Misplaced Pages

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

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Problem displaying wikipedia content in iPad application

I'm seeing Misplaced Pages mobile content not sized correctly when displayed within iPad apps using UIWebView. It is as though the mobile version has the page width fixed to the size of the iPad device, not the actual view it is displayed in. This is what I'm seeing: This is what I want to see: This used to work correctly. I suspect Misplaced Pages has become smarter in detecting it is displaying on an iPad and adjusting the frame size assuming it is being displayed with the iPad Safari browser. Is there any way to specify the content width along the lines of http://en.m.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Jupiter&device-width=320.0 (which doesn't work by the way)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.87.55.100 (talk) 02:03, 22 February 2012

Toolserver replication lag

Any toolserver experts about? The replication lag graphs suggest that copying of data from en.wp to toolserver s1 has stopped. Data is still being copied from commons to s1. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC) My estimate (to nearest 5 min) of the stop time is 19 March 2012 21:15 (UTC) --Redrose64 (talk) 23:08, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, Asher Feldman is tinkering with some of the boxes; this typically involves taking some capacity out of circulations and then rotating. The replication lag is actually a MAX() type query, hence the high figures. I believe. - Jarry1250  18:02, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

A little more in this e-mail. Dpmuk (talk) 18:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Over 48 hours replag now... Jared Preston (talk) 21:38, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

63+ hours; and already causing problems with bots. Jared Preston (talk) 12:21, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

It is over 3 days, now. It should fixed as a matter of urgency. --SupernovaExplosion 22:48, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I guess that if anybody here knew how to, they'd be doing it. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:08, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Most toolserver tools are shut down. Somebody run a RFA now! Josh Parris 23:38, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

What does RFA mean? --SupernovaExplosion 00:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. WP:RFA Josh Parris 00:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Here jira:MNT-1225 are some details on the problem, which extends well beyond tools and bots. I haven't been able to find an estimated time for completion. — cardiff | chestnut — 01:00, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

From http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-March/059044.html:

...I'm going to juggle which db watchlist queries go to during the migration, so nothing should be noticeable on the site.

Ha! I assume that this was all tested on a large non-production database first? I also hope that the thumbnail calculation that someone made about this taking 48 days to resolve is not correct. Fingers crossed for the Misplaced Pages brand.

GFHandel ♬  02:09, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Why dosen't MySQL allow for this kind of thing to be run in the background? Tim1357 02:51, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Coz MySQL is a toy playing at being a big kid's database. There's ways this could have been done without taking out toolserver, but they would have had the effect of an inconsistent database for a while. And the database schema wouldn't have been identical to production. That's all in the past. Josh Parris 09:45, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Current estimate is somewhere between 3 and 18 days (total). The lower end of the estimate has already been exceeded. Josh Parris 09:57, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

It is 4 days 6 hours now. Looks like this will be a record. --SupernovaExplosion 04:15, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

6 days, 5 hours. @_@ We're approaching the replication singularity! Silverseren 02:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the replag graphs can't handle a delay of over 500,000 seconds (5 days 18 hours 53 min 20 sec). --Redrose64 (talk) 08:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

A site like Misplaced Pages should care for technology and invest more resources in this field. It is unfortunate this happens in Misplaced Pages. --SupernovaExplosion 09:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know how this is handled, but if it's a case of being one volunteer and that we should not ask much because it is just one volunteer, maybe that is not enough. North8000 (talk) 10:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

It is investing - Wikimedia Labs is set to "internalise" key features of the Toolservers over the next year or so. - Jarry1250  11:51, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

What does that mean for us? Jared Preston (talk) 16:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Is there any sort of workaround for this? I believe a large number of projects are set to generate monthly reports on March 31st (I know WP:DPL does so), and the lack of such reports will, for the short term at least, gum up a lot of regular maintenance. bd2412 T 19:32, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

More worse, replication lag is currently 1 weeks, 6 hours, 49 minutes, 29 seconds. Dipankan says.. 04:07, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

More than 1 week (+1 day+ 12hours) is disastrous. My editcount is suck at 7992 for a good lot of time. etra999 (talk) 08:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Same here; 7,567 for as long back as I can remember. Gosh, I don't even know how many edits I've done in these 8 days! But my Preferences still seems to be working. ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 14:36, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I am hardly well-versed with any of the complex technicalities of running Misplaced Pages, but a week-long replication lag is disastrous for the continued running of the project. Edit counters have all become useless as edits for over a week have not been counted. In addition, some events such as WP:INDIA's Tag and Assess event have also been thrown out of gear due to wrong statistics. There seems to be no end in sight, and in my years on Misplaced Pages I have never had to encounter a replication lag as severe as this. Is there any fixed deadline allotted to rectify this problem? Because we need the replication lag to disappear fast, otherwise too many problems are going to build up. Perhaps setting a proper deadline and strictly sticking to it will speed up the rectification (if it hasn't already been done). ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 10:18, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

According to the latest Signpost, the toolserver issue is set to be resolved by Friday. bd2412 T 14:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost note is at Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2012-03-26/Technology report#In brief. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

March 30? Let's hope so. ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 14:41, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

MySQL rollback after the HDD filled up thus requiring a full dump from the WMF, I'm revising my estimates to early April. This isn't the worst:

• Not enough disk space to hold enwiki
• WMF discarded database when splitting clusters
• Deleted replication file (took too much space)
• Replication was ever-so-barely catching up

IIRC, the record hold is two months on dewiki. — Dispenser 18:52, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

For the 99% of us who aren't insiders on this, could you explain? Are you the person who is handling this? Thanks. North8000 (talk) 00:38, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, early April? How early? Do you realize how much of a problem this is going to become if this issue isn't fixed by March 31? How can the issue be so severe? It hardly matters what the record is on some other language Misplaced Pages, enwiki is the biggest by far and needs continuous running. Cracks are appearing all over the enwiki now, for God's sake the lag is 8 days! ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 14:34, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

There needs to be some more transparency here. We really need explained exactly what happened and what exactly is being done. Its causing two many problems.Edinburgh Wanderer 17:14, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Agree. If it's just one overloaded volunteer handling a huge and important area, then we should know that. North8000 (talk) 17:43, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

For future reference, fixes that are likely to cause several days worth of toolserver backup should be implemented towards the beginning of the month, and not towards the end, so that month-end project turnover will be unaffected. bd2412 T 20:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

At Dispenser's request I'm speaking here to point people to the latest news on the issue. It looks like Toolserver's administrators are waiting for the machine to finish a job and aren't sure when it's going to end, and in the meantime are asking WMF's systems administrators for "a fresh enwp-dump soon". I've relayed this to WMF systems administrators. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator 23:19, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

So in effect we cannot predict when this problem will get over? In fact you are saying that this problem may not get over at all? What exactly do you mean by "waiting for a process"? What process? Why is it taking so much time? We need answers. I don't now whether you are familiar with the problem, but I expect somebody with knowledge of the problem to clearly specify what the problem is. Drop the vagueness. ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 09:02, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, so it's really a case of we don't really know. Could you please keep up us updated on any further updates however minor Thats all we askEdinburgh Wanderer 23:31, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Re Ankitbhatt: here is the exact problem: due to a schema change on the live servers, the toolserver databases cannot begin replication again until the schema change runs on them. This is a command that is executed on the database to change the structure of some of its tables, which was part of the latest Mediawiki upgrade.

