Misplaced Pages

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view · edit Frequently asked questions (see also: Misplaced Pages:Technical FAQ) Click "" next to each point to see more details. If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache. This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown. No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box. This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences. No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker. If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature. If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link. Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem. If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page. If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Misplaced Pages services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

Village pumps

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To-do: E · H · W · RUpdated 2009-09-19

please refresh category-list articles regularly to reflect deletions

My apologies if this is a worn-out subject. First time I ever thought about it, was today.

I viewed the (apparently, auto-generated) article about people with Asperger's. It included a "Nicky Reilly" link. But, the word Asperger's does not appear in today's version of the "Nicky Reilly" article!

Seemingly, at one time Asperger's was mentioned at the tail end of the Reilly article, in the Categories box. And seemingly, the Asperger's entry was subsequently removed from the Reilly article; and seemingly, there is not a regularly scheduled, automated re-generation of the "people with Asperger's" article, that would reflect the deletion in the Reilly article.

Naturally I suppose this means that there is not an automated, regularly scheduled re-generation of other category-list articles, either. It would be good to have a regular synchronization job like this.

But, all of this is conjecture on my part. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Publius3 (talk • contribs) 21:07, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Nicky Reilly has no own article. It is a redirect to 22 May 2008 Exeter bombing. The redirect page is in Category:People with Asperger syndrome. It is displayed in italics in the category. This means it is a redirect. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:41, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, PrimeHunter, for responding...but, after re-checking, I still do not see Asperger's mentioned there. Yes, the Nicky Reillly article to which I referred is the Exeter bombing article. And yes, there is a Category box in that article. But, I've cut and pasted the present contents of that Category box to here: 'Categories: Terrorist incidents in 2008 | Terrorism in the United Kingdom | Failed terrorist attempts | 2008 in England | Exeter' ...and as you can see, there is no mention of Asperger's. Should I be looking somewhere else? I am puzzled. In support of my speculation that Asperger's may have been first added to, and then removed from, that box, I see that the edit history mentions Asperger's in July 2009. But there is no longer any mention of Asperger's in the Exeter bombing/Nicky Reilly article itself. Publius3 (talk) 11:39, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Look here. Lupo 12:03, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Somebody removed the category yesterday so see the old version here instead. If you click on a Nicky Reilly link or enter it in the search box then you are automatically taken to the target of the redirect where the Asperger category never was. It is the redirect page itself which was in the category. My first post linked to it in "The redirect page " (but that link is to the current version without the category). PrimeHunter (talk) 10:32, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Orange links revisited

I asked the question here. One answer I didn't get is why, when I test links while previewing what I am about to add to Misplaced Pages, the NEXT link to test is the one that is orange, not the one I already tested.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:58, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

An active link (which your browser colours orange) is the color of a link when it has focus, either by clicking on it or tabbing to it. It has nothing to do with whether you have visited a page or not. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Search box help

I added a search box to one of my user pages, but searches seem to return no results. Does it take time for the pages to be crawled or added to the fulltext index, or should searches work immediately? SharkD  Talk  06:53, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it takes a while for recent changes to be reflected ion searches, see Misplaced Pages:Searching#Delay in updating the search index. The search of your subpages seems to be working for me now (). Svick (talk) 08:42, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Awseome, thanks! SharkD  Talk  05:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Technical problems spanning several pages

Layered images often not displaying in IE8

There is a problem with maps not displaying properly in IE that affects a number of templates. The relevant discussions are at:

• Talk:Rùm#Map_is_broken
• Template_talk:Infobox_Scottish_island#Problems_with_maps
• Template_talk:Location_map#Map_does_not_work_properly_in_IE
• Template_talk:West_Bank#Map_is_broken_in_IE
• Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_69#Scottish_island_infobox_map

There may well be other problem templates that I'm unaware of.

The issue was raised here a while ago but got shunted off into the archives with no resolution. I want to make one central discussion, and direct people to it from the various pages, but I don't know where to put it. It's no good having it here if it will be archived after a few days' inactivity. What is the best way to handle this? 86.134.10.88 (talk) 23:39, 6 January 2010 (UTC).

Some experienced user with IE8 needs to log out and see if he can reproduce the problem. Since other users have already stated that they don't have this problem in IE8, I'm not sure how to find ways to reproduce the issues. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Right, but my question here is not about how to fix the problem, it is about where to put a centralised discussion of the problem, since discussions on this page seem to have a very short shelf life. 86.146.46.12 (talk) 15:17, 7 January 2010 (UTC).

The talk page of the infobox is probably the best location. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:07, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

As I said, there are several different talk pages, currently each with a different discussion. I thought it would be clearer to point to a centralised discussion on a general-purpose problem-discussion page. 86.146.46.169 (talk) 18:46, 7 January 2010 (UTC).

