Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

Hi, I've been editing Wikipedia for many years. I'm shocked that the recognition capability for diffs is so lousy -- it's so rudimentary it seems like something from the 1970s or earlier. If you move one paragraph, everything under that paragraph shows up as completely new, even though it isn't. And so on. Why is the Wikipedia diff software unable to recognize exact text below a deletion, and so forth? Why can't this be improved? It's not rocket science, as they say. Word processors mastered this decades ago. And since diffs are such a vital part of any reliable editor's monitoring work, why isn't this a priority to reform? Text recognition capability seems to be a fairly easy thing to upgrade. Softlavender (talk) 10:13, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which word processors have mastered diff calculation? I can't even think of any that provide diffs in the first place. Microsoft Word can "track changes" because it can watch you as you type - this is not the same problem as providing the difference between two texts. Unfortunately, rocket science is a lot easier than diffs. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 11:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would repeat OrangeDog's rhetorical question - which word processors have mastered diff calculation? The "problem" with present-day diff calculation is that it is structural rather than semantic, meaning it looks at each text body as a linear batch of characters rather than as a group of hierarchically related expressions (doc, section, subsection, sentence, phrase, word). As far as I know, no commonly available application comes anywhere close to this treatment. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff is in my opinion much better than the mediawiki default. Rjwilmsi 14:48, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes wikEdDiff is definitely better. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:50, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why doesn't Wikipedia use that, then? Sheesh, it's been around for over 4 years, and the current Wiki platform is dinosauric and awful. Softlavender (talk) 19:08, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yet no one seems to volunteer to rewrite wikedDiff in C (programming language). Oh right, most of the software is volunteer work, so easy to forget. Anyone can submit patches. Have you considered trying to make the improvement yourself ? Apparently it is SO easy to do. Sheesh —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:54, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, but MediaWiki is coded in PHP, no? —DoRD (talk) 12:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

wikEdDiff is a user script -- a piece of JavaScript code executed on Wikipedia pages. It executes on the user's machine (the HTTP "client" machine, vs. one of WP's "server" machines). There would be relative disadvantages to that with an implementation written in either C or php. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 15:16, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh (slaps forehead), I hadn't noticed that this is the tech-savvy vpt page. The talk of rewrite no doubt implicitlyv referred to updating the mediawiki diff code (no doubt written in php) to function similarly to wikEdDiff. Pls ignore the above statement of the obvious. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 15:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the diff code used on Wikipedia is written in C++ as a PHP extension. There is a pure PHP version, but it's too inefficient for use on such a high-traffic site. Mr.Z-man 19:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidiff does resync in many cases. (Yes it can be better - there is a tool that marks moved stuff in blue - is that WikiEd? - but just wanted to defend the poor ol' native tool. ) Rich Farmbrough, 12:53, 1 May 2011 (UTC).[reply]

I lol'd at "dinosauric." --MZMcBride (talk) 19:28, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the edit diff's are an area that could use major improvement. Unfortunately, this requires a coder willing to do something about it. I think improving the edit diffs ought to be considered a high priority issue. It's something that the Wikimedia Foundation should pay somebody to improve. It's probably not that tough of a coding job but would have a major positive impact for editors. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:29, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is less one of technical solution as of dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's on the deployment as it is such a central feature of Wikipedia. Whoever does this needs to have some really good code hygiene and business analysis skills. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:51, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Ultimately, a "difference-bracket" option is needed to determine how many matching lines would indicate a re-sync of the 2 texts. Currently, comparisons get out-of-sync when a blank line is introduced (which ain't rocket science to fix). The hardest texts to re-synchronize would be multiple short lists with items repeated between lists, and that is why a "difference bracket" line count is needed, to overcome confusion when thinking lines in another list are a match to a changed list (which would be viewed as an inserted list rather than changed). In a sense, a blank line is a one-line list which matches every other such list, as appearing to be the same blank line, further down. -Wikid77 16:24, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • One of the intrinsic problems of standard matching algorithms is their focus on the line as opposed to the matching text block. This line-centric analysis is inherently stymied by the blank-line issue as you've pointed out. Line-centric approaches are certainly suitable for typesetting situations and to situations where data is presented in short or non-wrapping lines of relatively consistent length. What we need is an evolution forward from the "difference-bracket" kludge you've proposed as a way around the line-centric behavior of most difference engines. Hopefully someone with text analytics and deep regular expression skills has time to consider this. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Setting difference-bracket line-count is typical: The consideration of the "difference-bracket" setting, as specifying a line-count bracket to re-sync the matching lines, is not a "kludge" but rather, reality of how people edit, IMHO. People edit in line-mode, splitting text into separate lines, to make editing easier, and almost all articles have multiple lines inside. An editor could treat the markup as following a "string grammar" with no split lines, as just one massive text block containing many "<br />" connected, internally, as a continuous stream of markup text; however, "everyone" splits the markup into lines. This is especially common in lists, where very few people put a list as "AA<br />BB<br />CC" but instead, editors put 3 separate lines (for "AA" then "BB" then "CC"). A continuous mass of text would be unwieldy, to most people, and that is why differencing, or markup-comparison, has been treated as a line-mode comparison for decades in other computer systems. By contrast, the WYSIWYG interfaces are severely hampered by the difficulty of showing before/after changes, without shifting the generated display window. A difference-bracket must be used in highly repetitive lines, such as tables of similar data, and the resync problem can go hundreds of lines unless a difference-bracket line-count is specified to logically resync the text. For very long paragraphs, editors could purposely split the text, with an HTML-style comment ("<--Text split for short diff-list-->"). Similarly, the category-links could be scattered across the article's markup, but putting them as separate lines, at the bottom, makes editing and additions easier (with fewer duplicates). A similar "search-bracket" could be specified for search-engine matches, with repeated search phrases, but as a "word count" because people are expecting words in most searches, rather than lines with strings of markup symbols. However, it is helpful to consider alternative schemes to see why they would be more difficult for users to control. -Wikid77 15:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• I've been complaining about this for years (well, I've complained twice, I think, in four years, probably!). WP's diff generation is totally rubbish (in certain common circumstances) and full of basic schoolboy errors. Last time I mentioned it, I think I was told that the source was available, and if the errors were so "basic" I should fix it myself! He-he, very amusing! 86.183.0.105 (talk) 12:02, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• I've invoked the WikEd Gadget via my Preferences and it does provide a very different editing and version comparison world, one that is going to take a little getting used to, but which is much richer than the current editing and diff interfaces. I think that evangelizing about the WikEd Gadget to get more people to use it (is it possible to determine how many use it now?) could lead to the desired progression of the project through emerging interested talent, including the required rewrite needed for integration into WikiMedia software. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:30, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  WikEd is great, I use it myself, and it seems to be extremely popular. The only real problem with it is that it's a resource hog. Anyone using an older computer probably shouldn't use it. Even with my band new laptop, I still turn it off occasionally.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My gadgets are gone — not all the time, but most of the time. They happen to appear on this page while I'm editing this message, but not on any other en-Wikipedia pages I have open. No popups, no clock in the upper right corner of my display, no collapsing items in the navigation menu with vector skin, no "purge" link, page and user options no longer appear in drop-down menus on the toolbar. Even worse, external links no longer open in a separate window. It's as if all my advanced user preferences are being completely ignored!

Searching the archives, I found Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 88#Did something happen to popups?, but the advice there hasn't fixed my problem with popups, in spite of me adding lines to my common.css and vector.js pages. According to that discussion, there's a problem with a resource loader that has yet to be fixed.

In the meantime, what can I do to get back my normal Wikipedia functionality? This has been going on for about 4 days now. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:10, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to go ahead and assume those are all gadgets (i.e. JavaScript stuff), in which case, one of your gadgets has an error in it that only triggers on some pages, breaking all the other gadgets. Do you get any errors in your browser window? What browser are you using? Regards, - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 19:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, those are all gadgets available in the user preferences. I am using Google Chrome. The odd thing is, sometimes everything works, like this morning, and sometimes I get none of those gadgets I set, like right now.

Here are the errors I get in the Javascript console window when I look at a page.

• load.php: GET http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?… undefined (undefined)
• index.php:7611: Uncaught ReferenceError: hookEvent is not defined
• index.php:8: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'wikiUrlencode' of undefined
• index.php:198: Uncaught ReferenceError: addOnloadHook is not defined
• index.php:19: Uncaught ReferenceError: importStylesheet is not defined
• index.php:7: Uncaught ReferenceError: addOnloadHook is not defined
• index.php:5: Uncaught ReferenceError: addOnloadHook is not defined
• load.php:1: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'addPortletLink' of undefined
• load.php:1: Uncaught ReferenceError: importScript is not defined
• index.php:369: Uncaught ReferenceError: addButton is not defined
• geoiplookup.wikimedia.org: GET http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ undefined (undefined)

Many of those errors appear to be related to general utility functions and unrelated to scripts I have. Particularly addOnLoadHook looks like it may be related to the resource loader. If you look at User:Amatulic/vector.js you'll see that I don't have much there. I've commented out all but what I consider most necessary, and it made no difference. What I have has worked fine until a few days ago.

If it matters, here are the gadgetrs I have set in my user preferences. None of these things are working at the moment:

Browsing gadgets:

• Navigation popups (also I added this manually to my vector.js to no avail)

Editing gadgets: None

User interface gadgets:

• Add a "Purge" tab to the top of the page
• Add a clock in the personal toolbar
• Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar.
• Allow /16 and /24-/32 CIDR ranges on Special:Contributions forms as well as wildcard prefix searches
• Display an assessment of an articl's quality as part of the page header for each article.
• Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page
• Open external links in a new tab/window

User interface gadgets: editing:

• Add an [edit] link to the lead section of a page (this doesn't work for me now)
• Allow up to 50 more characters in edit summaries.

Library compatibility gadgets: none

~Amatulić (talk) 01:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What's really bizarre about this is the unpredictability. In the same browsing session, sometimes I get my gadgets including popups, and sometimes not. Actually, most of the time not. And this started just last week. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

...And the problem is not my scripts. I have no scripts running in my vector.js page. This happens on every browser I try (Chrome, IE8, Firefox).

I do notice that the browser spends a long time waiting for bits.wikimedia.org. It appears to generate an error 503 (service unavailable) rather frequently. It happens on Commons too: the file upload wizard fails to start, apparently because of a failure with bits.wikimedia.org. Might this be the source of my problem?

