Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. This page is not for new feature requests. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla or the Village pump proposals page because there is no guarantee developers will read this page. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug needs immediate attention).

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.

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Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:Technical FAQ)

Click "[show]" next to each point to see more details.

If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.

No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an `accesskey` property on it (default to `accesskey="f"` in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.

No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.

If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature.

If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.

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 before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.

For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Wikipedia services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

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Code update

I've done the weekly code update on the sites; see mw:This week's updates for a quick summary of recent changes. Mostly not too exciting, but some fixes to recent issues and a few bits here and there. We'll start rolling out some fun stuff for testing over the coming weeks... --brion (talk) 02:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A quick follow-up with input box changes. Inputbox can now be used to search page archives, using this code:

<inputbox>
type=fulltext
prefix={{FULLPAGENAME}}/Archive
break=no
searchbuttonlabel=Search archives
</inputbox>

Try it out for this page:

--rainman (talk) 02:27, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note: It breaks if FULLPAGENAME has a space, users will have to manually type in the page name using underscores, e.g. Talk:Some_page_name. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is this working for other people? I'm not getting results. I got excited and set one up at WT:VG, but I can't get it to work for me. Could it be my search settings or something? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 02:52, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Gah, there is bug because of which it doesn't recognize talk namespaces without the underscore... Will be fixed in next sync, I've fixed the inputbox at WT:VG. --rainman (talk) 03:01, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You certainly did fix it, thanks! This will be very useful. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 03:02, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Would {{FULLPAGENAMEE}} work? It uses underscores instead of spaces (among other escapistisms). --Splarka (rant) 11:34, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The search box is just fantastic. It'll be extremely useful on pages like WP:AN too! --.:Alex :. 17:40, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've added it to the WP:AN sidebar. --rainman (talk) 19:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How's this?

~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:02, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The search results always seem to include "Village pump" which is not very useful... SharkD (talk) 04:54, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They all contain "prefix:Wikipedia:Village pump", but that's how it searches the village pumps. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 09:36, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, I meant that "Wikipedia:Village pump" was being returned and bolded in the actual search results. The problem no longer seems to be occuring, so nevermind. SharkD (talk) 14:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Browser usage per project

Is there any browser usage data for Wikipedia that is on a per-project basis? I'd like to know if certain browsers are used more often on pages that fall under particular WikiProjects. SharkD (talk) 22:58, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By project do you mean "Wikipedia", "Wikibooks", "Wiktionary" etc or "WikiProject Oregon"? The former can be obtained fairly easily; the latter would be harder but probably not impossible. --brion (talk) 18:18, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I meant the latter. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 14:44, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sortable tables & Firefox 3.0.5

Resolved

– Fix update went live

Some WP:FOOTY users have reported problems with sortable tables and FF3.0.5 which is now happening to me too - on trying to sort a list that uses class="wikitable sortable" I am sent back to the top of the page and the element does not sort the column. I've tried this on random lists including List of Sultans of Zanzibar, Test cricket hat-tricks and the originally reported List of one-club men. As a non-IE user - can anyone check whether IE is affected and whether they get the same issue in their Firefox installs? Nanonic (talk) 23:05, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have a feeling it's a change in the sortable code, not the browser. I can confirm that Firefox 3.0.5 and Safari 3.2.1 are broken. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 01:05, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seems broken in IE7 also. Franamax (talk) 23:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC it's because the buttons are contained in anchor < a > tags, and there's no link inside them. This results in the page being refreshed or the user being shunted to the "_top" of the page. SharkD (talk) 23:35, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can't confirm the issue. The List of Sultans of Zanzibar article at least works fine for me in IE7 and FF3. Maybe I need to do a hard refresh or clear my cache first? SharkD (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have IE7 and it also works fine for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:38, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c) I do not have the same issue on Safari 3.2.1 (Mac OS X). I note differing reports in the original posting as well for Firefox. I'm guessing it might be a conflict between 2 cached javascript files. Try purging your browsercache to see if that solves anything. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:40, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Now i see this problem as well. "TypeError: Result of expression 'newRows[i][0]' [undefined] is not an object." wikibits.js (line 672). Which corresponds to for (var i = 0; i < newRows.length; i++) { if ((" "+newRows[i][0].className+" ").indexOf(" sortbottom ") == -1) Last change to wikibits.js diff. I'll ask one of the devs to take a look. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:58, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I reproduced it on the List_of_one-club_men page with Safari 3.2.1 btw. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:05, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can't reproduce this. It would seem as though newRows[i] has a non-array element in it somehow, based on TheDJ's reported error. The only way I could possibly see this happening is if staticRows has some bogus content. This might occur if "for (i in staticRows)" is executing loop iterations on i's that don't correspond to actual array elements. I don't know much JavaScript, but I've been told that "for" iterates over object attributes as well as array contents and isn't safe to use for arrays, so I've changed it in r45304 on the off chance that's what's responsible. It would make some sense, since that was a recent change, as TheDJ points out. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone point me to a Bugzilla thread or elsewhere where these changes are described? I've been working on making multi-span row/col headings work in sortable's, so I'd like to catch up on any parallel efforts. Franamax (talk) 00:33, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on the type of for loop. If it takes the following form it's OK:

for (var i = 0; i < thing.length; i ++)

However, if it takes the following form it can get screwy depending on the type of object:

for (var i in thing)

I never use this latter form in JavaScript. In some other languages it's safe, but not in JS.

