Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:24, 12 April 2009

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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.

succession box

succession box on this page is not working pl help..User:Yousaf465 (talk)

Icons in sidebars

Moved to: Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#Icons in sidebars.

Wikimania Announcement on sign-in page - be gone

Currently it's for Wikimania, or some disease, but I am not interested in contibuting - I gave at the office - is there a way to get this daily announcement away? I see it each time I log in and it is quite annoying. -- Banjeboi 06:41, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Where are you seeing this message, and what is its precise text? I can't see any such thing. Algebraist 09:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

There's a dismiss button attached to the message. Click it, and the message will go away for a while, unless you have disabled cookies on your browser. Graham87 09:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I just logged out, cleared my cache and logged back in. I didn't see anything. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:54, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

My bad, it's on all pages, my pages WP pages and articles as well. It says - "The Call for Participation for Wikimania 2009 has been released. Submit your presentations before April 15." I thought I had added code to rid myself of banner ads like this but there it is again. Do we have a workaround? It's really annoying. -- Banjeboi 19:54, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, that thing. The 'hide' link ought to work, or you could add

#siteNotice {display: none;}

to Special:Mypage/monobook.css to remove central notices for good. Algebraist 20:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I have that code but it doesn't seem to effect this one. Is there another code? -- Banjeboi 21:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

That CSS ought to work, unless you're not using monobook or your browser doesn't support CSS properly. Algebraist 09:23, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

That's why I was surprised, this has apparently worked fine in the past - could they be doing some workaround? -- Banjeboi 12:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

They aren't. It's working as well for me (and Zain, it seems) as ever. Algebraist 12:09, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm using a Firefox browser but it's worked fine before. -- Banjeboi 15:25, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Benjiboi: I bet you have to log in to Misplaced Pages each time you have restarted your browser, right? So you have not set your cookie permissions right.

But I see that you indeed have added that CSS code to your personal /monobook.css page. I just tested and that CSS does work. So in your case the cookie setting no longer should matter. So, have you bypassed your browser cache yet? You have to do that to see any changes you have done to your user /monobook.css. Since the CSS and javascript files from Misplaced Pages are cached for up to 31 days in the web browsers.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:28, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I've changed my cookie setting on my browser, let's see if that was the issue. -- Banjeboi 03:45, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Assigning category based on namespace

Guys and gals, I am having a heck of a morning. can anyone remind me how to use the parser functions to check namespace value to assign a category? Basically, IF Namespace = Template Then Category:Nav Templates

Got up too early, went to bed too late. Thanks for the help.

] 14:21, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:Template}}|]}}
Amalthea 14:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Or use one of our easy to use namespace detection templates such as {{template other}}. Or if you need more complex detection use {{namespace detect}}. For instance like this:

{{template other
| ]
| <!-- Don't categorise when not in template space. -->
}}

Since the namespace detection templates have the "demospace" feature they can be much better to use than to hardcode the detection, since it makes it possible to test and demonstrate the different behaviours of your template in its own documentation.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:10, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Recursion

The dev's seem to have broken recursion so now {{NextArchive}} doesn't work (a template I hacked together in my spare time; not widely used). See the template's wikitext for details on how it worked. Why doesn't that work anymore? I was thinking of extending it to {{FAC}}, but now I can't. I know it's a horrible hack, but if you don't like how my code looks, don't make me program in the equivalent of a COBOL/Pascal hybrid; give me sanity, or at least turing completeness. This type of check should be trivial, but now I can't see how to do it at all without writing a lot of boring code (like {{FAC}} is right now) and tying yourself to an arbitrary upper bound. --Thinboy00 @933, i.e. 21:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

This was deliberate, because these sorts of infinitely recursing templates were taking up ~40% of the CPU time of the entire Wikimedia cluster and also causing fatal OOM errors. If you want to discuss it, contact Domas Mituzas or Tim Starling on IRC.

Wikitext is not supposed to be a programming language, it's supposed to be a markup language. — Werdna • talk 04:04, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Too late. I think it's Turing-complete these days. --Carnildo (talk) 08:31, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thinboy00: I have spent some day thinking about your problem. I think I now have a much more efficient solution for your {{NextArchive}} template and some other archive templates. But it is too complex to explain here. I will contact you when I have coded up those solutions. It might take some time, I am pretty busy, although this is the kind of programming I love to do. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:41, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like Fermat's last solution. Gimmetrow 15:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Gimmetrow: Okay, you provoked me to disclose what I am going to do. But don't blame me if you get a headache from reading this:

As far as I know: The only way to find out how many archive pages a page has is to use the #ifexist parser function, since we must check if the archive pages exist or not. But #ifexist is a rather expensive operation since the server that parses the template has to call one of the database servers to check if the page exist or not.

