Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) - Wikipedia

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Dear Wikipedians: I, like you, am an editor; I create articles and make edits. But, many, I am sure many other people out there, are tired, frustrated and angry with the behavior of many Administrators. I am certain that it is appallingly easy to revert and article, that someone has undoubtedly spent allot of time and effort writing. I have, in the past spent hours, researching, planning, writing, checking and revising an addition to an article only to have the whole lot deleted forever three minutes afterwards.

I know that deletion of material is essential in a free-to-edit encyclopedia, but if you see an article that someone has anonymously devoted their time to writing, why could you not revise it, change it or give a reason for you action? They deserve one.

I know all Administrators are not all Drunk-With-Power-Trigger-Happy-Nazis, many of you do an excellent job and you know who you are.

In closing: Create, don’t Destroy. Make a distinction between “what is right, and what is easy”. Be enriched and enrich others with the knowledge of other people.

And keep that finger off the trigger.

(If I don't cop flack for this one, I will climb the Reichtag Bulding in a Spiderman outfit).

Dfrg.msc 07:22, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

• See also Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Trigger Happy, begun 6 June. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This may sound silly but I can't get a my redirect at Del Monte to work. I've tried hard to get it to go to Del Monte Foods but it just won't work. I someone could fix this for me I would be Eternally Greatful. Thanks Samuel 15:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Mayde somedid something just now but for some reason it works. Thanks Samuel 15:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I am currently doing a minor overhaul of the Engineering Portal and I would like to implement a script that cycles the Featured Article and Selected Image based on the current date. I've already used similar code on a website I did a while back, but I remember having to set up some server-side things to get the PHP recognized (sorry if this is a little vague, but it was a while back). Is Wikipedia set up for this kind of script, and if not, does anyone know of a way to pull the date with javascript?
Thank you,
Âme Errante 05:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You should easily be able to do this with avaiable 1.7 wikicode using parser functions, variables and/or magic words. For a quick example:

{{#switch:{{CURRENTDAY}}
|1|4|7|10|13|16|19|22|25|28|31=[[Image:Image 1.ext]]|
|2|5|8|11|14|17|20|23|26|29=[[Image:Image 2.ext]]|
|3|6|9|12|15|18|21|24|27|30=[[Image:Image 3.ext]]}}

Shows each image every third day of a month (using the #switch "fallthrough" method). You can do transclusions as well as image tags. --Splarka (rant) 07:10, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thank you Splarka. I didn't realize that Wikipedia's native pseudo-code had that kind of power. If I have any additional questions I'll be sure to let you know.
-Âme Errante 22:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sure thing. Just drop a note on my talk page. --Splarka (rant) 23:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm wondering how to view an article and see all the text that has been added to it throughout its history. This view would include the current as well as text that has been added and then deleted later. Yes, even the stupid vandalism text, I suppose.

I guess this would be similar to a multi-version diff that showed the adds from multiple versions. Instead, I theoretically could view each diff on an article's history page, but that would drive me and the WP servers nuts.

Does the software allow something in any way similar to this? Thanks! Bob schwartz 17:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

What sort of format are you looking for? Combining all diffs would be ridiculously long for any sizable page. What's your purpose?

(Incidentally, you don't mean to discuss deletion. That's something quite different from what you're talking about.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:38, 14 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! Seeing the article including all the text that was ever added (or at least in some time period) would give a fuller picture of the WP community's knowledge about that topic. There are often varying legitimate opinions around what content is too trivial, controversial, or off-point to belong in an article. Some articles have a few "guardians" who are vigilant in removing information that they view as inappropriate. Being able to see all the content ever added would be great for pages where useful information has been removed. (Of course you'd also see the vandalism, but the text added in those cases is almost always short and easily ignored.) Or is there a way to see or download the history of an article, even if it is in some less-than-user-friendly format? Bob schwartz 17:47, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There's no easy way to do this at present, at least that I know of. To get all history of all Wikipedia pages in XML format, you can go here; it's 7.6 GB compressed. Do with that what you like. (You could also file a feature request for an easier way to do this at Mediazilla:, but don't expect any devs to take up your task within your lifetime.  :)) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think your best bet would be to ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts (or someone with access to the m:toolserver (when it gets fixed, which may be a long time from now, sadly)) it sounds like something that should be feasible; just load all the revisions, and remove duplicate text (although, hm, I don't know of a well-known algorthim for that specfic task...) JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Anyone know if/how it's possible to transclude a page across Sister projects? For example, I would like to use the WikiQuote of the day on Wikipedia pages? The following link works just fine:

q:Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/October 4, 2024

But, it won't transclude:

{{q:Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/October 4, 2024}}

Am I doing something wrong? or is this just not possible? -Kmf164 (talk | contribs)

It is not possible. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 15:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It is possible, but it's disabled on Wikimedia wikis and I'm not sure of the state of the code as is. robchurch | talk 15:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the explanation. Though it would be nice to use "...of the day" features across projects, it sounds like more trouble (than it's worth) to enable it or add such a feature. Perhaps there are also server load issues? -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 05:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well, inter-project transclusion is indeed enabled in Wikimedia wikis, only it is restricted to the image namespace and images coming from Commons. I have no clue if that would work as an ugly hack, but I sure would love to have some sort of transclusion between projects... although ideally, I would want SUL before that too... Titoxd^(?!?) 05:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well, if you cluld, it would be terrible on the servers. That is why if you can't have a red interwiki link, because it would have to check in a completely different database to see if the page exists. And imagine if people started using {{tl}} in other wikis. It would be ac complete load on the servers if everybody typed {{en:tl|template}}. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 14:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

What do you think the link cache is for, then? It's probably crippled due to some dumb bug or instability or just fascististic administration. robchurch | talk 23:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

If we could just transclude the Commons image description pages for the limited purpose of Template:C-uploaded images, that would help significantly. See also my related post below.--Pharos 19:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I created a new howto, Wikipedia:How to fix bunched up edit links, on how to fix that problem where floated images push section edit links to the wrong place (which seems to be a FAQ). Please take a look and correct any mistakes I might have made. --cesarb 20:43, 14 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That is a very concise and helpful page. Are you going to add a link to it at the top of this forum in the FAQ list? Also, for one wiki, we had a solution for very large pages (like vote pages) that had bunched up sections that would be a pain for us to maintain manual clears (especially since most users adding to it didn't know how). In the common.css we put:

#headclear h1 { clear: both; }
#headclear h2 { clear: both; }
#headclear div.editsection { clear: both; position: relative; top: 2em;}

And then we wrapped the page in a <div id="headclear">. Not perfect, but functional (although it seems to cause problems in some versions of IE). --Splarka (rant) 00:59, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I intend to add it to the FAQ (which I wrote most of) as soon as I get more feedback (in fact, it's my intention from the beginning). I don't want to impinge potentially bogus advice on any newbie which might happen to wander by. --cesarb 01:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Legacy clear after "unknown" (legacy or CSS) float should always work. The opposite would fail on legacy browsers, CSS clear after legacy float. The main difference between {{clr}} and {{clear}} isn't legacy vs. CSS, but inline BR vs. block level DIV. Inline works everywhere within a block, block level isn't allowed in some places. For strict XHTML an inline element outside of all block level elements isn't allowed, in that case you'd need the DIV. Both are kludges, anything would be fine if folks start a DIV before any floating magic, and close it when they're happy with the result. For legacy browsers the "right" and "left" of [[image:]] is at best a waste of time. A dummy table with align="right" or "left" containing only the image works with "any" brwoser, and in that case you'd need {{clr}} or <br clear="all/left/right/>. Example on WP:EIS, if it's still there. -- Omniplex 06:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think I understood it better now, thanks for the explanation. I've removed the incorrect information from Wikipedia:How to fix bunched up edit links. --cesarb 12:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The entire article content is wrapped in a <div>, which in turn is wrapped in a <body>, which in turn is wrapped in an <html>. All elements are thus within multiple block-level tags, so there's no violation. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, sounds good now. In theory you could "downgrade" your 2nd example to work with older browsers, add align="right", optionally strike the then redundant float: right;, ready. That would be also a case where you'd use {{-}} or <br clear="right" /> to stop the floating.

Floating right can cause havoc if it meets something further down that can't be folded, wide <pre> lines or wide tables, unfortunately also long section titles in a ToC (unless the ToC is put in a table with width less than 100% leaving enough room for anything floating right). Maybe mention that floating left is better than floating right under rare conditions (vague because I'm not sure how much of it is only an oddity of my browser). -- Omniplex 17:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

No. The whole point of the second example is to work exactly like the first example. Since the first example uses only CSS floats (and thus would not float with obsolete or uncommon browsers), the second one has to also use only CSS floats. Doing otherwise would lose the whole point of the method, which is to fix the edit links while changing nothing else. I did think of align="right" versus style="float: right; clear: right", and concluded being as similar as possible would help avoid possibly susprising results, and thus would be better. If the first example had used align="right", the second example would have to use align="right" also; however, this is not usually seen in actual articles, and the page was written to help with the specific situation seen in several articles (and is supposed to be newbie-friendly, so it should avoid discussing obscure corner cases).

As to floating left, unless it's being proposed as a way to fix the section edit links, it shouldn't be in that page. --cesarb 04:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

For popular browsers there's no difference between inline CSS style="float: right;" and legacy align="right", they interpret it identically. I hope with a priority for inline CSS in the case of conflicts. For uncommon devices (mobile) or old browsers inline CSS is invisible, no effect. Where that's no problem it's fine. A huge sidebar appearing before the relevant content can be annoying, sooner or later somebody will fix or remove it.

Floating left, I can't tell if that's in any way related to edit link issues, inline CSS has no effect from my POV, also no undesirable side-effects. -- Omniplex 12:58, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Reference lists are constantly being proposed for deletion. They don't seem to be well-liked in "(main)", nor in "Wikipedia:" (largely administrative), and would be warping "Portal:" from the current usage. Yet, anybody with familiarity of an actual paper encyclopedia knows that reference lists are encyclopedic. The solution over at Wiktionary appears to be adding an Appendix: namespace for reference lists, about 6 months ago.

Please add an Appendix: namespace here, too.

--William Allen Simpson 09:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org

Component Wikimedia, General/Unknown. Severity enhancement. shell as a keyword. Make sure you mention the English Wikipedia in the report. robchurch | talk 15:47, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I always thought bugzilla was for general software changes, and here was for en: specific. For example, I couldn't find the Appendix request for wiktionary there. Anyway, bug 6346, thanks for the help!

--William Allen Simpson 19:23, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for pursuing this, William. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 10:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I uploaded a PNG of the FoxTrot Sunday banner to replace a JPEG that was out there. Originally, I uploaded a true-color PNG. For a few days, the thumbnail wouldn't show up. I couldn't figure out why--I didn't know I could purge the cache then--so I decided to upload a 64-color version of the image, which I needed to do anyway. As soon as I uploaded the 64-color version, the thumbnail appeared. But the thumbnail's file size was more than twice that of my original file! As far as I can guess, the thumbnail is of the true color version of the file, not the indexed color version.

I'm not entirely sure of the right way to purge an image's thumbnails. I just added the {{purge}} template to the image page, hit preview, and clicked the link. That wiped out the thumbnail for a few minutes, but the new thumbnail had the same outrageous file size as the old one.

Maybe I just don't understand how to purge images properly? I don't know. Starwiz 01:18, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Purging wouldn't solve it; AFAIK the thumbnails are always truecolor. If you are worried about the file size, upload a preresized version to use in the article, adding a link to the full-sized version on its image description page (don't forget to add {{notorphan}} to the full image). --cesarb 01:26, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In fact, doing some experiments with OptiPNG, it looks like not only the thumbnail is truecolor, it has more than 256 different colors (ImageMagick says it has 5517 colors). The original image has 32 colors. --cesarb 01:58, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

How strange! I guess I won't fight it. Did I at least purge the cache correctly, or is there an easier way to do that? --Starwiz 02:00, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The easiest way is to copy the edit link and change the action=edit to action=purge. It should give you the same URL you got with {{purge}}. --cesarb 02:34, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That's a good idea. Thanks for all your help! By the way, I have another problem, which I described on the assistance Village Pump, that I think you might be able to help me with. I'd really appreciate your assistance, if you're able to help. Thanks again, --Starwiz 03:14, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thumbnails typically have more colours than the original image because of interpolation. You could say that some of the information that was lost by reducing the image is in fact not lost at all, but instead transferred into the colour data. This colour data is not as easily compressible as the original spatial data was, so the thumbnail ends up with a larger filesize. If we don't do this interpolation, the thumbnail looks crap. It would be nice if we could send the full-size indexed image to the browser and have the browser scale and interpolate it, but unfortunately browsers can't be relied upon to do this properly. -- Tim Starling 04:29, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Copied from WP:ANI

I only put this here becasue the script that links to the media wiki autoblock page on template:AOLdos is thiiiiiiis close to working correctly, which would cut down on vandalism a lot IMO, so, one more question... PAGENAME gives " " and PAGENAMEE gives _ so is there a 3rd variable out there somewhere that inserts + signs in place of spaces? otherwise the mediawiki link is never going to work correctly without being manually subst'd and debugged--205.188.116.65 14:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The only way I know of to get something like 'User:Conrad+Bertrand+Dunkerson' (if I correctly understand that to be what you are looking for) into a template is to pass it in as a parameter. There is no 'magic word' (like 'PAGENAMEE') for '+' separators and no way in MediaWiki to parse sub-sets of a string. --CBD 20:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

What about {{urlencode:}}? That makes it so if you do {{urlencode:{{PAGENAME}}}} it will make it "Administrators'+noticeboard/Incidents" --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 20:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Now created at Template:PAGENAMEEE. AmiDaniel (talk) 20:41, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This is an horrible name. PAGENAMEE stands for "pagename encoded"; what the swearword does "PAGENAMEEE" stand for? --cesarb 23:31, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Then feel free to move it. I simply stuck it there as that was what was requested here. PAGENAMEEE I suppose would be pagename extended encoding or something, dunno. If you have a better idea for the name, then put it wherever you want. AmiDaniel (talk) 04:14, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Done. --cesarb 19:39, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

odd question

Are there any potential pitfalls, to using this as a template? {{User:AOL user/PAGENAMEEE.js}}--AOL user 04:15, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well, you don't want to use a JS file. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 04:34, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

True! 162.83.147.242 05:28, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still doesn't work, try logging out and logging back in.

