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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Janderk (talk | contribs) at 02:21, 8 October 2004 (→[[Constellation]] article). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues. Bugs and feature requests should be made at MediaZilla: since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.

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Option to preview changes?

Apologies if this should have gone to MediaZilla but I took a look and it intimidates me. ^^; Not to mention that it only mentions bugs, there, and makes no mention of feature requests.

The way MediaWiki works right now, you can push a button while making an edit to show a preview of the page as it will look after your edits. Then, once you've saved your edits, you can go to the history and ask for a comparison between the version you just saved and the version that's there now.

Why not a preview option that combines the two: one that shows you the difference between your proposed version and the current version before you save? For certain kinds of edits, this would be absolutely invaluable; for instance, I just moved a number of entries on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention from the History subsection of Computer and Information Science to the actual History section. Merely seeing the preview of the page as it would be wouldn't tell me if, for instance, I had accidentally slipped up and deleted an entry I was trying to move. I would have to wait until I'd finished saving and then ask for the comparison, and then go back and re-edit. Someone who didn't do that sort of double-checking wouldn't spot the problem, even if they did preview during the editing. -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:40, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Antaeus Feldspar's suggestion actually is a good one for almost any kind of nontrivial editing. Surely it's a good idea when you edit to decide, before you commit, whether the changes you made really are appropriate; we all have half-baked ideas that we think better of after a few minutes. AF's proposed technology would make it possible to check your own work more effectively. Opus33 02:18, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that with these problems happening to some users (not just myself) it would be even more valuable. Even if you use the preview button religiously, if you're editing a long article, it's murder to go back and try to figure out, without any clues, whether your browser introduced any changes other than the one you intended. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:48, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ceres page move request

Can an admin move Ceres (mythology) to Ceres? Not receiving any disagreement, I moved the disambiguation page to Ceres (disambiguation). —Mike 20:36, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Wait. This contradicts all the other ancient gods. See Jupiter, Mars. Don't we already have a convention on this? Rmhermen 00:11, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
I agree, we should just follow the existing practice. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:23, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I can't find the practice written out. But I recall we were going to move pages from foo (mythology) to foo (god) lest we insulted anyone. The ones listed on Roman mythology are still listed under three different forms. I would suggest standardizing on foo (god). Rmhermen 00:32, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
I can understand if there is a major planet by the same name, but in this case there isn't. You can also take a look at Quirinus, Minerva, and Lares for other examples of gods without the "(god)" or "(mythology)" disambiguation in the article's title. —Mike 04:20, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately, 1 Ceres is an odd case. Because there's no solid definition of just what a "planet" is, the solar system is left with many objects that are clearly not simple asteroids, but are historically not considered planets either. This category includes Ceres, 4 Vesta, and the recently discovered Sedna and Quaoar, among others. Many people think Pluto belongs in that category with them. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:42, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Current practice is a mess.
When a minor celestial object (or software program or anything else) is named after a mythological/religious entity, the original mythological/religious entity should surely have the undisambiguated title as it is the original after which the other was named. Currently this is not consistant. Compare the different treatment of Apollo and Juno. As to Jupiter and Mars, one can strongly argue that treatment of the deities should be under the undisambiguated article titles rather than under Jupiter (god) and Mars (god). If a name has muliple meanings, normally one at least should be the undisambiguated meaning, and here it should be Jupiter referring to the god, since that is the original. As the name of the planet is so common, it would be reasonable that the Jupiter page about the god would have two disambiguation links above the lead paragraph, one to Jupiter (planet) and one to Jupiter (disambiguation) for other meanings. This seems to me to be a rule that could be universally applied to all gods and mythological and legendary personages.
Another possible rule is that in cases where it seemed that a reference to something other than the deity is more common, then a disambiguation page would be the main target. The difficulty with this rule would be establishing which use was more common. Which use of Jupiter is most common? Probably here a case for the planet can be made. But what of Juno or Europa or Eros or Hercules and many others where it is probably impossible to tell which is the most common usage. Following the other rule avoids needless argument and makes Wikipedia usage consistant. Enter the divine name alone to get to an article on religion and mythology. Add "(planet)" or "(asteroid)" or "(constellation)" or "(satellite)" to get to the celestial objects. Or standardize an official list of celestial names which are considered of equal value to their mythological counterparts, ones where it is likely that more searches will be for the celestial references than the divine references. Such a list might be: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Vesta, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Sedna, Callisto, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Orion, Andromeda, Cassiopeia. For the rest, mythological and legendary articles get undisambiguated priority.
Use of "(mythology)" for deities has always been bad, especially so for Roman deities that don't have any known mythology. Vesta is not the goddess of the hearth in Roman mythology especially, but more generally the ancient Roman goddess of the hearth. Accordingly, in most case "(god)" or "(goddess)" is better when disambiguation is needed. But it shouldn't be much needed.
Jallan 22:54, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikimedia image problem

I don't really know where else to put this; I already tried on meta.wikimedia.org several days ago and have received no answer.