I've had this problem a lot using IE8 and have seen it in articles transcluding each of the above templates.

This appears to be a z-index bug in IE8 but it would be helpful to know of any a workaround, preferably something that can be applied on the server side.

I've tried logging out and, to my surprise, the problem persists when browsing anonymously, so it is not caused by navpopups.

As far as I know, my IE8/WinXP configuration is not unusual.

Note that {{West Bank}} uses {{West Bank Labelled Map}} and is independent of {{Location map}}, so this is not a problem that can be traced back to any one template.

— Richardguk (talk) 21:06, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

rowspan and columnspan and table sorting?

Evidently it's not possible to have a table automatically sort if there are any rowspan or columnspan values in it Help:Sorting. Isn't there some way of enabling the software to make that possible? Is the only workaround to get rid of the spans and duplicate words? Шизомби (Sz) (talk) 00:22, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I think others have tried... bugzilla:8028 http://tablesorter.com might be a potential solution if we go fully jQuery in the future (but that will be a while). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:21, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

The styling of those tables is a lot nicer than ours, too. SharkD  Talk  19:51, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Disabled animated gif (since yesterday)? (software change?)

Has something happened code-wise in the past day.

(1) An animated gif has frozen. (2) And some "div" absolute placement is now messed up.

Re: #1

NOTE: http://en.wikipedia.org/File:Phenakistoscope_3g07690a.gif should be an animated gif

And it is so if you click down in the upload table. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Phenakistoscope_3g07690a.gif

The freezing has taken place in the past day.

re (2): I'd carefully aligned some things up top, but now they've moved higher. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Proofreader77 (There was not overwriting yesterday.)

Note; I see Foxfire has updated, abut I tried with Google Chrome also, and the problems exist there too.

-- Proofreader77 00:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

As currently configured the software is supposed to show only the first frame of an animated GIF if the original height and width are such that height*width > 1 million or height*width*frames > 12.5 million. The limits are there to avoid resource overruns. However, it appears that it is freezing a variety of images even when these limits aren't reached so there is probably a problem in the limiter calculation. (Actually, the first of these can probably be removed now given the recent improvements in the GIF handler.) Dragons flight (talk) 10:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Do I (or someone) need to make a smaller animated gif of http://en.wikipedia.org/File:Phenakistoscope_3g07690a.gif

Reminder - the copy at "upload." ... animates fine. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Phenakistoscope_3g07690a.gif

(Note: the still frame display only began yesterday. It had been animating fine until then.) Proofreader77 12:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

There was a configuration change 3 days ago. I don't think you ought to need to change it because I believe it is a server side mistake since the image does not appear to breach the limits. Dragons flight (talk) 12:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

bugzilla:22041 Dragons flight (talk) 13:05, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks. Looks like issue is well documented for fixing. So I can just sit back and relax. :-) Proofreader77 19:48, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

User page protection

What is the default protection level for User pages? I have a series of User pages of a statistical nature that I feel might be prone to tampering. Thanks. SharkD  Talk  05:43, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I believe user pages and user subpages are editable by anyone, even anons, except for userspace .js and .css files (like User:Example/monobook.js and User:Example/monobook.css), which are editable only by the "owner" user (and admins, possibly). If you have pages in your userspace that you don't want tampered with, just watch them closely and revert any unwanted changes. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:52, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

You can also request protection, but this is only done after a proven record of vandalism. - Jarry1250  09:59, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

You can have any content you like in a user page, even if it ends in the suffixes ".css" or ".js", so if you have a user page that you want to protect, move it to a title ending with .css or .js. Graham87 12:47, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that I'm not active enough to monitor the pages on a daily basis, and the pages are meant to be used as a reference resource for editors, so factual accuracy is critical. Given the amount of noise that occurs in articles like this, I think the protection is warranted. SharkD  Talk  19:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Provide people with a link to a specific revision of the page, or disclaim that people should check the history before they use the information. No-one should be citing an on-wiki page anyway, but independently checking the actual sources themselves. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:59, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest moving it to the Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Video games, you even list this as a See Also, perhaps as Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Video games/Top video games lists. Then it could be monitored/maintained by multiple people, and as discussed above, considered for protection if a true rash of vandalism occurs. Great resource! Cander0000 (talk) 02:55, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

CentralNotice glitch on IE8

When logged out, I am receiving an approx. 12-px high, empty light gray box in the place where CentralNotices usually appear. The page code suggests it is to do with a "global sysops" notice. This is under IE8; it does not appear in Firefox 3.5 - it must be one of IE's many CSS glitches. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:36, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I can't find it in IE8 at the moment. Maybe it's been fixed? Probably just a hangover from the fundraiser css hacks. - Jarry1250  10:24, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I see, it relates to meta:Global sysops (for which a central notice is now appearing on Commons). Will probably be with us soon too. - Jarry1250  10:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Special:Book

