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::I would still appreciate feedback on whether the {{tl|Userspace draft}} tag is redundant when web browsers have already been blocked, via robots or NOINDEX. [[User:Geo Swan|Geo Swan]] ([[User talk:Geo Swan|talk]]) 02:29, 23 July 2010 (UTC) |
::I would still appreciate feedback on whether the {{tl|Userspace draft}} tag is redundant when web browsers have already been blocked, via robots or NOINDEX. [[User:Geo Swan|Geo Swan]] ([[User talk:Geo Swan|talk]]) 02:29, 23 July 2010 (UTC) |
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::::From what I've seen, robots.txt only applies in the root directory. Additionally, robots.txt files need to follow a very specific format, just listing entries on a wiki page won't work because of all the other HTML. {{tl|userspace draft}} is the only one of the 3 that provides a visual note in addition to noindexing; if you don't care about the box, then yes, its redundant. <span style="font-family:Broadway">[[User:Mr.Z-man|Mr.]][[User talk:Mr.Z-man|'''''Z-'''man'']]</span> 03:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC) |
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== image annotations == |
== image annotations == |
Revision as of 03:01, 23 July 2010
Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | WMF | Miscellaneous |
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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.
Preference to mark all edits minor by default asked to be removed in bugzilla:24313
Per the above-linked bugzilla, and this discussion, this preference will likely be removed shortly (as users often set it and forget it, causing non-minor edits to be marked minor).
The preference will be reset to the default; those who used previously this preference could probably use a script to restore the functionality, if desired. –xenotalk 21:30, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
- This change will be occurring very shortly; in order to assist users who had been appropriately using this, is anyone available to write a simple script to restore the functionality? –xenotalk 22:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
if(wgAction == 'edit') {
addOnloadHook(function minorEdit() {
document.getElementById('wpMinoredit').checked = true;
}
)}
- Several points. Firstly, the existence of a preference in the interface caused some problems by implying that using the preference was always allowed and could not be restricted. Secondly, editors who misuse a script can be restricted by having an administrator remove the script and protect their skin.js. Because there's no way to stop an editor from changing their preferences, the only way to stop abuse of the preference is by blocking. Thirdly, installing a script is a bit more difficult than checking off a preference, and requires the editor to view a message reminding them that they are responsible for the use of the script, so it there should be fewer editors doing so without thinking of the consequences. — Gavia immer (talk) 23:16, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think so. The minor-edit checkbox retains its condition while showing preview and changes. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:08, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
- I think Mark was asking whether the script would re-check the checkbox after pressing "Preview". I haven't tested it, but I don't think it will as it seems wgAction is "submit" in those cases, rather than "edit". Anomie⚔ 11:46, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
- If it's checked when you click the "Preview" button, it will be checked on the preview page, because the form contents are always reproduced when you preview. If you had the script auto-check on the preview page too, then if you unchecked it and previewed, it would become re-checked, which is not the desired behavior. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 20:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- Anomie has it right and I have now confirmed Preview and Changes both work as expected. Mark Hurd (talk) 04:38, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I think Mark was asking whether the script would re-check the checkbox after pressing "Preview". I haven't tested it, but I don't think it will as it seems wgAction is "submit" in those cases, rather than "edit". Anomie⚔ 11:46, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think so. The minor-edit checkbox retains its condition while showing preview and changes. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:08, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Here's something better. It remembers your last minor edit setting in a cookie. -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:20, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
if(wgAction == 'edit') {
addOnloadHook(function minorEdit() {
addHandler(document.getElementById('wpMinoredit'), 'change', minorEdit_change);
if (document.cookie.indexOf("minorEdit=true")!=-1) {document.getElementById('wpMinoredit').checked = true };
} )
}
function minorEdit_change() {
var e = new Date();
e.setTime( e.getTime() + (24*60*60*1000) ); // one day
document.cookie = 'minorEdit='+document.getElementById('wpMinoredit').checked+';expires=' + e.toGMTString();
}
GeSHi clarification before I go to bugzilla
I tried to use the syntax highlighting code "<syntaxhighight lang="rsplus"></syntaxhighight> (for the R programming language, but it appears that rsplus is not supported in wikipedia. Can anyone confirm that "rsplus" doesn't work or let me know if there is a bug listed for GeSHi to update the languages on wikipedia? Thanks. Protonk (talk) 01:50, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
I get the same behavior you do - the docs say rsplus is supported, but trying to use it gives an error message that doesn't list it as one of the supported options. I can't find a bug report for this, so I'd go ahead and make a new one if I were you. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:23, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
- Listed at buzilla #24383. Here's hoping I didn't miss something obvious. Protonk (talk) 03:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Moving to a lowercase article title
Hello. However it is that we are able to display articles such as iPhone with a leading lowercase letter, could someone please do that to Inext? - Richard Cavell (talk) 14:41, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Done - thanks to EmilJ. - Richard Cavell (talk) 14:45, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- I have write IPhone. I do it in that way: I clicked in editor the "Insert Link" button, typed on the keyboard "iPo" (in that cases!!!) and clicked in combobox "IPhone" item. So i can't understand: Where is the iPhone article you talking about??? And why the script change my "iPo" to "IPo"+"ne"??? Please fix that bug!
