Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla.

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Inline template wikitext formatting

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Citation discussion#Inline template wikitext formatting and comment, when you have a chance to do so. Thank you. 08:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC−5)

Make it easier to submit edit requests

Currently, MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext (shown when users try to edit a page they don't have rights to) provides instruction on how to make an edit request for a (semi)protected page. Why not make it a bit easier and just give visitors a prominent button to push? We can use an InputBox to preload the necessary {{editsemiprotected}} / {{editprotected}} text, and provide an explanatory editintro too. The example below, using preload/editintro borrowed from the Article Wizard, shows how.

Good idea? It might encourage frivolous requests, but we'd only know the signal/noise ratio by trying.

On a related note, I think it would be a lot friendlier if (a) the Edit button didn't become View Source when an editor doesn't have permission to edit - it's a missed opportunity to encourage people to find out more about editing and especially how signing up can have benefits and enable editing of semiprotected pages. (b) I don't really see that the average unregistered users actually wants to see the source wikitext; this is probably just confusing. Ditch it and use the space for a bigger, friendlier explanation of protection. Provide a link to the source for those few who really want it. Rd232 ^talk 21:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Template:CB-support2 I personally think this is brilliant! Thumbs up! Although, oppose the second idea about the view source button, which I have found useful many times. --JokerXtreme (talk) 21:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Strong oppose the removal of the "view source" tab. Two reasons:

• Sometimes, when explaining things to IP users, I have purposefully directed them to a given template, and suggested that they "view source", in order to see how something is done
• I often use "view source" on protected templates to see what the actual parameters are, and what happens when certain combinations are used. The editors who maintain templates often forget to keep the documentation in synch. As a non-admin, if this were implemented, I would lose the ability to check why my template transclusions don't work as per the documentation.

--Redrose64 (talk) 22:37, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

If I understand it correctly, what he proposes isn't that you won't be able to look at the source code, just that it would require one more click. Svick (talk) 23:05, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Correct. I'm not suggesting removing the ability to see the source, I'm suggesting hiding the source, because for most people it's a confusing distraction at their first point of entry. It could be collapsed on the same page (hidden by default), or there could be a link to the source on a separate page. Rd232 ^talk 23:07, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, the argument applies mainly for articles. For protected templates, people who come along probably do actually want to see the source. Rd232 ^talk 23:18, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Oppose part about hiding “View source”. I find it very useful, especially for protected templates. Also, the editnotice on semi-protected articles already explains that creating an account helps. Svick (talk) 23:05, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Comment - Well I think it would be useful if it was easy to propose, for instance, a minor change on a protected article, without going through all the fuzz of creating a section on the talk page. --JokerXtreme (talk) 23:15, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support adding an input box below the current text of MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext. Although users wishing to edit probably don't often get there in the first place, this surely happens from time to time and we should make it easier for them to request edits. Note that {{TALKPAGENAME}} should be used to make it work in general. Neutral on the rest; I agree with the general idea to make it easier to request edits on protected pages, maybe we should change the text which appears when pointing on view source from "you can view its source" to "you can view its source and request edits", though I think we'd need to ask devs for this. Cenarium (talk) 00:27, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

  Noting that the editprotected/editsemiprotected template should be contained in the preload. Cenarium (talk) 01:16, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

• Template:CB-support2 adding the inputbox. It will help new editors unfamiliar with our policies to submit requests. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} (continued below)
• Template:CB-oppose1 "view source" suggestion. "View source" is a useful button, and anyways, an explanation is given on the view source page. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:32, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm not talking about getting rid of the button, I'm suggesting making the button always say "Edit this page", to make it more inviting for people to click on and get an explanation that yes, they really can edit (but not this page right now). In addition, I'd try and make the explanation friendlier and more welcoming, and part of that might be not showing scary source text which you can't even edit: that seem offputting to me. In principle, there could be another Inputbox which uses the current article text to feed a sandbox, so that people can test editing (with a sufficiently clear explanation, this might work). Rd232 ^talk 08:06, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
    • I knew that it wasn't removing the button. Anyways, we have a nice header explaining why it can't be edited. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 10:14, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
      • The MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext message isn't particularly nice for newbies (I might draft a redesign if I have time); and semi-protected pages often only have the small lock icon, so there's no nice message on the page itself. And "View Source" is not exactly reinforcing the "Anyone Can Edit" message. Rd232 ^talk 10:19, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
        • • We already have a tooltip on it which is quite helpful and it pops up immediately ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 09:23, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
            • Yes, it pops up when you put the mouse over the button (also the tooltip just says "you can view the source" ...). What proportion of people do that? Why would they? The issue is sending a message that's right there. We do this as a matter of course with unprotected pages - I don't see we avoid doing this with protected pages. Rd232 ^talk 11:22, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
        • See also #Proposed implementation design by Rd232
• Endorse the inputbox for submit an edit request - great idea. Far too often IPs suggest edits without using the editprotected template, and are thus disenfranchised. –xeno^talk 17:54, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support, this could also work where an article is fully protected too. Mjroots (talk) 19:20, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support, a great idea. Can't imagine any drawbacks to implementing the make-a-request idea, whether for semiprotected pages or for fully protected pages. I have no opinion on the question of hiding the source-text link. Nyttend (talk) 23:35, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support, love the idea as well. Lets stick to the editform first, we can deal with the issue of the "view source" tab in a separate discussion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:56, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
• Template:CB-support2 And I make a mental note to give a hand on the design as soon as I have some spare time. Also, the source code should be in a collapsible box. It has to stay efficient and easy to use for us power users. But beginners should notice it only when they need it. It's a good compromise. Dodoïste (talk) 01:49, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
  • That's a good idea. Can it be done without changing the software? Rd232 ^talk 11:22, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
• Ditto what Nyttend said. Seraphim♥ 02:15, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
• Neutral - I might be interested in seeing how a temporary test implementation goes, because I'm worried that making it this easy will cause lots of trivial requests. Currently only people who are seriously concerned will go through the trouble of reading the instructions and making a request, and I think for protected pages only significant concerns should really warrant the attention and effort of an admin. So the commitment required to make a request, so to speak, was always sort of a built-in check against trivial requests. But with this button, anyone who wants to make any edit might use the button since it's so easy. So I'm not sure if this would turn out to be a good thing. Equazcion ^(talk) 22:33, 23 Mar 2010 (UTC)
  • It's a concern. It's fairly easy to keep an eye on though, because we'd see an increasing backlog in handling requests, at Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests / Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests. Probably we have to accept an increase in frivolous requests as a price for increasing worthwhile requests. Rd232 ^talk 22:44, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposed implementation design by Rd232

Please don't vote here on the idea in general, this is about collaborating on a specific design

OK, so User:Rd232/protectedpagetext has a draft redesign, and includes a working preload/editintro for editsemiprotected. Rd232 ^talk 17:27, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks nice, but what about fully protected pages? --JokerXtreme (talk) 17:32, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

That's not a problem. The same principles apply, I suggest we design them 1 at a time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:11, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Probably a good idea, but I've already drafted that too, at User:Rd232/protectedpagetext/sub1. Rd232 ^talk 01:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

• The thing is a tad tall this way. I suggest a similar layout as the Help desk. Just 2 columns with text, and then a new row with a request button. 80% of the people don't read that other text anyways. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:11, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

  I don't quite get that. Can you draft it? Rd232 ^talk 01:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I've improved the design a bit, not least using the trick from {{Feedback page}} where the inputbox parameters are plugged into a fullurl link, thus avoiding the format-scrambling inputbox. Rd232 ^talk 12:07, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

The format is much better, but it still would be nice to have a button. The edit proposal option now gets kinda lost in there. --JokerXtreme (talk) 12:50, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

How about an arrow icon (User:Rd232/protectedpagetext/sub1)? Or change things around more dramatically. Rd232 ^talk 13:47, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Hm, I don't think an arrow there makes much sense. How about "you can submit an edit request by clicking the button on the bottom" or something? So that the more experienced users can find the button right away. --JokerXtreme (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Why doesn't an arrow make sense there? It highlights the key action link. Your suggestion I think could be confusing. More showing and less telling would be helpful in this discussion - let's see what we're talking about; just edit my draft or create your own. Rd232 ^talk 14:15, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Something like that:User:Rd232/protectedpagetext/sub2. The text may need rewriting though, but the layout should look something like this (I think). --JokerXtreme (talk) 14:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess that's OK, but it slightly upsets the priority (unprotection should come last, I think). But it it's an improvement on the status quo either way, and it can always be revised later. What do people think? Rd232 ^talk 17:33, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I like JokerXtreme's suggestion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree, that one is probably my favorite out of both proposals. I have a feeling the button will "click" better with new users who are trying to figure out how to edit the page. I really don't think it upsets the priority either, because it's separate from everything else - i.e., it's not a bullet point. That's how I see it. — The Earwig ^(talk) 20:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. Let's give it a bit little longer for comments (24hrs?), and then somebody implement it please. Rd232 ^talk 22:16, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I like it too. :) It's much better than the current one imo, well done people. Ale_Jrb^talk 22:25, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Rd, what do you mean implement it? I thought it was already finished. It just needs the code from your "edit request" link. The templates probably need to change too. --JokerXtreme (talk) 22:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I assume he means putting it here, so it actually shows up. :) Ale_Jrb^talk 23:00, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Aaah, I see! Well, Rd, I guess you must have the honor :) Are those ok btw? {{editsemiprotected}}, {{editprotected}} Or do they need any change? --JokerXtreme (talk) 23:08, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'll do it then, probably tomorrow morning (probably better anyway that I do it since I split the code across pages to make editing easier, and it needs reintegrating). I don't see that those templates need any changes. Rd232 ^talk 09:07, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Y Done And implemented - now live. Rd232 ^talk 11:34, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

and I see that it's already attracting improper requests --Redrose64 (talk) 00:12, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

