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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 211.30.109.24 (talk) at 12:31, 5 November 2008 (→Quickie on server lag: yep). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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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 because there is no guarantee developers will read this page. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug needs immediate attention).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

WP:Ц

When I undo an edit, why does the comment in the comments line refer to WP:Ц? Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 21:03, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

According to David Levy, "While equally unorthodox, this makes the shortcut somewhat less cryptic and arbitrary". I could only guess, maybe this character is displayed differently in David's browser? —AlexSm 21:29, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) See MediaWiki talk:Undo-summary#Link to redirect page "WP:UNDO". Doesn't really seem very useful to me: all it saves is two bytes (since the Unicode "Ц" requires two bytes in UTF-8 while "UNDO" needs four). I'd be in favor of reverting it. (Of course, we'll still have to keep that redirect forever and ever, since it's linked from existing edit summaries.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:30, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unbelievably ridiculous if you ask me. Monster Under Your Bed (talk) 12:40, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It also seems a little silly to me. I just manually shorten the standard undo edit summary when I want more space for my own addition. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:20, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Imho WP:- could be a good choice. —AlexSm 18:21, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I don't agree with the original change from WP:UNDO, as I believe that keeping the link's target recognizable is more important than increasing the available edit summary characters by three. And as PrimeHunter noted, it's possible to edit the default message when additional space is needed.
It isn't something that I felt like arguing about (and a Cyrillic character that resembles the Latin letter "U" seems less confusing than a seemingly random punctuation mark), but I'd prefer that we simply revert to WP:UNDO. —David Levy 21:45, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted pending further discussion. David, thanks for the attempt with the "Ц"; given the concerns that have been raised, it is best to go back to the easily recocnizable "UNDO" until this can be resolved. Thoughts? --Ckatzchatspy 21:55, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I pay attention to the little things and do a good amount of undoing. And, well, "Ц" confused the hell out of me. No sir, I don't like it. But I do like having 3 extra spaces to type in the edit summary. Therefore, I suggest stealing WP:U as a redirect to Wikipedia:Username policy and instead point it to Help:Reverting#Undo. I guess that would need to go through WP:RfD. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 19:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Scratch that, probably WP:U is too ingrained in WP society as WP:Username policy, that it would be a bad idea to change it now. Maybe steal WP:X from Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity instead. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 19:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You know, if you're that desperate for extra characters in the edit summary, there's a "secret" trick that can get you up to 55 50 more of them. Just add this code to your monobook.js (or equivalent page for other skins): 

addOnloadHook(function () {
    var wpSummary = document.getElementById("wpSummary");
    if (wpSummary) wpSummary.setAttribute("maxlength", 250);
});

The only catch is that there's a slight risk of truncation: the actual limit in the code is 250 bytes, which may not mean quite as many UTF-8 characters. As long as your edit summaries are pure ASCII, all should be well, but any non-ASCII characters reduce the effective limit. (In principle, if your edit summary is long and has lots of non-ASCII characters, it can get truncated even without using this hack, but the 55-byte safety margin normally makes this less likely.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:50, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Minor correction: the actual hard limit appears to be 250 bytes, not 255. Anyway, I've written a safer version of the script. To use it, just add
importScript("User:Ilmari Karonen/longeditsummary.js");
to your monobook.js. This is actually safe enough — safer in some ways than the default 200 character limit — that it could perhaps be included in MediaWiki:Common.js/edit.js, at least after it's been tested in more browsers. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the script to a new version, thanks to Remember the dot for the suggestion. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:45, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article assessment gadget

I use a gadget that displays the current assessment of an article under its title. This works for all the pages I've come across except two that I've worked on recently: The Singles 1992-2003 and Tragic Kingdom. Both are Good Articles but The Singles displays start-class status and TK displays B-class status. This isn't a dire problem but I'm wondering if I'm seeing other articles wrongly or if these two articles appear wrongly to others. Can someone help me with this? -- Escape Artist Swyer Talk Contributions 14:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've got the same gadget installed, but get the proper coloring. Perhaps try turning it off, saving your preferences, and then back on? EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:50, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tried that, now using the gadget in my monobook (no difference). Tried bypassing cache, doesn't work. Tried unwatching and then rewatching pages, still doesn't work. -- Escape Artist Swyer Talk Contributions 16:05, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Did you try bypassing the cache while the gadget was off? (in theory, that would cause a fresh pull of the assessment data once you turn it back on) EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:08, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Just did. Not working. -- Escape Artist Swyer Talk Contributions 18:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you have another Gadget or monobook script installed that conflicts with this gadget. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:25, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(outdent) Well, I have popups, sixtabs and qsig. Any guesses? -- Escape Artist Swyer Talk Contributions 00:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I designed the script in such a way that it should never run into compatibility issues with other scripts, so I doubt that's the problem. (Besides, a conflict with another script would probably crash one or the other, not change the assessment detected.) The two pages you linked to are working fine for me, with both showing up correctly as good articles. Are you still having this problem? Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 02:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I should not have said "conflicts". What I intended was, that if another javascript tool fails to run (for whatever reason), it might be that your browser never reaches some other javascripts. As such it's possible that a broken javascript, can cause other javascripts to fail. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Predictive search and redundant articles

I noticed while looking for Ecology of Minnesota that Ecology of minnesota (note caps) is also an article, and that it redirects to the proper article. This is in keeping with Wikipedia's policies about naming conventions. However, when using the search box with the new predictive search feature, both articles come up in the listings (as well as the other case sensitive redirects). This seems a bit redundant; if someone is searching for an article, they would surely want the proper article, not the redirect. It also clutters the search box; it may take up to double the amount of scrolling to get to the right article.