- [[1]]
- --W.M.drossel (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- The script is an intended feature to allow you to find pages quickly. You can always not use the "Insert Link" button and just type [[iPhone]] instead.
- For technical reasons, all articles start with an upper-case letter, but you can add
{{Lower case title}}
to make it look like it starts with a lower-case letter. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:04, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
Strange "redirect"
I was looking at a very long article, but if I went back to it the computer would have to scroll down to get back to what I was reading. However, it didn't do that. It jumped forward to an article whose link I clicked on earlier while looking at the very long article, and the back button was no longer blue, meaning it couldn't be used.
I've asked similar questions before but no one seems to have an answer for this. Sometimes with very long articles or emails the back button won't go back to them, or the forward button won't go back to them.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:11, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
And it just happened again. I used the back button several times and it wouldn't go forward again because THIS page is so long. I should also add I have IE8 and Vista.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:13, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- Have you ever tried Firefox? I used to think Internet Explorer was the bees knees until I actually gave Firefox a chance. Never looked back. This is surely a browser issue, not Wikipedia's. –xenotalk 20:15, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- If this is what I think it is, then it isn't specific to Wikipedia. What might be happening is that when you hit "Back", the previous page is a redirect that sends you to another URL. This then wipes out your "Forward" pages since you are creating a new series of pages, starting with the redirected page, which is essentially the same as you clicking on a link, at least for the purpose of this example. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:19, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- I don't like Firefox. I've had to use it at libraries. Also, making a major change at home will just make things worse for me.
- I know there wasn't an actual redirect, but the behavior of the computer was like when there is one.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:30, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- Some wikilinks redirect to a section in an article, which is the same as a redirect and would wipe your Forward history, too. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:35, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- This is, again, a browser issue but it's like when I click on "Back" and get something I've already backed away from. I wonder if there's a glitch in the function of IE8? Only this time, instead of scrolling down to the specific point in the Wikipedia article (which is sort of like a redirect), it sent me back to an article I had clicked on "back" from.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:55, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- Some wikilinks redirect to a section in an article, which is the same as a redirect and would wipe your Forward history, too. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:35, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- I know there wasn't an actual redirect, but the behavior of the computer was like when there is one.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:30, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm seeing the forward button turn gray instead of black when the computer scrolls down in a long article or other type of page. It doesn't usually happen in a short article.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:58, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- There is probably nothing we can do here - this seems like an IE issue, not a Wikipedia issue. –xenotalk 16:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I posted this here but didn't get a lot of help. Someone, somewhere, must know the answer to this.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- At the risk of being repetitive and annoying, the answer is that you are using a sub-standard browser. I'm sure that you can customize Firefox to function how you like. If it's just tabbed browsing that you don't want, install the Tab Killer add-on. –xenotalk 18:50, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I don't like change. Why does no one understand that? IE8 is perfectly good and this is just an annoying glitch that makes me curious. A wholesale change would be much worse.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Ok. You should probably try to find some kind of dedicated IE support forum; most of our technically-minded users do not use IE and probably won't be inclined to help find a solution to this browser problem. –xenotalk 20:20, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Or perhaps give a specific example of a page producing the error; I for one am not going to try to find a page that is "very long" with a redirect to a section near the end of the page. I can't even understand the statement of the problem, so I'm glad there are other editors that seem to be able to interpret the issue. —Ost (talk) 21:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Ok. You should probably try to find some kind of dedicated IE support forum; most of our technically-minded users do not use IE and probably won't be inclined to help find a solution to this browser problem. –xenotalk 20:20, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I don't like change. Why does no one understand that? IE8 is perfectly good and this is just an annoying glitch that makes me curious. A wholesale change would be much worse.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- At the risk of being repetitive and annoying, the answer is that you are using a sub-standard browser. I'm sure that you can customize Firefox to function how you like. If it's just tabbed browsing that you don't want, install the Tab Killer add-on. –xenotalk 18:50, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I posted this here but didn't get a lot of help. Someone, somewhere, must know the answer to this.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:44, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm sure I mentioned Deepwater Horizon oil spill. I planned to reproduce the sequence of events on the computing reference desk (people were responding more here), but I never got around to it. I can't today because there's not enough time.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 13:14, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- And have you tried Chrome, a rising browser that is getting popular these days ? Or Opera ? There are 5 leading browsers at the moment, and IE is, as a matter of fact, the worst of them. It's only popular and used because Microsoft is using his monopoly in a very unfair fashion.