Every time I try to edit a page, the above message comes up. I've tried logging out and back in again, but it still appears. I can edit fine and preview fine so it's not a big problem, I'm just wondering why it keeps coming up. — FireFox • 13:29, 06 June '06

Try logging out, clearing your cache and cookies, and logging back in. ~MDD4696 14:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

No change =( — FireFox • 14:57, 06 June '06

Do you have a preview prior to your first edit? Agathoclea 16:47, 6 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Um, prior to my first change, yes. It automatically shows the preview. It's not happened before though. — FireFox • 17:55, 06 June '06

There's a setting in prefs to show preview on first edit. Try unchecking that. Also try a different browser or two - some have issues with losing session data prematurely. Deco 20:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It fixes the problem when I uncheck the box, but when I re-check the box the problem is still there. I've never had the problem before - it just appeared out of nowhere... no change of preferences, no change of browser or anything. — FireFox • 21:13, 06 June '06

I am having the same problem, but only when I try to edit pages in my user pages e.g. this page, not when I try to edit my user talk page or other user talk pages. I did try logging out and back in. I don't recall ever having experienced this kind of error before (been here about a year).---CH 21:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Me too. It only occurs on the first "preview load", and does not occur after that. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:54, 7 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Fixed. --Brion 08:37, 7 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Brion, Im getting the same problem. Can you tell me what the fix was? Can anyone help? Thanks.

Are you getting the same problem? The same problem means that all of the following are true:

1. You have "preview on first edit" enabled in your preferences
2. It only happens when you first click the edit link, not when you click 'save' or 'preview'.
3. It does not cause any problems with saving pages, it's just a confusing display of the message when you first click 'edit'.

I can confirm that this bug is indeed fixed, and I'm not seeing it when I test it now.

It's possible that you're encountering the actual session failure problem. The symptoms of this are:

1. Error message about loss of session data does show up when you click 'save'.
2. It does not show up when you click "edit" or "preview".
3. It makes it difficult or impossible to save any pages until resolved (usually by logging out and logging back in, possibly with an explicit clear of cookies in browser preferences).

--Brion 04:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It is in the second category you mentioned.

I get that error when I click 'save' but not when I click 'preview' ONLY when I am logged in

All browsers (Opera, FFox, IE, Safari) have had their cookies and cache cleared out, I am suspecting this to be a bug?

--Previous Poster 09:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I get this error when editing large talk and article pages, even when the section I am editing is a reasonable size. Logging in and loggout seldom helps. I am using Internet Explorer, and going to tools->general tab->settings->files and deleting all wikipedia and wikimedia related files, sometimes works. I have a fix or workaround however. I am running Sygate firewall and each failure is associated with an intrusion detection message in the security log, with this description

"Remote Overflow in MSIE script action handler attempted".

Disabling the Sygate firewall completely and reliably resolves the issue. With this information, does anyone have info or a theory as to why this is occurring? Are other firewalls also detecting this problem? Please assist, because disabling the firewall is not a satisfying workaround. I had to disable the firewall to edit this section by the way.--Poodleboy 12:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I will list the IP addresses that these attempts to intrude via this overflow are being made from as logged by sygate.

• • • 207.142.131.203
    • 207.142.131.206
    • 207.142.131.214
    • 207.142.131.235
    • 207.142.131.236
    • 207.142.131.245

Please investigate.--Poodleboy 14:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Can someone file a bugzilla on this? Thanx. --Poodleboy 11:34, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Report the issue to Sygate so they can investigate the false positive. --Brion 11:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Are the other occurances of loss of session data also linked to sygate?--Poodleboy 15:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Wouldn't the overflows be wikimedia bugs, even if they weren't intrusion attempts?--Poodleboy 10:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There's no such thing as an "overflow" in JavaScript. So... no. --Brion 15:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The overflow would be in Internet Explorer. Here is a description I found on the net:"This vulnerability can be triggered by specifying more than a couple thousand script action handlers (such as onLoad, onMouseMove, etc) for any single HTML tag. Due to a programming error, MSIE will then attempt to write memory array out of bounds, at an offset corresponding to the ID of the script action handler multiplied by 4 (due to 32-bit address clipping, the result is a small positive integer)." Perhaps Sygate set their detection threshold below a "couple thousand". Do we have a legitimate use for a large number of action handlers? Perhaps Sygate could not forsee such a use (due to lack of imagination?).--Poodleboy 11:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

MediaWiki doesn't use thousands of script handlers on the same tag. ;) It's theoretically possible that a buggy custom JavaScript could have added such a tag, of course. Check your monobook.js. --Brion 15:00, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict) The only place I know of where Wikipedia uses any of these is on the MediaWiki:Edittools, which appears on edit pages. However, while there is a large number of onclick handlers, there's only one for each tag; the overflow can only happen when there is more than one for each tag. So, if that's what Sygate is detecting, it's wrong and it's a false positive (probably it triggers on a number of onclick close together, without considering that, as long as they are on different tags, it cannot trigger the overflow). In other words, it's not lack of imagination, it's a bug; complain to Sygate. There's also a proposal to completely change the way it works, which would not hit Sygate's bug; however, that proposal depends on having editable JavaScript for all skins, which we currently don't have. --cesarb 15:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have "upgraded" to IE7 beta 2. This also works around the problem without disabling Sygate or Sygate logging the security threats. I was at a completely updated IE6 before. -- thanx for your assistance. If it is easy to file bug reports with Sygate, I will.--Poodleboy 06:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

My report was premature, I now reproduce the problem on IE7, I now suspect that the buffer space within IE is shared, and that the problem is cumulative if you have several web pages open at once. I generally have two dozen or more open for later reading. Of course, it may be sygates detection mechanism which is cumulative.--Poodleboy 08:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have noticed recently that whenever I redirect a page and I don't put in an edit summary, it automatically puts one like "Redirecting to page2". Is this a special javascript I have or is mediawiki doing this on purpose? --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 00:27, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

New feature, see last week's B.R.I.O.N., no JavaScript. -- Omniplex 06:38, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This is part of the new Sentient MediaWiki programme being implemented at present. Thanks for participating. :) robchurch | talk 20:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Wow, that is a really useful feature for vandal fighting. I was RC patrolling, and I saw the autosummary "rediticting to insert text". --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 18:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I just came across this edit. It seems rather odd. When I click on the link I go to this site: http://www.w3.org/ How did that happen? Just curious. older ≠ wiser 03:00, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It's weirdly formatted. Two https at the front. Peculiar. --Lord Deskana ^{I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS} 03:06, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think the browser is doing a search after the name lookup fails on http. If you google http, you get www.w3.org as the first link. —Bradley 21:51, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Ah, that's correct. IE figures it's a bad link and says so. Firefox, irritatingly, just does a silent Google and returns the first hit, which is not good behavior. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Open firefox and go to the URL about:config. Type keyword. in the search box. You can disable the feature with keyword.enabled and modify what it does by changing keyword.URL. You can set it to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q= if you want, and it will act like IE. Apparently in firefox it defaults to Feeling lucky search, whereas in netscape and mozilla suite it was a verbose google search. Shame there isn't a GUI for this, but that's how to change it back. // Kevin_b_er 07:34, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I know that Wikibooks has a "How to" and the Wikipedia has an "How to" edit an article but are there any "What to do" help articles for users for dealing with things like the discovery of pornography obscured somewhat by body paint or indecent discussions or topics that disquise profanity and obscenity, etc.?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pce3@ij.net (talk • contribs) .

This really isn't a technical question, try Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) or Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance) for people who are famliar with the latest on these issues. --iMeowbot~Meow 17:36, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

So are you saying that only established procedures are "technical" and these procedures are not established? ...IMHO (Talk) 20:50, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, no, I'm saying that it's a policy issue, and not a technical one. That's why the other links above would be more useful places to bring up the question. --iMeowbot~Meow 20:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, you should have asked your preceding questions there too. Technical is for technical issues, generally involving software problems. Deco 21:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Once policy is established its fulfillment becomes a technical issue. Once you decide to let your son drive the family car to the store then his driving the car to the store becomes a technical issue, i.e. where the keys are, is there enough gasoline, does he have his drivers license with him, are the breaks in good order. If he wants to take his girlfriend with him then that is a policy issue. All I am asking is where are the keys. It is a technical question and not a question of policy. ...IMHO (Talk) 23:37, 18 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You are using a different definition of "technical". This page is for technological software issues. Questions regarding policy go on the policy page, including anything community- or rule-related such as questions of where to locate policy pages. Deco 19:42, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

When I sign my comments, the time that is written down is 6 hours too late. For example, if the time is 10:00 UTC, the timestamp will sign my comment as 16:00 UTC. Any reason why this should happen?--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 16:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think you're confusing something. UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, don't ask me why it's appreviated UTC) isn't any U.S. time zone. It's the same time as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). —da Pete (ばか) 17:19, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Not really. GMT has daylight savings time, UTC doesn't. But that's where it's centered, yeah. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:06, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

No, GMT also has no summer time, it only happpens to be used as timezone name in winter by folks who use BST as daylight savings time in summer. Wikipedia has some articles about the details... <gd&r> -- Omniplex 06:49, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

No no, I mean the history says that I wrote this comment at one time, my timestamp gives a time 6 hours ahead. I assume they are both running on UTC, but there is a 6 hour discrepancy.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:46, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The history does not show the times on UTC; it shows them using the timezone offset you configured on your preferences. If you change it to 0, you'll notice the times will match. --cesarb 01:11, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I fixed it. Thanks, CesarB.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 01:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't know if anybody has actually noticed this, or whether it's meant to be like this... for a couple of weeks, an extra (edit) link has been appearing in difference links like these. However, both the link that says "Revision as of 18:05, June 4, 2006" (on the left side only) and the link that says "(edit)" do the same thing - edit the prior version of the page. For some reason they both point to different links, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_Brother_%28TV_series%29&oldid=56856770&action=edit and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_Brother_%28TV_series%29&action=edit&oldid=56856770. I would have thought that the "revision as of..." link on the left hand side should be a permanent link to that version of the page, like the "revision as of..." link on the right hand side does? — FireFox 16:21, 19 June '06

It works as expected for me. They point to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_Brother_%28TV_series%29&action=edit&oldid=56856770 and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_Brother_%28TV_series%29&action=edit&oldid=56869582 respectively. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:08, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That's not what I meant. This link, which is the "Revision as of 18:05, June 4, 2006" link on the left of this page should be a permanent link and it's not. Forget the right hand side of the page for now – both links on the left hand side point to the same thing. — FireFox 12:45, 20 June '06

You're seriously confusing me. The link entitled "Revision as of 18:05, 4 June 2006" points to here, which is a permanent link to the version as expected. The link immediately next to it labeled "edit" points to this, which is a permanent link to edit the version as expected. None of the links on the page point here, which is a reordered copy of the edit link. Could you provide a screenshot to clarify what's weird for you? What skin are you using? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Don't worry, I asked in #wikimedia-tech and it turns out I've probably got something or other in my monobook which is making the permanent link an edit link. — FireFox 10:54, 22 June '06

Hi. Is there an easy way to create lists on Wikipedia through use of another software application (e.g. FrontPage, Excel, etc.)??

I'd like to clean up the List of places in New York which is a series of sub-pages with tables, one for each letter.

The problem is two-fold: 1. The tables on each subpage (e.g. List of places in New York: A versus List of places in New York: L are not consistent. 2. Duplicates abound in the lists (e.g. "LaFayette" appears twice in List of places in New York: L).

I presume this is an issue with all similar lists across all 50 states. Additionally, perhaps a better template can be determined to incorporate or merge the sublists like towns, villages, CDPs, and unincorporated places.

Perhaps a WikiProject?