The Book namespace has been created, but this maintenance template page Special:Book still saves books on the old page structure, Misplaced Pages:Books/ (on the bottom right of the screen, in the "Save and share your book" box). Any idea where I can best request a change to this? Fram (talk) 10:15, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I asked in the pediapress IRC room, apparently that is one of the few strings that isn't configurable in the collection extension :D It will almost certainly require a codechange, and they are looking into it now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:20, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Fram (talk) 13:31, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Ticket: http://code.pediapress.com/ticket/760 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:06, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

subst templates

Is it possible to make template, which will work either as plain template and as substitution? For example,

• {{subst:review}}

should produce

• {{review|7 January 2010}}

Also, using without parameters:

• {{review}}

should produce different output (error message). AB 15:50, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

It would be far easier just to use two templates - one that you subst, and one that it calls. PROD works like this (subst:prod fills out the dated prod template). Ale_Jrb 16:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you can have different output depending on whether a template is substituted or not, see {{Error:must be substituted}} and {{Error:must not be substituted}} for starting points. However, if you want to require substitution, there is no way to use this trick without leaving artifacts in the expanded template (typically at least an empty #if with an error message).
Amalthea 16:15, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

• use two templates - but this makes more headache for users, which should now remember one more template. artifacts in the expanded template - if you mean "non-substituted template", then this is not too worse if these artifacts will not too noticeable. May you provide bones for such template? {{Demo of template that must be substituted}} is not suitable, because my template is more complex, than plain text string. AB 14:37, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
  • No, it doesn't. They only have to remember the subst template - that one handles calling the non-subst. Ale_Jrb 15:32, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
    • it doesn't - ...in theory. PS: Another reason: I not like to produce extra unnecessary pages. PPS: It's pity that current language not support subroutines. AB 16:36, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
      • As they still only have to remember one template, it doesn't. End. And a single extra page is much better that having left-over parser code on the page every time the template is used. Ale_Jrb 16:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Well, now that I've looked again at what you actually want to do: The best you can do is that the smart, substed template will expand to something like:
    {{#if:|{{review/core||Foo|{{{date}}}}}|{{review||Foo|date=January 2010}}}}
    That will look the same as {{review||Foo|date=January 2010}}, but the page source will contain the additional garbage, and for tags that's pretty much unacceptable. Avoiding that would require a change to MediaWiki. Like Ale_jrb said, that's why numerous similar templates solve this with an additional helper templates, like {{subst:prod}}, {{subst:orfud}}, or {{subst:nfurd}}.
    Amalthea 16:57, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
    • I was thinking, may instead of literally "{{subst:review}}" you could use {{review|subst:}} but I can't think how that would work in your context vis-a-vis junk artifacts - probably more, not less :) - Jarry1250  17:11, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
      • That would have to be {{subst:review|subst:}}, but you're right, I forgot that alternative (because I hate it).
        A proper solution (which would require a MediaWiki change, as I said above) would be to have an automatic parameter, like {{{__SUBST__}}}, which automatically expands to "subst:" if the template is being substituted, and is empty otherwise. And while one is at it, a {{{__NAME__}}} which expands to the current templates name (not the page name where it's used) would be very useful for navboxes, where we currently need to tell the template its own name. Amalthea 17:50, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

• require a change to MediaWiki - pity. :( AB 00:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Page notice links

We have now added new features to the editnotice system: As most of you soon will notice, when you edit pages you will now sometimes see red or blue links at the top of the edit page looking like this:

Or like this:

Those links are to the group and page editnotices of the page. Admins and accountcreators always see both links, even if the notices have not yet been created, since they can create and edit the editnotices. Normal users see the red "Page notice" links only on user and user talk basepages, since they can create and edit such notices. Normal users also see blue links to group and page notices if they already have been created, so they can find and view the source code of the notice. But they still can't edit those notices, except the ones in userspace.

To learn more about editnotices and to discuss these new features, see Misplaced Pages:Editnotice and its talkpage. Oh, and we would love to get some feedback about what people think about the editnotice system.

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Infobox at Grand Blanc Community High School

What's wrong with the infobox at Grand Blanc Community High School? Woogee (talk) 03:25, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I fixed up the athletics infobox. Still needs a school infobox. See other school articles for examples.LeadSongDog come howl 04:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

{{mtc}}

Will somebody please help me merging these 3 images to Wikimedia Commons? I can not do it myself.

]
]
]

At Commons there is a category named Steinway & Sons. The 3 images can be added to this category.