The update is very slow. So at the moment we are waiting to see which of these happens first: (1) the schema change can finish running on the toolserver database, at which point replication can be resumed; (2) the foundation can create a new dump of the enwiki database, which will already include the schema change. Then this can be imported into the toolserver and replication restarted from there. Importing a full dump is not fast but it may be faster than running the schema change on the toolserver database. The toolserver admins announced yesterday on the toolserver-l list that a fresh dump is being prepared for them . They do know what is going on and they are working to fix it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:22, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Something to also note is that major database actions are somewhat unpredictable, especially if there's activity on the database. Large database systems have a lot happening under the hood to help with optimization, performance and maintenance. Trying to predict how a particular action will result can be difficult, even with significant testing and planning because live production will always be different than a test database. At my job I'm a developer who uses a pretty large and active database and work closely with our database team on issues. More than a few times an action that all of our planning and testing said would not have an impact ended up causing problems. We've managed to befuddle Oracle a couple of times. Database work is part science, part magic and part black voodoo. Ravensfire (talk) 18:21, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Any idea, when this will get fixed? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 09:55, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Tomorrow we reach the two-week replication lag mark. Early April does not look like the time this problem can get rectified. Has there been any update? ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 15:47, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

I also want to know if there has been progress on this, since it has been over two weeks! How are things going? Is there any up-to-date counter on Misplaced Pages? I want to see all the editing statistics again. Backtable _{concerning my deeds.} 22:32, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

To those who have requested an update on this issue: User DaB is one of the people who is working on the problem, and he has provided some more recent information at the bottom of this thread, in the #A little chronic sub-section. — Mudwater 23:11, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Edit count

The edit counter for user contributions seems to have stopped. The current replication lag is more than four days. Is anyone working on it? HandsomeFella (talk) 09:13, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

See #Toolserver replication lag above. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:09, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

See WP:Edit counters for other edit counters. I recommend Wikichecker even if its rather intermittently available. — Dispenser 20:28, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Article counter

The tool used to count the number of articles created by a user seems to have stopped. Although I created 27 articles, the counter shows only 25. --SupernovaExplosion 03:38, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

See Toolserver replication lag above RudolfRed (talk) 06:12, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I have just tried the edit counter myself, on April 16 2012, and the very good news is that it now seems to be fixed, there is no longer the delay. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 10:39, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, as others have noted, this returmed to normal during the morning of 5 April. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:10, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Catscan rewrite

Catscan 2 has been showing the same error message for a while now: "MYSQL error : The MySQL server is running with the --read-only option so it cannot execute this statement "--eh bien mon prince (talk) 08:31, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like it could have something to do with this issue above. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 11:10, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Related, yes. - Jarry1250  14:44, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Replication Lag

Does anyone know why it is so high? Dan653 (talk) 00:05, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

See the discussion above at #Toolserver replication lag. EdJohnston (talk) 00:24, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the page name from the above link so it appears as a same-page link. This probably means that it will still work when this discussion is archived. Graham87 02:53, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Summary

The replication lag is caused by the schema update (jira:MNT-1225). If the WMF is done first, we'll try to import their copy (DaB. March 28). The Toolserver cluster is has some corruption in it (DaB. March 8). Asher who's updating the cluster is at some conference apparently (#wikimedia-tech). My numbers (above) are estimates with assumed WMF hardware and superficial understanding of databases. Other than that I don't know any more than you.

Interesting facts: enwiki is 782 GB (without page text); rosemary and thyme (TS s1 cluster) have 135 GB and 44 GB free, but enwiki takes 100 GB more thyme for some unknown reason. — Dispenser 23:30, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Speaking on behalf of the 99.9% who are not jocks and insiders on this, is there somebody willing an able to communicate more clearly to us, and in English instead of jargon and fragmented non-statements? We just need straight talk. If there is a volunteer who is embarrassed by this, don't be; we appreciate what you do and would like to thank you for your efforts. We just need straight talk and then to see how we can help to keep this important function working 99.9% of the time in the future, understand when it will be fixed, and to bring a speedy end to the current problem. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:37, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Nobody's sitting there doing anything manually, they're waiting for ("automated") database updates to finish. Nothing much we ordinary users can help with. SD5 02:40, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, so here's what's happened: The record of each and every single edit ever made has been changed on the servers in Florida. In Amsterdam, the Toolserver has a full copy of Misplaced Pages. The database software that WikiMedia uses does replication from Florida to Amsterdam, but it's been overwhelmed by the half billion changes to the database. It's desperately trying to copy them over, and while it's doing so it's not keeping up-to-date with ongoing changes to articles - so things like edit counts, date-last-changed, etc aren't making it into the database. Estimates for how long this will take vary wildly, presumably because a "how far have we gotten" can't be obtained - so effectively there's no progress bar. So various ways of making an estimate have been used, but the real answer is "it'll be done when it's done". The whole replication process can be halted by merely restoring a backup of Florida's database over Amsterdam's, and that's what the Toolserver technicians have requested from the WMF, because - what I consider to be the likely case based on the numbers above - it's going to take a very long time. Josh Parris 08:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Good news

A database dump is expected by the end of the week, meaning this problem will all solved. Josh Parris 08:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Finally, it's working :) etra999 (talk) 09:53, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

A little chronic

Hello all,
I am one of the roots of the toolserver and I was asked to do a little explaining what's going on at the moment and where the source of the problem was. A little history first:
At the middle of January both active roots were visiting the datacenter of the toolserver and had no internet-access for several hours. Sometime during the offline-periode the WMF changed the master-db-server of enwiki, because there was a problem with with the old server; that means that the toolserver stops the replication ("replication" is the process that keeps 2 (or more) db-servers in sync) and waits until a root changes the master-config-entry so the replication can continue. The situation was special that time, because the WMF brought the old-master (as slave) back very fast and so the toolserver continued to replicate from the old-master instead of the new-master; as we noticed that, it was already too late. We managed to switch to the new master later, but we were unsure if corruption had happened.
At the beginning of March an toolserver-user noticed a strange result in a database-query and further investigatment proved that our copy of enwiki was corrupt; the only way to fix that is to get a fresh dump from the wmf. We requested a dump at the WMF and were told that it will take a few days. We have 2 servers for enwiki and 1 of them did not show the wrong result – so I changed our setup in a way that only the non-corrupt server is used.
Roughly arround the same time, Mediawiki became version 1.19. The update brought some changes in the database-shema – the most important is the adding of some fields. The adding of a field takes some time, depending how big the table is – it can take days if the table is realy big (like the "history-table" of enwiki).
Of course it is not possible today to switch the english-wikipedia in read-only for some days until the change is done – so the wmf does a trick: they change the database-slaves first (one by one) and when every slave is done, they switch the master to a slave (so a slave becomes master). The toolserver can do that too for normal, because we have 2 servers for enwiki – but not this time because 1 server is still corrupt; also there was some miscommunication between the wmf and us and between the toolserver-roots, and so the update was brought to us with the normal replication – which is bad because now we have to wait several days until the change-command is done until the next command can be executed by the server.
What the near future brings: I requested a fresh dump again at the wmf tonight and the dumping is done at the moment. I think that will be done today night or tomorrow morning. Than it will take some hours to copy the dump over the atlantic. The import will take 2 or 3 days AFAIR and than few hours to catch up the replag – so there will be a non-corrupt- and up-to-date-server real soon (and a second few days later). Today morning 1 of our server finished the update (what a pitty: it was the server that is corrupt for sure) and so I hope that the other server will finish soon too (the server has more load and so it will take longer for normal).
I hope that answer your questions what happened. If you have further question, ask and I will try to answer them here – but please accept that I will not watch this village-pump forever, because enwp is not my home-wiki. --DaB. (talk) 13:50, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I created a JIRA-ticket so you can follow the progress better. --DaB. (talk) 14:21, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, DaB, for the explanation, which I partially understand. It seems that several different problems occurred, and combined to cause this issue. I'm sure many editors appreciate getting your communication about this. For now, one question: Do you have an estimate of when the problem will be completely fixed, and the replication lag all caught up? I'm sure it would be hard to pinpoint an exact hour, but can you estimate it to within, let's say, a day? Thanks again. — Mudwater 01:01, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

