Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AN

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Village pump (technical) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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User:Pupster21/monobook.js

Hello, it's me again again requesting a blanking of my monobook.js. However, this time I am requesting that an admin give me rc patrol admin-like revert script because I'm not sure I'm doing it right. --Pupster210 15:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be attracting a stroke of bad luck, Pupster. I'll make a post on WP:AN/I. Valentinian ^{T / C} 16:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just blanked it and I'm giving you WP:TW. Cheers, alphachimp 16:30, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how to use TW. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 17:21, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you teach me or give me a simpler one? --Pupster21 Talk To Me 17:23, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:POP is pretty straightforward--VectorPotential^Talk 17:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Add please. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 17:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, I can't edit your monobook (: --VectorPotential^Talk 17:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

... --Pupster21 Talk To Me 17:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

What you need to do is to go to your monobook and add the following code:

// [[User:Lupin/popups.js]]
importScript('User:Lupin/popups.js');

You might wish to open the edit window for this section and copy-paste it directly. Alternatively, you can open your monobook and type:

{{subst:navpop}}

That should do the trick. Valentinian ^{T / C} 19:04, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

If it is broken as in "it doesn't look right", you need to purge the page after you change it. Click here once you make a change to fix that. Even if you don't the code will still work as long as you clear your cache. Prodego ^talk 00:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

how do you delete and article you made?

meanmachine4242

If nobody else has edited the article since, log in to the account with which you made the article and place {{db-author}} on it, to request an admin to delete it. Otherwise, use WP:PROD or WP:AFD as usual. --ais523 11:03, 26 April 2007 (U T C)

Stop people from editing a page

Resolved

How do i stop other people from editting a page i made? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meanmachine4242 (talk • contribs) 22:00, 25 April 2007

You can't. This is the encyclopedia where anyone can contribute, after all. x42bn6 Talk 01:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Imagemap issues

Imagemap isn't working, just showing up as a lot of code and <imagemap>: image is invalid or non-existent. Any reason? Anything to do with the above thread? – Riana ^ऋ 14:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Check out the top right of my userpage for an example. – Riana ^ऋ 14:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I dont know enough about it, although if there is a problem with the images, then I would think the problem causing all the svg's to show as blue links might also be triggering the imagemap problem, possibly because it cannot find the images. Again, this is not an area of my expertise. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 14:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Whoa... I cannot even view your user page right now. It gives "database error" and "from within function "Image::upgradeRow". MySQL returned error "1223: Can't execute the query because you have a conflicting read lock (10.0.0.231)"." This was the same message I got trying to view a SVG image itself minutes ago. —Resurgent insurgent 2007-04-24 14:37Z

Database error? :S – Riana ^ऋ 14:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

(edit) And the blue question mark SVG at the top of this page is back. Still get the error for your user page. —Resurgent insurgent 2007-04-24 14:38Z

at last check I could view them on the image page, however they are not showing upo in userboxes. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 14:46, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this fixed now? -- Tim Starling 08:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

According to brion, yes (bugzilla:9677) (and it appears to be working on pages which contain the code in question, such as User:Riana). --ais523 13:54, 25 April 2007 (U T C)

SVG images not working

Resolved

Within the last few minutes, all SVG images have changed to bluelinks to their image description page and no longer show the image for me: for instance, {{tick}} displays "Y". Are other people getting this problem too? --ais523 14:24, 24 April 2007 (U T C)

They are not working when used in subst templates. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 14:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I cant actually view any of the images that now show up as blue links. I think it is also happening in not substed templates. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 14:29, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I was just about to comment on them not working, svg images that have been cached seem to work. But resize isn't working Richard Thompson (Talk! | Contribs) 14:31, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I as just about to say something, they don't show in templates or the image pages themselves... Must be a problem with the renderer. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, not just me. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 14:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be enwiki-only; for instance de:Vorlage:Begriffsklärung is showing an SVG image fine at the moment. --ais523 14:34, 24 April 2007 (U T C)

Is the issue connected with the thread below? – Riana ^ऋ 14:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

That is a distinct possibility. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I think everyone's having this problem. I noticed a pattern. Someone vandalized the image and then reverted by a Wikipedian but the image doesn't come back. Most national flags can't display edit history and when I click on file history nothing happens. OhanaUnited 14:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like they are back Richard Thompson (Talk! | Contribs) 14:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep, seems to be working fine now. – Riana ^ऋ 14:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

See also bugzilla:9677. --ais523 16:06, 24 April 2007 (U T C)

Unused files / uncategorized images

When and how did Special:Unusedimages and Special:Uncategorizedimages get changed into galleries? Both are hideously bad as galleries and make patrolling a pain. Is this something that comes from the MediaWiki namespace or somewhere else? Thanks. --BigDT (416) 05:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Heavy load?

