The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues aboutWikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at Bugzilla (How to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported to securitywikimedia.org.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.
If you 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.
Are there any plans to enable noreferrer on Wikipedia since there are browsers that support it? (There are also non-standard, browser specific methods to hide referrers).
For non-tech folks, when you are on the insecure wiki (http not https), and you click on an external link on the wiki, the external site you visit gets a copy of the wiki url you came from. For example, if you click on an external link in the reference section of any page, such as Banana, the site you go to will know you came from the url http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana .
Several privacy issues arise with allowing referers:
If a low-traffic page is viewed, and an external link followed, if the person comments about a recent development on the page, it may be possible to link the ip to the editor.
If a person visits the domain name or service repeatedly from the wiki, it may be possible to profile the individual.
This "referrer" feature, on any site, in any circumstance, is a disgraceful breach of privacy. I was appalled when I first learned of it. I think most people don't even know it exists. 86.176.208.123 (talk) 23:57, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) To play devil's advocate for a second, HTTP referrers are useful to website operators to discover who links to them (search engine link searches might not find Wikipedia because our external links are marked "nofollow"). Website operators are often knowledgeable on the subject of the linking article (that's why we linked to the site), and seeing Wikipedia linking to their site would probably inspire them to check out the article. Some proportion of these, being knowledgeable on the subject, would go on to improve the article or suggest improvements on the talk page.
On the other hand, link spammers could use referrers from Wikipedia to gauge the success of a link-spamming campaign. (However, there are other techniques to do this without using referrers.)
IMO, one set of pages that absolutely needs "noreferrer" would be deleted pages viewed by administrators (ditto for oversighted pages viewed by oversighters). If an administrator clicked an external link, the referrer would leak information about the deleted page (e.g. the page title, the timestamp of the revision, and that it linked to that site). This would be particularly harmful for pages where even the page's title has been oversighted (e.g. as a BLP violation).
Also, if you are concerned about your own privacy, it is possible to turn off referrers globally (not just from Wikipedia), using a browser setting or add-on (how depends on your browser). Note that some websites won't work without referrers (e.g. this link requires a referrer to work). – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)00:46, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Such an interesting dilemma! I'm a federal employee (and of average tech abilities), and as we boot up our computers we get a message about "no expectation of privacy" on our workstations. After seeing this for 15 years I've internalized the message, and assume that everything I do on the internet is public. And forgive me, I'm beginning to think that none of us should assume any level of privacy on the internet. That actually seems the safest, really. This leads me to understand that the internet is a giant advertising machine, and because I want to track where webusers come from to get to my educational site (so I can serve them better) I also know that someone is tracking me, as I buy dog beds for the local no-kill shelter on Groupon. And I'm ok with that, because I can't have it both ways.
Again, as someone creating an educational website I want to know when/if Wikipedia and the sister projects are sending me webusers - I can then strengthen my relationships with the referring websites (like we are doing here), and learn which uploaded files get used, and which don't, so I can be nimble and respond accordingly. Bdcousineau (talk) 01:08, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No opinon on the current subject, but the fact that privacy on the web is very low, does not mean nothing should be done to improve it (that's a general rule, and one of the poorest common arguments I usually see: "given X is already bad, there is no problem in making it worse") - Nabla (talk) 01:18, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've rephrased the request on WP:CENT to emphasise that this is a request to disable something used by Wikipediaweb browsers as part of a common standard, rather than starting from a status quo of its absence. I can understand that in some circumstances there are limited privacy implications, but these circumstances seem fairly limited and unusual. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:14, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your formulation "disable something used by Wikipedia as part of a common standard" makes it sound like Wikipedia is actively doing something now to pass referrer information. I'm not sure how it works but isn't the standard that a website does nothing at all and the browser by itself passes referrer information? And then a website can choose to add code to request browsers to not pass the referrer? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:56, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Aren't these descriptions the wrong way round? How can support for "noreferrer" mean that "Wikipedia should have referers"? Ditto the one below. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.18.113 (talk) 18:35, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Per the above two comments (moved from the support section), I've swapped support and oppose and updated the description at the top of each section to be a little more verbose. Hopefully things are a bit clearer now. (I also updated James086's !vote to reflect support and oppose have swapped meanings.) – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)00:55, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Smallman, perhaps you can write up the code that allows an editor to opt in to a noreferrer feature and we can iVote whether to place that option in Special:Preferences. The noreferrer feature could work both in logging into Wikipedia (erase the URL from where you came into Wikipedia) and in clicking on external links in Wikipedia (prevent the target site from learning the Wikipedia URL source that referred to the target site.) -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 09:19, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding Uzma's bit about erasing the URL from which a user enters Wikipedia, I don't think the WMF record this in a way that threatens privacy. Looking at the requests by origin report, it seems they only keep the domain name of the referer (not the full URL), and do not associate this with an IP address or username. Looking at the CheckUser documentation, CheckUsers cannot see referers either. It is possible that server logs accessible to developers might have them. If this were the case, it would be a topic for a separate discussion; this RFC is about referers sent to external sites, not those received by Wikipedia. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)15:04, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Someone below mentioned that there are reasons why referers exist, so I decided to look them up. I've taken the below snippets from the HTTP 1.0 specification, to better inform this discussion.
This allows a server to generate lists of back-links to resources for interest, logging, optimized caching, etc. It also allows obsolete or mistyped links to be traced for maintenance.
...
Note: Because the source of a link may be private information or may reveal an otherwise private information source, it is strongly recommended that the user be able to select whether or not the Referer field is sent. For example, a browser client could have a toggle switch for browsing openly/anonymously, which would respectively enable/disable the sending of Referer and From information.
— Berners-Lee, T.; Fielding, R.; Frystyk, H. (1996). "Referer". Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0. sec. 10.13. doi:10.17487/RFC1945. RFC1945. {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
The toggle switch was proposed in the HTTP/1.1 Protocol:
The Referer header allows reading patterns to be studied and reverse links drawn. Although it can be very useful, its power can be abused if user details are not separated from the information contained in the Referer. Even when the personal information has been removed, the Referer header might indicate a private document's URI whose publication would be inappropriate.
For those folks who believe HTTPS is the panacea, referers are sent on https -> https connections but not on https->http connections.
Clients SHOULD NOT include a Referer header field in a (non-secure) HTTP request if the referring page was transferred with a secure protocol.terface be provided for the user to enable or disable the sending of From and Referer information.
That means that when you click on a secure site from the secure wiki, you will send a referer. HTTPS will only prevent sending a referer to http sites.Smallman12q (talk) 16:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia should enable noreferrer, so that referers are not sent to external sites:
Support - Changes should be made in the best interests of readers and editors, not external sites. I think our users are more important than the owners of sites we link to. James086Talk15:21, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia sends referers to external sites now. The proposal is to stop doing this, not to add it. (James' comment previously referred to adding referers to Wikipedia, but he has since corrected this.) – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)00:55, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Wikipedia should take every reasonable step to ensure that it doesn't violate the privacy of any person. Telling other sites that the use rhad previously visited Wikipedia, let alone a specific Wikipedia page, is clearly such a violation. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu14:18, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There has been some confusion here about how referrer works but Wikipedia doesn't tell anything to other sites now. It's browsers which usually by themselves tell a site where the browser came from. The proposal is to make Wikipedia ask browsers to not tell they came from Wikipedia. I think few sites do that currently so when you surf, a website usually knows where you came from. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:56, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whether it's Wikipedia, or the user's own browser doing stuff behind the user's back, is irrelevent. If Wikipedia can prevent such action from being taken behind the user's back, it should. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu13:00, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support seems like since we do nofollow this would be logical too. That said, I don't think we should get all paranoid about the reasoning: the sky isn't going to fall because website A knows it's been linked to from website B, and any site likely to do something sinister with that info probably shouldn't be linked to on WP anyway. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind22:24, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nofollow serves an actual purpose: it takes away the SEO incentive for people to spam their links here. Noreferrer does not have any such purpose. Anomie⚔22:31, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
From what I understand, for the people that care, this is a positive. For the people that don't care, there's no effect at all. Therefore, I support. Sven ManguardWha?01:27, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support. If Wikipedia can ask browsers to not reveal that our users have visited a page on Wikipedia, we should do so, for the same reasons we use nofollow on links. Some external sites will use this information for "wikipedia optimization" to the detriment of our attempts to reduce COI problems. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:10, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support per Od Mishehu and Guy Macon. The web was a much smaller and saner place when this sort of tracing capability was introduced. The time to opt out is past due. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:21, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Referers might have been an ok idea in the CERN era of an academic-operated, research-oriented web. In today's advertiser and user-profiling web, they are evil and should be suppressed whenever possible. 67.117.146.66 (talk) 08:43, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support since as Sven said "for the people that care, this is a positive. For the people that don't care, there's no effect at all". Helder11:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support This should be an explicit Opt-In, not Opt-Out, choice. Unless readers are aware that the site can see their URL, this is not an acceptable practice. RolandR (talk)21:22, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support, Wikipedia should send no referers to any external site, as that enables external sites in theory to keep statistics of Wikipedia page readers' IP addresses: a no-go. --Chris Howard (talk) 09:37, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Clarification: External sites can see readers' IP addresses and gather statistics about pages the reader views on the external site even without the referer. Blocking the referer would stop the external site gathering statistics about which the page the reader viewed on Wikipedia to get to the external site, however. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)15:04, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
noreferrer - Oppose
Wikipedia should continue to allow referers to be sent to external sites:
