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Hi. Can you possibly tell me the best way to leave Misplaced Pages? I followed and asked an administrator to delete my user and talk pages. How does one write a password that can never be broken? Sorry if this is a FAQ. I do see it is not possible to delete an account nor do I wish to erase all that. Thank you. -] (]) 03:06, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi. Can you possibly tell me the best way to leave Misplaced Pages? I followed and asked an administrator to delete my user and talk pages. How does one write a password that can never be broken? Sorry if this is a FAQ. I do see it is not possible to delete an account nor do I wish to erase all that. Thank you. -] (]) 03:06, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
:Also, should I ask this question separately at Wikiquote, Wikinews, and Wikimedia Commons for those three accounts? -] (]) 03:27, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Misplaced Pages. 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).
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.
If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.
What do I do when there are tildes in a link? It messes up the link, inserting my usertag.
Searching wiki markup?
Can someone search en.wp, or their copy of the 2008-03-01 dump, for a list of articles with {{DEFAULTSORT:X* or {{DEFAULTSORT|X* ? -- Jeandré, 2008-03-07t12:57z
Java applets
When I attempted to play a sound sample, I got a scary message from my browser (Firefox, running under Ubuntu) about somebody wanting to run an untrusted applet. I clicked "cancel" and tried the button again -- this time it played, wasn't clear whether it had anything to do with an applet. A little detective work suggests the applet it's talking about is "cortado.jar", hosted on upload.wikimedia.org. I don't think the jar file was ever executed on my system (I think it was the totem plugin instead, which I reasonably trust), but it's a little disconcerting.
What concerns me here is whether people can just upload these Java files the same way they upload image files. Can they? I couldn't find a way to do it, but I also don't know where this jar file comes from. Can anyone tell me whether these files are the work of Wikimedia developers or of J Random Hacker? --Trovatore (talk) 09:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
The jar file is an applet that is capable of playing back ogg media files (It is called Cortado). The jar is hosted on upload.wikimedia.org, but in a section where only high-level and trusted developers of the Foundation can change it. The documentation on this seems a bit outdated, but it is located here Misplaced Pages:Media_help. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Code signing on Java applets is only required for those that access the raw system, which this does not. You would have to have very unusual security settings for it to complain about an unsigned applet that's completely sandboxed.
Note that the reason the applet's .jar file is on upload.wikimedia.org is precisely because of Java's security sandboxing; it needs to be able to load the media files there, and the sandbox prevents it from accessing files from anywhere else. Applets cannot be uploaded through the wikis by anyone else; it's put and maintained there by our server administrators. --brion (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, my browser did complain, and I don't think it's all that unusual. Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 running under Ubuntu 7.10; I haven't made any special security tweaks to the browser that I recall. What it said was that the classpath security code had not been finished, so maybe it was unable to detect that the applet was sandboxed. --Trovatore (talk) 17:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Ah, well your problem appears to be that you've installed a wildly unsafe Java plugin on your computer -- the GCJ-based Java applet plugin has no security sandboxing, so should really *not* be used on the general internet. This would not have been installed by default (it's certainly not there on my Ubuntu 7.10 install); unless you need it elsewhere I strongly recommend uninstalling it.
Note that Ubuntu 7.10 does by default include native browser plugins for playing the Ogg Vorbis and Theora media files that we host. You can select the native player (which might show up not-quite-correctly as "QuickTime" in the player option lists), and based on a saved browser cookie it'll pick that instead of the Java player in future. --brion (talk) 17:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Automated process to update images across all Wikimedia projects?
We are having a bit of a debate on the AN hereand it's clear that there is some confusion as to how the autoblocker deals with logged in users. I thought that it no longer blocked logged in users, but others think is does in some circumstances. WP:Autoblock is no help as it's aimed at blocked users. I cannot find a similar page aimed at admins. Could somone who actually knows how it works comment please. Theresa Knott | The otter sank15:33, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, autoblocks effectively hardblock the last IP(s) used by the account that is blocked. So accounts that use that IP will be unable to edit for the duration of the autoblock (about a day, I think) unless it is lifted. I'm not entirely sure what happens if someone is actually already signed in to their account at the moment the autoblock happens, if that is what you are asking, but I doubt those are treated differently. There are two solutions to someone who uses IPs that are are frequently the subject of autoblocks:
Independently softblock the IP. As I understand it, softblocked IPs aren't affected by autoblocks and those using them can edit without being affected by them. The downside is that if someone already has a load of socks, they can then edit from that IP using those socks in sequence with impunity - autoblocks were after all designed to stop that very occurrence. It would take a checkuser to detect that.
Administrator accounts are unaffected by autoblocks - we can edit even from a hardblocked IP due to a feature called "IP-block exempt". There has been strong support for making "IP-block exempt" individually assignable to any user - see Misplaced Pages:IP block exemption. If implemented by the devs, it would allow us to give this right to those frequently caught by autoblocks or those who have good reasons for wishing to use proxies - e.g. editing from China.
The MediaWiki software disallows the creation of pages with certain titles that are liable to abuse or difficult to parse; one of these is ]. (Notice that the link isn't parsed, even though I didn't escape it.) However, an entry for this title appears nonetheless to exist in the enwiki database. If you go to Special:WhatLinksHere/Slashdot&limit=50&from=390335&back=245947, the tenth item (as of this writing) is a link to ]. If you click on that link, you get taken to a "Bad Title" error page (even though the whatlinkshere page indicates that you should get redirected to Slashdot. Even odder, if you look at Special:Prefixindex//, the second entry in the first column (or the 4th overall) is also a link to ], but if you click on this one it is interpreted as /, which redirects to Slash (punctuation). So we have an entry in the database for a page that can't be accessed, can't be edited, and is displayed inconsistently on different special pages. I suspect this is going to take some manual mucking with the database tables to fix! --Russ(talk)22:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
But seriously, this is an issue for users of the api.php interface. If a query (for example, to generator=allpages) returns ] as one of the pages in the response, and the user then uses that result to form a new query that includes "/." in the titles= parameter, the new query will throw a Bad Title error. And that means that information about all the other titles in the query will be lost. --Russ(talk)09:52, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
I can confirm that the API does return pageid 414115, title "/.", in the result list when asked to generate the list of backlinks of Slashdot. Are you suggesting the API should filter these out? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
which appears to be a bot edit... but it was actually a self reversion of the previous edit from minutes before.
