Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

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

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Interface translations for rollback vs. undo

Where are interface translations set? When language is set to Serbian (and probably others, though problem does not occur for "fr") the "rollback" and "undo" button use the same word sometimes leading to issues (see [1]). –xeno^talk 15:36, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Special:AllMessages when it is wiki specific and on http://translatewiki.net for the software as a whole. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:15, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I assume that rollback and undo links are the latter? –xeno^talk 16:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

So this is where to get the particular one in question changed? –xeno^talk 16:55, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd say here [2] --Avala (talk) 10:04, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Strange, it says Врати измене , but that is not what is shown in the interface. –xeno^talk 12:36, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Solution against the broken external links: archive external links

Since two years, http://wikiwix.com prevents the links on the French Wikipedia from being broken (error 404). A script add a link to an archived version ([Archive]) of external links next to URLs. Here is the script that need to be added to MediaWiki:Common.js. These days they're proposing to extend their archive free service to us, and it's working on the French Wiktionary. Could we please get a consensus to install it here? JackPotte (talk) 21:40, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

It might help if you showed an example of the system in action. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:29, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Sure thing. For example, after every link in fr:Parc national Olympique#Notes et références there is an [archive] link. These links are all added with JavaScript.

Every link on the french Wikipedia is archived in the Wikiwix archive. By default, we chose to display the archive only in the references section because that's where we need them. It was also done to improve performance. The rest of the links can be displayed using a gadget. Dodoïste (talk) 16:17, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Jack, I think that's a brilliant idea. t would solve some of the huge problems where pages , especially on government sites, are removed because the webmasters beleive they are no longer of interest. We lose a lot of valuable WP:RS this way, and articles then suffer from dead links. Please consider starting a project page to discuss this. I would imagine it would not be to hard to obtain a consensus.--Kudpung (talk) 03:35, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia:Using WebCite, another web archiving service. Fences&Windows 15:00, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to search a particular namespace for a specific string?

Is there a way to search a particular namespace for a specific string?

For instance, using the search function to look for two words seems to return results for "word1" OR "word 2". What if you want to search for "word1" AND "word 2" or "word1 word2" ?  pablo 22:23, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm ... Try +Using +Pluses for additives and "quotes for phrases". –xeno^talk 22:25, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

It does AND by default. You can verify this by looking at the total number of results returned for initial words, and for words together. You can use AND/OR special words with - for NOT. e.g. Special:Search/word1 OR word2 -word3 which will return all documents with word1 or word2, but not word3. --rainman (talk) 12:50, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Watched pages becoming unwatched

Fairly regularly, I find that a page I'm watching has disappeared from my watchlist. When I realize, I have to view the page and add it again, but by then I may have missed talk/article developments I should have been aware of. Is this a known issue? PL290 (talk) 08:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe it has ever happened to me, but I usually have about 5-700 pages on my watchlist. How large is your watchlist? NW (Talk) 11:05, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

About the same (just over 700 currently).PL290 (talk) 12:07, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

5,387 right now. I wouldn't know if it ever happens. :-) Dougweller (talk) 12:38, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

• AWB settings maybe? –xeno^talk 13:12, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Good thought, but no: I have AWB set to "leave watchlist unchanged", and it appears to abide by that—and I can think of at least one page I've never AWB'd that suffered from the problem just recently. PL290 (talk) 17:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Character set used on zh.wikipedia

I know this Village Pump pertains to en.wikipedia, but my Chinese is too nonexistent to ask at the zh.wikipedia equivalent page: can anyone tell me which character set (i.e. traditional, simplified, or something else) is used on the Chinese Wikipedia at zh.wikipedia.org? Many thanks. Gonzonoir (talk) 11:06, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

That's a user setting, with automatic translation between the different versions. See Chinese Wikipedia. The best places to ask such questions in English are probably Talk:Chinese Wikipedia and zh:Project talk:Guestbook for non-Chinese speakers. Hans Adler 11:15, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see-- cheers for the advice. Gonzonoir (talk) 11:42, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

The Chinese Wikipedia uses a tab at the top-left corner of the page that switches the text between Taiwan Traditional (two forms, apparently), Mainland Simplified, and less well-known varieties. The actual content of the articles is the same in any character set. Intelligentsium 00:09, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to make MediaWiki:Longpagewarning appear for every edit?

