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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MiszaBot II (talk | contribs) at 06:36, 18 April 2007 (Archiving 8 thread(s) (older than 14d) to /dev/null.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Village Pump - Archive

DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN 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.

Post replies at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical), copying or summarizing the section you are replying to if necessary.

Note: Please add new material at the bottom of the page and remove any duplicate sections.

MediaWiki talk:Anonnotice#It needs to be moved up or over:

MediaWiki:Anonnotice is clashing with many of the top-right-corner icons for anons at the moment (see the thread linked in the section title for details). So it probably needs to be moved to the left. Per discussion in that thread, I'm taking the matter here for dicussion. --ais523 10:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

hello

i am wondering how to read articles on technical thing

thanks much i am pleased ur support

For technical information about Misplaced Pages and MediaWiki, Misplaced Pages:Technical FAQ and the MediaWiki website may be good starting points. --ais523 18:39, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

"Send new password" problems

Shocker: I'm sorry for editing this post, but there is a problem with the "Send new Password" function. I forgot my password, chose "Send new password", it said I'll get my password via email but I didn't. It's been 3 days now, I tried a couple of times to ask for a new password, but I don't get any email :\ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.18.88.109 (talk • contribs) 14:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Corrected number of articles

Misplaced Pages:What is an article? states "The automatic definition used by the software at Special:Statistics is: any page that is in the article namespace, is not a redirect page and contains at least one wiki link. The statistics software currently has no method of detecting disambiguation pages..." I assume it uses the text #REDIRECT to discriminate redirect pages; is there not some simple way the software could be taught to recognise {{disambig}} or Category:Disambiguation? This seems like a very easy thing to fix, why isn't it already there? Although, it will suddenly and dramatically reduce the article count, which may be difficult to explain... — Jack · talk · 14:56, Monday, 2 April 2007

It's a problem of what's efficient, not what's possible. Redirects are actually stored differently from ordinary pages in the database, so that the software can tell them apart trivially; the software can recognize disambiguation pages using the list in MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage, but couldn't check every page in a resonably efficient manner. There has been a feature request (bugzilla:6754) for disambiguation pages to be more cheaply distinguishable from ordinary pages, but for the time being it would be too much load on the servers to remove dab pages from the article count. --ais523 15:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Orange warning bar not showing up on IP talk page?

Has anybody else experienced this problem? A message posted to an IP talk page may not necessarily be received by the user. Some IPs experience it as the fact that the orange bar is stuck and won't clear out. Others have experienced it as the "new messages" notification does not show up no matter how many warnings are posted or if the cache is cleared. See here & here for more details. -- _Hdt83 01:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I had the orange bar stuck problem while I was temporarily an anon way back in Jan or Feb. It took perhaps 20 mins or so (can't really remember to be honest but it was a fair while) for it to disappear after I had visited the message. Purging etc didn't help nor was it cache related. There was at least one other report at the time Nil Einne 10:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

My problem is that they do not show up for me under a IP address. -- _Hdt83

This is Bug 9213. Prodego 02:11, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Has anybody else experienced this problem? I think that this is a major problem that is affecting many IP addresses. Please reply if somebody else has a similar problem with the "New Messages" bar. -- _Hdt83 03:58, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It affects all IP addresses, and has been doing so since January--VectorPotential 00:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Administrators editing signatures

I always thought it'd be good if (somehow) administrators could edit people's signatures, so we could deal with blatant violators of WP:SIG. Perhaps something like Special:Changesignature/Deskana? Just a thought. --Deskana (ya rly) 01:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Tony Sidaway had had a RFC because he edited signatures everywhere. Apparently, some agreed that in certain situations was fine, but many others rejected the idea. But, in trhuth, I don't think this is really necessary. -- ReyBrujo 02:22, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

That's what user talk pages are for. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Something needs to be done, to stop people producing signatures that are eiether unreadable, comprised of deprecated HTML, or both. Andy Mabbett 17:28, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but that "something" should start with talking to the problem editor. You don't need to be an administrator to leave a note on someone's talk page (well, if it's protected you do, but you get my point). EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I would propose we amend WP:SIG to deal with the specifics of exactly when administrators should edit people's signatures, for example, only if the user was asked politely first. I wouldn't suggest we add this feature and not impliment no set of rules dictating when it can be used. I don't think it'd be abused. If we implimented guidelines on when to use it, would you agree with the software addition? --Deskana (ya rly) 19:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree with it, personally, but there would have to be strict policy about its use, and possibly a log. You're just changing a variable in a database somewhere, as far as I'm aware. Gracenotes § 20:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Good idea; guidelines should be set down. Asking a user to change their signature before changing it without their knowledge is better than just changing someone's signature without them being given a chance to change it. Acalamari 20:55, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that's getting a bit creepy. Is there a specific instance where a user has been told by another editor (on their talk page) that their signature was disruptive and they ignored it, to the detriment of the community? You're talking about a largely cosmetic issue; personally, I dislike sigs that have super- and sub-scripts in them, as they distort the line spacing; is that a blockable offense? What about my own signature; is the ☯ offensive to someone? Is someone using a <font> tag instead of a <span> tag going to bring about the end of the encyclopedia; is using full color notation (ie: #336666) as opposed to simplified color declarations (ie: #366) causing people to leave the project? Should someone be banned indefinitely from the site for using the <blink> tag?
Well, the answer to that last question is "yes", but my point still stands: we've got a solution and we're looking for a problem. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a problem I've been addressing, albeit on a small scale, for a couple of years. Andy Mabbett 21:37, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

A few days ago I asked TomasBat (talk · contribs) to change his excessively long signature. He asked me if he *had* to, and I reluctantly said no. Apparently he didn't get the hint that he should, so there should be a way for us admins to give him the hint. Threats of blocking make no sense, so special:changesignature is a great idea. It would've prevented the whole -Ril- mess, too. Picaroon 21:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, my thoughts exactly. We'd, of course, also need something that prevents people from changing their signature back too though, since otherwise our changes could be undone, if the user just refuses to accept it. Maybe just Special:Resetsignature/Deskana, then, which resets the signature to it's default when the account was created? --Deskana (ya rly) 21:43, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

It probably won't be that useful to prevent someone from changing back their signature, since they could just paste in their (unacceptable) signature manually for each comment they make, if they really want to. Tra (Talk) 21:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

True, and putting in a guideline that says that users shouldn't paste it back in could create instruction-creep; an issue we want to avoid. Acalamari 22:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

