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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Soumyasch (talk | contribs) at 12:27, 29 June 2007 (→Page size messages: comment). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug is exigent).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

This page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.


10 templates transcluding 1 - or - 1 template transcluding 10

Main page: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates § Migration_to_the_coord_template

Some 150,000 coordinates are currently entered with a series of templates, e.g. {{coor at dms}}. Most templates just transclude one other template: {{coor URL}}.

The suggested migration would replace most templates with {{coord}}. Depending on the input, this template then call others, e.g. {{coord|12|34|12|N|45|33|45|W|display=inline,title}} transcludes:

  1. Template:Coord (protected)
  2. Template:Coord/input/dms (protected)
  3. Template:Coor dms2dec
  4. Template:Coord/dms2dec (protected)
  5. Template:Precision1
  6. Template:Precision/tz
  7. Template:Precision/tz/1
  8. Template:Coord/link (protected)
  9. Template:Coor URL (protected)
  10. Template:Coord/display/inline,title (protected)

The migration could increase the number of (used/transcluded) templates from 300,000 to 1.5 mio.

Is it preferable to have set of 10 templates calling 1 or 2 others, or one template transcluding 10 others. -- User:Docu

For some reason the diff and hist links on my watchlist now include "curid=<number>" in their url, this breaks the links and makes them give an error. Who did that? (H) 20:07, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, it looks like the server now accepts the new information put in the urls. Just part of the growing pains of a new feature I suppose. Seems fixed now. (H) 20:08, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The curid= parameter has been used on recent changes for at least 3 years, and has been in the Watchlist links since at least 1.9.3 (didn't bother checking any further back). There is a bug whereby curid= needs the title= or oldid= parameter included (even though it is totally ignored) or else the link goes to the defined main page. Compare the URIs (to Jonathan Pryce below. --Splarka (rant) 07:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

nested "class=collabsible collapsed" statements

Hi, if you look here, I am trying to set up a nested collapsable class table... I hope someone knows what I actually mean...

anyway, I have a "class = collabsible collapsed" statement. The outside one works, it has a caption "References". My question is not about referencing. It is about what you see when you click "Show"...

Currerently, all levels of the hidden table expand at the same time. I want it to look like this when I click the top "Show" link for the first time: 

References                                 [show]
Reference to City of Blacktown Social Plan [show]
Reference to GNB                           [show]
Sample citation of company website         [show]
Sample References section                  [show]

Is this possible? If so, how? I tried a helpme, User:Miranda thought I was asking about citation - that is an aside to what I am trying to do in this instance.

Thanks.Garrie 06:24, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Worked fine when I tried it just now, so I guess you fixed it. If you need to do more test edits in the future, you could use a sandbox. See WP:SP. Adrian M. H. 14:45, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Partial talk page history deletion

Though I am an admin, some folks think that I should know everything about everything but I don't - ever since I became an admin I realised just how much I don't know!

For example, from time to time I get requests from editors for a deletion from their history of, for example, spurious warning templates placed on their talk pages by vandals. Whilst such warnings are easily reverted users would like them deleted from their history whilst leaving the rest of the history in place - can this be done, please? TerriersFan 22:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the deletion policy allows this. Mike Dillon 23:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is not an acceptable practice and any administrator who engages in such deletions should be sanctioned. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's technically possible, but inadvisable (it would take a strong consensus somewhere like the admin's noticeboard that such a deletion is necessary to convinve me to do this); if a warning isn't justified, striking it out and giving an explanation as to the circumstances can be used, and in the case of vandalism removing it is the simplest thing to do (just removing it could also be done in other situations, although I think striking such warnings is more transparent). --ais523 17:26, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
To do it you need to use selective deletion. However, warnings should not be deleted from the page history, I personally follow the oversight guidelines for selective deletion. You should avoid selective deletion whenever possible, it is legally dubious, as it often breaks the GFDL. Prodego talk 21:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you eliminate any direct derivatives of that section, then it should be OK. Of course, if it's essential that it be deleted, to be 100% certain you've not caused any GFDL violations, you'd need to delete all the revisions after that date. Not ideal. --Deskana (talk) 16:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's always the trick of "copying and pasting the edit history in the talk page", which has been used in the past for transwiki (where it's kind of hard to preserve the full details of the edit history). --cesarb 23:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Unless you can use Special:Import for the particular transwiki, of course. --ais523 10:14, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
That's why I said "in the past"; IIRC, it was done that way back when Special:Import didn't work so well (or at all, I don't remember the details). --cesarb 00:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My edit went unattributed in history

An edit I made to the Reference desk seems to have been attributed to a bot. I had added the sentence Okay. Thanks. Any idea about maxi and mini-images?--~~~~ just a few minutes ago. But the edit got recorded as being made several hours ago, and that too by a bot (see old revision & new revision) My edit also does not come up in the "difference between revision". If this is a bug in the MediaWiki software, it needs to be fixed quickly, as this is a clear violation of the GFDL license. The fact that I added that sentence to the page is recorded nowhere!--Seraphiel 05:42, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at your user contributions, you'll find that your edit was in fact made on a sub page of the reference desk. Each day at 00:00 UTC, User:RefDeskBot archives the questions under the header for two days ago. It then transcludes this onto the main RD page. Harryboyles 06:14, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Lol, silly me. Thanks for pointing it out. Wonder why I never thought of checking my contributions. Thanks again.--Seraphiel 05:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Genesis (space station module)

Whitespace issues - me and several other people on the public IRC channel haven't been able to figure out what's going on. --Random832 00:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at historical versions, it seems to be caused somehow by the infobox --Random832 01:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I edited the infobox table markup and that fixed most of it - if anyone can figure out what's causing the rest that'd be great --Random832 01:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like this was fixed. One thing I noticed about the version before the fix was that a closing </tr> tag was missing for the "Station statistics" table row. Mike Dillon 01:28, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why can't we edit the first section of articles?

