Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:12, 26 August 2005

MW 1.5 bugs (EN)
For problems related to the upgrade, see Misplaced Pages:MW_1.5_bugs.

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FAQ: Intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear, and cause the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. This is an ongoing issue we are working on.

Details about the occasional slow speeds and deadlock errors: here

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Technical archive

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Better Upload Page to Get More Images Tagged

Over at the policy section, some people have crafted an idea for a better upload page to encourage people to tag their images or at least provide the information needed to tag them. You can go there for details, but basically we want a check box that says, "Is this a photograph you took yourself, or an image you created from scratch?" On the page where it says, "If you upload a file here to which you hold the copyright, you must license it under the GNU Free Documentation License or release it into the public domain. Alternately, you can upload your file to the Wikimedia Commons under a different free license." change it to "If you upload a file here to which you hold the copyright, you agree to license it under the GNU Free Documentation License, unless you specifically release it into the public domain. Alternately, you can upload your file to the Wikimedia Commons under a different free license." Then, say, "If not, do you have the image tag? If so, please enter it.". Then, "If you don't have a tag, please explain the source of this image in detail in the box below." Below can be the summary box that's always there. Server-side(not client JS) validation should ensure that either the first box is checked, the second contains text(preferably ensure there is a valid tag, but that's more difficult), or the third box contains text.

If the first is checked:

If there is nothing in the second, add {{GFDL-self}} to the summary. If there is something in the second, add

The uploader owns the copyright to this image. By uploading it to Misplaced Pages, he or she agreed to license it under the GFDL, unless he or she released it into the public domain below.

If the second is filled,

Check whether the form of the field is {{*}}. If it is, just add it to the summary. Otherwise, add {{<FIELD>}} to the summary.

If the third is filled,

Add it to the summary.

Can someone implement this, or at least provide feedback. If you are unsure what I am proposing, I can create an HTML mock-up. Superm401 | Talk 19:46, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea, and would urge others to show support/criticism so this idea can hopefully be acted upon. Martin (Bluemoose) 08:53, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Great idea. - Omegatron 19:02, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Good thought; an element of a larger effort needed to shift more work onto the engine, in part by using form elements other than one giant editable text field. — Xiong熊talk* 21:07, 2005 August 14 (UTC)

Agreed. --Workman161

Okay, then. Developers, can this be implemented without a change to the MediaWiki software? Superm401 | Talk 04:26, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Any objections from anyone? Superm401 | Talk 03:49, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate the unanimous support from the entire Misplaced Pages community. With your support, I have created a new BugZilla bug at . If for some reason you later decide discussion over major changes is beneficial, please post any comments there. Superm401 | Talk 21:41, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Page move vandalism is still a problem

Pagemove revert helps, but only up to a point. It needs to be improved.

The latest User:FREE ZOIDBERG ON WHEELS pagemove vandalism script ran from 17:58 to 18:02 today. The final fix (moving Tabuk, Kalinga ON WHEELS back to Tabuk, Kalinga at 19:52 was not done until nearly two hours later. This was not two hours of continuous effort: the page move log shows that some users moved some pages back for a while, then gave up.

One suggested improvement:

• Pagemove revert should have the option of NOT creating a redir back. We really DON'T need a redir from Tabuk, Kalinga ON WHEELS back to Tabuk, Kalinga. This redir makes Tabuk, Kalinga ON WHEELS a bluelink, making it impossible to tell from examining the page move log whether this page has been moved back yet or not. A second time-consuming sweep is needed to delete these useless "ON WHEELS" back-redirs, just to turn all the "ON WHEELS" links red in the pagemove log so we can be sure everything was moved back properly. This would also avoid the dreaded double-revert bug (when two users pagemove revert at the same time, the article page gets turned into a redir to itself).

In fact, we should have a quick pagemove revert that automatically:

1. does not create a back-redir
2. does not detour through the Special:Movepage screen (prompting for a reason and requiring an extra click)

See Bugzilla:3185, Bugzilla:3231. Thryduulf 23:26, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

As long as pagemove vandals can create hours of disruption by running an automated script for a few minutes, they will keep at it. Worse, sooner or later we will get "ON WHEELS" pages that miss scrutiny and remain at the renamed title. -- Curps 20:27, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

PS, and how about throttling the rate of page moves... do we really need to allow a single user to move 25 pages per minute? -- Curps 20:29, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Limiting page move rates for non-admins may help. But perhaps what's needed (admins+ only!) is "mass reversion" of a user's contributions (all or a defined subset) - a sort of anti-bot-bot. (Maybe this exists already?) Rd232 21:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