The revision-table (that's the table which contains the history-data) is importing at the moment; that's one of the last big ones. I would say that tomorrow evening the import should be done. --DaB. (talk) 20:08, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I really like the server names :¬) My favourite so far is hemlock ... Is the dump in yet and are we still on track for 01-April finish? Chaosdruid (talk) 03:00, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

No, the importing is slower then I thought it would be and it is not finished yet. I guess we have to wait until tomorrow. --DaB. (talk) 22:34, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's almost the end of "tomorrow" (UTC, of course). Any updates? ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 23:26, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Well done to DaB. (talk · contribs) and whoever else who may have been helping him; the replag has gone down from 14 to 5 days in a matter of minutes! Great to see Jared Preston (talk) 14:07, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

DaB. posted earlier today on toolserver-l as follows:

the import of s1 on thyme was finally done this morning (took a few days longer than I expected); replication is already running, replag is lower than 5 days at the moment. I declared it as sql-s1-rr and it is read-only at the moment (to speed up the replication a bit).

I will also switch sql-s1-user to it and will make it read/write somewhen tonight. Shortly after I start the re-import on rosemary. Please note that thyme has no commons-copy at the moment, so joins between enwp/commons are not possible on sql-s1-rr at the moment and will not be possible on sql-s1-user soon (when I start the re-import on rosemary).

Since "tonight" is in Central European Time, I take that (with hope) to mean sometime within the next couple of hours, at which point those tools that rely on user databases (but not those that need to access commons) should become available again. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:47, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

This is looking good. The replication lag is continuing to decrease. According to X!'s Edit Counter, it's now down to about 9 hours. — Mudwater 23:51, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Fantastic work! The lag is now down to less than four hours. Ah, the edits are literally pouring in :P ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 05:34, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

It appears that we're all caught up now. Great. Thanks to DaB and to the others who worked on fixing this problem. — Mudwater 10:38, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Some Toolserver tools

I found some tools on toolserver, such as edit counter, didn't appear recent changes on the English Misplaced Pages. However, other wikipedia doesn't have this problem. --Makecat_Talk 13:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

The EN database on Toolserver has been a little unwell recently. See #Toolserver_replication_lag for details. Should be getting well sometime around now. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:18, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Can someone tell me what is the obsession with edit counters, so I can stop making tools that work like witchcraft and start making popular stuff. And why isn't WP:popups enough? — Dispenser 19:31, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

The Toolserver database is used by many reports and tools; some bots depend upon it. When the replag is high, these processes may be at best inaccurate, at worst may carry out some harmful action which they believe will "correct" a problem which no longer exists on en.wp

X!'s edit counter is one of the easiest ways of checking whether Toolserver's replag is high or not, because it puts a great big message right at the top when replag is high. Caution: Replication lag is high, changes newer than 3 days, 16 hours, 53 minutes, 31 seconds may not be shown.

Then again, some people have WP:Editcountitis and can't sleep without knowing that their score is still climbing. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:33, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

You can check your latest edit count using the "My preferences" link.--Deathlaser (talk) 14:59, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes: but that doesn't analyse per month or per namespace. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:57, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Scrollbars in diff

Has anyone else seen scrollbar in a diff such as the ones I saw in en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(technical)&curid=3252662&diff=486056666&oldid=486054074? – Allen4names 17:45, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

No scrollbars show up for me in the diff, aside from the ordinary vertical browser one. Equazcion 17:49, 7 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I am using Firefox 11.0 running on Ubuntu 11.10 and I saw two scrollbars in the diff page. Is this a Firefox bug? – Allen4names 21:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what it could be, but I'm on Firefox 11 in Windows 7 x64, no scrollbars. Equazcion 21:50, 9 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I don't see scrollbars in the diff linked above, but I have seen them elsewhere about 4-5 days ago (Windoze XP, Firefox 3.6.28, Monobook). The specific diff I don't recall, but the edit summary was more than two lines long and contained some characters in a non-Latin script (possibly an Asian script), which made one of the lines slightly taller than normal. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:39, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Here's an example. The changed line, and the one two below, both show scrollbars at their right-hand sides, on both the left- and right-hand panes. These two lines both contain the two characters "⟨" and "⟩" which in edit mode are about five times as tall as normal characters. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:44, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

5 times ??? That is a bit much. I suspect this indicates that the used font does not have that specific character, and that your rendering is falling back to a different font that has a much larger base size than the font that should be used. I have seen similar issues in the past, and it usually happens in cases where the line-height is not sufficient for the character that needs to be drawn. If your OS is using such a completely different font for this specific glyph fallback, then I guess that would explain the problem you are seeing because the glyph would not fit inside the 'normal' line-height. This would be expected behavior in that case. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:22, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Improving the watchlist feature for MediaWiki

If you or a MediaWiki developer you know is interested in improving watchlists with grouping and usability enhancements, please let me know. I have submitted a clear and practical project proposal for the 2012 Google Summer of Code and I am seeking a mentor. I will, of course, do all of the heavy lifting (coding) to make it happen. All I need from a mentor is knowledgeable guidance and occasional assistance with debugging. Potential mentors can view the project here: and a partially functional example of the UI: --Blackjack48  ♠ ♣ 03:54, 9 April 2012‎

Well, I'd rather for watchlist editing to be a separate page from the list of changes.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:02, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

What steps should I take to improve the workflow? --Blackjack48  ♠ ♣ 04:11, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to see something like dividing the watchlist's changes into several lists on the same page organized by group/tag, and the group editing/viewing interface to be where you'd normally edit your watchlist now.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:35, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

(unindent). Please see Misplaced Pages:Global watchlist. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:00, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

+1 for global watchlists :-) Helder 20:02, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Deletion log not appearing for recently deleted file

When I go to File:Choky Ice image.jpg, deleted two days ago, the entire contents of the page are as follows:

File:Choky Ice image.jpg



View or restore 4 deleted edits?

Jump to: navigation, search

No file by this name exists, but you can upload it.

File usage

No pages on the English Misplaced Pages link to this file. (Pages on other projects are not counted.)

