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== Help with user page problem == |
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Someone keeps putting a sockpuppet sign on my user page. It's getting to be a hassle to go and remove it all the time. Could you protect my User Page so no one can do that? Thanks! [[User:BlackHak|BlackHak]] 21:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC) |
Revision as of 21:25, 5 September 2006
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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.
Frequently Asked Questions: (also see Wikipedia:Technical 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.
- The search index is often out of date, sometimes taking weeks before it's updated. Because of that, recent changes are not immediately reflected on the search.
- If all the links in the articles suddenly become underlined (or the opposite), or red links instead end with a red question mark (or the opposite), or paragraphs are fully justified instead of left justified (or the opposite), it's probably because your browser failed to load one of the stylesheets (or the server sent you a wrong one). Do a forced reload or bypass your cache.
- If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Wikipedia:How to fix your signature.
- If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
- It has been reported that the Google Toolbar extension for the Firefox browser is the source of some strange problems (including blanking part of a page when editing it). If you have that extension, try turning it off or upgrading to a newer version. See bugzilla:5643 for more information.
- If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page (if the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too). If it doesn't work, try again.
- Some adblockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. Also, it's surprisingly common for people to accidentally block the image server (upload.wikimedia.org) on Firefox.
- If the section edit links are being pushed down by floated images, check Wikipedia:How to fix bunched up edit links.
- If you are asked to download a file (
index.php
) when trying to edit, or your browser launches an image editor when trying to edit, disable "Use external editor" on your preferences.
These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.
Trouble Staying Logged In
I'm having an awful time trying to figure out why I can't stay logged in. I thought it had a connection with some software on my computer, and it seemed to be OK yesterday, but now today, I can't stay logged in beyond navigating to another page.
Anyone have any idea
I have made sure to enable cookies
I have the same problem on both my wife's computer and mine
I have the same problem with Mozilla Firefox and IE
I DON'T have the problem at work
I have updated Java and Macromedia Flash
I thought that there was a conflict with Kodak Easyshare software, because disbling it seemed to work yesterday, but it doesn't help today. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.82.9.76 (talk • contribs) 12:24, August 13, 2006 (UTC).
What happend to watermark image id="EnWpMpBook2"?
It dissappeared this weekend systemwide in all wikis. It's used on alternative mainpage designs here, but at ka: it was on the frontpage. Does someone know the reason? Would appreciate. - Alsandro · T · w:ka: Th · T 14:46, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
math symbols & pictures problem
Pix may be blocked - will recheck. Recent problem. I have RH9, Mozilla.
Math symbols in text, sometimes in LaTex etc often are distorted into what looks like random hashmarks or bird scratch. Many formulae can't be read because symbols in Greek, or special math symbols (like Intercept symbol, logical Not-, etc) are dropped. - I can read generic PDFs with same symbols etc.
User-links alignment broken
Sorry if this has already been discussed elsewhere, but I've been having a weird new display bug since this morning: In IE with monobook skin, the top link bar (the one that contains user page - "my talk" - "my preferences" etc.) is displayed normally as right-aligned, but shifts to left-aligned the moment I hover the mouse over it. (Irritating, if you come to think of it.) It's on all Wikimedia sites apparently. Has some central style sheet been changed recently? Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
- This is a bug in Internet Explorer, and is intermittent. Contact Microsoft for support. --Brion 11:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Interesting incident
Special:Contributions/203.134.131.18
My interpretation of the sequence of events here is:
- someone from that IP vandalized a page and left
- someone dropped a warning on the IP talk page (but it is not picked up)
- much later someone starts reading WP from that IP and gets the message.
- unnecessary grief follows.
Is my interpretation of the technical details of the new message process correct? That is, an IP address receives a new message flag even if they are only reading WP from that address, and no matter how old that message is? That's unfortunate, isn't it? 192.75.48.150 19:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
- AFAIK, your interpretation is correct. --cesarb 19:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
- MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext could be made more noticeable, such as the design I did here. Gerard Foley 20:52, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
- Creating an account is useless advice here, mind you. This has to do with people who aren't editing at all. 72.137.20.109 03:38, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
- They get the notification only if a session has been opened, which happens if they have attempted to edit a page or log in. Otherwise it's disabled for cache-friendliness. --Brion 11:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Weird error while trying to access some pages.
For some days I've been getting a weird error while trying to access some pages on Wikipedia. It's mostly for the Main Page but I've noticed some other pages have this problem as well. I have uploaded a screenshot of the error here:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/_sleepflower/wikierror.jpg
(It's in Dutch but I trust everyone is familiar with it; it basically asks me if I want to save a file called "Main_Page" that is of unknown format.) I tried to access the Main Page here but all I got was this weird error. This has happened on and off for the last few days, sometimes disappearing and then reappearing again. It seems to be only a problem in IE, as I am using Firefox right now (I couldn't access the technical help page in IE, got the error again) and it works just fine. I use Windows XP with IE 6. Anyone know what this is? 62.163.35.231 10:44, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
In your preferences, under the 'Editing' section, make sure "Use external editor by default" and "Use external diff by default" are off. Prodego talk 13:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
- Um, I'm not a member of Wikipedia so I can't change any preferences. 62.163.35.231 15:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
- Hmmm, I figured you just were a non-logged in user. When you use I.E., are you sure you aren't logged into an account (possibly without knowing it, if "Remember me" is set)? I can't think of any other way for this to happen, unless Internet Explorer is misconfigured somehow. Try resetting it's defaults as well. Prodego talk 16:00, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I am having the same problem too, got IE 6...I tried restoring to defaults and it is still not working, I can't access the main page or some articles...is something wrong with my comp...or wikipedia?
My guess is something with wikipedia and IE. Firefox seems to work just fine. I also did not have an account when trying this. Have logged into multiple machines with multiple versions of IE 6 running and all exhibit this behaviour.
The main page is working for me now...but still some of the articles are still not working for me...I don't have a account either.
I've found that it can work at times, then try the same page again and the Main_Page download prompt occurs again...
The main page isn't working for me once again as aren't some articles...what is odd...the articles not working for me...keeps on changing. This is very werid.
- This will have been the Squid 2.6 ETag issue, and fixed as of a few days ago. --Brion 11:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Severe browser compatibility issue introduced... Cannot report with Bugzilla!
Since the Bugzilla page requires registration that includes an e-mail address, I am unable to use it to submit this bug report: The Links 2.1pre4 web browser can no longer view English Wikipedia content as of August 23, 2006 (and possibly up to a month before that). Any attempt to load a Wikipedia page results in much garbage being displayed, instead of readable text. A lot of the garbage shown in the display consists mostly of asterisks (*) and periods (.) with a few alphanumeric characters and punctuation marks.
Spanish, German, and Netherlands Wikipedia are still readable, and all languages are readable in Mozilla and Lynx.
72.49.64.171 08:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
- This was most likely a temporary problem with the Squid 2.6 upgrade, due to a change in treatment of ETags. If so, this should have been resolved a couple days ago. --Brion 11:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Nuvola-inspired File Icons and Edit Bar for MediaWiki
I have created new File Type icons and Edit Bar icons for MediaWiki. Take a look at commons:Category:Nuvola-inspired File Icons for MediaWiki and commons:Category:Nuvola-inspired Edit Bar for MediaWiki
- These are a lot better, in my opinion, then those that ship with MediaWiki.
- They are of a unified theme, unlike the current MediaWiki icons.
- Some contain copyrighted icons, like Word and Excel icons. I believe they can be used to illustrate files created by those programs. If that is incorrect, I have also included alternate icons without those restrictions.
- I have also included some generic icons for file extensions I have not thought of, should they be of help, just copy them out of the generic folder and into the icons directory and rename them "fileicon-extension.png".
- These icon set is intended for use in the largest possible situations. For instance, if have included .doc images because many companies need them on their wikis, even though they are banned on Wikipedia.
- I would be thrilled if they were chosen to be included in future version of the MediaWiki software, and I give the MediaWiki Foundation full rights (where I have the rights to give) to do so.
- I don't have SVG versions, because I don't know how to use SVG software. Should someone have the skills and the Nuvola SVG icons, they are welcome to create more.
- To install on your own wiki, download the zip file from my website [1], and extract the icons in your /skins/common/images/icons directory, overwritting the old ones.
- To view them all on your wiki, you must make a little change in "/includes/ImagePage.php" Open it up in your text editior and hit Ctrl+F. Type in there "$this->img->isSafeFile()" Hit Find. Replace this string with the text "1==1" Don't forget you need to make these changes again, if you upgrade MediaWiki.
- One little note about this. Icons were disable for "not safe files", but I don't know why. Displaying a file icon seems to be perfectly safe. Can a developer tell me why icons are hidden for non-safe files? Thanks.
- If anyone has changes or ideas, just drop me a line, w:User_talk:Michael180
What do you think? --michael180 18:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
- I quite like them. To be used on MediaWiki I'm sure that they have to all be fully open-source etc., but I don't really know about the whole system. —Daniel (‽) 21:51, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
- I looked at all the edit bar icons for a short amount of time and wrote down what came to my mind when I saw them. Here's what I got: Bold (correct), Web link (correct), Heading (correct, but it looks a bit like "hi"), Picture (correct, but it's not very obvious), Italic (correct), Article link (correct), Calculator (wrong, I wasn't sure on that), Sound (correct), Strike out (wrong, it's actually "nowiki"), Signature (correct). I like the icons, and they would be even better if a couple of them were made a bit more obvious. Icey 22:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
- I made some alternate edit bars icons in response to User:Icey. The H1 could be just H, or we could change the codes to get H2, H3, etc. What do you think. The trademakred file icons (Word, Excel) could be removed, if they are not allowed. There are alternates already included. --michael180 17:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
- Hi Michael180, thanks for making the alternatives. Here's my thoughts on those and a few others:
- ExtLink: The globe seems to be cut off at the left. Would it be possible to cut a lot off or none at all? At the moment it looks wrong. It might be better if the land/sea were better defined, it's a bit blurry at the moment.
- Picture: Perhaps this have a simple outline of a person or mountain to make it obvious? It looks a bit too blurry as well.
- Heading: The one would be better if it looked more like a one, so it doesn't get confused with "Hi".
- Maths: I suppose having LaTeX as the icon is better, it would be a bit confusing to people who didn't know what LaTeX was though.
- nowiki: The one with thinner lines is the better of the two alternatives, because the picture is clearer. The icon is slightly better, because it doesn't look like a watch now. I don't think it's obvious what it does though.
- Sign: Maybe have a person and then four squiggles underneath them? That seems possible with that amount of space and it would be obvious what it is.
- Also, the category seems to be a sub category of itself, which is a bit confusing ;) I hope my ideas help. Icey 14:16, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Hi Michael180, thanks for making the alternatives. Here's my thoughts on those and a few others:
- What does anyone else think? Where else could I publicize this?--michael180 21:44, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Multi-line redirects: confirmation required from developers
- Context - Until recently, redirect pages were storing only the very first line and deleting everything else. Recently, redirect pages have been storing more than the first line.
- Question - Is this a permanent feature than can be documented, and officially used by editors?
- Complement - Some have started using this feature for adding information to redirect pages without having to pile everything on the first line (category tags, redirect templates, meta-information in HTML comments, etc.). A new change in MediaWiki, going back to the old single-line behavior, would erase all pages using the useful but currently undocumented feature. We thus need to know if it's officially implemented, or if it's a glitch that we shouldn't use.
