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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

Frequently Asked Questions: (also see Wikipedia:Technical FAQ)

• Intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear, and cause the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. This is an ongoing issue we are working on.
• The search index is often out of date, sometimes taking weeks before it's updated. Because of that, recent changes are not immediately reflected on the search.
• Spell checking has been disabled on the Wikipedia search engine for performance reasons.
• If all the links in the articles suddenly become underlined (or the opposite), or red links instead end with a red question mark (or the opposite), or paragraphs are fully justified instead of left justified (or the opposite), it's probably because your browser failed to load one of the stylesheets (or the server sent you a wrong one). Do a forced reload or bypass your cache.
• If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Wikipedia:How to fix your signature.
• If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
• It has been reported that the Google Toolbar extension for the Firefox browser is the source of some strange problems (including blanking part of a page when editing it). If you have that extension, try turning it off or upgrading to a newer version. See bugzilla:5643 for more information.
• If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page (if the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too). If it doesn't work, try again.
• Some adblockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. Also, it's surprisingly common for people to accidentally block the image server (upload.wikimedia.org) on Firefox.
• If the section edit links are being pushed down by floated images, check Wikipedia:How to fix bunched up edit links.
• If you are asked to download a file (index.php) when trying to edit, or your browser launches an image editor when trying to edit, disable "Use external editor" on your preferences.
• Some ISPs use transparent proxies which cause problems logging in. If you find that you are automatically logged out just after you have logged in, and removing all your Wikipedia cookies does not fix the issue, try using the secure server (much slower) to bypass the proxy. This happens most often with some satellite ISPs (particularly HughesNet/DirecWay/DirecPC).

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Citing Images

How do I cite an image taken from Wikipedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Charles_de_Gaulle.jpg If suppose I cite as Wikipedia: Charles_de_Gaulle.jpg, typing the same into the search bar wont take me to the image. Help

Shortcut string bug

Firefox lets you make a shortcut string (like "wp") search Wikipedia and other sites. However, it turns '/' into "%2F". Wikipedia doesn't handle that correctly like it does when Firefox replaces ':' with a similar sequence. Is this fixable or do we have to wait for a MediaWiki update? Will (Talk - contribs) 06:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

In namespaces with subpages disabled, '%2F' should probably be accepted as an alias for '/'. You could open a bug report if you like. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a low-level issue with Apache; see my comments on the bug report. --brion 10:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

What specific bug report? Harryboyles 03:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Bug 8254. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Section headers on my monobook.js page don't work

At User:Will Pittenger/monobook.js, I configured it to make jumping directly to a specific script easier by adding section headers. The section headers are JS-commented out to prevent them from being executed. However, the page is shown in one big <pre> box when I view the page. How do I fix it so the section headers work again? -Will Pittenger 06:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This has apparently been part of MediaWiki code for over 2.5 years: [1] (although until recently, it seems like it often failed to correctly escape all the html or apply the pre, if viewing a diff, old ID, or other strange circumstances, maybe something was fixed). What you can do if you just want to display (not edit), is transclude it to another page, eg: {{User:Will Pittenger/monobook.js}} on User:Will Pittenger/monobook. --Splarka (rant) 09:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Having investigated further, it appears the only time you'll see your page in a slightly-wikicode-friendly manner is just after you've created it (and only you will see it as such, and only while it is cached, &action=purge turns it into a big escaped <pre>). --Splarka (rant) 00:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Purge might work, but the purge tab does not. -Will Pittenger 01:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean 'does not work' in that it makes it a big <pre> (which you don't want) or doesn't? --Splarka (rant) 09:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The page is one large <pre> box until I purge the page. Same problem with my CSS page. Will (Talk - contribs) 22:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Odd, I have the opposite effect. When I create a new css/js, it appears rendered in wikicode, but when I purge it, it henceforth only appears (as the code implies) in a large <pre>. --Splarka (rant) 08:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

fun and profit with templates

Hi. I've been trying to make, at User:Morwen/library, a table containing books. The idea is that I would feed in the {{cite book}} parameters, and it spits out a table row, which has the output of {{cite book}} in one column, and then the actual source code to invoke that in the middle. Thus far I have failed spectacularly. Any suggestions? Morwen - Talk 11:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe this is impossible. Because if you write the curly template call braces in to the parameters of the call it is already too late. Because in

{{User:Morwen/metacite|1={{cite book|title=[[The Star Trek Encyclopedia]]|last=Okuda|first=Mike|coauthors=Denise, Okuda with Mirek, Debbie|publisher=Pocket Books|id=ISBN 0-671-53609-5|year=1999}}}}

I would say cite book is already expanded before User:Morwen/metacite is called. So I would say the parser gets:

{{User:Morwen/metacite|1=<cite class="book" style="font-style:normal" id="Reference-Okuda-1999">Okuda, Mike, Denise, Okuda with Mirek, Debbie (1999). <i>[[The Star Trek Encyclopedia]]</i>. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-53609-5.</cite>}}

Which is sure not what you want.

Furthermore, in your subtemplate, User:Morwen/metacite:

|-
|{{{1}}} || <nowiki>{{{1}}}</nowiki>

you are telling the parser with nowiki to ignore that {{{1}}} is a parameter. Impossibilities on two levels. --Ligulem 12:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

So do you have any idea how to accomplish this effect? I'm happy to mess around with stuff, I just want to only have the parameters in one place on the 'library' page, so as to avoid chance of mis-synching. I was working under the hope that it would do my cite book after it had sustituted in the parameters, and wanted it to nowiki after parsing the cite book, but before parsing the wikimarkup of that. Obviously it's not doing what I want. Morwen - Talk 12:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

"So do you have any idea how to accomplish this effect?": No. --Ligulem 12:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not quite certain I understand the confusion. Why not just have your metacite accept the cite parameters, then do a passthru of the parms. Here's a simple example of that, but note you'd have to add conditionals to test if parms are defined to show this cleaner, but I think the concept is there. See User:*Spark*/citeTest. --*Spark* 18:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Hmm, that has the drawback of not being very generic, but it will do for my purposes. Morwen - Talk 13:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

A book is a book is a book. The question is valuable, if the solution uneasy today. If a template is not made to be put inside another, there could be a way to link to some information from an URI, ISBN or Wikipedia page inside a template. Let's think about that. -- DLL ^{.. T} 18:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh? Morwen - Talk 13:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you can do something with msgnw. Put all the template calls in one subpage "cites". Then you can make a table with

{|
| {{User:Morwen/cites}}
| {{msgnw:User:Morwen/cites}}
|}

The first column will have all the evaluated templates from the cites page, the second will have just the code from the page. Gimmetrow 22:56, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Image Problems

File:SNCF Grenoble-Montmélian.svg

the image

Why does this image not show up inthumbnails (of frames, or in nothing). Chris5897 (T@£k) NOTE: The time, which is EIGHT O'CLOCK, FIFTEENTH OF DECEMBER, is left out to avoid automatic archival.