Why doesn't an entry from the deletion log appear? FYI, running Monobook through IE8 in Windows 7, although I can't see how that's relevant. Nyttend (talk) 05:53, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

The red link File:Choky Ice image.jpg gives me the url http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=File:Choky_Ice_image.jpg&action=edit&redlink=1 which includes "11:17, 8 April 2012 Feydey (talk | contribs) deleted page File:Choky Ice image.jpg (F9: Unambiguous copyright violation: All Rights Reserved)". The url http://en.wikipedia.org/File:Choky_Ice_image.jpg (which doesn't normally occur for non-existing pages and I made it manually) gives me the text you quote. It only includes "View or restore 4 deleted edits?" because I'm an admin like you. Non-admins get no indication a file has been deleted. From http://en.wikipedia.org/File:Choky_Ice_image.jpg I can click the red "File" tab and get http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=File:Choky_Ice_image.jpg&action=edit&redlink=1 with the deletion log. This appears to be normal behaviour for deleted files but I don't know why. It's the same for http://en.wikipedia.org/File:Jd13bebopage.jpg and other tested examples. For mainspace I see the deletion log in both url's, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/Agentil and http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Agentil&action=edit&redlink=1. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:35, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I have noticed this before and it is extraordinarily annoying. I didn't know you could click the "File" tab to see the deletion log, and without knowing that it is very annoying trying to pull up the deletion log. Can this be changed so that the deletion log is shown at both URLs? —danhash (talk) 14:35, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

That would make sense; if you go to deleted titles in other mainspaces, such as Red links or User:TAR2C, you get the deletion log even when you're not on edit mode. Nyttend (talk) 17:06, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

This seems like a MediaWiki-wide issue (the same thing happens at Commons). —danhash (talk) 17:42, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Having trouble staying logged in

Is there something wrong with servers? The system keeps logging me out. Sometimes, not all times though, when I click on another page, I'm logged back in. I'm currently using Firefox 11 if that helps. Elockid 22:37, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

1. Did you try other browsers?
2. Change your password, because that may mean your account is being used somewhere else.--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:41, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't work for Chrome as well. I'm also asking because after logging in, the icons of the other WikiProjects don't display. So I'm wondering if there's any correlation with that. I don't think this is a password problem. This occasionally happens but never to this extent. Elockid 23:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Ugh, looks like a problem with your CentralAuth cookie. Try clearing your CentralAuth cookies and try again.--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

How do I do that again? Elockid 00:48, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Go into Firefox's options, click the Privacy tab, then find the place where it says you can clear cookies. Remove any that have "centralauth" in them.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:06, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm still having some problems. :( Elockid 15:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

In the worst case scenario your account has been hacked; this often results from being logged in on a second computer somewhere else simultaneously.--Jasper Deng (talk) 17:22, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)/Archive 83#Loss of session data. I think I'll just have wait it out. Elockid 20:24, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, that sounds familiar. See Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)/Archive 96#Being logged out unexpectedly: is this the same issue? Please note that your browser losing session data is not the same as being logged out: you're still logged in, you've just been in an edit window for too long without going for any one of "Save page", "Show preview" or "Show changes", so MediaWiki thinks that you've abandoned your edit. My advice is to hit "Show preview" at intervals no longer than 30 minutes. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

But re-logging in should solve the problem, and apparently it did not or did it?--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:30, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

A bit. More recently, sometimes when I edit, I get error that there was a lost in session data and am logged out (it gives me the warning that my IP will be displayed when saving). This happens even in less than 5 minutes. Clicking on another page, I am logged back in. It's also not just that. Sometimes after clicking on the links to my Watchlist, Contribs, or in Wiki links, I am no longer logged in. However, when going to another page or clicking the back button and then going to another page, I am no longer logged out. I don't have any problems staying logged in other sites such Toolserver, Email, etc. Elockid 00:59, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Clicking on any Misplaced Pages link outside Misplaced Pages such as clicking a link to Misplaced Pages from Toolserver or Google logs me out as well. Elockid 01:13, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Ugh. Somehow your account got hacked or something.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:18, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

My alt account doesn't work either. Ugh. This is getting annoying. Elockid 02:50, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Something must be messing with your browser then....--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:59, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I guess I'll try and see whether my alt account has the same problem on a diff computer later. Elockid 03:05, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I've just had the "Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in." error when I'd been editing a page for less than three minutes. I was definitely logged in both before and after, and my login cookie hadn't expired - I had logged out and logged in again just 16 minutes earlier because of a rollback failure. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:03, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Happened again after editing for less than 60 secs. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:08, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

• I'm not sure if this is related, but if I leave WP on a page for >5 minutes and then click on, say, the link for my watchlist, it brings up the standard not logged-in page.--Gilderien Talk|Contribs

Im still constantly getting thrown out seems to be a bigger problem here when you combine slowness cant save due to loss of session data and this. Is there a bugzilla thread on this.Edinburgh Wanderer 18:08, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

• I'm getting it randomly tonight - can't edit at all. One second I'm logged in & if I go to another page, I'm logged out. Safari 5.5.1. Truthkeeper (talk) 00:47, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Oddly, it was just fine for me...up until a couple minutes ago, now I'm getting the random logouts. Grr. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 09:06, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

User:Catrope identified a memcached host with issues as the likely source of the problem, and replaced it with a spare. The issue should be resolved now, please report if you see it again during normal editing. --Eloquence* 19:12, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Not fixed still doing it. Just happened to me this minute.Edinburgh Wanderer 20:25, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Yep, still happening, has been all day. — Bility (talk) 21:32, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

If our initial diagnosis is correct, you may still be getting occasional errors until you've manually logged out and logged back in to clear corrupted session information. Can you please confirm that you've done so, and report whether any issues still occur regardless?---Eloquence* 21:46, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Just went 45 minutes without it logging me out, so hopefully it's gone for good. Thanks, — Bility (talk) 07:20, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

IPA font support

We got a complaint that Gentium Plus, probably the best IPA font freely available, is no longer supported. I don't know where our IPA class is specified. Could we add the following fonts to the CSS?

.IPA { font-family: "Gentium Plus", Gentium, "Charis SIL" ...}

They should definitely appear before any MS fonts, which are buggy (unless there have been recent fixes?)

Thanks, — kwami (talk) 21:04, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Considering the very low installed base of Gentium and other non-standard fonts on Windows, adding those fonts to .IPA and .Unicode is not regarded benificial. — Edokter (talk) — 09:17, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay. I'll just tell people to customize their CSS pages then. — kwami (talk) 20:49, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Problems in comparing revisions

a) There are (frequent) cases, e.g. the deletion of an empty line like here below "line 18", in which the comparison between the revisions fails because the software does not recognize which are the paragraphs to be compared (this doesn't happen with other softwares, e.g. with Microsoft Word). This makes it impossible to say if there are changes in the paragraph below "line 18". What can be done to solve this difficulty?

b) In the case of small changes, e.g. in spacings or punctuation, it is very difficult to see which is the change and were it is located, because there is a very small red character (in the case of a punctuation), or none (in the case of a space). There is an example of this in the same place than above, below "line 34". Perhaps it would be better to use a colored background, instead of colored characters, to signal the changes. --87.16.230.163 (talk) 23:33, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

a) The MediaWiki developers note that no single diff algorithm can give a "perfect" result for all changes. Therefore, no fix is planned; see Template:Bug.

b) On Monday, 23 April, Misplaced Pages will receive an upgrade to MediaWiki version 1.20wmf1, which includes a change in the diff coloring intended to improve usability, particularly for the color blind (who can find reading red text on a green background difficult). The new color scheme only includes a background behind the actual words changed. Here's an example: http://test2.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Main_Page&diff=36367&oldid=36206.

However, if you register an account here and log in, you can go to "My preferences" and switch on a couple gadgets ("wikEdDiff" and "Display diffs with the new yellow/blue color scheme ") that might improve the situation a bit for you. You can use the first gadget by clicking the Δ symbol below the normal diff, which will show an alternative diff view. The second gadget will allow you to use the new diff color scheme for the standard (side-by-side) diff view before the MediaWiki upgrade takes place. PleaseStand (talk) 00:31, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! The new color scheme is exactly what I meant.

