Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 11:18, 5 February 2008

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view · edit Frequently asked questions (see also: Misplaced Pages:Technical FAQ) Click "" next to each point to see more details. If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache. This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown. No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box. This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences. No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker. If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature. If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link. Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem. If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page. If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Misplaced Pages services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

Password email issue

Good evening, morning, or whatever state of being. I am DantheCowMan, and I am attempting to return following a long time exclusively in the "real" world. However, the "Email New Password" link has, it seems, failed to generate the hopeful document. My email address hasn't changed in, say, 5 physical years, so I know that that's not the issue....

Thoughts? Ideas? Musings? 151.213.92.107 (talk) 19:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Try checking any spam folders and/or spam filters on your email account, to see if it's in there. If you're certain it's the right email address, then there's no reason why it shouldn't turn up. Wait a while, in case there are some email servers being slow today or something. Try the Email New Password link again also, but if it eventually doesn't turn up, then I'm very sorry to say afraid you will have to create a new account. There isn't any way to reclaim a lost password without the email. If you create a new account you can put a note on your user page linking to your old account, and/or copy the user page content across, letting people know you used to edit as DantheCowMan. Hope this helps. And hopefully the email will turn up. • Anakin 19:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Did you confirm your email address? You started contributing before email confirmation was enabled. Unfortunately you need to log in before confirming your email address. However that might be the reason you aren't getting the password email. Graham87 02:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Couldn't tell you that specifically, as I've been in and out so much, but we can test it. Someone please hit the email link if exists. In any event documentation seems to suggest that that feature is only for human-human email interaction. Heres what I can tell you.

• No email whatsoever from WikiMedia has appeared in my inbox or spam folders. I have no further content filtrers to check.
• I have left and returned several times, presumably using the email new pwd' link, including I think twice in 2007.
• Before sleeping I created an alternate account for the express purpose of testing the system. Thus far (6+ hours later) no email has appeared from the "Confirm this account" link, or the "Change Password" link after I logged out.
• This happened once before, to me actually. The incident was recorded here as "1.4 Email issue", though again, this incident was before confirmation was a mainstream feature. Perhaps the evidence points to something similar?

151.213.92.107 (talk) 15:22, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I checked Special:Emailuser/DantheCowMan and it reported that "This user has not specified a valid e-mail address, or has chosen not to receive e-mail from other users." • Anakin 15:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Email confirmation shouldn't be an issue; it's supposed to send a password regardless, and I believe automatically confirm you email if you use that password. Anyway, the email option should either send an email of give an error message. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 18:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

New parser function

<imagemap> and other tags can now accept m:Help:Magic words and other fun things using the new parser function #tag. Example below.

{{#tag:imagemap|
Image:Foo.jpg{{!}}200px{{!}}picture of a foo
default 
desc none
}}

produces:

Enjoy! --MZMcBride (talk) 06:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Should also note that this is (hopefully) only going to be a temporary fix. The long-term goal is to get things like <ref>{{ #ifexists: Bob | ] | Bob }}</ref> to work on their own. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:51, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank goodness for that, too. I wish I could help develop that capability, too, but I have a lot to learn before I'll be able to do it. Good luck to the devs, though! Tuvok 06:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Though this is only a temporary fix, I just used it to convert {{WikimediaForPortals}} to ImageMap format from the deprecated {{click}} format ({{click}} can cause usability problems). This is great! Free hugs for willing devs, because this made my day. :D Nihiltres 00:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Template contradict-other

As I understand it, if article A contradicts article B, the right way to report this is to add the template {{contradict-other|B}} to A and {{contradict-other|A}} to B.

However, when these templates are expanded, the first one asks people to see the discussion at ] while the second one says to look at ]. For any particular alleged contradiction it seems obvious to me that there should be only one talk page where it is to be discussed. Is it be possible for the template to choose one arbitrarily, for example, whichever of the two articles has the first title alphabetically?

Or if not, could there be two different templates so you would add something like {{contradict-other|B}} to A and {{contradicted-by-other|A}} to B, and discussion would be directed to ] in both cases?

Still another possible solution: have a parameter where one value means "discuss on this article's talk page" and another value means "discuss on the other article's talk page". (One of these values could be null.) For example, {{contradict-other|B|here}} could go on A and {{contradict-other|A|}} on B.

I have another idea, which is prompted by the fact that the template apparently no longer provides any way to tell people what the contradiction is; but I'll put it in a separate section, below, because it pertains to other templates too.

--208.76.104.133 (talk) 08:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

See the documentation for {{Contradict-other}}. There is already a parameter to say "discuss on this article's talk page" or "discuss on the other article's talk page". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Dang, how'd I miss that? I did read that page. Sorry about that, folks. --208.76.104.133 (talk) 23:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I <3 modern skin, except for three things

I tried the new Modern skin (Prefs/Skins/Modern) and I like it a lot, I really like it, except for three things:

• All the links are underlined by default. That looks terrible on link-rich content like a wiki. I had to go to Prefs/Misc to turn off underlining. How to I change my modern.css and/or .js to underline links on mouse-hover only, like monobook?

• Visited links don't turn color. This disrupts my watchlist behavior. Surely there is a simple change to modern.css which can make visited links a different color, right?

• The left-hand nav bar is about 100px too wide at my font size. How do I put it on a diet?

Thanks to whoever made this skin. MilesAgain (talk) 13:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The output from the anti-vandal tool also appears in the upper-left corner (rather than in the centre of the page), therefore being garbled by the sidebar. NF24 14:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The yellow highlighting on Special:Newpages also doesn't work. NF24 14:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Try enabling the "modern compatibility" gadget (in the library gadgets section) in your preferences, does this fix the anti-vandal tool output? —Random832 14:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• links underlined by default: i think this was fixed yesterday. can you try a force-reload?
• visited link colour: this is fixed as of about 5 minutes ago
• to make the nav bar narrower, put something like this in your modern.css:

#mw_portlets { width: 12em; }
#mw_content { margin-left: 12em; }

kate. —Preceding comment was added at 08:57, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

THANK YOU KATE!!! 11em is the perfect width at my font size. MilesAgain (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Template:User transcluded a lot

