The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues aboutWikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla because there is no guarantee developers will read this page. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug needs immediate attention).
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use Javascript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See b1864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English), and for logged in users there is a gadget available in your preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
Spell checking has been disabled on the Wikipedia search engine for performance reasons, and also because it is impossible to prevent it 'fixing' legitimate errors (see Teh). You can use search engines like Google to search Wikipedia and correct mistakes in searches: include "site:en.wikipedia.org" with your searches. And for spell-checking what is in the edit box, you can use a web browser like Firefox, which includes such spell checking.
If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. Also, it's surprisingly common for people to accidentally block the image server (upload.wikimedia.org) on Firefox.
If you are asked to download a file (index.php) when trying to edit, or your browser launches an image editor when trying to edit, disable "Use external editor" on your MediaWiki user preferences. On the most recent version of MediaWiki (as of 21-May-2007), this is found under the "Editing" tab.
If you find that you are automatically logged out just after you have logged in, and removing all your Wikipedia cookies does not fix the issue, try using the secure server (much slower) to bypass the proxy. This happens most often with some satellite ISPs (particularly HughesNet/DirecWay/DirecPC).
Numbers listed in parentheses in the "Recent changes" section and in your watchlist are the number of added or removed bytes.
I have forgotten my password for my Russian Wikipedia account. Unfortunately, I cannot have a new one e-mailed to me, because I did not enable the e-mail option there. However, my e-mail option is enabled here in the English Wikipedia. Is it possible to have a new password e-mailed to my Russian account via my address here?--Crustaceanguy (talk) 01:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Is your account globalized(you can do it in Preferences- the first page). Wait no... global accounts have one password. Unfortunately, there is no way to recover your password unless Wikipedia has your email. 13:55, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I could give my e-mail address to the administrators responsible for e-mailing new passwords, but which specific administrator(s) would I need to talk to?--Crustaceanguy (talk) 20:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
You could, but how will the admin know that you are the genuine owner of that account? 03:24, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Administrators do not handle password-emailing: the MediaWiki software itself handles it without any human intervention (for privacy reasons), so you cannot "give it" your email unless you have already done so in Special:Preferences over there. Calvin 1998(t·c) 04:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, everyone!--Crustaceanguy (talk) 14:55, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
How do you actually delete a page?
No. I'm not looking to vandalize a page here in Wikipedia. But I've been working in a private Wiki and ended up with some extra pages. They are cluttering up the Special:Allpages list and I'd like to get rid of them.
I've read everything I could find about deleting, and seen the process you're supposed to go through to decide if a page is to be deleted. But what then? How do you actually make the page go away? Do I have to go in and mess with the database? I'm a little nervous about that. Bgoldnyxnet (talk) 21:49, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
In the English Wikipedia, administrator accounts (and some others) have a "delete" tab next to the "history" tab. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Why not sift around in the Wikibits js file (or some other file) to find the code for the delete tab. Then simply copy it into your common.js page. 15:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Mediawiki error project
Heyo. Many of our default MW error messages are pretty lousy. I've never had any trouble getting an admin to answer editprotected requests for these, but I do have a terrible time finding the damn things. Perhaps we could wrap all of these messages in some kind of purdy mbox with v-d-e links, like our fancy article templates. HiDrNick! 21:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
You should have any changes you make to the wording pushed upstream into MediaWiki. — Werdna • talk 06:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes please -- we like pretty. :D --brion (talk) 18:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Template error
Could anyone tell please tell me why the template User:Msgj/ISOtoMONTH is displaying an error even though it works correctly? For example {{User:Msgj/ISOtoMONTH|20081113144532}} produces 11, without any error. Thanks, MSGJ 14:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
When you view User:Msgj/ISOtoMONTH, you see the result of calling the template without specifying any parameters. Thus it calls User:Msgj/ExtractPlaceValue with first parameter {{{1}}}, second parameter 8, and third parameter 9. User:Msgj/ExtractPlaceValue then attempts to apply mathematical operations to {{{1}}}, which causes the error. When calling User:Msgj/ISOtoMONTH with {{User:Msgj/ISOtoMONTH|20081113144532}}, you specify the value of the parameter 1, and since you've specified a number, the operations can be applied to it without errors. Algebraist 14:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
What I was going to say. Wrap the code in <includeonly></includeonly> to keep it from displaying on the template page.--—— - 15:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Note that it would be easier to extract the month using the {{#time}} function: {{#time:m|20081113144532}} gives 11. For the moment it will fail for dates before 1970, but once r42663 is scapped it will work for all dates with 4-digit years. Anomie⚔ 22:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your help. I didn't know about the #time function so will use this one instead. MSGJ 11:14, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Possible problem with page: Dwight Shultz
First, try using the Search field at left to search for Dwight Shultz. If you get there, then it must be something wrong with my browser or some such.
