Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AL

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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having issues with the search function

72.130.163.87 19:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC) well, first of all, this is my first time posting on Wikipedia and I'm not sure if I'm doing some things wrong with posting.

Anyway, something is going on with the search engine because yesterday I was doing multiple word searches and it worked just fine, but today its not even working with two words. I've tried arm bone and then click the search button (pressing enter makes it go to the wiki article) but an error comes up saying: There was a problem with your search. This is probably temporary; try again in a few moments, or you can search Wikipedia through an external search service

I've tried a couple different two word searches, and sometimes it doesn't work with some one word searches. I don't know whats going on here because it was working just fine yesterday.

(self edit) Forgot to mention that I did clear cookies and cleared internet cache and it didn't solve it.

Sometimes the search is down. It is down for all users, not just you. It will be back soon. Please note that the {{helpme}} tag is for use on your personal talk page, not discussion pages.—WAvegetarian (talk) 23:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

doh, didn't know that it was suppoused to be for the personal talk page. Sometimes the search works ok sometimes it doesn't, although I can't find any other posts talking about this search engine issue here. Anyways, thanks.

MediaWiki:Booksources-isbn

I tried to add a link to ISBN on Special:Book source but the wiki link (i.e. [[International Standard Book Number|ISBN]]) didn't translate into a link, it showed up as [[International Standard Book Number|ISBN]] on the special page. How do I fix this? John Reaves (talk)

Some messages use HTML rather than wikimarkup. Does writing it as <a href="/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number">ISBN</a> work (it might not, some messages use plain text, in which ase a link is impossible)? --ais523 09:53, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

HTML didn't work. John Reaves (talk) 10:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

In that case, presumably it's a plain-text message, so the only way to link the word is to request a change in the software. --ais523 11:27, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Moving a page

Can someone direct me to the right place. The page was created wwithout capitalization.Osakadan 20:53, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

You can request page moves at WP:RM. --Aude (talk) 21:15, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

For an uncontroversial move (such as the wrong capitalisation) and the title you want to move it to is blank or is a redirect to the page you want to move and this is the only edit, you can move the page yourself. See Help:Moving a page. Otherwise you can use Wikipedia:Requested moves. mattbr 00:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to all!Osakadan 09:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

HELP! Timeline won't go before 1800

I'm trying to promote List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States to Feature List status and the timeline won't go before 1800 even though I enter the start date as 1789. I have no idea what is going wrong, its the weirdest thing. Here is the code im entering:

ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:12
PlotArea  = top:10 bottom:50 right:130 left:20
AlignBars = late

DateFormat = dd/mm/yyyy
Period     = from:01/01/1789 till:09/03/2008
TimeAxis   = orientation:horizontal
ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:01/01/1789

Colors     =
  id:justice   value:rgb(0,0,1)   legend: justice 

Legend     = columns:4 left:150 top:24 columnwidth:100

TextData =
  pos:(20,27) textcolor:black fontsize:M
  text:"Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States: "

BarData =
  barset:PM

PlotData=
  width:4 align:left fontsize:S shift:(5,-4) anchor:till
  barset:PM

And here is the error message that I'm getting:

EasyTimeline 1.9

Timeline generation failed: 3 errors found

Line 5: Period = from:01/01/1789 till:09/03/2008
- Period attribute 'from' invalid. Specify year >= 1800.

Line 7: ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:01/01/1789
- Scale attribute 'start' invalid.
Date '01/01/1789' not within range as specified by command Period.

Line 16: PlotData=
- PlotData invalid. No (valid) command 'Period' specified in previous lines.

It works when I put the starting dates as 01/01/1800. Any ideas on how to fix it or what could be the problem? Thank you. Warhol13 17:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I already replied in Help talk:EasyTimeline syntax Nil Einne 13:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Diff not displaying correctly

I just made an edit to Buffy video games with these changes [1] (this is using a diff between my edit and the previous previous previous edit). However, the diff between my edit and the previous edit is showing this [2]. Any reason for this? --- RockMFR 14:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, it's correct now. Whatever :P --- RockMFR 21:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

.svg map not rendering

Does someone know how to get Image:India annual rainfall map en.svg do display? Nichalp confirmed that this map was not displaying for him either. This is what I'm seeing currently. Thanks. Saravask 13:39, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that thumbnail gave me the strangest Squid error message I've ever seen.

ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/India_annual_rainfall_map_en.svg/300px-India_annual_rainfall_map_en.svg.png

The following error was encountered:

    * Socket Failure 

The system returned:

    (98) Address already in use

Squid is unable to create a TCP socket, presumably due to excessive load. Please retry your request.

Your cache administrator is nobody.
Generated Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:34:00 GMT by db10.wikimedia.org (squid/2.6.STABLE9)

After a reload, I got a completely transparent 300x339 image (generated at 20 Mar 2007 00:33:51 GMT according to the tIME chunk). Purging the image on Commons fixed it. --cesarb 00:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Saravask 02:32, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

SVG's have been rendering weird for a while now. There was some complaint on that here last week. My experience is if you change the size, you can get it to come in and display. Some are partial, and some are just a frame. Definitely needs someone to figure out what's happening with the conversion to PNG or whatever. // FrankB 17:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Sig-tastrophe

Alright, hopefully someone here knows HTML from a hole in the ground (unlike me) and can tell me why my sig is not working. HTML testing and the preview feature indicate it SHOULD work, but in the raw sig box it rejects it unquestionably. It follows, verbatim:

<font face="impact, serif"> <span style="background:black;color:red;borderstyle:double;letter-spacing:3px">Bullzeye</span><small>^{<i> [[User_Talk:Bullzeye|Complaint Dept.]]/[[Special:Contributions/Bullzeye|Contribs)]]</i></small>}

Drop me a line on my user page if you can help me. Thanks a lot -Bullzeye

Swap the </small> and </sup>. —Ruud 02:11, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Note dropped on talk page. Gimmetrow 02:13, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Success! A winner is me! Thank you everyone! Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 02:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

There's still a slight problem; your sig is too bloody annoying. To fix this, go to Special:Preferences, clear the "Signature" field and press "Save". Thanks – Qxz 04:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

=D. *gives Qxz a cookie* AmiDaniel (talk) 02:13, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Which method of "includeonly" should I use on image copyright tags?

A while ago I started methodically reviewing the image copyright tags in Special:Prefixindex/Template:PD, standardizing them with Template:Image-license, and replacing the code <includeonly>[[Category:Public domain images]]</includeonly> (or whatever the image category was) with the code {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Image|[[Category:Public domain images|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}. Fabartus (Frankb) left a post on my talk page that seemed to indicate that the ParserFunction I use to replace the "includeonly" tag may not be portable to other sites using MediaWiki. I do not know and am entirely neutral about this; I could just as easily reverse the changes I've made to the image copyright tags with the prefix "PD." My question is: Is the ParserFunction not portable to other sites using MediaWiki? Thanks for your input. --Iamunknown 04:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

ParserFunctions requires an extension to be installed, and so a default install of MediaWiki will not include it. However, the installation is incredibly simple. Further, thousands of templates use ParserFunctions, so I don't think worrying about portability for any particular set of templates is necessary. Hope that helps. --MZMcBride 04:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

After an edit conflict, by the way: MediaWiki does not come with ParserFunctions; you have to install them as an extension. Of course, we have many templates with ParserFunctions, and I don't see why we shouldn't use them just because someone else doesn't. For example, the use of <ref> tags is not a standard feature, yet we use them. See Special:Version for everything that's not portable, per se.

Either way works, although the I would think that it might be useful to have [[Category:Public domain images|{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Image|{{PAGENAME}}|*}}]] just to locate uses of this template not in the image namespace. And technically, your use of "Image" may not be portable to other language Wikipedias, while File ({{ns:6}}) is. Gracenotes^T § 04:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Help with journal citation template malfunction?

Hi all,

Several of us are working on improving Wikipedia's range of taxonomic articles, by making stubs with references. To check that our references were OK before submitting them to Wikipedia, we made a master list of 4428 especially useful references to proofread. Unfortunately, the formatting of the references seem to fail after about a few hundred {{cite journal}} references. We could split the master list up and proofread the sublists separately, but maybe there's an easy solution that we've overlooked? Thanks for your time and help! :) Willow 22:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that there is some limit to the number of times a template can be called per page, so yeah, go with subpages. It takes forever to load, anyway; I had to wait a full minute on DSL. -Amarkov moo! 23:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah there are Template limits. The stats for the current page are below:

<!-- 
Pre-expand include size: 2047944 bytes
Post-expand include size: 1240275 bytes
Template argument size: 590210 bytes
Maximum: 2048000 bytes
-->

Template:Cite journal is intricate and large, causing the issues you're seeing. A possible option is creating a much slimmer template for just a specific page, or split the article. Cheers. --MZMcBride 00:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Talk page blanking after edits

On two separate occassions, edits to Wikipedia talk:Railway line template have resulted in large parts of the discussion being blanked. See edit 1 and edit 2. The first edit was by me, and I assumed I'd just done something stupid, so reverted it. The second was by User:HandigeHarry, who assures me it wasn't deliberate (and I have no reason to doubt him). Could there be any reason for this?

NB - I've previously posted this on WP:HELPDESK, where it was suggested it might be a server glitch. – Tivedshambo (talk) 15:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

It could be related to this archive question. If it is, this could be a significant problem. Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 19:56, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Section editing error

I've seen one instances today where section editing caused the part of the page that wasn't edited to revert to an older version ([3]), and one where section editing caused the rest of the page to disappear ([4]). >Radiant< 13:29, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Weird things have been happening to everyone lately, from blankings to out-of-order revisions. It's odd. Gracenotes^T § 13:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

programmatic access

Hi, I'm writing an application that needs access to wikipedia data. For a variety of reasons, it would be really great if I could access the data programmatically. The two that top the list:

• I could then avoid scraping the front of the en.wikipedia.org sight, sparing your servers the burden and sparing myself the time necessary to write code that does such an awful thing.
• The data I get would be free of the html content that wraps it.

Note: my needs would be met by either of: a queriable web service... or a dump of some or all of the wikipedia content (which I would then download and use offline).

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

ty

Kierah 11:22, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

See m:dumps. MaxSem 11:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and please ensure you meet the terms of the content licence (described at Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License) if you are using Wikipedia content outside of Wikipedia. mattbr 11:39, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

(WP:BEANS) There is also query.php or you can go directly to action=raw on a page. Don't abuse these, however. Live mirrors and such get themselves blocked ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 08:31, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Template whiz needed

Please see Template_talk:User_iso15924#Feature_request and Template:Babel. Thanks! Xiner (talk, email) 03:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

What is it you're asking for? I don't think there is a way to prevent the level zero categories from appearing across the board without editing all of the level zero templates. Assuming that the userbox portion is kept, all that needs to be done is to remove the categories from the templates (which I've already seen being done by bots, cf. Template:User ang-0). If you're talking about suppressing the userboxes too, they can be redirected to {{void}}. Both of these things require editing individual templates, since the level passed to {{Babel}} is not a separate parameter from the language code. Mike Dillon 06:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I took a closer look at {{User iso15924}} and made it suppress the category logic for level zero. The remaining Babel templates need to be addressed individually since there is not a meta-template from what I've seen. I just fixed Template:User ar-0, which was sort of a bitch because of RTL/LTR issues. Mike Dillon 06:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I will reply on your talk page, but thank you in advance! Xiner (talk, email) 15:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

DXF to SVG or something similar

I have (and I can create) quality DXF drawings that I could contribute with. My guess is that the preferred format for any technical drawing is the SVG format. Can someone confirm this and if so, where can I find a free application to convert DXF to SVG? Thanks in advance for the help. --ChaChaFut 03:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if Inkscape does it natively yet or not, but a quick google showed some promising tools like this. Good luck! - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you know if this is freeware? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ChaChaFut (talk • contribs) 22:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC).

Inkscape is free software and it can save in SVG format. However I do not know if it is able to open DXF file (which I do not know what is it) -- AnyFile 17:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding contribution link to user pages

I wish there were a contributions link on other users' talk pages. When I'm looking at a user's contribution history, like to look for a pattern of vandalism, I have to open "my contributions" in a new window, copy their IP and paste it in the new window's URL bar. It's a hassle. It'd be a lot easier to have a "User's contributions" link right on their pages. --AW 17:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Try adding this to your user javascript file:

if (wgCanonicalNamespace.indexOf('User') === 0 ) {
  user = wgTitle.split('/')[0];
  addPortletLink('p-tb', '/wiki/Special:Contributions/' + user, user + "'s contributions");
}

Lupin|talk|popups 18:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

To my what? --AW 20:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

To monobook.js, assuming you are using the monobook skin. But I thought MediaWiki does this for you already? It does for me... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 20:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what monobook or mediawiki is, but I guess I'll try --AW 20:08, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Me too. Look under the search box on the left of the screen in the "toolbox", and on every user page you should see a link for "User contributions". --MECU≈talk 20:09, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, never noticed that! Thanks. I guess I can delete that code from the monobook page then? --AW 20:11, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep. BTW: monobook is the default skin for Wikipedia, and Mediawiki is the software Wikipedia runs on. Prodego ^talk 00:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I can not understand what is your request, but if you want to see the User contributions list of an anonymous user, just copy the IP address in the search box and hit the Go button. (see m:Help:Go_button#Special_features) -- AnyFile 17:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Coping with transclusion size limits

Someone posted at Wikipedia:Requested templates asking for help with {{Episode list}}, in particular its use in List of ER episodes. when investigating, I learned of the template transclusion size limit. I popped on over to Template talk:Episode list and it seems others have run across the problem. I'm writing here to ask people's suggestions for working with this. Some options:

1. Increase Wikipedia transclusion limit

   No article changes required

   Increased load on servers, stopgap measure

2. Subst the template into large articles

   Reduce server load, fairly easy

   Template change not reflected in articles

3. Edit the template to minimize markup length

   No article changes required

   Tricky, stopgap measure

4. Break large lists into subpages

   Reduce server load, fairly easy

   Reduces value of the list

What are people's thoughts about this? —dgies^t_c 22:19, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Try the /doc subpage trick first. Here is the current size:

Pre-expand include size: 2045988 bytes
Post-expand include size: 469088 bytes
Template argument size: 669068 bytes
Maximum: 2048000 bytes

--MECU≈talk 22:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

• If the post-expand size is the problem here, how about this: break the more algorithmic parts of this template into sub-templates, which are only called if needed. For example,

{{ {{#if:{{{parameter|}}}|nothing|maximage}} }}

• This would mean that {{nothing}} would have to be protected. Server load, not pretty, but it works. Gracenotes^T § 22:37, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not post-expand size that's the issue, it's the pre-expand size. My suggestion is to make a template that is a slimmed-down version of {{Episode list}}, something like {{ER episode}}, and then use much simpler syntax. I'm a pretty good template editor, but honestly I have no idea why the code is so complicated for Template:Episode list, and I can't begin to understand "ParaCheck123" throughout it. --MZMcBride 00:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

ParaCheck123 looks like an extremely cheesy name for a parameter placeholder. It appears as though a simple #if statement would have done well in its stead. Gracenotes^T § 01:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

ParaCheck is just a trick used so that changes can be triggered by a parameter being listed, but still left blank. For example, |Image= will trigger the screenshot layout, even if you don't have it filled out. Excluding |Image will switch the template to a no screenshot format. "ParaCheck123" was just something I thought wouldn't be a probable value for any of the variables, so it can really be anything that is not likely to be a value where it's used (Director, episode number, etc). I've suggested that ParaCheck123 be changed to "ʁ", which is also unlikely to be a value for any of those. -- Ned Scott 05:59, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Cleaning up the code is probably going to solve the biggest issues. The #ifeq: is a poor way to do what you want. Right below it where it does {{ #if: {{{Title|}}} | '''"{{{Title}}}"''' }} is much more efficient. Multiply that by the number of times you used it (several dozen) and there's your problem. I believe Gracenotes said they were going to work on the code, but since it's protected, I dunno where. --MECU≈talk 12:53, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

A place holder is required for parameters that are desired but not filled out, but a good many didn't understand that when applying the template. This trick makes it so that if you list the parameter, then it will trigger a column even if you don't fill it out. -- Ned Scott 12:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Right, essentially the default value says "don't do anything, no column"; setting the variable at all (even to blank) kicks it over to "do something, create a column"; and actually filling in a non-blank value gives it something to do in that column. Nice trinary result: no, yes, yes-THIS. -- Ben ^TALK/_HIST 02:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)   (deleted my own stupid suggestion following this, as it would not help your transclusion overhead.)

