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Contents
- 1 Math aligned environments failing to parse
- 2 Searchbox is broken & Search is overloaded
- 3 fixing archive oddity
- 4 Problem with subst-ing template multi-move
- 5 Help Desk archives not updating links properly
- 6 Substituting inside includeonly tags
- 7 iPhone search options not working
- 8 How do I retrieve a specific short sequence from Special:Contributions?
- 9 Link not showing on iPhone
- 10 "Typography refresh" beta feature changes the appearance of TOC?
- 11 Commons.js
- 12 Confusing error message
- 13 Universal Language Selector will be enabled by default again on this wiki by 21 February 2014
- 14 Raw LilyPond score problem
- 15 Should c: be added as an interwiki link for Commons?
- 16 Babel categories
- 17 Disable sortability in selected wikitable columns
- 18 Importing some images
- 19 Quick request
- 20 Why doesn't it leave redirects from .js pages on rename?
- 21 Strange problem with "GA nominee" template?
- 22 Malware on Template talk:Did you know placed by an IP address
- 23 Wanted: Gadget
- 24 Tools link
- 25 WikiLove seems broken
- 26 Amendment to the Terms of Use
- 27 Setting a max-width for the vector skin + centered layout
- 28 Undoing edits on multiple pages at once?
- 29 Replace old stats.grok.se with wikiviewstats
- 30 Experimenting with a new template?
- 31 Linux issues
- 32 What is Delivery of "Popular pages tool update" to...
- 33 Gremlins?
- 34 Mark single pages as visited
- 35 Where is Mediawiki loading this script?
- 36 Page creator tool
- 37 Lots of Wikimedia Foundation errors
- 38 Apparent ref name and/or ref group name confusion
- 39 Difference between revisions pages comment truncation
- 40 Tech News: 2014-09
- 41 Getting redirect targets
- 42 Passing a ?search-string parameter to a url in a template (either raw of wrapped in a citation template) to produce a reference in a reflist.
Math aligned environments failing to parse
There's a bug being discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Problem with multiline equations. The "aligned" and "alignedat" environments are failing to parse. Affected articles include Spherical trigonometry#Polar triangles and 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯#Heuristics. Here's an example:
I see the output Failed to parse(unknown function '\begin'): {\begin{alignedat}{3}A'&=\pi -a,&\qquad B'&=\pi -b,&\qquad C'&=\pi -c,\\a'&=\pi -A,&b'&=\pi -B,&c'&=\pi -C.\end{alignedat}}
Can anyone here help? Thanks, Melchoir (talk) 02:05, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh, and I should mention that this was working yesterday! Melchoir (talk) 02:14, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
- I am seeing this at Triple product#Using geometric algebra, which was working when I edited it on 21 January. Similarly it's complaining about the align directive:
- Failed to parse(unknown function '\begin'): {\begin{aligned}{\mathbf ...
- --JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 02:30, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
- See also a similar question above. Graham87 04:20, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
There are some more examples, which helpfully list the TeX source, at Help:Displaying a formula. Also experienced a few timeout/too many people accessing the page errors accessing that and Noether's theorem, another problem page.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 14:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
- This has also been reported to OTRS, see Steradian for example.--ukexpat (talk) 15:19, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
This seriously undermines the functionality of Wikipedia's mathematics articles. It needs to be fixed right away, even if that means undoing the recent upgrade. Sławomir Biały (talk) 20:08, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
- I see red everywhere I go on WP today - and also botched attempts to fix the affected formulae. Where can I go to usefully complain about this? --catslash (talk) 23:23, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
This week's update of the Math extension had some weirdness, but it was reverted - which means the Math extension here should be running the same version as last week. bugzilla:60997 is the tracking bug for the issues. Legoktm (talk) 23:51, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
- I'm unclear what you mean. You mean it was broken but was reverted so should be back to normal/how it was a week ago? It's still broken on the many pages linked here and in the example above. Or do we have to wait for this to be rolled out/propagated?--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 00:12, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
This has to be fixed quickly. Almost all of the articles that display mathematical equations have been showing this error. Formulas and equations are definitely the most important things that people are looking for in articles about Math and science. [ Derek Leung | LM ] 00:17, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- Use {array} columns or colon-indent to align: Hopefully, the source of the problems with "{alignedat}" can be pinpointed and corrected, but meanwhile, the "{array}" alignment works (such as with 6-el "{llllll}" for 6 columns separated by "&"), as follows:
:: <math> \begin{array}{llllll} A' &= \pi - a , \qquad & B' &= \pi - b ,\qquad& C' &= \pi - c ,\\ a' &= \pi - A , & b' &= \pi - B , & c' &= \pi - C . \end{array} </math>
- That math-tag will show alignment into 6 columns:
-
- Each qquad spacer "\qquad &" should end with an "&" separator, and with that then the various math articles can be fixed, as well as other issues copy-edited, to format correctly. -Wikid77 (talk) 03:42, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- That's a very bad idea. Align works as it's an easy and natural addition to a block of formulae: the directives at beginning and end and then '&=' and '//' where you want things aligned and lines broken within. Using arrays like that is overkill. But more importantly the articles aren't broken: the Mediawiki software is. The solution is to get that fixed as soon as possible, not edit articles just to revert then hours or days later. Anyone who needs to work with such formulae in the (hopefully very short) interim can enable MathJax which doesn't have this problem.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 03:54, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- Using the "{array}" alignment is already done for other equations in those math articles, and is not "overkill" by any means. Telling users here to "enable MathJax" does not fix the red-error parser messages which hundreds of users see in major math articles such as "Integral". Also, there is no need to revert use of "{array}" alignment as it is already used in many articles. -Wikid77 07:17, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- @Wikid77: As long as you continue to damage the formatting on mathematics articles in this way I will continue to revert you. Ozob (talk) 06:08, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- Calling the copy-editing of math articles as "damage" still does not permit a violation of wp:3RR by reverting the re-aligned formulas to, once again, display parser errors such as the glaring "Failed to parse(unknown function '\begin'): {\begin{alignedat}{3}". The copy-editing of those articles should not be reverted to emphasize a wp:POINT about problems with math-tag formatting. Let other users edit those math pages to improve the formats. -Wikid77 07:17, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- As of yet none of the editors in this discussion have violated WP:3RR. Ozob made two reverts each to Integral and Spherical trigonometry. The 3RR rule only counts reverts within the same article. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 18:01, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- I didn't realise that Wikid77 was going ahead with this. Seconded. I've reverted other editors already who've tried 'fixing' articles not realising the problem was with Mediawiki. But anyone who's read the thread here or at the maths project should be perfectly clear where the problem lies and so should not be 'fixing' the articles which aren't broken.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 06:27, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- The main goal is to fix the equation-formatting problems wherever they are displayed, rather than blame the math-tag software as an excuse to leave broken equations in major articles, for 3 days. -Wikid77 07:17, 8 February, 12:17, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- Calling the copy-editing of math articles as "damage" still does not permit a violation of wp:3RR by reverting the re-aligned formulas to, once again, display parser errors such as the glaring "Failed to parse(unknown function '\begin'): {\begin{alignedat}{3}". The copy-editing of those articles should not be reverted to emphasize a wp:POINT about problems with math-tag formatting. Let other users edit those math pages to improve the formats. -Wikid77 07:17, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- Wikid77 has raised this issue at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive259#Reverting fixes of equations. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 18:01, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- That's a very bad idea. Align works as it's an easy and natural addition to a block of formulae: the directives at beginning and end and then '&=' and '//' where you want things aligned and lines broken within. Using arrays like that is overkill. But more importantly the articles aren't broken: the Mediawiki software is. The solution is to get that fixed as soon as possible, not edit articles just to revert then hours or days later. Anyone who needs to work with such formulae in the (hopefully very short) interim can enable MathJax which doesn't have this problem.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 03:54, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
While some choose to bicker over the short-term management of this problem, I would prefer to look at the underlying issue. How is that a change to the software that supports mathematics articles can be made which breaks a significant number of them without that fact being noticed, or fixed before it is deployed? Why is it that mathematics editors at such places at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics, who may be assumed to have between them a considerable degree of expertise and experience in these matters, are not consulted, or even informed about these changes? There appear to have been failures at a number of levels over this matter. Deltahedron (talk) 12:06, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- Many math experts used MathJax format and did not see the error messages viewed by thousands of people. -Wikid77 12:17, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- You raise a good point. I don't know the details, but expect that there is some set of automated tests the programmers use to test changes to the Mediawiki software. It is apparent that the automated latex test suite is not comprehensive. Part of the problem is that this is only broken for folks not using MathJax--perhaps not all branches are tested automatically? This particular change was meant to be transparent to the user, which is likely why it was not mentioned at WP Math. It is not the first time in the past year that we have had latex rendering issues, so it seems a problem area for Mediawiki. --Mark viking (talk) 17:32, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- All MediaWiki seems to be "problem areas" and rebroken many times; the only reason why #switch or #ifeq still work is they remain "non-improved" but there is talk to "rewrite the parser" as NewPP is likely a hodge-podge of software subsystems. Rather than blame the developers, we need to know "Top 100 math articles" to watch/rescue, and then notice how Polynomial, Calculus, Derivative, Integral, Sine, Complex number (etc.) were all broken, to be quick-fixed (same-day) not bicker for 3 days whether altered alignment is worse than a glaring red-error message. Meanwhile "wp:Equation hoarding" has overcomplified the major math pages, where most of the botched equations should have been in minor subpages, not excessive wp:UNDUE detail in major pages viewed 2x per minute. The page "Sine" should be kept minimal with links to subpages such as "Polynomial equivalents of sine" and then put Taylor series formulas (+Lagrange polynomials +others) on the subpages. -Wikid77 12:17, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Popular_pages for the "Top 100 math articles" to watch/rescue.--Salix alba (talk): 12:57, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- All MediaWiki seems to be "problem areas" and rebroken many times; the only reason why #switch or #ifeq still work is they remain "non-improved" but there is talk to "rewrite the parser" as NewPP is likely a hodge-podge of software subsystems. Rather than blame the developers, we need to know "Top 100 math articles" to watch/rescue, and then notice how Polynomial, Calculus, Derivative, Integral, Sine, Complex number (etc.) were all broken, to be quick-fixed (same-day) not bicker for 3 days whether altered alignment is worse than a glaring red-error message. Meanwhile "wp:Equation hoarding" has overcomplified the major math pages, where most of the botched equations should have been in minor subpages, not excessive wp:UNDUE detail in major pages viewed 2x per minute. The page "Sine" should be kept minimal with links to subpages such as "Polynomial equivalents of sine" and then put Taylor series formulas (+Lagrange polynomials +others) on the subpages. -Wikid77 12:17, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Problems with math rendering
As of 7-Feb-2014 there seems to be a problem with math rendering.
