Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

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.

« Archives, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216

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)

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)

(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)

Unbelievably ridiculous if you ask me. Monster Under Your Bed ^(talk) 12:40, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

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)

Imho WP:- could be a good choice. —AlexSm 18:21, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

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)

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? --Ckatz^chat_spy 21:55, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Just did. Not working. -- _{Escape Artist Swyer} ^Talk _{Contributions} 18:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you have another Gadget or monobook script installed that conflicts with this gadget. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:25, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Well, I have popups, sixtabs and qsig. Any guesses? -- _{Escape Artist Swyer} ^Talk _{Contributions} 00:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Sounds great to me! Thanks for the answer. I look forward to the revamped search box. -- Techtonic (talk) 01:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

You can change the default search namespaces under Search in preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:36, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

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)

I have filed a bugreport https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16194 --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Indeed I overlooked it. Thanks for the fix. -- Mentisock 09:55, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

"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)

Gone down to 2000, looks to be decreasing. Anyone know what the cause was? — neuro^(talk) 15:32, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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

(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)

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)

Very high lag on occasion is everyday, its undecided cause a source of glum, the techs are aware of it. m:Main causes of lag. Wikimedia lag stats. We need not to trouble ourselves with it. Clark89 (talk) 21:08, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

Talk to User:ClockworkSoul or see WP:IGOR. Happy‑melon 08:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

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[2]. Did I do something wrong after all? And if not, what can be done to fix this? --Conti|✉ 23:08, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

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

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)

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)

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)

In Special:Mypage/monobook.css something like below. --Splarka (rant) 08:07, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

#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)

You could use something like {{#sub:codswallop|0|1}} and get c (if it wasn't disabled of course, see [3]). — CharlotteWebb 01:19, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

I fixed it by adding the {{lowercase}} template. – ukexpat (talk) 01:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

Anglo-Saxon language is a redirect to Old English, so that would be more consistent. Nyttend (talk) 13:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Now that's really, really weird

When I started writing this edit[4], 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

"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)

It may be related to contributions being lagged. --NE2 17:11, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

So it's not just me then? PC78 (talk) 17:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

The Yanks took those away from us. --NE2 17:24, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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

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

"Sandbox"

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

I am sorry to have misled you, Slowking Man. My IE (now that hasn't changed) is Version 7, not 5. I don't know if, in the terms of such experts as yourself, this is any big improvement. If, however, it is my browser that is at fault, then there is no fix at the moment. (Not everyone can just whip off and change a whole system, painstaking learned and barely understood even now. We inhabit very different technical worlds, you and I.) I do have Sophos anti-virus running. ៛ Bielle (talk) 18:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

IE 7 should do just fine. You can find probably find a "print screen" button at the top of your keyboard; somewhere above the "delete" button, to the left of the numpad. Press that key. You now have a picture of whatever your screen was showing in your clipboard. Proceed to open up Paint, which you can find in the start menu somewhere. Paste the picture - you can do so by pressing the "Ctrl" button and the "V" key at the same time, or through the menus at the top of the Paint window - and save it, for example on your desktop. Open this link in your browser and upload the picture you just saved, and give us a link to it here. Plrk (talk) 13:27, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

"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)

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)

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)

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)

Painfully, dial-up slow. -- Banjeboi 02:01, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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?) --Ckatz^chat_spy 02:07, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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

It got removed by the server admins (see the server-admin log) Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 03:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

It's baaaaaaack.....but go visit Special:Preferences to turn it off via a gadget... — xaosflux ^Talk 05:09, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

I agree I think it looks more like a blood donation site. I am not at all impressed in the way in which this years fundraising has been addressed. What about the people who have already donated, must they suffer this glaring at them for every page of wikipedia they visit for the next few months? I agree with the comments above that it is not exactly the most luring of requests and is quite irritating. Can't it be done a little more subtlely? Also whats with the emotional blackmail "we are here when you need us. Now we need you". Having a "Donate Now" in red on every wiki page seems to be rather forceful to say the least. Count Blofeld 12:45, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

