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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at BugZilla.

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

view · edit Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:Technical FAQ) Click "[show]" next to each point to see more details. If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache. This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown. No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box. This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences. No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker. If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature. If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link. Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem. If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page. If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Wikipedia services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

« Archives, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213

For maybe a month, maybe a couple or so, I've noticed every time I preview a page and do some edits, and click preview again the page takes just a fraction of a bit longer to load, and it always connects to some website http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ (I think, it's hard to see because it's only visible for a second). What is that? Why does it do that? Anyone know what this is about?--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 12:15, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it isn't just previewing/editing, it's viewing articles too - like just refreshing my watchlist I'm noticing it. It's like 'Wikimedia Central' is keeping tabs on me, noting when I refresh pages and noting my location (?!). Kinda creepy.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 12:25, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now that is really creepy. I don't know about you, but when I licked it, It shows my location, and I mean in coordinates! Creepy! Rehman 13:10, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Alright now this freaked me out: I checked the coords and, its just 5 km (3.1 mi) off my dot! Rehman 13:13, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The watchlist has had a similar service for ages. And you are being watched just as often by simply every single click you make on wikipedia (that would be called server access logs). All such "watching" is anonymized, per the privacy policy of the foundation. The geo service is included on every page in order to work around issues with caching for anonymous users. In looking into this however, it has become obvious that the geoip server does not do appropriate request caching, so for some people it will indeed download the geolocation page on EVERY single request (which is unnecessary). The ops team will now fix this I have been told. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:59, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Funny, I was just about to start a new section about this same issue. It's extremely irritating, and causing slow, slow page loads for me, typically causing edit conflicts any time I try to post on a long page. Each time there is a pause of up to ten seconds on "geoiplookup.wikimedia.org"; meanwhile my browser hangs up until it's finished loading. I notice that page source has <script type="text/javascript" src="http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/"></script> in it. On a little digging, I find this series of posts on the tech mailing list. Does anyone know if this is a new thing? Is there a way to make it stop? If it is necessary for Wikimedia to collect our IP addresses and log our visits, can that information be processed in the background without slowing down our page loads? Antandrus (talk) 14:18, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well first of all, don't use IE, that should help a lot. Also when the new Resource loader is done in a month or two, then all script loading should become a lot faster. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:56, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The easy way to stop it is to put "127.0.0.1 geoiplookup.wikimedia.org" in your hosts file. I've done it at some point because of the long delays it was causing on loading any Wikipedia pages; it's reassuring to know that I'm not missing anything as the whole thing is bloody useless (or that's my interpretation of the above discussion).—Emil J. 12:29, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I wanted to log into my Wikipedia account today and, realizing I forgot the password, I asked for a new one to be sent by e-mail. I can't remember which e-mail address I had associated to the Wikipedia account, so I checked all of them (I use several), but the password recovery e-mail is nowhere to be found. I looked in the spam folders too.

What can I do now? I'm worried that maybe I mistyped my e-mail (unlikely, but evidence seems to point to that). Is there any way to regain access to my account? I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong place, btw. --85.186.76.207 (talk) 10:09, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What is the name of your account? Otherwise I don't believe that much can be done about it. HeyMid (contributions) 10:41, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why is that relevant? :) --85.186.76.207 (talk) 11:16, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because he's trying to help you get your account back. Rehman 11:22, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was hoping there would be some standard procedure to follow. But if it helps, my account is User:Urzică. --85.186.76.207 (talk) 11:34, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Special:EmailUser/Urzică says there is no e-mail associated with that account. You may be able to bug the sysadmins to reset your password. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 11:40, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The user may have created h*s account with h*s e-mail address, but may have forgotten to confirm it. HeyMid (contributions) 11:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No offence IP85.186.76.207, but, what guarantee do we have that you actually are the rightful owner of that account? For security reasons, I have left a note on the talkpage, and hopefully s/he won't reply (since its you, IP). FYI, the account made the last edit on October 30. Rehman 12:07, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hey wait a minute. It seems that you have created a global account way back in January 2009, with the first account created in November 2006! You are also a sysop at ro.wiki. No offence again but, what are the chances of you forgetting a four-year old password? Rehman 12:11, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And especially considering that the username has edited as recently as yesterday (not at this wiki) suggests that this may be an impersonator. And the account is unified (SUL'ed). But Urzică may have been automatically logged in previously, and doesn't know h*s password. HeyMid (contributions) 12:21, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You have no guarantee that I am who I claim to be, which is what makes this difficult. My password was stored on my home computer, I logged in automatically for so long that I forgot it. I am now at a different location. I'm pissed off about this whole thing, I'm aware that I might have to make a new account and lose the sysop rights and/or credibility on my home wiki (that is why I didn't ask for help there in the first place, btw). All the same, it won't be the end of the world if that happens. I'll still be able to contribute, which is what matters.