When I was looking at a request to edit Template:User, I looked at the backlinks. It seems there are 33187 pages that transclude this template. Is there any reason not to go through and substitute a bunch of these, particularly ones on archived pages? — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:58, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think substituting them would be effective. One of Misplaced Pages's guidelines is don't worry about performance. Besides which, editing and saving a new revision of a page requires *far* more work on the part of the server than having a transcluded template on an old page. There are lots of templates used on hundreds of thousands of articles. I think it's essentially fairly harmless to leave them. • Anakin 19:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

My main concern is whether this is the type of template (like unsigned) that should always be substituted. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:01, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not like unsigned. When a particular template should always be substituted, it's often because it contains a message directed at a specific editor who may be confused if the message changes. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:18, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Like unsigned, there's no reason that the use of this template on old pages needs to be kept in sync with use on new pages (compare the fact tag, which should look the same on all pages). — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

But there's no reason for it NOT to, whereas, as PrimeHunter said, there's a reason not to do so with unsigned. —Random832 15:37, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

What reason is there for unsigned to change on newer pages? I think it's somewhat shortsighted to accumulate these massively-used templates. We should transclude templates that will need to be updated, and substitute the rest. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

database?

Did the database just crash or something? Misplaced Pages was down for several minutes for me.--172.168.50.11 (talk) 23:47, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

There were problems for a few minutes; they seem to have subsided. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:03, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Few minutse?! I thought it was at least an hour. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

If I had a pound for every time the server went down, I'd be a very rich person. There's no point in worrying about crashes, let alone starting a thread to discuss them: they're always going to happen. Anthøny 23:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Viewing new articles created by people

Is it possible to look at someone's (e.g. your own) contributions only in terms of new articles (preferable even just non-redirects)? It seems impossible to find the new pages you've made among the jungle of edits.

A second question: is Misplaced Pages's number of articles (~2.2 million) exclusive of disambiguation pages? Richard001 (talk) 01:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

1. I don't believe so.
2. See Special:Statistics for what it includes, it probably does include disambig pages.

Prodego 02:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

• Actually I think there is. http://tools.wikimedia.de/~escaladix/larticles/ This was fine the other day when it was pointed out to me, but doesn't seem to be working at the moment. Suggest trying it again in a day or so. Good luck. —Moondyne 04:26, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I have a tool that looks through user contribs to report on link add/removes. It currently spots new articles as "warnings" (and only runs on Windows and takes a while). Tweaking it to scan for new articles only and report them properly is on my list. If you don't get satisfaction elsewhere, watchlist my sub-page, I will announce there when I get that task done. Franamax (talk) 04:55, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't get the tools.de site to work, though I'll try again later. As for the number of articles, I would have asked at the page you linked but it isn't the sort that has a talk page and the related pages are very inactive. Should we actually be including disambig pages in our article count, assuming we actually are? They're not really 'content' pages are they? Richard001 (talk) 07:59, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Nope, still not working. When we have something running we should add a link at the Misplaced Pages:User contributions page so others can find this info easier. Richard001 (talk) 23:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Modern skin

I was trying to update Misplaced Pages:Customisation, and noticed that MediaWiki:Modern.css is empty. Is there any reason it is only stored at http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/modern/main.css ?

Also, where is the main discussion/development history for this new skin? I couldn't see anything in the various mailing list archives, at meta, or via google searches. Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 06:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Although MediaWiki:Modern.css doesn't exist by default, you can create it and it'll work the same as MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Most of the discussion (of which there was actually very little) took place on IRC. mediawiki-l is probably the best place to discuss it. kate. —Preceding comment was added at 08:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, so can't edit that page. Someone else has created it though, and seems to be bugfixing it. Hopefully people who know about skins will watchlist it, and continue to bugfix and improve it. Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 07:19, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The avalibility to watch Special Pages

It would be nice if we could watchlist specialpages, such as:

• User contributions

Good for tracking the edits of problematic users

• whatlinkshere

Tracking pages created regarding a template

and etc. The benefits would be huge-- penubag  01:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Special pages are essentially one-time, "snapshot" reports. There is no way to track changes in such reports.

For a watchlist of edits by specific editors, see User:Tra#User watchlist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by John Broughton (talk • contribs) 15:13, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention that it's not clear what would happen if a user decided to watch Special:Watchlist itself. --ais523 15:44, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

:head explodes: ↔NMajdan•talk 15:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki redirects

Currently, these don't work. Why? It is quite a good idea. -- Anonymous Dissident 08:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Soft redirect. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I know of them. They just provide links. I am requesting proper redirection. -- Anonymous Dissident 14:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think we want vandals to be able to redirect readers into a foreign language page, particularly one with a graphic image. And, as noted on the page cited by PrimeHunter, there would be no "Redirected from " message on the page when you get to the destination, if the redirect was automatic. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:11, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There's also a lot of obscure non-Wikimedia web sites on the interwiki list. I don't think we should have automatic redirects to those. I think it's more sensible if people get told when they're leaving the site. • Anakin 16:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There are two flavors of interwiki redirects listed, those that are iw_local and those that are not . The major difference between the two is the URL redirect trick only works for iw_local. Interwiki links only resolve one depth level. So for example, the meta.wikimedia.org interwiki m: is local, but the mediawiki.org interwiki mw: is not. So m:mw:foo works but mw:m:foo does not. This is to prevent malicious "bouncing" to non-local sites. I believe even with interwiki redirecting enabled, the non-local ones do not redirect. Perhaps a user preference could be initiated to allow automatic local interwiki redirecting? This could also be done as a gadget or userscript. --Splarka (rant) 08:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd support such a user script, or even a preference that is auto-opt-out. -- Anonymous Dissident 06:56, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Please help our wp

I want apply toclimit class to our Korean Misplaced Pages. For test, I copied English Misplaced Pages's class (in MediaWiki:Common.css) into my own css ko:User:피첼/monobook.css, and I tested in Sandbox. But it doesn't work! What should I do? --Ficell (talk) 13:16, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Did you purge your cache? --Splarka (rant) 08:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. This problem is solved now. Thank you for reply, Splarka. --Ficell (talk) 14:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Question on redirection templates

I've been writing a few redirection templates to help with fictional characters and tv episodes (eg {{ER to list entry}}, and a user noticed that, when using the template, the text that is in the template that is not within the "noinclude" markup but also not contained in the "includeonly" markup does not show up on the page with the redirection; it is present when you preview it, but it is also very obvious there is a difference in how the preview is shown, and then how the actual resulting page looks (which contains the down/right 90deg arrow and large text with the redirect page name).