This is absolutely beyond ridiculous. I should not have to use adblock plus on Wikipedia. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 12:55, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. Every article I turn to the red block is putting me off, can't imagine how it looks to new visitors and people who don't know how to disable it. If we must keep the banner even when "hidden" can't we at least remove that obnoxious red donate block and keep it as "Wikipedia is a non-profit project: please donate today" Count Blofeld 12:58, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Just wanted to add my voice/opinion into the mix (because let's face it, you can never have too many). This banner is ridiculous, ugly and a pain in the arse. Thanks so much :D Alex Muller 14:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

How is this campaign being run? It's obvious that the office who put that two-inch solid blood red chiclet up there has no competent graphic designers, no editors, and no readers of Wikipedia. Why are people who are so out of touch allowed to soil our project with this blot?

Who is this? How do I contact them? —Michael Z. 2008-11-05 14:32 z

I just sent the following to donate@wikimedia.org. Perhaps they would understand the problem if a few more participants let them know how this is going over:

Hi.

I'm a Wikipedia editor and administrator who regularly puts in a lot of work on the project.

The new ad banner with the huge blood-red chiclet reading "Donate Now »" is visually disruptive -- it actually makes it difficult to edit. It's accompanied by a "hide" button which doesn't hide it. I've had to develop a custom spam blocker for it, to hide it by adding code to my user style sheet.

It's insensitive towards participants in this project. It makes it seem that the people running the fundraising campaign are out of touch.

Please remove it as soon as possible.

In the future, please get a skilled designer to mess with the look of our project.

 —Michael Z. 2008-11-05 14:48 z

I got a reply from Rand Montoya (Head of Community Giving at the Wikimedia Foundation) that he understands and will see what they can do, but no promises. We will see what happens. --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:45, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Note: I've been assured that those in charge of running the fundraiser are paying attention to the discussion happening at Meta. If you have comments / concerns / etc. about the fundraiser, please bring them up at meta:Talk:Fundraising 2008/design drafts. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:55, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Ad blocking

Add the following to your user style sheet. This will hide the red button only, but still let you read future notices:

 .red-button { visibility: hidden; }

 —Michael Z. 2008-11-05 14:45 z

People don't seem to understand that they can disable the sitenotice in Special:Preferences under the "gadgets" tab. There is no need for external software, and really no need to use your individual stylesheet page. Sitenotices are rare, so there will be no harm in enabling this in your preferences, as the gadget will be deleted at the end of the fundraiser anyways and there won't be any other sitenotices in the meantime. Also, as a side note, this is what keeps Wikipedia running. So stop whining about it ;-) . - Rjd0060 (talk) 15:02, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes but it could be done a lot more tactfully and in rather better taste. How are most editors to know it can be disabled? Count Blofeld 16:48, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

The other problem with using Special:Prefs to disable it is that what if you forget to turn it back in a month or so, and the Foundation uses that space for an announcement (such as board member voting or something) that you probably want to see? I'm not as concerned with having a banner that cannot completely be hidden (think PBS during membership drives) but the button is what really makes this visually offensive. --MASEM 17:00, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Did you read my comment two above yours? Sitenotices are rare, so there will be no harm in enabling this in your preferences, as the gadget will be deleted at the end of the fundraiser anyways and there won't be any other sitenotices in the meantime. - Rjd0060 (talk) 17:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

"People don't seem to understand..." Well, why the heck should they be expected to know this? By thought transference? Many of us are far more interested in editing than in technical arcana, and only come here when driven to do so by the sort of situation created by this imposition (where, to add insult to injury, "hide" doesn't actually mean "hide" at all). In any case, the preferences/gadgets solution you suggest doesn't work for me: I just get "Your password is invalid or too short. It must have at least 1 character and be different from your username." (Never have any other password problems on Wp.) I have contributed to most financial appeals in the past but certainly won't be doing so while this abuse of the sitenotices system continues. --- Picapica (talk) 17:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