Referring to Preferences, Appearance, Math, options "Always render PNG", and "MathJax (experimental; best for most browsers)", the following used to work in PNG and in MathJax. Now it doesn't work in PNG anymore, producing an error "Failed to parse(unknown function '\begin'): {\begin{aligned}...", but it still works in MathJax, although the formular are now centered on the page:
In article Complex number:
In article Polynomial:
Attempts were made to "correct" the faulting aligns; [1], [2], [3], [4].
Other changes were made, for instance this one to Maxwell's equations.
The following render correctly (no problems in PNG) but in MathJax some equations get centered on the page, whereas other remain left aligned and are properly indented:
When text is added after the math tags, there is no centering:
- (text)
(text)
- (text)
- (text)
- (text)
- (text)
- (text)
- (text)
What's up? - DVdm (talk) 10:49, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- The first problem is being discussed above, at #Math aligned environments failing to parse. I am not sure if the other alignment inconsistencies are related or not. —PC-XT+ 11:18, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- They are; all math related problems started to happen when they took out a large chuck of math code from core in the assumption that the Math extension could handle it. Turns out it can't because the core code did a lot of converting before feeding it to the extension. Without this converting, the extension is now being fed invalid code, hence the errors. — Edokter (talk) — 11:26, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the replies. Let's hope this gets fixed before too many math articles get—sort of —damaged by well-meaning authors. Shouldn't some kind of watchlist announcement be put in place? - DVdm (talk) 12:10, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- @Edokter: That's not a correct assessment of the situation. The Math extension has been handling the rendering since about 2011. There were several issues with the most recent update; the code removed from core did not cause the issue with rendering various formulas (it did cause some site performance issues). The problem behind the rendering is that when the "transformation and validation" code was separated from the "render PNG" code so that validation could be used for MathJax as well (bug 49169 ), it was overlooked that the output of the validator isn't accepted as input to the renderer (which still contains all the same transformation and validation code). Anomie⚔ 14:35, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- They are; all math related problems started to happen when they took out a large chuck of math code from core in the assumption that the Math extension could handle it. Turns out it can't because the core code did a lot of converting before feeding it to the extension. Without this converting, the extension is now being fed invalid code, hence the errors. — Edokter (talk) — 11:26, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Math parsing Error
At Real_projective_line#Motivation_for_arithmetic_operations I get this error:
Failed to parse(unknown function '\begin'): {\begin{aligned}\\a+\infty =\infty +a&=\infty ,&a\in {\mathbb {R}}\\a-\infty =\infty -a&=\infty ,&a\in {\mathbb {R}}\\a\cdot \infty =\infty \cdot a&=\infty ,&a\in {\mathbb {R}},a\neq 0\\\infty \cdot \infty &=\infty \\{\frac {a}{\infty }}&=0,&a\in {\mathbb {R}}\\{\frac {\infty }{a}}&=\infty ,&a\in {\mathbb {R}},a\neq 0\\{\frac {a}{0}}&=\infty ,&a\in {\mathbb {R}},a\neq 0\end{aligned}}
Can someone fix it please. I am not sure what else I should tell you, so feel free to ask. TheKing44 (talk) 19:27, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, see all over the place. I made the same mistake, creating a section about something already well under discussion - DVdm (talk) 19:16, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- I've backported and deployed a Math syntax check fix. It should be less broken now (which seems to be the case). Aaron Schulz 21:08, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, it seems to be fixed. Thanks!
The strange indending/centering behaviour in MathJax remains though—see two threads higher at #Problems with math rendering. Any idea about that? DVdm (talk) 21:31, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
- This is discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Displayed equations are centered?. It might be due to a change in the MathJax from version 2.2 to version 2.3. There is a bug at bug 61051 .--Salix alba (talk): 00:42, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, it seems to be fixed. Thanks!
- I've backported and deployed a Math syntax check fix. It should be less broken now (which seems to be the case). Aaron Schulz 21:08, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
The article Great-circle navigation includes some mathematical formulae, which are displayed using <math>...</math>
tags.
However, something is broken, and the display just consists of red error messages. Can anyone fix it? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:14, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- That was probably related to the issues reported above. A purge fixed it. Matma Rex talk 01:18, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- So are 0.999... and every single article that contains \begin{align}... [ Derek Leung | LM ] 01:28, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:43, 9 February 2014 (UTC) Done Thanks, looks good now. --
-
Fixed but slow
Although it's now rendering properly it's so slow it's causing serious problems. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Performance problems.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 07:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- There's still at least one page that still isn't working. Jestingrabbit (talk) 07:25, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- It loaded for me (though it took 33 seconds) and looks fine.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 08:02, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- Editing is extremely slow. Just made this edit. It took a few minutes between Save page and a "504 Gateway Time-out". The same thing happened with the preceding edit earlier. I estimate that it took as much as 5 minutes. Math editing has become virtually impossible. - DVdm (talk) 11:24, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- It loaded for me (though it took 33 seconds) and looks fine.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 08:02, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- See below: "#Confirmed http works when https gets 504 Gateway Time-out". -Wikid77 09:37, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
- I just deployed a fix (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/113481) for Math performance. Slow pages will render slowly for 1 more time and then be normal after that again. For example this page takes 2.6sec instead of 36sec now. Aaron Schulz 00:02, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- Confirmed math-tag cache speed double 2x, similar now to Simple WP, where new equations edit-preview 2x faster than before (124 math-tags in 42 seconds, formerly 92 sec.) and then will re-display from cache within a few seconds. -Wikid77 08:01, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Failure to Parse Mathematical Formulas
The \begin{aligned} command seems to fail in many pages, such as these:
The matter is of some urgency as there are many pages with matrix algebra and these seem affected. Limit-theorem (talk) 14:04, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- Please see previous threads. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- Both pages are now fine. I guess someone purged them. The underlying software bug is fixed, so any pages still showing this error are from cache and can be fixed with a purge. Per the first point in the Village pump (technical) FAQ, if something looks wrong, a purge is the first thing to try. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:31, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Purge-refresh major math pages
People should continue to wp:purge-refresh the major math pages (with "?action=purge"), which have lagged in reformatting the 3-day mathtag glitch, even though the math-tag '{align}' problem was fixed over 24 hours earlier, on Saturday c.21:00, 8 February 2014. I had to purge the following: Calculus, Derivative, Integral, Sine, Fast Fourier transform, Completing the square, System of linear equations, Quadratic integral, etc. Others have purged: Complex number, Polynomial, Quadratic formula, Great-circle navigation, Maximum entropy classifier, etc. Many had pageviews 1,000-3,000 per day. The typical page uses 'begin{aligned}' to force equations at '=' into alignment. I posted a similar note at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales, viewed 1,000 per day. -Wikid77 00:58/12:17, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- I just purged Level set method which was showing "Failed to parse(unknown error)" for the <math>\varphi</math> in "The boundary of the shape is then the zero level set of " and for the same markup later in the section at " is represented as the zero level set of " - in both cases without the align environment (if I've understood things correctly). I don't know if this is significant, but this seems a vaguely appropriate place to report it. --Mrow84 (talk) 18:13, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- That's fine... what we'd really like to know about is pages where a WP:PURGE didn't fix the problem. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:40, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- Example? — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 20:27, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- I don't know of any, that's the point. Are there any left out there? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:12, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- I first saw a "parse" problem on Cosine similarity a few minutes ago; there's no error message; just the display
complement in positive space, that is: $ D_{C}(A,B)=1-S_{C}(A,B) $. It is important
Purging doesn't seem to work. Also on Level set method which fails on en but works on de.
SBaker43 (talk) 12:18, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
- I first saw a "parse" problem on Cosine similarity a few minutes ago; there's no error message; just the display
- I don't know of any, that's the point. Are there any left out there? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:12, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- Example? — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 20:27, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- That's fine... what we'd really like to know about is pages where a WP:PURGE didn't fix the problem. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:40, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- This is what you see if you have MathJax enabled in preferences, but your browser does not support MathJax (e.g. JavaScript is disabled). It probably works on the German Wikipedia because you don't have MathJax enabled there. Other possibilities are problems with a user script or gadget preventing MathJax from working correctly, or a server problem preventing the MathJax scripts loading from bits.wikimedia.org. (The latter is unlikely; we normally have a lot more people complaining when bits goes down.) – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:03, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Side question
Does mediawiki throw pages with these types of errors into a tracking category? Werieth (talk) 21:06, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- Ping AKlapper (WMF) Steven (WMF) Werieth (talk) 13:35, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
- Not that I'm aware of. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:27, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Status?
Looking at article Summation in MathJax, it is clear that there still is a serious problem. All equations are centered except those that have text added. Using \text{} to move the text inside the math tags is no solution as wikimarkup doesn't work that way.
- with text added and centering fails and wp:wikilinks work
- Failed to parse(lexing error): x_{12} = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a} \text{ with text added and centering works but [[wp:wikilinks]] fail}
What is the status now? - DVdm (talk) 09:52, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Note - Look what people are doing now, due to this problem. - DVdm (talk) 12:54, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Why is rendering math so slow?
I don't know if this is a result of the MathJax update itself or already was an issue before, but I realized that rendering math on this very page is extremely slow. On my Notebook it's so bad that on a first page load it completely locks up Firefox for about 5-10 seconds and throws an "unresponding script" warning. Strange part is that I copied this whole section regarding math into a test page in my userspace where it renders much faster without locking Firefox.