But we don't need to check all the archive pages, we just need to find the last one. So I am going to use a binary search to find the last page. (But with some modifications so it works better in template code, and so we find low values faster.) Thus I can find the last archive page in the range 1-199 with about 8 #ifexist calls. That is much more efficient than the approaches used now. If we need to check higher numbers I can do that too, but I don't think we need more for now. I have already coded a binary search for another template that searches the range 0-500, so I know how to do it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:11, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Featured Topic page gone crazy

I am pretty sure that Misplaced Pages:Featured topics is not supposed to look the way that it does. Something has drastically gone wrong. -MBK₀₀₄ 07:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Cydebot malfunctioned. Should be all OK now (it's a great way to pad your edit count!) MER-C 08:46, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Icons in WikiProject banners

A recent change to {{WPBannerMeta}} has meant that it now displays little icons next to the quality assessment for all grades (B-Class, Stub-Class, Template-Class, etc); previously they were only shown for FA, FL, A and GA classes. Although we're determined to make this a user preference, with people being able to use personal CSS to see whichever icons they want, there's some discussion still over what the default appearance should be. If anyone here actually gives a damn (:D), we'd love to hear your thoughts on the icons at Template talk:WPBannerMeta#-Class. Happy‑melon 09:43, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

People want user preferences to change the little icons in WikiProject templates? Seriously? --Apoc2400 (talk) 20:45, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

By that I mean it's possible to play with them in personal CSS, not that there's a checkbox in Special:Preferences for them. That would indeed be a little OTT... :D Happy‑melon 20:47, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Commons top icon

You may notice that for some time, image pages that mirror a file on Commons, display a small Commons icon in the top-right corner. However, the icon overlaps the top edit link generated by MediaWiki:Gadget-edittop.js. This would normally not a problem, if the icon has an id, but the Commons icon does not. Where is that icon generated, and is it possible to add an id="commons-icon" to its declaration, so it can be accounted for in the script? — Edokter • Talk • 13:15, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sharedupload --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:28, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! — Edokter • Talk • 13:33, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

RSS feed

I want to set up RSS feeds for user talk pages and maybe a few article pages. How do I do that? I went to WP:Syndication, but I couldn't find the icon in the history page that I am supposed to click. Griffinofwales (talk) 17:51, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

It's in the toolbox, down the left hand side on the history page. Tra (Talk) 18:41, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Special input box for sources when creating a new article

I suggest that when creating a new article, there be a new input box labeled 'Sources'. It would be below the main text box, and the same width but only a few lines high. If anything is entered there, it will be appended to the article under a heading 'Sources'. A bullet point (*) is added at the beginning of each line if not already present.

This would encourage new editors to add sources when creating new articles without having to figure out the <ref></ref> system. Experienced editors probably prefer to enter references in the main text box, so it should be possible to disable the 'Sources' box under preferences. --Apoc2400 (talk) 20:38, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Not exactly what you describe, but you can enable Special:Preferences → Gadgets → refTools. --Gadget850 (talk) 20:45, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I was already using refTools. I don't want this for myself, for new editors who may be unsure of where to put sources, and might need a more direct reminder. --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

This is much better than the suggestion to change "Edit summary" to "Summary and sources". –xeno (talk) 20:45, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. If we do that sort of thing, separate input is the way to go. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:29, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• It's not a bad idea, but it has issues. How do you encourage inline citations and what do you do when such a header already exists? = Mgm| 12:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• It would only be displayed when creating a new article. If someone adds both inline citations and uses this box, then there will be two reference sections until somebody gets around to fixing it. Fixing reference formatting is easy compared to digging up sources for unreferenced articles. --Apoc2400 (talk) 15:26, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• It does require a bit of a mind change. However, if this field is used- a bot can pass the information to the controlling Project group who will want to ce the new article. In doing so, this line can be changed to a cite, the section into a bibliography, and harvard notation used to insert inline refs. Ok, there are a lot of assumptions there too! As to the question of how you encourage citation. If there is a new box to fill- we can expect a two line prompt and it is here we leave links to a page about correct referencing. Just a thought. --ClemRutter (talk) 15:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Help please

Something very weird just happenned. After I leftthis comment on an article talkpage, I was unexplainedly unlogged and the edit was attributed, instead of me to Palaboys (talk · contribs). I haven't a clue how or why but could someone fully block Palaboys? With the recent block and disruption regarding Barney Frank I'm concerned about a technical hack. -- Banjeboi 02:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe you. It sounds like the details might be different in your case, but if it was anything like mine, this is some kind of rare, bizarre server hiccup, and Palaboys probably hasn't done anything. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

If anyone here has a clue how this might have happened, please chime in. Palaboys has been (rather unfairly, IMHO) blocked for this, and I'm pretty sure this is just a technical glitch of some kind. --Floquenbeam (talk) 03:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Palaboys, may be someone's valid account but ... this is a big glitch if it applies edits under a different user name. Just to help a bit here I use a floating IP, shared set of IP's that changes when one launches onto the Internet, and no, I don't use wifi. -- Banjeboi 03:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Normally this shouldn't happen in that case either, since the login is stored in a cookie which is linked to your computer. I see Palaboys was created 1 minute before the edit. Are you sure you didn't create that account on an other browser window? With your permission, I could run a CheckUser. -- lucasbfr 09:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, go for a checkuser. this was very strange. Pushing a user off (logging them out) is one thing but putting their edit under a different username is very weird. -- Banjeboi 09:45, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, that is weird. I confirm that you did the edit, but you appear otherwise unrelated to Palaboys. I'll send the results to the CU mailing list to see if someone can shine some light here. -- lucasbfr 09:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll help however I can. -- Banjeboi 11:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Any update? -- Banjeboi 22:37, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Changes in the Rollback edit summary