Still, I'm definitely interested to solve this problem if at all possible. We can wait for "my" answer for as long as you wish, but then what? --85.186.76.207 (talk) 12:31, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I believe you – I'm currently assuming you're the one you're pretending to be. But how did you lose your automatic login? Did you clear the cache/cookies in your web browser? Or did you simply log out by accident? Or did you switch computer? Also, as Cobi suggests, try contacting a system administrator or "sysadmin". HeyMid (contributions) 12:35, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"but then what?", well, "I am now at a different location", so why not wait till you get back to the "earlier location" and hit the "forgot password" button? Rehman 12:38, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And when you are logged in you can change your password by clicking on "Change password" in your preferences. Also, why didn't you think about this before you left your earlier location? And is it so severe that you actually have to edit Wikipedia right now? HeyMid (contributions) 12:44, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Will my saved password still work if I already hit the "forgot password" button? I assumed that changes it and sends the new password by e-mail. If the old password still works, there's no problem at all. --85.186.76.207 (talk) 13:00, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As you seemingly either don't have an e-mail address connected to your account or have forgotten to confirm your e-mail address, nothing happens if you click on the "forgot password" button. That button only works if the account has an e-mail address. HeyMid (contributions) 13:07, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, ok - looks like I panicked over nothing. Sorry for all this and thank you for your help. --85.186.76.207 (talk) 13:11, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the record - that was me indeed. Sorry again for wasting your time. --Urzică (talk) 19:07, 7 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for being harsh, it was for the safety of your account ;) Rehman 03:07, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I want to apologize for my English in advance, as it's not my native language. I also want to apologize in case this isn't the right place to post this or if this issue has being already reported.

I'm following my watchlist updates through RSS feeds both in English and Spanish Wikipedia, but I've just realized that Google Reader was missing some of the updates. As "My watchlist" Wikipedia RSS feeds don't validate, I thought that, perhaps, changing to Atom I'd solve the problem. After all, "My watchlist" Wikipedia Atom feeds do validate. But then I found that Atom versions also miss items.

I have started a thread on Google Reader Help Forum to report this issue. I 'm "nornand" there.

Therefore, I'm tracking currently four watchlist feeds (RSS-Spanish, Atom-Spanish, RSS-English and Atom-English) and all of them have missed items in Google Reader. In my humble opinion, this is a serious problem because many people rely on GR to follow their feeds and Wikipedia editors aren't an exception for sure. When you add an article to your watchlist you do it for good reason (to control the quality of the updates, protect it against vandalism, etc.) so if your feed reader fails you'd better take precautions. In other words, I don't know if this issue is going to be solved some day or how big is its scope (my feeds are affected in two different languages), but I feel that it had to be reported.

It wold be nice if someone using Google Reader to follow his watchlist checked if he has the problem too.

Thank you and, again, sorry for my English and for the long post. I wait for your feedback.--Canyq (talk) 03:18, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is the same bug as Template:Bug. Svick (talk) 00:47, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hummm, yes, it may be the same bug, beacause although Atom feed validates, a warning about "entries with the same id" is given. As it is said in the bug page, Wikipedia feeds should use an unique ID instead of elements like article titles, which may appear in several entries. At this moment, my watchlist RSS feeds are a downright mess in terms of losing items, so my recommendation is using Atom versions although, as I have already said, they also lose some items. Anyway, I insist, this is a serious problem as it involves one of the most widespread feed readers, therefore either Google Reader or Wikipedia should try to fix it. But until that moment, my advice is that if you use Google Reader and are truly concerned about your watchlist, check updates manually in the webpage or try another feed reader. And if you want to keep on using Google Reader, at least, use Atom instead of RSS feeds (although you'll keep on losing entries). --Canyq (talk) 17:20, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised no one has said anything recently, but the coordinates map seems to be broken. I click on the little globe icon and the map appears. Sometimes the red dot appears, sometimes not. The typical amalgamation of links and nearby attractions, however, never appear. Instead, "Loading" appears for a while and then changes to an almost illegible "Bad Gate" error with a link to Error. Am I missing something? --136.160.151.190 (talk) 15:34, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