For as concerns the bug a), however, it may be particularly severe: if you continue looking at this you can see at least another striking example of problem a), below "line 99", in which the comparison of as many as six consecutive paragraphs is missed! I have checked that Word, instead, matches correctly all the paragraphs when comparing version (in both orders). Is it possible that the bug in wiki is due to the software considering the paragraphs as separate units, comparing them one a time, while Word considers a carriage return just like a "character", so it continues to search for matching text? --87.20.236.94 (talk) 07:28, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Save page issue

About 1/5 times I go to save or preview a page (when editing a section of an article or starting a new section on a talk page) my browser switches to editing the entire article, and the changes are not carried over. While using Chrome (v 18 on Windows XP) I can click the back button and I am taken back to the section edit screen with my changes present, and resave (I was using IE8, and it would take me back without my changes present.) Anyone hear of this issue? Or know a solution? (just happened while trying to start this section).--kelapstick 02:22, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like you are getting an edit conflict situation. In such cases, check the whole page when you believe that your "browser switches to editing the entire article" and you'll see that there are two edit boxes instead of the usual one: the upper one contains what the page has become since you started editing (but contains none of your edit); and the lower one is the edit window that you have been typing into. The intention is that you compare one with the other, adjust the top one to match the bottom one, and then save. This can be difficult, especially since if you had chosen to edit one section, the top one will still contains the entire page whereas the bottom one will contain only the one section that you were editing. I normally find that it's usually easiest to:

• ignore the top one and go to the bottom one
• mark the text that you entered since you began that edit and copy that to clipboard
• use the "back" button on your browser at least twice to return to the page as it was before you began editing
• edit the same section again, paste in the text from your clipboard
• preview and save.

--Redrose64 (talk) 07:46, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, while it does looks like an edit conflict, it is most definitely not one. Doesn't have bring up the notification, two windows to edit, different revisions, etc. It also happens on previews, which doesn't happen on ECs. --kelapstick 08:07, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Pop up ads

Is anyone else getting spammed by pop-up ads on wikipedia pages? I am. – Confession0791 04:08, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Not me, but I use Adblock Plus for my Firefox (nevertheless though I have no blacklisted stuff listed by that). This may be related to the "banner ads" complaint above.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Does Misplaced Pages:RFAQ#ADS help?--ukexpat (talk) 15:25, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Gadget for opening search results and suggestions in new tabs

I propose a gadget (in preferences) for opening search results and suggestions in new tabs. I suggest basing it on the JavaScript found here:

• commons:MediaWiki:Search-results-new-tab.js

It works great on both Misplaced Pages and the Commons. For implementation and more info read the talk page here:

• commons:MediaWiki talk:Search-results-new-tab.js

I also proposed this here:

• Misplaced Pages:Gadget/proposals#Open search results and suggestions in new tabs - but that page does not seem very active. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:10, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I started this Bugzilla thread: "Bug 35974 - Preference to open search results and suggestions in new tab".

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35974

But that may take a long time. Is there any reason this can't be implemented as a gadget now on English Misplaced Pages? Many people want it. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:23, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

ConfirmAccount extension, revisited

This is a note to let you know that we are seeking opinions on switching the ConfirmAccount extension on, effectively making the ACC process via the Toolserver redundant. You can read all the details here; I would be very grateful if people would indicate how they feel about the idea :). Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:30, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

clearing an autoblock

This used to be easy, now I can't seem to do it at all. I just unblocked a user, then used the link in the unblock template to go over to toolserver and check for autoblocks. I found one and clicked the link to clear it. It led back to Special:Unblock, which requires you to type in the user's name to unblock them, which I already did. What am I missing here? Beeblebrox (talk) 19:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Nakon's toolserver tool works by scanning Special:BlockList for any blocking summaries containing the username specified in the query. It will then give you a list of autoblocks (if any) to remove. You have to copy the number down (in this case "#3853836") and go to Special:Unblock, and enter the autoblock ID number. I have cleared the autoblock. Good luck! Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:50, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I tried that and it didn't work for me, not sure what I did wrong.... Beeblebrox (talk) 20:13, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Hhm... the # symbol might be of interest here...--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:55, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I believe that would be what it actually, didn't think of that. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:36, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot gadget

How can I get the Commons:MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js to work on the enwiki?Smallman12q (talk) 20:11, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Dead link

the following subsection Hadith#Shia_and_Sunni_differences has a template titled Template:Hadith collections SS , but the view link tab is dead. How can you enter it? Pass a Method talk 20:47, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

The template is actually Template:Hadith collections, since the first line of the section that you linked is

{{Hadith collections}}

and that template contained an improperly-entered |name= parameter - it must match the actual name of the template (omitting the Template: prefix). I've fixed it. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:02, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks like it was caused by a vandalism edit, see here. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:07, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

User contributions + View history

Is it possible to add a 'date' input to the user contributions and history software next to the 'year' and 'month'? Regards, Whenaxis (contribs) 01:18, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Not from here: you would need to file a Bugzilla ticket. But it's not really necessary because there is a workaround. Ignore the year and month selectors, but amend the URL in your browser's address bar as follows. First add either ? or & (if there is no ? already, use ?; but if there already is a ? use &). Then put offset= then the date (as a 8-figure number in the format YYYYMMDD) and the time (as a 6-figure number in the format ddmmyy).

For example, the "History" tab of this page goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(technical)&action=history. To get the page history for the whole of 2 October 2011 that were earlier than 18:00:00 (UTC), I would add &offset=20111002180000 (note the & because there's already a ?), which gives http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(technical)&action=history&offset=20111002180000.

Again, my own contributions are at http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/Redrose64 so my contribs before 18:00 UTC on 2 October 2011 are http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/Redrose64?offset=20111002180000 - note that here I have used ? because there wasn't one already.

To get edits for a whole day, use 240000 (midnight) for the time. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:03, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Wow, that's quite the process, to get per day. It would be much simpler with an actual 'day' input. It doesn't really matter that much to me, it's just more of a convenience thing. Regards, Whenaxis (contribs) 21:16, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

There is an easier method: Click "older 50" or whatever and change the date in the url. The 14-digit date and time can be cut off anywhere, for example replacing 20111002180000 by any of 2011, 201110, 20111002, 2011100218, 201110021800. It assumes 0's for missing digits. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:24, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

How do I set up an RSS feed for my watch list?