Ok, so do this: {{#if:{{{blah|}}}||do this}} which means: if nothing, then "do this", else nothing. Or, if "something", then do nothing, else, "do this". Notice the double pipes. After the first pipe means if true, the second means if false. --MECU≈talk 13:44, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Since including a big amount of text is not only a technical problem, but also an editorial problem, the best solution is to avoid the need of trascluding a big amount of text. -- AnyFile 17:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

UserPage creation

How do I create an UserPage - please direct me to an example of a well-written UserPage Tx, RS

This is more an artistic endeavor than a how-to, other than clicking on "edit", but you have already created user:Rstrawn. Look at pages in, for example, Category:User en (English-speaking wikipedians). If you see something you like, edit their page (so you can see the source) and grab the corresponding wikitext. —EncMstr 01:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Maths symbols

I find when browsing articles which contain certain mathemical symbols (such as First Order Logic - the symbol beside the C in the A, B, C bullet points won't show) that the symbols don't show - rather, a small square appears in its place. Am I missing a required font? Thanks, 81.102.34.92 23:14, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's the "therefore" character from the mathematical operators set. Please see Help:Multilingual support (and [5]). -- Rick Block (talk) 00:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

HELP

I accidentally changed my skin and really hate it now. Nothing I try will allow me to get it back to the default skin at all. I've had help from other mods and I've done the usual of going into My Preferencs and holding down Control + F5. I've deleted all my history and refreshed the page and shut the PC down but still to no avail. Can ANYONE at all help me. I will even let you have my account password so you can do it for me if you want! Yours Cls14 21:23, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully this will help:

1. Go here.
2. Click on "Skin"
3. Select whichever skin you want to view Wikipedia in.
4. Click "Save"
5. Press Ctrl + F5.

Gracenotes^T § 21:29, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes I have done that before thanks. Just doesn't work. Anyone else got any ideas? I have seen on another pages that this is a common problem. Why don't they just get rid of the different skins? They seem to cause more trouble than good. Cls14 21:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

See the FAQ at the top of this page. This link is supposed to fix it. Removing the skins would be as popular as making everyone drive cars painted black. —EncMstr 21:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Image:Foo_bar.jpg

If you try to go to a deleted/non-existent image page and the name has a space/underscore, the log link on that page is broken (see [6]). A quick search on bugzilla didn't give any results. Can someone familiar with the bug report system confirm whether or not this is a dupe? --- RockMFR 19:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I requested an edit here that should take care of the problem. Gracenotes^T § 19:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, I didn't realize that it was controlled by a MediaWiki page. Thanks for that. --- RockMFR 23:26, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Transwikification question

I installed a fresh copy of MediaWiki yesterday, and would like to be able to transwiki articles (keeping the history per GFDL requirements).

I notice Wiktionary and Wikibooks have transwiki enabled, how would I do this on my local one on 127.0.0.1??

I changed the settings per $wgImportSources using the interwiki links, but it didn't seem to work unlike the wikibooks example here.

If anyone could help me this would be appreciated. I've set up 2 of my own wikis so far, and they're going OK - they're not publically accessible, only used as an in-house encyclopedia. --sunstar net^talk 19:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Special:Protectedpages

I've filed an enhancement request as Bug9326 to include a namespace selector on this page. Please comment on Bugzilla if you would like. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 20:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like VOA upgraded this, just waiting for it to go live, thanks! — xaosflux ^Talk 01:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Problem with subcategory

I just added the category Category:Villages in Chile to Category:Villages by country but it shows up under "V" instead of "C". Can this be fixed? For my own satisfaction, would someone explain how, even if you do it? Thanks--JAXHERE | ^Talk 17:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Pipe the category-inclusion link to the sortkey you want (e.g. writing [[Category:Some user category]] on my userpage would sort it under 'U' for 'User:', but writing [[Category:Some user category|ais523]] on my userpage would sort it under 'a' for 'ais523'. --ais523 17:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The vertical bar is a wiki all-purpose delimiter. For example, in template references, it separates parameters. In regular wikilinks it provides an alias. In category "links" it provides an index value. For categories, it's common to have many which need to be indexed different from the article name: The wiki magic word {{DEFAULTSORT:}} is useful. See the wikitext at the bottom of Steve Fossett for a good example. —EncMstr 17:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations. The pipe worked fine. Does the use of {{DEFAULTSORT:}} eliminate the need to put in the index value for category links? JAXHERE | ^Talk 18:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what it is for. However, the help hints that you can have more than one; you cannot. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 18:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The help explains the way it's meant to work, not the way it actually works. --ais523 18:33, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Dorothea von Stetten Art Award

The article Dorothea von Stetten Art Award has a leading character I don't know. I am not able to move the article to Dorothea von Stetten Art Award. Can someone help? Greetings --Heiko A 09:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I've moved it. In the move page, I just positioned the cursor after the first 'D', pressed backspace several times, then retyped the 'D'. I've also deleted the incorrect title. -gadfium 09:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Odd text appearing - howso

I'm really sorry in advance if this is a dumb question, or if I am asking it in the wrong place, but please take a look at J.R. Orci. I am trying to work out where that text at the bottom of the page comes from - the one that starts "Amazon.Com, Barnes and Noble, African American Fiction..."

I've looked everywhere I could think of, and am curious as to what I am missing.

Any help would be appreciated. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 21:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

It was in Template:Writer-stub. I removed it. Prodego ^talk 21:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - it was odd, but I looked at another stubbed writer and didn't se ethe text, so assumed it wasn't there. Oh well. I'll know what sort of thing to look for next time! Thanks. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 22:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Autoblocks appearing in admin block log

Forgive me if this has been proposed before, but I would like to suggest putting autoblocks directly in an admins blocklog, it would make it far easier to check up on and the autoblock tool seams to stop functioning at times (as it has now). The block could be in the same format as the IPblocklist, but maybe with an addition to make it clear that it is an autoblock and not a manual admin move. Ryanpostlethwaite contribs/talk 20:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

While the devs are at it, it would sure be nice if the block log told me which IP range block is effecting a specific IP. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 02:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Ohh, and it sure would be nice if admins could see deleted edits in a users contributions, maybe a different color? ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 02:59, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That last one should be doable after the 1.10 release, if VoiceOfAll's rev_deleted work is committed to the core code. However, the deleted contributions extension has to be enabled as well. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Template collapse/state control

Could someone that is good with controlling the collapse-ability of templates help with Template:Hidden begin? I tried adding a "state" to allow controlling the template to force open/close/auto (or default auto) but it doesn't seem to be working and I'm not very good with these collapsible things. Take a look at 2007 Colorado Buffaloes football team where I'm testing it. The 2007 Recruits should be forced closed. I know testing in the article space isn't a good idea, but I was sure this would work and it seems I was wrong. Any help is appreciated. Thanks. --MECU≈talk 19:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

According to the table at the bottom of this page, NavFrame div cannot have a custom initial state. In order to do that, you'll need to use collapsible tables. Cheers. --MZMcBride 19:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks. Could you help with Template:AmFootballScoreSummaryStart now please? It's using tables and the default should be collapsed, which works okay, but when you click "show", it changes the table from the min-width 300px to a auto-sized table (that moves the show button) and doesn't show the table! Talk about frustrating. Click show again and it works, but doesn't use the mid-width feature ever again. --MECU≈talk 19:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

A few minor edits seemed to help. Let me know if you have any other issues. --MZMcBride 22:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

How do I warn a vandalist which is not registered (only has an IP address - specifically 204.38.150.2)?

I am sorry if I posted this question on the wrong page, in the wrong format, etc., but there is a limit to how much a man should read and search just to ask a simple question.

Gidip 15:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you read Wikipedia:Vandalism? IP addresses have talk pages too. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 15:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

You can post a message on the user's talk page, which in this case is User talk:204.38.150.2. Judging by all the previous warnings on the talk page and previous blocks it seems this user is a known vandal. I hope this helps, Jayden54 15:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both. Gidip 19:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Odd diff

this diff shows a lot of other text that is not displayed in the article. Gimmetrow 01:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

That's because it was removed in the next edit: [7]. --MECU≈talk 19:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps I should be clearer - the diff shows a lot of text in red which was not represented in the form of the page displayed immediately below the diff as the result of the diff. It's gone now, of course. Gimmetrow 19:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

BBC Code?

Is there any way to change editing to BBC code? --PokeYourHeadOff 22:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean BBCode?. If so I wouldn't hold your breath! BBCode does not have a universal standard. You may currently choose between wiki markup (rather similar to bbcode) and/or HTML. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:39, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Wikimarkup is easier than most implementations of BBCode that I've seen. — Frecklefoot | Talk 11:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Opps ya BBcode, sigh, I like BBcode better. Well I guess I can live with it. --PokeYourHeadOff 00:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

wpReason and implementation

I propose several changes to all templates in Category:Speedy deletion templates, except for {{db-meta}} and {{db-reason}} and redirects. Namely,

1. The removal of the reasonlink parameter. This has been superseded by a change in {{db-meta}} that was suggested on the talk page.
2. Making the the link to a criterion have a normal font size. E.g., instead of (<small>[[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G10|CSD G10]]</small>), ([[Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G10|CSD G10]]). This will make deletion summary... well, well ugly, and it may also be useful in
3. Shortening each criterion link (indicated by 1=value, so the it can easily fit into a deletion reason, if any are not short enough already.

And another one:

1. Encouraging the use of the wpReason parameter for admins, since it makes clearing CAT:CSD a bit easier.

I hope this proposal is sane, or at least makes sense. I would be fine with implementing it myself, iff there is consensus. Gracenotes^T § 16:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sort of against this. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 20:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

It just sounds silly. - Patricknoddy^{TALK (reply here)|HISTORY} 20:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Date and time disapeared

I used to have the date and time displayed in the upper right (which I found very useful in knowing how recent an edit is). This time has dissapeared. Does anybody here know how I can get it back? Thanks! -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 14:48, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Odd bug?

I seem to be getting a random "new message" notification for no apparent reason when there are no new messages on my talk page, and it's not the "practical joke" template, either. I can't remember the circumstances for the first time it happened, but today I prodded a few articles, added the templates to the user's talk page, saved the edit, and got a new message notification after saving the diff. MSJapan 11:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Table help

Here's what I'd like to do, but can't: over here, near the bottom of that table, you'll see how Andrew Oliver is in a column by himself. He shouldn't be; he should be just to the left of where he currently is. Can we arrange that, please? Biruitorul 04:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Have a look now: Is that what you wanted? —EncMstr 04:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks! Biruitorul 16:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Image transparency issues

Image:Us senate seal.png is acting up. It's transparent (ie, I added an alpha layer and removed the white stuff outside the circle, and it has the checkerboard), but it doesn't appear as such on Template:USCongressTerms. It's probably a transient quirk that no one can fix (and I tried clearing all sorts of caches), although if anyone knows what caused it, that'd be great. Gracenotes^T § 20:20, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. I right-clicked the image, purged it, and then purged the template page, as well as adding a one to the end of the thumbnail name. One of those things worked. : - ) --MZMcBride 01:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The background still appears opaque in Firefox... but no matter, it will be fixed eventually for me. Gracenotes^T § 02:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Firefox crashed, and it was fixed! Of course, I have mixed feelings about that, but am glad that my cache was cleared... somehow. Gracenotes^T § 16:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

New-messages bar appearing when I don't have messages

Twice today, the new-messages bar has appeared for me even though I don't have any new message. (I click on 'last change' and get a diff I've already viewed; when navigating away either the original time when it came up correctly or the time it comes up incorrectly, it's disappeared again.) Anyone know what might be causing this? --ais523 17:47, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but I'm getting them too, over the last several days and continuing now. Doesn't seem to matter which browser I use. If there's a trick to make this stop I'd love to hear it. — coelacan — 03:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm adding myself to the list of people encountering this glitch. Anybody know what's up? AniMate 05:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Me too, and I've been seeing some other artifacts (such as existing pages yielding redlinks). At a guess, there is discrepancy between the different servers. >Radiant< 12:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been getting these fake "you've got mail" messages for days. The server always notifies me about the last edit to the page, including if it is a reply I made myself. (Running Win XP with IE 7.0).Valentinian ^{T / C} 13:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I keep getting these too, and was about to come here to complain about it... Hbdragon88 00:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Radiant's explanation seems good, though I have to say that these false new message banners are much more annoying than any of the joke banners people were complaining about a few weeks ago. Do we have any answers on what's happening? AniMate 07:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I am seeing this for ca 3 days now and with increasing tendnecy, today ca. 5 times.--Tikiwont 14:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

wikitable

Did someone change the way that wikitable works? All the "cell borders" appear to be gone to me. Am I having a personal problem or was a change made? If a change was made intentionally, can it please be reverted? I think that this class is used in too many places for it to be changed arbitrarily. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 05:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Does it still look screwed up after following WP:PURGE and WP:CACHE? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Believe this is due to a recent change in the site-wide CSS files. I brought up the concern that it would most likely break in IE6 at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Wikitable changes, but the change has not been reverted. I'll add an {{editprotected}} and link to this posting as a followup. Sorry for the breakage. Mike Dillon 05:49, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Monobook.js malfunction

Hi, could you please fix my monobook.js for me. There is a malfunction causing all monobook functionality to disappear. It only happens from within my account. Please, help! zero » 03:26, 24 March 2007 (UTC) Monobook is back up again! zero » 04:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• Excellent! That certainly is a large and complex monobook. --Iamunknown 04:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Cropped Top

I noticed the entire top of Wikipedia is cropped. Even the globe! The Sign text and icon sure could use some space down as well.