That's a damn good idea. If it doesn't already exist, it should be added. For accounts which are created "indisputably" in bad faith and which commit only vandalism(and there are plenty), when blocking there should be an option to revert all edits for which they are last(and obviously if they have a chain of edits at the end, go to the last edit not from the bad account). That's not foolproof but it would be very helpful. If something similar already exists, forgive my ignorance(though I would like to hear more about the feature). Superm401 | Talk 03:57, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I second the need for a single-click page move revert. In addition, we also need a way to see new user accounts (is there a way already I don't know?) since I think they need to age for a week or so before they can be used for page moves. Or how about requiring a certain number of edits (10? 25? 100?) before the account can be used for page moves? Page move vandalism is so much harder to deal with than the "regular" kind that I think some slightly higher bar must be reached for a new user before page moving is possible. Antandrus (talk) 19:47, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that's reasonable. It's quite easy to get an admin or veteran editor to help and the need for page moves is much rarer than edits, obviously. Superm401 | Talk 03:57, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

(copied from WP:AN/I#Willy again) If they just created nonsense articles that were speedied it would be their first edit. 100 or 200 would give a much greater chance of spotting a pattern of nonsense articles than just 25. A requirement for 100 or 200 non-deleted edits would be even better. They could use multiple users, but they would take time to register and log in to - particularly if it was impossible to be logged into more than one account on a computer at once. I don't know if this is the case at the moment, but if it isn't I think it would be triviially easy to implement with cookies. Perhaps also we could impose a limit that meant that you could only create one account per computer per hour - again maybe implementable with cookies. Combined these would mean that to move 15 pages would a require a minium of five hours of preparation just to create the accounts, then a significant amount of time to accumulate the 100 or 200 articles per article, especially if they had to be edits that were not deleted. Remember that if they are persistently making bad edits or creating nonsense articles then they would be blocked, likely for 24 hours at a time. Add all this up and just to go on a 15 article moving spree would take probably a week of preparation. A 100-article spree would require 34 accounts, taking a minimum of 34 hours to create, assuming a dedicated vandal working constantly for 8 hours a day this would take 4¼ days. Assuming that 100 non-deleted edits are required for each account would take an average of 5 minutes each to avoid being blocked and to allow for ones that are deleted, this is would take 17,000 mintues which, working constantly 8 hours a day every day, would take about 36 days. Assuming 200 non-deleted edits and a vandal working on average 4 hours per day it would take over 4½ months of preparation. With a mass-rollback option this 4.5 months of effort by the vandal could be reverted in less than 2 minutes; using normal move rollback it would be fixable by the community in less than 30 minutes I suspect. 4½ months work for less than an hour's glory would not be worth it for any human, and bots would be spotted long before they became an issue. Thryduulf 11:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

see also Bugzilla:3185 and Bugzilla:3231. Thryduulf 23:31, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Blocks washing off in the rain?

I have a feeling that users are becoming unblocked without any admin action. For example, I know that an account of the Willy on Wheels vandal were blocked indefinitely several months ago, yet it was able to vandalize recently.

Also, on en-Wiktionary, the vandal "ConneI MacKenzie" (impersonating user Connel MacKenzie) was blocked indefinitely, yet he disappeared from the IP block list, and no record of him being unblocked could be found in the block log. --Ixfd64 22:23, 2005 August 16 (UTC)

When an account or IP is blocked more than once with differing lengths, it becomes unblocked when the shortest one expires. ConneI MacKenzie was blocked for one week and indefinitely; therefore his block ran out after one week. —Cryptic (talk) 23:19, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

That sounds backwards. Shouldn't it be when the longest one expires? — Nowhither 23:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

That's what I thought too. --Ixfd64 00:03, 2005 August 17 (UTC)

You'd think, but the software probably checks the database every x amount of time for expired blocks, and then unblocks those cases, causing this behavior. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:06, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I should probably fix Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy then. --Ixfd64 01:15, 2005 August 18 (UTC)

No. This is a bug. I'm posting it to Zilla. Superm401 | Talk 04:13, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

Please don't comment further here for any reason. Post your comments at the BugZilla bug report. Superm401 | Talk 04:21, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

Block list is rather big

The block list has become rather big, stressing both the server and client when retrieved. Could it perhaps be a good idea to check which indefinite username blocks are so old that they can be deleted, possibly in combination with deleting the account itsself? This is probably easiest for someone with SQL access. --fvw* 01:49, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the simplest thing is to scramble the password and blank the email address for any indefinitely blocked user accounts. No checking of the accounts' edits would be necessary; just a check that the block is indefinite. The block can then be removed.

I suggest that only accounts blocked a certain period of time ago - perhaps six months - be treated in this way, to make sure that no appeal against the block is in process.

I think there are a very small number of accounts which are blocked indefinitely but the block will be lifted after some condition is reached (e.g. legal action is resolved). If any of these accounts are scrambled by mistake, they can be restored to their rightful owners on application to a developer with proof of identity once the appropriate condition is met.-gadfium 03:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

The accounts I can think of which should not be scrambled are Mlorrey (talk · contribs) and Pioneer-12 (talk · contribs).-gadfium 05:14, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I wish there was a way I could be alerted if a user is already blocked at the special:blockip page. Checking is such a pain. But some offensive usernames have been blocked over and over again because no one looked to see if already was. Or if someone has been indef blocked for being a reincarnation/sockpuppet, and I block them for 48 hours for petty vandalism, it wipes out the prior block. So often it's importent to check, but quite annoying. Dmcdevit·t 05:45, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, but what about those with automatic cookie logins? Dunc|☺ 13:40, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Blocks on IPs have to be checked every time the "Save page" button is pressed. But theoretically, a block on a username should only need to be checked once, at login time, so that we could have a billion username blocks with no strain on the server.

