A banner ad. just appeared on my watchlist page, asking me to confirm Wikipedia e-mail. I have no (Wikipedia) e-mail address. How do I get rid of the banner advert? It takes up more than a quarter of my (small) screen!
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e-mail subject as an argument to Special:Emailuser
How can I make a link to Special:Emailuser where a subject at my liking is included pr default in the Subject field of the email form? Like the subject variable in the mailto link in html. Shanes20:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, all emails are sent with the title Wikipedia Email (or a similar variant). There doesn't seem to be any way to change it. There doesn't seem to be a bug for this, so I suggest you file one at Bugzilla as a feature request. — Ambush Commander(Talk)21:20, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would caution though that e-mails sent through wikipedia should remain readilly identifiable as from wikipedia. So any user specified subject should probablly be appended to the standard subject, not replace it. Plugwash22:15, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Wikipedia Email actually already is quite cryptic (it takes a while for me to figure out, "Oh, that's from Wikipedia!". It probably should be from wikipedia, with a reply-to set to the user who sent the email. Plus, there really should be a disclaimer appended to the bottom of the email. — Ambush Commander(Talk)03:09, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My main motivation for wanting this is to be able to automatically include the IP of blocked users in the mail-link on MediaWiki:Blockedtext. The page does note that users need to include the IP given in any mail, but I receive quite a few mails from auto-blocked users who ask to be unblocked but forget to include the IP. So I thought it could save some frustration and mailing back and forth if we just had it inserted in the subject field in the form. The subject field could also contain a string "Unblock Request" or some such that could up the importance level setting in any e-mail filters admins might have. Shanes10:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Create a special type of email for complaining blocks, which automatically gives IP address (most people won't want to give their IP when emailing others for privacy concerns), or...
Allow a user to set-up multiple types of Wikipedia email forms accessible like Special:Emailuser/Example/Block with custom subjects/automatically appended things, etc.
Instead of using subject Wikipedia Email, allow users to specify a subject and simply prepend [Wikipedia Email] to it.
We probably understand eachother, but to be clear: I just wanted a way to have a string inserted in the subject (or body, for that matter) field before the user edits and submits the mail form. The user can edit out any string inserted in any field before submitting it (just as in the html mailto: equivalent), which should take care of any privacy concernes. It's just that I get those mails from blocked users where they have simply forgotten to put the IP given to them on MediaWiki:Blockedtext ($3 to that page) in the actual form themselves making their mail pointless. I have to mail them back, wait for any respond, all of it just costing a lot of time and frustration on both parts. And I can see other uses than this special case for this option as well.
On your other note about how standard the subject argument to mailto: is, I do think it's a standard as much as RFC 2368 says:
The creator of a mailto URL cannot expect the resolver of a URL to understand more than the "subject" and "body" headers. Clients that resolve mailto URLs into mail messages SHOULD be able to correctly create RFC 822-compliant mail messages using the "subject" and "body" headers.
It doesn't say MUST, but SHOULD is pretty strong in RFC speak. But this is beside the point anyway, as I think it would be a nice option whether mailto: had it or not. Anyway, I understand now that it's not implemented in mediawiki and I should go beg on bugzilla. I probably will, next time I get frustrated by one of those IP-lacking unblock me mails. Shanes23:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whoo, looks like I was mistaken (I knew that certain headers were not standard, here we go. Must brush up on my RFCs).
I pressed ALT-F which is the shortcut in Firefox (on Linux) to select the file menu. The browser would not open the File menu and jumped rather abrubtly to somewhere else on the page. If anyone knows why it did this, and whether it is normal (i.e. a "feature") or is a bug with Wikipedia (I have occasionally found this to happen on other sites but only rarely, thank goodness, as it is quite annoying) do please write a reply about it.
Thanks for reply, I can see from the extensive list of shortcuts that your regular users must rely on them... I have found that keys that I use a lot get to feel like they are programmed into my hands, I don't have to think anything except "Open New Browser Window" (Alt+F then N) to do the action so it is a slight shock when it does something completely different. I have always found the mouse to be very slow to use and having to use the mouse a lot causes trouble (pain in shoulders, wrists, forearms, eyes etc.)... have not figured out the disabling method, though, have not got a "kelvin/monobook.js" anywhere that I know of... but I will not worry, I can use CTRL+N to open new window, CTRL+F for Find, CTRL+C for Copy etc. Wikipedia is a great resource, many thanks.
Kelvin
62.69.32.11101:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also note, if you hold Alt and then press F, then you goto the search box. If you press Alt, releas, then press F, you get the file menu. --^demon21:57, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestion: Name variations
It would be nice if the Wikipedia search could automatically try variations of names, such as Jimmy->James, Bob->Robert. There should be redirects for this, but there aren't always - a recent example I ran across was Cliff Stein for Clifford Stein. If there's support I could enter this at Mediawiki Bugzilla. Deco02:05, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if Wikipedia's search could do a lot of things, but (as far as I can tell), it never will so I use Google site search. Superm401 - Talk04:04, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The Flag of Nepal (possible bug in image resizing?)
On some occasions, images are resized just one pixel too small. For example:
[[Image:Flag of Nepal.svg|50x50px]]:
(size: 40x49)
[[Image:Flag of Nepal.svg|20x17px]]:
(size: 13x16)
[[Image:Flag of Nepal.svg|20x18px]]:
(size: 14x17)
I've only seem this happening with svg images which are higher than wide. Any ideas on this? I suppose it's some kind of rounding error in the code. --Mx200021:05, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thumbnails are indexed according to width. When you include a box size, a thumbnail small enough to fit inside that box will be made, but it may well be shorter than the given height if that's what the width turns up. --Brion18:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I thought so too initially, but that doesn't work out: The last thumb (with a screen size of 14x17) would fit perfectly in the box of the second one (20x17), yet Mediawiki produces a smaller thumb, even though the correct one (14px wide, instead of 13px) exists. --Mx200022:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is actually even weirder than that. For example, the first image above is actually 48 pixels tall, but the <img> tag specifies a height of 49 pixels, causing the image to be scaled up by one pixel in the browser. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, I've seen this happen with PNG images too, and also in cases where only the width of the image is specified. I'll post examples if I find them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:59, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I know theres a workaround in place for IE - when you edit it says at the top "WARNING: Your browser is not unicode compliant. A workaround is in place to allow you to safely edit articles: non-ASCII characters will appear in the edit box as hexadecimal codes." im having the same problems in safari with mac 10.2.8. if i edit anything with korean interwiki links they just come up as question marks and french accents get replaced with a diamond shaped box with a question mark in it. can a similar workaround me made for safari? have a look at this diff to see what i mean. whats odder is that it doesnt happen with every edit - it didnt happen on the previous edit (which was also mine. the second edit was trying to fix a mistake i made!) BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard22:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What's the User-Agent header it sends? The workaround is keyed on the User-Agent. Also, check for any proxies which could be causing it. --cesarb22:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
mac 10.2.8, safari 1.0.3. so yes it does - i only ever use safari. and sorry i havent a clue what a user-agent is. there done seem to be any proxies listed that might effect it either. BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard04:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It definitely shouldn't do that; I suspect a configuration problem. I'll see if I can install a 10.2 test partition on my laptop to test... --Brion01:27, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've installed Mac OS X 10.2.8, with Safari 1.0.3, and edited Category:Science_fiction_films. There's no apparent problem there.