If done, I'd absolutely want some log of who changed what, and when, along with some strict guidelines about when sigs can or can't be edited. By the end of the day, it may be easier to implement some technical restrictions (on images, or perhaps length, for example). If the goal is to avoid useless cluttered code when editing talk pages, then a character limit length would seem to address a large portion of the problem, no? – Luna Santin (talk) 22:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Restrictions would not really work, anyone can just paste a long signature if necessary (after all, I type the four tildes myself everytime I sign). Maybe we should start a WP:AIV/SIG to report extremely long signatures ;-) -- ReyBrujo 22:34, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Another problem with restricting long signatures is that if that kind of change was made to the software, the existing long signatures would need to be automatically removed through an SQL query which could use up a lot of memory, and additionally, what would they be changed to? If they were just truncated, that could make the html invalid, whilst simply resetting them to the default value could upset a lot of users. As for the 'signature change log', it would only really make sense if users' changes to their own signature are logged as well. Tra (Talk) 22:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Such a tool would very likely be problematic especially if adminstrators sharing the POV of someone like User:Tony Sidaway were to have access to it. Sidaway changes all signatures indiscriminately and given the number of times he is called to task about that on his talk page, doing that is disruptive. Who's going to be making the judgement call? I don't appreciate my signature being altered and I especially wouldn't appreciate the altering of signatures enmasse by some power tripping adminstrator with a tool like this. There is a long tradition on the project for upstanding and highly contributory users to utilize distinctive signatures to better identify themselves and the commentary they make, this thinking goes counter to that tradition and is likely to alienate these valuable folks. (→Netscott) 00:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I would just observe anyone alienated by changes to their signature wouldn't seem to have all that deep of a commitment to the project. Also, a limit on the length of signatures can easily be enforced by simply not allowing anyone to change their signature to one longer than the prescribed limit. No need to change all the existing long signatures, eventually they will be weeded out. —Doug Bell 01:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this not a deep enough commiment to the project Doug Bell? I agree that there are signatures that are too long and or too garish (literally I've seen signatures that due to their high contrast nature have interrupted a given talk discussion) but as others have said here, the best way to address this is through discussion with the concerned user. (→Netscott) 01:38, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't directing the comment at you, but rather at anyone that would become alienated (i.e. significantly disturbed as to impact their participation in the project) by a change to their signature. I'm not assuming that characterization applies to you. —Doug Bell 06:56, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

It does come off as incredibly disrespectful. Remember we're volunteers here - if we feel a lack of respect, or believe our contributions are not welcome, we can quit at any time. Titoxd 03:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Not possible. I can set my signature to {{subst:User:ReyBrujo/sg}}, and have all the HTML code I want at that subpage. -- ReyBrujo 01:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I've got two thaughts on this. 1) this is to much creep. If someone's signature is disruptive, blocking is available. 2)Enabling the other extreme (e.g. Special:Prefences/Targetuser) would allow for this, as well as assiting users with other preerences related challanges. This would need to be resticted to sysops and the email settings should probally be left alone. — xaosflux 04:04, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Questions:

1. How would this be an improvement to the encyclopedia?
2. How is this not just another attempt at an administrative power grab over editors?
3. With administrators now busying themselves making sure everyone's sig is perfect, how will they have time to create and edit articles?
4. Does Deskana understand the ill-will this will engender in those editors who have their well crafted sigs edited, or is he simply that callous that he doesn't care?

—M (talk • contribs) 20:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

To address #3: a lot of administrators don't contribute to article creation, and focus more on the "nuts and bolts" of running Misplaced Pages. I don't see this as a bad thing (I, for one, have never created an article from scratch). At most, I think it would be administrators watching a noticeboard (maybe just using WP:AN so it wouldn't be a new board) and addressing issues as they come up; to suggest that policing sigs would somehow significantly impact an admin's workload is a bit silly, in my opinion. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggested solutions

I'm sure that these have been suggested previously, but how about just:

• disallow images in signatures (this should be a no-brainer especially with the recent clarification from the board). Also consider that we still have people putting fair use images in userboxes, having to go and clean up such signatures, would be needless work that just shouldn't be necessary. One can be creative and unique without an image.

• disallow transclusion of pages in a signature (Honestly, I thought that that was already disallowed...)

• set a shorter length. Yes, a user "could" then paste the signature, and there is no reason to set an actual "rule" against it (I really don't want to find that we have editors sitting there counting characters in a signature...), however, just removing the "convenience" of the "extreme" lengths should be enough to cut down on thoughtlessly long signatures. I've seen quite a bit of discussion about how to concatenate/shorten lengths, and I think that this would just add an extra "suggestion", without having "instruction creep" of requirements.

Hope this helps. Interested in further discussion, obviously : ) - jc37 00:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Another Watchlist Problem.

I don't seem to be able to access my watchlist at all. Every time I go into it, it comes up with an error. Does anyone else have this problem? Acalamari 18:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, see same problem. Also see job queue at 1.4 million and increasing. Gimmetrow 18:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Interesting; the job queue length has caused a lot of watchlist problems recently. Acalamari 18:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I was having problems with it along the lines of what has been said, but now it appears to be working again. Strange. --LuigiManiac 18:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, it's working again. It seems the watchlist problems last for up to half an hour at most (by my experience) to as short as a few minutes. Acalamari 18:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Again. 2nd day running? Simply south 22:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

And now that it has come up it is 20 minutes behind present amazingly. Simply south 22:38, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Then not loading again. Simply south 23:00, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It has been working for me again, except now it is suddenly over 5 hours behind. What is wrong this time with it? Anyone else having this sudden problem? --LuigiManiac 04:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, see Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(technical)#The_Watchlist_Again. Gimmetrow 04:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Job queue

The job queue is over 2 million. Isn't that sort of high? -- Prove It 03:46, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Not really, and it's likely the result of an edit in a high-use template (maybe a cite template?). Jayden54 09:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

(cringes) - Well, at least part of it could be as a result of cleaning up user categories. I've been going through the userboxes and removing parent cats (essentially duplicative cats) from the programming/OS userboxes. Many of them did not use includeonly/noinclude, and often a userbox would add the transcluder to several cats. For example, if you have bas-3 on your userpage, you would have been added to bas-3, bas, and Wikipedian programmers. I've been removing the latter two as parent cats. I also removed the OS category from the userbox per WP:UCFD. (It's still not depopulated, after a few days...) Even so, I don't think that those actions would equal even close to a 20 thousand, much less, 2 million? - jc37 10:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and Category:Teenage Wikipedians has been merged, and it's also a fairly good sized cat... Anyone else out there been fixing/altering templates? : ) - jc37 10:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I edited some templates yesterday, including {{birth date and age}}. Any idea how long the queue would take to clear if there were no new additions at all? There is a request to edit {{fact}}, which would add quite a lot. CMummert · talk 13:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it, and go right ahead and perform the changes that are requested. The developers will step in if there are any problems, see Misplaced Pages:Don't worry about performance. Jayden54 15:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Right, it shouldn't hurt performance, but it might frustrate people who are changing categories on templates to wait a week before the job queue gets to the articles that use the template. There is a related discussion at meta that seems to suggest 2 million is higher than normal. CMummert · talk 16:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, the reason for the job-queue remaining so full is that the server which would normally be servicing it is busy performing some rather massive updates to the database schema which are keeping it busy. This should be finished within a few days when normal service will be resumed. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:19, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I had the distinct impression that it wasn't going down. Is there a noticeboard somewhere with information like this? CMummert · talk 10:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

There's the Server admin log, but the information there is very technical (it's directed at the other developers); there's also the channel topic for #wikimedia-tech. However, most of the time, the information comes from lurking on #wikimedia-tech. --cesarb 22:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Combined-category filtering

It occurred to me recently that it would be useful to have a tool, for non-technical users, whereby articles in two specified categories could be listed; for instance "all articles in category:Birmingham also in Category:articles needing cleanup" or "all articles in category: living people also in category:people from Birmingham". I have no idea how this might be achieved, not the skills to implement it,. Anyone interested? Andy Mabbett 07:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Try m:User:Duesentrieb/CatScan. It may have a problem with Category:Living people because it's so large; I tried an intersect of Category:People from Birmingham, England with that and it died on me after a few minutes.-gadfium 08:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:AWB has a list comparer function, where you can load the articles in two categories (or from what links here and others) and find which are in both, one or the other. It will take ages to load large categories though. You could try scanning the m:data dumps offline for large categories, although the data might be slightly out of date. mattbr 10:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

More on sortable tables

Ongoing discussion at Template talk:Sortablename. --Random832 13:10, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Search result lisitings...