Please advise if this needs to go elsewhere to report.

--RonEJ 23:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

How to link to an image within an image caption?

This is the page where i'd like to add a link within caption text: Utah_Phillips

This is the current image with photo text from that page, into which i'd like to insert a link to an image.

[[Image:Utah bw sm.jpg|thumb|Utah Phillips]]

Here is the image to be linked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IWW.jpg

Caption text should say: Utah Phillips showing his IWW card

And clicking on IWW card should take the browser to that larger image of the card.

I try to do it like this:

[[Image:Utah bw sm.jpg|thumb|Utah Phillips showing his [[Image:IWW.jpg|IWW card]]]]

But Wikipedia embeds the image, rather than displaying the link to the image. A trick that i haven't yet learned, can anyone please help? thanks! Richard Myers 21:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Use [[Image:Utah bw sm.jpg|thumb|Utah Phillips showing his [[:Image:IWW.jpg|IWW card]]]] . Note the colon. Prodego ^talk 21:11, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that worked great! Richard Myers 23:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Image removed - fair use stuff should stay in mainspace. x42bn6 Talk 23:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Didn't know it was fair use, since I didn't look at the image page. But messages here are not archived, so it would not have lasted long anyway. Prodego ^talk 01:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Problem: Contributions Not Showing New Edits.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this problem, if I go into my contributions, and the contributions of others', nothing registers. Does anyone know what's going on here? Acalamari 20:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's updating, but slowly. Is this a similar error to what happened with the watchlists a few weeks ago? Acalamari 20:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Never mind; it seems to be fine now. I'm not sure if anyone else noticed the problem. Acalamari 20:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Been happening for some time for me, usually updates about 30sec-1min. Matthew 20:48, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay; I suspect it's probably the same problem as last time, as the watchlist did nothing as well. However, last time I only had a stuck watchlist; I still had updating contributions. I guess it was a delay in the servers or something like that. Acalamari 20:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Template talk:IPA

It was suggested here that this template should use a lang parameter to indicate it does not contain ordinary English. But it is not clear what the right lang code would be. Please comment on the talk page of the template. Thanks, CMummert · talk 18:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

You have new messages (last change)

I am getting the "new messages" notifier (orange box) once in a while and once i go checking for any new message i find nothing new. Do you have an explanation for that? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 12:48, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

A lot of us have this problem, see above.It looks like nobody has a good answer at the moment. Valentinian ^{T / C} 12:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

(Edit conf) See the "New-messages bar appearing when I don't have messages" section above. I don't know if anything new is known. I'm seeing this too, and have noticed it often occurs in conjunction with the problem where a random older revision of the page is served (see WP:ANI#Caches_and_Page_Histories for example). -SpuriousQ (talk) 12:56, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys for your replies. I haven't paid attention to the thread above. Cheers. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 14:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

In your case, your talk page received a number of subtle edits, any one of which would trigger the notification, but might be hard to notice without doing a diff. This one, for example, is a single word added in the midst of a long paragraph. In the last day, there were two other edits which added a couple sentences not at the bottom of the page. Perhaps you overlooked those? —EncMstr 16:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks EncMstr. Well, not really. I always make sure to check the history w/ much scrunity. Indeed, my case here is that i get the message notifier while i am editing or clicking on a link in order to browse an article. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 17:08, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

A tempting explanation, but it wouldn't explan what happend to my talk page. I got the same message three or four times, and around five notices about a reply I made myself. On the positive side; today, it has only happened once. Valentinian ^{T / C} 16:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Make that twice (sigh). Valentinian ^{T / C} 16:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Four times for me today, displaying the same (top) diff each time (I checked the history, just to make sure). --ais523 17:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Cache coherency issue: has been happening for a couple of weeks now

There has been an issue with this for the last week or two. There is also a related issue where sometimes the page history is old, or the version of the page is old. It looks like there is an issue with the cache coherency of servers that sometimes delivers a stale page. The stale page issue can cause the "new messages" flag to be incorrectly evaluated. I haven't seen much discussion though on whether this is being fixed, or even if it has been logged as a bug. —Doug Bell ^talk 18:56, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Scylla and Charybdis (the 'import a dump' Odyssey)

Hi, this is User:Mdob - again!

My home computer configurantion:

• Windows XP, pt-br, SP1;
• running an administrator account
• IE6;
• WAMP5 1.4.4:
  • Apache version : Apache/1.3.33 (Win32)
  • PHP version : 5.0.4
  • MySQL version : 4.1.10a-nt - extension : mysqli
  • phpinfo( ), PHPmyadmin 2.6.1-pl3, SQLitemanager 1.0.4
• MediaWiki 1.8.2:
  • project name:MyPedia
  • 2 accounts: WikiSysop and Mdob
• no Internet access from home, so I browse the Web in a Internet house (Sorry by the red link, I don't know how you call these things in English

My problem:

After one and a half year of tries, I still can't import a dump (Wikipedia or Wikia or watever) into my home computer either logged as WikiSysop or as Mdob

I've tried the:

• esperanto,
• ido and
• maori wikipedias

and the

• doom wiki.

Scylla

If I run "iexplore.exe http://127.0.0.1/wiki/Maintenance/ImportDump.php" this message appears:

403 Forbidden - Microsoft Internet Explorer

Forbidden You don't have permission to access /wiki/Maintenance/ImportDump.php on this server.

---

Apache/1.3.33 Server at 127.0.0.1 Port 80

But I have permission! I'm running an administrator account!

If I try:

cmd
cd C:\wamp\www\wiki\maintenance
path=c:\wamp\php
php importDump.php < c:\pages_current.xml

PHP bombs and shows this nonsense message:

DB connection error: MySQL functions missing, have you compiled PHP with the --with-mysql option?

Compiled PHP? Hello?!? This is Windows! Different from Linux, I don't have to compile programs to install them. I downloaded wamp5-1.4.4.exe auto-installer from SourceForge and double clicked it and installed it. phpMyAdmin runs perfectly.

The permissions Apache is refering to are not the permissions you (on an administrator account) have; it's refering to the permissions Apache itself (running on a different account) has. You should check if the php files are readable by the account Apache is running under. About PHP, even if you are in Windows, it was compiled (by someone else in this case); either whoever compiled it didn't compile the mysql client code, or you didn't load the mysql module (check your php configuration, IIRC it comes with all the modules commented out; also note the configuration for the command line PHP executable might be in a different file than the Apache PHP module configuration). --cesarb 00:16, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I'm totally clueless about this. What files do I have to modify? Can you give names? I know zero about Apache configuration! are you refering to httpd.conf? Mdob | Talk 20:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The PHP configuration is separate from the Apache configuration, and it's usually called php.ini; I have no idea where it's located on the Windows port of PHP. There should be two of them, one for the Apache module and one for the command line interface. Look for some commented extension= lines, the correct line to add would be something like extension=mysql.dll. --cesarb 21:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Righ, I'm going to try this when I am back home (right now I am at the LAN house). Thanks. PS: don't delete this thread yet. probably I'll have more questions about this all. Mdob | Talk 22:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind. I've uncommented all extension= lines in php.ini, wich screwed up my Mediawiki installation (error messages starting appearing showing my usename and password instead of the Mainpage). Nonetheless, thank you very much. I'll give up trying to install a dump (by now). Ok. You can delete or archive this thread now.

Charybdis

But if I try to import a dump inside mediawiki-1.8.2, running "iexplore.exe http://127.0.0.1/wiki/index.php/Special:Import" and trying to import c:\pages_current.xml (the 6575KB doom wiki), this shows up:

Upload of import file failed; perhaps the file is bigger than the allowed upload size.

Please export the file from the source wiki using the Special:Export utility, save it to your disk and upload it here.

bigger than the allowed upload size???!!?!? This is lame. If mediawiki-1.8.2 can't import a mere 6MB dump, what to say about the esperanto and ido dumps, with 30+ MB each, not to mention the englishwikipedia 1.8 GB super-dooper-hyper-mega-jumbo dump... what is the logic in offering dumps for download if you can't import them?

I do can dump my personal wikimedia project (MyPedia) to Export.xml and then reimport it with Special:Import (So, the problem is not with the Special:Import feature)

Recapitulating:

• I can't import a wiki (not only the doom or Wikia or Wikimedia wikis - any wiki)
• I can't import through Special:Import (except only the small Export.xml files I myself create);
• I can't import through mantenance\importDump.php
• I can't even import through "php importDump.php < pages_current.xml"

I've already read the meta and Wikipedia help pages, and even some old pages like "How to become a MediaWiki hacker" and "Wikipedia:Database dump import problems". Nothing happened and I've already run out of ideas.

(*Sight*) sugestions, anyone?

The upload limit is not a MediaWiki one; it's a PHP limit (to prevent denial of service attacks). It's usually a very small value (a few megabytes IIRC), and can be increased on the configuration file (but don't increase it too much on a public server). Also, I don't think Special:Import can import full dumps (its main use is to import single pages exported by Special:Export). --cesarb 00:16, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

What configuration file? PHP, Apache? Please note, I'm a clueless newbie. Mdob | Talk 20:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Special:import can import many pages at once, if they are in the format Special:Export uses(which can give multiple pages with multiple revisions). ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 02:33, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It's the PHP one. --cesarb 21:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Strange happenings in Wikipedia

• Check this out in edit mode

[[Special:Whatlinkshere/{{BASEPAGENAMEE}}|what links here]]

This: {{BASEPAGENAMEE}}">[[Special:Whatlinkshere/{{BASEPAGENAMEE}}|what links here]] is what I see, again it might be my monobook stuff acting up. -- Darkest Hour 19:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Has to be your monobook. Prodego ^talk 21:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Registering on Other Wiki sites (Italian)

Hey I registered on the Italian Wikipedia, and I got the conformation email, and clicked the conformation link, and it my conformation was accepted. I tried to log in, and it said that my account couldn't be created because my school's filter wouldn't allow it or something... I'm at home, and there are NO filters that wouldn't allow it... so what's wrong? If anyone can help, reply on my talk page, or email me @: <email removed>

Thanks! Bryse 01:20, 22 March 2007 (UTC)Bryse

This is the English Wikipedia. It's possible that someone here can help, but if you're having problems at another language version of Wikipedia, you may be better off asking there rather than here. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If you got the confirmation email, then your account must have been created. If it was the Italian Wikipedia, the same issues would affect you here, so go ahead and try again. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 21:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Display time remaining on active block

When viewing the block log for a particular user, is it possible to (a) provide some kind of indication that a block is currently active; and/or (b) display the time remaining (DD:HH:MM) for that block? Thanks. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 00:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I really doubt that this change is going to get any priority by the developers. It seems primarily intended to help someone who has been blocked and is trying to figure out exactly when he/she can resume editing. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Finding cities for your country using, UTC, UTC-5 and other timezones per WP:CCT

Can we sort [this list in alphebetical order. I've attempt to make a category but it doesn't appear to have the concensus of the community. The usefull category helped me sort through the cities and make the appropriate corrections. You may find it usefull to peruse cities that link to the different timezones. (ex. Got to UTC-5 and click what links here) There are however, limitations. One is that we can't browse in alphabetical order.

I did try to make a category for cities by UTC timezone but a CfD prevailed and it was removed... taking away a list of 5000+ cities categorized (see my back-up. There was not enough support for such a category.

Many cities currently utilize the {{template:Infobox city}} and have a link to the related UTC timezone. Use this to your benefit. You can find a list of cities by clicking the corresponding UTC timezone. And, if ever you feel like bringing back the category we will need at least 5 to 7 people to support this. GO to my project WP:CCT and start a section to voice your opinion. When we have enough people we'll start the cat. --CyclePat 23:00, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the alphabetization, on–wiki, as far as I am aware, no. You can use WP:AWB to load the what links here list, and you can then sort this alphabetically and work through them if you want. There is also a list comparer so you can have the timezone what links here list and the infobox what transcludes here list and find which articles are on both lists and use that list how you wish. My other suggestion would be to use a program like Excel, copy and paste the links and sort alphabetically. Hope that helps, mattbr 00:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey! Supper dupper! Thank you for the reply and the reminder on my userpage. I'll deffinatelly be checking into it and I'll give you my feedback at this location on how everything went. --CyclePat 18:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If you want to see the work I did check out: User:CyclePat/UTC Timezone/List of places in the UTC-5 timezone. Thank you again. --CyclePat 20:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Signature

How do you change the way your name appears when you sign your post? Also the talk and contributions that appear next to your name? Tayquan 12:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The setting's under 'signature' and 'raw signature' on Special:Preferences, but I suggest you read Wikipedia:Signatures and Wikipedia:How to fix your signature first, because it's quite easy to mess it up quite badly. --ais523 12:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

It's fucked up have a look. <i><font face="arial, helvetica" color="#007700"><b>Ø</b></font></i> [[User:Tayquan|<font face="Tahoma, helvetica" color="#007700"><b><i>Tayquan</i></b></font> ^{[[User talk:Tayquan|<font face="Tahoma, helvetica" color="#007700"><b><i>holla</i></b></font>]]}_{[[Special:Contributions/Tayquan|<font face="Tahoma, helvetica" color="#007700"><b><i>Hard work</i></b></font>]]}]] 12:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC) I copied someone elses and it doesn't work right. I just want it to say holla (linking to my talk page) and hard work (linking to my contributions), when I sign.

The one I copied from is here:[8]

Under the "hmm...What did I do??" heading.