I installed a Wikimedia wiki on my personal computer as a sort of PIM. It's working very well, except that any image I put into an article is left- and bottom-aligned. I've tried many possible remedies and nothing seems to work. Does anyone know why this is happening, and more importantly how to fix it? Thanks in advance. -Branddobbe 10:20, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)


Database problem?

When attempting to edit earlier versions of various articles, I encountered this message:

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Petrel,oldid=6156053".
This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.
If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.

Anyone know what's going on? Ðåñηÿßôý | Talk 02:29, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't know what's going on. I've seen the same thing happen on the Wikimedia: site a bit, but it doesn't seem to be reproducible since I can access Petrel&oldid=6156053 without an error. You might want to report it to MediaZilla: if you see it again. Angela. 08:00, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)
These can happen when one of the slave database servers is too far behind the primary database server. Mentioning it to me in a private message in IRC is the fastest way to get it looked at if I'm around, otherwise a mention in #mediawiki will do the job. It happens that I also changed the error message a little while and it now suggests trying again in a couple of minutes. That's usually more than enough time to catch up - even a couple of seconds will usually be enough. At around the time of this problem report there was an unusually large delay because of page move vandalism, fixed by temporarily switching to only using one server. The next version of the MediaWiki software is expected to have a big improvement in the area of page moves, making them almost instantaneous and no longe a possible cause of lag. It's possible that this sort of query will be changed to make it wait up to a few seconds for the slave to catch up to the master. Jamesday 14:31, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I wrote the code to fix this and various related problems, months ago. -- Tim Starling 00:32, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

Need help moving page back.

I would like to help moving an article back from "Coalition prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison" to "Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse." Thanks. Maurreen 13:51, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Seems to have been done. Coalition prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and its talk page are both currently redirects, to Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse and its talk page, and neither has significant history (just your move). And there's quite a discussion at Talk:Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse about the name, with a couple of polls and various opinions as to what they decided.

Assuming this request has been satisfied, nothing more needs to happen. But in future please note when requests have been satisfied so people don't have to waste time checking. It's also good to wikify the article names, it takes little trouble on your part and saves significant time on the part of those who want to help. Andrewa 00:22, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with wikipedia logo? Everytime I glide the mouse pointer over it the logo reloads. It wasn't like that before and it's very annoying. What's going on? Wareware 03:01, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Same was happening for me, for a couple of days. I assume somebody altered the Javascript with an unanticipated consequence. Seems OK now. A couple of months ago I had problems with severe image breakup when two or more instances of the Wikipedia page were open, but that too seems OK now. --NathanHawking 21:34, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC)

Need help moving Ki ho'alu to Ki ho`alu

I need help moving Ki ho'alu to Ki ho`alu due to a mis-spell. Problem of course is I created a page Ki ho`alu already. Needs deletion; sorry.

Ross

Done. Andrewa 13:47, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Request to move pages

The talk page and history has been moved from the article Corset to Tight lacing corset. Could these be moved back, please? There are more details on the discussion page.

- Katherine Shaw 09:59, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

I concur: the page should be moved back. Not all corsets are laced, so the page is a misnomer. [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 10:08, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This page has since been moved back to the original location. Just FYI for anyone reading it here. —Morven 03:33, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

Image cut off

Look at Tarija and look at the map of Bolivia - look at the lower left. The black border doesn't reach around there. Right? Now click the image, and you see that it does, in fact, reach around. My browser here is IE6 - Is this a known issue? Seems an odd issue, but here we are, it seems to be lopping off the lowest one or two lines of the image. --Golbez 22:14, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

The problem wasn't happening with Mozilla, but I could see it using IE6. I tweaked it (forgetting to sign in in the IE window, of course), and it seems better. (both browsers miss a tiny bit of the right border) Niteowlneils 02:39, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Bernard Shaw and Bernard shaw... admin please help me move

There are two pages, one named "Bernard Shaw," which is a redirect to "George Bernard Shaw," and a page named "Bernard shaw," which is a disambiguation page between "George Bernard Shaw" and a still-blank "Bernard Shaw (CNN)" (Bernard Shaw is a CNN comentator).