Following the discussion on MediaWiki talk:Revertpage (advertised on the proposals village pump) I plan to change the default rollback edit summary to ←Reverted edits by $1 (talk) to last version by $2 (new links to WP:rollback and WP:AES). However, I guess some automated tools might get confused. Any idea who to warn in advance? -- lucasbfr 09:33, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd bug User:AzaToth and User:Addshore, they maintain Twinkle and Huggle. MBisanz 09:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I already said that Huggle needs a change in the config, I can do that once we've settled on a format. Twinkle doesn't care. But there are other recent changes monitors that I know nothing about, WP:Lupin for example. --Amalthea 09:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Fonts

I cannot read

ᐸᔕᖘᘔ ᐯᖗ᙭ ᐁᑕᒉᕠᖙ: ᙭ᖘᕟ ᘕᕒ ᑕᒉᕠ: ᔕᖘᘔᒉᕠ

(it's showing boxes) Fonts anyone?

Get a proper browser :D Happy‑melon 10:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I've got a proper browser, and it still can't display half those characters. Algebraist 10:20, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I have Windows Vista and all the symbols display in IE 7.0, Firefox 3.0.8 and Opera 9.64. It's Canadian Aboriginal syllabics and I guess few people ever need them for anything practical. The userbox is apparently a joke involving Mars, maybe supposed to be a claim about being from Mars. I don't know whether the symbols are random or can be translated. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Mac OS X 10.5 with Safari also displays al this characters. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I guess it depends on what fonts you have on your computer (the characters don't render on my Firefox either) -- lucasbfr 11:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

If you zoom in, you will find that those boxes have numbers in them representing the numeric value of a unicode character. The first is 1438— Canadian Aboriginal syllabics "pa". You can get that font from http://languagegeek.com/font/fontdownload.html. --Gadget850 (talk) 14:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I love Code2000: it's got everything. --Carnildo (talk) 07:56, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Connecting from Thailand

I've seen multiple complaints that users from Thailand can no longer connect to wikipedia. Any idea why this is? Anyone else experiencing this? Any more information? What should I tell the individuals who are experiencing this problem (one has been able to connect only via proxy)?-Andrew c  14:55, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Can't they browse the website at all or are they blocked? -- lucasbfr 15:19, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

"a page unavailable error"-Andrew c  17:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Is the problem just Misplaced Pages? Can they connect to the secure server? Other Wikimedia sites? Other US-based websites? Mr.Z-man 18:05, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

WikiProjectBanner and WikiProjectBanners Dont Collapse Banners

I have two PCs each running Professional XP and I'm using Firfox 3.0.8 on each. I just noticed today that on one of them the banners do not collapse when the article talk pages have the WikiProjectBanner or WikiProjectBanners templates. Is there something I can do on the PC that does not collapse the project banners? Pknkly (talk) 16:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Try purging the cache and check that JavaScript is enabled on the machine that doesn't collapse. Do other JavaScript functions execute on that machine? Do other collapsible things collapse? Happy‑melon 17:50, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Right on! There was a Firefox add on (Java Quick Starter) for controlling Java scripts and the block on Wiki pages had not been removed. Thank you for giving me more edit time and less PC troubleshooting time. Pknkly (talk) 06:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Commons images, local copies, and deletion

I'd like to propose a modification of the behaviour for the bots that delink Commons images that have been deleted. Specifically, what I've noticed is that in some cases, images are moved from EnWiki to Commons - but run afoul of the licensing requirements there and get deleted. The bots then delink those images from EnWiki, even though the original rationales were acceptable here. (A recent example is File:Heroes helix.svg; I've also encountered this with science images, and I'm sure it occurs across the project.) Net effect is that EnWiki loses valid images, complicated by the fact that many editors won't even know they have been removed or how to get them back.