I notice that often when I search for something, several pages of results come back. However when I click on one of the page numbers or the "Next »" link, often it takes me to a generic "no results" page. For instance try searching for "fromthe". Currently four pages are returned but only the first seems to display. What's going on here? Is this a Misplaced Pages problem or a Mediawiki problem? No problem? Jason Quinn 17:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I think what's happening is you're searching in only one or a few namespaces, but it still gives the total number of results in all namespaces. Checking all the checkboxes beside the namespaces gives all 4 pages of results. –Pomte 18:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Pomte. It appears you are correct that it is a namespace thing. The question now becomes is this behavior that is best? I think it is certainly confusing the way it is. Jason Quinn 21:31, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Error on selecting 'Save page' (Vista)

My new Vista-based PC is set up with multiple accounts – one for each of the family, plus one admin account. On accounts where Parental Controls have been enabled, I am seeing a problem when trying to save an edited page.

When 'Save page' is pressed, the updated page is not displayed. Instead, I get an essentially blank page saying the following:

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage 


Most likely causes:
- You are not connected to the Internet. 
- The website is encountering problems. 
- There might be a typing error in the address. 

The URL in the address bar is unchanged (it still ends 'submit'), but clicking 'Refresh' clears the error page and reloads the article page in edit mode. (This confused me for a while, until I realised that my previous edits HAD been accepted, and I had re-opened the saved page for a further edit.)

The problem is NOT caused by a page filter, as my account does not have any URL restrictions enabled. (My account has a time restriction set, to disable access at midnight in a desperate attempt to stop me editing WP late into the night :o( ). Disabling all restrictions and restarting the account cleared the problem, but re-enabling the time limit restriction brought the error back again. I never see the problem in my admin account, but see it 100% in restricted accounts.

The problem applies to both WP and 'Commons'.

• So, any ideas?
• Is it purely a Vista problem?
• Were the WP tecchies aware of it?
• Is there anything I can do to avoid the problem, short of disabling the restrictions?

EdJogg 19:45, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem hasn't been reported to the bug tracker yet, as far as I can see; you can file a bug report at mediazilla:. I can't think of any solutions to this (maybe someone else at VPT can?). I suspect it's a Vista problem, or it would probably have been noticed before now. --ais523 11:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Toyota Prius page layout is messed up on Firefox

The layout of the Toyota Prius page is bad on Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows XP. Looks okay on IE. The left column with the menus is missing and the menus are scattered over the left side of the text. Dougher 20:44, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I think I fixed it by closing the table used in the article. Is it fixed now? --MZMcBride 22:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

GNU/Linux Naming Controversy FAR

Can somebody figure out how to list GNU/Linux naming controversy for FAR and move my justification from the talk page? I have no idea what I'm doing. Qwertydvorak 22:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

See WP:FAR. If you have any questions, let me know below. Cheers. --MZMcBride 22:53, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I tried to follow those guidelines, adding the FAR tag apparently doesn't work because of the slash in the page name. Qwertydvorak 20:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, I did not know I had to create the page. Qwertydvorak 20:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Tab Priority/Position

I understand why focus isn't given to the search box on the Main Page (yes, I read the FAQ)....but how about putting focus on the item (or some other "placeholder") just prior to the Search box. Or perhaps giving the Search box a higher tab priority/index. Currently, one must Tab through nearly every hyperlink on the page before the cursor finally gets around to the Search box.

By adjusting the tab priority of the search box and/or the initial tab position of the cursor, one could still use the arrow keys to function as expected, and would only require a single 'TAB' to move it to the search box. (Incidentally, if the focus were in the Search box, the same action would allow the arrow keys to work...just "Tab" out of it.) It just doesn't make sense that the page requires a user to move his/her hand back to the mouse, click the search box, then move his/her hand back to the keyboard to perform a search. This could all be simplified with proper tab priority/position when the page loads. ++Arx Fortis 07:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The accesskey attribute is set on that element, to "f" (see also WP:KB). You can also put something in your personal user js to set focus right on it, like:

addOnloadHook(function() {document.getElementById('searchInput').focus(); return false;});

Or you could set the tabindex to 1 (note that diff pages, edit pages and other such pages already have an element with a tabindex="1" attribute, so you'd either have to except them or accept them):

addOnloadHook(function() {document.getElementById('searchInput').tabIndex='1'; return false;;});

--Splarka (rant) 07:53, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

The Search access key in Firefox requires CTRL-ALT-F. That's an awkward combo for a fairly routine task. I doubt most users know they have a user.js....much less how to edit one. I still haven't heard a good reason why the tab index can't be changed to make search #2. ++Arx Fortis 13:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

category weirdness

Can someone help me figure out why Category:Amz isn't showing up in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion? — coelacan — 01:49, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

It probably has something to do with the job queue being at 2,339,644. --MZMcBride 01:57, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

46 hours after it was tagged for speedy? I've seen other categories get tagged and untagged in the meantime, which did show up in the parent category. Doesn't make sense... — coelacan — 02:04, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit tabs

How do you remove the links that show up on the right from within a page? Think outside the box 09:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

my preferences -> Editing -> Enable section editing via links (first checkbox). –Pomte 10:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

For a specific article add: __NOEDITSECTION__ (see: Help:Magic words). --Van helsing 10:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Think outside the box 10:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:Link GA not working

It seems that {{Link GA}} fails to work properly. For example, after I added {{Link GA|zh}} to Flag of Hong Kong, the GA icon doesn't show up in the part of the interwiki links. However, {{Link FA}} is fine at the moment. -- Kevinhksouth 10:08, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Did it ever work? The reason that {{Link FA}} works is because of supporting JavaScript in the linkFA function in MediaWiki:Common.js and a CSS definition for li.FA in MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Mike Dillon 05:03, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks like there is a bullet image for this purpose already at Image:Monobook-bullet-plus.png. I've also created Image:Monobook-bullet-ga.png, which is a downsized version of Image:Symbol support vote.svg. The resulting lists would look something like this:

Image:Monobook-bullet-plus.png

Image:Monobook-bullet-ga.png

I had to fake this since the HTML filter for Misplaced Pages strips out the "style" element on <li> tags. If there is support for this change, User:Ruud Koot would be the one to ask about getting it done since he maintains the {{Link FA}} support. Mike Dillon 05:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe this has already been rejected in the past (at least we chose not to mark our own GAs with an icon at the top, why would we then try to draw attention to GAs in other languages?) —Ruud 09:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

But the fact is that this template is used in several language versions already. If English Misplaced Pages decides not to use it, please delete this template, and also lock this title, so that noone else, who doesn't know such policy, would be able to create it again. -- Kevinhksouth 06:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Hit Counter?