Where a browser has an encoding problem (like Mac IE) it would always show the problem, not just on some edits; so if you only saw a rare occasional problem it's probably not the browser at all, but something else like a weird transient server bug. If you've seen in more than once, can you supply some additional information, such as if you saw any error messages, odd or slow behavior, if you copied-and-pasted the text into another program to do editing, etc? --Brion07:51, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose ive had this problem about a dozen times in all. usually i notice it and fix it right away since it only effects french accents but this time it mixed up the korean interwikis as well and i had to get help. theres never any error message. it just saves and then i notice all the glitchy charachters. other than that the saves were exactly the same as normal - same speed, no error messages, and no copying and pasting (i did all the editing in the edit window). in fact i did two edits of the science fiction category in exactly the same way within a coupla minutes. the first one went fine, the second caused the glitch (have a look at the cat's history to see). BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard00:42, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have a signature that I am rather fond of on a user subpage (/sig) because the nickname field says it is invalid html. Would someone enlighten me as to why this doesn't work as a raw signature?
Not sure if this is a known problem or not, couldn't see anything in the bugzilla. Anyway on 10 December 2005 I did a search for zeland (common mispelling of Zealand as in New Zealand ) and fixed most of them. However when I do a search for the world now like this it still shows the pages from which the word has been removed ( like Official Opposition (New Zealand) and Joan Hammond ) . I would guess there is some problem with the search database not updating. IS this a known bug? - SimonLyall10:27, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When searching through a page's History, if you choose a revision that is a redirect to another page, e.g. here and here, the revision navigation text, which reads like this:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Revision as of 08:48, 11 October 2005; view current revision
← Older revision | Newer revision →
Last night I was patrolling rapid vandalism by several anons on the same network. There didn't seem to be many patrollers and admins around, so the vandals weren't blocked and there are probably still some unreverted edits around. Trouble is, I don't know how to find them short of grepping the next database image. Is there a way to do this? Gazpacho00:57, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Gallery Landscape Problems
I rebuilt my computer last week. Ever since, I have not been able to see landscape thumbnail images within galleries (including my own gallery). I can see portrait thumbnails within galleries just fine. I tested my own galleries on a different machine, and it (of course) worked fine. Obviously, the problem is with my machine. I'm using IE 6.0, and JRE 5.0 (just downloaded today). Has anybody seen this problem and know a solution? Rklawton03:30, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
More info: when I look at the HTML source code, the <img src tag is missing entirely for landscape images but not for the portrate images. Rklawton07:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Try disabling ad blocking software, if you are running any. Symantec products in particular will sometimes mistake Wikipedia images for ads and remove them. Dragons flight07:59, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with some Symantec ad-blocking software, and I believe with similar software from other vendors too, is that it blocks all images from a directory called /ad/. MediaWiki divides images up into randomly named two character directories, and a small proportion end up in /ad/. The solution is to configure Symantec software to always allow wikipedia and wikimedia images. I had this problem with earlier versions of Symantec software, but I don't think it occurs in the most recent (v 3) of Symantec Client Security.-gadfium08:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Smoley hokes Batman! That totally worked, and I never would have figured that one out. I've been using PCs since the Apple II (and even some pre-PC machines). These machines get harder to use every year that goes by. Sheesh. Thanks a bunch! Rklawton04:47, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
According to RFC 3986, angle brackets are not on the list of permitted characters in URIs, so they need to be encoded. Parentheses and semicolons are on the list of "reserved" characters, meaning that they are only supposed to be used for specific purposes specified in the relevant URI scheme, and encoded otherwise. Thus, your example is not a valid URI. *Dan T.*14:57, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing says what IE and Firefox should do with invalid URIs, so both just go on and encode things. Other software (like MediaWiki) can do differently. --cesarb22:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm looking for some technical assistance in producing a "single-page WikiReader", as a trial to investigate how easily this sort of thing is to get done, the article in question being Marian Rejewski. What's the best way of going about this? I've tried saving a copy of the online article and then opening it in OpenOffice; however, the article looks awful! Any tips would be appreciated. — Matt Crypto18:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at de:Wikipedia:PDF-Generator and the external links there. Another possibility would be a software like PDF Creator (*.ps → *.pdf)! You also could try to download the Wikipedia CSS files that are imported in the HTML file "Marian_Rejewski.html" (at the top of the html source code). Or you could save the html file with the full web address to the CSS files (main.css, monobook.css). Then you should get a better result with OpenOffice.org, too. --- Best regards, Melancholie13:49, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
page linking template for military of sri lanka
i need help on creating a template for linking the diffrent branches of the sri lankan military. i need a similar template to the one in the army of india page. i need the specfic codes to create the template because i am not very proficient in creating articles.
Edit textarea cutting off
Um... For some reason I can't edit this in Firefox. If I view source, the entire text of the article is inside the textarea, but only the first 4121 characters show up in the edit window. Happens while logged off, too, but doesn't happen in IE. — Omegatron17:58, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I don't understand what you mean. How is the "textarea" a different thing from the "edit window"? Anyway, I just added a blank link using Firefox 1.5.0.1, and it seems to work fine. If you're seeing weird problems in firefox but not IE, I'd suspect a rouge extension. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk18:06, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The textarea meaning the actual HTML code, and the edit window meaning the rendered, displayed text area. You might be right about extensions, though someone else had trouble editing it on the talk page, so I didn't suspect that. I'll check for any red extensions. ;-) — Omegatron18:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In the last couple of days I have noticed that if you type in a non-existent category (eg typo or not sure of correct name) it no longer comes back as a redlink. This is very inconvenient. Is this intentional or merely a software glitch?--Mais oui!20:39, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Deleted orphaned fair-use images: are there any logs available?
While I've been away, a bunch of fair-use images that I uploaded got orphaned and then shortly deleted. Contrary to the policy described at WP:IFD, deleting orphaned images doesn't require posting any notification to me. Additionally, I can no longer browse my deleted contributions using Kate's tool, so I can't even tell how many of those images got deleted.
Now the question is, how can I get a list of fair-use images I uploaded that got deleted as orphaned? Is that at all possible? --tyomitch03:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. Fairuse is not an integrated software concept, just a little template that those fairuse bots check for. I got hammered by this too (it's real annoying, because they don't care if the images were used on a talk page for fact checking or whatnot). — Ambush Commander(Talk)03:47, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then maybe there's a way to either
make these bots log what they're doing, or
make the list of a user's deleted contributions available?
The latter would also allow admins to separate vandals who had all their edits deleted from innocent newbies who had not edited a single page. --tyomitch07:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Unless the copyright status of the text of this page or section is clarified and determined to be compatible with Wikipedia's content license, the problematic text and revisions or the entire page may be deleted one week after the time of its listing.