Thank you.

done. bit of a niggly procedure; I should look into that. but your files should be on commons under the same names. let me know if there's any issues.

I have to say, grand pianos are truly beautiful objects. form and function, tied in a knot. --Ludwigs2 11:17, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much. It is all very good. Fanoftheworld (talk) 11:56, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

SVG Skin

Is it technically possible to have a MediaWiki skin which not only uses SVG for the interface but also passes SVG files directly to the browser instead of rendering them as PNG first? This would be really cool for large monitors, the visually impaired and anyone who surfs this site while zoomed in. I understand there would be some issues with unoptimized images hanging the browser, but if Misplaced Pages made the push to a vector-based web, we'd likely see WebKit and Mozilla deal with these problems in browserland Bitplane (talk) 14:37, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

There are several problems

• For content, SVG files can be much larger than small pngs
• It is VERY difficult to detect how well a browser supports SVG. Especially for anonymous users, we would have split the caching of pages into "people who can handle SVG" vs. "people who cannot handle SVG" and all the detection for that has to be done as well. That's simply not possible
• So the only thing I can see as a possibility is an SVG skin, that people can select themselves in the preferences. But i don't think that does much good for support.

See also (outdated page) m:SVG image support —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:14, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that they can be larger, but well formed ones usually aren't. I agree that it should also be a user preference rather than automatically detecting Chrome, Firefox and Safari users and just enabling it (though this would work in the majority of cases). If I did the work and created such a skin, is it likely to be accepted? Bitplane (talk) 19:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

No idea, I don't speak for the developers. You can submit patches to bugzilla: though. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Convert template help needed

Is anyone who watches this page familiar enough with {{convert}} to help me with an apparently simple but esoteric solution to an issue? Specifically, I want to convert acres to hectares but display the output number only for use in a table with the units given in the header, i.e. "241 (98)" instead of "241 acres (98 ha)". To do so, I used the syntax 241 ({{Convert|241|acre|ha|disp=output number only}}). That resulted in a redlinked subtemplate being displayed. I created the redlink as a redirect, see Template:Convert/LoffAoffDoutput number onlySoffNa, just to see what would happen. This is not easy to do with a sandbox as the main template can't be easily edited for testing. I need to fix this, because as of now it just outputs the conversion factor, i.e. "241 (98)", no matter what the input. Sswonk (talk) 18:33, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I redirected Template:Convert/LoffAoffDoutput number onlySoffNa to Template:Convert/LoffAoffDoutput number onlySoff instead of Template:Convert/LoffAoffDoutput number onlySoffT like you did and it seems to work now. Svick (talk) 19:43, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, that did it. The system of convert subtemplates is vast, so getting as far as I did gives me some measure of hope for future endeavors in that realm. This one's done, thanks again. Sswonk (talk) 19:51, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Special:UnwatchedPages

Special:UnwatchedPages is giving me absolutely no results. Am I to take it that every article is now watched? I'm an admin, so whatever is happening is not an issue with permissions. Nyttend (talk) 00:27, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

As UnwatchedPages is a protected page, normal users are not going to be able to help out. Try posting at AN. 124.168.93.126 (talk) 06:29, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

For the record, its empty for me too. Don't know why, but its not just you--Jac16888 14:16, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

This has been disabled for a long, long time afaik, so that vandals can't easily find pages that have nobody watching them. You can find the exact number of watchers for a specific page by using this handy tool. It only works for pages with over 30 watchers, however: it won't tell you whether there are 29 people or 0 people watching a page though, for the same reason as above. Ale_Jrb 15:40, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

It was always available to admins, I don't remember hearing about it being disabled for us too--Jac16888 15:42, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Meh, I never realised that. Weird then. Ale_Jrb 15:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Galleries

Help:Table#Wikitable_as_image_gallery explains advantages of using a table over <gallery>.

Misplaced Pages:Extended_image_syntax#Compatibility_considerations and Misplaced Pages:When_to_use_tables#When_tables_should_not_be_used says that tables should not be used for these purposes.

This is probably not possible with <gallery>. I suggest making this a priority for bugzilla to implement.174.3.101.61 (talk) 04:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion For The Page View Tool

I suggest that we can have the window/tool open, and when someone goes to the page, it changes\updates on real time. Report to bugzilla to fix.174.3.101.61 (talk) 04:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Given that Misplaced Pages gets as many as 75,000 hits per second, this would probably be too resource intensive. Mr.Z-man 17:13, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

How do I add a Misplaced Pages template to my own wiki?