Is this by design, or a possible bug in rendering of such pages? I note I spot checked a few other redirection templates that seemed to have the same effect. --MASEM 16:34, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Move the template inclusion to a newline and it will start working. Not really sure what the exact desired/expected behaviour is --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:29, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

That's not the issue. The template doesn't need to be on a newline. –Pomte 20:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Error on Page, according to IE6

Pretty much all Misplaced Pages pages I pull up in IE6 (at work, grrr) report an error on page (bottom left of the app), the details of which are specified as Line 74 Character 5: expected identifier, string or number. By my count, that would be the following markup: <h3 id="siteSub"></h3>. Is this just IE being crap, or what? --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

It was doing it to me when I pulled up Misplaced Pages in IE a few days ago too. Every page. • Anakin 17:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC). Correction: It's only happening when I'm logged in. Fine otherwise. • Anakin 17:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

IE7 reports the same issue. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:12, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Can you provoke any errors or warnings in an HTML validator? I can't with this one, but I may not be trying the same pages as you. Bovlb (talk) 19:34, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Any Internet Explorer error you encounter almost never lists the correct line number. I believe it expands <script> tags first then uses line numbers there. Firefox does not cite any problems, so it's probably one of the Internet Explorer fix scripts. x42bn6 Talk Mess 20:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it gets something like the right line number (plus or minus a few), but it always reports the error as being in the main page instead of in whatever included js file. In debugging other things, I've sometimes resorted to adding blank lines to the beginning of various files until I find the one that changes the line number in the error message. Anomie⚔ 01:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I have the same issue in IE7 except line 16. Check the source of your page when it loads for MediaWiki:Gadget-edittop.js, looking at that file on-wiki, I strongly suspect there is an error setting var localtitles, one too many commas. When I modify it on a local version, it seems to work just fine. Franamax (talk) 23:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I got my problem resolved as above. If anyone else is still getting error messages (after purging your browser cache), post again, I'm on a roll... :) Franamax (talk) 01:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Still getting an error, but the line number has changed (to 1265). I'm not sure how to "Check the source of your page when it loads for MediaWiki:Gadget-edittop.js", but happy to co-operate if you can give me a steer; thanks. Oh. now moved to line 574: "Twinklefluff is undefined". I suspect we might know in which neck of the woods that is... --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

And indeed all errors I'm seeing are Twinkle errors; and as Twinkle is not IE complaint, mystery solved. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:12, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this could have been resolved much more quickly: editing Misplaced Pages at work eh, why don't you just go tell your boss about the problem? :) Franamax (talk) 22:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Algerian district maps

- - Dear Sir/Madame, - http://en.wikipedia.org/A%C3%AFn_Abid_District - and - http://en.wikipedia.org/Zighoud_Youcef_District - Should colour different areas? - Although named differently, it shows the same area under different names. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.202.75.120 (talk) 18:34, 29 January 2008 (UTC) (restored question by Pete St.John (talk) 20:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC))

• So, yes, both maps show the same region, but by different names. I'd ask at the talk pages; but I'm not familiar at all with Algerian geography, perhaps these names are of the same place over different periods. I'd guess though that one of the maps is mislabelled. Pete St.John (talk) 20:28, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Special:Movepage $1 issue

Perhaps this has been reported elsewhere, but I just went to go move a page over a multiple edit redirect. The resulting page that notes deletion is required (with sysop tools) links to the page about to be deleted, but appears to be a piped link to $1. Such as:

"Caution: The destination article "Foobar" already exists. Do you want to delete it to make way for the move? (Check the edit history.)"

Not a big problem, but I hadn't noticed it before. Rkitko 20:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed it a couple of days ago. Just means a little bit more work. You have to delete it manually. Does someone know how to fix it? Woody (talk) 20:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Be sure to mention any other broken messages. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Rollback link in watchlists

Is it possible to add a rollback link to each edit seen on Special:Watchlist? This would be especially useful given the existence of tabs and popups. John Reaves 22:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

When I was granted the rollback privilege, it began appearing exactly like that. See Misplaced Pages:Rollback feature. —EncMstr 22:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC Never mind. I confused it with page history. —EncMstr 22:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm 99% sure there is a bugzilla request for this already. – Mike.lifeguard |  01:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:9305 --MZMcBride (talk) 02:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

custom rollback summary

Following the announcement, on this BRION edition, of the creation of some useful parameters for rollback summaries, I'd like to ask how to actually use these parameters. I just tried using the "$1" form directly in the edit summary here, but as you can see it didn't work. Probably a dumb mistake, but I want to know what is the right way to do it. Waldir 08:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It will have to be set project-wide at MediaWiki:Revertpage. Probably best to start discussion somewhere about it. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Here? in the talk page? somewhere else? Waldir 09:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, I ended up noting that what I did was an undo, not a revert. But the edit summaries for both would be greatly improved if included the extra info. The suggestion Roan Kattouw made in the bug page was:

Reverted revision $5 ($6) and earlier revisions by $2, reverted to revision $3 ($4) by $1

Waldir 09:31, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I tried a custom-summary rollback (setting 'summary' in the URL), and got this. It seems $variables aren't expanded in custom rollback summaries, only in the sitewide default. --ais523 10:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Would developers consider adding $variable replacement for the custom summaries as well as the site-wide one? Such a feature would be very useful. (In addition, perhaps have another rule, e.g. $$ → $, so that one can have dollar signs followed by numbers.) Gracenotes § 20:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Smart category searching

Is there any webpage out there, or is there any potential to upgrade Misplaced Pages, so I could cross reference categories? E.g, if I wanted to find Dutch actors born in 1970, I could cross reference our Dutch actors and 1970 births categories and come up with a list of articles that are in both category sets. I've poked around and can't find a way to do this, but it would be a really helpful tool for a lot of people. Any thoughts? Neıl ☎ 15:18, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser has a "list comparer" function that does just that. jwillbur 18:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, take a look at Misplaced Pages:Semantic Misplaced Pages. Especially, Misplaced Pages:Persondata and the correspondig wikiproject might be interesting. Waldir 18:23, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

And catscan of course, if the toolserver ever finishes importing the database after it crashed last week. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Give me 48 hours and Ill write a tool that is not dependant on the SQL Database. β 00:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Wicked !, though I'd prefer a commonshelper tool in that case :D --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

this tool will only be a temp tool. As for the commons helper, Ive got no clue how that operates. If There are any future tool request feel free to ask. β 00:18, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Can I get a copy of this tool? Might be helpful for some image stuff I currently ask East718 for. MBisanz 00:43, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