Is there a change I can make in my vector.css that will cause the notice to always appear? Or in a different similar file? Thanks, meshach (talk) 21:46, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a note about the question heading. Of course I am meaning MediaWiki:Longpagewarning not the corresponding talk page. I fixed the question heading. meshach (talk) 01:02, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

• In other words: the OP wants the page size to be listed at the top of every page when editing it, even if smaller than 32kb. –xeno^talk 17:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Won't Jump

Please look at That '70s Show#Running_gags. Note that there are many links to episodes. Each link jumps to the spot on the page where the episode is EXCEPT Street Fighting Man, which just displays the page normally (starting at the top). I don't see anything I've done wrong in how I link to that episode. I've even tried to compare the underlying table code for the season 7 article (Street Fighting Man) with, for example, season 1 (Stolen Car), and I don't see any obvious difference that might make season 7 misbehave. I'm sure it's something very silly I've missed, but I'm tired of staring at it.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:15, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. Some of the episode templates had non-breaking spaces before the pipe characters, so the link identifiers included the non-breaking space after the episode number. I replaced these with ordinary spaces which get stripped when the page is rendered. — Richardguk (talk) 00:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm very glad I stopped staring at it. What is a non-breaking space? How could I have seen it?--Bbb23 (talk) 00:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

A non-breaking space (or a hard space) is a character that prevents two adjacent words' being separated should they happen to lie at the end of a line. This is useful for keeping quantities and units together but can be a problem in cases like this because they are interpreted differently from normal spaces. WikEd or another tool might highlight these, but often you just have to recognize the 'symptoms' of the problem you are having. Intelligentsium 01:28, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I would add that this is not a common problem on Wikipedia, because most non-breaking spaces are encoded in the wikitext as the corresponding HTML character entity reference  .

To help you fix the same problem in any related articles, notice the lines in the wikitext which are marked as having changed with my edit. In each case, there is a character that looks like a space immediately before the wikitext |EpisodeNumber2 but previously the character in this position was in fact a non-breaking space.

Ironically, though the character was impossible to see, my web browser seemed to convert it to a space when it displayed the edit box, so I only had to copy and paste the entire text back in and save it again. Or at least, I think that's what fixed it!

— Richardguk (talk) 03:13, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation and thanks for fixing it!--Bbb23 (talk) 14:32, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Question: What sorts of edits result in such drastic increases in page views?

To understand my question, first look at http://stats.grok.se/en/201005/Sony_Dash (page view statistics). So on May 21st I edited and moved Sony Dash from Dash (personal internet viewer). I found pictures on Flickr and added an infobox. Out of curiosity I checked the pageview stats, and was surprised to see that starting that day the page views went up drastically. The previous month had a total number of 230 views, the following month 2231. Now I understand that adding content and a picture make it show up on more search engines, and I can assume that some of those page views on that day are from me and maybe some Commons people checking out a new image, but what about all the days after? I see my edits to this article as relatively lazy, and the majority of the text I added were bare facts in the infobox. I'm certain that the WP search takes days if not longer to register changes, and I changed nothing on the Sony template which is where most of the inbound links come from, so I'm curious if anyone knows what edits in particular could create almost instant results like this. Where do all these new views come form and how, while still being lazy, can these results be reproduced? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 07:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Check stats for "Dash_(personal_internet_viewer)" - the view total remained about the same, it's just that before the move readers ended up at Dash_(personal_internet_viewer) while now they end up at Sony Dash. Skäpperöd (talk) 07:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep, was going to say the same thing. ~DC _{Let's Vent} 07:57, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I should sleep more before editing. I thought I had cracked the code! ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 08:23, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

In general, to increase page views, you can add links to the article on other pages, interwikilinks, redirects, and categories. you can also try to get the page on the front page as a WP:DYK or a WP:FA. Finally, try to get the subject of the page in the news, and your pageviews will increase drastically. Idose, a carbohydrate, went from 40-50 views a day to 100 a day and more when I-doser hit the news, only because of mistyped searches. Raymond Gafner goes from 300 monthly views to 3000 monthly views every two years for one month during the olympics, just for having won the Pierre de Coubertin medal in 1999 (the latter article similarly goes from 1200 or so vies a month, to 30,000 views for one month during the Olympics). Fram (talk) 09:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Style for headings