I try to get up newbie contributions, but I get nothing... Is this very overworked, now? To many newbies, or what? Greswik 19:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

OMG! why is that, even I facing the same problem. --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ ^{walkie-talkie} 19:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

User contributions

What's the deal with the new boxes on the User contributions page? I see vandalism, I go to look at the IP address's page to see what other vandalism has been performed, and I don't see any contributions at all, even the vandalism I just reverted. And what are the purposes of those two boxes? Corvus cornix 18:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that the reason the contributions aren't showing up is good old-fashioned lag. As for the boxes, they're a new feature on contributions pages. I think they're supposed to make it easier to go from contributions page to contributions page. --Luigi Maniac 18:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Now when I try to see the contributions made by a user with an extensive history at Wikipedia, it's taking godawful amounts of time for the contributions page to come up. Only the newbie IP addresses actually show up in a quick amount of time, and they're empty. In fact, when I try to see my own contributions, I get the "The Wikimedia Foundation servers are currently experiencing technical difficulties." error screen, even though Wikipedia is up and running. Corvus cornix 18:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes; the contributions are slow again, and I think the watchlists might be a bit slow as well. Give it a 15 minutes to half an hour; it should be fine by then. It normally takes about that long for the problem to go away. Both the watchlist and the contributions are taking some time to load at the moment. Acalamari 18:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Whew, seems to be fixed. Maybe it just needed a lunch break. :) Corvus cornix 20:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

lowercase question

How do I properly use the lowercase parser function with a template variable? I have a switch statement and rather having something like |Test|test|TEST=output, I'd to just have one possible result which I could do if it was all lowercase. I've tried {{#switch:{{lc:{{{variable|}}}}} but that doesn't appear to be working. Any idea?↔NMajdan•talk 18:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, I think it is working.↔NMajdan•talk 18:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

SVG problems on my local copy of MediaWiki

File:Sunstar-wiki1.jpg

I got SVG working on my local copy of MediaWiki, but it doesn't quite render as well as I thought.

This is my template:

This user has left Wikipedia, and may not return or may well be inactive. They are not indefinitely blocked, or banned.
The user can return at any time.See block log.

However, the SVG image of the stop hand has a white border, which it doesn't on Wikipedia - I'm using ImageMagick as the renderer. If I used Inkscape would that work better??

All advice is appreciated. Thanks, --SunStar Net ^talk 20:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

If it looks okay in Firefox but not MSIE, it might be a transparency issue. Apparently there's a javascript hack somewhere that's enabled on Wikipedia? [1] --Interiot 06:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The SVG does not work in Firefox, the screenshot above is from Firefox. It's still rendering a white background with SVGs, doesn't do that with PNGs. Should I change from Imagemagick to Inkscape?? --SunStar Net ^talk 09:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses a modified version of librsvg. You might try running it instead of Imagemagick. I don't have any experience using Inkscape in batch mode, only as a vector image editor. Mike Dillon 02:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm using Windows XP to run my WAMP Apache server... how do I install RSVG on Windows XP to get it to render the SVG's correctly?? --SunStar Net ^talk 09:26, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea. It looks like you can download it here, but I have no idea what's involved. You might find this page helpful as well. Mike Dillon 14:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Graphic switching on Richmond County, Virginia

There is some rather odd behavior going on with the map of Richmond County, Virginia. Tested on Camino and Safari, both display a graphic with the state capital, Richmond City, highlighted rather than the county, which is northeast of the city. This graphic also appears on the page for Image:Map_of_Virginia_highlighting_Richmond_County.svg, which is referenced automatically via Template:Infobox U.S. County.

But when I downloaded the SVG to try and fix it, the downloaded SVG had Richmond County highlighted correctly. Seems like there's some weird substitution going on -- would a more advanced WikiGnome please check this out? Thanks. VT hawkeye_{talk to me} 17:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried Shift-F5? Or WP:Purge? — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 20:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I have verified that both versions look the same under Firefox (Windows). However, I'm a geography idiot and dunno if the image is the correct one - it's a fairly small red spot. I also have a image broken link for the seal. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 20:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, I reread the original post. I have the same problem. However, I asked it to purge the preview page and now it says the image is gone. And no record of it being erased in a deletion log. Yikes. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 20:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, I figured it out. SVGs are XML. There are two "paths" both named Richmond. One needs to be RichmondCo (the first). Then the fill at the end will highlight the proper one. (I did this locally in my text editor.) Bet the same problem happens with Roanoke. There are two of them too. I'd contact the original author and have him fix them all. The WikiMedia engine has a "last one" wins approach, the browser seems to do "first match." — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 20:22, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed this for the following images:

It had already been fixed for Image:Map_of_Virginia_highlighting_Fairfax_County.svg. The duplicate id issue is a problem for all of the other Virginia county maps as well, but they don't show any visible problems because there are no internal references to the duplicate ids. Since most of these county locator maps were generated using the same method by the same user, there are almost certainly maps in other states with the same problem. My fix was to append "_County" to the names of the paths for the counties whose names were the same as a city and update the xref. A safer way to deal with this would probably be to append "_County" to the paths for all counties. Mike Dillon 01:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

After looking at this closer, I don't think this will be a problem in states that don't have independent cities. The issue is that these maps were created from Census Bureau data and they treat independent cities and equivalent to counties for Census purposes. That's why the Virginia maps even have cities in them when other states only have counties. I took a quick look at the maps for the other counties listed in the Independent city article and their maps seem fine.

Also, I've uploaded Image:Map of Virginia counties and cities.svg to Commons with the ids for all of the counties changed to include "_County". Hopefully this can be a good basis for any future changes to Virginia county/city maps. Mike Dillon 01:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Not the end of the world but...

Made a typo fix on Self-injury and (i was logged on) it changed it all ok, but when i look at my watchlist i see a random ip number (which happens to be mine!)... i suppose it's a bug but dunno what happened, i made a edit to my user page, and my it appaeared as a contribution with my name...Would this have to do maybe with what the above user posted or? Ps is there any actual place to report bugs? Here i thought was most suitable? Later. petze 14:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

This might be fixable by just setting your browser to auto-log you in. I can't remember what's necessary, but I ran into the issue of me getting logged off when I had to reinstall Firefox. I fixed it, but I don't remember the fix except having Firefox remember my password and some other setting. Root⁴(one) 20:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Current recentchanges numbers only show net change?

For instance a green +1000 means that 1000 chars were added to the article, right? So let's take this, for example:

"I like pie."

If someone vandalized it into:

"I like egg."

It would be recorded as a zero change. Is there a way to change it so that it shows not just the net change, but the change components individually? That is, in the above example edit, it would show like this:

(diff) (hist) . . Pie‎; 03:15 . . (-3)(+3) . . Kirbytime (Talk | contribs)

Hmm?--Ķĩřβȳ ♥♥♥Ťįɱé Ø 03:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this significant enough to create confusion the other relatively new number? Do vandals ever count the number of characters in an article, then perform ROT13 to keep the overall change at (0)? –Pomte 03:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen it yet, but if that happens, we should just start looking at changes with net 0 character difference. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

That would be really helpful. In RC patrol I often encounter 0 changes that are vandalism of the kind that is hard to spot. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not just 0 change, it could be a major (±1000) change, but off by maybe ±20, so while over 1000 bits where changed, maybe 980 bits were added, so the change number won't show up as bolded in the recent changes.--Kirby♥time 06:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

IIRC, finding the minimal editing distance between any two strings (read articles) where adding, deleting, replacing, and moving are possible operations is very hard in terms of computational complexity. However, one could instead find approximate edit distances based on the "diffs" generated (which, btw, are not always optimal) between sequential edits and that might be useful enough. (I am not part of the technical crew of Wikipedia; I'm just making some comments.) Root⁴(one) 20:05, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Article ~~~~ inaccessible but still in category

As you can see here, the article ~~~~ is still in Category:Protected redirects, but is no longer a valid title. Any idea for deleting it? It's a bit annoying because all other operations you do on the category listing fail beacuse of it (I have parsed it out, but it's an ugly kludge). Tizio 13:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

If it gives the "Bad title" error message, the only way to delete it is to wait for the next time when the developers run their bad title fixing script, which will rename the page directly in the database to a valid name prefixed with Broken/. After that's done, since the title is no longer invalid, it can be deleted normally. --cesarb 14:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Great! Thanks. Tizio 14:25, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Special:PrefixIndex

I am confused, and wondering if I am misusing this or have found a gotcha. I was researching questionable user names and using Special:PrefixIndex. The username a concern had been raised about was User:The way, the truth, and the light which exists. But I can't find it using PrefixIndex and 'The w' (which does find User:The watershark for instance). What am I doing wrong? Can you help me see the light? Shenme 04:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the user page for that user doesn't exist (nor any subpages), so it isn't found by that search. Mike Dillon 05:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Prefix index is for pages. A user can exist but no have a page. Use Special:Listusers. --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@(Lets go Yankees!) 05:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, very good. I had gotten a small clue when I came across a user whose sole presence was a /monobook.js subpage. Thanks! Shenme 07:53, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers?username=The_way (you can pseudo-prefixindex link thusly). --Splarka (rant) 08:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Cascading notice in edit summaries

I've noticed that the cascading notice is not shown in edit histories ([2]), but is shown in the logs. Is this something that can be done through the MediaWiki namespace, or does this need a bug report? 164.107.166.217 18:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a bug, as far as I can tell. I have submitted bugzilla:9652 with my interpretation of why "[cascading]" isn't included in the edit summary. Tizio 12:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

CSS bug in <code> boxes

<code> boxes have a line-height of 1.1em. This value is too small because with certain font sizes a little bit may be cut off from the lower part of characters. Underscores may disappear. Here is an example:

{abcd_efgh}
xxxxxxxxxxx
{abcd_efgh}

In my browser the lower part of the curly braces and the small g are cut off, the underscore disappeared.

