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X!'s Edit Counter

{{archive-top|result=RfC launched on meta. There is clear support for the removal of the opt-in requirement. Please direct all comments and opinions to that RfC.—cyberpower _Offline 03:03, 22 June 2013 (UTC) Several users have expressed that they want the detailed edit stats to be visible without having to optin. I see this as a Privacy concern and I feel the community should answer this question before taking any intiative on this. Should the detailed edit counter remain as an opt-in or should it be an opt-out or not opt-able at all? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberpower678 (talk • contribs) 12:58, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Further explanation, copied from below and edited a bit for clarity.

Currently, any editor must opt themself in to allow other editors to see additional statistics in X!'s edit counter (for that editor). These additional statistics are (a) top namespace edits and (b) monthly edit statistics. This opt-in was set up because because of a law in Germany, where the toolserver is located. Since we are migrating everything from the toolserver to Wikimedia's labs (in the U.S.), this law isn't relevant anymore.

There are editors who want to see the monthly stats and top namespace edits for everyone, not just for editors who have opted in. The question is should we allow this (by disabling opt-in) or whether we should users to still have control over what can be seen in the edit counter (by keeping opt-in). A third option is to allow users to opt-out; if they don't, then all other editors could see their full statistics.

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:33, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Keep opt-in

1. Opt-out privacy is a joke, and is not privacy at all. While it's certainly not the biggest privacy violation on the Internet, I don't think people have an automatic right to view this kind of data. Oh, and as mentioned below, as long as this is hosted on the toolserver, it can't be changed. There's some German privacy law regarding "profiling of individual user's activity", which requires this kinda thing to be opt-in. --Chris 14:44, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

   Urgh. It's on labs now, and the toolserver version will be shutoff soon.—cyberpower _Online 14:51, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

2. This is a clear privacy issue, I fail to see how anybody can see otherwise. GiantSnowman 15:02, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

   Believe me, a lot of people on IRC tried. I said I'm not doing it without an RfC.—cyberpower _Online 15:24, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

3. +1 to Chris's statement: "Opt-out privacy is a joke..." Keep this opt-in. If someone wants to use it for themselves, then it's a few clicks away. If they want to use it to peer into someone else's history, it's for that person to open that door to them. --RA (talk) 15:25, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
4. i'm surprised that this is even brought up as an option. an active editor's edit pattern can reveal way too much about them, and the idea that this data should be thrown into the public domain without them actively expressing consent is inconceivable. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:45, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
5. Our contributions are already public record, but for detailed analysis of our edits, which can be used to hound an editor by those who do not assume good faith of the editors intentions, should IMHO be something that should be primarily available to 'Crats or if an editor chooses to make it publicly available. Hopefully, everyone will want increased transparency of our activities, but IMHO it should be a personal choice, rather than something that one has to opt out from.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:56, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

   The really crazy/creepy folk, the ones that would engage in off-wiki hounding or outing or real life confrontations, don't need X!s tool. Those people are dedicated enough to sift through a lot more than just some graphs. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:02, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

6. The fact that some data is public but scattered, is one thing, collecting and organizing the data is something quite different, that is (good part of) the work of Intelligence agencies («intelligence gathering, does not necessarily involve espionage, but often collates open-source information.», from Espionage). WP is not a espionage / intelligence agency, I'd say. - Nabla (talk) 23:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
7. Per Chris G. It Is Me Here 17:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
8. Yes. This is one of the rare questions I have a gut answer to :-). The data is public, and there is nothing stopping people "rolling their own" analysis, but there is a big difference between that and Wikimedia-supported profiling and publication. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
9. Yes. The opt-in steps are easy (even I figured it out), and the privacy concerns are compelling. New editors are probably unaware of the feature, and for some this could discourage participation when they become aware. 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 15:46, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
10. Very strong support that it should be "opt-in". There are strong privacy concerns. We can expect new users to be unaware that these counters even exist for a substantial period of time before they discover them; that is, if many of them would even discover them at all. I do not think they should be surprised about it when and if they do. This should even be being polled. It's a matter of principle. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason Quinn (talk • contribs) 17:39, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
11. I'm aware it's easily available through other means, but it doesn't automatically follow that it should be easily available through this tool as well. wctaiwan (talk) 07:28, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
12. I prefer opt-in. It's not a critical issue, but it seems polite to ask people for permission before collecting and visualizing information about them – even if it's public information. Also, we don't need to turn Misplaced Pages into some kind of contest or competition. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 14:40, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
13. Keep opt-in. - Yes, the data is already available. But there is indeed a difference between that and analysis of the data supported by WikiMedia. Plus, people are too interested in this often (but not always) trivial data. See the numerous edit counters. Garion96 (talk) 08:15, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Remove opt-in and replace with opt-out

1. As per Tom Morris, this information is not actually private. X!'s edit counter is a quick and efficient way to gauge an editor's contribution history. I think that switching to an opt-out system would help to improve transparency. Some people would feel uncomfortable with their editing patterns being so exposed, so they should still be permitted to opt-out at their discretion. Kurtis 17:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

   Just as an additional note, I'm fine with the consensus to remove opt-in altogether. Transparency is important; when I first commented here, I just thought some editors might feel more comfortable with the option to not have their editing history so much easier to track. The more I think about it, the more I'm swayed by the comments directly below. Consider this a support for either option. "One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do..." Kurtis 04:33, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Remove opt-in completely

1. This information isn't "private". It's just a compilation of public data. Anyone who has access to the Toolserver or to the API can work this out with very little work. Treating public data as if it were private data leads people to believe that by not opting-in or by opting-out, the compilation of these statistics won't be done. It just means it won't be done by this tool. I mean, let's consider the silliness of this: shall we allow users to "opt-out" from Stalker, Max McBride's tool to compare contributions between users in order to help people detect socking? No. The issue isn't actually privacy in any meaningful sense of the term. The reason it is opt-in is to give people a feeling that they are in control of "private" information, even though it isn't private information and they aren't in control. I'd rather not give people the illusion that this information is private when it isn't. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:45, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

   Who's Max? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:18, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

   @MZMcBride: Someone just got a new nickname. I kinda like how "Max" rolls off the tongue vs. "MZ". You might also want an avatar, though, to counter that mental image of Max Headroom that springs to mind.... ;-)  —Grollτech (talk) 22:25, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

2. Yeah this. The data is publicly available, that tools shouldn't exist which compile it in a usable form seems silly. --Jayron32 17:49, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
3. The tool doesn't give you any information that isn't already on the user contribs page, seems silly to have an opt-in, or an opt-out. Though I'd support opt-out over opt-in if we must. Prodego 18:02, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

   Note that if the tool is hosted on a wikimedia de server, then the opt-in must stay. Prodego 18:03, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

4. It's a helpful tool that uses publicly available information. When unavailable, it just makes finding the information so much harder. I see no real privacy concerns as long as every editors contributions may be browsed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
5. Going a step further to say that user contributions should be scrutinized carefully and this tool helps enable this. Data on editors' contributions should be widely available to combat POV pushing and similar problematic behaviour. There is no privacy issue as contributions are public record. This falls squarely in line with the foundations's privacy policy which reads: User contributions are also aggregated and publicly available. User contributions are aggregated according to their registration and login status. Data on user contributions, such as the times at which users edited and the number of edits they have made, are publicly available via user contributions lists, and in aggregated forms published by other users. ThemFromSpace 23:08, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
6. It's simply a tool that takes public data and aggregates it using standard methods. Without the tool, all the information could still be found, but it would just take more work. I see no privacy violation here. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:52, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
7. Per Tom Morris. Ironholds (talk) 00:24, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
8. Per Jayron32 -- John of Reading (talk) 04:49, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
9. Per everyone above. Graham87 04:54, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
10. I have never understood why this is opt in. It saves a lot of time on various issues, and therefore should be available freely - especially as there are no privacy issues. Mdann52 (talk) 10:05, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

    @Mdann52: It was opt-in because German law required it. Toolserver is located in Germany.—cyberpower _Online 15:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

11. Per above, if it's moved from a server where it's a legal requirement (damn Germans!). It's not actually private information - just number of edits/month and number of edits to individual articles, both of which IIRC can be found on other tools, associated or not. Ansh666 14:39, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

    @Ansh666: You realized you just damned me, right? The guy who is moving the tools to labs. :p—cyberpower _Online 15:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

    Heh, oops. Ansh666 20:20, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

12. Per all above. ·addshore· 23:11, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
13. You cannot make private what has already been publicized. When each datum has been published, nothing new is revealed by summaries and aggregations that users could always perform on their own computers, if they wished. Opt-in or opt-out attempts to weave garments of mixed fibers. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 02:00, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
14. Because this information is very easy to gather from the API, which is publicly accessible, and with only very minimal coding skills. Any added privacy from an opt-in is illusory. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
15. Per supra. Theopolisme (talk) 03:07, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
16. I don't understand how there can be a privacy violation. The pages a person has contributed to is something they should be proud of. -- Numbermaniac _(C) 07:24, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
17. A false sense of privacy. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 19:08, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
18. Per User:Numbermaniac, Not entirely sure how it can be considered a "privacy violation", If you don't want the edit counter being public then don't edit on WP, It's not rocket science!. ........ →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 00:15, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
19. This is not a privacy issue. We are all responsible for maintaining the integrity of Misplaced Pages. Transparency is good. Carrite (talk) 06:43, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
20. The information is already public! The only thing one needs to work a lot to find those! --Tito Dutta  (talk • contributions • email) 00:22, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
21. There isn't a real privacy concern here, and I'm someone that takes digital privacy more serious than they should. I see no reason not to remove opt-in. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:56, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
22. Suggesting an illusion of privacy with an opt-in is worse than being up front with what this data is. older ≠ wiser 17:08, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
23. Useful information, and consistent with the desire for transparency.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:08, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
24. Activities performed in a public place aren't private.—Kww(talk) 19:29, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
25. The information stats isn't a privacy issue as its already available and accessible to all. All this does is compile the information that anyone can already view in an easy format.Blethering Scot 19:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
26. I fail to see how anybody's editing history is private. On some users I've always wanted to see the detailed stats for some people but they haven't opted in yet. JayJay 00:27, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
27. Compiling stats from public information doesn't require anyone's permission. I oppose the ability to opt-out too. Transparency is key. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 01:37, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
28. Support per all above. Fredlyfish4 (talk) 20:30, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
29. Per Tom Morris. -- œ 06:58, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
30. This information can be computed rather quickly from Special:Contributions. Why go through all the trouble if the tool is available? This information is really in no way private. Jguy _Talk 14:08, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
31. I'm for transparency. Let everything be public. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
32. Support with the reservation that en.wiki does not control a global tool, and this decision needs to apply to en.wiki only or be taken to meta before implementation, as well as explicitly approved by the WMF legal eagles. Tazerdadog (talk) 21:29, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
33. Support removal of opt-in. Most of the "privacy!!!!!!!!!!!!11" people are Snowdenbots who really have no idea about privacy. Just because some information happens to be hidden away in a dark corner of the Internet doesn't mean it's private, it's just not yet been seen by many people. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if the Snowdenbot WMF nuked this proposal from orbit (assuming the "#YOLOswagz2001WMFlolprivacyfreecultureftw" people who make up Misplaced Pages's high society rejected this as "no consensus".) In the end, this isn't a privacy issue, it's a non-issue, and anyone hacking at the privacy stump is really fooling themselves. Wer900 • talk 04:39, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