More experienced users, please reply. Thank you. CPAScott 20:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There's some way to edit Wikipedia with an external editor, but I'm not sure of the exact procedure. (It involves going to Special:Preferences → Editing → Use external editor by default, but how you'd set up your editor to accept the pages I don't know.) As for inconsistency, since as far as I can tell the only stylistic inconsistency is the lack of a single table class in some of the tables, there's probably not much point in creating a template, which would be awkward in any case. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:20, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Simetrica, but more important than consistent tables is the presence of many, many, many duplicates in those lists. To remove them by deleting Wiki's code would take HOURS. If I were able to download the tables to Excel, say, I could search and eliminate duplicates very quickly and then reload the tables. I'll check out the section suggested by Tom (below), but more assistance is requested. CPAScott 14:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Information about using an external editor is at m:Help:External editors. Tom Harrison ^Talk 02:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I'm having a problem doing a redirect. I've done a number in the past but for some reason cannot seem to get this one to work. The redirect in question is getting this to redirect to this. What am I doing wrong? --Wisden17 21:37, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Nothing, apparently; it works fine. --Brion 21:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, thanks Brion, for pointing that out (and sorry for troublin Mr. Vibber himself, I think this is my first interaction with you, but also my first interaciton with a 'developer')!:) I left a helpme and User:Pilotguy responded, and I pointed out to him that the problem seemed to have solved itself. Brion is there usually a lag in redirects working, i.e. after creating them should they work instantly? This has been the case in the past when I've created them, hence the problem caused with this one. --Wisden17 21:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

No, they should always work immediately. If you find it not working again, please take a screenshot for reference; I'm curious just what happens... --Brion 02:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

If you're on page A, going through A?action=edit and A?action=submit to create the redirect, returning to page A, then browsers might use what they have in their cache for A no matter what you do on the server side. Guessing: -- Omniplex 07:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well you see I sort of thought that, Omniplex, so you can see from the page history that I tried blanking the page and then adding the redirect. That didn't work immediately and there was a good 2-3 mintues between my final edit to the page and the redirect actually working. I tried searching 'Gay Games VII' a number of times to test the redirect, and each time it would take me to the page with the redirect format looking like this:

#redirect Gay Games (notes how the redirect is in lowercase, whilst when I typed it I used uppercase). I'll let you know Brion if I have any further problems, and get a screenshot off to you. Many thanks for your quick reply. --Wisden17 12:32, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This "new" oddity just hit me elsewhere. IIRC #redirects with variables like BASEPAGENAME never worked, and [[../]] also fails (that could be new). For the ordinary case it can take minutes until a new redirect works, action=purge apparently doesn't help. Coming from another page adding ?redirect=yes might have an effect. Or it's a placebo burning time until the redirect works anyway. Was your observation also at a subpage, or anything with a slash in it?-- Omniplex 16:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

1) What does "take me to the page" mean? Is that the extract listed in the search results, or what you saw after clicking the link?

2) What exactly *was* the link? Did it have "&redirect=no" on the URL?

--Brion 15:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi, sorry Brion, that wasn't as clear as it could have been. Right, to test the redirect I tried searching "Gay Games VII" a number (about 7/8) times. Every time it would take me to a the "Gay Games VII" article page, with the text as described above (namely #redirect Gay Games). Every time I edited the "Gay Games VII" page I would get a correct formed redirect, however when searching in another tab (Firefox tabbed browsing) I would be taken back to the "Gay Games VII" page, as described above.

I'm not entirely sure which link you are referring to in the second question. The redirect that was trying to be achieved was "Gay Games VII" redirecting to "Gay Games". I came across the redirect whilst on new-page patrol, and could see that the editor was having difficulty creating the redirect. When editing the redirect I made sure to add "&redirect=no", so I got the right editing screen up. Every time I would save the edit, and each time on saving it would take to me to a correctly formed redirect page. However, if I refreshed the page, or searched for "Gay Games VII" in another tab (as described above) I would get the incorrectly format page (with the "Gay Games VII" page display #redirect Gay Games). I hope this is clear and answers both your questions above. --Wisden17 16:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

So what might be the cause of a one-day fall from 16 to 30 on Alexa? Might there be a server slowdown? Or might it be some other cause for a loss in traffic? Ancheta Wis 23:44, 19 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

We're still 16th on this list? --james_{(lets talk)} 00:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, but the detailed graphs show a steap drop. I'm thinking, summer maybe? Fewer students are in school. I couldn't say why all of sudden it has fallen though. Doesn't matter really, we are here to make great free content, not to have a popular website. BrokenSegue 00:32, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It wouldn't surprise me, wikipedia is a pretty geeky site and educational institutions are about the only situation i can think of where you are likely to have geeks with free time using machines infested with stuff like alexa. Plugwash 00:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't see a steep drop here, but you hit it on the head with "we are here to make great free content, not to have a popular website." :) --james_{(lets talk)} 02:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

BBC has a drop in the same time period as has CNN. Informational webistes are takeing a hammering. not sure why. Google reorg perhaps but the date is wrong.Geni 02:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I also suspect we've been overtaken by both the official FIFA site and the World Cup 2006 official site in the last couple of weeks, to name but two... Grutness...wha? 01:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Plenty of subjects are no more discussed at my job. The world revolves around boys in bright colours in Germany. Let this be a lesson. When following sport on the TV or the net shall become compelling, WPs and wikis shall wither. --DLL 20:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

They've changed their minds about the fall to 30th, and now it only went down to 19th, but the reach and pageview scores are still well down. I don't buy the World Cup explanation. The fall started very suddenly and well after the World Cup was underway. Anyway, Wikipedia covers the World Cup and it is generating a vast amount of edits. Also could Americans please remember that based on comScore stats, they account for well under a quarter of users, so they don't determine everything. Plus a majority of Wikipedian users are probably adults. I think they are having technical problems at Alexa's end. This has happened before, for example a few months back several Chinese sites that are normally in the top twenty fall into the thousands for two days. 62.31.55.223 02:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The drop from 16 to 30 was most likely Alexa's fault, I have also seen such discontinuities in their figures before. Alexa rank is based on a composition of two figures: reach and traffic. Their measurement of traffic is typically fairly stable and reliable, but reach tends to jump up and down randomly. The reason is probably that reach can't be measured exactly, it requires some manual fudge factors that they tweak periodically. Our absolute traffic as measured by us has been roughly steady for the past month, see [1]. -- Tim Starling 07:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The 21 June numbers are normal for the time of the week. It looks like the apparent crash was all an Alexa screw-up and hopefully it is now over. 62.31.55.223 19:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

What is the point of being able to protect pages with "move=autoconfirmed" if not-autoconfirmed users can't even move pages? Why don't we just remove that protection option if it is completely pointless? The options should be edit=autoconfirmed, edit=sysop, and move=sysop. Also (I don't know if VPT is the right place to put the following sentence), why don't we just move=sysop articles like cat and dog permanently? They are a high target for page-move vandalism, and if a scientist renames cats and dogs, an admin will probably have heard about it, and move the page. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 02:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

While the second part of your question is more suited for WP:VPP, I believe move=autoconfirmed will stop new users (< 4 days) from moving a page. I agree with you though, but I guess having all 3 options for both edit and move might make more sense being stored in the database (not that I know much about the MediaWiki schema)? --james_{(lets talk)} 02:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I mean that users who aren't autoconfirmed can't move pages, so move=autoconfirmed is totally useless--GeorgeMoney ^T·C 02:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC).Reply

a) Not all our wikis are set that way.

b) There's no guarantee this wiki will always remain set that way. --Brion 02:28, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

And FWIW, I didn't know non-autoconfirmed but logged in users couldn't move pages :) I've learnt something today! --james_{(lets talk)} 02:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I agree that the option seems relatively redundant, though as Brion said, most Wikis allow non-autoconfirmeds to move pages. My real question is "Why would we want to go out of our way to remove this option, when having it is not causing any harm to anyone?" AmiDaniel (talk) 02:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

My ISP (westnet.com.au) says they would be able to track the repeat wikipedia vandal who keeps getting one of their proxy IPs (202.72.148.102) blocked if wikipedia could provide the X-Forwarded-For information sent with the HTTP request for the relevant edits. Is there any way to retrieve that from our logs? &#0151; JEREMY 07:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You'd have to ask the devs, its not possible (as far as I'm aware) for users or sysops to retrieve that info. In the meantime, you might want to point your ISP to m:XFF project to get their proxies listed. --james_{(lets talk)} 08:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I've done the latter. Once they're listed, we'll be able to precisely block the vandals and fix the problem. Thanks! &#0151; JEREMY 09:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

We don't actually need the ISP's involvement to list their proxies, as long as the proxy IPs are known and have an appropriate reverse DNS entry. In this case, unfortunately, reverse DNS for 202.72.148.102 just returns NXDOMAIN. If you could get them to fix that, that would be great. If it was something like "cache1.westnet.com.au" then we could be sure that IP really is a dedicated proxy. -- Tim Starling 07:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The ISP in question, westnet, now tell me "The PTR's for our IPs have been updated. This should allow Wiki[pedia] to confirm that the source IP is in fact a dedicated proxy." Is this in fact the case? If so, is there anything more I need to do for the problem to go away? &#0151; JEREMY 17:25, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

At least for 202.72.148.102, its reverse DNS now points to cache-1.wa.westnet.com.au. As m:XFF project says, you should now contact Tim Starling directly. --cesarb 17:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have been experiencing periodic lockups and delays on Wikipedia. No other sites seem to be so affected, so I discount a problem with my ISP, LAN or workstation. In particular, Wikipedia locks up when I try to log on. I am using Internet Explorer -- no cracks please.

I have tried leaving the logon attempt alone for an extended time (an hour) and no success; however, if I close my browser and immediately open a new session, I am treated as logged in over half the time. Furthermore, I find that I need to leave the browser locked up for at least one full minute or I will not be logged in when I open the new session.

The last time that I experienced this, it got so bad that I could not get logged in under my user ID for several months, although I could edit under my IP address. (No, I was not blocked -- I have a clean record.) Any clues? Robert A.West (Talk) 12:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Can you describe what a lockup means here? What web browser are you using? --Brion 15:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

During logon, Internet Explorer shows the progress bar as progressing slowly through to around 2/3 completion, then just sits there. The window can be closed normally, but so long as it is open, any attempt to access Wikipedia via another window fails. I can, however, access Google, for example, via another window while the Wikipedia logon is pending. Closing the window and opening a new browser window may find me logged on, or not, as described above. The problem can go away spontaneously and then recur. Does this help clarify? Robert A.West (Talk) 16:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have an enormous problem currently. It appears to happen in both Firefox and IE, though I'm not sure if it goes away when I log out - when I click the edit link at the top of any page in any namespace, the edit box randomly cuts off the bottom part of the article. It's always in random places, sometimes it doesn't happen, and I've tried it on different computers with different internet connections - what could be going wrong? All I can conclude is that it's a Wiki-wide problem, or it's my monobook.js corrupting. Fix, please? —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 18:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There is a Google toolbar bug that can cause this, however, it only occurs if you change tabs/windows while the edit box is up. Prodego ^talk 18:26, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I get that bug too, uninstalling the google toolbar will solve it. Not ideal I know. Theres more info on this bug here Mediawiki Bug 5643 Ydam 19:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. Looks like I'll have to survive on the standard FF bar then... No problem. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 10:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is there somewhere that I can read about how to use { { ref_harvard } } for Harvard Referencing? Bubba73 (talk), 22:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The documentation is at Template talk:Ref harvard. It might also help to look at existing articles that use it. Wikipedia:Harvard referencing should also be useful. --iMeowbot~Meow 23:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

OK, but I don't see anywhere where it says what parameters can go after ref_harvard and note_label. Bubba73 (talk), 23:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It's definitely there, I see {{ref_harvard_name|Harvard reference|id}} and {{note_label|reference_name|number|id}} with explainations for exch right underneath.

These particular templates don't need lists of named parameters, you just put the information between the pipes, none of the foo= stuff that all the cool kids are using now. Its that the part that's meesing with your head? --iMeowbot~Meow 23:39, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I think that is it. I was expecting parameters such as "year=", "publisher=", "ISBN=", "edition=", etc. But it is pretty much free form, aparantly. Bubba73 (talk), 00:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well, one more thing. With the new style of footnotes, you can click on the note and it takes you down to the link. At the link you can click on the "^" and it takes you back to the text. If you click on the Harvard reference, it takes you down to the reference, but I don't see a way to have it take you back to the text. Is there a way to do that? Bubba73 (talk), 00:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I figured out how to do that by adding a parameter, but it seems like more work than it should be. E.g., the footnote style numbers them for you. But maybe that isn't possible with Harvard style. Bubba73 (talk), 01:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it can be a lot of bother. I think that's why the Cite.php form has become so popular. Numbered footnotes are a little harder to follow, but it's a little less fiddly to make it work. --iMeowbot~Meow 02:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I prefer Harvard referencing (I don't like putting all of the details in the text), but I'm used to just doing it in the text, the old-fashioned way. I've done two of them the new way now. Bubba73 (talk), 03:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In my preferences, I have Always Underline set. A lot of the time just after I edit an article, this option somehow quits working (i.e. links are not underlined). This happens in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. All I have to do to get the underlining back is to go to preferences and click Save. But is there a way to keep from having to do this? Bubba73 (talk), 22:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Have you tried cache-refreshing the page? -- Serephine ♠ talk - 23:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Do you mean the F5 refresh in IE? If so, then yes. It doesn't help. Bubba73 (talk), 23:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Adding
a {text-decoration: underline;}
to your personal CSS (User:Bubba73/monobook.css) may help. Does anyone have any theories as to why this occurs, though? Ingoolemo ^talk 01:53, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I just followed your suggestion. I'll see if the problem reoccurs. Bubba73 (talk), 02:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

See the FAQ at the top of this page. --cesarb 03:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Greetings, no help was available on the Mozilla site that I could find so I thought I'd ask here. Last night my up-to-date Firefox client decided to start rendering Wikipedia (and some other sites - not ALL that use css) without css. My pages are very hard to use, and I can't seem to find an option to "turn it back on". I did nothing special last night, one new opened tab caused this all to start happening. My skin is still set to Monobook, changing it does not affect the browser. Thankyou very much for your time! -- Serephine ♠ talk - 23:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Does Wikipedia render properly in another browser? ~MDD4696 02:56, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, sorry for not including that. IE displays it fine. Also, some other things which I have discovered:

• looking at it even through Google cache makes it display incorrectly
• navpopup script no longer works.
• other language Wikipedias work fine, it's just the English one which has lost its css
• saving the page as a complete html file and opening it in IE results in the same loss of css, even though commonPrint.css was saved -- Serephine ♠ talk - 03:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