The "American presidential debates" entry lists "Bernard Shaw" as a former presidential TV debate moderator. The link, however, is to "Bernard Shaw" and redirects to "George Bernard Shaw." George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, ten years before the first TV debate between Kennedy and Nixon.

Please help moving things around.

Thanks.

Large Boat 02:18, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Done. Bernard Shaw is now the disambiguation page. Incoming links all made to point to the correct place. Lupo 09:39, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Table help needed

Can someone help me with the wiki markup on Air Force One? Thanks. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 22:05, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

Done. :) --Golbez 22:33, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

My watchlist

...Gets bizarre editions from time to time and I'm inclined to believe that someone is messing with me. I changed my password and it just happened again recently. I'm quite sure I didn't opt to watch ADOLF HITLER IS EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN or ClockWorkNigger, or various random strings of letters. Has this happened to people in the past? :-\ --Tothebarricades.tk 00:05, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

When a page on your watchlist gets moved, the new title is automatically added. Those were most likely the result of page move vandals. Goplat 04:56, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Yesterday Adolf Hitler was moved to ADOLF HITLER IS EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN by a vandal, and of course moved back quite quickly - so I am quite sure you have Hitler on your watchlist. And ClockWorkNigger was Linux temporarily. andy 14:51, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Move Theiss River to Tisza

Could someone please move Theiss River to Tisza? Theiss is the not so current name for the river Tisza, which flows in Romania, Ukraine, Hungary and Serbia. Theiss is the old German name, but for instance in Encyclopedia Britannica the Hungarian name Tisza is used. The reason a simple move doesn't work is that there is already some history on Tisza. Right now it's a redirect to Theiss River, but it used to be a stub saying "this is the Hungarian name of Theiss". --12:40, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There's been discussion on the talk page, and no-one seems to object, so I've gone and moved Theiss River to Tisza, and changed the (quite numerous) redirects. zoney ♣ talk 22:26, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Current events talk page

Can someone restore the history for Talk:Current events (which is now at Talk:September 2004)? Grunt, being somewhat overzealous in archiving the Current events page, moved Talk:Current events to Talk:September 2004 (and I changed the Talk:September 2004 to a redirect), destroying the history for Talk:Current events. Mateo SA | talk 03:07, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Your efforts to fix the problem made it worse. Unfortunately, the feature that would have allowed you to fix it cleanly doesn't seem to be well-known.
MediaWiki allows for pages to be moved over redirects provided two conditions are met: 1) The redirect points at the article being moved; 2) the redirect has no history other than its creation. Had you simply moved the talk page back, there'd be no fuss.
The problem is now repaired. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:07, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll remember that in the future. - Mateo SA 04:33, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Older versions vs latest version, edit history

I seem to be unable to get to the latest version of the article on Kurt Krenn. I can only access it if I click on the edit history and then (last). Why's that? Anything wrong? <KF> 16:30, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Please ignore the above. Of course it's working now. <KF> 16:44, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Arrows at the end of external links - now gone?

Has anyone else noticed that the little blue arrows at the end of an external link are no longer there? Does anyone know why? I think it's useful to be able to distinguish an external link from an internal one. Paul August 20:26, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

You can still distinguish them by color; external and interwiki links are a lighter blue than internal links. Goplat 20:52, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
That difference in color is very subtle and perhaps my eyesight is failing or perhaps my monitor is less than optimal, but I find the colors are nearly indistinguishable unless I look really closely. I think it is a really bad idea to remove the icons (or in the alternative, at least make the external link color more noticably distinct). [[User:Bkonrad|User:Bkonrad/sig2]] 21:09, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
My question is who decided to make that change? —Mike 21:49, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)
I second that question. Could we look for consensus first? – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 21:39, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
I can't tell the difference on the poor LCD screen of my laptop. violet/riga (t) 20:25, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well the arrows now seem to be back. Paul August 17:16, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

This is the code that Internet Explorer sees , starts complaining about line 3

/* generated javascript */var skin = 'myskin'; var stylepath = '/style';/* MediaWiki:Myskin */ <Myskin.js&gt