Try it yourself. Click on this link, which my browser attempted to access from Commons: http://bits.wikimedia.org/commons.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext!uploadWizard&skin=vector&version=20110510T164824Z

I pretty consistently get "Error 503 Service Unavailable" with a "Guru meditation" message below suggestive of the old Amiga computer. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:53, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ha. Sometimes my gadgets work. And sometimes I can click on that link above. The content begins:

mediaWiki.loader.implement("ext.uploadWizard",function($,mw){(function($){function Tipsy(element,options){this.$element=$(element);this.options=options;this.enabled=true;this.displayed=false;this.fixTitle();}

which suggests my problem may indeed be the resource loader failing to load, on those far-too-frequent occasions (beginning just over a week ago) when the resource at bits.wikimedia.org generates a 503 error. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:12, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's been 2 or 3 weeks now since this problem started. Anyone have any idea what's going on? It does seem to be a problem with the availability of bits.wikimedia.org, as far as I can tell. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:12, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Both of your links are working for me. Have you tried using a different internet connection and seeing if that's the issue? If not, try disabling all of your gadgets and scripts, and see if you get an error from bits. —mc10 (t/c) 23:03, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've done that (disabled everything), except I've tried from multiple computers on the same network rather than from different networks. I don't see why bits should suddenly give problems on my network when it was working before and I have no problems with any other sites.

The problem has been difficult to repeat this week. Things seem to have improved somewhat; those links are also working for me at the moment. But I can never predict when it will happen. Sometimes I get popups on my watchlist, sometimes not. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:33, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since about 6:30 am UTC, I am having severe problems getting the site to load. Pages load very slowly, usually waiting for bits.wikimedia.org, and in most cases timeout. Occasionally they load minus the skin. I'm running Win 7 (Home Premium) and Firefox just updated itself to 3.6.17 when I rebooted to see whether that would fix the problem. Other sites are loading, so it appears to be a Wikipedia problem. It's happening for me with de. as well as en. Apologies if this has been reported but I don't see it in the contents for the page and this edit screen still tells me it's reading en.wikipedia.org so I hope this posts! Yngvadottir (talk) 15:25, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm running XP Pro with Chrome and experiencing the same thing. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 15:58, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using Windows 7 and not encountering any problems. IE9 Windows 7 X64 --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   → Shake 'n Bake 16:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Operations team is looking into this now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiwooster (talk • contribs) 17:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I also had timeouts for more than 3 hours, but with Firefox 3.6.13 (not 3.6.17), and used IE for slow access (with fewer timeouts). The wide impact of today's slow response can be seen by observing page-view stats for the next few days, such as for article "blanket" (but don't view that article, to avoid "epistemic feedback"): stats May-2011 (averaged 208 pageviews-per-day in April). Some other articles can be used as "litmus test" articles, which have had steady daily pageviews as immune to the typical weekday-rises of many articles, such as "Beach" (which rises ~50% from weekend 950 to weekday 1,450 pageviews). Response seems better now. -Wikid77 17:42, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The pageview stats seem to indicate no hindrance to reader interest: whatever slow-down occurred for hours, on 10 May, did not cause many readers (world-wide) to stay away for the whole day. -Wikid77 16:24, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I have been having connection problems as described since at least 00:01 UTC on 10 May affecting only Wikipedia pages (i.e. not CNN/google etc). Some page configurations, such as simple diffs, load faster than others, timing out on quite a few, editing and saving are problematic; script-running is slow to a crawl too. I am Hong Kong based, have tried a public machine (IE on W7), my work (FF on NT) and home (Chrome on OSX) machines all give similar problems – not browser-related for what I can tell. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:05, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• For what it's worth, I'm having consistent issues loading pages here. Something like a quarter of the time Wikipedia pages fail to load (general Internet connectivity is fine). RxS (talk) 18:30, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Me, too. I don't know about 25% of the time but VERY frequently. Sometimes on something as simple as clicking on My watchlist. Most annoying.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:34, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

25% might be a bit high but not by much. It lasts a couple minutes then is fine. It is annoying to say the least. Anyone have any idea what's going on? RxS (talk) 18:37, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(smiling) I didn't say 25% was too high. Might actually be low. Annoying was a diplomatic word.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:42, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is no better today.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• It was much improved the day after my complaint above; it has deteriorated again today – noticeably slower, but tolerable. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:54, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• For me, it started on May 13 and has continued since with little change for the better or for the worse, although it comes in waves.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bump. It does come in waves, but never goes away and is bad tonight for example. RxS (talk) 03:12, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would describe it as intermittent but frequent and consistent. The phrase "never goes away" is particularly apt, although I might say "never completely goes away" instead as occasional clicks work fine. Is anyone investigating this? It seems lately it's just reports from me, RxS, and Ohconfucius.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:54, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've had the same problem intermittently (using XP & Chrome). It seems to happen more on some specific pages, especially article history, although maybe my brain is just trying to find patterns in randomness. Hasn't happened in the last few hours. bobrayner (talk) 14:10, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm so glad this isn't just me. I've been having this problem for a week or more. I use Windows XP and Firefox 4.0.1. Is anyone trying to look into this? --Auntof6 (talk) 03:39, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Look at the topics ("Slow load time" and its subsection) lower down on this page.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:07, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What is going on with the weird "rate this page" box at the bottom of Joseph Elsner, Planet, and maybe other pages as well? This is not a template - it seems like it's coming straight from MediaWiki. Is this part of some proposed rating scheme? If so, where was that discussion? » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 04:32, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Found a relevant MediaWiki page via google, but I don't know what it means: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/86530. Wha?!... » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 04:49, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

May be related to [1] -- placing a bug on Bugzilla. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 05:00, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Look a few sections up, in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool. Prodego ^talk 05:02, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Where was the Signpost on this?? I guess it came in after "press time". Well, Signpost ought to have something on it next week, at least: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 05:13, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-05-09/Technology report#In brief. You're just failing everywhere on this thread! :-) Killiondude (talk) 05:50, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:DBAD, Killion. As I'm pointing out at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool, that little Tech Report "In Brief" entry hardly does justice to the potential significance of this development. As one who reads News and Notes with interest but lacks the software knowledge to benefit (usually) from poring over the Tech Report, and then stumbles across this odd "Rate this page" feature, for which I was fairly certain there was no community discussion on WP, I think my response was perfectly reasonable. I think the failure here is with the people who were positioned to better inform the community of this major change. » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 15:36, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While I support the Article Feedback Tool (at least, for research right now), I agree that it was not a very good idea to suddenly add it to 100,000 pages without telling the community in a big notice beforehand ... people will be very confused for a while. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:27, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is also "Expanded Use of Article Feedback Tool" as a discussion above. There just needs to be a "what is this?" button on the page when it starts, then people will know. Overall,k about time it started - a good idea, and just a beginning. There will be more in 2 years I am sure. History2007 (talk) 08:12, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What I am wondering, however, is how these ratings supposed to keep up with the edits? If we have a lousy stub which is (rightfully) rated by a dozen people as lousy, and tomorrow an editor comes in and improves it to, say, B-class, are the old lousy ratings still going to carry over? And surely over time this kind of problems will only accumulate?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 12, 2011; 19:41 (UTC)

Good point. And this really means that this tool deserves more comment from the community at large, so suggestions such as yours can be included. As you stated, many of these ratings can become "stale ratings" that rate a snapshot of the article in the past and will lose validity over time, as the content changes. I will suggest a discussion the general Village Pump. History2007 (talk) 07:21, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is already being considered in the design of the extension. Helder 21:03, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The "What is this" link was requested on Bug 28927 and also on MediaWiki talk:Articlefeedback-form-panel-title. Helder 19:56, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi everybody, the extension of the AFT to 100K articles (about 3% of articles on the English Wikipedia) was announced on the Wikimedia blog and on wikien and you can find an extensive discussion of the rationale on this page. Feedback from the community is very much welcome as the feature is still experimental and we'd love to hear how to improve it. For other frequently asked questions, check out this page. --DarTar (talk) 19:13, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I like "Rate This Page". Maybe people don't have the time or inclination to provide detailed criticism. It works for me.70.125.135.72 (talk) 20:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is a good idea, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that it is but a beginning and has a long way to go. But the journey has to stop with this step. I think we need an Rfc. History2007 (talk) 23:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And when are these things going to disappear from the pages they've just appeared on? Surely they're not permanent? They're way too big and ungainly. They don't look like the small ones that occasionally appeared on pages before. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 10:24, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with All Hallow's Wraith. They are obtrusive -- way too big and ungainly. They interfere with viewing the Categories. And they make Wikipedia in general, and the article in particular, look very unprofessional. The thing has multiple problems and was very ill thought out. Please remove the things or allow us a way to remove them ourselves. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 10:58, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming you are using the vector skin, you can add #mw-articlefeedback{ display:none; } to your Special:Mypage/vector.css file, which will make them disappear (works for me anyway). Jenks24 (talk) 11:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why not make the "Rate this Page" panel collapsable (and collapsed by default) like some of the navigation boxes found at the bottom of some articles? [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 00:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right, that's a great idea. I wouldn't mind them that much if they were collapsible. There should have been wider community input about their implementation. And like I said, is there a set date for when this trial stops? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:03, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like the idea. Nonetheless, this is something which can be customizable by adding the appropriate code in personal js code. Helder 13:45, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It just appeared magically in two redirects (here and here) I made today (in addition to the main article they were being redirected to). ¬___¬ Is there any way to remove them from those pages, they'd just be wasted sitting on a page no one ever sees (if the primary goal is to gather feedback, that is).-- Obsidi♠n^Soul 16:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's definitely a bug. We'll look into it.--Eloquence* 17:50, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Someone above also mentioned disambig pages. I assume those will also be avoided now. Right? History2007 (talk) 16:09, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No it is still being added to random new pages. See here. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 06:35, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure it is a bad thing to be able to get feedback also for disambiguation pages: some disambiguation pages can be complete and well-organized while others are not. This information may be useful. Helder 13:45, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The appearing of it in new pages is just a consequence of the way used to define "random page" in the js code. See mw:Thread:Talk:Article feedback/New pages/reply (3) for more details.

But I would consider a bug the presence of the extension on redirect pages, since it is only useful in the target pages. A fix for this was requested on Bug 29164.

You can try to delete the redirect page and recreate it so that its page_id changes. If you are lucky, the three last digits of the new page_id will be greater than or equal to 027 and the tool will not be displayed... :-)

Seriously, a more general (but still temporary) solution would be to add some code to MediaWiki:Common.js to hide the form in redirect pages. One option would be to query the API for info about the page and add the CSS #mw-articlefeedback{ display:none; } if it has the parameter "redirect". Such a code could probably be ported to the extension itself (or maybe this information is available to the extension by other means). Helder 13:45, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Where are the Ratings saved? How can one make changes? Bielle (talk) 18:00, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is a separate Pandora's box:

• Can the ratings be edited by the person who submitted them?
• Can they be edited/reverted by others if they are vandalism?
• What does it mean for a rating to be vandalism? X-standard deviations gap where X=...?
• Can ratings be edited by an admin if they are part of WP:Wikihounding of an editor by another?
• Can IPs/puppets repeatedly rate?
• Etc. etc. etc.