What can I do to resolve the issue?
If you hold the copyright to this text, you can license it in a manner that allows its use on Wikipedia.
To confirm your permission, you can either display a notice to this effect at the site of original publication or send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-enwikimedia.org or a postal letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages must explicitly permit use under CC BY-SA and the GFDL. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
Note that articles on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view and must be verifiable in published third-party sources; consider whether, copyright issues aside, your text is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia.
Otherwise, you may rewrite this page without copyright-infringing material. Your rewrite should be placed on this page, where it will be available for an administrator or clerk to review it at the end of the listing period. Follow this link to create the temporary subpage. Please mention the rewrite upon completion on this article's discussion page.
Simply modifying copyrighted text is not sufficient to avoid copyright infringement—if the original copyright violation cannot be cleanly removed or the article reverted to a prior version, it is best to write the article from scratch. (See Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing.)
For license compliance, any content used from the original article must be properly attributed; if you use content from the original, please leave a note at the top of your rewrite saying as much. You may duplicate non-infringing text that you had contributed yourself.
It is always a good idea, if rewriting, to identify the point where the copyrighted content was imported to Wikipedia and to check to make sure that the contributor did not add content imported from other sources. When closing investigations, clerks and administrators may find other copyright problems than the one identified. If this material is in the proposed rewrite and cannot be easily removed, the rewrite may not be usable.
Add the following template to the talk page of the contributor of the material: {{subst:Nothanks-web|pg=Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)|url={{{url}}}}} ~~~~
Place {{copyvio/bottom}} at the end of the portion you want to blank. If nominating the entire page, please place this template at the top of the page, set the "fullpage" parameter to "yes", and place {{copyvio/bottom}} at the very end of the article.
[[Category:Wikipedia pages tagged for copyright problems|]]
I don't think it's necessarily to have a whole new template for this - most everything is the same except for the author's claim that it's a copyvio. It doesn't affect process or anything. You can note this in the reasons on the copyvio listing page, and I think that's good enough. Deco22:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can emphasize text by putting two
apostrophes on each side. Three apostrophes
will emphasize it strongly. Five
apostrophes is even stronger.
You can ''emphasize text'' by putting two
apostrophes on each side. Three apostrophes
will emphasize it '''strongly'''. Five
apostrophes is '''''even stronger'''''.
Except this text is actually italic, not emphasized, and this is bold, not strong. Check the HTML source. Why is it done this way? — Omegatron19:32, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but ''this'' is the markup for emphasis, and '''this''' is the markup for strong emphasis. This is what the how to edit pages say, and this is the way it used to render in the HTML. I don't know why it was changed. — Omegatron22:14, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
IIRC it was changed to bold/italic because it was discovered that the quote markup was being used for general bolding/italicing not just emphasised text. It was felt better to have non-semantic html markup than incorrect semantic markup. Plugwash22:00, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Occasionally the markup is used incorrectly. (We're using definition lists to hold this conversation, for instance, which seems wrong to me.)
But ''double quoted'' text is almost always used in the Wikipedia to mean emphasis; not italics, and we still have <i>italic text</i> → italic text available for the few places it is actually used. I, for one, want it changed back. — Omegatron22:14, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree with you, but as I recall, some editors felt that italic emphasis applied to indicate some or all of foreign terms, or book titles, or short quotations, or generic names, or indicating words as words were not "emphasis". I would argue that in the few cases where there is a better semantic equivalent (HTML cite, dfn, or arguably q elements), emphasizing the words still indicates that there is something different about them, which should be evident from the context, while italics indicate nothing.
Anyone know how screen readers indicate italics and emphasis? My configuration of Lynx text-only browser treats all of i, b, em, and strong, or combinations, the same. —MichaelZ. 2006-02-26 22:53 Z
All of those except short quotations should be emphasis instead of italics, in my book. When there is a better semantic tag, it can be used, too. — Omegatron23:03, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Underlines
Is it just me, or are all the links have underlines all of a suddon? Is some one messing with the Monobok style?--Rayc03:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There have been a few times that I've visited Wikipedia when every link is underlined no matter what, like Rayc is talking about, and I have no idea why. ~MDD469605:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's because the browser failed to load one of the stylesheets. Do a forced reload (Shift-Reload on Firefox) and it'll work. --cesarb13:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is more or less a software feature request, but I wanted to ask for comments here first before submitting it at bugzilla.
I would find the following new magic words useful:
NEXTMONTH: To show the number of the next month
NEXTMONTHNAME: To show the name of next month
NEXTMONTHYEAR: To show the year that will be valid next month
NEXTWEEK: The number of next week
NEXTWEEKYEAR: The year belonging to next week
NEXTDAY: To show tomorrow's day of the month
NEXTDAYNAME: To show the name of tomorrow's weekday
NEXTDAYWEEK: To show the week number that belongs to tomorrow
NEXTDAYMONTH: To show the month that belongs to tomorrow
NEXTDAYMONTHNAME: Tomorrow's month name
NEXTDAYYEAR: The year that belongs to tomorrow's date
These magic words could help with testing. For example, on pages changing daily, like the main page, it would be possible to create a test version that will automagically show what tomorrow's main page will look like. Similarly, pages changing monthly could use this to preview next month's contents. This could be very useful to preview future content to see if the formatting of transcluded pages looks good. (I would love to have a test page that always shows tomorrow's version of Portal:Germany so I can make sure it will look alright). I am pretty sure some other pages could also benefit from "tomorrow" (or "yesterday") links that are made via magic words. Does this sound useful to anybody else or are there good reasons not to have such new magic words? Kusma(討論)04:21, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I knew that was possible using several layers of templates, but that seems a somewhat hackish way to implement this. Are we allowed to use meta-meta-meta-templates for this kind of things now? Kusma(討論)21:00, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bug 5116
I have requested a special kind of category piping at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5116. I will not go into specifics here; if you wish clarification, please leave them on the bugzilla page so I can make sure that the developers are also aware of my clarification. My proposal is mainly to deal with aircraft articles, though I'm sure that other topics have noted this problem as well. Ingoolemotalk08:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In the last week or so, I've had some problems loading Wikipedia pages, mainly diffs and special pages. When I load them the page displays, then a system window pops up saying "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site <page address>. Operation aborted" and an OK button. I click the OK button and the page is replaced by a "cannot be displayed" message. Strangely, when I click the back button the page displays perfectly. This happens infrequently and to seemingly random pages, but never outside Wikipedia. If I go back and forth from a page where it has happened the error tends to occur again. It last happened on this user contributions page just a minute ago. Raven4x4x10:37, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have been creating articles for Slovenian municipalities - basically just copying the standard-municipality infobox to the new en.wiki articles. I noticed that the contents of the infobox cleverly changes to the language of the wiki it is posted in - i.e. "Prebivalcev" becomes "population" and so on.
However - currently this infobox is being copyied to other Wiki's as well i.e.. .ja and .sv. And the contents is from a 2002 statistical cencus - so when the contents is updated some time soon (presumably first in the Slovenian Wiki) I assume the process has to be repeated in all other Wikis? It's a trickle effect which works slowly and therefore lowers the quality of Wikipedia as the factual data on some Wikis will be outdated while perfectly current data is avilable in other Wikis. In addition, updating this data takes time from many editors and the work is largely redundant.