Every redundant redirect is listed in Category:Redirects from other capitalisations. Could they be somehow excluded from the search box? Or is there another solution I'm missing?

Thanks! -- Techtonic (talk) 07:12, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... not having looked at the suggestion code, I don't know which would be easier: excluding pages in Category:Unprintworthy redirects or pages that redirect to a title that case-folds to the same value as its own title. Either would have advantages: the first would catch other undesirable suggestions (such as redirects from typos), while the second would also catch redirects to alternatively capitalized titles that haven't been categorized (which is probably most of them). Might be worth implementing both, if practical. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keeping the redirects from typos in the auto-suggest is useful. If someone's likely to typo while searching, they're likely to typo while using the auto-suggest feature. --Carnildo (talk) 07:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we do have a better engine, that excludes alternative capitalization redirects and such, sorts suggestions according to number of backlinks, etc.. It will be deployed once we figure out the hardware details on the WMF cluster. --rainman (talk) 14:56, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds great to me! Thanks for the answer. I look forward to the revamped search box. -- Techtonic (talk) 01:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While we are talking search, can I add a personal gripe. It would be so useful if there was a monobook setting that cause the engine to display Category:xyzs under the entries for xyzs- or a onekey shortcut to place Category: in the search input box. ClemRutter (talk) 10:01, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You can change the default search namespaces under Search in preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:36, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tables in poems stopped working

I noticed this problem with Philetas of Cos. It looked fine a few days ago, but when I rechecked it now, poems containing tables (in order to show transliteration) were preceded by huge amounts of vertical white space. For example, this markup: 

 Here is an example poem and transliteration:

 <poem style='margin-left: 1em'>
 {| cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0
 | colspan=2 | ξεῖνε, Φιλίταϲ εἰμί·  λόγων ὁ ψευδόμενόϲ με
 |   
 | colspan=2 | ''{{transl|el|ISO|Xeîne, Philítas eimí. Lógōn ho pseudómenós me}}''
 |-
 |   
 | ὥλεϲε καὶ νυκτῶν φροντίδεϲ ἑϲπέριοι
 |   
 |   
 | ''{{transl|el|ISO|hṓlese kaì nyktôn phrontídes hespérioi}}''
 |}
 </poem>

formerly used to look nice, but it now produces this output:

Here is an example poem and transliteration:

ξεῖνε, Φιλίταϲ εἰμί·  λόγων ὁ ψευδόμενόϲ με
   
 Xeîne, Philítas eimí. Lógōn ho pseudómenós me
  
 ὥλεϲε καὶ νυκτῶν φροντίδεϲ ἑϲπέριοι
   
   
 hṓlese kaì nyktôn phrontídes hespérioi

Currently there are several lines' worth of unwanted vertical white space between the "Here is an example poem and transliteration" line, and the poem. The generated HTML contains a lot of <br /> elements that generate that white space. A few days ago, it didn't do that. What is causing this regression? I assume something changed recently with the Wikimedia software? How would I track this down? Eubulides (talk) 23:31, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have filed a bugreport https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16194 --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks; the response there seems to be "don't do that". I worked around the problem by replacing <poem style='margin-left: 1em'> with <div style='margin-left: 1em'>. I haven't a clue as to why that works around the problem, or whether this "fix" is an advisable one; I don't know what defines the "poem" element. Eubulides (talk) 07:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well knowing brion, I think he will still take another look at some time, but yes, the general idea is: "don't use tables inside a <poem> , it's intended for single lines or blocks of text only." --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Poem mostly just adds a <br/> to the end of each line, and wraps it in a div, to make it easier to format blocks of text that require wiki formatting. I'd guess the <br/>s confuse the table parsing, but I don't know what else to expect; it seems like they shouldn't be necessary to use together. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 20:25, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Coincidentally, I created {{quote2col}} yesterday for original and translated texts. I could not get variables to work inside of the <poem>...</poem> tags, so I used the #tag magic word. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 20:59, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Quote2col

Thanks. Is there some way to improve the way that quote2col works with wide or narrow margins? If you look at the original, it responds fairly well when the browser's window is narrow or wide: it always maintains a gutter (white space between the columns), and it keeps the paired lines in sync (though it doesn't further indent the lines if they wrap around, which is a minus). In contrast, quote2col doesn't maintain a gutter, and it doesn't use wide margins effectively; and it does an even worse job with indenting. I reproduced the problem with Firefox 3.0.3 but I expect that similar problems would occur in other browsers as you narrow or widen the browsing window. Eubulides (talk) 21:18, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the default width— how now? If you need more tweaks or features, let's take it to Template talk:Quote2col. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 21:28, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More .ogv thumbnailing problems

Video 1
Video 2

That's two recently uploaded .ogv videos that don't thumbnail. Coincidence? Or yet another thumbnailing bug? MER-C 08:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm told Cortado doesn't understand video metadata produced with the latest version of ffmpeg2theora. Bug filed. MER-C 09:01, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pages in categories not working like it should?