-- 62.147.112.177 10:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Er, is there no developer on this board? Should it be posted somewhere else? Zero answer seems weird for such a straightforward yes/no question. 62.147.38.54 13:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I was also waiting for an answer on this one because of the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Redirect. What I could find is bugzilla:1476, comment #19, which seems to imply that this is a permanent change. (Liberatore, 2006). 15:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- That's a great link! It provides us with an external, authoritative source about the status of both issues. I've added it to the talk page so as to keep it. Meanwhile:
- I went to #wikimedia-tech and got a partial answer from Brion, then a complete answer from Tim Starling, the short story being:
- Categories in redirects are officially OK
- Multi-line redirects are officially OK
- BUT templates in redirects, such as the "R templates", are not OK for performance reasons, and may be broken in the future.
- The first two points are good, but the third one will be a problem for the current documentation at Wikipedia:Redirect and all the Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages
- The long story and IRC logs at
- Wikipedia_talk:Redirect#Content_of_redirects:_templates.2C_categories.2C_multiple_lines.
- -- 62.147.38.54 17:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- OT: Dear 62.147.38.54 (62.147.38.54, 62.147.112.177), may I ask you (two, three?) to create a login so you will have an own talk page. You seem be doing nice work here, so why make it so complicated ;-) --Ligulem 17:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikimedia.org server problems
In the past hour or so, http://svn.wikimedia.org (m:MediaWiki_extensions) has been down. I've looked at some of the status sites, but it's hard to interpret the results on them. Anyone know of the best place to go to check on the most up-to-date mediawiki and wikimedia server status? --J. J. 17:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
- The best place to check the up-to-date status is the IRC channels. --cesarb 22:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
- There was an odd outage which coincided with Brion being absent for the weekend. Long resolved, now. 86.134.92.120 05:01, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Indeed, I found out on the tech IRC channel. It's amazing how many people were online and willing to respond to my questions there! I meant to respond here earlier to tell Cesar thanks. --J. J. 13:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Semi Protection
On wikipedia to edit a semiprotected page a user must have a 4-day old account, but on my wiki (MediaWiki 1.6) a user only needs the account no mater how old it is. What is the cause of the difference? 213.94.234.66 21:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
- I think a better place for that is at mw:Project:Support desk. —Mets501 (talk) 03:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Quick answer; the autoconfirmed group isn't switched on by default; set $wgAutoConfirmAge = 86400 * 4;
in LocalSettings.php to do this. 86.134.92.120 05:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Fonts in SVG
Could someone tell me what fonts are supported for SVGs? Or more specifically, if I was to upload an SVG with DejaVu Sans (as a referenced font, not embedded) could MediaWiki render it correctly? I want to upload SVG renderings of a number of Unicode characters not in most fonts, which are currently GIF and I need to know if I can use DejaVu Sans as text or will I have to convert it to standard SVG paths (easy, but larger size than if it was text) - Рэдхот 15:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
- Ok I've established by myself, that it can't. But how can font support be added to MediaWiki, especially since DejaVu Sans supports such a wide range of charachters and is free (libre free). - Рэдхот 15:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
- File a feature request at bugzilla. A server admin should see it soon enough and do something about it. If not, consider contacting one directly (via their talk page, e-mail or IRC). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:30, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Script?
Lately, a few times a day, when I'm accessing Wikipedia, my Firefox browser pops up a message about a script that can't run & gives me the choice of stopping it. Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here? (If you do, could you possibly answer here and ping me on my user talk page to let me know to come look? Thanks in advance.) - Jmabel | Talk 18:57, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
- Doing what? Accessing what? Viewing what pages, performing what actions, etc? Full text of error or warning messages that appear? Name of the script? More information is needed. 86.134.92.120 04:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Storm may affect Wikipedia servers.
Is Wikipedia servers in Florida prepared for this thing ? IF it hits where they currently think it'll hit, the storm may take down Wikipedia. Ready for a Hurricane ? Martial Law 05:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
- Hi. You must be new. Let me introduce you to 2004 Atlantic hurricane season. In particular, Hurricane Charley. Wikimedia is located in the Tampa area, and they were more than prepared for what happened back then; this storm is not too likely to hit Tampa, but either way, yes, they have plans and know what they're doing. --Golbez 06:03, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
- In fact, they did cut power to downtown Tampa during Charley, and the WP servers ran off a generator. --Golbez 06:11, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
- I was raised as a military brat USAF and US ARMY, w/ some family in classified govt. agencies. In the military, you learn to be prepared, or you end up dead due to enemy action, bad weather, disease. Martial Law 07:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
- this storm is not too likely to hit Tampa As of 11AM EST Sunday, Tampa is right in the center of the projected track. -anon
- Latest track data show it may hit Tampa head on. Hope I'm incorrect. Martial Law 02:16, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
There are contingencies established at various levels to handle this sort of thing. 86.134.92.120 04:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Not receiving confirmation e-mails
Help, Mr. Wizard!
No matter how many times I click that button to send a confirmation e-mail to my address, I never receive a single one. They're not even spam-blocked; they just don't come. It's been 12 hours since my first try, and even that one hasn't arrived. I don't use a free address (e.g., hotmail, gmail, etc.), it's a standard e-mail address. I have no idea what's going on here...--TServo2049 17:23, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
- If you're relating to your WP account : tick the appropriate in your preferences tag "Enable e-mail from other users". -- DLL .. T 19:18, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
That preference has nothing to do with email address confirmation. 86.134.92.120 04:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Workarounds for browser problems displaying tables and Thumbed images.
- Undoubtedly these are known bugs, but I am interested in workarounds to achieve the resulting format in both Firefox and IE. My versions are the latest as of this date: Firefox for Windows, 1.5.0.6. -Mak Thorpe 23:28, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Table 1. Using Windows/Linux Firefox or Safari or Konqueror, the image will overlay this table.. OK with Internet Explorer. aaaaaaa bbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbb ccccccccccc dddddddddddddddd eeeeeeeeeeeee ffffffffffff gggggggggggg hhhhhhhhhhh iiiiiiiiiii jjjjjjjj kkkkkk lllllllllll mmmmmmmmm nnnnnnnnnn ooooooooo pppppppp qqqqqqqqq rrrrrrrrrr sssssssssss tttttttttt uuuuuuuuuuuuu vvvvvvvvvvvvvv wwwwwwwwwww xxxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyy zzzzzzzz |
Table 2. Using Firefox, the image now displays normally. Using Safari, the table is placed below (following) the image. Under Internet Explorer, the text following the table will not display underneath the table.. aaaaaaa bbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbb ccccccccccc dddddddddddddddd eeeeeeeeeeeee ffffffffffff gggggggggggg hhhhhhhhhhh iiiiiiiiiii jjjjjjjj kkkkkk lllllllllll mmmmmmmmm nnnnnnnnnn ooooooooo pppppppp qqqqqqqqq rrrrrrrrrr sssssssssss tttttttttt uuuuuuuuuuuuu vvvvvvvvvvvvvv wwwwwwwwwww xxxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyy zzzzzzzz |
This line should be below table 2. Under Firefox and Konqueror it will display beneath Table 1. Using Safari, it appears beneath Table 1 not overlaid on the image. Under IE, it will appear to the right of the second table.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mak Thorpe (talk • contribs) .
- I took the liberty of adding Konqueror behaviour to this section.-Mr Adequate 04:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps what you're looking for is this? My guess is it will display consistently across all browsers.
|
with some text following the table. Using Safari, this text is below the end of the image, creating a visual gap following the table. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Hey- I wish it were that easy. Does your solution answer the issue? Nope. Not at all. The goal is that the table be able to utilize 100% of the screen space without regard to whatever thumbed images may or may not have appeared before. Surely there is some way to tell the renderer- Kill all previous states- clean slate. User wants 100% of the width of the client subwindow reserved for articles. I don't care how ugly it is- I just need it to work on all major browsers. -Mak Thorpe 15:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Then, you mean like the following? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Text sort of goes along for a while, but now we want a full width table.
Table 4. aaaaaaa bbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbb ccccccccccc dddddddddddddddd eeeeeeeeeeeee ffffffffffff gggggggggggg hhhhhhhhhhh iiiiiiiiiii jjjjjjjj kkkkkk lllllllllll mmmmmmmmm nnnnnnnnnn ooooooooo pppppppp qqqqqqqqq rrrrrrrrrr sssssssssss tttttttttt uuuuuuuuuuuuu vvvvvvvvvvvvvv wwwwwwwwwww xxxxxxxxxxx yyyyyyyy zzzzzzzz |
And, here's some text following the table.
- There are worse cases. See SpyAxe. Try changing the window width; some widths look good, and for some, images overlap text. Sometimes, even the "edit" text button overlaps other text. Now that's a clear CSS bug. Remember HTML "tables", when nothing ever overlapped? --John Nagle 18:28, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks Rick. br clear all looks like it kills the float state that was confusing Firefox or IE. Hopefully others will confirm this solution (Table 4) works just fine on Safari and Konqueror. Regards, -Mak Thorpe 23:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- In Konqueror, Table 3 appears with normal wrap not overlapping the image but beside it. Table 4 appears below the image.-Mr Adequate 01:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I'm almost 100% certain <br clear=all/> works for all browsers (it works for Safari as well as the others previously listed). I would have suggested this originally, but didn't understand what you were attempting to do. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- This also seems to work <div style="clear: both"></div>, and doesn't introduce an extra line break. I have no idea if it is proper, but experimentation suggests it also has the same affect as br clear all on this anomalous behaviour. -Mak 18:44, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I'm almost 100% certain <br clear=all/> works for all browsers (it works for Safari as well as the others previously listed). I would have suggested this originally, but didn't understand what you were attempting to do. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Doubled references?
I was editing the article on High Technology High School, and I added a new reference. When I previewed the page, everything seemed right, but when I saved the page, the references were doubled. What I mean by this was that there are six references, but reference one became reference 7, reference two became 8, and so on. Has anyone encountered this before, or will it fix itself?
--BadgerOfDarkness 19:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Seems fine here. Six references, numbered 1-6. --TheParanoidOne 19:28, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- I'm having a similar problem after editing Millsaps College to add a reference. I've checked twice, and there is only one set of <ref></ref> tags in the article; still, the reference is numbered as 2, and there are two identical references in the References section. Am I missing something subtle in the article body? PS Yes, I forced a reload from the server just to double-check. :-) --Tkynerd 19:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Silly, silly me. I assumed my problem at List of misnamed theorems was too bizarre to have been reported before, but obviously not. Sorry for the duplicated question below. ---CH 03:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- See below: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Solution to problems with footnotes and references. Errabee 15:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Miniclip ref numbers duplicated
Something has gone wrong with the reference numbers at Miniclip. The references are duplicated and the first inline reference numbers is 8. No obvious cause. --John Nagle 19:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Looks like the same problem reported below with several other articles. Presumably someone broke the cite code temporarily. It seems to be fixed now. --John Nagle 02:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Strange situation with footnotes
I have an odd situation with footnotes on the United States Marine Corps article. The very first such link (1a in the references) doesn't go anywhere. Moreover, the links to the article and current version show different numbers of footnotes.
