Misplaced Pages

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FAQ: Intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear, and cause the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. This is an ongoing issue we are working on.

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Still trying to get rid of the banner ad in watchlist; help!

I have been trying for two weeks now to get rid of the banner ad in my Watchlist about 'e-mail must be confirmed' (I do not have an e-mail to confirm). Several people have made suggestions (thank you, all!) but none work. I have created a User:quota/monobook.css with the magic incantation. I have erased all files and temporary files. I have rebooted endless times. But I still get that banner which displaces all useful information off the bottom of the page.

Why isn't there a way to say 'yes I have seen this, thank you'? Following the links is hopeless .. one just goes around a loop.

Really would appreciate some help on this! quota 22:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

There's no "banner ad"; there's a helpful message someone put in about a change in the system. If you don't want to read it over and over, don't read it. --Brion 00:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, with the huge space above and below and three lines in the box it takes about six lines of my screen, which means on the first screen ther are only 2 or 3 watchlist items. It's hard to see how that's 'helpful' :-) quota 09:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Alright, the instructions for doing this are really simple, so read this several times if you need to:

• Edit that file. Yes, it should be blank. Go to edit and it will bring up an edit screen.
• Add this:

#confirmemail { display: none; }
...then and save the file.

• You will then need to do a hard refresh of your browser. You will need to press Control-F5 if you're using Internet Explorer, or Control-Shift-R if you're using Mozilla/Safari/Konqueror or F5 if you're using Opera.
• Go to your watchlist and the message should be gone.

- File:Ottawa flag.png nathanrdotcom 00:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks for the detailed instructions! They are pretty much what I'd garnered from other posts scattered about.

I've tried them again, following exactly that procedure, and there is absolutely no effect. (This on IE.) Any idea when the box will go away of its own accord? quota 09:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah, a thought .. could it be that the reason it does not work is because I am using the 'Classic' Skin? If so, is there some other way to get rid of it? -- Thanks. quota 09:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Use User:Quota/standard.css instead. Sam Korn 09:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

That seems to have worked. Thank you! 05:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe for these banner-boxes a checkbox 'please don't show me this again' would save many frustrating minutes and hours. I would much rather spend time editing than trying to work around this sort of thing. quota

Deleted Articles

I've noticed that it is some vandals favorite activity to create hoax articles. However, once these articles are deleted they disappear from the user's contribution list. Is there any way to see what articles a user has created, including deleted articles? It seems like it would be useful, since these articles take up more overall energy to fix than simple vandalism, and if it was known that a user tended to create hoax articles, then less time could be spent triple checking that it was indeed a hoax. Makemi 06:16, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Not at this time. --Brion 06:57, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

But we could make note of it on their talk page esp. in the Edit Summary. It'll take an extra step to check out, but the edit summary would quickly bring this matter to attention, and it's not something the user can make go away. Rklawton 07:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Is there an attempt to bring back deleted article list? --Masssiveego 03:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Brion's working on changes to the way we mark specific data as deleted, which appears to include different levels of visibility. Looks like the old deleted revisions stuff will be reborn in shiny new packaging. Rob Church 07:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

PRE on user style pages

I noticed that the automatic <pre> style that used to be present on user style pages, and apparently on MediaWiki style pages too, has been removed, along with the warning that you have to clear your browser's cache to see changes. Manually adding /*<pre><nowiki>*/ to the beginning of a document is sort of cumbersome; why was this feature removed? Phoenix-forgotten 21:18, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Please provide a URL to such a page. Rob Church (talk) 07:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

It looks like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Monobook.css are two examples besides my user style page. Phoenix-forgotten 01:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The user subpage seems fixed to me (the cache warning shows up, and it's pre'd etc. fine) but I'm not sure about the former. Could be inconsistencies with the software's handling of what constitutes a CSS or JS subpage. Going to take a look, since I suspect the last person to poke that was me. Rob Church 07:47, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Confirmed the user thing is fine for me. The MediaWiki:Common.css et al. pages never had this editing quirk added in the first place. I'll look into adding it since it's useful. :) Rob Church 20:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

My user CSS page seems to have its auto-PRE back. Dunno what was wrong last week, but it's fine now. :) Scratch that; it's still buggy. Apparently it only gets broken after I've edited it. The page probably gets stuck in the server's cache as a non-CSS page, because it goes back to normal after I purge it. Phoenix-forgotten 19:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

See also monobook.js rendering as wikitext sometimes — Omegatron 20:18, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Hiding robot edits in watchlist

Buzilla: 4895

Please vote for this feature. My watchlist is unusable until this feature is activated. Of the 120 items on the first page of my watchlist, over 80 are from bots. It's as simple as setting $wgFilterRobotsWL = true;... we just have to wait for a dev to actually make this change... — ₀₉₁₈ • 2006-03-9 20:23

Please note that Brion Vibber has now marked this bug WONTFIX. Rob Church (talk) 07:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

And for follow-up, it's been REOPENED pending a fix to the feature Brian cited. Rob Church 07:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

index.php/Article

Hi. I was wondering how you got index.php/Article to be the same as index.php?title=article. I was wondering becuase I am writing a program in php, and this would allow for a much cleaner URL. Thanks, Shardsofmetal 19:22, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Some instructions about how to configure a MediaWiki installation are found at Using a very short URL, and that may have the answer to your question. Titoxd 22:39, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

See $_SERVER. Note this is not always available. --Brion 00:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank You. Unfortunately, it didn't answer my question. This is my fault, I didn't word my question the way I should have, and I apoligize. What I actually wanted to know is from a programming perspective, how is it that you can program a file so that when called with a /variable, you can tell it to set variable as a certain variable. I hope that this is worded all right. Thank you, Shardsofmetal 03:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

This is either closely related to, or the same as, a question I've been having: when the web server sees "index.php/Article", how is it that it does not blindly try to treat "index.php" as a directory, and "Article" as a standalone page within it? Is apache smart enough to notice that when a seeming directory compoent within a URL (a) exists but is (b) not a directory but (c) is a server-side script, it might be okay to run that script and let it interpret the rest of the pathname? —Steve Summit (talk) 05:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Short answer: Yes. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 05:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible to get a long answer (or a link to where it is described), because I do not know how to do this, but would like to. Thanks, Shardsofmetal 18:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Learn about .htaccess, you'll find that Misplaced Pages simply instructs Apache to blindly send everything after wiki/ to title variable. — Ambush Commander 17:31, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, the long answer is "Go to http://httpd.apache.org/ and download the Apache web server source code." The short answer was already given above. --Brion 05:33, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

If you haven't figured it out already, add:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^wiki/(.*)$ index.php?title=$1

to your .htaccess file. Make sure that you have the rewrite module loaded by having:

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
AddModule mod_rewrite.c

in your httpd.conf file. Tristanb 08:31, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

No, it has nothing whatsoever to do with rewrite rules. (Though you can accomplish similar things that way.) --Brion 08:51, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Expanding on what Brion said, the way Misplaced Pages does it can't possibly be mod_rewrite, because Misplaced Pages does not require use of .htaccess at all, as I discovered when I downloaded mediawiki and started playing with it myself. (That is, the mediawiki installation documents do not tell you to create a .htaccess file; the -- very nicely automated, btw -- mediawiki installation procedure does not create a .htaccess file for you; and my own mediawiki installation is working just fine, including with respect to subdocuments, and there's no .htaccess file in its /wiki directory.) But it's true, there's a zillion Apache modules out there which can do all sorts of things, and the perl motto probably applies: "TMTOWTDI".

(As an aside, there's a school of thought that suggests that mod_rewrite might not be the first tool you should reach for when performing some URL-related trick. To be sure, and as its own documentation proclaims, it is "the Swiss Army Knife of URL manipulation". But its documentation also contains two cautionary quotes: "The great thing about mod_rewrite is it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail. The downside to mod_rewrite is that it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail. " "Despite the tons of examples and docs, mod_rewrite is voodoo. Damned cool voodoo, but still voodoo. ")

Shardsofmetal's question still remains, though: once apache has looked at the URI components "index.php/Article", determined that "index.php" is not a directory, determined that "index.php" is a server-side script, and called it, how does index.php recover the string "/Article"? (Yeah, I know, I could figure this out by looking at the source code, but I haven't delved into it yet.)

—Steve Summit (talk) 14:17, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I already provided exactly that information on March 5. Please read above. --Brion 00:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

RTFS. 86.134.49.239 22:02, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Telescopic taxobox

I could never describe myself as a deletionist, but I am all for hiding information that isn't immediately useful.

So here's my proposal for a telescopic taxobox, allowing taxonomic groups which are currently missing to be simply hidden, rather than absent:

Normal view	Expanded view		Proposed template usage
			{{Taxobox | image = Pleorodeles_waltl.jpg | image_caption = In an aquarium | color = pink | name = Iberian Ribbed Newt | regnum = ]ia | unranked_phylum = ] | unranked_phylum_hide = true | superphylum = ] | superphylum_hide = true | phylum = ] | superclassis = ] | superclassis_hide = true | classis = ] | subclassis = ] | subclassis_hide = true | ordo = ] | familia = ] | genus = '']'' | species = '''''P. waltl''''' | binomial = ''Pleurodeles waltl'' | binomial_authority = ... | range_map = ... }}

The shrunk version is more readable. The expanded version is more complete. And this way little compromise needs to be made between them. A third click could perhaps hide the classifcation all together, and show just the binomial name.

I was hoping the mechanism could coopt the Hide/Show button from the Table of Contents box, but my attempts have so far failed (see /teletaxotest). A page that does does something similar (but hides the whole box, not just parts) is here: User:Essjay/CVU/IRC/Verifications

Which classifications would be hidden would be set per species or taxon. (see parameters ending in _hide in the proposed template usage above).

Anyway, I've pretty much given up on making this myself. I suspect it would need some extra Javascript that would have to be added to the main javascript file of the Misplaced Pages. But anyone else who wants to give it a go, please do.

Note: I have noticed that the metadata on images is collapsable, and maybe the javascript it uses can be hijacked. (e.g. see Metadata section on Australia_Cairns_Koala.jpg) but I haven't attempted to use this approach as yet.

I'm wondering if someone were to make this work using some javascript if it would be possible to add javascript to the wikipedia's main .js file? Perhaps if it were a generic solution?

