Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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Village pump technical   post
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.	Shortcuts: WP:VPT WP:VP/T
edit Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) (see also: Wikipedia:Technical FAQ) Click "[show]" to the right of 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 b1864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English), and for logged in users there is a gadget available in your preferences. No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. For spell-checking what is in the edit box, you can use a web browser like Firefox, which includes such spell checking. 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. 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. 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. Problems loading the edit page: 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 MediaWiki user preferences. On the most recent version of MediaWiki (as of 21-May-2007), this is found under the "Editing" tab. 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). Numbers listed in parentheses in the "Recent changes" section and in your watchlist are the number of added or removed bytes. Questions and suggestions related to www.wikipedia.org portal should go to Meta.
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When bug 19219 is fixed: revert this When bug 19232 is fixed: revert this

[edit] GeSHi update

Per bugzilla:10967, GeSHi has been upgraded on Wikmedia, as well as the extension to plug it in to Mediawiki. As a consequence of this, though, the previously unintentional behavior of GeSHi <pre> tags getting the same border as Mediawiki <pre> has been "fixed", meaning they should no longer appear with borders.

However, this is probably not what most wikis will want, having gotten used to these borders. But simply re-adding the border with !important is not an optimal solution, as not all GeSHi outputs use exactly one <pre>.

Per bugzilla:16324 though, at the same time, a consistent class has been added to all <source> output. This is either <div class="mw-geshi"> or <span class="mw-geshi"> (for enclose="none"). Meaning, a wiki can re-add the borders via site-wide CSS now (rather than using crude selectors or a long comma-delimited list of all languages). For example in MediaWiki:Monobook.css one could add something like:

div.mw-geshi {padding: 1em; margin:1em 0; border: 1px dashed #2f6fab;}

--Splarka (rant) 06:59, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I edited User:33rogers/monobook.css and it works now. --33rogers (talk) 08:08, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Why to MediaWiki:Monobook.css, but not to MediaWiki:Geshi.css? Ruslik_Zero 10:09, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

For the same reason it probably shouldn't be added to MediaWiki:Common.css. MediaWiki:Geshi.css loads in all skins, but only Monobook and Chick (and the forthcoming Vector) define <pre> border as "1px dashed #2f6fab;". This could be done with body.skin-skinname of course. --Splarka (rant) 10:49, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Um, at least for me, Haskell and Scheme code examples are now virtually unreadable as the keywords and the punctuation are shown with a very pale yellow/green color that is barely visible on the white background that Monobook.css is giving me. Was this change intentional? —Tobias Bergemann (talk) 06:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I want the code to be surrounded by the boxes! If I use <pre></pre> around the code box, then the coloring goes away. Here is [http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:0LKC8ZoYUJkJ:en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-Programmer%27s_Tutorial_for_Python_3.0/Decisions+site:http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-Programmer%2527s_Tutorial_for_Python_3.0/Decisions&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a Google's Cache of June 23] and here is the current page. Do you see the difference? This update was not necessary! It caused more problems. --33rogers (talk) 07:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

This seems to annoy people, so I opened bugzilla:19416. Comments required. --Splarka (rant) 08:14, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --33rogers (talk) 08:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New idea to simplify editing for newcomers?

In the coming months, I'll be teaching some workshops for scientists on how to edit Wikipedia. After seeing this usability video, I'm concerned about how difficult it is for newcomers to understand wiki-markup, especially in articles with lots of inline citations, other templates, navigation and infoboxes.

One solution is to color-code elements, as does the editing tool, wikEd. But another solution occurred to me today. Could we use JavaScript to show/hide the non-textual elements such as inline citations, infoboxes, comments, etc.? For example, we might collapse an inline citation to an asterisk inside the edit box; clicking on the asterisk would cause it to expand to the full citation, which could then be edited and re-collapsed to the asterisk. Such an approach could drastically simplify the edit-box appearance of the article, making it much more similar to what readers see.