Take a look at Category:B-Class physics articles of High-importance (for example)

It says that there are 214 pages in that category (so does the magic word PAGESINCATEGORY. However, the first page contains 200 of them (or so the page says), but the next page contains 10 of them rather than 14. What is up with that? And yes I purged the cache several times.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:24, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As it says in Help:Category#Adding a category by using a template, either wait for the job queue to do its thing or do a null edit on each talk page that has been removed from the category (which in practical terms is almost impossible to find out). Graham87 06:50, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is not that there are missing pages or pages that shouldn't be there anymore. It's that the number reported doesn't match the number of links. It's saying "This pages contain 20 links" while it contains 15 of them. This is not a problem of the page being up to date or not. This is a problem of not reporting accurately what's on the page.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:53, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User creation log entry appearance in watchlist mystery

Last night I noticed a minor edit in a minor article which would be considered spam, i.e. a link was added to an "external links" section which promoted the website of a new user, Sackrabbit (talk · contribs). However, I found the linked site to be useful and relevant to the subject so I kept it, simply editing it to remove reference to his sackrabbit.com venture. I informed the user on his wikitalk, and then noticed something: the user creation log entry for Sackrabbit appeared in my watchlist. Is this normal? I did create his talk page, but I don't remember ever seeing a user creation entry appear in my watchlist prior to this. Please point me to information regarding why this has happened, as I searched but was unable to find an explanation. Thanks – Sswonk (talk) 17:12, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Log entries have been recorded in watchlists for a month or 2 now... Dendodge TalkContribs 17:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ya, but I gather Sswonk didn't CREATE the user Sackrabbit... that user existed already and had contribs before Sswonk left a note on their talk. I think, anyway. For reference [m:Special/CentralAuth] shows the account was created and unified on en.wikipedia.org at01:07, 31 October 2008 ++Lar: t/c 17:21, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is correct. I did not create Sackrabbit, which is what concerns me. Sswonk (talk) 17:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it is anything to be concerned about (although it is always good to ask!) My experience has been that the listing only appears if the user registers within the time period that your watchlist covers; that is to say, if Sackrabbit registers at 6 AM, you make an edit that adds his/her user or talk page to your watchlist at 6 PM, and your watchlist covers more than 12 hours, the user creation log will show up on your watchlist. If you edit, say, my talk page, I might end up on your watchlist but you won't see a user log entry because it was almost three years ago (and thus probably outside the range of your list.) I also see entries in the deletion, protection and block logs relating to users whose pages I have edited. --Ckatzchatspy 17:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Would the user creation log indicate I had created the user if I had done so? Here is a copy of the actual line from my watchlist:
  • (User creation log); 01:07 . . Sackrabbit (Talk | contribs) New user account
Sswonk (talk) 17:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Works that way for me too - if I add a user talk page to my watchlist, the creation log entry shows up too, even if I did not create the user. – ukexpat (talk) 17:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sswonk: you could just do a simple test: go to Special:Log/newusers, pick any new account (except those created automatically), add userpage to your watchlist and then reload your watchlist. And yes, when a user creates another user the message is different: just scroll through the same log. —AlexSm 18:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This stems from how log entries are recorded by the server: it stores the time, the type of log entry, the user who did the action, the page affected, and the log comment. When a logged action affects a user rather than a page, the user's userpage is stored as the "page affected". This is why, when you watchlist someone's talkpage, your watchlist shows their account being created. --Carnildo (talk) 21:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting quirk, thanks for explaining it. ++Lar: t/c 19:10, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page tree

Is there a feature similar to category trees, but for pages and subpages? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:12, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. Special:Prefixindex is the best we have. Algebraist 08:31, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well it's better than nothing for sure. I can function with that but a page tree feature would be nice to have, so if a dev wants to implement that, cool. But it's certainly not a priority. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:55, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indiscrirminate diff engine? Specific diff text not showing

Please hold your nose at the content dispute involved, for anyone who looks at this. My question is about whether or not DifferenceEngine.php has gone colour-blind here. Looking at this diff, for me (IE7, monobook, minimal preferences) the entire changed paragraph is red-on-yellow in the pre version, and red-on-green in the post version. This makes it impossible to identify the substantive change, whereas visual inspection confirms that almost all of the text is identical. The actual changes can be found by searching for "successive Canadian governments" (left(pre)-side) and "Liberal governments and constitutional" (right(post)-side) - this is where I warned you to hold your nose! The text exactly re-synchs within 1-200 bytes(/UTF-8 entities) or so.

My question is: wouldn't the diff display normally just highlight the changed text within the paragraph? The text synchs char-by-char both above and below a relatively small text change. Thanks to the dopey content conflict, there are several other diff's in the recent history with the same diagnostic. Why is the diff not pinning down the precise text change? Thanks! Franamax (talk) 08:31, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it just because the whitespace was changed? — neuro(talk) 15:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any obvious whitespace change. That definitely looks like a bug in the diff engine, in the sense that it should be able to do better than that, even given the limitations of the two-pass algorithm used. I'm not sure why it fails here. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, found the problem. From svn:trunk/extensions/wikidiff2/wikidiff2.cpp, function split_tokens():
	// Don't try to do a word-level diff on very long lines
	if (text.size() > MAX_DIFF_LINE) {
		tokens.push_back(Word(text.begin(), text.end(), text.end()));
		return;
	}
MAX_DIFF_LINE is defined in wikidiff2.h as 10000 bytes. The differing lines in the two versions here are 12076 and 12122 bytes respectively. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:04, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It ought to be possible to fix the code so that any shared prefix and/or suffix is ignored when checking against the limit. It's a bit tricky due to the fact that you have to ensure the shared prefix ends on a token boundary, but it should be possible. I could try fixing it, but I don't really know C++ very well (just plain C). Of course, even better would be to write a new diff implementation that scales better for long input so that such hard limits can be dispensed with. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:30, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

VF IRC bots & category in template

Where do the bots get their information from? (I mean... I know that ultimately it's the raw RC where it comes from but why does VF receive it from the bots not directly?)