What I'd suggest is that the bots first check to see if an EnWiki version exists or existed, confirm that the licensing was valid, and then restore the local copy. If there is no valid local copy, only then would they go and comment out/remove the image links from articles. That way, we have a "fallback" setup - if an image is valid here, but not on Commons, it gets removed from Commons but stays on this project. Thoughts? --Ckatz_spy 16:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Bots can't restore local copies without being tagged as sysops. I'd actually be happy if the bots documented what they did; I've seen them delete bad images, but there were alternate (free) images that could have been used to replace, but the bots didn't know, and it's impossible to figure out where exactly they went. Frustrating. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The primary reason for this is of course that an image is transferred and Commons folk find out that the rationale HERE wasn't proper either. In my opinion however, it would be handy if there was a webinterface to the logs of commonsdelinker (cause I know there are logs). Then it would be easy to see where an image was deleted. This could also log to which cats the deleted image belonged (easier to find alternatives), and it could log any links to other wikipedia's that existed on the description page, so you can check what can be restored (and then perhaps used on en.wp with a FUR). Now if that query can be launched from the edit summary, then you have one powerful tool in my opinion. But who is gonna build it :D --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:11, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The problems I've seen have included a recent one where a self-drawn image was properly licensed here, but (for some reason) not on Commons. After being deleted from Commons, the end result was a loss of the image here, even though it was originally fine. In another case, a NASA image was transferred, and then a deletion vote there decided it was acceptable use on EnWiki, but not on Commons. The bot, however, just removed it here and left nothing. These are two cases where someone familiar with the system noticed the removal. How many acceptable images are disappearing from EnWiki because no-one happens to be in the right place at the right time? --Ckatz_spy 19:01, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, this kind of thing is happening all the time. The people who move images to Commons don't seem to know what they are doing. They are constantly moving fair use images, protected high-risk images and even interface images to Commons and delete (or request deletion of) the images here. And they even often move images that already have an identical copy with the same name at Commons, but since they then get a name collision they move it to a new name, thus we get duplicates on Commons.

One thing that could be done is that the Commons people really should check if the image should be moved back to Misplaced Pages, instead of just deleting it if it is not fit for Commons.

I am watching a handful of high-risk images, and I have to restore some of them every month. It is starting to get ridiculous.

I don't know what we should do about this. It doesn't seem like the people who move images to Commons are learning.

At least the people that change from png images to svg images have now learnt to not delete the png version. (Often the png image is needed for the attribution path, or the svg image simply is ugly, or the svg image is not a correct substitute since the editor who made the svg image had no understanding of the subject.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:57, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Two equals signs do not an edit summary make?

Not a huge issue, just a little curious, why two equals signs, i.e. == doesn't work as an edit summary? This peculiarity caused me to commit an edit without an edit summary for the first time in recent memory (the horror). –xeno (talk) 18:28, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I was very tempted to {{uw-es}} you now. :)
It's probably because the wpSummary field is also used for the section header if you create a new section, which is automatically enclosed in == signs. --Amalthea 09:19, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

And I was tempted to selectively delete the revision... Yes, I'm slightly o-c. =] Thanks for the explanation. –xeno (talk) 18:03, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

JavaScript failure in IE

Does anyone have any bright ideas on this? Since I made this edit to {{WPBannerMeta}}, IE7 chokes and dies on the CollapsibleTables. WTF?!?! Happy‑melon 21:54, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Chokes and dies how? On IE8, looking at Talk:A Clockwork Orange, it acts incredibly strange: text disappears and reappears depending on which sequence of show/hide links you click, but the actual collapsing still works, and its not screaming at me about script errors. Mr.Z-man 00:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

the only thing I see that would sensibly make a difference is that you didn't include the 'border-collapse:collapse' style element in the revision you made. could IE be choking trying to make conventional (separated-cell) tables collapsible? everything else looks like garden variety changes. --Ludwigs2 02:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

There more of a conversation about it at MediaWiki_talk:Common.js#IE_bugfix_breaking_IE.3F. -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:26, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

How to count number of editors that actually set date preferences?

Is there a way to count the number of editors that actually set date preferences?

I am sure that there is already a count of the number of registered editors. But it would be interesting to have a count of the number of editors that actually set a date preference. This would help inform the debate about autoformatting and the vote that is about to end at: Misplaced Pages:Date formatting and linking poll. We solve other variations such as 'color/colour' without needing markup. It would be useful to know the statistics on usage of this bizarre feature of Misplaced Pages to see if it is worth all the trouble. Lightmouse (talk) 10:00, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

You need to run a SQL query like

USING enwiki
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM user
WHERE LOCATE( 'date=default' , user_options ) == 0

On a complete copy of the enwiki user database table. Which is not replicated to the toolserver. So you'll need to ask the devs to do it. And there are about 9 million rows in that table. You might need to pester the devs for some time :D Happy‑melon 10:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