- Basically, you can ask a question to the Microsoft Community. I absolutely won't guarantee that your issue will be fixed (IE isn't popular for solving issues at all, quite the contrary), but you're likely to get an answer. Dodoïste (talk) 08:40, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- My problems will be worse if I add these strange browsers. That I guarantee.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:17, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- Also, Firefox has behaved very poorly at the library where I have to use it if ads cause problems. When the computer freezes up there is an ad on the screen with moving information but not what I came to the site to see, or everything is ther but I can't do anything. Or there is some information at the bottom of the screen about some web site relating to an ad. If I try to click or go anywhere else, I get the message "stopped". As if that communicated any information.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:16, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- I know I promised I'd stop pestering you about Firefox, but just to response to your issue there, Adblock is an excellent Firefox add-on that can rid you of those meddlesome ads. –xenotalk 15:18, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- I use Firefox at a library. So it's not up to me. As for that being a solution at home, it's yet another way the soltuion would be worse than the problem.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:55, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- I know I promised I'd stop pestering you about Firefox, but just to response to your issue there, Adblock is an excellent Firefox add-on that can rid you of those meddlesome ads. –xenotalk 15:18, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I create new Template:Location map2 with ideas from de, ru, fr and uk wiki. This template works also with location map templates with y, x parameters, for example: Template:Location map China1, Template:Location map Canada1, Template:Location map Russia1, Template:Location map Africa1. May be it need to include code of Template:Location map2 to Template:Location map?--Амба (talk) 21:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
- This is a fork of {{Location map}} and is being discussed at Templates for discussion. –droll [chat] 06:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
Two search boxes - any way to make them gracefully switch from side by side to one below the other?
Hey all, recently we redesigned the header for Wikipedia:Reference desk pages and added another search box for the whole of wikipedia in case people miss the one at the top. These are put side by side, see for example Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing. Problem with this is it increases the minimum horizontal resolution for the header to above 800 pixels.
While I left a suggestion on the talk page, no one has yet came up with what would seem to me to be the obvious solution, make them gracefully switch from being side to side to one below the other as necessary. Does anyone know if this is possible and if so, how to do it?
Nil Einne (talk) 06:33, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Put them into two divs and float them left: User:Nx/Sandbox -- Nx / talk 06:42, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- The search boxes are contained within a table in Wikipedia:Reference desk/header/howtoask. It looks straightforward to reformat the table if there's consensus to do so. — Tivedshambo (t/c) 06:48, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
Telling articles from redirects
I've been around a few years and have a bloated watchlist (about 12,361 entries). I'd guess that many hundreds of them are redirects that were created automatically when pages were moved. When I sit down to delete some entries from the list I get discouraged at the thought of checking all of those to find the redirects. Does anyone know of a way to determine which articles are redirects automatically? Perhaps starting with pasting the watchlist into a page? Or using some tool? (This was inspired by trying out Huggle and finding it timing out when checking my watchlist, though I found a work-around for that). Will Beback talk 07:43, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Add the line
.watchlistredir { font-style:italic; }
to your personal css file. This will display redirects in italics. — Tivedshambo (t/c) 07:58, 18 July 2010 (UTC)- Brilliant. I deleted 87 redirects from the first two letters of the alphabet alone, not counting some that I kept. BTW, do you know if there is a listing of those Wikipedia-specific CSS elements? There are some other things I'd like to change. Will Beback talk 08:13, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes. Graham87 08:40, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks! Will Beback talk 20:15, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes. Graham87 08:40, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Wow, this made me actually go and finally use the CSS thing for the first time, despite seeing a lot of various other useful hints and stuff that I could have over the years. Thanks. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:05, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Brilliant. I deleted 87 redirects from the first two letters of the alphabet alone, not counting some that I kept. BTW, do you know if there is a listing of those Wikipedia-specific CSS elements? There are some other things I'd like to change. Will Beback talk 08:13, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
Or, use Anomie's link classifier script:
importScript('User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js'); // Linkback: [[User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js]]
importStylesheet('User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css'); // Linkback: [[User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css]]
The follow the instructions at the top of that page to bypass the cache.
See User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css for a list of the other link colors. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 17:51, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I am a firm believer in Link classifer. I said it before and I'll say it again "I think this script should be stanard issue to all editors". To your question this script will turn all redirected links Green, and all Disambig's to Yellow and AFD's to pink. doesn't get any eiser than that. Mlpearc powwow 18:03, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think it should be standard issue. Changing so many elements on a page, can be rather problematic for older browsers and computers. If it was JUST css, it be a different thing, but it is using Javascript, and a script that on a page like Barack Obama can take a rather long while to execute. If you want to use it, that's your prerogative, but there are many more people who do NOT want to use it, and to who it would actually be a problematic script. So add it as a gadget perhaps, but never enabled by default. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:14, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- It would probably confuse the frack out of most casual editors. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:20, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- Linkclassifier was recently tweaked to enable run-on-demand (instead of every pageload): User:Anomie/linkclassifier#Usage. I use "p-tb" instead of "p-cactions", to place the link in the "toolbox", instead of in the tabs. None of the slow-down, all of the power :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:41, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- It would probably confuse the frack out of most casual editors. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:20, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- I certainly don't like the idea of highlighting redirects differently from direct links, by default, in articles (as opposed to watchlists, where it might make some sense). If that were to happen, my prediction would be that we'd see a run on people "fixing" redirects by changing them to pipes. --Trovatore (talk) 21:31, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- Actually, now an idea has occurred to me. It just might make sense to color piped links differently. One of the most objectionable things about piped links is that the reader has no warning that the link may not go to an article that would be expected to have the title indicated. With a different color, that would be different. Of course it would still be bad practice to use pipes in such a way that information that ought to be given to the reader is encoded in the pipe.