EDIT: Fixed! Phew, that was really starting to worry me. All it required was a forced cache reset using Ctrl-F5 *pumps fist* -- Serephine ♠ talk - 04:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I've had problems with this - when WP server load is high, some stuff - new messages bars, categories and images in |thumb|s vanish,... - SoM 07:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think there should be a category for templates that act like magic words. For example, {{PAGENAME}} is a magic word, but it is not a template. But, {{PAGENAMEU}} is a pseudo-magic word, and it is a template. I think we should either make all the pseudo magic words real magic words, or we should make a category of them so we can keep track of them, because it is hard to tell which ones are templates and which ones are not. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 23:41, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

{{sofixit}}. Do you need help creating the categories? ~MDD4696 03:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'll try to find all of them I can. I know USer:Ed Poor has created alot of them, so I'll start searching from his contribs. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 04:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have noticed that you can't use HTML tags in template parameters. For example if you do {{codebox|<html type="html: html; xml: html;" style="something: #FFFFF">blah blah blah</html>, all you will see is {{{1}}}. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 05:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I just played with it then, it seems that if you pass {{template|<span style>text</span>}} it will return {{{1}}}, but if you pass {{template|<span styl>text</span>}} it will return <span>text</span>. That'd be the parser cleaning up my invalid "styl" element, but if you put in style, or style="color: blue", or clear="all" (it's also returning {{{1}}} on "<br clear="all">", but not on <br />), it will always return {{{1}}}. So it looks like it's failing on any HTML tags with valid attributes? --james_{(lets talk)} 05:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It is failing on any tags with the equals sign. The first equals sign between each pipe is parsed (in a template tag's parameter section) as a parameter and value. You can overcome this with: {{codebox|1=<html type="html: html; xml: html;" style="something: #FFFFF">blah blah blah</html> usually. --Splarka (rant) 08:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This is why I don't work on templates much :) That makes much more sense! --james_{(lets talk)} 09:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Actually, wait... why does {{template|<span style>text</span>}} fail? There's no equals signs (but the first untitled parameter thing works)... all I can think of is that the HTML tidy is adding equals signs before it gets parsed for templates... but that seems a little odd. (see User:Bornhj/sand, and I am aware <span style> is incredibly invalid HTML, but it's weird none-the-less) --james_{(lets talk)} 09:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'd blame tidy on that, probably. Have to ask a dev though, but what is the point? Just don't use invalid html, and use #= trick to get around the problem. --Splarka (rant) 10:06, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't plan on using it, just something I found while playing with the original problem. :) --james_{(lets talk)} 10:36, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't blame tidy. There's a component called the Sanitizer which cleans up invalid and potentially dangerous HTML, and is probably what you are hitting. --cesarb 18:08, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi, before I created this login account, i made several contributions not logged in, to where my ip address was recorded. Now I may get in trouble bc of a few things I wrote that I found out weren't true. I know based on what I contributed to with my ip address here, that it is traceable for someone I know to find out its me. Can I request that all contributions made from my ip address (I can provide it, its this computer) that I did before I made an account be deleted from their respective history pages? This is very important. Thank you.Talkietalkie 06:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I do not know the answer. Note that they say also : If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it. The same goes for your errors, the whole web planet knows about them. But you have a right to make errors - and those must have been corrected by some WPian. --DLL 22:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I need some advice from a font expert: I tried introducing at Wiktionary the kind of thing done here in {{IPA}}, {{Unicode}}, and {{Latinx}}, including classes in Common.css with the “font-family /**/:inherit;” IE hack, and introducing the Latinx template some places where they had previously used the Unicode template. (Thank you R. Koot for creating {{Latinx}} here.) The classes included also classes for Arabic and various Arabic-like scripts and also Russian/Cyrillic, which don’t exist here. The changes, however, produced complaints from a couple of Firefox users.

• When I first started replacing the Unicode template with Latinx (in Old English words where my IE6 needs Latinx), a user complained that with the change, bold Template:Latinx doesn't display properly on his browser. (Initially neither Unicode not Latinx had the IE hack; so the font lists applied to his Firefox.) I need Latinx for these words: with Unicode Template:Latinx appears as a box on my browser. Is there a better solution than to tell the other user to specify a font-family for the Latinx class in his monobook.css?
• When I got an admin to create a Unicode class, and I took the style declaration out of the template, the user complained that with the change “it doesn’t display bold macrons on any letters now...I'm getting some horrible blurry on-the-fly boldening.” Perhaps a workaround here is to remove the IE hack from the Unicode template? Or should he specify a font-family for the Unicode class in his monobook.css?
• With the introduction of the IE hack to the Russian class/template, a user complained that when combining diacritical marks are added to Russian words as accents (e.g. мо́ре) the accent mark doesn't combine properly. (The Russian font list is Arial Unicode MS, Gentium, Code2000, Lucida Sans Unicode.) Perhaps a workaround is to remove the IE hack from the Russian template?
• With the introduction of the IE hack to the Arabic(-like) classes/templates, the user complained that without forcing font-families, the scripts were too small and special Kurdish and Sindhi characters did not appear correctly. I had thought that browsers other than IE6 handled fonts correctly, but perhaps not so with Arabic(-like) script? Is the ideal solution to remove the IE hack from these classes?

The other users’ actual comments are at wikt:User talk:TEB728#Templates and wikt:User talk:TEB728#Font templates. --teb728 09:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

While I'm not the expert you are looking for, I can at least give a hint of a problem which can happen with non-IE browsers, and which might be the cause for some of the problems: while MSIE shows nothing when the current font doesn't have the needed character, other browsers search all the other installed fonts for it. If one of these fonts is broken, the wrong character will appear. One particular instance can be found at Talk:Voiced velar plosive, where it is discussed that the font "MS Reference Sans Serif" has the wrong character. --cesarb 17:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Another one I also know the answer to: the accent is probably placed at the wrong place due to the Verdana combining characters bug. Again, it's a broken font; this time it's Verdana. --cesarb 01:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't think it is the Verdana combining characters bug: What the Firefox user described was that the accent was high and well to the right side of the preceding character. This is, indeed, just what I see with the default font of IE: Cyrillic а́е (as compared with Latin áe, where I see the accent centered just above the a). With the Russian font list, I see Cyrillic а́е also low and centered.

If I understand correctly what you say about other browsers selecting a font as needed on a per-character basis, it follows that they will change fonts in the middle of a word! I am beginning to think that where font-family lists are needed on one browser, they probably should be applied to all browsers. What do you think of taking the “inherit hack” out of the classes even here at Wikipedia? --teb728 08:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

They won't normally change fonts in the middle of a word, because usually a word has all characters from the same script, and usually a font either has or doesn't have a particular script. The inherit hack seems to work fine on the English Wikipedia; complaints only happen on a few unusual situations, and in fact people complain when the hack is removed (in fact, IIRC, originally the hack wasn't present; it was added later). --cesarb 19:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I recently started to help contribute at a fledgling Wiki and created a general stub template. I am having trouble making it establish the "expanding it" text become a universal link to the edit section of the corresponding page it might happen to appear on. The Help section regarding stubs applies to this Wiki and I am otherwise unfamiliar with what to replace exactly for the one I am currently contributing toward. If any can help directly, feel free. If not, an explanation on what may need to be done would suffice. 75.2.14.252 09:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The code is: ''This article is a stub. You can help the ATHFWiki by [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{PAGENAME}}|action=edit}} expanding it].'' Cheers! --james_{(lets talk)} 09:51, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Many thanks Bornhj! 75.2.14.252 09:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

We ought to use HTTP codes for redirects (3xx) [2] because it creates a canonical URL. Why do we need a canonical URL?:

1. It is The Right Thing
2. It puts the PageRank of the aliases into the main article, thus giving the main article a good rank in web searches
3. It improves cache-ing of articles at proxy servers

Someone support me please! --Masatran

This has been discussed many times, and we can't do it. This would severely damage the functioning of the wiki by destroying the ability to follow back a redirect chain. In particular this change would be welcomed by disruptive vandals who wish to make it difficult to undo their insertion of bogus redirects. --Brion 16:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hello! I do not understand the methods discussed :

• How to use HTTP for a redirect, and
• How to follow back a redirect. Then why the ability to do this should be impaired. Is there an easy explanation, please ?

Relax, Masatran, you have the bold support of the W3C. --DLL 21:56, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

With HTTP redirects, the server asks the browser to fetch the resource at a new location. If that were done on Wikipedia, it would lose the line which says "(Redirected from Example)" below the header (which links back to the redirect page), since the server would be unable to know the browser had been redirected when serving the second request (it would look identical to a non-redirected request). --cesarb 22:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Another problem with using HTTP redirects is firewalls that do not allow URL's with ".exe" in them can be bypassed because of the way wikipedia uses redirects. But, a bad thing that is always a hassle to me is if I wanted to get a URL, and I want the url that is not the redir, I have to press the "page" button again, and then copy the url --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 22:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Why pressing the "page" button? Just right click on it and chose "Copy Link Location" (or something like "Copy Shortcut" on a certain popular browser). --cesarb 01:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I didn't mean copy the url, I meant if I want to create subpages. For example, if I follow a link to WP:UPH, and I wanted to create a subpage just by adding the subpagename to the url, I would have to press the page button and then add /subpage. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 01:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks to all! --DLL 20:16, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

To Brion: A browser extension [3] for Mozilla Firefox can show the HTTP redirects. --Masatran 08:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm well aware of this extension; I've been recommending it to people as a debugging tool for years. :) --Brion 06:43, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm trying to work on the article Twenty something. I'd like to merge it into Twentysomething (since without a space is the more correct spelling), though I'd prefer to keep the talk page and history from Twenty something, since it's the bigger article with the most discussion, and Twentysomething is only a disambig. Moving would salvage the talk and history, but that can't be done because Twentysomething already exists. Is there any way to solve this, or should I just merge and forget about the talk page? KyleGarvey 16:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

First move Twentysomething to Twentysomething (disambiguation); then ask for the redirect to be deleted, and move Twenty something over it. This is the easier way, requires little admin intervention (a G6 WP:CSD), and keeps all the history. --cesarb 17:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Breath_(2_a.m.) - CrazyRussian talk/email 16:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I seem to have fixed it. --Lord Deskana ^{I VALUE YOUR OPINIONS} 16:43, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Looks like it was an extra blank line at the top. Redirects must be in the first line to work. --cesarb 17:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Has there been any progress on a technical solution that could obsolete Template:C-uploaded on Wikipedia, or is any forthcoming? Just a solution where an admin on Wikipedia could protect an image here without having to download from commons and upload locally, which can be frustratingly time-consuming.--Pharos 19:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Have you filed a bug report on it? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:06, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure I would know how. I'm really not terribly well-informed about programming issues– perhaps someone more knowledgable than I could file a report there?--Pharos 00:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There's an open task to move protection to its own table, which would end up having this additional effect (nonexisting pages could be protected). robchurch | talk 00:34, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, but that would not differ substantially from the current situation, in that someone can still get around local protection by uploading something different to Commons. Perhaps there could be a way to "loock in" to the image as it was uploaded at one specific time?--Pharos 05:04, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I would just like to point out that admins very rarely check Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests, and requests can often go unnoticed for some time. There are two pages listed in that category now, but MediaWiki talk:Common.css has multiple requests on it, and MediaWiki talk:Edittools has one request. —Mets501 (talk) 21:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This isn't a technical problem. I suggest you post this on WP:AN. It's likely to be more noticed and acted upon at AN, anyway. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of YOUR OPINIONS} 21:56, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I know it wasn't a problem, I just wasn't sure where to post it :-). Thanks for the link to WP:AN, I'll post it there later. —Mets501 (talk) 22:46, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I notice that there have been developments on the appearance of the diff pages. However, there is no way to know when looking at a diff whether the edit has been flagged as minor or not. Has anyone ever looked at this issue before? --Tēlex 21:56, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That would be nice, yes. Maybe there should also be a way to see whether a diff is between two consecutive versions or two arbitrary versions. You should probably submit or search for this at bugzilla, though. Kusma (討論) 22:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well basically, with the templates ENGf and ENGf2 another user wanted to use a bordered version of the england flag, but me and another user kept reverting it back, as the flag wasn't showing up for some reason, now the image displayed fine at full size or any size including 19px and 21px, but did not show up when the code recquired it to be at 20px. Most annoyingly after looking at pictures of this for a long while, it has started showing up, almost nullifying the value of finding the answer to this question. However I am still curious.

Also on a different point, when people say, maybe its your browser, do they mean, my type of browser, or specifically the program on my machine. Philc _T^E_C^I 23:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This is in fact a FAQ, and a problem in the server; as explained at the FAQ at the top of the page, the solution is to purge the images until the thumbnails get lucky and start working. I would also like to know the reason the server misbehaves that way. --cesarb 01:43, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The server admin log says that ImageMagick was upgraded recently; perhaps it is related. ~MDD4696 20:19, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

See Mediazilla:5463. The issue should now be fixed. (And as for your side note, they could mean either; literally they're suggesting problems with just the browser, but they could be talking about your computer generally too.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have been working on Ancient Order of the Froth Blower (which I found on the verify list). In my browser, at least, the text appears in very wide, gray-backrounded text boxes, for no apparent reason. I can see in the history where the effect started, but I can't see why or how to fix it. Help?

If there is a space bar at the beggining of the line, it will appear in ASCII. Philc _T^E_C^I 23:59, 21 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

• Fixed. The problem occurs because there were extra spaces (indents) at the beginnings of the paragraphs. If you really need to indent something without the gray box, you can put a colon at the beginning, like this (you can see the colon if you click the "edit" button for this section on the page.)

See, Mom! No gray box!