 – Smallman12q (talk) 00:43, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am trying to make a list of all named Maine islands. I received from the state of Maine a lengthy table in an .xls file which I think is Microsoft Excell format (I use a Mac and Microsoft is a foreign country that I don't want to visit). I need to convert the data in Microsoft .xls format to Wiki-format. How? I have been doing it manually, one table entry at a time, deleting the Microsoft formatting by hand and substituting Wiki table format--but there is just too much data for that. How do I process the whole thing in one batch?

Example of .xls format I want to convert (in edit you can see the Microsoft markup symbols):

65-250 CABBAGE ISLAND LEDGE BOOTHBAY LINCOLN U 0.5 63-032 CALDERWOOD NORTH HAVEN KNOX R 63-791 CALDWELL SAINT GEORGE KNOX R 63-794 CALDWELL (EAST MOST LT SAINT GEORGE KNOX R 63-793 CALDWELL (LITTLE) SAINT GEORGE KNOX R 63-542 CALF SAINT GEORGE KNOX R 59-177 CALF SORRENTO HANCOCK R

Example of manually reformatted Wiki-table (again--go to edit to see the substituted Wiki markup)

Thanks for your ideas ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 16:40, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It should be very easy to do provided you have excel. Simply open in excel, copy-paste to http://excel2wiki.net and then copy-paste back to the wiki. If you can't open it, I (or someone) can do it for you. Simply upload the document somewhere (such as scribd) and post a link here.Smallman12q (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:01, 8 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]

WOW! It worked! Saving me and fellow editors MONTHS of tedious line-by-line transcription. There is a Barnstar for wonderfully helpful advice in your future.ElijahBosley ^{(talk ☞)} 13:50, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to help, if you need any more tech-related help post here, or to my talk page.Smallman12q (talk) 00:43, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

SIL has released an expanded version of their Gentium font, which our class=IPA supports. However, they've released it under the name 'Gentium Plus'. The class should be updated to choose that over plain Gentium. (I have no idea how to do this myself.) — kwami (talk) 20:08, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:45, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

...are, all of a sudden, showing automatically expanded, and with no option to hide? - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 20:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And now they're working. A few minutes ago HotCat - and cat piping when viewing Edit This Page - weren't working for a moment. Spoooky. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 20:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like your Javascript didn't load or encountered an error. And then it got fixed, somehow. Anomie⚔ 20:58, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks. Wouldn't surprise me. I have a touch with computers...and sure isn't King Midas's. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 22:01, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm currently seeing a JS error when I load my watchlist, coming from the geonotice.js module, which I assume is linked to WP:Geonotice. As a result the shortcut links to section headers aren't working. I've seen this happen before and I see a thread above about "geoiplookup". How do I completely opt out of any geonotice processing? If there's something of compelling interest to my "area" I will either already know about it or not care. I don't want the extra processing and I especially don't want to lose functionality because of some obscure problem. I don't want geonotice.js to load or execute on my system, period. Is there a way to opt out? (Yes I refreshed my cache, yes I use IE, no I don't care - I don't want the (non-)functionality) Thanks! Franamax (talk) 21:19, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can't opt out as far as I know. Not right now anyway. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:30, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks (I guess... :) Is there a place to discuss it? If it's only for watchlists it should be easily gadget-able. I'll try WT:Geonotice I guess. Franamax (talk) 23:29, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The WP:Geonotice. say "It can permanently be hidden by adding "#WN_GEON { display: none; }" to your CSS file." not tried this to see if it works or not.--Salix (talk): 12:35, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But hidden != disabling. Hidden will still run the code and load the resource in question. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:33, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely. Pages take long enough to load as it is. I'm sayin' don't bother to figure out where I am, I already know and I don't need or want the help. Hiding the results doesn't stop the processing and it doesn't fix the JS error I'm still seeing every time I check my watchlist. Franamax (talk) 23:42, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tools such as adblock plus for FireFox work great, Ive opt'ed out of several really annoying javascript addons. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 15:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was doing some anti-vandalism research when I happened to come across this: [1]

The Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy article received 5.4 million hits on 3/9/2010.