It is too early to say, but I think the proper requests outweigh the improper. --JokerXtreme (talk) 08:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Define "improper". It appears to be a good faith request relating to John_George_Adair#Adair.E2.80.99s_death, but in the wrong place (death template). Rd232 ^talk 09:41, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Can something be done to encourage editors to use a more descriptive section heading rather than the generic "edit request"? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:17, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess that could be useful. Maybe it should be added in the tmbox here: [1]. I couldn't find the template for it. But, I think the heading should start with "Edit request -". --JokerXtreme (talk) 10:58, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

And it should be possible to add the date to the default heading so that if people don't type in their own heading, as least you don't get several identical headings on a page which stops the table of contents working. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:48, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

The editintro templates are Template:Editsemiprotected/editintro and Template:Editprotected/editintro. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:50, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. Headings in an "Edit request - (time, date) - " preform, that users will fill in. OK, we need to add a third advice and probably place it first. Something like "Please use a descriptive headline. Fill in further details about the subject of the edit request.". Just throwing this on the table. --JokerXtreme (talk) 13:36, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

The wording needs to be more clear and easily seen. Already there has been a double or triple in requests, most of them not correct. Emphasis needs to be made on presenting a reliable source to back the change up, as well as a "change X to Y"-format, which may not be clear enough for some people.  fetchcomms☛ 00:21, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. As probably the person who has actioned most semi's in the past few days (as I often do), I've seen about a five-fold increase in the number, but most of them have been crap. Blank requests, garbled junk, vandalism. A few have been partly comprehensible, but of them, most gave no source, and/or didn't make a specific request. I am all for the idea of making the requests easier, but please, could someone make the request thingy clearer - emphasize the need to say exactly what needs to change, and to give reliable sources. Preferably in 6-foot high flashing comic-sans. Ty.  Chzz  ►  08:04, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

What about increases in good requests? Rd232 ^talk 09:51, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

NB requests like this one may not be exactly what we want, but they are an opportunity to engage new users who might otherwise not understand and walk away. It's a chance to explain. Rd232 ^talk 09:58, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we've had a few of those as well :) But mainly I seem to be telling people to discuss their proposals on the talk page first, which is especially important on fully protected pages. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:56, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, this was my concern about making the Request button too visible in MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext - it makes it more likely people will just jump to clicking the button to see what it does. I had the Request link more within the text (User:Rd232/protectedpagetext/sub) so people would actually have to read it to find that option. Also, it occurs to me that we should probably remove the button anyway on the main page, replacing it with a pointer to the tutorial perhaps. Rd232 ^talk 09:51, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that will rather discourage edit requesting in general. No one will bother to read, I know I wouldn't. I think my proposal below addresses the concerns raised.--JokerXtreme (talk) 10:52, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Editintro

I changed the template a little bit. I changed the icon and the instructions. Template:Editsemiprotected/editintroTEST. We could also bold the "follow instructions" here: MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext--JokerXtreme (talk) 09:07, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Better, for sure. As I said, I'm all in favour of encouraging editing, and in making it easier. Hopefully they will read that notice; I have a feeling that lack of sources will be the biggest problem - but that's OK; only takes a minute to respond to it explaining why we need sources. We shall see.

I'd like to make a request of my own here: it would be great if the people supporting this could keep an eye on the requests (Category:Wikipedia_semi-protected_edit_requests; bot updates can be transcluded from {{User:VeblenBot/SPERtable}}) and help to action them.  Chzz  ►  15:06, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Out of interest, I had a bit of a look. To my knowledge, we've had 44 requests since 25th; 9 of which have been successful. Notes in user:chzz/sper.  Chzz  ►  18:17, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I see most of the rejected requests were not referenced. And to tell the truth, no one was asked to provide references in the instructions. Am I wrong? Additionally, some of the requests I declined, did not check for consensus first. We should address that too. --JokerXtreme (talk) 18:21, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I think the consensus thing is a decision that the person dealing with it can make - and the request can be the start of a discussion; I don't see a problem with that. The main thing to drill in is the need for references - as always. Same as at WP:AFC, where I spend hours each day telling people what an RS is, what V really means, and that blogs and press-releases ain't enough for N. References, that's the key. To be honest we're bound to get some rubbish requests, no matter what; if we can somehow make it ultra-clear that refs are needed, that's the best chance we have to increase the good/bad ratio.  Chzz  ►  22:09, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Should I publish my editintro draft for a start and see how that goes? --JokerXtreme (talk) 22:23, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Sure, why not? I would suggest something in-between the current one and Template:Editsemiprotected/editintroTEST - I don't like the harsh red sign on the latter, I prefer the more friendly informational, but I'd like to see something like, perhaps, the "Please provide reliable sources when possible" highlighted?

Another idea is, how about 2 input boxes - one for their suggestion, and another for the reference?  Chzz  ►  22:39, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

How about the new version? Template:Editsemiprotected/editintroTEST. Maybe we should just add that sources are necessary in the request form, like here:

--JokerXtreme (talk) 23:38, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I've adopted Joker's changes and adapted and expanded on them - see Template:Editsemiprotected/editintro. I've also customised MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext for the Main Page, since an edit request button there doesn't seem useful (check it out by clicking View Source when not logged in). Rd232 ^talk 01:39, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks good, let's see how that goes. But, how about having "Edit request - {{currentuser}}" as the default heading? This would fix the problem with multiple ERs messing up the table of contents. --JokerXtreme (talk) 07:45, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

done, with date as well. Rd232 ^talk 15:17, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Problem with apostrophes

A user tried to use this at 2010 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament and was sent to edit Talk:2010 NCAA Men&. It reproduces easily. Celestra (talk) 03:39, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't fix this using inputbox; it ought to work with either TALKPAGENAME or TALKPAGENAMEE (Help:Magic_words), but neither does. Using the direct link trick with fullurl, it does work, so I've switched to that. Maybe someone else can sort it better. Rd232 ^talk 15:16, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Requests relating to non-existent pages

We are getting quite a lot of requests on salted pages. Quite often, the page has been through an AfD and {{editprotected}} is not appropriate. I think perhaps the link should not be displayed on these? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:03, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, done. Hid the whole table if the page doesn't exist but is protected, leaving the SALTed notice which points users to DRV. Rd232 ^talk 20:08, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Huge ugly confusing box

Please revert the recent changes to this template. All they have done is take up twice as much space to display the exact same information, and in two boxes, one of them multi-column, rather than a single one. The result is an ugly confusing mess. There is nothing to stop you adding a link to make an edit request without all that junk. Gurch (talk) 23:30, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Please be constructive. The aim is to provide a helpful link to editors. You could suggest an alternative method rather than asking for all changes to be reverted. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:55, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

As Rd pointed out, there were many more changes than just changing the template display. The point of the two boxes was to make sure that newbies pay attention to it, and in fact, it works. If you have something better to propose, please do so. --JokerXtreme (talk) 11:18, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

secure.wikimedia.org Proxy Error 502

I'm getting a lot of these over the last three days. I am signing off secure.wikimedia.org and signing in to en.wikipedia.org in order to accomplish anything. Any others with this problem? Is there a better place to determine the status of secure.wikimedia.org? Many thanks, Darrell_Greenwood (talk) 18:43, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Me too. It happens when I try to get diffs, edit (it'll make the edit but not return the proper screen), and even when I'm just reading a page. I've had to go to the unsecure server too. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:16, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the same for me. It seems to happen with any large page, one that has a lot of data to load. Clearing my browser cache does not help. It seems to have started just after the server failure a few days ago, and is very annoying. Have the secure servers not yet been fully restored? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I concur, it seems to mainly happen on large pages, and the problem started with the failure noted here "Update 21:32 UTC: Our SSL gateway, secure.wikimedia.org, was disabled due to overload issues, but is now back up." Thanks for your comments, as they make it unlikely that the continuing problem is mine. (Parenthetical remark, whilst troubleshooting, I came across a comment that European users can bypass the Amsterdam servers when those servers are down by logging into secure.wikipedia.org because it is in Florida. If enough people are still doing that... overload?) I haven't been able to find a web status indication for secure.wikipedia.org. Darrell_Greenwood (talk) 21:33, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, but can something be done to fix this now? — Rlevse • Talk • 23:59, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem is continuing for me. I've left a message at User talk:Tim Starling. It's not really clear to me where one can report what appears to be a hardware problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

In case it helps, here are further details of the 502 error message: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.7wm1 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g Server at secure.wikimedia.org Port 443. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:49, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

bugzilla:22982 was opened to track this issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:29, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, TheDJ. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:47, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I am getting the same error:

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request POST /wikipedia/en/enwiki/w/index.php.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.7wm1 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g Server at secure.wikimedia.org Port 443

--Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:36, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Ditto. Over the last few days I've been getting a 502 on https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en. I'm not experiencing it on http://en.wikipedia.org. It happens on both Safari and Firefox, survives a reboot, is intermitted, and doesn't seem to affect the Main Page. One article I've seen it on consistently is Ireland.