Does this seem like a good idea? Has it been done already? Thanks for your help, Proteins (talk) 23:16, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

If you want to create a new JavaScript based text editor (like WikiEd) you are welcome. Ruslik_Zero 11:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it is excellent that someone will be teaching something other than - here is how to vandalize the article on elephant on Wikipedia. Apteva (talk) 16:52, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

In response to the inline citations part, you might want to check out the citation system I used in GRB 970508 (if you haven't seen that kind already). This puts most of the information at the bottom of the page rather than in the middle of the text. It also produces an article that looks more similar to an academic journal than the conventional system. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 14:55, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Fixed number of decimals?

Is there a template/magicword which produces a fixed number of decimals? For instead shoving {{#expr: 1/3}} and 0.1 in it would produce something like 0.333333 and 0.100000. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:49, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

{{#expr:1/3 round 3}} == 0.333

{{#expr:1000000/3 round -3}} == 333000

You'd have to use something like padright to get non-significant zeroes. — CharlotteWebb 20:20, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Know of any template/magic words that pads to the right?Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:16, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You mean like "padright"?

{{padright:ABC|7|d}} = ABCdddd

Dragons flight (talk) 04:28, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Ugh, ain't the quick fix solution I was hoping for, but thanks nonetheless. At least I'll be able to do what I want (develop a sorting function for {{val}}).Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 13:57, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Rather than adding invisible zeroes and similar hackish nonsense, it would be better to produce some sorting js that actually works like you want it to. Like I explained to Thekohser on WR, the easiest fix is to ask the devs to remove the "$" (matching end-of-string) from the regular expressions used to identify numerical cell values in wikibits.js (thus recognizing a cell as a number as long as it starts with a number). It would be better to treat the source of the problem, but until then, any functions declared in MediaWiki:Common.js with the same names will over-ride the originals. — CharlotteWebb 09:51, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

The devs aren't given us parserfunctions, so we have to resort to "hackish nonsense". It is much quicker to spend weeks finding hacks than to figure out how in the world to file request to developpers anyway. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:08, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm serious. This isn't about parser-functions, it's about javascript. I can show you what to add to on common.js to make your tables sort properly without polluting the cell contents. — CharlotteWebb 00:04, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

And I'm serious too. common.js tricks are tricks that only benefit an unfathomably small minority of users, plus they won't do for what I have in mind. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

It would benefit anyone who has javascript enabled, whether they are logged in or not so I don't know what you're talking about. Everyone else would have non-sortable tables anyway, but either of these is better than the status quo—tables which sort incorrectly or contain a bunch of invisible garbage data at the beginning of the cell. — CharlotteWebb 10:30, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Total number of english wikipedia articles just dropped.

Resolved. Mystery explained: chunk of bot articles were deleted

I monitor the number of wikipedia english articles daily and I noticed that there was a recent unprecedented drop in the number of english wikipedia articles which you can find located at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

Underneath Page statistics -> Content pages. Does anybody know what happened? I'm just curious. It had been steadily rising (monitored in NZ) and then it dropped very suddenly

June 29 9.24 AM 2,929,524 articles

June 29 11.52 PM 2,926,146 articles

It's been rising ever since, at it's normal rate of approximately 1000 articles per day. Something big (purge) must have happened! HowiAuckland (talk) 05:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anybot's algae articles. mgiganteus1 (talk) 05:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

That's very interesting, thanks for your reply. I wonder over what period of time these articles were generated? HowiAuckland (talk) 08:06, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It appears the first creation was Sporochnus on 20 February 2009, and the last may be Helminthora on 19 April. The deletions were faster.[1] PrimeHunter (talk) 12:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] More links on Special:NewImages?

As one of the few new image patrollers, I spend a lot of time on Special:NewImages. Under the thumbnail, the username of the uploader is shown, along with a link to their userpage. It would also be nice if there was a link to their talk page- firstly, so it is easy to spot uploads by super-newbies, and secondly, because it would save me hitting them with deletion notices when they haven't even been welcomed, which is never nice. Is this something that would be easy to implement? J Milburn (talk) 17:00, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

It should be easy to do. There isn't a field in Special:AllMessages we can tweak, but a bugzilla: request should do it. MBisanz ^talk 17:07, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Special:Log/Upload is already there and it has everything except the thumbnail. MER-C 07:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Patrolling from that would take some getting used to, but I could give it a try ;) J Milburn (talk) 10:50, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at what the Commons has. In particular, check out the gadgets

• PrettyLog: reformats the log and displays thumbnails of most recent files, cannot show thumbs of overwritten files. Unfortunately, upload.wikimedia.org has been rather slow lately, I've seen it get the thumbs much quicker. Preview here, should be easy to port to en-WP.
• GalleryDetails: displays extended image info with quick links to mark for deletion, as copyvio, tineye search, etc. Admins get quick deletion links. That one would be hard to port since it depends on quite a few other files. There's also an alternate interface (see the documentation); that one would be still more work to port.