Why do you have to open the edit page for the entire page to edit the first section of an article? Why can't it just have an "Edit" above it like every other section?

You can actually edit just the first section. When you edit any other section, just replace the section number with '0'. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=edit&section=0 will edit the header of this page. There is also a user script here which you can add to your monobook.js. This will add a tab which does the same thing. Harryboyles 06:20, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As well as a template: {{edit-first-section}}. Don't place it on articles, though. Resurgent insurgent 03:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

=-/ Why isn't it set up for everyone?

I have also noticed this problem. I hope that the Wikipedia development team consider making this an integral part of page section editing. Axl 12:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's a long-standing feature request (bugzilla:156). The reason there isn't a link is apparently because nobody can agree where it should be. For some possible placements of the link, it might even be possible to add the link by editing MediaWiki space, apparently. --ais523 12:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I just had a look through "my preferences". I can't find a reference to "monobook.js". Axl 12:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Mypage/monobook.js; it's a page you edit to add user scripts (monobook.js and monobook.css between them form a sort of 'advanced preferences' system). See WikiProject User scripts' script repository for information on how to install a script, and the scripts that you can install themselves. --ais523 12:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I tried installing a script using the "importScript" example. It didn't work. *Sigh* I shall go back to editing the whole page when I want to edit the lead section. Axl 17:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You have to bypass your cache (Ctrl-F5 on IE and Firefox) after changing your monobook.js. --ais523 17:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Axl: from the history of your monobook.js I can see that you only tried the first script from this list. That script adds 0 tab, not the [edit] link, maybe you simply didn't notice that tab. Try Simple Edittop script, and if something doesn't work, I will be glad to help ∴ Alex Smotrov 17:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. It actually worked! :-) Axl 17:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

categories

why do people do [[Category:Category name|Page name]]? Why not just do [[Category:Category name]]?--Angermerit 18:18, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because that sorts all talk pages under T, all user pages under U, etc. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:SORTKEY. –Pomte 21:13, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The mystery of the disappearing PNG

Image:Mount Tai dot.png shows up blank both on its image page, and on Mount Tai. I'm using Firefox 2.0.4 on WinXP. It does load when I click for the full-size version, so I have no idea whether it's browser or Mediawiki that's at fault. Purging the image page then the article doesn't help either. Resurgent insurgent 03:51, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to reupload the image to see if that would have any effect and it didn't. Then I got a message from N that said there may be size limits in the thumbnailing process. Uploading the image at a smaller size could help with that. Alternatively, Lupin may be able to recreate the image as an SVG file, since he originally uploaded it via LupinBot. Mike Dillon 16:00, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The image is almost 7 megs uncompressed (and only 200 odd k compressed, impressive). The thumbnailing process can't handle images that large. The workaround is to upload a lower resolution version, let the thumbnail appear, and then re-upload the high res version. I'll see if I can't do that. -N 16:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If the thumbnail algorithm needs to have the image completely converted to a full color bitmap before processing, then it's not designed very well; it should only keep a narrow horizontal stripe in memory at any time. This implies that there should be a separate thumbnail algorithm for each image file format, but I don't think that would be a big problem. --Derlay 09:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just wanted to say, I tested this on my PPC 6700 and it rendered the image flawlessly. If my phone can do it there's no reason the MedaWiki software can't. -N 10:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is a reason MediaWiki can't: it has code to explicitly check for the image size and not do the thumbnail generation if it's too large. The thumbnailing is in fact not done by MediaWiki itself, but by imagemagick, and the excessive resource usage is a imagemagick limitation. --cesarb 23:59, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a limitation, it's just an issue with the default limits for memory usage. There is a -limit option to convert that can be used to limit the amount of memory used. It defaults to 1 gigabyte, which is probably way too high for a high-concurrency situation like the Wikimedia upload server. It should be possible to adjust it down and get the right balance. Mike Dillon 00:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't Download SVG in Safari/Mac

When I click on an SVG in the image description page, Safari 2 (Mac) automatically downloads the SVG to my desktop.

Is there a way to make SVG behave the same way as all the other image formats (jpg, png, etc), i.e., simply directing me to a page where there's only the image (usually enlarged).

Thanks for the help, Ye Wise Pump Villagers Who Happen to Use Mac ... --Menchi 05:59, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It does what it says. When you click on an image in the image description page, it directs you to the URI containing nothing but file that was originally uploaded. For jpg, png, etc, your brower can process them directly. For svg, it apparently cannot. Take for example commons:Image:Commons-logo.png and commons:Image:Commons-logo.svg. Clicking the link to these will produce:
/media/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Commons-logo.png
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: image/png
Content-Length: 5557

/media/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: image/svg+xml
Content-Length: 5780
The delivery method is identical. The difference is in the mime type. If your browser cannot recognize or process a filetype, it cannot display it inline. The reason you can see SVG images on the description pages, is due to the MediaWiki software rendering them as png first (like the above SVG, the image you see is actually something like Commons-logo.svg.png).
Some things you can try:
  • Find a plugin for your browser for SVG support (if available).
  • Increase the thumbnail size in Special:Preferences under /files. --Splarka (rant) 07:23, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Render the SVG as a larger png, for example [[Image:Commons-logo.svg|1000px]].