Currently, I guess it doesn't work that way, since you can still login when you're blocked, to respond to messages and so forth. But could we make it so, somehow? Misplaced Pages has a zillion read-only mirrors out there... why not make it so that when a blocked user logs in, they get sent to a read-only mirror server, maybe with a different domain name (but ours, not a third party's).

Could something like that possibly work? -- Curps 15:15, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

HTTP is not stateful, so blocking only at login is not actually sufficient. This is the same reason all web applications must validate all fields on a submit whether or not the entered data was prevalidated in the browser using something like javascript. In addition, if the user is redirected to a read-only mirror it seems like they wouldn't be able to write to their own talk page (which is currently allowed, even for blocked users). -- Rick Block (talk) 22:44, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

• It's a good idea to remove all old (e.g. half a year or more) indefinite blocks from the list, and scramble the passwords. It's also a good idea to change the software so that you cannot block a user that is already blocked (to fix the one-day-overwriting-indefinite-block thing). Radiant_>|< 12:23, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Don't always get a notice when I have new messages

For the last couple of days, sometimes (and I can't figure out when it does and doesn't happen), I haven't been getting a notice at the top of the page when I have new messages on my Talk page. I only notice it when I am looking through Recent changes and see that somebody has edited my Talk page. But like I said, it isn't consistantly a problem. Zoe 06:23, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

I've been having the same problem—only I notice it when I see the edit show up on my watchlist. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:26, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly the same thing here. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 02:31, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Likewise... it's not consistent, and it developed within the last two days. Antandrus (talk) 02:37, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Users who concur with this summary sign with ~~~~

1. Tomer 02:52, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
2. In case it helps pin down the reason, this change didn't generate an alert. --RobertG ♬ talk 15:24, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
3. BRIAN0918 • 2005-08-20 16:46

Don't always want a notice when I have new messages

I have disabled my yellow message, and wish I could do so in a more straightforward manner than creating a separate account to redirect my talk page to. It irritates me no end, affects the page layout when it comes up while editing as you can't reach the bold text etc horizontal line without scrolling, doesn't switch off if you access your talk page through diffs (from the watchlist, which I always do after somebody redirected my talk page to an obscene picture). Does noone else feel the same way? Is there an easier way to disable it? If not could one be added to preferences, SqueakBox 02:47, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

You can simply change your user stylesheet (if you are using the Monobook skin, it's at User:SqueakBox/monobook.css) and add a rule to not display these messages. I believe the correct rule to do so is ".usermessage { display: none }" (without the quotes). See Help:User styles for more information. --cesarb 17:58, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Fantastic. Works a treat. Cheers, SqueakBox 00:04, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

images not showing for some browsers

images not visible in article or image page, but image itself is fine. problem described at Talk:Eugenics#Main_image. seems to be a problem with some users of firefox. can you see this? i notice the style="visibility: hidden ! important; tag. --Rikurzhen 02:18, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

I see it, and I'm using firefox 1.0.6 — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 02:29, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

It's a known problem, and I've explained what's happening at Talk:Eugenics#Main_image.-gadfium 03:47, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

"What links here"

Don't know if this is the right place to post, but I have a question about the "What Links Here" function. I use it often to find related pages to edit, but going through all of the links can be clumsy.

Is there any reason the "What Links Here" couldn't be organized into catergories for easier browsing?

Like a catergory for "References in other Wiki articles", "Redirects", and "References in non-article Wiki pages (like user profiles and help pages)". I'm really only interested in seeing references from other articles, and it seems a little clumsy to have to go through a bunch of links I don't care about.

Sorry if this was suggested before --Rc251 02:58, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

This would be nice. I don't have much hope of it happening, though, since it involves change to the software for a not-terribly-huge benefit.

Another problem is the handling of redirects. To avoid the necessity for huge searches, pages are placed in the what-links-here list for the articles they link to at the time the pages are edited. If the situation of a page changes, without the page itself being edited, then the list is not updated, and so the list is incorrect.

Here is an illustration. Suppose page "X" uses a template that links to page "AA". Then the template is changed so that it links to "AA" indirectly, through the redirect "BB". Until page "X" itself is edited, it will still be listed in the what-links-here list for "AA" as linking directly.

This is not such a big deal now, but if we were to do categorization, then I think we would want it to be reliably correct, which would require fixing this issue, which would increase the load on the server.

Sorry to be so negative. — Nowhither 12:36, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Trouble displaying GIF files

I realize GIFs are not the preferred image format, but I am having trouble getting them to display. They seem okay on other peoples' pages.

I've scoured WP for help on this, but found nothing. Can someone please give me some help?

Many thanks,

Paul Klenk 05:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Which image is causing you trouble? Also, see two sections up about the Eugenics image, and see my answer on the referenced talk page about why some images don't display for some people.-gadfium 05:08, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Short Pages glitch?