The ip has already been blocked for a week, but I'm wondering if this 'impersonation' of a bot is a warnable offense, and if so: what warning? Geoff Riley (talk) 21:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Interesting question. I'm not sure, however, how the IP could mark the edit as a bot edit. Minor edits have a tick box, but as far as I know there is no corresponding box for a non-bot account to mark an edit as a bot edit...without wishing to question you, are you absolutely sure you're reading the watchlist correctly? GB 21:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Add the page to your watchlist and you’ll see it too. IPs don’t even have a minor checkbox. This is probably an issue for Village Pump (technical). —Travis 21:41, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, I'll get my knife and fork and tuck into a big helping of humble pie! Very strange indeed...whilst I'm not the most technically minded of people, is it perhaps possible that the bot wasn't logged in at the time...? GB 21:43, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I was just about to say that as well. Probably either a bug in the software or the IP hacked into marking it as a bot edit somehow using the URL or some foreign editing thing (perhaps?). jj137(talk) 21:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it's definitely as I depicted it above: at first I skipped over it because I generally ignore bot edits, but the fact that it was an IP drew my eye back to look again. If someone has found a way to mark vandalism as a bot edit then we'll have even more to examine in the chase. I'll wander over to the VPT and see if there's anyone interested. Thanks for the suggestion. Geoff Riley (talk) 21:48, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
There is definitely something wrong somewhere - I've taken a screen-dump of the result in case it's required for future evidence, as it won't be seen next time the page is edited. Let me know if you need it. — Tivedshambo (t/c) 22:41, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
That is used to hide mass rollbacks from RC, it doesn't set the user's contributions to be bot edits, and AFAIK it only works with rollback. Mr.Z-man17:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
How do you know that? They can't be seen on the watchlist anymore, since they aren't "top" edits, and they're impossible to find in recent changes. – FISDOF922:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Never mind. I found the option in preferences. The first two links you gave were marked as bot edits because an admin reverted them with the bot option. I don't know about the last two, though. – FISDOF922:42, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I think I've figured it out. When an administrator uses rollback with the bot option turned on, both the revert and the reverted edits are marked as bot edits. Since the edits to November 3 were self-reverted, when an admin attempted rollback, no edit was made but the "reverted" edits were still marked as bot edits. – FISDOF922:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
infoboxes
Can someone please tell me how to create an infobox without using a template. I am creating a wiki (mediawiki based) for my work and the only information i can find is about utilizing the templates that are already made. I need a wiki page that really explains how to create an infobox and that breaks down the markup. I have already looked at the existing pages on wikipedia.
Thank you!
Infoboxes are usually just tables, see Help:Infobox#Basic Infobox for the basic markup usually used in an infobox or Help:Table for more details about the markup for tables. They're generally turned into templates here so the same style of infobox can be easily reused on multiple articles. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Template coding help
Can someone please help clean up Template:US county navigation box? The box is set up so that one lists the name of the county seat (for example, for {{Logan County, Ohio}}, simply type "Bellefontaine") in order to get it to link to it. However, in some counties, the county seats have more complex names. For example, {{Quitman County, Georgia}} displays the county seat as "Georgetown, Quitman County"; it would be more desirable to display as "Georgetown", but if we put in "Georgetown" in the template, it's a disambiguation page. Similarly, {{Jefferson County, New York}} has its county seat listed as "Watertown (city)". Of course the county seat isn't the surrounding town of Watertown (see Administrative divisions of New York for technicalities), but that's the way we have to list it. Therefore, could someone write a code fix to make it so that only the first part of the name displays (similar to how typing ] results in Bellefontaine)? Someone already wrote one, but it didn't work, although I don't know if it was poorly written or if I put it in the code wrongly. I know that the template is a protected template; but I'm an administrator, so if you're a non-admin and write the proper code, tell me and I'll try it. Thanks much! Nyttend (talk) 00:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
How many counties have this problem? Are you looking for a sort of magical fix (ala your Bellefontaine example)? Or is it acceptable if some county templates have to be changed? The simplest solution would be to add a "seatname" parameter so that for Jefferson county the seat would be "Watertown (city)" for linking but the seatname would be "Watertown" for display. If that's an acceptable solution I'd be happy to code the change to Template:US county navigation box - and to test it via Special:ExpandTemplates first. Sbowers3 (talk) 11:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
A new parameter for footnotes
(Apologies if this has been posted before, but technical input is still needed - JB)
At Misplaced Pages talk:Footnotes#Page number support, a proposed change to the footnotes system is being discussed, to add a new parameter to footnotes that could be used for specifying page numbers or possibly notes. The editor who has coded up the change has asked other editors to review the coding before this is implemented.
The new feature opens the possibility of eliminating the two-section Harvard-style footnoting now appearing in many articles, making it much easier for readers to jump back and forth from a source to the article. More involvement of interested/knowledgeable editors would be welcomed. -- John Broughton(♫♫)16:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Deleted archive page
I just had a Speedy Delete put on an Archive page I made: (User talk:Mattisse/Archive 16) It was explained to me that parentheses are not allowed in archive pages. The problem is that I do not know how the parentheses got there, as they are not in the code generating the archive. How does that happen? (I notice another archive has a parentheses but was not given a speedy delete.) What do do? Thanks! Mattisse (Talk) 16:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The parentheses meant that the page was created in the article namespace rather than the User talk namespace, which is why it was nominated for deletion (and why I have deleted it). Pass on how it got there. If there are other archive pages in the article namespace, please let me or someone else know and they can be moved and resulting redirects deleted. Thanks, mattbr17:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I do not know how it got there and barely know what you are talking about, so I am not a good person to pass anything on. I asked the question here because I don't know. Thanks, Mattisse (Talk) 19:03, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant 'pass' as in 'I don't know the answer'. After some digging, it appears you created User talk:Mattisse/Archive 15 in October 2007 with the text ], which created a link to (User talk:Mattisse/Archive 16). This page ( (User talk:Mattisse/Archive_16) ) is in the article namespace because the software does not recognise it as having one of the defined prefixes for a namespace, such as Misplaced Pages: or User talk:, because it has the prefix (User talk: (with a '(' at the beginning). Misplaced Pages:Namespace has more details about namespaces. mattbr19:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
A suggestion about Misplaced Pages software: format of wikilinks
Currently, wikilinks can be in these two formats:
] :: link to page xxx, display xxx
] :: link to page xxx, display yyy
]zzz :: link to page xxx, display xxxzzz
]zzz :: link to page xxx, display yyyzzz
It would be useful if this form could also be allowed:
This would make a bit of a mess of inline image tags when they are converted to links (such as when they are blocked by the image blacklist. Does it solve any problems other than requiring a few extra characters be typed? Happy‑melon17:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The code ] displays as A caption when inlined, and "thumb|right|A caption" when "commented out" with a colon or trapped by the image blacklist. While the link is admittedly confusing, at least the intended image can be easily found by clicking on the link (or just hovering). Under your system, the link would display as Image:Example.pngright, which is extremely confusing, does not link to a valid image, and is difficult to accurately decipher without viewing the wikitext. Happy‑melon17:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I like your idea, Anthony.
How about if Anthony's suggestions would apply to all links except links beginning with "Image:"?
I would prefer to have:
] :: link to page xxxyyy, display yyy
(instead of display xxx as Anthony suggests), so that you could say things like ] or ] instead of ] and ]. Things like these come up all the time. I'm not sure I can think of any example where I'd want to display xxx; but if so, maybe somebody can come up with an alternate syntax. --Coppertwig (talk) 17:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Try ]. It substitutes that for ] when you save. All of the suggestions are pretty syntactic sugar, but it'll likely serve to make wikitext more unreadable and more unapproachable for some editors and a majority of those interested in contributing. In addition, they destroy the invariant of having the left-most parameter always be the page that you're linking to. Gracenotes § 18:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Have to agree with the above - it's overloading something that goes away from common usage. That said, there's nothing stopping anyone from making a template variation on this, for example, it could be {{ll|xxx|yyy|zzz}} to give ] which is minimal extra cost to the software and only adds 3 characters. (This is rather trivial to make, give me a shout if you think you want this) --MASEM18:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I was about to say that, but Gracenotes got here first; I agree with all the points. This edit is not useless, however, because Coppertwig has made a typo, which I have taken the liberty to correct (it was in the example—nothing to do with language). Interesting term, by the way, "syntactic sugar"... Waltham, The Duke of18:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I am confused by Masem's response; wouldn't it require a software modification for a change in the way links work to be possible, in templates or not? In any case, double standards is something I do not believe would be helpful; creating confusion with little to no benefits is surely something undesirable. Waltham, The Duke of19:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
A template version of the approach would not require any software changes - it is just would spell out the long version of what the proposed addition is looking looking to do. It's a very simple template to make. --MASEM13:53, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
(outdenting) It is pretty common to want to display a link without the namespace qualifier, e.g. ] or ]. So a variation of the original suggestion would be ] would be linked to xxx:yyy but display as yyy. The rule might be if the first part ends with a colon, the link is both parts. Afterall, a link that is just "xxx:" is meaningless so the only way to make it meaningful is to add the second part to it. Sbowers3 (talk) 19:42, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The main use would be in the many cases where a page's name is long and is the first part of related words, plus a bit. For example, linking from "reprocessed" to reprocessing as ].