—Pengo 08:58, 11 March 2006 (UTC) (/rants)

The template {{Afd}} has a "show/hide" button that only modify part of the box. However, it is in a fixed position, so it may not be what you are looking for. - Liberatore(T) 15:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

It can not be done using the javascript as it is now, but it can easly be an generic code-snip. Simlar for this:

<div class="hiddenStructure"> <!-- Outer container-->
<div class="hiddenStructureButton">Button...</div>
<div class="hiddenStructureElement"></div>
<div></div>
<div></div>
<div class="hiddenStructureElement"></div>
</div>

using

#Pseudo code (don't remeber all js at the moment :))
foreach(element = getElementsByClassName('hiddenStructure')){
element.getElementByClassName('hiddenStructureButton').addEvent(...);
foreach(element = getElementsByClassName('hiddenStructureElement')){
element.connect(event button);
}
}
function hideElement(element){
element.style.display='none';
}
etc...

_→AzaToth 01:12, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Note that the 'missing' taxons are generally left out deliberately and people working on the project will often go through and remove 'extra' taxons. Generally we show each of the major (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, et cetera) higher taxons, but not the sub-groupings (Super-phylum, Subclass, et cetera) unless one of those is the 'next higher' level above the article subject. --CBDunkerson 20:49, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you're addressing me or making a general comment here, but i'd like to clarify anyway. The point of the this suggestion is to allow the deliberately removed taxons to be merely hidden, rather than deleted. As I understand, they are only removed to save space. As the condensed version of the taxobox can be lacking in information, if not misleading, I'd like to keep them but in a hidden state, rather than have them deleted. —Pengo 01:05, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

In addition to 'saving space' the extra taxons are often left out because such 'sub-groupings' are often speculative or disputed and subject to more frequent change than the primary taxons. Also, the CSS based methods of implementing this which you are currently pursuing (hiddenStructure and the like) do not work for all users... such that if you are 'successful' the result would be that some users (people with text browsers, people with screen-readers for the blind, people on non-English language Wikipedias and Misplaced Pages mirrors) would always get the 'uncollapsed' format. --CBDunkerson 13:00, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

You have some valid points: Yes, some people would be stuck with an uncollapsed view, but they'd be stuck with valid information, quite unlike how some people have used "hiddenStructure" to "hide" nonsense code, so I don't see it as such a problem. The problem of the taxa being speculative and/or disputed is probably less surmountable, but I suspect that would be the exception rather than the rule? The extra taxa in the example above were all taken from Misplaced Pages articles. E.g. the grouping "deuterostomia" is revealed in the taxobox for chordate but is missing in all the taxa below it. Anyway, thanks for discussing this issue, I currently have no plans to persue it further as the gain is simply not that great and there are much more worthy low hanging fruit (like filling in conservation status where it's missing). Cheers. —Pengo 01:24, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Random Number Function ?

Is there existing functionality to parse a random number using wikimarkup at this time. An extension appears to be availible on meta m:User:Algorithm/RandomSelection. And apparently other wiki's (e.g. uncyl..) are using this with success? -- xaosflux /_CVU 05:46, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

What would it be useful for on Misplaced Pages? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:29, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

A random number generator would allow pages to display random content. The closest thing we have to that currently is what I've done with Portal:Featured content where a different set of past picture/article of the day are displayed from a randomized list every sixty seconds. However, that isn't truly random and it relies on a huge switch to do the evaluation. Actual random features would allow much greater flexibility with much less processing resources required. --CBDunkerson 20:37, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Ouch, just looked at Misplaced Pages:Featured content/SetDate, and it looks like a great candidate for a RND() function! xaosflux /_CVU 05:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. A simple random function could allow the same (actually better) functionality in a vastly smaller template. Even some basic string manipulation capabilities, such as being able to do right({{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}, 1), could be used to build much better randomization. The last digits of the article count and file count at any given moment would effectively be random numbers between 0 and 9... but a real random feature would be best. --CBDunkerson 00:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

A {{RANDOMNUMBER}} variable as envisioned would be a serious problem for caching of content, which is what keeps us from going under. Like {{CURRENTUSER}}, this one is unfeasible. Rob Church 07:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

It would if it were used on main content pages, but would it have these same issues if used in templates/headers/etc to call other pages that were already cached? — xaosflux 21:55, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Je ne comprends pas. Repetez, s'il vous plait. In plain English. Examples. Rob Church 19:41, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

transwiki instructions

Where is the documentation for the procedures for doing a transwiki to wiktionary and wikisource? RJFJR 17:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

m:Transwiki. -Splash 18:23, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Which sucks. We need a better method, one that actually preserves the histories properly. 86.134.49.239 22:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Hear, hear. -Splash 22:58, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't Special:Export and Special:Import work for this (assuming Export were made able to export the full article history for, say, just admins (right now it just exports the current state/edit details for everyone I believe))? —Locke Cole • t • c 00:58, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes. If Special:Export was fully-functional (yes, it's the same for admins as non at present) and Special:Import at all functional, we would probably have a viable transwiki mechanism... -Splash 16:36, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe the main concerns with enabling those are

• People abusing Special:Export and increasing the load without cause
• People inserting falsified edit histories, etc. via Special:Import

MediaWiki kinda sucks at communicating with other installations of itself. A Special:Transwiki would be an awesome feature, but going about it is a bit more awkward. Rob Church 07:32, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Would it be possible to allow access to Special:Export (with full edit history) and Special:Import in the same way it's possible to allow access to (for example) just rollback (and not full sysop privileges)? In this way, editors could request "import/export" privileges and have them granted on a case by case basis. Agreed that a Special:Transwiki would be ideal though. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 07:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Possible but I suspect it would become unmanageable. Rob Church 19:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

<nopreview> and <previewonly>_and_<previewonly>-2006-03-13T23:39:00.000Z">

Are there directives like those, similar to <noinclude> and <includeonly> ?

I have sections to edit in the middle of a large table. (take a look at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject The Beatles/Article Classification... each letter is a separate section) Because they are in the middle, when you edit one section, the text is not formatted in preview mode but is jumbled, making it harder to tell what you get when you save. I tried using includeonly which works if you edit an included subsection page (look at User:Lar/Sandbox and User:Lar/Sandbox/album Q, one of the sections) but not so well for what I want as when you click on the section edit tag it edits only a section of the inclusion.

Related question: how do you control the font size of the tag? It comes up in a very large font, I'd rather it was smaller than the section title. Or am I going about this the wrong way, using sections for editability? Should I be using something else? Forcing edits directly? ++Lar: t/c 23:39, 13 March 2006 (UTC)_and_<previewonly>"> _and_<previewonly>">

No such directives exist because there's no need for them to. It sounds ridiculous. The styles applied to the section edit links come from the CSS files in the skins and can be overridden with the sitewide customisation or a per-user customisation. 86.134.49.239 22:09, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry you think "it sounds ridiculous". Frankly, I found that comment rather offputting. I'm not sure who you are so I'll try asking again. I think there is a need for these tags and I've given an example why. Did you take a look at the table I referenced? If you don't understand why, please suggest a different way to achieve it.

The section edit links in the example I gave (again, did you look at it?) are way larger than normal ones. I suspect because the section head is buried in a table cell which is changing what size they are. Changing the sitewide customisation for section heads is probably not the way to address the issue. ++Lar: t/c 23:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I said it was ridiculous because it sounds like it to me. I don't see the need to hide things from preview, or only show them on preview, which is what such tags would be expected to do, no? As for the section edit links; well, providing context in the future would have helped that misunderstanding. No, changing the sitewide values isn't going to help. Rob Church 07:29, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

If you don't see the need to hide or show text or markup only during preview I suspect that perhaps you still haven't actually looked at the example I gave. Here is the problem again. Please take the time to look instead of spending time on writing snide commentary if you would be so kind (Please be civil, there is no context in which "ridiculous" is not snide or uncivil when applied to a suggestion, even if you think it actually is validly ridiculous, there are better ways of expressing your opinion). I have written it out again in more detail.

Go here: Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_The_Beatles/Article_Classification and scroll down to the tables... for example "Articles in Category:The Beatles albums. See how big that "edit" link is on any of the table sections? That's the first problem. Now click one, for example the "B" section: What was a nicely formatted table section when looking at the whole thing is now a jumbled mess in preview, because it's a chunk of a table out of the middle. Editing it is difficult because you can't be sure you did it right, and you have no way to tell without saving (increasing server load and the number of edits to track). But if the putative previewonly tag existed, a pair of previewonly {| and |} bracketing the text would make it all highly legible.

Now... you could say, why do you want to be able to edit one section at a time instead of the whole table? Two reasons. the whole table is big, and you have to scroll around a lot to check your work, but worse, it's subject to edit conflict when multiple project members are busily classifying articles. Hopefully that explains why this is a nice to have. Or alternatively, perhaps there is another way of doing it? One way we thought of is having each table section be a separately included subpage (where using noinclude then gives you the same effect) but that creates hundreds of subpages to manage, which seems icky. ++Lar: t/c 11:48, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That page gives me a headache just looking at the design. I see both points raised, yes. I still dispute that we should be allowing people to hide things from the preview; there isn't a massive lot of point in it for all our other pages, is there? Rob Church 20:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Trust me, it gives me a headache too!... I mentioned nopreview for symmetry reasons but it's previewonly that would allow a fix, nopreview doesn't seem very useful. Do you have any suggestions for improvement of the page, keeping in mind it's relatively high traffic? We had thought (in addition to the separately included subpage mentioned above) of splitting the tables up at the sections, but that causes the cell widths to vary (even with forced percentages in the header row) from one section to the next. Thanks for any suggestions (or pointers on where else to ask for ideas). ++Lar: t/c 05:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Blank edit fields

Yesterday, between 14:03 UTC and 14:31 UTC, a problem occurred when editing a page where Misplaced Pages would return an empty edit box when editing a page. This presents a serious problem for bots: they might end up blindly blanking large numbers of pages. Was this problem a one-time thing, or are those of us who run bots going to have to code around it?

(For anyone worried, the only effect this had on my bot was that it blanked its own talk page repeatedly.) --Carnildo 05:01, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Is it still happening? If so, we need much more information in order to reproduce, diagnose and fix it. 86.134.49.239 22:15, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

That's what I'm asking: Is it something that's likely to occur in the future (in which case I'll need to code around it), or was it a one-time thing? --Carnildo 05:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Long-since fixed, yes. --Brion 20:23, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. --Carnildo 21:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Scratch that -- the bug (or a similar one) is still there. OrphanBot just blanked an article, and the logs indicate two possibilities:

1. The page the server supplied contained an empty edit field, or
2. The server supplied a partial page, cut off sometime after the "wpEdittime" field but before the end of the "wpTextbox1" textarea.