Articles here are usually written in block style, with blank lines separating paragraphs, rather than indents. I hope this helps.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask! Joyous! | Talk 00:01, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Excellent! Thanks! --Brianyoumans 02:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In my recent edit of TinyURL, I had to cripple all of the relevant external links to TinyURL.com because the site has been put on the spam blacklist. Is there any way around this? Or, where do I need to go to bitch at... er... kindly communicate with... MediaWiki developers to get something changed? I understand the need for this kind of filtering, but the blacklist is functioning rather overzealously in this case. ~ Booya ^Bazooka 00:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Just put them within <nowiki> tags. All URL shortening services are blocked by the Spam blacklist, because they are often used to work around the blacklist, and there are no legitimate uses (you can always use the longer URL; the exception seems to be the TinyURL article itself, where you can use nowiki). See also the discussion a few days ago at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive#Spam blocking tinyurl.com. --cesarb 01:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Could it be as simple as making a link to Special:Statistics and creating a new page from that? Any help at all is appreciated. 75.2.14.252 06:37, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Special pages are "Special" in that you don't create them, they are generated by the software. You can add new ones with extensions, but if this wiki runs MediaWiki then Statistics should be there already. If it doesn't run MediaWiki, then you probably won't find your answer here. --Splarka (rant) 07:20, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Many thanks Splarka. 71.156.94.2 07:43, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Not sure if this is right place to post this, but I found myself unable to edit my User page because when I open the edit window I don't get a Save page button. I don't have this problem on any other page. ~ trialsanderrors 15:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Clear the cache of whatever web browser you use, else, try it with a different browser. Martin 16:05, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The problem's been ongoing for one or two week now. Not a cache issue. ~ trialsanderrors 16:14, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That's pretty weird. What browser are you using? Can you provide a screen shot of the issue? Does logging out help? --Brion 16:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I was able to edit it just now (I hope you don't mind, trialsanderrors) and then remove the test with no problem. Joyous! | Talk 16:49, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the help. Whatever you did, the buttons are back! ~ trialsanderrors 16:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I seem not to be getting section edit links. "+" still works fine. Is this me or is this a broader problem? - Jmabel | Talk 17:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Check your preferences, in particular the one labeled "Enable section editing via [edit] links". --cesarb 19:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I was wondering how pages get 'main page' in the 'article' tab at the top. Do they just have to begin with the words 'Main Page'? Daniel (‽) 19:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Via abuse of global javascript (at MediaWiki:Monobook.js):

//Main page tab no longer says article
function mainpg() {
      if ((isMainPage || /[\/=:]Main_Page/.test(document.location)) && document.getElementById('ca-nstab-main')) {
            document.getElementById('ca-nstab-main').firstChild.innerHTML = 'Main Page';
      }   
}
addOnloadHook(mainpg);

Still no cure for cancer! ^_^ --Splarka (rant) 20:17, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I can edit, for example, Reptilian humanoids in fiction, but not American terrorism. Everything seems to work fine; no errors appear, but nothing gets written to the page. What should I check? Tom Harrison ^Talk 21:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It seems like you did edit the page. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 22:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I did that edit with the built-in editor. It works fine everywhere, and the external editor works fine on most pages, but the external editor won't work for me on American terrorism. Tom Harrison ^Talk 23:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Guess based on action=raw, the JA interlanguage link at the end could be related to your problem, I'll add it below for a test. -- Omniplex 07:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

アメリカの戦争犯罪

Thanks, I don't think that's it, but then I don't understand how the interlanguage link might cause it. Your suggestion gave me an idea. I copied American terrorism to User:Tom harrison/terrorism, and I can edit it there. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:06, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Frequently I would like to add categories to an article, but the only way I know how is to find other articles with categories and copy them.

Is there a list of categories somewhere? KarenAnn 22:35, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There is [4] if you want a list of all categories, but the best way to do it is to find a very general category and navigate your way down to more specific subcategories. For example, if you wanted to find Category:Former Wikipedians, you would go from Category:Wikipedians → Category:Wikipedians by Wikipedia status → Category:Users not currently active→ Category:Former Wikipedians --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 22:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The only other way I know of to find new categories is to do a google query that includes site:en.wikipedia.org inurl:wiki/category. (site: and inurl: serve to limit the results to just enwiki categories). (or use wikipedia's internal search if you're looking for very new categories)--Interiot 02:36, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Goto Help:Category. Everything is there. --Jared W 21:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Look at the filmography... Shakti: The Power links to another wiki and not to the film's article... can that be fixed? gren グレン 23:49, 22 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

As that prefix is used as an interwiki link, you can't create such a page, so linking to it wouldn't do much good. See also: m:Interwiki_map. --Splarka (rant) 07:11, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The film has an article at Shakti (2002 film). – Smyth\^talk 16:38, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

What does it mean to Userfy, please? BlueValour 02:33, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Most likely it means to move something to the User namespace, a page such as User:EXAMPLE. You most likely saw it on an articles for deletion page. However, since you don't supply any context, I can't be sure that I gave you the correct explanation. Ingoolemo ^talk 03:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It is mostly seen in Miscellany for deletion. It means to move a page that doesn't meet the standards for a page in that namespace to a user subpage (most likely to a subpage of the user who created it). For example, let's say somebody made a page called Wikipedia:The contributions on this encyclopedia of Example User. To userfy it somebody would move it to User:Example User/My contributions to this encyclopedia --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 03:23, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

See Wikipedia:Glossary. --cesarb 14:28, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

When you do section editing, it gives a summary " → section - summary ", and the arrow links to page#section. That only works half of the time. Sometimes, if the section title has a link in it, the arrow would link to page#[[section_with_link]], but that doesn't work. It should just link to page#section_with_link without the link, because that's how the TOC does it, and that's the only way for it to work. Also, if you link to a category or image in an edit summary, it shows the colon at the beginning. Even though you don't need the leading colon (for edit smmaries), sometimes section titles have it (for example if you had a section title that linked to a cat or img, it would show the ugly colon at the beginning of the link in the edit summary) --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 03:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

See Mediazilla:5019 and its dependents. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is it just me or it there 2 weird pic at the top? American Patriot 1776 04:05, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It's not just you. There looks to be something wrong with Template:Cquote. --james _{// bornhj (talk)} 04:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Further investigation, the cquote template uses Template:Click. Click outputs this code in normal usage:

 <div style="position: relative; width: 20px; height: 20px; overflow: hidden">
 <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; font-size: 100px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 100px; z-index: 3"><strong class="selflink">   </strong></div>
 <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 2"><a href="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" class="image" title="Template:Cquote"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6b/Cquote1.png/20px-Cquote1.png" alt="Template:Cquote" width="20" height="15" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" /></a></div>
 </div>

But, when it's being used in Kamikaze, it outputs:

 <div>
 <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; font-size: 100px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 100px; z-index: 3"><strong class="selflink">   </strong></div>
 <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 2"><a href="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" class="image" title="Kamikaze"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6b/Cquote1.png" alt="Kamikaze" width="40" height="30" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" /></a></div>
 </div>

Note how the outer div has lost its position: relative (it's inside a table cell). Weird. --james _{// bornhj (talk)} 04:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There was an extra vertical bar in the call to cquote which I removed, and that seems to have solved the problem. I'm not sure how it caused the problem in the first place.-gadfium 04:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Looks good to me. --james _{// bornhj (talk)} 04:36, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm working on a subpage to my userpage to write an idea for a help section I had. I wanted to show examples of templates, but when I put them in, it puts the subpage in the categories that they refer to; i.e, putting the good article template in lists my subpage as a good article. Is there any way to prevent this? --Iorek85 07:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Problem solved on my talk page by user:Nunh-huh. Thank you. --Iorek85 07:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

hello, i would like to present wikipedia with my new idea/ design of the above, would they be interested? thanks, o, r, paul

I am using Opera 8.5 on a Windows XP Home PC. The toolbar, which contains the buttons for common formatting such as bold text and links, does not appear when I am editing Wikipedia. I have tried editing a whole page, adding a new page, editing an existing section and adding a new section - all across several namespaces - and the toolbar does not appear in any of these cases.

I tried editing Wikipedia - both anonymously and using this account - using Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7. with Google Toolbar extension installed, as well as Adblock and SessionSaver. The toolbar did appear, and the buttons were fully functional. I have installed the NoScript extension, and it previously prevented the buttons from functioning, but the buttons are functioning properly now in Firefox.

I tried making Opera identify as Mozilla, but that did not help. The toolbar only disappeared a few days ago, around the time I noticed several changes to the MediaWiki software, including a warning about advertising. I will try to recreate this problem on another computer.

How can I get the toolbar to appear in Opera?

Thanks for your attention.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hit F12 and make sure you have not disabled JavaScript. I'm using Opera myself and have not seen any problems with the edit toolbar. --Sherool (talk) 09:50, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hello. Thanks for your quick reply. I just checked and JavaScript is enabled. I will try using Opera on another computer to pinpoint the problem. What version of Opera are you using? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Opera 8.51 on Windows XP seems fine. What are the "changes to the MediaWiki software" you refer to? In particular there is no "warning about advertising" of any sort; perhaps there is some problem with your computer or a firewall application you are using? --Brion 18:10, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Never mind. The edit toolbar appears to have come back. Perhaps it was a temporary problem with my cache or image rendering. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 02:50, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Does anyone know of a template that does the above? I'm not sure #if or switch does this, or I can't quite suss out how to do it. I want a template to emit some text if a particularly named subpage of the page it is invoked on (({{{PAGENAME}}}/Comments for example) does not exist, and if it does, transclude it within the template. Pointers to examples gratefully received. ++Lar: t/c 12:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You can use #ifexist for that. See Template:IncludeIfExists. You may need to include : if not including another template (Liberatore, 2006). 19:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

awesome! thanks! ++Lar: t/c 20:09, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

New changes to edit page brought us some malformed html. It has broken one of the script i'm using. Is there any quality control regarding changes to the wiki? -- tasc ^talk_deeds 14:13, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure if we're talking same thing here... I'll provide some details. Editing interface seems malformed. An excerpt from the page's source (this is within the box for inserting various characters):

 <p><small><span id="edittools_characters"><b>Characters:</b>
 <a onclick="insertTags('Á','','');return false" href="#">Á</a>
 <a onclick="insertTags('á','','');return false" href="#">á</a>
 <!-- MANY MORE insertTags HERE... -->
 <a onclick="insertTags('<ref>','</ref>','');return false" href="#"><ref></ref></a>  
 <a onclick="insertTags('<references/>','','');return false" href="#"><references/></a></span>
 </p>
 </small></div>

I have highlighted the culprits - HTML tags which are closed in a wrong order. This breaks the validation of a page and causes some tools (like the godmodelite script) to stop functioning. Same phenomenon was observed when I was trying to migrate the script to pl.wikipedia.org - noone was able to help me there, which led me to creating a fix for the script - this should however be only a temporary solution. Can someone have a look into this and fix it? Misza13 ^{T C} 14:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

yes, this is it. I didn't mentioned it explicitly since mistakes can be seen in any decent validator. -- tasc ^talk_deeds 15:38, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Any suggestion concerning a project team for this defined purpose ?

• Create a list where people register to do the job
• Create a list of objects to be verified, including date of last change and date of last verification ; if it's html, a bit for "W3C validate". --DLL 18:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This looks like someone making an edit to MediaWiki:Edittools which resulted in some imbalanced text. Pester a local admin. robchurch | talk 19:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Brion suggested breaking the </small> and </div> on to separate lines, and it seems to have worked (because the parser isn't perfect):

 </small>
 </p>
 </div>

--Splarka (rant) 23:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

On UTC+0:20, the presence of {{timezones}} causes what should be two paragraphs to become one. I've never seen this before; can anyone explain it? – Smyth\^talk 16:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Removing the <center></center> tags fixed it. Changed the horizontal margins to auto (although you need a very high resolution or small text size to notice it). --Splarka (rant) 23:21, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Are there any metrics to determine the quality of a user's edits? The editcount tool leaves much to be desired, and I was wondering if there are any alternatives available. --Folajimi 17:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There's no quick fix, as quality is measured by different, sometimes conflicting, standards that are subjective and often impossible to measure. You can't use bytes uploaded, because some users may upload entire articles in one blow, and others may add hundreds of kilobytes of gibberish that must be deleted, to pick just one example. Titoxd^(?!?) 05:54, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

How can I create a table with a background image instead of a background color. The MediaWiki software is sanitizing my every attempt. --Jared W 18:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That is by design. Images should not be placed (in wikicode) except with a valid [[Image:]] tag, so that the description of the image is the image's only link. You can edit your personal css to display them as backgrounds on specific class/ID tables, or try to convince the community of a wiki to add to the MediaWiki:Common.css (see MediaWiki_talk:Common.css for requests, but it is unlikely such a request would be adopted). --Splarka (rant) 23:29, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thank you. That at least allows me to setup some <div> and <table> backgrounds from my own MediaWiki project. --Jared W 05:26, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well, if you have full access to the install (in which case, why are you asking here ^_^), you could enable external images, or even remove the background-image attribute from the sanitizer ("whitelist" it, as it were) - I think you can do the same for <a> and <img> too. --Splarka (rant) 10:29, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have located this image http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/2/23/Kraftwerk_Ekibastus.jpg of a power plant flue gas stack in Kazachstan which I would like to use in an article in the Wikipedia about flue gas stacks. How do I locate the image ... and then how do I upload it into the Wikipedia? - mbeychok 19:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

• http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/2/23/Kraftwerk_Ekibastus.jpg <-- clues in red...
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kraftwerk_Ekibastus.jpg <-- ...reformed to link to image desc
• or: [[:de:Image:Kraftwerk_Ekibastus.jpg]] <-- wikilink code...
• de:Image:Kraftwerk_Ekibastus.jpg <-- ...produces a wikilink to it