Is there any way to add a hit counter to a Misplaced Pages user Page?

Thanx,

Kevinwong913 16:00, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Technical FAQ#Can I add a page hit counter to a Misplaced Pages page? John Reaves (talk) 16:27, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanx.

Kevinwong913 01:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The Watchlist Again.

I assume everyone's watchlists are playing up again? I believe this is the third day in row we've had this? Acalamari 23:07, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Nah, I hasn't been 3 days. This is the first day my watchlist is having problems. I can navigate around WP just fine...--Ed 23:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Same here. Any idea as to what's going on? Fvasconcellos 23:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I can navigate Misplaced Pages perfectly, but this is the third time this has happened within 72 hours. If you read some of the above posts you'll see this is a continually occuring problem at the moment. Some users think it's the job queue length. Acalamari 23:11, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Fvasconcellos 23:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I was just about to report this (: VectorPotential 23:24, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad it's not just one user who's affected; by the fact all users are probably affected means that there is a problem somewhere that needs fixing. Acalamari 23:26, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

They seem to be working again now. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:34, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I was just about to say that. Thanks. :) Acalamari 23:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there a place where there's up to date statuses about Misplaced Pages? There should be a place to report this stuff and to actually know what's going on. --Ed 23:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Besides this page, where answers may be slow, the best I can think of is the #wikimedia-tech IRC channel. Thats where the developers and other tech people tend to hang out. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 02:28, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Right now, the watchlist is "working" but is only reporting edits that are about four hours old. Gimmetrow 04:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

It's essentially useless with 4 hour edits. PTO 04:40, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be catching up now... slowly... --- RockMFR 05:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

This lag is incredibly annoying - can't see the additions to WP:AIV on my watchlist meaning I have to actually check it! Viridae 05:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be about 8 hours behind now. But this is the first time I've experienced it. Tvoz |talk 05:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

8 hours? Mine is about 2:40! Viridae 05:24, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

When my watchlist first fell behind, it was by about 5 hours. Now it has caught up to being about 2 and a half hours behind. Why have there been so many problems with watchlists lately? --LuigiManiac 05:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

No idea, but its happening again - 15 minutes behind atm. Viridae 23:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

It is; and the contributions are updating slowly again as well. Acalamari 23:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow, this time I didn't even notice until Viridae's edit finally showed up on my watchlist (I have this page on my watchlist). Lag: it's a terrible thing. --LuigiManiac 23:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The lag is making vandalism fighting very tough. I also noticed that there is a problem with the font size in some pages. It was happening in my talk page and in other articles, like Click (film) (scroll down). —Anas 11:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the font problem in Click (film), which was caused by a missing close html tag for small. Since HTMLTidy has been upgraded on the Misplaced Pages servers (see message by Tim Starling below) tags don't get closed automatically anymore. Jayden54 11:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Uha, thanks for notifying me of that. —Anas 17:48, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Unknown exception in diff.

I was cleaning up vandalism and came across this. Up at the top left, it says "Unknown exception in diff". So, what's up? — coelacan — 00:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed when you make an edit to a page but don't change anything, the revision doesn't appear to append itself to the history. In this case, both revisions are the same (no changes) but somehow got put into the history - my guess. x42bn6 Talk 00:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

But they're not the same. If you look at the ranged diffs around that edit, it looks like ] on line 25 was changed to ]. –Pomte 02:22, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Hm, interesting; then I have no clue. x42bn6 Talk 18:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Previewing

Coming here from a suggestion in my post at the Help Desk (here)... I don't know if this is happening to anyone else, but lately for me the show preview button hasn't been working. After clicking the button, it refreshes back to the edit window without the preview above it, and only previewing the edit summary. I don't use the button much, but I was working with templates and inserting images the other day and it would have been handy. I disabled Tools/Navigation popups for a while (preview still didn't work) but logged out it worked fine. Any thoughts/suggestions/comments? I'm not too fussed about it not working, but it should, so... CattleGirl 02:09, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be working fine for me. Do you have a browser problem or something? Acalamari 02:28, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

No problems that I know of, everything else is working fine besides that button. CattleGirl 02:37, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Here are some tests you may be able to try, which would help isolate the cause of the problem:

• Try another Web browser on your computer.
• Try logging into your Misplaced Pages account from someone else's computer.
• Make another (dummy) account and log into it from your computer.

Trying those tests could shed some light on whether the problem is in your account settings, or your browser or computer, etc. For example, if the problem always occurs in your account regardless of what computer or browser you are using, but it does not occur in the dummy account from your computer, then the problem is almost certainly in your account settings. Also, when you link to a post on the Help desk, your link will break when the Help desk page gets archived, unless you use a permanent link like this. --Teratornis 04:17, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

My user page

Seems to have started displaying oddly today. Text in sections has become invisible, in Firefox and IE. Any ideas? --Guinnog 09:58, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Past versions appear the same way. You don't have closing </font> tags after your headings e.g. Apologia. –Pomte 10:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

It's always worked fine until today, so I thought that maybe something has changed at the server end. I lack the skill to edit it; any help you can give me in that would be welcome. --Guinnog 10:18, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I've tried fixing the code. No warranty applies (grin). Valentinian 10:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your work. I wonder (as the coding hadn't changed in ages) what made the site less error-tolerant overnight? Oh well, I don't understand such things; I am glad I brought it here. --Guinnog 10:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Are you using a different or upgraded browser than before? I've encountered a similar problem today: The entire bottom section here was crossed out for 5 whole days without anyone seeming to notice. It was also an improper tag (<s/> instead of </s>) so I'm assuming that only some browsers manage to show these errors. Unless the site was autocorrecting and autoclosing tags for some reason, and just stopped. –Pomte 11:39, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Both browsers I tried it with (Firefox 2.0.0.3 and Internet Explorer 7) displayed it correctly before. I wondered if something of the sort had happened. --Guinnog 11:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

See below for what happened. --cesarb 20:38, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

A couple of notes:

• Tags should be closed in the opposite order they are placed (an example pulled from your page: it should be <div style="whatever"><font tags="are evil">'''''Apologia'''''</font></div> (close the font tag first, then the div).
• Font tags, as I oh-so-subtly mentioned in the last example, shouldn't be used; the <span> (with a proper in-line CSS declaration) can apply the same effects without the odd inconstancies that they can introduce.
• For that matter, the font tags aren't doing anything in those examples; you can easily put a "font-family" and "color" declaration into the div tag.