Turn off on 'use raw signature' in your preferences. --ais523 13:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a bit simpler, and will probably work:

Tayquan ^holla _{hard work} If you want further modification (font color, which should be done with the span tag... :P, and I don't suggest changing the font face, although you can do special characters), just ask. Gracenotes^T § 13:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Tayquan ^holla_{Hard work} 10:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject Hip Hop assessment

Honestly have no idea where to ask this, figured here was the best place. Here's my issue: There are 700-some odd unassessed articles in Wikipedia:WikiProject hip hop and I'd have no problem going through and assessing them all. Problem is, Category:Unassessed-Class Hip hop articles does not update after I assess articles in it, which makes it incredibly difficult to identify articles that need to be assessed. This is not a problem with other Wikiprojects that I work on, such as WP:ALBUMS and Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography. It should be noted however, that the statistics are correctly updated on the assessment page (Wikipedia:WikiProject hip hop/Assessment). Could someone offer some insight on why this happens and [hopefully] how it can be fixed?--NPswimdude500 03:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It is because {{WikiProject hip hop}} is case-sensitive. The valid options for class are FA, A, GA, B, Start, Stub, Dab, List, Template, and Cat. Anything else will cause the category to be "unassessed". Never mind the fact that the template box itself might show the class if you make it lowercase. CMummert · talk 03:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Categories are not necessarily updated immediately. When the classification is changed, the listing of categories on the article will change, but this may take a few minutes or more to be reflected in the category itself. If you keep the category listing open in another window you can just go down the list and assess a few articles in order. Alternately, you may WP:PURGE the category and it may update right away. Gimmetrow 03:40, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I already tried purging it, unfortunately to no avail. CMummert seems to be right, replacing 'stub' with 'Stub' does the trick! Thanks to both of you for your help, it's very much appreciated.--NPswimdude500 03:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I updated the code to not be case-sensitive, so the articles that are classified as "stub" should work now. Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Even purging the page doesn't seem to work all the time. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 ^{(T | C | @)} 04:47, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

There are less than 600 articles now in the category. I modified Twista assessment to Start, and it disappeared from the list. From what I see, it is working. All others are classified, not even as stub or Stub. -- ReyBrujo 04:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Empty diff

This diff removed about 64,000 characters but shows up as empty. Has anyone seen this before, or possibly have an explanation? Without the little character count number on RC I probably wouldn't have reverted. Antandrus (talk) 16:38, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Look at the top of the page: "Out of memory in diff." Valentinian ^{T / C} 16:41, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I see it now: thank you. Strange I've never noticed anything like this before. Antandrus (talk) 16:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Me neither. It is probably not even listed in Wikipedia:Bugzilla. Valentinian ^{T / C} 16:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I've just added it to Bugzilla, see [9]. Jayden54 17:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Redirect problem - FA comment page lost

Western Chalukya is in the process of FA review. Yesterday the name was redirected to Western Chalukya Empire. Everything was redirected, except now on the Talk page template, the link no longer goes the FA editors comments. It goes to an empty page now. I do not know how to retrieve that link and redirect it. Is this the right place to ask for help on this issue? Thanks! Sincerely, Mattisse 14:51, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

While the history of edits and the talk page was correctly linked, the FAC discussion did not link. Can someone help? I am the nominator of the article mentioned above to FAC.Dineshkannambadi 15:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem has been resolved.Dineshkannambadi 15:35, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

wierd bug with semicolons and opera

I am having a strange bug with semicolons and opera. When I edit a certain page, a semicolon is added to one particular link, even though I do not add this semicolon myself. [10] This happens with Opera 9.10 (build 521) on linux. It does not seem to happen with Firefox, so I think it is a browser bug. I am posting here in case anyone else has seen such behavior in the past. CMummert · talk 11:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree it's strange. However, you should not add a bare & in a link; use & instead. --cesarb 16:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be a very subtle bug involving the precise location of the ampersand in the file. I tried making a shorter minimal example, but I couldn't. I can remove everything after the error and the error doesn't go away. I found that adding a single space to the beginning of the file will make the error go away. Since the article source is right at 32KB, I think that there is an overflow bug still present that I was unlucky enough to trip here. CMummert · talk 17:19, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Justify paragraphs

I like the way articles are displayed with justify paragraphs, it greatly enhances appearance and readability. A major drawback, however, is that all pages are displayed that way and e.g. histories do look a lot worse with justified "paragraphs", b/c the diff selection buttons are not vertically aligned any more etc. My question: Is there any workaround so that only pages in article namespace will be displayed with justified paragraphs? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 07:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Disable justifying in your prferences and add the following piece of code to Special:Mypage/monobook.css:

.ns-0 #bodyContent { text-align: justify; }

—Ruud 12:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Spread sheet - entry of data

Is it possible to create a spread sheet and allow people around the world to enter text information into the various columns?

I want to be able to create a spread sheet with about 150 words and phrases in English and allow people around the world to translate the words and phrases into their native languages of Arabic, Bengali, Finish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish.

A sample of the spread sheet can be viewed at the following URL.
Translation Spread Sheet

Lpscal 06:51, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

You could make a table

header 1	header 2	header 3
row 1, cell 1	row 1, cell 2	row 1, cell 3
row 2, cell 1	row 2, cell 2	row 2, cell 3

and ask the people at Wikipedia:WikiProject Philately to fill it in. —Ruud 12:00, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Need the general en.wikipedia.org header altered - new message

Per this concensus and conversation, please alter it. - Denny 23:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I've added a message to MediaWiki:Watchdetails. A message is visible on everybody's watchlist. —Ruud 23:46, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes. The Sitenotice isn't necessary, and the watchlist is definitely a better place. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:08, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Although I don't think it needs a sitenotice either, it would be nice to be able to dismiss it. John Reaves (talk) 00:17, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion: 5-10 days now, duration of Poll

As Jimbo himself is directly involved and no one has given a good reason not to have the notice on the Watchlist page, perhaps leave it up for five or ten days, then take it down--that will give everyone absolute notification of this (per Jimmy Wales) very important discussion is happening... then, when it actually goes to a Wales-mandated Poll, the notice will go up again, to let all users know about it, so that all editors can weigh in. Everyone needs to be absolutely aware of this, and this... is the only reasonable way to do it. aside from people complaining that its annoying, I don't see a valid reason to not do this. why would we not want every eligible editor to see this? what can be gained for any sense of keeping this quiet? It should be known to everyone it affects (which is everyone!). If anyone can give a reason why every editor shouldn't have a chance to weigh in... then that is a reason to not do it. otherwise, it should stay up. - Denny 02:19, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Spread sheet - entry of data

Is it possible to create a spread sheet and allow people around the world to enter text information into the various columns?
I want to be able to create a spread sheet with about 150 words and phrases in English and allow people around the world to translate the words and phrases into their native languages of Arabic, Bengali, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish.
A sample of the spread sheet can be viewed at the following URL.
Translation Spread Sheet--Larry from Los Angeles, California, United States 20:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Did you see the answer that was posted here? --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 21:30, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

adding a company to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Technological_company_stubs

How do I add a company to the - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Technological_company_stubs ?

The template - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Tech-company-stub , does not add to the Category:Technological_company_stubs .

Thanks ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paa12345 (talk • contribs)

Edit the specific article and add the code [[Category:Technological company stubs]] to the bottom of it. --MZMcBride 02:04, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't. The stub categories should not be added by hand. If the template is not adding to the stub category, fix the template. --cesarb 16:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

No by all means don't add the category by hand, it trashes the system completely. The template works fine, so all you have to do is add {{tech-company-stub}} to the bottom of the article. Valentinian ^{T / C} 16:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I still have the problem of adding; we are talking about several steps - modifying the Tech-company-stub template, adding a new page to Wikipedia, having this page show up in the list of companies in the - Category:Technological_company_stubs ;

the Tech-company-stub has some code - do I modify this code or not ? I did add the -
abcd abcd co - test add
to the beginning of the template code and
{{tech-company-stub}}
to the end of the code, got - edit conflict:Someone else has changed this page since you started editing it, resulting in an edit conflict.
How do I modify and add a page ?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Paa12345 (talk • contribs)

From what you're saying, I presume you are the same person as User:ARS Technologies who edited this template earlier today? Anyway, the text of the actual stub template is never changed / edited since this template can show up on hundreds of different articles. I don't mean to be rude but whatever you do, do not make changes to the stub template. Doing so will be seen as vandalism and will be reverted on sight. What you need to do is this: If the company you wish to add a page about is called "ARS Technologies", you'll want to add the article under this name so you type the following URL "address":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARS Technologies

and press "enter". The name of your article is the text you write in the URL after the "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/" bit. When you've done so, the system will respond that no such page exists. Now click "Edit this page" and write the text you wish to include in your article. If you wish to include a stub template (which simply identifies the article as less than 10 sentences long) then write the following text as the last part of your article: {{Tech-company-stub}} [[Category:Electronics companies of the United States]] That's all there is to it really. The last two lines of text mean that the article will turn up in Category:Electronics companies of the United States (and if you also add the stub template; in Category:Technological company stubs) in both cases, it will be listed there along with similar articles.

However, please keep in mind that articles must be notable and if another editor does not agree with the notability of the article, the article will likely be deleted again. Valentinian ^{T / C} 22:18, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

suppress {Link FA| Fr}

How can I suppress this link in "malaria" while this article is protected or semi-protected? The related French article is no more a FA in French Wikipedia. Tidoc. 16:24, 25 March 2007

I removed it. Thanks. MaxSem 14:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Bug? "Archived version" message appears for most recent version

When I view the edit history for an article and click any version, I get the new message "This is an archived version of this page, as edited by Fg2 (Talk | contribs) at 19:47, March 25, 2007. It may differ significantly from the current version." That's fine for old versions, but for the latest version it's incorrect. Can this be removed? Fg2 10:50, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Aha, I just noticed Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Pink box on "archived version" pages displays on "current version" too above. Fg2 12:08, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Dismiss on Watchdetails

Woa ... who added in the dismiss link on the Watchdetails? Five minutes ago it wasn't there, and now it is ... AmiDaniel (talk) 02:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I added it yesterday, your cache just didn't get refreshed until now. —Ruud 02:32, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Dead external links/301/m

I just tried to remove the reference on this page to Mel Hague because the link [11] is definitely not dead. Anyway, when I tried to save my change I got an anti-spam message saying that one of the other links on the page is blacklisted. Given that this is a list of dead links it's not particularly surprising. What should I should do? SMeeds 21:10, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Remove the blacklisted link from the page, and then save? (Check out M:spam blacklist for more info). Logical2u_{Review me!} 21:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but easier said than done. If I was on Linux I could dig out some utility to cross check the blacklist against the page content, but both the list and the page are large, so on Windows I am stuck. Any tips on finding what blacklisted item(s) are present on the page? Thanks. SMeeds 01:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC) Doh, I've just seen the URL in thespam report. Sorry for the bother. SMeeds 01:24, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Sig-tastrophe

Alright, hopefully someone here knows HTML from a hole in the ground (unlike me) and can tell me why my sig is not working. HTML testing and the preview feature indicate it SHOULD work, but in the raw sig box it rejects it unquestionably. It follows, verbatim:

<font face="impact, serif"> <span style="background:black;color:red;borderstyle:double;letter-spacing:3px">Bullzeye</span><small>^{<i> [[User_Talk:Bullzeye|Complaint Dept.]]/[[Special:Contributions/Bullzeye|Contribs)]]</i></small>}

Drop me a line on my user page if you can help me. Thanks a lot -Bullzeye

Swap the </small> and </sup>. —Ruud 02:11, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Note dropped on talk page. Gimmetrow 02:13, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Success! A winner is me! Thank you everyone! Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 02:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

There's still a slight problem; your sig is too bloody annoying. To fix this, go to Special:Preferences, clear the "Signature" field and press "Save". Thanks – Qxz 04:32, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

=D. *gives Qxz a cookie* AmiDaniel (talk) 02:13, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

United states glitches

can someone checkout the united states page, theres a few problems, i spotted them before —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pilko182 (talk • contribs).

Vandalism was fixed by User:Golbez. —Doug Bell ^talk 16:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Cascading in edit summary

When setting the cascading bit, [cascading] shows up in the logs, but it does not show in the edit summary. Any way to change this? --- RockMFR 03:50, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

how do put in this bit "This article or section is written like an advertisement."

i went onto the udo page and it reads like an advert so how do you put that blue box to read This article or section is written like an advertisement. knowing my luck you lot will say ut is in the faq section thanks anyway!! M hartlebury 00:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Edit the page and put {{advertisement}}. Welcome! MECU≈talk 00:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

NEVER MIND SORTED!! M hartlebury 00:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

DST bug

I am seeing weird behavior in my watchlist regarding the time of edits. Edits start at midnight and go to 0100, then jump to 0200 through 0259, then start back at 0200 and go correctly from there. I'm guessing that this is a result of some DST patch not being applied on the server? --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 06:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not that; DST isn't applied on MediaWiki. You have to manually edit your time offset to fix DST. Ral315 » 04:48, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I changed my offset back when the DST happened some weeks ago. At any rate, the symptoms that I saw 2 days ago went away at the start of the following hour, so it appears that whatever "happened" was of no real consequence anyways. Thanks. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 05:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Cite this revision not working?

Am I right that this is a bug? If I view an old revision of an article, and then press the Cite this article link, the citation information page shows the most recent revision instead. — Omegatron 15:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Well.. Is this a bug or not? For instance:

If you go to Cuttlefish and click Cite this article, it takes you to

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&page=Cuttlefish&id=117097812

If you go to a past revision of Cuttlefish and click Cite this article, it goes to

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&page=Cuttlefish&id=

I think it should be going to

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Cite&page=Cuttlefish&id=113191495

instead. Am I missing something? — Omegatron 19:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Can someone please confirm that this is not functioning correctly before I file a bug report? I think it's been this way for a long long time, so I'm wondering if it's meant to work that way and I'm just not thinking about it correctly. — Omegatron 16:54, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd file the bug report. If it's supposed to work that way, at least someone will have to acknowledge that. However, I suspect it is a bug. —Doug Bell ^talk 17:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. — Omegatron 23:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikitable Lite needs boldness

I think someone tinkered with class=wikitable so it has an overly bland design and fewer borders than are needed. WP:CITET needs borders around its large cells. (SEWilco 15:14, 18 March 2007 (UTC))

I broke common.css a few minutes ago, this might have caused this. Should be fixed now. —Ruud 15:25, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Nope. Reloaded and still the same. This is in Firefox, and the border is missing on the first cells but not most later cells. (SEWilco 15:42, 18 March 2007 (UTC))

Did you purge your local cache(shift-F5)? ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Cleared everything out and looks OK now. (SEWilco 16:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC))

It's broken the same way again. (SEWilco 03:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC))

Looks fine to me. Is this the same browser that you cleared your cache on? Mike Dillon 03:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Template editing help

Could someone please change {{Earthquake}} so that it displays no image if no map parameter is supplied? I've tried, but my understanding of template syntax mixed with tables is not great.See 1998 Papua New Guinea earthquake for an example of what the template produces currently with no map parameter, or 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake with a map parameter.-gadfium 08:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I think I've got it. It seems you can't use wikitable syntax within parser functions. I'd appreciate it if someone could check what I've done.-gadfium 09:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I've made the empty space disappear when no map is given. The image name parameter should also work, though I would call it caption or something to be clear. Any problems, let me know. I'll write a brief documentation. –Pomte 18:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks-gadfium 20:09, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Death date and age template broken

Template:Death date and age appears to be broken. Andy Mabbett 00:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems to work fine on pages like Aaliyah. If you look at the actual template page, it appears broken because the parameters are blank. I've added a note on the template page. Cheers. --MZMcBride 00:40, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Andy Mabbett 00:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

"Revert to revision 119076915 dated (unknown) by (unknown) using popups"

Is anyone else having this problem with their popups? I'm using IE6 btw--Heliac 17:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Logs ? Are they supposed to look like this ?

or has something gone wrong?--VectorPotential^Talk 18:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

• Also at WP:AN#Issue_with_a_recent_edit_to_a_MediaWiki_page. I think if someone went to a tech IRC channel (I don't know which one, though) the devs could fix it quickly. --Iamunknown 18:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like that change to MediaWiki was rolled back. The text you're seeing means that MediaWiki is not finding a value for the MediaWiki:Title-pattern system message. Mike Dillon 01:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Version r20745 of SpecialLog.php was attempting to use "title-pattern". This version or a similar version must have been live for a short time. The latest version uses a message called "log-title-wildcard". I assume this wildcard/pattern matching thing for titles will be rolled out once the kinks are ironed out. Mike Dillon 01:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I wish that change sticked. Hopefully they'll reimplement it. --Iamunknown 01:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Miser mode is on at the English Wikipedia, the change wouldn't matter for us. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Prodego (talk • contribs) 02:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC).