      1 date=hh:mm d.m.yyyy
      1 date=12
      1 date=ISO dt
      1 date=vi longmonth
      1 date=9
      1 date=km
      1 date=hh:mm d mon y
      1 date=hijri
      1 date=vi spelloutmonth
      2 date=ÄŒSN basic td
      2 date=yue ymd
      2 date=hh:mm d. mon y.
      2 date=h:mm d month y
      2 date=ÄŒSN padded dt
      2 date=dmy short
      2 date=ÄŒSN padded td
      2 date=h:mm d mon y
      2 date=fy normal
      3 date=hh:mm dd.mm.yyyy
      3 date=yue dmy
      3 date=h:mm d. mon y.
      4 date=vi shorth
      5 date=ko
      5 date=dmy hr
      5 date=7
      6 date=yue
      6 date=PÄŒP dt
      6 date=tdmy
      6 date=hh:mm d month y
      6 date=h:mm d. month y.
      8 date=thai
      8 date=h:mm dd.mm.yyyy
     10 date=on
     14 date=vi shortcolon
     14 date=alt dmy
     14 date=short dmyt
     14 date=dmy full
     18 date=et numeric
     20 date=ja
     23 date=fi seconds
     28 date=vi normal
     34 date=persian
     37 date=dmyts
     55 date=ÄŒSN basic dt
     58 date=hh:mm d. month y.
     60 date=fi normal
     61 date=fi numeric
     68 date=dmyt
     92 date=zh
   1898 date=4
   2031 date=3
   4702 date=ymd
   5933 date=
  17876 date=ISO 8601
  44032 date=2
  47158 date=1
  72480 date=dmy
  84787 date=mdy
1723038 date=0
7242868 date=default

Lot of crap in there, which is why Werdna is rewriting the preferences system. --Splarka (rant) 07:15, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I am trying to translate that into statistics for the five date preference options. It looks to me like:

• 7,242,868 have it set to the 'No preference' option
• 84,787 have it set to the mdy option
• 72,480 have it set to the dmy option
• 4,702 have it set to the ymd option
• 17,876 have it set to the ISO8601 option

Is that correct? Lightmouse (talk) 08:44, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Well 7 million have left it on the "no preference" option. Other than that, yes, I think that's right. Happy‑melon 09:26, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

The phrase left it implies that they have never changed it. How do we know that users don't change it and then change it back? My phrase was have it set which is more neutral. I see that 'date=0' has 1.7 million users. So my second question relates to these 'date=n' values. Are 'date=0' editors also using 'No preference? Lightmouse (talk) 09:52, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I read it as "have set it", which is equally unsupported; your version is indeed the most neutral. I'll have a dig through MediaWiki, see if I can work out what the other values evaluate to. Happy‑melon 11:29, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Tried and failed. What a mess! Good luck Werdna! Happy‑melon 11:48, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

0 is "default", 1 is "mdy", 2 is "dmy", and 3 is "ymd", at least in English (see $datePreferenceMigrationMap in MessagesEn.php). BTW, it seems that having these numeric codes means the account has not saved any changes to their preferences since 2006, or the preference would have been automatically updated to the more familiar string key. It seems most of the odd values originate from non-English message files; does uselang give you the other language's date options? Anomie⚔ 15:24, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. That would make the figures:

• 8,965,906 have it set to the 'No preference' option
• 131,945 have it set to the dmy option
• 116,512 have it set to the dmy option
• 6,733 have it set to the ymd option
• 19,774 have it set to the ISO8601 option

Using these new figures, it shows that 3.0% of editors have something other than 'No-preference' (the previous figure using post-2006 settings was 2.4%). Is that correct? Lightmouse (talk) 19:24, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

If those statistics are correct, it looks like 98% of registered editors have it set to 'No preference'. Lightmouse (talk) 11:56, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

How many of those 98% are indefinitely blocked (vandals, bad usernames, etc), vandals that abandoned the account upon receiving a final warning, abandoned SPAs, or other accounts that probably left all prefs at the default? Anomie⚔ 15:24, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

We don't have 48,502,715 "real" users. Under the current preferences system, all preferences are saved in the database at the default, so one cannot assume that the user specifically set that or even that they were aware that they could change it. Mr.Z-man 16:18, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

If setting a preference affects the likelihood of being inactive, that would be bizarre. But if you can get the statistics on that or any other factor, please post them. The debate has been long on opinion and short on statistical evidence. Lightmouse (talk) 16:51, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't be obtuse. He's only saying that the most accounts have not been used in a meaningful sense, and that the presence of a default preference setting should not be interpreted as a preference not to set any preference. I don't suppose there's any way we could get statistics for "auto-confirmed" users (which by definition have at least ten edits). I think if you set a higher threshold for serious involvement with the project you'll find a lower rate of user-prefs apathy. — CharlotteWebb 17:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what obtuse means, but it sounds like a bad thing. If you (CharlotteWebb) think I am a bad person, that doesn't matter. What matters to the community is evidence about how often autoformatting is used. It would help the debate if somebody could tell us all what 'date=0' and 'date=1' means. Statistics on autoconfirmed users would be interesting too, as CharlotteWebb suggests. The truth will set us all free. Lightmouse (talk) 17:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually Lightmouse the current usage is irrelevant. If people want something we work on giving it to them, we don't assume bad faith and question their motives for wanting it... —Locke Cole • t • c 18:03, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Disappearing ext links & cats on List of Grade I listed buildings in North Somerset

I've made some edits to a table on List of Grade I listed buildings in North Somerset (which has been nominated for FL) and seem to have done something which means the External links & Categories no longer show & I can't which bit of syntax I've damaged to produce this - any help appreciated.— Rod 11:58, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

You must have fixed it; looks OK now. --Gadget850 (talk) 12:23, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks agreed looks OK now - I don't know what I did - but resolved.— Rod 12:35, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I've had the same problem with L-form bacteria. The external links and cats were there when I edited the article, but hidden when I viewed it. I tried purging it, which made no difference, but when you click on the TOC link for external links, this section now appears. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:04, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a Firefox bug, sometimes it forgets to render the bottom of the page when the page is loaded. Often, something as simple as tabbing through the links on the page will cause Firefox to re-render it correctly. Anomie⚔ 00:15, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to generate some sort of list from templates?