- So does anyone have a gadget that colors piped links differently? I might use that one. --Trovatore (talk) 21:36, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think it should be standard issue. Changing so many elements on a page, can be rather problematic for older browsers and computers. If it was JUST css, it be a different thing, but it is using Javascript, and a script that on a page like Barack Obama can take a rather long while to execute. If you want to use it, that's your prerogative, but there are many more people who do NOT want to use it, and to who it would actually be a problematic script. So add it as a gadget perhaps, but never enabled by default. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:14, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- I am a firm believer in Link classifer. I said it before and I'll say it again "I think this script should be stanard issue to all editors". To your question this script will turn all redirected links Green, and all Disambig's to Yellow and AFD's to pink. doesn't get any eiser than that. Mlpearc powwow 18:03, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I think you are referring to WP:EASTEREGG. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 03:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- Also, redirected pages don't generally have talkpages, so where the talkpage is redlinked on your edit watchlist page, you can spot them straight away. Lugnuts (talk) 12:01, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
Cannot use parameters to create a reference inside a template
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fb/Yes_check.svg/20px-Yes_check.svg.png)
I have been experimenting with the use of a sub-template to create references to an external site which uses structured URLs, created by an existing template {{London Gazette}}.
My intention was that the parameters in my new template which creates the row in the data table would include three for the reference: {{{issue}}}
, {{{date}}}
and {{{page}}}
. Those three parameters would be used by the row-building template to call a sub-template which would create a named reference for one of the columns, as follows: <ref name="{{{issue}}-{{{date}}}-{{{page}}}">{{London Gazette |issue = {{{issue}}} | startpage = {{{page}}} | date={{{date}}} }}</ref>
That would give me properly formatted references, with names which allow cite.php to merge refs to the same page
In my tests I have incorporated error-checking to ensure that all parameters are present, and have successfully passed all the parameters. {{London Gazette}} is called ... but all the parameters in <ref name="{{{issue}}-{{{date}}}-{{{page}}}">{{London Gazette |issue = {{{issue}}} | startpage = {{{page}}} | date={{{date}}} }}</ref>
are empty.
To demonstrate this, I have set up a simple test at User:BrownHairedGirl/sandbox, in which the template {{User:BrownHairedGirl/myref]]}} is passed a one-word parameter. As you can see the parameter has a null value both in creating the reference name and in creating the text of the ref.
Is this a known bug, and is there any workaround?
It may sound like an esoteric issue, but in this case it would make it much easier to create and maintain a long series of references, particularly since each reference will be shared by an average of about 30 entries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:41, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Using
{{#tag:ref}}
in place of<ref name="etc.">content</ref>
seems to fix it. Intelligentsock 15:13, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- See WP:REFNEST for full syntax and bugs. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:26, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Big thanks to both of you. I didn't know about
{{#tag:ref}}
, but that fixes it all. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:37, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Big thanks to both of you. I didn't know about
- See WP:REFNEST for full syntax and bugs. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:26, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
Image links
Normally, if I click on a Wikipedia image, it takes me to the description page for that image. Recently, I haven't been able to click on any image at all. I'm still using the MonoBook skin, in IE8. --S-man (talk) 19:06, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
"Changes since I last edited" scipt
Is this script still working for other people? All I get is the "You have not edited this page! (recently)" message (even when I have). I'm still using the monobook skin.--Dodo bird (talk) 23:32, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- It has not been working for me recently in Vector either. —Ost (talk) 12:54, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fb/Yes_check.svg/20px-Yes_check.svg.png)
If the "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" feature is enabled in preferences and an edit summary is not entered, it prevents non-autoconfirmed users from saving edits which trigger the captcha. The edit window gets locked into a cycle of entering the captcha, being informed you didn't enter an edit summary and clicking continue to save without one, and being asked for a captcha again. Obviously this is easy to overcome by disabling the feature in preferences or entering an edit summary, but new users may be unaware of what they are doing wrong, and may assume the captcha is the problem 1230049-0012394-C (talk) 16:29, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- See bugzilla:10729 -- Nx / talk 16:33, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Good to know it's being worked on, thanks! 1230049-0012394-C (talk) 16:35, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Skin checking
Is it possible to write a script (or is there one already?) that will check which skin and browser you're using and show them a different version of the page based on that? I'm currently talking about the problems at HJ Mitchell's userpage with the English flag at top. It won't look right in Vector when it look right in MonoBook and looks bad in MonoBook when it looks good in Vector. I know that there are scripts that you can add to your monobook.js or vector.js. Mr. R00t Talk 16:49, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- You mean something like like the GENDER magicword? No, not that I know of. –xenotalk 16:55, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- How about we just outlaw elements that cover parts of the userinterface ? The topicons are bad enough in my opinion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:16, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Not a bad idea. I've moved the "toolbox" to the top location and some users have elements that then obscure my ability to click "user contributions", "logs", etc. (though this is not the case here). –xenotalk 17:18, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Something like this was what I was thinking of. Would