Template:MOS CPU, Template:MOS Video/Sound, and Template:MOS Interface - that all include Category:MOS Integrated Circuits. This is done using the <includeonly> tag so that the category won't actually contain the templates, just the underlying articles. For some reason, though, only the Template:MOS CPU articles are actually showing up in Category:MOS Integrated Circuits. I can't figure out why; the same category code was copied and pasted. Can anyone help? Crotalus horridus 20:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
- It's because you added the template to the articles and then later added the category to the template. Categories are only updated when you edit the article in the category, not when you change one of the templates. Basically you have to go to every article which should be in the category and do a null edit -- just click save, don't change anything. -- Tim Starling 22:29, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
- That seems to work. Thanks! Crotalus horridus 00:37, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Help with Unicode
I am having a lot of trouble with Unicode in a project on Wikipedia. I encounter a lot this kind of text: " Möbius strip" which should be instead "Möbius strip". Anybody knows at all how to convert the former to the latter? That would be really appreciated. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:45, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
- Is this text in existing articles? If so, can you please provide examples? The incorrect form looks like UTF-8 data displayed (incorrectly) as ISO-8859-1 characters. The "conversion" is to display them as UTF-8 characters. If the characters are now labeled as UTF-8 characters an actual conversion is necessary. I've looked a bit and haven't found a program that will do this. I strongly suspect there is one, since this must be a fairly common problem (logically, it boils down to reading the bytes as 8859 characters and then "casting" them to utf-8). -- Rick Block (talk) 15:29, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
- First check you haven’t forced your browser’s character encoding; it should be UTF-8. Susvolans ⇔ 14:40, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
- Thank you for your help. The issue was not with the browser. The issue was indeed with the encoding. If you have ISO-8859-1 data, you can encode it to unicode with the Perl "encode" function. However, if your data is already unicode and apply to that the "encode to unicode" function, you get garbage, like above. So I was doing overencoding.
- You may think that applying the "encode to unicode" function to unicode data will not change the data, it turns out it does. The moral: always know what encoding your data is in. Thanks guys. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I've shamelessly stolen from the Dutch and Vietnamese Wikipedias to create a new template, allowing an image to link somewhere other than its image description page. More info is on the talk page.
The main place this can be used is on the Main Page sister projects template, and there is a test version at Template:WikipediaSister/temp if anyone wants to check it before it goes up. the wub "?!" 12:02, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
- This is a great idea. The featured article pic in particular should link directly to the featured article. God knows how many users make that mistake everyday. Deco 04:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Templates in edit summaries
Is it possible to use simple templates (eg {{test}}) in edit summaries? I realise that it can't be done for tables, but small ones it ought to be available?--TheDoctor10 (talk|email) 17:31, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
lc, uc modifiers etc...
Was looking in the code and found this, works here:
{{lc:{{CURRENTDAYNAME}}}} | tuesday |
{{uc:{{CURRENTDAYNAME}}}} | TUESDAY |
{{uc:{{main|Article}}}} | MAIN ARTICLE: ARTICLE
|
{{lc:{{main|Article}}}} |
lcfirst and ucfirst is also defined, as are grammar and plural.
→AzaToth 22:23, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Redlinks
Okay, where did my redlinks go? Bring them back! android79 22:34, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Modifying Corporate Logos?
I am working on the article for GAMEY, and a friend of mine (and fellow Wikipedian) suggested that he and I take the first letter of each company, and paste it together to spell GAMEY (such has G from Google, A from AOL {or maybe the AOL Triangle}, etc. etc.) I told him this might violate the fair use policy, since we are modifiying the logos, and putting them together with their (sort of) competitors. What is the the ruling on this? CaptainAmerica 00:35, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
IMDb Interwikis broken
I just updated Wikipedia:IMDb. Currently the interwiki links produce broken links, e.g. IMDbName:Jack Nicolson and IMDbTitle:Beetle Juice. Please fix them. -- User:Docu
- Looking at how they're defined, it would seem the interwiki links are meant to take the IMDB name or title number, not the text name. For example IMDbName:0000197 links to Jack Nicholson and IMDbTitle:0094721 links to Beetle Juice. I don't know if there's a way to link to IMDB pages using text strings. Did this used to work? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Rick, thank you for your response. Indeed that's the way it's to work (I must have been a bit tired). BTW there used to be IMDB:Beetle Juice linking as http://us.imdb.com/Title?$1 , but there used to be a problem with the way spaces (" ") were converted. -- User:Docu
Finding out the number of users watching an article
Is there currently a way to find out how many users are watching a given page? If not, is there a bugzilla issue for this?