Why does WikiCommons only support media files? Why not make it possible for factual statistical data to be stored there as well?
I'm just using the example with infoboxes for political areas like municipalities, prefectures, countries, states and whatnot - I don't know if it could be used for other things as well, but it probably could. Put the infoboxes on Commons and call them from the national Wikis like you would a picture. When the infoboxes are to be updated they will only have to be updated in the commons and all Wikis will automatically be updated. You could create lists from specific cells in the infobox - i.e.. "Municipality by Size/Area/Donkeys" - and they'd be updated as well when the appropriate script was executed.
The administration of this particular area of Commons would probably need some stricter guidelines regarding categorizing, naming conventions and what exact data could be used - but it's would be worth it. Celcius12:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Categorizing Watchlist?
I participate in a number of projects and would be interested in sectioning off my watchlist by project, so I can see the changes in a particular area. This would help on busy periods when I don't have time to run through everything on my watchlist.
The way I envision it is to have a way to edit the watchlist list to sort and categorize them, so that they show up as separate tabs on "My Watchlists". Any thoughts on this proposal?
Why is Wikipedia working so slowly? It's been like this for a week now. Is it the same for everyone or just me? It's really bugging me. Does anyone know or can help? JackO'Lantern19:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Because Wikipedia is getting popular all the time, there may be certain times during the day when the site is very slow. This has been a regular, persistent issue. Zzyzx11(Talk)20:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, WP is spending money and time on upgrading the server farm(s) and making other improvements. "By September 2005, its server cluster had grown to around 100 servers in four locations around the world." See Wikipedia.Rich Farmbrough 23:24 27 February2006 (UTC).
Glitch
The problem is when I'm logged in, on the upper maragine (correct me if I misspelled that, it looks like butter's sister) where it has "My Talk My Prefrences etc., etc." Well when I move my mouse on it, it shifts left far enough that "My Talk" is under the Wikipedia main page link. That would cause problems. The glitch starts when I go from Wikipedia to the Commons and back.--Calvinsupergenius20:39, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like the database tables are really confused. Doing a null edit fixed two of these; I'm not fixing the rest for now, since the developers might want to take a look. --cesarb01:13, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. The problem was the interaction of <ref> tags with the job queue. When {{ScientologySeries}} was edited, all articles using that template which contained <ref> tags had their category sort keys corrupted. The root cause has been fixed, if you see any more missorted categories then you can fix them by working out which template was changed recently and doing a null edit to it. -- Tim Starling06:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Collateral damage template suggestion
Given the ongoing problem of frequent collateral damage to innocent good-faith contributors due to autoblocking of dynamic IPs, I have been tinkering with a possible template that might make it easier to alert administrators of collateral damage problems. The underlying idea is that innocent bystanders who get caught in an autoblock would only have to fill in the relevant IP and their name in order to alert the relevant admin of the problem.
The IP address 0.0.0.0 has been autoblocked under your signature.
Please note that this is a dynamic IP address that is used by many other contributors in good faith, and that the collateral damage your autoblocking is causing for these people is likely to outweigh any protective benefits of your autoblocking action.
This message has been sent to you by John Smith at this IP who would like to be able to contribute useful information to Wikipedia and therefore requests the block on this IP address to be removed.
Thank you for your help.John Smith 06:36, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
with the underlying syntax:
[[Image:Stop_hand.png|left|30px]] '''Dear Administrator''':
The IP address '''{{{IP|(Sorry, user forgot to enter IP)}}}''' has been '''autoblocked''' under your signature.
Please note that this is a dynamic IP address that is used by many other contributors in good faith, and that the collateral damage your autoblocking is causing for these people is likely to outweigh any protective benefits of your autoblocking action.
This message has been sent to you by '''{{{victim|a good-faith user}}}''' at this IP who would like to be able to contribute useful information to Wikipedia and therefore requests the block on this IP address to be removed.
'''''Thank you for your help''.''' {{{signed|~~~~}}}
with parameters in the above example set as IP = 0.0.0.0, victim = John Smith.
The idea behind the signed parameter is that it would be set to ~~~~ by default in order to give the administrator in question enough information about the affected user even if that user in their distraction forgets to give their name in the victim field. One of the reasons why I wanted to field this template here before adding it to the Template space is that I am not entirely sure whether the use of the four-tilde signature as the default value would be a syntax violation or not. Sandbox tests have been inconclusive. I am not a programmer, just a lowly Wikipedia contributor driven to boldness beyond my technical confidence out of sheer self-defense.
The idea would be to add this template along with a brief how-to guide to the page that autoblocked users are redirected to when they try to edit. At the present time this page contains relatively vague instructions on how to contact the relevant administrator, whose main result seems to be that the collaterally damaged user fires off a snarky message along the lines of "Why the heavy expletive are you accusing me of vandalism?" to said admin. I am hoping that this template would serve the dual purpose of (1) not leaving innocent autoblocked users at a loss about what to do and (2) preventing admins from receiving the brunt of these users' frayed tempers.
Having said that, I would still appreciate any technical input, and particularly any advice on the wisdom or folly of incorporating the four-tilde shortcut into a template (and how to do it right if it is folly). As I said, sandbox tests haven't quite worked out Vremya09:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can't help you with technical issues, and I don't do much blocking as an admin, but clearer instructions and a way to redirect frayed tempers sounds like a very good thing. I'd say go to it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 00:43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
For a few hours, SVGs exported from Adobe Illustrator were rendering incorrectly (blank) due to a funky incompatibility. That's fixed; until the total regeneration is completed, you should now be able to manually flush those using action=purge on the image page. (You might have to force a reload of the images afterwards to actually see the new version.) Note that if it's hosted on Commons you may have to do the purge at Commons. --Brion01:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, apparently a bug or limitation in libxml2. Illustrator's export (at least for some versions) uses inline DTD definitions to create named entities for the SVG and XLink namespace URLs, which apparently doesn't work right with libxml2 older than 2.6.22. If they rendered right before, it might have been due to older versions of librsvg not paying much attention to the XML namespaces... or something. :) --Brion07:25, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Links - underlined or not???