--Carnildo 21:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Lost amethyst

The skin amethyst was apparently deleted, I had recommended it on Misplaced Pages:Customisation for legacy browsers without CSS. There should be a skin not depending on CSS magic doing its stuff the old way with pure XHTML, no WP:HIDE tricks, if possible no unnecessary translations of HTML 3.2 entities to UTF-8, and proper name= anchors for <references/>.

Willing to help test and maintain a legacy skin: Omniplex 12:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The skin was removed because it had something wrong with it, if memory serves. I expect the exact reason is detailed in the release notes for 1.6 or the commit logs. 86.134.49.239 22:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

1) it looked terrible, 2) it was monumentally broken in every browser I tried it in, 3) the author didn't seem to have any interest in fixing or maintaining it. It would have been particularly ugly in browsers with poor CSS support; try the old Classic or Nostalgia skins, or the totally-blank-slate MySkin for that. --Brion 00:43, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Apparently I was "moved" to Classic, no problems with that - I could do without the "insert UTF-8 char." JavaScript zoo on my legacy browser with (normally) disabled JavaScript 1.1, but nice to have for legacy browsers would be a waste of time. However a hidden reset-button would be fine to accelerate the insertion of action=raw results, poor man's variant of external editor. Omniplex 02:02, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist by namespace?

I know it's probably been mentioned before, but there's no Talk:Watchlist so I'm bringing it here. What are the odds of being able to filter your watchlist by namespace, like you can with Contributions/Recent Changes? Sometimes I can't be buggered to deal with policy/RfA/*fD questions, but would still like to ensure that no one has vandalized Picts again.

I tried to split out the non-article-space pages I participate in and use Related Changes, but that's really hard to maintain and doesn't automagically update for things like Page Moves. And as much as I'd like to know the special syntax for showing ONLY WP-space watchlisted items, what I'm really concerned about is being able to only-show-articlespace on occasion. Thanks. -- nae'blis _(talk) 16:47, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

You can ask about this on bugzilla:, the developers will probably see it faster there. æle ✆ 21:02, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. See below for what I found. -- nae'blis _(talk) 22:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like something which would be useful to add. I'll get onto that if I have a spare moment, although I recommend filing a feature request if there isn't one.

If there is, please let me have the bug number so I know when to mark it fixed and can take other comments into consideration. 86.134.49.239 22:14, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

1862 seems to be an identical request, or nearly so, if I'm reading Bugzilla correctly. -- nae'blis _(talk) 22:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I've made a user script to do this: see Misplaced Pages:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Watchfilter. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:32, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Browser font change error

I'm not sure what happend, I think I did something odd with my trackball. All of the sudden[REDACTED] and wiktionary are displaying in what looks like a small font (it doesn't show bolds and it's hard to read). Does anyone know what I did...and how to fix it? RJFJR 01:00, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Seems better now. I don't know what happened or what fixed it. RJFJR 01:22, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Most browsers have a view, text size, option, often also with keybaord and mouse shortcuts. xaosflux /_CVU 03:32, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Can these be used in the Misplaced Pages: namespace?

I'd like to make use of some of the following icons for a menu on a page in the Misplaced Pages namespace, but I need to track down information on the legalities of doing so before I proceed. What do you know of the licenses, copyrights, and trademark rights to these icons?

Image:Crystal Clear app mac.png - a link is included on this page to a crude translation of the author's permission. Though it's hard to tell, because the translation is pretty rough.

Image:Finder icon.png Image:Pages icon.png Image:Apple Dictionary Icon.png Image:ICal Icon.png Image:IPhoto Icon.png Image:Apple iDisk Icon.png Image:ISync icon.png

Though it appears that these icons are from a trademarked program. So I'm still not sure if they can be displayed as menu items for a page. Any help you could provide in tracking down the information clarifying to what uses we can legally put these icons to would be most appreciated. --Go for it! 13:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

No, since they are fair-use images. See both that link and WP:FUP#Policy, in particular item 9. They can be used solely in articles (meaning article space) that are about the thing they illustrate and nowhere else. Including here, so I de-inlined them. -Splash 16:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Gibberish instead of italics

I've been contributing to Misplaced Pages for some months now. I've just tried logging on from work in my lunch break, but on a different computer from usual. All italic text appears as garbled gibberish (see screengrab). In the past I've had problems with adding and displaying accents until I reset the Preferences in Safari to Unicode, but doing this on this machine hasn't sorted the new problem out. It's an iMac running OSX Version 10.4.5, Safari Version 2.0.3 (417.8). The other machine which I usually use is a Mac G4 running Safari 2.0.2 (416.12) on OSX 10.4.3, and the pages still display fine on there. Does anyone know whether this a Mac OS problem, or a Safari version problem, or is something else going on here? SiGarb | Talk 13:43, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Never seen such before, could be some kind of monumental breakage in the operating system. Reboot and see... --Brion 20:11, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Will try again next time I'm on that machine. Meanwhile, I've reported the bug to Apple. SiGarb | Talk 20:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Textboxes get cut off

I'm using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1 and I'm having this interesting problem: When I have a textbox that has a lot of text, most of the bottom of the text gets cut off and I can only see the top of the textbox. This is a problem if you are trying to edit wiki articles if half of the textbox is deleted and never shown in the textbox when the browser loads. (It's also difficult to copy and paste long HTML codes that people have put into textboxes especially templates for blogger sites.) Can someone help me? (I don't have this problem when I open the same page in MSIE.)

Misplaced Pages:Article size might have some useful information... in the mean time, try editing by sections. -- WikidSmaht (talk) 21:08, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not using a primitive browser, I shouldn't be having this problem. --Rachack 21:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

1) Can you provide a list of pages on which you encounter this problem?

2) Can you tell us what operating system and version you're running?

3) Are you running any kinds of proxy servers? (Ad-blockers, "sanitizers", JS-strippers, etc)

4) Are you using any Firefox extensions? Have you tried disabling or removing them?

--Brion 20:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

NavHead css? - Template:Half-Life series

Very recently, (as in today), I've noticed that Template:Half-Life series is no longer displayed in its entirety. Instead, we just have the title and a show/hide button. I checked the version histories of the template, and the change happened some time in January, however as I have only just noticed it, I'm guessing it's a recent change to the css instead.

This is useless for a template, yes the Half-Life template was too bulky maybe, but it was made for ease of navigation for newbies and other general users. A quick and easy way to jump between articles, however, now it's hidden. You're average user is not going to spot the "show" button, or even look at the navhead. Could someone change this back? There is some mention of this at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Computer_and_video_games#What.27s_with_the_Show.2FHide.3F when pages with multiple navframes would have all but one hidden. Now they're all hidden, and it's rubbish. - Hahnchen 05:33, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Templates - What the heck!?

Several templates( such as Template:PokémonGames and Template:Mario series) which previously displayed in their entirety are now hidden( collapsed) by default, and you have to click “” to see their contents. Since the templates haven’t been edited, I suppose it must be a change in the software? How can the templates be forced to display their contents by default? -- WikidSmaht (talk) 21:03, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Not a software change, a stylesheet change. It looks like MediaWiki:Monobook.css was changed so that divs marked with the NavFrame class, as this one is, get the show/hide button. If you don't want it, you can change the div to some other class. --TreyHarris 21:31, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The button was always there, but it used to show by default, now it hides by default. Why was this changed, who should I talk to about it? Looking at that stylesheet’s history, it hasn’t been edited since January. Are you sure that’s the source of the problem? -- WikidSmaht (talk) 22:29, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it is better if we can decide the default state for each template. Making separated div for example such as NavFrameShow for show by default and NavFrameHide for hide by default. borgx 00:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, but I’m still not clear on who changed what and why in the first place. And what( if anything) can be done in the meantime? -- WikidSmaht (talk) 02:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I had a look at MediaWiki:Monobook.css round about the time I posted the original point above. But there hasn't been a change in that since January, so that wasn't the cause. I haven't found out yet what the cause actually is, but an awful lot of templates are doing an awful lot of no work by being hidden. Could someone revert this? - Hahnchen 02:30, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

These classes are from MediaWiki:Monobook.js, not from any of the CSS files. --cesarb 02:41, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

And, indeed, this is the change you all were looking for. --cesarb 02:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes—sorry, my fingers typed ".css" when I was thinking ".js". Apologies for the confusion. --TreyHarris 02:45, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Shameless plug: I'm making a Catalogue of CSS classes to make it easier to find where things such as these are defined and used. --cesarb 02:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Software solutions to copyvio

I've done a bit of research in the past into algorithms used by plagiarism detection systems. One of the simplest and most promising is described in the 2003 paper Winnowing: Local Algorithms for Document Fingerprinting, which I could implement a prototype of in PHP+SQL. All we would have to do is collect a corpus of text from a bunch of candidate sources, extract fingerprint data, and then we could have nearly instantaneous identification of any amount of copyrighted information anywhere in a submitted page. This is considerably more scalable than solutions based on the Google web service due to the web service's limitation on number of queries and query size. What do you all think? Deco 21:29, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

One point I didn't address above is what to do if a potential copyvio is detected; rejecting the document out of hand may be frustrating for users who are properly quoting material, or who accidentally conflict with it. I'd suggest instead that these changes are flagged on Recent Changes and the suspected copyvio portions highlighted in red in the diffs. This makes it all much more complicated, of course. Deco 22:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem with this is the incredibly wide range of possible sources for copyvio material: articles on primary and secondary schools frequently contain material copy-and-pasted from the "about" or "mission" pages on the school's website, while biographies of minor pop-culture figures come from the figure's promotional home page. Copyvios from concentrated sources such as Britannica or Encarta don't happen very often. --Carnildo 23:27, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Carnildo... I've never found a copyvio from what could be called a "standard" text; it's always been from a relatively small website directly related to the article's subject. This doesn't mean that there aren't copyvios from Britannica sneaking around, but in my experience they're much more rare. I didn't look at the paper, but since you talked about "collect a corpus of text," I'm wondering how you would address this problem of copyvios from smaller websites that don't really pop up until you google a specific sentence. Seqsea (talk) 00:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I've once found a copyvio from Britannica, though it was only the first paragraph you can get for free off the website. I think 99.x% of our copyvios come from either the official website of the subject or another website dedicated to the subject. I do think copyvios from Britannica and the like are the most dangerous to us, though, since we're directly competing with them.--Cherry blossom tree 00:54, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't actually considering copyvios from other encyclopedias, and I don't think I suggested anything to that effect. Most copyvios do come from the web. The corpus could be generated using a webcrawler, but because the web is so huge it would have to be targeted somehow to sites people are more likely to copy from. One way to do this would be to keep a list of websites known to be copyvio sources, but as Seqsea says, they're often small subject-specific sites. So this is tricky. Deco 01:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Image thumb layout unsatisfying

(This is a repost of a question submitted 2006-03-15 14:35:56 -0800, reverted (inadvertently?) at 2006-03-15 15:07:15 -0800)

In Washington Park, Portland#Children's Playground I'd like to display three thumbnail images across the page, preferably with left, center and right alignments. The current wikitext is

 ]
 ]
 ]
 {{clr}}

But this displays the first image on a line by itself. The other two images are left/right aligned okay, but below the centered image, with plenty of space for the center image. It doesn't seem to be browser related: roughly the same appearance with IE 6.0, Netscape 8.0, Firefox 1.0 and 1.5.0.1 on Win2k and XP. The size of the thumbs has no effect as well. Putting the image references in left, center, right order got even stranger results: left appeared okay, but center was midway between center and right, then right was on a line by itself.