Thanks, nyenyec ☎ 18:52, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
- No and no. Note that being able to determine how many users are watching a page might be useful information for vandals. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:07, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
- Yes and yes, though not on this mediawiki. Fixed using the Enotif patch. See meta:Share watchlists for more information. ∴ here…♠ 19:09, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Need a dev to clear a revision on a long page
This diff contains a great deal of personal information which probably doesn't belong here - I asked on #wikipedia and they tell me the page is too long for an admin to delete the revision without freezing the database, but a dev can just wipe that one revision. Any help would be appreciated... (ESkog)(Talk) 21:38, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Category:Long words
Is there any way to force Category:Long words to display in one column instead of three? Melchoir 01:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Nope, but it sounds like a great software suggestion. Deco 04:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- You might try a workaround using the category indexing function. Try forcing the longest words to the bottom with something like [[Category:Long words|z]]; the entries should alphabetize after being forced to the bottom, i.e. all in column three, which might change the column widths. I've not tried this myself, so this is a hypothesis rather than speaking from experience, and it's far away from a perfect solution. Courtland 01:16, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
- I don't think that would work. Large letter sections get split over multiple columns, see Category:User warning templates's "T" section, for example. And anyway, having everything in categorised under "Z" would just be confusing. -- AJR | Talk 12:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
AFD Help!
I am trying to put into the AFD list this page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/GEN%40
but for some reason the list isn't accepting my change... can someone have a look and let me know how I can fix this? novacatz 03:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Remove / increase recommended article size limit
Right now WP gives a recommendation to keep article sizes under 32kb every time you edit an article larger than that.
I know it once was a technical issue, but that is no longer so. While it is also true that large articles are better off broken into different subsections with the main article only listing summaries, still, even then 32kb is too little for good articles.
Another former reason reasonably valid 3-4 years ago when WP started was that not everyone has fast internet (many people still had 14,400 baud and 56k was considered good), but internet speed (like other computer-related measurable quantities) has increased exponentially in the last years, and now over half of internet users have cable/dsl for which downloading 100kb is nothing, and 99% of the rest have 56k which can also load a 50-100kb page reasonably fast.
About 90% of featured articles are WAY over 32kb. Except for really specific topics where one can cover it all in a smaller article (such as the recent shoe wax article), an article of 50 to 100kb is pretty much required to have enough material for featured status. Whereas before a good broad article was pretty much a collection of subpages with short summaries, the present widely accepted definition is an article which is strong and sound by itself, which can be informative on its own, and subpages would further expand on the subject for those interested in the particular subtopic, rather than being forced to go there just to understand the material of the main article.
And large article sizes are even more essential now when there is a big initiative to include lots of references and links.
You may say that its still not a big deal to have the reminder, but I'd argue that it may actually discourage editors (especially new editors) to contribute new material to an article which already contains quite a bit, but is still far off from FA.