Anyone know why wikilinks keep on changing from being underlined to not being underlined, and back again? Is this some edit war going on in the style formatting department? - MPF12:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It usually happens because your browser failed to load one of the stylesheets (most probably the one generated from your preferences). To fix, do a forced reload on your browser (Shift-Reload on Firefox). --cesarb13:58, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, that doesn't make any difference, nor is there anywhere in my preferences where the underlining or not can be changed on its own without other much more obvious page layout changes which haven't happened (I've investigated both of these possibilities already!) - MPF14:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Currently the image for every logo appears in the category page so when you go to the page it tries to load 200 images. On top of that there are so many logos that the first page on goes up to 9-11pdp and each letter has dozens of pages making the act of finding anything impossible. There are people that are trying to fix the problem by putting the logos into subcatagories but that doesn't solve the problem because the logo template puts the logos on the main page. Can anything be done to fix this problem? --JeffW17:32, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose I might be able to do that if I was pointed to the right documentation, but I can't edit the template, it's Protected. --JeffW14:22, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think changing
[[Category:Logos|<noinclude> </noinclude> {{PAGENAME}}]] to
So I should copy and paste the logo code to a new template and make the change there? Is there some sort of naming convention or should I just call it logo2? --JeffW04:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
CesarB, that has been done, but several logos that only have a subcat tag still appear under "logos" as well as the resective subcat.--Esprit15d19:22, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At 20:14, March 1, 2006, I was creating a succession box for William A. Trimble. 20:14 was the time I posted it. I looked at my User Contributions and discovered at the same time, "I" had edited Aurora class battleship. I was baffeled as I know that I didn't edit that article, heck the subject its on is about a Stargate Atlantis episode that hasnt even aired where I live yet! Could someone look into this and see if there is another American Patriot 1776 out there? And yes, I am sure that I did not edit that artilce. Thank you very much! American Patriot 177620:41, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Have you perhaps been sharing your account with a buddy in town who uses the same ISP and likes Stargate? Might you have left yourself logged in on his/her computer? --Brion22:48, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a project page somewhere that clearly explains the autoblocker and/or its impact on AOL users? The amount of email I get from AOL users confused about being blocked has gone up substantially lately and I want some uniform place to send them for answers. android7922:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mail server blacklisted by SpamCop
For some lovely reason our new mail server has been blacklisted by SpamCop, allegedly for sending mail to spamtrap addresses. (They provide no details by policy, of course, so there's no way to verify it.)
Since there's a tiny possibility that the user-to-user email feature actually could be abused, I've gone ahead and enabled the e-mail confirmation requirement for using email features. This is a bit annoying for the moment since you have to do it separately on each wiki.
I've disputed the listing, so hopefully we'll get it removed soonish and those who aren't getting email will, uh, start getting it again. --Brion22:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What this means for most users: You must go to Special:Confirmemail and tell it to email you a confirmation code. If you don't, you will not receive Wikipedia email. You have to do it with all your accounts, if you have more than one. --cesarb 04:11, 2 March 2006 (UTC) (link changed. Superm401 - Talk05:46, 2 March 2006 (UTC))[reply]
Hmmm. All of a sudden, a mysterious message appears at the top of my Watchlist page:
Wikipedia e-mail confirmation has been enabled. To receive Wikipedia e-mail, you must go to Special:Confirmemail, request a code, and follow the link in the e-mail.
No explanation is given, nor is a link to a WP: policy page or a discussion page provided. No hint of this appears on the Community Portal. "Special:Confirmemail" also fails to explain what has changed, and why this process has been added. How am I supposed to know this isn't a very sophisticated prank? If we need this new process, we really ought to post a notice about it and include an explanatory link in the message that gets displayed everywhere. ~ Jeff Q(talk)09:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If such a message showed up, it's because someone added it to the watchlist display in the hopes people would see it (eg, they "posted a notice about it and included an explanatory link")
You don't need to confirm your address; only if you wish to receive email from other users through the wiki.
If you do, it's through the preferences page. There's a nice big box showing your status, next to the box for opting in to allow receiving mail from other users.
There is no WP: policy page or discussion page, as this is a technical decision I made based on the needs of the site.
I've announced the reason for it here and on wikitech-l; as with all such announcements the information should be copied from these central places to whereever you guys would best see it on each wiki.
It won't just be recieving email, you won't be able to email other users, which is the more relevant part for protecting from improper use. At least we'll know that everyone who can email users has entered a valid return address themselves. — Laura Scudder☎15:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since the bare link to Special:Confirmemail has been confusing people (linking to the preferences would have been much better), I've edited its text (which is at MediaWiki:Confirmemail text) to add a link back to the preferences. It would be a good idea to change it to explain better the situation; I've only added a sentence, the rest is still the MediaWiki default. --cesarb15:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would the SpamCop block have also affected the WikiEN-l mailing list traffic? I stopped receiving it yesterday. (But it started back up again today -- so maybe that means the SpamCop block is lifted?) —Steve Summit (talk) 15:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I enabled my Wikipedia email function when I created my account. Do I need to follow this link and enter the confirmation code, or is this only for new users? Palmiro | Talk16:50, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it should. The entry on the Server admin log quite clearly says it has been enabled for all public wikis. If you are an admin on other of the wikis, go ahead and do it; if you aren't, tell the admins there to do it. It's also particularly important for the admins to do the confirmation on their accounts as soon as possible, because it's one of the ways they can be contacted. --cesarb20:23, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As no one has bothered to explain why you need me to reconfirm my email address, I've disabled wikipedia e-mail for now. (I'm as paranoid about my security as you are about yours. :-P ) This is somewhat bothersome to me, as I'd like to be able to communicate with wikipedia e-mail. What gives? Kim Bruning20:18, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Let me explain then. Wikipedia has not asked for confirmation of your email address in the past; you could put any random email address in the email address field, and it would be used when someone tried to send email to you via Wikipedia. Now, however, the confirmation has been enabled; to be able to use the email features, your email must be confirmed. This confirmation is nothing more than proving that you are the legitimate owner of the email address. When you ask it to send you a confirmation email, it will send to the email registered in your preferences a short text message containing a link with a random key. You just have to open that link with your browser and your email has been confirmed as valid.
Here's a sample of how the message looks like (it's the one I received, sanitized to remove personal information):
Someone, probably you from IP address 127.0.0.1, has registered an
account "CesarB" with this e-mail address on Wikipedia.
To confirm that this account really does belong to you and activate
e-mail features on Wikipedia, please open this link in your browser:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Confirmemail/deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeef
If this is *not* you, please do not follow the link. This confirmation code
will expire at 04:07, 9 March 2006.
[That's the "how";] Here, I think, is the real reason [why]. As cesarb said, in the past, you could theoretically have put any random email address in the email address field. So that random person could have received Wikipedia email intended for you. So Wikipedia could be said to be spamming that person. In order to prove to concerned outside parties (e.g. spamcop) that it does not spam people, Wikipedia needs to be able to point to its policies which ensure that all the addresses it sends to are valid and requested.