I'm looking for the CSS which will produce the headings like we use on Wikipedia. I want to hardcode rather than using == or <h2> because I do not want it to appear in the table of contents. For background, this is for the Template:Invitation to edit initiative which will inivite readers to edit certain articles and produce a collapsed mini tutorial. It's these headings which I don't want to interfere with the article itself. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Does <h2> show in a ToC? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 20:02, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it did when I tried it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:06, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

It depends on the skin, but my developer toolbar tells me the following (for Vector):

.h2 {
  color: black;
  font-size: 150%;
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-weight: bold;
  line-height: 1.5em;
  margin-bottom: 0.6em;
  padding: 0.5em 0 0.17em;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #aaa;
  width: auto;
}
.h3 {
  color: black;
  font-size: 132%;
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-weight: bold;
  line-height: 1.5em;
  margin-bottom: 0.3em;
  padding: 0.5em 0 0.17em;
  border-bottom: none;
  width: auto;
}

— Edokter • Talk • 20:25, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Monobook uses http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css. Check the page source for main.css. Be aware that using the header tags will add the header to the TOC. I think there is a template that emulates a header without adding it to the TOC, but I can't remember it. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Old Wikipedia logo has disappeared in Monobook

Maybe it's just me, but the Wikipedia logo has disappeared from the upper left corner of the page in Monobook. Clicking the empty space still takes me to the Main Page, but the logo is blank. Logged out I can see the new logo in Vector. Any idea what happened? –Grondemar 05:20, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Unable to reproduce, even after clearing my browser cache. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:54, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

still there for me – not sure if there's a choice of image flavours though, and if so, it's the right one for you! Always use Monobook. Trev M  ~  12:43, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

It's because http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/b/bc/20100513062230!Wiki.png is returning a 404 error. –xeno^talk 17:00, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Use http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Wikipedia-logo-en.png instead. –xeno^talk 17:03, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Is this something I need to fix, and if so, how would I do it? –Grondemar 17:49, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

You have to update the URL in Special:Mypage/skin.css. –xeno^talk 17:50, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

It worked, thanks! –Grondemar 17:53, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

No problem. Long Live The Old Logo! –xeno^talk 17:54, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Anyone else screaming because of unnecessary case sensitivity in templates?

I was just trying to assign an article a wikiproject class. I have done this several times and would have thought it could be a fairly intuitive exercise, having read the criteria for assigning articles. But to get the 4 permutations of upper and lower cases of "Class" and the letter signifying the value right took me... yees, you guesssed it, 4 goes. And then there was getting the order of the quality and importance right to please the templates.

I presume there's a master template for the plethora of minor wikiproject categorization templates (many unfilled, perhaps not helped by this tediousness). Wouldn't some template wiz feel great about disposing of unnecessary case (and order) sensitivities to help move this along a bit smoother? Trev M  ~  12:38, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Suggest this at Template talk:WPBannerMeta. –xeno^talk 17:51, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Always good to get a bit nearer to the business end of things – thanks Xeno. Trev M  ~  19:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Revdel usernames in user list

Is it possible to revdel a username so that it will not be visible in Special:ListUsers? -- œ^™ 14:36, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Hm. Perhaps through the user creation log? I'm not sure, but that's what sprang to mind. Killiondude (talk) 17:09, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

'HideUser' does this. –xeno^talk 17:12, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Do admins have access to 'HideUser'? I'm not sure what that is. If you're referring to the "Delete editor's username/IP" option in RevDel, that still doesn't hide the name from the Special:ListUsers listing, I don't think. -- œ^™ 02:16, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

No, only oversighters have access to HideUser, which makes it possible to hide a username from Special:Listusers. Graham87 07:50, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

fullurl and external data

I want to use the {{{name}}} in fullurl: like this: [{{fullurl:template:abc{{{name}}}|action=edit}}] however, as you can see, it does not seem to work. Is there any other way to make this work?--Hengsheng120 (talk) 20:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

It does seem to work, as you say but maybe didn't mean. It gives the result I would expect when it's transcluded with a parameter called name. For example, the code {{Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)|name=example}} currently makes your above code produce a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Abcexample&action=edit for me (who is at http://en.wikipedia.org). Did you mean it does not seem to work? In that case, what exactly do you want to happen when exactly which code is used? Or if you don't know which code to use then which effect do you want to achieve? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Is {{{name}}} the parameter in a template? If so, which one? Or do you mean {{PAGENAME}}? (Note two not three braces for PAGENAME: see Help:Magic words for more info.) — Richardguk (talk) 21:10, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Old IP-addresses with "xxx" at the end