When looking at the Short Pages page, a number of pages show up as zero length which have substantial content. For example, Our Gang was last edited on July 21, is 39K, and hasn't been vandalized to empty anywhere in the recent history. But it shows up as size 0 in Short Pages. Boojum 05:03, 19 August 2005 (UTC) (And the link is red instead of blue!)

That list is cached. It's not always up-to-date. --cesarb 17:53, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Special:Ipblocklist

The IP Block List has "expires expires" for every block that isn't indefinite. Zoe 06:27, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

This is fixed. And welcome back, Zoe. -- Tim Starling 01:36, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Why does my watchlist fail to show articles that were edited 1 month before current date?

When I select 'Show all', my watchlist only lists articles that were edited within the last month.

On 16 Aug, it only showed articles edited between 18 Jul and 16 Aug. When I select 'display and edit the complete list', the complete list included articles edited before 18 July. The list only had 174 pages.

Today (19 Aug), it only shows articles edited between 22 Jul and 19 Aug. When I select 'display and edit the complete list', the complete list includes articles edited before 19 Aug. The list only has 81 pages.

Am I the only one experiencing this problem? How do I fix it? Bobblewik 13:02, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

There's a cut-off. It prevents over-loading the server. ] 17:13, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Aha. I thought it was unintended. Thanks for replying. I thought it was broken because it has the options: Show last 1 | 2 | 6 | 12 hours 1 | 3 | 7 days all

The term all is misleading. Could all be changed to a number of days as in Recent changes? For example: Show last 1 | 2 | 6 | 12 hours 1 | 3 | 7 | 30 days

Would it be possible to make it a rolling list just like Recent changes. That has very similar options, no cut-off, and permits me to go backwards in time page by page as far as I want. Bobblewik 17:48, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

I suggest you make a feature request on Bugzilla. Cheers, ] 18:27, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Has this changed recently? It used to show changes back to year zero... -- ALoan (Talk) 18:40, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

IE 6.0 - How do I prevent this error message in IE 6.0?

"Warning: Page has Expired The page you requested was created using information you submitted in a form. This page is no longer available. As a security precaution, Internet Explorer does not automatically resubmit your information for you.

To resubmit your information and view this Web page, click the Refresh button."

I get this message when I am editing an article and then temporarily go to another article or an external link for reference. Upon returning to the editing page, I have to refresh as directed by this message, and it takes quite a while.

This doesn't happen with Firefox or my home IE, of which I'm not sure of the version number. I tried Tools>Internet Options>(Temporary Internet Files) Settings both to automatically refresh the page and to refresh every visit to the page. Is there some other setting somewhere?

Thanks, Spalding 19:01, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

One way is to open a second browser window to go to the external link or other article, then return to the original window, continue editing and save your results. Paul Klenk 19:25, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Paul. It looks like I'm a victim of using two browsers. Since Firefox is my favorite at home, and of course I have to use IE at work, I'm in the habit of using control-click to open links in new tabs in Firefox. That same action in IE does nothing, it just opens the link in the current window. Before Firefox, I was in the habit of using shift-click, which opens the link in a new window in both browsers. But now I realize I have been trying control-click at work, and having a vague feeling that it used to work. Ahhh, habituation. I would like to find the root cause of this problem, though, even if for nothing else other than curiosity's sake. Spalding 23:24, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Table rendering / display issue

Opera, at least on my machine, doesn't appear to display tables properly. Specifically, it doesn't display the lines which demarcate table rows. What could possibly cause this? I'm using Opera 8.2 on a Windows 2000 box. Mackensen (talk) 21:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Opera 8.0 on XP shows the same problem (I checked it on monobook and classic). That table uses "prettytable", but removing that didn't fix it. So I suspect it's a problem in the basic CSS stylesheet. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:33, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

#Top link?

I made this suggestion at (proposals), and it was recommended that I bring it here. So, here it is:

Would the developers be willing to put in a #top link next to the edit button at the top of each ==Section== or ===Subsection===? I think most browsers now automatically predefine the top line of an HTML page as <a name=#top></a>. Alternatively, it shouldn't be so difficult (I say, as I sit here coaching from my easy chair) to predefine all the article pages with a hidden #top.

Would this be worth the added clutter when you can just press Home? ~~ N (t/c) 22:31, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh cool! Thanks ptar! I dinna know you could do that!  :-p /me makes note: that was my one thing I learned today. Tomer 22:40, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Glad to help. ~~ N (t/c) 22:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

The last part is in the code already. As to the proposal, I don't think it necessary. There may be a piece of Javascript you could use to do your settings only. ] 22:33, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

How to send messages

I have received messages, but do not know how to respond. How can I send a message to someone? - NWOG

Go to their talk page. Superm401 | Talk 15:22, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Complex Article support

For complex articles (Such as is Sustainable energy) which by definition refer to a list of other articles, I would like to see Articlespace partial transclusion. That is the ability to transclude only the opening section of a referenced article. This in general would expand lists to be readable articles without creating duplicate and forkable information. Benjamin Gatti

{{:Wind power/Main|noimage}} should produce the opening section

No. That just encourages lazy editing. If you're going to include information about a secondary topic, summarize it yourself and relate it to the main topic. You don't want the same information about coal power for the environmentalism article as you do for the fossil fuel article. This is why transclusion is strongly discouraged. Superm401 | Talk 16:12, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Random article bug?