This is pointless paranoia. The few people who are concerned should either avoid clicking external links, install a browser extension to block/falsify the referrer, or use the Javascript snippet WOSlinker posted above. Anomie⚔15:45, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Anomie above. Anyone who is worried about a site knowing they got there by following a link in Wikipedia should be even more worried about links on other sites and install or activate referrer blocking in their browser. Kiore (talk) 08:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Referrer isn't as big of a privacy breach as people think. It's also useful for certain sites, such as when I was working on my edit counter. I'll bring up an anecdotal example of why referrer was helpful: The tool was getting hit hard in basically a DOS attack. It was causing my email to get spammed, the tool was getting throttled, and by looking at the referrer, I found which page the attack was coming from, and was able to solve it. It's near impossible to get anything bad out of the referrer, and when a site really needs it, like I did, it's useful to have. (X! · talk) · @957 · 21:57, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Let's not mess up the way the Internet was designed to work. There are reasons the referrer exists, and there is no reason to remove that en masse. Prodegotalk07:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is stupid. It gives people a false sense of privacy while breaking an important part of the HTTP protocol. --Chris11:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Referer header is optional; omitting it does not break the protocol. The proposed technique for disabling it is part of HTML5, not some hack. However, I do think it would be an abuse of rel="noreferrer" to turn it on globally. The use intended by the HTML5 authors was to block referers from private pages, to avoid leaking private information. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)22:47, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with what all the "opposers" before me have said. The only "sure" way to do this, would be for the user to do it in his UA settings, not trying to enforce a one-size-fits-all "solution" by mucking about with Wikipedia (which probably wouldn't work anyway). ⇔ ChristTrekker14:22, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So, if you visit a website, your IP is transmitted to them anyway. All that putting noreferrer on it does is deny the site owner useful information about who is linking to their site. So, oppose. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, It is in the HTTP protocol for a reason, it is useful, people can block this on a case by case basis using scripts so removing noreferrer for the whole site seems pointless and wrong. ·Add§hore·Talk To Me!21:20, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, it's standard, useful for web analytics, and if the user doesn't want to people to know where they've been, they can disable it themselves/use the secure server. --SarekOfVulcan (talk)11:50, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 1) Referrers are part of the structure of the Web. Wikipedia should work with the web protocols, not against them. 2) One way to measure the success of partnerships with GLAMs and other organisations is for them to see how many referrals they get via Wikipedia. This is important: one of the drivers of the growing academic respectability of Wikipedia is that people who run scholarly journals or online archives are seeing how much Wikipedia is driving their traffic. MartinPoulter (talk) 19:23, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Sarek sums it up beautifully. As we are the Worlds fifth largest (and by far the most visible) website out there, it's up to us to lead the way in standards. There is a simple solution to this: Edit the Special:LoginUser page to briefly mention noreferrer in the explanation field. -T.I.M(Contact)01:19, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; there are no genuine privacy benefits, and there are a number of entirely legitimate technical reasons why that header is useful. Users genuinely concerned about following links should use the privacy extension of their browsers or retype URLs, not rely on specific sites using noreferrers. — Coren(talk)03:33, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Anomie, Sarek, Martin, Tom. If we are really concerned about users privacy under the belief they cannot take care of it themselves, we should enable HTTPS by default as MZMcBride and Edoktor have suggested. Nil Einne (talk) 07:03, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Referers are still sent when the url is https. Also, https doesn't help much with privacy of page views if someone can snoop the TCP traffic (since the lengths of the pages are still observable through the encryption, and that goes a long way towards identifying the pages). Https is useful for protecting passwords but that's about it. It has nothing to do with this referer issue and is a red herring. And the idea of asking users to log in and set a profile option to turn off referers is unhelpful: logging in correlates all of the person's pageviews together (a privacy problem in its own right), and anyway the vast majority of visitors never log in or edit (that's that #5 website in the world thing: non-logged-in read-only users). It would be ok to have a login option to turn the referers on for users who want to send them. 67.117.146.66 (talk) 08:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Clarification: Referers are sent when following a link from one HTTPS site to another, but are not sent when following a link from an HTTPS site to a plain HTTP one. (I think this is what you meant; I'm just making it a bit clearer.)
As well as passwords, HTTPS is useful to protect login cookies (which can be used to impersonate a logged-in user if discovered). HTTPS can also effectively protect non-public content, such as deleted pages being viewed by administrators. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)23:34, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose -- This putative "improvement" to privacy is many orders of magnitude smaller than the privacy failure we create in making permanent, publicly-available records of all contributions by IP address for most editors, that is to say, IP editors. Convince the community that not requiring account creation isn't a serious privacy concern, and do something about *that*, and then we can deal with the at best marginally-useful improvements like this. --j⚛e deckertalk23:49, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This issue seems slightly paranoia. Anyway, it will also be moot once Wikipedia switches to https-only, as clicks from secure sites never send referrers. — Edokter (talk) — 09:34, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Normally I'd favor any efforts by a site to protect its users' privacy. In this case, since concerned users already have ways to strip or forge referrers on their own (several methods are mentioned here), I don't see a compelling need for any action on Wikipedia's end. Kilopi (talk) 05:30, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm leaning towards oppose. Referers provide useful information for webmasters, which most sites do not use in a way that threatens privacy. Users should decide for themselves whether or not they want to provide referers to websites and use their browser settings (or add-ons) to control this. (I acknowledge that browser makers could do more to make privacy options clear to users.) I also regard the proposal as abusing the "noreferrer" feature, as the HTML5 authors did not intend it to be used across a whole site.
However, I'm putting myself down as neutral because I think the noreferrer feature should be used in limited circumstances. When someone with permission to view an oversighted (or deleted) page clicks an external link, a referer should not be sent. Some websites make referer logs public, and hence could expose article titles that have been suppressed on Wikipedia. Given that a common reason for suppression of a title is a BLP problem, we should do everything we can to prevent such titles being sent to other sites. Protecting non-public information such as this is the intended use of noreferrer. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)23:30, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Question: http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Meta_referrer gives four possible values for using referrer in a meta tag (never, always, origin, default). Are we talking about adding a meta tag to our HTML or adding something to the HTTP headers? If the latter, are those four values available in the HTTP header? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thus far, this proposal has discussed adding the HTML5 rel="noreferrer" to every link. Using the meta tag would be another way to achieve the same end. I am unaware of an HTTP header that would have the same effect. If we were to go ahead with this, it might be worth investigating which method has the best support amongst browsers (or just use both to be extra certain). – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)22:47, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If we can make it work, the "origin" option has a lot going for it. It tells the linked-to page that the link came from en.wikipedia.org without saying what page on Wikipedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:58, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. At Talk:Main Page, a couple of users are reporting that the site is rendering for them as 22 Jan, despite them living in Europe, where it's currently 23 Jan. Hence, they're seeing yesterday's TFA. NB I live in the UK and all seems fine to me. --Dweller (talk) 11:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I was the first poster on main page, the Main Page definitely doesn't update for me. Firefox 9.0.1 and 10.0.2 here. Windows XP 2002 SP3. France. F5, CTRL+F5, restarting the computer doesn't work, and I have this problem on different computers. I'm stuck on Jan 22, which was a rather miserable day for me :D BTW is this problem related to the one I have on Commons ? The Commons Main Page doesn't update regularly for me either, I have to force it by switching to mobile view and back. Thank you, have a nice day. 130.79.37.169 (talk) 12:11, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm having the same problem and I'm in the UK. The main page should be 23rd January. Why is yesterday's page loading instead? I've never had this problem on Wikipedia before. TurboForce (talk) 14:41, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. While this glitch may be annoying for those it's affecting, it's remarkable that the migration has had such little impact. Virtual coffee and chocolate to all the developers from me. (I presume that American IT people depend on similar foodgroups to their British cousins). --Dweller (talk) 14:46, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This was a routing problem relating to page purges, and it's now been fixed (and primarily affected European users). Any affected pages can be purged and should show up properly for all users. ^demon[omg plz]15:02, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Concur with Dweller. I can honestly say that if I hadn't read about the migration, I wouldn't have noticed a thing. Well done! An optimist on the run!15:16, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This problem is still ongoing, at least for me here in the UK. Many pages will show their 22 Jan version in read mode even if later edits have been made. The edits can be seen in edit mode, but will not appear in normal read mode. Neither do they show up in the history view. It's the same for the talk pages. 78.146.235.71 (talk) 04:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is still ongoing, I posted to Talk:Main Page about one of the sections not updating. and was pointed to here. (The DYK section is not updated for unlogged visitors.) It's probably not just the front page. Yesterday I made 2 edits to an article. I could see them in my contributions, but they weren't present in the article's revision history and in the article itself. (Even when I was logged in.) When I returned to Wikipedia today, they were there. --Moscow Connection (talk) 05:08, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, when I log out, no recent modifications on any pages seems to be shown. In the revision history too, I see an older version without newer edits. I try to purge pages, but nothing helps. When I log in, I can see everything. --Moscow Connection (talk) 05:50, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This glitch is still active in Germany. Although our location is 0730 UTC on 24 Jan the main page shows 1630 UTC 23 Jan. And the Talk page shows a completely different UTC. Purging the pages does not work at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.56.68.216 (talk) 06:47, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Issue is still active as of 1530 GMT 24 January in Netherlands on IE and Firefox, purging etc. no effect. Site still is showing 23 January information. This seems to only be the case with en.wikipedia.org, nl, fr and de versions working fine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.210.0.175 (talk) 15:35, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The glitch is still ongoing (for those not logged in). Many pages still shown in their January 22 or 23 state. This must be causing pretty serious problems. What is being done about it? 78.146.235.71 (talk) 21:40, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I then went to one of these articles, followed links to about five pages deep, then backed out to the main page - and saw that it was now showing the correct information for January 25 (TFA - Pinguicula moranensis; DYK - 2012 Race of Champions, Abel Schr›der/Vester Egesborg/Undløse/St Martin's, Make the World Move, Thomas Aquinas Dictionary, Dima Yakovlev Law, Ian McKeever, Detroit's population increased over 1,000 times). --Redrose64 (talk) 13:50, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is geting ridiculous. This morning (25th) the main page was showing the correct date and I thought that at last all the problems had been fixed. This afternoon I visit it again, and its back to showing the 23rd! Come on, guys. You're losing technical credibility, here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.59.43.240 (talk) 14:33, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I actually had an issue with safari on mac just now... was switching in and out of private mode for work at WP:OP and noticed that I was seeing different versions of that page depending on whether I was logged in or logged out.... The last edit visible was from Jan. 18, but there were no edits to the page between then and the 22nd. One interesting commonality is that both the main page and WP:OP both use subpages..... Sailsbystars (talk) 18:22, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It also affects the Japanese Wikipedia. I've just noticed. I can't see the latest edits and the latest enties in the edit history when I log out. Two examples:
Getting this when accessing the main page while not logged in using Safari v6.0.2 on MacBook Pro running OSX v10.8.2.