This symptom started within the last hour.Ancheta Wis 13:46, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

special characters turning into question marks

I stumbled across two instances where edits had somehow inadvertently turned special characters (dashes, apostrophes and quotation marks) into question marks. The original reports are here and here. I have no idea what these two cases have in common. It looks like a bug, but it's not clear whether it's a bug on some users' machines or in the WP software. It seems important that we find out. If you've come across this phenomenon, either while editing or in the form of strange question marks in articles, please give as many details of circumstances, browser, operating system etc. as you can below. Perhaps we can identify a pattern. (If this is well-known and/or solved, feel free to remove this post.) Fpahl 18:42, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This kind of problem was invoked once before; see here and here. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 18:51, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
I know at least some of what's going on -- it seems to be a problem with "smart quotes". As best as I can figure, some people are doing their editing with editors that replace simple apostrophes, ASCII 27, with a non-standard "smart quote" character, ASCII 3F. Then some browsers, such as the one I'm stuck with on my downstairs computer, render those characters as apostrophes when showing the article, and when showing the text inside an editor box, but when saving the text, doesn't. I presume something similar's up with dashes and quotation marks. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:30, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Why the same browser is also introducing space errors, that seem to insert arbitrary returns into the wikitext in strange places, is something I don't even have a theory for yet. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:55, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

How to edit mediawiki so only the contents of a page is shown

I would like to know how to do this i.e. which files to edit and how. I only want the page to contain the contents - none of the headers/footers, just the text that someone inserts into the text box.

Hope you can help.

someone please fix hip hop slang

hip hop slang seems to have somehow gotten messed up on my last edit & now I can't edit it at all. I'd try to work on this myself, but I'm on my way out the door. I believe that if someone can just revert my last edit it should be fine. -- Jmabel 20:11, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

Reverted by Cyrius. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 21:47, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
Forgot to note it here. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:28, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Watchlist Cache problem

I'm not sure what is going on. My Watchlist seems to have gotten stuck and shows the last edit as being at 18:38:35, an edit to Monobook.css by Eloquence. I've emptied my cache and forced refreshes to no effect. Same thing happens in both Firefox and IE. I can see in Recent Changes that there are edits that should be showing up but are not. Any idea what is happening and what, if anything I can do? [[User:Bkonrad|User:Bkonrad/sig2]] 02:36, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This was happening to me earlier today. I was able to get it to update correctly by choosing a different time-interval display (e.g. "all" instead of last three days). Not sure what was causing it though. Antandrus 02:43, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Lots of people are seeing this problem. Unfortunately, the only developer that seems to be active doesn't know the caching system well. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:28, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It's not just the watchlist, it's also my own contributions, which got stuck at "12:39, Oct 3, 2004 (hist) Cover version (I)", although I have been contributing all afternoon. But it also affects ordinary pages. I have cleared my cache and really cleared my cache a thousand times—to no avail. <KF> 16:47, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
And today it's my user page. I've just switched on my computer and I get my user page from last week, before some major changes. It also happens regularly that when I state a problem like this one no one answers or they tell me they do not have that problem—which doesn't help a lot either. <KF> 17:30, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
I never have problems like these. It may be because I always change any browser I use from the default 'automatically' (IE wording, other browsers have other terminology) to 'always' fetch the actual current page. If you can't find the setting, let me know what browser you're using, and I can give specifics. Niteowlneils 19:25, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Why does Wikipedia appear so different (and less nice) on Netscape than IE?

i'm a hard-core Mac guy and i generally hate Micro$hit and nearly everything they make. anyway, why can't wiki look the same for my (sorta old) Netscape browser as it does for IE? r b-j 03:13, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Probably poor CSS support. Update your netscape or use Mozilla Firefox. —Morven 03:30, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
it's what my wife hears when we complain to M$ about her windoze machine (upgrade your windows OS). my Mac is quite functional but not real new (G3, OS 9.1). newer versions of Netscape actually performed poorer and buggier when i installed it. i presume that if i buy a new Mac with OSX i can get a Netscape or other browser that will draw wiki the way it looks on IE, i just do not understand why it was ever necessary. anyway, thanx Marvin. r b-j 05:45, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps you could be more specific as to what's wrong? --Golbez 06:00, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
well, it doesn't look the same (with tabs on top for "Main Page", etc.) no matter what skin i use. some skins (e.g. the something "Blue" one) do not work at all. i'm using the Classic skin and any underlined links that are to the right of the "standard" links on the left column do not work. so any wiki page that i am reading, if i put the arrow over such a link, it does not change into a little finger as it should. r b-j 05:39, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
And what version of Netscape? Netscape 7 on OS9 looks fine to me. Netscape 4.75 looks like crap, but that is true for many newer Websites for that old a version Netscape, whether Mac or PC--many sites simply block any Netscape before 6.01. Niteowlneils 00:05, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
okay, i'll get a newer Netscape. version 6 (i think it was that one) was buggy and 4.75 seems to work fine on nearly any website i happen to go to. i didn't even know there was a version 7. i'll admit that i'm still dial-up here and i shudder to think about the download time. r b-j 05:39, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Funnily enough I came to this page to post a question about why Wikipedia loads much more quickly in Mozilla Firefox than in Explorer. I discovered this by accident - Explorer was loading wikipedia incredibly slowly - sometimes stalling completely - even though I'd deleted the cache files and tried other fixes which various people had suggested. For reasons unconnected with this problem, I downloaded Firefox and discovered that page loads are much quicker, not only for wiki but also other sites. Also the layout looks exactly the same as on IE - at least it does to me. Have also tried Opera but that isn't so fast and, on my machine at least, crashes from time to time. Based on Morven's comment, I assume the problem with IE could be to do with CSS? Jerry 15:28, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
sorry about the ignorance, but what the hell is "CSS"? r b-j 05:39, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Cascading Style Sheets. The right way to put style markup in a web page. (The wrong way is using horrible kludges like <font>.) {Ανάριον} 09:03, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Stacking images

I've been working on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article, and I added the CBC's logo history to the CBC article in the form of stacked images. User:Radagast proceeded to edit the article to properly render the stacked images in his browser, but it messed up the captions in my browser (Mozilla 1.5). Apparently, stacked images seem to be getting rendered properly in only one type of browser at a time, and out of whack on all other browser types. Could you report on how stacked images are rendered in your browser? Denelson83 04:15, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The article looks ok here on Safari v1.2.3 —Mike 10:13, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
Um, your edit has problems on initial load with Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.7, and Firefox 0.9.2 (refresh or resize makes the problem go away) in the "Programming" section--his version moves the problem to the "Overview" section. Anyway, I'll look into it some more. Niteowlneils 23:30, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
OK, I've moved the images a bit, and can no longer repro any text/image overlap problem on any of the 5 browsers I have available. How does it look for you? Niteowlneils 23:51, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Looks good in Firefox, at least; I hope Denelson83 is now satisfied with the caption layout... Radagast 13:04, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Images not found on articles

I can't view any images on Michael Moore. Visiting the image pages also does not work, for example Image:Mmoore.jpg Rhobite 19:40, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

They're loading for me - try hard refreshing? violet/riga (t) 19:46, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Strange, they work in IE but not FireFox. So it's probably on my end, never mind. Rhobite 20:14, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
The pic. loads OK in my version of Firefox (v1 preview release)Jerry 15:36, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Any other Mozilla user having problems?

The English Wikipedia has appeared down to my Mozilla 1.7.2 browser for a couple of days now, the pages appear to start loading but never actually load. French Wikipedia and the Meta are slow but usable.

I've only recently discovered that the problem doesn't occur at all on MS-IE6. This is a bit ironical as I mainly installed Mozilla as a workaround for Wikipedia's problems with IE (or IE's problems with Wikipedia if you prefer). Are any other Mozilla (not Firefox) users having any similar problems? Andrewa 03:49, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've switched to Firefox 1.0PR for navigating Wikipedia, and have noticed no such problems... --Golbez 03:59, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
Firefox is not Mozilla. Andrewa 05:22, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Pardons; you said "Mozilla (not Firefox)" and my eyes saw "Mozilla (or Firefox)". Sorry. --Golbez 05:38, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
No, thanks for the reply, and sorry if I was terse! Your comment is both relevant and helpful. But I'm far more interested in Mozilla (browser), since I know there's no problem with IE, and terrified that people will confuse Mozilla (the browser part of the Mozilla suite) with Firefox as they're both from Mozilla Foundation (the organisation). IMO the differences are big enough to consider them as different browsers for the purposes of this exercise. Just to make the water even muddier, Mozilla was originally the name of a version of the Netscape Navigator browser!
One possible conclusion, as I've had no other replies, is that there are few other people using the Mozilla suite, they've all gone to Firefox and perhaps so should I. Another possibility is that those using Mozilla suite are not seeing this message, either because they just assume that Wikipedia is down or because they have no access to another browser or both. Andrewa 09:20, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm not having any problems. I'm using Mozilla 1.6 on Mandrake 10.0. I use Firefox on another machine sometimes, without any problems there either. I use the classic interface, if that matters.-gadfium 21:30, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thank you! Just a hunch, based on a question below... what screen resolution? I'm 800x600 and unable to go higher than that on current hardware. Andrewa 22:21, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
1280x1024. I'm on an LCD screen, which looks horrible in any other resolution.-gadfium 22:34, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think the resolution just became a hot suspect! Andrewa 22:42, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Curiouser and curiouser... It has now come good, sometime since my last post. I can only assume there has been a change somewhere, it has not been at my end AFAIK. Andrewa 06:22, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
...and it's now broken again. No problem with IE6, but Mozilla loading the same page just hangs. Andrewa 11:44, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Tabs at top behaving strangely

