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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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How can I get other users to talk more often on my talk page? I would like to know how they could do that, and that I can get them to talk more often. Thanks. -- MISTER ALCOHOL ^{T C} 05:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With respect, your talk page's background colour is not very attractive imo. That could cause users to keep away from your page. If you keep doing lots of work around the project, eventually people will respond to your work. Anyway, if you're not getting many comments, at least you know you're not doing anything wrong. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to kill the way that image half-covers 'From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia', too. Algebraist 12:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, though this may seem a bit harsh, see WP:NOTBLOG - the talk pages are tools used to contact other editors, but if no other editors need to contact you, then so be it. _TalkIslander 16:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. -- MISTER ALCOHOL ^{T C} 05:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I know I'd hesitate to post, or even read, your pages, with that eye-watering coloration. Little Red Riding Hoodtalk 22:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely agree - blue links on that hideous shade of red are very hard to read and tiring on the eyes. – ukexpat (talk) 15:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And white text on AliceBlue background is entirely unreadable. Algebraist 15:45, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to pull a TOC from one page and display on another? --Pair O' Dimes (talk) 13:37, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't think so. The TOC is generated automatically. Of course, you could copy the HTML and modify it a bit, or you could just make a wikitable from it. Why do you need to transclude a TOC? ManishEarth^Talk 14:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One of the portals on Intellipedia acts as an integrator for highlights from various divisions of a program. The "more..." link navigates readers to the full details of each highlight. The highlights section is manually updated and transcluded from the details page. I would like to automate the process and reduce manual dependency. This could be achieved by transluding the TOC. However, when I transcluded the TOC to the portal, it generated a TOC for the portal, not the details page. Hope that makes sense? --Pair O' Dimes (talk) 16:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

TOCs are dynamically generated from the heading on the current page. There is not way to transcluded just the TOC. Your best option is to get a bot to update it for you. — Dispenser 09:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Dispenser, I'll look into that. --•••••• Pair ' Dimes 21:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While leaving a message on someone's talk page, I observed a link to the article B.o.B. In the current edition, there's a hatnote "For other uses, see bob." with "bob" in blue, but it's basically blue text: it's not a link. The coding for the hatnote reads simply {{otheruses|bob}}, which (as far as I can see) seems totally reasonable, and should produce some sort of link. Anyone have an idea what's wrong? Nyttend (talk) 03:03, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The link seems to work for me. Mr.Z-man 03:34, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Link works here too lucideer 03:39, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Works for me as well; sure it wasn't just a momentary browser glitch? EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:32, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a .js gadget out there somewhere which adds a tab to Special: pages (called "page" or something) which links to the Mediawiki: page which the Special: page is based on (for the purposes of discussing / editing it, say)? Thanks in advance. It Is Me Here (talk) 09:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The first example I looked at, Special:Statistics, incorporates at least 15 Mediawiki: pages. Algebraist 13:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could the related MediaWiki: pages be listed at the bottom, then? Dendodge Talk^Contribs 13:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My usual technique is to load Special:Allmessages (warning: large page) and search that for the content of the message I'm looking for. Is that helpful? {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 18:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a specific page in mind, it might be faster/easier to look at the source code [1]. — CharlotteWebb 19:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks for the replies, people. It Is Me Here (talk) 19:55, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional input is sought. Please see this discussion:

• MediaWiki talk:Sidebar#Moving search box above navigation --Timeshifter (talk) 07:49, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All the pages regarding places in Derbyshire eg. Matlock, Derbyshire have problems where the map of the county with the red dot for the location should be, can somebody please look at it and help solve it, it's problematic for every location in the county so could it be a template/image error? Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 16:55, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. A broken bot had incorrectly added a interwiki link to {{Location map United Kingdom Derbyshire}}. Anomie⚔ 17:52, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Every history page contains links to three external tools. The "Revision history statistics" link was recently changed to point to a different tool than it used to. Does anyone know where the old tool is located? I think the domain ended in .de but I'm not sure. Thanks. --Andrew Kelly (talk) 17:05, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of stuff used to be hosted on tools.wikimedia.de, which is now redirected to toolserver.org. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it was on the toolserver. I think it was an independent site. I remember it had banner ads at the top of every page. --Andrew Kelly (talk) 17:23, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Which is the reason it has been removed. See the history of MediaWiki:Histlegend and this discussion (with the link to the site). Cenarium ^Talk 17:50, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I wanted to know. Thank you for showing me where the site is! --Andrew Kelly (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Has anyone here ever actually had an edit completely disappear? I edited User:Martinp23/NPWatcher/Checkpage earlier today and added my name, but my edit doesn't show up in the history or on the page - usually I would assume that I simply did not save, but I have the saved page in another tab. I wasn't edit conflicted, so I have no idea what is going on. Anyone got an explanation to offer? — neuro^(talk) 23:13, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Worked it out, I actually edited User:Martinp23/NPWatcher/Checkpage/Requests, and the page needed purging. — neuro^(talk) 23:16, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello... In Category:Presumed GFDL images it states there are 473 files that fall into this category, but if you actually count the number of images there are only 365 (197 on page 1 and 168 on page 2); where are the missing 108 files? I am sure its not earth shattering and likely has a very reasonable answer, but I really know nothing about categories here on WP. Thanks.--Jordan 1972 (talk) 01:59, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure that they are not in a subcategory within the category itself? Also, which category is it? — neuro^(talk) 11:16, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed [[Category:Presumed GFDL images]]to[[:Category:Presumed GFDL images]] in the post by Jordan 1972. The former adds the page to the category. The latter creates a link to it. This issue has been reported before at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 51#Problems with category page counts?. I don't know the cause. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First, thanks for the fix of the category link -- and yeah it has been discussed, and very recently in the link you provided and in the link in the link. The fact it came up three times in three weeks is very interesting to me. At this point, I won't worry about it, I just figured there were 100+ images hidden somewhere that could use some attention. Thanks also for the tip on the ":" for categories; I knew it for images. --Jordan 1972 (talk) 13:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fellow Wikipedians;

It has come to my attention that the captchas we have for account registration are not utilizable by the blind. While we have a account creation group, this is a major inconvenience for blind potential users and many might just give up and leave. I am suggesting that we add a audible captcha or work towards adding one. If this is not possible, maybe we could add a note to that effect to the create account page, apologizing for the inconvenience and asking blind users to email the Account Creation Group. Geoff Plourde (talk) 03:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Such a note already exists: 'Unable to see the image? An administrator can create an account for you.' Algebraist 04:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe that administrators should have to create accounts for blind people. It would appear to be unfair to an otherwise good contributor to force him/her to wait for assistance. Also, this would be a PR shiny. Geoff Plourde (talk) 01:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

An audible CAPTCHA may indeed be nice, if we could generate the requisite audio clips. — Werdna • talk 06:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've always wondered - don't audible CAPCHAs defeat the whole point? I know that they do something with background noise... but surely it is much easier for a bot to get through than a standard one? As a programmer, I am utterly stumped as to how a well coded bot could not get through an audible CAPTCHA. I don't really see what is wrong with ACC, as an account creator we get most accounts dealt with within about an hour or so of them being requested. — neuro^(talk) 11:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"The whole point" is simply to reduce the number of non-human accounts created. Most spambots do not have the facilities required to successfully complete an audio captcha (not least because it is less effort to simply do a better job at visual ones), thus serving the captcha's purpose just fine. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, audible CAPTCHAs are quite hard to hack. Its not just background noise, they 'warp' the sound, add pauses, and do lots of other things. Try using the audible CAPTCHA when you create an account on Gmail and you'll see what I mean. ManishEarth^{Talk - Stalk} 13:09, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I must have been on a site with an outdated build, then, because I distinctly remember it simply being audio files combined to read a number. Hm. — neuro^(talk) 14:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. Just as with image captchas, it depends on the quality of the implementation. As recently as May 2008 gmail's audio captcha was extremely weak. Anomie⚔ 17:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If an audio captcha system already exist that could be implemented in WP then it would be a small effort to include that as an alternative to visual captchas. Agree that audio captchas would be at least as hard to crack as the visual ones, but it would depend on the implementation of course. If it turns out to be too weak, it would be even easier to disable it until fixed. I can't see any downside to it?
—Apis (talk) 02:45, 21 November 2008 (UTC