Does anybody else experience something similar? Is there an explanation why it's rendering faster in my user page? Might this even indicate a potential performance issue regarding MathJax? In my opinion math shouln't render slower if there is other content on the page, but maybe the implementation details of the Math extension are responsible for the observed behavior. --Patrick87 (talk) 13:13, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Searchbox is broken & Search is overloaded
When I enter anything into the Searchbox, the searchpage comes up instead of bringing me to the page in question, this happens whether I enter a page name, a redirect name, or a shortcut name (yes, I have spelled it properly. It's also become case sensitive, saying the page I entered doesn't exist if I use a different case (say all lower case when the shortcut is all upcaps) - 76.65.129.222 (talk) 07:29, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Also, I suspect as a result of this bug ("feature") it appears that the search engine is now extremely bogged down. In the wee hours of the day, searchbox keeps failing by saying it is overloaded. -- 76.65.129.222 (talk) 07:37, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Exact error message welcome, plus browser information (for the first part). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:46, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
-
-
- (My IP has rolled over). Today, it doesn't seem overloaded, but there's a persistent error. If I enter WP:USA into the searchbox, it will return:
-
- An error has occurred while searching: The search backend returned an error:
-
- And anything I type into the searchbox whatsoever always goes to the searchpage. If I enter WP:VPT into the searchbox I get
-
- There is a page named "Wikipedia:VPT" on Wikipedia
-
- with a list of results
- I am using Firefox 27 (versions newer than this version appear to be incompatible with other software I have, but this behaviour of Wikipedia did not occur before I posted this message, it worked fine in FF27 previoiusly) -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 23:34, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
-
-
-
- This is also happening with WaterFox 18 and PaleMoon 24 -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 08:51, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
-
Is this some issue that Wikipedia is now requiring JavaScript? (it does not work even with JS on) -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 05:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- The 'action' of search without Javascript is always full search yes. If it were 'go', then it would not be possible to reach the 'full text' search. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:17, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- Why? It was previously possible - if an article exactly matched, then you were taken there, otherwise you were taken to the search page. If you wanted full text search where an article matched, you clicked on the magnifying glass, then searched. 192.12.81.1 (talk) 15:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- Also, typing a tilde ('~') in front of a search forces a full text search instead of jumping straight to an article title. (I normally search from the browser address bar, where this function still works.) – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:23, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- Why? It was previously possible - if an article exactly matched, then you were taken there, otherwise you were taken to the search page. If you wanted full text search where an article matched, you clicked on the magnifying glass, then searched. 192.12.81.1 (talk) 15:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- You are incorrect. The action of "search" was to "go" to the page you typed in (without JS on). The change is very recent, in worked the day before I filed this, and the day I filed this, it broke. I suspect the search engine overload is caused by this change. A prominent (search for other uses) should instead be included as a top link (similar in appearance to what you get when you follow a redirect) to lower the server loading, so that when you go somewhere you're not wanting, you get to go to the searchpage that way. The overloaded searchpage is annoying as well, having to reload search several times to get results is not a good thing. If the searchbox were restored to just "go" to the page you want, it would take up less server resources than listing all the possible pages you might want.
- Also, even with JavaScript on, it isn't working. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 01:50, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Article wizard also broken
Any idea what change from Wikipedia brought this about? I notice that the styling for Wikipedia:Article_wizard is also broken across multiple browsers. The buttons for "Write an article now (for new users)", "Request an article be written on a topic", "Create something else (for advanced users)" are invisible. I assume this has occurred at the same time the searchbox broke. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 11:39, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- Indeed, I see the same thing on the article wizard. The links are using white-on-white text, though I can't see where that text colour is being set. Since I know where to click, I can still click the links though they aren't visible. You can reveal the links by pressing ^ Ctrl+A to highlight the whole page. I've linked to this discussion from the article wizard's talk page. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- Any solution should work with JavsScript off. I don't see why embedded styling into the template wouldn't work... -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 06:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- I'm guessing it is something to do with MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Fixing Template:clickable button, although the buttons show up fine for me (even when logged out). I made some edits (and some null edits) to a few pages, can you check if it is still an issue? — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 23:15, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
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- @PartTimeGnome: What browser/OS are you using? When I test Article Wizard on my machine (Firefox and Chrome on OSX) as well as Firefox and IE7 on Windows, I still see the full blue buttons. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:06, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- Opera 12.16 on openSUSE Linux. Others below have now identified that the button styling relied on JavaScript, which I have also disabled. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:11, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- I confirm this, Firefox 23.0.1, Win 7, javascript off. Enabling scripts from wikimedia.org makes the button background appear. 192.12.81.1 (talk) 15:07, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- @Edokter, Anomie, S Page (WMF), Kaldari, Sage Ross (WMF), Helder.wiki, Superm401: As participants in the linked discussion, do you have any ideas here? — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 15:37, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
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- JavaScript is required, otherwise, you end up with a white 'button' (just a span really) with white text. The better course is to use {{clickable button 2}} directly instead of {{blue button}}, as it constructs the link differetly and handles the font color better (as seen above). — Edokter (talk) — 15:57, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, if JS is turned off that's your issue, since we're conditionally loading the style with JavaScript. There are alternatives if that's causing many people problems, so we can find a different solution. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:09, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, alternatives are needed. User experience should degrade gracefully if JavaScript is disabled. White-on-white text is not graceful... (If it's essential for performance reasons to reduce the CSS that is sent to browsers, perhaps the parser could detect markup in the pages that indicates additional resource loader modules to load with the page?) – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:11, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- @Edokter, Technical 13, Steven (WMF):, for now I suggest rolling back Steven's change to {{blue button}}, since it doesn't play well without JavaScript (without JS you get the white coloring without the blue background). That will fix the immediate issue. However, I agree that {{clickable button 2}} works better. With that, the button is on the inside, which means it overrides the link's coloring. No explicit #FFF is needed. Without JavaScript, it simply looks like a link. So if that's okay (link appearance with no JS), Article Wizard can use {{clickable button 2}}. See my test version of {{Article wizard/button wizard}} at [5].
- {{blue button}} could also be rewritten to behave like {{clickable button 2}}, or even call it when a link is specified. Superm401 - Talk 22:22, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC) Done self-reverted for now.
-
- Yes, if JS is turned off that's your issue, since we're conditionally loading the style with JavaScript. There are alternatives if that's causing many people problems, so we can find a different solution. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:09, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- JavaScript is required, otherwise, you end up with a white 'button' (just a span really) with white text. The better course is to use {{clickable button 2}} directly instead of {{blue button}}, as it constructs the link differetly and handles the font color better (as seen above). — Edokter (talk) — 15:57, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- @PartTimeGnome: What browser/OS are you using? When I test Article Wizard on my machine (Firefox and Chrome on OSX) as well as Firefox and IE7 on Windows, I still see the full blue buttons. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:06, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- I'm not sure if it was T13's changes or Steven's revert, but the buttons now appear fine for me, both logged in and logged out. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:11, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Search algorithm and search engine issues
I'll note that the search algorithm seems faulty. franklin underwood does not show Franklin Underwood as a result in the first page of results. However, previously, the go to page function that used to work would directly bring up the "Franklin Underwood" article, now you'd have to click past the first page of results to even know it exists (and would probably assume that it doesn't exist, since it didn't show up at the top of the results) ; the WPUSA error can be seen with [6] -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 03:49, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- Franklin Underwood was created yesterday and has not been indexed by the search engine yet. See Help:Searching#Delay in updating the search index. The go to page function doesn't use the search index. It works for me and goes to Franklin Underwood when I enter
franklin underwood
in the search box at the top right below Log in/out. The second search box at Special:Search has different functionality. It adds&fulltext=Search
to the url. This prevents the go function and is intentional. Which search box are you using? The top right box has a drop-down box saying "containing..." (at least in my browser). If that is activated then&fulltext=1
is added and this also disables the go function. I don't know whether there is any difference between&fulltext=Search
and&fulltext=1
. It appears&fulltext=x
for almost any x (other than 0) disables go. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:25, 21 February 2014 (UTC)- The WP:USA error happens when I enter it into the searchbox (the box thing underneath log-in) and it happens if I use the search page. The resultant result page is the same regardless of whether I access the search page or use the search box. Indeed, for the last week, anything entered into the searchbox underneath "log-in" is exactly the same as using the search page. I assume a Wikipedia update changed the behaviour of the searchbox to be identical to the searchpage. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 07:32, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- PrimeHunter, re-read some of the earlier discussion above. Like me, 70.50 has JavaScript disabled in their browser, so they do not see the "containing..." pop-up. Previously, searching with the box under "Log in" with JS disabled could immediately go to an article with a matching title. 70.50 is reporting that this recently changed such that a search is always a full text search if JS is disabled, and there is no option for the normal "go" behaviour. This is using the default Vector skin. I'm using Monobook where the search still defaults to "go" as previously. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 17:45, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- OK, I also get no "go" in Firefox and Vector when JavaScript is disabled. I don't know how it has behaved previously. There is apparently disagreement about that so maybe it depended on something else. Franklin Underwood has now been indexed by search so the article is the first search result on franklin underwood. The below search box has a Go button which works for me with JavaScript disabled, but that isn't very helpful when the normal Vector search box works differently. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:38, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
-
-
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- Yup, that's more like the Monobook search box, which also has separate "Go" and "Search" buttons. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:14, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
-
-
To clear up some confusion:
- Behavior of the Vector search box is not related to the behavior of the search backend
- Behavior of the Vector search box is also not related to the behavior of the search box above, nor any other search box anywhere else on any page
Vector's search box uses 'Go' mode by default when the user has JavaScript enabled and a browser capable of rendering the search suggestions; otherwise it uses the fulltext search mode. This is intended and a caused by a recent change: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/82100/ – previously it always used 'Go' mode.