This has actually been an issue for me ever since the new Monobook skin was implemented; I just haven't complained about it yet. I'm sure there must have been others who have experienced this same problem, so sorry about bringing it up again, I just don't know where discussion of this bug is. Anyway, the bug is this: the "Watch" tab at the top of the screen always appears below the other tabs, and then, when I move my mouse pointer over the tabs, all the tabs at the top move away from their horizontal row and instead stack vertically in the top left, just to the right of the Wikipedia globe image. I'm using IE6 on WinXP in an 800x600 res. --Lowellian 06:59, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Similar results with IE5 and IE6 under Win98SE. The workaround I use is to eliminate the background, see User:Andrewa/monobook.css and feel free to copy it.
IMO the default skin should support a large range of platforms and give preference to the popular ones, but the facts are that our volunteer developers use Unix and/or powerful and skillfully customised platforms, so that's what Wikipedia works best on too. It appears to be currently broken on both IE and Mozilla in various ways.
Anyway, please let me know if my workaround helps you, I'm interested. Andrewa 21:18, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
IE6 on WinXP SP2, no problems here, and had no problems before upgrading to SP2... (I use Firefox at home, no problems there either) My resolution here is 1024x, though; that might be your problem, 800x might be too small? --Golbez 21:43, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm... My monitor/graphics card combination won't go beyond 800x600, so yes, the resolution is probably a factor. Andrewa 22:18, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Andrewa, unfortunately your workaround didn't work for me. However, your suggestion gave me the idea that it was basically a stylesheet problem, so then I delved into the monobook stylesheet. The odd thing about this bug is that it looks like there's plenty of blank space in an 800x600 res to fit in all the tabs, but nevertheless the display screws up by "wrapping" the tabs for some inexplicable reason. After studying the code for a while, I was able to locate the source of the problem: 

#p-cactions {
...
    width: 76%;
...
}

The above line applies only to the tabs at the top of the page, and to no other elements on the page. The problem the width statement creates problems is that 76% of the width of a 800x600 screen is not enough to hold all the tabs. Therefore, I then changed my stylesheet by adding this line to my personal monobook.css page: 

#p-cactions { width: 100%; }

Now the tabs display properly in an 800x600 resolution! (Even better: this change does not create problems—or even change the display at all—in larger resolutions. In fact, I don't understand why the stylesheet developers even chose to make the width 76% in the first place; unless I'm missing something, it should always have been 100%. 100% doesn't screw up the column to the left, either.)

Anyway, thanks for the comments. You helped me find a solution.

--Lowellian 05:25, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Argg, okay, I spoke too soon. There is a slight problem with what I posted above, and now I see why the stylesheet developers chose to post a value less than 100%. It creates blank space to the right of the page, so that in an 800x600 res a horizontal scroll bar will appear at the bottom of the window. However, though 100% does not work, the following does (without being so wide as to create a horizontal scroll bar), and it fixes the stacking tabs problem. 

#p-cactions { width: 80%; }

Now it works! (I think.)

--Lowellian 05:35, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Moving categories

Is there some technical reason why category pages cannot be moved the way that pages in the main namespace are? Most of the issues filling up Wikipedia:Categories for deletion would probably not be there if users (or sysops) could simply move pages. (I know that the links in the individual articles would still probably need to be hand-edited to point to the new category) --Rlandmann 00:54, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Since this week, the links in Wikipedia are underlined, even though I have that option disabled in my preferences. It worked fine until this weekend, and I haven't changed or upgraded my browsers's versions (Firefox 1.0 and 0.9). It appears to be working well in Internet Explorer (6) at the same machine. Jeronimo 06:31, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I had the opposite problem for about half a day recently, links disappearing on certain page loads (continuously for a couple of hours). Also in Firefox with no modifications at my end, previously worked fine, and has worked fine since. zoney ♣ talk 09:48, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I find that hard refreshing a page usually solves the problem. violet/riga (t) 09:59, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Reloading indeed works, thanks (and it also explains that I didn't have these problems sometimes, probably after a reload). Still I'm curious about the origin of the problem. As I didn't change browsers, I would seem likely that Wikipedia is the cause of this problem. Jeronimo 19:09, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Who removed underlines on article hyperlinks?