    Was the ridiculing really necessary? wctaiwan (talk) 08:58, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

34. Compiling public data (about anonymous user names) and displaying it is easy to read form in no one violates anyone's privacy. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:19, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
35. Tom has put it very well. There is no sense in which this data is, or should be, private. — Scott • talk 14:55, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
36. Per User:King of Hearts and my comment below. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• You need to make your opening statement clearer, explain the situation in greater detail. You say editors "want the detailed edit stats to be visible" - visible to themselves, or visible to the public? GiantSnowman 13:23, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  I don't see how it can be much clearer. There are users who don't want the opt-in and there are users who want to keep it. So I'm asking the community the simple question. Should the edit counter have the optin?—cyberpower _Online 14:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  No, it's still clear as mud. Opt-in to what? GiantSnowman 14:22, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Top Namespaces Edits and monthly statistics.—cyberpower _Online 14:23, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Slightly clearer - but I'll repeat, "visible to themselves, or visible to the public?" GiantSnowman 14:26, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Removing optin means visible to the public.—cyberpower _Online 14:28, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  I agree that you should explain it better and also add that those with x number of edits will always be opt-out. I thought anyone could opt-out by simply deleting the page created during opt-in? Also, the options above are not clear to me. What if I wanted all editors to be automatically opt-in? Mohamed CJ (talk) 14:30, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  @Mohamed CJ: "What if I wanted all editors to be automatically opt-in?" Then you would support the section "Remove opt-in and replace with Opt-out". That section is for making everyone automatically opted-in and they have the option to opt-out.—cyberpower _Online 15:00, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  I'm still not 100% clear, can somebody else please have a go seeing as cyberpower is unable/unwilling? GiantSnowman 14:40, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Let me try this again. Currently, all editor are required to opt themselves in to allow everyone to see additional statistics in X!'s edit counter. These are top namespace edits and monthly edit statistics. This opt-in was setup because because of a law in Germany, which toolserver is located in. Since we are migrating to labs, there are users who wish to see other users monthly stats and top namespace without that said user being looked up to have to opt-in. Therefore all data will be readily available without said users consent. The question is should we allow this or should the user still have control over what can be seen in the edit counter, that is should opt-in be removed, or should it be kept, respectively. I'm sorry if this isn't clear either. I'm trying my best to make it clear.—cyberpower _Online 14:57, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  No, that's perfect, exactly what I was looking for! Some of us aren't as technically minded as others... ;) GiantSnowman 15:01, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

• How is it a privacy concern? Anyone who has access to the database (any Toolserver user, say) can work out the most-edited-pages of a user by running the query by hand (or going through Special:Contributions). The reason for requiring opt-in is as much to preserve server resources as is it to give users the illusion that the public information is somehow not public. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:53, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Some users wish the compilation of public data to be readily accessible. I am well aware that this is public data.—cyberpower _Online 14:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  While certainly true, it doesn't mean we should just give up any attempt at privacy. There's a big difference between anyone with access to the Toolserver (or anyone who can code) being able to work something out, and anyone who can use a web browser. --Chris 14:53, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Actually, it's not just anyone with access to the Toolserver. It's anyone with access to the API... which is everybody. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:39, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Ok then go ahead. Someone who is not a coder, please work out the namespace totals/month counts/etc for my account. --Chris 02:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  It is rather time consuming, but they could do that by going through Special:Contributions and compiling the statistics by hand. Toolserver (or now Tool Labs) or API scripts are just doing what any editor with the time and inclination could do. There's nothing stopping anyone from creating an off-wiki edit counter that uses the API and shows far more detailed information than X's counter - WikiCounter for instance. I might do so on Tool Labs precisely because I'd like to play around with new fancy charting libraries. —Tom Morris (talk) 04:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  That link is broken.—cyberpower _Offline 04:33, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  Thank you for proving my point. Yes the data is public, but who in the right mind would go through 20,000 edits and count them manually? Yes it would be possible for a dedicated person to work out this kind of information, that does not mean we should make their job any easier. --Chris 05:01, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  Anyone could download a mirror of the database and run a query to get the same results. It's not limit to TS tool devs.--v/r - TP 13:26, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  Yes, I completely understand that. What I am saying is that there is a big difference between someone being able to use the API, or a database dump and write a script to generate that information, and someone being able to navigate to a web page and access it at the click of a button. No, it's not perfect privacy, but it is better than nothing. --Chris 13:33, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  Chris, no offense intended, but I'm not sure that you understand what the word "private" actually means. — Scott • talk 19:26, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

• It was an issue on the toolserver due to German privacy laws which are bizarrely strict. Werieth (talk) 14:05, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Correct. And I'm very strong on Privacy concerns. Maybe because I'm German too.—cyberpower _Online 14:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

• I am not sure what this is doing here. I don't see a comment from the user whose account X's tool is on and who would obviously have to agree to these proposed changes, and I don't see a statement from toolserver admins stating that this would be compatible with their ToS, as it was my understanding that it was for ToS purposes that this was impossible. Snowolf 15:40, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  I also am not sure as to why, if this was a serious proposal, the English Misplaced Pages would get to decide what happens to a global tool. Snowolf 15:41, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  It's not toolserver anymore. It's labs. Completely different now.—cyberpower _Online 15:51, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  I don't think it matters if it is on the Toolserver or Labs. It's still a global tool. Snowolf's point stands. Killiondude (talk) 16:22, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  It is now completely up to the owner of the tool, as Snowolf says. This vote doesn't really matter. Prodego 18:09, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  I maintain it too. Right now I have taken up the project if moving it to labs. So it does matter. And I probably will be launching a proposal on meta or redirect a thread to here for more input globally.—cyberpower _Offline 18:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  Your time would be much better spent improving and maintaining tools rather than starting discussions like this. :-) If you have coding skills, I'd strongly recommend focusing on coding. We already have enough process wonkery and meta-process wonkery. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:41, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

  To address the issue of the tool's 'owner', I maintain that I inherited the and do not own them and I've taken part in the process, led by Cyberpower, to migrate these tools to labs. I've joined a team, of sorts, that Cyber has termed xlabs and so as these tools move to labs, I am abdicating any sort of psuedo ownership I gained while hosting open source tools that I didn't even design and barely maintained. I'm definitely okay with any changes to the tools as long as it's a team decision and I've address that with Cyber already.--v/r - TP 02:23, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• toolserver.org/~tparis/topedits/ lists 100 top edited pages of each namespace publicly. wikichecker.com even shows edit counts by hour of day and day of week. So the data is already public.···Vanischenu/_Talk」 22:06, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
• I'd have to agree with Snowolf, this should be a global discussion and not held on enwiki. Enwiki is not in charge of the other wikis. --Rschen7754 04:53, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

  If this RfC continues to take this course, we will most likely launch a second RfC on meta before any change is applied, after a discussion with the team.

Any chance we could make it opt-out only for en.wp users? I only ask because meta moves slower than a snail with a brain injury when it comes to policy discussions. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:17, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Based on what I'm looking at right now, it doesn't look there's going to be an opt at all. Besides, the change won't go into effect until at least the tools are migrated, debugged, and fully set up.—cyberpower _Offline 03:49, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

• I'm echoing Snowolf's concerns. The English Misplaced Pages does not have sole authority over this tool.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:37, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

  Correct. TParis and I have authority, but unlike Misplaced Pages devs, we're giving the English and global community the opportunity to decide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberpower678 (talk • contribs) 14:59, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

  This line of argument is begging the question. — Scott • talk 09:12, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• There are anomalies in German laws. Germany probably keeps the most detailed personal information over its residents than any other Western country and that is why the populace is largely paranoid about their personal data, which then reflects in such trivia as the use of the ToolServer for quickly compiling data that most of us can gather and collate from other tool server devices, editor contribs, and page histories. The sooner the Edit stats without op-in become available as standard, it will make the work of RfA /RfB/ARCOM/Stewarship, voters, SPI researchers, the granting of minor user rights, and many more meta workers much easier. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

  I was aware that the tool was very popular, but wasn't aware that there was such a strong dependency on it. I will begin a meta RfC to determine the remaining fate of the tool.—cyberpower _Online 02:20, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

User e-mail sending speed limit

Is there a technical limit on how many e-mails you can send in one peridod (e. g., 1 hour)? --Синкретик (talk) 06:19, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, 20 per day. MER-C 07:44, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• Please give a prooflink. I Assume good faith, but err is human. --Синкретик (talk) 08:16, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=userinfo&uiprop=ratelimits MER-C 08:26, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Doesn that mean 20 letters regardless of the receiver? I'm asking because we at Russian Misplaced Pages had a case of massive e-mail WP:Canvassing at user Pessimist2006's RFA & he failed. --Синкретик (talk) 08:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

That link is for the English Misplaced Pages. As far as I can tell, the throttle limit is set on a per-site basis; http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=userinfo&uiprop=ratelimits shows entirely different limits for the Russian Misplaced Pages. Perhaps this means that global accounts can be spammed by visiting the various Wikimedia projects in turn, sending as many e-mails as possible before reaching the limit, before moving on to the next one. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:41, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• That should be changed email limit globally! --Tito Dutta  (talk • contributions • email) 09:01, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
  • That's probably not easily doable until we actually finish the whole global account migration (SUL). But we should make a bugzilla for it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:16, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Support making a bugzilla if that's easy enough to do now. --Синкретик (talk) 11:25, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
      • There's no need to start an entire Bugzilla just for this one issue. A single report to the existing Bugzilla will suffice. And there's no need to vote for that; just head on over to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ and file the report. —Psychonaut (talk) 13:14, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
        • Yes, but they may not fulfill it due to absence of consensus. --Синкретик (talk) 13:28, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
          • I've never known the developers to check for consensus here before implementing a very reasonable feature request. If they want to gauge the demand for a feature they'll sooner look at the Bugzilla votes. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:10, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• • • • • • • Yes, that is a problem, isn't it. Users should not have to out themselves to report or vote for a bug. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:08, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow you guys... Tangent much... Let's try to get this back on topic... Has anyone submitted a ticket to bugzilla yet to get a global email limit set once SUL project is done? Jorm (WMF), sorry to bother you, but I'm curious who is lead on the SUL project if you happen to know or can find out. Thanks. Technical 13 (talk) 16:37, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• I have. --Синкретик (talk) 17:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Voted Technical 13 (talk) 17:08, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
• For the record, developers do not look at votes on bugzilla, like ever (Seriously. The vote feature is used like a watchlist for bugzilla for folks who don't like adding themselves as cc on a bug). It is preferred to gather consensus on a wiki page (and usually consensus is required for config changes. Reasonable requests get denied all the time due to lack of consensus ). In regards to Синкретик's question, according to mw:Auth_systems, that would be Chris. Bawolff (talk)
  • Noted: Bawolff, In2thats12, RobLa-WMF can one of you ping/echo Chris to this discussion, I can't seem to see a link to his profile on mw: or here on w: Thanks Technical 13 (talk) 19:32, 11 June 2013 (UTC) 19:25, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
    • btw, I should clarify one thing about my previous comment. Consensus is needed for config changes generally, it is not needed for bug fixes usually (if the bug could reasonably considered to be obviously unwanted behaviour). This request may fall more in the bug fix category than the config change category. Chris's user page is mw:User:CSteipp. Bawolff (talk) 19:47, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I left Chris a message on mw:User talk:CSteipp and now we just wait for a reply. Technical 13 (talk) 11:06, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
    • He's left a comment on the bug page. He doesn't oppose it. --Синкретик (talk) 13:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
    • <Technical_13> Would you mind if I quote your Bugzilla reply on VPT csteipp ?
      <csteipp> Technical_13: not at all
      

      For some background, the limit is currently 20 emails/user for all wikis (that
      was changed from 100 a few months back). That counter is per wiki, so a user
      could send out emails from multiple wikis to the same user, and the target
      would receive more than 20/day.
      