I have a feeling it's a malformed footnote somewhere, but are there any clues to where it might be?--Mmx1 23:10, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Having added a closequote to the name="something" field, the # of refs is back to 52. However, the first 2 backreferences (links from the footnotes back into the body of the article) are still broken. --Mmx1 23:19, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Further update: See User:Mmx1/Sandbox2. References are duplicated for some reason. Must be a bug in the cite code. I see the identical bug when logged in via firefox and as anon via IE.--Mmx1 23:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't know what's causing it, but purging ([2]) fixes it. --NE2 23:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Um, every time the page is edited, it destroys the order of the links. It didn't do that before, and you can see what it is doing to Hurricane Katrina. Can a site admin revert any change that happened to cite.php lately? Titoxd(?!?) 02:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Can you describe this destruction in more detail? For instance, is it a doubling of each footnote? --Brion 10:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- There are two different phenomena. In one form, the entire list of footnotes is doubled. If there are supposed to be 10 foonotes, there will be 20 (numbered 1-20), with the first footnote in the text starting at number 11. In the other form, every footnote has doubled letters in the reference section, both [a] and [b], as if a named template were being re-used. Gimmetrow 10:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- For an example of the first form, see Conservative Judaism#Footnotes (until someone clears it). Gimmetrow 11:17, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I'm having the same problem (see above #51) and also the person who wrote the note below mine {#52). So far we have received no help. Mattisse(talk) 12:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- We know how to fix it short-term. I'm leaving that one un-fixed so others know what we're talking about. Gimmetrow 12:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- There should be a more pernament and long-term solution than purging individual pages. The sheer number of questions asking the same questions (including me) is amazing. —Jared Hunt August 29, 2006, 14:28 (UTC)
- The problem only seems to happen for me if I edit an individual section and rearrange the order of footnotes within or add a new one. If I edit from the top of the page things stay in order. In either case, after reloading a minute or two later, the problem seems to resolve itself. It might simply be an issue of the cache being confused. Perhaps it registers only a part of the article updating instead of the entire thing. I'm not a technical expert, but that's my best guess. Ryu Kaze 00:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Some articles have been recached. However, I'm the last edit on one article over 12 hours old, and the issue is still present. It also appears after most edits on most articles using cite.php. Gimmetrow 00:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Hm. Do you know if anyone's been having the issue whether they edit from the top of the page or just an individual section? Like I said, it's not happened for me at all when editing from the top. Ryu Kaze 00:52, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I haven't done a detailed study, but I usually edit the entire page at once rather than by section. (Editing by section seems to introduce extra line breaks at the end of the section, sometimes.) I still see the problem regularly. Gimmetrow 00:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I guess that answers my question. Thanks. I guess it just must be random. Ryu Kaze 02:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I haven't done a detailed study, but I usually edit the entire page at once rather than by section. (Editing by section seems to introduce extra line breaks at the end of the section, sometimes.) I still see the problem regularly. Gimmetrow 00:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Hm. Do you know if anyone's been having the issue whether they edit from the top of the page or just an individual section? Like I said, it's not happened for me at all when editing from the top. Ryu Kaze 00:52, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Some articles have been recached. However, I'm the last edit on one article over 12 hours old, and the issue is still present. It also appears after most edits on most articles using cite.php. Gimmetrow 00:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- The problem only seems to happen for me if I edit an individual section and rearrange the order of footnotes within or add a new one. If I edit from the top of the page things stay in order. In either case, after reloading a minute or two later, the problem seems to resolve itself. It might simply be an issue of the cache being confused. Perhaps it registers only a part of the article updating instead of the entire thing. I'm not a technical expert, but that's my best guess. Ryu Kaze 00:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I'm having the same problem (see above #51) and also the person who wrote the note below mine {#52). So far we have received no help. Mattisse(talk) 12:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Can you describe this destruction in more detail? For instance, is it a doubling of each footnote? --Brion 10:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
phtml
If you go to the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/phtml it redirects to Main Page (and uses real http codes to redirect), but if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phtml it uses the wiki-redirect system to go to PHP.
If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=phtml it wiki-reidrects to PHP and so does ?title=Phtml.
If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.phtml it http-redirects to main page.
So i'm guessing it thinks /wiki/phtml is equivelant to /wiki.phtml .
Is there any reason why it thinks a slash is a dot?
GeorgeMoney (talk) 23:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
- Knowing the usual syntax for regexps, and knowing that that redirect is from mod_rewrite (which uses regexps), I'd say someone wrote
.
(matches any character) when they meant\.
(matches a literal dot). Report it on bugzilla (product Wikimedia, component General/Unknown), and a developer will fix it later when they have time. --cesarb 18:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Exactly it. Fixed, thanks! --Brion 11:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Need help in coding, probably
Due to a second instance of vandalism in my archives by users who cannot edit my user talk page (it was sprotected after it had been vandalized multiple times by IPs of banned users) I had decided to create a subpage that I have transcluded into my user talk page. However, I do not want level two headers nor do I want sections by established users to be superceded by possibly vandalous edits by malicious vandals. Is there a way to either
- Make it so the unprotected section forces level 3 headers for each section? or
- Make it so the unprotected section is always at the bottom of my page, and new sections via the new section tab are placed before it?
--Ryūlóng 01:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Oh, and I do not feel that unprotection is necessary at this moment in time. Ryūlóng 01:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- No. --cesarb 18:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Mysterious problem involving footnotes and citation templates
I tried to make a little List of misnamed theorems, but something went terribly wrong and I can't figure out how to fix the problem. For some mysterious reason, all the arrows pointing to the place where a footnote occurs are doubled in the reference section. Only the second of each pair appears to be functional. Please fix it if you can! ---CH 02:57, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
It seems to come and go. Reloading the page was one of the first things I tried, and it didn't seem to help. To my surprise, just after making the above query, reloading the page did seem to resolve the problem, but this definitely didn't seem to help earlier today. I am still baffled, but the fact that so many are experiencing problems suggests that something in the code might have been broken by a modification earlier today. ---CH 03:09, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I didn't just mean purge the cache. I added ?action=purge to the URL and reloaded. You probably saw the version after I did that. Gimmetrow 03:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- ?action=purge has just worked for a similar problem I had. I've never encountered it before, has something changed today? Espresso Addict 04:01, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I'm thinking there may be something wrong on Wikipedia's end because this is the first time I've encountered this problem, and others as well. Any guesses? —Jared Hunt August 29, 2006, 13:53 (UTC)
- I'm not sure if there's any connection, but I noticed that today I could not reproduce a certain error that has always "worked" in the past, namely leaving out the slash in a closing </ref> tag. When it "works" this error captures all or at least a good chunk of the following text, up to the next header, assuming that it's still reading the reference. However, when I tried it today cutting out the slash produced just the same results as normal in the preview, and when I returned, having cancelled the edit, my footnotes were as described here. -- Antaeus Feldspar 15:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I had the same problem. I'm going to try the purge thing.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 16:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yeah, that worked.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 16:18, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I had the same problem. I'm going to try the purge thing.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 16:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
This question is very quickly becoming the MFAQ of the day. Is any permanent solution at hand? -- Lost(talk) 16:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- The permanent solution is to invalidate every page in the cache (which may be happening, job queue seems fairly large at 420k and growing), and make sure the software invalidates a page with every save. Gimmetrow 16:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I have filed bugzilla:7166, related to this issue. Dragons flight 18:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- But apperently someone beat me, see also bugzilla:7162. Dragons flight 18:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Note that it appears on pages that do not use the references comment, such as Gliding and Choe Manri. (Do you need a separate registration for bugzilla?) Gimmetrow 18:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I have added a colored box to the top of this page to direct people towards the temporary solution (and to avoid even more sections talking about the same problem). --cesarb 18:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I found this while editing a page. Looking at it from another browser, all was OK. Rich Farmbrough 08:44 30 August 2006 (GMT).
Whatlinkshere strangeness
I recently checked the "What links here" for the article Arsenal F.C. (e.g. [3]) and found it now contains a lot of articles pertaining to Italian municipalities (e.g. Camporgiano), a seemingly unrelated topic. I assumed it was something to do with the navigation templates they use (Template:Province of Lucca) but I can't find any link to Arsenal F.C. within the template, nor anywhere else in the article. Checking the "Related changes" link for Camporgiano [4] produces a list of mostly unrelated articles (Arab League, Guadeloupe, MSN), none of which are seemingly linked to in the page. Can anyone shed a light as to why? Qwghlm 09:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yeah. Strange stuff. I haven't tracked down anything yet. For example I'm also utterly puzzled why editing Pope Pius I says it transcludes Template:Comic book reference =:-P. Need having a closer look on templates to make sure nobody vandalized any template. --Ligulem 09:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I fixed a html tag error on Pope Pius I. But now we have the doubled footnotes problem there (as reported on this page already, scroll up)... --Ligulem 10:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Could be a database problem. Edit a page and a number of non-present templates are listed, but once the page is saved the template connections seem to get fixed. (Then a purge to fix the foonotes... ;) Gimmetrow 10:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- After checking a few articles, I wonder if the template problem is a consequence of the recent WoW vandalism. Various templates were moved around. Gimmetrow 11:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
The job queue is now over 400,000. Could it be that every page on WP is being invalidated and recached? Gimmetrow 16:31, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Just for the records: Job queue length is now on 890,180. I would say this *is* huge now. Never seen it that high before. --Ligulem 22:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I don't know if the two are related, but Whatlinkshere for images was patched very recently, which will require rebuilding the link table for all images. However, I don't know if those are being farmed onto the jobs queue. Dragons flight 01:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I was just about the report the same strangeness for Louisville, Kentucky. I usually check Louisville redirects to determine whether they were meant to go to University of Louisville. This current problem is hindering that check. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 02:33, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Haven't found anything in common between various pages. Simple pages seem OK. Pages for various animals seem OK (these have a taxobox infobox). Minor league baseball teams seem OK (images and simple infobox). Costa Rica thinks that Saturn and Ashford, Kent link to it; all three of these are somewhat complex and use several images, templates and infoboxes (but different infoboxes). You don't suppose the Template whose name is an exclamation point is having its name used in a context which makes it be interpreted as a program or SQL "bang" symbol? (SEWilco 05:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC))
- Notice #Problem with operation of category pages below says a category is including articles which do not have the category. Categories and Whatlinkshere may both be using indexes of some type. Without looking at the code, I wouldn't be surprised if the job queue is a DB index of some type. Something wrong with the first two type of indexes might affect the job queue, or perhaps all three things are entangled in some sort of index problem. I'm painting with a broad brush, but all this will undoubtedly get looked at shortly by someone with more detailed awareness of the system. (SEWilco 06:08, 30 August 2006 (UTC))
- Two possibilies: Someone found an unprotected meta template and screwed with it, or the tables are actually screwed up. Of interest to PC Gamer-related issues, {{Ann_anime}} is somehow transcluded now or at some point in the recent past to hundreds of pages for an unknown reason. Kevin_b_er 08:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Footnotes error?
I was just reading Wikipedia:Help_desk#Footnotes_at_Opus_Dei and thought that it was a problem on that end, solved easily by deleting cache etc. But after I editted Every Song Is A Cry For Love, the same error occured to me. The problem is gone and it's does not matter for me much, but I'm wondering if there's a bigger problem at Wikipedia's end. —Jared Hunt August 29, 2006, 13:28 (UTC)
- Read this section above. Gimmetrow 13:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Solution to problems with footnotes and references
Putting this in its own section because tons of people seem to be having this problem right now.
Adding ?action=purge to the URL of the page you are having problems with (load the page, then in the address bar, add ?action=purge to the end of the URL and press Enter) seems to fix the problem with doubled footnotes and references that don't work, at least for some people. It worked for me with the Millsaps College article I edited yesterday. I'm not sure this is a permanent fix for the article itself; it may just fix your browser, but I guess it's worth trying.