something like that even work? Mr. R00t Talk 18:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- For javascript, the skin global variable contains the skin name (right click, view source, and you'll see a bunch of globals in the js code block at the very top, including the skin), for css, the body element has a skin-specific class, e.g. "skin-vector". Of course this is not very useful, because you can only add the script or css for yourself, not anyone else visiting your userpage, so it will be broken for everyone else. -- Nx / talk 18:13, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Something like this was what I was thinking of. Would something like that even work? Mr. R00t Talk 18:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Not a bad idea. I've moved the "toolbox" to the top location and some users have elements that then obscure my ability to click "user contributions", "logs", etc. (though this is not the case here). –xenotalk 17:18, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- How about we just outlaw elements that cover parts of the userinterface ? The topicons are bad enough in my opinion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:16, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
I know that. I need to be able to be able to access whatever program it uses and put it on a page. I'm hoping that it will work similar to {{REVISIONUSER}}. Mr. R00t Talk 18:19, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- File a bugzilla:. –xenotalk 18:23, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Alright. Mr. R00t Talk 18:24, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- There's a mediawiki extension that introduces a magic word to output the skin name, but the problem with that is that it breaks the parser cache - whenever someone with a different skin visits the page, the page would have to be reparsed (alternatively, multiple copies of the page would be stored in the cache, one for each skin). It's not installed and probably will never be installed at WP for this reason. -- Nx / talk 18:24, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- bug 24444. I was thinking of placing different versions in the cache to make it work. Mr. R00t Talk 18:34, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- That would be a lot of cache duplication for a pretty much useless (IMO) feature . It would be more efficient to just do what was done for topicon, and add some css to the global skin-specific css files to position the image correctly. But I don't see how that would be useful except for userpages. -- Nx / talk 18:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- bug 24444. I was thinking of placing different versions in the cache to make it work. Mr. R00t Talk 18:34, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- There's a mediawiki extension that introduces a magic word to output the skin name, but the problem with that is that it breaks the parser cache - whenever someone with a different skin visits the page, the page would have to be reparsed (alternatively, multiple copies of the page would be stored in the cache, one for each skin). It's not installed and probably will never be installed at WP for this reason. -- Nx / talk 18:24, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Alright. Mr. R00t Talk 18:24, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Strange glitch
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/42/New_pages_1.png/300px-New_pages_1.png)
This appeared while viewing User talk:White Shadows. I'm running The latest Firefox on Mac OS X 10.6.3. ~NerdyScienceDude (✉ • ✐ • ✍) 18:15, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- I'm running exactly the same browser on the same operating system and I'm getting what it's supposed to look like. I'm using Vector. Mr. R00t Talk 18:36, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, it's a recognised bug when transcluding special pages - bugzilla:23293. Nothing to worry about really, just, as you say, a glitch. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 18:40, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Desription of wikifunctions.dll
Is there any desription to AWB library - wikifunctions.dll? Besuglov.S cont / talk 16:34, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
Exporting from OpenOffice
Are you familiar with the function of exporting from OpenOffice to MediaWiki? See Wikipedia talk:Tools#Exporting from OpenOffice.
Thank you. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:27, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
Trouble with staying logged in
I logged in yesterday and clicked on the link to my watchlist. But instead of taking me to my watchlist a screen came up that said "you must be logged in to view your watchlist," even though I had logged in. So I clicked the link to log in, and suddenly, without typing in anything, I was logged in again. This happened to me twice yesterday. What's going on? The Raptor Let's talk/My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions 23:28, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
- This has happened to me, too, especially last July (which is exactly 1 year ago!), when I was most active. To anyone reading this, please see the related HD thread (WP:HD#Problem with staying logged in). Kayau Voting IS evil 04:54, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- They told me to bring it here, so I did. Anybody else have anything to say about this? The Raptor Let's talk/My mistakes; I mean, er, contributions 13:40, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
Double space after a period
The MOS:FULLSTOP guideline says: "The number of spaces following the terminal punctuation of a sentence in the wiki markup makes no difference on Wikipedia because the MediaWiki software condenses any number of spaces to just one when rendering the page." Is that true regardless of what browser the reader is using? Long previous discussion here. Art LaPella (talk) 05:52, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, because this is an underlying feature of HTML in general; in most cases any amount of whitespace is treated identically to one unit of whitespace and rendered as one space. Note that doublespacing does make a difference in the formatting of the edit window text, so it's not entirely without effect. — Gavia immer (talk) 06:00, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, that seems to be the standard answer. However, it might be useful to refer to this page where the original discussion started. The technical discussion began near the end of the thread. WP:MoS#Specific statement with respect to double sentence spacing or double spacing after terminal punctuation is needed. Basically, the discussion centers over whether is it possible for someone to view the spacing in a Wikipedia article with a browser that shows HTML as it was typed, as in "wysiwyg". --Airborne84 (talk) 12:33, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- In short: No, it's not possible.