      To move this to a global throttle isn't trivial, but we could do it. It would
      fall into the general Admin Tools work.
      

      
      Technical 13 (talk) 18:25, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
      • The email system only lets me send about 1 every other day. I gave up trying to use the Email system. Kumioko (talk) 17:16, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
        • It's a bug than can be fixed if you report it in details with a new thread here. My restriction request is hardly connected to your problem. --Синкретик (talk) 06:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
• No replies to the bug have been made on bugzilla last week. The developers must be very busy, maybe with SUL finalization… --Синкретик (talk) 18:47, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Problems with a special character

I would like to know more about this character: "�". If I search for it, Misplaced Pages will return the following message:

 An error has occurred while searching: The search backend returned an error: 

If I try ] or http://en.wikipedia.org/%EF%BF%BD - it will say "Bad Title".

How can a Misplaced Pages reader find information about such a character on a Misplaced Pages article? Thanks. —  Ark25  (talk) 06:17, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

That is the Unicode 'REPLACEMENT CHARACTER' (U+FFFD). See Specials_(Unicode_block)#Replacement_character. --Splarka (rant) 07:29, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! I added the character to the list at Misplaced Pages:Page name#Invalid page names - the reader will be pointed to the list after getting a "Bad Title" error. —  Ark25  (talk) 08:19, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I fixed the description as only � is invalid in page titles. The other specials are valid, and in fact the respective one-character-titled articles all exist (as redirects): FFF9, FFFA, FFFB, FFFC. However, something is wrong with search: for example, gives the error message you mention above, while works. In fact, searching for � also works if there is more text in the search box . This sounds very much like a bug to me.—Emil J. 18:29, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I get the same message searching for a pipe character: thus. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:02, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Apparently the bug is already tracked at bugzilla:47761.—Emil J. 11:00, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

In this case, I think the search engine should a similar message to the one at when you get a search error. The red error message should be shown alone only when there is an unknown error. —  Ark25  (talk) 00:26, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

There likely is an unknown error. Why would the search engine ever complain about a bad title? It is supposed to search through articles that exist, not those that don’t.—Emil J. 10:36, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

In order to help the users. It can be done by a simple change to the interface of the search engine. Most users have no idea that the search didn't work because of using an illegal character. So it's good to get a similar message to the one at "Bad title". —  Ark25  (talk) 15:10, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I think you still do not get it. The reason the search engine didn’t work is not related in any way to any illegal characters, this was just a coincidence. It breaks in the same way for quite ordinary characters (or short strings), such as $. As mentioned in bugzilla:47761, it also breaks for lone namespace prefixes, such as Talk:.—Emil J. 16:30, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I didn't realize there is a bug in the search engine. Sorry for dumb question: the search engine should never return that error? —  Ark25  (talk) 05:52, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I can’t speak for the devs, but I’d say that since the error message is totally unhelpful, it should never be returned in this form. (I guess the text of the message is just a template used for all search error messages, where the colons are supposed to be followed by a specific error description, but in this case the offending code where the error happened did not supply any specific message due to some anomaly.)—Emil J. 14:52, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Template:AFC statistics

Thanks to whoever got the Template:AFC statistics page working again. It's so much nicer reviewing pages from there with the additional information provided. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:16, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I think The Earwig and their bot updates the page, so they deserve the praise. Bgwhite (talk) 07:25, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

It was an AFC group effort. Earwig updated the bot, I lightened the template some, and someone (I don't remember who) replaced part of the template with a Lua component to make it lighter and cleaner. Technical 13 (talk) 11:41, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The last one is Martijn Hoekstra. — Earwig  14:55, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Well,great. I was using the "Afc submissions sorted by date", but the Template version has some extra information that helps me pick out articles to review. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:00, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Where as I'm still a fairly new reviewer without a lot of time on my hands, I like to sort them by size and knock off 25-50 small ones at a time. Technical 13 (talk) 13:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Bolding on watchlist despite preference set for no bolding

I noticed that pages I haven't visited since they were last updated just started appearing in bold on my watchlist. I have the preference set under gadgets to not have the bolding, but the bolding is showing up despite the preference. I tried turning the bolding on in the preferences and then back off, but that did not fix the problem. Is there some sort of bug with the bolding/no bolding option? Just before the bolding started showing up, I visited Special:Newpages . . . could that have somehow affected my watchlist? Calathan (talk) 18:18, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

this setting works for me as advertised. try to do a deep-refresh (assuming ff, chrome or ie on windows, press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Delete, and select whatever your browser use for "drop/forget/delete cache/temporary files". if you use a different browser or os, look in the browser's menu how to completely purge the cache), and see if this solves the problem.

also, if you use a skin other than vector, try it with vector. if you find that the problem is skin or browser related, please report your findings. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:27, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh, what a headache. Literally...the bold is horrendous. 1. I have checked my preferences under gadgets and indeed have bolding for watchlist unselected. 2. I just performed the "detete temporary internet files" routine (thanks for the neat keypress info...) 3. I temporarily changed my skin from Modern to Vector. None of this mattered one iota. I still have pages bolded. The only way I can keep from getting a migraine is to click "mark all pages visited" each time I check my watchlist; which only works for a moment because I have nearly a thousand pages I watch, some of which are quite active (like this one). This is new, unexpected and unliked. Fylbecatulous talk 18:45, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I have purged the cache, I'm not on compatibility mode, and the option isn't selected in my preferences. GiantSnowman 18:51, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I've also tried the suggestions קיפודנחש gave, and they did not fix the problem. I'm using MonoBook, but the bolding was still present when I switched to Vector. I also deleted the cache/temporary Internet files, but that didn't solve the problem. The bolding is still present. Calathan (talk) 18:54, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not working for me either. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:58, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

the problem seems to be real, but it only materialize with IE - for ff and chrome this preference seem to work as advertised. this is the probable cause - i venture a guess that the person who created this gadget use some browser other than IE. i left him a message asking him to take a look at this topic. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:27, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

It worked perfectly on IE for about a year, why would it suddently change? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:38, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

If it is an IE issue, try toggling "compatibility" mode... Technical 13 (talk) 19:44, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

As I've already said, that doesn't work. GiantSnowman 19:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I have IE10. I see nothing that applies to me on the "Compatability mode" choices...therefore, I too am not in compatability mode and don't intent to tinker, actually. I agree: what has happened? I've been upgraded to IE 10 as long as it has been available. Fylbecatulous talk 20:00, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

This is probably an issue now when it wasn't for the last year because of the recent introduction of green bullets on the watchlist. I believe these use some of the same classes as watchlist bolding; the bolding gadget was probably changed to accommodate this. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:08, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I think I fixed it. As usual, IE is retarded enough to miss the the finer points of CSS; it does not seem to understand what 'inherit' means. — Edokter (talk) — 20:04, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I've logged out, re-purged and opened a new browser - still big'n'bold. GiantSnowman 20:08, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Seems like another, unfortunately increasingly typical, change to the system that has not been properly tested. Why does Misplaced Pages allow any editor to install any changes without a full test on all browsers? I have complained several times before about such changes and received very arrogant responses along the lines of "it's your fault for using IE" or as described above "IE is retarded"

NO - like it, or hate it, IE is the most used browser in the world, if any change has not been fully tested in all standard browsers it should not be allowed to be implemented. I've made this point before, and it was described as "unrealistic", although no reason or justification was made for this claim. As it is, my editing has been severely hampered for months by the toolbars dropping into the edit pane, due to another so-called "improvement" that caused more damage than good.

Misplaced Pages has been wondering why experienced editors leave - whilst ignoring repeated requests not to "fix" things that are not bust. We need a simple, basic interface which editors can add to by selecting options in My Preferences, not an increasingly complex interface that requires editors to install complex lines of code to disable them, if they can find this code hidden on some obscure page. Arjayay (talk) 20:31, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikitech-l: Features vs. Internet Explorers. Helder 21:11, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Since gerrit:65414-change, the CSS for the watchlist is loaded trough javascript. If the user is encountering an error in one of his (other) scripts, then this script may not be able to load and not be able to add the CSS, which would explain the problem that this user is experiencing. See also the report below —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:02, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

This is what I have on my common.css -

strong.mw-watched { font-weight: normal !important; }
span.updatedmarker{display:none;}
#mw-watchlist-resetbutton{display:none}
span.mw-editsection { float:right; }

I also have bolding unselected and green bullets selected on my Preferences > Gadgets menu.

What I get on my Watchlist is green bullets and bolding. I prefer the clearly noticable but not screamingly offensive little green dots without bolding. I'm using IE9 on Win7 - I threw out IE10 because it comprehensively stuffed up the layouts here and on other sites. The bolding happens right at the end of the page loading, almost as an "afterthought", I'm not sure if that is significant. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:59, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I have to keep the green bullets "selected" (which is ok; they are not too vivid). If I did away with them, then my reset button would be hidden and I woudl have no way to mark all pages visited to allow me a moment with no bold. I am keeping IE10 because I figured out some tweaks that made it work better for me (such as the dastardly "auto-spelll correct" which wrinkly underlined everything here that was in code because it wasn't spaced (such as defaultsort:woodbridge). To me, the bolding is "screamingly offensive". I do not intend to downgrade my browser just for the quirks of Misplaced Pages. And yes, the bold still lives this morning, btw. Fylbecatulous talk 11:36, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

OK, just to get this clear, this might take at least a week to get this properly fixed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:40, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Z'okay. ツ Fylbecatulous talk 12:24, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

• Its not a javascript error issue for me. I examined the Firefox 19.0.2 error console and there are zero errors but a lot of warnings. For me I used the enhanced RC feed and the timestamps are still bold for me. Werieth (talk) 12:19, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

OK, I downloaded an IE10 virtual machine from http://modern.ie and it seems that IE has a different load order of the styles or something, causing it to follow different specificity rules. I made our overrulling stronger and that seems to have fixed it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:23, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

This appears to have fixed itself for me i.e. I have done nothing to my computer but it is sorted. GiantSnowman 19:20, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Did it start behaving soon after 15:14 (UTC) today? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:28, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

No, I think it was working fine this morning. GiantSnowman 19:31, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

For anyone who may care, according to Misplaced Pages's own Browser statistics, IE is no longer the most used browser. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:18, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Bolding on watchlist has gone away, please give it back

Please give me the bold marks on the watchlist back, since the update today they have completely gone away – no matter that the pages all haven’t been watched, it tells that they all have which is wrong. I have been told in the meantime that they now only can be seen, when someone has a functionating (newer version of) JavaScript in the browser. But that again is not what unobtrusive JavaScript is about. First no notifications here anymore and no possibility to change interwikis anymore because of Wikidata and so on (new translation feature not editable), now these changes back again, what comes next? WT:Flow#‎Flow without javascript, the VisualEditor, what else should be feared to get live some day?