This behavior was discussed fervently on the changeset I linked above; in the end I was convinced that this is a better solution. The change was also announced in the second-to-last (I think) tech news posted here. If you disagree, please file a bug. Matma Rex talk 20:22, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 123#Tech News: 2014-07 says: "The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript." To me, that formulation sounds like it was about giving a search choice like if you have JavaScript, and not about replacing the existing 'Go' mode. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:45, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- That's a horrid change. It's probably contributing to overloading the search engine as well. Instead the change should have just added a line like when you follow a redirect and it says redirected from X, to have an option of a fulltext search. Or you could add separate search and go buttons to Vector. What's more it doesn't work per my WP:USA search example that breaks the search engine. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 08:10, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- I also think it's an annoying change, but many users didn't know how to make a full-text search when there is a pagename match. The current WP:USA error is general for full-text searches. You encounter the error due to the change, but it isn't caused by the change. With JavaScript enabled I get "An error has occurred while searching: The search backend returned an error:", whether I select "containing..." or use Special:Search or click "Search" in the above box, or click https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3A&search=WP%3AUSA&fulltext=Search. It also happens for all other tested namespace:USA searches, for example talk:USA, portal:USA, category:USA. In past periods I have gotten that error message for a lot of searches, but it varies. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:04, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
-
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- Except now I, and people like me, will never find out if such a page exists, because the search engine is broken. It effectively ceases to exist, since no results occur. All such pages disappear from existence to all users who end up at the searchpage. So the new "feature" is a bug, since it makes finding some pages impossible. If the change were instead instituted as a pair of buttons on Vector, one for search and one for go, then this problem wouldn't be a problem. And acessing fulltext search could be expressed in a different manner, as I suggested, it could look like following a redirect, where small text indicates you followed a redirect, instead small text would indicate "To search for alternate topics, click here" or somesuch. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 04:50, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
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- The current error message on full-text search of WP:USA is a bug, but normally you are told of a pagename match in bold above the search results. For example, WP:VPT gives me: There is a page named "Wikipedia:VPT" on Wikipedia. This feature is case sensitive after the first letter but if you searched on another letter case then the first search result should normally be the page when it has been indexed by search – usually within a day. I also think there should be a Go option somewhere users can find. Here is one they wouldn't find but you can bookmark it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Your_first_article#Title_for_your_new_article. You can also add
?useskin=monobook
to any page, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BlankPage?useskin=monobook. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- The current error message on full-text search of WP:USA is a bug, but normally you are told of a pagename match in bold above the search results. For example, WP:VPT gives me: There is a page named "Wikipedia:VPT" on Wikipedia. This feature is case sensitive after the first letter but if you searched on another letter case then the first search result should normally be the page when it has been indexed by search – usually within a day. I also think there should be a Go option somewhere users can find. Here is one they wouldn't find but you can bookmark it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Your_first_article#Title_for_your_new_article. You can also add
-
-
fixing archive oddity
Currently there exist 2 archive pages of the "Talk:Transistor" page -- Talk:Transistor/archive and Talk:Transistor/Archive 1. Alas, the page Talk:Transistor only links to 1 of them.
What can I do to fix this? --DavidCary (talk) 19:19, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Talk:Transistor/Archive 1 to Talk:Transistor/Archive 2 and Talk:Transistor/archive to Talk:Transistor/Archive 1 - this has got them into a consistent sequence; and then I made two cleanup edits. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:53, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- I went and checked the contributions of the person who created that archive to find out if they had made any other similarly misnamed archives. Due to the discrepancy between the number of bytes removed from the transistor talk page and the size of the archive (which can be accounted for by the move of some text from the main talk page to Talk:History of the transistor), I examined their archival edit to the main transistor talk page, and discovered that there was yet another missing archive at Talk:Transistor 1. It was later deleted as an orphaned talk page, so I've restored it and moved it to Talk:Transistor/Archive 1, necessitating yet another renumbering of the transistor talk page archives. Just letting you all know because this operation has broken most of the links in the above posts. Graham87 12:10/12:30, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- OK, I needed to make one more cleanup edit. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:35, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Done It looks like only the second of these was bot-created, the first being from manual archiving, so I moved - I went and checked the contributions of the person who created that archive to find out if they had made any other similarly misnamed archives. Due to the discrepancy between the number of bytes removed from the transistor talk page and the size of the archive (which can be accounted for by the move of some text from the main talk page to Talk:History of the transistor), I examined their archival edit to the main transistor talk page, and discovered that there was yet another missing archive at Talk:Transistor 1. It was later deleted as an orphaned talk page, so I've restored it and moved it to Talk:Transistor/Archive 1, necessitating yet another renumbering of the transistor talk page archives. Just letting you all know because this operation has broken most of the links in the above posts. Graham87 12:10/12:30, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
Problem with subst-ing template multi-move
Hello.
I was trying to propose a multi-move at Talk:Alpine skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics – Men's Super-G. When I subst-ed the multi-move template, I got an error message telling me that parameter current1 should be Alpine skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics – Men's Super-G, and nothing else. It was; I copy-pasted it several times just to be sure. Finally, I had to empty the parameter – not remove it, as the error message suggested – and then it worked. Is there a bug somewhere? Does this have anything to do with the endashes in the article title? I tried to replace the endashes with &endash;
, but it didn't help.
HandsomeFella (talk) 22:26, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
- The documentation at {{Move-multi}} says:
- See also Template talk:Move-multi#Current page? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:24, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- Ok, thanks. But this bug must have been "introduced" in some new release. I have proposed similar multi-moves before, for instance this one a year ago. There were no such problems then. Also, the error message should say that the parameter should be empty, not omitted. If I remember correctly, omitting the parameter didn't work properly.
- HandsomeFella (talk) 07:06, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
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- I've just written Module:Move-multi, which fixes this bug and removes the 30-page limit. You can test it out using {{subst:move-multi/sandbox}}. Unless anyone spots any problems with it in the next day or so, I plan on replacing the existing template with it. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:44, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- Also, Wbm1058 will probably want to look at this, seeing as RMCD bot uses this template. I've kept the formatting very close to the current template, save from tweaking a couple of the error messages, so hopefully there won't be any issues. It can't hurt to have more people take a look at it, though. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:59, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
-
-
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- Omitted and empty current1 both work in my tests of the existing template version. The check of current1 was added in August 2012.[7]. Your example is from February 2013 but didn't trigger the bug because it had no apostrophe or other problematic character in current1. It used the pagename at the time and said
current1=2008–09 Speed Skating World Cup/100 m Men
. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:56, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- Omitted and empty current1 both work in my tests of the existing template version. The check of current1 was added in August 2012.[7]. Your example is from February 2013 but didn't trigger the bug because it had no apostrophe or other problematic character in current1. It used the pagename at the time and said
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- Geesh. The documentation says: Specification of parameter current1 is unnecessary and optional. I would really like to deprecate this parameter. My longer-term goal was to merge {{Move-multi}} into {{requested move}}, but the clunky coding to support 30 pages was impeding my plans. Lua-coding to support 30+ pages seems like a good idea. What I really want to do is make parameter {{{new1}}} an alternative way for specifying the unnamed parameter {{{1}}} of {{move}}. It will probably be some time before I take the time to learn Lua. I would rather see one module Module:Move that supports both {{move}} and {{move-multi}} rather than have redundant error-checking being done in two different languages which will be prone to logic-forking. I won't be supporting that. Someone should test by submitting some actual move requests using the sandbox template before turning it live. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:57, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
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- Interesting thoughts. None of that will be too hard to put in the current module - the hard work is done already. I'll have a go at adding it in now. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:16, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
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- I've now updated the module to handle {{requested move}}, and consequently I've renamed it to Module:Requested move. You can test out the new code with {{subst:requested move/sandbox}}. I've also had a new idea for the module, but VPT isn't really the place for it, so I've started a new thread at Template talk:Requested move#Lua conversion. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 16:01, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
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Help Desk archives not updating links properly
Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 February 10 and Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2014 February 11 are both linking to the Current Help Desk, even though there is at least one page already archived between each of those and the first page that, while archived, is still transcluded.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:58, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- No response, but the problem appears to be fixed.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:56, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- Next time you see this problem, try purging the page and it should come right. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:18, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- I've been given this advice before. I actually tried it today with a red link and it turned purple. Thanks.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:01, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Substituting inside includeonly tags
Is there a way to substitute templates and magic words inside <includeonly>
tags, such as here (where the templates should have expanded to generate a sort key but didn't)? This archived discussion is about the same issue but doesn't give a solution. SiBr4 (talk) 21:54, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
If that's not possible, I think I'll have to avoid using includeonly and use tricks like this instead. SiBr4 (talk) 12:13, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- Here's one way to get it working: replace the initial
<includeonly>
tag with "{{subst:includeonly|
". Replace the closing</includeonly>
tag with "}}
". Substitution will work normally between these. The{{subst:includeonly}}
template itself expands back into regular<includeonly>...</includeonly>
when you save. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:12, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
iPhone search options not working
A few months ago I noticed that while typing items into the search box on the "web version" of Wikipedia that it no longer gives me a list of options from what I am typing. For example, before the problem, I would start typing the word "New" and I would get options like "New York" and "New Orleans" that I could click on instead of needing to type in the entire phrase.
I have experienced this on multiple iPhones, logged in and not, so I know it's not just me. This does not appear to be a problem with the iPad or with other mobile devices, only on the iPhone. Nor does it happen while using the "mobile version" of Wikipedia. It also does this on wifi and on the cell network.
With nearly half of all US smart phone users owning iPhones, this may be a problem that affects quite a few people. Any thought?JOJ Hutton 22:03, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- Confirming this. Search suggestions don't appear when using the Wikipedia desktop site in Safari on my iphone 4, although they do appear for the mobile site. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:37, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- This is intentional. iPhone and iPad are on the blacklist. I do remember that a while ago the blacklist wasn't working for a few months. If it's on the blacklist, then that is probably because it is broken in some versions of iOS. So to enable this feature, we would need to investigate from which Safari iOS version this feature works. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:28, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
How do I retrieve a specific short sequence from Special:Contributions?
I can do it from a page history [8], but I want to list a user's contributions to this project over a specific period. Can I do that using Special:Contributions? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:53, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- You can indeed, and it has the exact same syntax as doing it from the page history. Just alter the "offset" and "limit" fields in the URL, like this. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 07:05, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you Mr Strad. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Link not showing on iPhone
An expert in mobile.css would be appreciated at Template talk:Redirect#Template not working on iphone. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:35, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
"Typography refresh" beta feature changes the appearance of TOC?
Somewhere higher on this page we learned that the "Typography refresh" beta feature no long changes the "max-width" of the content. However, it seems that now it does something else instead: it changes the appearance of "Table of content". To view it, go to any page with TOC, enable and disable this beta feature (Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures), and notice the change in TOC appearance.