I tried <gallery> ... </nogallery>, but it doesn't make the image thumbnails satisfyingly large. Maybe there's a way to control that? (It does seem the proper way.) EncMstr 22:35, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Someone changed the page to use a gallery, but without comment. Is this intended as an improvment?

I think it might be me, but the server had issues when I tried to save and I couldn't even see the final results. Circeus 02:12, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Some characters disapear when pasting Wiki pages into MS-Word...

When I paste http://en.wikipedia.org/Russian_phonology into MS Word2000 many of the phonetic characters appear as boxes. What fonts do I need to add to Windows2000proSP4 for the chars to be preserved? THanks, MMCohen

Paste them into Notepad, rather than Word. Notepad is a full fledged Unicode editor, whilst your copy of Word may not be. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 02:43, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Cite.php weirdness

The last footnote of Lack of outside support in the Warsaw Uprising unexplicably begins as bold, despite my having looked the entire paragraph for mismatched apostrophes... Can somebody gives it a deeper look? Circeus 02:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It's caused by the single quote at the end of "told that the files had been inadvertently destroyed". I'm not sure how best to fix it, though; you might want to get rid of the italics there entirely. —Kirill Lokshin 02:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I fixed it. The closing single quote was joined with the two primes ending the italics. — Knowledge Seeker দ 02:29, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

m:Cite offers a list of known issues. Omniplex 00:06, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

This wasn't a problem with Cite.php at all, though. Superm401 - Talk 21:44, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

IE error seriously annoying

Is anyone looking into the error discussed at the top of this page that occurs in IE when on wiki? Specifically: "In the last week or so, I've had some problems loading Misplaced Pages pages, mainly diffs and special pages. When I load them the page displays, then a system window pops up saying "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site <page address>. Operation aborted" and an OK button. I click the OK button and the page is replaced by a "cannot be displayed" message. Strangely, when I click the back button the page displays perfectly. This happens infrequently and to seemingly random pages, but never outside Misplaced Pages. If I go back and forth from a page where it has happened the error tends to occur again."

The error is seriously annoying and seems to be getting worse. "use firefox" is not a satisfactory answer here. most people see[REDACTED] through IE.--Deglr6328 05:32, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Seriously, try Firefox (or Opera). If it happens there, too, then you know it's either Misplaced Pages or your internet connection that's at fault. If it doesn't happen, then you know it's Internet Explorer that's at fault. --Carnildo 06:23, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Ugh, I KNOW! I USE FIREFOX!!! It doesn't happen when using it, it only happens w/IE. The point is MOST people here use IE to read wiki!--Deglr6328 08:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, having popular sites start failing in IE might just be the impetus to get more people to switch to a better browser, like hitting a mule with a two-by-four. Not that I'm advocating intentionally breaking the site in IE or anything... :-) *Dan T.* 00:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That sort of talk is impractical and never leads to things being fixed. Rob Church 07:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem absolutely must be fixed. IE is not an insignificant browser here, whatever people think. Superm401 - Talk 21:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any such IE-specific problem. If you can collect some information (OS versions, network providers, packet traces??) that would be super. --Brion 23:04, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

It happens on win2k with IE6 with all the latest patches and SP's installed. I have put an ethereal (or is that 'taken') dump on your talk page. --Deglr6328 08:33, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

The only accomodation I think IE users deserve is a prominent link to the downloads page. John Reid 01:26, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah! I'd throw them all in jail too! The mind truly boggles at this nonsensical, illogical zealotry. Get a clue. --Deglr6328 02:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

As I said above; that sort of talk is impractical, etc. Rob Church 19:32, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Not really a solution, because many public terminals (libraries and schools) use Internet Explorer. Furthermore, on behalf of myself, I am not allowed to download Firefox onto my computer. Ingoolemo  02:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem might be caused by malfunctioning spyware/adware that only affect IE. Try running various anti-spyware programs.
As for all the IE-hating talk, I'll say that I've been using Firefox for quite a while, and recently switched back to IE because it works so much better for me. Both browsers have serious problems, but IE's problems happen to cause me less trouble than Firefox's problems. –T_if_eg_{o 00:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)}

the problem is not related to spyware or adware as I am afflicted with neither. I can get it to happen again and again (the "operation cancelled" error) if when I am on the page that gives me the error I go "back" to the page to reload it within 2 seconds. however if I wait more than 5 seconds the chances of it happening again right away are much lower.--Deglr6328 04:14, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

How sure are sure that you don't have spyware/adware? Because I was having the exact same problem you're mentioning just the other day, and then I tried running Netscape's spyware scan, and suddenly I'm not getting that error in IE anymore. –T_if_eg_{o 00:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)}

Looking for a template

I am working on an article that received FA status a few days ago. In the past, although most of us working on this article had adopted the <ref></ref> reference system, and I had "translated" all previous source notes into this format, there were a couple of users who had refused to utilize the new system and had, instead, entered footnotes in whatever manner struck their fancy at a given moment, despite numerous requests from other editors to use the <ref></ref> system. The existence of the deprecated source notes inserted by the persons in question was noted in the FAC process and had to be corrected -- a time-consuming task that was carried out by the person who had nominated the article. My current concern is how, now that FA status has been achieved and all source notes are in the correct format, we can make it clear to those who wish to contribute to this article in the future that they must enter their source notes using the<ref></ref> system. Is there a template stipulating that usage of the <ref></ref> system is required that can placed on the Talk page? Thank you -- Polaris999 07:32, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It is not, and cannot be required at the moment, partly because there are still uncorrected caveats to the Cite.php system. See Battle of Krasny Bor (refs in template breaks up)and Military hiatiry o France (Refs in Picture captions) for examples of articles that can't be converted. Circeus 11:45, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Contribs link in diff views

When viewing the diff between two edits, there used to be a Talk and Contribs link next to the 2 editors' names. It was working fine a few hours ago, but now the Contribs link is gone and only the Talk link is there. Is this the way it'll be from now on, or is it an error? tv316 19:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

If you click the IP in a diff, you get its contribs; however, there's no link for contribs of a username. Who boffed this up? --Golbez 19:52, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It's now the same as the user info links displayed elsewhere in the user interface. --Brion 20:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Brion, but I don't understand what you mean by that. Also, it's apparently affected my rollback button, which I get from godmode-light, and made it tell me that "Contributions" is not the most recent vandal, but the vandal is. tv316 20:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Look at things like Recent Changes and Watchlist.

I don't know anything about your "godmode-light", presumably it needs to be fixed. --Brion 20:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

So is this format of just the talk page link in the diff view here to stay? For some vandals who have usernames and just in some cases when I want to see what a user has been up to, it's a bit annoying to have to click on the 'my contributions' button at the top and then copy and paste their name in the address bar to replace mine. Is there a reason for the change?

godmode-light was made by User:Sam Hocevar. It gived non-admins a rollback button. tv316 20:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It's funny that you see this as the way to get to a user's contributions, because that's what I also thought for a very long time (long after being an admin). But on every userpage (empty or not) there's a "User contributions" link in the toolbox to the left. I felt really silly when I discovered it after having pasted in username's in urls for a long time. But maybe this fact (that many don't know about that link) is a good reason to put back the contributions link in the diffs. I don't know. Shanes 20:48, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

This is highly annoying, that link was very useful. Martin 20:40, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I also found the contribs link extremely useful for fighting vandalism. older ≠ wiser 20:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I've come up with a fix for Godmode-light, if anyone is interested...

Find this line:

vandal = l.getElementsByTagName('a').title.split(':');

and replace it with this

vandal = l.getElementsByTagName('a').title.split(':');

That line is located in the function AddRevertButtons. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page. --lightdarkness 20:44, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

To explain how this would work for me - I'd middle-click all the diffs in my watchlist. If I see a vandalism, I left-click rollback and middle-click Contribs, so that I can see if he has other vandalisms. Please, please change this back, Brion, you should not make vandalfighting harder for the sake of a more standard interface. --Golbez 21:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

The old code was broken and hacky and ain't going back. I have though tossed in a contribs link in the user tools; as a bonus this is on the Recent Changes and Watchlist too (since it's the same code). Let me know if it seems good/bad/evil. --Brion 21:23, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

The functionality seems identical to how it was before, so I've no problem with it at all. Thank you. --Golbez 21:30, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Ditto. Me happy now. Thanks Brion. older ≠ wiser 22:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

By the way, on a related note, has the edit summary in diffs been changed to italics? Here's a random diff link I just pulled off RC: Or is it just that I'm remembering incorrectly? Just curious; I really don't mind either way, but I would favor plaintext. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 21:50, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I noticed this too, I believe it has changed from normal to itallic. --lightdarkness 22:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's using the same styling as recent changes, watchlist, history, etc etc etc instead of the incorrect styling that it used to use. --Brion 23:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem now is that the contrib link appears for registered users, but not for anonymous editors, which is where it is needed the most... Titoxd 06:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The IP link takes you to their contribs. --lightdarkness 13:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Right now my monobook.js contains only one line:

 document.write('<SCRIPT SRC="http://sam.zoy.org/wikipedia/godmode-light.js"><\/SCRIPT>'); 

What exactly do I have to do to fix the problem? deeptrivia (talk) 22:13, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

You have to go to Sam's page and download the whole thing, put it on your monobook.js, replace that one line, and remember to clear your browser cache. Makemi 22:23, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

What he said, I also replied on your talk page with those instructions. --lightdarkness 22:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

User-specified New Pages

Is ther a way to see all the "New pages" that an specific user has created, perhaps something similar to Special:Newpages but user specified? --MoRsΞ 23:08, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Looking at a filtered Special:Newpages now; will be committing it to the codebase when I've done a bit more cleaning. :) Rob Church 20:21, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That will be very useful. We already have Special:Log/upload so it's kind of odd that we don't have this. Thanks for working on it. Superm401 - Talk 21:50, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Administrator needed! Please!