If you're going to put a style on hyperlinks so they are not underlined then the colour contrast between ordinary text (black) and hyperlinks (light blue) must be improved.

I always use bold blue on my websites.

The distinction between ordinary text and hyperlinks now that some helpful soul has decreed that underlined hyperlinks are verboten, is far too subtle. PatrickDunfordNZ 07:08, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As this archive is now archived monthly and all the entries have been copied to this new archive, the old pages have become obsolete:

Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/Archive-01
Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/Archive-02
Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/Archive-03
Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/Archive-04
Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/Archive-05

They probably should be removed by an admin. -- Solitude 14:41, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

Okey-dokey. – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 00:38, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Category whitespace & alphabetizing

Two questions here:

  1. Adding an article to multiple categories adds extra whitespace to the bottom of articles. Is there any reason why the whitespace can't be eliminated like it is for inter-language wiki links? (NOTE: This may only be a problem with the Classic skin I am using).
  2. Is it possible to alphabetize categories so they can be added in any order? Or is the un-alphabetizing of categories a feature?

Just curious... — Frecklefoot | Talk 14:49, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

  1. I switched over to Classic from Monobook and saw the white space. It may just be a leftover from the way categories show up in Monobook (at the bottom). But I'm no developer; this may not be true.
  2. categories are displayed at the bottom of the article in the order they come up in the wikicode. to the best of my knowledge, they do not automatically sort. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 23:57, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Strange edits

I'm seeing very odd edits by User:69.69.47.126 on articles such as I Love Lucy. I'm running Safari on an Apple iBook, using the Monobook skin . Could someone else look to see if the issue is the edit itself, or just how it's displaying on my machine? Joyous 23:07, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

It appears the user is, either intentionally or by way of some sort of virus/spyware on their machine, added javascript based advert links to an external site. It looks like the change has been reverted. -- Chuq 23:51, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This user has made lots of edits like this - although it looks unintentional, since otherwise their edits have been ok. Paul August 18:02, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

An image that isn't there, and won't go away.

The image, Image:Scuba-flag1.jpg, doesn't seem to display. But I can't delete it either. What gives? – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 00:34, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

There's a known bug in the software that causes this. Sometimes it can be fixed by uploading and immediately deleting a dummy image with the same name. Other times, you have to add it to WP:IFD#Broken images that can't be deleted and wait for a developer to get rid of it once and for all. In this case, I was able to get rid of it using the upload/delete trick. • Benc • 21:59, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I Need a Bot

I've created a Category:Communes of the Calvados département, and need a bot to populate it. All it needs to do is go over the links in Communes of the Calvados département, remove Category:Cities, towns and villages of France if it is present, and add a link to Category:Communes of the Calvados département. I've done all the A's by hand, but it would be far faster if a bot was to do the rest. Is this possible? -- Itai 14:01, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:Auto-categorization. HTH, • Benc • 21:31, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Page move request

Could an admin please move Lifetime Achievement Award to BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award over the existing redirect, if possible, in order to maintain the style of titles for the other awards at BBC Sports Personality of the Year? Thanks. -- Michael Warren | Talk 17:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Done. I did a manual, non-admin cut-and-paste job because both pages had meaningful edit histories. And Lifetime Achievement Award now redirects to Award, since the BBC Sports award is one of many lifetime achievement awards. • Benc • 21:36, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Assigning {{PAGENAME}} as a default value of a template parameter

I've been trying to add a parameter to Template:Wikisource full, known by the name "Wikisource full parameter" (meaning that the template will be called by: {{Wikisource full|Wikisource full parameter=value}}), the default value for this parameter being {{PAGENAME}}. For this purpose I have created a Template:Wikisource full parameter, whose contents are: "{PAGENAME}". Naturally, this doesn't work. It there a way in which this can be accomplished? -- Itai 19:00, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Not to my knowledge, under the current software. If you haven't seen this already, you might want to take a look at m:Extended template syntax, which is one place for template junkies (like myself :-)) to hang out. • Benc • 21:46, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Does keying Direct To Flash via USB leave record on XP PC?

I want to keep confidential info on usb and have no record on PC - My flash device allows keying direct, does it leave any record of contents on the PC?

Brian Yench

P.S.

Underlined liks in MonoBook

I too am having difficulty with underlined links in MonoBook. My preference has always been to have underline off, and that is how it is set. Starting a few days ago, however, MonoBook does not recognise that pref setting; switching to Cologne, oddly enough, resolves the problem. If anyone has suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them. Denni☯ 01:56, 2004 Oct 7 (UTC)

I looked at it a few days ago and it looks like MonoBook is the only one having the problem. But I don't have any idea why. —Mike 04:27, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Finding user registrations?