By my suggested rules the form ] would mean the same as ]zzz and therefore would be redundant, so ] could be given the meaning "display zzz, link to xxxzzz". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Again, try ]. It substitutes the phrase. Implementing this feature, unfortunately, would break several pieces of software, not the least of which is AWB. Gracenotes § 23:15, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
It may be enough to allow ] for "link to xxxyyy, display xxx"; if so, "link to xxxyyy, display xxxzzz" could be done by ]zzz , e.g. ]ed . Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
For the 1 to 10 percent of editors who do a lot of these types of wikilinks, having a more complicated syntax could reduce the amount of typing they do. For the other 90+%, you're proposing a further complication of the syntax (it's hard enough for a newcomer to understand templates, tables, piped links, and footnotes as is), making editing of Misplaced Pages even more difficult. Given that it's fairly easy, these days, to copy and paste text strings, I really think we don't need to further shift wikitext in favor of very experienced editors. We already have enough challenges in getting new, constructive editors for the project. -- John Broughton(♫♫)14:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Totally agree. It is already bad enough that they get screwed by the syntactical difference between internal and external links. We should make Misplaced Pages easier to edit, not harder. —Ian Spackman (talk) 14:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I shall make a parallel: light travels through the fastest route, not through the shortest one. A change like the one proposed here would have editors use less characters, but would actually delay the editing process. I do not believe this is to Misplaced Pages's benefit, and I prefer to think that this is unintended by the proposal's originator as well. Waltham, The Duke of16:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Given that already, as well as the standard case "] = link to xxx, display yyy", there is the special case "] = link to xxx:yyy, display yyy", and the "]" case, adding "] = link to xxxyyy, display xxx" does not seem complicated to me. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Regarding the special case "] = link to xxx:yyy, display yyy", - let's be clear about this - it's is a shortcut for experienced editors. After saving an edit, the wikitext actually looks like this: ], which is absolutely standard. The next editor coming along will have no idea (and no need to know) that the previous editor didn't have to type in the text to the right of the vertical bar (the second "yyy").
So if you're proposing a similar transitory wikicode, something that, upon saving an edit, will become standard wikitext, that's one thing - something much less controversial than permanently different wikicode that becomes yet one more thing that new editors have to learn (and Misplaced Pages has a high rate of turnover - so that's a lot of learning). If, however, you're saying something like "well, we already have a complicated syntax, so I don't see any problem with making it even more complicated" - then I can't agree. -- John Broughton(♫♫)12:57, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I did not know that the format ] is transitory: I did not know of it and I had never used it. I still think that allowing "] = link to xxxyyy, display xxx", as permanent, would be helpful: e.g. to me "they believe that the Holy Host is ]ed each time." is easier understood while editing than "they believe that the Holy Host is ] each time.". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
A suggestion re galleries
It would be useful if the <gallery> ..... </gallery> construction would display the image thumbnails in rows of as many can fit across the user's browser's window's current width, instead of always in rows of 4. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 17:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know how technically feasible this would be, but it would be great if when a diff is shown there was also an option to see what pages link to that diff (or perhaps also that link to wider/narrower diffs that are supersets/subsets of the diff being displayed). Obviously it wouldn't quite be analogous to the "what links here" button, as links to diffs would look like external links, but hopefully it could still be made to work. The motivation for this is that if there has been subsequent discussion regarding an edit, it would then be possible to see the diff in the context of the discussion that has already taken place, which could sometimes be very useful. Thanks. — Alan22:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I am new to this site, so I forgot the copyright tags. I fixed it, and it's showing up alright in the Commons, but not when you click on the photo from the Pine Barrens Tree Frog article. How do I get rid of the deletion tag, and does it really matter since I fixed it in the Commons? Lonerockalex (talk) 23:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
All the infoboxes are suddenly appearing left justified, on top of the article text - using Firefox. Anyone else seeing this? Doceirias (talk) 03:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I often come across articles where the line of the section division overlaps the photos or other things in the way example: ragweed, photo under taxobox on right. I know they're not supposed to look like that, and I've tried to fix them, but I don't really know why it's doing that to fix it other than looking over the code and hoping something jumps out. I know it's nit-picky, but it bothers me and I'm willing to fix it. Can anyone tell me how? Also, is there a good way to finding the formatting error with things like this? Thanks Garnet avi (talk) 08:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Another formatting question: when to and when not to add a TOCbox tag. Some pages seem to generate the TOC fine on their own, others not so much. What's up with that? Garnet avi (talk) 08:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't figure out what you were talking about until I resized my browser. I use IE7 and it looks as though some widths display correctly and some widths show the line across the image. If you (or others) have the same experience, that would point to an IE bug. Of course, the solution for ragweed is to tear it out and destroy it before it starts pollinating. Even the article is making my eyes puffy. :) Franamax (talk) 07:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Ag! Resizing the window does it! Evil upon evil. That really drives me up the wall. I'm amazed you even thought of resizing. I didn't even think to associate that formatting error to window size. Thanks for braving the ragweed to answer my question. Garnet avi (talk) 00:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Tabs At The Top
There should be tabs saying, for example, this page:
project page
discussion
edit project page
edit discussion page
history project page
history dicussion
+
Right now, the functionality is a bit lost. I mean the tabs can be moved around and organized, but right now, it's happened and possible and will happen that if the functionality is not there, those few precious seconds can cost a great idea from being exchanged, either on the dicussion page, or written down on the project page, let's say.
Slightly incoherent but if I interpret it correctly, you would like:
To have two edit links, one for the "project page" and one for the "discussion page" regardless of which page you are viewing, and:
To be able to change the order in which these links appear.
Javascript could do both very easily, unless also you want these features to exist in mediawiki by default. By the way there is no "history discussion" page. — CharlotteWebb14:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I think a very similar question was posted on another VP page (at least I seem to remember answering it). As CharlotteWebb has indicated, an individual editor can tailor the tabs using Javascript (what is often referred to here as a "user script"). That way, everyone else doesn't have to deal with a change in tabs (assuming you could get consensus for a change, which you can't).
If you are referring to an example from Chess opening, the closing bracket is not blue. Look at the anchor tag in the HTML source (search for "often cataloged") and you will see the ")" is outside the tag. If your browser shows the ) in blue, that's not Misplaced Pages's problem. It's likely an optical illusion though. Franamax (talk) 07:39, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The links and tabs from the top of the page are now displaying down the side. Seems to be the same on all pages. Any idea what is occurring please? Screenshot here
My preferences -> Gadgets -> uncheck "Use a black background with green text on the Monobook skin". MaxSem10:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The colours I like and chose, it was the edit/history/watch & my talk/preferences/watchlist etc moving about that was odd. As I say. thay have moved back to the right place now so all is well. DuncanHill (talk) 11:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
There were issues with wikipedia being down yesterday. Because of that, you probably loaded one of the CSS files only partially, causing the page to misformat. Once the caches of your browser or wikipedia cleared, the issue was gone again. I had a similar experience myself yesterday. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:46, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
That makes sense thanks - I had been unable to get onto Misplaced Pages, and the bizarreness happened when I came back after that. DuncanHill (talk) 12:48, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Display links to other language Wikipedias
Could you add an option / tab to unlock displaying the links to other language wikipedia pages?