But these are policy rather than software issues, and they could not have possibly all been anticipated as part of a technical design. I do not have answers for them, but as any new feature/tool general suggestions by various people will eventually provide some answers. This is a new and interesting game with potential for a positive impact on Wikipedia, so we will just have to wait and see. But please do make suggestions ASAP because the sooner suggestions are fed into a software design as it undergoes testing the better. History2007 (talk) 21:34, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the way the ratings logic is currently implemented:

• After a user rates an article, their rating appears pre-filled upon subsequent views of the article.
• If a user wants to change their rating, they can adjust the stars and click submit. They may also clear their ratings entirely by clicking on the trash icon next to the stars. This re-rating overrides their previous rating.

So at any point in time, an article has only one ratings set for a given registered user or IP address since subsequent ratings take the place of previous ratings. This mechanism makes it a little more difficult to game the ratings. For example, if ratings were associated by cookie, a user could easily rate an article, delete the cookie, and then rate the article again. Since the ratings are associated with IP addresses/accounts, a user would either have to find another machine with a different IP address or create another account.

Currently, there isn't a definition of ratings vandalism, and ratings cannot be edited or deleted by anyone but the rater. We should continue to monitor the ratings patterns to see if it would be useful to have this type of feature. It will be tricky since such a definition will have to be able to separate vandalism from true changes (e.g., if the article is vandalized and as a consequence receives lower reviews). Based on the limited averages we're seeing on the dashboard, it looks like the volume of well-intentioned ratings outweighs the volume of vandalism ratings, at least among the more heavily rated articles. Howief (talk) 22:44, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I assume the ratings go into a SQL-based repository of some type. Do they? If so, what is the Wiki-protocol for editing that type of data? I have not seen an example of that in Wikipedia. Is there one? History2007 (talk) 00:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finally! Finally I traced the thing here. (Happy that someone used the phrase "Rate this page" because how could I be ever guessing the "Article Feedback Tool" when there is not name of the feature on that ratebox!)

Well nice thing to rate the page and let the public be more engaged with Wikipedia content as Eric Moeller mentioned above. But the weird thing about this particular box is that this element, unlike any other in Wikipedia so far, can't be easilly traced to its origin, source code, discussion about it, or explanation of what the feature is and how it popped there. Normally when there is something new out, I look at the wikisource code and trace it back to the project which discusses its merit. I am satisfied then. Not need to ask, no need to comment a thing. Well here it suddenly poped out of nowhere. No trace of it in the page's wikicode. No link to follow, ... just uppearing on the end of weird page (lets say, it was not one of the best pages here, not one of the featured articles).

So in conclussion after rereading all written here, I completelly agree with what TheDJ mentioned above:

Conclusion, the feature needs a "What is this?" link and a "turn this off" button as well as a good place to turn it on again.

(But would there be the "what is this?" link, they could at least hunt for the more answers - on how to switch it off etc. on the description page. The "what is this?" link is quite essential)

I believe this might be yet quite interesting feature and I believe it will be good source of statistics. Just provide some common courtessy for fellow wikipedians, so they can fetch some information about it on their own and easily. In the end they will be not wasting your time, the time of the more knowledgeble by repeating the same question here and elsewhere all over again.--Reo ⁺ 18:52, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See Bug 28927 and MediaWiki talk:Articlefeedback-form-panel-title for the "What is this" link. Helder 14:24, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to redirects mentioned above, feedback tool is now also in some disambiguation pages: ARA Veinticinco de Mayo. Also, where can I find when the feedback tool appeared on a particular page? Shouldn't that information be visible in page logs? MKFI (talk) 16:38, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't a good thing to get feedback also about disambiguation pages? As said above, I think it is useful to know which disambiguation are complete and well-organized and which ones are not. It would be useful to have lists such as those created by the ReaderFeedback extension (see example on Portuguese Wikibooks)

I think there is no log for articles where it was enabled by means of a category. But if the tool is in an article created after May 10, and is not in the category, the tool is likely to be there since the article was created. For articles created before, and which were not in the list of pages where the extension was first enabled, the date is probably May 10. Helder 14:24, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While I wholeheartedly support this initiative, for me too its sudden appearance was quite a shock... There should have been some sort of warning. Also, I question the usefulness of this tool in stub articles. What is there to evaluate in two or three-line articles? IMO the tool only makes sense for C-class and above, where there is an actual more or less complete article to evaluate. Of course, most articles are not even assessed, so this would be impossible to implement, but perhaps articles with stub notices should be excluded. Constantine ✍ 09:35, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• This template is showing up on Pieria (Syria) (and other articles) without anything on the article to create it (or any way to remove it). The project page at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Workgroup does not seem to have anyone who watching it. This project seems abandoned and out of control, it should be controlled or shut down. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:54, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree that something should be done, particularly a better explanation of this tool to the community. See also this thread I started a while ago. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:03, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are Wikipedia pages painfully slow to load today for anyone else, or is it just me? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:25, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not just you, REALLY slow... [stwalkerster|talk] 17:29, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Working fine for me and that's speaking as someone with a broadband speed that's a tiny 223kbps. AD 17:37, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I get time-outs partway through loading large pages (like WP:RD/S), or loading of the page but not the toolbars and frame decorations. Sometimes a quick hit "reload" resolves it...probably one hella-lagged (to use the technical term) machine in the pool. DMacks (talk) 17:44, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's been bad for several days now. See topic above for more complaints.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Echo the above. It's pretty awful. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:05, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Things are loading at a decent speed for me. No complaints at the moment; I haven't encountered any error messages yet. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's been midly irritating all day, but now it's painful. Difs and pop-ups are uber-slow, and many times pages only load half-way. Other times when they do load, the font is very tiny, or the page is disjointed. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 00:10, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disjointed pages are always painful. You should seek medical advice. Seriously, for me it varies from irritating (actually rarely just mildly irritating) to painful. With the new buttons on Firefox 4, I often have to click on X to stop and then on the arrow to reload, and sometimes more than once. I just wish someone would let us know what is going on, even if it's just to say "we are still looking into it".--Bbb23 (talk) 00:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, it goes in streaks. I'm surprised it's not more of a topic of conversation. When it fails, it's gone for several minutes...RxS (talk) 03:27, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't get into my watchlist at all; it just hangs. Diffs are bad, history is bad, articles very slow, talk pages are sometimes only half loading. Has been like this for a couple of days for me. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 13:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I thought this was just me. It's making editing a real pain. Some kind of news that someone knows what's wrong (and that it may get better at some point) would be lovely. --Dweller (talk) 15:18, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It has been a real hindrance to my editing as well. It's frustrating when I have to wait literally minutes and then my browser finally just shows me a blank page, or even worse, a partially-loaded page. When a page doesn't load all the way, it can be difficult to tell, especially if it's a page I've never visited before. I might just assume that's all there is to the page. Then I reload, and all of a sudden the article is twice as big.

I have a suspicion that this slow performance may coincide with the decision to turn on email notification for EVERY editor on Wikipedia at the same time. Per the discussion below talking about the new email feature, that feature was available on smaller encyclopedias for some time but avoided on en.wiki because of performance concerns. Maybe those concerns were valid? -- Atama頭 16:40, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I highly doubt that. Sounds more like a caching server that is kaput somewhere. Other possibility is perhaps that the central notice for the board elections that is running right now ? I'm asking in the IRC channel of the system administrators for any ideas about the cause. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:56, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for doing that. Hopefully, they will respond and you can let us know.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:58, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I, too, wonder if it's a caching server problem. I've been having problems with loading time at work for about a week now (which is before the email notifications were turned on, by the way), but at home everything is loading in no time and with no problems...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 19:04 (UTC)

Can you please explain a bit more why there would be a difference between your work and home experiences? Is there something we can do at our end to mitigate the problem?--Bbb23 (talk) 19:29, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Because the connections are routed via different providers, so there's a good chance that my work connection is hitting a defective cache server whereas my home connection does not?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 17, 2011; 19:45 (UTC)

Interesting. If that's true, then it would also explain why some people are complaining, why some are saying it's okay, and why more people aren't complaining at all.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:51, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I edit from work, and from home. From home it's a simple cable connection to a local ISP. From work, it's through a Websense proxy server that goes through who knows where, but nowhere close to here. I don't think this is a regional thing. Also, this issue is serious enough that I'm probably going to stay away from Wikipedia for awhile. This site is nearly unusable in this condition. It's like driving a car that breaks down every 5 minutes or so on the highway. -- Atama頭 00:09, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm now getting load times over at least a minute for pretty much every page. Timing a few, the shortest was 1m2s, Logic gate. It's getting ridiculous. [stwalkerster|talk] 01:16, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have opened a ticket bugzilla:29034. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Users affected, and who know how to, might consider running traceroutes on en.wikipedia.org and/or bits.wikimedia.org. Might be helpful in figuring out if it is maybe a routing issue or something ? Link to them from here, or from the ticket. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:54, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

 Done, but it's not as bad now as it was last night. [stwalkerster|talk] 13:12, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not one of those who "knows how to", I did want to note that it had eased up for me this morning, but has gotten worse as the day has progressed. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:21, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Local traceroutes and from an online service show no problems with either en or bits. —DoRD (talk) 14:17, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is everyone of you from the UK per chance ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:50, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not here, no. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:53, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. Texas. It's been very slow for me, but has been running more smoothly today. —DoRD (talk) 13:54, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's slightly better for me today, but still slow and some pages are still only half loading. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 13:59, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm from the Southern east coast. I was on the west coast last week and had no issues there, but picked up problems as soon as I got back home. I tend to agree with Slim that it seems slightly better today. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:06, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Southwestern U.S. here. The problem continues. It may be slightly better this morning, but yesterday it got worse as the day progressed, so I'm waiting to see if it's really any better. Plus, it's still happening, so unless someone did something, why would it really be better? As for traceroutes, I'm suspicious as to their validity (with online tools). For example, I ran a traceroute from this site, and for both wikipedia and wikimedia, it showed slightly slow but not horrible timings. I then tried doing the same thing with www.cnn.com, and it timed out over and over until it aborted. Yet, when I access www.cnn.com, the response is instantaneous and complete. So, if someone can suggest an online tool that shows credible results, I'm willing to try it.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's already getting worse for me. I clicked on BLPN and it shows the title, says "transferring data" in the status bar, and just sits there. It's still sitting there as I type this message (it's been at least 2-3 minutes). Usually, I click on X and then refresh to push it along, but I'm curious what it will do if I don't do that. Should time out, but FF doesn't seem to care. :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 16:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's pretty quick for me at the moment, but it's been up and down all day. Usually it just hangs halfway through loading a page for a few minutes, then sometimes carries on, if I don't get impatient and refresh it. I must have left a tab open in that state for about 10 mins though, surprised Chrome didn't time it out... it's annoying though. [stwalkerster|talk] 16:15, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Western Canada on this end. Given the responses above, it definitely does not appear to be UK related. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 15:48, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ohconfucius (above in earlier topic) is in Hong Kong. Don't know if he's still experiencing the problem.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:51, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