Shall it not be possible anymore to edit Misplaced Pages without scripts? Why? Why shall WP editors be forced to new systems, new browsers, new scripts? Does the Foundation want to drive editors away who are not compatible with that what the Foundation wants? If this kind of driving away the editors will continue in the future, then the editors will be away someday, yes. But why do you want this to happen? I thought that there would be a reaching-out for new editors. But it seems to be that theses new editors must meet some technical conditions which are set by the Foundation. That’s really a pity. Everyone should be able to edit WP. Also in the future. Can you please take a look upon Misplaced Pages:Petition to the WMF on handling of interface changes before changing such things? --Geitost 22:14, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Please change this back, so that everyone can see the bold marks again: gerrit:65414, CSS file. Or fix it in another way. I don’t have a bugzilla account and don’t want one. --Geitost 22:40, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

This looks like an unintended side effect of a change. You should report it as a bug in bugzilla by following the instructions How to report a bug, in this case under the product 'MediaWiki' and the component 'Interface'. This is to make developers of the software aware of the issue. If you have done so, please paste the number of the bug report (or the link) here, so others can also inform themselves about the bug's status. Thanks in advance!—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:58, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Please read my last sentence, I don’t like to be forced to get a new e-mail address which has to be posted in Bugzilla and there can be seen by everyone, so I won’t make a bugzilla account. I thought that maybe the developers also take a look here, if they update MediaWiki.

I first noticed this change today between 20:00 and 21:00 (CEST) which is between 18:00 and 19:00 (UTC). That is exactly the time when the new version of MediaWiki had been placed to dewiki. And the same happens here on enwiki again, and I think here has also taken place a MW update at this time. So I suppose that this issue here is related to the one above at #Bolding on watchlist despite preference set for no bolding, where users who didn’t want this feature took a script for not seeing it anymore. Now that this feature has been put from css to js (with the update), I can’t see it anymore, and perhaps scripts that should turn this off, don’t function anymore. This isn’t good on both sides and better should be reverted or fixed in another way. I think it would be enough, if anyone just linked to the two threads here on bugzilla. If there ain’t no bug at this time which I just don’t know. --Geitost 23:18, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to this Geitost. Actually I wondered what was wrong with the bolding on the watchlist today, since bolding was only shown after a noticeable lag. The use of JavaScript explains this unwanted behavior perfectly. I posted a comment to the Gerrit patch mentioned above.

Actually I only created an account for this, since I think we're using by far too much JavaScript already. Instead of even expanding its use, we should strip it out wherever possible. Best example is the new "Thanks" feature that is totally unusable without JavaScript (and seems to even leave some non-working buttons with JavaScript disabled) or the new "Notifications" feature that's also pretty crippled without JavaScript. --Patrick87 (talk) 23:20, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that’s why I wrote that also into the petition linked above. See also the Flow discussion. I’m really afraid about the next features that will be put onto the wikis (WP:Flow, WP:VisualEditor). No notifications, no translation extension usable (if there are pages with that new extension, you first have to search for the messages in the namespace Translation: via Special:PrefixIndex instead, that’s quite difficult and takes a lot of time to find the right message to change, you won’t create or change many translations that way, that’s for sure, and: you have to know that, otherwise you won’t edit any translations), no possibility at all to add, change or remove wrong interwikis on Wikidata (cause the pages there are not able to edit directly anymore and interwikis are JS-only on Wikidata). There’s so much now that can’t be done anymore which are really core features and are needed. And it’s getting more and more all the time. I really don’t understand that noone changes this direction back again. It’s the wrong direction to drive away people this way. --Geitost 23:46, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be a good idea to put this issue forward at the now-being board elections and other elections. There have to be candidates who care about the users and the communities, as long as the developers and the Foundation don’t care about this (or seem not to do this). --Geitost 00:00, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I have submitted a change suggestion gerrit:68601, that might be able to address this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:01, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much! :-) --Geitost 00:03, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

• Thank you both for working on that problem. The April 2013 editor-activity data has revealed about 10,055 more active editors than expected after the typical 6% decreases in prior years, so even though many veteran editors have gone on break, there are hundreds who have stayed or returned to see these problems. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:25, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

FYI: It is now possible to edit interwiki links in Wikidata without JavaScript. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:05, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

That is most excellent news! I had been giving Wikidata a wide berth after I tried it a while back and found it to be unusable (lots of "edit" links that did nothing when clicked, etc). Your comment prompted me to take another look, and it now works. Thank you! – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:51, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

May not be related to this but how do we get the bolding back on the related changes special page for those items that are on our watchlist. Keith D (talk) 17:31, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

If only this totally unwanted feature would go away - I just can't get rid of it. Anyone who wants bold on watchlist, but can't get it, willing to change computers with me, who doesn't want bold on watchlist, but can't get rid of it?
On a serious note, this just re-emphasises my point above, that changes are not tested before they are implemented. Arjayay (talk) 17:46, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

i think you are not 100% fair here. you make the equation "contains bugs === untested". anyone who had even small amount of exposure to software realize immediately that this equation is false, but to emphasize the point, i'll present the same logic in a different form: "tested software === software that contains 0 bugs". practically every person who ever turned on a computer recognizes that the second equation is false.

no "untested" feature go into MW software, and no release to date was 100% free of bugs. putting my prophet cap on, i can see into the future and predict with absolute certainty that the next 50 releases will _all_ be tested, and will _all_ contain bugs.

as to "unwanted features": higher in this very page you complained that "my editing has been severely hampered for months by the toolbars dropping into the edit pane". however, i am somewhat familiar with the bug you referred to, and in know that this problem only occurred when one keep the "advanced" toolbar in the editor open. everything inside this "advanced" toolbar are "features" that at one point or another, someone dubbed as "unwanted". the fact you use these enough to keep the "advanced" toolbar open (and hence encountering the problem you described, which, btw, persisted for little more than a week, not "months") proves that you yourself find at least *some* of those "unwanted features" useful. as to the problem discussed here: this is not a mediawiki problem. it's a problem created when diligent and capable people here at enwiki tried to enhance this feature, in direct response to users' requests. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:32, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

You state the problem "persisted for little more than a week" - as if it has actually been resolved - which it most certainly hasn't - I am still suffering from it, and my statement of "months" is totally accurate. You claim to be "somewhat familiar with it", so perhaps you could actually resolve it? - Arjayay (talk) 21:22, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

see Bugzilla:27698. i had the honor of reopening this bug report when the problem reincarnated recently, and as far as i knew, the solution really did its job. your report is the first i heard about this issue still persisting. after reading your report, i tried it, and was able to reproduce using "compatibility mode" on IE-10 (i do not usually use IE, and when i do, i do not usually use "compatibility mode"). ttbomk, "compatibility mode" for IE-10 emulates IE-7 behavior. i think this issue should be reported, but may i ask, which browser do you use? peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 03:57, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

created a new report: Bugzilla:49609. if you use IE 9 or 10, i'll bet that you have "compatibility mode" on, and if you'll turn it off the problem will go away. if you use ie-8, there's still larger than 0 probability that going out of compatibility mode will solve the problem. if you use ie-7 i'm afraid you'll have to wait for the bug to be fixed. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 04:32, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm on IE8 (highest I can use in XP) but not in compatibility mode. As I've explained before, there seems to be a common misunderstanding about compatibility mode - it is only backwards compatible - so if I was in it on IE8 I'd end up compatible with earlier versiosn, such as IE7, which you freely admit is not fixed.Arjayay (talk) 17:42, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

first, i apologize for being a bit snappy above. this issue (actually, not exactly this issue, but similar enough that the terse description applied to it) appeared for all browsers a while ago, and was fixed fairly quickly, and hence my comment. i was not aware that it persisted for IE until i read your report. i verified it myself, and opened a new bug report, which was later marked "duplicate" of Bugzilla:4756. as to "compatibility mode": i do not have access to IE-8, and it is close to impossible to switch IE version (except upgrading - but then downgrading back is often no longer an option...). so i only succeded reproducing it with "compatibility mode" for IE-10. as it happens, "compatibility mode" on ie-9 and ie-10 emulates almost (but not quite) exactly IE-7 behavior. i do not know of a good way to test webpage behavior with IE-8 except finding a box with genuine IE-8, which is not a viable option for most developers. regarding insufficient testing with IE and specifically IE in compatibility mode: this is a known deficiency of MW development process, and several people, including myselfth have alerted about it in the past. i am sure MW will be thrilled to have volunteer testers who use genuine IE of any version, and specifically IE-8. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:30, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• Is there any way of de-selecting the bolding on the watchlist? It becomes kind of a watchlist on the watchlist, and I find it disruptive to some degree (sorry to the developers). HandsomeFella (talk) 21:25, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

• How to change your watchlist look/behaviour, see: Misplaced Pages:Customizing watchlists. This assumes things are working correctly. I personally love the bolding, so you must be related to my evil in-laws :) Bgwhite (talk) 23:29, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but it doesn't work. I have checked both boxes, the one for the green bullets and reset button, and the one for bold. Should I try manually disabling? HandsomeFella (talk) 10:33, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor disabled

Hey all

As some of you may have noticed, there's a pretty serious issue with the VisualEditor at the moment; it's been tentatively traced to a deployment earlier this morning. We've made fixing it of the highest priority, and in the meantime are about to turn off the VE to prevent people accidentally munging articles. It goes without saying that we're very sorry about this issue, and the disruption it has caused; hopefully it won't be repeated! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:49, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

That's alright Oliver, just beat yourself with a bat and we'll call it even.--v/r - TP 15:02, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I must have been on another planet, noticed nothing ! ·addshore· 15:03, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

TParis; that sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure if my concussion influences my judgment, there ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

We've already decided to turn off VE for a bit, do we really need your judgement for the next couple hours? ;) <ducks> Jalexander--WMF 17:44, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

gerrit:68667 was merged. Helder 16:39, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

The VE should now be live again :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I activated it on my account just to see it out of curiosity, but I don't see any change. Where's the VisualEditor?—cyberpower _Online 23:58, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor#How to enable the VisualEditor. Note you only get the VisualEditor option in some namespaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:12, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Yikes that thing is horrible. It also doesn't seem to want to work right. I can't edit anything with it. All it does is cover the field with green diagonal stripes.—cyberpower _Online 00:22, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Your using it wrong ;p ·addshore· 00:31, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Template editing is coming next week, or soon thereafter, according to the progress report above, #VisualEditor weekly update - 2013-06-13 (MW 1.22wmf7). –Quiddity (talk) 02:26, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah I tried it a couple of times in the last week or two about a week ago and only a mother could love it was my feeling about it. Anyway I'll try it out again when it has something about editing template calls. Dmcq (talk) 08:26, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Click image opens image in gallery mode?