I can understand if it's not everyone's cup of tea to have a list of links to languages they don't speak at the bottom of their page. However there are quite a few of us who speak more than one language. Currently the link can only be accessed through the "edit" page. I'm not talking Wikitionary here, but the pagelink. Looking up the corresponding expression in Wikitionary (hoping to find the right one) and then switching to a different language one and trying it there adds unnecessary steps and only works for one word literal translations. If you try to look up names you'd better know how they translate.
If you added a tab that displays the page with the links to other languages displayed everyone would win. People who don't want a cluttered page can stay with the usual one and those looking for more information in other languages don't have to start and "edit" process they don't intend to do. I'm not a programmer, but it should not take a lot of code and space to add that option, the links are already on the pages anyway.
Thks. Lisa March 18 08. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.23.111 (talk) 10:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm interested in developing my bot skills, particularly to running bots which operate on a continuous basis, rather than the more script-oriented bots I'm already operating. I'm looking for a more experienced bot coder/operator who can help me get to grips with the extra knowledge and tools required to operate continuously-running bots. Kind of an adopt-a-bot-owner system :D. I can work in C++ and VB, but all of my previous bot-coding experience has been in python. Anyone interested and willing to give me a hand? Happy‑melon10:40, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Space between paragraphs please (Refereces)
The CSS seems to put very little space between paragraphs. Hardly visible. This makes some articles very hard to read. Suggest at least 1/2 extra line. The HTML default is not too bad.
(On IE7, most common browser. Also on ancient Netscape.)
(A secondary issue, it would be very interesting to be able to find page hits per page. Probably not on the page itself but accessible. A bot could scan the access logs from time to time and do a simple sort/merg.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tuntable (talk • contribs) 23:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I've added the following to the css page. The problem with paragraphs is worst when you have references. That is because the references slightly increase the line height. In this paragraph I have added some dummy references to demonstrate this point here and here. When you have lots of references in an article (as you should) it becomes very hard to see where paragraphs start.
Fiddling with my preferences is not the start, I care about what the huge number of other readers will see. I would therefor urge that the default CSS be changed to increase the height slightly. Note how the previous paragraph has been split apart.
Thanks for the pointer to stats.grock.se. 04:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)Tuntable
WP:CLASS shows user/chick.css occupies the ninth and final position in the stylesheet cascade order. Is that advice correct? Do settings in chick.css always override settings from earlier stylesheets? I didn't notice any effects from chick.css. BTW, is the warning on WP:CLASS, "This article or section needs to be updated", stale? - Neparis (talk) 03:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
In the monobook-derived skins, the user css is the last to load. However, load order is not the only hierarchy determinator. Specificity dictates it, (#bodyContent a {} will override a {} for example), as well as !important (can ever override hard-coded style="" attributes). Please note, chick.css only affects you if you're using the chick skin.
Also, I was the last to rewrite that section of WP:CLASS earlier this month (since I was sick of the satelness). However, most of the rest of the page could stand to be updated, so the notice probably still applies. --Splarka (rant) 07:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I'm writing on behalf of some of our best humanities editors, Awadewit, Qp10qp and I daresay several others, who would like two automatically numbered reference systems that could operate in parallel, one for the actual bibliographic references and one for scholarly footnotes. Examples of this style may be seen at William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, where the Cite.php approach was used for the references and {{Ref label}}/{{Note label}} used for the scholarly footnotes. The problem with the latter, of course, is that it's not automatically incremented; if a new footnote is introduced in the middle, all the subsequent footnotes have to be re-lettered, which costs time and opens the door to regrettable human errors. I mentioned the {{explain}} template, but that seems sub-optimal.
I've done some preliminary research and this problem seems to have been considered obliquely at a few Bugzilla pages, e.g., bugs 5997, 6271, 6272, and 12796, but I can't make out whether a solution has been worked out?
As an experiment, I was going to try to make my own template solution, an updated version of the Ref/Note templates, but clearly I need a global HTML page variable that I can increment and induce to format, similar to the HTML tag
<ol type=A\>
. In fact, I tried to subvert the "ordered list" tag for this purpose, but I couldn't figure out how to override its tab formatting. So: what I'd like is a mechanism for setting up, incrementing, displaying and resetting an internal counter on a page, something like the "ol" tag but without the formatting, e.g., <counterdef name="footnotes" type=A start=1>, <incrementcounter name="footnotes">, <displaycounter name="footnotes"> and maybe <setcounter name="footnotes" start=23>, or their equivalents done in templates. From those elements, I could make a good Ref/Note template system, I think.
Personally, I think we'd be better off with just adding a parallel system with <note> tags, that behaves exactly like the current system using <ref> tags. That way, if the cite.php system is changed (I think there are strong arguments for doing so, to make it more intuitive), the change would happen immediately to the parallel system. Plus it would be much easier for editors if there were simply two systems, one for footnotes, and the other for notes, that behaved virtually identically. -- John Broughton(♫♫)15:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree completely, that does seem like a better idea! I'd just assumed that such a basic addition in the Mediawiki software would take a long time to implement and to be adopted here at the English Misplaced Pages. On the other hand, I don't know much about the software itself, so perhaps it would be easy for a Supreme Software Guru to code? I think it's a very important extension to make, to give our best editors free rein in their artistry and to make it easy for scholars new to WP to contribute in a format they're used to. :) Does anyone have any suggestions on how to move John's idea forward? Willow (talk) 15:37, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I've actually been working off and on on something like that. Once I get all the numbering to work out right, this would allow something like <ref group=note/> to display like . -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 16:04, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I think your solution is more elegant and better in the long run, being more general and powerful, but I think I agree with John that, for this purpose, we should keep it as simple as possible, and as similar to the <ref></ref> system as possible. Accordingly, I dashed off a new PHP extension based very closely on Cite.php, which may be found here, with internationalization here. The new tags are <note>, </note> and <footnotes />, just like <ref>, </ref> and <references />. I tried to be as scrupulous as I could, but I don't know how to debug or test the new code; could you do that for me, Steve, and make any necessary changes/improvements to make it work correctly? I really hope it won't be much work for you, since I made such minor changes in Ævar's code. Thank you very, very much! :) Willow (talk) 21:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I apologize if this sounds like nitpicking, but <notes/> is probably much less problematical than <footnotes/>. WP:Footnotes says not only Footnotes add material that explains a point in greater detail, but that would be distracting if included in the main text (that's notes) but also Footnotes are also used to cite sources. In other words, I think we should continue to use the generic "footnotes" to cover both the existing "ref" system and the proposed "note" system, with the ref system being for citations and the notes system for elaborations. -- John Broughton(♫♫)21:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Technically, your solution seems simple enough. But it's not easy to get a new extension installed, and the people who decide what extensions to install tend to be very averse to duplicated code. So my hope is that once I get the last few kinks worked out (which at this point are basically just getting the linkages right with a mix of named/unnamed refs in different groups) it will just drop into the current system. I'm sorry I can't be more optimistic about that, but if we were to come up with a simpler solution it would need to work by reusing/extending the existing code. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 23:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