Hitting refresh initially gave the page from 24th, but subsequent refreshes bring up the page from the 23rd.
A Windows 7 Professional PC, on the same router, running Firefox v18.0.1 shows the correct page when not logged in.
Pendleboater (talk) 20:17, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well spare a thought for us closer to the international date line! Here in New Zealand we ALWAYS have to wait about 12 hours to get an update for the new day for ALL of the wiki sites. Do you here all of us complaining about it? NO you don't (well I did mention somewhere that we should change the server time to the date line time). . -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:44, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm from Germany and I notice this problem also in de.wp es.wp en.wp ... It is not just a problem with the main page. In a lot of articles I see old versions and an old revision history without edits from 25th and 24th January. --93.209.87.114 (talk) 21:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you should stop telling in the headline that this is just a problem with the main page (who looks every day at the main page and who really cares if the main page shows an older version?). If the problem would be that just the main page is not updated, this would not be a big problem. But I (and apparently a lot of other people) can not see the new versions of millions of articles in all languages. I already saw an article with vandalism which was reverted but I have to see the vandalised version of the article and can not fight it because of this problem. This seems to be a very serious problem and I would feel better when someone of the technical team would explain what is happening here and if they can fix the problem. Ironically I can see the new version of a page (for a limited period of time) after I have edited it. --93.209.69.102 (talk) 21:44, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The main page problem began very recently, and has affected many users whether logged in or not. By contrast, users who are not logged in have always been served cached copies of most pages, primarily for reasons of speed. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But now even when the cache is purged 2 day old versions of articles are shown. I read and edit in a lot of languages of Wikipedia since years and this never happened before. --93.209.69.102 (talk) 21:58, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have experienced this problem in the UK as well for the last couple of days, and it's still active. Best way I found of viewing most recent updates, which works, is by going around all cache records on my computer. In other words, refreshing the page won't work. But going around cache does, which, while the problem lasts, can easily be done by pressing Ctrl+F5. Whichever page you're viewing should refresh properly and display the latest updated version. The same thing works for Talk pages and View History. It has worked for me consistently since the problem started, which seems to indicate that the cause is a temporary misinteraction of WP pages with cache. Just refresh with Ctrl+F5 each time you open a page, and the content will be updated. I hope this helps. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.170.99.72 (talk) 22:20, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, Squid has had issues for weeks (maybe months). Logged-out users are constantly served old versions of pages and it doesn't have anything to do with the recent data center migration. I suspect the reason the issues have persisted for so long is that most editors (read: people capable of properly complaining) are logged in. But if you look at any reasonably active page (think: noticeboard) while logged out, you'll quickly notice discrepancies between the date of the most recent edit and the "this page last modified" timestamp. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:23, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I reported a related squid issue in August 2011[1]. I didn't say it at the time, but the <ahem> educational pages like ANI served a couple days old content (up to week old for RFA)... it would have sounded a bit strange to complain that ANI was doing re-runs. I don't think I have had to use the history tab to bypass the cache since spring 2012, maybe. In any case, the cache oddities go back a long way. 88.148.249.186 (talk) 05:59, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This has been going on for days now and it isn't getting any better! Why haven't those trying to fix this at least posted some update about what they are doing about it? 92.24.102.136 (talk) 00:00, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am told that this should now be fixed (just got the email), they asked if we could take down the notice but I'll leave that up for others if it seems like we're all set in the purge catch up. If people are still seeing issues please let me know. I'm told that it was a "evil multicast forwarding router bug" Jalexander--WMF01:32, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is still going on. For example: FC Barcelona - the last edit I can see in the revision history is from 21 January. I never had this problem before. Most articles which where edited since 22 January are not shown with their recent versions. Even purge does not help. Only editing. Crazy thing: When I edit a page (or when I make a 0-edit) I can see the recent revisions. But when I delete the cookies in my browser the recent revisions disappear. --79.216.49.235 (talk) 02:21, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An anonymous browser request just now for Main page (lowercase "p", which redirects to Main Page) from Europe is still showing 22 January:
Extended content
HTTP request:
GET /wiki/Main_page HTTP/1.1
Cache-Control: max-age=0
If-Modified-Since: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 02:02:00 GMT
HTTP response:
HTTP/1.0 304 Not Modified
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 02:34:05 GMT
Last-Modified: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 02:02:00 GMT
Age: 351590
X-Cache: HIT from amssq39.esams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from amssq39.esams.wikimedia.org:3128
X-Cache: MISS from knsq29.knams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from knsq29.knams.wikimedia.org:80
HTML source:
<!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:15580374-0!*!0!!*!4!* and timestamp 20130122020202 --><!-- Served by srv275 in 0.165 secs. -->
For comparison, the actual main page (Main Page, capital "P") is showing 26 January when requested anonymously, but still showing the MediaWiki:Sitenotice even though the notice was blanked 2.5 hours ago:
<!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:15580374-0!*!0!!*!4!* and timestamp 20130126011833 --><!-- Served by mw1094 in 0.170 secs. -->
Is this related to the relatively large job queue (currently around 400,000 and risen over the past few hours)? Not sure if the cache will now be updated routinely as the job queue is processed in due course, or if the stale pages indicate an ongoing fault.
Yep, I still have to rely on versions from January 22/23 and then forward diff by diff to get the later changes - I purged the browser: no effect, neither on en.wp nor de.wp or es.wp, regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 08:54, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing got better. A lot of pages are just visible until 22/23 January and some pages updated but then they stopped again at 24 or 25 January (like probably the main page stops at 26 January?) For example the Main page of the French Wikipedia has also still this problem. But this problems concerns not just the unimportant mainpages. It concerns the about 1 billion pages in all wikipedia languages When you edit a page OR sign in you see the current version. But as soon as you delete your cookies you see again versions which are outdated since up to four days. --93.209.82.159 (talk) 10:26, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in the US and I had the outdated pages problem only when I was not logged in. When I was logged in, I didn't notice any problem. --Bob K31416 (talk) 12:18, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Re Redrose64's comment, "The main page problem began very recently, and has affected many users whether logged in or not. By contrast, users who are not logged in have always been served cached copies of most pages, primarily for reasons of speed." — How often are cached copies updated? --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:54, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The revision history is often more outdated and does not show the revision which appears. But also the revision which appears is often outdated since days. --Yoda1893 (talk) 19:40, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi folks - I'm the person who solved the problem before. Our purging infrastructure works by sending multicast purge requests to the cache boxes. To purge between the US and Europe, since we have private IPs plus we can't use private multicast ranges across other peoples networks, we have a relay that converts the multicast requests to unicast. Basically what happened is that one of the routers in Tampa had a stale entry in its multicast forwarding table, preventing the multicast tree for that group from being built up to the new datacenter in Ashburn. When we switched the mastership over, purge requests were then sourced from Ashburn, showing us this "fun" bug. This means that all purge requests that should have been sent to Europe had been basically "black holed." Since the relay machine saw no traffic, it was unable to relay those requests, and the nature of purge requests means that the servers which request the purges aren't waiting for an "ack." Therefore all of the purge requests have been lost in time, and wil not be "caught up." All new purge requests will be sent properly. Purging stale pages should fix the problem. This problem should only have been seen in the European caching center and therefore only visible to visitors from Europe. If see a stale page, please append ?action=purge to the page, forcing a purge. If this still does not fix the issue, please file a bug on bugzilla https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/LeslieCarr (talk) 17:03, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is still alive and kicking, LeslieCarr. For instance, I can only see your preceding entry on this page in edit mode. It does not show up in the ordinary article. Refreshing with "?action=purge" has no effect, either on this page or any other I try. Unfortunately, I'm not sufficiently technical to understand how to file a bug on bugzilla. (I'm probably not alone in this!) The worst effect of this problem isn't the minor inconvenience that articles are slightly out-of-date but that the history revision pages aren't updated (the "?action=purge" command isn't even recognized there!). This must be causing absolute havoc with conflicting edits, especially by the many editors who might still be completely unaware of this problem. 92.24.97.99 (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The main page of en.wp did not update to January 27 (when not logged in and without cookies) until now. The problem which concerns all pages in every language concerns now again also the main page of en.wp. purge does not work. --79.216.49.61 (talk) 03:05, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just so you know, I am seeing January 26, 2013 (UTC) as the current date in the "On this day..." section while not logged in. Refreshing nor purging the page seems to have an effect on what I see. It is currently January 27, 2013, 10:06 here in the Czech republic, so the correct UTC time should be January 27, 2013, 9:06 UTC. I am running Firefox 18.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.6.8. I also checked the Czech and Slovak main page, however they both seem to show the correct date, so the problems appears to be specific to the English Wikipedia. 83.208.213.135 (talk) 09:06, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so right after I posted that comment, I went back to the main page, refreshed it, and now it shows January 27 for me. I don't know what caused it, but it must have happened in the last ten minutes maximum. The only thing that comes to my mind is the actual action of previewing and posting the previous comment here. Couldn't that have affected the process and somewhat forced the main page to purge when ?action=purge didn't? 83.208.213.135 (talk) 09:14, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When your cookies are deleted or you use another browser it will be again January 26 on the main page and a lot of articles will show you revisions from January 26, January 25, January 24, January 23 or January 22. For example at List of Spanish football transfers winter 2012–13 the current version contains transfers until January 26. But as European IP (without having edited or when you edit and delete cookies) you can only see transfers until January 24 and the revision history shows only edits until January 22. --79.216.48.157 (talk) 10:45, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Its still ongoing here - even with purging. And its not only the main page - its all pages. One reason that many people might not be reporting this is that its hard to see whats going on or not, as this discussion is only visible once you edit the entire page. There is a lot of not quite right information going around, as everyone is seeing a slightly different view of the problem. FWIW, Firefox 10.0.07, Debian testing, cookies disabled, javascript disabled.46.115.99.15 (talk) 10:24, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know whether this is related, but Wikipedia:Today's featured article/Tomorrow is currently showing me the Featured Article from January 24 (i.e. it's showing what it should be showing on January 23) and nothing I can do (refresh, purge etc.) can fix it. This also occurs when I am logged out, and I've also just tried it on my phone (via 3G, so a different IP address) and it's the same there as well. Black Kite (talk) 11:00, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm getting the correct January 28 one (about Jane Austen). I think that the reason that some Europeans are reporting "still broken" where others are reporting "no, it's all OK now" is because there is more than one server, some of which are fully up to date - and of those that are stuck in the past, they are not all "behind" to the same degree. If you retrieve a page which is clearly out of date, it might have come from a particular server (let's call it "A"); then if you go away and come back (or somebody else retrieves the same page), it might now come from server "B" which yields a different cached copy, which may be up to date. So, "A" needs maintenance whereas "B" might not. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:02, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Relate or not, it become impossible to update old .svg. No purge method seems to work. On Commons, en, fr. Thumbs generated remain unchanged. file description page keeps the 6 year old png (from SVG). Update histories do not always include recent updates. Any infromation / advise welcome - thank you [Firefox and Chrome on XP) Eurocommuter (talk) 15:44, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can confirm this (SVG uploads not working). I am trying to edit (remove drop shadow) from File:GOP Logo1.svg, a file hosted on WP for licensing reasons. I can locally confirm that the rsvg library and Firefox render the new SVG source correctly. But after I first uploaded the fixed version to WP, the cached PNG thumbnail did not update. Before, I've encountered this with malformed SVGs, so I optimized the SVG to make it very simple and again verified it renders with Firefox and rsvg. After uploading the second .SVG source, the first upload's PNG thumbnail did suddenly refresh, however. But it does not help, because the most recent file's PNG cache remains un-updated. I am editing from Europe through the .NL servers --hydrox (talk) 00:33, 28 January 2013 (UTC) ed Sweet, purging the server cache worked! --hydrox (talk) 23:39, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately I'm in no position to immerse myself into this. Just want to report that the problem persists here. Both articles and histories are up to at least two days old, but just in some pages, and the "edit" tabs seem to be updated. I've purged, tried different browser, all of that. 83.253.228.202 (talk) 18:28, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
content not refreshing from Hungary, using ipv6.