I see this problem on Windows XP (both with ClearType turned on and off) with Firefox (fixed width font: Consolas, 15px), IE7 (default font settings) and Opera (default font settings).

I noticed this problem in Barton-Nackman trick where the underscores disappear from value_type in the first <code> box.

Changing line-height to 1.2 em solves the problem. BarroColorado 15:27, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

That should be done site-wide, then, please. James S. 16:33, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I hope this was the right place to report this ... I'm not sure if this should be considered a MediaWiki bug, or a Wikipedia bug (as the stylesheet is specific to this site). The culprit is in the declarations for pre in http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css -- BarroColorado 18:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Attention administrators: The problem with 'g' is semi-bad, but changing '_' to ' ' in code is horrible -- please make this correction. Thank you. James S. 21:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Just a clarification note: there isn't actually such a thing as a <code> "box", as <code> is an inline element. The box you are referring to is <pre>, which was generated in the above example because of the whitespace at the beginning of the lines (wikicode for pre). How do the following look to you?

Pre generated with whitespace:

{abcd_efgh}
xxxxxxxxxxx
{abcd_efgh}

Pre generated with <pre> :

{abcd_efgh}
xxxxxxxxxxx
{abcd_efgh}

Pure <code> with no pre:

{abcd_efgh} xxxxxxxxxxx {abcd_efgh}

--Splarka (rant) 07:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! They look fine. I also removed the <code> tags from Barton-Nackman trick. -- BarroColorado 13:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Language problem

I'm Swedish and therefore, I use Swedish even on the English wiki (i.e. I don't write in Swedish but I've chosen that language under "My settings" for all the menus and stuff). At the top of Wikipedia, where we all have the links "My user page", "My discussion page", "My settings", "My watchlist", "My contributions" and "Log out", they are and have always been in Swedish for me, until now. They're all still in Swedish, except for "My watchlist" which is (starting today) for some odd reason in English. I have checked the "System messages" under "Special pages" and there, it ~~still~~ no longer says "Min övervakningslista" but "My watchlist" for me. Does anybody else, who doesn't have English in their language settings, exeperience the same problem and does anybody have a solution? /Ludde23 ^{Talk Contrib} 18:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I only speak English, but after seeing this I got curious and switched my language setting to Swedish. It did the same thing to me. I don't know what is causing it, but it might be the recent upgrade. --Luigi Maniac 18:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

This is indeed strange: in Italian it's "my watchlist", but in German it's not. Tizio 19:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

This is controlled by the MediaWiki:Watchlist system message. Since it has been customized on-wiki without customizing MediaWiki:Watchlist/sv, the Swedish version doesn't work. Since MediaWiki:Watchlist has the same value as the software default, deleting it should restore the cross-language functionality. I'm not sure about the difference between Italian and German, since neither one has been customized on-wiki. Mike Dillon 02:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. It looks like MediaWiki:Mywatchlist may actually be the message that is used. From what I can tell, MediaWiki:Mywatchlist/de has a software-level default, but MediaWiki:Mywatchlist/sv and MediaWiki:Mywatchlist/it have the English phrase "My watchlist". I'd have to look at the source to see exactly what the logic is here, but it looks like it might be using MediaWiki:Mywatchlist and not MediaWiki:Watchlist. Mike Dillon 03:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

After looking at the source, it seems that it issue is that the language files define "watchlist" and "my-watchlist", but not "mywatchlist". I still don't exactly understand how this works, since SkinTemplate.php requests "my-watchlist", but I'm pretty sure that the missing keys for "mywatchlist" are the cause of the problem. The only language with definitions for "mywatchlsit" are zh_yue, bg, ar, zh_tw, de, en, fi, fr, he, and id. Mike Dillon 03:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This was fixed by Brion in revision r21417, but it isn't live yet. Mike Dillon 15:17, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Losing Edits

I just lost over a 100 edits after someone deleted WP:ACC..Is it possible??..Cometstyles 21:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Blame User:John Reaves (!); Edits are lost when a page is deleted, sorry. GDonato (talk) 21:58, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

hehe..yeah but I dont think he was the one who deleted it..--Cometstyles 22:03, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