But it's not easy to get a new extension installed, and the people who decide what extensions to install tend to be very averse to duplicated code - Since "notes" and "citations" are now two roughly parallel functions, it really makes sense to have two roughly parallel extensions (the notes system would use a,b,c,d, etc., not 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., as the numbering). I'm sorry if such duplication seems inelegant or otherwise wrong to developers, but I hope that they are also willing to take into account that existing wikicode is complicated now; making it even more complicated for the sake of adding features is an inferior solution - from the user viewpoint - to cloning existing functionality, which requires minimal new learning by editors. -- John Broughton(♫♫)14:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm perfectly willing to changes <footnotes /> to <notes />; I do see the difficulty with WP:Footnotes! My only worry was that newbie editors might accidentally substitute <notes> for <note>, being so similar and all. I realized another mistake I made yesterday: I forgot to change the superscript to letters! I'll try to fix both mistakes today, when I have a free moment. I think there's room for both solutions, <note> and <ref group=notes>, although I suppose that the functionality of the latter and the simplicity of the former could be combined by wrapping the latter in a template. Anyway, I'm going to get my feet wet with trying to have the <notes> code adopted here at the English Misplaced Pages; we can always change back when the <ref group=notes> code is finished, if that's the consensus. I daresay <notes> won't be used very often, so converting the few over won't be hard. Willow (talk) 12:58, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if I was unclear earlier; there was consensus in an earlier discussion that it should be done this way, and <note> should just be implemented as an alias for <ref group=note>; I mostly haven't been thinking as much about that since it's pretty trivial to add. Two parallel extensions would work, as long as one simply called the other without too much replicated code, but I think it's more likely to wind up as one enhanced extension. That's really just a maintenance issue, since they don't like to have to maintain the same piece of code in two places. Anyway, I think I got all of the linking issues resolved last night, so I hope I can move this along a little more quickly now. However, I haven't added support for using letters yet (currently it's still the style labels) although it shouldn't be too difficult to do that. BTW, if you wanted to work on that, it would probably be easier to pass it along as a diff from the current code, to make it easier to see what was changed. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 16:00, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Hey Steve, I wish that I'd read your message before fixing those mistakes! :P Oh well, it wasn't so bad; the changes I made were pretty minor and didn't take too much time. The new versions of the PHP and internationalization files are still here and here. I was still concerned about developers getting confused between, e.g., noteKey and notesKey, so I left the Footnotes in the code itself. Thus, the general scheme was to map Cite to Footnote, Ref to Note, and Refs/References to Footnotes. However, I made <notes /> the user command (instead of <footnotes />) by changing the parserhook
thus, <notes /> invokes the callback function "footnotes" defined earlier in the Footnotes.php file. To change the labels to letters in the references themselves, I changed "++$this->mOutCnt" in the function linkNote (formerly linkRef) into the full-blown
taking advantage of that nifty array; the only drawback is that, given its present definition, we could only have ~26 different explanatory footnotes. If we were going to use this code, I'd lengthen it using double letters such as "aa", "ab", ... giving us 26*26=676 new possibilities. To do the converse in the <notes /> section, i.e., to use pure integers (instead of letters) to link multiple references to the same footnote, I changed the function footnotesFormatEntryNumericBacklinkLabel (formerly referencesFormatEntryNumericBacklinkLabel) to use "$ret = $wgContLang->formatNum( $offset );" and kept the'cite_references_link_many_format' as its default in Cite.i18n.php. Perhaps these solutions might be helpful in your own adaptations?
It was fun learning about how Misplaced Pages actually works and learning a little PHP at the same time. :) It doesn't seem so scary now, which it did only yesterday. I've no regrets about working on it and my only worry now is that we get your new system adopted as quickly as possible. I know that the humanities editors are super-eager to start on their next project, and I wouldn't want their enthusiasm thwarted by a long delay! :) Willow (talk) 18:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Porting the Italian Misplaced Pages CSS
For some reason, I think the Italian Misplaced Pages (complete with it's rounded corners and stuff) is actually quite nice, and pasting it into the user monobook.css actually works quite nicely. Though, I do get an error in the corner if I visit a page with semi-protection in the iconified mode (Cause I think that's a en.wikipedia exclusive feature). Think someone could fix this up to support the Iconified protection correctly? ViperSnake15120:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Rounded corners are nice, but I think we should look more closely at other differences to see if they're desirable for en.wikipedia.org. For example, I really like having the "edit" link immediately to the right of a section title (see, for example, it:Storia di Verona), rather than all the way to the right. Placing it right next to the title (subtly) encourages people to edit a section, I'd guess. -- John Broughton(♫♫)22:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
I am not sure if this is the proper places for this, but I read /Before posting and decided this was a good place to start. For about the last 40 minutes, I have not been able to use the "Related changes" link on the toolbox links. I have reset my cache, reset my internet connect, reset FireFox, to no avail. I get this error message:
Database error
A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
(SQL query hidden)
from within function "wfSpecialRecentchangeslinked". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '<<<<<<< .mine rc_new_len ======= rc_new_len, rc_log_ty (10.0.0.2)".
I just submitted a 3RR complaint on User:Redthoreau on the article Che Guevara. I have never been successful in these requests, as they have always been "malformed". Could someone check my 3RR complaint to see if I did it correctly? I submitted it just a few minutes or so ago. Thanks, Mattisse (Talk) 00:49, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Am I hallucinating or have the lowercase m's on my watchlist (used to denote minor revisions) gotten tiny, unbold, and possibly in a new font? They used to be decently large and bold, which allowed a poor squinty-eyed editor to see them at a glance. If this isn't just a sudden browser quirk but a policy change, was it discussed and where? It's awful. Rivertorch (talk) 01:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
You're not hallucinating, and the "b" for bot-edit has also become unreadable (I use Safari on WinXP). Maybe it is a new policy to make Misplaced Pages inaccessible to the vast majority of the world's population who have less than superlative eyesight. Or maybe it's a balls-up. DuncanHill (talk) 01:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, all recent changes list pages should show correctly now. The only visual difference is that items don't bleed over to the far left out of their block, which was intended. Voice-of-All21:47, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Watchlist
Screendump of my watchlistDitto, showing borders of tables
Please, would some teach me how to pace 3RR warnings. I do not understand the direction so I am never able to fine one when harassed. I filled one today and it was rejected because I had done something wrong. Please, I need to under stand this. I have been at wikipedia 2 years and have never managed to file one that was not malformed. So I am defenseless against 3RR editors.
Yes. I am not clear what you are saying above. When you say list in order, do you mean up or down? Besides two edits being the same, was there anything else I did wrong? I did eventually enter 8 edits and had another 5 or so to go. If one is a duplicate, does that throw out the whole 3RR complaint, the 7 other examples?
I had to copy someone else's entry as I do not understand the template -- after trying to use if for a long time, having edit conflicts etc. My complaint kept being removed so I had to repeatedly do it over. Why were my 3RR complaints removed before I had finished compiling them. (I learned that you cannot file them all at once because of edit conflicts.) There were a good 20 more edits, but my entry kept being removing, I had to retrieve it and do the whole thing over again several times, meanwhile trying to complile the ever growing list of subsequent 3RR examples as the editor continued to edit. Do you have suggestions for this situation?