That's all I spotted; I just took a very brief look at the page, though. EVula // talk // ☯ // 13:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Technical problems when trying to revert vandalism

I have several times tried to revert vandalism on the article Rockville Centre, New York, and my edit is keep being blocked when I click save as it says I am spamming the page. As the vandalism removed half the page content and reverting it meant restoring the external links, and it is classing these legitimate external links as spam. Why is it doing this, and how can it detect which links are inapropriate and which are not? Retiono Virginian 15:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

That's probably the Spam blacklist; take a look at the list to find which of the external links is causing the block, and do not restore it when reverting the page. --cesarb 20:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:List_of_protected_pages

This page has been broken since early yesterday - refuses to display. What's up? - Merzbow 17:55, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

It always takes ages to load whenever I try and load it... presumably because there are so many protected pages and the content of the page is huge? Perhaps your browser just timed out? --Deskana (ya rly) 17:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually it seems a bit broken. There's an entire section filled with stuff about the article lt, which seems to be an error relating to Template:lt, and there's also a lot of stuff about the article Article. It seems a bit bugged out. Maybe we should contact the bot owner. --Deskana (ya rly) 18:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

That is not a new problem, and it's not a bot problem; it's the template limits getting hit. Just check the HTML source for the page; the parser outputs plenty of warnings hidden inside HTML comments. As to the slow loading, it's no surprise, given that the generated HTML for that page is over two megabytes long, and that's without expanding a lot of the templates. --cesarb 20:32, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't even get any HTML source - browser spins for two minutes and then a Wikimedia Foundation error page comes up. - Merzbow 22:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing that this page predates the category system? Perhaps it should be moved to categories. - jc37 10:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

HTML Tidy?

Nevermind, post moved to Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#Tidy upgraded--VectorPotential 18:54, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Template not quite working?

Here is a partial copy of post at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America:

Can anyone here tell me how to resolve this issue I stumbled across? Help appreciated. CJLippert 18:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to do anything; just wait for the job queue to catch up. The template was changed very recently, and it was not using {{PAGENAME}} before; what you are seeing is still the old categorization. --cesarb 20:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Funny Formatting In The Article About Amber

Amber

The formatting in this article gets strange about 1/2 way down starting at "Amber Inclusions". Everything is italicized from that section down. I looked in the source in a number of different places but I didn't see any stray "italic" syntax. Can someone take a look at this and see what is going on? 67.177.149.119 20:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

• See Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#Tidy upgraded--VectorPotential 20:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

• I've gone ahead and fixed the Amber (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article, the problem was someone forgot to close a </cite> tag--VectorPotential 20:28, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

American/British web page parser?

Sorry if this is question has previously been asked, but is there a tool I can use that will look at a wikipedia article and search for words that are distinctive between the American and British versions of the English language? I.e. cookie in American, biscuit in British; potato chip in American, crisp in British; center in American, centre in British; and so forth. I need to be able to search a long page and look for potential intermixing of the two. Thank you! — RJH (talk) 20:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

CURENTUSER template ?

Hello. I there such a template wich replace by the current user name? I tryed : {{CURENTUSER}},{{CURENTUSER}}, {{USER}}, {{USERPAGE}}, Special:Mypage, Special:Mytalk... but and searched in help files but i didn't find a suitable one.
It is for use in an input box such as :

<inputbox>
type=create
preload={{PAGENAME}}/Bookmark
break=no
prefix=User:{{CURENTUSER}}/Bookmarks/
buttonlabel=New bookmark
</inputbox>

It is for a wikia project.
Thanks by advance if you can help.--Ttibaut 22:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

No, there's no such magicword. At a guess, it's because it wouldn't be able to be meaningfully cached by the Squids. —Cryptic 00:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I will try to find another way to do it. If someone has an idea it would be welcomed ^-^--Ttibaut 00:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that using Special:Mypage/Bookmarks/ could work, but you'd have to be on a site that is using a version of Inputbox that actually supports prefix to test that. The version installed on Misplaced Pages doesn't support it as far as I can tell; I'm not sure about Wikia. Mike Dillon 00:44, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikia support prefix. Thanks, i'll give you the result of the test in a few minutes^-^--Ttibaut 00:54, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It works!!! Thank you very much Mike!!!--Ttibaut 00:58, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Index.php query string

Where can I find the sintax of the query string for index.php? (For example, when I clicked for writing this post the URL was http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=edit&section=new.)

I would like to develop a web form for adding {{subst:uw-delete1}} and similar templates on User Talk pages, and for performing other task which require editing multiple pages. Some time ago I noticed somewhere that there was a body (or similar) parameter which allow filling the edition text area with a predefined value, but I would like to know the whole spectrum of possibilites. Rjgodoy 04:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Try having a look at Manual:Parameters to index.php.Titoxd 07:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Oops, didn't notice you snuck in an edit there Titoxd. My fault for taking half an hour to type this ^_^. --Splarka (rant)

The "whole spectrum" is pretty big, as each action and each Special page (as well as each extension Special page) can have its own unique parameters. Here is the best non-source-code (but incomplete) list you'll probably find: mw:Manual:Parameters_to_index.php. However, these aren't specific to 'index.php' as that is basically the long form of the same URI (/ is just an available alias set by .htaccess or something). For example: en.wikipedia.org/User:Splarka?action=edit.

You can often have good luck finding usable URI parameter names by viewing the html. For example, on a delete page: <input type='text' size='60' name='wpReason' id='wpReason' value="" tabindex="1" />

The name in this case indicates the parameter, so for example you can use &wpReason=some+reason to preload a reason. However, sometimes you need to view the php source. The edit page (source) only seems to take 4 URI parameters:

# Get variables from query string :P
$section = $wgRequest->getVal( 'section' );
$preload = $wgRequest->getVal( 'preload' );
$undoafter = $wgRequest->getVal( 'undoafter' );
$undo = $wgRequest->getVal( 'undo' );

The rest are all POST, as far as I can tell. But, what you can do, is use &preload=Some_Template&section=new (because preload only works with new pages or new sections, and needs a template for 'preload').

What I've done before to circumvent this, is a bit of javascript (for example, see Wikia:User:Splarka/newwiki.js). You could write up a little script that would, with a properly formatted URI like say: en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Splarka?action=edit&appendtext=%3D%3DSome+header%3D%3D%0A%0A%7B%7Bsubst%3Auw-delete1%7D%7D%0A&autosave=true

(I often use scripts like this to batch delete, batch move, batch block, and even batch upload files, with nothing more than Firefox)... one problem though, is it requires a user to edit their user js, unlike the preload above.

Anyway, HTH. --Splarka (rant) 08:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

ping delay problem

Hi there,

I have a small problem in terms of networking.

I had a test setup consisting of two Cisco Routers and when I Ping from one Router to Another the delay time is being inconsitent.

This setup was setup in our office and when I try to ping from one Router the Average ping delay should be around 650mSec but it is surpassing the limit and even sometimes exceeding 700mSec , which is not acceptable by our Inspection Agency, all they want to clear the system is a very good reason for the cause of inconsistent ping delay as it is exceeding the Specification.

I would like someone to assist me in this regard at the earliest, for the product to get cleared.