In light of that, I propose to, either,
- Remove the warning at all, as irrelevant on both technical and editorial grounds, or
- Increase the article size reccomendation from 32kb to at least 100kb. Elvarg 04:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- I agree that instead of recommending any particular size, we should instead recommend that articles that grow to unwieldly lengths be broken up, where this term is subjectively determined on a per-article basis. Deco 04:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- I was under the impression the limit was first enforced because of a hard limit on the amount of text allowed in a editable text box in certain ld browsers. I think that that reason is now gone. I would support getting rid of the warning, and enforce common sense at the FAC stage. --Martyman-(talk) 09:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Somebody mentioned the other day on the extra-long AfD that this is still an issue on handheld devices. Even there it's probably not a big problem, since you can edit individual sections (until you hit an edit conflict). Zocky 09:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- I was under the impression the limit was first enforced because of a hard limit on the amount of text allowed in a editable text box in certain ld browsers. I think that that reason is now gone. I would support getting rid of the warning, and enforce common sense at the FAC stage. --Martyman-(talk) 09:30, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Monobook
Why is it that in certain foreign Wikipedias (French, Italian, and Spanish), the default theme has rounded tabs at the top (for Edit, Talk, and History pages)? No particular reason for asking, just curious. --Mark Yen 05:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Because people there made it so. --Brion 18:47, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Note: I have warned User:Bitcyh, who claims on User talk:Bitcyh he/she is an animal at the Okinawa zoo, that he/she may be blocked soon. I am not an admin. --Unforgettableid | talk to me 06:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- I have blocked User:Bitych with the template {{UsernameBlock}}, a template that is also accessible to you. Sycthos 02:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Edits by browser
I would like to do research that would be required for doing an offline Wikipedia (similar to a German "Wikipedia-CD"-like project, but for frequent editors) in English. What percentage of Wikipedia edits are made by users who use browsers other than IE, Netscape, Safari and Firefox releases? Firefox betas are ok to count. (I feel my set of criteria is an okay proxy for "at least somewhat-technically-inclined users" but the information is not accessible at Wikipedia:Statistics.) --Unforgettableid | talk to me 06:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Watching pages
Why can't I add comments to my watchlist to note down for myself why I marked a page to be watched? --Unforgettableid | talk to me 06:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Editing welcome template
Can the subst: anon template be edited to reflect the fact that anons can't create articles? I'd do it myself, but I'm unsure how. Thanks. Natgoo 12:52, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- It's there by implication - starting new pages is listed as a benefit of getting a login. The page is at Template:Anon if you think it needs rewording. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Thanks. The template I saw that prompted the question was different though - must have been user created. I'll leave a note on their talk page. Natgoo 15:10, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Can't post
I've been trying to add an entry to Wikipedia:Copyright violations, using the boilerplate text from Template:Copyvio. However, every time I hit the submit button, I get a connection error. I believe the error results from something in the syntax. I've been able to edit several pages in different namespaces normally (including this one). At the same time, I've been unable to add that text to several pages in different namespaces. What's going on here? (Also, could someone please take care of the copyvio posting for me? It's for Shell sort.) --Smack (talk) 18:18, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Remove content warning on talk pages
The warning
Content must not violate any copyright and must be based on verifiable sources. By editing here, you agree to license your contributions under the GFDL.
Is good for article pages, but it should be removed from talk pages. Talk pages are discussion portals, not articles, and discussion should be as free as possible.
- The only thing we can remove from that is verifiable sources, as discussion is supposed to be ones own opinion. Copyright violations and GFDL contributions all apply to talk pages as well however. WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 20:17, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Clearly we cannot allow copyright violation, as this is against the law. However, there are some who have made a reasonable case that participants in discussions should, as on newsgroups or mailing lists, retain copyright to their original statements, particularly since we hardly ever edit the comments of others. I like it like it is though. Deco 20:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- You retain copyright on any talk page comments you make; you just implicitly agree to license them under the GFDL whenever you post to a Wikipedia talk page. AFAIK, this is non-negotiable. A user who wanted to not license his talk page comments in this way (User:Pioneer-12, I believe) has been banned indefinitely for disagreeing with this policy. android79 21:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Well, then at least remove the references part on talk pages. Elvarg 21:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- I think the references part should remain as well. Talk pages are for discussing the article, and so all statements should be based on verifiable sources. Even on the talk page we should be saying "I think we should do X because Y", not "I think X". I do not think we shoukd seek to encourage people to post unverified statements to the talk pages, as they could then become a repository of false information which google can pick up and disseminate further. Wikipedia is not a discussion portal and talk pages are not for general discussion, and there should be an onus on us to source our opinions. Steve block talk 13:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
"Featured articles star"
Why is that that on the Foreign language Wikipedias featured articles have a small star on the top right corner of the Article (don't confuse with talk page), (for example see http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6rfuknattleikur ), yet English featured articles don't have this star? On the other hand, links to FOREIGN feature articles on the English wikipedia (bottom left list of other languages) do have stars for corresponding articles, yet foreign articles don't have stars near featured English counterparts.