HTH, Lupo 12:41, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Show whole page

How can I show a whole page inside another page? I want to show Henry Burk inside Portal:Leathermaking/Selected biography/1. Debresser (talk) 23:23, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

If you want to transclude the entire article, then simply add {{Henry Burk}}. If you want to tranclude only a portion, such as the lead, then enclose that portion of the article in <onlyinclude></onlyinclude>. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I must be having a brain cramp, because that isn't working. -— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Transclusion targets the template namespace by default. You need an initial : to specify the mainspace. Algebraist 23:56, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes- the template markup defaults to template space. For articlespace you have to start with a colon like {{:Henry Burk}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:57, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] So I guess we've been updated?

Well, firstly, the search page has been updated, looks alot nicer.

And Vector is now available as an option for themes in the theme picker, though it seems to not have the new toolbar everyone has been talking about. {{tmbox}} also doesn't seem to render correctly in that theme... But still. ViperSnake151  Talk  23:23, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The toolbar is a separate option in Special:Preferences, under "Editing" (enable enhanced editing toolbar).--Eloquence* 23:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, tmbox does render correctly, the class has just not been assigned a color yet. Prodego ^talk 23:38, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Resolved. Buglet in search formatting update fixed!

The new search page no longer offers the ability to create the page if an exact match wasn't found. This is a disaster! This was one of the primary entry points for page creation. Now, if I want to create a page, the only way to do so is to create a redlink somewhere and click on it. WTF?! Hesperian 23:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

That is fixed now. Prodego ^talk 23:42, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Hesperian 00:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Is updating the category search, the existing +incategory: feature (bug 2285http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2285), planned ? That would be an excellent addition to the search and simplify some maintenance tasks. Cenarium (talk) 00:21, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

No, no further work on this is planned until someone comes along and makes a proper category intersection backend. --rainman (talk) 00:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia's server admin log. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:29, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• • Urgent - I cannot edit!!! I am using Opera 8 beta from Windows 98. Submit buttons in forms have stopped working - I cannot edit or even log in. What has happened? Quick fix or revert, please. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 09:04, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I filed a slew of bugreports on various css/js issues, and I added a coordinates position for the Vector skin, because that was annoying the hell out of me :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Right-sided scroll bar

Hi, several months ago I converted Template:Holden timeline into a scrollable timeline. However, I would like the bottom scrollbar to be set to the right-hand side by default, showing the most recent models first. OSX (talk • contributions) 01:16, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is not possible. --- RockMFR 02:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bug in Konqueror

On all English Wikipedia pages Konqueror indicates the following: "Error: ReferenceError: Can't find variable: XPathResult" SkyBon^{Talk\Contributions} 06:50, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Can't reproduce with Konqueror 4.2.3 on Win XP. What gadgets do you have enabled? Lupo 07:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] CSS class for self-links