Trying to start a news letter for our project

i was wondering if you all can tell me how to make a newsletter like the ones you got for a project i recently started. basicly i need the whole works in how to make it diffrent colors and how to add diffrent editable paragraphs but still making it as a whole part of the newsletters to how to add pictures and stuff. if you all want to just lay out the design for me instead of showing me then you can start it up on {{Festival Newsletter}} and then just explain a bit what you did to get the boxes and stuff in place. THANKSMaverick423 17:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

editing tags defined?

Hi. hope I'm asking this in the appropriate place!

Maybe I'm missing something, but for the life of me I can't find the answer anywhwhere to what the tags "<includeonly>", "<noinclude>", and "{{DEFAULTSORT:}}" are supposed to do. They're listed under the edit window, so I assume they're relatively important &/or useful. Is there a comprehensive list of these kind of tags somewhere handy? The "HTML in Wiki markup" page seems to omit alot of the "<xyz>" tags that I see alot in pages....Thanks in advance --Turangalila (talk) 19:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

It is all in Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia. I don't have the specific pages memorized. Prodego ^talk 19:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

You might start reading at WP:MAGIC and Help:Substitution. CMummert · talk 19:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay thanks I found them - Help:Categories#Sort_key - looks like all 3 effect how a page or a template relates to categories. Sorry, I didn't even know what sort of page to look in. I guess there'es no comp. alpha list o' markup / tags w/ basic explanations? Thanks again--Turangalila (talk) 07:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Where should suggestions go?

I assume wikipedia editors now and then have valuable suggestions to improve the wiki code in order to improve ease of editing or other aspects. Q1: Where should I post such suggestions? Q2: My current suggestion is to record 'Show preview' as a transaction of a logged-on editor, just like 'Save page'. This transaction should then postpone the time when the editor is automatically logged out. I'm often logged out while working on an article because I'm using 'Show preview' before saving / 'Save page'. It appears to the system as if I'm not active and my session is terminated. JMK 12:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If the change can be accomplished merely by changing practices on Wikipedia, the correct place is the proposals village pump. In cases such as these, though, when a software change is needed, you can go to mediazilla: to request enhancement requests or bugfixes with the developers. --ais523 12:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. JMK 12:19, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

IIRC, "Show preview" does postpone the automatic logout, as does viewing any page (even articles). --cesarb 23:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject Hip Hop assessment

Honestly have no idea where to ask this, figured here was the best place. Here's my issue: There are 700-some odd unassessed articles in Wikipedia:WikiProject hip hop and I'd have no problem going through and assessing them all. Problem is, Category:Unassessed-Class Hip hop articles does not update after I assess articles in it, which makes it incredibly difficult to identify articles that need to be assessed. This is not a problem with other Wikiprojects that I work on, such as WP:ALBUMS and Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography. It should be noted however, that the statistics are correctly updated on the assessment page (Wikipedia:WikiProject hip hop/Assessment). Could someone offer some insight on why this happens and [hopefully] how it can be fixed?--NPswimdude500 03:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It is because {{WikiProject hip hop}} is case-sensitive. The valid options for class are FA, A, GA, B, Start, Stub, Dab, List, Template, and Cat. Anything else will cause the category to be "unassessed". Never mind the fact that the template box itself might show the class if you make it lowercase. CMummert · talk 03:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Categories are not necessarily updated immediately. When the classification is changed, the listing of categories on the article will change, but this may take a few minutes or more to be reflected in the category itself. If you keep the category listing open in another window you can just go down the list and assess a few articles in order. Alternately, you may WP:PURGE the category and it may update right away. Gimmetrow 03:40, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I already tried purging it, unfortunately to no avail. CMummert seems to be right, replacing 'stub' with 'Stub' does the trick! Thanks to both of you for your help, it's very much appreciated.--NPswimdude500 03:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I updated the code to not be case-sensitive, so the articles that are classified as "stub" should work now. Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Even purging the page doesn't seem to work all the time. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 ^{(T | C | @)} 04:47, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

There are less than 600 articles now in the category. I modified Twista assessment to Start, and it disappeared from the list. From what I see, it is working. All others are classified, not even as stub or Stub. -- ReyBrujo 04:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

HagermanBot

The sandbox area at the HagermanBot page implies that the Bot has stopped working. Anyone got any info on this? --Dweller 12:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's an unsigned post as further test. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dweller (talk • contribs) 12:15, 28 March 2007 (UTC).

Hmmm. Worked here, but not in its sandbox or on my talk page. Anyone able to fix the automation on my talk page for me? --Dweller 12:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The bot is mantained by User:Hagerman; I'd suggest to contact him, as nobody else can help you regarding his bot (and I think there is no other signature bot around). Tizio 12:25, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

His user pages indicate he's not editing, so I'm not optimistic of a speedy response there. --Dweller 13:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

In auto-generated "File links", move user pages to the bottom

Today's featured picture is a fascinating photo, Image:Tumbler_Snapper_rope_tricks.jpg. When you click on that link, an auto-generated "File links" section lists every page on Wikipedia that links to it. Because many user pages have the Featured Picture Of The Day template, the "File links" section has something like 150 user pages listed, and to find the actual article that's really associated with the picture, you have to read through this list until you see something that doesn't start with "User:".

Would be preferable if articles went first, alphabetically I suppose, and then users' pages were displayed afterwards, presumably also alphabetically (or, arguably, not at all). Tempshill 18:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Here is something to just um... alphabetize them. (is lame) --Splarka (rant) 08:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

 function linkstoimage() {
   if(document.title.indexOf('Image:')!=0) return;
   var uls = document.getElementById('bodyContent').getElementsByTagName('ul');
   var lis = uls[uls.length-1].innerHTML.split('<li>');
   lis = lis.sort();
   uls[uls.length-1].innerHTML = lis.join('<li>');
 }
 addOnloadHook(linkstoimage);

Infobox question

Is there any way to make letters with borders around them appear on infoboxes? For instance in sports the infoboxes use the teams two main colors, see Chad Johnson. However the New York Giants two main colors are blue and red which people have complained is unreadable:[12] Can the red letters appear with white borders around them? Quadzilla99 16:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that is possible to outline the letters without drastic measures, such as creating an image for every letter (in every color possible). However, you can put a span with a white background around the parts of the text that are hard to read. For example: edit and put in as a parameter for the "NFL player" template:

|Name=<span style="background-color:white">{{PAGENAME}}</span>

--Splarka (rant) 08:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Signature

How do you change the way your name appears when you sign your post? Also the talk and contributions that appear next to your name? Tayquan 12:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The setting's under 'signature' and 'raw signature' on Special:Preferences, but I suggest you read Wikipedia:Signatures and Wikipedia:How to fix your signature first, because it's quite easy to mess it up quite badly. --ais523 12:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

It's fucked up have a look. <i><font face="arial, helvetica" color="#007700"><b>Ø</b></font></i> [[User:Tayquan|<font face="Tahoma, helvetica" color="#007700"><b><i>Tayquan</i></b></font> ^{[[User talk:Tayquan|<font face="Tahoma, helvetica" color="#007700"><b><i>holla</i></b></font>]]}_{[[Special:Contributions/Tayquan|<font face="Tahoma, helvetica" color="#007700"><b><i>Hard work</i></b></font>]]}]] 12:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC) I copied someone elses and it doesn't work right. I just want it to say holla (linking to my talk page) and hard work (linking to my contributions), when I sign.

The one I copied from is here:[13]

Under the "hmm...What did I do??" heading.

Turn off on 'use raw signature' in your preferences. --ais523 13:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a bit simpler, and will probably work:

Tayquan ^holla _{hard work} If you want further modification (font color, which should be done with the span tag... :P, and I don't suggest changing the font face, although you can do special characters), just ask. Gracenotes^T § 13:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Tayquan ^holla_{Hard work} 10:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Broken diff - "out of memory"

I'm unable to diff a recent change to the Criticism of Islam article because the server gives an "out-of-memory" error. Here is the link to the diff - [14] - can people tell me if they also see it, in which case I guess the next step is to file a formal bug? - Merzbow 00:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

It's discussed in another thread above -- Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Empty_diff. Filed with Bugzilla. I voted for it there, so feel free to do likewise. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:34, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, will vote. - Merzbow 00:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Categories on User pages

I just removed categories from User:Kosigrim page. Perhaps code should be implemented to disregard article categories accidentally used in the user space. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 23:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

How do you distinguish between 'article' categories, and regular ones? Prodego ^talk 23:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

With the Category header templates. --cesarb 00:04, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Concerns about scaling on WP for site-wide poll

Could the devs reading this take a look here on the poll discussion page, and weigh in on any possible tech issues? The tentative plan was for when the poll goes live, to run a Watchlist notification for the duration to ensure that "all" regular editors were informed, as it's such a major policy matter. - Denny 23:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's several aspects to how major an issue it really is, but the biggest problem with having a poll on the scale that you propose is that lots of people will have edit conflicts. --Kim Bruning 00:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikis = not good for polls. Someone should write a Special:Poll extension... Hmm... Prodego ^talk 03:33, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

svn:trunk/extensions/Vote. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

But it shouldn't be used on wikipedia. --Kim Bruning 18:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Well that is embarrassing :). But agreed, not in our scope. Prodego ^talk 19:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

local .js not loading

It doesn't appear that any of my monobook.js items are running anymore. The last change I made was to install the FireFox patch (now to version 1.5.0.11). Is anyone else having issues? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Firefox v2 is out you know? Maybe you should try that? I've not got any issues with v2. --Deskana (talk) 23:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yea I just didn't want to break all my plugins :| — xaosflux ^Talk 00:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

All of mine continued to work, but all I have is a gestures mod and STOP! HAMMERTIME! functionality :-p --Deskana (talk) 00:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Use nightly tester tools. [15] It basically forces all your extensions to be compatible, regardless of whether they really are, so be warned! --M1ss1ontomars2k4 ^{(T | C | @)} 04:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Are you getting any JavaScript errors in Tools -> Error Console? Mike Dillon 01:40, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Found it, looks like for some reason my javascript knocked to off during the upgrade :| Thanks, — xaosflux ^Talk 12:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if this related...Wikipedia recently broke on one machine (Windows XP Home, Firefox 2.0.0.3. The sidebar is gone and all pages look really bad. The edit tools no longer insert wiki markup. The other wikipedias (such as the fr one), the wiktionaries, wikisource, wikicommons, etc. all still work just fine. Other machines running the same Firefox work fine. What's going on? Help! Urhixidur 02:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, clearing the cache cleared the problem! Urhixidur 02:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Microformats

Anyone interested in microformats (or metadata in general) and the deployment of microformats on Wikipedia, might like to be aware of, or even join, WikiProject Microformats. Andy Mabbett 14:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Having a few problems with Status Switcher

I need some help with my userpage. I got bored and started looking around when I came across Misza13's Status Switcher script. I decided to use it, but after I put everything in I now have two problems. Problem one is that it says Example's Status on the template on my userpage. How do I get that to say LuigiManiac's Status? My second problem is that before I put in the template, my userboxes were on the far right side of the page. Now they moved to the left of the Status template. How do I get them back where they were? Thank you in advance. --LuigiManiac | Talk 15:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I making an edit here in hopes of drawing a reply after nearly five days of waiting with no responses. It may not be a high priority issue, but I fear it may go completely unanswered if I don't do something. --LuigiManiac 16:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

"Revert to revision 119076915 dated (unknown) by (unknown) using popups"

Is anyone else having this problem with their popups? I'm using IE6 btw--Heliac 17:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

User page edits

Why are anons allowed to edit user pages? If they want to give out awards they can go to the talk page, not that anons generally should give out awards anyway. So, why leave the door open to vandalism? The Behnam 03:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Anyone can edit. It's a core philosophy of the project. One which the protection policy disregards, mind you. But still. --Deskana (talk) 03:21, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

It makes perfect sense for the articles but for the user pages it just seems an invitation to vandalism and nothing more. The Behnam 03:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Anons can revert vandalism too. I know I would have undid any vandalism to user pages I found before I got my account. I just didn't find any. The only problem is that it seems like more anons vandalize than help with user pages. --LuigiManiac 03:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I just don't see the point in having them edit user pages, especially when the equation is not equal as it is. The Behnam 03:57, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

True, very true. I guess there wouldn't really be as much vandalism for the particularly helpful anons to revert if anons were not allowed to edit pages in the first place. Still, Deskana had a point about it being a core philosophy of the project. I don't think it's going to change anytime soon. --LuigiManiac 04:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Prohibit anonymous users from editing discusses Wikipedia's policy, which evidently derives directly from the will of the Great Leader. From my non-scientific personal sampling of other wikis, I get the idea that Wikipedia is idiosyncratic here; I don't recall seeing another non-WikiMedia Foundation wiki which allows unregistered users to edit most pages (does anyone know of any?). The reason seems to be that few other wikis enjoy such a large community of human volunteers who are willing to donate thousands of hours of skilled labor to manually revert vandalism, over and over. However, despite the lip service paid to this lofty ideal, over time the policy is steadily eroding as Wikipedia ratchets up security bit by bit (for example, see the policy changes in response to: John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy). Given Wikipedia's ever-increasing visibility and thus attractiveness to vandals and spammers, it's hard to see the creep toward tighter access control reversing itself any time soon. --Teratornis 16:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

The wiki where I made my first wiki edit, Esolang, allows anon edits. I don't think it has any protected pages at the moment, either (although I might be wrong on that). --ais523 16:20, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Sooner or later the good anon editors will discover, through editing userpages to leave messages, that they're supposed to leave messages on the user's talk page instead. Not allowing anons to edit userpages might send the wrong message. I also think it's better for us to block users for vandalizing userpages rather than allowing them to vandalize an actual article. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 ^{(T | C | @)} 04:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The third time this month...

I have been unable to edit my prefrences. I can access the main page (User profile) but cannot access the other pages. Also I cannot change my name while part of it is in the name change box the other part is outside of the box.