Is it due to different versions of the Wiki software, or is it made on purpose? (for example to encourage visits to lesser known languages)?Elvarg 21:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Because tht would be a self-reference. I don't like those featured article starts in the sidebar either, they're almost worthless because different projects have such drastically different standards on what qualifies as a feature article. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:35, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- I don't think a star on an english featured article (as already present on nonenglish articles) is self reference, rather it symbolises the featured status, distinguishes the article as exceptionally good, and reminds editors the article they may want to change is considered good as is, so large changes should reflect consensus).
- My question however is not whether we should have them or not, rather why SOME wikipedias HAVE them and others DON'T.Elvarg 21:52, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- It's put there using a special template - [4] - which uses CSS positioning to put the star there. Personally I think it's a really good idea, in fact I was recently wondering if such a thing was possible and hadn't seen this template before. After all we put up big notices when we know there is something wrong with an article (e.g. it needs cleanup or there is an NPOV dispute), so why not highlight featured articles? Although I get the impression that Raul654, who is unofficially in charge of featured articles on en is strongly against including such stars. the wub "?!" 21:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- The stars missing from interwiki links on non-en wikis is probably just because the users there don't know or don't read English well enough to find out. I've added the stars on the en links on de for a couple rail transport articles that I know are featured here. Slambo (Speak) 21:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Personally I'm more concerned about the top-right starts currently present on other wikipedias but not english ones. I think we should do a community discussion to decide once and for all whether we want to include this kind of style (refer to the Arvalsgrein article I gave link to earlier to see how it looks). Personally I support it, as it would be another step forward in an article appraisal and community validation process. Elvarg 22:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
- Hmm, a blank page but with a featured star in the corner; since the history doesn't show evidence of vandalism, I'm guessing that Snið means Template (following What links here to Matarprjónar [boy, am I glad that all the languages put the site usage and navigation links in the same place!] seems to confirm this). The German wiki does it differently with a green star at the bottom of the article, as can be seen on John Bull (Lokomotive) (a translation of an article that I wrote and took to featured status here on en). Interestingly, someone deleted Vorlage:Link FA; I haven't found another template on de that would do the star on the interwiki link, and I don't know enough German to decipher the whole story there. I think I prefer having the star at the top of the article rather than the bottom. Slambo (Speak) 14:21, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
- Personally I'm more concerned about the top-right starts currently present on other wikipedias but not english ones. I think we should do a community discussion to decide once and for all whether we want to include this kind of style (refer to the Arvalsgrein article I gave link to earlier to see how it looks). Personally I support it, as it would be another step forward in an article appraisal and community validation process. Elvarg 22:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
From the Wikimedia Help Desk:
- When i try to view the article on 'globalization' on Firefox (ver 1.5), i get a bad layout in my browser where the containers 'Content' and 'Trade Series' overlap. Vik Nuckchady
WAvegetarian (talk) (email) (contribs) 01:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
- Using the same version of firefox, I don't see any actual overlaps, either in the Classic or Monobook skins. The article does feature rather an unfortunate number of floaty boxes which pile up horizontally in an ugly manner (something that also happens in IE and Opera). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
- If it's the pileup that is the problem, it's easy to fix with {{clearright}}. Fixed. --cesarb 02:50, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
CSS errors
--Dfeuer 09:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
- Please see my comment here which suggests fixes to the two errors I was having at the time. There's yet another error now coming from a line-height with the invalid value auto, which I suspect should be inherit instead. I already made the change, failing to notice the (very clear) warning at the top, and reverted it; but if there are no objections, I would really like to reapply the change. —HorsePunchKid→龜 2005-12-17 03:42:11Z
List is somewhat broken
A lot of the examples in Help:List does not work. For example:
#list item A1 ##list item B1 ##list item B2 :continuing list item A1 #list item A2 |
|
→AzaToth 09:51, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
- It works fine if you don't have the ": continuing..." line in there. Or if you have it as "#: continuing...". it's because there's no hash-character on that line that the trouble arises. Grutness...wha? 12:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, as stated above, you need an extra #. See example:
#list item A1 ##list item B1 ##list item B2 #:continuing list item A1 #list item A2 |
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Image upload licensing line broken for IE
If you try to upload an image with IE, the handy-dandy licensing template button doesn't work - or more to the point, only the top three lines can be selected (no license, unknown licence, "image found"). Any useful templates you have to enter by hand. Can this bug be fixed, please? Grutness...wha? 12:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
- No repro for me with IE 6.0.3790.1830 on Windows Server 2003 SP1 Standard. Deco 02:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Stabilisation of articles for general release
It seems to me the strength of the wikipedia is the editors. Particularly the well established editors with many good edits.