I love how clicking play on the video in Mirror test opens and enlarges the video in the center of the screen, dims the background, and starts playing. It would be great if images also operated in this way. The majority of readers when clicking on an image simply want to see a large version of it.. the user experience would be better if the image opened just like the video example. It would have its caption, a link to the file page, maybe a next/previous button for other images in the same article. Has this been discussed or considered for the English WP? I'm sure the developers are busy but I think it would be a huge improvement. --Mahanga (Talk) 03:54, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid this is not feasible, for legal reasons. For any non-copyright image (such as those licensed CC-BY), we must provide attribution, and displaying the file description page is the means of doing this. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:02, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand how we can do it for videos but not for images? The same licensing issues apply. --Mahanga (Talk) 14:42, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

The video has a 'credits' section, that (although imperfect) is probably the best we can do and at the same time keep presenting video in a usable way. With images we have always been afraid that if we present people with a 'bigger' version, they will download that, instead of downloading it from the 'origin' page. We can definitely create some sort of image mode as well, its just that noone has made it yet. It would be easier if we actually had a database with attribution and licenses for each file, that would make presenting the attribution in different formats a lot easier. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:17, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I do wish someone steps up to the task because I think everyone would agree that it makes for a much better user experience, especially on mobile. The challenges regarding licensing seem minor and surmountable. I'm not sure how the video extracts the licensing information, but I'm sure the same or similar method could be used for images. The image could also have a link to the Commons page and also links to download original version and/or different resolutions. There are a number of extensions that could be serve as a great starting point. Here's wishing for some image viewing changes by sometime in 2014. --Mahanga (Talk) 15:34, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Redrose64, "not feasible" is a pretty strong statement. What's wrong with displaying attribution and licensing information in the lightbox frame under the image, just like how you would do it when embedding an image on any other website? The example at right is all I would have to do on my own website to meet license conditions. — Scott • talk 09:20, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

red Cite Error message precision

The mostly-red message (example) "Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{Reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or a <references group="lower-alpha"/> tag (see the help page)." is not quite correct on those occasions when we use {{Efn}} templates and not ref elements and a {{Notelist}} template and not a {{Reflist}} template or a <references> element. Parallel situations probably include upper-alpha ({{Efn-ua}}) and romanettes ({{Efn-lr}}). The message does give useful advice but it can easily be misunderstood in these cases, such as by leading editors to add {{Reflist}} templates when they should instead add {{Notelist}} templates. Perhaps the red message should be rephrased (perhaps conditioned on which templates are in use for that page) or, if too many possibilities exist, linked to a page listing the possibilities so editors can pick one relevant to their case. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:08, 15 June 2013 (UTC) (This was posted a few minutes ago without interpreting the sig tildes; now correcting a nowiki tag that truncated the display: 18:08, 15 June 2013 (UTC))

I will update this soon. Unfortunately, there is no way to detect which template triggered the error. --  Gadget850 18:58, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

{{notelist}} is merely a shorthand for {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:15, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I guess possibly the code could detect whether an Efn or related template is currently present, if that would help. I'm not a programming expert, so I don't know, and detecting is probably not critical. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:03, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Possibly, but the code is in Cite and only a developer can change it. --  Gadget850 21:38, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I've added a #ifeq in MediaWiki:Cite error group refs without references to check if $1=lower-alpha -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:15, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I rolled this back for the moment. There is still a lot of usage of {{reflist|group-lower-alpha}}, and there are also variations of {{notelist}}. We also need to test this carefully as MediaWiki namespace can be tricky. Headed out to the drive in, will look at this later. --  Gadget850 22:41, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Updated the message to show the group name in the <ref> tag. Added a switch to show the {{efn}} and {{notelist}} templates. Updated the help page to show the three sets of templates. --  Gadget850 13:36, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Multiple references to the same source

When a particular source is used just once in an article, you are guaranteed to be able to get back to the referenced sentence after viewing the source. When there are multiple uses of the source you have to work out whether the link you followed was from the 1st or 2nd, etc. use of that source.

For example at British National Corpus the first sentence has three supporting sources, , and , Clicking on the takes you to the references section where you can see it is Burnard and Ashton (1998), you can then follow the ^ link get back to the first sentence. Having clicking the you have to choose from to get back to where you were, in this case it's not rocket science to work out that the first sentence will be link .

As it gets further down the article though it gets harder to work out. For example in the Spoken discourse under represented section, the first sentence is marked as being verified by source 6. Clicking the you are taken to the references section where you learn the reference is Burnard (2002). After reading that you have to chose from to get you back to the section you were reading. If you have read the entire article to this point and been noting each source you could possibly work out that it is link you want. If you haven't read the entire article to this point and/or haven't been noting each source, then you are left with blind guessing. We must be able to do better than that!

TL:DR: When a single source is cited multiple times, getting back from the references section to the right section of pose requires guesswork. This is bad and should be changed.'

The only two solutions I can think of off the top of my head are either to include the usage letter in the inline reference,

"The proportion of written to spoken material in the BNC is 10:1.", or

"The proportion of written to spoken material in the BNC is 10:1."

Which might get confusing if people are expecting to find source 6a but end up at source 6. The other alternative is to number the citations not the sources, so the references would either have lots of duplicates (a waste of space, potentially confusing and potentially making it seem like the sourcing is exagerated), or there would be several numbers for some sources, eg.

1. 17. Brown (2000)

3. 6. Schmidt (2003)

4. 7. 14. 15. Smith (2008)

5. Jones (1998)

8. 9. 10. 12. 13. White (2010)

11. Brown (2009)

16. 21. Jackson (2012)

Which is bad and horrible in several ways.

I originally posted the above (minus the TLDR) at help talk:Footnotes#Multiple references to the same source where it was noted that a change from to or would require developer action following a request at bugzilla. There is no point making a request there until there is consensus here for a change, particularly one of this magnitude. Even if it weren't it's such a significant reader-facing change that it needs to be done right first time. So I'm starting this discussion here to determine what the reaction is to the proposal, what suggestions people have for the format (I'm certain that there must be alternatives other than those I note above), etc. Once there is stability about what people like and don't like, then I guess a prominently advertised RfC followed by a bugzilla request, and then wait for an unknowable amount of time for implementation.

I will link to this discussion from various pages related to citing sources, footnotes and accessibility/usability issues, but more links will be good! Thryduulf (talk) 00:29, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I use the browser's back feature by clicking its back icon, or pressing Backspace or Alt+←. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:41, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

That's useful as a workaround, but the link issue should still be fixed. Thryduulf (talk) 01:00, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I think you need to explain why the back button is not a full and complete solution. Dmcq (talk) 08:09, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Because it's not at all obvious (I didn't know about it for example, and I'm an above average user) and isn't guaranteed to work on all platforms. If the back button was a full solution there would be no point in providing back links at all. Thryduulf (talk) 08:18, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry about that but it is a pretty standard fixture on the major browsers. By not always working I think you're probably referring to some applications where if you press the button something happens like buying a chair, yes pressing the browsers back button then can cause problems because you can't take back an order that way and a transaction environment would have been set up. The back button they provide will take you to before then to something like looking at a picture of a chair instead. However in Misplaced Pages the only tranasctions of that sort we have are when you press the save page button when editing. Dmcq (talk) 08:34, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

That's not what I'm on about at all. Hardly a major browser these days, but the version of IE on my old phone would take you back to the previous page rather than the previous point in the same page. We should also not just be catering for only the technically literate - if it wasn't obvious to me then it's not going to be obvious to a whole swathe of users less technically adept than I am. I'm sorry, but I don't regard the back button being available as a reason why this problem does not need to be fixed. Thryduulf (talk) 09:25, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Remembering the letter is something that you have to do here and could be confusing in the text. May be you could highlight the letter in the reference section that you arrived at the particular reference from at the same time as you highlight the reference entry in blue. Keith D (talk) 13:28, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

The blue highlighting is achieved with the target pseudo-class :target - the CSS is

ol.references li:target, sup.reference:target, span.citation:target { background-color: #ddeeff; }

which works for the whole entry in the list. To give one letter some styling in addition to the blue for the whole entry cannot be done with CSS alone, and I'm not enough of a Javascript coder to know whether it's feasible. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:29, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

If feasible (I have no idea) then the highlighting would be good for those who have the bowser support (wider for css than js AIUI). For accessibility reasons we shouldn't rely on something working only with javascript if possible, although I do take the point about the letter potentially being confusing. Would a number ( etc) be better than a letter? I'm not sure there is a way around the remembering the letter (or whatever) number though. Thryduulf (talk) 17:22, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) For "one letter", read "a substring of the list entry" - it doesn't matter whether it's a letter, number or some other characters. The problem is two-fold, and unrelated.

• When you follow links from the article text to the refs section, and you have a superscripted ref link in the article text that occurs more than once, say the which occurs three times in NBR 224 and 420 Classes (once in the infobox, twice in the "History" section), each of those links is identical, so the target has no knowledge of where it came from. Therefore, as things stand, it's not possible to have highlighting like

1. ^ Ahrons 1987, p. 195.

assuming that you had clicked the second in that article, because the links from the first and third are identical.

• The Cite extension of MediaWiki does not have the means for adding distinguishing marks to the which it presently generates via the system message MediaWiki:Cite reference link. The extension would need to be amended so that the third of the three values presently passed into that system message is not a simple number but one of the other methods which you suggest. In other words, it's not that or are difficult so must somehow be "better", but that they're all equally difficult to do.