Hope that helps. SharkD (talk) 01:30, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Simetrical already fixed this in SVN. The new code isn't live yet - those affected will likely have to simply wait until the site is updated. — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 05:12, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sortable tables are still broken in IE 6 and Firefox/3.0.5. travb (talk) 06:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a target date for this fix going live? -- Tcncv (talk) 06:17, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You know, this has been broken for 2 days now. When is this going to be fixed? travb (talk) 10:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WT:TW#Table sorting does not work when either Friendly or Twinkle is enabled. --Amalthea 16:55, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Still doesn't work for me and I don't use either of those tools. Nanonic (talk) 17:10, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

← But you include User:AzaToth/morebits.js in your monobook.js, which causes the problem. To be exact, the follwoing three functions do:

Array.prototype.uniq = function arrayPrototypeUniq() {
	var result = [];
	for( var i = 0; i < this.length; ++i ) {
		var current = this[i];
		if( result.indexOf( current ) == -1 ) {
			result.push( current );
		}
	}
	return result;
}

Array.prototype.dups = function arrayPrototypeUniq() {
	var uniques = [];
	var result = [];
	for( var i = 0; i < this.length; ++i ) {
		var current = this[i];
		if( uniques.indexOf( current ) == -1 ) {
			uniques.push( current );
		} else {
			result.push( current );
		}
	}
	return result;
}

Array.prototype.chunk = function arrayChunk( size ) {
	if( typeof( size ) != 'number' || size <= 0 ) { // pretty impossible to do anything :)
		return [ this ]; // we return an array consisting of this array.
	}
	var result = [];
	var current;
	for(var i = 0; i < this.length; ++i ) {
		if( i % size == 0 ) { // when 'i' is 0, this is always true, so we start by creating one.
			current = [];
			result.push( current );
		}
		current.push( this[i] );
	}
    return result;
}

If I remove them from morebits.js, I can sort tables again. If I execute either one of them, it stops working. And I have no idea why. --Amalthea 17:23, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

After reading the above again, it makes sense of course, so once the patch goes live it should work again. Until then, turning off anything that uses morebits or similarily extends Array will also help. --Amalthea 17:34, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I discovered the same thing, just before seeing your message above. I can only speculate that since the offending statement in wikibits is not executed (most tables have no "unsortable" rows), the error is not detected as long as the builtin version of Array is used. However, by adding the extension methods above, Array is treated differently and Firefox apparently does some up-front validation, detects the error and aborts execution. I hate wierd. -- Tcncv (talk) 19:47, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you're saying. The offending statement is executed if you add things to the Array prototype. That's the problem. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:18, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. My "speculation" above was way off. For the benefit of other readers, what was really happening was a result of the for(var i in staticRows) { var row = staticRows[i]; newRows.splice(row[2], 0, row); }, which was supposed to merge staticrows into newrows. That code was also copying the Twinkle-morebits.js created methods (uniq, dups, and chunk) into newrows. Attempts to use these methods a few lines later as if they were arrays triggered the error. If neither Twinkle or Friendly are active, the Array methods do not get created, they don't get copied into newrows, and all's fine. This change corrects the error. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:48, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Should be able to put this live today, now that it's not the weekend and we're at work. :) (Otherwise it'd wait until the regular update tomorrow.) --brion (talk) 18:16, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't have time to poke around to it today (yay catching up on year-end bills after holiday ;). It'll go live with the whole Tuesday batch. --brion (talk) 02:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Went live with the rest of the updates last night. --brion (talk) 19:25, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Current ongoing server problems affecting new messages, edit histories, backlinks, etc.

Resolved

These were all caused by database lag due to a bug in a batch job moving our text storage from one server batch to another on January 2. The job was stopped and the lag issues were resolved at that time. --brion (talk) 18:00, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You have new messages bar sticking

Resolved

Has something changed regarding the "You have new messages" bar? It seems to be sticking for me and sporadically not going away. If I visit a page for the first time, about half the time, it's showing the bar. If I hit my browser's refresh button (Firefox) it sometimes goes away. My watchlist is continuing to show it, although I can see that it's not just a local browser caching issue because my watchlist is being updated. --B (talk) 16:30, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I had the same problem. Majorly talk 16:57, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Me, too. It's still doing it. - Hordaland (talk) 18:39, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Same problem, I have IE.--Ipatrol (talk) 21:26, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Me three (or four). I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.20 with a 1999 vintage iMac and Mac OS 10.3.9. HTH, Her Pegship (tis herself) 21:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Atleast I'm not going crazy. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 21:58, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You have new messages (last change).

Resolved

An IP left a message on my talk page unsigned. SineBot signed it. Then a user removed the signature and signed it and SineBot re-signed it and removed users. Then the user signed the comment again, and I reverted it. Since SineBot's re-signing on certain pages I get the "You have new messages (last change)." bar and it doesn't matter how many times I click (last change) it doesn't go away. One of those pages is the main page. Help? my name inc-Review me 18:15, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As of now-the problem has disappeared. But if it comes back I will post it here. btw if anyone knows what's wrong, post it here for my future use. Thanks my name inc-Review me 18:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed similar problems telling me I've got a new message, when infact it's a message that was posted about 1/2 an hour ago (which was signed). Lugnuts (talk) 18:32, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely related to this issue. --Unpopular Opinion (talk) 18:45, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also having this problem. The last edit to my talk page was done by BrownBot, who was delivering the December 2008 WikiProject Films Newsletter at 03:49, 2 January 2009 (UTC) and yet I'm still getting the orange bar, even when I purge a page. SchfiftyThree ^(talk!) 19:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed similar problems when creating pages under my user namespace. I.e. redlinks linking to such pages are not changing, and sometimes I am being navigated to the generic "start a page here" message when trying to go to the page. SharkD (talk) 20:48, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edits not showing up in the edit history

Resolved

A few minutes ago, the revision history for Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Mister Alcohol showed this as the top edit:

(cur) (last) 18:05, 2 January 2009 Davidwr (Talk | contribs) m (32,359 bytes) (Reverted edits by Davidwr (talk) to last version by Straight Edge PXK) (rollback | undo)

Yet, when you open the edit, there are two future edits available if you follow the diff tags.