Full response:

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /wikipedia/en/wiki/Ireland.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.7wm1 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g Server at secure.wikimedia.org Port 443

--RA (talk) 20:42, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if this helps or confuses, but I get the error message:

"The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. The proxy server could not handle the request GET /wikipedia/en/wiki/3rd_Battalion_3rd_Marines."

when I am on the secure server, *but* when I go to the English server and try to edit the page, I get the same error. I have gotten this error on numerous pages on both the secure and English server.Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 00:03, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

• Me too, happens intermittently. Started last few days. ► RATEL ◄ 12:09, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

According to the Bugzilla report, linked above, they are in the process of setting up a new server that, when installed, will hopefully fix the problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:03, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

At least for me, this now seems to be fixed. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:53, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not happening as often, but I got it once today so far. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:39, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

One edit completed without error messages, and it got all the way through. Thank you to the server people. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 21:43, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Any talk page

Why is it that if you edit a talk page when logged out you can only see the edit box, whilst logged in you can see the whole page? This applies to "edit this page". This is definitely a recent change. IMO for the worst. Simply south (talk) 20:51, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Whoa, that is new. I can't imagine that being of any benefit at all. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:58, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the problem description. More info required. screenshots might help. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:05, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

This is something that can be enabled in preferences, if "Show preview on first edit" (in the "Editing" section) is selected. snigbrook (talk) 01:09, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

For those who don't know...

Where was the discussion on these changes (a bit ironic eh?) Simply south (talk) 01:14, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Possibly an option in your preferences. Take a look at the editing tab and see if the tick is on "Show preview on first edit". Astronaut (talk) 01:32, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, possibly it's just so old that I've forgotten there was ever a choice. That's the same as "new", right? — Gavia immer (talk) 02:18, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

No, you've got it wrong Astronaut and Snigbrook. Logged out\IP editors do not get preferences. Look at the pics again and look especially at the top of the screen. Simply south (talk) 18:42, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

And logged in users DO. Look at your settings, like Astronaut described. The NORMAL behavior is to have the edit box when you click edit, and not, to have both the preview and the editbox. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:09, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

In the past it has been both even when not in user. Simply south (talk) 15:43, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Collapse template transclusion list

When you edit a page, or View Source on a page you don't have permission to edit, you get a list of transcluded templates (which is often quite long). I've never understood why we do this; it's never been any use to me and it must confuse newbies (see eg edit request on a template, clicked through from article).

Proposal: use a {{hat}}-style approach (with an appropriate message of course) to collapse that list by default (i.e. people wishing to see it need to click [show]). Rd232 ^talk 15:31, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

• If this is done please allow it to be shown-by-default with some CSS magic. Thanks, –xeno^talk 15:47, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Of course. Incidentally I've no idea how my proposal can exactly be implemented; but I'm sure we can figure it out. Rd232 ^talk 15:54, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
    • I'm working on something User:TheDJ/usagecollapse.js, but it is far from finished. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:21, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
      • Now hide template lists, file usage and global file usage, when you want it to. Uses a cookie to remember your last action. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:07, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
        • That's great, thanks. But the primary motivation for this is not confusing newbies, so the show/hide option needs to be available by default for all users, and the list hidden by default. I guess it needs to be added to MediaWiki:common.js? Shall I suggest that there? Rd232 ^talk 08:03, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

On this topic one frequent annoyance to me is that the same template list is not visible during a section-edit. I know the least astonishing behavior would be to list only the templates upon which that section depends, but listing them unfilteredly from the `templatelinks` table would be better than no information. Perhaps I′ll write a gadget for this. ―AoV² 08:47, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Twinkle vs. spam blacklist

I tagged Lakhotia Computer Centre for speedy deletion as a copyvio, but it wasn't easy. Twinkle said that tagging the article was complete, but I didn't see the tag on the article! So I tried adding it manually, thinking that it was just an intermittent glitch in Twinkle. To my surprise, the URL the content came from was on the spam blacklist! No wonder why the article hadn't earlier been deleted with most of the other "large unwikified new articles". PleaseStand ^(talk) 06:44, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Please report twinkle issues to WT:TW/BUGS. –xeno^talk 13:40, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm thinking that the easiest fix is actually to change {{db-g12}} to nowiki external links. I don't want to break the somewhat complex template (though not nearly as much as {{dated prod}}) though; I would prefer that someone with more template experience make the change. But wait...is it even possible to nowiki a template parameter from within the template? Yes it is. Use {{#tag:nowiki|{{{url}}}}}. PleaseStand ^(talk) 18:13, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Posted at Template talk:Db-meta#Nowiki the URL in Db-g12 with the proposed changes. PleaseStand ^(talk) 06:33, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

7 accts in 24 hrs

Resolved

Is our accountcreation blocker working correctly? The one that allows a user to make only 6 accounts in 24 hours? I'm not an accountcreator, which means if I create six accounts within 24 hours, I'm blocked from creating more. I've started at WP:ACC, and looking at my user creation log, it seems that I have made 11 accounts in the 24 hr range March 29, 15:45-March 30, 15:45 (UTC). Even if we consider that the software might consider a day as a UTC cay, not any arbitrary range of 24 hrs, I've still created 7 accounts on March 30 (UTC). How did I bypass the accountcreation block? Thanks, ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 10:59, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

My guess is that your IP must get changed by your ISP from time to time - if you had the same IP, you would only be able to create 6 accounts from 0000UTC-235959.99UTC, especially as your count for today is 11 accounts created. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 13:38, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Or you used different computers. Ruslik_Zero 14:57, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Didn't change comps, and I didn't turn off my router. I do have a rotating IP, but my comp was on the whole time (I was studying my notes). Do IP's rotate when you're using them? ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 02:39, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

They could...depends on your ISP provider.Smallman12q (talk) 23:29, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Oooh. I didn't know that... Thanks! ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Best way to save watchlist items for more than the max. 7 days?

What's the best way to save watchlist items for more than the maximum of 7 days? It will probably either require use of the RSS feed or the API. I'd prefer using a service that's already available rather than write my own. Also, the solution should not require human intervention; i.e., it should download new watchlist items automatically. I was thinking of using Google Reader as it archives items pretty far back, but I can't recall if it only fetches new items when you visit it, which would require human intervention and is therefore not an option for me. Gary King (talk) 17:20, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

The maximum is in fact 30 days, see Special:Watchlist [2]. Were you wanting something to list (in a file) every passing edit for a set of pages or only to display “recent changes” in some window other than your web browser? ―AoV² 07:01, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Good Lord you just saved me a lot of time. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 18:03, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Create article quality and importance fields in the database

Article quality is presently detected by looking at article talk pages (see User:Pyrospirit/metadata). I wonder if we might instead make quality and importance database fields, either in the page table or in quality/importance table(s) linked to that table, and add functions to detect that data (e.g. Article::getQuality(), or Title::getArticleImportance, etc.) so that extensions and such can more easily make use of it. Rather than assigning quality and importance values via edits to the talk page, quality and importance could be set on the article page itself via a button/drop-down menu in a similar manner as, for instance, protection or categorization is done, and modifications to this metadata would be logged. (Note that protected_titles has its own table.) The talk page WikiProject templates could then populate this data using magic words such as {{ARTICLEQUALITY}} and {{ARTICLEIMPORTANCE}}. Measures similar to those used by Wikipedia:ESSAY_C/C/A#Score might be used.

We are perhaps used to thinking of notability as a true/false dichotomy because our deletion debates operate within that paradigm, but really notability is a spectrum on which many levels could be set in accordance with various criteria. Deletion debates do result in a boolean measure of article importance being added to the database (i.e. deleted or undeleted). But a more nuanced approach could be in order. Quality and importance are vital attributes of an article, because article length, completeness, sourcing, style, notability, etc. help determine an article's overall current usefulness and how much attention the article deserves/requires. I.e., if you only have an hour a day to devote to editing, you might want to focus your attention on high-importance, low-quality articles. The fact that WikiProjects go around grading articles by quality and importance, and that we plaster Wikipedia maintenance templates to warn readers of article problems and notability issues and to help us categorize and spot articles in need of improvement or other action, shows that there is some recognition of these metrics' importance.