--Redrose64 (talk) 22:07, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I understand now the technical issues, thanks. My comment about being maybe better than was related to Keith D's comment "Remembering the letter is something that you have to do here and could be confusing in the text". I understood that to mean that a suffix letter may be confusing for humans reading the article when it appears in the middle of a section of prose (e.g. source 19 at British National Corpus#Classification errors and misleading titles#Classification errors and misleading titles) - i.e. the letter may get mistaken for lexical information. vs vs may be equally easy or difficult for the software, but they aren't necessarily for humans. I don't actually know if this is what Keith meant or whether a reference suffix letter would be an issue, but it is something we should think about before asking for a specific format. Thryduulf (talk) 00:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

My comment was related to the fact that normally you take no notice of the actual detail in the brackets, just use it to click on to get to the relevant reference. You have to consciously make a note of the letter in this case to go back. On the further point raised it could be confused as some sort of technical thing such as a page number or item in the reference. Keith D (talk) 08:37, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I expect it doesn't help at all in Thryduulf's situation, but Preferences, Gadgets, Browsing, Reference Tooltips may avoid you having to go down to the reference list in the first place. Thincat (talk) 21:53, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Cite reference link formats the in-text link. The backlink characters are set by MediaWiki:Cite references link many format and the default is ^ etc. This was changed in 2006 to match the {{ref}} template. The actual labels are defined at MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels and allow for 1065 backlinks. --  Gadget850 09:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The basis of this discussion is incorrect. The problem is not multiple uses of a source, but multiple uses of a "named ref" (i.e., "<ref name= ...>"). There is much to be said for using short cites in the text to link to a single full citation of a source. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:06, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• Updated the help-page for backspace/Back key: I have updated the help-page, Help:Footnotes, to remind users that the backspace or Back-key can be used (in IE or Firefox browsers) to return to the "footnote marker" superscript "" after seeing the footnote text. For many users, that will work. -Wikid77 01:55, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • For some, definitely. For many, maybe. It doesn't mean that we still shouldn't fix this for everybody though. Thryduulf (talk) 13:37, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

For what users does the "back" button not suffice? Should we be fixing what is possibly a browser deficiency? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

i do not think there is a single browser for which the back button will not do exactly what you expect it to do. קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:09, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Category not displaying

In S. Charles Lee, Category:NRHP architects was added here. However, it isn't displaying in the article for me. But, he does appear in the category here. Can anyone tell what is happening? Chris857 (talk) 03:22, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

@Chris857: - Category:NRHP architects was a hidden category, which do not display unless you change your preferences. I unhid the category in this edit to resolve the issue. GoingBatty (talk) 04:51, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I've re-hidden that category. It was hidden as the result of this WP:CFD discussion. Read that discussion to understand the reasons why it is hidden. --Orlady (talk) 16:15, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

@Orlady: - Note that the template on Category:NRHP architects states that this category "contains pages that are not articles", which clearly is not the case. You may want to add some additional text in the category to summarize the discussion so people who were not involved in the discussion (such as Chris857) will understand. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:08, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not going to change that template or edit the category. Please note that the category is maintained primarily by User:Doncram (not me); if there's a desire to edit it, discuss it with him. As for the template, that's a standard template that is added automatically to hidden categories. One sentence in the template does say that the category "contains pages that are not articles, or it groups articles by status rather than content". Neither one of those statements is exactly true for that category (because it does contain articles grouped on the basis of content). However, the main point is the one that's made in the previous sentence: the category is used for administration of the Misplaced Pages project and is not part of the encyclopedia. It takes some patience to read through the CFD discussion, but a person who takes the time to read it will find some reasons why this category isn't considered appropriate for inclusion in the encyclopedia. --Orlady (talk) 20:38, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

How to include Misplaced Pages:Book_sources into Special:BookSources?

Because suddenly zh:Special:BookSources can't include zh:template:网络书源,I want to know why the Special:BookSources of other language does nothing happened?Does it need to modify which page?and how to change the default item of the Special:BookSources listing?--Cwek (talk) 11:32, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

The page displayed by zh:Special:BookSources is named by zh:MediaWiki:Booksources. The named page is in the Misplaced Pages namespace. This is currently set at the Chinese default, "图书来源", so the Special:BookSources page should show zh:Misplaced Pages:图书来源. However, this was deleted by zh:User:Liangent on 14 June 2013... – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:59, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Do you means that the Special:BookSources will include the Misplaced Pages:XXXX page which the XXXX defines in MediaWiki:Booksources?Because somesone modify the translation of MediaWiki:Booksources on translatewiki which he changes ″网络书源″ to "图书来源",the mapping lost.But now it seems that it had rolled back and wait for the weekly update.--Cwek (talk) 00:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. If you don't want to wait for the weekly update, an admin can edit zh:MediaWiki:Booksources to set it back to "网络书源". After the update, an admin can "delete" the page to reset it to its default (which should be the same if the update fixed it). – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 19:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Deferred revisions: a specific implementation proposal

I have proposed a specific implementation proposal for Misplaced Pages:Deferred revisions, which does not require massive software changes. I'd like some comments on the technical side (feasibility, stability, etc) before moving to WP:VPR. Cenarium (talk) 19:43, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

It's a clever idea. From a technical perspective, it may require some non-trivial additions to the AbuseFilter extension, and possibly some to FlaggedRevs as well. I agree that it is proposed "in a way that minimizes the amount of technical changes required", but the minimal amount of changes required may not be as small as you think. — This, that and the other (talk) 12:01, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I'd file a bugzilla report to see if the software side of things was feasible before going to VPR. I like the idea, though. — Mr. Stradivarius 12:04, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that removing the PC protection after a revision gets accepted may prove challenging technically. Devs may get more motivation if they see an idea has gained support, but since it's likely to be approved and is of general interest (not just for en.wp), I'll file it now and see. Cenarium (talk) 19:23, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

This is Template:Bug. Cenarium (talk) 20:58, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible to add, site-wide, extra space before the first nav template?

This issue came up at MOS talk. It would probably be best if you answered in that venue, in order to keep the discussion all in one place. 86.121.18.17 (talk) 11:35, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Articles with fooian-language external links

Categories Articles with fooian-language external links (e.g. with Bengali language in Mahatma Gandhi Road, Kolkata) seem to be unhidden or whatever it is. Any progress on that? Brandmeister 14:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Somebody recently decided to alter certain templates, such as {{language icon}} (see this edit), to use a hyphen instead of a space in the category, without first ensuring that the new categories existed. A non-existent category shows as a redlink; and is never hidden. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:30, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The categories are in the process of being renamed per CFD. I suggest patience: it is a time-consuming process because there are hundreds of such categories. Give us a few days to complete this before anyone freaks out. Good Ol’factory 21:46, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The CfD is wp:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_June_1#Category:Articles_with_non-English_language_external_links. The todo list is Current nominations as of today: -DePiep (talk) 21:58, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Due to the mounting concerns (I've had several inquiries), I'm going to just waive through the regular 48-hour waiting period and try to start the bots on the renames today. This should resolve the problem as quickly as possible. Good Ol’factory 22:01, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd say, don't mount the bot before recovering from the horse's one. But hey, I only know about mountains. And: since it is covered (not forgotten), I don't mind time. -DePiep (talk) 22:05, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Articles with Russian-language external links

Category:Articles with Russian-language external links does not exist, but redlinks e.g. from Compounds of fluorine. Creating it by shows 200+ (potential) pages. What happened? Similar: page Aziz Duwaik has redlink Category:Articles containing Arabic-language text. -DePiep (talk) 20:53, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

This happened; see #Articles with fooian-language external links, above. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:04, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I could have thought there was an earlier post on this. And: my section title is off. I keep this one for the example. -DePiep (talk) 21:37, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The categories are in the process of being renamed per CFD. I suggest patience: it is a time-consuming process because there are hundreds of such categories. Give us a few days to complete this before anyone freaks out. Good Ol’factory 21:45, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Fine with me. Have a nice edit. -DePiep (talk) 21:49, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Bots should be starting the renaming process today, as long as the bots don't decide they are on strike today. Good Ol’factory 21:59, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Redirects in template query

Clicking on 1996 in the following Template:Notre Dame Fighting Irish football navbox initially goes to the correct location within the target article, but then throws you to the bottom; the redirect in 1996 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team looks OK, any ideas...GrahamHardy (talk) 15:06, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

@GrahamHardy: This is because the 1996 link actually links to a specific section of Notre Dame Fighting Irish football (1990–99); your browser automatically scrolls to that section, see WP:ANCHOR for more details. Cheers, Theopolisme (talk) 15:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

@GrahamHardy:, I suggest being patient. Theopolisme, I think I know what Graham is talking about. All of the pages do that to me too where they load the page, go to the right section, go to the bottom, and then bounce back up to the section. It has to do with how the page loads and if it doesn't bounce back up to the section for you, clicking on the URL bar and hitting enter will usually bring you back there. I'm pretty sure that is a browser bug and there is nothing that the Misplaced Pages (MediaWiki) people can do to fix it. Technical 13 (talk) 16:13, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh, okay, thanks for clarifying. Yeah, not present in Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8_4) AppleWebKit/536.30.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.5 Safari/536.30.1. Theopolisme (talk) 16:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

It's due to collapsible sections of infoboxes - there are eight of these before the 1996 heading: three in 1990, one in 1993, three in 1993 and one in 1995. When the page loads, these are initially uncollapsed, but after the page has completed loading, they collapse. If your browser has jumped to the 1996 heading before the boxes collapse, the page content will effectively be pulled upwards, which explains the behaviour you describe. But if your browser jumps to the heading after all the collapsing has occurred, it'll hit the right spot and stay there. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure that may be a contributing factor in some cases Redrose64, but it is doing it on VPT right now for me and there are no collapsed sections on this page currently. I'm using Firefox 21 if it is of any consequence. Technical 13 (talk) 18:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor - A/B test launch on 18 June

Hey all.

As previously announced (via a watchlist notice and static announcements), we'll be enabling the VisualEditor for a percentage of newly-created accounts, starting Tuesday the 18th. Our main goal here is to find out what difference it makes to the number of users who start editing, and who complete an edit, so we can find out what strains a full deployment might put on community workflows - even if it works perfectly as software, we need to know if turning it on will break the teahouse :). Obviously there are some bugs at the moment, a few of them very serious, but I've been assured the big ones will be fixed before the software launches for this test - including things like template and reference editing. If we aren't comfortable with the state of it, we won't hit the on button. If things look fine, we turn it on, and something breaks dramatically, tell us - we retain the ability to just switch the VE off if it starts mangling things, and will be monitoring closely :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

i thought that according to Declaration of Helsinki, there should be some committee you need to consult before running experiments on humans, no? . peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:59, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not a legally binding instrument, the lead says so! But we'll do our best to make it as non-painful as possible :P. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• VisualEditor got edit-conflict on slighest change and lost all text: The slightest edit-conflict is completely fatal, losing all changes so the page source shows only one word: "undefined". I tried several times to see how the VisualEditor would react to interim changes by another username, and the results were a total disaster, where the slightest changes triggered edit-conflict against the interim revision (but the wikitext editor did auto-correct and merge changes into the interim revision). Plus, when I clicked "manual fix for edit conflict" then the VisualEditor showed the text of the edited page as one word: "undefined" and I was not even able to copy/paste any of the attempted changes for saving elsewhere. I think that amounts to "cruelty to humans" to crater on the slightest change, and then pretend there is a "manual" method for the user to salvage the VisualEditor session, which instead contains the one word "undefined" as the entire result of their keystrokes. I would delay experiments on unaware human subjects (new users) for another month, at least. Instead, give them a welcome message to ask them to "volunteer" to try the WYSIWYG VisualEditor, but not force the Edit-button to send them through the "cattle chute" for subsequent processing. -Wikid77 02:09, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I think this might relate to bugzilla:49737 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