--Splarka (rant) 07:23, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]


"Email this article"

Hi. I have been on Wikipedia for a few months, and I totally enjoy it. I have used it many times for my school assignments. My id is: Calypsos. I have some advice for you that I think may help make Wikipedia a better place for everyone, and to help increase Wikipedia's membership. If you have an "email this article" button on each article then that would be great. I have thought about emailing so many articles to my friends, but I could never find that button (and I know they would enjoy the article). Yahoo has the button on its news articles. I think it would make Wikipedia even better than ever! Thanks for your consideration (and thanks to Beth Dodge for pointing me here). Calypsos 03:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)Amin Isaacks[reply]

I believe someone already wrote an extension for this -- not sure if there's a reason it's not enabled on enwiki. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, and we will consider it =D. AmiDaniel (talk) 03:27, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
At first this confused me, because we have "E-mail this user". When I saw it in my watchlist I thought you mean't e-mailing the article (as in, writing to the article), which didn't make much sense. Now it does :), and it seems like a good idea. --(Review Me) R ParlateContribs@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 15:54, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's mw:Extension:EmailArticle; it doesn't look like it was written with Wikimedia in mind in the first place, and the devs would probably have to review the code and check its performance first. You could ask for it to be installed at bugzilla:. --ais523 14:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
We have no intention of adding an "e-mail this article to someone" feature at this time. There's a couple reasons for this:
  1. It would be too open to abuse for spamming.
    Since articles can be created by anyone, and you would be sending mail to other people (not confirmed users on the wiki), it would be far too easy to abuse the system to create a spam message and email it out to a bunch of people. This is pretty different from centralized news articles where the only things you could mail out were written and pre-approved by employees somewhere.
  2. It's not that hard to email something yourself. :) Every browser I've seen has an "e-mail this page" feature of some kind, and even if you're not at your own computer just about everyone's got webmail of some kind. A couple clicks and you're in your email and can send it out to as many people as you like (and confirmed from your own mail server).
--brion 15:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mediawiki and adware

If anyone's familiar with the topic, I'd be interested in seeing responses to Wikipedia_talk:Advertisements#Spyware/Adware from the more technically adept editors. Is it possible to measure the impact of adware/spyware vendors on our readership? MrZaiustalk 16:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Posts not automatically getting signed

Since I refuse to submit to the ridiculous process of manually doing something the software is capable of doing: how come my posts aren't automatically getting signed anymore by the bot?

User:HagermanBot. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:13, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just use 4 tildes (—METS501 (talk) 00:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)) which will automatically sign your posts. —METS501 (talk) 00:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The bot was added because many people, such as yourself, either do not know how to or forget to sign their posts on talkpages, using 4 tildes (~~~~). It is nonetheless still considered quite bad form not to sign your posts, a task that requires practically no effort, and it creates additional overhead and resource waste to simply reply upon a bot to add {{unsigned}} to all of your posts. We are not sure when the bot, or a clone of the bot, will be back up and running, but until then, and even after then, please sign your posts yourself, as it is a sign of decency and proper etiquette. AmiDaniel (talk) 00:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You have no argument. That's like telling me I have to put four tildas at the end of my post when posting on a forum, otherwise the template that encases my post (that has your username and other info) won't show up.

If you think you can do better, then do so. Whining here about your own laziness is going to get you nowhere. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't tell me I'm whining; I'm suggesting an improvement to the system. Granted it's not that hard to put four tildas after your posts, but a lot of other things aren't that hard either that we can make manual: Why not take away the "keep me logged in" function and make users log in everytime they use the site? It's not that hard and takes up hardly any time.

Wikipedia has a purely wikitext-based thread system; it's not like posts are arranged in little units, as in forums (see m:LiquidThreads, a system in development which will do that). Whatever text people want to add to a page they should add without worrying that it will be modified by a machine somewhere in between submitting it and viewing it. (Unless you consciously want MediaWiki to modify it; for example, template substitution, or replacing ~~~~ with a sig.) The idea of a wiki, at least in my interpretation, is: people know what they're doing, so let them do it. If you don't want your posts to be signed, don't add ~~~~. It's very simple :) GracenotesT § 04:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that nice, rational explanation--that really clarified things for me. I still think the fact that you have to sign your posts is ridiculous, though (in this case you want machine intervention); however it's good that LiquidThreads is underway. Lumarine 04:47, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The question remains, though, what happened to Hagerman (talk · contribs) since he stopped editing about a month before his bot did. I've sent him an email from his userpage and am awaiting a reply, but I wonder if I'm not the first to do so. Call me a worry wart, but my imagination's run rampant and I hope he's okay. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 00:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Before the latest absence, Hagerman didn't edit from February 5 to April 28. When he came back, he only edited for two days before going away again. It seems like a pattern, so I wouldn't be too worried that anything is amiss. Comments on his talk page made it seem like he was away on business during March/April. There was also a thread about his absence on the Bot owners' noticeboard last time he wasn't editing. Mike Dillon 02:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist timelength