So then, what exact use could be made of these fields? Maybe Special:RecentChanges could filter articles by quality and importance; some users might prefer to only keep an eye on articles above a certain threshold of importance. I am thinking in particular of this being useful in a hyper-inclusionist encyclopedia that allows lots of content that would be below Wikipedia's current standards for inclusion. Suppose there are a bunch of articles on garage bands and such. Some users might deem those subjects to be so non-notable that they don't even care if those articles get vandalized, so they would filter those articles out of their recent changes. On the other hand, a user might wish to search out articles that are both high-importance and low-quality and concentrate his efforts on those. A reader could set minimum standards of importance and quality in his user preferences, and wikilinks could turn different styles (much as article titles turn different colors with Pyrospirit's gadget) or be deactivated entirely (i.e. turn into black plaintext) based on whether or not an article meets his preferred thresholds of quality and importance.

It might be argued, But then people will edit war over what an article's importance and quality rating should be. I see no reason to expect this. We do not see much edit warring over quality and importance assessments under our current system even though we do make those assessments; and we have orderly processes such as WP:FAC, WP:FAR, and WP:GA for deciding whether to promote or demote articles from certain tiers of quality. I have never seen a user storm off angrily from the project or go on a rampage over something that happened in those processes. The major disputes occur at XFD and WP:DRV, but the need for most deletions could be obviated in a hyper-inclusionist encyclopedia in which information were graded and filtered by user preference.

It might be further argued, But if people don't pay much attention to the low-quality articles, and filter them out of what they see, then those articles will never get the love they need to improve. Again, though, when combined with the importance metric, this problem can be obviated, because people can focus their efforts on high-importance, low-quality articles. Articles on low-importance subjects such as garage bands, because few people know or care about them, will tend to not receive many edits, and to stay in a low-quality state. This is no big deal; the encyclopedia's reputation will not suffer much from their presence, because who is going to google those subjects, find those articles, and be disgusted with our coverage of them? If a lot of people are googling a subject and reading the article on that subject, then that article is probably going to receive more edits from that increased readership and thereby improve, and someone may even bump its importance level up (if for instance it gets slashdotted), leading to further attention from those who otherwise would have filtered it out. I think the built-in self-correction mechanisms of this model can provide for all of these problems to solve themselves.

I am not going to Bugzilla yet with this, because I still haven't worked out all the details of how this could/should work. I think it should be tested on another wiki first. E.g., we are doing some soul-searching over at Libertapedia over what we want to include, and the question arises, Does any harm come from having non-notable content on the project? The only harm is that it gets in the way; it could clog RecentChanges and such. But if we can filter it out, it might not matter, and we would be freed from having to police the site and always be sitting in judgment as to what is notable enough to include and what isn't. I think it could reduce the potential for drama and bad feelings, if no one has to have their (otherwise well-written and in conformity with the encyclopedia's style standards) article deleted for lack of notability.

I welcome any thoughts on this proposal and any insights that can help refine the details. Tisane (talk) 17:31, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

tl;dr, but I should note that importance (and to a lesser degree, class) is subjective among wikiprojects. –xeno^talk 17:33, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Good point. A starting point for the quality scale could be some of the attributes listed at, for instance, Wikipedia:Featured article criteria and Wikipedia:Good article criteria. Still, it is noteworthy that people don't seem to get in too many conflicts about the assessments, until deletion becomes a possibility. For instance, at FAC, people will make objections, others will address the objections by editing the article or point out why the objection is non-actionable, and the process is pretty civil. Why do you suppose that is? I speculate it is because the spectre of imminent deletion isn't looming over people's heads, and any decision made is pretty reversible, whereas it can be pretty hard to reverse a deletion; for one thing, the content is removed and collaboration stops after a deletion. Tisane (talk) 17:40, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

You're right, there is very little warring when it comes to assessing an article, even the most popular ones. That's because class/importance of an article is not really important; it's just a way to indicate the status of an article, for a particular WikiProject. According to your proposal, though, the class and importance of an article would increase, which might lead to conflict, especially regarding what articles would be considered of "Top" importance. Anyway, the first step in this would be for an extension to MediaWiki to be created, then test it, then we can see exactly how it would work. Your proposal sounds promising, but also probably a bit idealistic and it assumes that people will actually spend more time working on high-importance articles than low- ones. Have a look at WP:CORE and WP:VITAL, as well as WP:FA and you will see that that is not the case. Gary King (talk) 17:44, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

For someone who wants to publicize a certain topic, quality assessment decisions like FAC are very important. Consider, for instance, how the readership of Mendip Hills went from about 100 a day to 18,200 after it hit the main page. Yet FAC is still a pretty-laid back process, despite all that is riding on FA status.

There is a de facto quality measure, as least as far as completeness in concerned, in that the length of an article seems to affect its google ranking, and the sheer quantity of keywords makes a long article likely to show up in more searches. Redundant material tends to be eliminated by editors, and unsourced info tends to be removed, so any long article must have a lot of good stuff, may be Google's theory.

I agree that core articles are in bad shape. Play (theatre), for instance, has always been in abysmal shape. I think it is because people do use Wikipedia for promotion of their pet causes/organizations/interests, and there is less incentive to write about such general, well-known subjects than a particular subset that the person perceives as yearning for more attention - e.g., a particular play, rather than plays in general. That's just the economics of the situation. But maybe we can bend economics to our advantage. If articles with higher quality ratings get more readers (as they already do to some extent, as in the main page and Google examples above), then people will have an incentive to improve, if not the core articles, at least the articles that pertain to their interests. That seems to have worked well in incentivizing people to raise articles to FA standards. (I think a lot of people pursue GA as just a step along the way to FA.) Tisane (talk) 18:08, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Hitting the main page does, of course, increase views for an article, but only for that one day. Then the article goes back to stagnating like it was before. Most visits to Wikipedia come from web search results, and not from visiting the Main Page then clicking around. FAC is definitely not a laid-back process. Most of the people who don't have problems getting through the process have already done it before. Google rankings are barely affected by keywords; they are well known for not focusing on keywords, but rather on inbound links as they have been doing since they were founded. Ultimately, people will pretty much always edit whatever they want, regardless of how important an article has been subjectively determined to be. Also, general articles like the one you provide are very hard to write. It's easier to write about something concrete like an actual historic event or book. Gary King (talk) 18:20, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

As I said, WikiProjects will usually agree on the class, but importance is a horse of a different colour. While Toronto is of top-importance to WikiProject Toronto, it is considered high-importance to WikiProject Cities whereas WikiProject Foo may consider it only 'low' importance. –xeno^talk 18:14, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I run the WP 1.0 bot. The bot does keep importance and quality information in a database on toolserver. If there is a need to get this information in an automated way, I can probably implement an API to allow tools to query the data.

There are a few issues with conflicting ratings:

• Importance ratings will vary wildly between projects. For example, an article might be very high importance for WikiProject Alabama but very low priority for WikiProject Geography.
• Quality ratings are usually less varies. But a few projects have A-class checklists, and so an article might be rated B by them even if it is rated A by others. There are also B-class checklists.
• Some projects use non-standard ratings like "Bottom-importance" or "B+-class".

I will not be following this thread so please contact me separately if there is something you'd like to see in the WP 1.0 bot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:29, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Setting an importance for an arcticle across Wikipedia as compared to the current system of setting an importance per wikiproject is not likely to be agreed apon easy. Why have one importance rating rather then the existing system? Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 18:34, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Since deletion is already a sitewide importance decision that override WikiProject consensus, part of the idea is to replace the steep cliff of notable enough for inclusion vs. non-notable enough to merit deletion, with a more finely-graded slope for determining what level of obscurity an article should be relegated to. This could make decisions less acrimonious, as in close cases all that is riding on it is an upgrade/downgrade between, say, Start-Class and C-Class, or Bottom-Importance and Low-Importance. This is kinda analogous to the reasoning adopted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission in setting up a Sentencing Table with 43 overlapping levels; they figured it would prevent steep cliffs that would cause a lot of legal wrangling and appeals over whether, say, the defendant possessed 49 grams of crack or the 50 needed to push him over the edge into a much harsher sentence.

Even if it were just a binary notable/non-notable dichotomy, a field for importance differentiation could allow for some filtering and thereby make it possible to dispense with deletions of content that some people find useful but the bulk of people would rather not see. The goal is to minimize deletion, and even to eliminate it with the exception of that which is legally required to be deleted, and to minimize the harmful effects of such a policy. The question has to be asked, "Why do we want to delete non-notable stuff?" It's because we don't want it hanging around the wiki. But if you can avoid having it interfering with what you're trying to accomplish, it's as good as if it weren't there. So in that way, everyone gets what they want (or most of what they want, anyway). Tisane (talk) 18:52, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

This is now bug 23016. Tisane (talk) 10:41, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

No, it's because if every non-notable concept was allowed to split into its own article, instead of remaining as part of a larger, notable concept, then the encyclopaedia would devolve into a category/outline tree containing only poorly sourced (if at all) stubs and spam. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:21, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Notability is only indirectly related to the importance ratings used by Wikiprojects. It is entirely possible for an article to be about an obviously notable topic to be rated low-importance by a project simply because it isn't strongly connected to the the project. Michael Jackson, for example, is an obviously notable person, however WikiProject California considers the article to be of low importance with regard to the state of California. Assessment isn't related to notability at all. Assessment is a measure of article quality. There are plenty of high-quality articles about barely notable subjects and plenty of stubs about extremely important topics. Proposing this as an end run around notability is going to attract much more opposition then just as a technical change to improve metadata. Mr.Z-man 16:12, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's any point to having an importance field for each article (as opposed to the current scheme in which each WikiProject assigns its own measure of importance) except to help implement an alternative to deletion of non-notable articles. WikiProjects can probably agree on quality metrics more readily, though.