--Splarka (rant) 23:37, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, that is just how to *locate* it. To upload: Special:Upload. See image use policy and how to upload for uploading. --Splarka (rant) 23:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It has now been uploaded to commons:Image:Kraftwerk Ekibastus.jpg, just FYI, so you can use it normally. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:06, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

When I open the page Jazmin I find the last parts missing, including the templates put there. But, when I open the page in "edit page" all of the missing part is still there, including the whole filmograpy. How do I get it right, and make the whole article appear in regular mode (i.e. reading or non-editing mode)? (Aditya Kabir 20:30, 23 June 2006 (UTC))Reply

Probably because you had an unclosed <ref> tag, but you already removed it. They need to be self-closed, for example: <ref name="ib01" /> --Splarka (rant) 23:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Ever since the 2006 FIFA World Cup began, I've been forced to go through so many edit conflicts when editing that page. I think that for extra-frustrated people who can never get their version in, there should be "force save" button to paste in their version no matter what. However, since two people might both press "force save", causing another conflict, then perhaps make the "forced save" option available to only those who have gone through at least three edit conflicts. How's this idea sound? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yeah. I really get tired of having to go through multiple edit conflicts when I just want to save. Because of this, sometimes I edit in a hurry to not get into edit conflicts, and sometimes make mistakes. --GeorgeMoney ^T·C 21:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Crap, to be frank. The whole point of an edit conflict is to ensure that stuff doesn't get overwritten and lost. Allowing people to force their version through could result in a lot of harm on pages with a high edit volume. robchurch | talk 15:28, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I created some "In Use" templates more than two years ago — November of 2003 — to take care of just this issue, so that you could save a page with a flag to ask people to give you a short period of time - say 5 minutes to 1/2 an hour - to make a change and not cause a conflict. Some people have even improved on them to make the message work better. There are two forms, {{Inuse|5 minutes}} or {{Inuse|5 minutes}} or {{Inuse||for=|until 3:20 PM EDT 6/26}} in which case you get either of the following:

5 Minutes:

This project page is actively undergoing a major edit for 5 Minutes. To help avoid edit conflicts, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed. This page was last edited at 18:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC) (18 years ago) – this estimate is cached, update. Please remove this template if this page hasn't been edited for a significant time. If you are the editor who added this template, please be sure to remove it or replace it with {{Under construction}} between editing sessions.

Until 3:20:

This project page is actively undergoing a major edit for . To help avoid edit conflicts, please do not edit this page while this message is displayed. This page was last edited at 18:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC) (18 years ago) – this estimate is cached, update. Please remove this template if this page hasn't been edited for a significant time. If you are the editor who added this template, please be sure to remove it or replace it with {{Under construction}} between editing sessions.

Save the page first with this message, then re-edit. Make the changes, and, of course, remove this template reference when you re-save. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 19:03, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Some users (incl me) won't know what EDT is. UTC might be slightly better, but is there a better way? The 5 minute one is fine, except without checking the history page I don't know whether it was posted 1 minute ago, or 4 minutes, or 3 days. (btw, although I'm nitpicking, I do think it's a good idea).

It might be worth adding - you can do draft edits in a text editor.

And when editing the introduction section, it's possible to edit just the section (which should reduce the chance of an edit conflict) - just click on the [edit] link for any other section, then go to the url and change the number on the end to 0, so it reads section=0 --Singkong2005 ^{(t - c - WPID)} 14:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

COMMAND= {{ref_harvard|Bean1|Be An Actuary 2005|none}}.

I saw this command in the article "Actuary"

it links to refernce at the bottom of the page. i would like to learn how the details of this command works but havent found it on any of the help pages.

joe 22:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That is called a template inclusion (or template for short), and what that does is include the page at Template:Ref_harvard into the page there, with the parameters (after the vertical pipes). What that particular one does is: <span class="reference" id="ref_{{{1}}}{{{3}}}">[[#endnote_{{{1}}}{{{3}}}|({{{2}}})]]</span>. Which basically means, it links to a section at the end of the page titled endnote_NAME (where NAME is the first parameter plus third parameter). This uses the <a name=""> html tag, which wikicode implants in each section header (= == === ==== etc). Detailed usage instructions can be found at Template_talk:Ref_harvard. See m:Help:Template for a description of how templates work. --Splarka (rant) 23:54, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Am I the only one seeing the Portuguese national kit in white, green and grey? Can someone fix it please? (I work with Internet Explorer, maybe it's something that doesn't happen with Firefox). Joaopais 23:41, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Can you provide any type of link whatsoever to the problem? --Splarka (rant) 23:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I forgot. It's here. Thanks. Joaopais 03:22, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I suggest you ask at Template talk:Football kit. It uses various transparencies and so on that may not always display correctly in all browsers. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I recently made a search (in Wikipedia) for acaraje. No results turned up, so I made the page that I linked to in the previous sentence. However. When I, through other articles, find an article named acarajé, I'm baffled.

How come the search engine didn't pick up on the word without the accent?

This must be a major flaw, as most people (I think) do not always use accents in searches.

--Qwerty qwerty 03:06, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Generealy we work around this problem by useing redirects.Geni 03:15, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, but the question is how long before someone discovers the problem with every single article that is affected, and then actually redirects the page. It would be better to change the search engine, wouldn't it? --Qwerty qwerty 03:21, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

See also Wikipedia:Village_pump_(perennial_proposals)#Better_search_feature.-gadfium 03:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

and another thing thats annying, is if you search for something, and it comes up with a major article which you dont want, I find then next 100 or so hits after than are redirects to that page. Philc _T^E_C^I 23:57, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In the future, admins might be more readily reached at WP:AN. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I've made an SVG at Image:Information_icon.svg which displays in Opera and Adobe Illustrator, but Wikipedia can't seem to convert it to a PNG. Any ideas? El T 12:57, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There have been problems with this recently. Try thumbnails of various sizes - small sizes seem to work more often. It might also be that the renderer Wikipedia is configured to use doesn't support some of the stuff used in your SVG. Deco 13:48, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I tried purging the cache and that seems to have fixed it. — Ian Moody ^(talk) 13:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think I've finally got this problem resolved. If you see similar files blanking, purge them -- it should be the last time you have to. --Brion 05:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

How can I get a table to appear is ASCII, i thinks thats the correct term,

like this basically

as when you put a space infront of it nothing happens.

Nothing	hehe
...	...

so is there some sort of thingy in the triangle brackets I can put in to make it so this. Philc _T^E_C^I 14:34, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You probably want <pre>...</pre>:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!Nothing!!hehe
|-
|...||...
|-
|}

æ² ✆ 2006-06-24t14:52z

Cheers Philc _T^E_C^I 17:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I was having a look at whether linkspam is an issue on talk pages and noticed the following things:

1. External links on talk pages are marked with "rel=nofollow".
2. Google does indexes very few "Talk" pages, but does index "User Talk" and "Wikipedia Talk" pages, as witnessed by the query talk utc -user -template, or a direct search for a heavily discussed page: Talk:George_W._Bush.
3. Yahoo does index article talk pages: talk -user
4. The robots file robots.txt does not exclude talk pages
5. The links from article pages to talk pages are not marked with 'rel="nofollow"'.

Number 1 is a good thing, but I don't understand number 2 in view of 3--5. Is there anyone with a clue? My hunch is that Google gives a very low priority to pages that are only linked to from one other page (i.e. from the accompanying article page), while user talk pages are typically linked to from many other user talk pages through the signatures. Han-Kwang 17:32, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I believe our SiteMap specifies lower priority for talk pages. --Brion 17:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Not that I think it's a good idea for Wikipedia, but I'm wondering if my memory is failing. I used to be involved in another project that used the MediaWiki software and I swear I remember the ability to directly edit history pages, such as adding a forgotten edit summary. I don't think it was a local modification because we rarely used edit summaries and I doubt anyone would have gone out of their way to add this feature. I don't want to go install and configure the software just to satisfy my curiosity. Am I losing my mind? Opabinia regalis 17:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

No. --Brion 17:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Rather, yes, you are losing your mind. ;) We don't have such a feature. Under limited circumstances entries may be removed from the history, but they may not be altered in any way. --Brion 17:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well dammit, I just lost a bet then. Thanks. Opabinia regalis 18:47, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Can I create a template that automatically substitutes itself, without having to use subst:? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:12, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

No. How would it? Without subst: the template is not even called until the page is loaded, so nothing happens on save. --Splarka (rant) 00:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Poo. That'll make things difficult.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 14:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%8EUser:AnnaKucsma/Geography/France (the extra characters before "user" are only visible in URL) and [[Talk:‎User:AnnaKucsma/Geography/France]]. Circeus 23:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

looks like a candidate for WP:MFD. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 00:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This could easily become a slippery slope... How would you address this? --Folajimi 00:20, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

no need its ok where it is. but the AnnaKucsma needs userfying which is done via MFD. it doesnt automatically mean deletion. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 00:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I went ahead and just moved it to where it was obviously intended to go. I just wasn't sure it would work properly. Circeus 00:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is there a way to look at a certain page's stats, like how many times it has been viewed, and how regularly, etc...? Pacian 23:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Basically, no, but for a slightly more complete answer please see Wikipedia:Technical FAQ#Can I add a page hit counter to a Wikipedia page?. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:00, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi. Does anybody knows which pages are using the MediaWiki:Tog-shownumberswatching message? borgx ^(talk) 03:03, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It's switched off on Wikimedia wikis, but normally, the numbers would show up in changes lists and under the "page last edited"/page view counters at the bottom. robchurch | talk 03:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is there some method that can be used to change one instance of a category to another - my specific example - I'd like to change all instances of "Category:Live-bearers" to a new category "Category:Ovoviviparous fish" - is this possible to automate? ThanksHappyVR 14:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, you can request renaming at CFD, they have some bots which can do all the work automatically. --cesarb 15:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is there a way to insert section headings in tables, such as at the page Harry Potter cast? It would be much more convenient on that page to edit only the section of the type of cast rather than going to the top of the page. I'm pretty sure I've seen this done before, but I don't remember where or know how. Thanks. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 17:43, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is the change I just made to that article what you had in mind? --iMeowbot~Meow 18:31, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It is. Thank you. I could have sworn I did the same thing myself, to no avail… hmm… LOL. :-D Thanks again. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 20:19, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The links won't show up in a preview, so you can have it exactly right and it will still look wrong. --iMeowbot~Meow 13:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Not really sure if to post this in BugZilla as a feature request or here, but I'll put it here as it is more visible.

In a quite detailed essay about Wikipedia titled Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past (good read, by the way), Roy Rosenzweig, director of the Center for History and New Media in George Mason University, suggests:

“

Indeed, simply taking information buried on the “History” page and making it more public would enhance Wikipedia—for example, the “Article” page might say, “This article has been edited 350 times since it was created on May 5, 2002, including 30 times in the past week.” It could even add that “very active Wikipedians” (those with more than one hundred edits this month) contributed 52 percent of those edits.

”

Currently, MediaWiki:Lastmodified has room for one variable, it being the last modification date. How feasible would it be for the article creation date to be there, as well as the number of revisions in a page, and the number of revisions in a given time period? The suggestion sounded like a good thing, but I can't find in the Database layout whether it is possible without running expensive queries on each page view. Would it require db schema changes, or I'm just not looking at the right place? Should it be something we do anyways? Comments? Applause? Angry lynch mobs? Titoxd^(?!?) 18:34, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think this is an excellent idea, and one that might go a long way towards increasing transparency and confidence for the reader who doesn't know our inner workings. If it's not possible now, perhaps it can be added to the database in the future. — Catherine\^talk 13:02, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Nice idea. --DLL 20:47, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

As it seems it is a good idea, and other editors agree, can it be done? I personally think that it could be done by adding a char(14) page_creation field to the Page table, defaulting pages to blank and filling it by invalidating the page's cache, and filling the value on the first page view with the first edit's rev_timestamp value. The number of edits in history is available at Special:Mostrevisions, but I don't know how expensive it is to generate that data. As for the number of edits within a week and the number of active Wikipedians, I have no clue how to actually do it. Is it feasible? Titoxd^(?!?) 03:56, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In English verbs, the {{Grammar series}} sidebar was just added after the {{IPA notice}} sidebar. Rather than being stacked, the two sidebars appear side by side, pinching the top of the article. (In preview only) I tried inserting {{clearright}} between them with no difference on my browser (IE6). I also tried enclosing the second sidebar in a div tag with style="float:right;clear:right"; that stacked them, but the top of the article was still pinched adjacent to the second sidebar. What's the solution. --teb728 19:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Pushing one of the two a bit lower, which I've done now. Titoxd^(?!?) 19:52, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Or, enclosing them in a table (feel free to revert to the other version). -- Rick Block (talk) 20:00, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

But I think a better way would be to add a "clear:right" to the 'Grammar series' template since it is unlikely you would ever want it to be side-by-side with any other template. —Mike 00:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is this possible? I would like to make a table like the ones at Utah-BYU rivalry#Results or Army-Navy#By_year where the row is colored by the winner of the event. Currently, the way this is done is by specifying the bgcolor for each individual row.

What I really would like to do is have something like this ...

{{start game list|Align=right|HeaderColor=c0c0c0|Year=1|City=1|Winner=1}}
{{Sports game|Year=1940|City=[[Akron, Ohio|Akron]]|Winner=Youngstown State|Score=13-0}}
{{Sports game|Year=1941|City=[[Youngstown, Ohio|Youngstown]]|Winner=Youngstown State|Score=19-0}}
|}

... where the row could infer its color from the name of the winner and {{start game list}} could define the colors for the teams involved. Is such a thing possible? BigDT 19:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't think there's a way to set the color in one template and use it in another, but you could use m:ParserFunctions (specifically ifeq) in template:Sports game to select a color, or define another template that selects the color given the winning team. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:22, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I added the parsing functions ... unfortunately, you're right, it doesn't inherit the variables from template to template. I can only get it to work if I specify the teams and colors on every row (as I do in the last two). It won't inherit the variables from the parent template (as I attempt in the first two).