It references an external image, which a) doesn't exist and b) isn't allowed if it did. You need to either remove the image or tell your SVG editor to embed the images into the SVG file. --brion 20:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Those GIF links are not the problem; they are not trying to include the GIF, and removing them makes no difference at all. In fact, the image as uploaded [2] works fine when viewed separately, only inlining it doesn't work (at least in Firefox 1.5.0.8). This isn't related to Wikipedia at all, hand-written HTML has the same problem. Looks like a Firefox bug. --Derlay 03:02, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... It doesn't work on test.wikipedia.org, but it renders fine at Wikia, but we very recently (like, two days ago) upgraded our SVG rendering. --Splarka (rant) 08:38, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Our SVG renderer is modified to fail automatically if the image attempts to load any external resources (for instance, external .gif images). Local files wouldn't work anyway, and allowing the renderer to load arbitrary files from our servers would be a security risk. Hence, failure to render. --brion 19:41, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Firefox 2.0 refresh issue

Does anyone else have a problem in Firefox 2.0 where you edit an article, click Save Page, and the resulting view doesn't show your changes until you refresh the page? Just wondering if there is a workaround or fix. Mus Musculus 20:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have that problem as well. Prodego ^talk 22:30, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

It's probably that the squid cache hasn't been updated with the changes you made to the page. ?action=purge should deal with it. Titoxd^(?!?) 22:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it would be that, because the problem only occurs when the page edited is loaded immediately after the save, after which a soft refresh will load the page. Whereas if it were the squid cache, the page should continue to load the old version, until the squid cache is purged. Prodego ^talk 22:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

But there we go again: the squid cache doesn't take much to update, but it takes long enough for immediate views to be served using the old page. I have Firefox 2.0 as well, and I only see the problem when Ganglia says that the servers are overloading. Titoxd^(?!?) 22:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I have not checked that, however, I do notice the problem only occurs on long pages, so you are probably right, the squid did not update before the page was loaded, then when it is reloaded it has updated. I have no idea what you mean by "here we go again", has there been some debate on something like this? Prodego ^talk 23:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

No, just that I had written the same thing two lines above and in the Help Desk. :) Titoxd^(?!?) 17:57, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Well actually you may be right (unless this is a byproduct of the fact that all info is sent from or to the main server when this is selected), since going to my preferences and disabling page caching seems to have fixed it. Prodego ^talk 22:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem. It's only been happening over the last week or so for me. Firefox 2.0 on a Mac. I used to use the ?action=purge command each time, which sorts the problem on an individual page basis, but now I've given up and just assume that the edit has been saved. Mike Peel 20:52, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm - I wonder if that's the problem I'm having too: I posted this a few days ago on Help (didn't know about this place), and then the problem went away mostly, but it is still intermittently happening. I use Firefox too, but on a PC - didn't realize that might be relevant. Also, I don't know what you mean by "?action=purge" - please explain, if it's something I should be doing. However, this problem of not seeing the edit until I refresh the screen was not happening until a few days ago, and it doesn't happen each time, with no particular pattern. Went away for a few days, now is back, sometimes.

Here's what I said:

Reporting possible bug

Seems in the last few days whenever I complete an edit ("save" it I mean), I am returned to the page or section showing the old text in place until I refresh the screen, where it then shows me the updated text. This never used to happen (by "used to" I mean a couple of days ago) - previously after "save" I'd see the new text immediately. Is this a bug or feature, and if a feature, why? thanks Tvoz 18:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for any help! Tvoz 03:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

highlighting spaces?

Is it possible to highlight spaces in article differences? Many times I look at the diffrences and have to examine to find the difference. The Placebo Effect 02:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, there are a few ways to do it, which involve editing your user/monobook.css:

This method gives the differences a light-red background color, and forces all spaces to expand fully. Note that large edit pages may be hard to read with white-space:pre:

td.diff-deletedline span.diffchange {background-color: #ffdddd; white-space:pre }
td.diff-addedline span.diffchange {background-color: #ffdddd; white-space:pre }

If that looks too ugly, you can try something more subtle, like putting a padded border around the diffchange (which will be an empty box where spaces were added or removed, making them obvious) (although they will be collapsed):

td.diff-deletedline span.diffchange {border:1px solid #ff0000; padding:0 2px; }
td.diff-addedline span.diffchange {border:1px solid #ff0000; padding:0 2px; }

--Splarka (rant) 08:55, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

white-space: pre-wrap; is probably superior to white-space: pre;, if your browser supports it (can't recall if IE7 does). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:32, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Undeleting recreated articles

Why does it take so long for an article to appear (sometimes an hour or more) after an article that has been recreated is undeleted (i.e. the histories are merged)? —Doug Bell ^talk 21:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't take any time for me, perhaps you need to purge the squid cache, or your own cache(Ctrl-F5 in many browsers, including IE and Firefox)? Prodego ^talk 21:29, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing it needed to be WP:PURGED. That seems to have fixed this, I'll remember that in the future if I have the problem again. Thanks, —Doug Bell ^talk 22:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

What's Going On?

About one out of every four times that I searched a keyword on Wikipedia in the past week, I got the little message that said that there was a problem with my search due to temporary technical difficulties. Is this problem the fault of my computer, or the Wikipedia server in general, and can I do anything about it? Eilicea 00:06, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's just a problem in general. You're not at fault, other users see it too. My guess is that it's a side effect of the servers having to try to index over a million articles and update the index every time someone edits, or something like that. What to do? Just try searching again in a little while, say 30 seconds. Nihiltres 01:06, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

At least for me, it's not been 30 seconds. In fact, it's lasted half the day on two occasions. I've been searching via Google, though--does that work for you?

edittools

I want to add EditTools to my MediaWiki 1.8.2 (you know, the character box on the edit page, etc.) except: 1) my wiki is kinda buggy, and 2) I have no clue where to get the javascript, and 3) I have no clue what the <charinsert> stuff is. Please help? 151.200.19.88 11:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

mw:Extension:CharInsert --Splarka (rant) 20:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Problem of message alerts.