Thank you D.ravikanth

• The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Misplaced Pages. Maybe the reference desk can help. Good luck, Notinasnaid 07:32, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Really confusing

This really odd problem seems not to be isolated. Can anyone here comment? AndyJones 15:18, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Monobook.js

Does the monobook.js make my user account broken? I want to know. Jet123 23:17, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Your monobook.js seems not to exist, and so it can't be broken. CMummert · talk 23:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa

Do other people see this article as I do — with the line that's normally under the title actually going through it? If so, does anyone have any idea why this is happening? (If not, does anybody have any idea why I'm seeing it that way?) --Mel Etitis (Talk) 09:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

• I also see the line going through... may be because of the superscript? Rjgodoy 10:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I assume so, but I can't see how to get rid of it; nothing shows up on the Move screen. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 23:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Try previewing the article after removing the {{downsize}} line. This might be a reason to disallow tags like <sup> on the title line. –Pomte 01:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that worked. I agree about superscript tags. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 09:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

New messages bar

My new messages bar has popped up at least 5 times in the last 20 minutes but I haven't been receiving new messages at all. What's wrong? The Evil Clown 16:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It just happened to me too, while viewing a diff. Femto 18:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

BTW, I forgot to mention that, it happens during diffs, and when I finish the revery, it still is there until you go to your talk. The Evil Clown 18:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, that function is happening as it is supposed to; the message appears until you view your talk page, no matter what. If it is still appearing after that, though, that would be a different problem.

Also, it might be that someone made a minor edit, but not a new post per se; the system can't distinguish between the two, and so gives you a message no matter what. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:21, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

There was no edit made at all. Or esle I won't be complaining. The Evil Clown 00:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

In my case, there hasn't been an edit to my talk page in the last 20 hours before the phantom message bar popped up. Not even a deleted edit in the revision history ...unless a revision was removed by Misplaced Pages:Oversight. Would the new message flag remain in those cases? Anyone here with permissions to check the oversight log for User talk:Evilclown93 and User talk:Femto? Sounds unlikely though. (And no, it wasn't one of those fake practical joke messages on people's user pages, just to be clear.) Perhaps there was a major glitch in the synchronization of the server times, something like that. Femto 12:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that might be it; I know there have been a lot of strange time-delay glitches here lately, such as the contribs page being out of date and whatnot. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:27, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

What happened?!

All of a sudden, my scripts quit working. Any idea what's up?  ~Steptrip 00:10, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I seem to have had a similar problem. When I added new options of popups to my monobook, they didn't change anything. When I bypassed my cache, it stopped working altogether. When I removed it, it worked just fine. I guess some scripts are problematic. I might need some help with this too. Thanks. – AstroHurricane001 00:55, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I had this problem after a recent firefox upgrade, kicked up javascript option to off, try reseting that setting in your browser. — xaosflux 00:57, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

wikimedia diff function

I have several questions on diff program used for page historirs.

1) Is the diff program specifically developed for wikipedia?

2) Is it almost the same as the "dif" program under unix/linux?

3) If it is different, what are the major differences?

4) Is it obtainable from wikipedia or any other resource?

5) Is there any technical paper on how to reimplement it?

Thanks,

Ramazan.

I don't know, but if someone doesn't come along with an answer, perhaps you could look at the source. The database is available at Misplaced Pages:Database download, but points to the frontend source at Misplaced Pages:MediaWiki, which says it's at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia/. I agree, it acts a lot like the Linux diff utility. —EncMstr 05:33, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

1) kind of, 2) no, 3) it makes HTML and does word-level diffs, 4) C++ version (used on Misplaced Pages), PHP version (used on other MediaWiki wikis). 5) Possibly, try an abstract search. It's based on a diff module from PhpWiki, which was based on a Perl module by Ned Konz (now obsolete), which was loosely based on GNU diffutils. Various features and optimisations were added along the way. See the comments in the source. -- Tim Starling 07:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Something wrong

Something wrong with the colors in Misplaced Pages. In my userpage, some of the blue and black color texts was turned into white. And not even that. This part I took from User:Snowolfd4's sign. Previously it was green and now its blue. Original version can found on here.----♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ 08:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

SVG rendering with opaque background instead of transparent

Could a developer look at this conversation on the reference desk and confirm whether it is a browser problem or wiki problem (and if it is the latter then hopefully fix it). Thanks in advance Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 12:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Horizontal TOC

Is there such a thing as a horizontal toc? I've looked a lot of places now - and I can't seem to find one, but I figure if anyone knew you guys would. One problem is I can't do this like a css type of thing - any user that comes has to see it horizontally. I was hoping for something like this (with less space in between words):

Thanks for any help! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Danielfolsom (talk • contribs)

There are horizontal ones at Misplaced Pages:Template messages/Compact table of contents, but these are for long alphanumeric and similar lists. –Pomte 16:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

What about this?

<div class="horizontal">
__TOC__
</div>

It's a new feature that's being worked out at the moment. --ais523 16:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow - thanks for te quick response!danielfolsom ©

You're lucky in the timing; that wouldn't have worked a week ago. There are still some problems with Internet Explorer 6 that need to be worked out. --ais523 17:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist customisations?

Or, more specifically, is there any way to display the date on which each item was added to my watchlist? I would find this useful as a memory aid. Adrian M. H. 16:45, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that information's recorded by the server, so there'd be no way to display it (and mw:Watchlist table confirms this). --ais523 16:48, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh well, thanks anyway. I wondered if that might be the case. Back to the notepad and pen! Adrian M. H. 16:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

You could add links to a user subpage. This way, your edit history will tell you when you added each link, and you can use Special:Recentchangeslinked as a pseudo-watchlist. –Pomte 17:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea. Thanks. Adrian M. H. 17:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Link color Table

Is there anyway to set the color of links for an entire table?danielfolsom © 18:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit and editor count

First, is there a way to determine the number of edits an article has had, and second, the number of editors that have edited the article. I wanted that info for this without having to count. Thanks. KnightLago 20:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah here's the article statics page. --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ 20:23, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. KnightLago 20:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggesting additions

I want to propose a new feature that would involve a built-in moving/renaming tool for categories, similar to the one we have for pages. Where do I propose this and/or who do I contact about this? --Hemlock Martinis 23:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, you can use AWB :) If you moved Category:A to Category:B, then all of the pages in Category:A would still say Category:A, and Category:B would be empty, even if the wikitext and revision history of Category:A was moved. Is the latter what you're looking for? Gracenotes § 00:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess that works. I was hoping for a built-in feature, but I doubt that'll happen. Thanks! --Hemlock Martinis 00:50, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Repeating my questions

I hope it is alright to do this. I asked some questions on this page that were never answered, and seeing as how they are in the archive now, I would like to repost them in hopes of getting some responses. Here they are, as copied and pasted from the archive:

I need some help with my userpage. I got bored and started looking around when I came across Misza13's Status Switcher script. I decided to use it, but after I put everything in I now have two problems. Problem one is that it says Example's Status on the template on my userpage. How do I get that to say LuigiManiac's Status? My second problem is that before I put in the template, my userboxes were on the far right side of the page. Now they moved to the left of the Status template. How do I get them back where they were? Thank you in advance. From 24 March 2007