And another question... what's wrong with this? Why doesn't it want to sort the usernames in the category with {{PAGENAME}}? -- Mentisock 10:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to sort correctly to me. Can you give an example of incorrect sorting by that template, or have you overlooked that many pages in the category are added by User:Quoth the Raven/Userboxes/Political Science which currently sorts by W? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For debugging category sorting problems, the following API query is often useful: [1]. In this case, a lot of the pages indeed have the sort key "Wikipedians interested in political science". Anyway, I've fixed the page linked by PrimeHunter above, so the category should be fixed shortly (as soon as all the pages get updated). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:08, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed I overlooked it. Thanks for the fix. -- Mentisock 09:55, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Due to high database server lag...

...changes newer than 8308 seconds might not be shown in this list."

Okay, what happened now? — neuro(talk) 15:21, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gone down to 2000, looks to be decreasing. Anyone know what the cause was? — neuro(talk) 15:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No idea. If it happens repeatedly, post again, or let the server techs know about it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:50, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have records of a server lag of 2880 seconds on October 12, 10:27 AM PDT . Calvin 1998 (t·c) 19:38, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes it gets really high, one time it was 170 hours! Clark89 (talk) 19:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(several months ago). It is common to have it at 10-40 seconds, every once in a while it goes up to extraordinary levels, usually 2000 to 10,000 thousand seconds, then comes down over a few hours. Try to use little server bandwidth when this is happening so it ceases, that is probably the cause. Clark89 (talk) 05:42, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unless you're running a really fast-editing bot or are an admin deleting pages with large histories (the effect from user renames has been reduced), the effect that one user will have is virtually nil. The lag isn't related to bandwidth (Wikimedia gets 50,000+ requests/sec during peak time), but from the slave database servers getting out of sync with the master. Mr.Z-man 06:24, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Move "New messages" tag above the title?

Has anyone given any thought to moving the "New messages" tag that shows up when one has new talk page messages to above the page title? That would seem to provide confirmation that one has a real message rather than a user's trying to spoof the message on their user page. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:57, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is a bug filed in bugzilla to that effect. It just hasn't been resolved yet, possibly because it's not a very high priority for the devs. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
bug 12681 if you're interested. - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:24, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wonderful! Much appreciated. I didn't think I was the only one who thought that would be a prudent idea... SchuminWeb (Talk) 02:25, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

talkpage Template formatting help needed

Resolved
 – Template fixed. -- Banjeboi 21:31, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I may be doing something wrong ... but for some reason {{WikiProject September 11, 2001}} won't nest properly on Talk:Mychal F. Judge. It does seem to nest on other articles and other project tags nest on this one. I'm guessing it's something with the template but I have not been able to sort out the fix. Any help appreciated. -- Banjeboi 21:51, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem appears to be in the preceding {{WikiProjectFireService}} when it's followed by any project tag. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers! I was hoping I wasn't completely inept! -- Banjeboi 21:31, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Experienced editors needed...

I'm building a team of editors for the development of a set of country profiles/outlines, including one for each country of the world. This set of pages (which is now well under way) is part of Wikipedia's outline of knowledge, and will serve as a useful tool for browsing country-related subjects and comparing countries. Editors experienced in the creation and use of bots, and editors experienced (or interested in) the use of advanced wikitools like WP:AWB and WP:LINKY are especially needed. If you'd like to help or would like to find out more, please contact me. The Transhumanist    00:38, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Categories not showing

Can someone take a look at Denise Phua? The categories are in the text but they're not showing up at the bottom of the page for me. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 03:22, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They show here... Calvin 1998 (t·c) 03:39, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's a FireFox 3 rendering bug, if you can reduce it to a relatively simple test case you could report it to [2]. Resizing your window often fixes it, and just hitting the tab key tends to work for me. Anomie⚔ 15:03, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Script checking whether you have edited a page?

Is there a .JS script (which adds a tab to the top of the page called "me" or something) that can show you your edits to a given page, so that you could check whether you had posted on a page, say, and if so, how many times? If you know of such a script, please do tell me! Thanks. It Is Me Here (talk) 14:19, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The link labelled "Revision history statistics" in the page history will give you that information, among many other statistics about the page and the users who have edited it. The statistics about your edits will be accurate unless you are either out of the top 1,000 users who have edited a page, or your edit is outside the first 50,000 edits in a page history. So basically it will work for your purposes 99.999314159% of the time. Graham87 15:17, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Where is the link, sorry? I don't see it - all I see is View logs for this page. It Is Me Here (talk) 16:39, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhat lower down, in the line beginning 'External tools:'. Algebraist 19:57, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean now - but I can only see that line when I'm logged out; when I'm logged in, the links disappear. Is there something wrong with my preferences, would you say, or my css or js? It Is Me Here (talk) 20:47, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