I did something silly and created a Misplaced Pages nonsense entry. Sorry. I regret it and wish to remove the entry's history. But I do not know how to do this. I suspect it requires someone with higher Misplaced Pages user rights than mine. My username is Marcusvox and you will see the silly entries I made on http://en.wikipedia.org/Sympatico

Can the history of my edits be deleted please, so this nonsense page will disappear for good? Once again, my apologies to the[REDACTED] community for this lapse on my part. I do not make a habit of creating nonsense entries.--Marcusvox 23:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

That's very honest of you, but there's no need to delete them from the history since you've already reverted them out. -Splash 00:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there's no need to delete them, but there's also no need to keep them, so why not? Deleted. --cesarb 00:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks CesarB. I assume you are an admin. I will not be so foolish again. --Marcusvox 00:55, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

For one thing, they're no longer visible on the user contribs. Superm401 - Talk 02:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

But his request here to remove them is. --cesarb 16:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

WP Logo blurred in IE

Although this problem can easily get rid of by using Firefox, but I just want to ask if anyone have a workaround for solving this problem. The Misplaced Pages logo displayed blurred when using Microsoft Internet Explorer only (IE6 also confirmed). (see image) But seems that this problem is not consistent. I have found other PC with IE6 that work fine, but many disturbed with this condition. borgx 00:14, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The reason is, that you are including your image by CSS (Monobook.css)! Maybe some versions of IE have problems doing so correctly ;-) You really should put up a request at m:Requests for logos (or better: Bugzilla!), because when Wiki.png is activated this effect will not be there any more. BTW: In my view the chief cause of this could be in ../skins-1.5/common/IEFixes.js at "Center image with hack for IE5.5", where the logo gets middled/centered. Maybe this causes that duplication (blurred logo)!? Try if the logo is shown correctly when you have JavaScript disabled, please. If yes, the following might work when added to Monobook.js:

if (isMSIE55 && !doneIEAlphaFix) {
 logospan.style.left = '50%';
 logospan.style.setExpression('marginLeft', '"-" + (this.offsetWidth / 0) + "px"');
}

If not (what I think; ->IE5.5), you could try to align the image (->#p-logo) 2px more to the left side in Monobook.css! --- Hopefully something of that will work; best regards, Melancholie 21:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

P.s.: Ah, there already is one: MediaZilla:5275 --Melancholie 21:50, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Need a bunch of users' opinions on sizes

At Template_talk:Current_U.S._Senators#Size poll, we're discussing whether or not the current version (D) is as good as the suggested one (M). Which version is smaller (which is the question of the moment). Many people are saying version (D), but it sure as heck doesn't look that way on mine. More pairs of eyes (and a larger variety of browsers) are needed, I think. Thanks! Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 01:11, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I get "D" to be smaller - Firefox, Windows XP, 1024*768px. (I also can't see the colours, but that's another matter entirely...) Shimgray | talk | 01:41, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

D is much smaller (Firefox, winXP). I can barely see the colours. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

D appears smaller to me as well. Also can barely distinguish the light colors. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

D is smaller (Mozilla SeaMonkey Suite); the other one doesn't even fit in my screen resolution, forcing a horizontal scrollbar. *Dan T.* 02:20, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

D is smaller, but not by much (Opera, large fonts). --Carnildo 02:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

D has the smaller type size, with a little bit of scrolling needed. M needs a lot of scrolling to see it all (on IE6 with a 1024 by 768 screen). Both with D and M the scrolling is irritating - Adrian Pingstone 16:26, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

D fits nicely on the screen, while M overflows and needs horizontal scrolling. Both versions are perfectly readable. Mozilla Firefox 1.5 on Debian stable, 1600x1200, 132 DPI. --cesarb 00:47, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I've explained the reason for M being bigger than D at Template_talk:Current_U.S._Senators#Size poll. --cesarb 00:59, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Replacing the image in the taxobox, and getting an image to sit where it belongs

In the article Hythe, Alberta, I have two problems. I want to replace the map in the taxobox with the map sitting above it, but I can't find where in the code the first map's name is. It must be in the taxobox code somewhere, because when I remove that, the map disappears too. Second, failing being able to replace the taxobox map, I want the other map to sit flush right. Using the code ] ought to do it, no? But it seems it doesn't quite. Can I please get a hand with this? Thanks! Denni ☯ 04:10, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The box is created by {{Canadian Town}}, which has hardcoded into it the use of an image called "{{PAGENAME}} Location.png". The only way to get your image into the box, short of rewriting the template to allow an override of the image name, would be to re-upload your map over Image:Hythe, Alberta Location.png.

I'm not quite sure what your alternative request is. The dwalbertahythe.png is flush right for me (but I use the classic skin, which sometimes places images differently from monobook). I would suggest you put the new image below the box rather than beside it, which you can achieve just be shifting it down the wikicode a few paragraphs.-gadfium 05:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That's just the default name for the image. It can be overriden with a template parameter. --cesarb 01:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Help needed to fix a glitch

Hi, I've had a bit of trouble trying to format a number of tables in the past on this page. If anybody happens to know how to fix the problem of incomplete borders around these 3 tables without changing the arrangement of the contents inside, could you please so kindly fix them for me? Thanks heaps. mdmanser 14:08, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Try removing the style bit about the borders. --Brion 22:39, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Images in articles give poorer google results

I discovered to my dismay that having images in an article produces poorer results from a google search (see ) than one without. A google hit on a[REDACTED] article with an image shows the caption of the image in the snippet rather than the first essential summary of the article. In the example search here for Nanortalik (search:), the German[REDACTED] article gets #1 and with the essential information we would like to see displayed in the search result snippet. For the english Misplaced Pages (#10) that has an image at the start, the snippet does not encourage follow-through click due to its irrelevant snippet text. Any suggestions on how to prevent this, apart from having no images at the top of the page? Jens Nielsen 15:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages really doesn't have to worry about search engine optimization. We're the 18th most popular site on the internet, according to Alexa. If you build it, they will come. Superm401 - Talk 21:55, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

'Edit' location screwed up

In Celtic knot the location of the 'edit' link for the History section is screwed up...somehow forced lower that the headline underline, possibly due to the images on the right. I can't seem to figure out a way to get this to sit normally, on the same line as the headline. Help? --Kickstart70 16:45, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Page renders as I'd expect; section edit links will move about to accommodate block content. You could add a <br style="clear: both;" /> which might achieve the desired effect, but it doesn't make much difference. Rob Church 19:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Sam Korn came and provided a fix, which is why it looks right now to you. It's a workable fix, but kind of a hack. Previous to this, the 'edit' link was rendered on top of other text within the History section. Ideally, this wouldn't be an issue, and I think that perhaps a containing box around both the included images would solve it more permanently. --Kickstart70 20:43, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Apparently a new section; "typo"

I just noticed this on my Watchlist, that an IP address had apparently submitted a new section called "typo", with the arrow link to the section (which is redundant and just messes around with the syntax). There is no section called typo and when I first saw I attributed it to the edit summary anyway. I went through every test I could think of to check that this wasn't just me, but I found more proof on the history page and user contribs here, the contribution to Avro Arrow. Whats with this? --The1exile - Talk - Contribs - 17:05, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like the user entered /* typo */ as their edit summary. This would cause MediaWiki to render it as a section link. Rob Church 19:40, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice if that syntax couldn't be forged...Superm401 - Talk 21:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

How would the software know? Rob Church 19:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Molasses

You guys have a server down ? Misplaced Pages acts like Dial-up is faster, and I'm on DSL. I was directed here from WP:AN regarding this matter. Martial Law 21:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC) :(

Try 120 seconds, and a "Operation has Timed out." has appeared. Martial Law 21:43, 17 March 2006 (UTC) :o

Remove item from watchlist

There's an item which has been on my watchlist for a couple months now, and it's beginning to bug me. I've tried removing it a number of times, and I've cleared my browser cache, but every time it says "Couldn't remove item 'Misplaced Pages:BJAODN/This is your final warning, if you attempt another bad joke , you will be deleted nonsense'...done." Any ideas? Makemi 22:09, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Is that the exact title of the actual page on your watchlist? Does clicking this link help? This is a bit difficult to debug, since no-one else can actually see your watchlist. Could you cut and paste the part of your complete watchlist containing the page you're trying to remove below? Or could you save the entire page to disk and e-mail it to me? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:32, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The link you gave resulted in the exact same error (yes, that is the exact name). In context it is

• White flight
• Misplaced Pages:BJAODN/This is your final warning, if you attempt another bad joke , you will be deleted nonsense
• William Hunt
• William Joyce (writer)
• William Shakespeare
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Women's rights
• Zac Efron
• Zaire

User

• User:-TheRaven-
• User:129.252.89.201
• User:151.198.82.3
• User:167.206.142.194
• User:167.206.174.28

I guess it's weird because this was actually a vandal article, which is why it shows up in regular articles, rather than Misplaced Pages namespace articles. (eg. the title of the page was Misplaced Pages:etc., it wasn't truly part of the namespace). Perhaps that's why the software is confused. Thanks, Makemi 23:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Now that's weird! But I think I've figured out a workaround: try this link. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey! You did it! Why did that work? Thanks, Makemi 00:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

When you watch or unwatch a page, the talk page is also watched or unwatched, and vice versa. The name of the page unwatched by the above link begins with "Talk:Misplaced Pages:", which makes it the talk page of a (supposedly impossible) main-namespace page with a name beginning with "Misplaced Pages:", which is what you somehow had on your watchlist. So unwatching it also unwatched the corresponding article page.