In general, any site that sends mail (any site, for any reason) pretty much has to use a "double opt-in" scheme like this. Any other scheme eventually gets hijacked by spammers. I agree that double opt-in is a nuisance for all concerned, but it's unfortunately one of the prices we all have to pay in response to those pesky spammers. (I'm also not suggesting that Wikipedia email had actually been getting hijacked by any spammers yet, but I think it's clear that the "every site needs to use double opt-in, no matter what" policy does apply.) —Steve Summit (talk) 21:06, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't the correct name for it "confirmed opt-in"? "Double opt-in" sounds like you are doing something twice, which you are not (you only have to confirm once). --cesarb22:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Double opt-in" is what a friend of mine calls it; I don't know which term is considered "correct". It's "double" because you have to explicitly do two things: ask for the email, and confirm that you asked. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
RE:"How to get this off my watchlist notice" comments, you can bypass the box with the methods shown above, but the notice on the watchlist page is not going to be permenant, I've added it via MediaWiki:Watchdetails to get the word out to the thousands of editors who use wikipedia email, but don't read the mailing list or this page often. Comments regarding it's use can be made on MediaWiki talk:Watchdetails. I was bold in implementing this notice, even with it being in the mediawiki space, but don't intend for it to be up for more than 2 weeks. If confirmation are going to be left enabled, perhaps we could send out one last unconfirmed email to all wikimail holders, letting them know of the confirmation requirement? xaosfluxTalk/CVU01:37, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's a message at the top of my watchlist. I suppose I'm not the only one. :) It links here, but a link to an explaining page (what it's about) would make more sense. DirkvdM06:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have got this "confirmmail" message 4 times now. Three times have I confirmed it this week. The IP number mentioned in the email is not mine tho. Does this matter? And how many times do I ave to confirm this?DanielDemaret17:00, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As long as the username on the confirmation email is correct, and you really requested the confirmation email to be sent, it's normal; the IP is probably a transparent proxy you are using (go to Special:Watchlist while not logged in; it should display the same IP address). You have to confirm only if Special:Preferences says you need to; you can see there when it was confirmed, and if it needs confirmation. --cesarb17:09, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Because that article contains both the words "bit" and "torent" (refering apprently to Torent Forest, a location in the game). It was apparently the only article using both words, as you spelled them. Dragons flight05:18, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't that majorly suck ass? I mean really, isn't there some way to tell it that there is at least a possibility that someone entering a bad spelling for bittorrent wants that instead of a completely unrelated computer game? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.40.249.122 (talk • contribs)
Is anyone in charge of fixing the search engine? How do I help fix it? Is there a plan for rolling out a new version? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.40.249.122 (talk • contribs)
Not really. To do so would be a massive cost of time and effort. Unlike Google and Yahoo, we have only a few full-time developers, none of whose first concerns are the search algorithm. You're talking about something that would take years with the resources we have. It'd be nice, but there's not much we can do right now. Ral315 (talk) 06:23, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What about making it an open source project? Surely, as popular as wp is, there would be volunteers to code it? I mean, there are os search algs that are better than that already. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.40.249.122 (talk • contribs)
Ahem, Google already fixed it for us, just type "bit torent site:en.wikipedia.org" in the google query box, you'll get what you want [2]. Isn't this great? Problem solved! Back to writing encyclopedia. --Vsion14:22, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A quick fix might be to add a link to the search results page: "You can search this term on Wikipedia using google", and that would do the site:en.wikipedia.org search. Just a random idea... Weregerbil14:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Alternatively, we could encourage our users to spell correctly... Anyway, whenever the MediaWiki search is unavailable, a Google search box pops up. (At least, it does for me) haz(user talk)e15:39, 2 March 2006
Why is it ever switched on? There are no advantages, and lots of disadvantages to the MediaWiki search.
As a furriner I do appreciate sites that feature fuzzy searches, as correct spelling has an extra hurdle for us non-native speakers. Fuzzy searching is a long researched and published subject; ready code and almost ready pseudocode are available. Performance is a bit of a problem though. Exact matching is fast with a properly indexed database, whereas fuzzy algorithms generally require a heavier scan (though heuristics can be used to prune the search space). Weregerbil16:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In this specific case, there exists a redirect from "Bit torent" to "BitTorrent", but it does not show up in the search results. However, when one searches for "Bit torrent", the first two results are redirects to "BitTorrent". Now that doesn't make sense. --Someones life15:59, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks - the Google search works great! Why don't we switch over to that entirely? I don't want to be rude, but the built in search is an embarrasment. There are plenty of better ones out there, but it seems like the Google one is easiest. At the very least, put an option to use the google one wherever the other one is. In my case, someone on the phone asked me to check out bit torrent. So I type it in on Wikipedia, mis-spelling it (yes, I am, but then, so are a lot of people) and get absolute nonsense and no clue as to what to do next. Of course, in the real world, I type it into Google, realise I am mis-spelling it, and get the the main page for the software, but wouldn't it be nice if the seach on wp actually worked?
Google, as far as I know, still relies on web crawling to build their index. This would mean that Google searches with respect to Wikipedia will always be out of date and have the potential to overlook the obscure and little linked to topics. Hence we can't rely solely upon Google. Also, some people have issues with endorsing just one commercial search vendor. Ultimately search improvements are probably going to have come from inside. Providing intelligent fuzzy logic is a laudable goal, but dramatically increases the computational complexity of search. That doesn't make it impossible, but probably means that search will need to have some hardware dedicated to it if it is going to be made fancy without bogging down the rest of the site. Dragons flight18:37, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it says just above that the search index is badly out of date, so Wikipedia search clearly isn't operating on live data. I think switching to Google is a good option, though perhaps there should be a customisation available to choose a different one?--Myk06:36, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It does work you just need to go back to school and quit complaining.. unless of course your willing to help fund development?--MatthewFenton16:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Somehow I'm not surprised that Google, with an annual revenue of $6 billion and immense market capitalization, can afford all the fuzzylogic software it wants, complete with a hundred thousand servers (they really do have that many) to run it. Somehow I'm surprised that people expect free, non-profit Wikipedia to be able to manage it. In the meantime, until billionaires start to fund Wikipedia, we're just going to have to rely on accurate spelling or deal with the fact that typos will produce unwanted results. RGTraynor17:03, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The search engine is indeed crap, and I think the difficulty involved in improving it it is being far, far overstated. Yes, to make it perfect could take years, but to make it "good enough" should only take a few weeks for somebody who knows how to tweak regular expressions. (Don't ask me to quantify how I arrived at the figure of only a "few weeks", I pulled it from the same place you pulled the "years" figure). I've written similar searches myself. However, complaining here isn't the answer... there's got to be a place where we can request programmatic enhancements without getting the request shot down by people who know nothing about programming. The Crow17:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the obstacles seem to be being overstated. The heavy lift on doing a good enough job on this has already been done. For that matter, it's a project that might be given to students. Actually, yes, people do expect Wikipedia to manage it, in the same way that Mozilla puts out world class browsers and Open Office is expected to function. That's not being rude and ungrateful, just stating a fact. The original poster seemed to be asking how to help, and has not been given anywhere concrete to do that. For great justice.17:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The original poster actually used the words "How do I help fix it?" - pretty unambiguously offering to help, not just bitching. For what it's worth, I certainly don't have the coding skills to make this work, but I too would vote +1 for work on enabling fuzzy searching. I'd also vote +1 for people assuming good faith and pointing the original poster towards where he can help, rather than just slamming him (e.g. "It does work you just need to go back to school and quit complaining" - not very helpful). As has been pointed out, you may hear a word in conversation or on the radio and not know how to spell it, and for those without english as a first language I'm sure flexibility would sometimes help. Jamse18:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not being a dictionary doesnt mean it doesnt work, Its not a spell checker nor should it be.. If you cant spell what your looking for then check it in a dictionary--MatthewFenton17:58, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It can be hard to check somethng in a dictionary if you don't know how it's spelled :-) Going to school might not be a practical option to a large part of the world's population. Especially in the parts of the world where unbiased information is needed the most desperately. "Learn to spell English, lazy bones" is not the most constructive approach for helping them.