MBisanz, this will still be hosted by the toolserver. β 01:34, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Mediawiki:Readonlywarning

This message was (until I changed it, see ) very easy to miss. I'd also never (to my knowledge) seen it before, what determines when this is shown and when Mediawiki:Readonlytext is shown? It looks like when this is shown the text box is editable, but what's the difference between the actual database lock states that cause these two behaviors? —Random832 20:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:MODERN skin

Per above, I've been putting Modern skin bugs at WT:MODERN which points to MediaWiki talk:Modern.css. If that isn't the right place, please tell us here, move my comments, and re-redirect W:MODERN. Thanks. MilesAgain (talk) 22:50, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

for bugs in the skin itself (as opposed to problems with Misplaced Pages-specific CSS/JS), please file a bug at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org and assign it to me (river@wikimedia.org). if you really don't want to use bugzilla, you can write it on my talk page, but i don't check that very often. kate. —Preceding comment was added at 09:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Template parameter giving me no output...scratching my head...

Hi! I've been doing a slight re-tool on Template:WPFILMS Announcements in order to be able to transclude just the peer review list from the table w/o having the listing housed elsewhere. I've added a "peerreviewonly" parameter which should only display that part of the page when it "=yes", but right now it's just showing me nothing. Am I making some really obvious mistake? I basically set each of the other sides of the template on an #ifeq conditional that renders nothing if equal to yes, but the rest of the page if not equal. Help?! Many thanks in advance, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 02:24, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Did this edit by Geometry guy fix the problem? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:17, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Artist

I wonder if someone could have a look at this, as the blue colour of the bar at the top does not appear automatically when the template is pasted as shown in the documentation. Tyrenius (talk) 04:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

To get the default blue bar, omit the "| bgcolour = " line. DH85868993 (talk) 07:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Most vandalized pages problems

Firefox freezes when I access the "most vandalized pages" page. I'm using FasterFox. Is it related to the new preprocesser? Dalekusa (talk) 16:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Running a parser diff test shows no difference, but it is a very long page with lots of links. To display it Firefox is going to have to check every one of those links to see if it's in the history and should be displayed in a different colour. That could slow it down if you have a long browser history. Perhaps as a first thing to check, try clearing the history and see if the problem persists. • Anakin 17:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Template substitution not working correctly

I came back to Misplaced Pages today after a week off only to find that the preformatted code on User:TwinsMetsFan/citeny no longer works. When I paste the code onto a page with a reference tag ({{reflist}} or <references />) and preview/save, the resulting code is borked, as the "template" isn't accepting any parameters nor is it subst'ing the parsers correctly. More information available on request; TIA. --TMF 00:02, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Probably due to the new Parser that the servers are running now. See m:Migration to the new preprocessor. I have not looked at the code yet, because i really need to stop editing for today, but if no one else has fixed it by tomorrow, I will definitely take a look at it for you. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It looks like something's messed up with the <ref> tags. I know it used to be that pipe tricks didn't work in references, but now it looks like the problem has gone one step further and parameters in templates within references no longer work either (as the much simpler User:TwinsMetsFan/citeny2 doesn't work anymore, whether I subst or not). This is a real PITA since the point of having these pages was to use them to quickly generate references that I use multiple times in one day. --TMF 18:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I have made the basic change that uses the new parserfunction #tag, but i'm unsure how to specify name= for a ref with that technique. I'm hoping someone will be able to tell us. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:02, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, everything works great now except for the issue with the ref name you mentioned. Hopefully someone will have the answer for that. --TMF 21:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I did some messing around in a sandbox, and to me it seems that the third usage example shown on doesn't work, at least not here. Not even the default example worked - when I previewed it, it spit out an "invalid language" error, which tells me that it's not reading the "attribute" parameter. So that explains why the ref name= isn't working ATM. --TMF 21:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

{{#tag:ref|<refcontetns>|<name="", etc.>}} should do it. Test below.

1. ^ zomg a ref!

--MZMcBride (talk) 02:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That worked perfectly! Thanks! Now all that's left is for someone to correct the parameter order on the extension's MediaWiki page. =) --TMF 02:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is one of slight misunderstanding. The instructions you are referring to are for an extension, while the #tag being used on Wikimedia is a core parser function of slightly different operation (for example: the #tag here cannot generate html tags, only xml-style parser hooks). However, the instructions for the #tag we have are not 100% correct either. These help pages probably need updating: m:Help:Magic_words#Formatting, m:Help:Parser_function -- --Splarka (rant) 08:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Strange diff

SineBot signed a comment at my talk page, but the diff is rather perplexing. I am sure this is not a problem with the bot because editing the version before the bot signed and pressing the "Show changes" button show that the only difference is the signature, however editing the previous version and clicking the "diff" to the current version, it shows many differences that do not exist. Any idea? -- ReyBrujo (talk) 00:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

This is faster: click here, pressing the "current version diff" shows something different than pressing the "Show changes" button, although both should do the same (this would likely work until my talk page is edited). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 00:06, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Prodego 02:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Any news here? I noticed you removed the transclusion in your sandbox, yet my talk page is still protected via cascading through it. Never mind, it is free now (apparently there was a delay between releasing the page and actually freeing it). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 01:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Several new proposals for Template:Episode list and other notes

I've made a bunch of proposals for the episode templates {{Episode list}} and {{Japanese episode list}} (such as dedicated "Director" and "Writer" fields), as well as a method of translcuding season pages onto main LOE pages, plus other notes. Input from anyone interested would be greatly appreciated. See Template talk:Episode list#Revamp -- Ned Scott 06:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

quickUnwatch -- please evaluate

Please evaluate User:Gutza/quickUnwatch.js – at some point in the future I'd like to propose it as a gadget, but for now only a few people have tested it, and I'd like to hear from more of you. The script allows you to quickly unwatch pages directly from Special:Watchlist by showing a "(-w)" link besides each of the article/talk pages in the list. It should work under any skin, under any modern JS-enabled browser, with any watchlist preferences.