This happened earlier today to me on I think the same page and it happened to another editor on another page as well. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:23, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Edits not showing up in article histories

Resolved

Many of the edits I've made recently are showing up in my contributions list, but not in the article's histories. For example, my edits to Montgomery County High School (Kentucky), and the vandalistic edits which were made prior to that, which I fixed. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 20:55, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And now, when I see a newly-created article in Recent changes (such as Jptnow), I'm getting "there is no such article", and no log history to indicate the article was deleted. I have to click on the red link on the "there is no such article" message and go to the article in edit mode, before I can see the article. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 21:26, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Half the recent changes disappeared on me when I refreshed, before coming back when I refreshed again. I've also noticed transclusions not updating and have been getting a lot of 404 errors. --.:Alex :. 22:08, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problems reported at the Help Desk

Resolved

The following was reported at the Help Desk and has been copied here for inclusion with other similar reported problems.

A comment, not a question. The Wikipedia servers seem to be getting out of sync. Several times in the last 30 minutes I have edited and saved an existing article, only to be told that it doesn't exist. I have had similar problems while patrolling the new page list. After clicking "Mark as patrolled", I get an error message saying I need to select a specific version. In both situations, I try again (sometimes 3-4 times) and it eventually works. I'm going to take a short wikibreak and let the servers rest for now. Truthanado (talk) 16:35, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they are still hungover from celebrating the New Year? – ukexpat (talk) 16:42, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Or maybe they're still lost in the leap second. Truthanado (talk) 17:01, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried refreshing the article? Sometimes I start a new article to be told it doesn't exist. ~A H 1^(TCU) 17:14, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I have this happening too. I've refreshed the article and the same thing happens. Has Jimbo got enough donantions to get a server upgrade by now? Lugnuts (talk) 18:57, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is really getting frustrating. Articles are randomly there or not there. Changes may take or not. Can someone kick the servers? TN‑X-Man 18:58, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem appears to be ongoing and also affecting "New message" bars and "What links here". However, this is really an issue for WP:VP/T not the helpdesk. Geometry guy 20:28, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You have new messages bar link not working

If 2 or more edits are done to my talk page, the "You have new messages" bar is not in the middle (sort of on the bottom of the bar) and the links don't work. It's fine when only 1 edit is made to my talk page. What's the issue? Can someone fix this? Thanks! Math Cool 10 ^{Sign here!} 03:49, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template used for CSD#I8 - inappropriate content

Resolved

– WT:TW#User talk page templates when issuing I8. --Amalthea 19:33, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

When tagging an image with an I8 via Twinkle it does two things that aren't great (one is a Twinkle issue, will report it elsewhere)...

Twinkle inserts Template:Firstarticle if the Talk page is blank. This isn't appropriate for an I8 as it includes text like "Unfortunately, one or more of the pages you created, like ***.JPG, may not conform to some of Wikipedia's guidelines for page creation, and may soon be deleted". I think this is a Twinkle issue so will report it on that page.
It then includes Template:Db-nowcommons-notice. Which is fine, except this template includes Template:db-notice which has text about modifying the article to include a hangon notice, and so on.

Basically the whole effect of this is to make it look like the editor has done something wrong as opposed to it being a technical move of a good quality image to Commons.

I tried fixing the Db-nowcommons-notice template, but decided I didn't trust myself to get it right. Can someone more experienced take a look at this please? For an example, see this diff.

Thanks Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 17:40, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed enhancements to table sorting

Hello all. I've been working quite a bit with tables and noticed that one of the features that has been on the table sorting todo list is "don't break on colspans/rowspans (bug 8028)". Well, with the recent problems I was having with sorting (also covered above), I grabbed a copy of the wikibits.js script and started playing with it. Well one thing let to another, and I believe I've come up with a robust implementation that supports both rowspans and column spans. To summarize, I've made the following enhancements:

Before sorting, rowspans will be exploded, so that rows are self contained and can be sorted without garbling the table structure.
During sorting, colspans are recognized and counted when retrieving column values, so that the proper sort value is retrieved from each row. Each column in a colspan range is treated as having the same value. Colspans are preserved, they are not split.
After sorting, some cell ranges may be recombined under certain restrictive conditions (still being refined). Also, the class="autorowspan" option can be applied to columns or the entire table to enable more aggressive rowspan combines, such as combining cells in the newly sorted column that were not originally combined.

I know I've put the cart before the horse, but I'd like to know who to contact to get the changes reviewed for possible inclusion in the official script. I realize there will be significant testing required as well as discussions regarding how some of its features should best work, and that it may be a long slow process.

If anyone is interested in taking a look, the source is in User:Tcncv/sorttables.js and I have a few test tables [[]User:Tcncv/Table Sort Demo|here]]. The only prerequisite is that you add importScript('User:Tcncv/sorttables.js'); to your monobook.js file (or whatever skin you use). You can also try it with your own tables by changing the class="wikitable sortable" attribute to class="wikitable tcncv_sortable" in the table definition, and optionally adding class="autorowspan" to one or more column header cells.

Currently it works well under Firefox 3.0.4, and most of it works under IE7. (Recombine does not work, but I expect to get this fixed shortly.) I plan to test in IE6 and an old version of Netscape, but will need help testing with other browsers and versions.

I'm looking forward to your feedback. -- Tcncv (talk) 06:16, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice if there were a centralized location for continued discussion of modifications to this file, like there is for MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Monobook.css. As it stands now, discussions are hidden in the inner bowels of Bugzilla. SharkD (talk) 08:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well that's were changes to the mediawiki software are made, so that is where that discussion belongs. Requirements: Testing of the script on IE 5 and later, FF 2 and later, Opera 9 and later, and Safari 2 and later. A diff file between the original wikibits.js and a "new" wikibits.js, submitting the diff (aka patch) trough bugzilla with a description, testcases, and testresults. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I'll take a look around Bugzilla. I'm new to that arena, so any pointers would be appreciated. I'll also work on improving and formalizing my test cases. I will need some help with getting it tested in all of the browser versions.