- While it is certainly possible for someone to create a browser that treats white space in a non-standard way, all of the major browsers (for English, anyway) treat runs of multiple whitespace characters as a single space unless specifically instructed otherwise by tags (e.g. <pre>) or CSS. And even were someone to use such a non-standard browser or edit their user css to apply the appropriate CSS directives to the entire page, MediaWiki as installed here (or, more likely, tidy) will itself collapse runs of multiple whitespace characters before serving the page to the browser. So even though there "should" be 5 spaces in [ ] according to the wikitext, if you look at the rendered page output there is only one. Anomie⚔ 15:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- MediaWiki would have to be changed for this to happen, but it's not impossible. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 16:02, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, it would be perfectly possible in principle. The obvious way to do it would be to have MediaWiki replace a double space with a space followed by a non-breaking space. There are some HTML-based applications that do this. However, it's unlikely anyone would be interested in doing the coding for that, since on the web, the universally accepted convention is single spaces between sentences. Also, it would make a lot of pages look odd where people wrote several spaces in a row and expected it to show up as a single space in the actual article. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 16:02, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- For that matter, the request would be possible if MediaWiki would just stop collapsing multiple spaces. Normal browsers would continue to collapse the whitespace, but the hypothetical non-standard browser mentioned would be able to choose to display them. I personally agree that changing MediaWiki in this way is not worth doing. Anomie⚔ 16:41, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, that seems to be the standard answer. However, it might be useful to refer to this page where the original discussion started. The technical discussion began near the end of the thread. WP:MoS#Specific statement with respect to double sentence spacing or double spacing after terminal punctuation is needed. Basically, the discussion centers over whether is it possible for someone to view the spacing in a Wikipedia article with a browser that shows HTML as it was typed, as in "wysiwyg". --Airborne84 (talk) 12:33, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- Sentence spacing was a recently featured article on the Main page. T'would be remiss not to mention :) -- Quiddity (talk) 20:18, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Contribs page
I'm not sure if this belongs here, and I ask to be excused if it does not. I noticed something odd that is there when I open anyone's contributions page.
(latest | earliest) View (newer 250 | older 250) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)
There are two spaces (an extra space) between "newer 250" and the vertical bar. This applies always, no matter whose contributions I'm seeing, no matter how many edits I've chosen to view, and no matter whether I'm logged in or not. Why is it so? --Theurgist (talk) 07:05, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- I think I have found the error, see Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages#MediaWiki:Viewprevnext. Svick (talk) 09:45, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
robots.txt, __ NOINDEX__ and {{userspace draft}}
The __NOINDEX__ and {{noindex}} directives aren't that well-known or well documented.
I was creating subpages under User:Geo Swan for years before I became aware of them.
__NOINDEX__ directive and robots.txt seem to work differently. A robots.txt, with the appropriate contents, tells well-behaved web-crawling robots, like those that search engines use to find contents, will honor the robots from indexing the files in that directory, and all subdirectories -- while the __NOINDEX__ directive only applies to the article on which it has been placed.
I wonder, since, to a web-browser's robots, the subpages of User pages are just files and directories, couldn't a properly drafted robots.txt eliminate the need to put the __NOINDEX__ directive on all our subpages?
If a file has already been hidden from web-browsers, then a {{userspace draft}} would be redundant, and unnecessary, wouldn't it?
Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 23:21, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- An admin would need to put every user who used noindex on the robots.txt, so it would be rather inconvenient (users couldn't do it themselves) and robots.txt would become rather huge {{userspace draft}} is used on more than 10,000 userpages; even if everyone who used the template had 10 subpages, that would still be 1,000 more things to list on robots.txt. Mr.Z-man 01:05, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- I thought that robots that honored robots.txt directives, look for a robots.txt in every directory they traverse. So, if I create a subpage User:Geo Swan/Guantanamo/robots.txt shouldn't it be able to block compliant robots from everything in that directory?