The article kilogram uses font tags so that links going to different part of the article are displayed in a different color. It would be quite useful to have such a feature working by default, especially in places such as Irish phonology#History of the discipline where one might want to be able to tell citations from links to other articles with a glance. Is there a pseudo-CSS class (something like a:visited) applying to self-links? If not, could it be possible to add a feature to MediaWiki making all self-links have a class="mw-self" attribute or something like that? --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 14:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I really don't see the need or this. There may be accessibility issues; this should be run past WikiProject Accessibility; see also Wikipedia:Colours. Personally, I find it confusing to find green links in this article, since my monobook.css has rules to show redirects as green links. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I see kilogram is full of all sorts of wacky formatting (e.g. spans with 0.1em margins (I guess because in a certain person's browser "(foo)" doesn't look perfect; in my browser, OTOH, their "fixed" version "(foo)" looks worse) and _{{nbsp}} (apparently for the purpose of screwing with IE's line-height)), "smart" quotes, and the like. But I'm not going to go near that article, as the person responsible for those oddities is someone my sanity is best served by avoiding. Anomie⚔ 19:58, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I was scratching appendages until I read Talk:Kilogram#Spans and closed span tags. The margin-lefts are used to add a space every three digits behind the decimal and to add spacing between italics and the reference link. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The space-every-three-digits part at least sort of makes sense, they're using spans so copy-pasting the numbers doesn't include the spaces. But the italics thing is apparently fixing IE to the detriment of other browsers: Kilogram^[1] versus Kilogram^[1]? ice."^[1] versus ice.”^[1]? The first looks better to me in both cases, and has the advantage of lacking confusing markup. Anomie⚔ 02:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Sigh, Kilogram. I tried fixing it, and was reverted, twice, with some nutjob saying I had to properly close the span tags... I got the hell out of there at that point. I mean, I was being chastized about proper html, when I was removing things like <span style="margin-left:0.1em"><ref></span>, and being reverted with things like "I don’t believe you are correct. All HTML commands like span tags must be closed." --Splarka (rant) 08:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that if you really want to make style changes again, you have a good reason for him to be the one getting out of there this time. It's too bad someone doing so much good content-wise has to royally screw it up style-wise. Anomie⚔ 10:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It's not a browser issue as much as a font issue: in my browser, the eff "f)" used to clash into the parenthesis, but now I've installed a more recent sans-serif font and it doesn't anymore (although it still does barely touch it). I'm still using the exact same version of the browser. So it's not as simple as that. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 11:24, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Greg_L. — CharlotteWebb 12:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] links_to_essays_in_policy_pages

Please join the discussion in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Links_to_essays_in_policy_pages - Altenmann >t 17:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Why is there ActiveX on WP?

I'm seeing atop every WP page viewed, a warning notification from Symantec Antivirus that "Your security settings do not allow Web sites to use ActiveX controls installed on your computer. This page may not display correctly." Is there some way to make my preferences such that no ActiveX is used?LeadSongDog come howl 17:52, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

It's most probably some gadget or the newly served jQuery, or the autosuggestions for the search box that try to use XmlHttpRequest, a web-2.0 way for Javascript to talk to the server it came from. (It does not allow Javascript to talk to arbitrary server, just the one the page came from, in this case to .wikipedia.org.) On Internet Explorer (at least the older ones, not sure about IE8), that XmlHttpRequest thing is available only as an ActiveX component. It's nothing evil. Does Gmail work for you? They also use it. Try configuring your virus software to allow the use of ActiveX for the domains .wikipedia.org and .wikimedia.org. Otherwise, try disabling autosuggestions in your preferences, and disabling gadgets. Lupo 19:01, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I see it even before logging in from IE6 on a restrictively managed network where all external xml and AJAX is blocked, so yes, gmail is also blocked. The autosuggest doesn't work on this machine either, so you may be right that there's a connection. I didn't think it was evil, but it clearly is not very general either. Users shouldn't get error messages as their first contact with WP. I'd like to ascertain the cause of the behaviour. It seems to be the same not just on WP, but also on meta, commons, wikiversity, and wiktionary. Perhaps something around language support. Anyhow, it's ugly.LeadSongDog come howl 22:13, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

You wouldn't have this problem on a current version of Internet Explorer, or on a default configuration of Internet Explorer, or on any browser other than Internet Explorer. If we could detect that you have the rare combination of an old version with an unusual configuration we would just disable the AJAX stuff for you, but apparently the only way to find out is to try it -- which throws the dialog box at the user. Thanks, Microsoft! :) --brion (talk) 22:28, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, if I had any such option I would exercise it, but not everyone gets to change their configuration. Think public kiosks, libraries, corporate networks, etc. Lots of reasons to lock down a config. The tools at ip2location seem able to determine that I'm running IE6 on Win XP here, so that's clearly available info. But what is it that needs AJAX to work? Can't the basic UI functions of the main page at least be rendered in straight HTML? LeadSongDog come howl 23:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem isn't the version, its the configuration. The little bit of AJAX used in the normal interface should work fine with a standard installation of IE6. The problem is the security settings, and AFAIK, there's no reliable way to detect settings that would cause such conflicts. Mr.Z-man 00:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, gotcha. But what's changed in the last two days that might be blocked?LeadSongDog come howl 01:16, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I know this doesn't really answer your question, but maybe you could ask your Internet café/library/corporation to upgrade IE or install a different browser such as Firefox? If the organization you rely on knew that there is a demand, they'd be more motivated to make the switch. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 01:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