My message alerts don't go off, in spite of having read the message by clicking message alert link. They remain even after response for few days and always come on any page, I open. swadhyayee 13:30, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Try refreshing, clearing your cache and purging both your talk page and the pages where the 'you have new mesages' alerts come up. Tra (Talk) 14:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but technically I am dumb to understand catch and purging so what are these two things and how to do it? swadhyayee 14:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I am sorry, I have an article on my favourite list. I select the article from my favourite list after opening internet browser and I get the page with alert. To make it clear, I think this page is in my favourite list from long and message alert was not as default. swadhyayee 15:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Purge for more information on how to purge and clear your cache. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 15:41, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Cyber Esponiage

I'm was thinking about this the other day (some as a result of reading about worms, bugs, hacking issues, etc.)... was curious if there are any initiatives underway to attack Terrorist sites or supporters thereof? Surely no one can say if it is being done, but certainly an attack on the vehicle used to communicate is not out of the question.

Lost last half hour of edits

I was looking at Richard Dawkins, my watchlist had an edit from it recently: 17:39 Richard Dawkins (diff; hist) . . Lithfo (Talk | contribs), but when I go to history, the most recent edit shows as: 13:51, December 17, 2006 Mikker (Talk | contribs). Purge did not help. Seems all the articles on my watchlist only show edits up to 17:19 --*Spark* 17:49, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

This keeps happening. Sometimes the article history I'm looking at is current, sometimes it stop at around 17:20. A few refreshes helps, suppose I'm getting bounced around to different servers, some which are not up to date. --*Spark* 17:56, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Similar thing here - a change shewed up on my watchlist, I went to look at it and then chased a websource, came back to wikipedia, edited the page, then clicked on my watchlist and was presented with an older version than I had been seeing 5 minutes earlier!DuncanHill 17:57, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

from observation It looks like there's a problem with Watchlists, but edits are being applied normally without disruption. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 18:03, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Edit histories intermittently have the same problem, eg, an edit shews up on a users contributions page, you go to the article, the article shews the up to date version, but the last edit doesn't shew on the edit history.DuncanHill 18:07, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

same here Kotok-McCarthy. Susanlesch 18:08, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

• The developers are aware of it, per #wikimedia-tech. Titoxd^(?!?) 18:08, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

• Wouldn't it make sense to lock the database in this sort of situation? --- RockMFR 01:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

some developer has f***ed the database up!!

I saw someone delete my comment I made, but I don't think they were doing that, just trying to respond to it, but if you try to respond to it you end up deleting the message that was left! Anyone else got this problem? Paul Silverman 17:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

You mean by section editing? I could answer here properly. Prodego ^talk 18:21, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Edit article with a new section link

Is there a way in wikitext to add a link to edit an article?

Specifically, I want in my User talk page to have a link to edit my user talk page in a new section.

Is this possible, and if so then how.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by xensyria (talk • contribs) 18:40, 17 December 2006

Sure, edit here. Gimmetrow 19:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very kind of you. I take it that there is no internal wiki way to do this?

Also, sorry about not signing it before. Xensyria 19:07, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

If by "internal" you mean as a [[wikilink]], then no, you cannot do this as this method requires parameters. However, you can make it a bit more classy: add new comment (as using the full url manually can break on mirrors and the https server). --Splarka (rant) 20:54, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

My JavaScript isn't loading.. (possibly due to new "interact" sidebar)

My user scripts aren't loading; I think it's due to the fact that some admin made a new "interact" sidebar. --Split Infinity ^(talk) 00:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

There's quite a lot of scripts there. Try blanking the page then adding back each of the scripts one by one to see where the problem is. Tra (Talk) 00:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I suspect the problem lies in the fact there was no longer a navigation box, I renamed the browse box back to navigation? —Ruud 01:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

That's right. Thanks! --Split Infinity ^(talk) 01:08, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Something wierd is going on....

I seems like the system isn't behaving normally. After making an edit and then looking at the history, sometimes my edit isn't listed. Other weird things happening that are hard to explain. Anyone else seeing things like this? ike9898 01:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see it is mentioned above. ike9898 01:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

new messages on talk page are non-existant

I keep getting a message that I have new messages on my talk page. However, when I check, I find no new messages. In fact, there have been no edits to that page in two days. What gives?

I don't know if it is relevant or not, but I use User:GeorgeMoney/UserScripts/newmessages. Should I ask him? Will (Talk - contribs) 04:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

But you have messages today. I posted a message to someone's talk page, and although it was listed in the user's talk page, the edit would not appear in the user's talk page history until a minute or so had passed. I believe there are some caching issues, so I would not really worry about this. -- ReyBrujo 05:34, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you check your Talk page's history? Sometimes somebody might vandalize your page and another editor come along and remove it, thus triggering the "new messages" message. Or somebody could have added a comment and then thought better of it. Check the history of the page to see if anything like that occurred. If it's nothing like that, try editing the page to clear the message. User:Zoe|(talk) 18:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Special:Mostrevisions

What's the problem here? It's been offline for three weeks now.

It puts too much stress on the database servers; hence, it was removed. It hopefully will be brought back up when Wikimedia buys more servers, so donate! Titoxd^(?!?) 21:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Bug/feature with your watchlist

The symptom: if you copy/paste a page off of your watchlist and use it to make a wikilink, it turns into a redlink. For example, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎ obviously exists, but is redlinked.

The cause: If you hit view->source while on your watchlist, you will see a non-printable character directly after the </a> and before the semicolon. This non-printable character gets included when you do a copy/paste from your watchlist.

The so what: On several occasions, I have seen pages that appear to have the correct name, but if you hover over the link, you see some junk at the end. If you hover over my link to WP:ANI above, you will see bad characters at the end. This can cause obvious problems. User A copies text off of his/her watchlist to use as a WikiLink in an article. Even though a real article exists, you now have a redlink making it look like no article is there. If someone clicks on it, they can create a new article that will appear to have the same name as the real one. You now have two forks of the article in existence. BigDT 21:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a Unicode LRM. I just went to Special:Prefixindex and nuked six pages starting with it; unfortunately, there isn't a Special:Suffixindex to find the ones which end with it. I believe it shouldn't be possible to use it within page titles; I will file a bug asking for it to be removed from page titles. --cesarb 22:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Reported as bugzilla:8312. --cesarb 22:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for passing it on. I had seen this happen beore, but never knew where the incorrect character was coming from. It wasn't until this evening when I created the redirect WP:FURG by copying and pasting Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline from my watchlist (see [3] for that version) that I was able to figure it out. BigDT 22:54, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Fixed by brion on r18513 as explained on his comment at bugzilla:3696. I already went through all the remaining articles with broken titles on this wiki and deleted or fixed them. --cesarb 13:08, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Text size shrinking upon log off

It's rather bizarre. All of a sudden, the size of body text--but not of tables of contents or text on the Main Page--shrink a size. I first noticed this at United States House of Representatives, accessed from the Main Page (in the Lewinsky Scandal bit). Is this on my side or yours? Lockesdonkey 03:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

You probably have a different skin set in your preferences. If you view it with the standard skin do you see a difference? --*Spark* 03:21, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

It's probably related to the issue brought up one section below this. Titoxd^(?!?) 03:34, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Shrunken Text?