Hi,
I have tried firefox, opera, chrome, reload, private browsing, f5, ctrl-f5, but i still see the state of the main page as it was on the 23rd of january. It seems that a squid needs a kick.
Extended content
GET /wiki/Main_Page HTTP/1.1
Host: en.wikipedia.org
Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/24.0.1312.52 Safari/537.17
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch
Accept-Language: hu-HU,hu;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.6,en;q=0.4
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
Cookie: centralnotice_bucket=1-4.2; clicktracking-session=HBszflapTPzHCS9W0J1TpTXaa5HZfSrvq; mediaWiki.user.bucket%3Aext.articleFeedback-tracking=10%3Atrack; mediaWiki.user.id=57FUr6tSm2LJWGc2cBerv7Qv2Qrl8UCD
If-Modified-Since: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:58:51 GMT
HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
Server: nginx/1.1.19
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:24:38 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Connection: keep-alive
Last-Modified: Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:58:51 GMT
Age: 134746
X-Cache: HIT from amssq43.esams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from amssq43.esams.wikimedia.org:3128
X-Cache: MISS from amssq44.esams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from amssq44.esams.wikimedia.org:80
Via: 1.0 amssq43.esams.wikimedia.org:3128 (squid/2.7.STABLE9), 1.0 amssq44.esams.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.7.STABLE9)
GET /w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&508635914 HTTP/1.1
Host: en.wikipedia.org
Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Accept: */*
If-Modified-Since: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:12:35 GMT
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/24.0.1312.52 Safari/537.17
Referer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch
Accept-Language: hu-HU,hu;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.6,en;q=0.4
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3
Cookie: centralnotice_bucket=1-4.2; clicktracking-session=HBszflapTPzHCS9W0J1TpTXaa5HZfSrvq; mediaWiki.user.bucket%3Aext.articleFeedback-tracking=10%3Atrack; mediaWiki.user.id=57FUr6tSm2LJWGc2cBerv7Qv2Qrl8UCD
HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
Server: nginx/1.1.19
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:24:38 GMT
Content-Type: text/javascript; charset=UTF-8
Connection: keep-alive
Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:12:35 GMT
Age: 23
X-Cache: HIT from amssq37.esams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from amssq37.esams.wikimedia.org:3128
X-Cache: MISS from amssq40.esams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from amssq40.esams.wikimedia.org:80
Via: 1.0 amssq37.esams.wikimedia.org:3128 (squid/2.7.STABLE9), 1.0 amssq40.esams.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.7.STABLE9)
Edits in several articles show up in the edit history complete with renderred article underneath but not in the article under the article tab. This has happened in several articles and despite rebooting, refreshing my browser IE9, the edits refuse to show up. I attempted to do a minor edit to one that presented this problem and it appeared in the article but disapeared when I re-accessed the page, next time. One of the later special effects is the last edit line in the edit history has disappeared too. Good luck with this one. I believe this happenned last fall, also. Not in article talk page.[2], Not even in edit history page unless you slide to next [3]. 174.118.142.187 (talk) 22:35, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
its Due to a technical issue, some users are receiving outdated versions of pages, including the main page. Please see the village pump for details. i want to hide it i have read it alot today 65.175.255.73 (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Remembering to hide the message presumably requires the browser to have JavaScript and cookie-saving enabled. So some users will see the message again each session (if they have only session. cookies enabled) or all the time (if they have cookies disabled). — Richardguk (talk) 01:06, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To add to an existing section: Click the "edit" link to the right of the section heading, scroll to the bottom of the edit box, then add your comments at the end of the edit box. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)21:51, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Main Page updates
I'm still having problems with main page note showing correctly. In UK and it is 27th Jan but main page is from 26th. Using XP with Firefox. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.69.251.91 (talk) 18:16, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Latest update from Operations
Hey all :). So, I've just been talking to Leslie Carr, one of our more awesome Ops engineers - and by 'awesome' I mean 'she spent 8 hours being batted around tech support and developers at the company that makes some of our hardware, and even more troubleshooting'. She's been working literally non-stop on this since Friday, and is incredibly sorry about both the problem and the fact that it's taking so long. Hopefully we'll have it resolved soon: in the meantime, thank you to all of you for your patience, and to Leslie for her hard work :). I'll let you know as soon as we have an update. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:11, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the feedback, and thanks to you and awesome Leslie and everyone else for keeping the technology tamed and helping to turn our random edits into a world class resource! — Richardguk (talk) 02:01, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently the problem /should/ hopefully be fixed; try ?action=purge to clear old versions, and they should filter out over time naturally as the cache updates :). Let me know if it doesn't work. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I just checked another user's talk page where I had edited. Nothing yet. I made a minor edit and the combined edits result showed up on the talk page. After exiting and reloading the talk page it is gone again. hmmmmm... very strange. Actually this edit doesn't even show in the edit history page. Best and luck to you. 174.118.142.187 (talk) 16:13, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"?action=purge" didn't do anything for me. Well first I had to know where to put the option text. LOL I have purged my caches a few times (shift <F5> and shift <browser refresh> on each page this has happenned to me. I cannot see your response, above on the page and I still do not see my minor indent edit to my own message, yet. I see them all in this edit text box and once I hit "Save Page" but when returning they do not exist again. 174.118.142.187 (talk) 18:19, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now this page seems to be fine and fully updated but the user's talk page this edit still does not appear from 4-5 edits back. When I added the purge to the URL it came back with a purge request confirmatiion box, both times (that did not occur ever on this WP:VPtech page) and yet still old news. I think there may be some selective eHarrassment from the system at selective places. :) 174.118.142.187 (talk) 18:42, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can see the latest edit in the revision history. But it doesn't change the way the page is rendered anyway. To purge edit histories, add "&action=purge", not "?". (The question mark is already there.) --Moscow Connection (talk) 21:54, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It gets better with that one... "Search for "Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)&action=purge" in existing pages of namespace Wikipedia.". Looks like incorrect syntax using a string concatenation operator? The "?" works and is not already there in any page I have seen. Thanks 174.118.142.187 (talk) 22:12, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Er... sorry to spoil your fun, but it isn't possible to purge edit histories separately from the article. The URL for a page history looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&action=history. If you add &action=purge to that, it will have two action= parts. MediaWiki resolves the duplication by ignoring all instances of action= except the last one. Hence the effect is the same as if you had just added ?action=purge to the URL of the article itself. (You might be right about purging an article also purging its history. I've never had to deal with an out-of-date edit history before.) – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)23:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that I maybe actually purged the article and the history simultaneously. That's why I added a note (two replies above, in brackets.) But anyway, the history was outdated and the purge worked. --Moscow Connection (talk) 23:17, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see now. There was one "action" already. So I purged the article and both the article and its history were updated. There was no fun involved, cause I updated all the other articles the usual way and noticed that their histories become updated too. --Moscow Connection (talk) 23:29, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A purge takes more time to appear now. I purged a page and the page took over 30 seconds or so to actually update. I had already thought that the problem returned and was going to post here when I checked and the latest edit was there. --Moscow Connection (talk) 06:19, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
New feature announcement: New edits sometimes don't appear in the edit history until the page is purged. It was the case with articles, but now with edit histories too. I've just seen a fresh out-of-date revision history. An edit made on January 29 (after the purge problem was fixed) didn't appear neither in the article, nor in the revision history until I purged the page. Like PartTimeGnome, I had never seen an out-of-date edit history before January 22. Did outdated revision histories (like outdated articles that need purging) become a new feature of Wikipedia? But the way, I could see the edit in the user contributions.--Moscow Connection (talk) 06:19, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is still happening ocasionally for me. It was on a talk page with another person's edit. The purge command on the URL worked (I got confirmation boxes both timees) but it took about 15-20 minutes, and three or four browser refreshes to get my copy of the page to reflect the edit from hours back. 174.118.142.187 (talk) 15:06, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, happened today again - but only once, thanks to and for doubtlessly hard work done - on Meta, where I initially was forced to access Micru's replies via the history, best regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 22:10, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Template error
Can someone check the template that generates the "we're currently having trouble with the main page" blurb? It appears to be causing the text on the page below where it is transcluded to be in small and centered text (in Chrome for Mac, at least), making the site effectively unreadable. Looks like an unclosed tag or two. Thank you. 94.192.225.169 (talk) 19:24, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
First time I'd ever visited the page in question, so nothing in the cache. Not using a proxy server either. Perhaps just one of those internetty things that happen and thus not my fault and not worth the slap down reply. Thanks. 94.192.225.169 (talk) 19:57, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's all still happening to new edits and events. Even the message appears and disappears randomly in the same pages. The message went from just the "main page" to "main page and others" and now back to "main page" again, when it appears. Tese are the same pages I have been to dozen times without a message. Still needs some unhacking, yet. 174.118.142.187 (talk) 20:57, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Revision history is outdated while the article is up to date