I'm also still looking for input from the user/editor community. If anyone out there has worked on complex tables to which they'd like to add sort capabilities, but have not done so because of lack of rowspan/colspan support, please let me know and I'll take a look. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:23, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But, the fact is that discussions on the topic are being made here. There's three discussions on this page at this very moment, one more that I know of in the most recent archive, and probably countless others if you search farther back. Bugzilla is great when you have concrete changes that are ready to go. But it's not so great for planning or (as I mentioned) coordinating efforts. Note also that the page doesn't necessarily have to exist on Wikipedia; it could just as easily exist on the WikiMedia wiki. SharkD (talk) 04:07, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion summary for AfD

Recently, the automated deletion summary for csd and afd tags disappeared and was required to choose from the droplist. Now most of the items are back but when I want to close some afd debates, there's no automated link to the discussion in the summary. Impractical, really. Anyone knows how to get that function back, it's really time saving. Thanks. --Tone 22:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could use User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD to save yourself the manual work. Regards So Why 09:50, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed for AfD, MfD, and the others that use a sensible method of linking to the discussion pages. Happy‑melon 20:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

dummy edit js

I have no knowledge of Java. If I did, I could and would figure this out myself. So: Is there a user script (or anything else) that will automatically make a dummy edit to a page? Not like the "undo" feature automatic, I mean like Twinkle automatic. Like you just press a button and it does it. It doesn't even show you an edit screen. flaming lawye r^c 03:08, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dummy edit or null edit? There is Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Add purge to tabs which gives you a link to purge the cache, which depending on what you might want to accomplish will be enough. It reloads the page apparently, but I'd assume that you want to see the result of the purged anyway. --Amalthea 03:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They both seem to encompass what I'm aiming for: an edit that makes no change to the wikitext. Well, I guess that's closer to a null edit. And no, just purging won't work. I'm working with the template-category issue, which is only solved by a null edit or waiting for the server to work it out. flaming lawye r^c 03:30, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Splarka/nulledit.js should still work. Try it with importScript('User:Splarka/nulledit.js') in your monobook.js (or copy it there if you wish to modify it or don't trust me, mwahaha). --Splarka (rant) 08:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

parameters to make a template display a different section heading depending on which page it is transcluded on?

Have tried to get this to work on my own but haven't had luck so far ...

Template:LGBT rights table Europe is transcluded on both Homosexuality laws of the world and LGBT rights in Europe (so that you only have to edit the template to update both articles).

I have tried to set it where by using {{LGBT rights table Europe |world=yes}} it would display a header of ===Europe=== , and if transcluded using {{LGBT rights table Europe |continent=yes}} it would display a section header of ===Laws by country=== instead. have tried 2 different ways with if, but neither has worked. Am sure I'm doing something wrong (I used code from a navbox , but it didn't translate well to this purpose). As is now, I have it set to just display the "Europe" header always, so that it looks right on Homosexuality laws of the world, but this makes it display Europe as a section header also on LGBT rights in Europe which doesn't work right. Any help (or pointing me to relevent examples) would be greatly appreciated, thx. Outsider80^(User0529) (talk) 07:36, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're missing a pipe character between {{{parameter|}}} and ===header===. But maybe you want to do something like:

==={{#ifeq:{{{PAGENAME}}}|LGBT rights table Europe|LGBT rights by country|Europe}}===

Which would switch automatically. Or maybe simply:

==={{{header|LGBT rights by country}}}===

Which would take a header name as a parameter. --Splarka (rant) 08:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Thanks, Splarka, the extra pipe worked perfect. many many thanks. Outsider80^(User0529) (talk) 09:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Article red link - but the article is there!

Resolved

– ukexpat (talk) 15:03, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. A few days ago I created the article for a film called Girl No. 217. When you look at the article, it appears that none of the cast have their own article yet, but I created one for the leading actress, Yelena Kuzmina. If you click on her name it takes you to the edit screen, and you can clearly see that the article exists! Why is this happening and how can it be fixed? Lugnuts (talk) 08:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A purge worked. --Splarka (rant) 08:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yey! Many thanks. Lugnuts (talk) 10:29, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

CSS to clear stub icons

(This might not be the place to bring this up, my apologies if this is misplaced.)
The stub templates generally include an image located to the left of the text. Some stub templates achieve this by using a table (which i honestly don't like), and some achieve this by floating the image to the left. The following only really applies to templates which use the "floating method" (which I would argue is more correct).

Sometimes articles transclude multiple stub templates, or may possibly contain content following a stub template (Although I cannot think of an example where anything other than another stub is a "problem"). If the CSS rule #stub{overflow:auto;} were added to the stylesheets somewhere, it would prevent the first stub templates left floated "stub icon" from floating to the left of the following stub template icon. Is there a reason, that I am overlooking, for not implementing this? (note: this could also possibly be achieved by adding the previously mentioned rule to class boilerplate or metadata, although I am not aware of the implications of such as I am not aware of all the instances of said classes) Just a thought. Thanks! ./zro (⠠⠵) 18:53, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could this be resolved by use of the {{asbox}} meta-template for article stub templates? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like that would solve the visual rendering "issue". Should existing stub templates be converted to use {{asbox}} instead? Is there some project to do such? Also, I would note that while this does solve the "visual rendering issue", it does use tables to achieve this stylistic effect. Also, it incorporates the use of ... as opposed to .... Both of these choices seem like bad markup to me. Perhaps I'm out of line here though... is there a policy or guideline on markup that I'm not aware of? I would think that we should strive for best practices in semantic markup. ./zro (⠠⠵) 19:25, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at {{asbox}} a bit closer, it appears that there are issues in the way it handles categories, so it has not been well accepted. I fiddled around trying to convert a project stub template and see some of the problems. It does look like there is some push to fix it. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:21, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Category links CSS tinkering

Not entirely sure if this is the best place to put this, but can't really think of anywhere else more appropriate, so here it goes...