- I would still appreciate feedback on whether the {{Userspace draft}} tag is redundant when web browsers have already been blocked, via robots or NOINDEX. Geo Swan (talk) 02:29, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
- From what I've seen, robots.txt only applies in the root directory. Additionally, robots.txt files need to follow a very specific format, just listing entries on a wiki page won't work because of all the other HTML. {{userspace draft}} is the only one of the 3 that provides a visual note in addition to noindexing; if you don't care about the box, then yes, its redundant. Mr.Z-man 03:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
- I would still appreciate feedback on whether the {{Userspace draft}} tag is redundant when web browsers have already been blocked, via robots or NOINDEX. Geo Swan (talk) 02:29, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
image annotations
Why do images on wikimedia have option to annotate images but on wikipedia they do not? Kallimachus (talk) 01:14, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- Because the ImageAnnotator gadget is only enabled at Wikimedia Commons. Graham87 02:25, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- It seems very useful, especially when looking at complex images. We need to enable that for wikipedia. Kallimachus (talk) 05:26, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- This has been discussed here at length between December 2009 and March 2010:
- Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 68#Image annotation in WP
- Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 71#Image Annotation
- Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 72#ImageAnnotator gadget on Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Annotate
- Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical)/Annotate
- Perhaps someone who is interested could read the discussions and summarise the current situation here. I think there was concern that vandals could add inappropriate annotations without easily being detected.
- — Richardguk (talk) 23:11, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- This has been discussed here at length between December 2009 and March 2010:
Transwiki Watchlists
There's way too much separation between Wiki projects. I want to have a transwiki watchlist where I can keep an eye on Wikipedia Pages in various languages as well as files I keep an eye on in the commons and entries I've contributed to in the dictionary. It's way too much of a pain to keep an eye on everything, so certain things go unwatched or unresponded to.
Am I the first one to bring this up? Don't many of you have the same complaint/problem? Chrisrus (talk) 05:40, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- There is an external tool called Watchlistr that does exactly this. And there is also an open bug requesting this. Svick (talk) 09:48, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Edit summary moved
I've been away for a while. Today I return to make an edit and found the edit summary hidden away(on a mobile device) to the right of the page. if I wasn't really aware from before that edit summaries are desirable I would not of even realised entering an edit summary was possible now. Where did the discussion happen on moving it's position? What where people thinking? Is entering an edit summary something no longer desirable? Don't we want newbies especially to enter edit summaries as much as they can? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 10:09, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- Edit summaries are certainly very desirable, not only from newbies. I don't see any such change in Firefox (even with small window width). What kind of device and browser are you using. Could you provide screenshot/photo of the problem? Svick (talk) 10:32, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Parser ifeq used with Magic Words
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fb/Yes_check.svg/20px-Yes_check.svg.png)
For some reason this coding does not work:
{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Template||'''[[New York City]]'''}}
I want to create a condition, that:
If a the namespace IS a template, '''[[New York City]]''' will NOT be shown.
If the namespace is NOT a template, '''[[New York City]]''' WILL be shown.
Any suggestions? Can I use magicwords this way? If not, is there another way to do this? Thank you for your time. Adamtheclown (talk) 14:27, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- Your code works fine, at least when I tested it on Template:Template sandbox (displayed nothing) versus Wikipedia:Sandbox displayed New York City. –xenotalk 14:32, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- Your right xeno, I just double checked myself, and came here to report this. Thank you for taking the time to do this. 14:35, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Citing an annotation
Not sure if this is the right place...but how do you cite/reference an annotation?Smallman12q (talk) 16:03, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- We need more context to help you. An annotation where? – ukexpat (talk) 16:07, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- An annotation in an article...for example in Edmund_Evans#Process_and_techniques the last line...I'd like to do
- <ref group="a">On page viii of ''The Caldecott Aesop: Twenty Fables : A Facsimile of the 1883 Edition'', a production note states that the "majority of color plates were made from the first woodblock renderings of Caldecott's work." The statement is not sufficiently clear to indicate to what extant the original blocks were used, however the cracks in the color plates suggest that the original blocks may in fact have been used.<ref>Richardson, p. 33</ref></ref>
- but it gives me an error. I'd like to cite a page for the annotation.Smallman12q (talk) 16:42, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- WP:REFNEST is probably what you're after. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 16:55, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- Ye nested ref is what I needed. Thanks.