API would definitely be your best bet. I have a script that tells me how long ago my last edit was (I'm thinking about combining this with an auto-unwatch tool). Sounds like you want more information than that though. What, something that looks just like the history tab but has only your edits? — CharlotteWebb 22:14, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

beware of code 
function history_filter(){
  if(wgUserName == null || wgAction != "history") return;
  ul = document.getElementById("pagehistory");
  if(!ul) return;
  if(location.href.match("&myeditsonly") ) {
    document.getElementById("contentSub").innerHTML += ' | <a href="' +
      location.href.replace("&myeditsonly=1", "") + '">show all edits</a>';
    x = new XMLHttpRequest();
    x.open("GET", wgServer + "/enwiki/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvlimit=500&titles=" +
      encodeURIComponent(wgPageName) + "&rvprop=ids|flags|timestamp|size|comment&rvuser=" +
      encodeURIComponent(wgUserName) + "&format=xml", true);
    x.onreadystatechange = function() {
      if(x.readyState != 4) return;
      rev = new DOMParser().parseFromString(x.responseText, "text/xml").getElementsByTagName("rev");
      var difflink = function(r1, r2, a) {
        return '<a href="' + wgServer + '?title=' + encodeURIComponent(wgPageName) +
          '&diff=' + r1 + '&oldid=' + r2 + '" title="' + wgPageName + '">' + a + '</a>';
        }
      var oldidlink = function(r, a) {
        return '<a href="' + wgServer + '?title=' + encodeURIComponent(wgPageName) +
          '&oldid=' + r + '" title="' + wgPageName + '">' + a + '</a>';
        }
      var radio = function(r, n) {
        return ' <input type="radio" value="' + r + '" name="' + n + '" />';
        }
      s = ""
      for(var i = 0; i < rev.length; i++){
        var oldid = rev[i].getAttribute("revid"); var bytes = rev[i].getAttribute("size");
        var minor = rev[i].getAttribute("minor"); var sum = rev[i].getAttribute("comment");
        var ts = rev[i].getAttribute("timestamp").match(/(\d{4})\-(\d\d)\-(\d\d)T([\d\:]+)\:\d\dZ/);
        s += '<li>(' + (oldid == wgCurRevisionId ? "cur" :
          difflink(wgCurRevisionId, oldid, "cur")) + ") (" +
          difflink("prev", oldid, "last") + ")" + radio(oldid, "oldid") +
          radio(oldid, "diff") + " " + oldidlink(oldid, ts[4] + ", " +
          parseInt(ts[3].replace("0", "")) + " " + ["January", "February",
          "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September",
          "October", "November", "December"][parseInt(ts[2].replace("0",
          ""))-1] +" " + ts[1]) + " " + '<span class="history-user">' +
          document.getElementById("pt-userpage").innerHTML + " (" +
          document.getElementById("pt-mytalk").innerHTML.replace(/>[^<]+</, ">talk<") + " | " +
          document.getElementById("pt-mycontris").innerHTML.replace(/>[^<]+</, ">contribs<") + ")</span>" +
          (minor ? ' <span class="minor">m</span>' : "") +
          (bytes ? ' <span class="history-size">(' + bytes.replace(/(\d)(\d\d\d)$/, "$1,$2") + ' bytes)</span>' : "") +
          (sum ? ' <span class="comment">(' +  sum + ')</span>' : "") +'</li>';
        }
      ul.innerHTML = s;
      if(!rev.length) document.getElementById("contentSub").innerHTML +=
        '\n<div class="error">you've never edited this page, or else there is a bug somewhere</div>';
      }
    ul.innerHTML="scraping from api.php, please wait...";
    x.send("");
    }
  else document.getElementById("contentSub").innerHTML += ' | <a href="' +
    location.href + "&myeditsonly=1" + '">show my edits only</a>';
  }

 addOnloadHook(history_filter);

I got bored and came up with this, let me know if it doesn't work (probably won't in IE), or how it can be made better if it does work. — CharlotteWebb 00:28, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of all WikiProject templates

Is there any centralized list of all WikiProject templates that are placed on the talk page of articles? What I'm looking for is a computer-readable list with an entry for each WikiProject that includes the name of the WikiProject and the name of the template used to mark articles as being a part of that WikiProject. Also, if this doesn't already exist, is there a way to make one without having to write each entry manually? Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 16:17, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:WikiProject banners may help; if you have scripting skills you may be able to check each one for a Wikipedia: namespace link and get the project name that way. Note that there are subprojects like Wikipedia:WikiProject New York City Public Transportation that use the parent template. —NE2 16:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Talk to User:ClockworkSoul or see WP:IGOR. Happy‑melon 08:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with the timeline extension

I wanted to update Template:ArbitrationCommitteeChartRecent to include User:Thebainer's reappointment for another year. I created a copy of the template at my sandbox and updated it accordingly. I'm pretty sure I made no mistake, but the result isn't what I expected. At first the timeline picture just vanished, but after a few minutes it did appear (I suppose the image needed to be generated first), but all the text is missing now[3]. Did I do something wrong after all? And if not, what can be done to fix this? --Conti|✉ 23:08, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Known recent problem of unknown cause, see bugzilla:16085. --Splarka (rant) 08:14, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clicked on 'Preview' but Page was 'Saved' - Possible Bug?

I have had his happen about (at least) four times. At first I chalked it up to user error, or being cross-eyed or fatigued. However, I just went back to a page I made an entry on and was accused of not signing my comment - which I always try to do (yet this entry was bot-signed). A few minutes ago when I replied, I previewed my reply and I know I clicked preview. However, my comment was saved in its preliminary form (luckily, not before I was able to log my signature). Anyone else had this crop up? It's intermittant. --VictorC (talk) 23:44, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't had this or heard reports of it. You can always colorize the buttons to distinguish them... --MZMcBride (talk) 23:57, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Could be my computer or my mouse, I suppose. How would I "colorize" the preview button though? I am curious. — VictorC (talk) 01:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In Special:Mypage/monobook.css something like below. --Splarka (rant) 08:07, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
#wpPreview {background-color:#aa0000; border:2px outset #aa0000;}

Evaluating first character

Is there a way to evaluate only the first character of a parameter for use in the #ifeq parser function? DoubleBlue (Talk) 00:36, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You could use something like {{#sub:codswallop|0|1}} and get c (if it wasn't disabled of course, see [4]). — CharlotteWebb 01:19, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's what I was looking for. Thanks. Any indication if they'll be installed here? DoubleBlue (Talk) 01:33, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't "disabled". That is a very controversial and heavy parser function extension which has never been installed here and likely never will, see bugzilla:6455. --Splarka (rant) 08:11, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need to move page from "IParty" to "iParty"; when I attempt to move it, it says that I can't move it to the same page

At first I thought it couldn't be done, but then I saw that the "iPhone" page has that done to it, and "iParty" needs it too since the business name is officially "iParty", not "IParty."