The watchlist used to go back for 30 days, but now it only goes back for 7 days. This was done without warning and also makes the watchlist almost useless for people who either don't use Wikipedia on a daily basis, or who don't want to maintain all the pages on their watchlist every day. —Centrx→talk • 01:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Willing to buy us some servers to get it back the way it was? Watchlists utilize about the most expensive query on all of Wikimedia, and massive efforts are being done to minimize their effect upon the servers. This was one of them. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:53, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
At least make it possible to do a longer query, in the same way one can query user contributions above the last 500 edits by manually putting a number in the URL. This change was done without warning, and anyway are you sure that this was not a change of the recent changes table without any consideration of the effects on the watchlist?
Other options: change the default query to 1 day instead of 3 days; the default query is the most common, and is duplicated by anyone who then chooses "all". Also, why not instead prevent the creation of new pages by newly registered users, a vast number of which require the creation of a page, several edits, and then the deletion of it because it was junk. Why not make the watchlist be limited to 14 days instead of 7 days? That's still less than half of the previous 30 days. There are other options; the watchlist is the most useful feature on the wiki, aside from the plain editing. —Centrx→talk • 03:07, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You are correct, the watchlist times were changed as a result of the default RC max age being changed to "7 * 24 * 3600". I would suggest filing a bug report for Wikimedia to request the value be set to a higher amount locally, as it's not going to be resolved here. AmiDaniel (talk) 21:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why not change it back to the higher time length everywhere? This is a problem that effects every wiki, not just the English Wikipedia or just Wikimedia projects. There already is a bug report filed, 10349, but this is a new introduction of erroneous behavior on an important feature of the site that renders the feature almost null for a significant population of users. —Centrx→talk • 23:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it could be at least 14-15 days. Also I suggest that temporary you return 30 days watchlist and then to warn users that watchlist will be reduced from 30 days to 14-15 days after for example one week so that they can prepare themselves for that change. This reduce of watchlist time without warning caused problems to many users. PANONIAN 16:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have to throw my vote in favor here too. I've been backlogged on my watchlist about ten days and now I've been cut off from the tail end. I think that changing the default query to one day as Centrx suggests would help cut down server load from the vast majority of queries. Thanks! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 16:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have posted a link to this conversation and to the bug report at Help talk:Watching pages#Watchlist only going back one week now so that editors visiting there can know what's going on. Cheers! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 00:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Today when I tried to check the "WHOIS" information for an IP editor from his contributions page, dnsstuff acted like the address was never put in. The same thing happened for the other links on that page Special:Contributions/70.217.214.35. However, when I turned over to the user's talk page I found that the links are working properly. This seems to be the case on all the IP pages I'm visiting today. Thoughts? —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 16:53, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

DOI issues

I'm having a problem placing this doi number into an inline citation: 10.1666/0094-8373(2004)030<0522:OEAMDO>2.0.CO;2. It is an accurate one, yet when I save the page, it creates a whole different doi number, this one: <0522:OEAMDO>2.0.CO;2 10.1666/0094-8373(2004)030<0522:OEAMDO>2.0.CO;2 into the citation in the footnotes section. Can anyone help? Orangemarlin 00:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia doesn't accept "<" or ">" in external links. I think it is possible to work around this by using URL codes instead of those characters. Now someone remember what the codes are? Dragons flight 02:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You mean < and >? --Visviva 04:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, we need the URL codes not the HTML codes. As in how "%20" codes for a space. Dragons flight 05:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
%3c and %3e respectively. —Cryptic 07:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Edit conflict (but I was busy testing it before posting). --Splarka (rant) 07:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This will be unfortunate, because in some of the scientific articles DOI numbers give quick links to the article abstract, and you can confirm the reference actually being germane to the issue at hand. The great DOI angels create these numbers, so I'm not sure what the workaround can be if I cannot use the "<". Orangemarlin 07:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm feeling a bit of deja vu... --cesarb 09:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

urlencode would probably be a good idea, although for some reason it's making < into XML-compliant &lt; before encoding it. I'm not positive if this would work with URLs. GracenotesT § 17:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cryptic's ideas worked. And thanks Splarka for implementation. I hate DOI codes, but they really cut down on the work necessary to read these articles. Orangemarlin 18:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, I was referring to the template in general (that is, urlencode the {{{1|{{{id}}}}}}). GracenotesT § 21:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've started a proposal called Wikipedia:Link intersection about a method of using wikilinks to do keyword searches to find similar pages. Feedback would be appreciated -- especially from a developer. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 03:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Two changes to "What links here" would make it much more useful:

  1. The default namespace should not be "All". It should be the namespace of the article. If you are in the main namespace, you are probably looking for articles that link to the article, and not everything.
  2. The links should be ordered alphabetical. If there are more than a page worth, there should be a table of contents.
Are these changes possible? -- ☑ SamuelWantman 03:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The first idea seems meritorious, although there are perhaps some drawbacks (incoming links from Talk pages may be interesting, and of course it's important to know whether some of the links may be template-generated). As for the second, though I'm not a dev, it seems like it would be difficult to arrange, and could add significantly to database load... It's worth noting that we don't have automatically generated TOCs for categories either, and category listings are similar to Whatlinkshere in being the products of a (more or less) live database query. Of course, categories *are* alphabetized, so perhaps that part of the proposal is feasible. -- Visviva 05:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Categories are alphabetized by their sortkey, whereas other links only have the page id of the page linked from in the database. It is techinically possible, but I'm not sure if it is too much of a burden. Another useful change would be filtering of transclusions (only them, or none of them, or either). However, the proper place for feature requests is bugzilla. Kotepho 05:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm most definitely aware that category TOCs are the result of a template (I wrote the first iteration of {{CategoryTOC}}). I am ignorant about how special pages come into existence. Does changing the default on the namespace require a developer? I noticed that "What links here" recently changed. Was that a software change? I've seen discussions on this page previously get implemented rather quickly if there is support, and if it inspires the right person with the skills to make it happen. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 06:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for special pages you have to get someone with svn access to commit it and then a systems admin will update the copy of mediawiki used for wikimedia from svn. Sometimes you can harass them into doing things quickly, other times it can take months. You also have to convince them it is a good idea. Other times it things can be changed either in the site's javascript or other pages in the MediaWiki: namespace that any administrator may edit. These can happen a lot quicker. Kotepho 08:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Centered digits on Template:NFPA 704

It appears that the digits in {{NFPA 704}} look centered in their respective cells on some browser+skin combinations (Mozilla Firefox+Classic skin, Konqueror+Monobook) but not others (Mozilla Firefox+Monobook). Lowering the digits a pixel or two would make it look fine on some while breaking it on others, so it's not an acceptable solution. Is there any way of making the digits appear centered for everyone? --Fibonacci 09:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Viewing site wide changes made in the past (not so recent changes).

I want to check site wide changes made just after 04:00 GMT on 2007-06-05, but the link [1] only shows the current changes. Help:Recent changes doesn't help. -- Jeandré, 2007-06-25t11:51z

Recent changes only covers up to 5000 edits as per this section under the help page you provided: "Restriction on number of edits; alternatives". This covers only about three hours here because of the sheer quantity of edits that are made here. As of a few seconds ago, the latest revision ID was 140509529: thats 140.5 million revisions/edits in the database (assuming they were all there, which they aren't). There is no practical way that Wikipedia would be able to serve live the number of edits you requested (about 800,000 - 1,000,000). Harryboyles 12:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The information is still recorded somewhere, though (in the histories of the individual articles), but presumably it would take a custom script run on a database dump to find it (unless there's something on the toolserver for this). --ais523 12:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
The revisions are, for the most part, in chronological order (barring undeletion of revisions deleted before the current numbering system was created, and other strange crap). So, what you can do, is go to diff=135964858 (title parameter will be ignored) and increment it by one digit until you get bored. Also, you could do some clever stuff with api.php, such as get the title of several revisions at a time. --Splarka (rant) 08:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's happened to the Arch. Portal?

WP:ARCH suddenly looks very strange - but nobody seems to have edited in a while - I suspect something like the box-headers have been changed, and this has affect the layout - Portal:box-header doesn't seem to have been edited though - anyone got any ideas what's happening? --Mcginnly | Natter 12:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The selected article closed its division twice. See my last edit to Portal:Architecture/Selected_article/2007-26, which has fixed it.-gadfium 20:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template admin needed

This request for a edit to an protected template would best be undertaken by someone familiar with template coding. (I've had mixed results and hassles even when giving something that can be cut and pasted in verbatim as this one, and I won't be here to field questions as I'm about to leave the office.) Thanks // FrankB 14:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

wiki "servers not found" on 25.6.2007

Almost all day today from around 10 am to 11 pm, all wiki servers (pedias, commons etc.) have been unavailable from my IP address. I could only access the http://wikipedia.org address, but all links there got a "server not found" error. My ISP said they could access all wiki servers, so I have no clue to the problem. Suggestions? --Janke | Talk 20:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Try doing a tcptraceroute to the Wikipedia servers; it will probably point exactly to the problem location (since it uses TCP packets, it can also find out some port-specific firewalling problems, and even uncover transparent proxies). --cesarb 22:52, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There was apparently a crash of the .org TLD server today. Everything's been restored and is working again; however, the bad dns was cached by many ISPs. Please flush your dns cache, and if that doesn't work, contact your ISP to ask them to flush theirs. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The entire .org TLD crashed??? That's unheard of. --  Denelson83  23:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template help

Is there a way to fix this Template:Infobox cardinalstyles so the text in the articles doesn't butt up against the info box? Here's an example page; Francesco Cardinal Marchetti-Selvaggiani. In all the articles with this templete it makes the page unsightly and a bit difficult to read on the articles that have more text. The example I gave is just to show what I mean. I do not know how to configure templates at all, or I'd do it myself. Thanks for any help anyone can provide. - Jeeny Talk 22:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The margin-left I just added to the table's style should do it, if you're asking what I think you are. —Cryptic 22:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yay! Thank you! You're the best! :) - Jeeny Talk 23:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

View my entire UserSpace

Is there a way to check for orphaned or old userspace pages that I may have forgotten about, or to view a list of all pages in my userspace? Thanks! CredoFromStart talk 14:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here ya go.[2] You can replace the username with anyone to check elsewhere. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent. Put it in my wiki bookmarks. Thanks! CredoFromStart talk 14:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not a problem. You can also add an ending slash to just display subpages. (tiny detail) EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:57, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wierd different recent changes

There's some wierd thing in recent changes, it's like

Special:Recentchangeslinks/[pagename goes here]

And then it does this wierd narrowed down recent changes to a certain number of pages. I'm not sure how it works, anyone seen it? I found it somewhere once and didn't save where it was. Anyone know what i'm talking about? Joshua Zelinsky 15:24, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In the toolbox on the left click "Related changes" on a page. It is the recent changes of all pages linked from that page, it even works on categories I believe. Kotepho 15:37, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. So it's just stuff that the page itself links to, or is it also stuff that links to the page, or is it both? Joshua Zelinsky 10:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Stuff that the page itself links to, including ones linked through templates. –Pomte 18:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

server lag?

Am I the only one getting severe server lag today?--VectorPotentialTalk 16:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help with Template:Cite journal

Hello. Do you have any idea why the publishers do not show up in these two citations? 1. Hart, Joseph (6 May 1998). "Room at the Bottom". City Pages 19 (909). Retrieved on 1 April 2007. and 2. Anfinson, Scott F. (1989). "Part 2: Archaeological Explorations and Interpretive Potentials: Chapter 4 Interpretive Potentials". The Minnesota Archaeologist 49. Retrieved on 3 April 2007. Sorry if typos of mine are the cause. Thanks for any help. -Susanlesch 16:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rendering problem at Korea Greens

Check out this rendering problem in Firefox 1.5.0.12 on Korea Greens:

Image:bug-koreagreens.png

Is this a Firefox bug or a Wikipedia bug? Tempshill 18:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Different browsers will render it differently, but the big problem on that page is that there is so much material in infoboxes and very little in text. I've fixed the immediate problem by adding {{-}} to force the bottom box to really be at the bottom.-gadfium 20:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Tempshill 15:53, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Footnotes comment in articles

Is there a way to find all articles that have the following comment in the references section:

<!-- This article uses [[Wikipedia:Footnotes]]. Please use this format when adding references to material in the article. External links added directly to this section will be swiftly deleted without notice. -->

This comment is found when you click on "edit this page", it's commented out in the references section in some articles. It is not newbie friendly and really should no longer be in any article, especially since we now have {{reflist}}. Articles with this comment cannot be found via the Wikipedia search feature or Google. It would be helpful if we somehow could get a list of these articles, go through them (perhaps with a bot) and get rid of these comments found in articles. --Aude (talk) 15:30, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you temporarily remove the Wikipedia:Footnotes link from tags like {{Citations missing}} (that seems to be the most prominent one, if there are any others), then Whatlinkshere will be useful. –Pomte 18:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikipedia:Footnotes link is in the wiki code and is commented out. It's not part of the {{Citations missing}} tag. You only see the comment if you click on edit this page or click the "edit" link for the references section in some articles. It was in this version of the Ben's Chili Bowl article. I have since removed the comment, so it's no in the current revision. A newbie saw the comment and was frustrated and confused by it. This editor at least left a note on the talk page and I was able to help. I'm sure many see the comment, are scared away from editing, and don't leave a note on the talk page. I would like to know what other articles have those comments in the references section, and would be interested in seeing them removed. Might be a good task for a bot. --Aude (talk) 19:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the issue, and I'm positive that Whatlinkshere includes links that are <!-- commented out -->. For example, Special:Whatlinkshere/User:Zocky/PicturePopups.js lists your monobook. Try removing the first line:
// User:Zocky/PicturePopups.js - please include this line
and you'll no longer see your monobook listed there. The only obstacle so far is that most of the listed articles are due to {{Citations missing}}. –Pomte 19:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is a different thing: although user .js pages are shown as plain text, their contents are still interpreted like any other Wiki page, so the "//" comment has no effect. Counterexample: I put a commented out link to User:Dapete/Test in User:Dapete/Test/Test and it's not shown. --Dapeteばか 20:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I stand corrected. I suppose a bot can detect that comment, so Wikipedia:Bot requests? –Pomte 21:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Naphthalene = +RON ?

How much truth are there in the myth that if you add Naphthalene balls (Moth Balls) to your fuel tank, it will increase the RON value of the fuel. We live with a very poor 93RON unleaded wich causes a lot of problemes for slightly higher compression motors. I know some people use Xylene but things like these are just as difficouleto get as Aviation and Racing fuel.

Regards, Bennie.

You're probably looking for the reference desk. This page is for reporting technical issues with wikipedia--VectorPotentialTalk 20:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

I like the new way of adding pages to your watchlist. -Yancyfry 22:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

err what new way? Lynbarn 00:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I really like the new feature as well. It's a big improvement. Grandmasterka 02:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Much more convenient. –Pomte 02:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The new way uses AJAX to watch/unwatch the page without going to an interstitial page and redirecting back. Mike Dillon 02:36, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Okay thanks. That is neat, but I wonder (After 25 years working with 'em, I've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a coincidence where a computer is involved!) if this could be the cause of the issue I mentioned on this page two items below, re MSIE ActiveX/plug-ins? Regards Lynbarn 08:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That seems quite likely. I'll comment below. Mike Dillon 14:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article Hodge-Laplacian is a redirect to the article Laplace operator.

When I did a google search for "Hodge-Laplacian wikipedia" the first result is to the (bad) mirror site http://www.savage-comedy.com/_Hodge_Laplacian.