It does not seem obvious why "Typography refresh" should change aspects of the UI and appearance which are not related to fonts. Maybe the name of this beta preference should change to "Page design improvements" or something, or, alternatively, maybe the "Typography refresh" project and team should just leave the page design alone, and concentrate on "Typography refresh". peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:29, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- You can review the VectorBeta CSS here. And we get fat quotes on blockquotes. -- Gadget850 talk 00:52, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- "vectorbeta" makes sense. "Typography refresh" does not. inasmuch as there is a "vectorbeta" project, it should be marked as "vector beta", and this way it won't surprise those who enable it in their "beta" preferences. it's always a bad idea to call something one name while it means something completely different. it's deceiving, and it does not promote trust. if there is a project to revamp the UI, it should say so. my guess is that if this was marked "vector beta" in the first place, people would not make so much noise about the asinine decision to limit the width to 750px (or whatever it was). when you call something "Typography refresh", i think you should better limit what this something does to the vicinity of fonts. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 01:32, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- The discussion page for this (linked from the preference) is at mw:Talk:Typography Refresh. There is more discussion there about the TOC and more. TL;DR: I think you're probably right. Eventually just migrating the TOC and other changes to a "Vector beta" feature instead of "Typography Refresh" should be done. Repeating this feedback on the Talk page on mediawiki.org will help the UX designers hear that. ;) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:34, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- "vectorbeta" makes sense. "Typography refresh" does not. inasmuch as there is a "vectorbeta" project, it should be marked as "vector beta", and this way it won't surprise those who enable it in their "beta" preferences. it's always a bad idea to call something one name while it means something completely different. it's deceiving, and it does not promote trust. if there is a project to revamp the UI, it should say so. my guess is that if this was marked "vector beta" in the first place, people would not make so much noise about the asinine decision to limit the width to 750px (or whatever it was). when you call something "Typography refresh", i think you should better limit what this something does to the vicinity of fonts. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 01:32, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Commons.js
Is this something new that I've missed? It seems I can put code into Special:MyPage/common.js now and the JavaScript will apply regardless of the skin I'm using or the browser modifications that I have, so long as JS is enabled. I thought it was the case that I originally had to specify the skin I'm using when putting JS code in, like Special:MyPage/vector.js or Special:MyPage/monobook.js. When did common.js make such practices obsolete? TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 09:54, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- It's not obsolete. Common.js applies to all skins, but you can still use skin-specific code in vector/monobook.js/css, which is especially usefull for CSS. But if you only use one skin, then just use common.js/css. — Edokter (talk) — 12:11, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- It has been there for years. It's called "Shared CSS/JavaScript for all skins" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:46, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- It was introduced three years ago with mw:MediaWiki 1.17 in February 2011 (the earliest mentions on this page are in Archive 87 of March 2011 but serious discussion doesn't occur until Archive 88); since then the links have been shown at Preferences → Appearance as "Shared CSS/JavaScript for all skins: Custom CSS Custom JavaScript". More at bugzilla:10183. Please note that the file names begin "common", not "commons"; that is, the links are to Special:MyPage/common.css and Special:MyPage/common.js --Redrose64 (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Confusing error message
I was just asked why an article was giving the error message "Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page)." I was told that the help page wasn't helpful. No wonder, since the error was simply a missing </ref>. Can this be fixed? It's pointing people in the wrong direction. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 10:15, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- The example was [9]. The error message links to Help:Cite errors/Cite error refs without references which lists several possibilities including the one in the example:
- Sometimes the reference list markup exists, but the message is shown because the
<ref>
tag immediately before the reference list markup does not have a closing</ref>
or it is malformed, thus hiding the rest of the text in the article, including the reference list. If this is the case, find the last<ref>
tag and ensure it is properly closed with</ref>
.
- I don't think it's possible for the software to distinguish between this and other possibilities, but maybe the help page could be improved. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Universal Language Selector will be enabled by default again on this wiki by 21 February 2014
On January 21 2014 the MediaWiki extension Universal Language Selector (ULS) was disabled on this wiki. A new preference was added for logged-in users to turn on ULS. This was done to prevent slow loading of pages due to ULS webfonts, a behaviour that had been observed by the Wikimedia Technical Operations team on some wikis.
We are now ready to enable ULS again. The temporary preference to enable ULS will be removed. A new checkbox has been added to the Language Panel to enable/disable font delivery. This will be unchecked by default for this wiki, but can be selected at any time by the users to enable webfonts. This is an interim solution while we improve the feature of webfonts delivery.
You can read the announcement and the development plan for more information. Apologies for writing this message only in English. Thank you. Runa —Preceding undated comment added 12:30, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- This means that most of ULS will come back soon, but webfonts (is anyone here looking for OpenDyslexic?) will need to specifically be enabled by each user. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:21, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Raw LilyPond score problem
Hello everyone!
I have a big problem with translating File:Bach-raison-passacaglias.gif to LilyPond markup in <score> tag, provided in mw:Extension:Score. I try to use all features of LilyPond by enabling {{{raw}}}
param, however I get:
I don't understand, I even disabled MIDI file generation (which is disabled by default).
Here's my code:
<score lang="lilypond" raw="1" midi="0"> \score { \new Staff \relative g, { \clef bass \key g \major \repeat unfold 2 { g16( d' b') a b d, b' d, } | \repeat unfold 2 { g,16( e' c') b c e, c' e, } | } } \score { \new Staff \relative b { \clef bass \key g \major \partial 16 b16 | <g, d' b'~>4 b'16 a( g fis) g( d e fis) g( a b c) | d16( b g fis) g( e d c) b(c d e) fis( g a b) | } } </score>
Thanks in advance for help. --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 18:27, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- I can get it to work with the following changes: (i) omit the
raw="1"
(ii) remove the second\score {
and the}
immediately preceding (iii) alter the first\score {
to<<
(iv) alter the last}
to>>
--Redrose64 (talk) 19:52, 19 February 2014 (UTC)- Could you post your code here please? --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 20:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
-
<score lang="lilypond" midi="0">
<<
\new Staff \relative g, {
\clef bass
\key g \major
\repeat unfold 2 { g16( d' b') a b d, b' d, } |
\repeat unfold 2 { g,16( e' c') b c e, c' e, } |
}
\new Staff \relative b {
\clef bass
\key g \major
\partial 16 b16 |
<g, d' b'~>4 b'16 a( g fis) g( d e fis) g( a b c) |
d16( b g fis) g( e d c) b(c d e) fis( g a b) |
}
>>
</score>
-
- Could you post your code here please? --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 20:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you, but your output is a little different than expected above. See the first example which uses \score param, so full LilyPond markup is needed. --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 22:11, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- I don't know. The extension was written by GrafZahl (talk · contribs) who is probably a much better person to ask. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:21, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
- The thing I'm most confused about here is that Rezonansowy's code is producing output completely different from File:Bach-raison-passacaglias.gif: different time signature, different key signature, different number of parts... Rezonansowy, did you link to the wrong file? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- @Mr. Stradivarius: No, this code is taken from LilyPond free documentation, I only have to change notes. But the problem occurs when I use
{{{\score}}}
form full LilyPond functionality, it supported (see its doc) by setting{{{raw}}}
to 1, but I get error about MIDI, even if I disable MIDI generation. --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 12:45, 20 February 2014 (UTC)- It appears that the MIDI file is generated and expected even if 'midi="0"' is passed in the tag (and actually, it appears that's the default). If you're doing raw lilypond, you need to include \layout and \midi so a PNG and a MIDI file get output for MediaWiki to find, and you'll probably also want a \header too to keep it from making a full-page image. Something like this:
- HTH. Anomie⚔ 22:41, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 17:46, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- It appears that the MIDI file is generated and expected even if 'midi="0"' is passed in the tag (and actually, it appears that's the default). If you're doing raw lilypond, you need to include \layout and \midi so a PNG and a MIDI file get output for MediaWiki to find, and you'll probably also want a \header too to keep it from making a full-page image. Something like this:
- @Mr. Stradivarius: No, this code is taken from LilyPond free documentation, I only have to change notes. But the problem occurs when I use
- The thing I'm most confused about here is that Rezonansowy's code is producing output completely different from File:Bach-raison-passacaglias.gif: different time signature, different key signature, different number of parts... Rezonansowy, did you link to the wrong file? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- I don't know. The extension was written by GrafZahl (talk · contribs) who is probably a much better person to ask. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:21, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Should c: be added as an interwiki link for Commons?
On Meta, an RfC has been opened to discuss whether c: should be added as an interwiki link prefix for Commons. The RfC was originally run in 2011 and met a positive response, but was not well-attended. Following concerns of some editors here that it was insufficient to demonstrate broad consensus across projects for the feature, it has now been reopened to attract more discussion.
A related discussion is underway at RfD regarding several existing redirects beginning with "C:" that could clash with this development if cross-project consensus is found for its implementation. — Scott • talk 22:44, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
WP:MULTI, people; please discuss at meta:Requests for comment/Wikimedia Commons#2014 RfC |
---|
|
Babel categories
Please can editors familiar with the Wikipedia:Babel comment at Template talk:Babel#Capitalisation_of_categories?
I have been trying to sort of the capitalisation of some categories, but have realised that the issues are a little more complex than first appeared. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:14, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Disable sortability in selected wikitable columns
Is there a way to disable the sortability on selected columns in wikitables? If so, how? Thanks, Rehman 12:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- A considerable amount of information about setting up sorting in tables is available at Help:Sorting. Your specific question is covered at Help:Sorting#Making a column unsortable, which has an example. You define the column as
class="unsortable"
. Makyen (talk) 13:18, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Importing some images
I'm pretty sure the images on this page are in the public domain by this time, and I'd like to use them to illustrate the article on billet reading. I'm at a loss how to extract them though. Normally I simply Copy and Paste into "Preview", but that doesn't work in this case. Can someone extract these for me? Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:14, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- I don't know how to extract them directly but you could make a screenshot. If you have Windows then you probably have Snipping Tool in a menu somewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:11, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- At least on Windows, images from sections of the page can be easily copied by downloading the PDF file and opening it using Adobe Reader (I only tested on version XI, but other versions have worked previously). You can left click to select the sub-image you desire, then right click, or Ctrl-C, to copy the image to the clipboard. It can then be pasted into a image viewer/editor (e.g. irfanview). Makyen (talk) 00:08, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Quick request
Would anyone be able to fix what I clearly messed up in this sandbox? As part of changing the links to a more reliable page (labs), the whole template needs reformatting, so if anyone could fix my mistake(s), that would be great, as it really shouldn't amount to much. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:13, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- Each of the
{{#if}}
parser functions used for the "quick check" links was missing two closing brackets, which caused the entire message box to break. I think I've fixed that with this edit. Could you check whether the template now behaves like it should? SiBr4 (talk) 21:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)- It looks awesome, so thanks for the help! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Why doesn't it leave redirects from .js pages on rename?