Hi! I've noticed that with some old IP-addresses which edited uninlogged like the same year as Wikipedia was formed, not the whole IP-address (e.g. not all the numbers in the IP-address) are shown. Why is it like that with the oldest edits? Were the actual IP-addresses not identifyable at that time? /HeyMid (contributions) 22:20, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it was just a change of privacy policy. Masking the last 8-bits was probably judged to provide little additional privacy for many anonymous editors, and would have been confusing for editors or readers with a similar address to that of an editor who had received a user talk page message. — Richardguk (talk) 23:35, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

That would be true, except I have never encountered any evidence of someone trying to communicate with an anonymous user in those days. I thinkt the last octet of the IP address was masked with "xxx" to make it slightly more difficult to do WHOIS lookups. IIRC there was a time when admins could see the full IP address while other users could not. Also see Wikipedia:Phase II feature requests/Cookies, logins, and privacy, which was written when Wikipedia used UseModWiki. Graham87 07:41, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

has the server been acting up lately?

I have had a hard time getting the Wikipedia to load lately, I am wondering if its just me? Weaponbb7 (talk) 01:27, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you for asking. Well, I am running the secure version, and I also had downloading issues yesterday. It took like 5–10 seconds to load a page, which is kinda slow, but it is a bit better today. So no, you weren't the only user who were experiencing slow-down issues yesterday, probably all users around the world were affected. /HeyMid (contributions) 07:39, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

allow non-registered users to choose the skin they like

Not everyone likes vector & not everyone wants to become a registered user. Therefore, it should be allowed to set a preferred skin (to be stored in a cookie). Likewise, not everyone's eyes are as good as they used to be. Therefore users should be allowed to set a preferred font-size as well. Hpvpp (talk) 06:20, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a good idea. --Extra 999 (Contact ^me + _contribs) 06:36, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Using Ctrl + and Ctrl - should adjust the font size in your browser. Most browsers should automatically remember the setting. This has nothing to do with the skin or registration. Zunaid 06:50, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Adding different versions of pages for anonymous users is a gigantic penalty on the caching capabilities. That is the reason it isn't implemented already. If people want custom versions, they can register an account. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:06, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Well surely the majority of pages are cached in monobook for registered users? Incidentally do we have any page impression stats by skin for registered users? Rich Farmbrough, 17:57, 4 September 2010 (UTC).

Don't logged-in users usually bypass the squid cache, among other reasons because the page has their username at the top? Which would mean the squids don't actually have pages cached in monobook. Since the squids are said to handle about 78% of all requests (almost all of which are from non-logged-in users), just offering monobook versus vector to anons could make a significant enough difference to make the sysadmins unhappy. Feel free to ask them if you want to know for sure. Anomie⚔ 20:16, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Correct. Logged in users only benefit from the parsercache. From the point where the html is generated, each user will get his own html (otherwise your username couldn't appear at the top of the page for instance). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:52, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Well there would be ways and means, but if that's how it works. Any idea on the page impression stats by skin for registered users? Rich Farmbrough, 23:34, 4 September 2010 (UTC).

Some clarification might be in order. I don't like vector and have set my preference to monobook. But that is just me. I would have clicked <take me back>, but I feared that would undo all the editing improvements as well. Point is, however, that I am not at all convinced that the world-out-there agrees that vector is better. For example, my mother (86 years) makes very occasional use of Wikipedia, but has difficulty reading the screen and so prefers larger fonts. I told her that Ctrl-+ does the trick, but she forgets. Indeed, she is not really computer literate. Point, however is that she does not appreciate change where she sees no need. She is not sure whether vector is an improvement or not, but says that it worked well the way it was and changing something that does not need change is only confusing. And that puts her off. Now, I am sure that most people use Wikipedia for what it is intended, namely to get information. And I am also sure that most people don't want to be bothered getting an account when other services on the web offer comparable functionality without that hassle. And whether vector is better than monobook should not be the outcome of a poll amongst registered users, but the result of a proper scientific study. And as long as there is no scientific proof that vector is actually better it should not be the default. Wikipedia is there for users and not just for registered users. Thus, my request to let the choice of skin be stored in a cookie. Hpvpp (talk) 01:05, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