People aren't expected to know - what I meant by that was, it has been repeated here, and various other noticeboards, about ten times in the last two days. I was simply suggesting enabling the gadget, rather than mess with .css pages, because the gadget is much easier.  :-) - Rjd0060 (talk) 19:50, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I should add that every single time we have this, people talk about how it's going to destroy wikipedia, everyone hates it, it's so much worse then last time (you'd think we must have a blinking popup by now given how it's always worse then last time), etc etc. Yet every single time wikipedia seems to survive. Sometimes the ads is tweaked a bit, but it stays and seems to actually work. I'm not saying there isn't a need for resonable discussion, but all the hypobolics are IMHO over the top. Nil Einne (talk) 03:14, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Red button in collapsed stated

Anyone else think it would be a good idea to inline the div of the red button, when the collapsed state is active ? That would save some considerable and valuable vertical screenspace if you ask me. Should be simple to fix by adding

style=display:inline

to the redbutton div for the collapsed state. If anyone knows how to make that happen, please pursue this. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Site crashes with URL-encoded addresses

For some reason, whenever I go to a page whose URL has been URL encoded (that is, special characters like : have been translated into %3A, etc.), instead of the page itself, I get a double ad banner, one expanded, and another collapsed. In case that's not clear:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) works as one would expect it to.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_(technical) , however, should bring me to the same page, but instead I get this (screenshot)

Is anyone else getting this problem? I'm using Firefox 3.0.3 on Windows XP, and I have the gadget adblocker enabled. This problem does not appear to occur in IE6 (when using IE Tab in Firefox). Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 21:52, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

What adblocker gadget? Why don't you just use the suppress display of fundraiser sitenotice gadget? Nil Einne (talk) 03:15, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

That's the one I meant. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 05:47, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I have posted some selected comments here. Cirt (talk) 09:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I've proposed an alternative on this page. Take a look and add your support if you would prefer it. Pretzels^Talk! 17:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

Great idea, & thanks for the cheatsheet reminder! Sparafucil (talk) 02:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Thanks ^^- Unpopular Opinion (talk) 07:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

It can also be turned off in Special:Preferences - Gadgets.--Tikiwont (talk) 10:43, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Note: I've been assured that those in charge of running the fundraiser are paying attention to the discussion happening at Meta. If you have comments / concerns / etc. about the fundraiser, please bring them up at meta:Talk:Fundraising 2008/design drafts. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:53, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

FWIW the notice is loading from here. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:01, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Appeal banner's show/hide obscures protection icon etc.

Can the show/hide link in the donation appeal banner be nudged to left, or at least to somewhere where it won't get in the way of the padlock icon, the spoken version icon (and perhaps others)? For example, on Barack Obama it gets in the way of the padlock etc. (I know I can probably hide the appeal banner in its entirety via my preferences, but that's no good for anons or inexperienced users.)--A bit iffy (talk) 15:30, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

We're actively working on this. It's been a problem for years. If you really want an immediate solution, add "importScript('User:Splarka/topiconfix.js')" to your monobook.js page. If you can wait a couple of days, the fix will (hopefully) be live on the entire site. More discussion can be found here. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I don't want an immediate solution for myself so I won't even bother with that script. It's good to hear that there's a general solution on the way. Cheers, --A bit iffy (talk) 12:28, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

A solution for this issue is now running, but you might have to clear your browser cache before you notice it. However this again shows that we really should fix this once and for all. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

External Links

Hi,

I am trying to make my company name into a hyperlink however I cannot figure out how to do so. If I cannot actually put an external link into the text where can I put it - the only place I could find was References at the bottom of the page but I don't think that is correct?

Please help!

Elaine — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elainebyrne (talk • contribs)

Hi Elaine, and welcome to Wikipedia. Actually, a better place to ask this is on the Help Desk page. Anyway, if the company has an article in Wikipedia, the format is [[McDonald's]] (or whatever). However, if the company doesn't have its own article, then it may possibly be not appropriate to add a hyperlink - it depends on the circumstances. What's the context? --A bit iffy (talk) 18:30, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Before you add links to your company, please read WP:Spam and WP:EL. – ukexpat (talk) 19:51, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Transwiki Link

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be like this or what, but at least on this page, the link to "transwiki" leads to a disambig page, though I'm not sure which of the pages on that page is more apporpriate. Anyone think we should do something about this? ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 18:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Different password for saving preferences?