In my particular case, no, but that doesn't matter, it's just another nuisance notification banner to me and if I wait long enough it'll eventually get updated. To someone else it could be "OMG, this site is trying to infect my computer! I'm not going to risk going there (to wikipedia) again, it must be full of viruses! Good thing Symantec caught it." And we've lost another potential contributor. Lots of underfunded public libraries and schools are using old hand-me-down machines that are memory limited. They lock down these machines because there's a new and often careless user every few minutes. I'd be amazed if the problem isn't showing up there too. LeadSongDog come howl 16:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Firefox uses less memory than IE: [2]. Old hardware is not the problem, in fact, until recently I was browsing quite happily with Firefox on a 7-year-old old Pentium III with 512 MB of memory. And really, it's not hard to lock down machines without going security-paranoid and popping up warnings about Wikipedia. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 16:35, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I get that. I don't choose the config.LeadSongDog come howl 16:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Could the problem be avoided by providing on IE an XHR facade that used hidden iframes instead of the ActiveX component for the transport? (Of course, IE6 also has a "security" setting "Launching programs and files in an IFRAME": disable/enable/prompt... it just sucks.) Lupo 07:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps. Got an example I could check?LeadSongDog come howl 16:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Automatically marking a deleted article as "patrolled"

Please see this thread at Proposals. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 19:35, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] The new enhanced toolbar

First off, kudos to those who did this - it looks sharp. That aside, is there a discussion page for the toolbar? There are a few issues I've noticed that might be worth addressing. (For example, internal and external links buttons are swapped for some reason; internal now follows external, whereas the previous version - internal first - would seem to make more sense. The "redirect" button has vanished as well.) Thanks in advance. --Ckatz^chat_spy 01:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

More on this... there are a number of buttons that seem to be missing, and the "refTools" gadget that adds a button for simplified "cite" templates doesn't work with it. --Ckatz^chat_spy 01:47, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Best place to comment right now is on the usability wiki. Sorry this isn't quite clear; we'll be launching a more explicit and visible request for feedback soon.--Eloquence* 01:50, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I am not seeing a new toolbar - looks exactly the same as before. Do I have to enable it somewhere? FF 3.0.11, WinXP SP2. – ukexpat (talk) 03:08, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It's a preferences option. Algebraist 03:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I have "Show edit toolbar" checked on the Editing tab, has been for as long as I can remember. – ukexpat (talk) 03:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It is a new option, a few lines down, labelled "Enable enhanced editing toolbar". --Ckatz^chat_spy 03:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Doh! Got it - maybe it should be moved up the list to just below the standard toolbar. No sig button? -ukexpat (talk) 03:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

That would be sensible. I don't think it can be done locally, though; you'll have to open a bug. Algebraist 03:26, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Typo

There's a typo in the MediaWiki "Action complete" page that comes up after you delete a page; it says "Depending on the reason for deletion, you may want to remove any links to this pageand ..." instead of "Depending on the reason for deletion, you may want to remove any links to this page and ...". Does anyone know where to go to fix it?

(If you need an example of what I'm talking about, check out User:Rjanag/Delete me! and delete it, you have my permission. You should see the error after you delete it.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure? MediaWiki:Deletedtext seems to be the page in question, and I don't see such a typo there. (Also not there when I deleted that page.) ÷seresin 05:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Might have to be a file page, is there a separate mediawiki page for that? I got the typo when I deleted File:ChinaTJC.jpg. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I saw this the other day and tried to figure out how to fix it. MediaWiki:Filedelete-success is where I went, but couldn't find the error. In fact this edit on June 18 looks like it should have fixed the problem (though I only noticed the problem within the last week). --auburnpilot talk 05:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I just uploaded File:Delete me!.jpg if anyone wants to take a whack at it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I tried this edit... it took me a while to test it (getting the deletion equivalent of edit conflicts), but I just tried it now and it seems to be fixed. I guess just was not quite enough within a {{switch}} template to be recognized as a real space, and I had to bring in the heavy   artillery. Anyway, this looks resolved to me, let me know if any of you are still having problems. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yep - all fixed now thanks - Peripitus (Talk) 05:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be a bug here. &#32; and &#032; usually get converted to &#32; by the parser (then get converted to spaces by HTMLTidy, I think). However, when used in this interface message, &#32; gets removed entirely. &#032; still gets the normal treatment. --- RockMFR 05:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe MediaWiki message pages are processed through HTMLTidy. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:46, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Math in templates?