The new skin was not used because of a poll of registered users, it was implemented after months of testing by the Usability Initiative team, which included multiple studies. Mr.Z-man 04:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Ahem, I believe you are wrong. The usability initiative goal was "to measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors" and the studies were aimed "towards greater ease of use for novice users". Note that this means in both cases contributors. And contributors are likely to have a different outlook than most people who just go to Wikipedia to get some information. Hpvpp (talk) 03:36, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

My main point was it was not a poll of users as you said. One of the main goals of it was to reduce the divide between "readers" and "editors" by making it easier to learn to edit. The majority of the study participants had never edited before. I would say that most, if not all editors originally came to Wikipedia to get information, so I don't think their outlook is that different. In any case, the initiative also focused on site navigation, which is why the search box was moved and the sidebar links (most of which are unused by readers) were collapsed by default. Though those were really the only changes for readers. The actual layout of articles didn't change. Mr.Z-man 04:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I concede your point, though my argument still stands: the majority of user are not contributors, but will still have preferences which should be honored. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hpvpp (talk • contribs) 05:13, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Special:Random

Can anybody tell me the pattern from which Special:Random finds and loads. --Extra 999 (Contact ^me + _contribs) 06:35, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Technical FAQ#Is the "random article" feature really random?. Killiondude (talk) 06:54, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

"intitle" and "lookfrom" Wikipedia search options for finding section titles ?

I find the "intitle" and "lookfrom" Wikipedia search options (as in intitle:"search phrase" and lookfrom:"search phrase") to be very useful to find articles relating to a subject of interest.

However it would also be useful if I could look for section titles within articles using "intitle" and "lookfrom" rather than just article titles. I bet there are plenty of sections tucked away which would be of interest to me and i might llke to link to.

If it isn't possible with standard Wiki software, perhaps somebody could do a couple of searches for me on my behalf using specialist Wiki software.

I suppose one possibility would be the ability to search on the raw HTML version of Wikipedia and make use of the fact that section titles always start with a "=". --Penbat (talk) 10:25, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd prefer to say "raw wikicode" but if you have a couple specific searches that don't require a bang up-to-date version of Wikipedia, drop me a note on my talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:54, 4 September 2010 (UTC).

Since the search results often point out headers in pages that include your search term, I'm guessing it might be that the headers for pages are stored somewhere in the searchindex. Wether or not they can be individually targeted with the current software, I'm not sure, but if it is in the db already, then perhaps this could be implemented if not yet possible. Try bugzilla. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:58, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Odd edit summary

For me with Firefox this displays a smudge, it crashes IE [3]. The entry is the one for Zalgo 02:48, 24 September 2009. Probably needs a bugzilla raising. Rich Farmbrough, 17:51, 4 September 2010 (UTC).

I have no idea why it crashes IE, but it displays that way, because that's how the edit summary should display: it contains lots of unusual Unicode characters. It seems this user likes to use them on purpose: see his edit that I undid and his response to that at User talk:Svick/Archive 2#S̗͍̻͖̳̲͉̒ͦ́̽͌͊o̙͔͉͚̰̱ͤr͋ͧ̐r̉͑͊y̭̻̘̬̙̼ͫ̑ͤͪͧͩ̉. Svick (talk) 19:10, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it does look rather odd in FF, but I guess it displays properly - not that I know what it's supposed to look like - with Safari and Chrome. If IE can't display it, then Microsoft has another bug to fix. :D —DoRD (talk) 20:03, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Quite a bit of stuff in that [4] edit summary: [5]. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:41, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the advantage to allowing stuff as complex as this text in edit summaries, although I can see the advantage of allowing "normal" unicode. Certainly it seems a little unwise without going into BEANS. Rich Farmbrough, 23:30, 4 September 2010 (UTC).

Notifying Devs about a Bugzilla request

I understand that the devs are busy. But I was wondering how does one bring a bugzilla posting to their attention?

I posted one (11499) several years ago, and it's still listed as "new". With no comments that I see.

It's not a big deal, but I would find it incredibly useful.

Any help with this would be most welcome. - jc37 22:00, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

You could try posting to wikitech. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 01:52, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Add syntax checking of website addresses

Is there a way of validating the text specified for external website addresses in links? I know there's the help section which includes information on external link syntax with "http://", but is there a way of asking the editor to confirm if [www.website.com] should be [6], even if it is just a prompt "did you mean http://www"?