Coppertwig did not address the question of how do complete a 3RR question correctly. I said do not know how to make a 3RR report that is not "malformed". Coppertwig said he did not know what that word meant so he could not help me there. The rest of his post was the standard stuff directed toward newbies. (I have +44,00 unique edits). I still do not know how to file 3RR complains. He also said using TW for warnings was not a good way. That is the only way I know to template. He did not explain how to give warnings correctly. Please give me information on how to template correctly. I would be very grateful. Thanks! Mattisse (Talk) 17:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
The 1st revert is listed first and should be the one which was performed first among the reported reverts. Use the preview button and only save after the report is completed. If that gives an edit conflict then it should usually be possible to save a new edit with the same report so quickly that it doesn't give a new conflict. "malformed" means it doesn't follow the requirements, for example because some of the names and diffs have not been inserted correctly in Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR#Example. There is no software check for malformed reports. As Coppertwig said, you reported consecutive edits (meaning nobody else edited the page between) by the same editor. Misplaced Pages:Three-revert rule#What is a revert? says "Consecutive reverts by one editor are generally treated as one revert for the purposes of this rule." The idea is that it shouldn't matter whether an editor reverts two things in the same edit or spreads it in two edits right after each other. "1st revert" and "2nd revert" in your report are consecutive and can therefore only count as one revert. Another time you can pick one of them in the report and ignore the other. "3rd revert" is the same edit as the 1st. "4th revert" was made before the others, causing confusion and maybe leading to being ignored. 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th revert were all consecutive so they can only count as one. Even with the out-of-order 4th revert included, there can only be 3 counted reverts in your report. (1-3), 4, (5-9). Note: I haven't examined the article history enough to see which edits were reverts. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh well. It is hopeless then. What you are describing is above my ability. I also do not know how to template someone except by TW, which I have been told is wrong. I cannot find out another way. Well, I will just keep to myself, write my own articles and stay away from others. That is mostly what I have been doing for most of my 40,000 edits, so I can learn for myself and keep away from the ugliness here. Thanks anyway. Mattisse (Talk) 01:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Changes not appearing in watchlist
The watchlist is not showing some changes made to articles I'm tracking. Can you help me understand what's up?
Here's an example. Gerriet42 has been editing the articles Red Hair and Sunscreen. Looking at my watchlist, none of his changes are showing up. Changes by other users are appearing, but not those from Gerriet42.
Please let me know if there is anything else you need to help diagnose what's going on.
Red Hair redirects to Red hair and has not been edited since December. If only Red Hair is on a watchlist then edits to the redirect target will not be listed. If "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" under the Watchlist tab at Special:Preferences is not checked then you only see the latest edit to a page on your watchlist. My watchlist is too large to see whether the Gerriet42 edits from yesterday appear if it's checked. The edits are not marked as minor or bot so there shouldn't be an option to hide them from watchlists. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Total article numbers in categories
I hope I'm asking in the right place. Categories now seem to be able to give the total number of articles in them. This is great! However, why don't the "Wikify by month" categories show this total number? (For example, Category:Wikify from November 2007.) Related maintenance categories show it. Also, is there any way of parsing the total article number to another page? If at all possible, this would make updating the {{Wikification progress}} template much easier. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 14:03, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Population of the number of items in a category is being done by a maintenance script (it's stored in the database as a number). As you may appreciate, there are a lot of categories for which this information needs to be generated. My understanding is that this is probably being done alphabetically, and the category you point to is at the end of the alphabet. — Werdnatalk11:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Diff from the History of my talk page is not consistent with actual output
Hi, a friend left me a message on my talk page. The talk page is fine as far as I can tell. But the diff tells another story. According to the diff my friend changed some section headings and moved others. Yet the talk page shows no signs of this. On top of that I looked into his edits in edit mode and could not find any trace of the changes as they appear on this mysterious diff. Any help into this baffling case would be greatly appreciated, as always. Dr.K. (talk) 17:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Looks like some sort of bug in the diff code; if you save the wikicode of the two revisions into files and run a diff by hand, the only change is the addition of the new section at the bottom. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
That's exactly what I thought but you proved it and you also gave me the technical description. Thank you very much Carl. Take care. Tasos, (Dr.K. (talk) 18:47, 20 March 2008 (UTC))
Awesome. Thank you very much PrimeHunter for your kind follow up. Your technical skill is great and I really appreciate your help in clearing up this gremlin. All in a day's work for you I guess. Take care for now. Dr.K. (talk) 20:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages watchlist software change?
I am, as of yesterday, getting a Misplaced Pages generated error message every time I go to my watchlist: "You seem to be using the javascript-enhanced watchlist, which is incompatible with the category watchlist script at present; please uninstall it." What changed that this is happening, is there anything I can do to stop getting the error message short of uninstalling and what happens if I keep both, i.e., one or both won't function? Something else? --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I noticed that when removing a lot of text, the watchlist shows the number in a strong span like <strong class="mw-plusminus-neg">(-14,939)</strong>. However, when adding a lot of text it doesn't use the same (as in <span class="mw-plusminus-pos">(+120,002)</span>). Shouldn't both be bolded via strong (note that I have disabled color and size increase via CSS). Just wondering. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 20:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm sure that the last time I looked, the entries on my watchlist didn't have a white background. It currently looks awful against the pale blue page background. I understand there was a substantial revision to the watchlist display code recently - is this the cause? Or am I only just noticing something that's been there all along? Happy‑melon20:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
The gadget in the preference that allows you to "display an article's grade/rating/assessment on the article page by parsing the grade stored on the talk page" marks List-Class articles as unassessed. Now that WP:1.0 allows List-Class in their parameters, many more articles will use this tag, so can the gadget be changed to show it? (And by the way, who would make such a change? Is there some group of editors who can edit the script in which wikipedia is written or would it have to go through a Mediawiki patch?) --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I've added list and disambiguation page detection to the script at User:Pyrospirit/metadata.js, which is basically the development version of the script. Unfortunately, the script is refusing to work for some reason. Still trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Pyrospirit (talk·contribs) 04:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Seems to be an issue with how IE handles the clearing of the floated infobox, if your window is wide enough for the article body to be shorter than the box. It should push the entire category box down until it's out of the way of the floated box (as Firefox and Safari do quite correctly), but instead is pushing down its content while maintaining the same top point for the border and background. You can work around this by inserting a <br clear="all"/> at the bottom of the page, for now... I'm not sure if there's a clean style fix for it. --brion (talk) 18:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Embedded font support now live
The latest version of Safari includes support for embedded fonts, opening up new possibilities for font support on Misplaced Pages. To demonstrate the concept, I added the DejaVu Sans font as a gadget. If you are using Safari 3.1 or later, just checking the box will enable you to use this font even if you can't install it directly onto your computer.
Please try this out and let me know how it works. DejaVu Sans is not the most useful font, and I'd be interested in hearing about other fonts that might be useful to have as gadgets. —Remember the dot07:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Range block bypass flag?
It's a difficult but not uncommon situation. There's an IP range which is used entirely for vandalism. Soft blocking hasn't helped, the track record goes on since forever... hard blocking's really called for... except a handful of genuine users use that range so you can't.
Is there any merit in a flag or right that any sysop can apply to an account (or remove), that lets them edit through an IP range block?
This would essentially mean that a range could be hard blocked in general, and yet specific editors in good standing still edit from those IPs. It wouldn't interfere with blocking that editor, but would mean either the flag would need deleting, or the block would need to be on their specific named account.
I would envisage the flag as being given based on sysop judgement that a range needed blocking and this was a measure to allow that to be done, and removed on sysop judgement that a user was intended to be caught by a range block. The thought being that users who are visibly decent editors enough that a hard range block (almost always for serious disrupters) shouldn't apply to them, probably won't be intended to be caught by a range block or need range blocking themselves that often. Blocks of users like that are almost always placed on their names, not their IP range, by sysops.