Something strange is going on. This happens when I'm not logged in, I'm in Russia. This article この街 (森高千里の曲) in the Japanese Wikipedia is up to date, but its edit history is not showing the 3 latest edits, made on January 30 (UTC). The latest edit listed is from January 23. (History. These edits: [4][5][6] are not listed.) I didn't try to purge the page now cause I wanted to show the problem. When I log in, the problem disappears. --Moscow Connection (talk) 02:32, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Another up-to-date article with out-of-date history in the Japanese Wikipedia: 湾岸ワンダーダーリン/ラズベリーラブ. When I'm not logged in, I can still see the latest revision of the article, but the article history doesn't show the latest edit, made on January 28 (UTC). (There were only 3 edits, on January 13, 25 and 28.) (When I log in, I can see the edit in the history.) I notice problems only in the Japanese Wikipedia simply because I don't edit much lately and don't have an opportunity to notice much. --Moscow Connection (talk) 08:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, for me it doesn't happen after a purge. Articles don't update immediately aftar I purge them, but eventually, in a few seconds or minutes, they do update. I didn't purge the last example intentionally, though. So anyone can check if they see more than two edits in the history here: [7]. --Moscow Connection (talk) 16:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(For me it doesn't, but I haven't spent that much time in Wikipedia lately to be sure everything is fixed. People in the section "Template error" above say that for them the problem with pages that won't purge persists.) --Moscow Connection (talk) 16:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Image revisions not appearing in articles
I have noticed several updated images I have uploaded recently, along with one uploaded by another user, that are still appearing in articles with the original revision. The original revision of File:P&O Cruises Australia.png was appearing in the article infobox in a stretched form but has now been replaced by a vector file. File:DVLA.svg is still appearing in the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency article as the old logo rather than the new version that was uploaded on 28 January. File:Edinburgh Airport logo.png was still appearing with the old logo so I replaced it with another upload under a different filename. File:Costa Cruises Logo.png still shows the original revision without transparency. The images I have uploaded all come up in my file list with the updated revisions. Cloudbound (talk) 14:04, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The workaround (quoting bawolff from Bugzilla): If File:Example.svg was not updating for the 200px thumbnail size, you would do the following: 1. Go to
What they did was upgrade enwiki from 1.21wmf7 to 1.21wmf8. The particular change being complained about appears to be this one, FYI. I don't think it was done for newbies so much as other languages, so that for example arwiki could see something like "[تعديل=امنع المستخدمين الجدد وغير المسجلين]" in their logs instead of "[edit=autoconfirmed]". Note that won't go live on arwiki until tomorrow, but you can see it now on non-Wikipedia projects such as de:wikt:Special:Log/protect. Anomie⚔21:35, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is actually less useful phrasing, because "new" is undefined while "autoconfirmed" has a definition. If there was a way to wikilink the "autoconfirmed" and "admin" (instead of sysop) text, that'd be best. Is this a change directly to the MediaWiki software or is there a MediaWiki: namespace file that can be changed? – PhilosopherLet us reason together.19:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Additionally, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that some (perhaps those less than proficient in English) could interpret it as "if you try to edit the page, you will be blocked". But hold on... if it's localized now, does that mean that we can change what it says? Because then we could compromise on something like [edit=Autoconfirmed users only] - new users would understand what it means, but we wouldn't feel like MediaWiki is treating us like toddlers. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler)16:08, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, sort of. The messages are MediaWiki:protect-level-autoconfirmed and MediaWiki:protect-level-sysop. But there are two potential issues: 1, the messages are resolved when the page is protected, so it could be changed going forward but existing logs will still have the old text. And 2, these messages are the same ones used in the protection form itself, so whatever changes are made will be reflected there too. Anomie⚔21:09, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A new bug when developing a category
Hello,
Today, I encounter a new bug in Wikipedia when I develop a category. With Safari Mac. I go at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_set_in_Poland. I click on the + to develop the category History of Poland on film. And I get this insult message :
“categorytree-collapse-bullet: Parse error at position 0 in input:”
I still get [+] on all category pages. The bug affects all such categories (i.e. with three layers - the + is to expand a subcategory). I do not get it when logged out because then I get served triangles as suggested. Grandiose(me, talk, contribs) 12:27, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What's up with the extra space after external links?
Resolved
For several days at least I've been seeing an extra space after external links, and no icon for non-html doc links like pdfs, etc.. This results in commas and periods being misplaced, and the general look of amateur coding. Is this an ongoing problem that everyone but me is already aware of? I'm using Monobook, but I notice the issue when not logged in as well. — Sctechlaw (talk) 04:33, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and yes. Disabling this stylesheet resolves the space issue (but also disables most WP styles too), so I'm wondering if that stylesheet was recently changed? This occurs in Firefox 18.01 on Win7-64 for me, haven't looked recently on other boxes. — Sctechlaw (talk) 15:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) the stylesheet you point to is basically an agglomeration of many individual stylesheets. the "resourceloader" will do that. if you want to investigate, you should probably add "?debug=1" (or "&debug=1", depending whether the address line already contains a "?") to the address line. this will cause each stylesheet (and btw, also each script) to be loaded separately, so you'll be able to disable them one by one to find out which of them causes the issue. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 16:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thanks for that; more info now:
When I'm not logged in, I see no icons for external links that should have them, e.g., DOC, PDF, HTTPS (for a linked secure page), etc.. I also see an extra space after every external link.
When I am logged in, I see the icons on links that should have them, but on external links that should not have any icon (plain HTTP links to an html-type document), there remains an extra space. Disabling this stylesheet resolves the issue, but also disable most WP styles. I hope this information helps resolve the problem.
Only thing I see is the external-link icon missing. First thing to try is disable any user script and gadgets one-by-one to see if that fixes the problem. Most likely cause is that one of them may load conflicting CSS that causes the icon to diappear. — Edokter (talk) — 19:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a second screenshot (from Apple Inc. litigation footnote #52.) User scripts and gadgets are not "on" when one is not logged in, so that cannot be the issue. I did disable all Firefox add-ons in case that was the issue. but it had no effect. — Sctechlaw (talk) 20:23, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Narrowing things down further, (1) there appears to be a stylesheet problem with the "Lock" icons for secure links when not logged in, and (2) same issue for non-secure external links whether logged in or not. In other words, when there is no lock icon to be used according the cascade, it leaves a space, and it shouldn't. — Sctechlaw (talk) 20:19, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But, the cascade is still broken: when logged out there is no lock icon, just a space; and when logged in or out there is no external link icon showing up, just a space where it should be. It wouldn't be so annoying if it didn't make things look so bad, as in image 2. Anybody? — Sctechlaw (talk) 11:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Try using differt skins. It looks like you are using Monobook so try Vector instead. This may be a problem with one of the servers returning a 401, 404, or other error so finding out what skin you are using and what server (do a host lookup) can help. – Allen4names (IPv6 contributions) 02:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Allen, this occurs whether logged in or not, so I'm pretty sure it's not a matter of skin choice. The only difference I see when when I'm logged in is that the lock icons for secure links show up but the icon for standard external links does not. When I'm not logged in, neither of them show up. — Sctechlaw (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
→ Also, since I don't save my cookies or site preferences between browser sessions, when I'm not signed in, WP is not reading any preexisting cookie or preference, thus I believe it defaults to the vector skin. Surely I can't be the only one experiencing this issue. — Sctechlaw (talk) 21:02, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Since it seems no one has asked this yet, do you have any content or ad blocker software? Also check any content blocking functions in your browser (even if you don't use them, in case they became set by accident). For example, in Firefox go to Preferences ▸ Content, and check that "Load images automatically" is checked. Then click "Exceptions" to the right of this, and make sure that no Wikipedia or Wikimedia sites are listed as exceptions. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)22:34, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I checked those in my initial survey of possible issues on my end. Nothing is different, no new add-ons, settings, etc.. To test further, I created a new naked profile, same result, and even temporarily loaded a backup profile from December to check, just to make sure, again with the same result, and this is what led me to think it was a CSS bug. However, as an additional test I did try to load some random WP pages in Iceweasel and Seamonkey, which work correctly, and also in IE, and the icons do appear normally there too. So, this makes me wonder whether the last Firefox update, which occurred recently, has anything to do with the disappeared icons. I haven't yet checked the Moz support forums to see if anyone there is also experiencing the same problem. — Sctechlaw (talk) 04:22, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Found the answer finally. The latest update to Firefox includes a new config option:
security.mixed_content.block_display_content
which is supposed to default to false, but for me got set to true during the update, and, even with a new profile was set to true and would not 'hold' between browser sessions. I found some other issues too with this update, all appear to have been due to a corrupted update. Reinstalling Firefox resolved the issue. So this problem is solved, yay. Thanks all for your input. — Sctechlaw (talk) 05:29, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Double click to edit not working
I have always used double click to edit, but it has stopped working (XP, IE8, Vector). I first noticed it a couple of days ago and assumed it was a temporary glitch, but it is still not working. Yes I have purged, and rebooted, and I haven't touched my JavaScript, whilst other things relying on Java - such as the edit toolbar - are still working. Arjayay (talk) 18:44, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Still not working, but have noticed that double click works on the first use, having opened Wikipedia, but odesn't work thereafter until re-booted - seems to be some soort of "hang-up" _ Arjayay (talk) 19:38, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How much does Pending Changes slow down load-times?