According to the deletion logs, he is. you could try to convince someone to restore the revisions from further back if you really want those edits. GDonato (talk) 22:05, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Its not that but it made me think if it could happen on a Wikipedia page, it can happen with other articles as well and thats pretty scary and if someone ever hacked into Wikipedia and crashed it..wooo..the world will end..hehe(kind of)..--Cometstyles 22:09, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, it could be restored by any other admin, so it isn't a problem. I can still see and if I wish, restore the page, for example. Prodego ^talk 23:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Technically, the edits aren't lost, they're just hidden from regular users and are only shown to admins on a page by page basis through Special:Undelete. The edits don't appear to admins on the user contribs page. Because this is what edit counters use to count edits, the deleted edits don't count and the total can go down. Harryboyles 00:59, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

That page will not and should not be restored, it is periodically deleted to remove user's e-mail addresses from the history in order to preserve their privacy. John Reaves (talk) 07:15, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Of course, at first glance I thought it was just to prevent the page history from becoming excessive on an active page. GDonato (talk) 10:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, on a similar note has anyone ever thought of converting this page to e-mail requests (like WP:RFO) as this page could be a real target page for spammers, they're going to get about 50-100 e-mail addresses a week there, aren't they?

I suggested this some time ago at the talk page. The developers are unwilling to set up a list, however. Tra (Talk) 12:09, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:BITED better not suggest it again :-}! Thanks. GDonato (talk) 12:19, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Odd internal error message

I just tried to delete an image and got this message:

There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please hit "back" and reload the page you came from, then try again.

This is the first time I've got this - is it happening to anyone else? If not, what's the reason it might have happened to me? – Riana _ऋ 12:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Have you ever had the "loss of session data" error when trying to edit? It may be related to that, but that's juts a hunch. Are you still getting the error? --Deskana (fry that thing!) 12:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I do get "loss of session data" every so often, but that seems to fairly common - I've never had this one before! And I've got it twice since. – Riana _ऋ 12:27, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Either way, I've changed my password just in case. – Riana _ऋ 12:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't think changing your password is necessary, this seems to be more of a software problem than anything else. Your account is as likely to be secure as mine is, I think. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 12:34, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, it sure didn't help - I just got it again. Grrr – Riana _ऋ 12:37, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Presumably what's happened is that it's got confused about the cookies and thinks you're trying to hack your own account? (By the way, I don't think the password's got anything to do with the seession data.) --ais523 12:49, 27 April 2007 (U T C)

That's strange. I got logged out a few times too. – Riana _ऋ 12:55, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Image:Cricket World Cup trophy.jpg

I cropped this image from the original because it was off-centre. Now it seems to be displaying a stretched and distorted version of the original image when it displays at 100 and 200px. But at 80 and 120px it displays correctly. See the image page for sample displays. Is this a server purging issue, and if so why won't it fix? I'm seeing the same thing from IE as well as FF and a good 10 minutes has elapsed, so I presume its not in my browser cache. Any help appreciated. —Moondyne 06:34, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The original uploader has now reverted the image back to the off-centre version (which is fine), but then the 80 and 120px thumbnails changed to centred versions with distortion. And now when I look, all thumbnails have changed to off-centred with no distortion. I'd love to know the answer to this, please. —Moondyne 07:28, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes when you upload an image, it loads the new image but not the dimensions of the new image, causing the new image to be displayed exactly the same size as the old image. I think this is more of an issue with your browser cache than it is with MediaWiki software. A forced refresh normally fixes the problem, which probably explains why when you came back to it later, it showed it correctly. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 12:28, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Well why would I have seen the same problem in both my IE and Firefox browsers? Another user saw the problem also. And in between I refreshed my browser cache with F5 and Ctrl-F5. I'd just like to get to the bottom of it if possible. —Moondyne 14:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The only time I've had this problem is with the above conditions, it is entirely possible there is another unique set of conditions causing exactly the same symptoms. Has anyone had this problem too? --Deskana (fry that thing!) 01:21, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Appendix namespace

m:Appendix namespace

In case it hasn't been noted here already: The Spanish Wikipedians are proposing that all Wikipedias in all languages gain an "Appendix:" namespace (like the ones in the Spanish Wikipedia and the English Wiktionary) and that all Wikipedias have an Encyclopedic Support Contents Policy. Uncle G 23:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Technically doable, but please, let's not. Basically, it boils down to some people thinking that tables, reference lists, and lists shouldn't be in the main namespace, but others disagreeing. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
- Agree with Titoxd. No more red tape. Please! Valentinian ^{T / C} 23:35, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The place for discussion is the talk page of the Meta page linked to above. The people making the proposal won't see know about your objections if you write them here. Uncle G 15:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

- - Well, I'm talking about the English Wikipedia here. Other wikis may find it useful, but not here. And they do know about me not liking it, I participated in the process to enact that thing... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:04, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Undo CSS change to smallcaps