I've never set up an RSS feed for anything. How do I do it for my watch list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unto Caesar (talk • contribs) 01:47, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Syndication. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:05, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. --Unto Caesar (talk) 01:07, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

File pending

Please, help! I tried to upload a File:OšupiSLevýmPřítokem003, but in last step started pending: Its true, that I uploaded file with similar name File:OšupiSLevýmPřítokem001.JPG, but till now I haven't had any problems with similar file names. Now as I want to finish, I get a message: ... please wait, still checking the title for uniqueness... and my computer is blocked here for 1 hour. Please help solve this problem, as my computer is blocked by this. Thanks! --Kusurija (talk) 10:21, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Problem was resolved. Thanks! --Kusurija (talk) 11:09, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

All gone slow again

Page loads (whether view or edit) are taking far too long, it sticks waiting for bits.wikimedia.org and eventually they time out and I get virtually unstyled page. Not completely unstyled, because my personal .css is still used. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Its running very slow for me as well.Edinburgh Wanderer 16:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Now back to normal. Did I hear a rumour somewhere that MediaWiki 1.20 would be rolled out soon? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:46, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

It was in this weeks signpost tech report Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2012-04-09.Edinburgh Wanderer 21:08, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Running at a crawling pace again now.Edinburgh Wanderer 16:35, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Maybe the addition of video content storage and streaming over time is slowing things down. I have long thought it was a bad idea to try to duplicate Youtube on Wikimedia. Wikimedia will never have the money or spare bandwidth to support the massive server needs over time of video in my opinion. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:52, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

C sharp framework

I've been working on creating a C# class library for general use in accessing MediaWiki servers through the API interface (I'm aware that there are a couple of others already out there, not least of which are AWB and DotNetWikiBot, but I've never been satisfied with any of them, and it just seems better to start from scratch then to take on all of their baggage). The work that I've done on it has been off-and-on for a while now, and it's grown fairly large... honestly, I'm reaching a point where I'd just like to get it done already (or, at least, get it working so that it's at least in an "alpha" state, you know?). Adding to that, I'd also planned on releasing it publicly eventually anyway, and so I'm wondering if there is anyone out there with a little bit of web space, preferably with SVN, (to upload the project to) and/or if there's anyone around that wants to chip in some development time. I'm not sure that I want to run a whole open source project thing, but... well, I wanted to at least post this and see what sort of reaction that it gets. Regards,
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:11, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Sourceforge, Github, or CodePlex (all free) are the way to go. See also Comparison of open source software hosting facilities. If it's a single file, you could post it on the wiki (more than one becomes annoying). Out of curiosity, are you targeting .net 4?Smallman12q (talk) 21:38, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

I hate sourceforge... I like a bunch of the projects on there, but I find the site itself to be... I don't know, I just don't like it. I don't really know much about github (which uses... git, right?) or CodePlex. I guess that I should check them out. Anyway, the project is up to more than a dozen files already, and probably a few thousand lines (although, admittedly, a lot of that is comments. I document the hell out of my code. ). I am targeting .NET 4.0, but I don't think that I'm using any 4.0 features yet (Code Contracts is something that I like... not sure if I've added any to this project yet, though).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Code contracts=D. I remember hearing about the complaints of how the static checker wasn't available below VS Premium. Documentation is good. Not sure why you don't like those sites...but you can always upload the project as a zip somewhere(megaupload, dropbox, etc.) ...though it's a bit harder to track changes. Smallman12q (talk) 02:13, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Yea, it may not be such a good idea to be adding any code contracts to a project that will probably be open source... I thought that there was an add on for VS Express, but... I don't need to worry about those things, since I own Pro... or was it Premium. heh I'm looking at CodePlex, and I like what I see so far, so I may start a project there.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:37, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Category bug

It seems that when a category gets deleted but it had listed itself within other categories, it still shows up in these. Deleted category was Category:Authenticated encryption. Nageh (talk) 20:36, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Deleting a category page has never gotten rid of the category itself. The only way to remove a category is to go to each page that uses it and removing it from the page. This isn't a bug, it's more or less by design. Incidentally, removing all of the categories from use doesn't delete the category page either.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:47, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you don't understand what I mean (or I don't understand you). Why does Category:Authenticated encryption still show up in the subcategory "Cryptographic algorithms" of Category:Cryptography (in the tree view)? I tried clearing the cache but that didn't change anything. Nageh (talk) 20:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see. That stuff is take care of slowly, by a background task on the server. Just give it some time and check back later. It'll go away eventually.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:00, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, I suspected something like this, didn't think it would take so long, though. I guess I'll give it a day. :) Nageh (talk) 21:04, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Broken script

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User:Keymanweb/Keymanweb&oldid=362720513 - Documentation page pre-blanking
• User:Keymanweb/keymanweb.js

I've blanked this documentation page because the script it documents appears to be broken, to the point that all pages appear blank when it's used. While testing, I had to disable Javascript to remove it from my scripts file (Vector skin, Firefox 11 and Chrome 17). An administrator may want to also delete or blank the script page itself, as it could be considered malware (even if unintentionally), and it is advertised outside Misplaced Pages.

The documentation page also made it look like this script was made to promote a company, and the account it's under seems to be single-purpose, as it only has contributions related to this script. Equazcion 22:08, 13 Apr 2012 (UTC)

The script appears to attempt to write in code posted on another website, which seems not cool. Equazcion 22:18, 13 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Since this now seems to be more of a concern than I thought initially I posted this to ANI. Equazcion 22:25, 13 Apr 2012 (UTC)

IPv6 RFC

See User talk:Jasper Deng/IPv6#RFC. This is within the scope of Misplaced Pages:WikiProject IPv6 Readiness.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:22, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible to ignore specific users/bots on the watchlist?

I know it would be very useful in the case of several bots. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:27, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, see Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_98#Hiding_a_particular_user_from_watchlist Hot Stop 04:33, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. A bit complicated, but I made a little guide at WP:HIDEBOT. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:13, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Good idea with the guide, thanks for doing that. Equazcion 11:54, 14 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Nicely done. Hot Stop 05:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Survey with prizes popup?

I clicked on User:Gary King's talk page tab and was redirected to:

• http://bidr.trellian.com/r.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwinner.prize-surveywinner.com%2Ft%2Fsurvey%2F%3Fgen_d%3DWikipedia%26gen_bg%3DF6F6F6%26gen_fc%3D000000%26kw%3Dwikipedia%26sid%3D20120414215743cda51477287d925b9e

which then redirected to:

• http://wikipedia.prize-surveywinner.com/t/survey/us2/index.php

A voice told me "Congratulations, you have been chosen to..."

It's a little late for April Fools... Equazcion 12:04, 14 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I just got it again when clicking on a different link. Is anyone else getting this or did I get some malware? Equazcion 12:08, 14 Apr 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like either malware or typosquatting. Are you sure you were at wikipedia.org without typos? Your browser history may show the url. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:50, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks like it was typosquatting. One of my scripts had an error that made it point to enwikipedia.org instead of en.wikipedia.org. Thanks for the help :) Equazcion 14:14, 14 Apr 2012 (UTC)

Reflist Template Issue

On the WTBO page, I keep getting a warning message saying I haven't placed the {{reflist}} template on the page. The problem is I have placed it on the page. I asked User:OlEnglish to take a look and he couldn't find the cause, so he sent me to you all. I even switched a reference around (one was linking to 6 different sentences) to see if that was the problem, still nothing. Hope you all can help. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 16:53, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

<ref name="Offutt2/"> -- Slash was inside the quote, which messed up everything that came after it on the page. Fixed now. Equazcion 17:27, 14 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I am having the same issue on Georgia State Route 223. I had the <references/>, then I changed to {{Reflist}}, but that, too, didn't help. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 17:45, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

You were missing a closing ref tag, which again messed up everything that came after. Fixed now. Equazcion 17:48, 14 Apr 2012 (UTC)

I looked at that sentence probably 15 times, never seen it. Thanks Equazcion, much appreciated! :) - Neutralhomer • Talk • 18:05, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting the reference. I feel like an idiot for that. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 20:20, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Server issue today?