@OrangeDog: If we get rid of WP:N but keep W:V, might that not take care of the "poorly sourced (if at all)" pages problem? Also, are stubs worse than no article at all? Lastly, notability policy is not necessarily needed in order to ensure consolidation of stubs into a larger article; there are notable subjects that nonetheless have no potential to grow beyond a stub, and we therefore merge and redirect. The same can be done with non-notable subjects. A list of garage bands in Detroit, for instance, is not necessarily a bad thing, if each item is sourced. Tisane (talk) 13:28, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that you're trying to turn what could be almost a no-brainer technical change (I can't really imagine why anyone would oppose a system that can cleanly and completely replace the current template-based system for wikiproject tagging - if that's all it does) into a massive, sweeping policy change that would basically deprecate Wikipedia:Notability and all the more specific notability guidelines, would probably turn Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not into a shell of what it is now, would require major revision to Wikipedia:Deletion policy, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, and the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion system, possibly require changes to other policies (any policy that mentions deletion), and then create a whole new policy on the use of this new system as well. You saw how much opposition there was for PWD, do you honestly think you're going to get support for all this? Mr.Z-man 01:08, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Static GIF images not being resized by MediaWiki for years now. When will MediaWiki resizing return?

Static GIF resizing by MediaWiki worked fine years ago. Then some idiot Wikimedia developer saint turned it off, and the rest of the developers left it turned off for years (except for a few months). See commons:Commons:Graphics village pump#GIF scaling (animated and non-animated) still not working and commons:Commons:Graphics village pump#Can static GIF scaling be separated from animated GIF scaling?

See commons:Category:Octave Uzanne or any category with lots of charts, graphs, diagrams, or maps in GIF form. They take many minutes for dialup users to load. The Octave Uzanne thumbnail images look blurry now, but looked sharp when MediaWiki resized them. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:55, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

For that particular issue, convert the images to PNG format. When properly done and then run through optimization software, the file size is often less. PNG crusade bot and 718 Bot (here, not on Commons) used to automatically process GIF images tagged with {{ShouldBePNG}} (where conversion results in a file-size reduction of the full size image), but that task does not seem to be active anymore. PleaseStand ^(talk) 21:25, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary. GIF is an accepted copyright-free format for graphics and grayscale images such as commons:Category:Octave Uzanne. Graphics such as drawings, Line Art, graphs, charts, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, posters, banners, and flyers. GIF is a lossless format that works fine for graphics with less than 256 colors (which is true for most graphics).

See also: commons:Commons talk:Superseded images policy. GIF images are fully accepted. Conversion to PNG might be necessary for some GIFs that use transparency. By the way, if you want an easy way to make PNG images smaller (in kilobytes) I recommend Irfanview. It can losslessly compress PNG images so as to use less kilobytes for the same image without any loss in image quality. Install the Irfanview plugin pack too. It installs instantly and includes even better PNG compression, PNGOUT, which is easy to use in Irfanview. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

File:Plush Toys.JPG

Devs' ears can be particularly sensitive.

WP:NPA still applies even if you're talking about a paid staff member. They're still a member of the Wikimedia community. Mr.Z-man 21:48, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

See also WP:BITED. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Lol. I repent. I will do 3 "Hail Jimbos" and smoke a fatty to calm down. Love the image. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Can some developers please respond? --Timeshifter (talk) 10:28, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems like it works to me: File:X.gifFile:X.gifFile:X.gif —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 18:36, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The browser, not MediaWiki, is doing the GIF image scaling. The number of kilobytes downloaded for a thumbnail is the same as for the full-size GIF image. See commons:Category:Octave Uzanne for example. Check the image properties for some thumbnail GIF images there. You might have to use MS Internet Explorer to get the image properties if you are not using the most recent version of Firefox. Example thumbnail info: "327.96 KB (335,832 bytes)," and "1,971px × 2,714px (scaled to 87px × 120px)". That scaling is done in the browser. The full 327 KB is being downloaded for that tiny thumbnail GIF.

That particular category has sharp, not blurry, thumbnails when MediaWiki does the scaling. Viewing that category's thumbnails is an easy way to tell if MediaWiki scaling of static GIF images has been turned on. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:55, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Diff bugs

I suppose this is a waste of time. I keep begging for the stupid bugs in Wikipedia's diff generation to be fixed, but nothing ever happens. I despair. Is it just me?

Typical example of what I mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Amir_Khan_%28boxer%29&action=historysubmit&diff=353069392&oldid=348362877

Look at the vast amounts of red ink where, in fact, nothing at all has changed.

Please don't bother replying with hard luck stories about how difficult this stuff is to code. These are FUNDAMENTAL, GLARING BUGS, not esoteric niceties. Rant over for now, but I would so love it if you could help get this fixed. 86.152.242.9 (talk) 01:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC).

Agreed. I suggest using wikEdDiff for a better diff tool. You'll need an account to use it, though, of course. Gary King (talk) 01:43, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

@IP_Address It's open source, send patches, if you so clearly understand how this is done. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:41, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, if they are FUNDAMENTAL and GLARING then you should be able to correct them yourself. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:13, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Total nonsense, OrangeDog, and you know it! 81.156.127.170 (talk) 23:57, 31 March 2010 (UTC).

A bit of CSS signature help...

Well, I have spent sometime reading, and have tried to make my self a signature. What I have come up with is this:

A p3rson✉

However, I get an "Invalid raw signature, check HTML tags" error when I attempt to use it. I have it at ~253 characters, did I miss something?

P.S. - The full code is available at my sandbox.  A  p3rson  03:02, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

This should do it. Gary King (talk) 03:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe this instead? :D :p

A p3rson]]✉

¦ Reisio (talk) 12:02, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

NB, blinking signatures are disallowed per Wikipedia:SIG#Appearance_and_color – ╟─TreasuryTag►cabinet─╢ 17:44, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Mmm, but according to WP:POLICY, a policy, both policies and guidelines are meaningless because of WP:NOTSTATUTE, a policy; and even if they weren't, they'd be meaningless because of WP:IGNORE, a policy; and even if they weren't… % ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:42, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

You clearly misunderstand WP:IGNORE. ╟─TreasuryTag►secretariat─╢ 06:49, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

just musing, but it's probably best not to argue policy on a matter that does not help to improve the encyclopedia. --Ludwigs2 19:57, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the blink tag tends to incite violence. It is dangerous, do not use it. Gary King (talk) 20:05, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Was just mockery, anyways. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:12, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Weird

So this was on Category:Wings of the United States Air Force for around 12 hours, "The following 193 pages are in this category, out of 197 total. This list may not reflect recent changes." It's not all that bad except for the fact that there is no second page. Any ideas? I'm going to finish emptying the category right now, but it's really weird that it's saying that. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:42, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Long help desk archive page won't load

[3] It doesn't even have "history" or "edit" at the top, or my name or links to my talk page and contributions. Usually it just takes a while, but this time it only loads the portion up to Oct. 10, 2006 and it appears to be at the bottom. Regardless of how many times I try. But I know I've seen the page as far as Oct. 15.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:17, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. I'm curious about why it did that, though. Normally it doesn't just quit like that.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

It's probably just the size of the page. It looks like there was an error that resulted in many of threads being duplicated (between 2.287 and 2.511, although a few have additional comments); this is a possible explanation for the length of that archive. snigbrook (talk) 23:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Script help

I use User:Ais523/catwatch.js, its incredibly useful to me for things like attack pages and requests for unblock etc, but because I'm in the UK and we're forward an hour now, new pages in the categories i'm watching appear are listed as being an hour earlier than they are to me, so I keep missing them. Is there anyway to change that in my vector.js?--Jac16888^Talk 22:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Special:Preferences → Date and time → Time offset. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:59, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

But that would change my whole watchlist. Is there anyway to change it so the category items are listed an hour later?--Jac16888^Talk 00:58, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Table rendering

Can somebody tell me why this table isn't rendering?

{| {{table}}
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Conference'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Year'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Date Held'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Venue'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Host'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Theme'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Programme Chairs'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Conference Chairs:'''
| align="center" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|'''Site'''
|-
| WWW1||1994||May 25-27||Geneva, Switzerland/France||Cern||?||?||?||?
|-
| 
|}

I got it using http://excel2wiki.net/index.php where I pasted

Conference	Year	Date Held	Venue	Host	Theme	Programme Chairs	Conference Chairs:	Site
WWW1	1994	May 25-27	Geneva, Switzerland/France	Cern	?	?	?	?