Sorry if this is in the wrong section. There's nothing I can see on Mediawiki that tells me how to do this. I'm a fan of Template:Quote_box and would love to use it on my own wiki. I'm not seeing a similar extension on Mediawiki and Cite and Poem don't quite do the same thing. So my question is, how do I use this template on my own wiki? (Assuming I can.) Thanks in advance. Peter Greenwell (talk) 15:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you just copy this--Jac16888 15:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Did that, but it does this --> http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/7377/quotebox.gif As you can see, it formats the quote fine, but it displays the CSS and some of the coding. I'm assuming I need to add more or enable something further for the formatting to come out right and for the coding to be invisible. Thanks for your help so far. Peter Greenwell (talk) 15:41, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

try creating this one too, if you haven't already--Jac16888 15:44, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Also and --Jac16888 15:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

It looks to me like you don't have mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions installed (or they're not working). Do you? Ale_Jrb 15:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Could be, my guess was just that most templates use other templates in long chains--Jac16888 15:49, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

That's true, but from the source of the quote box template, none of those are used. And note that the only code that's displaying is that inside the parser function sections. Ale_Jrb 15:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I do have parserfunctions installed (in extensions/) and the proper line in LocalSettings.php there. Funny thing is that Special:Pages Version isn't showing it. In other words, I don't think it's being loaded, which is an entirely different problem I'll need to head over to Mediawiki for. Thanks again for all the help. Peter Greenwell (talk) 16:03, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Just let you guys know I got it working. My server was reading a cached version of LocalSettings.php, not the newer one I changed. It's all good now. Peter Greenwell (talk) 03:05, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Good. :) Ale_Jrb 11:07, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Bot problem

Moved from Misplaced Pages talk:Village pump#Bot problem. Svick (talk) 16:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi there. There is a bot doing strange things. I can't seem to find the shut-off. Here is an example, and contribs. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:14, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it's just the signature that doesn't seem to render properly. Maybe it's just my display. Maybe the bot has already been turned off. Cheers. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:17, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not just your display. The (protected) page to turn this bot off is User:SQLBot-Hello/welcome.run and it was already done, so this shouldn't be a problem anymore. Svick (talk) 16:50, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

testing templates

I was wondering if Misplaced Pages has a "testing option" for testing heavily used templates that have been modified? This would be something that a group of users could access to test new templates that reside on a "test space" on wikipedia. This option would assure that for any template found by the[REDACTED] software when reading a page, that the test space would first be checked to see if this template resides there. Then if the template was not there, the main template space on Misplaced Pages would be searched. This would be a step between a user testing a template in their own user space and actually loading it into the live[REDACTED] -when the user felt the template was ready, they would copy it over to this test space and ask a group of experienced users to check out the template before going live. This would allow a group of users to call up different[REDACTED] pages using this template and check if the template in the test area affects the many different ways of calling a heavily used template. When you test a template in your user space, you have to dummy up a lot of stuff for testing. With an option like this, a group of users could test the use of a new template without having to dummy up anything. Is there anything like this? stmrlbs|talk 18:04, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The usual way of dealing with changes to complex templates is to use template test cases. This way, anybody can change the sandbox and then see how would it affect the template output in one place. I think this way is better than your proposal, because even if I'm interested in templates, I want to test one template at a time not all templates that have some untested changes and it's better to have one place for each template, where rare cases can be tested, rather than going through few real pages, finding that template there and ensuring it's okay. Also, in testcases you can easily compare how original and changed versions of a template behave. Svick (talk) 18:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I am aware of how to test templates in a user space. But, like I said, in order to test it, you have to dummy up any pages that call the template, too, in order to test it. There is no way to get a listing of all the different ways a template can be called - you can't search for all the calls of a template where a certain parameter is used a certain way. I understand what you are saying about calling in other people's templates from a test area, but a testing option could also be set up to specify a variable testing area (perhaps a sub user space). The advantage to testing with something like this is that you could test by browsing any[REDACTED] page that calls the template without having to create a "dummy page" to specifically call the test template. This is a method used in many other systems for just this purpose. I was just wondering if Misplaced Pages had something similar. stmrlbs|talk 18:36, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

When I'm testing a change to a complex template, I do the following

1. make a copy of the template in my userspace, and make the changes there
2. go back to the original template, click "What links here"
3. open a randomish selection of the pages that transclude it (usually trying to get some from redirects as well) - maybe 5 to 10, depending on how big the change is.
4. on each of those pages, I open the section that uses the template in edit mode and change the template name to my userpage mockup
5. then I use preview mode to test the mockup - I can just leave the page in edit mode, repeatedly clicking preview to test revisions to the userfied template, change and add and remove parameter values to see what happen, and etc. I just have to remember to click close when I'm done so I don't commit any change to the page itself.