West coast of the US here and it's still irritatingly slow. Killiondude (talk) 17:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot discern an obvious pattern here. Can someone use Firebug or WebkitInspector to at the very least pinpoint the transaction that is on hold for so long and the server that it is trying to reach ? Also, try using "View Source" of the webpage, and look for the '<!-- Served by line in the served out html of a request that takes this long. More detailed information is needed if we want to pinpoint the problem, cause the sysadmins don't see any reason for these problems. The status.wikimedia.org is also not having any issues from any of the locations that polls for access. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:36, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm willing to help, but I need more specific instructions from you. I use FF 4. I just added Firebug as an add-on (never used it before). I've enabled the console. I have the console in a separate window. It appears to log entries for each time I click on something (clearing what it logged on the previous click). It seems to create maybe 25-35 entries per click with columns as to what it's doing. What do you want me to provide here to be looked at? Are there any special settings you want me to use on Firebug?--Bbb23 (talk) 17:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's back to being very slow for me. Pages barely loading. I'm having to keep several windows open, and once I press save, go to another window to open the page if I want to keep writing there. In the meantime, I can see in the first window that it hasn't finished loading yet. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:58, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Me too, taken about 5 minutes to load just this edit page, after various attempts through getting Wikimedia errors - duly reported to the tech IRC channel too. Looks like they're having other issues right now though. [stwalkerster|talk] 18:28, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It just took me nearly 15 minutes to make one edit. Couldn't get the page to open, couldn't get preview to work, then why I tried to save I kept getting error messages. It's too slow to use now, so I'm giving up for a bit. Six error messages so far trying to save this edit. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 18:28, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some more issues are currently playing up, possibly due to the deploy of the Google News SiteMap extension a few hours ago, or due to updated translated messages. It's not yet known if these new issues (which are much larger and seemingly affecting everyone) are in any way related to the issues that are being reported in this topic. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a error I just got, generally it's been very slow today (same as every other day this week)...and getting this edit done was like pulling teeth. Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical), from 208.80.152.88 via sq63.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to ()Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno [No Error] at Wed, 18 May 2011 18:08:47 GMT RxS (talk) 18:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the bugzilla bug has been closed as "INVALID". 3 mins it took me to load this edit page - and I highly doubt it's any of the issues Krinkle has suggested on the bug report, due to the number and the geographical distribution of people affected by this. [stwalkerster|talk] 19:15, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Given Krinkle's response that it may be caused "problems at your provider" and "anything on your computer", I have to doubt that this VP thread was even reviewed despite being linked to in the bug report. How frustrating for the editors who are affected. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 19:30, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorely tempted to reopen that bug report actually, with something snarky like "I'm pretty sure I've got a different ISP to other people whom this is affecting, given it's affecting people all over the world". So far I have restrained myself though, cos that sort of response isn't fair to them either. Seriously though, I think it should be reopened re-affirming this thread. I just don't trust myself to keep a cool head while doing it. [stwalkerster|talk] 19:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aah, the old "user error" canard. It's nice to know someone cares. Fortunately, we're well-paid for all of our work here.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Don't worry, ops are working on it. Nemo 19:51, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how you know, but I certainly hope you're right. My offer to DJ (above) to help still stands if someone explains what they need and what I should do.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:10, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes if we wish to retain and attract editors editing needs to be faster than it is now. We need to through everything we have at this problem. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm on the US South East Coast in Florida and it's been terribly slow the past couple of days and remains slow today. Pages half-load, they load slowly section-by-section, only load the header of the page then hang, happens on articles, talk pages, and even my watchlist...sometimes I'll have to refresh the browser to get the whole watchlist to load. Very irritating. Dreadstar ☥ 20:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

TheDJ and myself have done some poking, and we don't think it's an issue at Wikimedia, nor an issue with the users. We think the problem may lie with some server/router/rr somewhere in the middle, which we don't really have control over. I'm going to try re-routing my local traffic over an SSH link to a remote machine of mine, but I dunno what will work and what won't at the moment. [stwalkerster|talk] 20:43, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck, but I must say that if it's a router, it seems odd it's not affecting other servers besides Wikipedia/Wikimedia. Network issues can be very complex to diagnose. I hope someone can pinpoint the problem.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:04, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If it is something in the middle, it's odd that it's happening to users across a couple continents. RxS (talk) 21:16, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Could be something pretty close to Wikimedia - it'd go a way to explain the temperamental nature of the problem too, and also why it's only affecting some users. One network peering partner of many going bad, network decides to route a request through them, and suddenly a page is really slow to load. [stwalkerster|talk] 21:21, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's been happening Down Under too. Very frustrating. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 21:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And here in southern Ontario, Canada, it reminds me of the first time I went on line about 15 years ago when the images scanned on the screen line by line. This is not a user or an ISP or a browser problem. 21:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, it'll do the old-school style line-by-line scanning down the screen, building the page slowly. Sometimes hanging on a section, wait for it, then draws the next section down... Dreadstar ☥ 23:11, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a lot of trouble too here in California. Even at school where I have tons of bandwidth in both direction, uploads to Commons are proceedubg at an unusually slow rate, taking hours to upload 100 MB. Ordinary pages like this one are loading slowly and timing out too. Dcoetzee 23:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're a graduate student in computer science. Fix it! :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 00:17, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's really bad tonight...hard to do anything. Is there an update somewhere? I'm having a hard time believing that this worldwide issue is being caused by something near Wikipedia but not Wikipedia itself. RxS (talk) 03:55, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in the Pacific NW. The site has been slower than usual on and off for the past few days.bllix (talk) 04:58, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just so it's clear, the problem is still continuing for me. Tomorrow will be the first-week anniversary of this problem (for me).--Bbb23 (talk) 14:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked on the Foundation mailing list whether anyone is looking into it; no reply so far. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 14:26, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have you received any reply? The problem continues, and what is most troubling is the lack of any feedback from those responsible for fixing it except for a crappy response to the bug report. It's hard to believe anyone is investigating or working on the issue. I'd love to be proved wrong.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:48, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Erik Moeller posted a reply in the Bugzilla thread, citing a number of issues, one of which is a router problem in Tampa that can't be fixed until Tuesday at the earliest. But it looks like there's some hope coming. -- Atama頭 23:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update. It's been dreadful this afternoon here.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:32, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For the last several hours, I've been unable to load pages either on en:wp or on Commons without logging in through the secure server: regardless of what page I try to load, it gives me a "cannot display the webpage" message similar to what I get if I go to a nonexistent website. Does anyone have an idea how to get rid of the "Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely?" message that I get from IE version 8.0.6001.19048? Or do I simply have to try a different browser? On top of that, does anyone know what's going on with the servers to make this happen? Nyttend (talk) 04:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see discussions above with people's locations being asked: I'm in Bloomington, Indiana. Nyttend (talk) 04:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bugzilla:29034 for reference. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:10, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yep things are real slow now; however, refreshing once usually loads the page immediately. Gary King (talk · scripts) 14:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is a problem. For about 3 days, intermittently. Pages don't load or load very slowly. Bus stop (talk) 14:32, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agh, it's still happening and it's just unbearable. Dreadstar ☥ 15:59, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Last four or five days (in Australia) it as been slow but the last two it has gotten worse to the point that pages (articles, templates, talkpages ect) just don't load or half load and needs to be refreshed a few times to get them to load, whether I'm logged in or not. I've even used my Edu's computers and internet to see if my broadband ISP was the cause but still have the same issue there as well. Bidgee (talk) 03:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Ok, just now my watchlist only loaded about a quarter of the way and hung, this code was at the very end of the watchlist: "<li class="mw-line-odd watchlist-4-" Dreadstar ☥ 17:01, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm getting the same thing. My watchlist keeps loading only halfway, and often without the top part, and it's now happened a few times in preview too, where I can see only the top part of the article. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• In addition to the resource loader failure I've been experiencing for 3 weeks now (see "My gadgets no longer work" above), I am also experiencing flakey page loading for the last 3 days. My experience is the same as SlimVirgin's: The page loads part way and hangs forever. If I hit my 'reload' button the page reloads quickly and completely. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:08, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Seems to be worse today! Pages don't completely load but normally a few refreshes fixes allows it to full load, but today even refreshing isn't working. Getting a fully loaded page is just luck today! Bidgee (talk) 03:29, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bump, is this ever going to be fixed? RxS (talk) 05:54, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, because of the combination of these two sections, updates are inserted in two places. According to Atama above, there is a router problem that will hopefully be fixed next week, although the phrase "Tuesday at the earliest" is not at all concrete as to when. Then, of course, there's the issue of whether the router problem is actually the cause. One thing I can say for sure is it's been really horrible yesterday and today for me.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, for anyone who hasn't visited the link to Bugzilla, Erik Moeller said the following:

Erik Moeller 2011-05-20 21:27:06 UTC

According to the ops team, there are a number of separate and unrelated ops issues that have come up in the last few days:

1) Not all users are experiencing slowness, but a subset of users are. There's no definite smoking gun, but the most likely cause are ongoing issues with one of our routers in Tampa. The router will have to be taken down for maintenance to fix this issue, and order to perform this maintenance operation with minimal disruption, we need to have key ops engineers on standby to deal with any issues that may arise. My understanding is that the best available maintenance window is Tuesday next week.

2) There was a software deployment on May 18 which caused an application server overload; it was reverted the same day.

3) The mobile servers are currently intermittently overloaded, throwing internal server errors, and servers to provide additional capacity have been racked today.

4) In case you're looking at it, ganglia.wikimedia.org is not displaying correct server status information (as of yesterday); it's in the process of being fixed.

We're still in the process of setting up a new primary data center location in Ashburn, VA, which will give us higher site reliability in general, and also create the possibility of safe failover in maintenance or emergency situations.

What I gathered from that is that we wouldn't expect to see an improvement until Tuesday (tomorrow). What I quoted above was three days ago, on Friday the 20th. -- Atama頭 16:29, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but today it seems much better for me. --Auntof6 (talk) 14:54, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The techs have performed some much needed maintenance on the network today. [2] Hopefully this has resolved the problems people were having. the wub "?!" 17:07, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, it hasn't resolved problems. Image thumbnail updating, both on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, is as slow as before. I estimate it is running at approximately 1% of normal speed. Thumbnail updates after uploading a modified image now still take upwards of 24 36 48 hours, where they used to take less than 60 seconds. —Quicksilver^{T @} 20:10, 26 May 2011 (UTC) [updated 15:04 28 May 2011 UTC)][reply]

It's improved for me as well.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:08, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It was much better for several days, but now it's back to the same old thing. Possibly worse, I'd say a third of my attempts to load a page fail. RxS (talk) 05:58, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Because that it is slower, it is more difficult to edit pages. I have tried to edit many pages but I get an message that it could not be processed because of bandwidth. I saved all the codes they gave me. Its Chinese.