I added the move catlinks code to my monobook.css from Help:User styles ages ago in one of my periodic bouts of fairly pointless tinkering, and have always just put up with its annoying habit of spilling over onto article content on articles in several categories. Been trying occasionally over the last few days however to try and so something about it, and yet everything I do either does absolutely nothing or simply causes the entire catlinks box to disappear. I confess that I am not entirely adept at CSS, and so need somebody who has aclue what they're talking about to help me.

In particular:

Nothing I change seems to have any effect on font size. I'd like to make it fairly small text, slightly larger than the size of superscript. Yet no amount of changing font-size, line-height or for that matter the colour has had the slightest bit of difference.
I think I managed to change the width of the box, no idea why that worked and nothing else does
What do I need to do so that the box floats clear of everything else? I tried changing float:right to clear:right, still no luck. Is there anyway to change it so i appears 'above the line' so to speak next to where the featured article star goes for example?

This is what I have so far:

/* move the catlinks box */
#catlinks {  
  position:absolute;
  z-index:1;
/*  border: 1px solid #aaaaaa; 
  background: #fafaff; */
  right:1em; 
  top:-0.25em;
  width:25em;
  float:right;
  margin: 0.2em;
  padding:0.2em;
}
 
/* format the catlinks itself */
p.catlinks {
  color: #aaaaaa;
  font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;
  font-size:33%;
  line-height: 1.2em;
  text-align:left;
  text-indent:0;
  text-transform: none;
  white-space:normal;
  margin: 0.2em;
}
 
/* format links in the catlinks (as distinguished from ":" and "|") */
p.catlinks a {
  color:#888888;
  font-size:33%;
}

Thanks in advance. Chrism would like to hear from you 19:31, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

class="catlinks" is no longer in a , use .catlinks.
#catlinks still works.
As you are using absolute positioning, you can't have it clear objects that are already there, since it isn't actually there itself. You'd need to give the objects you want pushed down a top margin, or their container a top padding, but since you don't know in advance the size of the catecory list that is a bit hit-and-miss.

Also, // doesn't work in CSS as a comment (as used in your monobook.css), and might be screwing stuff up. This might work better as javascript. (Also, don't go pasting your 'fixed' code here again, just edit the example above or link to a diff on your monobook.css) --Splarka (rant) 21:03, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers for the help, I've managed to sort out the CSS problems, and now going to have a tinker either attempting to write some javascript or adding some padding to #sitesub and see what I can do. Much obliged - Chrism would like to hear from you 15:27, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bullets and text size

Is there a way to change the bullet size in lists in such a way that it corresponds to the font size of the text? I'm using IE and the bullets always remain the same size. This is true whether I change the text size using CSS or via the browser's own menu option. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 22:31, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Get a better browser? In FF3 they scale fine. Algebraist 22:33, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, except that you're wrong. SharkD (talk) 22:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The bullets are images; they do not scale, not on any browser. — Edokter • Talk • 22:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What bullets are you talking about? The bullets created by * scale fine here. Algebraist 22:43, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See User:SharkD/Sandbox/Bullet test. SharkD (talk) 23:19, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I got them to scale in FF3 *if* they belong to generic elements (DIV, SPAN, etc.) that have had their "display" style explicitely set to "list-item". Otherwise, it won't work. The fact that it works even *some of the time* might be a bug in FF3. Unfortunately, I was looking for a solution that works more reliably across browsers. SharkD (talk) 23:14, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is possible using CSS. You'd need to use JavaScript, which is almost certainly more trouble than it's worth. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 13:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why you'd want to use JavaScript in this case. Care to elaborate? SharkD (talk) 03:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you can either do this server-side or client-side. Server-side is likely impractical: you'd have to parse all the CSS rules that could possibly apply to the element to do it properly, which is difficult at best (what are you going to do, run a web browser on the server to parse the HTML output?) and impossible at worst (technically users can define user stylesheets and such, which the server doesn't even know about). On the client side, your options are pretty much limited to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, since other things like Flash and Java can't affect the HTML part of the page as far as I know. It's not possible to achieve the effect desired with just HTML and CSS, as far as I know, so that leaves JavaScript as your only option. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All you can accomplish with JavaScript is modify the HTML and CSS. So, if you can't do it in either of these two, then JavaScript is not going to help you. SharkD (talk) 05:29, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

HTML and CSS are capable of providing different-sized bullet images. What they can't do is decide which bullet point to display based on text size. JavaScript could, in principle, iterate through all of the list items on a page, check the size of the text, and change the HTML/CSS accordingly, if you really wanted that. Alternatively, of course, you could require the user to manually wrap the list in <div class="big-icon"> or something. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Page tagged 2007 showing in CAT:CSD today?

I stumbled across this page on CSD duty today. It was tagged with {{hangon}} in August of 2007 which puts pages in CAT:CSD as well. Despite being tagged for 1,5 years now, it did only show up in CAT:CSD today. So I wondered why that was the case. Any ideas? Regards So Why 09:47, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if a category is added by template transclusion, as with CAT:CSD in the case of {{hangon}}, the page is only added to the category when recached (Help:Category#Adding_a_category_by_using_a_template) – possibly the task was "lost" from the job queue at the time, due to server trouble or something similar? haz (talk) 11:01, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was just gonna say the same. Seems the most likely explanation. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:06, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The category inclusion was present in the {{hangon}}-template in 2007. Shouldn't it have shown immediately as Help:Category#Adding a category by using a template specifies? I thought recaching only is needed when the category was added to the template after the page was tagged with it? So Why 11:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right there; I'm surprised no-one's picked me up on that before as I'm sure I've offered that explanation in another context! I'm out of ideas then... I'm still standing by "random glitch", though. Perhaps if you call up the deletion log from around the time that you noticed the oddity, check either side of it for speedy deletions close to that point, then check the deleted history to see if there are any other similar cases? If it's an isolated incident then I guess that a random server quirk is the most likely explanation. haz (talk) 15:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Main namespace discussion