I've been using the Random article link a bit and, with 2/3 million articles to choose from, the probability of seeing an artice twice should essentially be zero. However, I've just had Nacirema for a second time and am sure that a couple of others that I didn't make a note of have also repeated in the last few weeks. Has anyone else noted this behaviour? I presume the random number is intended to be from a Uniform Distribution? Dlyons493 16:03, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... Birthday paradox? anyway, it's really impossible to get really good random numbers: I doubt Misplaced Pages uses external sources (i.e. webcam/audio/static streams) to generate its random numbers: it might still be using PHP's internal pseudorandom number generator. Who knows? You can always take a look at MediaWiki yourself. ;-) — Ambush Commander 19:51, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Did some checking myself, it uses mt_rand called twice:

function wfRandom() {
	# The maximum random value is "only" 2^31-1, so get two random
	# values to reduce the chance of dupes
	$max = mt_getrandmax();
	$rand = number_format( mt_rand() * mt_rand()
		/ $max / $max, 12, '.', '' );
	return $rand;
}

Hope that helps. — Ambush Commander 19:58, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

I damn well hope not. That random number function is demonstrably awful, and I thought I fixed it 6 months ago. I'll look into it. -- Tim Starling 02:45, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

It was fixed in 1.5. That function was introduced by someone who was worried about the 32-bit granularity of the previous random number function, a complaint which I ignored because of the extremely low probability of observing any related artifacts. Unfortunately, they replaced it with something far worse. I spent some time thinking about how bad that function is, as a mathematical game. There's two effects: firstly, the distribution is skewed towards zero because the probability distribution of X where X is uniformly distributed is not itself uniformly distributed. Secondly, the probability of the integer $rand*$max*$max having lots of prime factors is higher than the probability of it being a prime number. I seem to remember there's a simple relationship between the number of prime factors and the probability.

Dlysons493 may simply be seeing chance coincidences, you'd expect such coincidences after about √700,000 = 837 requests. -- Tim Starling 03:12, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Automated open proxy testing

When a block is applied to an anon IP address, the Mediawiki software should apply the block right away and then automatically queue an open proxy test to be done (either immediately or queued for later). If an open proxy is detected, the 24 hour block should be upgraded (automatically) to an indefinite block.

I believe such proxy checking software already exists and was running at one time. However, some ISPs objected to random, "unsolicited" probes of their address range to detect open proxies. But if it's one specific IP address that has visited our site very recently (ie, Internet traffic has been exchanged between our IP address and the ISP's) and has done something to warrant blocking, then a proxy check is perfectly appropriate and there would be no grounds for objection by the ISP. -- Curps 16:41, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

We can just scan every editor if we want to, the unofficial word from our colo is that they will stand up for us in the face of complaints. The only thing we're missing is software and a bit of system administration -- all proxy scans should be run from a single IP address. -- Tim Starling 23:27, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Wasn't that already done before, and abandoned because too many IP blocks slowed MediaWiki down? --cesarb 23:56, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

It was abandoned because admins at other sites were complaining that we were probing them for vulnerabilities. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:17, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can see, it was because it was slowing things down. See Jamesday's comment at Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Archive_5#OpenProxyBlockerBot. (Other attempts: User:Proxy blocker and meta:Proxy blocking). --cesarb 01:49, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Don't pay too much attention to Jamesday's speculation. Maybe that's why he wanted it switched off, but it's certainly not why it was switched off. Proxy scanning was switched off because Jimbo asked us to switch it off, and not to switch it back on again without asking him. He did this because of the large number of complaints received, and he was worried that it would jeopardise our internet access. More recently, a colo staff member told us that our internet access was not at risk, and that they have no problem with us doing this, as long as we warn them first. -- Tim Starling 02:36, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Copyright_problems Page Needs Sectioned

I just displayed the Copyright_problems page to check for an image on August 22nd. Even though I have a broadband connection the page took at least 15 minutes to fully download, possibly longer since I was tired of waiting and did something else. I noticed the comment about Misplaced Pages being slow and took that into account but the Copyright_problems page is just too slow to download because of its size and gets bigger every day. Also, the Village_pump_(technical) page is very slow too. I don't have any problems with much shorter pages.

My proposal is to separate each day on its own page with a link pointing to it from the main page. I know with regular coding this would be easy but with a table of contents and Wiki special coding to deal with I don't know if it can be done. If I knew how I would do this myself but I'm fairly new and still learning.

I'm using Firefox 1.0.6 and noticed the same results in IE 6.0 under Windows XP Home.

Rogerqcaz 07:26, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Transparent infoboxes??