Here it goes (Please note that I replaced my IP by "--.--.--.---")

---

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=500_Keys&action=submit, from --.--.--.--- via sq75.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to 208.80.152.88 (208.80.152.88) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Mon, 16 May 2011 19:01:38 GMT

---

Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AbuseLog/4761656, from --.--.--.--- via sq75.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to 208.80.152.48 (208.80.152.48) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Mon, 16 May 2011 21:19:22 GMT

---

Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AbuseLog/4761656, from --.--.--.--- via sq66.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to 208.80.152.48 (208.80.152.48) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Mon, 16 May 2011 21:27:57 GMT

---

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Ebe123&action=submit, from --.--.--.--- via sq74.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to 208.80.152.85 (208.80.152.85) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Tue, 17 May 2011 18:09:05 GMT

---

Request: POST http://fr.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Mod%C3%A8le:IP_scolaire&action=submit, from 208.80.152.50 via sq62.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to () Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno [No Error] at Wed, 18 May 2011 18:06:29 GMT

---

Request: GET http://fr.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Mod%C3%A8le:IP_scolaire&action=edit, from 208.80.152.74 via sq63.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to () Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno (11) Resource temporarily unavailable at Wed, 18 May 2011 18:07:57 GMT

---

Request: POST http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mod%C3%A8le:IP_scolaire&action=submit, from 208.80.152.49 via sq61.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to () Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno [No Error] at Wed, 18 May 2011 18:10:06 GMT

---

Request: POST http://fr.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Cat%C3%A9gorie:Adresse_IP_scolaire&action=submit, from 208.80.152.82 via sq64.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to () Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno [No Error] at Wed, 18 May 2011 18:16:46 GMT

---

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=500_Keys&action=submit, from --.--.--.--- via sq75.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE7) to 208.80.152.88 (208.80.152.88) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Wed, 18 May 2011 21:21:51 GMT

---

~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 21:10, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I guess this should really be a Bugzilla issue or a firefox bug but here goes. The page Portal:Mathematics/Suggestions reliably causes Firefox on a Mac to crash (latest versions of both). The problem seems to have something to do with pictures in a two column layout. Safari also seems to have problems with the page placing the pictures incorrectly. Any thoughts?--Salix (talk): 21:25, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Works fine for me in Firefox 4 on a Mac. I don't understand why having pictures in a two-column layout would crash a browser. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:46, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just crashed for me, using Firefox 4 on a PC. 216.93.212.245 (talk) 22:33, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So [3] doesn't crash but the latest revision does? Does this always happen or only sometimes? And does it crash in a different browser? Gary King (talk · scripts) 14:25, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just checked with IE8 and had no problem loading the page, though the last image took a long time to load. 216.93.212.245 (talk) 17:10, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think we determined on IRC last night that it's a FF4 thing. FF4 on Win7 and Ubuntu both shut down when trying to open that page. Killiondude (talk) 19:31, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me on FF4 on XP. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 15:23, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Portal:Mathematics/Suggestions page loads OK for me with Firefox 3.6.17 on Ubuntu 10.04. Also works OK with SeaMonkey 2.0, which is now based on Firefox 3 code. It loads with Opera 11 without crashing, but doesn't show 2-column layout at bottom. —Quicksilver^{T @} 16:50, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm creating a number of redirects, and a lot of them are getting the "rate this page" feature appear. Is there really any need for this on redirects and dab pages? Can it be turned off for these? Mjroots (talk) 08:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It always helps if you list a couple of examples. And this probably requires software changes to fix, so bugzilla:. bugzilla:27252 might be related btw. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:30, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Examples: Erato Sartes, MV Erato Sartes, Spaarnestroom, MV Spaarnestroom, Starkenborgh, MV Starkenborgh. Mjroots (talk) 07:14, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto for me. Here's one: The Long Winter (film) Lugnuts (talk) 19:40, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are two issues:

• Bug 29164 - ArticleFeedback shouldn't be displayed on redirect pages (should be fixed when rev:88151 goes live)
• The way the extension determines if a "random" page should or not be rateable, described in this comment.

Helder 21:13, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just got this myself at Tissue printer, a redirect I'd just made. I was the only one to edit the redirect and it asks me to rate it. Whatever this scheme is, it needs work. Wnt (talk) 05:43, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone give me guidance as to why I have no importance statistics in the article assessment quality table for the National Railway Museum, shown below. Also, according to summaries at individual category pages, I have 15 articles assessment for quality and 28 assessed for importance ... but 17 articles turning up in the table. I've looked at the job queue and poked the table at the update page. That exhausts my knowledge. All help welcomed; thanks. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:37, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

National Railway Museum-related pages by quality
Quality
	Total
Assessed	0
Total	0

Okay. So it was a lag in the toolserver database.

The main page's "In the News" section has a link about the WTO ruling regarding Boeing and Airbus. The link is Competition between Airbus and Boeing#World Trade Organization litigation but when clicking this link, my browser (Firefox 4) sends me to the bottom of that article instead of to the relevant section. I can't see any problem with the link name itself. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:03, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I had the same thing happen to me. I think it started happening off and on (to me) when the ResourceLoader or something was changed on the site. Killiondude (talk) 08:58, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

From one of my browsers (Firefox). It is still in Chrome. Any idea what I might've messed up? Restarting the browser is not helping, I've recently installed a new firewall but disabling it does not restore the toolbar. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:42, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Adding some other issues, it seems that for Wikipedia in Firefox, my Javascript is not working. Why could that be? PS. It doesn't work on en wiki and Commons, but it works on pl wiki and many other websites... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:12, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've been editing WP articles for years but in the past few months I've perceived a rise in the number of performance problems or functionality quirks I've been experiencing. I'll briefly mention the types of symptoms I've seen.

I am curious if others are seeing the same things in these past months. I also have a question: if I want to to get a performance status and a state of health check about WP, where's the best place to go? I known about http://status.wikimedia.org/ and http://ganglia.wikimedia.org/; I also know that WP:CHAT and certain email aliases/archives are available. But I've got to think that there must be some page in the WP: namespace that summarizes WP health and performance from the user's perspective instead of the subsystem perspective presented by those sources. I've tried WP:HEALTH, WP:STATUS, WP:PERFORMANCE, all to no avail, as well as WP:FAQ WP:FAQ/Technical, and FAQs mentioned at the village pumps. I've tried some archive searches too, and briefly resorted to googling various topics.

Thanks in advance. 67.101.7.230 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:29, 23 May 2011 (UTC).[reply]

This is probably related to this thread above on this page. A lot of people are frustrated. I'm on a semi-Wikibreak until it's fixed, it's too frustrating. (Obviously not a full break or I wouldn't be typing this.) -- Atama頭 19:43, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This issue was posted at the Reference Desk five days ago, and the poster was told to bring the issue here; I don't think they have, so I will add it. Often, when I write a post on a talk page, Chrome adds an extra line break before my indent. (Examples in the link above.)

Can you help?  ajmint  (talk•edits) 19:29, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is this the same issue as #Google Chrome inserts an extra line break when adding a comment to a talk page, above? -- John of Reading (talk) 19:36, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, didn't see that (just searched archives).  ajmint  (talk•edits) 19:39, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's really getting on my nerves, images don't update, even if I purge really hard! Are there any admins in here who can fix this? --Beao 23:21, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeing the same problem. Modified images uploaded 6-12 hours earlier aren't showing up, even after clearing my browser cache and clicking on the Wikipedia clock display to force purging. This has been going on for several days now, and it doesn't matter what time of day it is. I first encountered it on 23 May 2011, while trying to upload a new version of a rather small JPEG image, and every image since then has been a pain in the ass. Somebody obviously monkeyed with the server settings; thumbnail regeneration has become nonexistent. Could it be that the purging command is no longer being executed? —Quicksilver^{T @} 16:18, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please assist I was looking at the timeline inserted into Sikhism (permanent link) using the <timeline> tag and I noticed that if you use the following scheme:

PlotData=

  width:10 textcolor:black align:left anchor:from shift:(12,-6)

  bar:Nanak from:1469 till:1539 color:1

...