Is there any way to find a chronological list of user registrations, or registrations around the same time as another registration? I ask because I've noticed a number of articles from users with very similar IDs (EG 0101CHANyf, 0101KONGkh, 0101LIhm, 0101TSOIyy, 0101HOhy, 0101WONGsh, 0101WANty, 0101LEUNGcy, 0101SOwk, 0101SOym, 0101LUIkw marco (the only one that has anything on their user page, so far, and it states "I am HKU BJ student Marco Lui. Feel free to leave me message."), 0101LEEyy, 0101CHANmw, 0101LAMsy, etc.) on similar topics (and they usually only have contributed to one new article, or articles by the similar IDs), and suspect a class project ala the Dartmouth debacle, and would like to be able to find them all. The good news is that, unlike many of the Dartmouth articles, so far they seem to be about very valid subjects (so far mostly people active in mainland China journalism, politics, and activism), but the formatting is clearly not by an experienced Wikipedian, and while the language of some, like the first one I found, Dai Qing is pretty solid, some of the others need some help with grammar, and could use some English terms for things currently only given using, um, oh, I forget the proper term for Asian language characters. It's great to have the articles, since they help make Wikipedia less US/West-centric, but it would be nice to have the formatting a bit more standard, etc. Niteowlneils 02:21, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, I've left a positive inquiry on 0101LUIkw marco's Talk page (he'd been previously welcomed by Meelar). Niteowlneils 02:49, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The "class project" assessment appears to be correct. A long chain of stuff short, the available information leads to Fuzheado (aka Prof. Andrew Lih), who appears to be running the project. Fuzheado's done this in the past, and without the problems of the Dartmouth project (as far as I know). -- Cyrius|✎ 03:01, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'll do one better - there is a master list of all the articles they are working on, and you can do a "Related changes" on it to track all of them. Check it out here [1]. We have not seen quite the problems of the "Dartmouth project" perhaps because we provide more well defined project guidelines and choose notable article that are sure to survive VfD. Fuzheado | Talk 03:21, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Great, thanks for the link. I shouldn't have even mentioned Dartmouth, since this is clearly a much better guided project, with significantly better overall results. Niteowlneils 03:42, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Impressive investigative work! zoney ♣ talk 10:16, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

URLs after redirects

Currently after ending up at a redirect, the page URL keeps the redirect, and not the correct URL. This is confusing (and I find it annoying). Is this a limitation of the software, or a (strange) deliberate choice? {Ανάριον} 09:13, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)


Request move Himalayas to Himalaya

The Himalayas article should be moved to Himalaya, which is the correct spelling. I tried a cut and paste move but lost the page history as a result. I undid the changes but can now not use the Move function because my mistake created multiple history entries in Himalaya requiring admin rights to move. Could an admin please move Himalayas to Himalaya. Thanks. Janderk 23:08, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Correct according to whom? - SimonP 23:55, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)
While both are often used and linguistically correct according to Merriam Webster [2] it is explained in the article that Himalaya is already a plural term. Searching Google for Himalaya [3] results in 706,000 hits, while Himalayas [4] shows 461,000 hits. So the world uses Himalaya more often too. Janderk 00:39, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
no--Jiang 00:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Cannot upload image

Whenever I try to upload an image, I get "The file is corrupt or has an incorrect extension. Please check the file and upload again." What's wrong? --Jiang 23:39, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Name of the image? [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 23:48, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Images that don't exist. i also tried to revise Image:IndiaNumbered1.png. --Jiang

Adobe Illustrator files

I have created a couple of maps and then made png files of each. One user has asked me about using my format. Is there a place to upload AI, CDR etc. files so that maps can be edited by others as time goes by? --CloudSurfer 23:52, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Check an image, please?

I just uploaded and added my first-ever image to an article, in Castletownshend. I would greatly appreciate it if someone knowledgeable would look at it to see how many different ways I've violated the Wiki-way of doing things. If I'm fouling it up somehow, I'd like to know early, so I can fix it. Please reply on my talk page. Thanks! Joyous 00:52, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

Constellation article

Looks like someone decided to change the article on Constellations to their own personal user page. Can someone revert this back to the actual article about constellations? --ScottyBoy900Q∞ 02:15, 08 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Done. You can do it too. Just select the last good version from the history, edit and save it. Janderk 02:21, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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