It would then allow hard blocking of a range used by a hard-core problem case, for a week or a month or whatever, without so much collateral damage for a clearly well-meaning user on that range.
Sounds like a good idea. It'd make some cases of IP-hopping vandalism easier to deal with. I imagine it'd make CU's lives easier, too. SQL08:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Look similar to Misplaced Pages:IP block exemption. But I have no idea how to "exempt" a user, even though it says its possible. And since when is anyone allowed to edit from Tor!? But yea, this could be a useful flag, if it were limited to say Crats/CUs, since I wouldn't trust Admins to make the call or be easy to monitor. MBisanz08:53, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I'm reminded of prior proposals to allow unblocking of single IPs within blocked ranges, or to hand out ipblock-exempt via whatever mechanism (most proposals there have focused on open proxies, but rangeblocks are likewise an important issue; the right makes a user effectively immune to anything but a direct block on their account). I'm not sure as to the technical difficulty/ease of a similar flag that would focus solely on rangeblocks, or if this folds into the debates on ipblock-exempt. Either way, the situation FT2 describes has no easy solution, currently, and this might be one fix to consider trying. – Luna Santin (talk) 08:58, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
To clarify, it's not for proxy avoidance, and I'd be more than happy to see its use limited to "users who would otherwise be caught by vandalism or personal attack range-blocks, or the like" or issued by checkusers, rather than proxies. A technical measure for that would be that it would only override an IP range not a single IPblock. (Open proxies are almost always sole IPs.) FT209:13, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
This was one of the reasons for the Misplaced Pages:IP block exemption proposal - accounts frequently caught in autoblocks/rangeblocks but who are nevertheless good users would be made immune to such blocks in the same ways as admins are by being assigned IPblock-exempt. WjBscribe09:07, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
The important bit is the devs agreeing to enable it - after the fuss over rollback, I could understand them being reluctant :-) .... WjBscribe09:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
If admins will be involved in either noticing suspicious user with the ipblockexempt flag or de-flagging bad users, can we add something to the new admin school. Rollback was a good idea, but there was precious little training on it, even though we all knew hat it is. I suspect at least half the admins have no idea what ip-block-exempt is or that there is a policy on it. MBisanz21:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
To be honest, I think that's a good thing. Unlike rollback, this isn't the kind of thing to give out simply based on trust - there should be trust and need. Mr.Z-man22:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
(unindent) Agree. Dodgy unblocking of proxies by putting holes in them and (accidentally or otherwise) letting bad actors back in, is a favorite use of non-hard blocks, and this will have applications in that area. Since we probably wont be handling this out like confetti, maybe a "request for ipexemption" subpage - same as many other "request" pages... user posts a request and if there is broad consensus (remember this isn't handed out as a norm to all users) then it's given. That way it has some certainty of communal input. FT223:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
maybe a "request for ipexemption" subpage... I think this idea has not been discussed at the policy talk page yet. Anyway, I support it. -- FayssalF - 04:40, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Bear in mind, though, that blocked users will have difficulty posting to such a page. If requests are to be resolved via a central forum, we'd probably need to be watching for (and harvesting) relevant unblock requests. Not a huge problem, just making sure that's on the table. – Luna Santin (talk) 06:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
OnloadHook not working
Can anyone tell me why the bottom five lines of my .css is having absolutely no effect whatsoever? I've cleared/purged/deleted everything I can get my hands on, and I know the cached version is current (I disabled and then re-enabled the 'page logs' bit, and that works ok). Happy‑melon12:08, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
1) It's your .js, not "css"; 2) Please use Firefox or Opera and open Tools->Error console; 3) This would show you the error with undefined wgPageTitle which was supposed to be wgTitle (look at any page HTML source); 4) You might want to make it wgTitle.split('/') so it works on user subpages as well. —AlexSm15:18, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you!! I should have guessed it would be something really stupid like that. I keep meaning to switch from IE7, but it's too much hassle (three computers of my own to change, plus the inevitable battle with the network admins when I try to use it anywhere other than home :D. Happy‑melon15:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Little 'W' not appearing on IE7 tabs
Until very recently (not more than a couple of hours ago) tabs in IE7 open on a wikipedia page had a little white 'W' image on the left-hand edge - that's now just showing the IE 'e' logo. Pages open at meta/wikisource/wiktionary still display their relevant images, so is it just wikipedia? Or is it just me? Happy‑melon12:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
You are right on both counts. IE7 does it for me as well. The Wiktionary tabs have the W but Misplaced Pages tabs show only the IE7 logo. Dr.K. (talk) 14:36, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
My problem is the redirect Six Feet Under. There is an article "Six Feet Under (band)" and there was an article "Six Feet Under" about a TV series. But the term "Six Feet Under" was originally taken by the band so i moved "Six Feet Under" to "Six Feet Under (TV series)". Is there some way how to rewrite all "Six Feet Under" links to "Six Feet Under (TV series)" other than make every single one? Some kind of mass rewrite or something quick?... There are hundreds of these links.....--Lykantrop18:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't get this aversion and intolerance against metal bands. You reverted my edit without any knowledge of the matter just because the band is a metal band or what. If you red something about the band, you would see that Six Feet Under is the fourth best-selling death metal act and consists band members from the most influental and important death metal bands ever, 3 of the members were in 3 of 6 best selling death metal bands, Six Feet Under is nuber 4.(link). On Youtube are under Six Feet Under 8 of 20 videos about the band even when the other thing is a TV series with 63 episodes. Google gives for "six feet under HBO" about 318 000 and for "six feet under TV series" about 348 000, for "six feet under metal" 555 000, and for "six feet under metal band" about 1 900 000 ! So the band is not only the original user of the term but also worldwide known, important and frequented and at least so frequented as the TV series. The band is also a present theme with new events, albums... The TV series is a several years old matter with no progress anymore. I am not here to promote any unknown metal bands, but this one is very very very big one. So I would be glad if you wouldn't revert this edit just because of your prejudice to heavy metal. I really think that I don't need to talk to you (an adminitrator) about such things as WP:NPOV and WP:POV. And thanks for such a kind answer to my question...Lykantrop13:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
See Misplaced Pages:Assume good faith. I have nothing against metal bands and I don't see how a disambiguating name is related to WP:NPOV and WP:POV. Category:Six Feet Under is about the TV series. Being among the best known in a small genre is not the same as for a big genre. None of the band albums appear to have reached 100000 sold copies. I see you moved the TV series again without discussion. What is your plan for the name Six Feet Under? A disambiguation page would make sense to me but it sounds like you want it to be about the band which you consider most notable. See Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation pages with links for some tools to help fix links. As you say, there are a lot of them. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:08, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
You can be sure I have a good faith. Yes I want to make a disambiguation page, although I am sure that the band's page is more frequented on wikipedia than the TV series (but that is just my opinion). I moved it without a discussion because it is obvious that the band is at least as notable as the TV series, so I dont see why should the TV series article keep the name of the band, when it is neither originally the TV series, nor more important. And to say that death metal is a small musical genre is definitely no longer matching for several years and not these days at all. I understand that lots of people have no clue about this music, but on the other hand other people have no clue about TV series. It could be discussed what is more notable, but the disambiguation page should be there at least. It has been told to me that the double redirects will be fixed by a bot within a couple of days. Lykantrop23:06, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I have a template that I'm trying to create, but not being very sucessful. Can anyone help me out here? Full documentation of what it is supposed to do is included below. Thanks, --Ajl772 (talk) 18:27, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
View documentation
Documentation
Usage
This template makes the rollover tooltip text display the specified text.