When I call up articles the text shrinks. I hate it! Why does it do this?

• What browser are you using? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 03:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Any browser. Someone forgot to close a <small> in MediaWiki:Sitenotice, which is shown in every page. Fixed. Titoxd^(?!?) 03:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
    • So it's more better now?72.38.233.236 03:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
      • It should. Try purging your browser's cache if it still shows up ugly for you. Titoxd^(?!?) 03:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
        • It seems that the Foster Brooks article is still tiny.
          • Looks fine to me ... the problem's at your end. Nihiltres 03:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Edit count

How can I find out how many edits have I made ? Tavilis 08:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Your edit count yandman 08:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks ! Tavilis 09:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Goto the top of the page and click on my contributions pilko182 09:47, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

But that doesn't give you a count, just a list. User:Zoe|(talk) 18:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, at least for a week or so more. It will probably give you your edit count soon now that there's a database field for it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Page creation

how do you create a new page —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pilko182 (talk • contribs).

Step 1: If you don't have an account, create one (see Help:Logging in). Rick Block (talk) 18:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Step 2: Go to a relevant page, edit the existing page so the it will link also to the new page.

Step 3: In the edited page, follow the red link you just created, and it will create the new page

Step 4: Edit the new page. Thank you contributing wikipedia! Cate | _Talk 10:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

What idiot starts from 0 when counting ;) 22:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC) :)

TPF

I want to see the PNRS that underwent schedule change on Nov 18. I work in Apollo test system. I understand that the PNRS will be logged into a queue. I want to know how to identify the Queue..Can any of you tell me the entry?

Not sure which part of Wikipedia this applies to. Can you narrow it down a bit? Notinasnaid 10:21, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

You might want try asking at the Reference desk. Tra (Talk) 14:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Special characters "edittools"

How do I get the special character box on my Media Wiki, or better yet, is there a help page on it? I've been looking for a while, and I can't find a help page on the special character box. My last resort was to copy the html... but I don't even know where the js function is. Could someone help me? By the way, I'm using media wiki 1.8.2. Hangfromthefloor 09:25, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

...never mind, I found MediaWiki:Edittools, but I still don't know how to use it. Also, can anyone give me suggestions for how to automatically change apostrophes and quotation marks in to smart ones? i.e. ' → ’ Hangfromthefloor 12:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

1. You want the CharInsert extension. Check Special:Version for various things we have that you might be missing out on.
2. You could write an extension to do a preg_replace on the page text on parse. The only tricky bit would be writing the regex so that it gets things that you want to get and not anything else. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Automatic edit summaries

Can anyone remember where the discussions of the automatic edit summaries are taking place? The problem I want to raise concerns redirects. Currently, if someone creates a redirect from scratch, and saves the page without an edit summary, the automatic edit summary says <-Redirected page to XYZ, as seen here. But if someone then edits the redirect, adding a category for example (and there are reasons to add other text to redirect pages), but still leaving the page as a redirect, then removing all the stuff except the redirect produces the same automatic edit summary of <-Redirected page to XYZ, when in fact the redirect was in place all along. See the history here to see what I mean. Any way to get the automatic edit summary to only appear when a redirect is added and previously it wasn't there, and avoid doing this when both the before and after pages are the same redirect? Carcharoth 14:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Specifically, this automatic edit summary is misleading. Carcharoth 14:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussions are taking place at Wikipedia talk:Automatic edit summaries, where you could request this. Tra (Talk) 14:47, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Carcharoth 22:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Space in external links

A parameter of {{hpw}} allows for the user to insert the name of an article on the Harry Potter wiki, and it should link it to that article. However, if a space is used in the parameter (for example {{hpw|Harry Potter}}), the link will take you to http://harrypotter.wikia.com/Harry and pipe it to read "Potter". How can spaces be transformed to underscores in this parameter? --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 18:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Feed the parameter through the m:Help:Parser function urlencode (or anchorencode, see m:Help:Magic words). {{urlencode:Harry Potter}} results in Harry+Potter while {{anchorencode:Harry Potter}} results in Harry_Potter. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Easiest would probably be: {{hpw|Harry_Potter|Harry Potter}} producing:

• Harry Potter on Harry Potter Wiki, an external wiki

Be careful to avoid leading spaces on the first template parameter. Gimmetrow 18:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I just used {{anchorencode:{{{1}}}}} to avoid alerting people to use an underscore. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 19:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

{{anchorencode:}} is probably the wrong solution here: for example, {{anchorencode:M&M's}} produces "M&M's". That function is meant for MediaWiki section links, and isn't particularly useful for anything else. The correct solution in general would be {{urlencode:}} with the /w/index.php?title= link syntax; however, for Wikia wikis, an easier solution is to link to f.ex. wikia:harrypotter:Harry Potter. For other interwiki link prefixes, see meta:Interwiki map. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 08:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Fun new feature: edit change sizes in Recentchanges

After some database schema changes, we have started updating the live software on the site again. Visibly, this introduces a field on Special:Recentchanges showing the number of characters added or removed by each edit, giving an impression of the magnitude of changes.

This figure has been available for some time on the IRC feeds of changes, but is now stored in the database for display in the recent changes list. --brion 19:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This is great! Would it be possible to add this to other 'lists of edits' e.g. watchlist, new pages etc. It might also be useful to add it to article histories and user contributions but this might not be possible if the field is stored only in the recent changes table. Tra (Talk) 21:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

One of the classes has a typo in it. class=\'mw-pluminus-neg\' in /includes/RecentChange.php line 565. (doesn't match the class "mw-plusminus-neg" in main.css) --Splarka (rant) 08:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Image caption font size

This font size seems large.