Okay, while I'm waiting for my five day old problem to be solved, I have a new one. It also has to do with scripts. I just started helping the fine folks at Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation pages with links, and I tried out Barticus88's dpl.js (it's shown on WP:DPL's talk page). It actually is working just fine. What's the problem? Well, I also have the popups tool in my monobook.js, and it was working until I put in dpl.js. Now I can't get any popups to, well, pop up. After using it for awhile, I put dpl.js out, purged my cache, tested my popups, put it back in, purged my cache again, and tested popups again, and I can say with great certainty that the dpl.js is blocking the popups tool. I like both of them, so is there is some way to have both enabled at the same time? Thanks in advance. From 30 March 2007

I hope that these will finally be answered, as they still have not been resolved. --LuigiManiac 02:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The first one is done. The second one is more complex. Prodego 03:07, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Non-ASCII characters

I'm trying to clean up Han. It includes many non-ASCII characters, which display as question marks in Firefox (2.0.0.3, encoding Unicode UTF-8). I've heard that, in some cases, non-ASCII characters can be "corrupted" and actually stored as question marks or other gibberish characters in the database. How do I know whether or not that's the case here? --Smack (talk) 03:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The easiest approach is to install and use a font that include Asian characters, see Help:Multilingual support. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

None of the character on that page appear as a question mark. In the past I've made such a corruption: copied article text into an editor, made changes, and when I pasted it back into the edit box, the characters appeared as question marks. –Pomte 09:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Diff error

For some reason, the diffs on some edits I'm making in AWB aren't displaying right. For the article İskenderun I changed Category:Port cities to Category:Port cities in Turkey. The category was changed but the diff shows the category simply being removed . It did this for some other articles that I changed but not all (see ). I have made similar edits with AWB (slightly different category) and never had this problem. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 04:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

According to the history for this one, the article already had both categories prior to your change (see this revision just before yours). So instead of replacing the one category with a duplicate of the other one, the first one was apparently just removed. – mcy1008 (talk) 05:01, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

That must be a quirk of AWB; because when there are two of the same category, it changes both of them. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 05:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Something wrong with the codes I copied

I have copied {{User:Storkk/Quotes{{#expr:{{#time:i}} mod 4}}}} from User:Storkk, where User:Storkk/Quotes led to User:Storkk/Quotes2 or User:Storkk/Quotes3. Then I altered it to {{User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary{{#expr:{{#time:i}} mod 4}}}} on User:Aditya Kabir, where User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary leads to User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary. I also have copied the switch to 30 quotes on User:Storkk/Quotes2 and expanded it to 100 quotes on User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary. But, it is not working, and my limited knowledge can't figure it out. Can anyone take a look at the codes and figure out the problem? If you respond here, please, leave a note on my talk page. Aditya Kabir 08:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on Wiki parser functions, but I think your codes are correct. However, Misplaced Pages aggressively caches page content. If you try to edit one of the pages, and then replace "&action=edit" in the URL with "&action=purge", you'll see a new random quote. I don't know how you get around page caching other than by this manual method.-gadfium 09:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. The manual method is not working either, it's showing as a red link. Every time I click on it it gets me to - http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User:Aditya_Kabir/Devil%27s_dictionary1&action=edit. When I replace "=edit" with "=purge" it's back the redlink again. No quotes anywhere. The code is working fine the page I copied it from. What to do? Aditya Kabir 10:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess, I have been able to figure it out. The trick is to have multiple pages with the same switching code. It gets me to User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary0, User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary1 and User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary2. It doesn't seem to use the original User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary page at all. Aditya Kabir 10:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Technically you're supposed to have User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary3 too. The idea is to have different sets of quotes on each of these dictionary pages. But that's an inefficient way of doing it. If you want to keep all the quotes on one page, get rid of {{#expr:{{#time:i}} mod 4}}, so you can stick to User:Aditya Kabir/Devil's dictionary without bothering about the numbered pages. –Pomte 11:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Adding attributes to links

Can we add "class " and/ or "rel" attributes to internal and external links? This is needed for certain microformats, as outlined at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Microformats#MediaWiki issues. Andy Mabbett 08:56, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

kan't login

wen i try to get in mi account, i get the 404 message. so i kan't login

nd yes, i deliberately tiping like dis, so mi ip isnt associated wit my accoutn.

-75.26.3.100 16:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Ummm? How will changing how you type do anything? If it is a 404 you should just try again, it is probably on our end. Prodego 17:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I had some trouble logging in too, something about technical difficulties. The problem went away after I executed the ipconfig /flushdns command, which I assume assigned my computer a new server to work with. —Remember the dot 17:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Timestamp overlap

Copied from Talk:Main Page, 20:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The timestamp on this talk page is overlapping with the "Your continued donations keep Misplaced Pages running!" that appears when not logged in. It has "display:none" in the style attribute, so I'm a bit confused about why this even appears at all... 164.107.166.227 18:18, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I see this as well. It really looks rather ugly... but I don't know how to fix it. Help? Goldfritter 16:11, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Does this only appear when one is not logged in ? I don't see it now. I have seen it before and it disappears when I reload/refresh the page. Rather odd.... --PFHLai 19:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a conflict between the style class "metadata topicon" which is used to locate the date on this page and the wiki-wide begging message that is only shown when logged out. The begging message is shown with javascript with a style of "text-align:right;" in the div id="siteNotice". The result is they slap on top of each other. One or the other element needs to be rethought. --Monotonehell 19:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Can we move the clock a little bit down to avoid this conflict ? --PFHLai 19:41, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

If we move the clock down (only on this page as it's a wiki-wide style class) it will conflict with the horizontal rule when people are logged in. The div that is visible for those not logged in adds extra space. I'm not sure what to do as everyone's browser renders a little different depending on what browser they have and how it handles fonts, not to mention personal font settings. --Monotonehell 19:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

How about: <div id="coordinates">'''{{CURRENTTIME}}, {{CURRENTDAYNAME}} ], ] (])'''</div>? The text will be a little smaller. Cheers, 22:07, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorting Names Aphabetically in Categories

In Georgian Misplaced Pages in order to have peoples' bios sorted aphabetically in their categories we have to name articles as "last name, first name" (e.g. Washington, George, etc., which is unnatural for the language, see example), but here in English Misplaced Pages it's not required. Can anyone tell, what do we need to do to rectify this? Will very much appreciate. - Alsandro · T · w:ka: Th · T 07:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

What you can do is use category sort keys on individual articles. AFAIK, there's no way to do this wiki-wide. Titoxd 08:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

thanks. - Alsandro · T · w:ka: Th · T 07:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

TeX is UGLY

The images containing renderings of any TeX used in articles generates them in a font that is completely different from the article font. In a size that is too big, and on a background that is always white. Is there anything that can be done to make these images blend in more with the articles, i.e. use the cmbright package to render the equations sans serif - and turn the font size down a bit. Also would it be possible to use a transparent background for the images? Conrad.Irwin 09:35, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Serifs are useful to differentiate between similar symbols. Complicated expressions need the large font size. Consider the normal distribution:

${\displaystyle f(x;\mu ,\sigma )={\frac {1}{\sigma {\sqrt {2\pi }}}}\,e^{-{\frac {(x-\mu )^{2}}{2\sigma ^{2}}}}}$