• If you're taking bug reports here, I've only made two edits with VisualEditor recently, both yesterday, both disasters: this and this. The random garbling of text (insertion of "ad a private-pilot license and" and "
• There are plenty of bug reports at WP:VE/F, and these include some that are similar (if not identical) to those of Wikid77 and Dank. Please can we avoid filling up VPT with what are likely to be duplicate threads? --Redrose64 (talk) 14:38, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, thanks. Please give your feedback at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Feedback. That page is being very closely monitored. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:43, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
    • I gave my feedback at the Visual editor page and I'll summarize here what I said there. I have serious concerns wiht the roll out of VE. The app isn't ready yet so we should not be forcing it to 50% of our new users. They don't know our processes, won't know how to report problems and since many of the problems are subtle, they may not even know its a problem. I'm not going to dwell on it here I just wanted to leave a general note. Kumioko (talk) 19:03, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
• Hey all. We're going to postpone the A/B test for several days; I'll post more details as I get them, but I understand it's largely down to known bugs with the existing software - bugs that you reported, and bugs that were crucial in making a go/no go decision. Thank you to everyone for all your hard work poking at the VE, and for all your reports thus far; it's much appreciated :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks as always, Oliver and Maggie, I'll make my bug report over there. - Dank (push to talk) 20:25, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

"You cannot overwrite this file"

File:I-might-be-a-cunt-but-im-not-a-fucking-cunt-video-screenshot.jpg
Cannot overwrite this file.... but why? It's not used on anything sensitive and there's nothing in the history or page information noting protection. – JBarta (talk) 21:25, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

My bot got this too when it tried to automatically reduce the file. Take a look at the MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist...it's being blocked by the regex .*fucking.cunt.*. You'll need to find an admin to upload it for you. Theopolisme (talk) 21:30, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Ahh. Thanks. – JBarta (talk) 21:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Image deletion

Are some images permanently deleted? Image:WW1-TitlePic-For-Misplaced Pages.jpg shows no file history and no previous image versions, but it was a working image that was used in the WWI article in early 2006 (at this point, for instance; though it doesn't show up in the infobox, even as a redlink, you can see it if you edit that page version). Why can't I see it in the deleted history? Kafziel 22:49, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

If you look at the diff a few edits later, the file name was vandalized from File:WW1 TitlePicture For Misplaced Pages Article.jpg, which still exists. So, no image was ever uploaded at that tile, thus no history. Chris857 (talk) 22:53, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

No, there was a file there. It was sneaky vandalism in which a similar file name was used for an image that showed WWI biplanes with swastikas on them, and Bruce Willis from 12 Monkeys inserted into the photo with the Vickers crew. It's mentioned in the talk page history. And I actually saw it at the time. Kafziel 22:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

It was on Commons; go to the file there and you'll see the deletion log. Nyttend (talk) 23:18, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

In reference to the original question, some files are permanently deleted: prior to 2006 or so, when an image was deleted, the image data was removed from the server. As a result, very old image deletions can't be undone. --Carnildo (talk) 01:03, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Indeed; see the relevant Signpost story. Graham87 01:47, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! Kafziel 05:09, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Article deleted in 2010 appears in search

If I search for "And was digitally released on June" including the quotation marks, a result for Who's My Bitch (Paradiso Girls song) is returned. But this string has never existed on that page. What's going on? Is this a bug? Thanks! SomeFreakOnTheInternet (talk) 21:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The search page for "And was digitally released on June" says "3 July 2010" for the hit on Who's My Bitch (Paradiso Girls song). Today it's a redirect but on that date it did indeed contain the quoted string. The article was deleted 5 July 2010 so the real question is why results from a page deleted 3 years ago is appearing in searches. I suspect it has something to do with the only edit after the deletion being the creation of a redirect (24 May 2012). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I copied the above from Misplaced Pages:Help desk#Search result returned for something that doesn't exist. The full text currently displayed on the search page: ""Who's My Bitch" was leaked online June 8, 2010, and was digitally released on June 22, 2010. It was featured on MTV's The City . ..." Admin-only link to the deleted revision displayed in the search. It seems harmless in this case but deleted pages can contain nasty stuff and should only be visible to admins for legal reasons. Is this a one-off or a serious bug? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:07, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Reported this in bugzilla —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:15, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!! SomeFreakOnTheInternet (talk) 23:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

"Ride or Die (Film)" cannot get linked to according articles in the French or German Wiki

FYI: There is a French (RAP Connection) and a German (Ride or Die – Fahr zur Hölle, Baby!) article about Ride or Die. Whenever I try somehow to link them all together, I get the error message this was impossible because the French and the German article were already connected. Please look into this matter. NordhornerII (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:19, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I guess you don't know how interlanguage links work with Wikidata and tried to do something in a wrong way. The French and German articles were indeed already connected and now the English also is. I see Deutsch and Français at Ride or Die (film)#p-lang, and the foreign articles have links to English. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:07, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello, actually I have just rather recently worked with interlanguage links. In case of doubt please check these articles: Camille Claudel 1915 and Body of War. In "Old Europe" we are used to switch between languages. The original error message was (that) I weren't logged in for using Wikidata. I logged in three times (or "thrice" LOL) but the error message kept coming. So I tried to link the articles within Wikidata and that misfired bringing up the aforementioned error message. I deleted my cookies (because I had logged in to the Misplaced Pages from the film artcle "Ride or Die") and restarted the browser but still no joy. Before this I had no trouble but I noticed that sometimes the interlanguage links only get active after the article in question has been edited again. (I presume this tells you more than me.) However, thank you for your attention. NordhornerII (talk) _The man from Nordhorn 08:35, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Account Creation Issues

For everyone's information.—cyberpower _Online 02:57, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

We're on it. Thanks for the swift bug report. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 02:58, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

• You're very welcome Steven (WMF). That is what we do, find broken stuffs and make sure it gets documented... Technical 13 (talk) 11:13, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

CHECKWIKI and/or AWB removing self-closing XHTML syntax

At here, two <BR /> tags were changed to <BR> tags, in addition to replacing a missing double-bracket later in the article. The edit comment was "(WP:CHECKWIKI error fix #10. Bracket problem. Do general fixes and cleanup if needed. - using AWB (9270))". I understand the slash is needed to make it syntactically correct XHTML. In WP pages, is the <BR /> form incorrect (unlikely), optional (likely), or required (unlikely)? Did AWB/CHECKWIKI do this, or was it the operator (and should it have)? —— 07:20, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I've checked it using 5.5.0.2 SVN 9117, and that version doesn't make this change, so either this is a recent change to the AWB code or it is something that Bgwhite (talk · contribs) did specially. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:50, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We used to serve XHTML 1.0, where <br /> was the only permitted form. In 2012 (I think, possibly late 2011) we started serving HTML5 instead, where the documented form is <br> but <br /> is also permitted. In HTML5, either may be upper or lower case - in XHTML, only lowercase is permitted. So we've gone from a single variant to four. Despite that, some people do occasionally use </br> which is meaningless in HTML5, and only meaningful in XHTML if it directly follows a <br> - which was specifically recommended against in the XHTML docs. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:51, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

If you look at the HTML page source of each revision, you will see that HTML Tidy transforms both variants into <br>. Nothing to stress about in that regard. "Optional" would be my answer to the original question. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:02, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the syntax highlighter gadget treats only <br /> as correct, for ease of implementation. I'm not sure how popular that gadget is now, though. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 17:30, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

AWB doesn't change <br/> to <br> -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:42, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Feature brainstorm for Module:WikiProjectBanner

I'm in the early stages of developing a Lua-based replacement for {{WPBannerMeta}}, and I would appreciate peoples ideas for features. If there is anything that you have wanted to do with your WikiProject template, but haven't been able to due to limitations in the meta-template, I would be very interested to hear it. The discussion is over at Template talk:WPBannerMeta. — Mr. Stradivarius 12:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Gadget-BugStatusUpdate and restricted bugs

Would it be possible to modify MediaWiki:Gadget-BugStatusUpdate.js to display a special label for security-restricted bug reports, such as the one mentioned here? --SoledadKabocha (talk) 17:27, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Of course it is possible... I'll look into this. I would like to modify the gadget and css and template a little to try and return "Secure Bug" or something if the api can't pull the status for the user and changed the background color of the template to a pastel red color or something to make it clear that the user can't access the bug. I'll play with it in the sandbox in a bit. Technical 13 (talk) 17:47, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Update: SoledadKabocha, you may want to check out MediaWiki talk:Gadget-BugStatusUpdate.js#Stepping up to the plate... where I've created a list of things that "aren't quite right" with the current {{Tracked}} system. Technical 13 (talk) 19:39, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Recover account?

Hi. Is there any way to recover a lost password ~ while one is actually logged into the account? I realise that once not logged in there isn't but, because of a probably unreproducible computer...thing, i am logged into my alternate account, the password of which was glitched out of existence after one edit. Is there any way to change my password or get a new one e-mailed, now that i am in it? I'm sure it's obvious, i'm not a completely new user; the one edit i made was to redirect the user page to mine own main account's page; sure would like to use this account though, as it's named after one of my favourite characters in fiction. Thanks for any help...Kahtar (talk) 08:48, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

If you have forgotten your password but are still logged in, go to Preferences and follow the link "Password: Change password" near the bottom of the first box. Also at Preferences, ensure that an email address has been set (it's in the last box). If you do the second of these, you can get a new password even if you log out, see Help:Reset password. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:06, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Redrose. Unfortunately, both those options require me to know my password before i can change it. I suspect i'm out of luck. Kahtar (talk) 09:42, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

You should still be able to set an email address, and follow the instruction at Help:Reset password#Forgotten password. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:49, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Curiously, no. Special:ChangeEmail requires a password and, although i enter the one i logged in with a few hours ago, the software tells me "Incorrect password entered." Same thing, of course, on Special:PasswordReset ~ the password that got me here isn't acceptable to change the password. Doesn't make sense to me (like lots of computer things) nor, perhaps, to you; unreproducible i called it above, probably it is, and unrecoverable, too. Kahtar (talk) 11:13, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Maybe you misremembered a detail in the password. Try variations, for example in capitalization. You can maybe get the username (but not any of its saved settings) from another account. At Misplaced Pages:Changing username/Simple you can request a rename away from Kahtar, saying you are LindsayH and linking to . Then log in as LindsayH and confirm it. Then log in from a third account with a working password and request a rename to Kahtar. Special:CentralAuth/Kahtar also shows accounts at meta and simple. They would need separate rename requests if you want them in the new account. Don't visit any further wikis while you are logged in as Kahtar. That will create the account at those wikis. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:29, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

• The only thing I can offer to suggest is to follow the instructions for {{User committed identity}} and then proceed as if your account was compromised. Just my suggestion. Technical 13 (talk) 12:03, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a need for {{User committed identity}} here when the account has no extra user rights, no edits worth attribution, and you have already explained the problem while logged in. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:03, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Regarding template The Barnstar of Good Humor

There is some problem with The Barnstar of Good Humor! barn star. See the example in the template's documentation. The same problem can be seen here or here too. But the surprising thing is that everything was perfectly right till 5 June 2013. Moreover the template has not been changed since 22 November 2012‎. I am not getting what the actual problem is. Hope that someone here is able to solve it. Regards. - Jayadevp13 12:47, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

@Jayadevp13:I can't see any problems with it... can you be more precise about the issue please? Mdann52 (talk) 12:54, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I fixed a problem in the example but I don't see a problem in the uses you link. Please describe the problem you see and say your browser and skin. Depending on the problem, it may help to clear your cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:58, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

This may be stupid question, but are you referring to the difference between the original and alternative versions?