this obviates the need to mock up transcluding pages, gives a good selection of real-world uses of the template to test on, and allows me to clean up all the more obvious errors in coding. I don't see any advantage to having a specific 'testing mode' or 'testing option' that preview mode can't handle. --Ludwigs2 19:15, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

this works fine if the template is not heavily used, and you know a good variety of pages to do this "open, edit, preview" method to test, and this is probably a good way to test any template modifications. But for a heavily used template (like infobox road template) that is called by 10,000 pages, and has multilevel calls with different parameter variations with each nesting level, this isn't enough, imo. It would be nice for any template that is heavily used to be able to be able to be tested by a group of users on a project (like the[REDACTED] road project). I was thinking with a site as big as wikipedia, that perhaps there was some mechanism in place to do this that I didn't know about, but I guess there isn't. Just thought I would check. stmrlbs|talk 19:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I've worked on heavily used, complex templates. the only advantage I'm seeing to your proposal is that it allows you to quickly test the template on a large variety of pages without the bother of editing those pages and changing the template name. however, you would basically expose all of[REDACTED] to the test version. the main reasons we shouldn't directly edit massively transcluded templates in template space is so that (a) we don't mess up thousands of pages at once, and (b) so that we don't kill the servers forcing them to re-render and re-cache all of those thousands of pages more than they absolutely need to. having this test mode would be just like editing the template directly in template space.

now, that being said, if there were some way to set up a user testing mode, so that this 'being tested' template would only appear to the particular user doing the testing (and not affect[REDACTED] more generally) that might be useful. I suppose we could create a mode which bypasses caches entirely for that given user and rerenders each page on the fly, using templates from an alt-template space, though I have no idea about the technical feasibility or desirability of such a thing. --Ludwigs2 19:57, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

"however, you would basically expose all of[REDACTED] to the test version." I don't think you understand what I am asking. If this was a special function in wikipedia, this would only be invoked by those users that requested that testing mode, set the switch, or however itthis special browsing mode would be turned on. Like setting your preferences category box is on top instead of on the bottom or changing the UTC times to be relative to the local time for this user. The[REDACTED] software recognizes that it will set up the display of the page a bit differently for this user, while this option is on. The users testing would turn on this template testing function, with perhaps an option to point to that users test space or a special area for this. Then for those users, the software would check this special place first for any template called for any page. If the software did not find the template in the special testing area, then it would call it in from the regular template space. It is a change in the "concatenation" of what gets called in to display a page. This would enable a group of users could just play with this for a couple of days with many pages just to make sure the template (or templates) worked correctly for a wide variety of pages. No other users would be affected. Only users turning on this option would be affected. Then when the group was satisfied, they would agree to have the template moved to the main template area and they would turn off the testing option in their preferences. stmrlbs|talk 20:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Functionality Required

In Misplaced Pages:When_to_use_tables#Images, I'm using <blockquote></blockquote> in this way:

<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
{| align="right"
| ]
|}
</blockquote>

What results is a white box with a black border. The picture being on the right with a white border. But I don't want this, instead, I want the whole white box to ENCLOSE the picture. Why is this not happening?

If this is a bug, can you report it to bugzilla (retorical question).174.3.101.61 (talk) 21:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.3.101.61 (talk) 21:44, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Another problem I have is when I use <blockquote></blockquote> like this:

:<blockquote></blockquote>

the colon (":") does not "indent" (move the whole "thing" over (to the right)). What is the reason? Why is the functionality so poor?174.3.101.61 (talk) 21:47, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you report this to bugzilla?174.3.101.61 (talk) 21:49, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether it's a bug or not, but I'm also not sure why you're using a table inside a blockquote. either of the following works:

{| align="right" style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;"
| ]
|}
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em; ">
]
</blockquote>

you can indent blockquotes

::<blockquote>this is some text</blockquote>

yields:

this is some text

but it's sometimes easier just to use the {{quotation}} template:

::{{quotation|this is some text}}

yields:

this is some text

Blockquote is not strictly a MediaWiki feature. Its just an HTML tag that MediaWiki allows to be used. MediaWiki doesn't do any special processing for blockquote besides parsing the content like any other wikitext. The presentation of it is determined by the browser. Putting a table with images in it is not the intended use for blockquote, so its not incredibly unexpected that it doesn't do what you want. Mr.Z-man 03:41, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

If you need more options than {{quotation}}, then there are {{quote box}} and {{quote box2}} and more in Category:Quotation templates. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  03:48, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

bits.wikimedia.org?