The load times on Deaths in 2013 are excessively long, and editors have even converted all of the references to the basic <ref> </ref> format, to avoid the delays from using citation templates, but this has not sped things up very much. How much of this extreme slowness is down to the use of Wikipedia:Pending changes, rather than semi-protection? Arjayay (talk) 18:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You can also try adding ?forceprofile=true to URLs (not POST requests though) and clicking "view source" to look for any intersting profiling data. Aaron Schulz23:35, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can bots do asynchronous requests to the wikipedia api? For example several uploads simultaneously through the commons api or is this frowned upon? Would there be a performance benefit? I have a 100 Mbit/s line and so I'd like to know if doing simultaneous uploads would be worthwhile. Smallman12q (talk) 22:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it should be fine if you don't use too many threads (I'd stop at three). Are you able to saturate the connection with only one thread? MER-C08:30, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? That page doesn't look like a policy -- the sole author does not seem to be listed here (in fact, the author is banned on en.wp). Almost nothinglinks to that page; if it is policy you really should publicise it more. I searched wikitech, and CPUs have come a long way since this was posted nearly six years ago. MER-C14:00, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've filed bugzilla:44584 for guidance...there should an official policy. @MER-C, I'm not able to saturate the line with only one thread. (The line is part of a wider shared line, but I'm guaranteed that minimum).Smallman12q (talk) 15:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The development for TAFI has progressed significantly over the last few weeks, and we are preparing to launch the new feature on the main page when it can be properly implemented (target date Feb 9th at 0:00 UTC, but subject to change). Concensus was established that the TAFI content should be placed below the DYK content. A key part of this is the concensus to display one of a group of several articles (7 at this time), shown randomly. One implementation of this can be seen on the example page. It requires the user manually click the purge button, and I do not know if there is another way to do this sort of thing.
As far executing this implementation on the Main Page, one editor suggested that "the simplest approach is to use a new set of seven dated subpages each week (which can be created and prepared as far in advance as desired). When the date arrives, the update will occur automatically." Being more accustomed to my work in the textile industry, I have no clue when it comes to these matters. From what I gather, items to appear on the Main Page first go through Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow, and this can be used to transclude the relevant article blurbs to the page. I am looking for assistance from technically minded individuals that can help in implementing this on the Main Page. --NickPenguin(contribs)01:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is no way that consensus is sufficient to modify the main page. Without feedback from hundreds of editors, the main page should not be touched. There needs to be a discussion linked form the watchlist notice, in addition to CENT and the other usual pages, before you can do this. Prodegotalk04:19, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe we did go an RfC, which was also at CENT and other places, though I am not sure anybody mentioned going through the Watchlist notice. The proposal was passed by consensus at the Village Pump(Proposals), which I believe is the page where any such proposal is to be passed.
In any case, is there something else that we ought to be doing before TAFI can make it to the Main Page? If so, what? [Just a casual count revealed 50+ editors voting on the original proposal] TheOriginalSoni (talk) 07:27, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What page do I edit to update this template's documentation?
I'm looking at the documentation for Template:Uw-unsourced3. At the bottom there's a little table that shows the different warning levels available. For Template:Uw-unsourcedn where n in [1, 2, 3] it says incorrectly that Template:Uw-unsourced4 is N/A. There actually is a Template:Uw-unsourced4. I want to update the documentation to fix this, but I cannot figure out what page I need to edit to do it! Note Please, I'm looking for someone to tell me how to figure it out so I can learn, I'm not asking to have it done for me! Help appreciated, cheers... Zad6816:21, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I’m not going to do it myself since you asked. If you view the source of the template, you’ll see that the documentation comes from {{Templatesnotice|series = uw-unsourced|max = 3|s1 = uw-unsor3}}. A bit of common sense confirmed by experiment shows that raising the max parameter to 4 does the job.—EmilJ.16:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
problem opening wikipedia
my browser (explorer 8) on my pc (windows XP SP2) makes me see every site normally,except wikipedia. The issue occurred yesterday and it seems not solved yet. your site appears to be running,but is extremely slow and often can't load photos or heavy pages. it seems strange,as a few days ago it was going wonderfully. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.21.32.151 (talk) 17:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
thanks a lot for answering. not fixed yet,and it seems getting worse. could it depend on the new signal enhancer I bought to improve the wi-fi signal? I thought about it as the sole action I made in these days,but wikipedia is the only site affected. other sites are ok. if it helps the problem occurred in Italy.
New feature: guided tours
I've been writing a lot about this lately, so I am going to be brief, but I just wanted to give folks a heads up about the first, preliminary release of a new feature from the editor engagement experiments team: interactive guided tours. You can read more about this in the following places...
We're only using this feature in a couple experimental places right now, but it has a lot of potential to do good, if used carefully. Please let me know if you have any questions, especially about creating tours. Me and the developers on the team would be happy to walk you through the process. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk18:21, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your test tour goes off the edge of the screen when it points to the search box (Monobook, Firefox 18, 1920x1080). MER-C06:31, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's because you created the redirect on Wikipedia. If the image is on Commons, I believe that the redirect must be on Commons too. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:15, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I guess ImageRemovalBot got the same false message as us that the file doesn't exist, and the bot reacted like it's supposed to react for files that don't exist: Remove them. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:34, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
CommonsDelinker replaced Army flag.gif above with the new name as well. This caused the image to display correctly. I've undone the bot here, since that is supposed to be an example of using the redirect, not using the new name directly. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)15:31, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It appears to vary which of the file redirects are working. Army flag.gif also works for me now, both here and at commons:User:PrimeHunter/sandbox, but the three other examples still don't work. I tried to track down when the problem started by previewing Commons files moved at different times yesterday, but I couldn't come to a conclusion because it sometimes varied between previews whether a given redirect worked. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:12, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Cool. The redirect now works, so the un-edited articles should work.
Do we know what went wrong here?
If it was user error (in the way the file was moved), has it been documented so the wiki software might be able to warn users in the future if it sees the same actions?
If it was a wiki software error, has it been documented and fixed? Did other similar renames fail in the same way and have they been fixed?
Is there an explanation somewhere of how redirects work with these kinds of files (that are apparently on Commons, but still referred to as though they were in the enwiki File namespace I think)? There doesn't appear to be an actual redirect on enwiki – links to the old filename just go to the new filename when followed.
When a file is moved (whether on Wikipedia or on Commons), a redirect is normally left behind, unless the moving admin deselects "Leave a redirect behind". This redirect should work for all normal usage of the file (but won't work if the file is accessed directly through the Media: namespace). When the file is on commons, a redirect on commons should be sufficient for all Wikipedias: the Wikipedias should not need to create their own local redirects. Unfortunately some commons admins are in the habit of deselecting "Leave a redirect behind", or of deleting file redirects that they encounter, without first ensuring that all file usage is for the new name. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:55, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Most of these issues, when a properly redirected image does not show, are technical/software (database, caching) issues. It was working fine over a long period but one of the constantly applied mediawiki updates may have missed proper testing and broke something. In the past we had problems with improper deletions due to database quirks (page deleted but image stayed visible and was not deletable) so this may be related somehow. --Denniss (talk) 16:29, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Help creating template for fractions
Hello CSS/Wikimarkup experts,
I would like to create a general template to display inline calculations or simple formulas, e.g. 9 \times 103 \times 4. Template:frac and Template:fraction don't put the numerator above the denominator. I know I can use the LaTeX math feature, such as used in Template:DentalFormula here, but
The font does not match the normal text font face and size.
It doesn't resize correctly when I resize the text.
I've experimented with some CSS to produce this:
9 × 10
3 × 4
(although I wrote the raw HTML here, it will be transcluded from a template). This works on my Firefox 18 browser, as long as I wrap the entire paragraph in a div (as is done here).
If not, the p tag closes, the table is displayed as a separate block:
9 × 10
3 × 4
, then the rest of the text appears in a separate p tag.
Is there a way to avoid that? Or is there another way to inline such fractions?
The simple answer is: use the math/LaTeX markup. It is rubbish right now as you rightly point out, but if you use some crazy HTML/CSS-based solution for some formulas but not others, then fixes made to the math/LaTeX extension in future (e.g. install MathJax, anyone?) won’t apply to your fancy template. — Timwi (talk) 20:50, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Aha! Turns out MathJax is actually supported, but you have to rummage through the preferences first and find a well-hidden option. Go to Preferences, Appearance, and then at the bottom choose MathJax. — Timwi (talk)
These templates do not display correctly in pdf files because apparently our pdf creator knows nothing about 'inline-block' display option. Ruslik_Zero16:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are many templates that have this problem. That doesn't mean they should be excluded from use. These templates use ordinairy HTML/CSS, which any PDF converter should be able to handle. — Edokter (talk) — 18:34, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
PDF rendering problem - same as another report, or different?
An email received by Wikimedia noted a problem rendering an article as PDF. The article is House of Medici
I tried it myself, and thought it was successful, but when I open the file, it reads:
WARNING: Article could not be rendered - outputting plain text.
Potential causes of the problem are: (a) a bug in the pdf-writer software (b) problematic Mediawiki markup (c) table is too wide
I do see bug in rendering page as PDF. That note a bug identified, and marked as fixed, although when I go to the bug report, it appears to be fixed, but not yet deployed.