In fact, I'm willing to bet that it was the oddly named talk page that you'd watchlisted in the first place. Unfortunately Special:Watchlist/edit only lists the non-talk names, which means you can't unwatch such an oddly named talk page that way. Using the unwatch tab on the talk page itself would probably also have worked. This is, arguably, a bug. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Submitted as Bug 5280. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, that sort of makes sense, although generally when have I removed pages from my watchlist which have the same circumstance (I've only edited the deleted talk page, and both article and talk page are deleted) I don't have a problem, but perhaps the "Misplaced Pages"ness of it was what caused the bug. Thanks, Makemi 01:43, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Creating an account

FYI, I've added Creating_an_account to the Meta:Help, so it might show up also here in the derived help page later. This technical nit could be also a legal issue - IANAL :-) Omniplex 23:50, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Most Wikimedia wikis only require Captchas during emergencies (bot vandalism). At any rate, the section didn't say how to create an account, only why one might not be able to. I've fleshed it out a bit. Superm401 - Talk 23:52, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't help much, the m:Special:Captcha page still has no link to an online account manager, your link on the Help page leads to a huge list of admins with no indication who's able to handle issues with m:Special:Captcha, and the error message Can't view captcha image a second time shows again that Captchas are often coupled with technical ignorance... <sigh />  Thanks for the help page update, apparently the special page is an oddity only affecting Meta. Omniplex 09:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

User Contributions

Is it possible to get a list of user contributions - just the same as the present list, but filtered to exclude all pages for which the user is (top)? (That is all edits to a page marked top, not just the most recent edit to it.) -- SGBailey 00:07, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Bug??

This may be a bug, or not, but when I go to an article, and I go to its history, and then I click 'compare selected versions', the latest version (on the right) has a '' on the top of it and then a ' link to the right. I thought these links were only used and given to administrators. Is this a bug? Funnybunny 04:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I know that Brion had been editing some things in regards to diff view, but if you did see that it was probably just temporary, as I'm not seeing the described features. --lightdarkness 05:17, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

You have "Godmode-lite" installed in your monobook.js. This gives some extra facilities to Misplaced Pages users using javascript. It isn't as powerful or as efficient as the tools administrators have. It looks like Voice of All (talk · contribs) installed it there for you. If you didn't ask for this, please say so and someone will remove it for you.-gadfium 05:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Voice of All has been installing scripts left, right and centre; someone needs to tell him to stop, it's rude and tantamount to abusing his privilege of editing what would be considered a protected page. Rob Church 19:26, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Patrolled edit

On Help:Patrolled edit I've just "disabled" {{Phh:Patrolled edit}} by inserting __END__ (the template didn't exist before).

So far it's documented / obvious / clear, pick what you like, but I'm less sure about the obscure {{System admin toc}} - is "disabling" it with __END__ the normal procedure to get rid of the broken link on a help page? Omniplex 08:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what the "approved" way is. You have to put something in the empty page and regular spaces don't work. I just got rid of Template:Phh:Inputbox with &nbsp (an HTML character entity that stands for "non-breaking space", or as I prefer, "'nother blank space") Superm401 - Talk 00:55, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

ACK, magic word __END__ or simply   (=  ) both do the trick. I only want to know what the real purpose of a broken link {{System admin toc}} was, maybe it's a part of some maintenance procdure, and disabling it was a bad idea. Omniplex 07:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Bug in article - report this

On polish Misplaced Pages we created a page where users may report bugs. And we add link to this page to all pages in menu (right menu - Zgłoś błąd). Page take a referer and we know where is bug. I think, that is good think to add this page in EN.wiki. What do you thing?

List reported bugs - pl:Misplaced Pages:Zgłoś_błąd_w_artykule. Link is add to pl:Mediawiki:Sidebar (bug in article), Name and url are in pl:MediaWiki:Bug in article-url and pl:MediaWiki:Bug in article. Source of file with form to report bugs is in: http://adamdziura.9g.pl/wikipedia/wikibug.phps. Adam Dziura 11:32, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Um, how is this different to Bugzilla? Sam Korn 12:16, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

User reported bugs in articles (not in Mediawiki). Bugs - bad date birth, bad information, typo... this is better for non-advanced user. ] 12:31, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Easier than Misplaced Pages:Tutorial to teach them how to fix it themselves? Sam Korn 14:00, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes. But some users (readers) can not have time to correct. Or they don't knows how to correct or to be afraid of an edition. In polish Misplaced Pages a lot of misconceptions were found. See the history of changes in this article. This is like send mail to administror (You have a bad day of birth in ...) A suggestions write there are useful. Many[REDACTED] users are reading this voice and he is correcting a mistake (searching for correct data in other sources). Adam Dziura 14:58, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

This is a really bad habit to get people into; it's also very un-wiki. You're just asking for a massive backlog. Even if people don't want to {{sofixit}}, there are better options. For minor (potential) problems, people can put templates like {{fact}} or a note on the talk page. For bigger issues, the are cleanup templates that people should learn. Having them complain to the "central authority" for every problem will be harmful in the long run. Superm401 - Talk 00:58, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you will allow to the test of it. So for 2 days? Perhaps you will change your mind later. :) Adam Dziura 09:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

infobox help

Can anyone tell me how to get tables into infoboxes ant how to create tables?

For a quick and dirty example see Template talk:-, for a more elaborated example see Template:Infobox Micronation(edit talk links history). Omniplex 14:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Difficulty printing

This article can't be printed properly without having some text covered up by some images, making a mess. Some students who use WP are sometimes requested by their teacher to print out a copy of the article for school work. Can anyone help fix up the article? Some students might need it urgently... --Bruin rrss23 14:58, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

It prints ok from Safari in Mac OS X 10.4.5; some of the images are split across two pages which is mildly annoying but I see no overlapping. --Brion 22:55, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Did you try the "printable version" link on the sidebar? Superm401 - Talk 01:00, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I did but it still didn't work. Looks like I have to cut and paste each individual part separately... --Bruin rrss23 03:32, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Section titles overlap with Images

The article about PCI Express has a problem in the form factors section when viewed at a sufficiently high resolution (1024x768) — the image in the previous section overlaps with the section’s headlines; in lower resolutions (or a small browser window) it is not an issue, since the text fills the space. This is probably an issue in other articles as well.

After some experimenting it seems that the solution is to add the CSS clear property to the section headlines in order to avoid this kind of problem; the use of “clear: both” should take care of large images floating on the left or right.

Perhaps someone should also check if floating images can cause problems with subsection headlines.

Please note that CSS clear has no effect for legacy floating (align=) on legacy browsers, if you're dealing with align= effects check out Template:-(edit talk links history) (technical details on the talk page). Omniplex 07:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

It is not about the align propery. The image on the page I mention has the CSS float=left property. The template you mention inserts a <br clear="all">, which does take care of the issue, but adds undesired extra space; furthermore, since this can be an issue wherever there is a large floating image, you shouldn't expect people to insert the template for “just in case”. I think the CSS clear=both should be added by default to any section element (<h2> is used), as it makes sense — there is no reason that a subsequent section should “flow” around an image from a previous section. --70.107.124.95 15:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

A default clear for headers at least downto <h2> could make sense, but on some pages huge infoboxes intentionally float to the right of the ToC and the first section, e.g. Sealand or several guideline pages. For a pure CSS situation check out Template:Clear(edit talk links history), it uses a dummy <div>. Omniplex 20:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Spam filter problem

There's a problem with the spam filter, in which a person can make an edit like this one, but I'm not allowed to revert it. Can an admin revert that and someone please look into it? Thanks. tv316 22:59, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Somebody reverted it already. No idea why you think that you can't do that, removing an unsigned Spanish text on a controversial talk page is IMHO no technical issue. Omniplex 07:57, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not that I didn't think I could do it. It would not allow to me either rollback or manually revert it. Do you really think I would just post a link to the diff and say "Alright, guys. Have fun. Not my problem anymore!"? It becomes a technical issue the moment my revert gets denied due to the spam filter. tv316 22:53, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

The omninerd link in the "Al-Qaeda strategy" section triggers the spam filter (administrative rollbacks apparently work, though). I have fixed the problem by tweaking the link. Raul654 07:58, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Pre-populating a new page

I've been unable to find a Help section that deals with pre-populating a new page. For example, if a user clicks to create a new page, I want the page to already have several standard templates in it and / or sections pre-built so they know what the page is supposed to look like. I assume this is common practice but I'm unable to find the documentation where it is discussed. Thanks in advance for pointing me in the right direction! Jimkloss 23:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

This is not common practice. There are no standard templates and pages are not pre-populated. User:Zoe| 23:19, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

It's certainly possible, but en.wikipedia doesn't do it. en.wikinews.org does, but I don't know the mechanism. I assume you are asking so you can do this on your own MediaWiki site, but this is not the place to get support for MediaWiki. I think http://www.mwusers.com/ may be an appropriate place.-gadfium 23:53, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Add "&preload=<page who's text you want to include>" and alternatively "&autosummary=<some url encoded text>" to the end of an edit link. It's used on for example Category:Images with unknown source (along with a couple of other "magic" commands in the link that automaticaly creates a new sub-category when clicked). It only works for "redlinks", if the page already exist the prefill text is not used. an example --Sherool (talk) 00:22, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm sorry, yes I should have indicated I was asking for our new wiki and not for Misplaced Pages. I think you've given me enough to go on. Sorry I didn't ask over at MediaWiki. Still confused about who is what and what is where. Jimkloss

This is funny. I'm the one who made the link on Category:Images with unknown source (at great effort :) ), but I momentarily forgot about it and got into an edit conflict just now. I was just going to point out that you can create such links using input boxes (constrained input tags) or the GET urls that result. However, Sherool correctly points out that if you pair the preload attribute (one of the GET attributes input boxes can make) with the undocumented autominor, autoclick, and/or autosummary options, you can do some pretty cool things. I'll go over them:

• preload will fill the page with the wikitext from a template.
• autosummary will automatically create an edit summary
• autoclick will click one of the three buttons (wpSave, wpPreview, or WpDiff)
• autoedit will make regex replacements.

Use these cautiously.