The CSS directive that controlled the size of text rendered in smallcaps was changed some while back. This change needs to be reversed or at least modified. It has resulted in text that is nearly illegible (and certainly crappy-looking) in Safari at default font and size (sample). At a blown-up font size, one can see that the smallcaps are much smaller than they should be, regardless what the scale of the base font size is (sample2). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Previous contents of a category

While reviewing my watchlist for red-linked categories that I had edited that had been deleted or renamed (I found one - Category:Texts by J. R. R. Tolkien), I found this deletion of a category. Not a very important one, and one that was empty at the time of deletion. My point is that it wasn't empty at one point, but I can't remember what was in it. Is there anyway to find out what used to be in that category? Carcharoth 01:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It was moved in this discussion to Category:Works of J. R. R. Tolkien. It would have been nice of the deletion message has included a link to the discussion. Mike Dillon 02:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The deletion message for the "Texts..." category did have a link to the discussion. Mike Dillon 02:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I know. I followed that link as well. The empty category I am referring to was a different one, specifically this one. As I said, not very important. The "Texts..." one obviously is important! :-) Sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned two categories in the same post - it was bound to get confusing! The reference to the "Texts..." category was really an aside related to the previous section. Carcharoth 02:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

National debt/Soc. Sec. clock

What exactly would the script that I would type into my User page to get the clock from http://zfacts.com/p/793.html onto the page? Alphabetagamma 00:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It's possible to use this script if you want to see it yourself, but you can't make it work in such a way that other users will see it. Mike Dillon 01:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Hierarchy of links pressed in the current session

In a given user initiated session, it would be helpful to have hierarchy of links that the user is clicking. This would help them being able to go back or move forward to link of interest in the given search. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.55.47 (talk • contribs)

That would be kinda cool, but I'm not entirely sure how feasible that would be. At the very least, there's always your browser's history. ;) EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

And why would anyone want to? We all have menu bar/Start bar clocks. This is 1995 silliness. :-/ — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

problems editing page

For some reason I can no longer edit the Yue Fei page. I recently rewrote the entire page and have never had a problem with it before. Now when I try to edit any part of the page, it brings me here (It should say "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"). I even logged off and tried editing the page anonymously and it didn't work either. I can edit other pages, but not this one. There has to be a reason for it.

I just went to the help desk and some people reverted the page back to its original form. I noticed I can only perform one edit after another user does. After that, I can't touch the page. Why is this? (Ghostexorcist 17:39, 21 April 2007 (UTC))

I just switched to a different web browser and I still can't edit the page! (Ghostexorcist 18:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC))

Can you edit individual sections? x42bn6 Talk 18:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I just tried and yes I can edit individual sections, just not the entire article. (Ghostexorcist 18:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC))

I think your browser might be timing out because it is taking too long to load the edit page or something - just a guess. Does it take a long time before timing out? x42bn6 Talk 23:48, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Unicode issue (?)

What causes this kind of borkage? [3] Is this a browser issue, an issue of someone copying and pasting the article into another program to edit, or a setting on the computer? I don't see it every day, but it can be messy to clean up. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 16:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Typically that is a browser issue, try downloading more langauge support. Voice-of-All 17:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

No, in this case Antandrus is correct. Whoever did the edit at that diff is using old non-Unicode-aware software (external editor? really ancient browser?) which replaced the legit unicode characters with old Windows-only gibberish characters. You see (if you don't use a MS operating system) this kind of mess all over the web on pages from the early 2000s and farther back. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

They are not Windows-only gibberish characters, they are ordinary question marks, used for example by iconv to represent characters that aren't in the destination character set. According to the logs, the browser in question was Safari on Mac OS X 10.2.x (AppleWebKit/85.8.5). -- Tim Starling

Special:Filepath is inconsistent

Hi!

I'm trying to get the pathname for (arbitrary) images. Special:Filepath used to work(?) but now is inconsistent. For instance Special:Filepath/wiki.png (which resolves to http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Wiki.png) is found just fine, but Special:Filepath/Africa.png (which resolves to http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Africa.png) returns nothing.

Is it the "commons" thing? Any suggestions/workarounds? Thanks. --Saintrain 22:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons is a different installation with a different db. Filepath seems to be restricted to local images on the same MediaWiki installation. Voice-of-All 23:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks VoA. Solution (at least for commons):

when Special:Filepath/Africa.png fails (404's), try commons:Special:Filepath/Africa.png .

but when both fail ???

New question:

Are there other DBs where WP images are stored?
What are they called?