I just renamed @Gary King: and it didn't leave redirects from his .js pages and the like. Is that intended behaviour, and isn't that going to break a lot of user scripts? (e.g. User:Gary King/comments in local time.js) –xenotalk 22:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think redirects work on .js pages. And yeah, that's gonna break some userscripts. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 22:40, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- Redirects don't work on .js pages, so MediaWiki doesn't try to create them (anymore?). The scripts would be broken either way. Anomie⚔ 22:44, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
- I know JS redirects used to work, not sure if something changed recently. Werieth (talk) 23:16, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- JS redirects may have worked at one time, but I've never seen it. Xeno, what I usually do if I move one of my scripts to a different sub-page and there are still people using it at the old location is just import the new location from the old. So, on User:Gary King/comments in local time.js, you might put
importScript( 'User:Gary/comments in local time.js' );
-
- Ah yes, that would be an elegant solution. Perhaps @Gary: will implement it. –xenotalk 23:33, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- Xeno, that is not Gary's userspace anymore and he will not have access to that userjs as he is not an administrator (according to his user page). An admin will need to put that there, perhaps Redrose64 would be so kind? — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 02:38, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) A
#REDIRECT [[...]]
on a .js page has not worked to redirect a link for at least as long as I've been aware that the possibility existed - over four years. Quite simply, the#REDIRECT
is not a valid javascript statement. This is why an admin who moves a .js page should deselect "Leave a redirect behind". If you want to simulate a redirect, useimportscript
as noted above. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)-
- Added the
importscript
as suggested above. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 02:45, 21 February 2014 (UTC) - "Leave a redirect behind" is automatically deselected and cannot be selected when admins move .js and .css pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:19, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- Added the
-
- JS redirects may have worked at one time, but I've never seen it. Xeno, what I usually do if I move one of my scripts to a different sub-page and there are still people using it at the old location is just import the new location from the old. So, on User:Gary King/comments in local time.js, you might put
- MediaWiki:Movepagetext-noredirectfixer displays the same redirect claim for .js moves as other moves. Maybe we should add a pagename check and display a correct message for .js and .css. We could even display code you can add to the old title to import the new title. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:12, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- Consider also adding a mw.log.warn( 'Please update your scripts to load X instead of Y' ) call to the old page name so users are notified of the change and can update their scripts to avoid making an extra HTTP request. Helder.wiki 12:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- The default MediaWiki message (currently seen at MediaWiki:Movepagetext-noredirectfixer/en-gb) also makes the false redirect claim for .js and .css, so maybe it should be reported somewhere (not by me). PrimeHunter (talk) 03:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) MediaWiki:Movepagetext-noredirectfixer/en-gb is not customised for this Wikipedia; whereas MediaWiki:Movepagetext-noredirectfixer/en has been customised. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Strange problem with "GA nominee" template?
If you'll take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_development_program&oldid=596357499, another user had inserted the {{GA nominee}} template onto the talk page, which caused the TOC to disappear. A cursory glance at the code on the talk page and at the template didn't reveal any problems, but perhaps I missed something. Things are fine right now, as I just forced the TOC with the magic word. Still, the underlying problem should probably be found, if possible. Thanks! — Huntster (t @ c) 05:41, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- It isn't caused by {{GA nominee}} but by {{Box-header}} which inserts
__NOTOC__
unless the parameterTOC
is set to non-empty. This is only documented on Template talk:Box-header. It should probably also be on the template page. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:54, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Malware on Template talk:Did you know placed by an IP address
Please see Template talk:Did you know. Under Feb 20 there is a nomination template called The Psycoexwife placed there by an IP address. If you open the template, it's a redirect page to an external website. Can this please be removed? — Maile (talk) 13:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- As of this time of writing, I see it, but it appears legit. It's an article, but an orphan, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThePsychoExWife.com
- Are you sure it's malware, or are just suspicious? meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 13:12, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- What you're seeing is not the redirect page. The redirect page is not a Wikipedia page, but an external website spam or some kind of hoax, with lots of Asian-type graphics on it. And the url for it is The PsychoExWife.com. In fact, just the way the Wikipedia page has the ".com" in the title should indicate that. It's not the link to the Wikipedia page that is the redirect. It's the template itself, and it doesn't happen instantly. I clicked on the "Review or comment" link on its place in the Nominations page. That action is supposed to open the edit window on an individual nomination template, which it did except the template was blank. It was supposed to show the actual template nomination text for editing. Without closing that, and thinking it was a harmless fluke, I opened a different browser window and went to Wikipedia talk: Did You Know. Then I came back to the window with the nomination template, and it was on the external website.— Maile (talk) 13:31, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- The blank page was probably because the DYK nomination was originally at Template talk:Did you know nominations/ThePsychoExWife.com rather than Template:Did you know nominations/ThePsychoExWife.com. I have no idea why you might have wound up elsewhere or where exactly you might have ended up. Anomie⚔ 13:47, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- What you're seeing is not the redirect page. The redirect page is not a Wikipedia page, but an external website spam or some kind of hoax, with lots of Asian-type graphics on it. And the url for it is The PsychoExWife.com. In fact, just the way the Wikipedia page has the ".com" in the title should indicate that. It's not the link to the Wikipedia page that is the redirect. It's the template itself, and it doesn't happen instantly. I clicked on the "Review or comment" link on its place in the Nominations page. That action is supposed to open the edit window on an individual nomination template, which it did except the template was blank. It was supposed to show the actual template nomination text for editing. Without closing that, and thinking it was a harmless fluke, I opened a different browser window and went to Wikipedia talk: Did You Know. Then I came back to the window with the nomination template, and it was on the external website.— Maile (talk) 13:31, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Wanted: Gadget
I would like a way to change the "Edit this page" tab to a more concise "Edit". Werieth (talk) 15:08, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- The default Vector skin says Edit so I guess you have MonoBook. Try this in Special:MyPage/monobook.js:
var tablink = document.getElementById('ca-edit').getElementsByTagName('a')[0]; tablink.firstChild.nodeValue = 'edit';
- PrimeHunter (talk) 15:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- Do you have Visual Editor enabled in your preferences? That may change the name of tags I've used jquery in my Special:MyPage/skin.js to set things to just how I want them
jQuery( document ).ready( function( $ ) { // Paste jQuery snippet heres $('li#ca-edit a').html('Edit'); // change label for wikitext edit tab $('li#ca-ve-edit a').html('VE edit'); // change label for visualEditor edit tab $('.mw-editsection a:nth-child(2)' ).html('Edit'); // change label for wikitext section edits links $('.mw-editsection-visualeditor').html('VE edit'); // change label for visualEditor section edit links $('.mw-editsection-bracket').css('display','none'); // Don't display [ ] square brackets for section edits // $('.mw-editsection-divider').css('display','none'); // Don't display the | divider for section edits (commented out) $('#firstHeading .mw-editsection-visualeditor').css('display','none'); // Don't display the section 0 VE edit link which is broken $('#firstHeading .mw-editsection-divider').css('display','none'); // Don't display the divider for section zero } );
-
- You can do things either using PrimeHunters methods or jquery.--Salix alba (talk): 15:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- This simplest way I can think of is a nice elegant jQuery command in your Special:MyPage/skin.js like:
$('#ca-edit a').text('Edit');
-
- Happy editing! — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 15:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Tools link
I would like to add a link, similar to the user, talk, and contributions links, at the top of each page I display when logged in, to go to a user subpage which would have a variety of convenience links. What would be the best way to add such a link? Assume the page is User:DESiegel/Tools. DES (talk) 16:17, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- So, what you went is your own TW style dropdown of custom links? It will require a custom userscript if that is the case. If you just wanted a link to take you directly to User:DESiegel/Tools from any page, it would be a one-line command like:
mw.util.addPortletLink('p-views', '/wiki/User:DESiegel/Tools', 'p-DEStools', 'Go to [[User:DESiegel/Tools]]');
- As far as the personal dropdown goes, I'm not sure if that is part of MediaWiki:Gadget-morebits.js or not, but I'm guessing @This, that and the other, Azatoth, Amalthea: would probably know and be able to help you. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 16:33, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- You are missing ')' and the link isn't made in the requested place. Try this:
mw.util.addPortletLink('p-personal', mw.util.wikiGetlink('User:DESiegel/Tools'), 'Tools', 'pt-DEStools', 'Go to User:DESiegel/Tools', null, '#pt-preferences');
- PrimeHunter (talk) 16:50, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you I just want one link, not a drop-down, at least not yet. Which special page should the above code go into please? DES (talk) 17:02, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- @@PrimeHunter, Technical 13: DES (talk) 17:04, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- Special:MyPage/common.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:07, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- (edit conflict × 2) You were right PrimeHunter about the missing ')', and I've added it. I also misread the request thinking they wanted a tab like [User][Talk][Edit][History]... Lastly, DES, I would probably suggest putting it on your skin.js. When you do, don't forget that you will probably need to WP:BYPASS. Happy editing! — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 17:08, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Thank you very much, PrimeHunter, and Technical 13 that worked just as I had in mind. Now there is no need for me to clutter up my talk page with my list of tools, and I can feel easier making the list longer. I should have thought of this and asked about it long ago. DES (talk) 17:14, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- Please note the "wikiGetlink()" is deprecated, and you should use "getUrl()" instead. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:41, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
-
-
WikiLove seems broken
Was there a change to the WikiLove extension that just got deployed this week? Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiLove#WikiLove seems broken for details and comment there. Thank you. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 20:40, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Amendment to the Terms of Use
Setting a max-width for the vector skin + centered layout
Hi,
Is there a CSS expert that could help me with this? I need to set a maximum width for the vector skin and center its layout (see the following image).