P.S. See Meta:Names for a page that clears up our needlessly confusing names. Superm401 - Talk 00:50, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Note that the final three actions are not documented on meta, because they're not part of Mediawiki. They're part of my popups script, and won't work without it (or User:Lupin/autoedit.js instead). Lupin|talk|popups 13:05, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

finding a new article with the "search" function

Hi, I created a new article, "University of Southern California Law School," but I can only access it from links from other existing articles. How can I make it appear when a user types in relevant words into the "search" box on the left? Thanks for your help. Pbgr

The search index might take a while to update. Try again in a few hours... days... what's the lag on indexing again? æle ✆ 00:49, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Also you can add various relevant redirects to make it easier for users to find your page. Tutmosis 00:55, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I created the article a few days ago and it's still not coming up on the search index... Is it that slow? Pbgr

Personally I when i type University of Southern California Law School it comes up perfectly fine. Its intresting to note that when you type the exact same thing in small caps it does not cope up. I recommend making various redirects; atleast one being same thing in small caps. If you want I can do it for you. Tutmosis 01:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Pbgr

Several weeks currently. --Brion 18:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Getting Username in Javascript?

I'm trying to store the username (of the currently logged-in user) into a string variable. So far I've tried

var myUserName = document.getElementById('contentSub').innerHTML.match(/'(.+)'/);

but that fails because document.getElementById('contentSub') returns null. I also tried using MediaWiki:Yourname but I can't figure out the syntax for it. --Tifego 03:00, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest document.getElementById('pt-userpage').getElementsByTagName('a').href and remove the "/User:" prefix. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:19, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. (But why not document.getElementById('pt-userpage').getElementsByTagName('a').text instead?) --Tifego 04:03, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

You can do:

var myUserName = document.getElementById('pt-userpage').getElementsByTagName('a').firstChild.nodeValue

"text" isn't a valid object. However, the elegant way to do it is read the cookie (ideally, you should use a cookie-reading function).

var cke = document.cookie;

var pos = cke.indexOf("enwikiUserName");

var start = cke.indexOf("=", pos)+1;

var end = cke.indexOf(";", pos);

if (end == -1) end = cke.length;

var myUserName = cke.substring(start, end)

-Superm401 - Talk 05:29, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

No, I think you're wrong about that being necesssary. Mainly because I'm already using the ".text" version and it works to get my username perfectly. --Tifego 05:33, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

To clarify: "text" has special meaning that makes it valid to use here although there's no node with that name. "text" is what's inside the node, i.e. <tag>text</tag>. --Tifego 05:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

You're right! Keep in mind, though, the DOM standard it to use textNode . Superm401 - Talk 05:47, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, I still think it's cool to use a cookie. Superm401 - Talk 05:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

A better way to extract the cookie, using regular expressions, is:

var userName = decodeURIComponent(/((^|;)\s*enwikiUserName\s*=(*)|$)/.exec(document.cookie).replace(/\+/g, " "));

This also takes care of unescaping the username properly. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Columns of content without yucky tables

I have been working to get rid of table-based visual layouts lately, and tried to tackle content in columns, like some people prefer with See also sections that have tons of links, etc. I don't really like them, but whatever; I might as well make them work well. Besides, with the CSS-based layout, people who really don't like the columns can turn them off in their monobook.css.  ;-) The original templates are at {{col-begin}}, and my new ones are at Template talk:Columns. I need feedback and it needs tweaking. Bypass your cache if you don't see the example. — Omegatron 06:14, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Change Main Page

Anyway to override the new main page and view the old main page or am I asking for a hopeless cause. The new one honestly hurts my eyes! Mike _{(T C)} 07:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Main Page alternate (Classic 2006) (the Featured article, ITN, selected annivs, and DYK should still rotate properly) Raul654 07:53, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

help on common.css

Where can I find documentation for common.css? I copied the common.css & monobook.css from WP to my local wiki (1.5.7) , but the templates failed to displayed correctly according to the class declared on common.css, so I have to type it in "style clause" manually to get them work. Did I miss some steps? Thanks for any help. borgx 08:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, only beginning with 1.6 does MediaWiki import MediaWiki:Common.css automatically. With older versions, you have to do the import manually; look at the history of MediaWiki:Monobook.css for the manual import (I'm the one who did it, if it helps the search). --cesarb 05:30, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Coordinates

• Note: I posted this in the help desk and they suggested I ask the question here.

I just noticed that the German Misplaced Pages has an option where the coordinates of a location are inserted in the upper-right header. Here is one example: . Is this possible in the English version? If so, how? Sean WI 16:29, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

It looks like a template: Template:Koordinate Text Artikel, perhaps copy the template to wikipedia? Mike _{(T C)} 16:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Started a template: Template:CoorHeader - doesn't seem to work. I think the German wiki actually has code inserted into the header. Is that a possibility? (Perhaps you could take a look at that template...I probably did it wrong. Sean WI 16:51, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

There will also be code in the stylesheet: . I suggest you engage in more discussion before going ahead with these additions, as there may be conflicts with other fields. Sam Korn 17:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Should I continue the discussion here or could you point me in the direction of a proper forum for this? Sean WI 17:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

You might consider the mailing list. Sam Korn 17:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

We've been suggesting it for a year over at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates#Coordinates at the top of the article and I posted Bug 4719: RFE: geo coordinates in page title on all (common) en: .css but no joy.

--William Allen Simpson 13:21, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Posted possible code at MediaWiki talk:Common.css and MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css.

--William Allen Simpson 11:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Moving category history

Can something like this: Category:Norma Elizabeth Boyd be fixed (moved to the main namespace) by a dev or something? Or should I just cut & paste move it and delete the category? --Sherool (talk) 18:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Unwatched pages

Could someone in the know have a look at Special:Unwatched pages and see what's going on? I can only see the first 1000 articles, the pages are blank after that. There's a comment on the talk page, Misplaced Pages talk:Special:Unwatchedpages that it has been static since the server problems in mid February, I don't know if that's connected/resolved? Thanks, Steve block talk 20:19, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

It's a cached data set with the top 1000 entries. --Brion 18:41, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Doh. Anyway to see beyond that? Steve block talk 10:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Hiding MediaWiki:Tagline

I've succeeded in copying the code from MediaWiki:Monobook.js to eliminate the appearance of the title bar for my user page, but I haven't figured out how to hide the MediaWiki:Tagline message. Any ideas? (see top of User:Spangineer/monobook.js) —Spangineer (háblame) 21:18, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

The ID is "siteSub". Sam Korn 21:22, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Right, but I've copied the code exactly from MediaWiki:Monobook.js that mentions siteSub, but the effect isn't equivalent. I'm not sure what's going on. —Spangineer (háblame) 23:07, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

What are you trying to do? Sam Korn 23:18, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

And then miraculously, it started working. My userpage is basically a personalized version of the new main page, and I want it to cut the title bar just like it does for the main page. But I think I got it figured out now. Sorry for the trouble! —Spangineer (háblame) 00:17, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Cursor Defaulting to Search Box

Most websites already have the cursor flashing in their search box when the page has loaded. This isn't the case with[REDACTED] (not with me anyway) - The user must manually click the box to enter text. Is this something which can be changed? Bswee 23:23, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe this has been discussed before. The reason that it doesn't default to the search box, is so that users can scroll the page using the arrow keys, and not need to have use of a mouse. --lightdarkness 23:35, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

And also so it doesn't jump about when you use a section link. Sam Korn 00:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I personally hate it when sites mess with cursor focus like that... it often screws you up, for instance if you have clicked on an input field or the browser address bar while the page is loading and started to type something, then suddenly when the page finishes loading it moves the cursor somewhere else and the stuff you're typing winds up in the wrong place. This can even be a security risk, if what you were typing was your password in a login form; this is usually not shown when you type it, but if your cursor is moved somewhere else, it will be visible to somebody looking over your shoulder. One of the good things about Misplaced Pages versus lots of other sites is that it doesn't screw around with stuff like that. *Dan T.* 01:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

How can I get the TeX reader to recognize more symbols?

I've started to try to improve some of the economics pages, but one symbol I really need to use is the "preference" operator, seen here under the names \prec \preceq \succ and \succeq. How can I get the "math" tags to recognize these symbols? --Ossanha 03:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

External URL links to 3rd party video

I've been searching for W.P. policy on external links to video hosted on Google video, etc. where the legal status of those video items is undeterminable. Should links be made only to those sources where license / copyright status can be determined? If yes, how does that extend to text material? See for relevant discussion. Revmachine21 06:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Since they're external and thus not hosted by Misplaced Pages, I don't think their copyright status matters; Misplaced Pages isn't responsible for what other websites provide. Unless it's a direct link to something highly illegal, I guess. (Obviously I don't exactly know.) –T_if_eg_{o 00:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)}

We strongly discourage linking to material explicitly known to be a copyright violation. Shimgray | talk | 22:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer & I don't proclaim to know copyright laws, so how can I make that determination? If I went to Google Video and searched for "Hard Gay' videoes (a Japanese comic) in an attempt to enrich Masaki Sumitani page, what policy does Misplaced Pages provide me in order to figure this out? Also, what is the policy when I'm literate enough in a foreign language to find non-English source sites, but not literate enough to read the entire site to make copyright determinations? I'm looking for explicit clear policy here. I'd prefer a link to a Misplaced Pages help page rather than statements of opinion. Revmachine21 04:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

You could try listing something at Misplaced Pages:Requested copyright examinations, but that page is pretty stagnant. WP:EL is somewhat ambiguous about this, but I've removed links to Google videos because they're generally not permanent or official. I also think that if a video clip is valuable enough to an article, it should be uploaded to Misplaced Pages and claimed as fair use. ~MDD4696 05:40, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

New Language Wikipedias

Is there a way we can get some developers to look at Approved requests for new languages? About a dozen languages have been approved for creation, and the Norman test-Wiki has well over 100 articles already (more than nearly half of our "real" Wikipedias). No new wikipedias have been created in quite some time, however. The Jade Knight 09:17, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Double redirects

I just had a look at Misplaced Pages:Double redirects to find out why Double redirects are considered a Bad Thing™.

The excuse given was that MediaWiki does not allow them to prevent infinite loops.

This is a very lame excuse.

Loop detection is a solved problem. I can imagine the programmer not putting it in as a day-one feature, but it's actually pretty simple. All you need is to remember all the article names you've visited in any redirection chain and bail out if you meet the same one again. As a sanity check you could put in a maximum hop count of say, twenty, just in case things go funny.

In fact what we have at the minute is a degenerate case of the above where the maximum hop count is one.

Surely it is better to have a proper article structure than to bitch about a few CPU cycles and a few lines of PHP.

(BTW, I am a sysadmin, database administrator, network administrator, web server administrator, programmer, etc., etc.. I do understand the technical issues. It's a little bit of extra server load, not a good reason to deny this functionality.)

Duckbill 09:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

You may be "a sysadmin, database administrator, network administrator, web server administrator, programmer, etc., etc.", but are you doing that for the #18 most popular website in the world on a shoestring budget? If you want it fixed, you can download the MediaWiki code and make the change yourself, and there's a good chance it'll be accepted. --Carnildo 19:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Explicitly refusing to follow farther chains encourages people to keep the pathways clean, reducing spaghetti redirect chains which could be very hard to sort out when needed. So while it would be easy enough to let the software follow longer chains, we don't want it to. --Brion 21:43, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Arrow display problem

The unicode symbols for '↘' "south west arrow" (U+2198) and '↙' "south east arrow" (U+2199) are reversed in the edit window - i.e. the arrow that should point south east points south west and vice versa. The same thing happens in <pre> formatted blocks, and in the edit window at Bugzilla. User:Thryduulf/Arrows shows the problem, Cousin chart is a real-world example of where the confusion exists.

I've reported this at Bugzilla (bugzilla:5295), but as the problem happens on Linux but not on Windows XP I'm now wondering if this isn't a MediaWiki issue but a font issue? Thryduulf 11:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

U+2198 (↘) is "south east arrow" and U+2199 (↙) is "south west arrow". see for more information _→AzaToth 12:58, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, yes I got that wrong. But the problem still remains that the arrows display differntly - it seems to be the article display is wrong. I've uploaded a screenshot to user:Thryduulf/Arrows to show the problem Thryduulf 15:45, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

It's a font issue. Threy show up just fine here. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:03, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Also the down arrow points right and the right arrow points down (but southeast and southwest both display correctly for me using Firefox 1.0.2 on SuSE 9). Slambo (Speak) 16:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Here is it how it looks for me: Template:Imgbox _→AzaToth 19:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

They worked fine for me as well (Firefox 1.5.0.1, Windows XP). — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Popups and Godmode light

I use both Godmode-light and Navigation Popups. The problem is that when I view someone's contributions I see something like this:

1. 12:38, 20 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m Hedy d'Ancona (Link Oxfam Novib) (top)
2. 12:37, 20 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Samenwerkende Hulporganisaties (top)

where Erwin85 (username) is a link to the article with &fakeaction=rollback&vandal=title= added. Does this mean these two scripts are incompatible or did I do something wrong? User:Erwin85/monobook.js. Erwin85 12:51, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't use godmode-lite, but I hear there are problems with popups. Try the variant godmode-lite listed at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_User_scripts/Scripts instead. Lupin|talk|popups 13:10, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

This didn't fix it, but thanks anyway. I guess I'll remove godmode-lite, most of my vandalfighting is done on the Dutch Misplaced Pages where I use my own script for reverting vandalism, so I don't really use godmode-light that much. I can always edit my own script for the English wikipedia. Erwin85 13:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

you should see Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#Contribs link in diff views, lightdarkenss made a fix. Makemi 23:33, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

The version at User:Ilmari Karonen/godmode-light.js (which Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_User_scripts/Scripts links to) should be fixed now, I think. I'm coming to the conclusion that what it really needs is a full rewrite, though. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Unknown new article shows up in my watchlist

This article Microshit suddenly showed up in my watchlist. I'm not aware of ever editing or touching this article before, in fact it only existed about 30 minutes before I refreshed my watchlist.

How'd that happen? SchmuckyTheCat 19:34, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

You are watching Microsoft. A vandal moved Microsoft to Microshit. You end up watching both. Sam Korn 19:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it was moved. Microshit never had the edit history of Microsoft (shown in the screenshot) it linked to it and the link worked. The current article doesn't show any moves. SchmuckyTheCat 22:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the deleted history for Microshit, I can see the page was moved 2006-03-17; look at the edit history for Microsoft around that date (you'll also find Mickeysoft on your watchlist from the same vandal). --cesarb 22:37, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

ah, the benefits of seeing deleted histories. so I only saw the edit history of the most recent recreation. SchmuckyTheCat 23:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Anon Talk Pages

Hi all. I was wondering why the "Anonymous user talk page" footer only appears on some IP talk pages, like User talk:205.146.141.149, and not others, like User talk:207.15.198.140. Shouldn't it be on all anon talk pages? ~MDD4696 22:32, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Issues with Godmode-light

Recently, when I've attempted to rollback vandalism with Godmode-light, I've received that message that the last editor was Contributions and not whoever the last editor actually was. Has anyone else been having this problem? If there's an easy solution can someone point me to it?

see Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#Contribs link in diff views, lightdarkness made a fix. Makemi 23:27, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Sam Korn 23:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Portal heading background

For the portal, how do i change the color of the heading background? Such as Selected article heading background etc. Tutmosis 23:33, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Save Function

The save function is malfunctioning. Had to hit SAVE three (3) times for it to function. Martial Law 06:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC) :o

Log out, clear cache, log back in. Happens to me and someone told me to do this, fixed it for me. It was happening a lot to me today. Mike _{(T C)} 07:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

That worked. Martial Law 07:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC) :)

Really appreciate the assisstance. Martial Law 07:20, 21 March 2006 (UTC) :)

NP, if you want the reasons it does it, search the WP:AN archives, i know it is there, around the time of a crash at the start of the year. Mike _{(T C)} 07:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

blocked user

Is it true that blocked users are allowed to make edit to their own talk page on en.wikipedia? How to request this feature on other wikipedia? Thanks borgx 08:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Highlight search box

A proposal that came out the Main Page Redesign discussions was:

• Improve visibility of the left-navigation search box in the default MonoBook skin. Perhaps, an orange-colored border (as used on the active tabs at the top)?

This would be to aid new users in finding the search box.

this is easily shown by adding this line to one's user/monobook.css

(and presummably common or monobook css for sitewide)

#searchBody {border-color: #FABD23;}

The proposal was initially offered as an alternative to a second search box that was appearing in the headers of many redesign-drafts. (links to discussion archives: 1 - 2 - 3 (in depth description and vote))

The only question remaining, is can this highlight be coded to display on only select pages (specifically the Main Page, and possibly any others we wanted to choose)? (or only for non-signed-in users, or other useful permutations?) Or is it a choice of "site-wide or nothing"?

Once this is answered, I will copy the proposal to the proposal page. Thanks. --Quiddity 09:20, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Infobox

I was trying to edit the page University of Hyderabad. In the box on the right hand side of the page it shows text like {{{free_lable}}}. any idea how to remove it. --Bolasanibk 09:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

List of interwikis

Is there a full alphabetical list of interwiki links anywhere? I keep on finding interwikis put in alphabetical order of the code rather than the language, and correct the 'out of order' ones I know about:

• es: (Español) comes before eo: (Esperanto)
• ko: (Hangugeo) comes before hi: (Hindi)
• he: (Ivrit) comes after it: (Italiano)
• ja: (Nihongo) comes after nl: (Nederlands)
• fi: (Suomi) comes just before sv: (Svenska)

but also wonder how many others are there which I don't know about. An easily found full list that I can refer newbies to would be useful. - MPF 11:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

See m:Interwiki sorting order and Misplaced Pages:Language order poll. Martin 12:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Didn't realise it wasn't fully settled. Shouldn't the poll be advertised a bit more widely? I've been a contributor for over 2 years and knew nothing about it. - MPF 13:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Is the browsebar useful?

Portal topics

Activities

Culture

Geography

Health

History

Mathematics

Nature

People

Philosophy

Religion

Society

Technology

Random portal

A discussion concerning the above {{browsebar}} is taking place at Template talk:Browsebar#Is this bar useful?. The problem is, nobody really knows what use is being made of the thing (and its various other versions), or by whom. Therefore, I have two questions for you wikitechies:

1. Is there a way of measuring usage of templates and their various links?
2. If so, how?

Otherwise we'll just be basing any changes made to it (and its placement) on sheer guesses. Please help. --Go for it! 22:20, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Close-Comment Markup Provided on Server Side

Unless you believe i forged the section-name in my summary (i don't believe that ), this diff testifies that my saved edit of a section resulted in the addition of the three characters

-->

at the end of the file, within a section that did not appear in my edit pane during the edit. I presume the condition that might lead to this is my having left, in the section i was editing, but later than the last close-comment on the page, an "open-comment" markup

<!--

I can see reasons why such a measure which might actually be a good idea. But it violates the convention that everything in the edit window (allowing for template substitutions) and nothing else gets into the new revision (with (IIRC) some exceptions involving only white-space). In that, it may be too clever by half. (I haven't determined if it is replicable.) If this is permanent, IMO it is a significant breach in the transparency of editing, which may undercut the sense that you can become a contributor in the first 60 seconds after deciding you want to; IMO it would deserve discussion.
--Jerzy•t 22:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

There are various postprocessing steps done when you save an edit; for example the 'signature' and save-time includes of templates. Due to the way comments are involved in postprocessing, an open-comment without a close bit will end up adding the missing close bit back in at the end.

"Section editing" is an illusion of convenience; actual processing happens on the complete page. --Brion 00:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Can we have a 'tomorrow' link now?

Very nice redesign - congratulations to all.

Can a 'tomorrow' link be added programmatically to On This Day? Since Misplaced Pages seems to run on UTC/GMT or AAT (America Awakens Time), On This Day only changes after the four billion or so people who live east of Greenwich have already begun to experience the next day. We aren't so impressive at the watercooler/pump when we're talking about yesterday's events! Assuming Misplaced Pages won't undergo a virtual relocation to the international dateline, perhaps the masters of the mainpage could save us a click or two by providing a link to the forthcoming day as well as the last three? How about it? --Brian Samosa 22:42, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Um, actually, no, when GMT is at midnight, Beijing - which is UTC+8 - is just getting to work. So they have plenty of stuff to chat about that occurred that day. So while your request is a valid one, your reasoning is a bit off. A few hundred million people live east of UTC+8, but the bulk of the "four billion" is still asleep when UTC reaches midnight and Misplaced Pages ticks over - in particular, India still sleeps. --Golbez 00:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

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