Thanks. --Saintrain 20:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

No; only Commons (the global image repository) and the local repository. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 05:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Updates to Protected Pages

Thanks devs for implementing the update to: Special:Protectedpages, many sort options are now available. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Ooh. Nice pretty tools. Almost makes me want to... nah. Editing is still more fun. Carcharoth 03:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Adding classes to 'img' and 'href' elements

As part of adding microformats (see also WP:UF) to templates, I need to find a way to add classes to image tags (<img class="logo" [...]>) and to external links (<href class="url" [...]>). Is there a way to achieve this, with the the current software? Andy Mabbett 14:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

No. --cesarb 16:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

High Speed Bot Editing

A discussion that has involved in to having bot accounts edit at much increased rates (e.g. 3600 edits/hour) is taking place at Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#Cydebot_Block. Comment is welcome there. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 07:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Image question

This is probably not the place to ask this type of question, but how do you scan an image from TV show or movie? I'd like to scan a few fair use screenshots for some film/TB articles. Incidentally, I looked into the rationales needed and policies. Aaron Bowen 06:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Your question probably would be better here. Cheers. --MZMcBride 07:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll ask it there too. Aaron Bowen 07:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

need help with {{archive}} template... possible broken link or incorrect usage?

Hello. I'm working on improving Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts including the archive procedures.

We're using the {{archive}} template on the archived pages to ask users not to edit those pages.

But the link inside the template-generated page heading box directs comments to the (non-existant) archive talk page, rather than the main page at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts. Comments posted on the archive talk pages would not be seen by anyone, so this seems like a problem with the structure of the template - or maybe I'm missing an argument in the template.

An example of the result can be seen here: Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts/Archive/2007

Is it possible this is a bug in the template, or are we not setting it up correctly?

Would someone please advise me on the proper way to set this up so the template does not create a redlink to the archive talk page and instead directs users to add new comments to the main page at Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts... ?

Thanks! --Parzival418 06:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The template is set up to use certain code that is getting confused by the slashes in the article title. I fixed the link provided by specifying which talk page is the current (code: {{archive|Wikipedia talk:Wikiquette alerts}}). Hope that helps. Cheers. --MZMcBride 06:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

{{archive|Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts}} links to the desired project page. –Pomte 07:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much to both of you for the quick replies. I understand how to use the argument now and will fix the other archive pages.

I tried to find the syntax for this template before I posted my question here, but the template documentation page does not mention any arguments. I looked at the source of the page for the template but didn't know how to read the syntax. Now that I see how you handled it, I understand better what I read there, though just barely, and I still don't understand the "if" part of the template at the end.

Anyway... I thought you might want to know that the documentation page for this template may need to be updated to explain the use of the argument. I would update it myself but I don't want to take a chance on causing confusion if I don't get it right.

I appreciate your help, have a good evening. --Parzival418 07:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I have added basic documentation. Feel free to improve on it by editing that sentence, and don't worry about changing the actual template as long as you're only editing text within <noinclude>. The parameter in question is {{{1}}} and the link is given with [[{{{1|{{TALKSPACE}}:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}}|current talk page]], which means if the parameter isn't given, then link to the Talk: page above the current page. –Pomte 07:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

That's great, I get it now. Thanks very much! --Parzival418 07:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Soviet Army

Unless I've missed something obvious, the Category:Soviet Army is both its own parent and its own child. How can this be fixed? Greenshed 22:39, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed this. Mike Dillon

Can anyone think of anything to add to this template, or should I call it done for now?--VectorPotential^Talk 23:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe a WHOIS link still works, when asking about a range. That might be useful? – Luna Santin (talk) 01:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Added--VectorPotential^Talk 01:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

redlinks to commons images

Images on commons redlink when you use the [[:Image:foo.jpg]] format, such as at [4], which actually exists [5]. Worse, when you click such a link it brings up a page editor and provides no clue that the image actually does exist. Is there a work-around? Nardman1 05:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Why is it a problem? -- Tim Starling 06:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Because I can't put text links to the images, at least using the inline system, making things like discussing whether the image belongs in an article impossible. Futhermore, Wikipedia has dozens of legacy discussions about images that were later moved to Commons, and the links to them don't work. Clicking the link leads one to a text editor without a proper preview, leading one to believe inaccurately that the image doesn't in fact exist. Nardman1 17:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Hm, let's see: Image:Cow-on pole, with horns.jpeg. Looks like it's already working. The deletion log correctly ignores the Commons image, but it doesn't mean the rest of the software does the same. --cesarb 19:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
- D'oh. Nardman1 21:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Bytes on history??