Rko202 (talk) 01:12, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it by adding the {{lowercase}} template. – ukexpat (talk) 01:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
See Help:Page name#Case-sensitivity and Manual:$wgCapitalLinks. Page titles and user names are case-insensitive for the first letter, as MySQL has problems with sorting database entries based on the first character. For example, go to //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod. You can make the page look like it has a lower-case first letter by adding {{lowercase}}, which uses a magic word that tells MediaWiki to change the page's title when it builds the HTML that it sends the viewer, but the actual title of the database entry is still "IPod". Wiktionary has case-insensitive pages by request, seeing as it's a dictionary (see sun and Sun), but this causes problems such as breaking the search feature.
A more optimal solution to this has been long-desired; the aforementioned {{lowercase}} template used to add a tag to trigger a bit of JavaScript that made the user's browser change the page title after it was downloaded. Someone's currently working on rewriting parts of MediaWiki to make capitalization more elegant, but this will understandably take a while, as the software's been written since pretty much the beginning under the assumptions that the first letter of any database key is case-insensitive, and that an underscore is equivalent to a space (check out "slowking_Man"'s contributions, or if you're an admin, try blocking him). So now you know more than you probably ever wanted to about MediaWiki's character handling. —Slowking Man (talk) 03:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This much is intentional to the extent that we want to be able to write a sentence like: 

[[Stupid]] is as [[stupid]] does.

Without having to explicitly create a redirect or a piped link. Wiktionary handles it differently, as there it is considered normal for "Polish" and "polish" to point to completely different content. I'd rather not to see the same flood-gate opened on Wikipedia. In fact I think it would be better if titles were less case-sensitive, to eliminate the need to manually create a redirect from least weasel to Least Weasel, for example. I think the best possible solution will be one which allows the "correct" title to use any amount of capitalization or spacing it wants to, prevent the creation of other articles with titles which are identical except for capitalization and spacing, and make unorthodox links such as LeASt weASeL automatically point to the correct place. — CharlotteWebb 04:06, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is all true, for normal article titles. I still think an exception should be made for articles that begin with non-Latin (especially Greek) letters, because these are usually symbols, and it is quite possible for case to be significant for these. For example Ω-logic is an entirely different thing from ω-logic. --Trovatore (talk) 08:10, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Um... have you guys not heard of {{DISPLAYTITLE}}? — Werdna • talk 06:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another template formatting issue

On {{Current}} the template doesn't seem to fit or size like the other templates do. That is, it seems to bleed off the page (on the right side) rather than wrapping the text to fit the webpage like the other templates do. See Zeituni Onyango for an example. It's a fully protected template as well so either an admin could format or post {{editprotected}} to the template talkpage. Any help appreciated. -- Banjeboi 01:23, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What browser and browser version are you using ? As far as I can see {{current}} is a standard {{ambox}} and those are quite thoroughly tested on many browsers. (I don't see your issue with Zeituni Onyango when using Safari 3.1 for instance) --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm on Firefox at the moment. The other templates on the page (right above it) text wrap just fine but this one doesn't. -- Banjeboi 02:01, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Correction, I do see it, but only when i make my window very (VERY) slim. The cause is the non-breaking spaces that seem to be part of the text. I suggest you discuss any changes to that on it's talk page. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:02, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I see those now. I'll take it there. -- Banjeboi 02:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Language

Not sure this is the right place to bring this up, but...having a need to look at the Old English Wikipedia for the first time in a long time, I went to J. R. R. Tolkien, which has an interwiki, and I observed that the Old English link in the "other languages" list was "Anglo-Saxon". Am I remembering wrongly, or did it previously display as "Englisc" (the way that an Old English writer would write the name of his language)? And if it previously was this way, why/when was it changed; if I'm wrong, and it's always been shown as "Anglo-Saxon", is there a place where I could discuss this with a hope of changing it to "Englisc"? Nyttend (talk) 01:14, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it's always been that way or not, but one obvious reason to prefer "Anglo-Saxon" over "Englisc" is that the latter's similarity to "English" could be quite confusing to a lot of people who neither speak nor have ever even heard of "Englisc". I suppose "Eald Englisc" or "Engle-Seaxisc" might be possible compromises. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
According to archive.org the ang link was added between 04:00, 13 Dec 2004 and 18:36, 7 Jan 2005, where it was "Anglo Saxon". Looking at languages/Names.php the only changes to the ang code ever, were: rev:35443, rev:7324, and rev:5945 (which added it just a few months before ang.wp existed)... Perhaps it predated the interlang system? --Splarka (rant) 09:25, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is off-topic, but what's the best Modern English translation for the "ang" language code? A few weeks ago, I wrote a script to translate interwiki languages in the left-hand column into their Modern English equivalents. The list of translations at the Meta suggested that "ang" should be translated into "Old English"; would you suggest something else? Any other suggestions for the script would be welcome. Thanks for your help, Proteins (talk) 19:24, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now that's really, really weird