If you do a google search for "Laplace operator wikipedia" you get the nice wikipedia article as the first result.

My guess is that the reason is the way Wikipedia shows it pages to the Google robot? Is there any way to correct this problem?

Best regards, Pierreback 22:41, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably help if the exact phrase "Hodge-Laplacian" was mentioned somewhere in the article; I don't think that the words appear next to each other in the article at the moment. --ais523 14:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Activex in wikipedia?

To help dissuade my PC from collecting virii, I have increased the security by blocking activex from running in MSIE7. Normally, this hasn't caused any problems, but today, on almost every Wikipedia page I go to, I get the following dialog box appearing: 

Do you want to allow software such as Activex controls and plug-ins to run?
  • Has anything changed in wikipedia to require an Activex or plug-in?
  • Has anybody else experienced this behaviour?

Thanks for your comments, regards, Lynbarn 22:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am quite sure that Wikipedia doesn't use Activex. Maybe you have some kind of Adware on your computer. Try Spybot - Search & Destroy --Apoc2400 08:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the suggestion. It certainly never used to! It may not be ActiveX that is triggering the dialog box, but some other plug-in. I ran S&D over the weekend, but something may have happened since. There is also another possibility - see my comment in Thanks - the item two above this one. Regards, Lynbarn 09:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Try watching/unwatching a page with ActiveX/plugins disabled, and see if it works; that should indicate whether it's that that's causing the problem. (Based on how the AJAX watch works, I wouldn't expect such an error to come up until you actually tried to watch or unwatch if it was that that was causing it, though.) --ais523 10:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

It looks like this is indeed caused by the AJAX watchlist functionality. When a page with a watch/unwatch action is loaded (which includes all pages except special pages):

  1. ajaxwatch.js is loaded
  2. This adds an onload hook for wgAjaxWatch.onLoad
  3. If there is a watch/unwatch action link, wfSupportsAjax is called
  4. This calls sajax_init_object

Inside of sajax_init_object is the following code: 

function sajax_init_object() {
    sajax_debug("sajax_init_object() called..");
    var A;
    try {
        A = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
    } catch (e) {
        try {
            A = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
        } catch (oc) {
            A = null;
        }
    }
    if (!A && typeof XMLHttpRequest != "undefined") {
        A = new XMLHttpRequest();
    }
    if (!A) {
        sajax_debug("Could not create connection object.");
    }
    return A;
}

If you have ActiveX restrictions turned on, then Boom! Mike Dillon 15:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That looks to me like a bad design for the watching; initalising the XMLHttpRequest object only when the watch link was actually clicked on would seem better in this case. (I suppose it's done the way it is so that other AJAXy features can be implemented without having to create a new request object.) --ais523 15:47, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
This is now fixed for IE 7; the native XMLHttpRequest control is now used instead of the ActiveX one, avoiding the warning.
For IE 6 the best we can do is probably to delay initialization until click time, but it would still prompt once you click the link. --brion 16:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
...aaaand that's now done too. --brion 16:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, that's fixed it for me. Many thanks, guys! Lynbarn 08:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Different image appearing

I'm moving this from Wikipedia:Help desk#Different image appearing since no one there can figure it out. I changed the image in the Chayanne article from Image:Chayanne.JPG (a copyvio) to Image:Chayanne.jpg, which I just uploaded at Commons. Now some headshot of the guy (not the free picture I uploaded) is showing up in the article. I checked the history of that filename, and there was a file uploaded there, but it was deleted in December and looks different from the one that's showing up. Purging the cache hasn't done anything. ShadowHalo 04:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've found that the real image will be shown by changing the thumbnail size to one that hasn't previously been used elsewhere. Note that if you try to show this one in 200px, there's an even different third fourth image. –Pomte 04:33, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, that's bizarre. So does that mean that the issue is probably coming from Commons since there's only been one image uploaded here but several deleted from there? ShadowHalo 04:50, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It appears that Commons doesn't delete all stored sizes of an image after it has been "deleted". So if you delete Chayanne.jpg from Commons again, all of the following (and more) may still remain: 200 201 230 231 250 345 –Pomte 08:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vote prompt won't stay hidden

I don't have enough edits to participate in the board election, so I clicked "hide" on the vote prompt at the top of every article. But when I close and re-open the browser, it's back. This also happens to me on the MediaWiki wiki (I can't hide it on Meta, since I don't have an account there.) Is there a way to permanently suppress that type of message? Thanks! Rockerbaby 04:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The 'hide' information is stored in a cookie; it seems as though your browser's deleting that cookie for what it thinks are security purposes. --ais523 09:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Edit history problem?

I added a vandal warning to User_talk:Lcb91. The weird thing is, I tried to edit the June section, and the server told me said section did not exist (twice), but I was able to edit it on a whole page edit. Furthermore, the user has warnings going back to May, and yet only shows 8 contribs in their history, all dated 28 June. I'm a bit confused. Is there a problem someplace MSJapan 10:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They have one warning, in May, for creating a nonsense page. Since the page was deleted it doesn't show in their edit history--VectorPotentialTalk 11:55, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is the {{#if:...}} around the first header; that screws things up. --brion 14:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Glitch!