This averages out to 62 hits/sec. for the entire day. Nearly 1500 hits/sec. were being recorded at peak (per [2]). Also unusual because nothing related to the controversy seemed to happen on this date?

Clearly there was some funny business. Anyone have any insight into what went on? Two plausible solutions in my mind: (1) statistics error, and (2) DDOS attack. If the latter, was there any discussion of it archived I could take a look at? West.andrew.g (talk) 20:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to say Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, but the dates don't quite match up. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 23:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

March 3, 2010 was the day that Final Fantasy XIII was (supposed to be) released. Was there a scene in that where you have to battle the Prophet? --Ludwigs2 00:01, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I've still got nothing. I do see that the folks who are upset about this kind of thing have launched plenty of DDOS attacks in the past, including against Wikipedia -- but I've found nothing definitive regarding this date. West.andrew.g (talk) 19:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a good one. Take the following div statement: <div style="height: 90px; overflow: auto">, now switch the order of the "height" and "overflow" statements, and try to save it. In other words, try to write <div style="overflow: auto; hight: 90px">, but with 'height' correctly spelled. Currently, this trips the spam filter, and it won't let you save it! I have no idea what is going on with this. I was able to circumvent this problem by swapping the order, but it seems very strange that a div style statement would have anything to do with the external link filter. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 22:45, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The filter says the problem is with the phrase "overflow: auto; hight:", again with things correctly spelled. I can't seem to find any such entry on either the local or global blacklists. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:30, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And to clarify, this is a spam blacklist problem, and nothing to do with the Special:EditFilter. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:31, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's the "standard" mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist blacklist either, even though it's giving the same message. It triggers even if you enter <nowiki>overflow: auto; height:</nowiki>. Anomie⚔ 00:10, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Google helped. MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist/Archives/2008/02#overflow: auto.3B height:. I'd have to agree with Isaac Dupree there. Anomie⚔ 00:32, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Weird... I was apparently the one who brought all this up in the first place. Funny how that happens. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 07:38, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To expand on "Blocking of this string occurs in the server configurations": InitialiseSettings.php.txt see the line '/overflow\s*:\s*auto\s*;\s*height\s*:|<div[^>]*font-size[^>]*font-color:\s*transparent[^>]*>/i'] under wgSpamRegex. Also see $wgSpamRegex, this is the raw method of inserting spam trips, without extensions. --Splarka (rant) 09:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm currently surveying Wikipedia's coverage of ice hockey, and have been messing around with searches and search links.

• Special:Search/intitle:"Ice hockey" -team -championships -Paralympics -Olympics

What I need to know is:

1. Is there a way to specify in the search itself how many results to display per page? (I'd like to set it at 500 or higher).

2. Is there a way to specify punctuation marks such as parentheses?

For example, this search:

• Special:Search/intitle:"Ice hockey" -"(ice hockey)"

doesn't work.

I'd like to not see results with "(ice hockey)" at the end of the title like this one: Andy Murray (ice hockey)

The Transhumanist    23:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1. The hard limit is 500 results, mainly because setting it higher can produce (sometimes unintentional) strain on our search backend during peak times.
2. No, punctuation marks and wikitext are by default ignored. I think it would be useful to have a raw-text search where both would be searchable, but as far as I know, no-one is working on it. --rainman (talk) 00:08, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At Special:Preferences under "Search options" you can choose Hits per page. On a search results page you can click a number at the bottom to change the number of hits for that search, and to see what the url looks like. Afterwards you can manually change the number in the url. I don't know whether the number can be controlled with a wikilink to Special:Search. Help:Searching#Specialist searches links Grep which can search punctuation in page titles (see regexp), but cannot search page content. I don't know whether it can be used to exclude "(ice hockey)" like in your example, or whether it can give many search hits. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:15, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Please feel free to answer between my responses below...)