What happens with me is, I get a 'no such page' page, and a message saying, "did you mean dwight shultz? with the emphasis exactly as shown. I tried capitalized first letters, no caps, his first name William in front, the whole bit. linking to the page from a Wikia gaming page with template wikipedia:dwight shultz works fine, and is how I know his first name is William :o) Anarchangel (talk) 01:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
There is a page at Dwight Schultz with a 'c' but not at Dwight Shultz. Are you sure the problem isn't that you made a typo in the name both when you searched for it in Wikipedia and wrote it here, but you spelled it correctly when you were at Wikia? Your alleged wikipedia:dwight shultz from Wikia is the wrong spelling and shouldn't have found the page. When I search for Dwight Shultz in Wikipedia it correctly says "No page with that title exists" and later "Did you mean: Dwight Schultz" which is in fact the name of a page. Everything seems to work as it should to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:23, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
How can I get other users to talk more often on my talk page? I would like to know how they could do that, and that I can get them to talk more often. Thanks. -- 05:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
With respect, your talk page's background colour is not very attractive imo. That could cause users to keep away from your page. If you keep doing lots of work around the project, eventually people will respond to your work. Anyway, if you're not getting many comments, at least you know you're not doing anything wrong. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
You might want to kill the way that image half-covers 'From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia', too. Algebraist 12:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Also, though this may seem a bit harsh, see WP:NOTBLOG - the talk pages are tools used to contact other editors, but if no other editors need to contact you, then so be it. 16:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. -- 05:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I know I'd hesitate to post, or even read, your pages, with that eye-watering coloration. 22:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
References
Hello,
Looking at the Transmission Electron Microscope page, I notice that one of the references (17) has a set of square braces [] around it, but looking at the ref tag it seems OK -- how do I kill the bonus braces? Is there a problem with the {{cite}} tag? I would find that hard to believe... User A1 (talk) 10:01, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
There was a carriage return in the middle of the title. Fixed. MSGJ 11:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Brilliant, I thought there had to be a sensible explanation that someone would know about. Thanks User A1 (talk)
Messages
Anyone knows where the 'insert' toolbar underneath an edit window is retrieved from? I searched Special:AllMessages but couldn't find anything relevant. Just want to notify someone that a comment saying "click on the character or tag to insert it into edit window" should have a 'the' before edit window, I guess (it's read by hovering the cursor on the insert toolbar). O_o -- 11:15, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
You might like to read Help:Edit toolbar. It's not a Wikipedia thing, so the master is probably at MediaWiki. MSGJ 11:37, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Ah yes, just a plain MW page... is there any easy way to find out what's brought from where? (MW pages can sometimes not be intuitively named either). -- 12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
If you're looking for a specific string, you can go to the "advanced search" form on Special:Search and select the "MediaWiki" namespace to search in. This may not work if the message has not been changed from its default value: in that case, try Special:Allmessages (warning: long page). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
And by the way do people agree with the grammar change? If so could an admin make the change, please? -- 13:07, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Is there a way to pull a TOC from one page and display on another? --Pair O' Dimes (talk) 13:37, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Don't think so. The TOC is generated automatically. Of course, you could copy the HTML and modify it a bit, or you could just make a wikitable from it. Why do you need to transclude a TOC? 14:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
One of the portals on Intellipedia acts as an integrator for highlights from various divisions of a program. The "more..." link navigates readers to the full details of each highlight. The highlights section is manually updated and transcluded from the details page. I would like to automate the process and reduce manual dependency. This could be achieved by transluding the TOC. However, when I transcluded the TOC to the portal, it generated a TOC for the portal, not the details page. Hope that makes sense? --Pair O' Dimes (talk) 16:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
TOCs are dynamically generated from the heading on the current page. There is not way to transcluded just the TOC. Your best option is to get a bot to update it for you. — Dispenser 09:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Usergroup: uploader
In Special:ListGroupRights, there is a new user group, 'uploader', with only one member. Does anyone know what is this user group and where it come from ? 17:00, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
There was a request somewhere to let admins grant brand new users "auto-confirm" rights before the normal waiting period. I can't yet grant the right via UserRights, but I assume this is the first stage of that feature. MBisanztalk 17:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