Example: <a class= ({SUBST:User:Darkest Hour/name}}" size="25" type="text"> 

The underlined part is the part I can delete and edit, the non underlined part is the part I cannot delete. Also lately many of my templates when put in <pr`e> tags or <no`wiki> tags has an <a class= beginning to it. Please explain what the issue is. If it is a code in my monobook here are the two of them: User:Darkest Hour/monobook.js & User:Darkest Hour/monobook.css. Thank you for your efforts to look into this very confusing problem, -- Darkest Hour 15:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it could be User:Darkest_Hour/linky.js. Try removing that and then trying again. If not, try removing them all and see if that helps, and if it does add them back in sections to see if you can find out which script you have a problem with. If not, I'm not sure. Anyone else? mattbr 16:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

In 'linky.js', add && document.title.indexOf("Special:Preferences") != 0 to the condition of the first if statement, and it should work better. --ais523 17:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that the double quote marks in the Example do not ballance. The syntax is probably wrong. Pete St.John 16:29, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Sidebar

I've been away for a little while, and suddenly the sidebar has changed! At least, that's what I think. If it has, why? CarrotMan 09:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

The sidebar's talk page is available here. Cheers. --MZMcBride 10:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Searching

Hi. I've written an article on Edgbarrow School, and this works fine. Is it possible for me to engineer it so that when someone sticks 'edgbarrow' instead of 'edgbarrow school' into the search engine they still get redirected to the same page? there's currently nothing on edgbarrow, so how can i redirect it? thanks --EvansUK 09:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

You can create a redirect page by editing that (nonexistent) page, and typing

#REDIRECT link target

as the only thing in the edit box. See Help:Redirect for more information. Hope that helps! --ais523 09:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

HTML classes

Is there a list somewhere that says what all the classes (metadata, messagebox, plainlinks, etc.) actually do? For example, I believe "metadata" will not be printed, but what else does it do? Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 03:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know of a particular page that lays out what each class does specifically, but the stylesheets can be viewed here and here. They provide some comments about the class's attributes. And yes, "metadata" makes things not print. Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes is as good as it gets. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:16, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Template params

Is it possible, within a template to have set parameters that will not change, but can be called in different places in the template. For example, can I make param foo always equal "bar", without needing to write the template as {{Template|foo=bar}}? Mr.Z-mantalk¢Review! 00:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

You can write the template so a parameter has a default value. If the template contained, for instance

<includeonly>Page = [[{{{foo|bar}}}]]</includeonly>

Then if you called the template with {{Template}} without defining foo, the default text "bar" would be used. However, if you had {{Template|foo=bar2}}, then the text "bar2" would be used. Is that what you want? Gimmetrow 00:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Or, if you're always using the same options, just don't use a parameter and just write the code that you want and it will always display. Otherwise using {{{foo|defaultvalue}}} works just fine. --MZMcBride 00:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

You can make an intermediary template, like Template:A has contents {{B|foo=bar}}, so calling {{A}} is the same as if foo always equals bar, but that is a bit silly. In the opposite direction, you could use sub-templates instead of parameters. Have Template:A with contents "blah blah {{b}} blah blah blah {{b}} blah blah", where Template:B has contents "bar", then it would not change. --Splarka (rant) 07:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I need some more help

Okay, while I'm waiting for my five day old problem to be solved, I have a new one. It also has to do with scripts. I just started helping the fine folks at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links, and I tried out Barticus88's dpl.js (it's shown on WP:DPL's talk page). It actually is working just fine. What's the problem? Well, I also have the popups tool in my monobook.js, and it was working until I put in dpl.js. Now I can't get any popups to, well, pop up. After using it for awhile, I put dpl.js out, purged my cache, tested my popups, put it back in, purged my cache again, and tested popups again, and I can say with great certainty that the dpl.js is blocking the popups tool. I like both of them, so is there is some way to have both enabled at the same time? Thanks in advance. --LuigiManiac 00:00, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

UPDATE:Apparently dpl.js is only blocking the popups tool for me in Firefox. In IE/Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet Browser, it is unaffected (meaning it is just as slow, visually a mess, and highly unstable as it normally is in IE). Quite interesting. --LuigiManiac 02:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

How do I back-up my wiki?

I have a wiki on http://editthis.info , and I was wondering how I should go about backing up my wiki (in case server crashes or something). Thanks for your help, esp. since this is a non-wikipedia related question. Andrewdt85 09:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

One way is explained at meta:Data dumps#Producing your own dumps. Generally, this kind of information is at meta: or MW:. Tizio 12:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

See here. Cheers. --MZMcBride 17:41, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I went to that page, bride, but while it was Exporting my wiki I got this message: "XML page cannot be displayed

Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later. The following tags were not closed: mediawiki. Error processing resource 'http://editthis.info/wikime/Special:Export?title=..."

Uh... what do I do? Thanks, Andrewdt85 09:03, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

You have to save the file somewhere, rather than viewing it (which browser are you using?). However, I would not use Special:Export for backup: it does not backup images and has a limit on the number of total revision it gives, it does not return the protection status, etc. Have you tried the dumpBackup.php script? Tizio 13:00, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

So, HOW do I do it? Andrewdt85 13:02, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Again: which browser are you using? Tizio 13:17, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, you can try the procedure via Special:Export, wait for the broswer to stop loading, then use "view source" (View->Source on IE, View->View source on Mozilla, etc), and then either copy&paste the result (Mozilla) or save it somewhere (IE). Tizio 13:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I use internet explorer, Windows Internet explorer to be precise. Andrewdt85 01:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Recruitment award (and an old Mac question)

Two questions:

1) I think I saw the other day an award to give to users who convince others to register an account, rather than be an anonymous editor. Can you point me to that?

2) I asked before, but it was archived away before I saw (so maybe you can point it out on my talk page where it won't dissapear), if there is a Macintosh/OS X version of AWB or other semi-automated tool.

Thanks fellow wikians! —ScouterSig 22:06, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The award is one of the Wikipedia:Personal user awards. Wikipedia:Tools/Editing tools has a list of semi-automated editing tools. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:04, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Nothing even close to what I tried to ask about; this only mentions spell checking and a quick jump to a n edit page via Safari. I'm looking for a real tool. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Scoutersig (talk • contribs) 00:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC).

Screen resolution

As a general rule, what is the minimum screen resolution that Wikipedia pages should support? Certain pages have templates across the top that either stretch the page, or worst-case scenario, cause the text in the templates at low resolutions (such as 800 x 600). -- NORTH ^talk 04:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd imagine if a template or image broke 800x600 then that template or image needs adjusting... - Denny 04:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

That's what I thought. Is there a policy (or guideline) page that spells this out? I thought I read it somewhere, but can't find it now... -- NORTH ^talk 04:19, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:LAYOUT#Images hints strongly that 800x600 is a good minimum size. But viewing discussions on it, people seem to agree that 800x600 is a good place to start, although are are exceptions (like {{World War II}}) Gracenotes^T § 04:30, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps if there's no policy, a more specific question would be good – since the original discussion wasn't about individual images or templates. The original version of the project page at WP:USRD has the TOC, the center table, and a newsbar across the top. At 800x600 (and at larger resolutions with the window not maximized), the table overlaps with the newsbar, causing the text to become unreadable. Is it necessary to change the page so that it works better at low resolutions? \

Current discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._Roads#Project_page_at_800x600. -- NORTH ^talk 04:39, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I commented at the project page, but I think it is worth bringing up here. You cannot safely assume that the user will run their browser at the full width of their screen. My User:CMummert/monobook.css limits the #content column to 7in wide, but my display is 1600px wide. You also cannot assume that users will run allow their browser to use small font sizes. I have seen these assumptions all too often at WP. CMummert · talk 17:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

See User:RoyBoy/The 800 Club, an informal effort to make sure all pages display correctly at 800 x 600, as well as larger sizes. — Catherine\^talk 04:17, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Questions about popups tool

I am having some problems with the popups tool. I would like to use it in helping me to revert vandalism and nonsense from pages, but whenever I bypass my cache on my watchlist to view new changes, it crashes my browser. I am running the Roger's Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet Browser. Is there anything I can do to get it to stop crashing? Also, for when I do spot vandalism, how do I revert it with popups? Do I hover over the version before the vandalism and click revert? Thanks in advance. --LuigiManiac | Talk 15:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• I don't really know anything about Roger's Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet Browser, but i do know that popups are not fully compatible with IE based browsers, and are subject to random crashes. They do however seem to be fully compatible with firefox and most of the popular alternative browsers. And to answer your second question, yes, just hover over revision you want to revert to, and press revert, failing that, there's also the undo button which doesn't require any javascript--VectorPotential^Talk 15:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, I'm pretty sure Roger's is IE-based, but I also have Firefox installed, so I can just switch to that for editting. Thank you for the prompt response, because in that short amount of time my browser crashed again from it. --LuigiManiac | Talk 16:00, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm running popups using IE and am having the exact same problem - when I press the Refresh button on Special:Recentchanges it crashes my browser. It's not fatal, since I can just refresh the Recentchanges screen by using the link at the side, but would it be better for me not to use popups? Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 20:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Mine also does the same thing. It also randomly crashes at times when I load any wikipedia page. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 20:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
        • I now use Firefox to edit. Not only did it stop crashing, but all of those options now show up under two menus, similar to the File, Edit, View, etc. menus on IE and Firefox. I definitely like popups more now. --LuigiManiac | Talk 20:43, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
      • My browser often crashed on Recent changes and sometimes New pages when I used IE. I use Firefox now and don't have that problem. The popups didn't work too well in IE either but do fine with Firefox.--Paloma Walker 01:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Revert button on move log?

What happened to the revert button on entries in the move log? Apologies if it's been asked before, but I haven't had to fix pagemove vandalism in a while, and having this button made it a lot easier. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 04:41, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Someone broke it. It's been fixed, but the fix hasn't been applied to the live site, as there is a schema change pending. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Antandrus (talk) 04:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Death date and age template broken

Template:Death date and age appears to be broken. Andy Mabbett 00:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems to work fine on pages like Aaliyah. If you look at the actual template page, it appears broken because the parameters are blank. I've added a note on the template page. Cheers. --MZMcBride 00:40, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Andy Mabbett 00:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Problem with cite web and two columns

There is a strange issue at Dreamfall which I can't track: when using a combination of two columns for references and a quote makes the reference "eat" anything below their section. To test it, go to the article, edit it, and do a preview: with {{reflist|1}} works fine. Now set it to two columns ({{reflist|2}}) and do a preview: the edit box disappeared. If you use {{reflist|2}} but delete the quote of the last reference (reference RTb_291), and the preview works. I think it has to do with the second ’ appearing in the quote (because the text is cut just before it) but I am not sure why. Firefox 2.0.0.3 / Linux Ubuntu 6.10. -- ReyBrujo 22:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried placing the quote outside the template?Circeus 23:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, no problem then. But putting the quote inside the template apparently breaks it. I am curious as to why the combination breaks it. -- ReyBrujo 23:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Oddly, it works for me, setting the parameter to 2. No anomalies. Gracenotes^T § 23:17, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Also don't see the problem described. Gimmetrow 23:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... I can't reproduce it every other time. I will try with another browser later, thanks for checking it out. -- ReyBrujo 23:53, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

In MediaWiki or not?

Can somebody please tell me if m:VariablesExtension is in the MediaWiki software or not? I'd really like to be able to use it. The page says, "It was ported to version MediaWiki version 1.8 by Hempel." But there is a bug report (bugzilla:7865) that says it will not be added.↔NMajdan•talk 13:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Man, this sucks. Both MediaWiki extensions that would make my template work are apparently not in the Wikipedia software. bugzilla:6455 is also not in the software. Guess I'll just have to use manual user input for my template.↔NMajdan•talk 13:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

If it were enabled, it would be listed on the relevant section of Special:Version. However, by that bug, it is unlikely it will be enabled in its current form. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That would be handy. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Logs ? Are they supposed to look like this ?

or has something gone wrong?--VectorPotential^Talk 18:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

• Also at WP:AN#Issue_with_a_recent_edit_to_a_MediaWiki_page. I think if someone went to a tech IRC channel (I don't know which one, though) the devs could fix it quickly. --Iamunknown 18:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like that change to MediaWiki was rolled back. The text you're seeing means that MediaWiki is not finding a value for the MediaWiki:Title-pattern system message. Mike Dillon 01:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Version r20745 of SpecialLog.php was attempting to use "title-pattern". This version or a similar version must have been live for a short time. The latest version uses a message called "log-title-wildcard". I assume this wildcard/pattern matching thing for titles will be rolled out once the kinks are ironed out. Mike Dillon 01:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I wish that change sticked. Hopefully they'll reimplement it. --Iamunknown 01:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Miser mode is on at the English Wikipedia, the change wouldn't matter for us. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Prodego (talk • contribs) 02:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC).

Referencing geo coordinates

With the onset of auto locator maps Template:Location map start, it is now possible to make clickable route maps for roads, rail lines etc. But the process of obtaining the coordinates for every marker for every map is both time consuming and cumbersome. This can be simplified if there was some way of referencing the coordinate information from an article. for example geo:London%7CDover would return the lattitude and longtitude of London and Dover and autmoatically mark it on a locator map. This will be extremely useful and easy for making locator maps of highways -- ^{PlaneMad|YakYak} 07:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Try: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. Andy Mabbett 16:24, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

CURENTUSER template ?

Hello. I there such a template wich replace by the current user name? I tryed : {{CURENTUSER}},{{CURENTUSER}}, {{USER}}, {{USERPAGE}}, Special:Mypage, Special:Mytalk... but and searched in help files but i didn't find a suitable one.
It is for use in an input box such as :

<inputbox>
type=create
preload={{PAGENAME}}/Bookmark
break=no
prefix=User:{{CURENTUSER}}/Bookmarks/
buttonlabel=New bookmark
</inputbox>

It is for a wikia project.
Thanks by advance if you can help.--Ttibaut 22:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

No, there's no such magicword.[16] At a guess, it's because it wouldn't be able to be meaningfully cached by the Squids. —Cryptic 00:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I will try to find another way to do it. If someone has an idea it would be welcomed ^-^--Ttibaut 00:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that using Special:Mypage/Bookmarks/ could work, but you'd have to be on a site that is using a version of Inputbox that actually supports prefix to test that. The version installed on Wikipedia doesn't support it as far as I can tell; I'm not sure about Wikia. Mike Dillon 00:44, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikia support prefix. Thanks, i'll give you the result of the test in a few minutes^-^--Ttibaut 00:54, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It works!!! Thank you very much Mike!!!--Ttibaut 00:58, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

HTML Tidy?