I would like to point the reader to this discussion.
I hope someone can identify whether:
The problem with House of Medici is the same as in the bug_in_rendering_page_as_PDF, and is not yet fixed (from the stand-point of the reader) but is expected to be deployed at some time in the future, or
The problem with this file is known, and there is a work-around, or
I've accessed it on my Windows Phone 7.5, and it redirects me twice, to some sites that on first look seem to be either sex/dating/pornography sites. Based on this, and the comments above, I've removed the link. Even though it's the only reference, I'm sure someone can find a more reliable source. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. gwickwiretalkedits23:48, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Doing some investigation I discovered that http://resources.infolinks.com/js/infolinks_main.js is an included javascript and that it is the source of the hijacking. Werieth (talk) 03:09, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing that User:Darkness Shines has retired, I was curious to see when he started editing, so I went to Special:Contributions/Darkness Shines and told it to show his earliest contributions. To my surprise, the block log changed: instead of displaying his current one-week block, it displayed the following block message:
02:23, 5 January 2012 Magog the Ogre (talk | contribs | block) blocked Darkness Shines (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 24 hours (Edit warring: Taliban)
What's going on with the log? And is it something that needs work, or should it be forgotten? This reminds me of seeing reports in the past of people who were recorded as being blocked even though their blocks had expired. IE8/Windows 7/Monobook, though that's probably irrelevant. Nyttend (talk) 00:54, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Everything seems to be functioning fine for me except for one of the blocks I made today (The system thinks that Saturday is a specific date on 1970 but when changing the block, the expiry was correct). @Gilderien, if you remove the underscore, the block is displayed. Elockid(Talk)01:07, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's exactly what you pointed out: when you click to show the earliest contributions, it also changes the block log extract to display the earliest block instead of the most recent. I'm sick of seeing this bug, why hasn't anyone fixed it already? Anomie⚔02:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ambiguous contributions link
I know this has been discussed before, (here), but I'm getting sick to death of the ambiguous "contributions" link in my sidebar in classic skin. I repeatedly find myself clicking it when I want to check another user's contributions, and seeing my own instead. I thought I'd get used to it in time, but it's not happening. I never used to do this when it was "my contributions", so it's just the ambiguity that's throwing me. When this was raised before, someone came up with a css tweak, which I've tried in my common.css page, but it doesn't work in classic skin. Any suggestions? An optimist on the run!07:46, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The following CSS should work for the Classic skin:
My code works in Opera 12, but it is possible that Writ Keeper is right with regards to using content: in other browsers. (Edit: Writ Keeper updated his comment before I saved, so the following mention of #pt-mycontris makes no sense now.) #pt-mycontris is specific to Vector though, so won't work with Classic. Below is a combination of both of our CSS that might work:
It's also possible that your browser doesn't like the title= selector I am using (I know it doesn't work in IE6; it should work in later versions of IE). If that is the case, I can't think of anything else to try, since Classic is rather lacking in the IDs and classes I would use in other skins. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)16:01, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The previous/next version links go to the revision of the article with the previous/next revision ID number, not the previous/next revision by timestamp. Because I imported that July 2001 revision into the Wikipedia database from the Nostalgia Wikipedia in May 2010, the July 2001 edit has a revision ID number typical of edits from May 2010. This problem is tracked in Bugzilla as bug 2930. Graham8710:53, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"RFC" autolinks
Has something changed recently such that the letters "RFC" followed by a number will automatically link to ietf RFCs? For example, here under the Computing section. I hadn't noticed this behavior before. older ≠ wiser17:50, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's been set up this way for a while, in the same way as ISBN autolinking. I'm not sure how long it's been enabled, but I believe several years. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:10, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The feature is called "Post-edit feedback", and, once the target (e.g. Urdu) community had agreed upon its installation, take that request to //bugzilla.wikimedia.org . I'm sure it's not too difficult to configure, though localisation work might be required. - Jarry1250[Deliberationneeded]17:58, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, the {{Coastal settlements}} template was modified in early December and the link to the category appears not to be working. I cannot see what the problem is, may be you cannot substitute in the parameter as it is trying to do. Can anyone fix-it? Keith D (talk) 18:13, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) As presently coded, {{Coastal settlements}} expects |place= to contain plain text without wikimarkup, because it applies wikimarkup to that text. At Tunstall, East Riding of Yorkshire, there is |place=the [[East Riding of Yorkshire]] - you are getting a page link inside a category link, which is forbidden - the only links which may contain other links are file links, where the caption text may be wikilinked. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:29, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Raymarcbadz (talk·contribs) has a curious habit: if he creates a page and it comes up with an "help improve this page" box at the bottom, he requests its deletion and re-creates it so that a "rate this page" box will appear instead. See this dialogue headed "articles for deletion". We have told him that his behaviour is obsessive but for my own interest can someone please tell me what determines which box comes up. Is it possible to change the box or suppress it altogether? — RHaworth (talk·contribs) 22:21, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Due to a site revamp, I'm having to rework {{singlechart}} and {{albumchart}}. The core of the problem is that to reference a Billboard chart for an individual artist, you need to know a six digit magic number. Billboard just changed them all, and I'm having to figure out how to update thousands of hardcoded magic numbers. I've done the search, and now know that there are approximately 14,000 artists that have both a Wikipedia article and a Billboard chart. More like 1000 actually have an existing call to singlechart or albumchart.
The brute force way to fix things is just take my updated list of 14,000 artists and throw it into {{BillboardID}}. That way, I can ignore the artistids being passed in to the templates, look up the magic number based solely on artist name, and only have one place to update when the numbers get changed. I suspect that something, somewhere, something is going to break if I do that.
My first thought is to break it into submacros based on the first two characters of the artist name, so that BillboardID is just a big switch statement that calls BillboardIDAA, BillboardIDAE, BillboardIDAQ .... BillboardIDZZ. What I don't know is the way the templates actually get processed internally. If I did that, would I still wind up loading all 14,000 artists every time as the template expanded?
My second alternative is to set up a special website that redirects you to the appropriate chart based on a database lookup. I'm not eager to pay money to do it, and feel queasy about setting up a universal redirection service to someone else's website. That's why I'd really like to figure out a decent way to do it inside a template.—Kww(talk) 04:48, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure whether #switch would expand all of the templates, but I'd do it like this instead: {{ BillBoardID/{{ uc:{{ padleft:|2|{{{artist}}} }} }} }}. Hence, if {{{artist}}} begins "Ab", this should transclude {{BillboardID/AB}}. This would only expand the one template. If the template might not exist and you want to avoid showing a redlink, you can combine this with #ifexist to check for its existence before trying to expand it.
As for your idea of setting up a special website, the Toolserver can provide free hosting for tools that are useful to Wikimedia wikis. Wikimedia Tool Labs will replace Toolserver at some (uncertain) point in the nearish future, so bear in mind your site's URL is likely to change if you go down this route. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs)15:34, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
External links should nearly always go directly to the target and not via a redirect service, not even one we set up and control. If {{BillboardID}} gets thousands of artist-ID combinations in one big template then it becomes expensive to use. Subtemplates could help but the proper solution is to add the ID in the calling article. Consider Wikipedia:Bot requests for this. Bot requests have been used many times to update links to moved or revamped websites (my own experience with this was very poor but hopefully it normally runs better). PrimeHunter (talk) 15:47, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Which of the files MonobookStylesheet, MediaWiki:Common.css, commonPrint.css do I need to make another wiki have the same look as wp when class="wikitable" is used? and where should it go? in particular the less gray background in the table header seems not to materialize? Electron9 (talk) 16:54, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How do you deal with two changes in a row on pending changes? at Super Bowl, I would like to accept a change by Mjrmtg (grammar fix) and reject the change by the IP before him. In addition, why wasn't my change reviewed? RyanVesey15:12, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Even more weird, while Mjrmtg's edit doesn't show up as accepted, it appears in the article. It also doesn't show my most recent review in the log [10]RyanVesey15:22, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not that I claim to be an expert on pending changes, which I'm not, but my understanding is that you can only accept the latest revision, not individual diffs. So to accept some changes and not others, you have to revert the unwanted changes and then simply accept the resulting revision "authored" by you. The valid changes then do not appear in the page history to be accepted, but still show up because a later revision was accepted without those changes being reverted and MediaWiki simply shows the latest accepted revision. jcgoble3 (talk) 19:38, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Let me see if I can answer all questions:
Ryan: If you make an edit to a page with pending changes without reviewing those changes first, it treats your edit as if you didn't look at the pending changes. It therefore adds your edit to the queue of changes pending. This is so that vandalism isn't accepted when a reviewer makes an edit (or an autoconfirmed) when it shouldn't be.
Unaccepted edits appear to all logged in users. There is a preference that can be changed to deal with this.
Jcgoble is correct that you can only accept a 'version', and only the latest one. That prevents you from accepting your edit, but not the old one. Darn technical difficulties...
The English Wikipedia introduced restrictions on page creation on 5 December 2005 in response to the Seigenthaler incident. Though this was originally intended as an experiment on ways to reduce hoax and attack articles, the restrictions have since become permanent. Read the Signpost article written at the time for more detail.
Targets from a Google search are actually URLs to Google itself, which then redirects to the actual target. That's fine for HTML and text targets: after a moment the browser is refreshed to the intended URL. But for certain filetypes (most notably PDF and I think MS Word and Office files), you never get the final URL, you only get the Google redirection URL. The Google redirection URL is spam-blocked, because it could be used to avoid other spamblocks. That's reasonable, but it's so difficult to discern the actual target you want for a PDF. All you have is the Google redirection URL, which is full of extraneous data and which encodes many the slashes, percent signs, and others. Is there a tool into which you can paste a Google redirection URL and get back the target?