Known issue: because of server-side caches, you occasionally click on a "-w" link, the watchlist is refreshed, but the page is still visible in the list. Upon manually reloading the watchlist (without any further action), the page is shown to have been removed from the list. I doubt this can be fixed client-side, but I'm very much open for suggestions. --Gutza 10:06, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice idea, although already implemented in wlUnwatch :) By the way, escape() doesn't work very well with non-ASCII pagenames, use encodeURIComponent() instead ∴ AlexSm 20:53, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

/me makes superhuman efforts to refrain from wielding a huge trout against self.

Nah, escape() is there just to escape single and double quotes because I'm passing the article name as a parameter in onClick() via HTML. But then again, who cares? :-) Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! --Gutza 21:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Login Password security

When I login or, even worse, when I create an account, I do so in an unsecure environment. There's no automatic encryption; the site reads "http" not "https". It's all well and good to urge people to make a secure password, but I, for one, am unwilling to trust a secure password to vagaries of an unencrypted web.

JohnGHissong (talk) 23:59, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Even entering the site using https:, bits and pieces use http:, and by the time login is complete, it is completely http:. Is this an intentional feature? —EncMstr 00:02, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You can use the secure server at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/Main_Page Harryboyles 01:29, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Note that if you log in over HTTPS, even though parts go over HTTP, none of your login details are transmitted in the clear. The only things that use HTTP are images mostly, Wikimedia-wide notices like the fundraiser banner that was up, and the page stats counter that triggers once every 6,000th page view or something. But the login cookies don't get sent on the HTTP requests. Only trouble is people have a habit of pasting en.wikipedia.org diffs because it's simpler, so you find yourself logged out (I always use {{fullurl}} for them). But it is secure. • Anakin 16:14, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Capital ß

Unicode is currently planning on adding a capital version of ß (sharp s) in Version 5.1 (expected March 2008). That presents a potential technical problem in that currently we map initial lowercase letters to uppercase. So what will be done for ß when support for Unicode 5.1 is added to the MediaWiki software? Special case it as a lowercase letter for its one article (and 10 redirects added for articles about subjects that begin with the Greek letter β), move it to the uppercase, or use it as an excuse for ending automatic case folding? Caerwine Caer’s whines 00:36, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

We could look at how Greek letters such as π are covered. If the capital is truly the same letter, we could also used the {{lowercase}} template. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Granted that Π is a redirect to Pi, but you enter п, you get told that you have been redirected to Pi from Π, not π because of the case folding. However, when Mediawiki eventually does go to 5.1, if we don't make plans for it, we'll have 11 entries in the article database that actually begin with something no entry now does, a lowercase letter, and that could well cause problems, especially since there are quite a few links to ß within Misplaced Pages, not to mention those that are without. Caerwine Caer’s whines 00:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I see what you mean now. If we do switch to a new Unicode version, the devs can easily write and execute a script to change the names of the articles in the database to use the correct case. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:19, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki is already fully case-sensitive. The only reason first-letter capitalization does not matter is that the $wgCapitalLinks switch is set to case-insensitive. Titoxd 08:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Linking to section headings

I'm working on creating a customized TOC and can't figure out how to do something (or if it's possible).

Can you link to a section heading without knowing it's name? Let's say I had:

== Heading 1 ==
text-text-text
===Foo===
text-text-text
===Bar===
text-text-text
===Cheese===
text-text-text

I know I could link to the particular sections with ], but is there a way I could link to, say, section 1.2 (Bar) without knowing it's name? Thanks in advance! --omtay38 02:59, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing in the generated html that would correspond. Unless, of course, you modified the page to have additional anchors.... —EncMstr 03:02, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Cool cool, thanks! --omtay38 03:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Fatal database error

Click on "What links here" and then "show redirects only".

I would enter this into the bug tracker, but frankly, I would prefer someone more experienced with the bug tracker do it because I have had bad experiences with bugzillas in the past. Also I am pressed for time and wish to contribute encyclopedic content with the time I have left. Thank you. MilesAgain (talk) 06:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

The "redirects only" tool is on the toolserver. The toolsever is down, and has been that way for some time. Graham87 11:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a nuisance actually, because the WP:Help desk tells people to search the FAQ first so we don't get asked "how do I post a new article?" five times a day, and now we are, because the FAQ is on Nubio, and that needs the toolserver. • Anakin 11:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Query.php extension?

I'm starting to get errors in pictures. They will load sometimes but other times they will not. When they don't load, I get the tooltip message Image preview failed :( Is the query.php extension installed?

Anyone know what might cause this? Gatoclass (talk) 13:55, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume you're using popups because I got the same error. XENON54 | talk | who? | 02 Feb 2008 17:01_GMT

Yeah, I am using popups. Gatoclass (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

query.php is obsolete and should not be used. Use api.php instead. query.php will be removed at any time. _→AzaToth 17:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure about that? query.php is not entirely obselete. For example, api.php does not (as far as I am aware) give a way to request the contributions for multiple users at once. If query.php will be 'removed at any time' then this would need to be publicised since there are likely to be applications using it both internal and external to Misplaced Pages. Tra (Talk) 01:09, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

How do I use "api.php"? Gatoclass (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You'd have to modify popups.js. The image page preview has been broken for a while now, though, and Lupin hasn't fixed it. Tuvok 18:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Performance improvement

I've made a request at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Big performance improvement that we serve the scripts that fix bugs in Internet Explorer only to users of Internet Explorer. This would significantly boost page load times for users of other browsers. Comments would be welcome. —Remember the dot 21:57, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Getting rid of unwanted watchlist item.

(Copied from Misplaced Pages:Help desk)

The last entry on my watchlist is:

Misplaced Pages:SOURCE

It is marked as a dead link, but it isn't, of course. When I look at the redirect page, it does not have an "unwatch" tab. When I check it and click on "remove titles" it still remains on my list.

When I "edit raw watchlist" and delete it, it is still on my list.

I tried "watch" then "unwatch". It is still my list.