The font size in image captions seems to have gotten large, but I can't figure out which CSS it's in. Does anyone know when/if this was changed? howcheng {chat} 19:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Yea. I noticed it as well.. it is messed up, doesn't blend well at all. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it looks OK, now. Tra (Talk) 21:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Probably related to bugzilla:8326. howcheng {chat} 22:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

SVG arrow problems when rendering as PNG

New to creating SVGs with Inkscape, but have a look at Image:SPI single slave.svg and Image:SPI three slaves.svg:

and

When mediawiki is rending them as PNGs it must not understand the arrows on the lines and drops them. However, Seamonkey 1.0.6 and Firefox 1.5.0.8 render the SVGs fine (go to the image page then click on the file name underneath to see the actual image file). Anyone know how to get mediawiki to render those arrow heads? Cburnett 20:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you have to convert the lines to a path. Select the line, then choose Path > Stroke to Path. That should do it. howcheng {chat} 20:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Every line I do that the arrow is no longer straight and at ~45 degree angle off of what it should be (both in inkscape and seamonkey). If it helps, I'm drawing a bezier curve with the line snapped straight by holding the control key, then end marker set in the fill and stroke dialog. Does it regardless of the line and marker type I choose. :/ Cburnett 20:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, it has something to do with the line being translated to a path resembling a filled rectangle to give it the appearance of being a line. And since the marker is anchored to a control point then, apparently, the angle of the triangle (the arrow head) depends upon the angle of the adjacent control points. Is there another way I could do this instead? Cburnett 20:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I only had to do it once, and it worked out fine for me, so I don't have any other suggestions for you. howcheng {chat} 21:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Got it! I upgraded from 0.43 to 0.44.1 and repeated the strok to path operation. Seems ok. Cburnett 00:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Borders around thumbnail images gone

If this is intentional, I apologize profusely, but the pictures at Flag of Bulgaria look faintly ridiculous. It is interesting to note that this is not the case at Flag of the United States. Lockesdonkey 22:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

probablly a transiant screwup, i've just purged the page and it looks fine now. Plugwash 22:21, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This was bugzilla:8326. Should be fixed now, though you might occasionally see badly mixed cached stylesheets. --brion 22:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

javascript - those "are you sure you want to do that" with ok and cancel

hi i am researching javascript and need to find out the real term for those JS dialogs that say something like are you sure you want to do that, with ok carrying on, and cancel cancelling it? thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.65.166.37 (talk • contribs) 22:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC).

var boolean = window.confirm("Are you sure?");

--howcheng {chat} 22:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

A confirmation dialog? Can't say that I've ever seen an official name for it. Cburnett 22:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

It would just be confirm(), not window.comfirm()

var boolean = confirm("Are you sure?");

GeorgeMoney (talk) 00:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

That's because if you call some function, the parser first looks for window.functionName() then functionName(). So window.confirm() is actually correct (it's a method of the window object) and also why you can just do confirm(). howcheng {chat} 01:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Well i never knew that. But if it worked for you, then what was your original problem that was posted here? GeorgeMoney (talk) 03:21, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I didn't ask the question, but it occurs to me now that I didn't answer it either. To answer, I don't think there's a name for it beyond "confirmation dialog box". howcheng {chat} 06:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enough, W3 calls the three of them (alert, confirm, prompt) "popup boxes" [4], and the confirm() one a "Confirm Box". Netscape sometimes refers to them as a "browser dialog box". --Splarka (rant) 08:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Windows programmers know these things as message boxes, regardless of the available buttons. The term message box is reserved for a dialog box containing only a message or question and a few buttons (and possibly an icon). But if the box asks a question, the term message box may sound a bit odd. It's a shame Javascript doesn't allow for other types of message boxes, like yes-no or yes-no-cancel. Ok-cancel message boxes really should only be used if you just asked the computer to do something, and you want the user to be able to cancel after reading the consequences. Shinobu 22:13, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Disambig link formatting

Currently the templates like {{dablink}} use wiki markup for formatting:

:<div class="dablink">''{{{1}}}''</div>

But shouldn't this really be

<div class="dablink">{{{1}}}</div>

and add this to the site-wide CSS?:

.dablink {
  font-style:italic;
  padding-left:2em;
}

Likewise for other built-in or "meta" messages. — Omegatron 01:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Actually, it should probably be <p class="dablink">{{{1}}}</p>, although that's arguable. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 07:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Undo

Undo is not undoing. It says it is, but the bad text remains in the edit screen. (It worked a couple of days ago, just not now - several times tonight.) Tvoz 08:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Update of Special:Shortpages

Could a developer update Special:Shortpages ? The current version was cached on 4 December and is totally useless now. I know this is supposed to be quite ressource intensive, but it would be nice to have a regular and, most importantly, predictable update frequency — the more often the better (although less than 2 days apart would be too much anyway since it takes some time to process all entries), but I don't know what would be reasonable from the technical point of view. Schutz 12:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Try these links: Wikipedia talk:Special:Shortpages & User:Zorglbot/Shortpages.--NMajdan•talk 22:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Hum... I have left a message on Wikipedia talk:Special:Shortpages a few weeks ago already, and User:Zorglbot/Shortpages is created and updated (from Special:Shortpages) by my own bot... Thanks anyway, Schutz 00:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems that all the Special: pages that cache lists of pages haven't been updated since 4 December, or earlier in some cases. Until recently, they have all been updating regularly every 2-3 days. Does anyone know what has happened? --Russ (talk) 11:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

There have been multiple complaints about this on Bugzilla, so I can assume the devs are looking into it. --ais523 16:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Special:Uncategorizedcategories has the same problem, last updated December 4th. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 13:31, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you have bug IDs so that I can follow the discussion ? I haven't found them after a quick search. Schutz 15:58, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

search spell correction

any reason we can't incorporate a spelling correction suggestion if misspellings are being search for within wikipedia? (i was thinking 'Did you mean xxxx?' google style). JoeSmack ^Talk 17:01, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

This feature has been disabled for performance reasons. Use Google to search Wikipedia instead. Tra (Talk) 18:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

SVG rendering issue

See Talk:Keyboard layout#Standardisation_needed.

How can we purge the old thumbnails from the cache?

And how come it used to give a problem, but doesn't anymore? Shinobu 21:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Browser cache/vandalism question

I don't know what to make of this question about old vandalism showing in Safari; can anyone have a look and respond to this new user? Thanks, Sandy (Talk) 22:07, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Opera mini

Someone posted here (I don't know why) the following message:

Hi wikipedia Developer Team, I am currently using Opera mini 3.0 on SE k500i mobile. I cannot post my comments to edit articles. The edit link gets 450 characters to my writing pad on mobile. Is there any feature for posting lines to existing articles using edit link from Opera mini? Opera mini has 6 million users approx. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_mini Suriya (Software Test Engineer)

Just forwarding the message... Titoxd^(?!?) 22:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I use OM to browse on my phone, there are character limits depending on the phone that you use and how much memory is open on the phone. In this case it's the software, not the site. Nate 07:40, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Problem on AfC pages

I'm not sure where this goes, so I'll start here.

For the last couple of days the AfC pages have been acting very screwy.

• The "edit button" does not edit the line that it's on - it opens the article before!
• The afc templates seem to be randomly putting the correct -top- and -bottom- tags on the new articles, so that sometimes editing a new article will affect the entire page!
• When a new request comes in, ofttimes there is not a new == == heading created.
• When there are multiple == == sections, attempting to edit the parent one opens only the top section, and not the entire submission. I've had to go through and blank out several nonsense listings that had multiple sections.