Credit goes to User:Gimmetrow in the "Mysterious problem involving footnotes and citation templates" above. --Tkynerd 13:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- It has been noted in Wikipedia talk:Footnotes. (SEWilco 14:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC))
- It is not browser specific. I tried it on two computers. It may be User or Page specific. Morphh 18:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
As I've been adding a lot of references lately to an article, I've also come across this problem. And I noticed something interesting, thay may hint at the cause of the problem. Editing a section creates a different result than editing the entire page. The footnotes or references start with those that are placed in that section or below, and then the entire article is scanned again, which results in only some footnotes or references being doubled. If you edit the entire page, it essentially does the same, resulting in a complete doubling. Errabee 14:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- It just happened to me with the initial version of Gay rights in South Korea. Plain editing did not work, purging did. Cleduc 04:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
This is a good fix, but still very annoying. The doubling effect has happened on three articles I have edited references for -- starting yesterday. --MattWright (talk) 17:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I have tried the purge fix on Taxicabs of the United States but its getting worse - can anyone fix this article, please? TerriersFan 18:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- It seems fine: 4 refmarks, 4 notes. Gimmetrow 18:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, I have edited some other sections and it has fixed itself. Weird. Thanks for looking, though. TerriersFan 18:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- It seems fine: 4 refmarks, 4 notes. Gimmetrow 18:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Has anyone put in a bug report to mediawiki? -- Stbalbach 04:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- A bug report has been filed. 86.134.92.120 04:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- There is a red notice box presently at the top of this page. For the benefit of archival readers I'll mention bugzilla:7162. (SEWilco 04:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC))
Bot access funniness
I've recently reactivated the rambot and in the process of testing it I made these changes. This is not normally a problem, except every time I make a successful change, I get a "403: Forbidden" response code. This despite the fact that the edit happens anyway. I have no idea why and would like to know if anyone else is aware of this particular problem. — Ram-Man () (talk) 15:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I can't speculate about why it allows you to edit and then gives you a 403, but I know Wikipedia 403's a variety of user agent strings that look like bots it doesn't like. Given the venerable age of Rambot, it might have been contructed before those restrictions were put in place. Dragons flight 01:18, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- That seems likely. It was totally restricting me when I had no user agent specified, so when I made one up, this was the result. I could spoof another bot's user agent string, but I'd rather get this one to be used, since it is unique and would be easier to block in the event of problems. Interestingly, getting a 403 is more efficient in terms of bandwidth than receiving a success with the new page included. I'm pretty sure I don't get a 403 on any other errors. Nevertheless, for all I know this could be a bug in the user-agent filtering. UPDATE: Strike that. I changed my user agent to spoof that of the pywikipediabot, with the same result. Apparently a 403 success :). — Ram-Man () (talk) 12:01, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I think I may know what the problem is. Because the rambot predates current bot policy, and it has been running approved for years (besides being inactive for the past ~1.5 year period) without any regard to the forming/changing policy that has affected new bots. I've never been listed on Wikipedia:Bots/Approval log, so my guess is that the software is filtering out any account with the bot flag that are not on the approval log, or something similar to this. I'm unfamiliar with the "recent" technical limitations, but I think the rambot was the first bot with the bot flag, so any newer approval changes might not have been applied. This bug may be limited to the rambot only if that is the case, since any other new bot would have the flag AND be approved. — Ram-Man () (talk) 12:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- It's listed as a bot in Special:Listusers, so there's nothing on the MediaWiki side of the equation. AFAIK, there's no "approved bot" flag in the database, and there's no interface to do so. Check the bot's IP, if you're running it from a different computer. Is it blocked? Are you trying to access a URL in Wikipedia's root folder or something similar? Titoxd(?!?) 16:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I think I may know what the problem is. Because the rambot predates current bot policy, and it has been running approved for years (besides being inactive for the past ~1.5 year period) without any regard to the forming/changing policy that has affected new bots. I've never been listed on Wikipedia:Bots/Approval log, so my guess is that the software is filtering out any account with the bot flag that are not on the approval log, or something similar to this. I'm unfamiliar with the "recent" technical limitations, but I think the rambot was the first bot with the bot flag, so any newer approval changes might not have been applied. This bug may be limited to the rambot only if that is the case, since any other new bot would have the flag AND be approved. — Ram-Man () (talk) 12:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I'm to understand there's blocks on various useragents in the squid proxy cache servers to prevent poorly coded bots from running amok. Perhaps a developer would know what user agent you could specify to avoid the 403. Kevin_b_er 19:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I suspected that it had nothing to do with "approval" and as for the user agent stuff, I spoofed the user agent to match the ever popular pywikipediabot, so it should have been none the wiser. And I'm editing from the same IP address and the addresses used in the bots seem like they should also work using a web browser. I don't know what the difference is. — Ram-Man () (talk) 20:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Try something completely unique, and ideally put contact information (a URL, or even a wikilink would work) as part of the User-Agent string, and try it again... if it doesn't, then you are requesting a link, after page save, that is blocked by Apache (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/.htaccess). Titoxd(?!?) 20:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- The user-agent string that I'm using *is* unique, since I just invented it to make it work at all. And the "request" is a page submit, which returns 403. If I view or edit the page (i.e. with "&action=edit") it works fine and I get a standard 200. When I view the SAME link with "&action=submit", that's when I get the 403. The only difference (besides the POST data being sent) is "edit" vs. "submit". -- RM 21:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- Try something completely unique, and ideally put contact information (a URL, or even a wikilink would work) as part of the User-Agent string, and try it again... if it doesn't, then you are requesting a link, after page save, that is blocked by Apache (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/.htaccess). Titoxd(?!?) 20:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- I suspected that it had nothing to do with "approval" and as for the user agent stuff, I spoofed the user agent to match the ever popular pywikipediabot, so it should have been none the wiser. And I'm editing from the same IP address and the addresses used in the bots seem like they should also work using a web browser. I don't know what the difference is. — Ram-Man () (talk) 20:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Animated GIF too big for thumb?
I uploaded this Image:Hurricane Katrina LA landfall radar.gif (6MB animated gif) file to Commons earlier. However, MediaWiki fails to produce a thumbnail (like to the right), making the image useless. Is there a hard limit on the max size to animated gifs for thumbs?--Nilfanion (talk) 19:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- fixed, any ideas what happened?--Nilfanion ([[User
talk:Nilfanion|talk]]) 22:05, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- There's a limit on time and memory usage for image thumbnailing. If thumbnailing the image comes close to the limit, then some servers may be able to scrape under it while others fail. I wouldn't recommend using animated GIF as a storage format for large videos, Theora is probably better. Some day we might even have support for embedding it in wiki pages. You could generate a small animated GIF thumbnail offline, for temporary use in articles. -- Tim Starling 11:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Expunging block log entries
Anyone know offhand if there's already a BugZilla bug about the idea of expunging bogus entries from the block log? I looked, [6] but didn't see anything that fit. This came up in this thread: User_talk:Lar#Carnildo an offshoot of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Carnildo 3 Thanks! ++Lar: t/c 21:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- I oppose. Two things can be done in cases like this. First, the user can save the links to the discussions (talk pages, ArbCom, WP:ANI) where the community agrees that a block is improper. Second, a respected admin can add an unblock to the log with an explanatory summary, so anyone viewing the log is notified of the situation. NoSeptember 13:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- In certain cases, I think, pointing to history and so forth, and even a cancelling unblock, are insufficient to properly expunge a record. Specifically, in Giano's case (whatever I may think of his general civility of late) I feel he has been unfairly labeled with having committed "hate speech". In another case, we have an admin that blocked a user for one second "because they said they had a clean block log". In another case, we have an admin who blocked a user ACCIDENTALLY and labeled it with the warning he meant for the troll he was trying to block. The block log is very significant and very permanent. I do not think that expunging should be done lightly, or by just one person acting alone, but there ought to be a way to get rid of entries that clearly should not be there in the first place. I'd like to see this more widely discussed but I am not sure where exactly. I note that I have been told by several old hands that there HAVE been cases of block entries being expunged in the past, but that it took direct developer intervention and was potentially error prone, and not easy to carry out. This new interface would make it easier but I do not advocate that it have wide availability. ++Lar: t/c 14:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Unlike oversight removal of edit summaries with personal information, improper block log entries will remain very rare. We would desysop an admin who deliberately added personal info to a log, for example. An interface would seem a very low priority, and its existance would encourage increased use of the option. Mistakes can be explained away as I mentioned above, it doesn't really besmudge one's record if the record shows that the block summary was in error. As for increasing discussion, you can link to this thread from WP:ANI. NoSeptember 14:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I agree with NoSeptember, particularily because if there is something truly egregious, then a developer can remove it, and if there's an interface, we'll go in a slippery slope, removing entries that really aren't that objectionable. (and for the record, I could benefit from this, just look at my block log...) Titoxd(?!?) 17:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- There is already, I believe, a facility to really delete an edit, available to a subset of admins (arbitrators and a few others). I think the facility Lar proposes might be useful, and would support it if it doesn't involve too much work. And, for the record, the case which prompted Lar's enquiry did of course result in a desysopping - but the block record remains. --kingboyk 18:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I agree with NoSeptember, particularily because if there is something truly egregious, then a developer can remove it, and if there's an interface, we'll go in a slippery slope, removing entries that really aren't that objectionable. (and for the record, I could benefit from this, just look at my block log...) Titoxd(?!?) 17:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Unlike oversight removal of edit summaries with personal information, improper block log entries will remain very rare. We would desysop an admin who deliberately added personal info to a log, for example. An interface would seem a very low priority, and its existance would encourage increased use of the option. Mistakes can be explained away as I mentioned above, it doesn't really besmudge one's record if the record shows that the block summary was in error. As for increasing discussion, you can link to this thread from WP:ANI. NoSeptember 14:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- In certain cases, I think, pointing to history and so forth, and even a cancelling unblock, are insufficient to properly expunge a record. Specifically, in Giano's case (whatever I may think of his general civility of late) I feel he has been unfairly labeled with having committed "hate speech". In another case, we have an admin that blocked a user for one second "because they said they had a clean block log". In another case, we have an admin who blocked a user ACCIDENTALLY and labeled it with the warning he meant for the troll he was trying to block. The block log is very significant and very permanent. I do not think that expunging should be done lightly, or by just one person acting alone, but there ought to be a way to get rid of entries that clearly should not be there in the first place. I'd like to see this more widely discussed but I am not sure where exactly. I note that I have been told by several old hands that there HAVE been cases of block entries being expunged in the past, but that it took direct developer intervention and was potentially error prone, and not easy to carry out. This new interface would make it easier but I do not advocate that it have wide availability. ++Lar: t/c 14:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
[Back to margin.] In an extreme case like this, where someone has been seriously defamed in a way that could cause real-life harm in easily-imaginable scenarios, I think there should be a way of getting an item out of a block log. I don't think it should be easy or routinely available, and nor do I think that the wrong suffered by Giano gives him a free pass forever to be as uncivil as he likes to whoever he likes, but I DO think he has been seriously wronged and that Wikipedia should find a way to do something about it. And it should do likewise in any other rare and extreme case. Metamagician3000 09:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- I think that this is a good idea, but should only be available to users with the oversight permission. (As it happens, this consists mostly of current and former ArbCom members, and also includes two developers, three bureaucrats, and Jimbo Wales). Oversighting blocks should probably only be done on ArbCom decision, however. --ais523 12:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Not knowing this thread existed, I posted a very similar idea on WP:AN#Forgiveness_on_Wikipedia.