Anybody else notice that all recent edits in the history page now have the number of bytes? What's the use of this feature? -- _Hdt83 ^Chat 00:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It's part of the most recent MediaWiki upgrade, and you can get rid of it by adding .history-size{display: none;} to your monobook.css--VectorPotential^Talk 00:41, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes. And on some pages, all revisions have the number of bytes, and other only have a few or one. --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@(Lets go Yankees!) 01:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

What is the meaning of this? Why did you have to add it? ↔ ^tz (talk · contribs · autographs) 02:44:19, Friday, April 20, 2007 (UTC)

It looks like older edits made before the upgrade do not have the byte count. I think it was added for easier vandalism reverting. BANG ! 02:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This seems unnecessary on talk pages. Is it possible to hide it on discussion while still showing it for article histories, please? James S. 16:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes. — Alex Smotrov 19:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

.ns-1 .history-size, .ns-3 .history-size, .ns-5 .history-size, .ns-7 .history-size,
.ns-9 .history-size, .ns-11 .history-size, .ns-13 .history-size, 
.ns-15 .history-size, .ns-101 .history-size {display: none}

Late to the party, but anyways... pretty unnecessary count, most revisions have virtually the same value. If only variations of +/-25% were shown, it would be better :-) -- ReyBrujo 22:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Software upgraded

After some delays, the database schema updates are complete and we've upgraded the software on the servers to the current MediaWiki code. There are a few cute little user-visible improvements, but mostly we've just got more bug fixes and things in. There might be a few new errors which crept in, too, so do give a shout about new oddities. --brion 13:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to remove the bytes from your visible edit summaries? Not really a fan of them. Quadzilla99 14:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Having a quick peruse through the page source, I found the CSS class is history-size. Thus you could have something like

history-size{
   display: none;
}

I think I've got the right code. Harryboyles 14:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The code should be .history-size{display: none;} with a dot. Alex Smotrov 15:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Sure is utterly annoying to have to go through an extra page to get user contributions. What was the point of that? Making vandal-fighting more tedious? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 14:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
- What do you mean? From what I can tell and from what it seems you're after, nothing's changed. Special:Contributions/Jpgordon still gets what you expect. Harryboyles 14:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
  - Yeah -- for a few clicks anyway, I'd get just the radio-button choices, without data; but it fixed itself somehow. Or maybe I was hallucinating, I dunno. (Still seems like unnecessary extra stuff; newbie=contribs-newbie should be its own page, and not clutter up the regular contributions page.) --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 14:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
    - It's in the page history now. This is what we're referring to (the bytes) see here:[6] Quadzilla99 14:37, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
      - Wait, maybe I misunderstood you so. I just have to copy that to my css to turn off the bytes summary Harry? Am I understanding that correctly? Quadzilla99 14:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
        Yeah copy it to your css file. Harryboyles 14:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
        Ahhh, so much better. Thanks. Quadzilla99 02:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Bug: WHOIS no longer works off the contributions page of an IP editor. CMummert · talk 14:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Addition: It passes "Contributions" (the string) as the IP address to the whois pages. Harryboyles 15:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

This looks like a change in the behavior of {{PAGENAMEE}} on Special:Contributions. Apparently it used to contain the IP address or username. The IP address isn't passed to the wfMsg call, so it isn't possible to use "$1" or anything else in MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext to fix this. Mike Dillon 15:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

WHOIS is still broken. The point is that all the query strings use 'Contributions' as the parameter. Shenme 18:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Um. I don't think I contradicted that; I was just explaining why it is broken. All of the links in MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext use {{PAGENAMEE}}. Mike Dillon 20:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

This appears to have been fixed. Maybe browser cache was to blame, who knows. Harryboyles 07:17, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm interested in seeing two changes that I believe were announced but aren't in the deployed version:

Special:Contributions by IP subnet for /24 and /16 networks
Limiting of Special:Linksearch by namespace

Are there any plans to get these two things back into a future build? Mike Dillon 15:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Brion ripped that out, seems it was too slow. Actually he took a lot of VoA's features out, including Special:Checkuser changes, this, ect. Prodego ^talk 20:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Checkuser was not rolled-back. Only 1 function use was reverted (which was added to svn after the last site update), which was now re-added today. Voice-of-All 19:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there some practical reason for lumping these two features together?

It's really annoying to go into the special contributions page for one particular user, and wind up with a multiple choice question about whether I want to screen for all new users, when I just want one--VectorPotential^Talk 15:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention it's completely redundant with [7]--VectorPotential^Talk 16:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree. I don't see the point in this new feature either. --kingboyk 16:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I presume it's useful for vandal fighting? - jc37 16:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[8] is useful for vandal fighting, the above feature is just annoying and redundant--VectorPotential^Talk 17:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

And it isn't useful for vandal fighting, since new vandalisms are not showing up. Corvus cornix 18:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to have returned to normal ...for now--VectorPotential^Talk 20:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

And now it's back--VectorPotential^Talk 21:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Question

Does anybody know why the indent wikimarkup in text ("::...:" or "**...*") doesn't work when there's a left-aligned pic? Is there a bug listed? Niko Silver 20:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Can someone spare a few seconds to help me out with this please? Niko Silver 15:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

If you mean this: