Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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[edit] User-friendly editnotice system

I have done some thinking and experimenting regarding editnotices. (That's the header message boxes that are shown above the edit window when you edit a page.) I have figured out how we can make a much more user-friendly system. It will be easier to use and edit for both admins and users, and it can supply several new functions that the current system doesn't have.

I have coded up all that is needed for the new system. I have installed a fully working demo of the system over at {{editnotice loader}}. See also discussion over at Wikipedia talk:Editnotice#Slash style editnotices.

I would like some input from people what they think about the new system. Please discuss this at Wikipedia talk:Editnotice, not here.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't really understand what you've done, but most functionality should be written into software, not hacked together with templates. — Werdna • talk 03:25, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, several users have asked the devs to make this system but the devs said they didn't want to. One reason was that they thought it only fits for more mature Wikipedias such as the English Wikipedia. And then I realised I could do it in template code only. (And it won't cost much server load since it only executes in the edit windows. Compared to most infoboxes and navboxes out there this code is very lightweight, so compared to the page content in the edit preview this doesn't cost much.)
And another benefit is that there are many template coders here that can help out and fine tune this code. If/when we have had a stable version of it for a long time the devs might consider to copy the idea to system code instead. Thus they don't need to spend all the work figuring out how people want it to look and feel. But why should they? It's the same situation as navboxes. Why should we ask the devs to move the navbox functionality to system code when it runs fine as template code? We have many template programmers, but just a handful of devs.
--David Göthberg (talk) 05:23, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Who are these mysterious devs and where are their reasons actually given? --brion (talk) 14:40, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
See Krimpet's comment at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 46#Custom edit messages. — CharlotteWebb 15:39, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Why should we ask the devs to move the [whatever] functionality to system code when it runs fine as template code? - So other people who use MediaWiki (smaller Wikimedia wikis, Wikia, other users) can use it without trying to figure out which CSS, JS, and half dozen templates to copy from us. Mr.Z-man 16:05, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

You haven't yet described what you've actually done. You've gone and given links to a zillion templates, but I still haven't seen a clear description of what you want to do, and what benefits it provides. I get this vague feeling from the reference to Krimpet's comment that it's got to do with using the namespace name rather than the namespace number. If you describe what the system is, then we might be able to work something out in the software end, instead of horrible template hacks. — Werdna • talk 02:11, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Werdna: My message above that started out this section was just an announcement. It has links to three pages that explains it all. I don't want to fill the Village pump with lengthy explanations. (Since it takes a rather long explanation, even though the system when used will be very user-friendly.) So for starters you can follow this link and read what you see there: Template:Editnotice loader. Then you can follow the two other links in my message above to learn more and discuss this.
--David Göthberg (talk) 03:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I read the template documentation, but it didn't make any sense to me. The discussion page describes what you're actually on about when you talk about "hyphen-style" and "slash-style". My apologies for not finding that earlier.

On the substantive matter, if developers have really refused to implement what you call "slash-style" edit notices, it was probably for a reason. Note that the comments of a random developer don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the entire development team, and functionality should only be considered "rejected" if a bug has been closed as WONTFIX. In this case, the problem is probably that slashes in the MediaWiki namespace (which is, after all, for localisation), are used for language selection. Perhaps the same problems apply to javascript/template hacks that you throw together.

I contend that MediaWiki-namespace is a bad place to put edit-notices in the first place. They should be put in their own table in the database, as we store other data like page protection, blocks, and so on. If you want something implemented in software, file a bug. If the bug is closed with the outcome that a feature is not likely to be implemented for some technical reason, perhaps it shouldn't be done in template, either. — Werdna • talk 02:54, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You guys have misunderstood this in several ways. But I won't bother to explain it to you since it will take too much time and effort, and I just remembered that I think editnotices probably is a bad thing anyway. That is; I like editnotices, but I think it is likely that people will overuse them and misuse them. So it might be just as well that editnotices continue to be hard to use.
--David Göthberg (talk) 12:21, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chess pages will not load

I can't get pages that use Template:Chess_diagram to load. An example is checkmate, which I have not been able to get to load for two hours. Is there a way to get these pages to load, or is there a technical problem? Bubba73 (talk), 18:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Strange, they loaded just fine for me. Try these two section edit links:[1][2] The former doesn't use the template, the latter does. (I'm just trying to verify that it is indeed the template) EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
For me, the first oneloads in a second or two; the second one does not. Bubba73 (talk), 19:43, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, the second one does load in about 14 seconds. Bubba73 (talk), 19:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I waited 4+ minutes on the main article and it would not load, even partially. Over the last few months, the diagrams have been getting slower and slower. When it works, I can see each square of the board being loaded. Bubba73 (talk), 20:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
The image on the Wikipedia main page doesn't load either, but the text does. Bubba73 (talk), 20:07, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Checkmate does not load in 14 minutes. Bubba73 (talk), 20:24, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Check (chess) will load in about 8 seconds, but has only two diagrams. Bubba73 (talk), 20:36, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Chess opening takes more than 50 seconds to load with action=purge (<!-- Served by srv134 in 54.371 secs. -->). Checkmate just dies with "X-Squid-Error:ERR_READ_TIMEOUT". The problem is probably just too many images on the page. Each chessboard is made up of 68 images (64 squares and 4 images for the sides), so on chess opening with 30 boards, there's 2040 images on the page. Checkmate has only 4 more boards, but that's an additional 272 images, plus a handful of other images. It would probably be best if these were done by an extension that generated just one png image per board, similar to the <math> notation. Some other options would be to just use one image for the chessboard, then position the images of the pieces (with a transparent background) over the board with relative positioning. Technically you could do it with no images at all with HTML tables and Chess symbols in Unicode, but the symbols probably aren't well supported and it would probably be easier to use an image for the board than a 10x10 table. Mr.Z-man 21:38, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
There are perhaps thousands of diagrams in the chess articles. Can such a change be made without breaking the diagrams? Also the individual squares used to be PNGs, but they were changed to the recomended SVGs a year or to ago, if my memory is correct. Bubba73 (talk), 21:57, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

We should really be using an extension, not a template. — Werdna • talk 02:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Can that be done without breaking all of the diagrams? There are about 2,500 chess articles. Not all of them have diagrams, and there may not be thousands of them, but there are certainly many hundred diagrams in the articles. Bubba73 (talk), 02:07, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there are really that many distinct images on the pages. There are 6 pieces x 2 piece colors x 2 square colors + 2 colors of empty squares = 26 different images maximum. If both diagram sizes are used (Template:chess diagram and Template:chess diagram small) then this is doubled, but that's still only 52 images. I think this was just slow wikimedia servers. The chess opening page loads for me in just a few seconds right now. 165.189.91.148 (talk) 15:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

but it seems that the image for each square is requested from the server, even if it is the same as a previous one. I can see the individual squares filling in. BTW, the page is loading in less than 10 seconds for me today! Bubba73 (talk), 15:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Seems resolved, but I'm still interested in hearing what Werdna was talking about, with using an extension instead of the current set up. -- Ned Scott 04:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

In theory, Template:Chess diagram shouldn't be slow at all. It's not doing any fancy template processing, and uses only a small number of different actual images. It may be that use of individual images is being done inefficiently and this ends up being much slower than desired; this bears investigation. --brion (talk) 18:53, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
The problem did clear up for me the next day. Some other people had the same problem, others didn't. Bubba73 (talk), 20:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, yesterday and today the image of white knights on a light square doesn't load in the diagrams. Bubba73 (talk), 17:54, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
That's an unrelated issue -- it looks like one web server didn't get its software updated properly and may have been propagating the "sometimes silently delete an image file" bug. I believe the file's been replaced by now. (The rogue server has been fixed.)
Note that MrZ-man has been poking at the issue and is experimenting with a tweak to the parser which speeds up multiple uses of the same image on the same page. Looks good so far, will probably get integrated pretty soon. --brion (talk) 18:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you. The white knight on a light square still isn't working for me. Speaking of "silently delete an image file", the following three images quit working for me a couple of months ago. But it isn't too important because I replaced them by the equivalent svg files where I was using them. Bubba73 (talk), 01:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Image:Chess nll44.png Image:Chess nld44.png Image:Chess bdl44.png

Well, now the white knight on a light square is back, both above and in diagrams. Bubba73 (talk), 05:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

And now all three of those images are back, after being gone for weeks. Bubba73 (talk), 18:16, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Canonical namespace change coming: Image: -> File:

Brion has just announced on the wikitech-l list that he's planning to (finally) change the canonical name of the "Image:" namespace to "File:". Please update your scripts and bots, and note that a lot of templates and MediaWiki pages are also likely to be affected. Please note that, if everything goes as planned, we'll only have about one week to fix things before the change goes live. More details in Brion's post and at bugzilla:44. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I probably should be asking this elsewhere, but shouldn't the change result in Image: being an alternative value, just like how WP: now results in Wikipedia: ? If so, then at least some things won't be broken by the change. -- Ned Scott 02:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I think this was answered before you asked it, in the email linked above. "This should go smoothly and transparently for most purposes. 'Image:' will continue to be an alias, and perhaps even recommended for inline usage.". Anyhow, this is a good change and it's about time... - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
The problems occur when a script expects to be handed "Image:Example.jpg" as page name, but instead gets "File:Example.jpg". --Carnildo (talk) 04:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Aaah, ok. -- Ned Scott 04:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Additionally, scripts that use the JavaScript variable wgCanonicalNamespace to determine the namespace will be given "File" instead of the expected "Image". Calvin 1998 (t·c) 04:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

←Yes, this is excellent! The bots can be updated relatively painlessly, and the namespace's new name should be significantly less confusing to newcomers. —Remember the dot (talk) 05:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I read up on the links Ilmari gave above. Nothing is mentioned about template programming. So I really hope that the magic words and variables {{ns:6}}, {{ns:image}} and {{NAMESPACE}} will be updated to return "File", and that they will be updated at about the same moment in time. Or a lot of templates will break. Well, Brion mentions in his latest bugzilla comment that he has not yet fixed {{ns:image}}.
To prevent that literally almost 1 million transclusions of image related templates malfunction I have updated {{image other}} and {{namespace detect}} to understand both "image" and "file". To make life simple I recommend anyone that wants to do namespace detection in template code to use one of those templates.
--David Göthberg (talk) 07:26, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
just glancing briefly at Help:Namespace. while I doubt that CSS namespace detection is used much outside of the skins and main css files, has it been accounted for? also, is there any way to check which templates use a given Magic Word (similar to the way we can check which pages a template is transcluded into)? I'm just imagining a few hundreds of minor templates with hand-written namespace detection code getting fouled up, with weeks or months passing before anyone actually notices or reports it. --Ludwigs2 07:48, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Since it was me who wrote that CSS namespace detection section in Help:Namespace I should probably answer this question. :))
Ludwigs2: CSS based namespace detection should not have any problems with this name change, since it uses namespace numbers, not names. In the Image case the CSS class to "detect" is "ns-6", and that won't change.
And a simple way to find usage of a magic word or for instance a CSS class name is to use Special:Search. Try to select only template space, and search for NAMESPACE Image . I got about 170 hits, and some of those are cases of "{{NAMESPACE}}" compared to "Image" that needs fixing. To search for cases of "{{ns:image}}" you do a search for ns image . For me that gave about 230 hits in template space, but none of them was a "{{ns:image}}" case, although one was a switch case with "{{NAMESPACE}}" compared to "{{ns:0}}" and "Image" so it needs fixing.
But beware, Special:Search seems to have some oddities: It doesn't find all pages that has a word, since it often misses cases that we know exist. Even if those cases have been on a page for months. And different users get different hits. And even more oddly the same user seems to see the same hits when searching some day later. I can only guess, but perhaps there are several search servers, each with a different incomplete database, and different users get connected to different servers thus sees different hits, perhaps load balanced based on user IP or so. Some of the tech people in here can perhaps shed some light on what is going on? Anyway, this means it usually is a good idea if several users search for what needs to be fixed, to find as many cases as possible.
Another and more complete option is to ask the very helpful people over at Wikipedia:Bot requests to do a full search, on an off-line copy of the database. But since Special:Search works fairly well I only ask for such a search when I need to do a more advanced search that Special:Search can't handle.
--David Göthberg (talk) 10:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
nothing like a neigh straight from the horses mouth. ok, now that I know how, I'm happy to pitch in looking for template problems once the transition is made. thanks. --Ludwigs2 21:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Several system messages that expect "Image:" as canonical namespace name (as in {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Image|...) also need to be fixed (like Confirmdeletetext and Noarticletext). The {{ns:6}} is a safe choice (now and later), but it's not very user-friendly, so I would wait for Brion to announce if {{ns:image}} would continue to work or maybe {{ns:file}} will start working some time before the switch. —AlexSm 15:00, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Would there be any way of tracking which templates/messages/etc would need to be updated? Maybe have a bot crawl through the template namespace and make a list (or just make the correction right then and there)? -- Ned Scott 04:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Fixing that so {{ns:image}} still works is a requirement before this gets implemented, so no templates will need updating for that issue. --brion (talk) 18:20, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Would it not be better to have Image and File as two separate namespaces, calling {{ns:file}}, so when people upload a file the MediaWiki recognizes which one it is - e.g. a png uploaded as image, PDF as file, OGG as file etc. That's my 0.02 cents --Walmwutter (talk) 13:03, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
The wiki already recognizes the file type, there's no real need to separate things by namespace. If we made them *separate*, then all the existing uses of existing non-image files would break. If we made them *interchangeable in use* but distinct, then, well it'd just be kind of awkward. :)
There's been some thought of just tossing on some more aliases such as Video: and Audio: to make things prettier for embedding -- [[Video:Cool thingy.ovg]] -- but they'd all be functionally equivalent, there's no real benefit to separating them at a syntactic point. --brion (talk) 18:51, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

To make it easy for people to know when what works, here is a table with the variables in question:

Code Renders as
At 10 Oct 2008 At 13 Oct 2008 (today)
{{ns:6}} Image Image
{{ns:image}} Image Image
{{ns:file}} Template:Ns:file Template:Ns:file
{{ns:7}} Image_talk Image_talk
{{ns:image talk}} Image_talk Image_talk
{{ns:file talk}} Template:Ns:file talk Template:Ns:file talk

The table last column above shows what those codes generate when you see this (last time this page was saved or purged), not when I wrote this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:51, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks like you made a minor error with two of the table cells. I've corrected them; FWIW, the two columns look identical as of this writing. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:16, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Ilmari: Thanks for fixing the middle column.
Gah! I go away for two days and people edit my comment and break it? And they didn't even leave a comment here that they had changed my comment. My version of the table didn't look at all like that, others have edited it and inserted the static middle column. And as Ilmari noted that new column was broken. Although that new column might have some use, so I won't revert it this time. (But I did some clean-up for readability.)
--David Göthberg (talk) 10:06, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia on small screens

I sometimes view and contribute to Wikipedia on small screens. Unfortunately, it isn't always easy because people seem to hard-code large screen designs into it (e.g. fixed rather than proportional layouts). Talk pages often use indents and this shoves the text off to the right. It isn't so bad if people use alternating indents such as:
Comment1

Comment2

Comment3

Comment4

But if people use increasing indents, less of the text becomes visible. I would strongly encourage people to use alternating indents and it also happens to be much easier to see when specific comments added later such as:
Comment1

Comment2
Comment5: Specific comment about comment2
Comment6: Another specific comment about comment2

Comment3

Comment4

Comment7

Comment8

Anyway, somebody told me that it might be possible for a change to the standard CSS to assist accessibility on small screens. Is this possible? Lightmouse (talk) 16:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure a change to the sitewide CSS would be a particularly good idea. How small of a screen are you talking about? Smaller than 800x600? Mr.Z-man 17:38, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about CSS so I am just going by a recommendation given to me on my talk page. I am thinking of 240x320 which is common on PDA and phones. Lightmouse (talk) 17:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a new global MediaWiki:Handheld.css and there is always a possibility for personal CSS. Simple body.ns-talk dd, body.ns-4 dd {margin-left:0.5em} should make that indent (2em in Monobook skin) much smaller. Also could try a skin without sidebar, like Myskin. —AlexSm 17:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
It's the server script's responsibility to detect the client type (e.g. PC, PDA, etc.) and use the appropriate CSS. Unfortunately there's no standard for "user identification strings", which are the only info available to the server. If you Google for "user identification string" followed by the name of your handheld(s) and post the string here, it might be possible make some progress. -- Philcha (talk) 18:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't think that's correct. Handheld.css is included as a <link> in every page load, its up to the device to use the CSS links with media="handheld" when available. Mr.Z-man 18:28, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I prefer alternating indents anyway. I hate the increasing indent style, as it's really really annoying, even on a big screen. — Werdna • talk 02:51, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] detecting redirects in templates

does anyone know if there's a way to get the name of a redirect page in a template? I'm writing a template that will merge a bunch of foreign character text warnings, and it would be easiest if I could know where the redirect was coming from - otherwise I'd need to go back to all the original templates and add a parameter to specify its language. --Ludwigs2 17:54, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Not currently possible. Talk to the devs. — CharlotteWebb 01:23, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] problem with index.php in diff

I keep getting request to download index.php when I clicks on diff in history for past couple weeks, not sure what's going on there. Using Firefox 2.0.0.17 on Xubuntu. User_talk:TettyNullus —Preceding undated comment was added at 22:04, 8 October 2008 (UTC).

Make sure "Use external editor by default" is unchecked in the editing section of your preferences. Otherwise, I don't know. Graham87 01:26, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Ah it's only for diffs, so make sure "Use external diff by default", also in the editing section of the preferences, is unchecked. Graham87 01:28, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, that fixed it, was a bit bizarre for me TettyNullus (talk) 22:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Autoconfirmation

Is there any way to make an account have autoconfirmed status without waiting the four days and ten edits? J.delanoygabsadds 23:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

There is no way to do this with out going to extreme lengths. An account would be for all practical purposes autoconfirmed if the user was made an administrator or a developer could change the accounts status by tinkering with the logs, but I doubt either of those options is a valid solution to whatever problem you have. Icewedge (talk) 23:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
If you can't edit a semiprotected article, you can always post suggestions on the article talk page. Similarly, if you want to move (rename) an existing article, you can suggest that on the article talk page. If you want to create a new article, you can start by writing a draft on a subpage that you can create in your own userspace. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:42, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
OK, thanks guys. J.delanoygabsadds 23:53, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
I suppose it is advisable to create an article draft in one's userspace first, but one can still create an article as soon as one is registered, no? Waltham, The Duke of 22:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Might be implemented soonish, as the ability to remove autoconfirmed status already exists in the abuse filter, and a generic mechanism might be good. — Werdna • talk 02:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How to merge projects?

What methods can be used for merging two projects?

Scenario: Project A is a descendant of Project B. Project A is (long) inactive but has a number of subpages in addition to archives. You don't want to delete Project A because it has potentially useful material, and making it into a Project B task force would just create a dead task force. Is there an elegant solution available? Thanks for considering this! --Kleinzach 02:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Tag everything with {{historical}}. Keeps the pages around for reference, but everyone call tell that it's dead. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Much appreciated. --Kleinzach 23:24, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Current_daylight_saving_offset_in_Europe

Template:Current_daylight_saving_offset_in_Europe is reporting Expression error: Unexpected < operator and needs fixing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.179.66.147 (talk) 12:54, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Anomie⚔ 15:14, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Special:HideRevision

Although this is enabled at test.wikipedia, will it be enabled here for our oversighters?? It has some advantages, changing the revision visibility for logs that contain personal information so that developers don't have to delete a block log etc. but not rendering oversight as redundant.

I think it should be Wikimedia-wide enabled. --Walmwutter (talk) 13:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

A click produces "The action you have requested is limited to Oversighters." MER-C 13:13, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Special:HideRevision is oversight. You're thinking of single-revision deletion. — Werdna • talk 02:21, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Temporary password messages

On my alternate Simple English Wikipedia account, I recently usurped the English Wikipedia's username and have gotten sporadic "temporary password" requests. Since my SEW account is not active on the English Wikipedia, I suspect the original owner of that account is trying to get back into that account but doesn't know that the new username is now "xxxx (usurped)". Is there any way to change the login screen to redirect SUL-usurped usernames to their new account? Like, a general message like "If you have not logged into your account for some time, your username may have been usurped and is likely xxxx (usurpsed)." hbdragon88 (talk) 17:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

If there's a standard for the names, it might be possible to do that with some template tweaks customizing MediaWiki:Wrongpassword, but I'm not 100% sure offhand. --brion (talk) 18:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] David Irving

Ok, this is kind of weird. Take a look at Talk:David Irving. Look at the box for Wikiproject Crime. See the hammer and sickle? It's not supposed to be there and I can't find any code that puts it there. It's not there on any other talk page that features this project's tag. Now look at this link. This is what you get if you go to talk page history and click on the most recent version, in other words, the current version. It should be identical to the talk page except for the pink box at the top. But, it isn't; there's no hammer and sickle. I can't figure this out. I tried clearing my cache; same result. Any ideas?

Warning: David Irving is a holocaust denier and the talk page gets, well, heated. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 17:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a hammer and sickle - did you try a Wikipurge? – ukexpat (talk) 17:42, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Can't tell now because the page has been edited to compact the project boxes. Anyway, I guess it's fixed. Thanks. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 18:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

[3]. Gimmetrow 13:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline is very very slow . . . why?

I've been experimenting recently with graphical timelines created using the EasyTimeline extension (see Wikipedia:Timeline and mw:Extension:EasyTimeline/syntax). However, it's very hard to get anything done, since the time to generate a preview of a new or revised timeline is many minutes, sometimes over a half-hour.

To see the issue for yourself, take one of the pages from Category:Graphical timelines and make a small test edit to one of the graphical timelines (like adding the text "TEST" to one of the names in the timeline), then hit "preview". The graphical timeline is now vanished, replaced by your browser's missing graphic icon. Hit "preview" again every minute or two, until eventually many minutes later (wow!!!) the newly revised timeline shows up, including the "TEST" text wherever you entered it. I just did such a test again right now while writing this, and it took over 10 minutes for the revised timeline to appear.

Why is it taking so long to generate the PNG graphics? I assume all other users dealing with EasyTimeline are affected by this issue, too. Is this a recent problem only (I just started creating or editing graphical timelines within the last week, and the slowness has been there all week)? Or has it been that way for a long time? Is it worth submitting a bug report on Bugzilla? This is not really a bug, it's just super slow.

Thanks for any help you can provide. --Seattle Skier (talk) 21:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My "skin" is persisting...

Any idea why when I try to change my skin on my user prefs, only the preference page changes? All other pages remain the same as before. I have cleared my cache and cookies completely, signed out and back in, and no luck. My current skin is one with a black background and green text and normal links. I forget the name of that skin when I selected it but I like it very much. I do have need to change it on occasion, but I must be doing something wrong... any ideas apprediated radiooperator 01:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radiooperator (talk • contribs)

Have you tried purging? It probably won't work, but it's worth a try. =P Dendodge|TalkContribs 01:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Yep...no dice...any other ideas?

--radiooperator 01:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radiooperator (talk • contribs)

"Use a black background with green text on the Monobook skin" is under Gadgets and not under Skin. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
I am such a twit... thanks

radiooperator 01:42, 10 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radiooperator (talk • contribs)

[edit] Special pages

[Taken from the New contributors help desk for a better response, hopefully]

Hi, when you click special pages on the toolbox, why is it that some of the features listed at Help:Special page are not available? For example there is no special:mypage or special:mytalk. I find this to be particularly frustrating because as an IP i am always changing and would like a quick way to see my contribs. I dont know why mytalk or mypage is not available on the special pages, was it ever there? If it was, why was it removed? Thanks, any help appreciated. 220.239.56.131 (talk) 03:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

They do exist, they just aren't listed there. Just enter Special:Mypage or Special:Mytalk into the search bar. Special:Mycontributions goes to your contributions. Calvin 1998 (t·c) 03:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Default table

I don't know if I'm putting this in the proper VP forum, but I was wondering if we could change the default table layout that appears when the table button is used at the top of the editing window. It usually gives:

{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
! header 1
! header 2
! header 3
|-
| row 1, cell 1
| row 1, cell 2
| row 1, cell 3 
|-
| row 2, cell 1
| row 2, cell 2
| row 2, cell 3
|}

But I think it should be:

{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|+ title
|-
! header 1 !! header 2 !! header 3
|-
| row 1, cell 1 || row 1, cell 2 || row 1, cell 3
|-
| row 2, cell 1 || row 2, cell 2 || row 2, cell 3
|}

In my opinion, it's cleaner and takes up less space. Plus, it also exhibits the title function, which I don't think is universally known. --Wizard191 (talk) 18:51, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Leaving the quotation marks off HTML attributes is a bad habit. In XML and XHTML leaving the quotation marks off produces malformed documents, so it's better to just get in the habit of using quotation marks whether or not a parser will come by later to clean up the code before serving it.
Also, </br> is not valid HTML or XHTML, as br is not a closing tag. The correct form is <br/>. Other than that, I don't see much problem with your proposed changes. —Remember the dot (talk) 19:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the head's up on the quotation marks. I just put the breaks in for visual purposes; those don't need to be included in the actual code. I'm more concerned about the layout and title. --Wizard191 (talk) 20:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Why is border="1" needed for this sample? The wikitable CSS class already has border: 1px #aaa solid;. I'd suggest removal of that markup also. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Wikitable borders without CSS. Happy‑melon 22:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Andrwsc: The border="1" code is needed and should not be removed. See the link that Happy-melon gave above for the lengthy explanation and discussion about that.
Wizard191: I think I prefer the old table layout above since it is simpler to use. We don't need to show all the advanced options in the default layout that the table button inserts. Those double pipes "||" will probably only confuse beginners. They have no idea what CSS styles are.
Remember the dot: No, <br/> is not the correct form. The correct forms are either <br> or <br />. (Note the space between "br" and "/".)
--David Göthberg (talk) 11:40, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
You really think it is that much more confusing? If anything I think it's a little easier because each cell is laid out in relatively the correct location, where as with the old one you would have to think about the cell label to figure out where it's located. At the very least can we not include the title box? --Wizard191 (talk) 13:18, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My contributions under a different name

I don't know how this happened, but when I was renamed to "SchfiftyThree" on 4 August 2007, my old contributions under "Schfiftythree628" stayed under that name. My edits under my current username go all the way to 2 April 2007. My real first edit was made on 12 November 2005. I saw this sort of happen when User:RyanCross was renamed (having his first edit made on 4 October), but his has been fixed. So, how can all my contributions on Wikipedia be made into my current username? I figured I should have posted here, but if I'm in the wrong place, let me know. :-) SchfiftyThree 21:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

That sort of - glitch, you might say? - happens occasionally. My first example I noticed was Special:Contributions/badlydrawnjeff. After he was renamed, all he had was a null edit to preserve the username; and then, somehow, eight edits before then were reattributed to his original name rather than bdj (talk · contribs). hbdragon88 (talk) 22:47, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Looking at a few of them, I'd say these edits were deleted before he was renamed, then undeleted afterward. The bug causing this has probably been fixed by now, but I'm not sure. Deleted edits are stored in the "archive" table rather than the "revision" table. — CharlotteWebb 01:38, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Checklinks

Can this tool be added in revision history?. This tool is very useful when it comes to checking dead links and adding this tool can help whole wikipedia community and make the wikipedia a better place. --SkyWalker (talk) 06:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia/Commons duplicate images

I suggest adding Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons to Mediawiki:Shareduploadduplicate. As far as I understand, this notice is automatically added to images which are present on Commons and are identical. The addition of category would remove the need to tag such images with {{NowCommons}} manually. At the same time, Category:Images with a different image under the same name on Wikimedia Commons (presently added with {{ShadowsCommons}}) could be added to Mediawiki:Shareduploadconflict. Conscious (talk) 08:52, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

If it works to add categories to such MediaWiki messages then this seems like a good suggestion.
--David Göthberg (talk) 11:13, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
It works for the Cite.php error messages. The same should be doable for any MediaWiki message that is interpreted as wikitext. Anomie⚔ 15:17, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] slow response

The Wikipedia servers are usually quite responsive, but just now I am seeing long wait times, like twelve seconds to display a common page like Community Portal or Signpost. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 08:59, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Log oddities with protection logs

I noticed this in the protection log today:

  • USERNAME protected Test page ([create=sysop]) (vandalism)

when in the past the protection log used to be:

  • USERNAME protected The weather in London ([edit=autoconfirmed]]) ([indefinite]) ([move=autoconfirmed]]) ([indefinite]).

I noticed this when I used the latest SVN build on localhost, does anyone know if this will be fixed because this looks a bit odd??

I know it's a small thing... but it probably would look good to fix it anyway. --Walmwutter (talk) 11:04, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

What's exactly odd about it, and about which entry? That we can now protect non-existent pages from being (re-)created or that expiry times can be set separately for move and edit protections? (Both of which are useful features.) Миша13 12:51, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Misza13, in response to your enquiry: it's the fact that the [create=sysop] or [edit=sysop] parameter has not been italicised, as it used to be when pages were protected. That's all it really is. --Walmwutter (talk) 13:09, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I believe it's this commit, which completely revamped the protection system and also the log entries themselves (the changes to LogPage.php) - the protection parameters are no longer treated as part of the protection summary. Regardless, it's in fact more consistent given that only true summaries are italicised. Миша13 14:32, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Still should be italicised, as it used to be... purely because it looks better. --Walmwutter (talk) 15:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] __NOCATEGORY__

I think a magic word removing all categories from a page would be helpful. For example, in order to remove categories from a personal sandbox, and even in Wikipedia sandboxes, since they frequently appear in mainspace categories. There are also certain maintenance pages that shouldn't contain categories (e.g. Wikipedia:Main Page/Protection). Cenarium Talk 15:31, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

On a related note, I have often missed a general way to say at a transclusion that the transcluded page should not be allowed to add any categories. I know a parameter for this can be added to the code of individual templates but that is sometimes complicated, template tinkering can easily cause errors, and many templates are protected. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:47, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
The way to do it is to wrap the category code in <noinclude> tags. There isn't any other way to do it at present. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:51, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
It can't be used on the sandbox since the content changes often, while adding a magic word to Template:Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading) would be easy. And for personal sandboxes, they are many times included in templates or dispersed in the page making it longer to fix. Maybe we should create a bug for a magic word ? Cenarium Talk 16:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Carl's suggestion assumes the category should never be added to transclusions. I'm thinking of cases where a template should usually add a category but it isn't wanted at some transclusions, for example when discussing the template and demonstrating what it will produce with certain parameters, or when developing articles in user space (where the proposed __NOCATEGORY__ could also be used if no categories at all are wanted). Some templates have an optional parameter to say that a category should not be added but a general solution not requiring recoding of each template would be much better. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:09, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Err, PrimeHunter was referring to templates that put the page into categories (like {{unreferenced}} adds the page to Category:Articles lacking sources), and the {{{category}}} parameter available in many such templates for use to prevent things like Wikipedia:Template messages/Talk namespace's miscategorization. A __NOCATEGORY__ magic word wouldn't help with that because it would also prevent correct categorization of the page. It could still be useful for sandboxes though. Anomie⚔ 16:15, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

bug15941 filled. On the function, more precisely, __NOCATEGORY__ should remove the page from all categories. However, whether the categories on the page itself are showed is not very important. In the Wikipedia sandbox, it may help new users to see how categories work, on other pages it doesn't really mater. Cenarium Talk 18:18, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Just as a general note, when discussing magic words, please wrap them in <nowiki>, even if they haven't been created / implemented yet. If they are created or implemented in the future, the archive of this page will suddenly be using the word. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:03, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I too have been thinking about this problem. But I would prefer it like this:
<nocategory> Text and {{templates}} that won't categorise. </nocategory>
That would mean we could also prevent just parts of a page from adding categories. Thus for instance the pages under Wikipedia:Template messages could prevent the templates that they show from inserting categories, while we still can (manually) add categories to the page that we actually want to have there. If this is implemented the same way as the <noinclude> tags then this would also work for the sandbox case that Cenarium describes above. Just put a start <nocategory> in the sandbox header and the rest of the page will not categorise.
--David Göthberg (talk) 10:32, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, this would be even better. It has also been suggested at bugzilla. There' still the question of whether the categories should appear at the bottom of the page. In the sandbox, it would be helpful for new users, but in maintenance pages, it would be unneeded. Cenarium Talk 16:16, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Just to note that I've marked the new bug as yet another duplicate of the long-lived Bug 835, which seems to have generated much discussion, but no actual code in its ~4 year history. - IMSoP (talk) 18:54, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear, I looked at some of those duplicate bugzilla requests. Yeah, it seems to have been suggested many times. No wonder, this is a feature that would be very useful. I see there are suggestions for another version: {{nocat:template}}. That one wouldn't cover the sandbox case that Cenarium is thinking of but would cover the other cases, and would probably be simpler to implement than the <nocat> </nocat> I suggested. If combined with __NOCAT__ it would probably be easier to implement but would still cover both cases. Although <nocat> </nocat> is of course the more flexible alternative.
Cenarium: I see you mentioned that you want the categories to still show in the category footer box at the bottom of the page. That would be confusing on the pages under Wikipedia:Template messages, but as you pointed out would be good in sandboxes. So I did a little thinking: When hidden categories are shown (if you have enabled to see hidden categories) they are shown on a second line in the category footer box prefixed by the text "Hidden categories:". Your non-categorising categories could be listed in the same way, say prefixed by the text "Disabled categories:". I suggest you suggest that over at bugzilla. (I don't have a bugzilla account since I am way too busy here to have time for bugzilla.)
--David Göthberg (talk) 01:53, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken Wikipedia templates

Yo, something is screwed up with {{Spoken Wikipedia-2}} although it hasn't been edited for months. It does not seem to be closing properly, and sucks everything after it into itself. See Ayn Rand#External links for an example of the problem. the skomorokh 17:51, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed (unclosed div). Algebraist 18:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Grazi. the skomorokh 19:41, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Corrupted images

Could someone with more knowledge on the subject than me have a look at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Images_corruption. I think it is as a result of the image deletion a few weeks back. Thanks. Woody (talk) 20:16, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The ability to block vs. "no big deal"

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#The ability to block vs. "no big deal". - jc37 23:42, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] IP Addresses

Is this a valid IP address 222.198.50.265? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcollins37 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

No; IP sections don't surpass 255 (meaning the last valid IP would be 255.255.255.255). -Jéské (v^_^v Kacheek!) 00:18, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
You learn something new everyday :-) 220.239.56.131 (talk) 01:05, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
And we of course have an article IP address for people wanting to learn. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:14, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Note that invalid IP addresses can in fact be registered as usernames unless specifically mw:Extension:Username Blacklist'ed. So if you saw such a user editing somewhere, now you know why. — CharlotteWebb 01:19, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] [show] template improvement

For the page Sinhala alphabet, I use the show-template


(Click on [show] on the right if you only see boxes below)
Stops
voiceless voiced
unicode translit. IPA unicode translit. IPA
velar ක 0D9A ka [ka] ග 0D9C ga [ga] velar
retroflex ට 0DA7 ṭa [ʈa] ඩ 0DA9 ḍa [ɖa] retroflex
dental ත 0DAD ta [ta] ද 0DAF da [da] dental
labial ප 0DB4 pa [pa] බ 0DB6 ba [ba] labial
Other graphemes
unicode translit. IPA unicode translit. IPA
fricatives ස 0DC3 sa [sa] හ 0DC4 ha [ha] fricatives
affricates (ච) (0DA0) (ca) ([t͡ʃa]) ජ 0DA2 ja [ʤa] affricates
nasals ම 0DB8 ma [ma] න 0DB1 na [na] nasals
liquid ල 0DBD la [la] ර 0DBB ra [ra] liquid
glide ව 0DC0 va [ʋa] ය 0DBA ya [ja] glide
retroflex