I'm getting a lot of "Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in." errors while editing this afternoon. Any particular reason for this or is it just random weirdness? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 21:02, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I've been getting this on and off for a few days (but not today weirdly). Secretlondon (talk) 21:14, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Ive been getting that and the severe slowness mentioned above as well on and off since yesterday.Edinburgh Wanderer 21:26, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Me too: four so far today - the two noted above at #Having trouble staying logged in and two others. The usual workaround of going for "Show preview" before saving simply isn't working. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:03, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Still having trouble..80.3.25.148 (talk) 16:27, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Issue with HotCat?

Is there a problem with HotCat? On some pages, I can add categories, and on some, I cant'. Now, I know there is some code to add to pages to deny that, but these are normal article pages. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 23:52, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any HotCat problem. Note that HotCat cannot edit categories that are transcluded onto the page from templates. Lupo 11:59, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Some times response is slow, and an incomplete load can take place, and perhaps the hotcat javascript is not loaded for you. If you purge or reload the page it may reappear. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Trying to add an additional symbol to infobox

OK, I'm not sure if this belongs here or over on the Help Desk, I think both pages are relevant but I picked this one.

Eighteen U.S. States have a coat of arms as an official symbol alongside their state seal and flag. Seven of these coats of arms have their own article separate from the state seal article. I would like to add the coat of arms to the main infobox on the article of those seven states, but I don't want to supplant the state seal, as that is the standard of all 50 states and their infoboxes. However, Libya currently does not have a national coat of arms or seal, but the Transnational Council does have it's own seal, which as you can see, is added to the Libya article's infobox as "other symbol". I've been trying to do this to the infoboxes for the seven states with a separate article for their coat of arms, but it doesn't work for me. I don't really know if it's possible to do it with a first-level subdivision infobox or if it only works with national infoboxes, or if I'm not doing something right. Could anybody lend a hand? Fry1989 01:29, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

The issue is that Template:Infobox country has an other symbol field, but Template:Infobox U.S. state does not. Chris857 (talk) 01:40, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

So I'm guessing that means there's not really anything I can do to make it work then? Fry1989 01:43, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

The only field that is pretty free content-wise is the footnotes= parameter, but that places the text "footnotes" along with any other content. To add a place for the coat of arms, we need consensus to add it and someone with some template-fu. I suggest asking at Template talk:Infobox U.S. state. Chris857 (talk) 01:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Alright, I'll try that. I actually suspected it was a compatibility issue, rather than me not doing it right. Thanks for the direction, hopefully it turns out. Fry1989 02:10, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Notice: Slight change in AWB in-template handling

This shouldn't affect most of you, but AWB's search/replace logic for "in-template" check has been revised to address this issue in r8062. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:44, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

en.m.wikipedia.org and __NOINDEX__

All the pages I have started in userspace have a __NOINDEX__ directive on them -- so they won't be searched by search engines.

Nevertheless recent google searches for topics I work on are showing some userspace pages I created -- not under en.wikipedia.org -- but under en.m.wikipedia.org.

I am guessing that en.m.wikipedia.org contains all the regular wikipedia content, reformatted for represenation on browsers running on blackberry and other mobile devices?

Well, web search engines don't seem to be understanding __NOINDEX__ directives found on the mobile pages. Geo Swan (talk) 14:30, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Which subpages? Could you give an example? — Blue-Haired Lawyer 14:56, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I think this issue was fixed, but it might be it will take a LONG time before Google removes such entries from their index. There is also the wider issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:14, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

• An example? User:Geo_Swan/Afghanistan/Afghanistan%60s_Constitutional_Loya_Jirga_of_2002-2004 since moved to Constitutional Loya Jirga in article space. Geo Swan (talk) 16:44, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

The __NOINDEX__ should produce a <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> tag in html. From what I can make out from your example the mobile version has a robots tag but the normal version doesn't. There may be an issue with the redirect in user space no producing a robots tag. Otherwise The DJ's right. It's probably a legacy issue. Next time Googles' bot crawls the site, the mobile site should disappear. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 17:20, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Scratch that. Normal site has a <link rel="canonical" href="..." /> which does the same thing. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 17:26, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

• This was brought up recently. One of the bugzilla links above was cited. Killiondude (talk) 00:52, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Rasmin Trojan

When I check my Incoming Events on my anti-virus, this sometimes comes up as having been blocked. But what I find interesting is the explanation that is tied to Wikimedia, and I wonder if this is something to be concerned about:

• "A computer at bits-lb.eqiad.wikimedia.org has attempted an unsolicited connection to TCB port 1045 on your computer. TCB port 1045 is commonly used by the Rasmin Trojan service or program. The source computer has scanned your computer for this trojan, but it has been blocked by your firewall."

I also get similar incoming events from bits-lb.eqiad.wikimedia.org from TCB port 1041,1043,1044, etc., but none of them mention the Rasmin Trojan. Maile66 (talk) 11:41, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

where did the full-size reference option go?

We used to have a distinction between {{Reflist}}, which displayed notes in small print, and <references/>, which displayed them full size. The latter was useful for footnotes where we didn't want the reader to have to deal with small print. However, the two displays now look the same to me. Is there a reason that they are now apparently redundant? And what can we do where we don't want small print?

Thanks — kwami (talk) 20:45, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Guessing maybe the change was made because footnotes in print are usually all small? I don't know though. You could use <span style="font-size:115%;"><references /></span> to make them bigger. Equazcion 20:58, 17 Apr 2012 (UTC)

<references /> was styled to the same size as {{reflist}} in December 2010 after a proposal was supported. I am not aware of any other template that used any other size. If you don't like the smaller font, then you can set a personal style with Preferences → Gadgets → Disable smaller font sizes of elements such as Infoboxes, Navboxes and References lists. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  21:18, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

We have a number of articles where <references/> was used to not reduce the font size. Sometimes in a Notes section, with regular reduced {{Reflist}} in the references section. This has been for various reasons, for example explaining the pronunciation or native orthography of the head word, where we don't want reduced print because IPA, Arabic, Chinese, etc. can be difficult to read in small print. With this change, we'd need to have a bot search all the articles on WP and manually go through them, which would be a ridiculous amount of work. — kwami (talk) 21:24, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Examples? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  22:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Decipherment of rongorongo. You might argue that the Notes section should be small print, but it went through FA full size, and I think that's a decision to be made for each article. There are others that I've come across, with IPA etc. that really is hard to read in reduced type, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. — kwami (talk) 23:18, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the issue, but with my myopia I have excellent near vision. Could you point out some of the specific issues? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  00:28, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Sure, for IPA, Chinese, Arabic, etc. If you have the page set for a comfortable reading size, then when you come across scripts that are more difficult to read, making the font smaller only compounds the difficulty. Take the IPA: often a large number of diacritics, which involve a lot of fine detail. You can't just go by whether or not you have a diacritic, but which diacritic it is. This is difficult when the font is the same size as what is comfortable when reading English orthography. When you reduce the size, then the reader needs to adjust the display of their browser just to read the footnote. And it's not just a matter of having good near vision: when the details of the diacritics fall below the resolution of your monitor, a magnifying glass wouldn't do you any good. Sometimes diacritics are conflated: that nasal vowel disappears, for example, and becomes mid tone instead. Anyway, I think this is a decision to be made in the article, and such decisions have been made with the two reference calls that we had available. Their merger has messed up the formatting of articles that depended on them.