A glitch I found when trying to get to my user page:



File:Wiki Glitch.JPG

It's fine now but it was weird. Coastergeekperson04 a.k.a. Ceres3 18:08, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That happens to me occasionally. --ɐuɐʞsаАəp (ʞɿɐʇ) 18:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You might mind fixing your sig. It won't render properly on my computer. Coastergeekperson04 18:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This bug happens eventually on every computer on every page. (At least to my knowledge.) —Andrew Hampe Talk 00:50, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Transparency issues

This image shows up as solid gray with a white number and white trim in my browser (IE6). When I downloaded it to fix it, the gray areas come into my MS Photo Editor as transparent (which is correct). So the png appears to be right. Is this something I have to live with in my browser, or can I tweak the png to show the transparency correctly? I noticed that roughly 90% of the uniforms in Template:Basketball kit properly display the transparent areas, (Image:Kit body aab.png for example). What's different about those? Hoof Hearted 19:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, IE6 doesn't support png transparency, and is entirely a failing of IE6. Bassgoonist 19:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As our article on PNG details, while IE6 does not support alpha-channel transparency, it does support the simpler palette transparency (which is the same you would find on GIF images). Indeed, a quick look at both examples you gave with the sng tool show that Image:Kit body bb whitetrimnumbers.png is a truecolor image with an alpha channel, while Image:Kit body aab.png uses a palette, with the first entry transparent. It shouldn't make any difference, if it weren't for that MSIE bug. --cesarb 00:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Using IE7, all I see is a white shirt, no number. Corvus cornix 03:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

File:Kit body bb whitetrimnumbers test.png Is this correct? I undestood from your exposition that the image should be transparent, instead of gray, with white background and white number (tested with MSIE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254). Btw, I did save the image as bmp, and then I created the png again. Rjgodoy 11:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist

Is there some sort of hack I can add to my monobook that would allow me to watchlist only a talk page, but not its corresponding mainpage?--VectorPotentialTalk 19:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I am aware, you cannot stop both pages from being watched, but you can stop specific pages from appearing in your watchlist (with JavaScript, or very hacky CSS). GracenotesT § 19:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Never mind, it appears that even CSS 3 is not that hacky. GracenotesT § 19:46, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Confused on how to use javascript tools

How do I use this tool? User:Lupin/editcount.js, I've added his picture popups tool to my monobook, and it works, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to make this one work. This isn't a question about the script in question...just how you are supposed to make them work in general. Bassgoonist 19:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

popups

All of a sudden my popups seem to have stopped working, does anyone have any idea why? My monobook.js & my popups.js--VectorPotentialTalk 22:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, they're working again, must have been a fluke--VectorPotentialTalk 22:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Typo in page header

While I was seeing what W3C's CSS Validator would show on a wikipedia page, I discovered what appearently looks like a typo in the header. The line "<style type="text/css" media="screen,projection">" has "screen,projection" set for media. What should be set is "screen, projection". You can find the error on every normal page on Wikipedia. You can find the error here (It's the first error the validator produces). --Andrew Hampe Talk 23:11, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Page size messages

Someone has changed the messages we get when we edit so that it no longer gives the page size. It was very, very useful to know the size. Does anyone know who changed it and why, or where it was discussed? SlimVirgin (talk) 02:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The exact size is still available if you hit the history tab (it shows up after every edit now), but it was nice having the reminder on the edit page. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if I'm being dense, but I don't follow. I can't find the sizes anywhere I look now. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:42, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you click on the history tab, after each user name and (talk contribs) is a number, which is the number of bytes in the page at that point. This gives you the total page size. The old notice on the edit page only gave a specific size when a page was over about 30k, so in many ways the history tab is more helpful. There are javascript tools to get other sorts of page size info (size of reference text, for instance). Gimmetrow 02:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For me the top revision of this page in the history is:
02:42, June 29, 2007 SlimVirgin (Talk | contribs | block) (68,485 bytes) (→Page size messages - reply to Seraphimblade) [rollback]
So the pagesize is given after the username and before the edit summary... WjBscribe 02:46, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see now, thank you. It's not as helpful as before, in my view, because when you wanted to see whether removing a section would substantially reduce page size, you could remove it, preview, and check the difference. Now you'd presumably have to save before you'd see it. Does anyone know where the discussion about this took place, or can be started? SlimVirgin (talk) 04:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can use a bookmarklet (a favelet) to get a poor alternative. Add javascript:alert((""+window.getSelection()).length) to your bookmark. Now, select some text and click the bookmark, it will pop up the size. So, while editing, select the entire text, click the bookmark and you will know the size (Technically the number of characters, since WP uses Unicode which is 2 bytes per character, the size is twice the length). --soum talk 12:27, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting captcha

I did a double take when I saw it. I realized after a few seconds that it is peas + hits, but ... well ... umm ... yeah. It may be a good idea to have either a profanity filter or to at least remove a few key words from the dictionary. This one could definitely be taken the wrong way. --BigΔT 03:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I dont get it . . how do you peash something and what's the it that it's talking about? But yea, I'd agree there. Q T C 04:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, very interesting. I would have thought about neither the peas, nor the hits ;-) Rjgodoy 11:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

wgAjaxWatch error

My browser says that wgAjaxWatch.watchLinks is null or is not an object (line: 133). I have been editing some hours ago without this problem, so it must come from a recent change in wiki-software. Rjgodoy 11:35, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, for me watching/unwatching has reverted to the older method, rather then doing it via JS. --soum talk 12:15, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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