I just learnt above how to suppress the donation drive banner from the 'Gadgets' menu of the Preferences settings. Now, as I attempt to save, I get an error message stating that "Your password is invalid or too short. It must have at least 1 character and be different from your username." Now, this password easily lets me log on to my user account as it always has, why doesn't it work for Preferences? (Also, the advice given above about disabling sitenotices via the Monobook didn't work, and yes, I did use 'Shift-reload' after saving.) __meco (talk) 08:30, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you using Firefox? Someone else mentioned a similar problem at AN. The answer, provided by Mr Z Man, is that Firefox automatically fills in the "old password" field, so when you submit the form, it thinks you want to change your password to an empty string. Clear the "old password" field before saving preferences. That said, I didn't have a problem with Firefox, and the gadget works fine. Gwinva (talk) 08:41, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I am using Firefox and the advice you gave did the trick! __meco (talk) 09:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem

It's been three weeks or so since my original WP account (Shshshsh) stopped working. Everytime I log in on WP, my window is stuck... I initially thought it was a temporary problem, or maybe some geek had hacked in my account. That's why I created this new account (Shshshsh2). It entangles me a lot. I tried changing my password etc, but nothing helped. The problem still exists, and I thought maybe you have a solution? Maybe there is some way to fix it via admin tools, or any other way like changing my username or whatever? What could be the problem? Shshshsh2 (talk) 10:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by 'my window is stuck'? What, exactly, happens when you try to log on? Algebraist 10:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

When I log in (only on WP and only with my original account), after a few minutes online, unexpectedly, my window is stuck and unable to proceed. I mean, I cannot do anything but close it (that too with difficulty). Shshshsh2 (talk) 10:56, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried a different browser? Algebraist 11:15, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried disabling javascript or requesting that your User:Shshshsh/monobook.js be blanked? --Splarka (rant) 11:36, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. No I didn't try any of these. What do you mean by disabling javascript? In my Internet options? Shshshsh2 (talk) 14:56, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. On IE it's under tools/internet options/security/custom levels. Algebraist 15:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll try. Thank you. Shshshsh2 (talk) 15:10, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

No it doesn't help :( So I'll now ask an admin to blank my monobook, yeh? Shshshsh2 (talk) 15:17, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I have blanked it. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:41, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey guys I think it works!!! I'm not sure 100%, but as of now, nothing has happened. I ran several pages simultaneously, and it was not stuck (when it usually is...).

Now I wonder... it means I cannot fill my monobook again? Shahid • ^Talk2me 18:44, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Try it and see which script exactly was causing it. Probably popups, since that was changed to use the api.php recently (it can't be changed back, the query.php is no longer available). What operating system and browser/version do you have? --Splarka (rant) 18:48, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Your monobook.js didn't break my browsers (FF 3.0.3 and IE 7.0.5730.13 on winXP) so you can probably use it if you really want to. Algebraist 18:50, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I have Explorer. I don't really understand some of the things you guys said. What's api.php? Shahid • ^Talk2me 19:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

API is what the popups gadget now uses to access Wikipedia. It previously worked in a different way. It's possible this change was the cause of your problems, especially if you are using an obsolete browser. What version of Internet Explorer do you use? Algebraist 19:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I think 7. Shahid • ^Talk2me 19:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I tried to restore my monobook and it got stuck again. I don't get why it happens. What is specifically the problem with the popups? Shahid • ^Talk2me 21:45, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried the two scripts in your monobook separately? Have you tried the popups without the parameters? Have you tried the popups gadget in your preferences? Algebraist 22:01, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Well if I can't have the parameters and set my preferences then I am not interested in having them. I'll try to set the second script without the popups. Shahid • ^Talk2me 22:04, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

An IRC user ran a test for me, and it does indeed seem that popups is broken in IE7. I'll try to find a computer for myself with IE7 installed so that I can look into the problem. That will take some while however. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, TheDJ, it's very kind of you.