Any help would be appreciated!Smallman12q (talk) 23:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

It can be fixed by removing the {{table}}, which doesn't appear to have any purpose. snigbrook (talk) 23:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

That works! Was a template updated...I always used to include the {{table}} template...do you know if there are broken tables because of this?Smallman12q (talk) 23:51, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I've never seen the template before, but it looks like combining the two types of table causes problems. The {{table}} template isn't transcluded in a large number of pages so maybe you could identify where it was used in Special:WhatLinksHere. snigbrook (talk) 00:01, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Editors should use the updated WP-specific tool: http://excel2wiki.net/wikipedia.php. See Template talk:Table#Who uses this template? for more information. Flatscan (talk) 03:58, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

See also: Commons:Convert tables and charts to wiki code --Timeshifter (talk) 09:47, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

{{table}} has always been useless in this case. It was never intended to be used like that. It doesn't do anything without any parameters, so the template was recently changed changed to spit out an error if it lacked parameters. But if you put the template where you did, the error message breaks the table and the error is never seen. Oops. That may be difficult to detect and fix, because as far as I can tell not even categories will work there. Reach Out to the Truth 18:09, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Templates on articles and talk pages to avoid perennial issues

At the Harry Potter articles, editors keep changing the title Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (correct, it's a Brtish book & author) to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (US market only). How can I show a banner at articles and talk pages to tell the world which is the correct title - I'm fed up with reverting. In talk pages, I'd like the banner to fix at the top even if the page is archived. --Philcha (talk) 06:04, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Page can be move protected, and we could add an editintro warning about the title I guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK move protection works only for the article Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Unfortunately the title of the 1st book appears in many articles and talk pages - possibly all, because of the infobox - so all these articles and their talk pages need banners. --Philcha (talk) 16:52, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

People are going to change it with or without the big ugly banner at the top of the article. --Onorem♠Dil 16:53, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

But when they do, at least there's something to refer to, rather than starting the debate from scratch each time. I've seen {{tmbox}} used in talk page headers for this purpose, e.g.

PL290 (talk) 17:19, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Something on the talk page, sure. Hidden comment or editnotice on the article, sure. Notices at the top of the articles, like now appear on Harry Potter and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I don't like it. Also, between those two articles, the name was changed once in the past month. I can't think of any other article where that type of notice is at the top of the page. --Onorem♠Dil 17:34, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Ew. Yeah, messages like that should not be in the article itself. The talk page and the editnotice is the correct place for that. Reach Out to the Truth 18:10, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

See current User_talk:Philcha. If there's no banner on the article to minimise the number of incorrect edits, I won't bother fixing the title of the 1st book - which appears in the articles about the books and on Harrty Potter. --Philcha (talk) 22:52, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Reach Out to the Truth, see User_talk:Philcha --Philcha (talk) 23:37, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Talk page comments on same indent level are not vertically separated as much as other comments—bug?

I've noticed for a while that if I add a talk page comment on same indent level as the one above it, I must add a linespace first, or the rendering doesn't vertically separate those two comments as much as it does comments on different levels of indentation. This discrepancy can produce the impression that the lower comment is a continuation of the higher, because the line spacing is the same as when a line wraps within a paragraph. The two different vertical spacings can be seen in the example at Help:Talk_page#Indentation (second table, George's reply to Jane is too high: compare it with her reply to John above). In that example, it doesn't matter too much because the comments are so short they don't reach the right margin. But typically, comments do reach the right margin, and, depending how long the last line is, at a glance it's not always obvious that there's a break between two comments in this scenario. Is this a wikimedia bug? Or perhaps a css issue? I expect there might be a way to fix my css to make it look different to me, but obviously any fix should really produce the correct rendering for the default user, not just those who fix their own view. Anyone know a global fix for this? (Same in FF, Opera and IE, btw.) PL290 (talk) 15:22, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it's working as intended.

So that people can seperate thoughts on different lines.

Use a line break to seperate yourself from the poster above you. –xeno^talk 15:27, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Interesting that you consider the feature to allow that; I'd have said it afflicts it in just the same way! Those are paragraphs too (and may of course extend for more than a single line), so paragraph spacing (as opposed to wrapped line spacing) would be appropriate there too. So you think we should merely update Help:Talk_page#Indentation and its examples to advise adding an extra linebreak in this scenario? PL290 (talk) 16:36, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Putting the blank line in between seems to work for me (this post is the evidence). I do not think MediaWiki has "real" indentation. What most people call indentation is a special case of the definition list syntax where there is no defined term, not semantically correct. (Defined terms are lines starting with semicolons.) The closest we could have to "real" talk page indentation (without changing MediaWiki) would be to create a template similar to User:PleaseStand/Tpm. The first parameter is the number of half-tabs to indent by; the second (2=) is the message. Use <p> to start a new paragraph. The result has a line separating each post to a talk page. Of course all this is avoided in LiquidThreads, but when would that be implemented? PleaseStand ^(talk) 19:27, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

LQT is already enabled on some Wikimedia wikis, such as mediawiki.org (where it's optional page-by-page). I'd be mildly surprised if it weren't enabled optionally on most of the wikis within a year, although performance might need some work for the biggest ones. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 18:46, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

If this really bothers anyone, you could change the CSS to adjust spacing however you like. The : feature isn't really meant for indenting, though, it's meant for definition lists, like:

Item 1

Description/definition/etc.

Item 2

Description/definition/etc.

Item 3

Description/definition/etc.

The spacing is meant for this case, not for talk page discussions. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 18:46, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

See post above ("What most people call indentation..."); I already noticed that. Definition lists have some correct uses, for example, on my user page, and in glossaries. They are mostly used incorrectly though. And by the way, the CSS (to "fix" the formatting where a blank line is not left) is dd { margin-top: 1em; }, but that is far from perfect. It breaks multi-paragraph comments up because of the semantic incorrectness. PleaseStand ^(talk) 04:35, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

output of OS mapping API in wikipedia

Today (1st April) the UK government agency the Ordnance Survey (OS) has released a new API & totally changed the licencing agreements which should allow the use of the best UK mapping data free for non-commercial purposes. It would be great to be able to use this to illustrate UK place & geography articles. Further info & OS OpenSpace® Developer Agreement are available. I have generated a map (of Cheddar) without any markers or routes which can be included, just to test the inclusion in wikipedia. I have stripped out the header code "<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">" closing "</html>" as they suggest if embedding the map in another application & put it on a page in my sandbox - User:Rodw/Sandbox/Cheddar. I am unable to get it to display the map. Any help appreciated. NB if editing it you must leave the API Key <script type="text/javascript" src="http://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/osmapapi/openspace.js?key=832E76B2051F6AB8E0405F0ACA6011DE"></script> alone as this tells the OS that it can be run on http://en.wikipedia.org/.— Rod ^talk 20:30, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

It is not possible to embed just any html into Wikipedia. In order to support it like this, you either need to export it to an image, or you should create a MediaWiki extension. But I would like to point out that Wikipedia does not accept or use material that is allowed only for non-commercial purposes. So in terms of Wikipedia usage, this material is useless. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:53, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea how to create a mediawiki extension - I just think these maps could be a really useful addition to UK geography articles. The phrase non-commercial is mine - not from their rules. On checking it doesn't say that - where would be the best place to get advice on the suitability (or otherwise) of using this API on wikipedia? I have already put requests for help/opinion on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Maps#Use_of_UK_Ordnance_Survey_new_API & Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions#Use_of_UK_Ordnance_Survey_new_API. — Rod ^talk 21:34, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Problems that I see

1. "Usage of the API is subject to Usage Limits and system capacity", yet we it seems we are not allowed to duplicate the service and provide our own resources to host it either.
2. "This Agreement conveys a limited licence for You to use the API Key, Ordnance Survey Data, Developer Documentation and trade mark OS OpenSpace solely for the purposes of creating, delivering and maintaining a Web Application" so that means the material is not usable for books or other non-web application uses. This is a sever usage restriction
3. "You [sic. developer] may create Derived Data, and You may permit End User's to create Derived Data, in connection with Your Web Application. In the event that You or any End User creates Derived Data, such Derived Data shall be owned by Us" YUCK !!! you subsequently (5.4.2) get a license for your own work, which they can revoke if they stop liking you.
4. (6.2) "Your Web Application must not fall into any one or more of the categories listed below." again a usage restriction
5. (6.6) "Your Web Application must not be undertaken for, or in connection with, nor must it result in any Unacceptable Financial Gain. For the avoidance of doubt, this means that You are not permitted (nor may You permit others to) charge End Users any subscription or other fee for accessing and using the whole or any part of Your Web Application or the Ordnance Survey Data." commercial usage not allowed
6. (6.8) "You must ensure that a copy of the EULA is made accessible to End Users through a hypertext link at the bottom of each page of Your Web application." that will NEVER happen on Wikipedia, we don't allow such things.
7. (6.9) "You may only allow End Users to print a maximum of ten (10) paper copies, no greater than A4 (625 cm2) in size of any screen shot." Seriously ? that's not even close to being compatible with Wikipedia

I'm stopping here, because I think the point is clear, but there is plenty more where that came from. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:59, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Having said all that. The data itself is licensed per the OpenData license and mostly available for download. It's just the API that has a crazy set of unneeded restrictions. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:14, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, any product that hires a gazillion lawyers to draw up something as unreadable as this, isn't worthy of using the name "Open" btw. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:05, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

We can already use OpenStreetMap maps. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:46, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Could be helpful

It would be helpful for editors with hundreds of articles on their watchlist, if the list was automatically adjusted (shortened) as they process it. What I mean is that when they tick diff on an entry on their watchlist, that particular notification would disappear from the list as they went off to see the change they were being alerted to, (but of course any subsequent change would appear later on the list). This would automatically decrease the clutter of the user's watchlist. Perhaps it could be added as an option in users' watchlist preferences. Comments? Moriori (talk) 00:59, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I thought something like this would be useful, so I created a Windows application for myself that does something similar: Desktop Watchlist. Svick (talk) 01:48, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

On the IMSLP, they have it set to bold any new changes, but this affects all the edits of the article, not just the ones changed since you last visited. Of course, you also have to refresh your list. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:13, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Will $2 million Google donation be used to actually FIX BUGS?