Maybe this is interesting for the discussion as well: http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Mediawiki_and_Accessibility#CAPTCHA -- Lalue (talk) 08:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So the extension is already available, all we need to do is have it implemented. Geoff Plourde (talk) 18:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just curious if someone has ever thought of changing the distribution used by the Random Article link. I love using this to serendipitously find interesting articles, but a disproportionate number of articles are about geographic locations, etc. It would be neat if there was some type of Random Article link that picked based on a weighted distribution, like how often the page is viewed, how long it is, or how often it has been edited. That would probably make it more likely to get interesting articles (although interesting is subjective). Thanks bdodson (talk) 05:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's more geographic articles than any other kind, hence why they come back more often. There was a bot discussion sometime back about creating (literally) millions of these geographical articles. Lugnuts (talk) 09:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think bdodson is aware of why geographical articles come up more often than most, but that doesn't answer the question. Maybe first randomly selecting a top-level category and only then randomly picking an article within would work? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:27, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It might be a good idea to check whether Random Article really does return a disproportionate number of articles are about geographic locations. I just tried Random Article 6 times running, and got zero geography articles. OTOH some readers may prefer a random selection within specified categories. If so, an extension of Chris Cunningham (not at work)'s proposal might be good: a "totally random" option and a "pick a category" option.

Do we have any poll mechanism for researching users' thoughts on issues like this and other possible improvements to WP as a whole?--Philcha (talk) 12:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As of a year and a half ago, about 10% of Wikipedia's articles were about geographic locations. It's not too unlikely that you'll hit "random article" ten times and get ten locations. Far more likely is that you'll hit it ten times and get ten biographies, since those made up 30% of Wikipedia's content. --Carnildo (talk) 21:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I recently wrote a script that takes you to a random link on any page. It's useful for sampling random FeaturedorGood Articles, or for randomly diffusing through Wikipedia. Comments and suggestions are welcome, Proteins (talk) 03:44, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you don't want a random article button, but an interesting article button. That's a whole different kettle of fish, and there are several possible avenues to explore in deciding how to create such a feature... but alas, we don't have one currently. :( --brion (talk) 16:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just hit Special:Random six times, and got Singyahi Maidan, Kotorydz, Kachin Theological College, Aphelenchoides fragariae, Castle Roogna, and United States men's national water polo team (in that order). Given the proportionate number of geography articles we have, I think that's an appropriate spread. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:25, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear friends,

   We are conducting a study on the motivation of the knowledge sharing on Wikipedia. 

Your experience of the read from and write to Wikipedia is very important to the design and management of this knowledge platform. The survey will take about three minutes. We deeply appreciate your help on answering the following questions.

   After the survey is done, we will randomly select twenty persons and present them with USB 2GB Flash Drives. 

Besides, with each valid questionnaire, we will donate US $1 dollar to the Wikimedia Foundation. The result of this survey is analyzed in an anonymous way and is only regarded as the academic use. Please feel free to fill out the questionnaire. Thanks again for your time and valuable input.

May happiness and health be with you everyday!

★ On-line Questionnaire: http://140.119.19.152:8080/wiki/

Shari S. C. Shang

Eldon Y. Li

Professor,

Department of Management Information Systems,

National Chengchi University

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 吳雅玲 (talk • contribs) 13:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Answered, this isn't the appropriate section though. — neuro^(talk) 14:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Boo! --NE2 16:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There have been a few recent complaints at the Help Desk about the quality of resized GIF images; this seems to be a recent phenomenon. Has something been disabled for performance? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't remember where I read it, but GIF resizing was disabled, because large animated gifs were taking down the server that does the thumbnailing. The developers thought it would be less obtrusive to temporarily disable GIF resizing, so until they have found the cause and a way around it, it is disabled. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For non-animated images, try using PNG - it was designed to replace GIF and has a number of technical advantages over it (aside from thumbnailing properly). —Remember the dot ^(talk) 06:42, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I've been thinking that the Wikiproject assessment tables aren't as helpful as they could be since for example you can't click on the 3 in the Unnassessed Mid importance here and find out what articles are in that intersection. I also tried searching for talk pages in the two categories and got no results. I tried searching for incategory:"Low-importance education articles" incategory:"Unassessed education articles" in article talk pages with this search