{{User:BigDT/Sandbox2|Align=left|HeaderColor=c0c0c0|Year=1|City=1|Winner=1|TeamA=Hokies|TeamB=Wahoos|TeamAColor=maroon|TeamBColor=orange|Games=
{{User:BigDT/Sandbox3|Year=1941|City=[[Youngstown, Ohio|Youngstown]]|Winner=Wahoos|Score=19-0}}
{{User:BigDT/Sandbox3|Year=1942|City=[[Youngstown, Ohio|Youngstown]]|Winner=Hokies|Score=19-0}}
{{User:BigDT/Sandbox3|Year=1943|City=[[Akron, Ohio|Akron]]|Winner=Hokies|Score=13-0|TeamA=Wahoos|TeamB=Wahoos|TeamAColor=maroon|TeamBColor=orange}}
{{User:BigDT/Sandbox3|Year=1944|City=[[Akron, Ohio|Akron]]|Winner=Hokies|Score=13-0|TeamA=Hokies|TeamB=Wahoos|TeamAColor=maroon|TeamBColor=orange}}
}}

User:BigDT/Sandbox2
Any ideas from here? Another thing that would work is if there were some kind of iterative function ... for example, if I could have Year1, City1, Winner1, Score1, Year2, City2, Winner2, Score2, etc. That wouldn't be a spectacular solution, though, because of the nightmare of what happens if you have 100 games in the series and you leave out the second one ... oops ... any thoughts? BigDT 20:53, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You can indirect the color selection through another template, see for example:

{{User:BigDT/Sandbox2|Align=left|HeaderColor=c0c0c0|Year=1|City=1|Winner=1|TeamA=Hokies|TeamB=Wahoos|TeamAColor=maroon|TeamBColor=orange|Games=
{{User:Rick Block/Sandbox3|Year=1941|City=[[Youngstown, Ohio|Youngstown]]|Winner=Wahoos|Score=19-0}}
{{User:Rick Block/Sandbox3|Year=1942|City=[[Youngstown, Ohio|Youngstown]]|Winner=Hokies|Score=19-0}}
{{User:Rick Block/Sandbox3|Year=1943|City=[[Akron, Ohio|Akron]]|Winner=Wahoos|Score=13-0}}
{{User:Rick Block/Sandbox3|Year=1944|City=[[Akron, Ohio|Akron]]|Winner=Hokies|Score=13-0}}
}}

User:BigDT/Sandbox2

Seems like this might be closer to what you're looking for. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:28, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yeah ... I thought about that, but then there has to be an extra template every time the table is used ... BigDT 23:54, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

• Please note that, in the tables above, some rows are now very difficult to read on some browsers. I had to open this section in an edit window to see what was written on the dark maroon bars. You might want to use paler forms of the colours rather than "full strength". Grutness...wha? 04:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yeah ... the colors were as an example. (Orange and maroon are Virginia Tech's colors.) The problem I was hoping to solve was a way of making the colors generic (meaning, to not have to specify them for every single row) without using a child template (which would necessitate a template for every page using the table, negating the usefulness).

Any other ideas? Or is it just not possible?BigDT 14:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

For some reason, Image:Binary tree (letters).png appears to simply be a black box to me. Is this a browser issue? (I am using IE6). I have not noticed issues with any other .png files. I don't really mind that I can't see it, but I suspect that it might be a problem that others could have as well. Thanks!--GregRM 00:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

• It's an IE thing. It looks fine for me in Firefox, but I see the same black box you do in IE. I brought up this problem a month or so ago with respect to another picture. Go here and look at "Background colors for svg images". The solution for that image was to remove the corrupt local version of the image (there was a commons version that didn't have the problem). I know that this situation doesn't particularly help solve your problem, but it at least tells you it's an IE thing. BigDT 01:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply
  • By the way, as a workaround, if you make the image any size other than the natural size, that forces Wikipedia to generate a temporary copy of it. I have set the image to 231 px so now it displays in IE. That's a workaround, though - I don't have a clue how to fix the underlying problem. BigDT 01:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I have created a duplicate jpg file Image:Binary tree (letters)2.jpg, which should work fine in IE. --GeorgeMoney ^{(talk) (Help Me Improve!)} 01:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks BigDT and GeorgeMoney. The 231 px modification seemed to fix the problem in the article, although as would be expected from BigDT's explanation for the workaround, it still displays as a black box on the image description page. Of course, GeorgeMoney's jpg version appears fine on the image description page. Thanks again to both of you.--GregRM 01:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The reason for the problem is that an alpha channel was used instead of transparency. This is unnecessary; someone should edit it to change it. (Saving it as a JPEG isn't a good solution.) I'll do it if no one else does, but tonight I don't really have time. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I've purged the thumbnail cache for the image. The 230px version looks fine in IE now. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

A 'Speedy Delete' box on an article has been removed by the creator - what should I do next? BlueValour 01:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

OK, I tried a second time and the article has now gone. But, for future reference, a pointer to the procedure would help. BlueValour 02:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Template:Drmspeedy (and several stronger versions) are appropriate in this circumstance. There's a list of these templates at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:20, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Great, thanks. BlueValour 02:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi, my question is how to use the align paremeter when grouping user boxes using {{useboxtop}} {{userbox}} {{userboxbottom}}(just right/ left isn't good enough).Tal :) 11:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

All content is far from being accessable in the most efficient form. Even for direct human consumption the information could use more rigid and meaningful markup. More over for the use in automation and to be of true use to a modern individual the information needs to be easily useable by the simplest of programs possible. That means the actual data needs to be stored seperate from it's presentation wherever possible and there needs to be far more defined and enforced structure to the information. Even more the raw data needs to be accessable to anyone and everyone by allowing the entire (including all revisions, posters, etc) knowledgebase to be obtained and kept in sync. This also needs to be done in such a way that the most simple of programs possible is capable of doing it. A modern source of knowledge can't simply be a novel new way of obtaining and publishing information, it needs to be formated and published in a modern format.

I'm not really sure where to get started on this, so I guess I'll start here. I've contributed to Wikipedia for about a year, but more and more I'm finding that it's suboptimal for storing certain kinds of information. I've documented one concrete example of what I mean at Don't repeat yourself and have some other musings at User:PhilipR#Content_versus_presentation.

I'm sure that if MediaWiki doesn't currently have a module for conventional row-and-column kind of data -- and yes, i realize that even Wikipedia as we know it still has an RDBMS backend -- that something like that could be created. In my view this sort of thing would enhance Wikipedia immensely.

How would I go about suggesting this, if such an initiative doesn't yet exist? Cheers, PhilipR 19:17, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You mean templates? They do exist. Titoxd^(?!?) 20:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

No, I'm well aware of templates. In that regard one of the discussions about possibly setting up a template for each squads list, and why that discussion didn't seem to attain consensus, might be instructive. Even if that proposal had been adopted, it doesn't answer all my points -- for example, you can't sort a squad list by different fields just because it's templated. In general, it doesn't seem that one template for each bit of information (for example, templating Draman's name because we haven't yet resolved whether it's Draman or Dramani -- see my example on don't repeat yourself at User:PhilipR#Draman) is the right way to do things. - PhilipR 20:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps the question to ask is: If PhilipR is right that Wikipedia has an RDBMS backend, do (or should) editors have access to it? --teb728 22:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Well, plainly there are some things in the DB that editor-users shouldn't be accessing, like changing the history of a page. But that's a helpful starting point -- I'm envisioning that, for example, we might have a "virtual table" where the data in the table can get edited with the same audit trail that presently happens when someone edits an article. Only it's not a textual article -- it's just data, that can be presented a million ways in textual articles.

Simple example: suppose there were a "person" table with personal name, family name, date of birth, date of death, etc. etc. Then each time the person's name gets changed, that change propagates to all articles that use that name (that's the enhancement from the present setup). Another table might be "football scores"; another might be "Presidents of Brazil". I'm just blue-sky dreaming here; if necessary I can work harder to give a good example of what I'm envisioning. - PhilipR 22:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

One word. Wikidata. OK, a bit more than that. :) There's been discussion relating to this for a long time, but as far as I know, no particular time schedule for making it all happen. robchurch | talk 23:04, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Rob, I figured someone else had probably been thinking about this problem, but had no clue where to turn. Now I do. - PhilipR 23:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I recently downloaded a xml dump of Meta. I tried uploading it to my localhost wiki, running the same version, and when i try to upload it, it says something like "import source unknown". I have tried using the maintenance script, but it still has the same error. Is there something that I need to do prior to importing it, or is there a way to fix this error? Thanks, Shardsofmetal ^{[ Talk | Contribs ]} 19:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is there a resource anywhere, please, for the interest boxes that folks put on their User page? BlueValour 22:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:Userboxes? robchurch | talk 23:02, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Ah, just the job, thanks. BlueValour 23:43, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi

Just wondered what happened to the Peterborough entry - it is missing, the page does not load in properly. It worked fine on sunday and I have not done anything to my browser, the rest of the site works fine.

Cheers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.100.202 (talk • contribs) 19:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Looks fine here. --Brion 00:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Shortpages, Ancientpages, etc. - how are they run? The schedule seems to be erratic, now once in 3-4 days. Can they be put on a schedule? Once daily, perhaps? If not so frequently, at least on a known schedule. Thanks. - CrazyRussian talk/email 01:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

They're run on a regular schedule, twice a week. By amazing coincidence, this comes out to once every 3 or 4 days. --Brion 03:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Ouch. Used to be longer. Thanks for biting my behind anyway - keeps me honest. - CrazyRussian talk/email 05:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

User talk:Phaedriel appears differently on the secure.wikimedia.org server - everything after Joshbuddy's signature at the bottom of section 65 ("Asimov") is struck out, at least according to K-Meleon on Windows XP. After Phaedriel's signature at the start of section 90.1, everything becomes struck through and red. Accessing the page via en.wikipedia.org, everything looks normal. Kimchi.sg 01:57, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Fixed. Looks like a bad sig, though, hope it's not current! --Brion 03:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Admins protected highrisk templates because editing those templates could cause DOS and highload servers. My question is: since Wikimedia servers also handles other Wikipedia projects (is this correct?), can somebody make this kind of problem (dos/highload/outage) on en.wikipedia by changing other Wikipedia projects unprotected highrisk templates? or viceversa. sorry for bad english. :) borgx ^(talk) 03:55, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

As interwiki transclusions are not enabled, that shouldn't be possible (unless a high-risk template somewhere is automatically periodically propagated by bots (copied) from a central location to other projects or languages and is vandalized moments before such a copy, but that doesn't seem very likely). --Splarka (rant) 07:35, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Last time it happened (a high-risk template on en: was edited in one of the worst possible ways), IIRC the whole cluster went offline. However, that specific case shouldn't happen again, since the software and the server configuration were changed to avoid it. --cesarb 14:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I believe the issue you're referring to was replacing a template with megabytes of text. That should be impossible now, thankfully. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In general, DOS is not a concern with high-use templates at the current time, to my knowledge. The templates are mainly protected because you don't want a vandal inserting penis images into 200,000 articles at once. On other, smaller wikis, DOS certainly isn't an issue, because templates aren't used enough times to be an issue. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is the introduction of pseudo namespace C: in addition to CAT: relevant wrt the future Namespace manager? In three RFDs I claimed that it's a bad idea, but it could be also irrelevant, e.g. if there are no plans to introduce this feature on Wikipedia. -- Omniplex 04:45, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

There's no such thing as a pseudo namespace. Those pages all exist in the main namespace. The namespace manager exists in an incomplete and unmerged branch of the code at present. It's worth pointing out that CAT doesn't categorise pages; MediaWiki will not recognise anything other than the local and canonical namespace names for Category as category namespaces. robchurch | talk 18:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, "pseudo" means "not really", it's in the main namespace. The mentioned help page apparently offers to transform "pseudo" into "real"... at some very distant time, if I got your drift. And sure, CAT's no category like T's no template, theyr're used as shortcuts. I'm not defending this, quite the contrary looking for a good technical reason to at least limit it. Sounds like "namespace manager" isn't that magic wand. -- Omniplex 16:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think I can say with a high degree of confidence that there is no good technical reason to limit it. At most, there are aesthetic or ideological reasons. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:47, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't share that confidence wrt some hypothetical ISO language codes or Interwiki prefixes. The ideology is KISS, C / CAT, or P / WP, one letter's shorter, "Project" works on all projects, that could be a reason to use one letter. But other ideologies are "if it ain't broken don't fix it" and for consistency just stick to it. -- Omniplex 08:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

On Ladakh article, I'm getting the following error with some cites:

Cite error 4; Invalid call; no input specified

I think I'm doing all the right things, and the exact same syntax works sometimes, and doesn't work the other times. Could someone please check what the problem is? deeptrivia (talk) 04:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Try this: Insert 1 citation per edit. Whenever you get an error, post the code in question here, so we can analyse it. It's pretty hard for us to try and replicate the error with the information you've given us. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of YOUR OPINIONS} 07:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You entered the code <ref name =Crossroads></ref>. This is incorrect; use <ref name =Crossroads/> (strictly <ref name="Crossroads"/>, but MediaWiki isn't so picky). In the XML standard, these are identical, but not for Cite.php. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Tossed a little bit of code up there today that adds a "User logs" link in the toolbox whenever you visit a User (or User talk) page. I'm proposing its inclusion into monobook.js, or if you like it but don't want it included, the code is available there (or in my userspace as User:Kylu/userlog.js) for use. ~Kylu (u|t) 04:36, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I've tried to change the edit textbox fonts by changing the IE font but this is not working. What is the best way to change the edit textbox font in IE form Times New Roman to Comic Sans MS? ...IMHO (Talk) 04:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You should be able to edit your monobook css to do it. Try adding this:

textarea {font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size:110%;} 

--Splarka (rant) 07:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! Works great unless you fail to hit ctrl-F5 and reload IE. Thanks. ...IMHO (Talk) 13:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I already posted about this issue in corresponding talk page (Wikipedia talk:Sign your posts on talk pages#Formatting the Date), but got no answer. How to modify date format in signatures, which is obtained by ~~~~ or ~~~~~? -Yyy 12:20, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It's not possible. It's also not recommended to try to sign with an alternate date format (by hand, for instance) on pages such as this one which are archived by a bot (which ignores alternate date formats). --cesarb 14:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

On this wiki, don't. To have another wiki's behaviour corrected, open a feature request explaining what the correct date format is for that language, so we can have MediaWiki output the appropriate format. robchurch | talk 17:54, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Just to clarify: everybody's signature dates are inserted with the same style and time zone so you can reasonably compare them when looking at a page full of different people's comments. Since they're part of the text they can't be customized for each viewer. --Brion 23:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Why not wikilink the date so viewer preferences can kick in? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

To my knowledge, the best you can do is modify how the date appears. You can't change anything else beyond that. See {{User:nathanrdotcom/Sig}} (by doing this, you'd have to sign with three tildes rather than four). — Nathan ^(talk) _{/ 00:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)}Reply

Thank you, Nathan, this appears to be what I was searching for. -Yyy 07:13, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that's productive. What part of what Brion wrote did you not understand? robchurch | talk 02:12, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I did not need to customize everyones else signature dates, i just needed to modify my own signature date (it is converted to normal text, anyway, when saving page), and Nathan described how to do it, and it works. Date is still the same, only now there is possible to change, how it looks. Time is still in UTC, too. -Yyy 04:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I wasn't really sure where to ask this, so I decided to post here, where a broader audience may see it. I am in doubt about this edit. As you will see, this is a user talk page, and it's a situation where a bot added an automated message regarding the Signpost (which I'm not sure should be done, but it could be that the user signed up for this...). But then, five hours later, another bot removed the message from the talk page, calling it an automated archival. I'm not sure that we can have bots adding and removing messages from talk pages like this. Perhaps one of those bots, or both, is malfunctioning? Or is everything just fine and I'm overthinking this? Thanks, Redux 13:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The first was not an automatic bot, and delivered the signpost on request, the second archived old discussions (also on request), but apparently did not do it properly, as the discussion was not old, that is where the problem lies. Martin 14:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Update: Actually there is no problem, the message it removed was a different one than had just been placed there, so all is good. As to whether bots should do this kind of thing, both were done on request so I guess it isnt really a problem (though I don't know why they don't want to do it themselves). Martin 14:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'm glad to hear it. Thanks, Martin. Indeed, I missed that the message removed was not the exact same one that had been added earlier by Ralbot — as it turns out, one message about the Signpost was added and another message about the Signpost was removed later; and, although I knew that it was a very tangible possibility, I was not certain as to whether or not the actions had been requested by the user himself. In any case, all is well, then. Redux 17:58, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is there a page that enumerates the TOC-relates flags (__TOC__, __NOTOC__, etc.)? I'm looking for one that will cause the toc to be hidden by default. ~ Booya ^Bazooka 15:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You obviously want __NOTOC__ if the TOC is to disappear. see also Category:TOC templates Circeus 15:51, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

When you click the "hide" button, it doesn't disappear — just collapses to hide the contents, and still retains a link to expand it. That's what I'm looking to do. ~ Booya ^Bazooka 16:23, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

The page that enumerates them is Help:Magic words. --cesarb 17:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I recently added a few articles on terms that my professor and his colleges have been using and wished to be used correctly by others. It would be helpful to know if people have visited the articles and how many have done so. I was wondering if Wikipedia had the ability to keep track of the number of visits that these articles have received, and if this is in agreement with the ethics of the Wikipedia site. If someone could post a sample code, which could achieve this task, I would appreciate it. I am a amateur programmer and don’t have the ability to write a script on my own to accomplish this task. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tiasusnmt (talk • contribs) .

Basically no. Please see Wikipedia:Technical FAQ#Can I add a page hit counter to a Wikipedia page?. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:04, 27 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

For some articles, it seems to be the opening sentence. For others, it is a selected piece of text embedded in the article. There seems to be no default, or if there is, how does one change it? In other words, how is the Google caption assigned within the article? Thanks. --PureLogic 02:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I believe it's determined by Google's search algorithms based on the search term you enter. I'm no Google expert, though. --james _{// bornhj (talk)} 08:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It chooses it well, doesn't it! The summary for en.wikipedia.org is "A free encyclopedia built collaboratively using Wiki software. (GNU Free Documentation License)". That's cool. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of YOUR OPINIONS} 09:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sure does, but try it for yourself: first, try this query: site:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-4_Phantom_II "super demon" which returns a summary of "Although the Vought F8U Crusader won the contract, the Super Demon (as McDonnell's entrant ... The aircraft was originally designated the AH "Super Demon", ...". Then, try this query: site:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-4_Phantom_II Reconnaissance which returns a summary of "The German Luftwaffe initially ordered the reconnaissance RF-4E in 1969. ... Eleven reconnaissance aircraft received a similar RF-4EJ Kai upgrade. ..." (both from the same page, F-4 Phantom II, one of our newest featured articles). Gotta love Google! --james _{// bornhj (talk)} 12:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

As the originator of the question, I will describe the issue which led me to ask it. Googling "Winston Churchill" brings up a Wikipedia summary which is the first line of his entry -- probably the Wikipedia/Google default. But if you Google the Professor who has been questioning the US government's account of the 9/11 World Trade Center collapses, "David Ray Griffin", the Google summary finds a criticism of Griffin that is embedded way down in the article. It is very odd, is it not?--PureLogic 00:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Sometimes, the summary (abstract) is far from satisfactory. If there's an infobox on the page, you might get a spattering of redundant and seemingly meaningless info. site:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion: "Neon Genesis Evangelion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Neon Genesis Evangelion. The Neon Genesis Evangelion logo. 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (Neon Genesis Evangelion). Genre, Science fiction, Mecha, Psychological", which at least contains some information, but other times is a run of numbers. --GunnarRene 01:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

See also Wikipedia_talk:List_of_infoboxes#Search_engine_appearance--GunnarRene 01:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Where can I go to propose a change to the AfD template, please? BlueValour 03:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

• Try Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) Folajimi 04:09, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply
  • For changes relative to the template only (not the policy), Template talk:afd is probably a better place. (Liberatore, 2006). 16:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply
    • Useful suggestions chaps, thanks. BlueValour 21:48, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

An easy newbie question, I hope. I have my preferences set to Expanded watchlist. Can you tell me, please, what the letter N means, when it appears in the left-hand margin against an entry? Sorry to be so stupid! --MichaelMaggs 12:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It means it's a newly-created page. --Daduzi ^talk 12:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Obvious when you know. Many thanks. --MichaelMaggs 12:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I can best illustrate my question by an example:

I like pizza {{#if:{{{anchovies|}}}| and anchovies}}{{#if:{{{pepperoni|}}}| and pepperoni}}.

In order to engage this, I need to subst it in giving anchovies and pepperoni a dummy value:

{{subst:pizza|anchovies=y|pepperoni=y}}

What I'd like to be able to do is just do:

{{subst:pizza|anchovies|pepperoni}}

And have it go, "Oh, anchovies has been included as a template argument. So let's put in the 'anchovies' phrase."

How exactly do I tell the '#if' template to do that? I couldn't figure it out from m:ParserFunctions.

Much obliged to anyone who can assist. — Mike • 21:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

You can keep it general and put {{#if:{{{1|}}}| and {{{1}}}}} in the template, and call it with {{subst:pizza|anchovies|..}}, or {{#if:{{{1|}}}| and anchovies}}, and call it with e.g. {{subst:pizza|a|..}}.--Patrick 22:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

To clarify what Patrick is saying, if you do not include an equals sign (=) in an argument, then the parameter has no name, only a number. Eg:

• {{pizza|anchovies}} defines {{{1}}} as "anchovies" and {{{anchovies}}} as undefined.
• {{pizza|anchovies=}} defines {{{anchovies}}} as null, and {{{1}}} as undefined.
• {{pizza|anchovies|pepperoni}} therefore defines {{{1}}} and {{{2}}} so you must work with those.

Some examples of what you could do then:

Template:Pizza with contents: I like {{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{1|}}}|nothing}}{{#if:{{{2|}}}|&#32;and {{{2|}}}|}} on my pizza.

Which would produce:

• {{pizza}}: I like nothing on my pizza.
• {{pizza|anchovies}}: I like anchovies on my pizza.
• {{pizza|anchovies|pepperoni}}: I like anchovies and pepperoni on my pizza.

However, to only allow specific arguments, like a predetermined list of toppings in any order, you'd either have to use a #switch for each argument (if you allowed 5 arguments, you'd need 5 #switch) and a number of cases in each #switch equal to the number of toppings. Or you can require equals signs in your arguments and use one #if for each topping.

Note that subst + parserfunctions = headache too. --Splarka (rant) 23:37, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Guys, I can't tell you how much I appreciate the help. However, after seriously thinking about how I need to go about this, I've realized that what I was asking for above wasn't a practical way to approach the problem in question. I'm very grateful for your assistance anyway, and hope you'll forgive the change of mind. — Mike • 04:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

What precisely are the <<<END and END constructs used in the PHP source of MediaWiki? Like in this (from includes/ImagePage.php):

					$wgOut->addWikiText( <<<END
<div class="fullMedia">
<span class="dangerousLink">[[Media:$filename|$filename]]</span>
<span class="fileInfo"> ($info)</span>
</div>

<div class="mediaWarning">$warning</div>
END
						);

I can see the effect of the "tags," but where is their use defined? Are they built-in to the interpreter or are they elsewhere defined as > and <?php, respectively? I'm not fully familiar with PHP (if you couldn't tell) and I don't want to misuse these. —Bradley 22:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

http://uk.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.php robchurch | talk 02:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That makes no sense. It is three less-than symbols and the left-shift and less-than operators are all binary operators. How does this entity effectively escape text in the middle of a PHP file? —Bradley 03:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It's called heredoc syntax [5], and I suppose it is a little odd. It isn't the only time PHP uses less-than and greater-than symbols for purposes other than comparison, though. Consider the arrows ( => and -> ) used in array and class syntax... ~ Booya ^Bazooka 04:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

That's what I was looking for—difficult to find as the search engines don't index or simply don't work with "<<<". Thanks —Bradley 16:19, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Is there a way of seeing how many times a page has been viewed in a certain period? (And ideally, how many unique users/IP addresses). Thanks --Singkong2005 ^{(t - c - WPID)} 06:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

In the FAQ you're supposed to read before posting here: Wikipedia:Technical_FAQ#Can_I_add_a_page_hit_counter_to_a_Wikipedia_page.3F. --Splarka (rant) 08:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'll help you out. :) It's been disabled on wikipedia for performance reasons. Imagine having to run to a chalk board 20 feet from your mailbox and putting a tally every time you check you mail. Wikipedia has enough traffic that this would turn into a riduclous endevor. Hope this helps. JoeSmack ^Talk 14:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks - that does help. And sorry for not reading the intro and FAQ before posting (d'oh!) --Singkong2005 ^{(t - c - WPID)} 14:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Under the subheading "brands", the mead article lists about twenty commercial links. Is this acceptable?--Shantavira 13:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't think so. I can't find the specific policy right now, but I know we discourage links to commerical sites (except in the case of an article about a particular company, like Amazon.com). Also, all those links are extern links in the main article. It'd be fine to wikilink to a few articles about specific brands, but not extern link to a whole bunch of commercial sites as it is now doing. — Frecklefoot | Talk 14:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

I really don't know very much about designing a webpage, and even less about designing a Wiki userpage. I was just told that my page (which I copied mostly from User:Jimbo Wales) doesn't render properly in IE. The box with my picture covers up some of the text of my description.

Can someone: a) Show me what to do to make it work or link me to something? b) Fix it for me? Alphachimp ^talk 14:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Looks okay now - just a width=100% which I deleted. Cool Cat helped me with user page formatting a while back so glad to now be able to help another user. Of course that's assuming I have actually fixed the problem you were talking about... --Singkong2005 ^{(t - c - WPID)} 14:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

English Wikipedia has the main heading - Main Page removed (or not visible in the main skin). I'd like to do the same for Georgian wiki new proposed mainpage (see one version here თავფურცელი). Anyone knows how? If it had been discussed somewhere specifically, would appreciate the link. gmadlobt. Alsandro 16:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

This effect is achieved with a piece of JavaScript; see MediaWiki:Monobook.js. robchurch | talk 18:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hello,

In the Transmitter article, I'm trying to add an example image of a transmitter circuit. But the image ("Emetteur.jpg") is hosted on the French Wikipedia, and I don't know to directly put the image in the article rather than re-import it in the English wiki and then link the image.

Thanks for all future help. E-s-B∂_Talkfr 17:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

It needs to be uploaded onto en.wikipedia for it to be accessed. If it's a free image, you could upload it to the commons instead. --Lord Deskana ^{Dark Lord of YOUR OPINIONS} 17:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I asked the question as it is possible to do so (directly link across wikis without reimporting) in the french wikipedia. Perhaps a feature to ask ? E-s-B∂_Talkfr 18:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Reply