I think there is a problem with NoSeptember's objection in that the way the web works does not guarantee that people will always go to a user's page to check whether he's left a note of some previous block being unjust, or the block comment inaccurate. Worse, you could have some users who are very active on contentious topics and get hit by several unjust blocks. Explaining all that is going to make for dreary reading. Much better to purge the record in good faith. It's always good to be aware that what's created on Wikipedia may always be taken outside of Wikipedia. And I can't remember a time that the defeatist position turned out to be the right one with respect to Wikipedia conduct. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 13:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- I tend to agree, I think that it would be nice to have a (restricted) ability to purge log entries. People digging for stuff are probably going to look at the block log first, and having to maintain stuff on your user page explaining in detail why a certain block was unjust is probably not the best way to counter that. I'd like to see this for all log entries as well. This functionality might also help when some malcontent, frustrated by his edits that violate libel/privacy/copyright/obscenity/etc. laws being removed by oversight, starts putting this junk in the titles of articles, in usernames, etc. JYolkowski // talk 20:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- I agree also. Although purely accidental blocks are often easy to discern (such as the block I accidentally gave DVD R W a few moments ago :(), those accusing the blockee of hate speech and other horrendous acts leave a black smear across a user's record, harming their reputation. - Tangotango 07:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Perhaps it would be acceptable to restrict it only to oversighted users, as they're were granted that permission to deal with these kinds of things. Titoxd(?!?) 07:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I agree that oversight is probably the correct level of authority for this privilege. JYolkowski // talk 18:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Perhaps it would be acceptable to restrict it only to oversighted users, as they're were granted that permission to deal with these kinds of things. Titoxd(?!?) 07:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I agree also. Although purely accidental blocks are often easy to discern (such as the block I accidentally gave DVD R W a few moments ago :(), those accusing the blockee of hate speech and other horrendous acts leave a black smear across a user's record, harming their reputation. - Tangotango 07:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Problem with operation of category pages
A problem has appeared with the operation of category pages. Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs contains entries for articles that are not in the category. Alan Pascoe 22:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Might this be related to the above #Whatlinkshere strangeness? Are we having problems with indexes? (SEWilco 06:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC))
- I edited one of these articles, which believed it contained the template, and the spurious entry disappeared. Rich Farmbrough 08:40 30 August 2006 (GMT).
- bugzilla:7162 was fixed, and the problem apparently was stuff from recent edits being added to edited articles. So the recent flurry of ISBN-related edits was probably seeding this bug with ISBN category tags, which were then added to other articles. (SEWilco 15:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC))
Foreign language external links
I notice that these are frequently added to articles such as here but they do not display. What do they do, please? TerriersFan 22:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- You'll find them in the left column (outside the main article block). Under the "navigation", "search" and "toolbox blocks", there will be another block called "in other languages". Canadiana 22:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Jan Smuts's youth - Footnotes problem
I'm trying to edit the above article, but I am running into a problem with footnotes. In ordinary circumstances this page should have 21 footnotes - but as you will see on the page, these 21 have increased to 42. For some reason the first 21 are listed as per usual, then the list is repeated for 22 through to 42. Furthermore, the footnotes in the text now start from number 22, rather than number 1. Can anyone shed any light on the problem?
Xdamrtalk 23:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Just noticed the solution above - purging the page has done the trick.
Footnotes problem fixed
Since there's five million duplicate threads above, I won't respond in any of them individually.
The problem should now be fixed; use action=purge on any remaining affected pages or just edit them again. --Brion 11:15, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- See bugzilla:7162 (status: fixed). Thanks. --Ligulem 11:19, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- What about the spurious entries on category pages and What links here pages? As suggested elsewhere, editing an article causes it to disappear from listings it does not belong to, but it could be years before the listings are correct again. Alan Pascoe 13:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Are those from editing of templates? Wait for the templates to clear, or edit the pages. --Brion 15:23, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Odd results from What links here
What is Compost doing in the "What links here" results for "Tiberian Hebrew"? [9] There are other entries in that list that probably don't belong there either. Is there something inaccurate about "What links here"? --Hoziron 12:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I don't get compost in that list. Try purging your cache on that page: Mozilla/Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), IE: press Ctrl-F5, Opera/Konqueror: press F5. —Mets501 (talk) 13:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- That's because compost was just edited. If you edit any page, the links and categories for that article are updated and returned to normal. Gimmetrow 13:25, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I would like the ability to see which pages used to be linked to a page. Also, to see which pages used to be included in a category. Some sort of history page to track these things would be useful at times. NoSeptember 14:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Technical inability for sysops to unblock themselves
Since it is already discouraged for sysops to unblock themselves, this inability should be "codified" in the MediaWiki software, in order to prevent intentional and unintentional abuse. Perhaps only bureaucrats and stewards should be allowed to unblock any sysop.Peter O. (Talk) 14:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- There are good reasons to be able to unblock oneself, technical reasons. As long as we are willing to desysop admins who improperly use this ability (on a case by case basis, due to mitigating factors), there is no real need to codify it. NoSeptember 14:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
If you tried Googling the fucking mailing list archives, like it says at the top of the page, you'd see that there was a discussion about this there, or on BugZilla, when several other permission oversights were fixed up. 86.143.70.12 14:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
text color
How do you add custom text color? 206.176.119.180 18:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Like this:
<span style="color: COLOR;">TEXT</span>
replacing COLOR with the color of your choice (either in English or the hexadecimal code) and TEXT should be the text you want to change the color of. —Mets501 (talk) 18:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
However, please avoid doing this as it will break the consistent nature of articles on the site. In addition, forcing text to be a specific colour harms accessibility. 86.134.92.120 19:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Basically, colored text is good for signatures, user pages, portals, and a few other things. Other than that, though, it should not be used. —Mets501 (talk) 19:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- ...and some might argue against even many of those. Certainly signatures that look like angry fruit salad can be distracting and annoying. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Can someone fix the wikiness of this article? The first three "edit" links are groups halfway down the third section in the middle of a paragraph -- Kendrick7 20:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Fixed. See Wikipedia:How to fix bunched up edit links for a detailed explanation on how to fix it in the future. --cesarb 21:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Interwiki linking
Is there a page about interwiki linking/external linking and how it should be, especially in regards to wikia and how Smallville_(Season_1)#Pilot links to this. - Peregrinefisher 20:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- These pages might be useful to you: Wikipedia:Interwikimedia_link, Wikipedia:Interlanguage_links, meta:Help:Interwiki_linking, meta:Interwiki_map, list of prefixes. Icey 21:12, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- I guess I mean what are the rules about what's appropriate, not what' the syntax. - Peregrinefisher 22:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- That's a question for Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), not (technical), actually. Wikipedia:External links might give you some directions. (Liberatore, 2006). 15:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- I guess I mean what are the rules about what's appropriate, not what' the syntax. - Peregrinefisher 22:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Userpage Work
Hi, I'm a small time user and I wanted to add some spice to my userpage. I really don't think I have enough content on my page or enough experience here that it is worth someone who is good at this to overhaul my userpage (like Sango, Master of Puppets or Phaedriel), but I thought of adding a border, some new font color (I just found out how to do that by reading above), or some show/hide stuff. Is there a place I can visit or do I just have to stare at the complicated formatting on a well done page and try to figure it out? --Clyde Miller 21:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Most effects are done using CSS, which you can research elsewhere in the web; for instance, for a black 1 pixel border, surround the content by
<div style="border: 1px solid black">
and</div>
. To hide a section, you have to use magic classes parsed by a magic code at MediaWiki:Monobook.js; see {{hidden}} to see how it's done (you can use {{hidden}} directly if it fits your needs). --cesarb 21:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks I'll look into that. I'm not really sure what I want to do yet, but this really helps. --Clyde Miller 02:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yeah I've seen people do that. I'm not sure, but I'll consider it. --Clyde Miller 20:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Trying to put user contributions on watchlist
Hi, I was trying to find a way to be notified when known repeated spammers contributed, so that I could check their edits. I know there is some kind of complicated (for me!) workaround with CSS and enhanced recent changes. I asked at the help desk, and was told:
Make a subpage that lists such users and use the related changes feature to see what changes they make. - Mgm|(talk) 11:16, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
which was an adequate (if not ideal) workaround in theory.
I am having a little trouble getting it to work though. I've set up a page at User:Postglock/UserWatchlist, but when I click "Related Changes" from the toolbox, I can only get some edits to appear, although there are edits made after then. I'm not sure if others see the same thing, but (for example) no contributions from the first link Special:Contributions/203.129.192.23 appear on related changes. Thanks in advance. -postglock 07:46, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- I don't think related changes works with Special: pages. One could potentially write a quite script to output this query in a more user-friendly format... It could be done in javascript or elsewhere, not necessarily on the toolserver. --Interiot 16:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
That's a pretty interesting solution, but unfortunately I lack the skills to write any kind of script to deal with that... It does appear that some of the Special:Contributions pages are picked up by related changes, it just doesn't appear to be complete. (You might need to extend the date range for the example above.) -postglock 06:57, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- I had the idea of enabling user-watching via the watchlist last night (not after reading this). I might put up a request at bugzilla. —Daniel (‽) 14:11, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Good idea, I would have thought a fair few number of editors would appreciate such a feature. -postglock 07:31, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I can't up load an image
I try to upload a small jpeg and get the error:
"." not valid file format
any ideas? hza 12:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- Maybe name's wrong. Is your computer configured to see known file extensions? If not, configure so, and, if file name ends in ".", ".jpeg" or other strange extension, change it to ".jpg". If it hasn't extension, add ".jpg"
—Nethac DIU, always would speak here—
15:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
How to use Block log?
Someone put a sign on my page saying: It is suspected that this user may be a sock puppet, meat puppet or impersonator of Shravak. Then it says go to block log for evidence. How do I use block log to find out the evidence against me? Dattat 16:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- Go to your contributions page (from the links at the top) and there will be some links under the title. One of them will take you to your block log. —Daniel (‽) 17:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- Well, I don't get it. I am supposed to enter something in there in the middle box? I aready removed the sockpuppet thing because the directions said that if there was no evidence entered on the red link, I could. That's correct, isn't it? Dattat 17:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
- Here's the evidence. Icey 19:46, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Delay on Search function seems to just get longer
Having made enquiries at Wikipedia:Searching about the long lag for the search index (the answer seems to be that the search index is updated whenever someone can get around to it, and as the Search function is not considered a priority, this is quite infrequently), I'm wondering at what point the Search function becomes so out of date that it's considered an urgent problem. From my own experience it currently seems to be over three months since it was last updated (question: is this for the Wikipedia as a whole, or is the search index more up to date for some articles than others?), which is more like several months than the "weeks" mentioned in your FAQ at the top. Is there a way we can petition those who can update the search index to somehow set a regular timetable to do this (in principle, the oftener the better, but I recognise they are busy with a great many things, so perhaps weekly or fortnightly at least is practicable)? Thylacoleo 01:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- You can ask, but that won't actually help. I just need to sit aside for a few hours without being asked to do other things and get it fixed up. --Brion 08:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- Fair enough. I suppose I'm just hopeful that the necessary-but-not-always-urgent job of updating the search index could somehow be squeezed into the regular schedule of jobs amidst all the important-and-urgent ones that demand attention. I fear that it has a tendency to fall by the wayside until it too becomes urgent (as perhaps is the case now). I appreciate that updating the search index is a dull, onerous, time-consuming and thankless task. I can't do anything about the first three, but I can with respect to the last one: thank you! Thylacoleo 01:25, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
talk/contribs links in signature
Please explain how I can set up my user name to include the talk/contribs links when I use four tildas to sign a message. I probably wouldn't want to do this every time - is there a way of toggling it on/off (five tildas, perhaps?) I find these quick links incredibly useful. Many thanks, Lynbarn 07:49, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- The short answer is no. You can change your sig but you can only have one at a time. I'll tell you how to do this and show you a workaround.
- Go to Preferences and put any text you like in the Signatures box, including links to your talk or contribs. It's a small box but will hold plenty of text anyway. Please, out of respect for other editors, don't get too cute. Images and templates are forbidden; colors and weird characters are usually ugly and make you look silly, not cool. Check the box Raw signature; this removes your default sig, which is just a link to your user page. Insert your new sig plus timestamp anywhere with four tildes.
- Five tildes inserts only the timestamp. You can make this work in your favor. Create a subpage within your own userspace (e.g, User:Foo/sig1). Put your sig there and from that point on, sign your talk page posts like this:
{{subst:User:Foo/sig1}}~~~~~
- Obviously, you can create a sig2, sig3, sig4 page. But please note well that all your sigs should include, at a minimum, your username and a link to either your user page or your talk page. It's probably unwise to avoid overelaborate sigs in general and avoid using widely different sigs from page to page.