Two questions. 1) Did I make a simple mistake and that's why I got no results? 2) What would it take for all of these Wikiproject summary tables to link to the appropriate search results? This would be really helpful in identifying articles to work on. Thanks. - Taxman ^Talk 15:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was just thinking exactly the same thing! it would be incredibly useful in prioritizing work. DuncanHill (talk) 15:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is in the works, see User:WP 1.0 bot/Second generation. Happy‑melon 18:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, that will be good news when that is finished, but do you have any idea why the category intersection search I tried doesn't work? It seems to work for articles but not talk pages. It seems the mediawiki category search doesn't work when categories are added by a template. Is that worth filing a bug? - Taxman ^Talk 20:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The page seems a bit redundantly long. Can some of the stats maybe be tabled side by side (kind of like Special:SpecialPages)?

Also, aren't many stats using {{NUMBERINGROUP}} useless? Like, who cares about experimental user group uploader and about the 1 user it contains? And worse than that... why the ones that are just 0? This is supposed to be stats for the public... now it *may* be interested in the number of admins or such, maybe not so much about the crats, but certainly not the obsolete empty groups. -- Mentisock 17:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This page is dynamically created by the software, as such it has no idea which statistics people "care about" or even what each statistic means. They are just numbers from log tables that it is instructed to put onto the page in a sensible order. Remember that MediaWiki, the software which runs wikipedia, is also used to run thousands of websites that have a huge range of purposes; on some of those sites, the number of users in each category might be vitally important. It's not a simple as saying that because en.wiki doesn't care about a particular statistic, it should be removed. Happy‑melon 18:55, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In what possible cases could stats be vital? O_o -- Mentisock 10:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Imagine a site which takes a paper role-playing game online; the transparency and accountability of a wiki is ideally suited to keeping track of movements and activities in such a game. Pages in namespaces could represent events or objects in the game; users in various groups could represent players in various factions or with particular skills. On a wiki like this, accurate numbers for the number of users in a group and pages in a namespace are utterly invaluable to the game. This is just one example: MediaWiki is such a powerful and flexible platform for website development that the sky really is the limit for possible applications. Happy‑melon 11:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, well, it's still arguably not absolutely 'vitally important'... besides, they can generate them manually on a more suitable page maybe, as well. WP isn't an RPG though... or is it? :-p -- Mentisock 12:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course we're not an rpg site, the point is that regardless of how the statistics are generated and where they are displayed, they will be important to some users of MediaWiki. It is therefore inappropriate for us on en.wiki, just because we are the most prominent users of MediaWiki, to cause extra work for those other users to suit our own style preferences. We're far and away the biggest kid in the playground; we must be careful not to turn into the school bully. Happy‑melon 16:56, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean that nobody else does either... EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're honestly interested in how many stewards there are on en.wiki? :-p -- Mentisock 19:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, because I know how many local stewards there are without looking. However, I also realize that it's just a "grab every usergroup and spit out the number of people in each" type of page. The number of users, oversighters, articles, et al? Yes, that is interesting. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:00, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly. I'm just saying that the special page could be tidied up more. -- Mentisock 09:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If I edit a page of a certain length that has a {{reflist}} in it, that edit makes the categories disappear, even though the coding for the categories is still there. Any idea what is causing this? It just happened to me on Walden Galleria. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 03:36, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not seeing that when I look through the diffs; all categories are still visible at the bottom of each diff. Nor do I see the problem when I look at prior revisions of the page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Show us a diff. A reference tag might not have been closed, so everything after that was placed in the reference. Gary King (talk) 19:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this possible? It seems like more of an elegant solution than having the template in the sandbox for newbies to mistakenly delete and/or mess with every few hours.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 06:03, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not allowing people to edit stuff in the sandbox sort of defeats the entire purpose of having a sandbox... besides, it isn't part of the site interface; we could just make it a template and fully-protect it if we wanted to prevent it from being edited. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the post is about preventing users from messing with Template:Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)onWikipedia:Sandbox. The template page is protected so it cannot be changed by non-administrators, but they can remove it from the sandbox (and often do). As far as I know, the software currently gives no good way to avoid that. It would be possible to let Wikipedia:Sandbox be protected and transclude an editable sandbox but I don't think that would be good. A bot periodically restores the header [2] if it has been removed and continuing with that seems better to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the OP was suggesting we should have an editnotice for the sandbox? If so, we already have one. Algebraist 22:07, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See what Gurch said. The idea is to get the header we currently use out of the edit window with it still on the page, with edits appearing below it, or onto the edit page replacing that editnotice. Comment here also. Clark89 (talk) 23:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A noncomplianat mirror refuses to respond to any emails, and has ignored a DMTF takedown notice. I notified Jimbo, who directed me to Mike Godwin. He, in turn, suggested that we shut them down technically. It appears that they use ReflectionScript, although I don't know how to stop them from accessing Wikipedia with it. It was suggested that I begin a Village Pump discussion, so I have. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 16:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean a DTMF take-down notice? BEEP BEEP BEEEP! — Werdna • talk 02:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, whatever - I sent one. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 17:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would think, as a starting point, we should find out bugs in the script and then do someone to the Wikipedia interface to make the mirror break. Does anyone know how this could be done? I think the devs added the +\ to edittokens to break crappy proxies, can we find something that will have the same effect on ReflectionScript? Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 02:29, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add a button to the toolbar.: ie. the toolbar when you edit a page. (see images bellow)