See MediaWiki talk:Nstab-main for discussion about which text to put in the article/page tab. Gracenotes^T § 15:18, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prev vs Diff

History pages now appear to use (prev) where as user contribution pages use (diff). This should be consistent and since in the past history pages have always been (diff) I would suggest switching back to that.Geni 16:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Concur. "prev" isn't very intuitive. — Edokter • Talk • 16:48, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FYI here's the relevant code change. Gary King (talk) 17:06, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So can it be changed through MediaWiki:Last ?Geni 17:20, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That can probably be used to override the hardcoded defaults. Also, I believe the change was made to fix this (an issue submitted over two years ago). Gary King (talk) 17:23, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So we need to file another bugzilla request to change it back and wait two years? I really prefered "diff" as well... So Why 00:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, we can set it to whatever we want by changing the content of MediaWiki:Last. It's only because we haven't set a custom message (because we liked the old default) that we see this change. Happy‑melon 12:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The entry in the history that now has "prev" was "last" for as long as I've been on here. I prefer "prev" to "last", personally, as it's more specific. Graham87 08:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As noted above, it was never "diff", but was "last" for the last several years. Though "diff" might indeed be even better. :) --brion (talk) 17:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Prev" suggests "preview", and so is confusing. DuncanHill (talk) 17:36, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Prev" actually does make more sense to me, too. When I first joined, I was confused by "last" as comparing the version to the "current" version, or the "last" one to exist. Gary King (talk) 14:29, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

URL resulting in no output

Resolved

Why does this URL not work? It used to work before; does anybody know the correct syntax?

And also, just for a second attempt: does somebody know the answer to this? -- Menti sock 17:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the first URL, the offset parameter is supposed to have the date that you want to offset from, but 10000 isn't a date. What did the URL show before? Gary King (talk) 18:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

At some point in the past, the offset parameter was just a numeric offset, in number of results -- so offset=10000 would skip the 10,000 newest pages and show the next 500 "new" pages after those. Since this isn't efficient to do for large offsets, it was changed some time ago to a timestamp index which can very efficiently start from any arbitrary time in the past.

This does mean there's not a clear way to ask for "the 10,000th and beyond new pages", but you can specify a particular date and time if you like to jump to a point in the past. (You could generate a URL using {{#time}} perhaps.) --brion (talk) 19:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to infoboxes?

Resolved

Not long ago, the infoboxes produced by {{infobox}} and friends used to be displayed at the right hand side of the page, with the text of the main body of the article wrapping around the box (as one would expect from use of the CSS "float: right" attribute). Today, and for at least a few days before today, such infoboxes appear on the left, with the text of the main body of the article below them. For example, see 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, where the first line of the body of the article begins far "below the fold" due to the infobox. Almost all articles about countries and people have the same problem. What changed in the way infoboxes are defined by templates or handled by the software, and please could it be put back the old way? I don't see any obvious changes in Mediawiki:monobook.css, Template:infobox, or any of the other infobox templates which I checked (I checked only a few of the many infobox templates). —AlanBarrett (talk) 19:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Infoboxes look OK to me. Have you cleared your cache and done a server purge? – ukexpat (talk) 19:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, works for me, too. The text actually starts above the infobox due to the wikinews box. --Amalthea 19:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, that's funny. Clearing my browser cache fixed it. But I haven't edited any of these templates or CSS code, so I don't know how my browser cache became incorrect. Thank you. —AlanBarrett (talk) 20:05, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

nstab-wp

Resolved

Does MediaWiki:Nstab-wp actually do anything? It seems likely to me that it has been replaced by MediaWiki:Nstab-project, but I thought I'd ask to see if anyone knows more about it. MediaWiki talk:Nstab-wp shows that it has been a source of confusion to at least one other editor. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's not listed in Special:AllMessages. Algebraist 23:48, 7 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Decrapated maybe? It was initially set by user 'MediaWiki default'. — Edokter • Talk • 00:23, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is redundant; I have deleted it in the interests of cleanliness :D Happy‑melon 12:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thank you! I was ready to delete it myself. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 07:39, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bookmarklet

Resolved

Bookmarklet#History evidently is using the {{Template:Quote}} template with incorrect wikimarkup syntax; I would think fixing the problem should be fairly simple for someone more familiar with wikimarkup syntax than I. — Ti89TProgrammer (talk) 00:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Cheers, Amalthea 01:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

help: ߄

It's right-to-left character. It messed up TW when I AFD'd it (notice that it's not there...). Anyway, that's just part of the problem. What I actually came here to ask about was that Firefox just randomly de-unicode-ized it. One moment I saw what it was supposed to be (a weird-looking upside down question mark). Then like 10 seconds later, it turned into the box-with-4-letters-in-it (in the tabs, the edit box, and the title bar at the top). How can I fix this? flaming lawye r^c 02:43, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering...what version of Firefox are you using? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 08:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's RTL in IE6 too, but appears as a pipe-like character in read mode, and a box in edit mode. Densock|Dendodge^{in public} 11:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the answer is this. Oda Mari (talk) 14:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't know what fixed it, but it's back to normal... for now... flaming lawye r^c 23:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Table "flipping" scripts

I was wondering if anyone had written any table "flipping" scripts. What I mean is that, when showing one row/column the others automatically become hidden. Users will of course have "next" and "previous" links or some soryt of index to navigate the table. SharkD (talk) 03:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This would probalby be proscribed in mainspace by MOS:SCROLL. It could be useful in other namespaces, however. Happy‑melon 12:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They're for templates, so there's no proscription. SharkD (talk) 05:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah ok. As I said, such a thing would probably be very useful. Happy‑melon 10:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple section links in edit summaries