There are lots of concepts that are not in dictionaries (proper names come to mind). Also there are lots of words whose transliteration to English varies — witness the different spellings of Arabic words, as things like vowel transliteration are far from unambiguous.
Wikipedia has managed to get lots of volunteer help with content. From the comments in this thread I'm sensing that volunteer programmers have not been mobilized nearly to that level. Volunteer programmers certainly do exist; see the free software movement. Weregerbil18:19, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fixing the search engine is a problem, but remember, there are many others, like monitoring and maintaining a fast, healthy server grid, finish the much requested article validation and single login features, etc. There's many requests and few coders, though. That said, if any of you has a clue as to how to fix it, you are welcome to submit a PHP patch to Bugzilla. Titoxd(?!? - help us)18:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
COPY FROM MAIN VILLAGE PUMP: Does anyone realize that you can't get into the village pump by searching 'The Village Pump"? I typed it in the search and it came up with nothing, not even a relevancy match. I think it should be changed so that people can get in whether they searched it with or without 'the'. Pseudoanonymous03:34, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, I've found that the search box is really awful at finding anything in Wikipedia: space. Two factors might exacerbate this: the checkboxes which you may need to check to get results there, and the fact that if you started the title with "Wikipedia:" it will look for a word starting with "Wikipedia:", including the colon, instead of taking the hint to search in the Wikipedia namespace. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 18:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My guess would be that it's not so much that we don't have the development manpower, we don't have the servers. We don't even have the resources to update the literal full-text search indices now, from what I understand, so how are we supposed to improve them? (In my opinion, ads are the answer, but I realize that's an unpopular sentiment.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about that - I think its less about the brute force of being able to search more, and more about searching smart. For example, right now, it seems that the search engine does a full text search of the article and title, looking for exact matches. I can't see there's much value in that. Fuzzy searching of titles would be faster, require less server time, and return more useful results. For great justice.02:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, if we're worried about the servers, let's just turn off the search engine, and get free searching through Yahoo and Google. Their searches are better, free, and we use them anyway when the search engine is down. For great justice.02:33, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Share the hatred of ads. What about an 'ad mirror'? Loads of sites mirror with ads. Why not create a separate foundation whose purpose is to run an ad funded mirror (under the GFDL this is fine) and donating profits to WP? No one would fork, because it wouldn't be Wikipedia doing it. People who hate on it could hate on it. Who cares, it would be legal. And ... 3. Profit! For great justice.18:38, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding Titoxd's comment above that you can just submit a patch to bugzilla: you wouldn't submit a patch to our bugzilla, you'd submit a patch to the Lucene issue tracker. The search backend is an external open source project, just like MySQL or PHP. There's not much point in complaining about it here. Lucene has been in active development for longer than Wikipedia has existed, I hardly think it's reasonable to expect us to have written our own vastly superior search engine in that time. -- Tim Starling02:50, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Tim - it's interesting how little is known about this. Seriously though - there is a vastly superior alternative available to us right now, for less work than we're doing now - why not just switch it off, and use Yahoo and Google? For great justice.03:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yahoo and Google can't read our site structure (namespaces, etc), so can only provide a "dumb" word search. To have a more capable search which works with the wiki's structure (limiting common searches to the article space, etc), we have our own search engine. As noted above, it's based on Apache Lucene, a very capable and generalized open-source search backend library. If you're just going to whine about it, well, don't be surprised if no one pays much attention. :)
Additionally the foreign crawlers are limited to updating only after a long delay; at the moment this is true of our internal search as well but that's fixable if memory leak problems in the update daemon can be resolved. That's something Google or Yahoo can't provide.
A fuzzy title search à la "did you mean to type XYZ?" is possible and is in the code, but we have it disabled for now as it's slower to perform than the entire full-text search.
Kate's been working on improvements to the Lucene-based search for Wikia; if we can agree to get that work open-sourced we can move over to the updated code for Wikipedia as well. Otherwise it'll continue to sit around until someone else gets the inclination to put in some elbow grease. --Brion04:11, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We're aware it exists, but since it's totally proprietary it's not something we're considering. The Foundation's committed to running on a pretty much complete open-source software stack; part of what we're doing is making sure that everything we've got can be reproduced. --Brion07:37, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Brion - that's really helpful. If I understand you right, your saying that the search engine is better in theory than in practice, because WP had the fuzzy searching switched off to save server load? That improving the code wouldn't help, because the decent code is turned off? If that's the case, then it really is just a question of more money for more servers so that the decent search functions can be turned on? Thanks for an insightful answer. Just a comment from a user perspective, I have moved over to using google to search completely now, simply because it has the fuzzy title search. It would be great to see that in the main wp search, and would make it useable. Thanks again, For great justice.17:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Multilingualism
Isn't it possible to contribute in more than one language? I opened the main page in Zulu and it I suddenly wasn't logged in anymore, and then it said I didn't exist when I tried to log in! Is the English-language wikipedia completely seperate from the others? Do I need to create a new account for other language versions or am I just doing something wrong? Any help would be very appreciated! Thanks :) Joziboy 2 March 2006, 10:43
One has to wonder how that will be implemented, since surely there are duplicate user IDs in other languages. If someone in the Greek Wikipedia, for example, had created a User:Zoe account, how would this proposed change make sure that they don't take over my English language account, or that I don't take over their Greek language account? User:Zoe|(talk)17:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations, you've hit the exact problem with single logon (well, the big non-technical one) ;-). The two suggestions floated, IIRC, were either to force everyone off the duplicate account - so all the different Zoes have to get new usernames - or to find some algorithm to determine which user gets it, whether that be by volume of contributions or date of registration or number of accounts held under that name or... something. As you can guess, neither of these are going to please everyone. Shimgray | talk | 21:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I got the box back to looking halfway decent by scaling the image down to 121px width (from 128px). Somehow, the thumbnailer only outputs a grey line if the width of the image is between 122 and 170 pixels (using 171 or more pixels it works again). Somthing strange is going on... I tried purging and shift-refreshing, and only got the line. --grm_wnrEsc20:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a draft with mock text. I'm having trouble adjusting the space between the left- and right-hand columns in this table. Also, the right hand column's right margin is a little bit off too. I need to adjust these elements while retaining this style of table source code. Here's the link to the draft. User:Go for it!/Draft. --Go for it!17:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
watchlist preferences - want it to default to 3 days
My watchlist is about 1400 pages long — it keeps on defaulting to a timespan of 12 hours so I have to continuously click it to "3 days" (to check if I missed out anything), which I find annoying. Is there anyway, in CSS, etc. for me to change this and set my default to three days, no matter the length of my watchlist? Is there a plan to implement this without all this tweaking in the future, too? Elle vécut heureuseà jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 01:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen it but not quite sure I understand everything it is suppose to do and I can't find information about it. So what all is this suppose to be confirming? Ryokosha03:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Go to my preferences and make sure you have entered an e-mail address, and select the option there for getting a confirmation e-mail. You can also go to Special:Confirmemail to request the confirmation e-mail, so long as you have an e-mail address already set in my preferences. The confirmation is now required for e-mail functions to work. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 03:37, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've confirmed, so I don't know why the silly notice keeps appearing on every single page view. Make it go away! —MichaelZ. 2006-03-03 03:39 Z
But what the heck am I confiriming e-mail messages for? Just the standard to notify me of a reply to a watched page, updates to site and such? Ryokosha05:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, actually for when someone clicks on the E-mail this user link on your talk page. You are not notified of changes to pages in your watchlist or changes in the site; it is exclusively for communication originated by other users. Titoxd(?!? - help us)07:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone else seen this? Could this be a step towards something bigger and beautiful?