Full Capability Usage: {{linktitle|(url|wiki)=|text=|plain=}}
Only the bolded letters are necessary for the template to function properly.
Parameter Definitions
Parameter
Required
Notes
url
See notes
Use url for external links. (i.e., non-wiki namespace)
If url is omitted, the url must be the first parameter.
Huh? Are you trying to use a template to execute javascript? I'm not aware that's possible, though I'd love to be told different. As far as wiki is concerned, I think you've commented out the code anyway, when you use <!-- .. -->. (I put a hat over your documentation to keep this page clean :) Franamax (talk) 21:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm almost certain that the way the Misplaced Pages parser handles raw page text means that all methods of external linking apart from the usual -based wikicode are prohibited - they simply won't render as html tags, or the tags won't be acted upon by the browser. This is primarily to prevent spam- and redirect-vandalism, IIRC. Executing javascript from templates is similarly prohibited - what do you think the big warning across the top of all .css and .js pages is for? Allowing anyone to add javascript to wikipages to be executed on the browsers of all viewers is a recipe for disaster. In summary, I don't think there is a method for doing what you want, certainly not via html in a template. Happy‑melon21:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
But since you can only edit code pages in your own userspace, wouldn't a non-admin be able to create it and then not edit it? MBisanz05:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
It's only possible to create .css and .js pages in userspace (and your own userspace at that, unless you're an admin) or the MediaWiki namespace - creating, for instance, Template:Foo.js or Talk:Foo/skin.css will produce a normal page. Any page can be imported into users' .css and .js files - most of the scripts at WP:US are imported from project pages. Happy‑melon19:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Edit saving issue
Several times in the past week, after I've edited and saved a page, my changes do not appear, even after I refresh my cache. I have to go into the article history, open the most recent version (which includes my edit) for editing, and save it again without making any changes. After that, my changes become visible in the article, and the second (no change) edit does not appear in the article history. Has this been happening to other people? Could it be a legit bug, or am I the only one having this issue? — Swpb19:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Is it just me, or have some of the reference tags, i.e. the numbers in square brackets, changed? I've found those in wikitables are now subscript rather than superscript. As are some which carry over onto the next line, which then runs into the name of the next section for those at the end of a section. Peanut4 (talk) 20:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Was just going to post this. Although all of the ones found at the list of best-selling video games are superscript, many are broken: they either take you to the wrong reference, or don't take you anywhere. I have posted a few examples here, in case anyone needs to check them. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 21:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Ref. Reference problems - superscript numbers: I wonder if one of you tech gurus could help with a reference problem in the page Huddersfield Town F.C., please? If I click on the superscript for reference 7 nothing happens, it doesn't take you to the reference. But if I click on the superscript for reference 10 it takes me to reference 7. What have I done wrong, please? BlueValour (talk) 23:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
My own problems with references still aren't working. Has no-one else got a problem with this or are the changes intended? Peanut4 (talk) 22:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
It'll be difficult to find an example for the end of a section, because obviously it depends on screen size, but List of Aston Villa F.C. managers shows what I mean in a table. I think perhaps it's because the notes column doesn't have any text in. Peanut4 (talk) 23:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Could the watchlist preference "Add pages I create to my watchlist" be modified so that only article pages are watched? Most of the time I "create" a user talk page when I leave a comment for a new user, and I don't want to watch them. Thanks. Imagine Reason (talk) 23:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
This option merely checks the "Watch this page" box under the edit window by default; if you don't want a page watched, you can simply uncheck the box as you write your comment. Waltham, The Duke of00:29, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't think devs are going to make make a separate preference checkbox for you, so below is a simple userscript (goes into your monobook.js if you use default Monobook skin). —AlexSm01:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
//automatically "unwatch" created pages that are not articles
if (wgAction=='edit' && wgArticleId==0 && wgNamespaceNumber>0)
addOnloadHook(function(){
var t = document.getElementById('wpWatchthis')
if (t) t.checked = false
})
can't get an image that i uploaded to link to the main content page
hi,
i uploaded an image of the USS Jonas Ingram but i cannot get it to link to the main USS jonas ingram content page. It's not a copyright protected image, so should be OK. I don't know what to do now. Help! thanks, Jim —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.226.231.25 (talk)
Which image are you referring to or which account did you use to upload it, and exactly what do you want to do with it? You were not logged in when you made this post and the IP address has no other edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
hi, sorry i missed you. thx for the reply. i did upload the pic as a logged in user, as airforcefalcon05. i can see the image when i go to "My Contributions". but i can't figure out how to get the image from there to the main USS JONAS INGRAM wiki page. if you go to the main USS JONAS INGRAM page, you'll see an area on the top right where i want my ship photo to go. does that give u more info? Jim
Oh, one other thing. here's the file name of the image that i created, and can see when i go to the "My Contributions" page. USS_Jonas_Ingram-DD938.jpg. It is a public domain photo, as i noted in the area where the image is now. My goal is to have this image display on the main Jonas Ingram page, where it says something like "no photo available." thx again, Jim, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA PS: I served on this ship as a sailor in the mid-1970s. It was sunk as a target vessel in the early 1980s.
The text wasn't over lapping until I cleared my cache today. Weird, I hope this can be fixed. If you view my user page you can see.-- penubag (talk) 01:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
This was changed in MediaWiki:Common.css, see discussions on its talk page. I might be wrong, but I don't think you're supposed to use <sup> like this, as a "replacement" for <small>. —AlexSm01:46, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't use <small> because it puts unusual breaks between lines,
Yes, using CSS, like this piece of long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long text.
But I don't see anything unusual about the spacing of the small text. <sup> is reserved for superscripts like e and shouldn't be "abused" for small text. x42bn6TalkMess19:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
When I am editing an article, sometimes the IE7 shortcut for 'Back' (backspace) will somehow slip outside the text box and send me back a page. Going forward again takes me back to the edit page with all my work lost. How do I disable these shortcuts?
If you create an account you can solve this problem; go to your preferences, click gadgets, then check the 'disable access keys' box. That'll fix your problem. -- penubag (talk) 20:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Wait, that's a browser shortcut isn't it? Then what I said won't work. There may be a setting in your browser to fix this problem -- penubag (talk) 20:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't think you can disable those shortcuts. But you can switch to Mozilla Firefox (It's free!). If you accidentally go back, your work will still be there when you go forward again. Or you can just be more careful and make sure the cursor is inside the text box before you hit backspace. If you switched tabs, for example, the cursor will not be in the text box. – FISDOF920:23, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
problem with Image:group_rot180.png|150px
Can somebody help me figuring out why the image ] looks like this:
I have purged the page of the image, and this seems to have solved the problem. If you force a reload of articles in which this image is included, you shouldn't have any problem anymore. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Helping going away
Hi. Can you possibly tell me the best way to leave Misplaced Pages? I followed the instructions and asked an administrator to delete my user and talk pages. How does one write a password that can never be broken? Sorry if this is a FAQ. I do see it is not possible to delete an account nor do I wish to erase all that. Thank you. -Susanlesch (talk) 03:06, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Also, should I ask this question separately at Wikiquote, Wikinews, and Wikimedia Commons for those three accounts? -Susanlesch (talk) 03:27, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
view · edit Frequently asked questions (see also: Misplaced Pages:Technical FAQ)
Click "" next to each point to see more details.
Resolved Sbowers3 (talk) 01:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
#c-Jakob.scholbach-2008-03-22T21:46:00.000Z-problem_with_Image:group_rot180.png|150px){kind=link}