It used to be possible to link to multiple sections in edit summaries by repeating the syntax used to mark edit summaries (everything between /* and */). For example:

/* Foo */ response for Bob /* Bar */ response for Jane

Would provide two section links in the edit summary, one to #Foo and one to #Bar. When, and I guess more importantly, why, was this changed? And can it be changed back? —Locke Cole • t • c 07:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly from rev:39373. --Splarka (rant) 08:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How to add an image

Need to know how to add an image to an article, see vertigo (light), which i just created so i t could be listed on the page for disambiguation of vertigo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Addlight (talk • contribs) 08:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can use [[Image:Name.jpg]] to embed an uploaded image but in this case the image you'd like to add most likely doesn't conform to the license images need to be under to be on WP (or I suppose you could utilize fair use just for the relevant article). In any case you'd need to save the image and re-upload it here. -- Menti sock 09:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think [[File:XXXXX.XXX]] is preferred now, but the Image prefix still works.

Change Width and center a collapsible template

Resolved

Blah blah blah
blah blah blah

I created the above template, using "navbox collapsible collapsed" for User:Inclusionist/Deletionopitions.

But I can't figure out how to change the width of the entire template and then center the template.

I want to make the template the same length as average talk page templates. Thanks. travb (talk) 12:15, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the class in your example above from "navbox collapsible collapsed" to "collapsible collapsed messagebox standard-talk". Is that what you're looking for? --Amalthea 13:13, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much Amalthea :) I really appreciate it. travb (talk) 14:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Anytime. :) --Amalthea 14:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't that be User:Inclusionist/Deletionoptions? – ukexpat (talk) 14:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

{{FAQ}} appears to already do what you need. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is spelled wrong, thanks travb (talk) 20:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Search box woes

<moved from AN>

Seems trivial, but why when I go to the homepage (English) (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) does my cursor not automatically start in the search box? There is nowhere else on the page that you would enter text, and I would say most users want to type in the subject they are looking for immediately, so it makes no sense to not have that functionality. -- BEEFCAKE74 (talk) 13:47, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My Preferences, Gadgets tab, Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page is in the User interface gadgets section. --Onorem ♠Dil 13:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's because you might want to scroll using the arrow keys or Page Down. See Template:Bug. Note that on http://www.wikipedia.org/ and Special:Search, the search box is focused by default. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

English Wikipedia's main page has a large amount of content, and isn't designed around being a search portal -- it doesn't even prominently place a search box! If it did, then it would make sense to focus it like on the search portal pages. But right now it would not make sense. --brion (talk) 17:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And you can read more about this in the FAQ at the top of this page. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

History merge for images

Is it technically possible in Mediawiki to perform the equivalent of a history merge for an image? I am helping out on a small wiki where some well-meaning but ignorant users have uploaded new versions of some images under a different name. I would like to rearrange the images so that the old ones appear as older versions of the new, while retaining the attributions of whichever users uploaded each version. Is that possible without mucking around under the bonnet? TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 17:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. --brion (talk) 17:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Curses and black pudding. Is it possible at all? —Phil | Talk 18:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In theory, but it doesn't accomplish much that a link wouldn't. --brion (talk) 21:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Links to disambiguation pages

Is it technically possible for links to disambiguation pages to be in a different colour to other links? DuncanHill (talk) 17:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You can code a link to any web-color AFAIK, but since Disambiguation pages are tracked by a template inclusion, as opposed to a software feature like Redirects are, I do not think it is possible to code the system to color all disambiguation links a different color. MBisanz ^talk 17:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Depending upon your browser, you could probably diddle your personal CSS to trigger a colour-change on a URL ending with "(disambiguation)". Have fun with that… HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 18:05, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was with you up to "diddle your personal CSS". I am not very "with it" when it comes to technical expressions. DuncanHill (talk) 18:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pity. In that case, is there a gadget that would enable an editor to make dablinks appear in a different colour when logged in? DuncanHill (talk) 18:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, since the gadget would need to open ever link on a page, see if it transcludes {{disambig}} and then change the color. I'm sure it could be done, if you really wanted 50 pages to load for every mouseclick (and forget about ever loading an FA/ANI). MBisanz ^talk 19:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User:Splarka/dabfinder.js - adds a link to the toolbox to highlight disambig pages. Mr.Z-man 21:15, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That seems rather good - many thanks! DuncanHill (talk) 21:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, interesting, thanks for letting me know about it. MBisanz ^talk 21:32, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I use User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js, which also highlights redirects and pages up for deletion. Very useful. Happy‑melon 10:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which to me appears both not to work, and to make everything appear in tiny tiny writing. DuncanHill (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I use custom styles (User:Happy-melon/linkclassifier.css, but it works for me. What browser are you using? Happy‑melon 15:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation is tracked by template inclusion, but that just means one query per page against the templatelinks table. It should be no more expensive to implement this than it is to implement red links, in principle. But it's probably not worth it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:23, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bizarreness

In this diff [1] I am shewn as having inserted "British recording studios" after a pipe in the category, yet I did no such thing. I simply inserted a pipe with nithing after it to force the entry to the top of the category. Is wikipedia now falsifying edits? DuncanHill (talk) 19:39, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's called the Pipe trick, and I just used it in this comment when I typed [[Help:Pipe trick|]], yet the MediaWiki software will have saved it as [[Help:Pipe trick|Pipe trick]]. --Amalthea 19:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

... and I see you fixed it already, just as Wikipedia:Category#Priority sort keys recommends. --Amalthea 19:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aaarrggh! I don't want it saving things I haven't typed! DuncanHill (talk) 19:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So how did you get that fancy signature and timestamp after your comment? --Splarka (rant) 08:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By typing something which I knew would, and is widely advertised as being used to, generate specific text. DuncanHill (talk) 13:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pipe and a space force it to the top. Don't forget the space!~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ISBN thingy