- WP:REFNEST is probably what you're after. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 16:55, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- but it gives me an error. I'd like to cite a page for the annotation.Smallman12q (talk) 16:42, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
{{#tag:ref|On page viii of ''The Caldecott Aesop: Twenty Fables : A Facsimile of the 1883 Edition'', a production note states that the "majority of color plates were made from the first woodblock renderings of Caldecott's work." The statement is not sufficiently clear to indicate to what extant the original blocks were used, however the cracks in the color plates suggest that the original blocks may in fact have been used.{{#tag:ref|Richardson, p. 33}}|group="a"}} This worked =).Smallman12q (talk) 17:46, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
DBPedia links
Shouldn't each article link to its DBPedia equivalent? Either at the end of the interwiki links, and/ or through a meta header: <link rel="alternate" href="http://dbpedia.org/page/Birmingham">
for Birmingham, for example? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:30, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- Well it's not a sister project (so far), and link attributes would require some rather big software changes. Having said that, I'd prefer linking to an open database that contains verified sets of data. So instead of collecting all the data in wikipedia in a separate DB, collecting open data in a DB, is probably more useful in the long term and a better match to our goals. Matching from wikipedia to dbpedia is probably already rather simple to do with DBpedia itself, so I don't see a good reason to do that from within Wikipedia 'manually'. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:13, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Uploading to Commons
User:guillom of the Wikimedia Multimedia Usability team has published some results on his blog of the first testing done of the usability of Wikimedia Commons upload process, and the results of the first prototype for the new upload wizard that is currently under development. See also the following movies:
- File:Multimedia_usability_project_2010_-_Current_interface_testing.ogv
- File:Multimedia_usability_project_2010_-_Prototype_testing.ogv
- File:Multimedia_usability_project_2010_-_Room_for_improvement.ogv
Please contribute your ideas, and you can test the prototype if you want. I note that some of the results might apply to other processes as well. The "i'll just skip all this, because it is too much text" being the most notable usability issue that will likely apply to many other pages. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:08, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you. As a follow-up, I'd like to add that I'm currently working on a Questions & Answers page to address the most frequently asked questions. Feedback on the prototype is of course welcome, but you will understand that we may not have the resources to answer every comment individually, especially if many are similar. The Q&A page isn't ready yet, so it'll take some time before I can publish it. So, please consider this a "soft launch": we don't want to make a lot of publicity about our prototype yet. If you happen to know about it and you want to share your opinion, that's fine. But we'll officially invite the community later to try it out, when the Q&A page lets us focus on the most useful comments. Thanks, Guillaume Paumier 20:32, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Wikitext weirdness
I noticed a minor fault in how (presumably) MediaWiki renders a page, and will describe it in case anyone wants to follow up. The events took place at WT:Requests for comment/Jagged 85#Cleaning up the problem:
- At 06:06, 20 June 2010, a new section was added, and the wikitext included a <p> tag (with no closing tag) (diff). Looking at the html source for the page (permalink) shows that something (HTML Tidy?) added a closing </p>, and everything was good.
- Several comments were later added with varying indents (colons at left margin). All good.
- At 09:08, 28 June 2010, I appended a new comment: blank line and no colon (diff). All good.
- At 08:25, 22 July 2010, John Vandenberg appended a new comment: blank line and no colon (diff). Bug! His comment is rendered with no line break before mine (as if there were no blank line between the two comments) (permalink). I tried adding ?action=purge to the page URL, and I examined the wikitext for any strange characters, but can't see any. Bug still present.
- I mentioned this at User talk:John Vandenberg#Wikitext weirdness.
- At 11:00, 22 July 2010, Jack Merridew fixed the problem by replacing the <p> with a blank line (diff).
Conclusion: the <p> caused MediaWiki to misrender two paragraphs below. Johnuniq (talk) 00:08, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
- Not unexpected: the unclosed
<p>
element contains the indented text, which is parsed according to its own wikitext rules, then the paragraph tag is implicitly closed by HTML Tidy at the next section heading. HTML tag soup does not mix well with wikitext porridge. In fact wikitext porridge does not always mix well with wikitext porridge. It's a quirky syntax at the best of times. — Richardguk (talk) 00:36, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
Need CSS/javascript help with Template:ref_label
Template:ref label wraps its content in a span, rather than a div. This causes problems when the background color is set, because if the line spacing is wide enough then the underlying background color seeps through the cracks. There is a thread about this on the template talk page.
The CSS that is set in Common.css [2] refers directly to the span tag, not just the .citation class name. I have not looked up the javascript that takes care of changing the background color.
I don't know enough about our CSS/javascript setup to try to fix this problem. If someone with the knowledge has time to fix it, it would be appreciated. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:56, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
- I believe this was fixed for {{ref}}; see Template talk:Ref#Text color. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:05, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
Citation Checking in Show Preview
When I make changes to an article, I click on Show preview to see my changes. If I put in a Wiki link, for example, I can click on the link in the preview and make sure it works. However, if I make a citation change and click on the superscript citation, I can't see how the citation resolves. Thus, I have to Save page, check the resolved citation, and if I screwed up, go back in and fix it. Is there a way to do what I want without saving the page (short of using a sandbox)?--Bbb23 (talk) 01:14, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
Add this to Special:MyPage/skin.js and purge the page per the instructions at the top of the page:
importScript('User:Anomie/ajaxpreview.js'); // Linkback: [[User:Anomie/ajaxpreview.js]]
At the bottom of the edit window, you will find a button marked Ajax Preview w/Refs. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:02, 23 July 2010 (UTC)