It seems coherent, according to the user log, User:Brion VIBBER has granted this right per request. 17:05, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
I see the discussion is here. We need more discussion on the issue before a full-scale implementation (allow admins to grant it). 17:12, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Software updated
I've updated our live MediaWiki to the current development version; this should smooth out a few older bugs that have been fixed, and hopefully not break anything else. :)
Do let us know if anything's behaving wonky that wasn't previously. --brion (talk) 00:39, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Internal shortcuts to other wikis
I have seen various internal shortcuts (like meta:, de:, ...) to other wikis not related to WMF, or not even to Wikia. If there is an accessible list of those, I think we should discuss the relevance of each item. I was recently reviewing Category:Wikipedia soft redirects and found the page Peachtree Corners (now a redirect to Peachtree Corners, Georgia), it was a soft redirect which used the shortcut [[ourpeachtreecorners:]], which links to creekstone.net (google search), this site is identified as harmful by google and another security software I use. I deleted the page and was wondering why a harmful site is linked as a shortcut like this ? 01:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
The directory for interwiki prefixes is housed at m:Interwiki map. Additions and removals can be discussed on the talk page. Icewedge (talk) 01:56, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. I think we should have a local directory, though, as our needs differ. 02:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
For information, I am copying the comment I left to meta, ":I hope there are no other links like that, there are tools that allow to check weblinks in a page, it may be worthwhile to do that and review manually the suspect ones. I see that this one has been added there on 17 Nov. 2005 by an IP. The same day, User:Rbrightwell created the (now deleted and recreated) page w:Peachtree Corners (admin link) with a soft redirect using the interwiki link prefix that links to the dangerous site. It was visibly an elaborated vandalism, that lasted (almost) 3 years." 02:31, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
A trivial question about pageID and a challenging problem
I've just begun learning the mw:API, which seems very useful, and I'm wondering how the pageid variables are assigned. As an example, consider the results of this query.
At first I guessed that pageid's represented the order in which articles were added to the WP database; for example, carmofur is near the end and was created very recently. But I would be surprised if the English Wikipedia had >20 million pages; also, the pageID for Phil Spector is near the end, an article that was created in 2002.
Here's an interesting problem for people who like a challenge...
I'd like to write a script that guesses appropriate categories for a target article. (Assume for now that the target article has not yet been assigned to a category.) For example, could a script recognize that oxidative phosphorylation might fit well in the category Category:Cellular respiration? If the article title is itself a category (as DNA is), the problem is easy, but otherwise how would one do it?
One fruitful approach might be to examine the categories of the articles linked to from the target article as well as the categories of its backlinks. Pooling those categories together and clustering them by distance in the category tree might be one approach. The script could perhaps give extra weight to links in certain sections, such as the lead and "See also". Conversely, we might examine the members of the link-categories, and see whether those members have a similar profile of links as the target article.
It's still early days for this script and I'd be curious to hear other people's ideas. Thanks! Proteins (talk) 03:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
When a page title is deleted and then undeleted, as sometimes happens with vandalism fixes and history merges, the title gets a new PageID. This can also be seen with the what links here tool, which orders entries by PageID. You can find the logs of deletions, moves and so forth of a page by clicking on the link entitled "View logs for this page" in the history, but be careful when clicking on links, because they can be quite nasty. As for finding categories for a page, you might want to check out CommonSense which categorises images for Wikimedia Commons. Graham 03:53, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Graham! That's very helpful to understand, and I'll avoid that giant nastiness. For practice with the Api.php, I was thinking of writing a script to organize the output of Special:Whatlinkshere, which always seemed mysterious to me. But perhaps that's been done already? I'll also check out CommonSense. I'm thinking of using the script to help newbies and perhaps in categorization sweeps to generate a shortlist of candidates for humans to consider. Proteins (talk) 04:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
List of uniquely edited pages
When I run an edit counter like Wannabe Kate it shows me a statistic of "unique articles edited" I assume that includes all unique articles, unique wikipedia name space pages, etc. Is there a way for me to get a list of unique main space articles that I've edited? Wannabe Kate will show me the top 10 in each category, but I'd like to see a full list of all unique main space articles.--Crossmr (talk) 04:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Why is this in the WP: namespace?