Resolved

My ISBN thingy is no longer working - I mean the thing where one clicks on an ISBN and it takes one to the Amazon listing for the book. Now it just takes me to the Book sources page on Wikipedia. Any idea what has broken? DuncanHill (talk) 01:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean by "My ISBN thingy". The normal ISBN thingy at Wikipedia:ISBN has always (as far as I know) gone to a Book sources page on Wikipedia and not to Amazon. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:53, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've got a thing in my monobook.js which is meant to take me to Amazon.co.uk when I click on an ISBN in an article, instead it takes me to [2] instead. DuncanHill (talk) 02:09, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seems you've found the issue already. :) --Amalthea 02:15, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I thought so too, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. DuncanHill (talk) 02:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And I trust you've purged your borswer cache, with Ctrl+F5 or something? --Amalthea 02:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I had, twice, but a third time seems to have fixed it! DuncanHill (talk) 02:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Third time's a charm. Cheers, Amalthea 02:22, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Isolate and lock pages headed on their way to Wikia

Copied from here:

I was wondering if it were possible to place pages whose AfDs result in 'Move to Wikia' in some sort of a buffer where they cannot be edited, linked to, viewed by anons etc., but can still be copied to the other wikis. There could be a time limit of say 1 week after which the pages get deleted for good. Secondly, is this a real issue that has actually come up, or am I worrying over nothing? SharkD (talk) 05:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think its really an issue. If a page is being transwikied, it means its not so bad that we don't want people to see it, its just not quite appropriate for this site. The actual export/import process only takes a couple minutes; the main issue is just getting an admin on the wikia wiki to do the work. Mr.Z-man 05:43, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is it easy to notify the proper people? IIRC, you have to create an account for each wiki and log in. An automated system would be pretty neat. SharkD (talk) 06:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Other than Uncyclopedia (which has a separate user database) all Wikia wikis have a shared login. Those that are not on the wikia.com domain (memory-alpha.org for example) have separate cookies and so you may need to log in again, but otherwise you can move between Wikia wikis with the same session.

A local admin is needed to use Special:Import (and not all wikis have active admins) but a cut and paste move can be done by anyone. Most Wikia wikis (including all made in the last year or so) have a standard template available to give proper links and accreditation to Wikipedia ({{wikipedia|name}} or {{Wikipedia-deleted|usernames}}). So it's generally better to just do the move rather than try to find someone to do it for you. After all, most Wikia wikis are primarily concerned with writing their own articles rather than transferring them from Wikipedia ;)

If it's a lot of pages, and C&P is impractical, Wikia staff can help. We can be contacted via Special:Contact on any Wikia wiki -- sannse (talk) 10:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC) (Wikia Community Team)[reply]

Remove fundraiser banner on all projects (not only English Wikipedia)

Some time ago, I unified my accounts for all Wikimedia projects (English Wikipedia, Commons, Wikibooks, Bosnian Wikipedia etc). Works great.

Some time after that, there was a new fund raiser action. I donated a small amount of money. However, the fund raising banner did not go away. Searching whether it can be turned off, and how if it can, I realized that every registered user can suppress it from showing. Later I realized that it only works for English Wikipedia, and not for any other Wikimedia projects (Commons, Bosnian WP etc).

In "my preferences" on English WP, tab "Gadgets", there is option called "Suppress display of the fundraiser banner". However, this option does not exist in preferences of other Wikimedia projects.

I do not know who is responsible for that, but it would be nice if equivalent option were available for projects other than English Wikipedia, or if setting in English WP would affect all other projects.

Dzenanz (talk) 13:04, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The gadget in preferences is just a quick way to add a bit of CSS to your personal stylesheet suppressing the banner. Similar personal CSS could be used on other Wikipedia projects, but this would have to be done on each project separately. I don't know if it would be technically feasible to have a way of suppressing display on all projects at once. Algebraist 13:10, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So, some master admin (does such a thing exist) on each project should be responsible to add such an option to preferences (and, of course, implement it)? I was not surprised much that it has not been implemented on Bosnian WP, but it is also not implemented on Commons nor German WP Dzenanz (talk) 13:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You could add the appropriate CSS rule to your browser's user CSS to hide the banner on all projects, if you so desired. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that does not solve the problem in general, but it will solve it for me. I am somewhat familiar with CSS, so can anyone post here this piece of style sheet that controls fundraising banner? Also, does anyone know how to apply user CSS to GoogleChrome? I recently switched from Firefox to Chrome :) Dzenanz (talk) 14:53, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What I do it to have scripts that should run for me on all wikis in User:Happy-melon/global.js (which includes an import rule for User:Happy-melon/global.css, and then include everywhere an import rule to get that script for whichever wiki (see eg mw:User:Happy-melon/monobook.js). So I only need to make one edit to get my portable code everywhere. One of the rules in my global.css is to suppress the fundraiser banner (among other things). Works for me :D Happy‑melon 15:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Images and media for deletion move

It has been proposed that Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion be renamed Wikipedia:Files for deletion. We've identified two JavaScript tools and two bots that will need updating; what else might need to be changed? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:23, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why am I constantly being prompted with a Captcha requirement?

Despite multiple edits, I'm still being required to enter a Captcha phrase at times when I add links or undo edits by vandals which re-add links. I've got more than 10 edits, is it a length of time with an account requirement? AnyPerson (talk) 05:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Only registered users whose accounts have less than ten edits and are less than four days old are required to fill out a Captcha. So you will have to wait another two days. Graham87 09:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Confusing user interface for revision history

When you open the revision history of a page, the legend says

"(cur) = difference from current version, (last) = difference from preceding version"

yet the link buttons are labelled

"(cur) (prev) ..."

Is there someone who can edit the interface and straighten this out? I imagine this must be confusing, especially to new editors who try to figure out the buttons for the first time. The help page Help:Page history also still uses (last) instead of (prev). 77.183.102.108 (talk) 12:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]