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		This is just an example!

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		This is just an example!

jonkerz ♠talk 13:02, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

@Mdann52 and Jonkerz: The actual issue is this. When I load a page with that barnstar template, this one for example (the barnstar of humour is the middle one), this is what I see - A yellow box, inside it The Barnstar of Good Humor! heading, the text written below it from Hello Jayadevp13 ...to... 2 April 2013 (UTC) and then, just a blue coloured link to the file Barnstar of Humour Hires.png in the left. The 100px image doesn't display. Moreover, I am not able to highlight that blue coloured link with a cursor (as can be usually done, links can be highlighted for copying that text). The same thing is happening with the the second box which Jonkerz has added above. The first one appears perfect wherever I see it. I don't see that problem with any other barnstar boxes.

@PrimeHunter: I use Mozilla Firefox and vector.js skin. I also have Google Chrome installed and when I loaded the page in it, every thing's working fine. Don't know why?

I believe that somewhat the same problem is also being experienced by the person using the IP 117.201.187.14. He/She had told about it here. He/She had earlier edited User talk:Jayadevp13/Archive 1 (maybe coincidence). Regards.

- Jayadevp13 16:42, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

It might sound stupid, but just in case: Have you tried clearing your Firefox's cache (or reloading the page while holding the shift key on your keyboard)? --Patrick87 (talk) 17:09, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

@Patrick87: Your idea is not at all stupid. It works fine now. Everything has turned back to normal. But what was the actual problem and why didn't it happen to any other barnstar box. An explanation of how to do it also needs to be given to 117.201.187.14. Regards. - Jayadevp13 17:15, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not uncommon that an image temporarily fails to display at one or more resolutions for some or all users. It's usually fixed automatically. Commons:Help:Purge has tips which can sometimes help. It can happen to any image and is not related to barnstar coding. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:23, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Maybe that you are right. I don't know about it.

@Mdann52, PrimeHunter, Jonkerz, and Patrick87: Thank You all for using your time to help me. Regards and keep your good work going. - Jayadevp13 02:57, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Interaction report

Is there an existing tool that will tell me if, where, and when I have interacted with another user before? VQuakr (talk) 19:23, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Not that I know of, but there is a tool to tell you which pages you have both edited. WP:EIW is a good resource to find such tools.-gadfium 22:37, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

There are two more listed on Misplaced Pages:Tools#Page histories, each with somewhat different features. If the other editor has a few thousand edits, the question is not if, but where and when; you (VQuakr) and I have 67 pages in common (omg! sock puppets!) :) jonkerz ♠talk 22:45, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Perfect, thank you! VQuakr (talk) 04:40, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Is there an automated way to convert plain text dates to {{Start date}}?

Hi, first time posting to the Village pump, so I apologize in advance for my n00bishness. I posted the following question at the Help Desk and was encouraged to come here:

I was wondering if anyone knows 1) if there is an automated way to convert plain text dates to the {{Start date}} microformat template (ex: January 31, 1999 --> {{Start date|1999|01|31}}) and 2) how to request such a bot to take a pass at an article. This is an example article in need of repair. Thanks y'all! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:01, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Looking for a tool that is the reverse of the Editor Interaction Analyzer

I floated a question by the Help Desk a few weeks ago but the question got sidetracked and was never answered. I'm basically looking for a tool that is a reverse version of the Editor Interaction Analyzer. That is, I want to enter a bunch of articles into the tool, and have it tell me who the common editors are. My feeling is that this would be super-helpful for sockpuppet hunting. Ex: Maybe you've noticed that all articles about Spongebob Squarepants are being vandalized. Maybe you suspect User1234 of sockpuppetry/IP hopping/block evasion. Entering all of these pages into such a tool would tell you who the common editors were, so that you might be able to spot a trend with IP ranges, user names, etc. Does such a thing exist? Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 05:01, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

wikilinks to es-it:WP:

please link en:Juan Gabriel Valdés to es:Juan Gabriel Valdés and to it:Juan Gabriel Valdés. --Best regards, Keysanger (what?) 09:57, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

 In progress right... There are 3 different ones on wikidata, making this impossible atm. There is d:Q6299838, d:Q3810840 and d:Q13512624. I've pinged someone on there to sort the dups out, and I'll clean up later. Mdann52 (talk) 10:11, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

It's cleaned up now, and Mdann has already requested the deletion of redundant entries.  Done Matma Rex talk 12:09, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Hyderabad, India

Something has happened to all the alt-text on the article Hyderabad, India. I used visual editor and something happened. I am at a loss really. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:06, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

• Please report all problems with Visual Editor at WP:VE/F. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:07, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I propose to edit "Country data Niger"

I propose to adjust the template "Country data Niger", following the example of the "Country data Belgium".
Edit from to in Template:Country data Niger and the current default {{flagicon|Niger}} rename to {{flagicon|Niger|state}}
like has been modified to as a new default, in Template:Country data Belgium. — Maiō T. (talk) 18:28, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Database lag?

What did the devs break this time? :p—cyberpower _Offline 19:15, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

You don't expect any neat responses to this, do you? -- Toshio Yamaguchi 19:41, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

It's strange, cause I'm having a lot of issues with other sites too all of a sudden. ViperSnake151  Talk  19:49, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

It's meant to be humorous. But what did happen though?—cyberpower _{Limited Access} 20:13, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

When I was a car mechanic in my imaginary previous life and had customers calling and saying "My car is broken, tell me what's the issue, but I won't provide any details" I sometimes had a tough time. But this is meant to be humorous too. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:34, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Database lag

Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 913 seconds may not appear in this list.

What does this message mean? and how this issue will resolve? I mean, i can't see the newest changes--Jockzain (talk) 19:13, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Usually things are updated in just a few seconds. The message appears when that time increases dramatically. Wait at least 914 seconds and the changes will probably appear. There have been times when database lag was several hours. - 79.67.252.44 (talk) 08:58, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2)

Every edit I have made since tuesday has edit-conflicted, yet they have all gone through apart from the one I just tried to make to post this, and no other users have been involved.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 19:29, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

One issue may be if you are double-clicking the "save page" button - I have run into this issue before. Mdann52 (talk) 12:15, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Google and talk pages

Does Google usually index the Misplaced Pages talk pages? I don't remember seeing this before, but maybe I didn't happen to do an appropriate search. ( for example, this search) —Anne Delong (talk) 20:16, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Looks like it does index project talk. Werieth (talk) 20:32, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, any talk page that is not explicitly marked as {{NOINDEX}} will be indexed by Google. The main exception is "User talk", where you must opt in for each user talk page you want indexed. There are also some exceptions listed in Robots.txt, such as the talk pages of Articles for deletion. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:13, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm.... That's an interesting list of noticeboards and discussion pages, most of which I didn't know existed. I'm surprised that Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Articles for creation isn't on the noindex list; there is a lot of frank discussion there about deletions, copyvios, BLP problems, unwanted advertising, etc. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:10, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

WP:NOINDEX is a somewhat good resource. There seems to be some dated info on that page, however. Killiondude (talk) 04:33, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

RFC 2011

I was making a template for pending changes discussions, and unexpectedly, I found out that just typing RFC 2011 gives an external link, as you can see, to a 2011 RFC by the ietf. But why is this... Cenarium (talk) 21:03, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

It's like ISBN, and has been happening for *years*. See WP:RFCAUTO. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:13, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, and it's likely going to keep happening for quite some time considering the latest discussion and bugs status. Cenarium (talk) 04:10, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

FUN FACT: ISBN magic auto-linking was introduced in rev:40 (November 2001). I'm not sure when RFC was added. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:04, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

A query about bullet-point options

Hello. I'm trying to use bullet points as a way of structuring Infectious_mononucleosis#Signs_and_symptoms by age-groups without interrupting the flow, as subheadings would. My problem is that the second level of bullet points (i.e. a particular set of symptoms) is not a subdivision of the first level (the age groups). For this reason, I'd like to use graphically different (less prominent) bullet points for the second-level. I'm not sure whether the wiki markup allows this. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance, 81.157.7.7 (talk) 10:18, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

You could use {{plainlist}}, that removes the bullets altogether. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose64. Cheers, 81.157.7.7 (talk) 14:48, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Inputting a collapsible userbox list into infobox

When I see 10, 20 or 30 userboxes side by side or stacked, it hurts my eyes. So I've been attempting to incorporate collapsible lists of userboxes into my info box. I'm very new at Wiki-markup and the associated technical language, thus in attempting to solve my problem I've been using various portions of collapsible list templates that work in their own box/page and using said markup as a guide to creating my own.
My issues are,

• The collapsible list title and it's associated clickable link, 'show' are scrambled over each other.

I have a minor fix for this, I input a userbox all on it's own, below the hidden/collapsible area, and somehow this formats or changes the list title and show button so they do not overlap.

• However, regardless, when I expand my lists... lets say I expand list 1..the userboxes in list 1 look fine overall, but the title of list2/list3, etc and their show buttons are then scrambled over my userboxes or in random nearby spots.
  

You can check out my infobox at my user-page here. Or my sandbox has it loaded as well, where your free to dabble with as you please if it helps fix the issue.
My sandbox has two copies of the infobox, one with the minor fix applied (on top) and one without (on bottom).
In conclusion, I'm not running for help at the first sign of danger. Look at edits to my userpage over the last few days and you'll see I've tried quite a few different things. I want yall to know I've been actually researching this, but to no avail. Thank you for your time,
EzPz (talk) 17:00, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello, ParksTrailer, I'm pretty sure I can help you with this... Do you want it in a collapsible section or do you want it inside of a scrolling section like I have on my user page. Take a look and let me know. :) Technical 13 (talk) 17:37, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for checking out my issue! Collapsible, please sir :)EzPz (talk) 18:00, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, I took quite the liberty with how your wiki page was set up, and I've just about solved the problem completely. The only things left are for me to figure out how to align it to the left, add a backgorund color and up the font size, HOPEFULLY I can figure that stuff out :) My sandbox is updated, if you wanna take a look. Thanks man! EzPz (talk) 21:09, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I suggest reading the documentation for the infobox template... {{Infobox user}} Technical 13 (talk) 01:06, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

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