I'd like a list of articles that have a reporting mark in {{infobox rail}} or use {{reporting mark}}, along with the value of the parameter. (See CSX Transportation for an example of both, with reporting mark CSXT.) Is there any sort of bot or script that will do this? --NE2 17:59, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

The second one is easy: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Reporting mark. For the first one, one way would be to modify the template to put such articles in some category. —EncMstr (talk) 18:05, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

That wouldn't output the reporting mark though, which I believe is the end-goal here? –xeno (talk) 18:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the goal is some sort of table with the article and reporting mark matched up. --NE2 19:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

You can at least achieve it partially in a pretty easy way. You can make it so the template categorises the pages into say Category:Misplaced Pages infobox rail reporting marks, and feeds the reporting mark as category sort order to the category name. For instance Caltrain has the reporting mark "JPBX". So in the article Caltrain the template should categorise like this:

]

This won't show the whole reporting mark in the category, but at least all instances of JPBX will be sorted under "J" and they will be sorted next to each other, not mixed with other marks beginning with J.

We usually make such tracking categories hidden, so they won't bloat the category list at the bottom of the pages and so they won't confuse readers. If you need help with the code for such category handling I can point you to some good code examples. We often use this method when we want a template to report/log when it is used with faulty parameters, or when we want to find out which pages use a certain parameter. It is very useful when we are deprecating or renaming a parameter so we can fix any cases before we remove the parameter from a template. Note that it usually takes about 2 weeks before nearly all cases have arrived in the tracking category.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:57, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that's not quite what I want. I know MediaWiki itself won't do it, but does anyone have a script or something that will? --NE2 17:22, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

If you need more than what the category system can offer, then the place to ask is over at Misplaced Pages:Bot requests. They are very friendly and helpful over there. It's the kind of place where I would like to tag on five stars in the upper right corner "for excellent service".

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:51, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Please write me a bit of code to hide the "create a book" toolbox.

Thanks in advance =) –xeno (talk) 18:04, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Add to your monobook.css:

#p-coll-create_a_book { display: none; }

I think I'll go add that myself, it's irritating enough :D Happy‑melon 18:09, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Easy for you, greek for me. Thank yar =) –xeno (talk) 18:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

--NE2 19:47, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Making the "this is only a preview" message look like a proper editnotice

See proposal: essentially with a bit of CSS we can turn the preview bar into a proper editnotice like all the others we have. Comments appreciated over there. Happy‑melon 19:57, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

And get ignored like all the other editnotices? --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:26, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea, the current one is hard to see. I think while we are doing this we should add a temporary dismiss button to hide the edit notice once when it is clicked. This is because the edit notice screws with position: absolute; parameters making me save multiple times to align it correctly. Thanks -- penubag  (talk) 20:21, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Deprecation due to new parsers

The templates in Category:Date-computing templates have been largely deprecated by the {{#time:}} parser. Can we tag them all with {{tdeprecated}}?--Ipatrol (talk) 20:53, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Edit summary when edit the lead section

No matter which section is edited, the section name is automatically appeared in the edit summary, except lead section. I suggest that the edit summary should indicate "lead section" as other sections. This little change can help to make it easier to follow the edit history, like find out whether an edit is or is not related a particular section. Some other Misplaced Pages has already done so. --Quest for Truth (talk) 19:22, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree - that would be useful. Then edits of the whole page would be more easily distinguishable from edits to the lede only.Tvoz/talk 19:52, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that would be a worthy idea. It would certainly make it less difficult to follow the edit history of an article. tempodivalse  19:58, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

If you don't mind too much about the section name that appears in the edit summary, this can be done easily by adding "summary=/* firstHeading */ " to the section edit link, like this one.
I assume you use the editTop gadget? --Amalthea 20:52, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Where is it supposed to link to? — Edokter • Talk • 22:51, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

To the <h1 id="firstHeading"> with the page title: #firstHeading. Another option is #top. The problem is, older skins such as "Classic" do not have these IDs in the HTML. —AlexSm 23:30, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

It can simply link to the article without anchor. This will always load the top of the page where the lead section is found. --Quest for Truth (talk) 10:29, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Notes page?