Nevermind, post moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Tidy upgraded--VectorPotential^Talk 18:54, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit tabs

How do you remove the [edit] links that show up on the right from within a page? Think outside the box 09:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

my preferences -> Editing -> Enable section editing via [edit] links (first checkbox). –Pomte 10:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

For a specific article add: __NOEDITSECTION__ (see: Help:Magic words). --Van helsing 10:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Think outside the box 10:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Lower case first letters

Congratulations on getting around the capital first letter issue. It looks a bit jury-rigged (it displays the upper case title, i.e. Will.i.am, for a moment before switching, and the URL is still Will.i.am), but it works! :D Cigarette 22:08, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It's done with javascript, so that only happens after the page loads. Gracenotes^T § 04:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Spam Filter won't let me revert

I've encountered several instances where I was trying to revert vandalism but it won't let me revert because the spam filter pops up. What am I supposed to do? The article is very long and I can't revert because I have to search around the article for a link while some blatant vandalism is sitting around for everybody to see? Any suggestions on how to get around this? -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 01:50, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

When you try to save it should tell you what was the reason the spam filter did not allow it. Just remove it. -- ReyBrujo 02:19, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Horizontal lists

Is there a "wiki" method to mark-up horizontal lists, like that at A34 road#Former route, so that they're rendered as an HTML list, styled horizontally? Elsewhere (for example on http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/test/) I use something like:

.horizontal
 {
    padding: 0;
 margin-top: 0;
 margin-left: -1.5em;
 margin-bottom: 0.5em;
 margin-right: 0;
 }

.horizontal li 
 { 
    display: inline;
 font-size: 90%;
 line-height: 1.5;
 border-left: 0.1ex solid;
 padding-left: 0.5em;
 padding-right: 0.5em;
 }

.horizontal li:first-child
 {
 border-left: none;
 padding-left: 0;
 }

but I have no idea how to apply that to a list, or to a template for a list, in WikiCode. The border-left separator could, of course, be omitted if so desired.

Ideally, the solution would take the form:

  {{starthorizontallist}}
  *cat
  *dog
  ...
  *horse
  {{endhorizontallist}}

Andy Mabbett 16:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

You can suggest additions to the site-wide CSS at MediaWiki:monobook.css; once the css has been added, a simple <div class="horizontal"> surrounding the list would probably work (although the first definition in your stylesheet might have to be changed to .horizontal ul and the subsequent definitions to .horizontal ul li). You can test stylesheets at Special:Mypage/monobook.css. --ais523 17:03, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll try MediaWiki:monobook.css, first (see MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#Horizontal lists). Andy Mabbett 19:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Would use of a table meet your needs? An example:

cat

dog

pig

cow

...

horse

The wikisyntax is a bit ugly with the bullets, but the list looks pretty funny without them:

cat

dog

pig

cow

...

horse

But setting column widths fixes that:

cat

dog

pig

cow

...

horse

—EncMstr 18:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

"Would use of a table meet your needs?" - Thank you, but no. A list and a table are, semantically, different things, Tables are for tabular data, not layout! Andy Mabbett 19:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The CSS sounds like a harmless, and good, idea. You may want to propose an edit on the talk page of MediaWiki:Common.css. Gracenotes^T § 21:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Although, looking at the article you linked to, a horizontal list like that would hurt my not-that-wide screen. Have you seen {{Col-begin}}? It's a CSS hack for creating two equal columns, until CSS3 comes. Gracenotes^T § 21:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Horizontal lists should wrap to suit whatever size screen you use. ColBegin still produces a table. Andy Mabbett 21:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure about what you want. Hmmm. How does the formatting at Template:Roman Emperors look? Gracenotes^T § 21:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the look I want, but I want to achieve it with HTML lists (UL/ OL, and LI). Please see http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/test/ , where I have marked up part of the above, as a horizontal HTML list.Andy Mabbett 21:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

← You know, "ul" and "li" are HTML tags that can be implemented into MediaWiki wikitext. So a list like

<ul>
<li class=horizonal>Item A</li>
<li class=horizonal>Item B</li>
<li class=horizonal>Item C</li>
</ul>

Would work. I see where you're coming from... all that you'd need to do is propose an edit at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. On the other hand, however, using a table would work just as well, although without the same semantic feel. Gracenotes^T § 21:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but I want the ease-of-editing for authors and the semantic meaningfulness of list markup, without in-line CSS. I'm awkward, that way ;-) Andy Mabbett 22:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit put off by the <messiness>. However, I think that you can fix it by doing this:

<ul class=horizontal>
*Item A
*Item B
*Item C
</ul>

The only thing is, we'd have to alter the CSS file to change .horizontal into ul.horizontal. Gracenotes^T § 22:45, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not clear what you mean by "messiness". Andy Mabbett 22:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikitext is just a simplified version of HTML. Of course, it got rather complicated since then, but never mind that. So I think that we should not use the li tags, since they clutter up the editing box when a more elegant solution, using *, would work. Gracenotes^T § 22:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

so you were agreeing with my "want the ease-of-editing for authors"; I had thought you were disagreeing with me. Andy Mabbett 23:03, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Nope. I used <messiness> to mean messiness from too many HTML tags :). Gracenotes^T § 23:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I mean, yes, I agree with you. Slip of the fingers, I suppose. Gracenotes^T § 01:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Are there any substantial objections to this CSS being added to Common.css? CMummert · talk 02:22, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't have any effect on existing content. It will only affect lists that are wrapped in a parent element marked with class="horizontal". Mike Dillon 02:52, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggesting additions

I want to propose a new feature that would involve a built-in moving/renaming tool for categories, similar to the one we have for pages. Where do I propose this and/or who do I contact about this? --Hemlock Martinis 23:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, you can use AWB :) If you moved Category:A to Category:B, then all of the pages in Category:A would still say Category:A, and Category:B would be empty, even if the wikitext and revision history of Category:A was moved. Is the latter what you're looking for? Gracenotes^T § 00:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess that works. I was hoping for a built-in feature, but I doubt that'll happen. Thanks! --Hemlock Martinis 00:50, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Link color Table

Is there anyway to set the color of links for an entire table?danielfolsom © 18:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Horizontal TOC

Is there such a thing as a horizontal toc? I've looked a lot of places now - and I can't seem to find one, but I figure if anyone knew you guys would. One problem is I can't do this like a css type of thing - any user that comes has to see it horizontally. I was hoping for something like this (with less space in between words):

Table of Contents
Welcome to Wikipedia!	Great Job on your First edit!	Can I have your Opinion	Your first barnstar
You have been elected to an admin position	You have been elected to the Jimbo position	WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? WE'RE RUINED!	Thanks to you I won't ever let people edit MY wiki again - Jimbo

Thanks for any help! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Danielfolsom (talk • contribs)

There are horizontal ones at Wikipedia:Template messages/Compact table of contents, but these are for long alphanumeric and similar lists. –Pomte 16:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

What about this?

<div class="horizontal">
__TOC__
</div>

It's a new feature that's being worked out at the moment. --ais523 16:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow - thanks for te quick response!danielfolsom ©

You're lucky in the timing; that wouldn't have worked a week ago. There are still some problems with Internet Explorer 6 that need to be worked out. --ais523 17:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

wikimedia diff function

I have several questions on diff program used for page historirs.

1) Is the diff program specifically developed for wikipedia?

2) Is it almost the same as the "dif" program under unix/linux?

3) If it is different, what are the major differences?

4) Is it obtainable from wikipedia or any other resource?

5) Is there any technical paper on how to reimplement it?

Thanks,

Ramazan.

I don't know, but if someone doesn't come along with an answer, perhaps you could look at the source. The database is available at Wikipedia:Database download, but points to the frontend source at Wikipedia:MediaWiki, which says it's at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/. I agree, it acts a lot like the Linux diff utility. —EncMstr 05:33, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

1) kind of, 2) no, 3) it makes HTML and does word-level diffs, 4) C++ version (used on Wikipedia), PHP version (used on other MediaWiki wikis). 5) Possibly, try an abstract search. It's based on a diff module from PhpWiki, which was based on a Perl module by Ned Konz (now obsolete), which was loosely based on GNU diffutils. Various features and optimisations were added along the way. See the comments in the source. -- Tim Starling 07:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Transclusion of Special: pages

I recently created {{Juggling-stub}} and would like to transclude <noinclude>Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Juggling-stub</noinclude> into the template page or the /use subpage I also created. But following the instructions on WP:TRANS didn't work, I tried {{Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Juggling-stub}}. It doesn't say there that special pages cannot be transcluded. But is that the case or did I use the wrong syntax? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 14:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Not all special pages can be transcluded (some can, some can't); it seems that what-links-here is one of the ones that can't be. (The syntax would be correct, if it were possible.) --ais523 15:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Alternatively, is there another way to produce such a what links here list, like it exists for image pages? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 15:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

You could try noincluding a category (such as Category:Juggling stubs) into the template, and using the listing created by the category; I think that's the method most stubs use. --ais523 15:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The category was created by a user who didn't know about the 60+ stub rule. Below that threshold, templates are upmerged into another category, in this case Category:Culture stubs. I don't want to overstep my boundaries by unilaterally upmerging the template to a new category. Anyway, thanks for the ideas. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 16:56, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Deleting a redirect somehow deleted the target?

Yesterday, I had speedy deleted Joys Green as having insufficient context for expansion (A1). Today, I was asked to restore it, so I decided to userfy it for the requestor. I (1) restored the page, (2) removed the speedy deletion tag, (3) moved it to User:Eastmain/Joys Green, and (4) deleted the resulting redirect created at Joys Green.

But then I saw User:Eastmain/Joys Green was redlinked and Joys Green was bluelinked. I thought ok ... I must have accidentally deleted the userfied page instead of the redirect. So I re-deleted the redirect and restored the userfied page.

Then, I took a look at my deletion log:

1. 07:50, 2 April 2007 BigDT (Talk | contribs | block) restored "User:Eastmain/Joys Green" (6 revisions restored: userfied page)
2. 07:50, 2 April 2007 BigDT (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Joys Green" (content was: '#REDIRECT User:Eastmain/Joys Green' (and the only contributor was 'BigDT')) (Restore)
3. 07:49, 2 April 2007 BigDT (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Joys Green" (content was: '#REDIRECT User:Eastmain/Joys Green' (and the only contributor was 'BigDT')) (Restore)
4. 07:49, 2 April 2007 BigDT (Talk | contribs | block) moved Joys Green to User:Eastmain/Joys Green (userfying)
5. 07:49, 2 April 2007 BigDT (Talk | contribs | block) restored "Joys Green" (4 revisions restored: user request)

Remember that this is reverse chronological order. So I deleted Joys Green twice in a row with no intervening action and I restored User:Eastmain/Joys Green with the deletion never actually showing up in the log. And yes, I looked at the logs for both pages - nobody else was doing anything to them while I was in there. So somehow, deleting the redirect deleted its target instead. Any thoughts? Or is it just too early in the morning? --BigDT 12:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Probably just a server lag/cache issue. Sometimes deletions/page creations take a moment or two to show up if the server is heavily loaded. So I guess what happened was that after the move the target still showed up as a redlink because the move had not properly registered yet, and you still had the old name in the cache. History pages and such often look a bit wierd right after moves/undeletions. Just wait a few seconds and reload the page, usualy clears it right up. --Sherool (talk) 12:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

WatchlistBot

I started a new project today. It's currently up and running. The gist of it is you can ask this bot to watch certain articles (similar to your Wikipedia watchlist) and it will send you an IM on Jabber the moment an article on your list is edited.

Please test the bot and let me know how it works for you.

I apologize if this is the wrong place to announce this, but I'm quite excited that the bot is running after only a few hours of development.  :) --Chris (talk) 11:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

How do I back up my wiki successfully?

I use internet explorer, Windows Internet explorer to be precise. I have a wiki on http://editthis.info , and I was wondering how I should go about backing up my wiki (in case server crashes or something). I tried doing what it says to do on this page: meta:Data dumps#Producing your own dumps

But it didn’t work, because while it was Exporting my wiki I got this message: "XML page cannot be displayed. Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later. The following tags were not closed: mediawiki. Error processing resource.”

So how do I back-up my wiki w/o getting an error message? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Andrewdt85 (talk • contribs) 10:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC).

I hate to bring this up, but you can view raw XML pages in Firefox (I've never backed up a wiki before, so this may or may not be relevant)... Gracenotes^T § 15:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Normally in IE too, but it borks sometimes. The problem here seems to be that the XML page in question was malformed (which is what the error message seems to imply). However, I just checked Special:Export/User:ais523 here (as a test) and the tags there seem perfectly balanced to me; maybe a packet was lost or something like that when you tried to export, and IE didn't notice? --ais523 15:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Sortable, except for one column

I've used wikitable sortable in this article, but don't want to sort on the first column. How do I disable it for name? (I know I can turn the names into Lastname, Firstname as a workaround!) --Steve _(Stephen) ^talk 04:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. I just added "class=unsortable" to the name header. Cheers. --MZMcBride 05:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Cool. I didn't know you could turn off sorting for individual columns.-gadfium 06:38, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Extensions, alternative, & workarounds

(Carried over from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#HTML_MAP_element_in_WP)

There's a very nice page, Help:HTML in wikitext, of allowed wp HTML tags.

1. Would somebody in the know please add a list of workarounds/alternative for those that aren't? ("Allowed", that is, not "in the know". But that too)
2. At least a link to mw:Category:Extensions? (Yeah, I know about it now, I mean for the next poor slob to slog through looking for answers :-)

What are the other such categories, lists, pages, groups, cabals, ... that aren't in "Category:Extensions" but extend the functionality/joy of editing, presentation, display etc?

Joyfully, --Saintrain 00:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

If you want alternatives for "missing" HTML tags, I have two: {{nobr}} (for <nobr>) and {{bdo}} (for <bdo>). --cesarb 00:42, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks cesarb! That's exactly the kind of thing that should go on "Help:HTML in wikitext".

It would be really handy to have all that info on one page. --Saintrain 16:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there something wrong with contribution lists today?

Special:Contributions seems to be about 10 minutes behind. I've tried it from different browsers, logged out, logged in, etc - it's not a caching issue on my part and it's been consistently 10 minutes behind. If I go to [17], everything there is behind 10 minutes. Any thoughts?--BigDT 19:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Seconded. It's making it very hard to track the vandalize-revert-warn cycle. —dgies^t_c 20:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thirded. I came to ask about it because I am seeing the same thing.--Paloma Walker 20:25, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Fourthed, my individual contributions are way laggy. --Iamunknown 20:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed; the contibutions are updating slowly. This is the third time within a month I've heard this happen. Acalamari 20:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Mooothed, AIV is annoying with the need to sniff out article histories to see if there actually was vandalism. -Amarkov moore cowbell! 20:34, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it is because the job queue length (see Special:Statistics) is currently 163,054. That is the most I have ever seen it at. --Iamunknown 20:39, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I was personally responsible for getting it over 600 000 once. Didn't affect a thing. —Ruud 20:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I've seen it at 1.8 million. Don't think large job ques slows things down... Well except new thing added to the que may take a day and a half while it churns it's way though. I've noticed the contribs lag to by the way. --Sherool (talk) 21:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

What does the number mean? Number of jobs? Number of bytes? --Iamunknown 21:58, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Number of jobs ( = number of database records that might need to be updated). Everytime someone views a page one or more jobs are executed. —Ruud 00:23, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• This is still happening. Sucks. --192.75.48.150 14:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Can one customize the TOC function?