How can I get rid of it? --Softtest123 (talk) 13:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That sounds very strange. It's only possible to make general suggestions, not knowing what's causing it, but try "edit raw watchlist" again, making sure to hit the "Update Watchlist" button, and try clearing your browser cache. If that does not fix it, post at WP:Village pump (technical) - in case there is some strange database issue the devs should know about. Hopefully this will help. • Anakin 13:56, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

It also sounds strange to me. The general treatment of WP: has changed. I don't know whether this can cause watchlist problems if you were watching a WP: page like WP:SOURCE. Does http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=WP:SOURCE&action=unwatch or http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:SOURCE&action=unwatch work? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:55, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

This may be some side effect of the WP: to Misplaced Pages: "namespace alias" feature change in the MediaWiki software. Some discussion about this change has appeared on the Help desk: Search Help desk for: WP: Misplaced Pages: namespace alias. Speaking for myself only, I have not been too fond of this change where I have noticed it. It seems likely to break some things that subtly depend on the previous way things worked. Misplaced Pages is so intricate that it's hard to change any basic feature without breaking something. --Teratornis (talk) 19:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I hadn't tried clearing my cache, so I did, though it seems that when I have had cache problems with Firefox before all I needed to do was simply reload the page. The problem persists.

I get:

Your watchlist has been updated.
1 title was removed:
    * Misplaced Pages:SOURCE (Talk)
Your watchlist contains 25 titles, excluding talk pages. 

and

...
Voluntary Voting System Guidelines
Voting machine
Misplaced Pages:SOURCE
User:WimdeValk
Misplaced Pages:Template messages/Sources of articles
Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Citation cleanup
...

every time I delete it

I'll submit this section to WP:Village pump (technical).--Softtest123 (talk) 22:51, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Improving appearance of Misplaced Pages articles...

Dear Friends,

On most Misplaced Pages pages that have footnotes the gap in the line above the note is increased, and gives the whole article a ragged effect. A piece of css code can fix that easily.

Just add the following to your main .css: sup {vertical-align:text-top;} and see the difference!

Best wishes,

Ananda

Sunday, 2nd February 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.54.67.33 (talk) 23:51, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That would push the <sup> text down to the same level as the text itself, so I don't thinkit's a good idea. — Edokter • Talk • 00:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Mzajac/monobook.css/Superscript fix this might be something to look at as well if want to fix it. I believe that so far there has not been a solution that worked properly across all browsers... --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It would not push the text down to the same level as the text, but to the top of the font height. I can't demonstrate it here. But on my webpage the effect can be seen, and is quite acceptable. Have a look at http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Buddhist-Texts/K3-Udana-BJT/1-Bodhi-10.htm for an example. Ananda-53 (talk) 02:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

See vs. see. x42bn6 Talk Mess 05:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

That's using Ananda's code suggestion.

Using Mzajac's you get: See vs. see. Which looks the same to me (in current firefox, under ubuntu linux, using the Freesans font).

And I strongly agree with somehow fixing this, if it's possible. The articles do indeed look terrible in Opera and Safari (and any other affected browsers). -- Quiddity (talk) 08:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be dependent on the font used. Certain fonts produce especially large vertical gaps (possibly varying still further across platforms/browsers?), OpenSymbol, Chandas, Jarul, and "serif", are very bad on my system. -- Quiddity (talk) 08:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

They look bad in my IE browser too, but I have a fix. I just take all the footnotes out of the article and it looks fine. ;) Franamax (talk) 10:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The solution of Mzajac works very well for me in Safari, Opera and Firefox (all latest versions). The problem is mostly with IE i think (which i cannot test), and older versions of browsers. We might be able to construct some tests that limit the Mzajac solution to just a few browsers perhaps. I too am really interested in it, so i'll look further into it on Monday perhaps (won't get around to it today i think). --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Two issues at Misplaced Pages:Translation

The first problem can be seen at Misplaced Pages:Translation/*/In Progress and Misplaced Pages:Translation/*/Proofreaders Needed. In the template box in the upper left corner of the page, only as late as November 2007 is shown. I put the months up to February 2008 into the template (the template is Template:Translation/Months, which shows the same problem). Interestingly, all of the months do show up in the problem pages' tables of contents.

The second problem can be seen at Misplaced Pages:Translation/*/Translation Requests and Misplaced Pages:Translation/*/Completed Translations. Neither of these pages even show the table of contents. The template problem applies to these pages, too.

I'm not familiar with the code {{#if: {{{include_all|}}} so I won't attempt to work it out on my own. But I think that piece of code, found at Template:Translation/Months, might be the source of both problems. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 01:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Issue one is fixed. Looking at #2 now. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:16, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Got it. Issue two was an overflow of the post expand limitation that the software puts on templates. I suggest simply deprecating this method that is used now. With this I mean that on the pages that include everything (Misplaced Pages:Translation/*/Translation Requests and Misplaced Pages:Translation/*/Completed Translations), you should no longer use the {{Translation/Months}} template, but simply hardcode each separate month inclusion. It might be a tad more work, but you simply cannot put as much text in a single template. If you need me to set this up, than leave a note, and I will fix it tomorrow, if no one has responded before me. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Color picker

Good evening,

On #wikipedia-fr (the French Wikipédia IRC channel), an user has requested help about adding colored text in articles (e.g. for a legend "in red").

As a model is not really a good idea in these case (how to choose the hexadecimal color code?), I've coded http://www.dereckson.be/tools/colorpicker/ to help him.

The left area is to pick the right color, with a Photoshop-like interface.

The right area is divided in 3 tabs:

• at left, you write the text to hue
• switch to the middle tab to preview hued text (update in real time)
• the last tab gives you the code to copy/paste in the wiki.

Enjoy ;-) --Dereckson (talk) 03:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

That's some gorgeous JavaScript right there. x42bn6 Talk Mess 05:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

We used to have a list of online color pickers at Color tool (which was useful at one point, but was starting to get too big, and is now sadly all gone). This is a particularly good example though. Nicely done. -- Quiddity (talk) 04:56, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Image renaming

• Bugzilla link: 709

While it's not currently possible to move/rename images, Betacommand has a bot that can perform the function for us the hard way.

Requests for image movement should be placed at the bottom of Misplaced Pages talk:Image renaming. Admins are automatically authorized for the use of this tool, and non-admins may be added by having an admin list you at the bottom of Misplaced Pages:Image renaming, which also includes instructions on using the tool.

There is no "Requests for" process involved, you just need to have a reasonably good edit history.

Related pages can be found in Category:Image renaming ~Kylu (u|t) 06:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Spare bot in town?

I often need to change hatnotes generated manually by users into {{dablink}} templated messages. The benefits are obvious - they become non-printable and can be programmed by users in their stylesheet.