With Monobook, the code was the following:
#globalWrapper { max-width: 1140px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; } #column-one { position: relative !important; }
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
--Lorangeo (talk) 23:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
- The following works for me:
body { max-width: 1140px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; position: relative; }
- You can use the same trick on almost all well-designed websites, I believe. Vector is not very well-designed ;), so you need one more little hack (otherwise the search suggestions are misaligned – you might need to tweak the value of "16px" depending on various factors, sadly):
.suggestions { right: 16px !important; }
(edit conflict) Try this:
#bodyContent { max-width: 800px !important; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; }
-- Gadget850 talk 00:24, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- That's not valid CSS, Gadget850. It would be fine without that first line. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 17:52, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thank you. Matma Rex gave the good solution (whole layout centered). I came to the same solution as you, but I didn't know where to put the relative positioning property. I hope this will be supported on most modern browsers. --Lorangeo (talk) 00:38, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Undoing edits on multiple pages at once?
A registered user has added a category to about 40 pages and I believe the addition has been made in error (though in good-faith). Is it possible to remove the category from all 40 pages without performing an "undo" on each page separately?Sxg169 (talk) 02:19, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- see cat-a-lot on WP:US. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 04:16, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Replace old stats.grok.se with wikiviewstats
WP:Stats.grok has its successor - Wiki ViewStats on wmflabs. What can I say, it's better, much better! Please comment if you agree with me. --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 10:02, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- Oppose until such time as Wikiviewstats has the seven years + of stored hits that stats.grok does. That is important for researchers as well, and we should not get rid of it. Last I checked, wikiviewstats purges the data every 3 months or so. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:07, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- Oppose as well for now. Last time I checked, Wikiviewstats wasn't even working and still has no API. It would need to be working before it can replace anything, it needs to have an API like stats does so that information there can be retrieved with userscripts onwiki, and yeah, it should have a decent chunk of historical data. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 13:48, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- Oppose "tools.wmflabs.org" fails all the time and is unreliable..and also, stats.grok's simplicity and longevity is its best feature...would support the option to add a link to wikiviewstats on history pages for 'advanced' users--Stemoc (talk) 14:01, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- Oppose as well, at least when it comes to replacing stats.grok; would support adding a link in addition to stats.grok.se. For now, there are in my opinion far too many issues with tools.wmflabs.org and thus Wiki ViewStats and the information is not kept quite long enough for various purposes. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 14:31, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- Comment Wiki ViewStats is working and is a far superior tool than stats.grok will ever be. stats.grok is constantly missing data and has lower than actual page stats when compared with the actual dump and as Henrik is absent the majority of the time, issues and errors with it are rarely fixed properly if at all. Wiki ViewStats however has been designed as a 90 day rolling stat service not a permanent record which means its not suitable as a permanent replacement. Someone however will have to come up with a replacement at some point as this is likely to pack in at some point as Henrik goes absent. I would however say the people opposing because of unreliability of Labs isn't really a valid reason to oppose, Labs is the replacement for tool server provided by the WMF and we don't have much choice in the matter, although it is more reliable than tool server is at present. I see no reason why both cant be on offer especially to experienced users.Blethering Scot 17:08, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- I have nothing against Labs as a tool, or at least nothing that cannot be fixed. I just find it ridiculous that we want to lose 7 years + of archives willy-nilly. Historical page views are necessary for research, to follow on-Wiki trends, and if Labs is purging their archive every month or so then that is going to cause severe damage to research into Wikipedia. Migrate the archives, and I'll be liable to support. Otherwise Labs is just a shiny tool which does not recognize the importance of history. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:59, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- You don't seem to be able to separate Labs from Wiki ViewStats. WikiViewStats runs on Labs, it isn't Labs. No one has suggested losing any history not even me. The issue is that Stats.grok is becoming more and more unreliable, and as he becomes less active it's only going to get worse providing users links to both provides no issues whatsoever. Nobody loses history already in Stats.grok it will always be there, well until it dies from no maintenance which is a distinct possibility. Anyone is welcome to preempt that happening and create a new tool and migrate data.Blethering Scot 12:12, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- WT:DYK has come up with a proposal to use both systems together. I think that this would be the best of both worlds as it retains the system that works while also giving the option to use the new one. I personally prefer stats.grok but I think that using both would please the majority. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 18:28, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Experimenting with a new template?
I'm making some significant modifications to Template:Infobox river. So naturally I created a working copy in my sandbox: User:scs/Sandbox/Template Infobox river. To test it, I'm temporarily transcluding it from a few actual river articles, e.g. Little Bighorn River. Is this wrong? Is there a better way? (I'm half-remembering a rule against transcluding userspace templates from article space, which if so I'm breaking. I know I could create scratch copies of the river articles themselves, and in fact I did start with User:scs/Sandbox/Hoosic River, but it's a nuisance to do for the multiple articles one wants to test on to ensure functionality in all use cases.) —Steve Summit (talk) 14:55, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- TESTCASES — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 15:04, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) The usual way to do this is with /testcases pages. You could put your proposed template code in Template:Infobox river/sandbox, and create some tests at Template:Infobox river/testcases. See WP:TESTCASES for instructions, and see Template:Infobox person/testcases for an example. Also, you might find {{testcase table}} useful, as it avoids you having to type in the template code twice. I don't recall there being an actual rule against transcluding userspace sandboxes in mainspace, but I wouldn't do it myself. I think it's better to test pages elsewhere, and use the code in articles only when it's ready. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:08, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- See if Special:TemplateSandbox does what you want. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:04, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- WP:UP#Userspace and mainspace expressly forbids the linking of user pages from articles. By extension, the transclusion into articles of pages in user space is also prohibited. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:40, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- No longer implicitly by extension. I've edited it to make it explicit. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 20:29, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, everybody.
- Thanks for the information about testing templates -- I didn't know any of this. (In particular, Special:TemplateSandbox and {{Test-mode}} look especially useful. Kudos to whichever mediawiki devs conceived, implemented, and deployed those powerful features.)
- All five river articles that were temporarily transcluding the userspace sandbox copy of the template are now pointing back at the official template, which now has the new, tested changes.
—Steve Summit (talk) 13:19, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- Steve, I believe that was Brad Jorsch that wrote the TemplateSandbox extension. Your thanks go to him. That's great that you fixed the pages back to the real template and updated the code. :) Happy editing! — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 13:51, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- Note the idea for TemplateSandbox wasn't mine, I just implemented it. And {{test-mode}} is entirely someone else's doing. Anomie⚔ 17:46, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- Your modesty is appreciated, but as a software engineer myself, let me just say that I know both how fabulously useful design for testability techniques can be, and also how tantalizingly difficult it can be to find the wherewithal to actually get them implemented. So thanks again. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:45, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- Note the idea for TemplateSandbox wasn't mine, I just implemented it. And {{test-mode}} is entirely someone else's doing. Anomie⚔ 17:46, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Linux issues
Troll. Nothing to see here. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:10, 23 February 2014 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Just to let you guys know that the new version of Linux has a bit of trouble viewing the screen resolution in Wikipedia. Wrong ratios, wrong everything. --Civivlaospei (talk) 21:17, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
|
What is Delivery of "Popular pages tool update" to...
I see "Mass Media Log Delivery of "Popular pages tool update" to (all project names) was skipped because target was in a namespace that cannot be posted in" Fine, but other than skipping the projects, what is the popular pages tool update? — Maile (talk) 23:36, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
- Similar discussion -- Wikipedia talk:Mass message senders#Undelivered messages - Wikipedia talk: namespace. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 23:40, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Gremlins?
In the last two weeks, I've had two users new of my script enquiring about loading problems. They describe a sequence of events that seem improbable, given that my script has been well tested and any fatal bugs rapidly patched, and I cannot replicate the loading problems within my own userspace. The script seems to behave inconsistently between vector.js and monobook.js environments. First was this. The script didn't work in vector but was eventually made to work in monobook. I never thought the syntax –importScript('PATHNAME.js');
or importScript("PATHNAME.js");
– mattered, as I have both single quotes and double quotes inside my vector file and there are no problems with script importations.
Then, earlier today, another user reported that the script apparently loads, and the sidebar buttons appear, but clicking on it only results only in a new edit summary. Now given that the function that inserts the edit summary of my MOSNUM script is the last to execute, yet earlier-placed functions do not execute on a given article as well; the instruction (i.e. doaction('diff');
) that follows the edit summary insertion is not executed, it seems highly illogical behaviour. Any idea what could be the source of the problem? -- Ohc ¡digame! 00:26, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Mark single pages as visited
Hi all, there is the Mark all pages visited button on the watchlist but does anybody know how I can mark single pages that I have on my watchlist as visited (without actually visiting them)?
I checked the source a little and all what the mentioned button seems to do is calling User::clearAllNotifications()
. There is also User::clearNotification()
which seems to do exactly what I want, but I didn't find a way yet to access this from e.g. user JS.
Any idea how I could get the wanted functionality to e.g. add a "mark visited" button to all history pages? --Patrick87 (talk) 16:06, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- The API has action=setnotificationtimestamp that could be used in a user script for this purpose. Anomie⚔ 17:53, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Where is Mediawiki loading this script?
I'm on Commons, and I have the AjaxQuickDelete script installed. It is here: commons:MediaWiki:Gadget-AjaxQuickDelete.js.
I'd like to make some changes to the script, but I'm in my JavaScript debugger in Chrome, and I cannot find it in the debugger. Here is a list of the scripts which it is loading: http://postimg.org/image/sf6i73lax/.
Please note it is not any of the scripts in green, as those are actually stylesheets. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 18:01, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- It depends on how you load the script. If you have the gadget enabled, it should be delivered through ResourceLoader as one big, combined package (unless you use ?debug=true) coming from bits.wikimedia.org, But if you use importScript from your user space, it is loaded separately (as seen in your screenshot for AjaxSubmit.js at the top). — Edokter (talk) — 18:28, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- ?debug=true is what I needed. Thanks. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 19:14, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Page creator tool
The page creator tool is still down, any idea what is up with it? GiantSnowman 18:41, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- Cyberpower678 would know. πr2 (t • c) 17:35, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Lots of Wikimedia Foundation errors
I have been getting lots of Wikimedia Foundation errors in the last hour or so, nearly every time I load any page. Normally 1 or 2 refreshes makes it go away. Here is one of these:
Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VPT, from 10.128.0.117 via cp1065 cp1065 ([10.64.0.102]:3128), Varnish XID 141763187
Forwarded for: [my IP address], 10.128.0.116, 10.128.0.116, 10.128.0.117
Error: 503, Service Unavailable at Sun, 23 Feb 2014 19:43:27 GMT
This is from western Washington (state):Jay8g [V•T•E] 19:46, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yeah, I'm getting them too. -- Veggies (talk) 19:52, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- I was getting them in the United Kingdom from about 19:00 UTC, for a while no link worked on first click, sometimes it took five or six clicks for a link to succeed. Affected both https: and http: so it wasn't a protocol problem. Seems to be working OK now. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:21, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- The s2 cluster went down, which overwhelmed the rest of the system. It should now be fixed. Ironholds (talk) 01:39, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Apparent ref name and/or ref group name confusion
I was looking at the List of ongoing armed conflicts article with an eye to replacing the {{ref}}/{{note}} bits with {{efn}}s and a {{notelist}} with the notes as list-defined references (besides being arguably neater, the notelist approach would allow named notes to be reused). I ran into some problems. It seems as if either I'm missing something here or there is a reportable bug in here somewhere. Following are some examples simplified from what I was doing in the article to illustrate the problems I think I see (edit this to see the wikitext).