I came across this page: List of musical instruments by Hornbostel-Sachs number, and wondered...

Is there a way to make the auto table of contents render differently? For a page like this one, the TOC is potentially helpful, but here the TOC's numbering clashes w/ the numbering of the HS system itself, rendering the TOC nearly unreadable. I would think there would be other pages w/ this type of issue. Is there a way to make the TOC list stuff by headings w/o the outline numbers? ie could one make it render as just

Thing

Sub-thing

instead of

1 Thing

1.1 Sub-thing

I tried Category:TOC templates but couldn't find anything. Is this a "request-a-template" situation? Thanks —Turangalila (talk) 12:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Why does the headings have their own numeration? That is what the heading levels are about. You may be able to create it manually with __NOTOC__, however you will have to update it manually and casual users would not be able to do that. -- ReyBrujo 16:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The headings have their own numeration because the article is about a numerical typology – hence the title of the page. Having headings w/ the numbers of the typology makes some sense in these types of articles, though I looked at others such as DSM-IV and Dewey Decimal lists & they seem to have fudged & left the #'s out of the headings – perhaps because of this issue. If it really is impossible to keep the automatic compilation feature & lose the outline #'s in special cases then cool. It's probably not worth imposing a complicated manual process on editors. —Turangalila (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

You could request at MediaWiki_talk:Common.css an un-numbered class for wrapping your TOC in, such as:

.nonumtoc .tocnumber { display:none; }
.nonumtoc #toc ul,
.nonumtoc .toc ul {
  line-height: 1.5em;
  list-style-type: square;
  margin: .3em 0 0 1.5em;
  padding: 0;
  list-style-image: url(/skins-1.5/monobook/bullet.gif);
}

///(or a variation thereof). Which could be placed with <div class="nonumtoc">__TOC__</div>. Note that you'd have to be rather convincing to get it ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 07:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll give that a shot, thanks much. I'm gonna copy this discussion over to my talk page if that's ok. —Turangalila (talk) 18:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Sprotected and continued donations

It covers up templates like {{sprotected2}} and others that occur up there. It would be fine if it was below the line but on top of the line it messes a lot up. Look at the top of this page to see what I mean. (this is what it looks like from an annons POV.) --Darkest Hour|DarkeBot 17:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'd agree with you (and the section above, which is asking the same thing), so I've placed {{editprotected}} here. This needs to be moved substantially to the left as long as Wikipedia continues to use CSS hacks to put things in the top-right corner. --ais523 18:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you post this on WP:VPT? This is an extremely visible part of the interface, and it isn't something that should be subject to a sandbox treatment. Let's get it right the first time around. Titoxd^(?!?) 19:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Cheating sortable tables

Our sortable table feature is really great, and some of us wanted to apply that to episode lists that have different airing order, etc. The problem is that the episode list format usually has two rows per "episode", which causes sorting to get all wacky. In an attempt to get around this I have made a format that puts one table within a single table row, see User:Ned Scott/sandbox7 (using an episode template at User:Ned Scott/sandbox6). As you can see, it basically works but makes for some odd spacing (compare to the non-sortable version, List of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya episodes). Any advice on how to make the sortable version look more like the non-sortable version? -- Ned Scott 03:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I have made an attempt but there's a 1px #aaa border stuck around the top 2 cells (episode name, airdate). I think it's getting inherited from wikitable. using some awkward CSS. How do you fix the airdate cell width at 120px? In IE and Opera they squish over to the left. –Pomte 04:35, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that looks great. Not sure what to do about the Opera/IE problem, though. -- Ned Scott 05:10, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

collapse template

Hi, any chance of some pointers on writing/editing templates? How do I get a template to be collapsed when you first view a page on a specific page. Case in point: I have Template:The Mighty Boosh on List_of_characters_from_The_Mighty_Boosh but want it to be collapsed like the McCartney template on Paul McCartney. I looked at the source of the page and the template and couldn't pick out the bit of code that does it.

Thanks. ...adam... ^{(talk • contributions)} 20:23, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

There's an excellent table regarding the different types of collapsible tables at the bottom of this page. The rest of the page details the different options and which one would serve your needs. Collapsible tables have a custom initial state, while NavFrame div's don't. Any other questions, just ask.... Cheers. --MZMcBride 23:58, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Amazing - did just the job. Thanks mate. ...adam... ^{(talk • contributions)} 00:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you really want the template to be collapsed though? It would slow down navigation, which is the point. If the template is condensed vertically, then it won't take up much space and won't need to be collapsed. –Pomte 00:26, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It's for a disambiguation page - so I thought it was almost pointless it being there - but i thought it should be. I've put teh collapsed version on that page only, feel free to comment/edit if you think I've messed it up. ...adam... ^{(talk • contributions)} 00:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Template editing help

Could someone please change {{Earthquake}} so that it displays no image if no map parameter is supplied? I've tried, but my understanding of template syntax mixed with tables is not great.See 1998 Papua New Guinea earthquake for an example of what the template produces currently with no map parameter, or 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake with a map parameter.-gadfium 08:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I think I've got it. It seems you can't use wikitable syntax within parser functions. I'd appreciate it if someone could check what I've done.-gadfium 09:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I've made the empty space disappear when no map is given. The image name parameter should also work, though I would call it caption or something to be clear. Any problems, let me know. I'll write a brief documentation. –Pomte 18:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks-gadfium 20:09, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Image orphaning tab - putting the speedy back in speedy deletion

A discussion on the administrator's noticeboard has brought the problem with image speedy deletions out into the open - they take far too much work to be done effectively. It isn't the deletion that's hard - if it was, we'd have thousands of articles in CAT:CSD. It's removing the image from the articles that it's being used on, which can take several minutes per image, that is hard and tedious. (For comparison, article speedy deletions take five to ten seconds). Removing all uses of an image is a real pain unless you have a script that can do it for you.

I'd like to see if there is consensus for an "orphan" tab up next to the delete tab on all images. (I propose this here, as opposed to just requesting it at bugzilla, for two reasons: one, I'd like some other opinions, and two, I don't know how to file a bug report.) How does this sound? Picaroon 19:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a fantastic idea, unless there is some horrible downside I haven't thought of, in which case I hate it. :) How often does orphanbot run? Most of the images in CSD are db-noncom; is there a way to get orphanbot to run faster or more often? Of course, like the debate over protectionbot which was ultimately solved by adding cascading protection to the software, a software button would be better than a bot. Thatcher131 19:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

If technically possible, great!! Garion96 (talk) 19:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I like it, but I think we need to first hear from the developers how difficult the feature would be. Policy has to wait until features. Or, as Thatcher said, just fire up an accelerated orphanbot. --Golbez 19:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Some thoughts:

1. Sounds like something which can be achieved by using a script running on the toolserver and user-script.
2. Do images really need to be removed from articles before they are deleted, can't orphanbot just do it afterwards?

—Ruud 20:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll leave Carnildo a note about this thread. Picaroon 21:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't sound like a developer level thing. This would make hundreds of automated edits on some images, and the change would require:

• Loading file links.
• Editing every page.
• Searching every page.
• Removing every instance of the image.
• Saving every page.

There is nothing like this I can think of in the code, and would need to be made from scratch. I do not think it would be worth expending the large amount of dev time it would take to get this done. Prodego ^talk 20:57, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Wait, so you're proposing that humans should make these edits manually? Or should we just stop bothering removing redlinked images? Or should we just stop deleting images? Those are the only other choices. Picaroon 21:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

He means this shouldn't be a feature of MediaWiki (because it can't be done efficiently enough and puts to much effort on the regular developers), but can be done by bots/a script running on the toolserver (developed by someone else.) —Ruud 21:34, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I mean. There is no real advantage to having it integrated into the mediawiki code, since unlike say rollback, where you can easily say, "return to this version", there is no easy way to lessen the database load. Since there is no server advantage, and it would most likely be very time consuming to code into mediawiki, this is something better suited to be done via script/bot. Prodego ^talk 21:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

In response to various questions about OrphanBot:

1. OrphanBot currently does removals roughly once a day: it removes unsourced images every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and removes no-license images every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Depending on how fast Wikipedia is running and the size of the workload, this takes between four and twelve hours.
2. OrphanBot does not deal with replaceable fair use (needs human judgement), untagged images (I haven't gotten around to adding that task), or other categories of speedy deletion (theoretically, these would be gone before OrphanBot can see them).
3. OrphanBot can't deal with images once they're deleted: once the image is deleted, information on what pages are using it is no longer reliable.
4. Yes, I could add a task to have OrphanBot remove db-noncom images once an hour or so.

--Carnildo 23:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I have such a tab in my monobook.js from Georgemoney but I might be able to code a bot to remove images, as the JS code does the exact same. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Can OrphanBot, or some other bot, just remove links to nonexistent images? I understand that once the image is gone, the bot doesn't know what articles it used to be used in, but can't a bot go through all articles and remove red images links? Or can a bot not distinguish between an image that's nonexistent because it's really nonexistent and an image that appears to be nonexistent but is actually at Commons? —Angr 10:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

"Go through all articles"? Are you aware that Wikipedia has 1.7 million articles? It would take OrphanBot just shy of a month and a half to do so, transferring about 36 gigabytes of data, assuming it never stops to edit. --Carnildo 19:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Could other bots be written to do that work, then? Maybe six or seven of them that divide the articles up evenly among themselves? —Angr 20:55, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I have one idea: For links to Image: namespace, where no image is found, the link is hidden instead of shown as a red link _→AzaToth 22:43, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Carnildo could you have orphanbot parse the deletion log and then remove images that were deleted and have filelinks still? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

This would be much easier. I would have thought that the fact that we humans can see what file links exist for a given page means that, somehow, the bots would be able to pick that up as well. Harryboyles 07:02, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

You can see the links, yes, but are they reliable? The last time I checked, the "What links here" and "file links" lists for deleted images often did not include all uses of the image. --Carnildo 20:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

IT Jargon in disambig page

Can a few editors familiar with IT jargon check out the third item listed in Jamuna, and improve or delete it if inappropriate. It not only has no links, the last part of it is really making no sense to me whatever other than as a signature. "PM" should be Preventive maintenance, if I'm parsing it right at all, but it's all buzz words as written. // FrankB 15:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Appears to be nonsense, added by a user with a past history of vandalism - couldn't find anything informative on Google. I've deleted the information and put the template in the correct place. x42bn6 Talk 15:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

HTML color

What is the HTML color code of the blue links? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 14:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like rgb(0,43,184) to me. In hexadecimal, that would be #002BB8. x42bn6 Talk 15:24, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 15:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

How to delete wikipedia accounts.

hay i just want to know how to delete an account on wikipedia?

thx for your time.

By the GFDL, we can't delete accounts. You can request deletion of your userpage ({{db-author}}) and stop editing. Might also want to see m:Right to vanish. x42bn6 Talk 15:26, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

How do I lock my Wikia from editing?

I have a scratchpad wikia wiki that is getting vandalized a lot. How do I lock all pages from non-admin editing? It's not easy to do, b/c wikis are meant for editing, but in my case I have to. How to do it?

Thanks for helping me w/ a question unrelated to Wikipedia.Andrewdt85 08:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

If you're an admin there, you can protect all of the pages (or semiprotect them, which prevents anonymous and newly registered users from editing them). Or if you're a developer... well, that seems a bit extreme. So, if you're not an admin, there's probably not much you can do, sorry, besides reversion. Gracenotes^T § 17:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

These guys should be able to help Wikiasite:scratchpad:Special:Listusers/sysop. --Splarka (rant) 07:32, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

For the third time

Taken from: Anonnotice

Sprotected and continued donations

It covers up templates like {{sprotected2}} and others that occur up there. It would be fine if it was below the line but on top of the line it messes a lot up. Look at the top of this page to see what I mean. (this is what it looks like from an annons POV.) --Darkest Hour|DarkeBot 17:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'd agree with you (and the section above, which is asking the same thing), so I've placed {{editprotected}} here. This needs to be moved substantially to the left as long as Wikipedia continues to use CSS hacks to put things in the top-right corner. --ais523 18:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you post this on WP:VPT? This is an extremely visible part of the interface, and it isn't something that should be subject to a sandbox treatment. Let's get it right the first time around. Titoxd^(?!?) 19:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

«razorclaw 19:24:48, 04-17-2007»

Sorting Names Aphabetically in Categories

In Georgian Wikipedia in order to have peoples' bios sorted aphabetically in their categories we have to name articles as "last name, first name" (e.g. Washington, George, etc., which is unnatural for the language, see example), but here in English Wikipedia it's not required. Can anyone tell, what do we need to do to rectify this? Will very much appreciate. - Alsandro · T · w:ka: Th · T 07:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

What you can do is use category sort keys on individual articles. AFAIK, there's no way to do this wiki-wide. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 08:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

thanks. - Alsandro · T · w:ka: Th · T 07:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Wanted categories problem

There are quite a few categories listed at Special:Wanted categories that have been empty for months, but still show up even after the page is updated (e.g. Pages on votes for deletion, Historical stubs). Is there a way to force these off the list? --- RockMFR 00:57, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Lower case first letters

Congratulations on getting around the capital first letter issue. It looks a bit jury-rigged (it displays the upper case title, i.e. Will.i.am, for a moment before switching, and the URL is still Will.i.am), but it works! :D Cigarette 22:08, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It's done with javascript, so that only happens after the page loads. Gracenotes^T § 04:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

How to add article to category by a different name

Is there a way to add an article to a category but have it under a different name (on the category page) then the name of the article? --24.172.195.239 19:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

If you mean an alias, I don't think so. If you meant to have it indexed differently, yes. [[category:some category | last, first]] places the entry as one would expect for a person named first last. —EncMstr 19:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

So I set it on the article page? Is there any other fuctions I can change when appying the category tag?--24.172.194.34 19:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it goes on the article page. If you edit some category pages, you'll see that most are empty, except to make the category a subcategory. The category is "filled" by references from articles—kinda backward from normal. If you can follow that, you'll have got it.

Another category feature is the {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} magic word (even though it looks like a template call, it is processed directly by the wiki code). It makes the parameter the default index of all the categories, so each doesn't have to redundantly list the altered key value. See the wikitext at the bottom of Steve Fossett for a good example. —EncMstr 20:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It is also possible to create a redirect to the article from the alternate name and place the category on the redirect. But that really should only be done where having the article under the actual title might cause confusion if it were in the category (as, for example, can sometimes happen when merging stubs into a main article). older ≠ wiser 21:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)