How do you do math in templates? (For example, if I wanted a template that would add two parameters together and return the sum, like if I entered {{sum|5|5}} and got 10.) I thought there was a magic word or parser function that did this, but I can't seem to find it now, and there don't appear to be any math parser functions in Help:Extension:ParserFunctions. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It's the first parser function, expr. Something like, {{#expr: {{{1}}}+{{{2}}}}}. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, right under my nose. Thanks, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Move image to commons

Could someone please move this image to Commons for me? The "b" in the file name is not necessary if that helps any. Thanks! SharkD (talk) 11:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcut commands different after upgrade to Safari 4(?)

I've recently upgraded to Safari 4 for Mac and the shortcut key combinations to edit, save, preview, etc. have all changed. (This seems not to be the same issue discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive62#edit-tools not functioning in Safari for the Mac, but may be related.) Formerly, they were of the form "Ctrl+[key]" (like "Ctrl+s" for Save page), but now, hovering over the buttons and links reveals that they are "Ctrl+alt+[key]" (so Save page is now "Ctrl+alt+s"). Changing the "User agent" from Safari's "Develop" menu to "Safari 3.2.3 — Mac" changes the hover text to show "Ctrl+[key]" shortcut, but only the "Ctrl+alt+[key]" combos work. Can anyone identify whether this is a Safari thing or a Wikipedia thing? And, more importantly, can someone describe how to restore the former key combinations? Many thanks in advance. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

This has been the case since the early Safari 3 versions. bugzilla:14401 indicates since June 2008. And this is a Safari issue, it is not anything that you can influence from the website (only the letter) and every browser uses their own set of "keys" for these hotkeys. See also Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I suspected it was a Safari thing, but I have to disagree on the "since Safari 3" part (in my case, at least). Thanks for the reply. — Bellhalla (talk) 21:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. Changed from Webkit 526 and higher. Safari 3.2 used up to webkit 525.29. Man. I didn't realize I had been using Nightly builds of Safari for over a year already... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:33, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Page view stats not working

Example

I've been trying to access stats.grok.se today with no success. I don't think it's a problem on my end since no other websites are down and I've used stats.grok.se many times in the past. What's the word? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It looks like there is no IP address assigned to stats.grok.se – I think this would make it inaccessible. snigbrook (talk) 20:10, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm finding the same problem and indeed the DNS A record seems to have vanished. This is a huge issue, page counts are an important tool. I believe the site maintainer's moniker was Henrik, is that a user here we could contact? If he's having problems paying his phone bill, maybe we could persuade the Foundation to shift over a few dollars/kroner/euros for a little while. Franamax (talk) 02:09, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. He hasn't edited since June 7, so I sent him an email. Hopefully he'll be able to shed some light on this. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:37, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I decided to usurp the grok.se domain just as a placeholder, but according to this, the registration is active. The problem seems to be that both the DNS nameservers are inactive. ns.intresseklubben.org and ns.abelsson.com are both valid sub-domain entries - but they both resolve to 94.247.170.8 (Henrik, that's a no-no, you should always designate a secondary server). Pinging 94.247.170.8 returns nothing, and of course telnet'ing to port 53 there doesn't work either. It seems that the nameserver responsible for grok.se has left the building... Franamax (talk) 00:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Crap. I use it a lot for Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Traffic statistics. I've tried to contact him several times via his user page in the past but was never able to get a response from him. SharkD (talk) 15:00, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Vector skin and scripts

I've been testing Vector and some of the scripts a bit.