When I started writing this edit[5], the previous edit you'll see by User:Evb-wiki hadn't been made yet. I should have gotten an 'edit conflict', because Evb-wiki's edit came after I opened my edit window and before I hit the 'save page' button. I.e., edit conflict. Instead, it just added my edit after hers. I hit the back button a few times just to be sure I wasn't imagining things, and in my edit window her edit isn't there at all - instead the last edit was the previous one by Ferrylodge. I hope this makes sense.... Maybe a bug? ~ priyanath talk 04:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mediawiki does automatic conflict merging on a line-by-line basis. As you wern't conflicting with any lines being edited by them (and you seemed to be entering some whitespace above your comment, mediawiki was apparently happy with it. --Splarka (rant) 08:44, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image:Prague metro plan 2008.svg

Is it just me & MSIE, or is Image:Prague metro plan 2008.svg all messed up? If others find it messed up, I'll revert it to the previous version. -- SGBailey (talk) 08:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's borked for everyone - what you actually see is a PNG rendered from SVG by servers. I've reverted it myself. MaxSem(Han shot first!) 08:50, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Looks a lot like a bug in Wikimedia's current rsvg version: it seems to be ignoring styles specified with just a tag name, like: 
path {fill:none; stroke-width:12;}
It seems to be a recent regression, since the old thumbnail for the first version proves that it used to work. I've reuploaded a version that works around the bug, but we should really try to get it fixed. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 09:52, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"You have new messages" - umm... not really

Anybody else being hit by the orange bar with no new messages to be found? I archived my talk page nearly a half-hour ago, and now every few edits or so, I get the orange bar with no new messages. *shrug* JPG-GR (talk) 17:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It may be related to contributions being lagged. --NE2 17:11, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So it's not just me then? PC78 (talk) 17:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quickie on server lag

How many minutes is 20374 seconds? Also how comes there is a server lag when viewing a contributions page on this?

. Simply south (talk) 17:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How many minutes is it? If only you had a machine which could calculate or compute numbers and sums. --Golbez (talk) 17:15, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Yanks took those away from us. --NE2 17:24, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Could i clarify my second question? How comes there seemed to be a server lag of that time (found it equates to roughly just over 5½ hours)...? Simply south (talk) 21:02, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.google.com/search?q=20374+seconds+in+hours --MZMcBride (talk) 07:50, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess someone tried to blow up the wiki but failed :-) 211.30.109.24 (talk) 12:31, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Sandbox"

Why does Talk:Main Page say "Sandbox" where it should say "Talk:Main Page"? --NE2 17:28, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the magic word {{DISPLAYTITLE}} or similar was used on a transcluded page. It has been fixed. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Signbot Sinebot Template

I brought this up with User:Slakr, the operator of Signbot, several weeks ago. In the past few months the automatic signature which Signbot Sinebot adds to questions on the Ref Desks that are not signed by the questioner has become very large. If the text in general is about 12 point then the autosign is now showing as about 16 point. (I am looking at this in IE; perhaps it is not a problem in any other browser.) Slakr asked for examples and I gave them to him. (Look at almost any question on the Humanities Ref Desk, for example Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities). I have heard nothing since. Just as a user's large signature is annoying to the reader, so are these automatic ones. Has anyone else noticed this? Is anyone else irritated by the obtrusiveness of these long signatures? Is this an easy fix? (I can find no discussion that led to the initial change from same size to large size.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bielle (talk • contribs) 22:11, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see you were asked at User talk:Slakr/Archive 10#Huge Letters to provide screenshots and browser information, and you didn't reply there. The output of {{unsigned}} looks fine to me, as at the end of your post above. Anomie⚔ 23:38, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
With apologies, I must have missed the further the requests for information. I don't know how to provide a screenshot and my browser is IE 5 I believe. For your information, the {{unsigned}} appearing above also looks just fine to me. However, either the Bot isn't using that template or something on the Ref Desk pages is affecting the font size there. Here follows an example of the coding being used which I have cut-and-pasted from the current Ref Desk page: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.126.229.125 (talk) 01:30, 29 October 2008 (UTC) In my browser, this appears to be quite different from the one above. Not only is there a lot more coding (<span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/71.126.229.125|71.126.229.125]] ([[User talk:71.126.229.125|talk]]) 01:30, 29 October 2008 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> ) but "smaller" appears to translate into "larger". Thanks for your help. ៛ Bielle (talk) 00:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't want to be brusque, but Internet Explorer 5 is horrendously old and broken (in software terms), and you're opening yourself up to a legion of malware and security vulnerabilities by visiting any public website with it. IE 5 doesn't support entire swathes of the HTML and CSS standards, which is almost certainly why things look so odd for you.
Are you using some sort of corporate workstation or other locked-down device where you can't upgrade your software? If so, I would definitely recommend asking your IT department (or whoever the relevant people would be) to provide you with software released in at least the last decade. If you do have control over your system, please consider installing Mozilla Firefox or at least a recent version of IE. If you're stuck on an old version of Windows that recent IE and Firefox versions don't support, and can't upgrade Windows, consider trying a GNU/Linux distribution such as Ubuntu that will provide you with more recent software. —Slowking Man (talk) 06:12, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Support Wikipedia: a non-profit project" omnipresent banner