If this isn't the correct forum to address this, would you please redirect it to the right place! :) Thanks... SkierRMH 00:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The last two aren't bugs. The third is just people not following instructions, and the fourth is a feature of section editing. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 00:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

And the first?

Also, it is not consistent with the third one, sometimes all the sub-sections open up and sometimes they don't! SkierRMH 00:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The first happens when you click it, and someone creates a new section above it. The sections are renumbered, so, for instance, if you click on the fourteenth, you go to what used to be the thirteenth. No idea about the second. And is there a reason the third can't just be people sometimes following directions and sometimes not? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 00:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

top of page links jump left

Tonight for some unknown reason all my user links at the very top of the page 'my talk' etc when I touch them with the mouse cursor they jump to the left and hide behind the jigsaw globe --Matt 10:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I remember that happening to me as well on Internet Explorer. Have you tried Firefox? —Mets501 (talk) 12:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Happens to me occasionally, in IE. DuncanHill 13:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It has stopped again as mysteriously as it started, we have discussed firefox it might be time --Matt 21:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)to look into it thanks

• Bug Microsoft, it's a well-known problem on their end. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

converting a jpg image to a url

please help me do this, so i can add a photo to a blog,

thanks so much and Happy Holidays,

Randi

Do you mean you want to add a picture on Wikipedia to your blog? If so, you will need to find the picture you want, right click it and select properties. Somewhere there, you should find a URL beginning with /media. This is the url for the image. If your blog gets a lot of traffic, it might be better to upload the image to another server to reduce the impact to Wikipedia's servers. Tra (Talk) 21:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Not sure to understand the question clearly. Every file has an address, be it on your computer or on the web. A jpg image is a file ; its address is closely related to an url.

You are able to add a photo to a blog by stating its url, which you see in your browser when you go to that photo.

This is OK unless the image is used for a link, as our Wikipedia shattered globe top left does. It links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, but its own address is ... /media/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Wiki.png. To taste the difference, copy each link in the address bar. Does it help ? -- DLL ^{.. T} 19:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

What links here, my contribs, other lists?

The "What links here" list and the "my contributions" list both show a bulleted list of items. Other lists may have the same issue. To change it to a numbered list would require changing instances of <ul> to <ol> in the page, but seems it would be more useful and have zero impact on serving the page. Doesn't seem to be possible to change it with a user script - is it? If not, would it be a huge process to get this change implemented server side? Is it even a good idea? --*Spark* 22:41, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The core question is "which item is marked as #1"? If you only want it to be the item at the top of each page, even as you hit (older 50) and (newer 50), then that can be easily done via monobook.js. However, that's not necessarily very accurate/consistent, so I don't know that should be presented to users by default. The most accurate would be to mark #1 as your very first edit, and have increasing numbers as you go up the page, and as you hit (newer 50). Then you wouldn't need edit counters anymore. :) From what I've been able to tell though, keeping track of that would be database intensive, [5] so it's not clear that solution could be implemented either. --Interiot 23:01, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The only server side change I was referring to was changing the list element from unordered to ordered. Not true counting functionality on the server. Each page would start with #1. How would I do this with monobook.js? --*Spark* 23:15, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

In both cases, the <ul> doesn't have a class or ID, so you'd have to do some intelligent searching for ULs, I guess. --Interiot 00:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Note that edit counts won't be so server intensive anymore, as a recent database schema change added an user_editcount field to the User table. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Cool. It still wouldn't necessarily help this case though, since you can stick random things in the from= field, and make Special:Contributions jump into the middle of your edits, and it wouldn't have any reference point as to the number of edits at that point. --Interiot 00:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You can do this with CSS if your browser has decent support for it. If this list is numbered properly, it will work:

• Foo
• Bar
• Baz

To get this, add body.page-Special_Whatlinkshere #bodyContent ul, body.page-Special_Contributions #bodyContent ul { list-style: decimal; } to Special:Mypage/monobook.css. Note that this will have to be updated with the appropriate page names if the base special page names are changed in the future (which they probably will be, to e.g. Special:What links here). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

SVG problem

If you look at Line (racing), the image currently doesn't have a red arrow on the pavement. If you look at commons:Image:Racing line.svg, the image does currently have the red arrow. There are two versions of the image in history (one with the arrow and one without), however the last modification was done 7 months ago, Special:Log also doesn't show any other activity at commons or here, and ?action=purge doesn't clear up the problem. Any idea what's causing this and/or the best way to fix it? --Interiot 22:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it by reverting the last revision then reverting myself. Tra (Talk) 23:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

So do we need to do this every couple months, or is this something that can be triggered another way? (action=purge? Is there any other way to do a "null edit"?) --Interiot 00:50, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The ways of fixing these kinds of problems I can think of are (in this order):

• Refresh the page
• Clear browser cache
• Put ?action=purge on the URL of the image page
• Put ?action=purge on the URL of the article page
• Call the image with a dummy parameter in the querystring e.g. /media/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Racing_line.svg?abc=def
• Repeat all of the above several times over
• Revert the image or upload another copy over the top (this would probably qualify as a null edit)
• Make a null edit to the article

Or if all else fails:

• Change the width parameter of the image by 1px
• Create a new image from scratch
• Upload the image under a different name and reference the new name

I'm guessing when/if this happens again, the best thing to do would be to try some of the things in this list and hope at least one of them works. Tra (Talk) 01:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Image problem

The map on Long Island Rail Road is showing up way too large. No edits have been made to that article, template:infobox SG rail, or template:infobox rail that might have caused it. --NE2 23:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it. The map size specified in {{infobox SG rail}} shouldn't have 'px' in it. Tra (Talk) 23:29, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

That's strange; the "300pxpx" worked until recently. I suspect whatever was changed broke other pages too. --NE2 23:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Something is very odd. Up until yesterday List of largest suspension bridges looked just fine. Then suddenly, it looked like this! It was fixed by changing the parameter "150 px" to "150px". It doesn't seem that a space should matter. Worse, it seems like a bad idea to go from ignoring spaces to being fussy about them. -- Samuel Wantman 00:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The devs know about it. Titoxd^(?!?) 18:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It's fixed in trunk and should be live sometime soon, if it's not already. For now, try to use correct syntax.  :) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Zero sized reply from proxies when submitting

I've been getting this from show changes, submit, and preview actions. I've been mailing my edit to work and committing changes there without error, so I'm imagining that this is an issue with the proxy that serves my home IP address. The squid host in question is sq29.wikimedia.org. Is anyone aware of further details of this problem? Buffyg 19:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I do sometimes find that none or part of a page loads. Try pressing refresh when that happens. Tra (Talk) 20:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

This isn't the same thing. It's not that the page doesn't load. It's that the proxy repeatedly gives an error message, and changes aren't committed. Reloading doesn't fix the problem. Buffyg 22:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Try using the secure server (see the FAQ at the top of this page). This should bypass your proxy and workaround the problem. --cesarb 00:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Working redirect