I've clicked Special:Confirmemail and received the e-mail, but when I click the link in the e-mail, the Wiki page it goes to says "Invalid confirmation code. The code may have expired." I've tried this a few times yesterday and today. What should I do? --Bruce1ee08:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Can you reduce the space between the columns? - It's beyond me.
I need help with this one. There's a colum of white space down the middle (or almost middle) between the two columns. How can I reduce that so the gap is uniform with the gaps at the other edges of the same boxes? If you can do this, I will worship you as a markup GOD (GOD of Djinn).
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western, Arabic–Persian, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the spiritual problem of how to reach enlightenment with the exploration of the nature of reality and the ways of arriving at knowledge. Chinese philosophy focuses principally on practical issues in relation to right social conduct, government, and self-cultivation.
Philosophy ponders the most fundamental questions humankind has been able to ask. These are increasingly numerous and over time they have been arranged into the overlapping branches of the philosophy tree:
Aesthetics: What is art? What is beauty? Is there a standard of taste? Is art meaningful? If so, what does it mean? What is good art? Is art for the purpose of an end, or is "art for art's sake?" What connects us to art? How does art affect us? Is some art unethical? Can art corrupt or elevate societies?
Epistemology: What are the nature and limits of knowledge? What is more fundamental to human existence, knowing (epistemology) or being (ontology)? How do we come to know what we know? What are the limits and scope of knowledge? How can we know that there are other minds (if we can)? How can we know that there is an external world (if we can)? How can we prove our answers? What is a true statement?
Ethics: Is there a difference between ethically right and wrong actions (or values, or institutions)? If so, what is that difference? Which actions are right, and which wrong? Do divine commands make right acts right, or is their rightness based on something else? Are there standards of rightness that are absolute, or are all such standards relative to particular cultures? How should I live? What is happiness?
Logic: What makes a good argument? How can I think critically about complicated arguments? What makes for good thinking? When can I say that something just does not make sense? Where is the origin of logic?
Metaphysics: What sorts of things exist? What is the nature of those things? Do some things exist independently of our perception? What is the nature of space and time? What is the relationship of the mind to the body? What is it to be a person? What is it to be conscious? Do gods exist?
Political philosophy: Are political institutions and their exercise of power justified? What is justice? Is there a 'proper' role and scope of government? Is democracy the best form of governance? Is governance ethically justifiable? Should a state be allowed? Should a state be able to promote the norms and values of a certain moral or religious doctrine? Are states allowed to go to war? Do states have duties against inhabitants of other states?
I've tried and tried, and just can't figure it out. I need the two columns squeezed together, with the same space between them as is between the boxes elsewhere on the page. The borders are fine, and work as predicted. But that big wide space down the center is driving me NUTZ. (And no, this is not for the philosophy portal. I chose it as a starting point because the chart code used is more stable than a div-based layout. By the way, I need the double outer border to stay. Thanks. --Go for it!12:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not knowing exactly where you want to use this, I'm not sure exactly how to fix it, but I'd recommend some general cleanup and simplification regardless. Rather than clutter up this page, though, I'm going to play with a couple of versions on a sub-page. Let's take this question to User:Go for it!/table tests. Rossami(talk)21:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is that better? After playing with the paddings and margins for a bit, I dug deeper, and couldn't figure out a reason for the table to have five columns with nested tables within. I simplified it to two columns, with the borders applied directly to table cells, rather than to one-cell tables. I think I've simplified the code as far as I can, removing all the excess paddingses and marginses, and probably over-commented it for someone who seems to understand CSS as well as you do. Still, I hope that's helpful for whoever might be maintaining it down the road. Does this do what you want? — Catherine\talk22:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Turning off a specific edit button
Is there a way to turn off the [edit] button for a particular heading, while leaving all the other edit buttons on the page unaffected? --Go for it!14:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One method is to use <h2>This is a heading</h2> instead of ==This is a heading==. This used to cause problems when you tried to edit a later section on the page, as the correspondence between sections and headers was broken, but I think this was fixed quite some time ago. I haven't tried it, so use with caution.-gadfium20:22, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Pressing enter in the subject line
I suddenly understand why forums that have lots of newbies, such as Wikipedia:Reference desk, end up with so many people adding vague headings with no accompanying text!
If you press enter after typing the subject on an "add comment" editing page, it acts as if you clicked "Save page". I imagine most people who do this aren't trying to be obtuse or unhelpful, or thinking that the box is a search engine -- they may have even read the directions. But pressing the enter key, which would almost certainly do the right thing in most e-mail clients, happens to do something completely unhelpful to everyone involved on Wikipedia. And then the newbie probably gives up and goes away and we grumble about the stupid incoherent newbies.
Would it be possible to change this to something reasonable? The best thing would be for the enter key to take you from the subject to the body, but that may not be possible with the limitations of forms. Having the enter key do nothing would still be better. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 15:48, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can think of two or three ways I could archive a talk page, but I'd like to know what the official method is. For example, doing a Move would preserve all the edit history...and then I'd presumably make a new page out of the redirect that would create. But I could also just make a sub-page, then cut and paste most of the content from the original page, leaving the last few items in place. This would preserve continuity.
Both are usually used. Some people archive by cut-and-paste, some archive by moving; it's more of a personal preference. Avoid, however, the third method (archiving to history); it has significant drawbacks (the most important of them being making it much harder to search for older comments). --cesarb21:12, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To create a plug-in for Wikipedia
Hii all ,
We have developed a web mapping application . And would like to integrate it with Wikipedia . Our mapping application uses MapServer,Php/Mapscript , as the scripting language and MySql as the database. Our application accepts user clicks on the image provided by us .And points are plotted .We have developed a Php file to accomplish this. Could anybody tell us how to create a plug-in for Wikipedia .
Thanks a lot for your help
Munira
Do you mean Mediawiki, the software that runs Wikipedia, or the Wikipedia website itself? If its Mediawiki, see that article for links to the documentation for it. If it's Wikipedia the website, you'll have to present an extremely argument why we should run your software. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk21:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(size: 40x49)
(size: 13x16)
(size: 14x17)
→AzaToth 18:47, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
#c-MONGO-2006-02-28T10:48:00.000Z-Image:US_Locator_Blank.svg){kind=link}