.........

This button would open up (like a flash button) and allow you to chose what colour of text you would like to insert. How can I add this for just my account? monobook.js perhaps? What if we wanted to do this for everyone's account? --CyclePat (talk) 17:12, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Considering that we don't really use colored text anywhere in the encyclopedia itself (and most all those tools are for editing the encyclopedia), I don't think there will ever be a button for color. Kinda glad about that; I don't want Wikipedia talk pages to devolve into the average web forum with random colors everywhere... EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely not; anything that can't be emphasised enough with regular text, italics and bold, doesn't deserve to be heard. Of course no one can stop you adding it to your own edit toolbar, but be aware that many people will not particularly appreciate you using it extensively. Happy‑melon 18:20, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't think of any use for font colors in an article, but I use them to highlight content reviews and similar discussions. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:29, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Found-out how to add it to my own toolbar. In fact here's an image of the button (ie.:) (See my discussion about buttons for more details). Best regards. Thank you for your concerns regarding the unrelated and "un-written" wikipedia rules on users preferences or in this case, lack thereof interest, for coloured text or maybe even Big, bold, italic and/or UPPER CASE text.(sarcastically) --CyclePat (talk) 19:05, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Folks, I need the assistance of someone who knows more about template coding than I do (which means pretty much anyone). At the moment {{Infobox Rowing Club}} does not appear to contain the appropriate coding to enable a resized display of the club's emblem image. When I tried to add the club's emblem to the ibox I added to Agecroft Rowing Club, it was scaled up way too large causing jaggies and other distortion. Would someone please take a look at the template and suggest/implement the appropriate coding? Thanks.  – ukexpat (talk) 17:14, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a parameter called Emblemsize which, when defined, overrides the default 200px. Algebraist 18:56, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you that's perfect! – ukexpat (talk) 19:18, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am currently trying to customise my signature but am encountering technical difficulties. I want my signature to look like this:

It Is Me Here ^{t / c}

... but when I paste the relevant code - '''[[User:It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#006600;">It Is Me Here</span>]]''' <sup>'''[[User_talk:It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#CC6600;">t</span>]] / [[Special:Contributions/It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#CC6600;">c</span>]]</sup> - into the box in my Preferences page, and then type ~~~~ on a page, it renders it in the following way:

<span style="font-family:Arial">'''[[User:It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#006600;">It Is Me Here</span>]]''' <sup>'''[[User_talk:It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#CC6600;">t</span>]] / [[Special:Contributions/It Is Me Here|<span style="color:#CC6600;" (talk)