The "comments" link in this talk template below is still red despite of existing redirect. Thoughts to fix it properly? --Brand спойт 21:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I put ?action=purge on the end of the page URL to purge it, so it should be working now. Tra (Talk) 21:35, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Pages only partially showing

I am only seeing Australian hardcore down to just above "See also", looking at it in edit the rest of the article is there. It is occuring in both Firefox and Explorer. Paul foord 23:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It was a malformed <ref> tag; I've fixed it now. Tra (Talk) 23:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Refresh a Wikpedia page versus opening a new tab

I use Firefox, but don't think it matters to the question. If I have my watchlist loaded in a tab and refresh it, it takes many, many seconds to finish reloading. If I just open a new tab to load the page, however, it only takes a second. Why is there such a big difference? Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 00:15, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

When you refresh, the browser has to ask the server, for each component of the page, if it has been modified since you last loaded the page. On the other hand, if you just open the page again (on a new tab or otherwise), it has to ask the server only about the components which have expired (or which were marked as not cacheable). The number of requests is much smaller on the second case; if you have a high latency connection to the servers, the difference can be quite noticeable.

My suggestion would be to simply load the page again instead of refreshing it (pressing enter on the URL bar is often enough). --cesarb 00:31, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

History RSS feeds not working?

My beloved RSS feeds aren't working anymore. I get the following error message in Firefox. It also doesn't work in Opera, so this doesn't seem to be a problem on my side.

XML Parsing Error: xml declaration not at start of external entity

Line Number 2, Column 1:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
^

--Conti|✉ 01:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm getting an error as well. This could be because of a recent change to the code that caused them to become invalid. Tra (Talk) 01:37, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This is caused by the xml declaration (<?xml version=.......?>) having a new line before it, so it is not on line 1 anymore and the xml parser goes crazy. This is probably due to some PHP include file closing and leaving 2 extra lines after the closing php tag (the first new line after a closing php tag is omitted). It could also be due to the server messing up the headers leaving one extra line. I have no idea. GeorgeMoney (talk) 03:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. There was extra whitespace on the Special:Makebot extension's localization file. --brion 04:53, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

SVG coming out blank

Image:Status_EPBC.svg does not render to PNG (it comes out all white). It's fine in Firefox (2.0.0.1 / Win) when you look at the SVG image itself. It was created in Inkscape, and various versions ("plain svg", converted to paths, inkscape original) are found in the edit history (detailed on the image page). Yes, I've tried purging. Any help? —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 03:53, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It works now. I started a new drawing in inkscape and copied the contents of the old one across. What exactly Wikipedia was choking on, I don't know. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 04:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

A change in the recent changes

I looked at the recent changes and saw that some changes have (+xx) and others have (-xx). What is this, and what do the numbers mean? --AAA! ^{(AAAA • AAAAAAAA)} 04:21, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It's the amount of stuff removed or added. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 04:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Amount of characters to be precise :D GeorgeMoney (talk) 04:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

The numbers and classes to style them have been there a few days, the actual color change took place in MediaWiki:Monobook.css (more recently). You can copy the styles to your user/monobook.css and change them if you wish. --Splarka (rant) 08:07, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Amount of characters or amount of bytes? Last time I heard, it was the latter. Titoxd^(?!?) 08:15, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Probably number of bytes, as that coding solution would be quite trivial. --- RockMFR 06:25, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Bytes. 86.133.54.220 07:58, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Fix for image links

Has the software been modified so that if certain explicit images are added to a page, they will not show up on the page as an image, but just as a link to the image. If so, then good. That will hopefully put a stop to stupid image vandalism.--Azer Red Si? 04:55, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

A long time ago. See MediaWiki:Bad image list. Titoxd^(?!?) 08:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles sorted by number of "what links here" entries

Could it be possible to have all the articles sorted by number of links to them? This way we could have an objective importance measurement, and strart an improvement drive to the most "linked to" articles. --SidiLemine 12:35, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This is actually already one of the Special pages (linked from the toolbox, on the left), see Special:Mostlinked. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Login page and focus

I've been wanting to request this since my first login to Wikipedia. Incredibly I'm only doing it now and more incredibly it doesn't seem to be a FAQ (but I didn't search thoroughly): in the login form, could you please give focus to the username edit? A very small thing, but handy to have. —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 15:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Note that you should be able to put focus directly into the username field on the login form by hitting 'tab' once. --brion 01:30, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I know, and that's what I'm currently used to do. But having a simple workaround doesn't mean not being a defect, no? :-) —Gennaro Prota^•Talk 02:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Melding together Todo lists and WikiProjects

As the originator and heavy backer/contributor of WikiProject Louisville, I ultimately came to the conclusion that the project needed to keep track of todo lists set up for many of the articles catalogued for the project. So recently, I created a category Category:Louisville articles with todo lists and created the template {{Todo-Louisville}} as a stopgap measure for placing said articles in the new category. However, I recognize a potential conflict in articles covered by multiple projects. I would like to have a todo list that can set itself up in similar categories set up for separate projects. Does anyone have any ideas for doing this that I can chew on? Thanks, and happy holidays! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:01, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

You could add one of the WikiProject todo categories through the template, then add the other categories manually next to the template code. Tra (Talk) 19:33, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

13 digit ISBNs

Currently, 10 digit ISBNs, when placed together, make a clickable link. The MediaWiki software does not appear to have it implemented for 13 digit ISBNs. The 13 digit ISBN will become the standard at the turn of the new year, is there a plan in place to update the software to reflect this? --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:37, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

According to this search, there doesn't seem to be an existing bugzilla entry for it. Please feel free to create one. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:59, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Judging by a quick look at ISBN, links appear to be generated for 13-digit ISBNs just fine. The discussion page you linked also says that they work fine, but warns that third-party sites such as the library of congress search do not accept them.