But now I'm completely confused. As Algebraist suggested, I tried to check the two scripts separately. I removed the popups and left the Automated PR, and the problem returned -- it got stuck again. Then (I mean, what I have set now), removed the APR and left the popups and it seems to be working properly. How come? Shouldn't the problem be with the popups? Shahid • ^Talk2me 22:58, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Well a problem might be that it may take a while before the website uses the "new" monobook.js file. Perhaps if you keep it like this for 2 hours and then force reload again, you will see the problem with the popups. Sorry, loading scripts is a bit of a mess at times. :( --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

So what about the automated peer review? There's no problem with that? Shahid • ^Talk2me 23:08, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Well it still works well with the popups. Shahid • ^Talk2me 07:34, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I tried again. [While my popups script is set on the monobook,] I tried to install the automated PR. The problem returned. I removed now the APR, and it's gone. So can we be sure the APR is the reason behind that? Do you know why? Were there any recent changes with that script too? Shahid • ^Talk2me 08:04, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

changing the logo

Hi, we want to change the logo of gileki Wikipedia, what can we do? I upload our logo with name of glk:Image:Wiki.png but these logo not change. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AminSanaei (talk • contribs) 11:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

See mw:Logo. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:36, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

thank you but What is our LocalSettings.php file address?--AminSanaei (talk) 19:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Open a request at Bugzilla (Open a bug => Wikimedia => Site Requests) including a link to the community consensus for the new logo. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 20:30, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I create this https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16271 but they don’t change anything--AminSanaei (talk) 08:48, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if everyone responding is aware the question is about a logo for Gileki Wikipedia (which does not have its own custom logo), not English Wikipedia. To AminSanaei: A major change cannot occur without agreement from the user community, and in this case, probably agreement from the administrators at GWP. It won't be changed overnight. The logo may also have to be approved by English Wikipedia's administration, since it is a variation on their logo (and I'm not sure if they would approve a coloured-in version). Your best next move is to present it to everyone at the Gileki site; we probably can't (and shouldn't) provide much influence from here. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 11:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

meta:IRC channel quotes fortune cookie

Could a random quote be generated on any WM project page somehow? -- Mentisock 14:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Template:Random portal component says it was made for portals, but I don't see why it can't be used elsewhere. It picks a quote based on the day of the year. Template:Randomquote is another, but it isn't too user friendly, and has no documentation. It picks a quote based on the user's number of edits. It should be possible to modify the latter with a truly random number; you might look here for guidance. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 12:09, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Whois

How do I do a whois, please, to find the organisation behind an IP? TerriersFan (talk) 17:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Click the WHOIS link at the bottom of an IP talk or contributions page. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit notices for deletion pages

A discussion about the edit notice for the admin noticeboard took a turn away from that noticeboard, and towards the edit notices that are in place for disambiguation pages, how those are acheived, and whether a similar set of notices would be useful for various deletion systems. Since, if implemented, IMHO it would be best to set up something that functions for all the various deletion systems, instead of just doing, say, AFD, I figured a centralized discussion of the idea in general would be useful first. So here I am.

For those not familiar with them, Edit Notices are a fairly recent addition to the project code-base. They are notices that display above the edit box whenever in edit mode. The notices on Disambiguation pages are set up to trigger off of the disambig template's presence on the page, so the various deletion systems could easily have similar messages set up.

The idea would be to have different messages for the different systems. AFD tagged pages, AFD discussions, CSD tagged pages, PROD tagged pages, CFD, RFD, MFD, IFD, etc. It could even be granularized to specific CSD criteria if we wanted to go that far, based on the different CSD templates.