Any way to suppress this for those of us who don't wish to see this message on every page we visit? If not, when will it end so I can just figure if a long break is a better choice. -- Banjeboi 01:37, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was just going to ask the same thing; that banner is obnoxious on an unprecedented level. It needs a hide button that will make it completely hide. - auburnpilot talk 01:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Adding
#siteNotice {display: none;}
to your monobook.css works. That will suppress any other sitenotice as well, of course, but if this is the kind of garbage the slot is going to be used for, I don't want to see it. Algebraist 01:43, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone else notice that when they rolled that out, the servers got really slow? Is this just temporary while everything re-caches, or is it some sort of (inadvertent?) negative reinforcement - donate enough and we undo it? --NE2 01:49, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Painfully, dial-up slow. -- Banjeboi 02:01, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Any reason why it has to appear constantly for registered editors? The "hide" button doesn't remove it, unlike other top-of-page messages. (Not that we're "special", but doesn't time served count as a "donation" as well?) --Ckatzchatspy 02:07, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's like going to the blood bank and being constantly told while you're donating blood that they need your money --NE2 02:20, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm imagining it's so slow because the database is overloaded by people looking up Obama/McCain. I agree, the banner is wayyyy too big, I don't know why we can't simply use the former one. ~one of many editorofthewikis (talk/contribs/editor review)~ 03:02, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'm missing something. What banner? --Deskana (talk) 03:04, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It got removed by the server admins (see the server-admin log) Calvin 1998 (t·c) 03:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It was taken down until they could better optimize loading times for maximum donation to frustration ratio keep it from killing the servers. --NE2 03:05, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's baaaaaaack.....but go visit Special:Preferences to turn it off via a gadget... — xaosflux Talk 05:09, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If i click hide, i expect something to be hidden.... I'd rather choose to have google ads for the benefit of wikipedia than this colossal piece of lost screenspace. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 05:32, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To join in raining on the parade here, this is quite easily the most obnoxious donation banner ever. Perhaps if the Foundation weren't spending so much money on cross-country moves and over US$300,000 on the Office of the Executive Director, there'd be more money for seeking grants, buying much-needed hardware, and hiring developers to work on any of the numerous MediaWiki features that have been requested for years and years, and the Foundation wouldn't have to engage in unprofessional and obnoxious begging so often. —Slowking Man (talk) 06:27, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention thinking up less obnoxious ways of fundraising. Putting some of these to good use (e.g. posters) would be a good start. MER-C 06:46, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Did you miss the scrolling atrocity they inflicted on us at the start of last year's fundraiser? --Carnildo (talk) 07:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adblock Plus filter: upload.wikimedia.org$script . MER-C 06:54, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Expiring protection

Would it be possible to add an option to the protection expiry allowing admins to choose whether the protected page should return to no protection or semi-protection? This comes up w/ vandalism targets that temporarily go to full protection, but should go back to semi after a while (I'm coming at the issue from the presidential candidate biographies). Is there a patch already in the works, perhaps?--chaser - t 02:38, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

using # for lists

[edit] didnt come out as I intended the first try. While it would be nice, I think, to have the image code separate in editing mode, I'm not sure whethter to report a bug as I cant find any docunetation on using "#" Sparafucil (talk) 04:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

there's some documentation at wp:cheatsheet. in a case like this, the easiest thing to do is place the image link after the #, rather than on the line before (i.e. # [[image...]]). the image floats, so it will go to the proper position , and you need to have the numbered list paragraphs together so that numbering will be right. --Ludwigs2 04:40, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dismiss banner

OK, so a banner has just appeared at the top of the page -- how do I kill it. I've seen it, and I am aware of the donation requirements -- now I want to dismiss it, permanently. It is extremely large (unlike all previous ones). User A1 (talk) 05:50, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, and this probably doesn't belong here, why is the target 6 million, when the annual report prediction for community givings is 3 million? User A1 (talk) 05:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you have Adblock Plus, you can get rid of it permanently with the filter upload.wikimedia.org$script. Otherwise add #siteNotice {display: none} to Special:Mypage/monobook.css. MER-C 06:28, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See above. As for the dollar target, hey why not dream? The more money the Foundation gets, the more the Board and Directors can raise their salaries. —Slowking Man (talk) 06:36, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks ^^- Unpopular Opinion (talk) 07:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks MER-C. I must have had my eyes shut. Slowking: Why not dream? Because you should be accounting correctly. I don't mean to be harsh, but the goal seems to be an arbitrary value -- accounting should predict the required funds for the project, then aim to raise them. The data shown on the banner, and in the annual report should correspond. If the project only needs 3 mil, then why ask for 6 -- thats just being cheeky. User A1 (talk)
As a side note -- I find the notice slogans a little bit slick, as in oily. Also, its a sad day when you Adblock a wikimedia site. User A1 (talk) 07:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I was being sardonic. I fully agree, and my longer comment in the previous section describes my views in more detail. —Slowking Man (talk) 07:45, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It can also be turned off in Special:Preferences - Gadgets.--Tikiwont (talk) 10:43, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Contribution history

Any way that page (which is cool, by the way) can go to other pages of past contributions like in normal contribs pages? And as an extra question: will the new site notice suppress gadget work on all sitenotices (like the one we had recently) not just the fundraising one? -- Mentisock 10:12, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Currently it hides any element with class .siteNoticeBig or .siteNoticeSmall. If the fundraiser can have a more specific outside wrapper we can adjust the Gadget definition at MediaWiki:Gadget-HideFundraisingNotice.css. — xaosflux Talk 11:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW the notice is loading from here. — xaosflux Talk 12:01, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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