As for Arabic, have you ever seen a multilingual package that included Arabic or Persian? Take a look at the ingredients. You'll notice the Arabic script is not reduced to the same tiny size as Latin, Cyrillic, etc, because it becomes illegible. Similarly with Chinese: when printed small, complex Chinese characters are rendered as solid blobs of ink, again illegible. We sometimes don't want to clutter the lead with foreign scripts, so we relegate them to a footnote, but purposefully do not choose {{Reflist}}, because it make them too small. — kwami (talk) 00:39, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

You state that Decipherment of rongorongo "went through FA full size" - could you please point to the section of either WP:FA Criteria or Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Decipherment of rongorongo where the font size is mentioned? --Redrose64 (talk) 12:26, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

It wasn't mentioned. It was never an issue. — kwami (talk) 13:12, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Categories in page function

Is there a categories in page magic word function? I'd like to know how many categories a page has.Smallman12q (talk) 23:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I think. Ruslik_Zero 11:04, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Repair SUL Info

I have over 6000 edits in en wiki, but this shows I've more than 7000 edits. Fix http://toolserver.org/~quentinv57/sulinfo. --SupernovaExplosion 02:28, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

The latter number includes deleted edits. Ruslik_Zero 11:07, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

But the usual tool shows SupernovaExplosion has 5633 live edits plus 431 deleted edits. That's well short of the 7078 shown by the SUL tool. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:30, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Right, there is some problem with SUL Info. --SupernovaExplosion 11:33, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

The upload interface is a mess

There are some fairly big problems with it at the moment:

• You get 3 lines of text and then a big link to click that... reloads the same page, with a form on it. This makes the UI slower and more frustrating to use. Just have the link go straight to the form and put those 3 lines of text at the top.

• When you click on a file red-link, the standard upload form prompts you to upload a file with that name. The name gets lost in aforementioned unnecessary click-through so the file name field is not pre-filled as it should be.

• Most of the time when clicking a file red-link you are more interested in the file that used to be there and why it has gone, than in uploading a replacement. The standard upload form used to have a link to the deletion log for that file. Now there is nothing, because the file-name parameter gets dropped. Manually entering Special:Log as the URL and copy-pasting the red-link is unnecessarily tedious, and not exactly intuitive for new users.

Could whoever decided the regular old upload form wasn't good enough please fix their replacement? Gurch (talk) 13:46, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm an experienced editor, not too dumb, and have uploaded I'd guess 8 images (not many). The process is very confusing to me; with the two destinations, I don't even know where the main place to do it is at, and it isn't clear where those lines on the form end up. Last time one that looked like it wanted a description got used as the file name, and so not the file name is messed up , like a sentence with spaces and punctuation. I need to go to a few more years of upload college and then I can go fix that. North8000 (talk) 15:02, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Assuming that you're using the upload wizard, I think that Misplaced Pages talk:File Upload Wizard is the best place to raise problems. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:35, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Not following how something works

This code {{:2011 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament: qualifying teams}} is used on this page, which picks up some tables from this page. Can someone explain what is happening, so I can use the approach elsewhere?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:10, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

That code simply pulls the page content from the article (like a template), but a specific bit is wrapped in <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> tags making the "template" call only include that bit of the page. I hope this explains it clearly enough :) 21:19, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah I think I get it. I wasn't sure how it knew what pieces to bring over, and I was expecting that to be specified in the template, but now I see it is specified in the page itself. Thanks.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:27, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Using articles as transclusion material should be avoided. It may make sense to turn the tables in a given article or articles into templates or subtemplates, to be transcluded. --Izno (talk) 22:43, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Logging out

I am having problems with staying logged in. I have to keep signing in every few minutes.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:31, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

According to previous threads, this should have been fixed by now... apparently not. - Jarry1250  10:33, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

"If our initial diagnosis is correct, you may still be getting occasional errors until you've manually logged out and logged back in to clear corrupted session information. Can you please confirm that you've done so, and report whether any issues still occur regardless?" (Erik, above) - Jarry1250  10:35, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Its happened 5 times in the last 9 minutes. Right confirm I've logged out manually now and logged in again, we'll see how it goes now!♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:41, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Happened again and three times since.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:11, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Can't log in at all now. Somebody please sort this!80.3.25.148 (talk) 13:08, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

There is already a thread re this further up the page. Edinburgh Wanderer 13:49, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

V slow load times in IE 7.0

Some days I have no choice but to use the antiquated IE 7.0. When I do, trying to edit is sloooow and I mean geologically slow as pages load. I suspect I could speed up page load times by tweaking my monobook, but as I don't begin understand it (I've depended on the kindness of tech-savvy others to get it right) I'm loathe to touch it. I'd be most grateful if someone could take a look for me and suggest changes that retain maximum utility while delivering maximum possible improvement in load times. --Dweller (talk) 15:28, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Capcha requirement

For some reasons when I do nearly any edit as an IP or an Editor I am required to put in a capcha. Often requiring it to be input several times before its accepted. I understand that this is to prevent vandalism but it seems to me that this requirement is more of a hinderence than a help. If someone wants to vandalise the pedia an extra step isn't going to stop them and for spammers all I need to do is create an account andn make a couple edits first. Plus we have safeguards to catch this that IMO are superior to requiring every IP and new editor to use a captcha. If we make editing difficult enough people will just stop using it. I think that the reason I get it as an IP are pretty clear and with the status of my account appearing as though I am brand spanking new account to the system its pretty clear to me why thats happening. At the very least I do not think we need to require a captcha for every petty little edit nor do I think we need it for edits to talk pages.

Additionally, if the captcha is kept I recommend we reword it to be more appropriate to the edit being done. When I added a WikiProject banner to File talk:Saint Louis Parish Church New Orleans plans 1724.jpg I received the below message:

Your edit includes new external links. These may be much welcomed links to references. Please note that the nofollow HTML attribute is applied to external links in Misplaced Pages, instructing search engines to ignore these links when computing page ranks. For information on our standards for adding links, please see our External links Guideline.

To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below in the box, without any spaces (more info)

I did not input an external link, reference, HTML or anything else that this message implies. Kumioko (talk) 16:45, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

It may be because you're not an autoconfirmed user anymore?--Gilderien Talk|Contribs 16:47, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes I admit that might be part of it but IMO we shouldn't be requiring a captcha for something like this anyway. This encourages editors to not edit. Especially when the messageg doesn't match the action. Kumioko (talk) 16:51, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Issues with the security certificate?

In the past week, I have had repeated problems accessing the site on Firefox because of issues with the security certificate. This is the message I see on the page to which I am redirected:

This Connection is Untrusted

You have asked Firefox to connect securely to en.wikipedia.org, but we can't confirm that your connection is secure.

Normally, when you try to connect securely, sites will present trusted identification to prove that you are going to the right place. However, this site's identity can't be verified.

What Should I Do?

If you usually connect to this site without problems, this error could mean that someone is trying to impersonate the site, and you shouldn't continue.

When I open the technical details I see:

en.wikipedia.org uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is only valid for the following names:

• .wikimedia.org , wikimedia.org

(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)

When I add the exception, I still cannot access the English Misplaced Pages, instead, I get this error message:

Error 403 Requested target domain not allowed.

Requested target domain not allowed.

Guru Meditation:

XID: 1087749757

Varnish cache server

Just a little while ago, I encountered this same problem whilst in the middle of editing an article, which had never happened before. I have no trouble accessing any of the other Wikimedia pages, including the other language WPs. I am, to say the least, perplexed. Does anyone have any idea what is going on? ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 16:49, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages noticeboards
• Misplaced Pages features
• Pages automatically checked for accidental language links