It creates a timeline that includes the text "1469-1539" in the legend at the bottom, rather than the typographically correct "1469–1539" (that is, it generates a hyphen rather than an ndash, cf. WP:DASH.) Can someone amend this? Should I open a bug at Bugzilla for this? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:38, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Although this should be a noncontroversial request at bugzilla:, I'd personally wait until the current dispute over dashes/hyphens is resolved before filing a bug. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:43, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clicking on [4] which I sourced through an edit, I find the IP's contributions. Going through popups [5] I don't find any, why is this? Dougweller (talk) 04:31, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The contribs show for me with Popups. Try hard refreshing the current page, and then the contribs page. Gary King (talk · scripts) 05:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but the first url still doesn't show anything. I did shift/F5 in Chrome and also copied it to IE which I hadn't used for the url before. Dougweller (talk) 08:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• The answer lies within the 'User:' in the popups' url (note it's not present in the former link). Somehow, it inserts the 'User:' whilst it ought not to. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:47, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see a contribs list on a mouseover of both links. I have had similar issues in the past, however. Killiondude (talk) 08:55, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mouseover works for both also, but the 2nd url (not the first, sorry) still doesn't. Dougweller (talk) 09:04, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Usually when this happens, refreshing the page fixes it for me. When Popups content doesn't load, I think it's usually because it times out when trying to contact the server, since the site can be slow sometimes. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why Presently, users can rate Kierkegaard, even though it's simply a redirect to Søren Kierkegaard. What is the purpose of this? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:38, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is accidental and Eloquence has already stated here somewhere, that they will look into that this week. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:30, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A fix has been implemented and should go live with the next deployment.--Eloquence* 17:46, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I created Project: Kill as a redirect to a Leslie Nielsen film which actually has that name. However, it has placed it as a Wikipedia:Kill wrongly. The redirect is currently up for deletion at here. I need a tech guru to move Project Kill to Project: Kill as the title of the film article and evade it going to Wikipedia:kill.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:53, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is not possible. "Project:" is the native name of the Wikipedia namespace. It cannot be used as an article name. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:51, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See also: Wikipedia:Namespace#Aliases. On Wikisource for instance, Project: redirects to the Wikisource namespace. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It explicitly says there: "Project: Mersh is located at Project Mersh (Project: is an alias for the Wikipedia namespace)". עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone else notice anything wrong with this page, or is it just me? Angryapathy (talk) 16:52, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Seems normal to me; could you describe what is wrong with the page as you see it (or take a screenshot)? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:47, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fine to me too. If you didn't specify what the problem was, I assume that something went horribly wrong at the beginning of the page, probably the infobox, since the timeline at the top can perhaps look odd in certain circumstances. Just try bypassing your cache to get the latest version of the page. Someone vandalized the infobox so it was broken for a brief moment but it's fixed now. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:59, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia was never quick, but now it's slower on broadband than it was on a telephone line. I've just have seen a moderately long page (60,658 bytes) take over 3 minutes. The main culprit may be bits.wikimedia. --Philcha (talk) 18:26, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I misread your section title as, "Why is Wikipedia so horrible now?" and was tempted to agree with you ;) ╟─TreasuryTag►person of reasonable firmness─╢ 18:28, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Changed "horrible" to "horribly" in section title. —Quicksilver^{T @} 16:33, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please see #Slow load time above - although, it was supposed to have been fixed by now. —DoRD (talk) 19:09, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For days I have been seeing seeing stale article histories. Example: Revision history of Louis XIV of France stops on May 19, even though following the "next edit" link via "Compare selected revisions" shows at least 6 more edits. Those extra edits show up in user histories, just not in the article history. This is not the only article with a stale history, just an example. I have cleared my cache many times, turned off Firefox 4.0.1 and turned off rebooted my computer. Is it me or is it Wikipedia? 71.234.215.133 (talk) 19:38, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be only for logged out users, but yes, I've seen this too. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 21:09, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This should be fixed now, the same thing happened with newer versions of images. Apparently the slowness of the servers, also had another issue, sometimes purge commands would get lost, and the squids never received the latest versions of articles because of that. Both issues should be fixed now I think, but i'm not totally 100% sure. I'm not sure if the WMF is sure yet. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:35, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is still occurring. More information: if I edit an article the stale histories update; if I clear the cache after that the stale histories return. I find this frustrating, as one of the stale histories is to this project page. 71.234.215.133 (talk) 11:24, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Slowness of the servers" isn't a valid explanation. Somebody monkeyed with settings or software and broke something. I've seen image thumbnails not being updated for upwards of 10-12 hours, and the purge command doesn't force an update anymore, either. —Quicksilver^{T @} 16:31, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed a number of SVG maps today that aren't displaying properly. For example, if I visit https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:US_states_by_total_state_tax_revenue.svg I see a generic icon that looks like a blue amoeba with two tangent lines. If I click on that and visig http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/US_states_by_total_state_tax_revenue.svg I see the map properly. The map does not show up in the article State tax levels in the United States properly. I tried purging but this did not seem to help. -- Beland (talk) 04:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That image that you are seeing appears to be an icon that is part of the software. When I click to go to the SVG image directly to see how it renders there, my status bar in Internet Explorer 8 (which I believe has the Adobe SVG plugin installed) says "syntax error: line 10, column 2" and the image does not appear to load (or maybe it s just loading very slowly; who knows), so maybe there is a problem with the SVG image, but who knows. [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 06:11, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The file is perfectly legitimate although using an unusual namespacing style; there's a bug in our code. Looks like bugzilla:27465 -- I've reopened the issue as the previous fix didn't actually solve the problem correctly. (Basic problem: SVG / XML allows many different ways of specifying that the file is SVG [XML namespacing]. The current code assumes that SVG always had a particular namespace prefix or no prefix, which is an assumption this file violates.) --brion (talk) 23:11, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've added this and some other files as regression test cases in our phpunit suite, and a fix is queued up for review & merging (see bug link above for full info). --brion (talk) 00:10, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks for your work on this. -- Beland (talk) 03:29, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is it just me or is there something special about .mid sound files that makes it impossible to overwrite one with a new version? Yesterday I tried to upload a new version over an existing .mid file at File:Later Folia.mid. The upload log correctly registered my new version, but it's still the old version that gets played. Purging the page didn't help, and it's now almost a day. What am I doing wrong? Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:16, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't answer the "What am I doing wrong" bit, but would a G6 deletion to allow upload of the new file work? Ok, it's possibly bending the rules about an admin using the tools to do something a non-admin can't, but as it's with the intention of improvement, possibly WP:IAR is involable. Mjroots (talk) 08:29, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I don't think I would want to do that. In that case it would be better to just upload it under a new name. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:39, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's been a problem for the last few days in uploading modified images, too. New thumbnails aren't showing up for hours, although when one clicks on the full-size link, it is clear that the update has been accepted. I uploaded an edited image 10 hours ago, and it still isn't showing the new version thumbnail in the article. There may be a similar problem going on with all other media files. I first saw the problem with images on May 23, 2011. —Quicksilver^{T @} 16:27, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia web page is such a large scale that the text is broken down to 5 or less words per line and all other features such as images are outside my view. I need to scroll over to access them.

This is the only web page that has this effect, so I don't believe it has anything to do with my settings.

My internet explorer is version 6.0.

Where can I view any responses?

Sue Haley <e-mail redacted> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.83.133.249 (talk) 12:59, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You probably accidentally enlarged your font size for Wikipedia. To undo it, try Ctrl + Num -, or the View menu (I think it's called something like that in IE). User<Svick>.Talk(); 18:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To restore default font/zoom size in most browsers, user [Ctrl]-0 (press the "zero" key while holding the Ctrl key down). —Quicksilver^{T @} 19:07, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• When I have called for a long edit history list display, it takes up my time and Wikipedia's server's time to make the table, if it is long. When I then call for a compare of edits, the compare display overwrites the history display, and when afterwards I click the browser's left-arrow to go back to the history display, I must wait while Wikipedia's server remakes the history display. It would be useful if I could call the compare display to come on a new browser tab or on a new browser page. (I use Firefox.) Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:57, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Try the TabSubmit add-on. I just now installed it because your post reminded me how much I have missed the SubmitToTab add-on that was lost in an update somewhere, and it seems to work the same way (Firefox 4.0.1). - 2/0 (cont.) 14:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's a great extension for something I knew "had to be doable somehow"! Wish it worked with the javascript bullsh^Wweb-systems I have to use at work, but everywhere else seems to work fine. Thanks for finding it. DMacks (talk) 15:15, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello can you please take a look at my User:Penpaperpencil/modern.css page? It is saying this to me: "Code that you insert on this page could contain malicious content capable of compromising your account. If you are unsure whether code you are adding to this page is safe, you can ask at the appropriate village pump. The code will be executed when previewing this page under some skins, including Monobook." and I didn't understand it. It would be really helpful if you could help :) PenpaperpencilTalk09:06,5/26/2011

That is a standard notice whenever you are editing a css page. There's nothing harmful on your page. (Aside: your signature contravenes WP:SIG#NT) -- John of Reading (talk) 09:16, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks and I didn't know about the SIG sorry :( PenpaperpencilTalk12:38,5/26/2011

This is actually a problem from gv.wiki, but we don't have anyone there to advise. I'm hoping someone here can help; it's probably something simple I just don't know about. We are having problems with our version of {{Wikispecies}}, which is very simplified, breaking when article names or the alternative parameters contain spaces. Without encoding, the URL just links to the first word in the name and uses the rest as link text. I can't find a way to encode them properly; PAGENAMEE doesn't help when the Wikispecies name doesn't match ours (which is most of the time), and urlencode substitutes a plus for a space, which doesn't match the WS article names. Any suggestions? -- Shimmin Beg (talk) 15:01, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

m:Tech is a new forum for issues from any Wikimedia wiki.

It sounds like you either need to specify a parameter name ({{foo|bar=http://google.com/?search=bing}} instead of {{foo|http://google.com?search=bing}}) or you can try {{urlencode:}}. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:09, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your advice; I'll use m:Tech in future. Urlencode broke with spaces, but I've managed to fettle it by cribbing liberally from {{Commons}}. -- Shimmin Beg (talk) 15:37, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I already brought that up at the MediaWiki page about the tool, but since I didn't get a reply, I will repeat this question here.

What is the intended purpose of the article feedback tool? I think we already have well defined criteria for determining an articles quality (like neutrality of the article, number of sources etc). Also, who is supposed to analyze the collected data? And when the collected data has been analyzed, in which way will this information be used to improve the article and by whom? I know these questions may sound silly, but I just can't see the answers.

Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:06, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read mw:Article feedback, mw:Article feedback/FAQ, and mw:Extension:ArticleFeedback? --MZMcBride (talk) 15:10, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't read the pages you linked to yet, because I didn't know they exist until now :) Thanks very much for the links. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:19, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

After seeing the phrase "Individual Olympic Athletes" so capitalized in an article, but not a link, I looked to see if an article on Individual Olympic Athletes existed. It turns out that this title exists, but as a cross-namespace redirect leading to Category:Olympic competitors.

Fine. But what doesn't seem fine is that where it lists "Pages in category 'Olympic competitors'", one of them is Individual Olympic Athletes -- the same title whose redirect brought me to this page. If I saw that sort of thing on a normal page, I'd just edit and delink it -- but that concept doesn't apply here, since the content of a category page is generated automatically.

Presumably what's going on here is that because the page with the #REDIRECT line (necessarily) contains a link to the category page, the category processor is assuming that that page is itself in the category, and generating and entry on the category page for it. But in this case, not so!

I can't see why this would be intended behavior, so I'm assuming it's a bug and reporting it here in VP/T. If the point would be better raised elsewhere, please feel free to copy and paste this message accordingly.

(Side comment: if Individual Olympic Athletes is worth redirecting, then so is Individual Olympic Athlete. As an unregistered user -- who is going to remain that way, so don't bother replying -- I can't add that redirect, but perhaps someone else will.)

--208.76.104.133 (talk) 19:12, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When did it become acceptable to link from article space to Category space? I thought that was a no-no. 216.93.212.245 (talk) 21:57, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not (necessarily). A colon here is sufficient to prevent the link from also categorising the page. That's fixed that one at least :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 19:15, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I found Wikipedia:WikiProject_edit_counters, but it didn't seem to have what I was looking for. I need to write queries of the form "How many edits did user [x] have at time [y]?" This can be done using the API -- but extremely inefficiently, as you can only fetch metadata for 500 user contributions at a time (and I am not even interested in that metadata, I just want a raw count). Thus, prolific users and bots require many recursive calls -- leading to a ton of network traffic and lots of time. Anyone know of a more elegant solution? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 20:24, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You could request a toolserver account and then query the database directly. User<Svick>.Talk(); 21:17, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed that that would probably be the easiest way. API cap for admins and bots in 5000, btw. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 13:57, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

File:Talesofthenewteentitans4starfire.jpg is having a problem clearing the large size display image.

An editor decided to upload a "new" version of the file - actually a different image entirely - to avoid editing an article to get their way.

This was reverted, but while the thumbs and the archive of the original upload rendered the restored image, the large display on the file page and where the image is in use didn't change. Multiple reverts haven't cleared it. Aplying "purge" hasn't cleared it. Deleting the page and restoring only the original upload hasn't cleared it. Uploading from off page hasn't cleared it. Are there any other options?