The "Hits per page" preferences tip helped me a lot. Thank you. I also changed "Lines per hit" to 1, but it didn't have any effect. What is it supposed to do? I'd like to get results that list only the page names.

Is there any way to get the results in wikicode? I'd like the results to include link brackets.

Grep is great. It returns page names without the extra contextual stuff. And it gives many hits (though I haven't explored its limits yet). I never knew it existed. Thank you!

When I copy/paste results from Grep, there's an empty line between each one. Is there a way to get Grep results without these?

Is there an easy way to remove empty lines from a page?

I can't figure out how to use Grep to exclude strings. Eg., return titles with "Albania" in them but not those with "Superliga" in them.

But you can exclude characters from a string like the "(" from "(ice hockey)". For this I used "[^\(]ice hockey". It returns titles with "ice hockey" and not those with "(ice hockey"

You have been very helpful. Again, thank you!The Transhumanist    01:00, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It appears from my experiments and Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Customizing Wikipedia/Customizing with Preferences#Search (which I found by searching "Lines per hit") that "Lines per hit" has no effect. I don't have answers to the other questions. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:05, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've recently switched over to using the secure server to edit from, but I keep thinking that somehow I've managed to log onto the unsecure server by mistake and I'm on that one instead. To help reduce the panic, I'm trying to add some CSS code to my Monobook page to turn the backgrounds of pages a red tint (rather than the normal blue) if I'm on the secure server. Naturally, though, there isn't a whole lot of conditional logic in CSS (what there is seems limited to making Internet Explorer work) and my attempt to use parser functions also failed, likely because .css pages don't parse wikimarkup. Does anyone have any ideas for making this work, or is this an exercise in futility? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:25, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think probably, yes. You could achieve a similar result with custom js though I think. The same result if, for example, you modify the <body> tag directly. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 23:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You would need to do it from the JS said and have it add/modify the css that you want. Peachey88 ^{(T · C)} 23:40, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not being terribly familiar with javascript, how exactly would I do that? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 00:18, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This should do the trick —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:31, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

if( wgServer.indexOf( "https://secure.wikimedia.org" ) == 0 ) {
importStylesheet( "User:Hersfold/secure.css" );
}

Login on the normal and secure servers is separate, so if you log out on the normal server, you'll be able to see the difference because some buttons go missing. Ucucha 01:04, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Or, as OrangeDog said, you could use JS: this makes the text of User:Ucucha/sandbox appear in italics on the secure server but in normal font on the non-secure server. Ucucha 01:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The javascript worked - thanks much, everyone! Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 07:36, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now I have two different CAS(Central Authentication Service) servers. Browser to access web servers may be dispatched to these two CAS servers. How can I do to achieve, so no matter where redirection CAS servers can be authenticated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vincen koo (talk • contribs) 02:30, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This page is for dealing with technical issues related to Wikipedia. Try the computing reference desk. Graham87 06:05, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone think User:NYKevin/interface is potentially useful anywhere? I can't help but think it must be useful somewhere... but I can't quite figure out where. --NYKevin @007, i.e. 23:09, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If I turn Javascript off, it doesn't appear, but otherwise it comes up after the page loads. --NE2 23:51, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's a barely-visible X in the upper-right corner. Or you could try user CSS something like #centralNotice .siteNoticePic { display:none; } Anomie⚔ 01:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A more general solution using user CSS is:#siteNotice {display: none !important;} which will hide the entire sitenotice permanently. I've never suffered any injury from doing so, and the ratio of useful information to nonsense has always been pretty bad with that feature. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Someone higher-up fixed something, since it's gone again. I have something in my user CSS/JS that had successfully hidden it until today. --NE2 02:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The standard toolbar (The one that goes Bold, Italic to <ref /ref>, {{ Cite }}) occasionally loses all the buttons to the right of Horizontal line, and I need to refresh the edit page to get them back.--occono (talk) 03:26, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it's a browser-related issue? Do you have a recent version?—RJH (talk) 19:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It has affected me across mulitple computers and browsers. I thought getting rid of some gadgets and moving to the new skin might have fixed it, but it's been happening again.