[edit] Works

• Qui
• HotCat
• Popups
• + for new section
• lead section [edit] gadget

[edit] Broken

• assessment gadget is broken due to the changed ID for the talk page tab (ca-talk now ca-main_talk )
• refTools, broken as expected due to changed toolbar.
• The ipv6 detection code of Common.js
• Drop down menus (p-cactions now under views or something)

[edit] Requires thunks gadget

• wikEd doesn't work. likely due to changed layout of edit page
• UTC clock gadget. broken due to broken addPortletLink for p-personal (now called personal ?)
• Broken * purge tab (again due to changed id's for portlets)
• Broken twinkle (due to p-cactions changes most likely)

So it seems that so far most problems are with p-personal and p-cactions layout changes. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I added a gadget MediaWiki:Gadget-vectorskin-thunks.js, conveniently ripped from zh.wp that can deal with some of these issues. If people want to use the Vector skin, then this gadget may be useful until the scripts or skin are adapted. For compatibility, see the list above. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

This skin was rolled out a bit prematurely it seems to me. The most apparent problem I believe is that the tabs are apparently hardcoded? They are always showing the anon-version of the tabs, which for users of additional rights is missing the watch and move tabs, and for admins of course a lot more. And hmm, why does it introduce messages specific to that skin, e.g. uses MediaWiki:Vector-view-edit instead of MediaWiki:edit?
The tabs could of course all be added back via compatibility gadget, but ... Amalthea 09:25, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, found them. Yikes. Amalthea 09:28, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

This is just a preview though. I mean, you would have to have read the techblog to know about this atm, most people will never find it. It is there so that everyone can test and check more easily in real world situations. I think that is a good thing. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

A preview is certainly good. All those script incompatibilities wouldn't have been found without it. To me, it appears to be pretty final though, it's just as accessible as all other skins, and is going to be listed in the next Signpost. Amalthea 11:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

It is just a first iteration. I think many more iterations will follow before the skin becomes the default skin. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:50, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How do I mark deleted pages as patrolled?

I'm a regular patroller of the backlog of new pages. I've noticed that a lot get deleted without being marked, and they remain on the backlog but don't have a link to mark them patrolled. How can these entries be removed? -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

You should see a "mark as patrolled" link if you visit a new page from a link on Special:NewPages. – ukexpat (talk) 20:08, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I do on pages that haven't been deleted. I just noticed there is a discussion on the proposals board about this, though. Can't the code that delete a page also fire the code that is run when a person clicks "Mark as patrolled"? (Or have the mark as patrolled link remain on deleted pages) -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Deleted pages are removed from special:newpages altogether. You need to purge the page's cache. Triplestop x3 01:14, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Very simple

What is the URL of the "Permanently disable mobile site" link? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:01, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Currently it is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/mobileRedirect.php?to=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page&expires_in_days=3650 which is a redirect. Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 04:10, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] CSS cleanup for existing stubs

User:Jarry1250 has now created a list and AWB frontend, to fix the CSS issues with the current deployed stubs. I invite all Windows users to help fix these issues by using AWB. See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#CSS cleanup for existing stubs. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:49, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Webpage retrieval with eggdrop

I code an Eggdrop bot for IRC, and we are working having it return searches from inside IRC. When I send for a webpage on en.wikipedia.org, I get a webpage back that gives the following error output: <html><head> </head><body>

The document has moved <a href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Space">here</a>.

(And even if I try to go to that link, it returns the same link)When I retrieve with my web browser, it works fine.

Any suggestions on what I may be doing incorrectly? --Callcentermonkey (talk) 07:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Certain ill-behaved bots / user-agents are blocked by the server, and I suspect that's what you are seeing. In general, bot processes should use the mw:API whenever possible, respect the mw:Manual:Maxlag parameter, and avoid creating unreasonably high demand on the servers. Dragons flight (talk) 08:19, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! No, this is a small IRC community, 35-45 on average in channel (Been here for over 14 years, many for over 10, #callahans on Undernet, based on the books by Spider Robinson); I expect the bot to make from 0 to 15 queries per day at most, with an initial high usage (no more than 50) from testing the code, and the novelty of a new feature; with previous features, the activity resumes to normal levels in about a week. --Callcentermonkey (talk) 10:52, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, took a gander at that, nothing for tcl (not too much of an issue, I understand GET/POST); however that is way more complicated than needed; this bot is just for mainly returning one of two things: If it gets a disambiguation page, parse for first 3 or so, and /msg them to the requestor, or B) Output about the first 255 characters of the wiki article, with the link to read more, to channel. No editing, just reading the page only. I'll play with a few things from the API and see if I can get what I want, and thanks again --Callcentermonkey (talk) 11:03, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Here is some to help you along:

• The API
• api wiki text.
• API parse output of a page
• Check also the opensearch action of the api that might be useful
• I'm not sure if eggdrop will work with the api however, if it's blocked for normal wiki...