you know, I'm going to throw this idea out there, because it's something I keep finding myself missing. would it be possible to make a special page (like the watchlist) dedicated to making notes to yourself? I'm thinking a tab or link (like the 'watch' tab) that you can click on to add a given page to your notes page, and then on the notes page itself, have a link to each page with some space to leave notes (maybe have the links constructed as section headers, or something like that). of course, I could build something like that on a user subpage, but that's got two drawbacks that have kept me from doing it so far: (a) it's a pain to set up and maintain, and (b) it would be public, and I'm not sure I want the dumb things I'm mulling over available for everyone to read. thoughts? --Ludwigs2 00:06, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

bugzilla:541#c2 --Splarka (rant) 07:33, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

B: Having a secret subpage like that could be abused in many ways. (Note: Don't confuse this with what we usually mean by "secret user subpage" = subpages in user space that are not linked from anywhere.) And I see in the bugzilla request that Splarka linked too that Brion said "NO". I think an acceptable solution perhaps could be if such a subpage were only visible for all logged in users. Thus it at least would not be visible for the search engines and the Misplaced Pages readers.

A: The "one click bookmarking" functionality can be coded in javascript as a user script. So I went looking, and there already exist two such readymade scripts! See User:Twinzor/Wikimark and user:js/popupBookmarks. I have not tested any of them, so I don't know how well they work, but they look promising.

Personally I use a text file on my hard disk for my Misplaced Pages notes and to-do list. And more "permanent" bookmarks I manually add to my user page. But I only edit Misplaced Pages from home. But I know many Misplaced Pages editors are more nomadic so I can see the need for an easy to use bookmarks+notes page.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:52, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

lol - I see that issue produces some strong feelings. I hadn't actually thought about the javascript solution, but those look interesting. I'll check them out. and your 'logged in user' idea might work, though I'm still not sure I'd want my off-the-cuff thoughts enshrined forever in a public edit history. but if I could just make a decent bookmark list, that would be a good start. thanks. --Ludwigs2 16:22, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

automatic deletion summaries - again

A few weeks ago, I was asking about the disappearance of automatic deletion summaries. I think I now know the cause. It seems when this edit to MediaWiki:Sysop.js was made to introduce some new code, it also removed the old code that generated automatic deletion summaries in the process. Is there a way to bring this "feature" back? Unfortunately, I am unable to do this myself since I suck at JavaScript/CSS coding, and there's probably a 99.99% chance I would mess something up if I tried anything. --Ixfd64 (talk) 02:03, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

"content was ..."/"only contributor was ..." default deletion summaries have been disabled, as it's never an appropriate rationale for deletion and was highly problematic for attack pages, etc. The discussion for removal is here, disabling this caused some side effects, but since then, it's been resolved. Cenarium (talk) 02:25, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I guess that explains everything. Thanks for the information! --Ixfd64 (talk) 03:29, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

If you or anybody else really wants this and plans to use it I think I know how to make a javascript gadget to mimic the old behavior. — CharlotteWebb 17:05, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

History pages taking forever to load with javascript enabled

I know this isn't the Firefox help desk, but has anyone else experienced any issues with history pages taking forever to load in FF3.0.8 (Win) ? With javascript disabled, it works fine, but when enabled it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to load the history page. –xeno (talk) 03:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Does this happen on other WM projects, other MediaWiki installs, or when logged out? Lets narrow it down. --Splarka (rant) 07:35, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately this doesn't narrow it down at all, but I have a possibly related problem with history pages for exactly the same configuration (+ many installed extensions). History pages generally load OK, but twice during the last 24 hours a history page froze my browser so that I had to restart it. And it seems I am not the only one, see WP:ANI#Technical Problem? and WP:Help desk#Firefox freezing on page histories. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:37, 12 April 2009 (UTC), extended 16:12, 12 April 2009 (UTC).

Seems to only occur on Misplaced Pages, doesn't matter logged in or out, but it seems to be when looking for 250 or more revisions of history. Chrome and IE are fine... Pulling my hair out! I've emptied my monobooks and turned off all gadgets and still no joy. –xeno (talk) 14:37, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

After a night of rest, it seems that history pages are now loading (quite quickly in fact) for me. Looks like whatever problem was going on, has been fixed. - NeutralHomer • Talk • April 12, 2009 @ 17:20

Still no luck for me. If and when the pages load fast, they kind of hang for about 30-45 seconds before allowing me to scroll or click on anything. Limiting myself to 50 or 100 revisions is my temporary workaround but I wish I knew what was causing this. –xeno (talk) 17:24, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

History tab external tools problem

Hello there. I seem not to be able to view the "For any version listed below, click on its date to view it. For more help, see Help:Page history and Help:Edit summary. External tools: Revision history statistics · Revision history search · Page view statistics" line in history pages. I think something might be blocking it in my JS or CSS, but can't for the life of me figure out what. Does anyone have any ideas? It Is Me Here 09:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what a CSS rule is doing on your JS page, but other than that, can't see any reason why it would be hiding it. Happy‑melon 10:12, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

You're right, clearing both pages didn't help - so why can't I see those external tools? It Is Me Here 13:16, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Subpage feature

The MediaWiki subpage feature is enabled for most talkspaces. But it is disabled in the "Category talk" and "Help talk" namespaces. I think that is an omission that needs to be fixed. Among other things this makes it hard to do talk page archiving for category talk and help talk pages. I also think that subpages should be enabled for the "Help" namespace.