Or will it be used for Jimbo to try to invent another search engine, or for further development of the near-useless Liquid Threads?

How about we use the money to fix most of the around 4000 open bugs?

How about spending money on some simple usability fixes such as integrated watchlists, talk page section watchlisting, GIF scaling, and so on.

When Firefox's Mozilla Foundation got millions of dollars from Google over the years, they wasted a lot of it in my opinion. They worked on grandiose plans, and failed to listen to people about fixing all the many Firefox bugs. They ignore their discussion boards much of the time.

So what exactly are Wikipedia's plans for using the $2 million as concerns the many technical problems discussed in places such as this technical village pump? Where else but here can this be best openly discussed? Or is this one area where the Wikipedia consensus process (or at least open discussion) goes underground to unaccountable boards? --Timeshifter (talk) 12:08, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know this money has not specifically been allocated, but I'm quite sure that it was one of the donations that convinced the foundation that it would be possible to extent the contracts of the Usability Initiative team, which would otherwise have reached the end of their contracts and objectives in the coming two months. The only proper place to discuss this is on the Foundation wiki, or the foundation mailinglist I suspect. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:29, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

This is a village pump where we discuss technical issues. Other wikis, such as the Foundation wiki, get very little traffic and community participation due to the lack of one of the feature/bugs I mentioned, integrated watchlists. The mailing lists do not get much community participation due to the email list format, and because one's email address is exposed in the public archives. Same as at Bugzilla. That is another requested bug/feature, by the way, that has been ignored for years. I am talking about hiding email addresses in Bugzilla and the mailing list archives, as has long been done in most blog comments, major media page comments, Wikipedia, etc..

It is good to extend the contracts of those members of the Usability Initiative team that are making progress worthy of their pay. There needs to be open discussion though in my opinion about the balance between what is being budgeted for major initiatives such as the Usability Initiative, versus fixing bugs, and implementing long-requested bug/features. How do they blend together too? --Timeshifter (talk) 17:17, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what integrated watchlists are, but I believe talk page section watchlisting is something that will be accomplished with the "near-useless Liquid Threads", it would not be in any way simple to do with the current discussion page format. Mr.Z-man 15:11, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Implementing talk page section watchlisting would be simpler to do than fixing everything wrong with Liquid Threads in my opinion. My experience with LiquidThreads at http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org was not good. I left many suggestions for improvement as did many others. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:19, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Most of the fixes you suggested seem to be mainly UI improvements. That is still far easier than redesigning almost the entire watchlist system, which is what would be required to do that with the current discussion page system. Adding individual talk page threads to watchlists (without redesigning how talk pages work in the process, which is how liquidthreads does it) is probably one of the least-simple commonly requested features, which is why it hasn't been done. Mr.Z-man 19:29, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I think I read that watchlisting individual sections of watchlists was a numbering problem. People sometimes add more sections higher up on a talk page. Section breaks and so on. So a basic fix might be implemented now, but it wouldn't be perfect. I would settle for that, even if some of my watched sections break now and then. I think a lot of problems occur when people try for perfection when mediocrity will suffice. ;)

Kind of like the GIF scaling problem. Static GIF scaling worked fine. Animated GIF scaling became a problem. Rather than separate the two, the developers tried for one massive fix of both together. Turned out to be a big mistake. Should have kept what worked. How does the saying go,... If it aint broke, don't fix it. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:21, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

That's only part of the problem. The other part is that the watchlist system is designed with the assumption that only entire pages are watched. There currently isn't even a place in the database to put the section information. As for the GIF scaling fix, I believe it was turned off again because it was broken; it caused some animated GIFs to be displayed as still images or something similar. Mr.Z-man 00:43, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Please see: commons:Commons:Graphics village pump#GIF scaling (animated and non-animated) still not working and commons:Commons:Graphics village pump#Can static GIF scaling be separated from animated GIF scaling?. See also the related sections above and below them. Static GIF scaling/resizing has worked fine for years. The problem is with scaling/resizing animated GIFs. The solution is to separate the 2 tasks in MediaWiki. Problems pop up now and then with animated GIF scaling, due to the fact that scaling animated GIFs is far more complex, and there are many options on how to do it. It makes no sense to keep static and animated GIF scaling together. See the thread. It has been discussed there for months. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:48, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Talk page section watchlisting would be most effective on Village Pump pages. That is where it is most needed in my opinion. Maybe if Liquid Threads could be adjusted enough to fix the major problems, then maybe it could be tested on a Google $2 million dollar discussion page on a special village pump here on English Wikipedia. The main problem with Liquid Threads in my opinion is its lack of integration with current watchlists. We need integrated watchlists, not more separate watchlists. Plus Liquid Threads uses a really unsatisfactory form of "watchlist" called "new messages." It is not really even a watchlist. Most people prefer the simple scannable watchlists used everywhere else. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:58, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Talking of liquid threads (near useless or otherwise) - any news about when they're going to be deployed?--Kotniski (talk) 15:40, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

You might check here:

http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org

mw:Extension:LiquidThreads

mw:Extension talk:LiquidThreads --Timeshifter (talk) 17:17, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The $2 million is an unrestricted grant and will go toward Wikimedia's general budget. Much of that budget is spent on technical costs, including (increasingly) paid development. If you think that a few million dollars is enough to fix a significant number of bugs, though, you're mistaken. Even if it were entirely spent on hiring new developers, two million dollars would only get you two dozen or so. Many of the bugs users complain about the most would require weeks or months of developer time to properly fix. So it doesn't add up to thousands of bugs being fixed.

If you don't believe me, notice that Google made over $23 billion in profit for 2009, but there are 12582 open issues in their browser, Chrome. Users of normal software inevitably outnumber developers by thousands to one, or (in our case) tens of millions to one or more. There is never any guarantee that the bugs you want fixed will be prioritized, unless you do it or pay for it yourself. That's reality for you. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 18:43, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

You just gave me an interesting idea, although I have no idea whether it is reasonable: targeted donations to Wikimedia. I don't have enough money to fund something as big as Usability Initiative, but I would still like it if my few dollars would go towards fixing certain bug(s). Currently, there is no way I can do this, except maybe finding a developer and giving the money directly to him. Svick (talk) 20:33, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we can put features/bugs to a vote. Get some discussion going, and find out what most editors would appreciate most, and how they would prioritize resources. Of course, let people know the difficulty involved with fixing particular bugs, or implementing certain features. Continue this process indefinitely. When it becomes apparent that some things are too resource-intensive, then move on to others if people feel that way. The board and staff can do what they want in the end, but at least they will have more grassroots perspectives to help in their decisions. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Bugs in bugzilla already have votes, but I'm not sure whether developers actually consider them when deciding what to do. Svick (talk) 23:48, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Not really, AFAIK. I did create WP:DevMemo in an effort to improve (two-way) communication between devs and enwiki community. Rd232 ^talk 11:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

That is an idea. A dedicated Village Pump on Bug/Feature prioritization would get more traffic and discussion. If people could bookmark and watchlist the individual talk sections, then even more participation would occur.

I found this interesting talk page that combines the standard talk page and Liquid Threads:

strategy:Proposal talk:Global watchlists

Standard talk page sections are on top. Liquid Threads is on the bottom. Note that the Liquid Threads topics can be watched individually, but "watched" means only that new replies show up in "new messages" linked from the top of the talk page. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:25, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

IPA font rendering in Firefox

Hi,

It seems that the .IPA class doesn't work correctly in Firefox 3.6 on Windows. See Wikipedia talk:IPA#Wrong rendering on Firefox 3.6 on XP.

Can this be fixed without making users edit their private CSS?