I guess I'm here for two purposes at the moment. 1) Evaluating whether this is a good idea overall, and 2) wondering if people think this is the best place for this discussion, or if anyone can think of a better place for it. I would think the discussion location should be fairlt centralized, since this would effect a number of deletion systems, but I don't really want it hidden away somewhere like Wikipedia talk:Deletion discussions, where noone goes. - TexasAndroid (talk) 22:17, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Deletion process is being overhauled technically in a few months. — Werdna • talk 12:08, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Collapsible tables in Cologneblue skin

On {{WikiProject Louisville}}, the 'alerts' banner doesn't collapse by default for me in the cologneblue skin. I've tried it using both the NavFrames and CollapsibleTables implementations; neither work. Viewing Template:WikiProject Louisville alerts directly in the cologneblue skin works, as does viewing something like Template:WPAstronomy, leaving me mightily confused. Any bright ideas? Happy‑melon 22:41, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Seems the collapse code is broken

TypeError: Result of expression 'element.getAttribute' [undefined] is not a function. (MediaWiki:Common.js line 234)

while (element.parentNode) {
  var element = element.parentNode;
  if ( hasClass( element, "outercollapse" ) ) {
     collapseTable ( i );
     break;
  } else if (element.getAttribute("id") == "bodyContent" ) break;
}

So it breaks on the bodyContent check. Apparently cologneblue used neither outerContent nor bodyContent ? --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:58, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Aha! Yes, you got me, I only tested it in monobook... :S That clause was to stop the loop unnecessarily traversing up out of the content area... I'm surprised it causes an error tho, surely it should just not make the early break? Regardless, the important thing is, is there a nice reliable way of making it break at a sensible time? Perhaps it should stop when it gets to the <body> element? Happy‑melon 00:39, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Topicons

If people notice that their userpage topicon has broken, then do not be alarmed. This is due to a change we have made to stabilize the position of the icons (and coordinates) on articles due to the sitenotice (and will only be enabled for that period of time atm). Unfortunately, MANY people do not yet use class=topicon for their topicons, and they even usually have "hardcoded" icons on their pages. I'm currently working on a meta template {{topicon}} which will help people fix this properly, and to prevent any further disruptions by changes in CSS etc. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Unfortunately, it's rather distracting for my templates to be borked, and I don't have the resources or knowledge to fix them. The sooner the Wikimedia Foundation raises 6 million dollars, the happier I, for one, will be. CompuHacker (talk) 02:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I have converted User:ArielGold's page (diffview) to use this new {{topicon}}-template. Note that for the duration of the sitenotice, many of the "user talk"-topicons still won't behave nicely. This is because the icons are often of inconsistent size, causing them to easily cross the header line. When the sitenotice is no longer active however, the icons should return to their "original" position, and I can see if I can make further improvements to the template tomorrow. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:59, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The donation box looks really silly

Because the little arrows wrap to the next line and the red button background wasn't big enough to begin with. Also, the button is on a new line, while it could have been easily placed on the same line as the title, freeing up much needed screen real estate. Shinobu (talk) 05:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Donation banner suppression gadget

Why has the donation banner suppression gadget been disabled? Gwinva (talk) 06:48, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, forget that...seems like it's back. Did it really go, or was it some quirk for me? (I logged on and off a few times, and checked preferences, and it really had disappeared for a while.) Gwinva (talk)

If you are imagining things, then I am imagining the same things, too. (There might be some song lyrics in this.) It did go way for about 20 minutes, and the ugly banner came back. As you have noted, the fix is, once again, fixed. ៛ Bielle (talk) 06:54, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

It was removed, then restored after a short discussion. --Bongwarrior (talk) 06:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. For a minute or two I thought it had finally driven me mad. :) Gwinva (talk) 07:06, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Date format

This gets asked periodically - and the last flurry that I am aware was around 18 months ago. I don't know if things have changed since. But... Is there any way of getting dates in articles formatted according to the setting in one's preferences? I ask this because I HATE the "December 25, 1999" format. I wasn't a problem when it was "December 25, 1999" since that got formatted. However most date links seem to be being removed now. So what is the status of date formatting please. -- SGBailey (talk) 13:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Since the linking is being removed, you will have to deal with the format that is used in articles, whether you like it or not and there is no way around it. There's been a whole host of discussion surrounding it, including this one which is mentioned as the reference on the WP:DATE page. I don't think there can be any technical way since dates are now not being linked, i dont think its a big deal whether its December 25 or 25 December, and if thats your biggest worry in life, then i think you'll be fine :-) 211.30.109.24 (talk) 13:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)