What's up with the new subdomain? Is there anyplace to specifically discus the javascript that we're using (aside from here)?
— V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 11:47, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

bits. is a new domain that serves content that is mostly static (such as skin JS and CSS, centralnotice). Some ideas behind it are detailed here —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:46, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I really with that the decision making process to make these sorts of changes here on Misplaced Pages were more transparent.
— V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 13:24, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

It's perfectly transparent. It just is a lot of information, and keeping up to date with everything requires multiple day time jobs (which is why the foundation has 30 people employed these days) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:32, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Just from looking around, I guess that you're an "insider" in the MediaWiki developer community. As an editor here, and as someone with quite a bit of experience with both private and open source development, I've got to tell you that the developer community is awfully opaque here. Based on your statements and those by others I'm guessing that isn't the intent, but I'm here to tell you that the image presented to the English Misplaced Pages community (those of us who are not on the inside of the MediaWiki dev community, at least) is that development decisions are made in a "smoke filled back room", and that wider input is generally unwelcome.
— V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 14:35, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure the devs would love more outsider interest, it's understanding enough to feel able to contribute that's the problem I find (personally). Also, Ohms, you have to be careful: to a large extent (as I understand the change) this wasn't a MediaWiki decision, this was a Wikimedia decision - largely a similar set of people, but by no means the same. - Jarry1250  14:59, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. When Wikimedia decides that performance of the server park is benefited with a dedicated server with specialized caching to handle some static content shared by all installations, then that hardly concerns you as a user (Imagine if facebook were to notify you each time they added/removed a server from their serverpark). The information is out there, you just need to know where to look. And I'm not an insider, i'm just an editor interested in the tech side of wikipedia, who knows where to look when people ask questions like your original question. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Most development decisions are only made by the person who commits the change. Then every change is reviewed by a senior developer before it goes live on the site. Though as was pointed out, this was not a MediaWiki decision, nor one that affects the average end-user. But I'm not sure how much more open the development community can be. If anyone is an outsider, its only because they haven't gone inside yet. mw:Communication and mw:Developer hub are both linked to on the main page of MediaWiki.org and list the primary modes of communication for the developers, the IRC channel and the mailing list, both of which are open to anyone. Bugzilla and CodeReview are also open to anyone. Mr.Z-man 15:46, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused on where this so called 'back-room' decision complaint is coming from. Nothing changed except the address where things, users have no control over, are being hosted from. It's like getting angry of them changing what web server serves up the pages. Q 15:55, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't care about your interest. I'm a volunteer too, and I publish as much information as possible. Unfortunately, you will have to come and get that information yourself, I won't deliver it to you. You are not special. Thanks! Bye! Domas Mituzas (talk) 16:14, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Bits.wikimedia.org taken out of rotation due to reachability issues. Under investigation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:57, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Dear enwiki community,

We would like to remove the server 'srv56' from Apache rotation. That means this server will no longer be serving pages to users. Can someone please describe the approval process we need before doing this? Do we need consensus from the community for such a change or is a majority vote sufficient? Are there any enwiki guidelines we should follow when making this change?

Thanks! kate.

Kate, you are such a troll! We all know that you want to take out two servers, not just one! 16:02, 10 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Midom (talk • contribs)

Sure, be derisive and dismissive, as usual. *rolls eyes* I'll simply continue to not even try to volunteer my expertise to the development community here. If IRC and mailing lists are the definition of "openness" here, that speaks volumes by itself.
— V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 16:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

OMG, we just lost some engineering talent! Ring the alarm bells! What information didn't you get on IRC, btw? Which channel did you try? #overflow? Domas Mituzas (talk) 16:39, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

This is nothing to do with development community or software. This is a Wikimedia specific change made by system administrators, and I really can't think of a reason users would want to be consulted, or even care. (Or do you think we should not make any technical changes before asking users if it's okay?) kate.

We use mailing lists and IRC for communication, a bug tracker for tracking bugs, and a few wikis (mediawiki.org, wikitech.wikimedia.org) for documentation. These are the standard media for communication among open-source developers. They're generally open to the public and publicly logged (especially the dev stuff, sysadmin stuff is less open). I don't know what you think is more "open" than that – are developers to use the English Misplaced Pages for communication? That's outside enwiki's scope. Wikimedia runs a thousand or so wikis, and developers aren't going to single out one or two of them to talk to about technical changes. We have our own lower-volume media, and interested parties can subscribe to them.