Background and details:

I found an old report from a user that some of the talk page archiving templates don't work on category talk pages. I investigated and discovered that the reason is that the MediaWiki subpage feature is disabled on category talk pages. This means that magic words like {{BASEPAGENAME}} and {{SUBPAGENAME}} don't work as you expect, and relative paths like ] doesn't work at all on those pages. It also means that there is no small backlink to the basepage in the upper left corner of the subpage.

I can work around this problem with some fancy template programming, but I rather have the problem itself fixed. I see no reason why the subpage feature should be disabled in those talk spaces, and I don't think it will break anything if we enable subpages there.

I have checked some other language versions of Misplaced Pages, and they do have subpages enabled for all talk spaces. Also, they have subpages enabled for the "Help" namespace, which we don't have.

I know this is a simple setting in MediaWiki. My guess is that our sysadmins simply forgot to enable it for those talk spaces and for the Help namespace.

For reference, here is the full list of the talk spaces:

Subpages disabled: Help talk, Category talk

Subpages enabled: Talk, User talk, Misplaced Pages talk, File talk, MediaWiki talk, Template talk, Portal talk

And the subject spaces:

Subpages disabled: main/article, File, MediaWiki, Help, Category

Subpages enabled: User, Misplaced Pages, Template, Portal

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:06, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

From the Wikimedia configuration files, subpages should be enabled in all namespaces except 0, 6, 8, 12 and 14; that is, all except article/main, File, MediaWiki, Help and Category. Subpages not appearing in the Help talk and Category talk namespaces is a bug, as they are explicitly enabled in config. I agree that they should be enabled in the Help namespace, as has been done on numerous other wikis. Happy‑melon 12:36, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, in that settings file you linked to: Right below the default subpage settings there are some arrays which seems to be overrides for some projects. In the override array for enwiki the namespaces 12-15 are not listed, which I guess defaults to "false" = "no subpages". Thus Help, Help talk, Category and Category talk don't get subpages, no matter what the defaults say. So it seems we have located the exact place where this mistake was done.

Those arrays need to be fixed. And the code that uses those arrays should ideally be fixed so it falls back to the defaults for items that are not in the array, although that might be too tricky to be worth the trouble.

I see that the arrays for some of the other projects probably also need to be fixed.

So I guess this should be reported to Bugzilla? Can any of you guys who are used to Bugzilla file a bug report on this?

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:25, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I just did (Template:Bug); well spotted on the source. I'll update the bug with the exact problem and its fix. Happy‑melon 15:12, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Updated. Happy‑melon 15:26, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I see that Andrew Garrett (which I guess is User:Werdna) closed the bug as "invalid". He said:

"If you want subpages in these namespaces, you're going to have to check that nobody minds, and then post a site request."

And then he said:

"I don't think anybody expects a full-blown vote on such a trivial matter, just a general note somewhere prominent that the behaviour will be changing, and a check to see if anybody objects, as with most configuration changes."

He doesn't seem to understand that the MediaWiki default is to have subpages in the Help talk and Category talk namespaces. And that the way those override arrays were added is buggy. Anyway, I guess we can do some announcing and then post a "site request". (Does anyone know what a "site request" is and how it is done?) Since we want to enable subpages in the "Help:" namespace too, I will try to get a watchlist notice pointing to here. See the next two sections.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:26, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's just a particular category of bug reports. What 'bugs' me about his close is that he could just as easily turned the bug into a site request, rather than just shooting it and moving on. Happy‑melon 18:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Subpages in Help talk and Category talk

Per discussion in the section Subpage feature above, we want to enable the subpage feature in the "Help talk" and "Category talk" namespaces. We think it is just a bug that needs fixing, since all talk spaces are supposed to allow subpages. Among other things we need subpages for archiving of talk pages.

If anyone has any comments to this, please add them here.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:26, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• support I was just going to bring this up myself; I had been archiving some help talk pages and noticed the lack of the backlink. --Gadget850 (talk) 18:42, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support Happy‑melon 18:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Subpages in Help

Per discussion in the section Subpage feature above, we want to enable the subpage feature in the "Help:" namespace. The reason being that subpages are often useful, and we only have disabled subpages in the namespaces where it causes problems.

If anyone has any comments to this, please add them here.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:26, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• support Useful for related issues and test cases. --Gadget850 (talk) 18:42, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support Happy‑melon 18:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Expand templates intro

I suggest that this text be added to MediaWiki:Expand templates intro:

To expand an entire article, one may type {{:articlename}} in the box Input text instead of pasting the article's source.

I saw it on the Swedish wiki. Iceblock (talk) 14:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

« ref » tags, templates & parameters.

« It appears that paramaters cannot be used inside the ref tags. ». Are we right ?

Budelberger (   ) 19:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC).

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