--Smack (talk) 05:16, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

TeX is ugly, I argued that when it was first introduced . But I disagree about the sans serif, I'd rather see the whole article in a serif font to match the TeX rather than the other way around. -- Tim Starling 13:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

We can't control what font the article is in - the user does that with their web browser. I think that the biggest impediment to getting rid of TEX is that there is no reasonable support in pure HTML for anything except subscripts and superscripts, and until the browsers have a way to format math natively we are stuck with TEX images for complicated expressions. As a test, try to show the formula that Smack has above without using TEX in a way that most browsers will display correctly. CMummert · talk 13:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Tex does not look ugly to me. It looks nice. Using a different font for math symbols than text is a common practice. _InBC 13:47, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox spacing

Would it be practical to make "margin-top: 5px;" part of the default style for Infoboxes? I know that's bad karma and all to force style on things, but it would help keep infoboxes from being too close to things; like disambig notices and templates. - RoyBoy 02:12, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Might not the {{-}} template family do enough if used appropriately when needed? Nihiltres 04:38, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

question about user creation log

When I look at the user creation log for most users, it shows when the account was created. For instance, if I look at it shows that my account was created on 28 November 2005. What does it mean when a user's log doesn't say when the account was created? Is there a way to find out when it was created? --Akhilleus (talk) 03:48, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Er, could you provide an example? If the creation log doesn't say when the account was created, it might mean that it wasn't (ie: you can find blank contrib, user, and user talk pages for accounts that don't exist). EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It's also possible that the user account was created before the user creation log was enabled. The Newuserlog extension doesn't seem to have been created until August 2005. Mike Dillon 03:54, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think either one of these apply. I'm looking specifically at , a user who has an edit history; it looks like he became active in summer 2006. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, curious... if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that they created the account before the Newuserlog, but didn't actually use it for anything until after (or their first few contributions were deleted). EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose that's possible, but this user's first edits were pretty newbie-looking. I should explain what's going on: Mnyakko and another user, Zeeboid were recently blocked for violations of WP:SOCK. I'm trying to figure out if another named user created the Mnyakko account. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:27, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Going by approximate UserIDs, they seem to have created the username just a bit before the log was started.

• Splarka - UserID: 230000 ±200 - (6 April 2005)
• Mnyakko - UserID: 343000 ±200 - (??)
• User creation log created - (August 2005)
• Akhilleus - UserID: 615500 ±200 - (28 November 2005)
• Zeeboid - UserID: 1789100 ±200 - (13 July 2006)

So probably they were just camping.--Splarka (rant) 06:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Image sizes

"Specifying the width of an image can screw up the layout for some readers so much as to make the article unreadable. Misplaced Pages is used by people who may have very good reasons for specifying smaller, or larger images than what looks good in your browser. Since specifying an image size overrides the preferences they may have set, it should not be done without a very good reason. Essentially the guidelines say that it should only be done if shrinking the image to default size will make the image unusable."

• Is it a difficult problem to fix WP's image handling routines so that browsers aren't screwed up by specifying image sizes? Paul venter 15:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

User: Pupster21/monobook.js

I added admin-like revert to my mono book and now it won't let Pupster21 log in! --Pupster210 19:10, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

In that case, shouldn't we ask an admin to erase your monobook? If you agree, you could make a post at WP:AN/I, or I can do it for you. Valentinian 19:16, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Please do it. I didn't know that would crash my account. I mean, it says at the RC patrol that will give you admin like reverts. --Pupster210 19:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I can't think of a way that your monobook.js would affect logging into your account. Could you elaborate on what happens when you try to log in? Error messages, etc? —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 19:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It won't go to the login successful page. It did until I added that to my monobook. --Pupster210 19:22, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I have blanked your monobook.js page per your request. If it is the script causing your problems then refreshing your cache should help. Not sure how this could be caused by the script though. If it turns out to be something different you can just RV my blanking. _InBC 19:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll try. If it works I'll post with User:Pupster21 --Pupster210 19:24, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Victory!!! THANKS!!!! --Pupster21 19:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, good. _InBC 19:26, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

For future reference, disabling javascript in your browser, logging in, and removing your monobook.js file yourself is a lot more reliable; depending on your browser, your newly-blanked-by-an-admin .js file may not get reloaded on its own for quite some time. —Cryptic 19:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Gratz, but I wish the code had been commented out, instead of deleted, so we could diagnose the problem. Pete St.John 19:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It was blanked, not deleted. Here's the problematic revision. —Cryptic 19:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I am a little confused as to how a login issue could happen to Pup, but not to everyone else. I don't see any fault with the inclusion code. _InBC 19:33, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Monobook.css - better rendering for .diffchange in diff's...

I recently proposed a better method of highlighting diff's in Monobook.css at MediaWiki Talk:Monobook.css. It can be of great use when trying to locate what has been removed or added in a page change when it is just a period, comma, dash or other very small single character. I thought I would post it here, since it is suggested on that page that any changes be brought up here as well. Maybe make your replies/comments at the Monobook.css talk: page linked above? Thanks. --MattWright (talk) 21:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Photo won't move to right

In Badami Cave Temples, the last image at the bottom of the article will not move to the right as told to do. I have moved it around to see if placement makes a difference, but I can't figure out what is wrong. I would appreciate any help you can provide. I'm sure it is just a stupid mistake I am overlooking. Thanks! Sincerely, Mattisse 23:08, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind - I figured it out. (A mistake in a reference not several sections up was affecting it.) Thanks!--Mattisse 23:16, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Strange lines in Skarloey Railway (viewed with IE7)

Just noticed a problem in Skarloey Railway. There is a heading and a spoiler warning box sandwiched between a TOCleft box and a map image (this is not the problem!). However, in IE7 the lines from the spoiler warning and the underline for the heading stretch across the page, overwriting the TOC and the map. This does not occur in IE 5.5 and IE 6, in which I created/maintained this layout for the page.

Anyone got any ideas?

EdJogg 23:32, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• Weird lines in IE7 for me, none in Firefox. I have no idea why, just confirming it's a real problem. Nardman1 23:48, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

The Firefox rendering is most likely correct, but in any case I spaced out the text so there is no longer a problem. —Remember the dot 03:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Linking to an article with a slash in the title

If you're outside the main namespace, how can you link to an article with a leading slash? By default, the leading slash causes the link to be interpreted as a subpage of the current page, e.g. /etc/network/interfaces. ] (gives en:/etc/network/interfaces) is one (hackish) way of doing it, are there any others? See also Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Ifdown, where we're trying to figure out how to get this to behave with {{la}}. Thanks! cab 02:24, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The leading colon is the proper way to do it. ] (/etc/network/interfaces) should work as well. Titoxd 02:25, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. Based on m:Help:Parser function, I guess there's no way to strip leading colons? Just wondering since I'm trying to figure out if there's any way to fix {{la}}/{{lx}} to deal with this; e.g. {{la|:/etc/network/interfaces}} doesn't quite work, gives:

] (edit | ] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Cheers, cab 02:43, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, I guess m:StringFunctions is what I want, except they're not installed over here. So I suppose no solution for now. Cheers, cab 02:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)