A remarkable number of enwiki users seem to think that developers and sysadmins exist for the purpose of serving enwiki editors. We don't. Those of us who are paid are paid by Wikimedia, which has a mission that reaches far beyond enwiki and isn't accountable to enwiki. Those of us who are unpaid have our own reasons, which might or might not include helping enwiki editors, and almost certainly does not include helping any particular subgroup of editors. Asking us to talk to you about changes we make that barely affect you anyway, when you haven't even made a minimal effort to involve yourself in what we do, would be like an anonymous Misplaced Pages reader getting upset because you didn't consult them on a change to WP:NPOV. You want to be involved, you involve yourself. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:51, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Imagemap editor

I am not sure if the image map editor provided at this link http://toolserver.org/~dapete/ImageMapEdit/ImageMapEdit.html?en works or if I am using it incorrectly. When I provide the link of the picture (http://commons.wikimedia.org/File:Man_shadow_anatomy.png) in th text boxes for which I want to add imagemap and then I press the load button, the image doesn't get loaded in the image box. Please provide guidance how I should use it to add/generate imagemap code easily using this tool. Please let me know if you need more details. Thanks Amol.Gaitonde (talk) 14:52, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

It works here if I follow the instructions.

1. Load from Wikimedia project
2. Enter commons.wikimedia.org for the field "Wikimedia project"
3. Enter "Man_shadow_anatomy.png" for the field "Name"
4. Press "Load"

—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:30, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

What links here and navboxes

When looking at "What links here" for an article, why doesn't clicking on "Hide transclusions" hide links that are only contained in common navboxes? For example, if I go to the article Exile on Main St. and click on "What links here", one of the articles listed is Got Live If You Want It! (album). If I then click on "Hide transclusions", "Got Live If You Want It! (album)" is still listed as having a link to "Exile on Main St.". But, looking at "Got Live If You Want It! (album)", the article itself doesn't contain any links to "Exile on Main St.", it's listed because it contains the {{The Rolling Stones}} navbox, which does have a link to "Exile on Main St." It seems to me that clicking on "Hide transclusions" should hide that link. So, am I missing something? Or is this a "broken" -- and if so, how can a fix be requested? (See also: Help talk:What links here#Question. How do we hide excessive linkage? — Mudwater 16:30, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Even though the link is included via a transcluded template, it is still a link and not a transclusion, so I don't think it's broken. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:32, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes to the HTTPS version

I use the HTTPS version of Misplaced Pages to avoid my password being sent unencrypted. For the last few hours, whenever I open a page on the HTTPS version, Firefox 3.0.17 has been telling me "You have requested an encrypted page that contains some unencrypted information. Information that you see or enter on this page could easily be read by a third party."

Have there recently been changes to the HTTPS version that might account for this? (I imagine that encrypting data that is common to every page would be wasteful.) If so, does anybody know whether it is possible to disable this Security Warning for some sites and not others in Firefox? If not, does anybody have any ideas about why I might have started getting this Security Warning? If I login to the ordinary (non-HTTPS) version of Misplaced Pages, will my password be submitted in cleartext?

Tim Ivorson 2010-01-10

http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Bits_and_pieces is causing your problem. Josh Parris 17:26, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

To be more correct.. Due to the switch to bits.wikimedia.org, MORE elements will be coming from external servers (images were already coming from upload.wikimedia.org) These elements are not encrypted and FF warns of that. I'm not sure what the plans are on this front. Will inquire. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:41, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, Josh. So part of every secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia page I get today is coming from bits.wikimedia.org? If only there was a way of using the unencrypted Misplaced Pages with an encrypted password (like some Google sites). I do feel guilty about letting the Wikimedia servers unnecessarily (as far as I'm concerned) encrypt and decrypt so much stuff that's publicly available anyway. Tim Ivorson 2010-01-10

Mea culpa - I had the edit, just didn't save it - fixed now. 19:45, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Google Earth

Has anyone noticed in the past few months that every time you click on a coordinate, you get the nearest street address? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 16:27, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Twinkle Lost extra tabs

I used to have extra tabs for request protection, XfD and the like at the top of pages. They have now disappeared. Anyone know why/how? DuncanHill (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I've checked my gadgets, and the box for Twinkle is still checked. DuncanHill (talk) 18:05, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Twinkle relies on your browser's Javascript support, so if you switched browsers, enabled Javascript blocking, or got a Javascript-blocking browser add-on (like noscript), that could be the reason. Also try a hard refresh (usually shift-F5 ctrl-F5), or closing and restarting your browser. Equazcion 18:06, 10 Jan 2010 (UTC)

Haven't switched browsers, and Java working fine on other sites. DuncanHill (talk) 18:08, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Try logging out and back in, and restarting your browser completely. I've had this happen before, and when it wasn't a javascript blocking issue, it was generally just a momentary browser glitch that cleared itself up eventually. Equazcion 18:14, 10 Jan 2010 (UTC)

Also, if you've switched to the Vector skin (or the "Try Beta" option that uses Vector), items that were tabbed under Monobook are now mostly found under the drop-down menu under the downward-facing arrow. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:03, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages pages with to-do lists
• Misplaced Pages noticeboards
• Misplaced Pages features