- J Greb (talk) 21:58, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe delete the entire image off, and reupload them on a slightly different name? If original history need to be kept, delete all and restore only the required files (make sure each filehistory has a relevant pagehistory), and then try moving to a different name? This may be related to the server lag issues experienced at Commons (where some changes takes days to show up). Hope this helps. Regards. Rehman 06:00, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At Talk:2011 end times prediction we are set up for Miszabot to archive after 10 days (at least I think we are)... but for some reason it is not shifting old talk threads to the archives. A lot of the threads have comments that are more recent... but not all. Could someone take a look at it, please? Blueboar (talk) 23:50, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of pages that I'm visiting are not displaying the latest revision. Definitely not a template issue than can be cleared up by purging, not a cache issue either because this happens to pages I haven't previously vistited. For instance, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/University_of_California_Anti-Chinese_racism is showing up as still being an open AFD, even though it's been closed. Possibly related: many pages (including this one) are showing "view source" instead of "edit this page" despite not actually having any level of protection . 169.231.53.195 (talk) 05:03, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The 'nominornewtalk' right is no big deal, but there's no reason it shouldn't already be bundled with the autoconfirmed user rights package. I mean, I don't want to get a new messages bar because a user spell-checked their own message 10 minutes after my last response, it's stupid and I hate that bar enough already. I'm sure other users feel the same about the message bar as I do. Thoughts? —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 9:00pm • 11:00, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Bad Idea™ ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 11:02, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Would you care to elaborate? —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 1:46pm • 03:46, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the screenshot shown here, the template {{dts|2009|September|22}} produces the hidden output 02009-09-22 followed by the visible 22 September 2009. The 02009-09-22 22 September 2009 is interpretted by the Skype extension/add-on in web browsers as a phone number and rendered as such, meaning the hidden output becomes, undesirably, shown as a phone number. It is hard to determine how many pages this affects as it depends on whether the {{dts}} sort output and displayed output combine to make a phone number, but the Skype add-on is quite common in all web-browsers. Is there some way we can alter code in dts to stop this happening or block the add-on on wikipedia pages, I cannot image we have many actual phone numbers as WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Also this problem may transcend beyond this one template. Ideas welcome. Thanks, Rambo's Revenge (talk) 12:08, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is the Skype addon really that common? I use Skype and I don't seem to have it in either Firefox or Chrome (I haven't tried IE). - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 13:58, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Skype extension is widely accepted to be buggy, poorly implemented, and over-aggressive at replacing numbers in text boxes and other unwanted places (the trademark begin_of_the_skype_highlighting CSS class is prolific across the web). IMO this is a situation where we have to simply encourage people either not to use a badly-broken piece of software, to exert pressure on its authors to fix it, or to live with its dubious behaviour. Happy‑melon 14:51, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See also Special:AbuseFilter/313 and Special:AbuseFilter/345 Happy‑melon 14:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And the following old bugreports: bugzilla:23564 and bugzilla:26031. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:01, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've had Skype installed for years and never had the browser extension installed for me, either. Also, doing a quick search for the extension does indeed bring up lots of results that mention how buggy the extension is. This problem probably affects many other major websites besides Wikipedia. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:46, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I had to reinstall Skype recently and it installed the browser add-on. I quickly uninstalled the damn thing after it munged some edits. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:18, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have the xlinkbot reverting a link on the yo-yo page. I went ahead and released a video that corresponds to the yoyo wiki page into the public domain awhile back. The link worked fine without any problems. I accidently removed the clip that the video was linked to online(YouTube). I've uploaded the clip and tried re-linking it on Wikipedia and a bot keeps reverting the link to the removed status.

Yo-yo techniques[edit] SleepingFor more details on this topic, see Sleeper (yo-yo trick). Keeping a yo-yo spinning while remaining at the end of its uncoiled string is known as sleeping. Sleeping is the basis for nearly all yo-yo tricks other than looping, the player first putting the yo-yo in a "sleep" before throwing the yo-yo around using its string. Most modern yo-yos have a transaxle or ball bearing to assist this, but if it is a fixed axle yo-yo, the tension must be loose enough to allow this. The two main ways to do this are (1), allow the yo-yo to sit at the bottom of the string to unwind, or (2) perform lariat or UFO to loosen the tension (see yo-yo basics for video demonstration of throw down, sleeper, and UFO using a responsive yo-yo).

The updated link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PjCBMrTc48.

- Luke Renner <e-mail redacted> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.56.212.17 (talk) 13:41, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just tagged an article for G4 speedy. I then attempted to edit the template parameters to add a link to the previous AFD discussion. Instead the whole text of the article was copied to the article's talk page. I suspect the recent changes to the speedy templates to include a button linking to the talk page are the culprit here, but I have no clue how to fix it. Thanks in advance. – ukexpat (talk) 15:42, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That was weird! The article has now disappeared, of course, but I saw the history of the talk page. Can you give more details of "attempted to edit"? Which "edit" link did you use, what did you type, did you hit "preview", did you hit "save page"? At what point did you first realise that the talk page had been damaged? -- John of Reading (talk) 16:11, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I edited the whole page (edit tab, rather than just the opening section), inserted |Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Company of Heroes: Eastern Front in the CSD template code, didn't preview, hit save. When the browser re-loaded, I was on the talk page, not the article page, with the copy of the article displaying, alerting me to the weirdness. Not sure what else I can add.  – ukexpat (talk) 16:52, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just tried this at User:John of Reading/X2 and, of course, it behaved perfectly. Ideas, anyone? -- John of Reading (talk) 20:53, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One thought: perhaps the problem only manifests itself in mainspace- anyone want to create a speediable article to test it? – ukexpat (talk) 01:12, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I tried it in mainspace at an article already tagged as G12: [6]. Nothing was posted to the talk page. I imagine what you experienced is just an inexplicable, one-time glitch. Goodvac (talk) 01:32, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm probably overlooking something very simple, but I've tried every permutation that I can think of on the article infobox Harry Kalas with the signature parameter to get the image thereon and none of them are working: I tried

• | signature = File:Harry Kalas autograph.jpg|125px|Signature of sports announcer
  
• | signature = [[File:Harry Kalas autograph.jpg|125px|Signature of sports announcer]]
  
• | signature = [[File:Harry Kalas autograph.jpg|125px]]
  
• | signature = File:Harry Kalas autograph.jpg
  
• | signature = [[File:Harry Kalas autograph.jpg]]
  
• | signature = Harry Kalas autograph.jpg
  

Any suggestions on the actual formatting for this parameter? Skier Dude (talk) 23:56, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Something odd about {{Infobox sports announcer}}:

{{#if:{{{xxx<includeonly>|</includeonly>}}}|[[File:{{{signature}}}|125px|Signature of {{{name|{{PAGENAME}}}}}]]}}

Not sure why the xxx is there, but it means you have to include |xxx=1 to enable the signature. I suspect this is not the intent and it should be signature. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:11, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Turns out it wasn't your fault. The infobox template was broken a few months ago in this edit (notice the "xxx" when it should be "signature"). I fixed it. It's working in the article now. Gary King (talk · scripts) 00:11, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You got there firstest. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:15, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Much thanks - should have looked further :( Skier Dude (talk) 04:08, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, ISO-3166-2 is updatet. http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_3166-1_newsletter_vi-8_split_of_the_dutch_antilles_final-en.pdf Please update your templates and articels. --80.142.163.186 (talk) 11:30, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A large number of edits appear on pages only when I am logged in, and/or only appear in the page's history and are invisible on the edited page. I'm using the purge command a lot. Some pages seem to go unrefreshed for hours, sometimes over 24 hours, without getting updates unless I purge. Are the servers slow, or is something else wrong that's resulting in the need for so many manual purges? GreenPine (talk) 23:28, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've uploaded an image, and decided to modify it shortly after uploading it. It's part of a series of similar images, but for some reason MediaWiki isn't updating the image thumbnails (so the old image is still showing in articles and on the image description page itself). I've tried the guidance in WP:PURGE to no avail, cleared my cache, etc. and still nothing.

Any ideas? =) —Locke Cole • t • c 02:26, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps more patience on my part, as it seems to have resolved itself. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 23:19, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I created Salt Creek (White River) and was immediately presented with the Article Rating feature, complete with the "Did you know you can edit this page?" bit. Is it intended to appear to an article's creator immediately after that editor creates the article? Moreover, is there any tracking category for articles with the feature, or any other way to find which pages have it? I can't figure out what triggers which pages have it and which ones don't. Nyttend (talk) 12:59, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reported on Bug 29212 - Do not show ArticleFeedback tool to the author of a recently created article. Helder 21:30, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I really wish I could point you to where the community decided to add what some of us think it a horrible feature. I can't find that discussion, or even where one should take place. Dougweller (talk) 13:44, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's now being randomly deployed. Which can be mildly ammusing when it ends up on a redirect page.©Geni 13:51, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I like the feature; it's simply this implementation of it that seems rather odd. Nyttend (talk) 13:54, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)::I found the discussion page on mediawiki, they are adding it to 100,000 enwiki articles.[7] I've chimed in there, and the helpdesk thread where I asked where this was discussed is linked there also (it didn't get an answer, of course). Dougweller (talk) 13:53, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As I've said, I think it makes us too much like Facebook, and what do you think is going to happen on ethnic/religious etc. articles where we already have editwarring? How meaningful can it be on such articles? Dougweller (talk) 14:15, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How the hell does an article rating feature make us look too much like Facebook ? I really dislike how people seem to claw to make anything that is just a little bit more 'out of the box' from what we currently do and label it as being 'like Facebook'. If you don't like it, please stay in your own very nice comfy box, it shouldn't hinder us from looking into the real world as a community. This feature has plenty of problems but it being 'too much like Facebook' is definetly NOT one of them. If anything, this feature is 'too little like Facebook' feature-wise to be useful as a review system. Btw. on the last topic, how about we simply find out what happens, instead of endlessly speculating ? Throw one of those into the mix. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:12, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

NPA and AGF anyone? Insults and patronising comments aren't helpful - and again I ask, where was the community discussion that I hope took place before this was implemented, and where on enwiki can it be discussed now? Dougweller (talk) 21:07, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The tone may be strident, but I don't see an personal attacks or AGF failure; and he has a point about the "like Facebook" issue. I agree with you about the lack of community discussion. Rd232 ^talk 21:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c)As I have stated here several times over the past months, the thing holding back our software seems to be more and more the English Wikipedia and it is about time we call eachother out on that. I'm fed up with it as a volunteer contributor to the software and as a member of this community. I WANT new stuff that might help us move forward, and new stuff takes time to develop in such a way that it will satisfy the needs of the English Wikipedia community. If we can't run experiments, then software features and new ideas will never see the light of day here. Experiments are important, we should be allowed to fail, develop and improve here. People often wonder why it takes so long before they 'get' what they want software wise; well it's because this community is a freaking pain to satisfy.

If you want to take that personal, you are free to do that, but the criticism is intended to reflect on us as a community, more than you as a person. Like I said, this thing has a host of troubles, but being "like Facebook" is definitely not one of them, and I won't sit still and ignore such a blatant misrepresentation of of this experiment.

It seems you already found the relevant feedback forums, and unfortunately they are not 24/7 staffed. But such is life in a community developed project supported by a small foundation. Have a nice evening. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:40, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just a thought, but what if some developer(s) contributed just a little to the Signpost on a (semi)regular basis describing some of the trials and tribulations of what they're currently developing? One of the big problems in this area is lack of communication. If the community better understood what is involved and how hard it is, that would help, I think. Plus the Signpost has a feedback section - I'm sure you'd get encouragement/praise as well. Rd232 ^talk 21:48, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am the current Technology lead for the Signpost and I'm all ears. :) I have tried to give the article feedback extension a few mentions, but when I can find little news per se about it, it's tricky. Regards, - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 19:39, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It should at least be made smaller; it's way too large. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 21:29, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you make your feelings known at the relevant place mw:Talk:Article_feedback. It's unlikely that anyone working on the extension is reading this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:43, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Full deployment on all on en.wiki tomorrow! I've raised this at WP:ANI - not the best place and I was thinking of an RfC, but if it's going to happen in a few hours, ANI seems the best place to get the most attention. It seems pretty precipitous jumping from experiment to full implementation - where is the discussion of the trial that led to this decision? Dougweller (talk) 13:53, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The page is in error. Sorry about the confusion; there must have been an internal misunderstanding. A full roll-out isn't planned for tomorrow. We're continuing with incremental bump-ups in usage together with small fixes/improvements in response to community comments and our own findings.