Let's try a simple case:
- ^ ref a body
That looks OK and the forward and back links work as expected.
Let's add a second note with a second ref.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
a
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).- ^ note b body[3]
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "ref_b" is not used in the content (see the help page).
That looks screwed up. It looks like there is some confusion about reference groups. Let's try adding explicit group names to the #tag:refs.
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "b" is not used in the content (see the help page).
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "ref_b" is not used in the content (see the help page).
- ^ ref a body
That also looks screwed up.
If I'm doing something dumb here, I'd appreciate a clue. If not and it looks buggish, perhaps this can be reported.Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:01, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- Attempting to include a nested reference more than once within list-defined references results in a Cite error; see bug 20707 . Depending on how the reference is defined, you can get most any error. -- Gadget850 talk 02:41, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) @Wtmitchell: Nesting <ref>s is basically not supported, there are a few bugs like bug 16330 or bug 20707 reported, but basically this was never intended to work (as you can clearly tell by the fact that just doing <ref><ref></ref></ref> doesn't work, you need to use #tag). Making it work consistently would probably require considerable effort, but I have no detailed knowledge of Cite internals. Filing a bug is never a bad idea anyway :) Matma Rex talk 03:00, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks.
- I'll take a look at bug 20707 and perhaps add something there regarding this. I tend to stay away from WP:Bugzilla because I haven't seen much result from the time I've spent there in the past on other things.
- #tag:ref was among the things I keep at the back of my mind before {{refn}} appeared. I agree that {{refn}} looks less cryptic, though. I'll try to remember to use {{refn}} the next time a need to nest refs comes up.
- Unless I really garbled something, I wasn't attempting to nest <ref>s within <ref>s. I was nesting <ref>s within #tag:refs, as in Help:Footnote#Footnotes: embedding references (which I see now describes {{refn}} -- another reason to use that template).
- Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 07:08, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- I tried to make this work with {{refn}}, but couldn't get that to work either. Anyone interested can edit the wikitext here and see my attempts, which I've commented out to avoid rendering them here. If interested, uncomment to see the renderings and my remarks. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:12, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks.
Difference between revisions pages comment truncation
When editing a Wikipedia article, the user can enter up to 255 characters in the Edit summary. When a reviewer is performing an edit review on a Difference between revisions page, the comment field accepts a comment of up to 255 characters, but only about 85 are accepted; the rest are thrown away without warning. In this edit of February 4 I entered
- supplied reference is dead link. Please omit "th" in dates; just "August 11" not "August 11th".
which was truncated to
- supplied reference is dead link. Please omit "th" in dates; just "August 11" not "August
which is 88 characters; the full edit summary is
- Reverted 2 pending edits by Carissaryy to revision 596521603 by Filedelinkerbot: supplied reference is dead link. Please omit "th" in dates; just "August 11" not "August
which is 169 characters.
In this edit of Troye Sivan I entered
- unexplained removal of add superbowl"; added entries are listed with plural instead
(or possibly something longer), which was truncated to
- unexplained removal of add superbowl"; added entries are listed with plural instea
which is 82 characters; the full edit summary is
- Reverted 2 pending edits by 108.87.26.62 to revision 594895290 by Materialscientist: unexplained removal of add superbowl"; added entries are listed with plural instea
which is 167 characters.
In this edit of War on Women I entered
- OK, but still no basis for saying that Democrats have criticized concept or phrase "War on Women"
which was truncated to
- OK, but still no basis for saying that Democrats have criticized concept or phrase "Wa
which is 86 characters; the full edit summary is
- Reverted 1 pending edit by 2.102.186.164 to revision 595394124 by Anomalocaris: OK, but still no basis for saying that Democrats have criticized concept or phrase "Wa
which is 166 characters.
So I don't know what is the true limiting factor on truncating an edit review comment into an Edit summary, but the limit seems to be effectively about 85 characters.
It is wrong for Wikipedia to accept up to 255 characters and truncate without warning at about 85 characters. —Anomalocaris (talk) 10:09, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- It's not 255 displayed characters, it's 255 bytes of markup. Taking your first example: the actual edit summary was
- the markup for which is
[[Help:Reverting|Reverted]] 2 [[Wikipedia:Pending changes|pending]] edits by [[Special:Contributions/Carissaryy|Carissaryy]] to revision 596521603 by Filedelinkerbot: supplied reference is dead link. Please omit "th" in dates; just "August 11" not "August
- which is exactly 255 bytes. I haven't checked the other two, but I'm sure that the same applies to those. On a minor point: it's not 255 characters but 255 bytes - the difference becomes apparent when you use Unicode characters - an en-dash takes up three times as much space in an edit summary as a hyphen-minus. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:49, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- I've created the subsection Help:Edit summary#The 250 character limit which is perhaps on the technical side, but it's tucked away near the bottom; to avoid confusion I've not altered the earlier mentions of 250 characters on that page, other than to link the first mention to that new subsection. It should suffice for other curious people. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- this used to be a very serious issue for non-latin-script wikis (such as hewiki), esp. the distinction between "255 characters" and "255 bytes". truncated edit summaries were a matter of routine before it was fixed several years ago with the introduction of a special mw JS function ( $.byteLength() ), so now, the summary input will not let the editor overflow the summary. unfortunately, this functionality depends on JS (the summary input always had maxlength=255 attribute, but this does not help much when byte count differs from char count, because it limits characters and not bytes). i am not sure if VE is smart enough to use it, and if these reverts/edits were done using some script, then the script author needs to check the "byteLength" of the summary, and truncate it in a way that makes sense. for JS-less editors, the summary input is still limited to 255 characters (no character is *less* than 1 byte...) but this is of little help for non-latin-script languages. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:26, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- ok, i tested, and VE also safeguards against truncation, and will not let you create summaries longer than 255 bytes. this edit must have been done through some script of bot. please talk with eh script/bot developer about limiting edit summary length to 255 bytes. if it's a tool written in JS, they can use the $.byteLength() function - otherwise they'll have to create their own. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:25, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
-
- this used to be a very serious issue for non-latin-script wikis (such as hewiki), esp. the distinction between "255 characters" and "255 bytes". truncated edit summaries were a matter of routine before it was fixed several years ago with the introduction of a special mw JS function ( $.byteLength() ), so now, the summary input will not let the editor overflow the summary. unfortunately, this functionality depends on JS (the summary input always had maxlength=255 attribute, but this does not help much when byte count differs from char count, because it limits characters and not bytes). i am not sure if VE is smart enough to use it, and if these reverts/edits were done using some script, then the script author needs to check the "byteLength" of the summary, and truncate it in a way that makes sense. for JS-less editors, the summary input is still limited to 255 characters (no character is *less* than 1 byte...) but this is of little help for non-latin-script languages. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:26, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- I've created the subsection Help:Edit summary#The 250 character limit which is perhaps on the technical side, but it's tucked away near the bottom; to avoid confusion I've not altered the earlier mentions of 250 characters on that page, other than to link the first mention to that new subsection. It should suffice for other curious people. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
-
-
- Thank you for the explanation, RedRose64. I did not consider the markup bytes. However, I recommend you re-edit Help:Edit summary#The 250 character limit in light of this edit in my sandbox, which shows that the less than and greater than signs take up one byte each. Also, we still need to fix the problem that reviewer's reversion comments (where 255 characters are accepted) are truncated without warning at about 85 characters.
-
Tech News: 2014-09
10:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)Getting redirect targets
Is there a way of getting the target of a redirect known to be at a specific title? I.e. {{blahblahmagic:WP:EXAMPLE}} would produce Wikipedia:Example. — Scott • talk 17:45, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- See Module:Redirect. Ruslik_Zero 19:34, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
- Wish it worked for Special:Random (it doesn't tell me where I'll be redirected when I click. Is there anyway that it can be modified so that would work Ruslik? — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 19:50, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Passing a ?search-string parameter to a url in a template (either raw of wrapped in a citation template) to produce a reference in a reflist.
Here is the scenario. We have a long list of buildings in table format with a heritage-number in one field. This number is also used by website ''http://yorkshire.u08.eu'' as a page reference- to a encyclopedic page on that particular building. The aim is to wrap the heritage-number in a template {{Ynbr}} so it is rendered as reference (group) at the bottom of the page. This will appear as YNBR No: XXXX English Heritage, where XXXX is hyperlinked to ''http://yorkshire.u08.eu/?b=XXXX''.
Here is the sample page User:ClemRutter/sandbox4, and here is the template {{Ynbr}}. Here is the desired result when the links all follow http://yorkshire.u08.eu/?b=62684
The coding should have been fairly simple:
National Building Register: {{{1}}} <ref name="NBR">[http://yorkshire.u08.eu/?b={{{1}}} Yorkshire Heritage {{{1}}}] English Heritage}}|</ref> <noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>
- so I changed it to :
National Building Register: {{{1}}} <ref name="NBR">[http://yorkshire.u08.eu/?b={{#tag:ref| {{{1}}} }} Yorkshire Heritage {{#tag:ref| {{{1}}} }}] English Heritage}}|</ref> <noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>
Still that didn't work either.
- Perhaps there is someone who could explain what is going wrong-- or submit the necessary bug report.
And as my supplementary questions
- How do you write an url= attribute in a {{cite web}} template now the undefined positional parameter is ignored
- When these both work- will they continue to work when placed in a tfield in a trow in table?
Thanks in advance, the result will be worth the effort.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 18:09, 24 February 2014 (UTC)