Typically, these hatnotes take the form of :'' (indent and then italics). This makes them ideal for a bot-assisted search and replace operation. Anyone have a spare bot that could be used for this purpose? Unfortunately, Misplaced Pages search does not allow search for formatting. API access is therefore a prerequisite. JFW | T@lk 08:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Best place to ask is at Misplaced Pages:Bot requests. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Text and links that appear when creating new articles

Recently, the default text and links that appear when creating a new article seem to have changed. Right now it only says

• Before creating your article, please read Misplaced Pages:Your first article.
• As you create the article, please provide references to reliable sources. Without sources, the article may be deleted.

This is fine, but I seem to recall that previously there was a link to look for links to the article and to search for the term. Am I imagining that these links used to be there? If I'm not mistaken, I thought those links were very convenient to help avoid accidentally creating duplicate articles. older ≠ wiser 17:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I concur thoroughly. While you can use the "what links here" link in the left-hand column to check incoming links, there is now no link to search for the term, which can be handy especially for alternate capitalisations and hyphenations. I'd very much welcome its return. Qwghlm (talk) 18:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Came here for the same reason. This needs to be undone, or at least merged with the previous setup. Richard001 (talk) 23:49, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Ditto. I support the simplified box because noone seemed to read the old one, but now I realise we need the search link back, prominently, or people will create articles just because they can't spell the title. • Anakin 17:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Note that the text (which depends on the namespace of the created page) is from MediaWiki:Newarticletext, discussed on MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

CommonSettings.php

I can get commonsettings.php to work for my new MediaWiki 1.12 copy I downloaded from SVN, however I don't quite get InitialiseSettings.php as per http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/InitialiseSettings.php.html

why does the CommonSettings.php page (http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/CommonSettings.php.html) not include the following line:

$wgGroupPermissions = true;

According to mediawiki.org it says that line has to be included in CommonSettings.php or LocalSettings.php for stewards to set rights on other wikis - which I did using the above text.

Anyone able to help me with this one?? Also, what would I do to get InitialiseSettings.php working?? Thanks, --Solumeiras (talk) 19:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

(P.S. Anyone who can help me with this gets a barnstar!)

The files at noc.wikimedia are horribly outdated. Also, the default install of MediaWiki doesn't use CommonSettings, it uses LocalSettings. It's a personal preference of the Wikimedia sysadmins to use the name CommonSettings. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• I was trying to make it so that when I set up my MediaWiki installs on my localhost XAMPP server, they all have the same settings as Wikimedia does. Thanks, --Solumeiras (talk) 18:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Advanced template question

Is there any way to force the arguments of a template to resolve/execute first prior before actaully calling a template? That is, is there anyway to have: {{t1|a{{#if:{{{b|}}}|{{!}}b|}}|c}} as the content of template t2 such that {{t2|a=1|c=3}} executes {{t1|1|3}} while {{t2|a=1|b=2|c=3}} executes {{t1|1|2|3}}

Basically, this is try to provide a alternating color infobox where entries are optional; I thought using one base template to provided the alternating color functionality using unnamed parameters, and then having the infobox template format a call to this would work (as done on the Navbox template), but the execution order fails more. Of course, if anyone has a better suggestion/existing solution, I'd love to hear it. --MASEM 01:07, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It cannot be done in the new parser as you described, but the effect can be done other ways. _→AzaToth 01:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Such as? :-) --MASEM 01:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Parameter names can be conditional, e.g. {{t1|{{{a}}}|{{#if:{{{b|}}}|2}}={{{b}}}|{{#if:{{{b|}}}|3|2}}={{{c}}}}}.--Patrick (talk) 10:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Not in the new parser. _→AzaToth 10:44, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It looks like it still works, I just tried it . The equals sign cannot be conditional.--Patrick (talk) 11:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

While that's good to know, I don't think that will work for what I'm trying to do; if the equal sign is required, then so must be the vertical bar to separate parameters. I almost need to be able to construct the template call as a string, then feed that string to the parser to work through.

I'm still curious as to what AzaToth mentioned as other ways to achieve the effect of an alternating color table. As I've noted, I've got a template that has some named parameters for appearance control, but otherwise the other 20 parameters are unnamed, so that the first argument is shown in the odd-row style, the second in even-row style, and so forth. With the above, since I cannot seem to leave out the vertical bar, an empty argument (resulting from an optional parameter in the main infobox template) will create an empty argument to the alternating color template, and will result in either a blank row being shown or two rows of the same color next to each other, depending on if I seek empty vs undef, neither which is a solution. (if only we have in-template variable support! :-) --MASEM 17:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

For every entry you can count the number of previous entries with code like {{#if:{{{a|}}}|1|0}} + {{#if:{{{b|}}}|1|0}} + .., and check whether it is odd or even. It is rather cumbersome because the total number of such terms is ca. 1/2 of the square of the potential number of items (20 -> 200). If the conditions are complicated, so preferably not repeated, compute an integer of which the binary representation forms the Boolean array indicating which items are selected, and pass that on to another template, like in m:Template:Short DOW ipv (backlinks edit) discussed briefly in m:Help:Array#Producing_multiple_array_elements_in_standard_order.2C_without_duplicates.--Patrick (talk) 02:23, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

(←)Ok, I've figured out a way to do this, basically adding up the number of defined unnamed parameters in an #ifexpr, using the mod 2 result to determine odd or even (similar to the above). Of course, now I'm stuck on returns in the table layout: If I use {{User:Masem/infobox/base|title=Page title|1|1|||3|3|4|4|||6|6|7|7|||9|9|||||||13|13|es=background:#f0f0f0;|os=}}, I get the result shown to the right. The extra spaces on the table are a result of having two (or more) empty rows between those that are defined (based on using Special:ExpandTemplates, which seem to automatically create a <br/> and I can't figure out how to not prevent an unneeded row from creating a blank line. I've tried HTML commenting to link lines together with no luck. Any pointers here? --MASEM 07:04, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

See the second part of the section m:Help:Table#Conditional_table_row.--Patrick (talk) 09:33, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

query.php interface will be removed soon

Read bugzilla:12881 and http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-api/2008-February/000345.html for more details — VasilievVV (talk) 04:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It should not be removed just because there's another api available, since it is already being used by several user scripts and perhaps also by other applications outside of Misplaced Pages. Tra (Talk) 17:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Those applications should use the API instead. Gracenotes § 17:36, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I think Tra is quite correct that removing what was advertised as a stable interface is a poor choice. On the other hand, it seems to be a fait accompli, so the scripts do need to be changed to use api.php. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I hope the idea for a backwards-compatibility wrapper to be left in place is acted upon. Some tools that use query.php aren't in particularly active development anymore, and those would break were query.php just simply removed. Tuvok 19:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Minimal ToC?