- There's a generic template you might consider, {{user}}. To show you how it works, I'll sign this post with it. Good luck! John_Reid (talk • contribs) 03:00, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
my contribs aren't being recorded!
for some reason, many -- most -- of my contributions aren't listed on my 'my contributions' page. does anyone know why an edit wouldn't show up there? thanks, --Il hamster 08:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- Could you point to some examples? A common reason might be that you made edits while logged out. --Brion 08:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- Another common reason is that the contribution was to an article which was subsequently deleted. --cesarb 15:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Unicode font selection
(moved from Wikipedia Help Desk) Hello. I have several Unicode fonts installed on my computer, for use with various typefaces in some graphics work I do. (For example, there is a Unicode font resembling Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, etc.) Anyway, when IPA characters in a Wikipedia article appear, they are in one of the very light fonts I have installed, and are difficult to read. Is there any way of telling Wikipedia which Unicode font I want displayed, or does it always default to something? Thank you. — Michael J 08:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- Yes. If the IPA is properly tagged, you can edit your user CSS (user/monobook.css if you are using Monobook; for other skins, see the list at WP:CLASS) and add the following:
.IPA { font-family: "Bitstream Vera Sans" }
- replacing "Bitstream Vera Sans" by the name of the font you want to use. As for the default, if you are using IE, it defaults to a fixed list of fonts; if you are using anything else, it uses your browser's default (all browsers but IE are able to get characters from other fonts if they do not exist in the current font). --cesarb 15:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Edit toolbar buttons won’t load (except [#R])
I’ve been unable to edit any wiki page from one particular computer running IE6 and XP sp2. Logged in, logged out or cleared cache, has no effect. This problem is roughly 1 month old, it all worked fine before, and I can’t remember to have changed anything significant on that installation for a long time.
The problem
Reading pages goes okay. Edit window will load till it hits the toolbar buttons, it will load the Redirect button ([#R]), but non of the others (it’s trying to load it from …/skins-1.5/…etc. but will never happen). From that moment on that particular IE window is locked. Other IE windows will ‘http 404’ on all wiki sites, but not on anything else. Closing IE has no effect; I have to reboot to be able to read any wiki content again.
The closest bugzilla report I could find is Bug 5324: No edit toolbar and related/duplicate reports, but I’m running IE6 on XP, not mac/safari. Anyway, I haven’t been able to solve it. Has anybody a suggestion where I should look to solve the problem? Thanks. --Van helsing 14:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- The [#R] button is being added via MediaWiki:Monobook.js (the section under
/* add a redirect button to the edit page toolbar */
. Odd that that would work as an onload, but that javascript in the page wouldn't. I can suggest a few things to try, maybe, to narrow down the problem. Try these to see which stop the lockup:
- 1. Try disabling javascript, this should obviously work (but maybe not?).
- 2. Try going to the edit window of a user style page, these don't load the toolbar: User:Van helsing/monobook.js. Also try going to the view-source of a protected page, eg MediaWiki:Monobook.js (if you aren't sysop).
- 3. Try disabling the addbutton function temporarily. Put into User:Van helsing/monobook.js and then clear your cache:
function addButton() { // do nothing };
- 4. Try other Wikis for the problem:
- A. Wiktionary
- B. Wikia
- C. Uncyclopedia
- Report results here (anyone else have any ideas?), this will help narrow down the cause. --Splarka (rant) 07:32, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Hi Splarka, thanks a lot for your response. Silly thing is, I only was able to test your suggestion 1&2 since your post, sorry (reason being: comp and me too short in each other’s neighborhood since then).
- Results:
- 1. Try disabling javascript, this should obviously work (but maybe not?).
- Works indeed, no toolbar (don’t use it anyway), but also no locking IE
- 2. Try going to the edit window of a user style page, these don't load the toolbar: User:Van helsing/monobook.js. Also try going to the view-source of a protected page, eg MediaWiki:Monobook.js (if you aren't sysop).
- Works as well, same result
- 3. & 4.
- Will test as soon as I have a chance
- Can my Java plug-in be corrupted, where an update could resolve things? Thanks again. --Van helsing 11:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Any documentation on the various #if functions?
Hi folks, I'm trying to play around with the #if, #ifeq, and other commands. Is there any published documentation on how to use these things? I've been going at it blind, but I'd like to go at it with a better idea of the syntax. Thanks, Deathphoenix ʕ 17:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- See m:ParserFunctions. --Interiot 17:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- See also Category:Templates using ParserFunctions for practical examples of usage. -Mak 19:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- Wonderful. Thanks, guys. --Deathphoenix ʕ 19:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
- See also Category:Templates using ParserFunctions for practical examples of usage. -Mak 19:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Template:Hidden - Auto Show/Hide
The show/hide box produced with {{Hidden}} automatically remain open unless there is more then one of those, when all of the boxes remain closed. These is no way to set individually if the boxes should be open or closed by default. I think that editors should be able to control each box individuality if the boxes should default open or closed. It would be nice if a coder would be able to build this feature. It could be controlled by adding "|default=hidden" to the template syntax or writing something in the actual code. I am not too good with JavaScript, so I don't know what will work. If someone can build this feature it would be nice. See the discussion at Template_talk:Hidden#Default_to_show
The boxes are powered from the base javascript and are affected somewhat from MediaWiki:Monobook.css This feature premiered at de:Wikipedia:Navigationsleisten --michael180 00:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- This feature doesn't work at all in my browser (Mozilla 1.2.1 and please don't ask why). Please don't use it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Reid (talk • contribs) 02:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I coded up a replacement for the
createNavigationBarToggleButton
function at MediaWiki:Monobook.js which allows one to specify if the box should be open or closed by default. It can be found at [10] if you want to check the code. Once it's added to Monobook.js (replacing the function already there), usingNavFrameDefaultHide
instead ofNavFrame
will force the box to be hidden by default, and usingNavFrameDefaultShow
instead ofNavFrame
will force the box to be shown by default. I intend to add the code to Monobook.js in a few days if nobody complains. --cesarb 16:59, 2 September 2006 (UTC)- Wow, thanks!!! Will be great to get it running. --michael180 21:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Show as a tree / Show as a list in Catgegories
When did this come about? Any additional info available? older ≠ wiser 01:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Do you like it? Duesentrieb volunteered to make an announcement, since he did most of the work. He announced it on commons, de and the category tree page, saying that he wasn't active on en. I've now followed that up with a post to wikitech-l, which is hopefully a more visible forum for Wikimedians generally. Here is the archive of my post: [11]. -- Tim Starling 05:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- It could be useful (though I suspect I shall mainly stay with list), but it was very confusing when Cats started showing as a tree without my having selected it. DuncanHill 12:17, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I find it very confusing, mainly when many subcategories exist, and I'm totally opposed to the fact that categories appear as a tree by default. DeansFA 12:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I like that new feature. Kudos to Duesentrieb and Tim! --Ligulem 14:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
In response to some criticisms, Duesentrieb has just implemented a "unified view", which combines the strengths of both the tree view and the list view. There's apparently also an override parameter for bots. -- Tim Starling 14:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Categories are now appearing as a tree by default with no apparent means of over-riding this - help please! I find the list view much easier to read and navigate. DuncanHill 15:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
One potential problem is that people who click on the "+" sign and get the "nothing found" result, might think that is the end of the road: no articles there. Of course, it really means that there are just no subcategories. But will new users realise they need to click on the category link to see the articles inside the category? Carcharoth 16:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Another problem is that it is slower and less intyitive than the list, and depriving users of the choice (as appears to have happened) will discourage editors from exploring the categories to find the best ones for articles. DuncanHill 16:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I might (eventually) prefer the option to switch between views, rather than this "unified" version in use at the moment. But please, where was this discussed? It could be a great feature, and I use many of the Category tools, including the awesome Category Ladder, but I really want to see a debate about this rather major change (or be pointed to one if I missed it). There is also a post by Tim Starling here that explains some of this. Also, Tim's comment above was "In response to some criticisms" - well, where can I read these criticisms and add my own? Thanks. Carcharoth 16:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
If anyone is still reading this thread, I eventually found the right pages myself. See Meta:CategoryTree extension and Special:CategoryTree. Carcharoth 02:30, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi all - sorry for not showing up here earlier... I have a lot of places to be at, right now. That it got enabled on all projects so soon surprised me too - Tim seems to like to do stuff more than to talk about it, I guess :P
Anyway - I don't quite understand the talk about a "major change". With the new unified view, nothing changed except that you have a [+] widget for each subcategory, that will expand the view of it. If you just ignore it, everything is as before. To hide it completely, put .CategoryTreeBullet { display:none; } into your personal CSS.
Feel free to comment at meta:Talk:CategoryTree extension. And thanks for pointing out the "nothing found" issue, I'll try to fix it soon. Regards -- G. Gearloose (?!) aka Duesentrieb 19:47, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Edit summary stubbornness
Occasionally, I get the message warning me of no edit summary, even though I've provided one. Cute workarounds, like previewing again and then saving, with or without copy-pasting the edit sum, sometimes work and sometimes save the page without any edit sum. I feel it's vital to edit with good summaries, so this is an issue for me. John Reid 02:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I don't think it counts the section that you are editing as part of the edit summary (the part of the summary that's like
/* Edit summary stubbornness */
). Could that be your problem? —Mets501 (talk) 14:24, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Zero section editing
Hello all. I suggest adding a feature to display '[edit]' link for zero section as this is done in Russian Wikipedia. You should append
/* Making "edit" link for zero section */ var disable_zero_section = 0; function edit_zero_section() { if(disable_zero_section != 1 && (document.getElementById('bodyContent').innerHTML.match('class=\"editsection\"'))) document.getElementById('bodyContent').innerHTML = "<div class=\"editsection\" id=\"ca-edit-0\">[<a href=\"http://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=" + document.title.substr(0, document.title.lastIndexOf(" — ")) + "&action=edit§ion=0\">edit</a>]</div>" + document.getElementById('bodyContent').innerHTML; } addLoadEvent(edit_zero_section);
into MediaWiki:Monobook.js and
.editsection { float: right; margin-left: 5px; }
into MediaWiki:Common.css. This link looks like all other '[edit]' links. If doubt, please test in your own monobook.css & monobook.js. In Russian Wikipedia this is a default. Edward Chernenko 07:59, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Full support. If the specialists don't find any no-go's I would love to have this. I tested it in my user js/css and found a bug. The js should be:
/* Making "edit" link for zero section */ var disable_zero_section = 0; function edit_zero_section() { if(disable_zero_section != 1 && (document.getElementById('bodyContent').innerHTML.match('class=\"editsection\"'))) document.getElementById('bodyContent').innerHTML = "<div class=\"editsection\" id=\"ca-edit-0\">[<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=" + document.title.substr(0, document.title.lastIndexOf(" - ")) + "&action=edit§ion=0\">edit</a>]</div>" + document.getElementById('bodyContent').innerHTML; } addLoadEvent(edit_zero_section);
- --Ligulem 10:06, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- If that means what I think it does (having an edit box for the lead/intro, the text before the first section header) I most definitely support that. --kingboyk 11:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Aye, you can see it in action on the Russian article for 2006. However, if we decide to have this, I think it would be better to write it directly into the software, because:
- No Javascript would be used. This means less downloading and some people don't have Javascript enabled.
- It seems like a simple task to write it into the software.
- It would work with all the Wikipedias.
It could respect __NOEDITSECTION__, or maybe this does that already?
- Icey 12:18, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Arguments against Javascript are too common, not related to this idea. The fact is that we need this feature right now (it provides great traffic economy when zero section should be edited in big article). Also, this code supports NOEDITSECTION: it only appends edit link for zero section if there is already at least one edit link (so it will not be displayed for articles with NOEDITSECTION or protected articles, for article without subtitles or when user disables edit links in preferences). Edward Chernenko 12:24, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Cool, that's good that it works like that. I disagree that we need it "right now". Wouldn't it be better to wait a bit longer to get it implemented directly into the software so that it can benefit everyone, instead of rushing it in just for us? Icey 12:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I think that increasing global JS in size isn't so bad for users while it is cached by browser. Yes, you'll be forced to reload about 3K after this change but you spend much more reading your watchlist once :). About engine implementation: MediaWiki developers are too busy; haven't you seen number of unresolved reports in mediazilla? ;) So, I think that's not good idea to place some fixes on our side right now... Edward Chernenko 12:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Perhaps it is okay to get it written in like this for now, and then a permanent solution could be implemented in the future. I doubt it'll save much bandwidth, but it's useful at least. Do you know why the pages don't have [edit] links written into the top already? There may be a valid reason for that. Icey 13:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I think that increasing global JS in size isn't so bad for users while it is cached by browser. Yes, you'll be forced to reload about 3K after this change but you spend much more reading your watchlist once :). About engine implementation: MediaWiki developers are too busy; haven't you seen number of unresolved reports in mediazilla? ;) So, I think that's not good idea to place some fixes on our side right now... Edward Chernenko 12:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Cool, that's good that it works like that. I disagree that we need it "right now". Wouldn't it be better to wait a bit longer to get it implemented directly into the software so that it can benefit everyone, instead of rushing it in just for us? Icey 12:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Using an old version of Safari, article text becomes smaller and gray, and whole sentences and paragraphs look like links (but go nowhere when clicked). The same issue is there on the Russian article for 2006 page. I really like the idea of having the edit link there though. Carl Lindberg 01:53, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Arguments against Javascript are too common, not related to this idea. The fact is that we need this feature right now (it provides great traffic economy when zero section should be edited in big article). Also, this code supports NOEDITSECTION: it only appends edit link for zero section if there is already at least one edit link (so it will not be displayed for articles with NOEDITSECTION or protected articles, for article without subtitles or when user disables edit links in preferences). Edward Chernenko 12:24, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Aye, you can see it in action on the Russian article for 2006. However, if we decide to have this, I think it would be better to write it directly into the software, because:
- If that means what I think it does (having an edit box for the lead/intro, the text before the first section header) I most definitely support that. --kingboyk 11:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I strongly support this being added to the site js and css. Why not common.css and common.js though? —Mets501 (talk) 14:20, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- There is no MediaWiki:Common.js. See bugzilla:4178. --cesarb 15:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
There is, of course, an existing workaround for this already. You just click another section edit link, and then change the number at the end of the URL to zero (0). Simple. Carcharoth 22:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- It works, but it's a lot more time consuming than just clicking one link. —Mets501 (talk) 22:35, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- ...and it is, as you say, merely a workaround - quoting from the wikipedia article: A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed. I support this change wholehaertedly. Lynbarn 23:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Oh sure, the change is no problem (see my comment below). I just got the (probably wrong) impression from a few people here that they thought this was desperately needed. <checks> Yes, I was right, Edward Chernenko said: "we need this feature right now". So I mentioned the workaround to show that it is not needed "right now" (though if this does work, it would be nice). Carcharoth 00:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- ...and it is, as you say, merely a workaround - quoting from the wikipedia article: A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed. I support this change wholehaertedly. Lynbarn 23:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
A couple of days ago, I discovered a script for this purpose, which I edited to tweak its appearance and eliminate some bugs. It seems as though this was a waste of time, as the above code is much cleaner and appears to essentially duplicate the more complicated script's functionality. The one minor issue that I've noticed is that the edit link often appears after the rest of the page loads (for me, anyway). If this turns out to be the only bug, I strongly support the code's implementation. —David Levy 23:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- All scripts installed in on-load handlers work after everything is loaded. For another example, see {{title}} and {{wrongtitle}} implementation in ruwiki: here. Edward Chernenko 06:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd always assumed that the lead section editing was turned off for some reason, rather than just "not there". Probably aesthetic. I know there is a preference that can turn edit section labels on and off (presumably for those who just want to read, and not bother with this 'tiresome' editing business...). Would this code mess up that preference or not? Hang on, just re-read the above - I see that this question has already been answered and it is not a problem! Carcharoth 00:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- This code adds zero section edit link only when there is at least one edit link. So if someone disables this links in preferences, he will not see this link. Edward Chernenko 06:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
There is also a discussion at MediaWiki_talk:Monobook.js#oh_no.21. GeorgeMoney (talk) 01:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Using images from other wikipedia
I usually write in CAtalà viquipedia and sometimes I need an image that it's not in Commons but I find in GErmany wiki, for instance. The only solutions I know is copy this image to Commons and, then use it from Català wiki. Is it possible to use an image from English, French or whatever wikipedia without move it previously to Commons?. What should be the sintax to display the image?.Thanks. --Amadalvarez 09:52, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- I don't think that there is a way to do that. You either have to copy it to your local Wikipedia if it's under fair use or put it on commons for everyone to use if it's under a free license. —Mets501 (talk) 14:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Job queue
A couple of things I've observed about the job queue at Special:Statistics:
- If only <noinclude> text is edited in a template, which of course has no affect on pages transcluding it, the job queue still grows. In the case of very heavily used templates like {{WPBiography}} this can add a 6 figure number to the queue unnecessarily. It would be better if Mediawiki were able to filter our changes of this kind.
- It would seem also that if a template is edited, and then changed again whilst the first round of changes are in the job queue (not desirable, but sometimes a bug is found or an edit reverted) the job queue grows again. Wouldn't it be better to queue up articles only once and perform all changes when the article reaches the front of the queue. --kingboyk 15:31, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- This is a harmless illusion. The later duplicates are removed when the first one is run, which means that the size of the queue will go down twice as fast. This is much less expensive for the template saves than doing the dupe checks at first save time. --Brion 21:59, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Could it be that you meant text in <noinclude>? If yes, Wikipedia:Template doc page pattern solves that problem.
- Would be nice, but is nothing to make us bothered, as this is the job of the developers to optimise the servers as far enough as needed to support what is allowed. Or disallow by technical restrictions (example: Wikipedia:Template limits) what is unwanted and will never be tolerated. Of course this as an ideal ;-). --Ligulem 14:26, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Whoops, I did mean <noinclude>. Thanks. --kingboyk 17:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Listing redirects to a template
I've just moved a heavily used template ({{WikiProjectSongs}}→the much easier to remember {{Songs}}).
My problem is that this template is used on over 13000 talk pages (Index · Statistics · Log) and the what links here list is very large. Is there any way of finding out which pages redirect there only, so I can check for double redirects? --kingboyk 11:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- There are no double redirects. I set the limit to 5000 (Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Songs&limit=5000&from=0), which covered all links/transclusions, and looked for the word "redirect", it was only found once, so there's no double redirects. —Mets501 (talk) 14:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Excellent, thanks - and thanks for the tip. --kingboyk 17:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Odd article names
I was looking through the dump of the database looking for some words for the wiktionary when I ran into a whole bunch of odd article names:
- AmericanSamoa
- AppliedEthics
- AccessibleComputing
- AfghanistanHistory
- AfghanistanGeography
- AfghanistanPeople
- AfghanistanEconomy
- AfghanistanCommunications
- AfghanistanTransportations
- AfghanistanMilitary
- AfghanistanTransnationalIssues
- AssistiveTechnology
- AlbaniaHistory
- AlbaniaGeography
- AlbaniaPeople
- AsWeMayThink
- AllSaints
- AlbaniaGovernment
- AlbaniaEconomy
- AfroAsiaticLanguages
- ArtificalLanguages
- AbbadideS
- AbbevilleFrance
- AtlasShrugged
- ArtificialLanguages
- AtlasShruggedCharacters
- AtlasShruggedCompanies
- AyersMusicPublishingCompany
- AfricanAmericanPeople
- AdolfHitler
- AbdominalSurgery
Notice that these are article names with the space(s) removed. They are redirects. Any idea why these exist? (Someone at wiktionary asked about finding a list of all single word WP article names that didn't have entries in Wiktionary.) RJFJR 14:05, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- No idea. Maybe initial typos that were moved later? —Mets501 (talk) 14:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Early versions of MediaWiki used CamelCase to generate wikilinks, and other wiki softwares still do. These are probably very old articles or had such redirects made to catch links created in that style by users who are used to link like that from other wikis. --Sherool (talk) 15:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, these are old CamelCase redirects. They probably need to be kept for historical reasons. Carcharoth 16:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Well, that's interesting. Thank you. RJFJR 17:01, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
To confirm this, you can look back to the date of creation. For example, see the 31 May 2001 initial article for 'As We May Think'. Carcharoth 17:32, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Namespace question
Hi! Quick question: If I make an edit to User:Example/sandbox, then in which namespace would my edit be counted to be in—user space or article space? TIA!-- thunderboltza.k.a.Deepu Joseph |TALK 14:11, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- User space. It is a subpage of page Example in namespace User. RJFJR 14:18, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks! I was beginning to wonder why I was having so many user space edits. This explains it. Thank you.-- thunderboltza.k.a.Deepu Joseph |TALK 14:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
wikify template
Um, is something up with the wikify_date template? I think someone messed with it, and I don't know how to fix it. Thanks. Schwael 17:52, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Please ask User:Bluemoose ([12], [13]). --Ligulem 18:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Assistance needed at Wikiversity
Over at the English Wikiversity, we're working on a new main page design. It contains some bugs that need to be eliminated, and I'm hoping to recruit an experienced coder to take on the task. In particular, we need to add <h2> and </h2> elements to the headings in the right-hand column, and the image is off-center (and lacking the right-hand border) in IE6. Also, the original designer used a complex system of transclusion that hopefully could be simplified, and I'm sure that plenty of our code is sloppy and inefficient.
Thanks in advance! —David Levy 09:03, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
- No one has responded, so I'm bumping this to the bottom. If anyone can help, please step forward. —David Levy 08:15, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- Out of desperation, I'm bumping this one more time. We have consensus to implement the new Wikiversity main page, and only the need to fix these bugs is stopping us. Is anyone able and willing to help? —David Levy 18:06, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- might be worth trying th contact people listed at here or here.Geni 18:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks, but that won't be necessary. An anonymous editor responded to my third post almost immediately. The bugs have now been fixed. :) —David Levy 23:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Editing a Page Under Discussion
I want to add information to a page under discussion. Someone wants to merge it with another wikipedia topic. I don't think it is a good idea, and I would like to expand the article to show why I think both topics should be separate. But, there is no link to edit the information. Is it possible to edit a page under discussion? How? Thanks, --Aims3Bor 09:54, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- At the top of your screen is a set of tabs that relate to the current page. "Project page" will take you to the article, "discussopn" take you tot he talk page about the article. In addition to any edits on the article, you should list your arguments about merging on the talk page. RJFJR 16:47, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Font size
The font size has reduced on the whole. Is it only in my browser? I once changed the size in preferences but it was perhaps Mozilla. Now I can't find such a thing. --Brand спойт 10:37, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- It's your browser. In IE, hold down the control key and move the scroll wheel on your mouse an you can change this (I think it takes affect when you release the control button). There are other ways to set this, but that is how I usually accidentally change this, to my confusion. RJFJR 16:53, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Am I the only one who sees
var skin = "monobook"; var stylepath = "/skins-1.5"...
in very small print in this article, and no actual content? And if someone else sees it, can anyone tell me what's up with it? Sam Vimes | Address me 19:19, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- I don't see it. This is the first lines of Javascript in the Monobook skin. Does the text go away if you refresh/hard refresh? Sam Korn (smoddy) 19:26, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Sorted now. Never mind. Sam Vimes | Address me 20:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Could you give me some references?