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:30, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Issue with switchs and colors

See Book:Calgary for the problem. |text-color= isn't treated correctly when a hex-color is given. See {{saved book}} and {{pp-book-cover}} for the templates used to generate the text. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:41, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I fixed it with a &nbsp; hack for the moment. I'll need to look more carefully as to why it's happening (because it shouldn't be). --Ludwigs2 18:11, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

{{#if: #ee2222| #ee2222|CornFlowerBlue}}seems to introduce a linebreak for some reason. Strange... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:16, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem is this switch statement snippet: {{#switch:{{lc:{{{cover-color|}}} }} |black={{{text-color|black}}} |{{{text-color|}}} }}. for instance, if you test just this, like so:

AAA{{#switch:{{lc:{{{cover-color|black}}} }} |black={{{text-color|#96e}}} |{{{text-color|#e69}}} }}BBB

what you get is

AAA

1. 96eBBB

Notice how (for some reason) the SWITCH statement is adding a carriage return, which then forces the #-sign to get interpreted as a list element. seems like a bug to me. adding the non-breaking spaces fixes it by keeping the #-sign from being the first character on the line, but it is a hack. --Ludwigs2 18:38, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

&nbsp; breaks things since it's not allowed in the css. &#32; works however. Thanks for the help. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:41, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I think this is another instance of Template:Bug. Svick (talk) 18:47, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I′ll let you consider the following and draw your own conclusion. ―AoV² 21:45, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

input	output	html
{| style="background:{{#ifeq:a|a|#ffaaaa|green}};" | pink | style="background:{{#switch:z|x = yellow| z = #aaaaff}};" | blue |}	ffaaaa;" pink style="background: aaaaff;" | blue	<ol> <li>ffaaaa;"</li> </ol> <table> <tr> <td>pink</td> <td>style="background: <ol> <li>aaaaff;" | blue</li> </ol> </td> </tr> </table>
<table style="background:{{#ifeq:a|a|#ffaaaa|green}};"> <tr> <td> pink </td> <td style="background:{{#switch:z|x = yellow| z = #aaaaff}};"> blue </td> </tr> </table>	pink blue	<table style="background: #ffaaaa;"> <tr> <td>pink</td> <td style="background: #aaaaff;">blue</td> </tr> </table>

hmmm... the conclusion I draw from that is that the template should be rewritten with HTML rather than wikitext. is that what you were aiming at? happy to do it, if so... --Ludwigs2 05:15, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

That probably would be safer than the predescribed hack which relies upon the software changing   to a literal space, but not doing it too early. ―AoV² 06:50, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't explain why these parserfunctions introduce linebreaks in the first place in this case though. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:19, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

bugzilla:23033 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:30, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Logging in

I can browse and edit wikipedia as an IP address, but for the last several weeks, if I try to log in, then it says "Log in successful" but the page won't load, and then wikipedia becomes completely inaccessible. Once this happens, I try clearing all the cookies and cache but there is still no connection to wikipedia. I try switching to a different browser but once wikipedia won't load then it won't load via any browser. The only thing that seems to work is: logging in, closing the tab, wait for about 10 minutes then try wikipedia again. Why is this happening? Why the 10 min wait?

Sometimes switching the broadband on and off again in order to get a new dynamically assigned IP address works, but not always. I've tried turning off all firewall and anti-virus software but the problem persists even then. The problem is erratic - sometimes the login works fine. I'm from the UK on a BT broadband. Is there a problem between Wikipedia and BT? When this happens I can still access the rest of the internet and use a web-proxy to browse Wikipedia (but not edit). BT says it must be something at Wikipedia causing this. Is Wikipedia blocking connections from BT? Is BT secretly blocking access to Wikipedia? 86.149.236.34 (talk) 12:00, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by “the page won't load”? Do you get any error? Or is the loading taking forever? Svick (talk) 12:42, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I mean it takes forever, and if I close the tab and try to load any other wikipedia page then it comes up with a conection error message. 86.149.237.193 (talk) 14:26, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

It is also possible that you have CSS or JS installed that is broken. An administrator can help you if you give your username. If you don't want to do that here, I suggest going into IRC. Do "!admin I need help" and wait until an administrator is available to help you. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:26, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I've started new usernames. The same problem persists with any new username. 86.149.237.193 (talk) 14:26, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Can you try and see what happens if you use something like the german Wikipedia? And try using Wikinews. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:29, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, the problem just occurred again. So I tried the german wikipedia and wikinews and neither were available. I just got the error message: "Unable to connect Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.wikinews.org." Although both were perfectly available via a web-proxy. This time the problem happened not when I tried logging in, but when I wanted to use the wikipedia search box and realised javascript was off, so I switched javascript on in the web browser and hit page reload, and this is when the problem started. Takes forever to load and then all wikipedia (and it seems wikimedia) sites come up with the error message "Unable to connect Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at ..." So I switched javascript off again and tried to reload but still got the same problem. After a couple of minutes it started working again - so not as long a wait as when logging in, but the same sort of problem. 86.149.237.225 (talk) 18:54, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

That is really strange. The fact that you have no such issues using a proxy, is indicative that the problem really is with BT. An explanation why all servers are affected might be that they all use the server bits.wikimedia.org to host their Javascript and CSS. I strongly encourage you to take this up with BT and just push their helpdesk to make sure you have someone who knows what they are talking about, instead of just the simple help desk guys. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Help reverse redlinks

Rich put together a great list of derm ICD9 codes at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force/ILDS-ICD. However, many times the redlinks utilize a comma, like Balanitis, amoebic. Therefore, I wanted to know if someone would help reverse all the redlinks with commas. So, with the previous example, the redlink would be changed to Amoebic balanitis. Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 17:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Working on it automatically using AWB (assumptions will be made about capitalisation which you may want to check). All links, blue or red, will also be affected. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 14:48, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh good, next you can create [[Lastname, Firstname]] redirects for all biographies. ―AoV² 21:15, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Help with Template:Drugbox needed

In {{Drugbox}}, the "chembox validation field" (the very last line in transclusions where it shows, e. g. in Metformin, saying "[check mark] (what is this?) (verify)" has a light grey background in Firefox, but an eerie looking black background in IE 8. Does anyone know how this can be fixed? Thanks in advance, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:55, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't have IE to test on, but the only difference I see here is that the other cells use style="backgound-color: #xxx" while the last cell used bgcolor="#xxx" as a table cell attribute. maybe convert the last to a style attribute as well? --Ludwigs2 17:16, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

If that doesn't work, try to make a small screenshot and put it on http://imagebin.ca so that we can see the problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:18, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that does it! --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 17:29, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the change in the template - did you test that on your machine? if so, let me know and I'll add an {{editprotected}} request. see it now.--Ludwigs2 23:02, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Video

I've uploaded a video and added it to Steinway & Sons in the section "Expansion". When the video is not playing there is no picture, just a red cross and the text "Steinway piano - Duo-Art.ogg". Do somebody know what is wrong? Rerumirf (talk) 20:28, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

First thing that comes to my mind is that some part of Mediawiki thinks that all .ogg files are audio, so it doesn't generate the thumbnail. Try reuploading it with the .ogv extension. Svick (talk) 20:35, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I've uploaded it as a ".ogg" file because the video in the article Sun also is a ".ogg" file. I don't think that ".ogg" is a problem but thank you for helping anyway. Rerumirf (talk) 20:43, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Generation of the thumbnail simply failed for some reason. I'm not sure if there is a way to deal with this, other than reuploading. If the file still doesn't have a thumbnail, it might be that the file has a problem that trips up the thumbnail generator. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:13, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, when trying with native HTML5 player + XiphQT, I notice that the file is not seekable using that software. If the thumbgenerator has that same problem, it would be logical that no thumbnail can be created. The file needs to be remuxed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:17, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

– I don't know what "native HTML5 player + XiphQT" is. Rerumirf (talk) 21:24, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Not really relevant. The point is that if there is one player that doesn't understand the video, there is a likely possibility that there is more software that doesn't understand the video. Implying that this video was not properly created according to the ogg/theora specifications. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:28, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

– At Commons the video has the same problem: no picture but a red cross and some text. Rerumirf (talk) 21:27, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

What program did you use to generate the ogg? If it's just a matter of re-encoding the file then I'm sure someone will be able to help. A bug can also be filed to get the problem fixed at source. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:59, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

The video is made in "Windows Movie Maker". After making the video I changed the file to a ".ogg" on www.media-convert.com. Rerumirf (talk) 00:55, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Which is probably the problem I suspect you now have an wmv file in an ogg container. You need to convert it to a Theora file.©Geni 01:33, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

No, the file is using the Theora+Vorbis codecs or else it would not have played in Firefox (native HTML5 rather than Java player). The Java player also does not support the WMV codec. PleaseStand ^(talk) 03:34, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Re-encoded video using Firefogg, scaled down from 640x480 to 400x300. The scaled-down version is now in the article, and its thumbnail does appear. For future reference, use, as recommended by commons:Help:Converting video#Ogg-Theora - Multi-platform solutions, Miro Video Converter or Firefogg, preferably on the original file you got from Windows Movie Maker. Both use the same ffmpeg2theora encoder program and both should work on both Windows and Mac. The Firefogg option, although it requires that you use the Mozilla Firefox web browser when encoding the video, is particularly useful in that it will automatically downscale your video to reduce file size, according to its default settings. The Miro converter has no option to do so. As a note: I noticed when looking at the Codec Information of the original file that the file was encoded using libavcodec, known for producing broken files. PleaseStand ^(talk) 05:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

That last part is a rather useless remark, since libavcodec is the key element of ffmpeg, and used by all of the software you listed above (as well as most codec packs actually) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:23, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you PleaseStand, as I see it you have fixed the problem. Rerumirf (talk) 12:48, 4 April 2010 (UTC)