What exactly do you want us to change, if anything? --brion 01:11, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Colored numbers in Watchlist

The color code shows amount of data added or removed:

• (+620) = 620 bytes of data added
• (-35) = 35 bytes of data removed
• (0) = no change in total

(topposted) Jokestress 07:16, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I followed the procedures for challenging the deletion of an article (Pile-on, if you're interested) and immediately after that, I noticed that my Watchlist display now has green (for positive) or red (for negative) colored numbers after the edit time. It doesn't seem to refer to lines or characters added or deleted. Would someone please tell me what just happened, what it means, and hopefully how to remove it? Frotz661 06:44, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious of the new edition too. __earth ^(Talk) 06:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Those are the number of bytes changed per page, and are appearing in both watchlists and recent changes. Green is for additions, Red is for subtractions.— xaosflux ^Talk 06:47, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

• To get rid of it, add the following to your monobook.css (or the equivalent link for your skin):

.mw-plusminus-pos {display: none;}
.mw-plusminus-neg {display: none;}
.mw-plusminus-null {display: none;}

Titoxd^(?!?) 06:56, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Is there a page which talks about these changes? Also, I noticed the letter "b" shows up too. What is that in reference to? --Chris S. 07:03, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

b is not new, it indicates a bot edit. — xaosflux ^Talk 07:05, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

It's new to me. I sure hadn't seen the 'b' for bot edits before today. SubSeven 07:08, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I've not seen it either. Umeboshi 07:13, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Can we at least tone it down a bit - looks like a christmas tree --ZimZalaBim (talk) 07:12, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

But it's the holidays!

Anyways, it probably does need toning down a little bit. Titoxd^(?!?) 07:13, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe the b was only in recent changes, not watchlists. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 07:14, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I've had an edit appear with the bracketed number boldified - what does that indicate? —Keakealani 07:15, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

All of them are bold, except edits in which the size of the page does not change. That can be modified via CSS, either locally or globally. Titoxd^(?!?) 07:16, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Aaah, these colours are blinding me! :-) Seriously, the colours are fine, they don't need to be bold though. --Oden 07:17, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

This certainly needs toning down a bit. Makes going through my watchlist difficult with the distracting colours.--thunderboltz^(Deepu) 07:20, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

This system makes it easier to track vandalism (especially those huge -xxxxx edits). But would a percentage change be better than a raw number? Blanking a short article might show up as -400, a long article might show up as -10000. Insanephantom 07:17, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow. The future is now for Wikipedia. :-) --Tohru Honda13^{Sign here!} 07:18, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

More importantly, how can I get this feature for article histories and contribution pages? —Trevyn 07:20, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Most likely, no. The data is stored only on the Recentchanges table, which makes it usable for about a couple weeks ±, after which it is discarded. Titoxd^(?!?) 07:23, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Can we get rid of the colors, they're distracting. A simple + ore - should be sufficient. --The Way 07:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Percentages would be nice to have as opposed to the number of bytes gained/lost. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 07:25, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd sure like to turn it off, I find it ugly and it doesn't give very useful information. I think it should be added to the preferences. - MTC 07:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - it is very distracting IMO Orderinchaos78 07:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

You can change the colors with:

.mw-plusminus-pos {color: (color name or #);}
.mw-plusminus-neg {color: (color name or #);}
.mw-plusminus-null {color: (color name or #);}

I used #696969, but that's because it's the default text color in my monobook.css. Essjay (Talk) 07:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

• For those of us who don't have the time/know-how to play around with whatever "monobook cs" even means, is there any way to just make an option in our preferences to have it removed? It seems fairly arbitrary and random to have added it, I mean, I don't remember anyone asking for feedback, and I find it really distracting, with very little tangible benefits. -- Chabuk ^{[ T • C ]} 07:31, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

But, but, why?--Honeymane_{Heghlu meH QaQ jajvam} 07:32, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Look at the top of this section. Copy the code with "display: none" in it, hit Special:Mypage/monobook.css, edit it, paste it in, save it, shift-reload, and you're done. —Trevyn 07:38, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Why the Numbers to begin with though?

The colors are OK I guess, but the real distraction is the bold. Gzkn 07:37, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer if there were a way to make it be percentage based instead of number based. That way if someone blanked a short article, we'd know because it'd have a high percentage such as -99%, rather than a low byte of -269. Dionyseus 07:39, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

There's also no way to get rid of the distracting: "What do the colored numbers mean?" message... Gzkn 07:38, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, there is. #watchlist-notice {display: none;} Titoxd^(?!?) 07:39, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

These are features which were added after formal feature requests were filed on BugZilla and fulfilled; I can't for a moment understand the open hostility to something that makes tracking changes easier and more useful.

The CSS applied to the elements can be customised in MediaWiki:Monobook.css or your custom skin subpage. 86.133.54.220 07:40, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

As a follow-up, the reason that the bot flag indicator might not have been seen before is simple; think about what bot edits mean. As a default, these are suppressed from recent changes...the indicator is provided to flag these edits when the default is overridden in preferences or through the interface.

However, consider the case of the watchlist; the concept alone means that suppressing bot edits as a default might be undesirable. Before now, of course, the data we needed to show this up in the watchlist wasn't available (we were still using an older, and less-efficient method to push the data filtered from recentchanges into the standard change list code when building them) - now it's here. 86.133.54.220 07:50, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I tried adding it to my monobook.css but it clearly didn't work (and I think I've broken my monopage.css :( ) - isn't there a way somehow to just turn this off in the preferences? It isn't particularly useful to me but would be to some (I'd suggest a minority) of users. Orderinchaos78 07:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Did you purge your cache?

I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to create a preferences setting for this; however, you can file a bug in BugZilla if you think it is one. Titoxd^(?!?) 07:49, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I would recommend to set display:none as default and let those who actually need it customize it on their monobooks. ~ trialsanderrors 07:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I got rid of the bold per the above. It still shows in bold for large negative numbers for some reason; that may be good however. —Centrx→talk • 07:48, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I think it must not be forgotten that the great bulk of Wikipedians are not expert programmers/coders and these sort of things should be opt-in rather than opt-out. Orderinchaos78 07:49, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Please give the "What do the colored numbers mean?" a dismissal option like the one for the donations. I know how to do it myself, but this will be an annoyance for many users. And the numbers are fine, but they are not more important to see than the page titles. Please take out the bold text. Dekimasu 07:50, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Nobody who has commented so far has the technical access necessary to change this; it's limited to a very, very small group of people who rarely find the time to conribute to the projects because they're too busy keeping them from going offline. However, we can, and have, offered solutions for how to fix it locally until someone can file a bug request and get a dev to work on it. If there is anyone who doesn't know how to fix it themsleves, they are welcome to leave a note on my talk page with which option they want (change the colors or remove it outright, that's all I can do) and I'll be happy to do it for them. (If you want the watchlist notice removed too, I can do that as well.) Essjay (Talk) 07:55, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

SVG renders sigma, but not mu.

I recreated Image:Normal distribution pdf.png as an SVG; see Normal distribution pdf.svg. The μ's aren't displaying, even though the SVG source shows, for instance, <text>μ = 0, σ² = 0.2</text>. It also renders fine in inkscape/inkview. Should I file this as a bug on bugzilla? grendel|khan 07:04, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: There's a similar bug 3769, which may be related, but then again, may not be. Perhaps this is an issue with the fonts used in Mediawiki's rasterizer? grendel|khan 07:11, 24 December 2006 (UTC)