Please help! It Is Me Here (talk) 20:30, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: it turns out that I had needed to tick the "raw signatures" box and close a few tags. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 20:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to create a new template for referencing, but am getting the error Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "{"

Current source:

{{#ifexpr: {{{1}}}>0|[http://www.tki.org.nz/e/schools/display_school_info.php?school_id={{{1}}} Te Kete Ipurangi schools database: {{{2}}}]|[http://www.tki.org.nz/e/schools/index.php Te Kete Ipurangi schools database]}}<noinclude>{{Documentation}}[[Category:New Zealand specific source templates|TKI]]</noinclude>

What have I done wrong? An alternative logic would be to force the use of parameter 1 by displaying a nice red error message if it is missing. dramatic (talk) 21:49, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That source should work fine as long as the parameter 1 is defined. If 1 is not defined, it'll break. If the purpose of the #ifexpr is to check whether or not 1 is defined, you should replace it with #if:{{{1|}}}. Algebraist 22:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes— it should work properly when used. To keep it from looking ugly on the template page, enclose it in <includeonly>...</includeonly>. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:03, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - done and documented at {{TKI}} dramatic (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At present, the template will not function as documented: it will return an expression error if {{{1}}} is undefined. As I said, for this purpose, you should use #if. Algebraist 22:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any chance to have TOC without numerals, so just titles of chapters? --Janezdrilc (talk) 21:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Look in Category:TOC templates. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am afraid there is no such example. All templates include __NOTOC__ within the codes, but I need toc, only without numerals ahead of titles. I would actually need this in Wikisource. Thanks anyway for helping me. --Janezdrilc (talk) 21:11, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1) Does the article count include redirects? (A redirect might be considered a link.) And, by the way, if you answer this, please tell me how you knew.

2) I read somewhere that all wikipedia articles are numbered. Can I access the list of numbers and then retreive an article using its number? -- User:La la ooh, 20 November —Preceding undated comment was added at 00:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC).[reply]

1) As it says on Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia in the "data set" section, redirects are not counted.

2) Articles are numbered two different ways, one a simple indexing, and the other designed for the "random article" feature. You can't access either of them, and there's not really any use for doing so.

--Carnildo (talk) 03:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I have no idea what's up with this; whether its just me or everybody. Somehow or other, the tabs (article/discussion/edit this page/history etc) have been replaced by shorter versions (article/talk/edit/history). I'm confident that this is reversible as I when I load a page the originals pop up, and then switch to the shorter version. I preferred it with the extended version; is there a way I can get this back? -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 03:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

THe long versions are there for me... Try purging your cache (Click on the link or press Shift+refresh in Firefox) ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 06:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No change. Would it be something in preferences? I looked but could not find anything. -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 06:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you using any gadgets? If so, try disabling them one at a time to find the one doing it (theoretically). Also, whatever you have at User:The dark lord trombonator/monobook.js is just wrong, you should blank that (that is a bit of CSS and importing of a non-existing unprotected page). --Splarka (rant) 08:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you change your default language setting? I know that the tab labels are different in the British English version. – ukexpat (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks guys, but Splaka takes the cake. It was my gadget version of friendly, which I have since disabled since I never used it. Also thanks for the heads-up about the potential security hazard in that page that passed for a monobook (seriously, I have no idea what was even meant to be happening in there!) -- THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 20:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Revision history looses alignment after username of the editor, due to length of user name. Some style tag to make sure that (25,910 bytes) (Edit Summary here) come exactly one below another. Revison history page would look far tidier if done so.