Section header underlines are now crossing through infoboxes (since yesterday evening) - it's never happened before on en wikipedia, tho' I have seen it on some other language wikis. Anyone any idea why this has started happening, and how it can be remedied? It looks awful! - MPF 13:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

The problem has stopped now, as mysteriously as it began. Thanks, whoever solved it! - MPF 12:37, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Where’ve my messages gone?

I’ve had two messages on my talk page, but I wasn’t notified either time. Any ideas? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 16:18, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

See above. --cesarb 17:18, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Sandbox auto-purge

I was wondering, in MediaWiki, how do you set up a system to automatically delete the sandbox every 12 hours, like wikipedia does? If you know, could you please tell me here. Thanks, Shardsofmetal 01:45, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

this task is performed by a bot. if you follow the link from the history to the bots user page you should be able to find its owner and ask them exactly what they are running. Plugwash 01:48, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

It is User:Sandbot which is run by AllyUnion. Angela. 14:07, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Unicode in Article Titles?

Sorry, clueless oldie question (too frustrated to keep searching for what i've seen before somewhere).

Zürich has a legible URL but Emperor Yūryaku has what i take to be "hex C5AB" in the middle; i take that to be Unicode for the char i thot was an umlauted U before i moved Emperor Yuryaku to Emperor Yūryaku, and then started gleefully byp'g the multiple dbl rdrs.

Are we trying to avoid such titles? The hex coding looks like a bad sign, and there are other places where my MS IE uses different ugly representations of the title. Seems like i probably should put them back like i found them.

--Jerzy•t 02:56, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

Emperor Yūryaku displays fine in my Mozilla browser. *Dan* 03:19, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

No, we should be happy that Unicode in titles is finally possible. A scrambled url is a small price for not having to romanize every other foreign word. (And eventually, even IE will extend its Unicode support.) — Sverdrup 10:44, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

If there were no redirect from Emperor Yuryaku, and someone searched for that article, would a match be done to Emperor Yūryaku? In other words, does a non-unicode search match a unicode title? BTW, it looks fine for me, using Firefox as well. Zoe 22:45, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not completely sure about Search, but Go doesn't find it without the redirect (see User:Rick Block/Yūryaku, a Go search for "User:Rick Block/Yuryaku" doesn't find it). My guess is that Search wouldn't find it either ("ū" is as different from "u", as "u" is from "v"). I'm further guessing that in a category listing, "ū" would sort alphabetically after "z". There is a Unicode sort algorithm, which basically takes a character sort order as input (and, I think allows sets of characters, like "ū" and "u" to be treated as the same for sort purposes). I'd be happy if I'm wrong, but I'd be surprised if we're currently using it which would mean characters will sort by their Unicode character number (i.e. any accented character sorts following "z"). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:25, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

The sort order is as I suspected. I just created an article Zzrich (perhaps speedy deleted by now) which I put in category:Cities in Switzerland, and it sorts before Zürich (i.e. "z" comes before "ü"). The sort order issue is a known bug, see bugzilla:164. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:39, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

The workaround is to use ] in the Zürich article, to make sorting independent of diacritics. A bit of extra work, but we already have to do category sorting for personal names, as in: ] at Fred Flintstone. -- Curps 03:32, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Link Spam blocking

How do I turn on the Link Spamming on my wiki? I know it has something to do with assigning a value to $wgSpamRegex in LocalSettings.php, but I don't know what the value is. I have copied the wikipedia spam list to spamblacklist.txt, but I don't know php. pstudier 03:10, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

Please direct questions about running other wikis using the wikimedia software to the wikitech-l mediawiki-l mailing list. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:22, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

It should be mediawiki-l. Wikitech-l is about technical issues on our own sites. You need to install the Spam Blacklist extension. Angela. 14:02, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Today's featured article

I was wondering how Misplaced Pages creates their featured article page. Is it an automated process, or does somebody write the page every day? (If it is automated, please tell me how this is done.)

Thank You, Shardsofmetal 03:24, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The snippet from the featured article is prepared in advance and submitted to Misplaced Pages:Today's featured article -- you can look at the past and future articles to be featured at Misplaced Pages:Today's featured article/August 2005. The text corresponding to the day's featured article is then automatically trancluded on the Main Page. Note that there is one user responsible for preparing the blurbs and determining which articles to feature, but anyone can really help if they want. — Sverdrup 03:46, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Adding navigation links

In MediaWiki 1.5, how do you add links to the navigation bar?

Thanks, shardsofmetal 08:09, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

You start by asking MediaWiki-l. This isn't a support forum. -- Cyrius|✎ 11:01, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Just edit MediaWiki:Sidebar. Angela. 14:00, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Non-redirect spams Broken redirects

If you can get to Special:BrokenRedirects without timing out, it repeatedly lists Misplaced Pages:Deletion log archive/November 2004 (1) at the bottom, although it isn’t a redirect page at all. Any ideas? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 11:19, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Its not just that one, the first entry (actually the first four entries) has the same problem

# User talk: uriyan (Edit) → Israeli nuclear capability

User talk: uriyan is not a redirect, nor does it ever appear to have been. Thryduulf 12:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism by worms?