The other strength of the wikipedia is the users (these are people who aren't logged in). These make the wikipedia useful, and attract new editors to the wiki. These users need to see well established article versions, that have had a chance to be viewed and corrected by editors, and repaired as appropriate.
The main problem we have is low-edit editors. These users tend to 'test edit'/vandalise the wikipedia and this appears immediately to the users; but many of them also do good edits.
We need a mechanism for stopping the edits from low-edit editors from immediately appearing to the users.
My suggestion is an ad-hoc review process in keeping with the current 'esprit d'wikipedia'
I think that the wikipedia should follow the following rules:
An 'immature editor' is defined as any editor that has made less than 200 edits. A mature editor has made 200 or more.
No raw edit from an immature editor will be displayed to a non logged-in wikipedia user within less than 1 day. (Exception: users at the same IP address will have the article displayed immediately to avoid confusion after edits).
Modification within a day by another immature user resets the counter, and the article will only time out after another day The article displayed will be the newest article that has not been edited for a whole day, or has been edited by a mature user, or has been edited by the same IP address as the viewer. This rule can theoretically mean that a new edit never becomes visible, but in practice this will rarely happen, and the next rule helps avoid it anyway.
Modification of the article by a mature user makes the article immediately visible. This can make immature users edits visible- clearly the mature users are supposed to check to make sure that any previous edits are appropriate... the wiki software could help by pointing out if there had been recent changes...
Any mature editor caught making inappropriate edits has their account locked out. They have to start from scratch, this means that at most 0.5% of editors edits are bogus, even if an editor is a rogue.
Ok, my view is that these rules are not absolutely perfect, there's probably no such thing as perfect rules, but they are enormously better than what we have at the moment.
Comments? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wolfkeeper (talk • contribs) 2005-12-16 22:32:16 (UTC)
- An m:Article validation feature is being actively worked on and will apparently be available in trial form in the not too distant future. I suspect similar ideas (like yours) will not be acted on until after this trial. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
- I question the need for validation of articles. I claim that rejection of bad article revisions is far more important and normally does not require experts. The mechanisms proposed are a superset of what I propose, and the other features seem difficult to implement and at best of debateable value. A more general attempt at a solution is often not better since it is harder to use and harder to implement. WolfKeeper 05:02, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
- I think requiring even the edits of mature editors to be reviewed is a good idea. We may not be vandals, but we still make mistakes. Probably the simplest scheme imaginable is that no new version would become visible until at least k other editors had approved it, with a user preference to view either the newest or most recent approved version. Deco 06:20, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
- The wikipedia has done pretty well so far, without such mechanisms. It would be premature to add such mechanisms, my contention is that there may be better ways to do similar things without heavyweight voting. I also disagree with the political aspects such voting can introduce, it can introduce horse trading on articles and such like. Also groups of users can conspire to push through edits arbitrarily anyway. But that isn't at all the point of my proposal anyway. It is only an antivandalism mechanism, not a validation mechanism.WolfKeeper 06:33, 17 December 2005 (UTC)