—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

While Dragons flight is correct that the sysadmins have blocked various generic client library user agents as well as agents specific to certain troublesome bots, the error message you quote is more likely to be due to a missing "Host" header, required for Name-based virtual hosting. Which makes it likely you're using a rather old client library; simply updating it might fix the problem. Anomie⚔ 15:02, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ref is too imprecise

I tried to use the ref element to integrate footnotes. However, there seems to be no possibility to indicate if the footnote references to the sentence in front of the ref element or the paragraph in front of it. In example:

This is a first sentence. This is a second sentence.<ref>Miller (2009), p. 7.</ref>

Instead, it should be as follows:

This is a first sentence. <ref text="Miller (2009), p. 7.">This is a second sentence.</ref>

Now, it is clear, that Miller is based on the second sentence only. Is there any possibility, to indicate that? If not, it should be programmed, because it opens new possibilities, e.g. mouse-ever effects when having the mouse pointer over a sentence. Then, a pop-up box could show "Miller (2009), p. 7". Furthermore, it is much more helpful for future editors to know, if sentence 1 has a reference already and can be relied on. 78.53.37.113 (talk) 10:20, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Inline references should generally be placed after the first piece of punctuation following the fact that they supporting. So it would generally be assumed that, in your example above, the ref applied to the second sentence only. Otherwise, the ref would be duplicated:

This is a first sentence.<ref name=miller>Miller (2009), p. 7.</ref> This is a second sentence.<ref name=miller/>

While I agree that a more objective way of connecting facts with citations would be desirable, I don't think your proposal is viable, as it totally changes the syntax of the tags (what is currently reference content would be displayed as page content), a breaking change that is unlikely to be considered. I think a more uniform and consistent application of the tags would be an equally-effective way of improving verifiability. Happy‑melon 11:24, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Community consensus on how to best reference an article is mixed. I have had the first half of a compound sentence {{fact}} tagged due to the citation being placed at the end of the sentence. Contrast this with those who object to any inline references, complaining they obstruct the flow of text and make the article harder to read.

The Manual of Style calls for footnotes to be placed "immediately after the text that requires a source." My personal interpretation as to the meaning of this requirement allows for multiple consecutive sentences within a single paragraph to be referenced with a single footnote unless the text block contains quotations or other information likely to be challenged. This is consistent with Wikipedia:When to cite#When a source may not be needed and seems to provide a workable balance between verification and readability concerns. As Happy-melon has shown above, there are differences of opinion on this matter. --Allen3 ^talk 12:07, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Changing ref to a tag with an inside (i.e. <ref>Text.</ref>) would make it possible to do context highlighting in the browser. I.e. browsers could highlight the piece of text the ref pertains to. This would be very useful, IMO. SharkD (talk) 15:17, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I would find it rather annoying. Mr.Z-man 15:24, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Regular expression searching

Is there an already existing tool for searching Wikipedia using full-fledged regular expressions?

See my question at Wikipedia talk:Searching#Regular expression search.

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Full regular expression support would be very computationally expensive. Might have better luck with the limited subset supported by other search engines. If you really need to use them then I suggest downloading a site dump and writing your own scripts to do so locally. SharkD (talk) 15:11, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Why are categories deleted?

Why are categories deleted and recreated as a result of WP:CFD rename requests instead of moved? Categories have Talk pages as well. Are they less deserving of being preserved than article Talk pages? SharkD (talk) 14:56, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Because the software can't do category moves yet (there's probably a bug on bugzilla about this). If a category is renamed, its talk page should simply be moved. Category talk pages shouldn't be deleted when categories are renamed. --- RockMFR 16:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)