Is there any defense measure against a worm (like Code Red) that vandalizes random articles in Misplaced Pages from infected machines, for example by inserting (or replacing existing text with) random paragraphs generated with something like SCIgen? If you change the site layout, the worm writer might also issue "updates" that might spread or be retrieved by the infected machines in a distributed way. If you block the IP of infected machines, the man-power needed for identifying (vandalism may be very hard to identify when SCIgen-like tools are used and they can update themselves), de-vandalizing, blocking and unblocking may well be unaffordable when millions of machines become infected. We might have to disable editing and the registration of new accounts indefinitely if such a thing happens, which would change Misplaced Pages into a closed community.

I do not know whether such worm vandalism has ever occurred, nor do I intend to commit such :) I'm just curious. R6144 12:39, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there is any defense in place. Probably we'll wait until it happens before establishing formal procedures. In any case, it's not like there is a disaster waiting to happen; all edits of all articles are backed up, so fixing even widespread damage is always possible. But it will be interesting to see how Misplaced Pages deals with such things once they begin to happen (and they will!). One possibility, which would reduce vandalism of all sorts, is to allow edits only by registered accounts, and only (say) at least 24 hours after they were registered. — Nowhither 18:41, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

It's basically pure, simple DOS with an extra spin that no site ever in the world has ever had to deal with ever before. If indeed millions of machines get infected, first thing we'll have to do is salvage a crashed system. ;-) — Ambush Commander 18:54, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

We'd cope. As pointed out, worst-case we can put the database in read-only mode and subtly change the edit page form so the worm no longer works. I think we have a lot more to fear from subtle vandalism than any sort of all-out attack. --fvw* 18:58, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Just a little note: subtly change the edit page form so the worm no longer works wouldn't work if the worm is able to be patched by the writer, or if we set up an API (which was announced a while ago... although we could always disable the API too). I think we have a lot more to fear from subtle vandalism than any sort of all-out attack. Agreed. — Ambush Commander 19:10, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Well, we could always introduce "captcha"s I suppose. Anyway, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it. --fvw* 19:13, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here: easy captchas have been broken before, and making our captchas hard will simply make editing more laborious. Captcha's also limit Misplaced Pages's accessibility. — Ambush Commander 19:17, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

an evil idea i had (which i don't plan to implement) would be a botnet that repeatedly re-vandalised a page and if it saw the page was protected checked the what links here for the page and added all the pages from it to its list of pages to vandalise.

in other words the more admins tried to protect pages from the vandal botnet the worse the vandalism would get. Plugwash 19:33, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Shhh! It is in the opinion of the Cabal that discussions like this are counterproductive towards the future health of Misplaced Pages! About your "evil idea", it would be interesting because it leaves a small imprint at first but grows larger: subtlety always wins. — Ambush Commander 19:50, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Any decent hacker could take Misplaced Pages down with nothing but a single computer and a fast internet connection. But no-one has ever tried it. I'm forced to conclude that hackers all love Misplaced Pages. Britannica, on the other hand, should watch out. -- Tim Starling 00:46, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

All hackers love Misplaced Pages - could that be our new slogan? Really, I think the only people out to get us are kooks and script kiddies. Alphax  04:38, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about you, but I've not met many hackers (in the classic sense) who don't love Misplaced Pages... Shimgray 15:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

The Misplaced Pages community has contributes from all over the world, so no matter where and hacker/cracker lives they will be found and vigilante justice served. --Clawed 05:37, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

TANS Peru Flight 204

someone changed the commons picture? Aleichem 20:59, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

It's fixed; clear your cache and it will be okay again. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:02, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

search for ICE should give results

I just did a search that came up with no results. So I clicked Google and it brought up a Misplaced Pages page. What the ?????? What I typed in the search field was ICE and the page that I wanted to find was http://en.wikipedia.org/In_case_of_emergency Can you explain and/or correct this? Thanks!

I typed "ICE" into the search box and clicked on "Go" and it took me to ICE, which, right now, redirects to InterCity Express. We should probably make it a disambiguation page, if somebody wants to write an article on ICE (cell phone) or some similar title. Zoe 22:49, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Clicking on "Search" instead of "Go" comes up with "You searched for "ICE" ". If you click on Index, it will take you to a page, the first entry of which is ICE. Zoe 22:51, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

InterCity Express has a top link to ICE (disambiguation) which covers all this. Dragons flight 22:58, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Well, then ICE should redirect to the disambig page. I'll go and do that. Zoe 23:23, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Make history less cluttered by reverts

Currently a large part of the history is cluttered by vandalism and reverts thereof. This is inconvenient when I want to simply look at the history in order to (for example) see where some inaccurate fact comes from. I think there should be a way for the history UI to show identical versions in the history, and a way to hide all the versions in between (in edit wars this would only help those agreeing with the current HEAD version, but it does no harm anyway). Of course, something similar to "svn blame" would be even better. R6144 05:14, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

An excellent idea. It would also be lovely to be able to see when a particular bit of text worked its way into an article (i.e. without needing to perform the manual binary search that I currently use). Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 17:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

A photo on Wikimedia Commons seems to have been overruled by a photo uploaded directly to Misplaced Pages -- help!