I have trouble finding information here. I need to know how to disappear from Wikipedia. The ramafications of having my User page completely removed, etc. I know there are pages on this; I just can't find them.
I need to know how to best get out of here and leave no remiments. Thanks! Mattisse(talk) 22:48, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- The right to vanish page might be useful to you. Icey 23:51, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Re-direct vs. Article statistics
It seem to me some years ago that there could be a routine to scan the logs once a month for:
- any re-directs which are being directly accessed more often than the article to which the re-direct points
This could pickup articles which have been placed under uncommon or even odd titles rather than the more common English names for the subject.211.30.222.139 02:21, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
user renaming not showing up in the log?
It seems that GIen (talk · contribs) was recently renamed to Glen S (talk · contribs), but nothing about this shows up in the user rename log. Is there something that I'm missing? --Ixfd64 02:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
- It's there (August 23), but I'm not sure how the search fields work. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:18, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
- Hmm, I saw Glen S editing as GIen until today. I guess that it takes a while for username changes to take effect. --Ixfd64 05:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Tagging Bot
Does anyone know of a Bot that I could request to Add a project tag to every article under a Category (including Sub-Categories) if the tag does not already exist on the article? Thanks Morphh 03:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
- Also asked at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Template Tagging Bot, please reply there. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks, I think I'm good - I found the Bot request page after posting here. Morphh 04:18, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Fix Please!:-D
Ok, so here's the situtation: I was recently on an article's talk page history. But then I wanted to go to the article's history, so I clicked on article. But, unfortunatly, I went to the article page instead. So I realized I there was no way to go from a talk page's history to an article's history, and probably vice versa. Hopefully the programers could add something that could help? Was this post confusing? Please let me know on my talk page, if there's anything you don't understand. Thanks.100110100 23:11, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Aye, that would be useful, but I think the programmers have a lot of stuff to-do already. I made a bookmarklet so you can switch between normal and talk pages:
javascript:var x=document.location.href.replace(/http:\/\//, ""); if(x.indexOf("_talk:")<0) { x=x.replace(/:/, "_talk:"); } else { x=x.replace(/_talk:/, ":"); } document.location.href="http://" + x;
- You need to combine it into one line. I've split it out so this page doesn't get a horizontal scrollbar. I hope that helps. Icey 00:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks. Thought I'm a luddite; I have no idea what to do with what you gave me.......... Also, another thing just came up, along the same lines. I was in History, [meaning that I was looking at a page's history [if you need more clarification, please let me know]] but instead of going to the article's talk page, I wanted to edit the article's talk page, more specifically, post. But, alas, I there was not direct button to do so. Same request; could you developers remedy this please?! Thanks! I'll post this in its own section, & I'll take these requests to Proposals.100110100 08:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- Hi 100110100. To use the bookmarklet, copy it into notepad and then combine it into one line. I'll assume your using Internet Explorer for these instructions, so here you go:
- 1. Create a new bookmark by pressing Control+D
- 2. Open your favourites sidebar, right click the new bookmark and click properties.
- 3. In the URL box, add in the JavaScript above (remember it must be combined into one line) and then click OK. You may want to rename the bookmark to something more appropriate.
- After you've done that, pressing the bookmark will switch between the talk and normal page. That'll work on normal viewing, editing and the history. Icey 12:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks. Thought I'm a luddite; I have no idea what to do with what you gave me.......... Also, another thing just came up, along the same lines. I was in History, [meaning that I was looking at a page's history [if you need more clarification, please let me know]] but instead of going to the article's talk page, I wanted to edit the article's talk page, more specifically, post. But, alas, I there was not direct button to do so. Same request; could you developers remedy this please?! Thanks! I'll post this in its own section, & I'll take these requests to Proposals.100110100 08:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm creating a new template (infobox) to be used in the articles for individual European comics, as a replacement for the (at least) three different ones used now. I have most of the content issues sorted out, but I'm stuck on a few (hopefully small) technical issues. I have explained it at Template talk:Eurocomicbox (section Current Issues). I would be very grateful if some people could take a look and give me some help on how to resolve these issues. Any kind of help is welcome (assistance, pointers, hints, ...). Thank you! (posted previously at the village pump (assistance), I had missed this page somehow) Fram 13:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Copying question from Help Desk
Hi,
I am having difficulty citing sources in the article Muqattaat. If you look at the article, you will see that there are some places where the text is Right-to-left. The first citation follows an rtl character, and thus renders that part of the text unreadable with characters overlapping each other here and there.
The second issue is that the references do not actually appear at the end of the article.
If someone can help with these problems, it'd be great.
Thanks, Omer
- The references are now appearing. So the second issue is resolved. I dont know about the rtl part though. The article is Muqatta'at -- Lost(talk) 14:30, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you. Now I figure that you have to add a special references section. Any ideas where could I find help for the first issue. Omer 16:11, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Just bear for some time. It will be answered by an experienced editor on this very forum -- Lost(talk) 17:10, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you. Now I figure that you have to add a special references section. Any ideas where could I find help for the first issue. Omer 16:11, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- I have copied the above thread verbatim from WP:HD, as one part of the question was not answered there. Hopefully more experienced people on this forum can resolve this -- Lost(talk) 13:44, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
That's exactly the situation the element was created to solve (it's not supported on MediaWiki, but can be replaced by {{bdo}}). Fixed. --cesarb 16:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Colored Signatures
I know that this isn't of much importance, but it has been bothering me for a long time. How do you put colors into your signature?
--I am BrainiacOutcast and I approve this message.
- <span style="color:#FF0000; background-color:#00FF00">foobar</span>, where the color is #RRGGBB (red/green/blue), and you can pick a color from here. --Interiot 18:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Footnotes issue
The footnotes don't seem to match up on the JBIG2 page. For example, the current text renders as "An open source encoder can be found at [5].", while at the bottom, we have "5 : JBIG2 final draft spec".
AFAICT:
- Purging doesn't change anything
- The footnote numbering is server side
- The source seems correct -- "An open source encoder can be found at {{ref|d}}." ... {{note|d}}: http://www.imperialviolet.org/jbig2.html jbig2enc home page
However they are not referenced in the same order in the doc as listed in the footnotes (which shouldn't matter one would think).
Is this a bug? Or a bad article, or something more mysterious...
- When you use {{ref}} and {{note}}, in fact the numbering is set by the wikitext, rather than being automagically worked out by the parser (in both cases it is handled 'server side'). I changed the article over to the Cite style of referencing, and sliced up the difference between external links and references; of course you might want to make those back into inline references if you prefer. Hope that helps. -Splash - tk 01:47, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Adding a user gallery
Hello , I've created my user page and would like to add a user\gallery, How can I do this ? Thanks in advance C.
Distinguishing dynamic content
Hi. I understand suggestions should to go BugZilla but I simply cannot comprehend that animal, so hopefully someone here can help or relay this idea.
I was reading pages on time zones and standards and was quite surprised to find current times/dates, etc., shown in the text. A peek at Edit revealed some kind of function is used to generate these. This is Really Cool, but it may be helpful to users if such items were distinguished by color (green looks available) or an appended symbol to emphasize "yes, this figure is really as of right now" (well, when the page was loaded).
Could this perhaps be implemented in these templates or the function that generates these.
Thanks. Jeffreykopp 01:57, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- Dynamic content is served by several bits of native code and extensions, such as Parser Functions and Magic Words. They are used in a variety of ways: from adding plain text, table cells and rows, css styles, or whole pages of content. It would be almost impossible to force them to add a css class (or direct color style) to all instances in a non-breaking way. Example: <div style="{{#ifeq:{{{text|}}}|middle|text-align:center|text-align:left}}"> would be ruined by: <div style="<span class="dyncontent">text-align:center</span>">. The best way to do it is manually whenever it is used, which should be discussed on the talk page of the article in question (as colored text usage should be limited). --Splarka (rant) 07:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
User:Maclover/monobook.css
For some reason, I can't create a template at User:Maclover/monobook.css. Could anyone help me?
Please comment.//Mac Lover TalkC 03:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- What exactly do you mean?Voice-of-All 03:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- I believe that the software prevents you from creating css files for users other than yourself. You are logged in as User:Mac Lover, but you are attempting to create a file for User:Maclover, which is different both in not having a space and having an uncapitalised "l".-gadfium 03:22, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Normalizing CSS
So I've been using inline CSS for tables in my userpage for a while, but I'm trying to normalize all that styling into an external CSS sheet. In which file should I put my classes, etc.? Do I add it to User:ElAmericano/monobook.css? If so, will other users see it? Do I need to link to the stylesheet? Any help would be great, thanks. - ElAmericano (dímelo) 02:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- If you use the MonoBook skin, then your monobook.css is the place to put it. You do not need to link it in as that is already done for you. This page (and its history) will be visible to all users, as with most other pages on Wikipedia. --TheParanoidOne 05:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Any styling rules in monobook.css won't appear to other users. As far as I know, there's no way to use <style>-type CSS rules that are visible to others, unless it's important enough to put in the global .css files. --Interiot 09:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- So there's no efficient way to style user pages? - ElAmericano (dímelo) 17:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Uploading of bot source code
I have done some work on a Java interface with MediaWiki, and I would like to publish my code for other bot developers. Can I upload it directly to wikipedia? (It didn't like my attempted .tar.gz upload...) ~ Booya Bazooka 07:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- I don't think Wikipedia will accept a .tar.gz. Also, meta would be the correct site for that I think since your code interfaces with Mediawiki rather than specifically the English Wikipedia. --kingboyk 09:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- No. But you could create a project for example at http://sourceforge.net. I did it myself (example). Feel free to ask on my talk page if you need help doing this. Or drop me an email (ligulem _at_ pobox dot com). --Ligulem 09:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Tab Button Please!
I was in History, [meaning that I was looking at a page's history [if you need more clarification, please let me know]] but instead of going to the article's talk page, I wanted to edit the article's talk page, more specifically, post. But, alas, I there was not direct button to do so. Same request; could you developers remedy this please?! Thanks! I'll post this in its own section, & I'll take these requests to Proposals.100110100 08:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- More clarification of your problem/proposal could indeed be helpful. --Van helsing 09:05, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- This is the second curious request in as many days. It won't kill you to click a second time. --Golbez 09:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
There's already an edit button for editing while viewing history. If you're viewing the talk page history, the edit button will take you to the edit screen for the talk page. If you're viewing the main page history, the edit button will take you to (unsurprisingly) the edit screen for the main page. It would only be more confusing to show the user a second edit button for a page other than the one that they're viewing the history for. --Interiot 11:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
wikipedia and wiki quote....
Is wiki pedia and wiki quote are the Same ...?? I just want to put my website link to wiki Quote... How can I do that....
New Category System
I notice that the Category pages now have a [+] next to the subcategories. When was this introduced, and where is the information about it. 83.70.110.175 14:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- I believe Duesentrieb implemented it. Tim Starling posted a bit about it at Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Show as a tree / Show as a list. --Interiot 16:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject North American Union
The project page Wikipedia:WikiProject North American Union is showing up at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, but it has neither a template nor a category that would make it do so. Is this a bug, or what? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Herostratus (talk • contribs) 19:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
- It was because of Template:North American Union Tasks, which was tagged for speedy deletion. --cesarb 19:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
the symbols below the edit page
Our university has recently started a wiki of its own and I would like to put a table with special symbols underneath the edit page. I know you have put it on some technical page but I don't know where. I would appreciate some help
Help with user page problem
Someone keeps putting a sockpuppet sign on my user page. It's getting to be a hassle to go and remove it all the time. Could you protect my User Page so no one can do that? Thanks! BlackHak 21:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)