It's still happening. --occono (talk) 03:00, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've copied this from the Archive because it's still happening.--occono (talk) 01:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tonight I wrote a script that I think many will welcome. It is called Print dialog and it changes the "Printable version" link into a "Print page" link. When clicked, you get a dialog that allows you to make some choices. You can print everything which is normally hidden (for instance interface, metadata etc), but also force background to disappear, make all text black, hide references and hide images. It's in very early testing, and only tested with Safari, and possibly it might never work very well on IE, but IE sucks, so who cares :D. Have fun testing it, and let me know what you think. Simply add importScript('User:TheDJ/printdialog.js'); to your script page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot of the dialog earlier in the night, and a print to pdf version of printing with all interface elements enabled: HERE. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have now updated the documentation page with explanations and examples. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, can somebody figure out why Talk:Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth won't archive properly? I tried messing with Miszabot but suspect it was in vain. —K. the Surveyor (talk) 04:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

yeah, it's set to archive every 365 days. I'll set it to two weeks instead - give it a day or so to kick in. --Ludwigs2 06:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

i did that...just a short while ago. it had been set i think to 90 days or something. and we have posts from 2006. well anyway, hopefully it will work now... —K. the Surveyor (talk) 06:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I hope I'm putting this in the right place, but having tried everything I can think of and asking questions elsewhere, I think this is a problem with mediawiki software. On List of civil parishes in Somerset there is an extremely large list of references which seems to be too many for the software to display - can anyone suggest any solutions?— Rod ^talk 09:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Got the references to show up, although a bunch of them still are not displaying correctly (just displaying "cite web". I think the problem is the page is transcluding too many templates, which would explain why the cite templates aren't expanding properly, and also why the references didn't show up before (I switched the template {{reflist}} for a direct use of <references />), and why the Featured list template isn't working. Probably a setting somewhere to limit the number of templates any one page can transclude. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some possible further reading: Wikipedia:Template limits, maybe Special:ExpandTemplates would fix the problem - I don't know - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for trying. I've looked at the pages you pointed me to but they are beyond my technical capabilities & if I start fiddling I will probably break it.— Rod ^talk 10:00, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to remove some of the deadlink & similar templates. It all worked fine when it was promoted to FL but ironically I think it was the additional of the star template which broke it.— Rod ^talk 10:23, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, there's a Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded which notes other articles with a similar problem.  pablo 10:41, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The page was exceeding the "Post-expand include size" (as explained on Wikipedia:Template limits), which is to do with the number/size of templates rather than references themselves. As an immediate fix I have switched to the {{vcite web}} etc. templates, which changes the citation style but does mean they all show as there is less code. I have also replaced {{convert}} and {{centre}}. mattbr 11:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I will not claim to understand all of that but I can see that it has worked. Would it be worth some sort of note on the talk page of the 1000+ articles in the category given above to explain the problem?— Rod ^talk 11:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. I don't fully understand it either but it has to do with the size and complexity of the templates used. The reason for the page breaking may have been due to changes to the templates used rather than any action on the page itself. You might want to consider manually formatting the references or using a shortened system as described at Wikipedia:Citing sources#Shortened footnotes. Don't think there is an alternative to using {{coord}}? Many of the pages in that category are outside article space, but it might be worthwhile on the articles. mattbr 16:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments? Wikipedia talk:Chemical infobox#Chembox too long
--Wickey-nl (talk) 14:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a URL available for viewing a user's contributions to a specific page? Thanks, 28bytes (talk) 18:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe something at Help:Page history #Searching and exporting histories. DMacks (talk) 22:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can use this tool. Graham87 02:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 62#Finding all edits a user made to a certain page. Graham87 02:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do any automated tools exist to check on the creation of unsourced NEW articles by a user?

I add a lot of citations to Wikipedia, as well as tag {{citation needed}} to a lot of unsourced claims. From time to time I find a user who regularly creates NEW articles with no sources whatsover. Sometimes, the editor cites some of her/his NEW articles, while making exclusively unsourced claims in others. Or the editor sources a higher percentage of articles nowadays versus, say, a couple of years ago. It would be helpful to have an automated way of examining the NEW article history, sources or not, of a user--maybe get the percentage with sources and without over time. Anyone ever create a tool to do this? Cheers. N2e (talk) 19:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

IF you can define what a "sourced" article is vs unsourced, it shouldnt be that hard. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 19:43, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The basic criteria that would be most useful to look for would be a "==References==" section with at least one set of "<ref> ... </ref> reftags in the article. An article with "==External links==" might be considered to have some reliable source support, but it could not really be said to have the inline citations that are preferred by WP policy: "The policy on sourcing is Verifiability, which requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations." (quoted from WP:CS). In my view, at least one inline citation is required on a NEW article because any NEW article with no sources is likely to be challenged.