Other than the alphabetical compact Table of Contents templates, is there a means to either

• Disable the numbering on the standard TOC, or
• Limit it to a certain level, e.g. Level 2 and 3 headings only?

I ask because the TOC at Misplaced Pages:New_articles_(New_Zealand) is very ugly - the item numbers run on into the actual dates which are the headings, and it is excessively long. Just the months might suffice. dramatic (talk) 04:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if you can limit numbers, but you can do level heading limits with {{TOClimit}}. --MASEM 05:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

You can remove TOC numbers with <div class="nonumtoc">__TOC__</div>. --Splarka (rant) 08:27, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks, that looks much better. dramatic (talk) 22:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Going from a redirect's talk page to the redirect without getting lost

Admittedly, there have been several improvements over the years in respect with redirects. One no longer gets carried to the redirect's target when saving an edit to the redirect, and one can also avoid this abrupt journey when following a link from a category, and I think from a couple of other places (as usually, my memory serves me badly here).

I think there is another transition to be improved. The cleverer of you might have guessed it already by looking at the message's title. Personally, I find it stupid to write a message in a redirect's talk page (a protected one, in my case; I was asking for an administrator's help), then try to go back to the redirect and have it... redirect you.

To make a long story short, I now do solemny propose that the upper-left corner tag of a redirect should incorporate the "redirect=no" function (or something like that), at least when returning from a talk page. As I think that the tag's main function is to refresh the page as is, or, again, something like that, I have few hopes of this getting done. I do think, however, that it would save many editors from an unnecessary journey back and forth. Waltham, The Duke of 01:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello? Yes, I am right here. Waltham, The Duke of 22:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I do not like moving posts around, but I will not be ignored. I should like to know exactly how ridiculous my idea is or is not before having it archived. Waltham, The Duke of 11:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Good idea.

By the way, for a redirect in a category, the link on the category page redirects you to the target, which I think is good (except in the case of a category just for redirects, intended to keep track of them).--Patrick (talk) 12:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

How many pages use a template

Wondering if there is a way to find out how many pages use a particular template such as Template:Infobox Rugby Union biography.Londo06 13:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Go to "what links here" in the toolbox, and select the article namespace. There is no reason for an article to directly link to a template so we can safely assume all links are transclusions (i.e. the template is being used). In thiscase it is used 260 times. Fiddle with the numbered links to figure that out. Graham87 13:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Also see Special:Mostlinkedtemplates, as the top templates will be there. • Anakin 17:58, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe there are some tools on toolserv that can do the counting as well, and not count page links. Not sure where it is, though. -- Ned Scott 03:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

You can also use the API, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=embeddedin&eititle=Template:Stub&eilimit=500 . MER-C 04:48, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Delete reason dropdown script

Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Delete reason dropdown script —Random832 17:26, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

posts on talk page without any signatures

Maybe this isn't a bug, but I have noticed this on many talk pages. (I don't want to add clutter, but could give examples if necessary). In these cases, there are parts of a section, or an entire section, of a talk page that is not followed by a signature (including the "unsigned" default). Is this a problem? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Z1perlster (talk • contribs)

Like yours, just now? People forget to sign with ~~~~. There are bots that try to catch these comments and sign in their name, or users may sign them with the {{unsigned}} template (like I just did with your post). It is preferred if people signed, but sometimes they just forget ;-) Technically, MediaWiki won't sign if you forgot to do that. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 03:03, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I was talking with a non-Wikipedian (non-idiot, but non-technical) friend, and she actually found the requirement to sign comments intimidating enough to avoid commenting altogether: User:Omegatron/Interviews with Normals — Omegatron 04:20, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It would be more user-friendly if we could use a real forum system like phpBB instead of the wikicode. Maybe someday... —Remember the dot 05:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Someday we may have mw:Extension:LiquidThreads. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:42, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Namespaces as subdomains

Would it be possible/desirable to make namespaces into subdomains? Like Image:something.jpg's address would start with http://images.en.wikipedia.org and Misplaced Pages: namespace pages would start with wikipedia.en.wikipedia.org? The only reason I have in mind is that it would make it easier to Google site: search within a namespace.  :) Any other benefits/disadvantages you can think of? — Omegatron 04:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The MediaWiki software really isn't designed to do that... —Remember the dot 04:47, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

And I think there is some deal/method we have to screen out certain namespaces from google, so a person searching George Bush will get an article, as opposed to the Talk: George Bush page, which might be more active and have more external links. MBisanz 04:52, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

You could probably do that with Apache rewrite rules, but that would be insanely computationally expensive for a site of Misplaced Pages's size, and I'm not really sure about the benefit. Titoxd 04:59, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

You should be able to search for any namespace with Google (say, site:en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia: for Misplaced Pages namespace, and site:en.wikipedia.org/Image: for image namespace). You may get a few false positives, though. And while talking about search, I noticed the MediaWiki search has been downgraded (before I could search for *.play-asia.com/SOap, but now it does not take into account the directory, it would also return *.play-asia.com/paOS results, which were previously filtered out). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 05:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It is my experience that Google searches all namespaces except article talk.

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/ - millions of hits including articles

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk: - no hits (except the article Talk)

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/User: - many hits on this and all the following

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/User talk:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia talk:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Image:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Image talk:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/MediaWiki:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/MediaWiki talk:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Template:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Template talk:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Help:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Help talk:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Category:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Category talk:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Portal:

google:site:http://en.wikipedia.org/Portal talk:

Searching old sentences on article talk pages doesn't give Google hits at http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk. Misplaced Pages:Searching#Google says: "Google indexes all namespaces". It looks like this should be altered. I don't see a reason for Google to omit article talk in http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt or the rendered talk pages. Does anybody know why they do it? Could it be their own choice independent of us? Yahoo includes article talk in search results. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please restore the 'what links here' link to the post-move Special:Movepage screen

Drives me nuts when that disappears. Thanks Shawis (talk) 08:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I restored it. See also wp:VPR#Suggest removal of 'please fix double redirects' message after page move..--Patrick (talk) 09:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

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