Adrian-from-london (talk) 00:35, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I think I'm right in saying that the software only knows it's supposed to be a link because of the existence of a protocol prefix. That said, www. probably could trigger something and not interfere with this. The only way of implementing it quickly I can think of would be through the edit filter, but the performance overheads might be too great. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 11:58, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Confusion with new articles which were redirects

Wikipedia seems to have problems detecting that a new article is a new article if it was converted from a redirect. They dont appear on NEW PAGES and last time i checked any new articles i converted from a redirect werent recorded against my user name in my user stats as being new articles created by me. Also is {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} (currently 6,823,522) accurate ? Does it allow for conversions from redirects to new articles ?

As they dont seem to appear on NEW PAGES, they arnt subject to the scrutiny of new page patrol that new articles do. It seems like a good wheeze to set up a redirect then later replace it with some sort of garbage article (such as a hoax or spam or BLP violation) and there is a fair chance it wont get detected.

It looks like changing a redirect to a new article has just now very recently become detectable by Wiki software as i did one a few days ago and it included a "(Redirect becoming article)" edit summary see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Institutional_abuse&action=history MediaWiki:Tag-Redirect becoming article-description--Penbat (talk) 10:31, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

This is the filter software that has added a "tag". It is not part of the editsummary. Other tags indicate when a page is blanked for instance. See Special:Tags. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:56, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

The sound player

I'd never noticed until now that when I click on a pronunciation link I ma brought to a new page to play the sound and then have to click the back button in order to continue reading. I'm using the latest version of Firefox but was wondering if this is intended as default behaviour. Try for yourself:

The eurozone (pronunciation^ⓘ), officially...

Surely it would be preferable that sounds were played inline!? — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 16:18, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joshsiret (talk • contribs) 21:50, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Looking for beta testers for the Wikipedia:Script Installer

I'm currently looking for beta testers for the Wikipedia:Script Installer. In brief, what the tool does is it allows you to install any script with just one click, rather than need to go to your skin.js page and add the script in there manually while following a set of poorly worded instructions. If you have the time, please install this tool, play around with it, and if you find any bugs or problems, then post then on the talk page. Feature suggestions are welcome, but I've got a list of almost 100 items on my todo list, so there's a good chance that what you want is already in the works. To give you a taste of how the tool looks like, see the following gallery:

• 
  Script documentation page
• 
  Script Library
• 
  Script page
• 
  Skin page
• 
  Toolbox

Probably the feature that's missing the most is the ability to uninstall scripts, which is coming. However, I figured that it's more crucial to get the installing part working, first. Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:03, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Hard to evaluate it when the source code is obfuscated. Anomie⚔ 21:34, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't mean for the source code to be examined, but in any case, I was planning on uploading the code soon. The code's not obfuscated; you can easily decode it using base62, which I'm using so as to decrease the script's size by about 70%. At the moment, the code needs to be cleaned up a bit first and documented, but it should be available within 24 hours. Gary King (talk · scripts) 23:47, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Are you a developer that has written a script or two?

For developers who have written their own scripts, there are also ways to make them work with the Script Installer. Right now, when a user visits a .js page, the Script Installer will tell the user whether or not it is verified, and create a link for the user to click to install the script, if they want. However, when a user visits a documentation page, the Script Installer can't tell if the page is a documentation page or not, so the {{Script data}} template needs to be added to the bottom of the page to indicate this. This will then show the "Install this script?" box at the top of the documentation page. Some sample code:

{{script data | page = User:Gary King/script installer.js }}

This template also makes it easier to build a library of scripts that are still in active development (Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts is kind of dead), and perhaps in the near future, scripts using this template could more easily be considered "verified" in the Script Library; I'm not sure yet. Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:03, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Minor problem

Why is it that the text-heading of this section "Mystical Identification of Horsethieves?" does not appear as Bold Text like it should. Is it due to presence of some unnecessary punctuation mark etc...? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Grigori_Rasputin#Mystical_Identification_of_Horsethieves.3F

 Jon Ascton  (talk) 01:44, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

It's because of the unclosed <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned"> at the end of the previous section, which was added in this edit. Anomie⚔ 02:05, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I fixed the cut-and-paste error in copying the old autosignature. The size of the header should be correct now. EdJohnston (talk) 02:25, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

contentSub div?

Just out of curiosity, what is the purpose of the 'contentSub' div that appears on pages just below the 'From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia' line? as far as I can tell, it does nothing except add a line of (potentially unnecessary) whitespace. at least, I've never seen a case where it actually has content. is it purely decorative? --Ludwigs2 02:21, 6 September 2010 (UTC)