Why is Wikipedia:Uploaders in the WP: namespace? There is a link to it from here (click upload), and some stuff about Glenn Galiza (who's that?) comes up. The history has only one edit (page creation). I wonder how the link to the page wormed itself into the usergroup members page. Could someone check it? Thanks, 09:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
The user group was recently created by brion, and apparently no-one's got around to creating a proper description page for it yet. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:50, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
History missing from redirects page
The article on the "Perdicalis Incident" has been deleted, & replaced with a redirect to a short paragraph in the "Perdicalis" article. The deleted article is missing from history, & the redirect is given an incorrect date. (The long article was there about a month ago). How can I access the correct history? (I would like the information from the complete article, & the revision history.) MoFromMelb (talk) 15:21, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
There is, and never was, a page with the title "Perdicalis". Judging by this edit, you probably mean Ion Perdicaris, but I can't find anything that has been deleted previously in the list of the redirects to that page and I can't find any deletion discussion with the word "Perdicaris" in it. So I can't find anything that matches what you're talking about. Graham 17:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
It's there for me... Calvin 1998(t·c) 21:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Me too. – ukexpat (talk) 17:47, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Template:Otheruses
While leaving a message on someone's talk page, I observed a link to the article B.o.B. In the current edition, there's a hatnote "For other uses, see bob." with "bob" in blue, but it's basically blue text: it's not a link. The coding for the hatnote reads simply {{otheruses|bob}}, which (as far as I can see) seems totally reasonable, and should produce some sort of link. Anyone have an idea what's wrong? Nyttend (talk) 03:03, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
The link seems to work for me. 03:34, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Link works here too lucideer 03:39, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Works for me as well; sure it wasn't just a momentary browser glitch? EVula// talk // ☯ // 17:32, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Seeing the page behind a Special page?
Is there a .js gadget out there somewhere which adds a tab to Special: pages (called "page" or something) which links to the Mediawiki: page which the Special: page is based on (for the purposes of discussing / editing it, say)? Thanks in advance. It Is Me Here (talk) 09:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The first example I looked at, Special:Statistics, incorporates at least 15 Mediawiki: pages. Algebraist 13:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Could the related MediaWiki: pages be listed at the bottom, then? DendodgeTalkContribs 13:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
My usual technique is to load Special:Allmessages (warning: large page) and search that for the content of the message I'm looking for. Is that helpful? {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 18:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
If you have a specific page in mind, it might be faster/easier to look at the source code [1]. — CharlotteWebb 19:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
It might just be me, but I don't see a problem. It looks a bit like n2 to me. DendodgeTalkContribs 20:15, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, the example looks fine. Calvin 1998(t·c) 20:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
You have to set your preferences to "always display PNG" to see the problem, which is that this is another 0 byte math image. The other settings render it as HTML instead. Apparently the cause of these blank images is not yet known, although the server admins know that they are sometimes created. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I selected "Always render PNG" and it displays fine for me. It's 19x19 pixels and 249 bytes. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:24, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
That's because a server admin deleted the old one. The image really was broken; it's just that nobody seems to know what's causing the problem. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:34, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
What's wrong with P ??
<math>P</math> works as it should in equations and in tables and if it has a subscript. But by itself, embedded in a line of text, it results in an image place holder as here ==> P
It only happens for upper case. If lower case as here ==> p, it works.
It has been that way for a number of days. Has no one noticed it? mbeychok (talk) 23:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
See the above section. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your response, but it doesn't really help if one wants to use LaTeX math. Do you know if anyone is working to solve the problem? mbeychok (talk) 00:33, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Moving search box to the top of the sidebar
Additional input is sought. Please see this discussion:
All the pages regarding places in Derbyshire eg. Matlock, Derbyshire have problems where the map of the county with the red dot for the location should be, can somebody please look at it and help solve it, it's problematic for every location in the county so could it be a template/image error? 16:55, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Every history page contains links to three external tools. The "Revision history statistics" link was recently changed to point to a different tool than it used to. Does anyone know where the old tool is located? I think the domain ended in .de but I'm not sure. Thanks. --Andrew Kelly (talk) 17:05, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
A lot of stuff used to be hosted on tools.wikimedia.de, which is now redirected to toolserver.org. EVula// talk // ☯ // 17:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it was on the toolserver. I think it was an independent site. I remember it had banner ads at the top of every page. --Andrew Kelly (talk) 17:23, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Which is the reason it has been removed. See the history of MediaWiki:Histlegend and this discussion (with the link to the site). 17:50, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
That's what I wanted to know. Thank you for showing me where the site is! --Andrew Kelly (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)