Of course variations that remain compliant with Wikisyntax could also occur, such as: "== References ==" (with one or more spaces). What do others think? N2e (talk) 21:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen a lot of cases where a new user will put a direct external link inline with their text: [http://...] That will not generate anything in a References or External Links section, but is still referenced, just not formatted properly. Perhaps that is something that would still be useful to know though, as it is an opportunity to educate a new contributor before they get template-bombed off the project. So perhaps for the bot, an article that does not contain the string "<ref>"? Of course there's also the fact that a lot of new articles don't have any refs on their first edit, but do shortly thereafter (I'm guilty of that), so flagging for the N flag and no refs, might have too many false positives Arakunem^Talk 21:29, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Few new articles these days should go for more than a day or two without an external link. Just pop a deletion tag onto the article and the author should wake up and clean it up a bit. To automate the process, just write something to scan the new articles stream, hold for a day or two, and list those that haven't ever contained any external links of any kind.

You can easily spot an external link; it's a string starting with a scheme (http, ftp, or whatever) followed by ":" and some stuff. Simply this to "http://" which accounts for nearly every external link. At this point a human is asked to look at the link-free articles. If they contain a clearly verifiable source (ie: the human looks at the article and is able to obtain and read the source and verify it) then it's removed from the list. If not, then it's on the suspect new articles list. --TS 22:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, apparently not. In only a little looking on a single user, I found two new articles from August 2010 (three months ago) that are unsourced: Liogorytes and Philanthus ventilabris.

But that wasn't my question. I'm just wondering if there is an automated tool that would allow a search of a specific user to see what other articles that User has created, over the past few years, that were unsourced then and still are today. Cheers. N2e (talk) 22:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In my browser (Firefox 2.0.0.20), the text of the fundraising appeal displays at a huge size and overwrites a lot of other stuff, and there's no obvious place to click on to dismiss the box... AnonMoos (talk) 22:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What skin is that? Kaldari (talk) 22:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Classic". Finally figured out how to dismiss the box, after reading the thread several sections above... AnonMoos (talk) 22:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Weird. It looks fine to me in Classic skin in Firefox. Do you have any custom CSS? Kaldari (talk) 23:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No. AnonMoos (talk) 23:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 2.0 is very old. Please upgrade to 3.6. — Edokter • Talk • 23:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's the most-recently released version that works with the operating system I use, and I don't think it's so antiquarian that Wikipedia developers should completely ignore it. AnonMoos (talk) 23:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What OS are you using? And on what page are you seeing the errors? — Edokter • Talk • 23:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 3.0 (released 2008) dropped support for Windows NT4/98/ME which were End-of-Life'd in 2006. It's missing some important things like inline-block (use -moz-inline-box) and usage share for 2.0 is 0.38% of all browsers. Honestly, these people should upgrade or switch to Linux before their boxes join a botnet. — Dispenser 04:58, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have just reenabled the "Hide fundraiser banner"-gadget, in anticipation of more annoyed editors, starting tomorrow. :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:Jimbo Wales/Editnotice is appearing when editing User talk:Jimbo Wales. Is that supposed to happen? --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, technically that should happen. I've deleted the talk page of the editnotice. Editnotices should not have such talk pages, it breaks stuff. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What am I doing wrong here? Thanks, Access Denied – talk to me 04:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you need {{#if:{{{4|}}}|....}} rather than {{#if:{{{4}}}|....}} having a pipe in the parameter gives the empty string if the parameter is not defined, without the pipe the if clause evaluates to true when not parameter is set. See mw:Help:Parser functions in templates.--Salix (talk): 06:42, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Click on the Donate link at the left and it goes to [3]. Didnt know where or who to report it to. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 13:16, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]