Hello all-

I uploaded the photo here to the Wikimedia commons for an article I did on Charles Village, a Baltimore neighborhood. The photo is of Guilford Street.

Today, someone uploaded this photo of Lorne Calvert to, I'm guessing, Misplaced Pages, not the Commons. The two have the same filename -- Calvert.jpg. Now the image link on the Charles Village shows Mr. Calvert rather than Calvert St. (Or at least it did -- I commented it out pending the resolution of this issue.)

What's the best way to deal with this? Should I re-upload the photo to the commons and give it a more specific name? Should I contact the user who uploaded the second photo? Is there a syntax for making sure an image referenced comes from the commons? Aren't we supposed to be uploading all media to the commons anyway? Help! --Jfruh 05:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I would say change the name to a more specific one. If, during an upload, it didn't prompt the user that an image already existed under that name, then we have a bug that should be fixed. If it did, and the user chose to ignore the warning and overwrite the image, then that's rather rude behaviour on their part. I'm not sure which is the case, however, so I wouldn't yell at them until you know. A nicely worded inquiry to find out if it warned them might be appropriate, however. Alternatively you could do your own test, by uploading images with the same name to both places to see if you get a warning. Once you know if we have a bug, then you will know whether it was a bug or just rudeness. StuRat 06:52, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, reuploaded. I shall enquire with the other pic's uploader later. --Jfruh 16:11, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think you get overwrite warnings for Commons images unless they have had physical pages made here (for example to cat them) , but I could be wrong. Regardless, a very descriptive filename ensures no clashes; I often end up using ridiculously long filenames like Image:Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories box.jpg. A bit too wordy, but it's an exact description of what it shows, and it won't ever clash. Garrett 12:48, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

A longer name will certainly make it less likely that it will be reused, but it's still possible. This could happen if it's a picture of the same thing, but showing a different aspect of that thing. I also have a related problem dealing with images ... I added 3 images to Misplaced Pages and linked to them from inflection point, but afterwards realized I should have put them in Wiki commons. I loaded the 3 images there, under the same name, but I can't get rid of the images I uploaded to Misplaced Pages. How do I get rid of those and redirect the inflection point article to find the illustrations under the same name in Wiki commons ? StuRat 16:58, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Put the {{NowCommons}} template on the en.wikipedia copies, and (at some undetermined point in the future) they'll be deleted. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:16, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

To Do List Woes

When using to-do lists with the {{todo}} script I've now encountered twice a situation where I can click edit on the to do list box, make changes and not have it appear in the list. If I click edit again, the changes DO appear in the edit window. Please see my user page for an example. Why is this happening and how do I fix it? Flehmen 17:27, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Sigh, nevermind. It appears to be db lag as my edit appeared after 15 min., but it only strikes my todo lists. Flehmen 18:18, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki links in plain English

Interwiki links are of course, great. Despire the fact that I can rarely read any of the other languages, I'm often interested to see whether the other Wikis have more contents or better pictures on a particular article. However, because the interwiki links are given in their native language, I frequently find it dificult to tell what language some of the more obscure links are. That's fine - their main use is for people who can read that language. However, would it also be possible to label them with a tool tip pop-up showing the English name for each language. You can figure them out from the 2-letter country codes in the linked URLs, but this isn't particularly convenient. -- Solipsist 19:05, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Um, when you're viewing the page you already see all the interwiki language links with their English names. When you're editing the page, you see the codes like de:, fr:, etc. I don't think you can get a browser edit window to display popups when you cursor over any particular section of text. -- Curps 16:04, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Really? When I'm viewing a page, I see interwiki links in their native language, such as Deutsch and Русский, and 日本語. Most of the other items on the left hand panel have tool tip pop-ups showing keyboard shortcuts and the like, so I would have thought it was feasible, although the interwiki links are more dynamic. -- Solipsist 16:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

"Name of page" variable and templates

I'm working on this template Template:History_of_the_DRC, and I want the main image in the template to change according to which page the template is on. For instance, when on the Congo Crisis page, the image would show the flag of that period in the template. The only way I can think of doing this (except editing each individual page which has the template) would be if there was a "name of page" variable which I could put into the template, which would in turn link to an image of the same name.

Sot the template would have something like: image=$NameOfPage$.png

Which on the Congo Crisis page would translate to "Congo Crisis.png"

Is this possible. Or is there another way?

- Xed 21:27, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Is {{PAGENAME}} what you're looking for? --fvw* 21:33, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

All the available mediawiki variables are documented at m:Help:Variable. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:35, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Disallowing page redirects to self

A page should not be allowed to redirect to itself. This happens as a side-effect when two pagemove reverts happen closely spaced together, when the second admin doesn't notice that the button says "Delete and move" instead of just "Move". The page ends up as a redirect to itself, with all of the valid article history deleted, requiring a restore and content revert to the last good version. Doing a sanity check to disallow a page to redirect to itself might prevent this scenario. For an example of this, see the history of User:Tim Starling. -- Curps 16:01, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

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