Example current:

• (cur) (last) 03:53, 21 November 2008 Raise lkblr (Talk | contribs) (25,910 bytes) (→Ulsoor lake photo) (undo)
• (cur) (last) 22:37, 20 November 2008 Lihaas (Talk | contribs) (25,663 bytes) (→The name-change debate, again) (undo)

Example suggested:

• (cur) (last) 03:53, 21 November 2008 Raise lkblr (Talk | contribs) (25,910 bytes) (→Ulsoor lake photo) (undo)
• (cur) (last) 22:37, 20 November 2008 Lihaas (Talk | contribs) [---] (25,663 bytes) (→The name-change debate, again) (undo)

If that byte info come exactly below one another, notice [---] is blank space in above example so that "bytes" come exactly one below another, the history page will become tidy and more legible. Give your suggestions! Raise lkblr (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Span style=minwidth:150px UserName(talk|contribs) /span - Spanning username with minimum width would be one good solution. Raise lkblr (talk) 04:37, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can't just give it a minimum width; it'd still break whenever one line was longer than the other. Basically, the entire history layout would have to be converted into a table, something which is much, much grander than what you may have initially thought you were suggesting. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply, that table would tidy up overflowed edit summaries too. But some user names are too long, this has to be taken into consideration. Raise lkblr (talk) 10:15, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You could try adding something like this to your monobook.css or other skin-specific CSS file. This seems to work for me in FF3, anyway.

#pagehistory .mw-userlink {
    width:10ex;
    display:inline-block;
    vertical-align:top;
    white-space:nowrap;
    overflow:hidden;
}

"width:10ex" and "display:inline-block" tell the browser to use a specific width box to contain the username, and "vertical-align:top" tells it to align the box with the top of the containing box (the default, baseline, makes it appear superscripted). "white-space:nowrap" tells it to not wrap lines, and "overflow:hidden" tells it to not let the rest of the username flop out of the box. Anomie⚔ 12:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any way of organizing your watchlist by adding different watch categories, which youi can easily show or hide. For example, if you are patrolling heavily vandalized pages, then you don't want the edits cluttering up your watchlist. I'm looking for a feature which allows you to add watch pages with categories. Is this possible? Thanks, ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 06:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One of the watchlist scripts at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts#Watchlist may help, or if you use Firefox and Greasemonkey - Wikipedia:Tools/Greasemonkey user scripts#Misc. – ukexpat (talk) 16:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you have ticked the box for an edit tab for lead section editing (Special:Preferences > Gadgets > User interface gadgets--The box:"Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page"), and go to this page: Virus, then thelead section edit link covers the semi-protected padlock link. Could an admin fix the positioning? Thank you, ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 06:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think thats a screen resolution problem. I don't see an overlap when viewing at 1280x1024. In any event I don't think it's an admin fix, it would have to be a mediawiki software fix or an edit to the default .css. – ukexpat (talk) 15:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone looking into the GIF scaling problems? Anyone know if/when this will be fixed? It's making quite a few articles look like a dog's dinner, so I'd hate for it to be ignored. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.127.116 (talk) 14:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do concur that scaled GIF images look like crap now. I also see why; the GIFs are no longer scaled(!) All GIF images now have the original image as the source. This can get quite problematic for large images. — Edokter • Talk • 15:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See #GIF resizing. This Bugzilla report may be related.[3] --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

May I recommend a different web browser? I know Opera does high-quality image resizing. --Carnildo (talk) 23:02, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am interested in Semantic Wikipedia, but I can't seem to find any concrete information anywhere other than proposal from a few years ago. Are there any discussions about it? Are upper levels of the foundation considering using the Semantic Mediawiki extension in the near future? If not, what are the reservations? Is there some list of things they want to be implemented? Is there anything we can do while waiting, like preparing the ontology lists, writing automation bots etc.? So in short, is there a coordinated effort somewhere in Wikipedia, if not, why not? -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈ^ʝɘɖı 20:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's on our list to consider, but we're a bit leery by default -- performance and markup complexity implications need to be considered. We may end up doing something that's a little more limited but still provides many of the neat extras. --brion (talk) 21:07, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think extra Semantic MediaWiki markup is simple enough, i can't imagine how simpler it can be. If editors can deal with brackets they can handle those extra semicolons as well. But I certainly understand that there can be performance issues. May be we can start by using their markup but not do any realtime processing, reasoning, search etc. instead export rdf offline. When the performance becomes good enough we can turn on other features as well. -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈ^ʝɘɖı 03:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey everyone, the file size upload limit has been raised to 100MB by Brion Vibber. See here and here for the mailing list posts. Also, files uploaded are on new file servers now. Techman224^Talk 01:22, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]