The following fixes have already been made and will be deployed soon:

• Addition of blacklist categories. If an article is in one of those categories, AFT will not be shown.
• Hiding the tool on redirects.

The following improvements are planned:

• Easy ability to hide the tool, at least for logged in users.
• A link in the tool itself to the project page and associated discussion page.

Most importantly, though, we're planning to set up a public database dump of anonymized rating data. We hope that as we make this data available, the community will be able to have a more informed discussion about whether the tool, in its current form, can usefully inform Wikipedia development or not. So, for example, using this dump, a WikiProject could create an analysis of articles within its scope to identify articles that might be suitable for featured/good article candidacy, or to seek out articles with abnormally low ratings in any one rating category. Special:ArticleFeedback is just a first demonstration of the kind of data that can be easily pulled.

This is the first time that we're experimenting with serious engagement of readers beyond the edit button. This tool already is used both to collect data from readers, and to test calls for engagement when the rating is completed (create an account, edit the page, etc.). As we learn which rating and engagement strategies are useful and effective, we can evolve and develop the tool accordingly. Please review the extensive summary and data analysis already posted to the project page and help us improve the tool. If you want to get an overview of some of the longer term possibilities that a rating tool presents, please see the document mw:Article feedback/Extended review. Thanks, --Eloquence* 21:52, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Articles are displaying perfectly in IE and Firefox, but there is a problem with Google Chrome (current version 11.0.696.71). For example Water Rail has the taxobox on the left instead of right, the urls in the refs are shown as bare urls instead of being links from the title. On other pages, such as FAC, tables like the toolbox in nomination procedure are shifted to the left and above the accompanying text, and have lost the table borders. I've tried clearing the cache and restarting, but to no avail. Any thoughts, other than not using Chrome? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:29, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The sites look the same in both Firefox and Chrome for me. Are you perhaps using a different skin in Chrome than in other browsers? For instance, perhaps you aren't logged in? Try reinstalling Chrome perhaps? I can't even fathom how the pages could look like how you described. Could you take a screenshot to show us how it looks like? That might provide some clues. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:48, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The CSS isn't loading for you, for some reason, which is not (usually) a browser problem but rather an Internet connection problem. Either your ISP is experiencing high load or you're browsing on 56k dial up. :^) --Izno (talk) 16:59, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using reasonably fast broadband, the pages are loading faster, if anything, than on IE or FF4, and the problem isn't time dependent Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:07, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Then the last possible problem is that Wikipedia isn't serving the CSS fast enough. Another troubleshooting question: When did you download the new version? --Izno (talk) 17:13, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's an automatic update, I think. the release is dated Tuesday, May 24, 2011 14:17, which is about when I noticed the problem Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:50, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Try clearing browsing data by going to "Preferences" -> "Under the Hood" and clicking "Clear Browsing Data...". According to this thread with the same problem, that was the solution. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:54, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I cleared the browsing data for the last four weeks, problem gone! Thanks very much to both of you, who would have thought the solution was so simple — I'd tried looking on the web before I came here, couldn't even understand the suggestions. Thanks again, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:43, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

After too many years I've deployed updated version of the twinkle code. It's now gadget only, and hopefully it won't destroy the pedia. _→AzaToth 21:48, 29 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any way that Cite web can be customised so as when you first click on it within Edit you can choose which of the fields initially appear, without having to click on the 'Show/hide extra fields' tab. Or if not, is it possible for 'Date' to be globally added to the first show on Cite web, as I believe this is an important field. On Cite news the date field already shows when you first click on it. Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 08:53, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect you are referring to Wikipedia:RefToolbar. Please determine which version you are using and discuss on the talk page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 09:12, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for response. I have now posted at the 2.0 talk page although I note it does not seem to be that active. Eldumpo (talk) 10:01, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

On my user page, I'm getting extra left-padding in the box on the right.

I created a simpler test case in my sandbox. Here is the code:

{{Boxboxtop|About|backgroundcolor=lightblue}}

{{Userboxtop|}}

{{User en}}

{{User Wikipedian for|year=2005|month=12|day=5}}

{{Userboxbottom}}

{{Boxboxbottom}}

Here is what I see. The left margin is far bigger than the right margin. Does anyone know how to fix this?

—Tommyjb Talk! (12:57, 30 May 2011)

Using the #time: parser function, is there a way to determin the date of the first Monday of a given month? — Edokter (talk) — 13:27, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure exactly what you want as input (a specified month or the current?) and output (day number or full date?). If y and m is the year and month then {{#expr:8-{{#time:N|y-m-7}}}} will produce the day number. For example, {{#expr:8-{{#time:N|2011-5-7}}}} produces 2 which means the first Monday in May 2011 is the 2nd. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:07, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My input is "May 2011" and output should be "2 May 2011". I was hoping that "first monday of May 2011" would work, but that is not supported until PHP 5.3, and we're running 5.2. — Edokter (talk) — 14:16, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still not sure what you want as input. Do you mean a user should give a string containing a month, space and year like your example "May 2011", or do you want the current month and year to always be used? If it's the latter then the above can be adapted to {{#expr:8-{{#time:N|{{CURRENTYEAR}}-{{CURRENTMONTH}}-7}}}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}} which produces 5 August 2024, but it could probably be more elegant. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:37, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to build an archive for Today's featured list, which only appears on mondays, so "May 2011" (or whatever month is passed) is all I have to work with from which to distill the first occurence on Monday. I think I have it working though (examples: Wikipedia:Today's featured list/May 2011 and Wikipedia:Today's featured list/June 2011 which pass the month and year to Template:TFL archive), but not at all elegant. — Edokter (talk) — 15:15, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I went from Šarplaninac to its source then to Template:Kosovo-note and was shown an image obviously not meant to be there. I cannot find the image in the edit history, so I am assuming it is one of the stricken edits from 28 May. Something is broken. 71.234.215.133 (talk) 13:45, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean. Template:Kosovo-note was vandalized today 28 May. The vandalism has been reverted and the template protected but it can take some time before all articles using the template are updated (see Help:Job queue). Perhaps Šarplaninac was still showing the vandalized template version when you viewed it. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:14, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Šarplaninac was showing the correct template. Visiting the template page showed a stricken edit: an edit that should be visible only to admins. 71.234.215.133 (talk) 14:49, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK. There has lately been many unregistered users who report seeing old versions of pages. I guess this happened to you. The template page itself should have updated right away for all users and not be a job queue issue. I don't know whether there is a server which is behind with updates or what is going on. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have been aware of loading problems for two weeks, and posted above about it. An IP being able to see admin-only edits is a larger problem than stale articles, however, whether they are related in cause or not, and should be dealt with immediately. 71.234.215.133 (talk) 15:19, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I wondered if a tech guru could draw up say a list of the 1000 most searched for articles without articles on here? Its just quite a few articles I've started I've noticed got quite a few hits even before the article was created looking at the page views. It would be a good tool to build content as they are most in demand for pages.Tibetan Prayer ^᧾ 16:25, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess that most, if not all, of the 1000 most searched-for articles already are present, as not existing would drive numerous editors to create it, and others to expand it.(nevermind, didn't read above comment properly elektrikSHOOS 18:25, 30 May 2011 (UTC))[reply]

That said, that would be an interesting list to see. It would actually be neat, in general, to see WMF periodically release some general site analytics for the perusing. Anyone? elektrikSHOOS 18:24, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I don't mean the 1000 most searched for articles, I mean the 1000 most searched for articles which turn up at nothing but a red link. Looking at the page history of some articles I've created I see a few hits almost every day before it even existed. If I know which 1000 missing articles are most in demand I can make it a priority to start as many of them as I can.Tibetan Prayer ^᧾ 18:36, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I predict we will find 1/3 which just need redirects to existing articles or parts of existing articles, 1/3 which are clearly appropriate topics we have somehow missed, and 1/3 which will be out of scope as we currently define it and will need further consideration of WP:N, WP:NT, etc. to decide whether we should be the sort of encyclopedia than people expect the encyclopedia to be, or whether we know better than the readers what they ought to look here for. DGG ( talk ) 19:01, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would be a wonderful tool. --Bensin (talk) 20:35, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There was, or is, a list of the most linked to non-existent pages, but as I recall they are rather swamped by navbox linkages. Some about some aspect of Australian geography, I think. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:37, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• It's at Wikipedia:Most missed articles, but it is three years old. Fences&Windows 20:38, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Could you update then with a new list?Tibetan Prayer ^᧾ 22:01, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I must ask; Is there a community consensus for a the planned full deployment of this on all English Wikipedia articles on 31 May 2011? I've searched for a discussion about it but can't seem to find it. I see comments scattered here and there on enwp and mediawiki, some comments are positive and some are negative. Does the community want it, or is it just the Foundation that wants it? --Bensin (talk) 20:34, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind. Perhaps for once we should let the foundation get on with something without opposing them tooth and nail? Otherwise this'll turn into another Pending Changes debacle for no good reason. We Wikipedians love opposing change. Fences&Windows 20:37, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I started a discussion at WP:ANI. Change can be fine, I like pending changes for instance and would like to see it back. But implementing this without a community discussion and evidently without even evaluation of the trial isn't a good idea and sets a bad precedent. I suspect that even those who like or don't mind the concept might object to it being as obtrusive as it is, for instance. Why not have feedback from the community before it's fully implemented rather than have to deal with flack after it is? Dougweller (talk) 20:48, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am usually comfortable leaving these kind of things to the community to work out, but in this case I don't see the community having had its say. I want the community analyzing the impact of this thing before it is decided it should be implemented, not some dude at WMF saying he "has statistics supporting it" and then shoving "This is going to happen" down my throat. To me this goes to the very core of how the Wikimedia projects should operate and that the WMF should exist to support the community, not the other way around. Another community, LibriVox, decided against rating it's content. Perhaps we should look at how they reasoned to reach that decision? --Bensin (talk) 21:21, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This was a misunderstanding. Please see my response at #Article Rating appears immediately after creation?. Thanks,--Eloquence* 21:53, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Femme Fatales is currently a redirect, so Femme Fatales (magazine) should be moved here, as per naming conventions. --Beao 21:31, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's a redirect to a disambiguation page. What's special about this one? Also, VPT is not really the place to request such a move. I've seen people request it at WP:AN though, certainly. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 21:34, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]