For example, I'd like to dump in:
http://www.g00gle.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&ved=0CFQQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjfk.hood.edu%2FCollection%2FWeisberg%2520Subject%2520Index%2520Files%2FO%2520Disk%2FOlney%2520Warren%2FItem%252009.pdf&ei=HI4OUYX9Hs_EiwK4uIG4Dw&usg=AFQjCNHwjHRIhEWarlEQ6M-5Xk8TAusKYQ&sig2=QCGZzGelt140atGm6bfW8Q&bvm=bv.41867550,d.cGE (URL munged to "g00gle" to avoid spam-blocker)
What browser? In Firefox (multiple releases) for me, the target page is not updated for PDFs; that's the issue I'm describing above. Hmm... I should probably note that I view PDFs with Acrobat, not internally in the browser; that may make a difference. TJRC (talk) 18:08, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's because of my configuration to use an external viewer. Anyway, the question remains: is does anyone know of a tool into which you can paste a Google redirection URL and get back the target? TJRC (talk) 19:43, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This should work:
In the Google URL, copy the text between "&url=" and the next "&". That gives you the (double) percent-encoded URL: "http%3A%2F%2Fjfk.hood.edu%2FCollection%2FWeisberg%2520Subject%2520Index%2520Files%2FO%2520Disk%2FOlney%2520Warren%2FItem%252009.pdf"
To convert that back to the original URL, you can paste the above encoded text into the box labelled "Percent encoding for URIs" on this handy webpage: http://rishida.net/tools/conversion/
I process the raw page view statistics provided by the WMF (to make things like WP:5000). Prior to February 1, this file was always in a 4-column space-delimited format. However, beginning on that date, page titles started to appear which had spaces instead of underscores in them -- although this is not always the case (only a couple thousand in a file with several million lines). My processor started throwing errors and I've since fixed it -- but I could imagine this being a potential problem for those who haven't noticed the change or are not actively maintained (e.g., Henrik's tool). Is there any explanation why this occurred? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 18:05, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
They changed the format of the source log files to be tab-delimited instead of space-delimited, to make processing easier when the field values contain spaces. They intended to not change the format of pagecounts-raw,[11] but apparently something earlier in the process used to convert spaces in the page names to underscores but doesn't anymore. Hopefully that can be fixed quickly. Anomie⚔20:44, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a copy of the regular (every fortnight) update for the VisualEditor project, so that you all know what is happening (and make sure you have as much opportunity to tell us when we're wrong, as well as help guide the priorities for development and improvement).
In the two-and-a-half weeks since 1.21wmf9, the team have continued planning for the next tranche of work, and working on the core changes that will be needed in preparation for this. For the end of 2012/13, in line with the strategic goals for the VisualEditor set out in the 2012/13 plan, we are looking to provide VE as the 'default' editor for all users, capable of letting them edit the majority of content without needing to use the wikitext editor. This means adding support for at least basic templates, references, categories and images, each of which is a very large piece of work.
The initial focus has included a major expansion in the capabilities of the 'document model' module that converts between the HTML+RDFa rendered by mw:Parsoid and an editable document. Other areas of work have covered editability of images in the "ContentEditable" editing surface, refactoring the keyboard short-cut command triggering system, and improving the documentation system used so that the code is easier to extend.
A small number of changes have made it into the codebase for this release, most notably adding support for Microsoft Internet Explorer v. 9 and above (42847), adding hints of what keyboard short-cuts are available to each button (42919), which can now vary more easily by platform (44012), and internationalisation support for toolbar icons (38551).
Earlier today I went to WP:Page Curation and Special:NewPagesFeed to learn what they were. I've noticed since then that when I visit a new page, there will be a gray bar floating along the right edge of the screen with buttons for things like "Show metadata for this page" and "Mark this page as reviewed." Even if the bar is closed, it will reappear whenever I next view a new page (including refreshing the page that I closed it on). I'm assuming that bar is related to Page Curation or the New Pages Feed. However, I never signed up for anything related to Page Curation and don't want to participate in patrolling new pages. My guess is that just visiting the New Pages Feed has made it show up. If that is the case, I think that functionality should be changed. You shouldn't start getting that bar just because you were curious what the New Pages Feed was, but should have to opt in to participating. Also, closing the bar should actually get rid of it, not just get rid of it until the next time you view a new page. Calathan (talk) 19:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for referring me to that previous discussion, though it didn't seem like any solution to the problem was mentioned there. For me, and I assume also for the person who started the previous discussion, the toolbar does not stay closed after clicking the button to close it. My impression is that it works right for some people, but not for others (as some of the people responding seem to think that the x will keep it closed, so probably it does work for those people). Perhaps it doesn't work correctly in some browsers (I'm using IE9). If it could be fixed so that it works correctly for everyone (i.e. stays closed after you click the x, until you visit Special:NewPagesFeed again), I would really appreciate it. Calathan (talk) 21:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is a bug that has occurred because of a recent change to the API. A fix has been submitted and is waiting on deployment, which should be either tomorrow or next Monday.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 21:24, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I want to use this html code on wikipedia, however it doesn't seem to recognise even the most simple html. How to make wikipedia to interpretate it as html and not text ..?
<img> tags are not allowed. Use wikimarkup instead, and wrap the image markup in spans if necessary to apply positioning. Anomie⚔02:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to overlay a marker on a map (as indicated on your test page), there is probably already a template to do the job. For example:
3:[[File:Map of USA GA.svg|thumb|75|Map with Georgia highlighted]]
1
2
3
Atlanta
Atlanta (the United States)
Atlanta
Atlanta (Georgia)
Map with Georgia highlighted
See Help:Wiki markup for a general introduction to wikitext (most of which is not like HTML), or Help:HTML in wikitext for information about the permitted markup that is similar to HTML (including style="..." attributes which you can use to apply complex inline formatting to individual elements).
Over at WT:CSD, some editors are looking at a way of streamlining the SPEEDY process for attack pages. We obviously want to allow an editor to immediately hide that kind of content from the general public, but we also want admins to be able to evaluate the CSD tag efficiently and either delete the page or remove the tag. The way to do that would be to have the {{db-attack}} template hide page content for viewers unless they have the sysop bit. So my question is whether there is any way for content to be dependent on the viewer. Possibly a parser function so you could have code like {{#ifeq: {{UserRight}} | Sysop | Page content | --blank-- }}. One of the contributors seems to remember having seen an experiment on conditional content before, but doesn't remember where. Anybody have any leads on such a thing? VanIsaacWSVexcontribs04:20, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You can't modify static page content based on viewer settings (other than language, but that is a whole different ball of wax). This would be broken by cache, as the last person to cause the article content to re-render would set it for everyone who saw the cached version afterwards. This could be done with CSS and/or JS, but I think that is frowned upon on the English Wikipedia. There has been admin-only css in the past, but I think that has all been removed for various reasons. Probably your best bet is a collapsed section or simply commenting it out or blanking it (the history and edit pages are readily available, and what you suggest can be bypassed by non-admins this way anyway). --Splarka (rant) 08:08, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This was something I suggested, at template talk:db-meta. I posted a link to the page at WT:CSD, but wasn't aware that discussion was taking place there as well as that page isn't on my watchlist. I'll try to gather it all together rathether than have different forums taking place. Incidentally, it does seem technically possible to hide text from nonm-admins, as discussed recently on this VP, using <span class="sysop-show">. An optimist on the run!10:19, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How can I easily find the editor who contributed a given sentence to some Wikipedia article? Can I do a search on all revisions of a given article at the same time?
Suppose I see a sentence in some article and suppose I'd like to find the editor who contributed it. Is there a way to easily find that editor? If you have trouble understanding what I mean, how about an itsy bitsy teenie weenie example? Take the article, hell, Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. I read the article and I find in it the words "Bikini Amarillo" which is the name of a Mexican cover of the song. Say I'm keen to find the editor who contributed that crucial bit of information in order to show him Wikilove in the shape of an "itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polkadot... barnstar" (remember this is just a forinstance). Until now I've only known one very painful and lengthy process (which you can imagine) to obtain that information. Is there a way, in the current state of the software, to alleviate that pain and use a more efficient method? If this hypothetical efficient method (which I'd really love to hear about) involves locating the first revision containing a given phrase, it should also be the method one would use to identify the editor who removed a given phrase, by locating the last revision containing a given phrase. Long live WikiEfficiency! Signed: Basemetal (write to me here) 13:24, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Are Commons files transcluded into File: namespace?
{{Rename media}} is used to request renames of image files, but it's only designed for renaming images actually stored in the File: namespace. If someone attempts to request a rename of a file stored on Wikimedia Commons, the template complies and puts the page in Category:Wikipedia files requiring renaming. I would like to add some intelligence to this template, which checks if the file is (transcluded?) from Commons, and if so, writes an appropriate error message. Is that possible? Is there a magic word that can be checked, or something like that? See this diff for an example. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 15:27, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is not a way to fix the template to detect whether the image is originally on Commons or on Wikipedia, I believe. The "transclusion" of the image is not transclusion as you might speak of in a template but is more closely a mirror of the image and its description page. However, all images which are from Commons do have a standard boilerplate box which appears which identifies the image as being from Commons. Did you miss that? --Izno (talk) 15:52, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, I didn't miss the message, but I can see how others might. I found this because a less technically sophisticated editor made an error, which I found, and I also determined that what they wanted to do had not been done. So I am working through the process of figuring out how to help such editors help themselves to accomplish their desired changes, because often editors just revert their attempts, say something like, "no you can't do it this way," but then the change never happens. This is interesting. Someone tagged this page for rename back on 19 September 2011, and that request was reverted 21 September 2011. Then over a year later, another editor tries to rename it, but makes an obvious error. This is where I come in. Every now & then, I check for transclusions of {{subst:requested move}}, a template that must be substituted. I put myself in the novice editor's shoes, and walk through the process of following the error messages generated by "my" template (I wrote the edit checks that write these errors), and the trail leads to advice to use {{Rename media}}. So, curious to see what would happen, I tried this edit, and, a bit to my surprise, rather than tell me I have to do that at commons, a file mover complied with my request! So, now, I'm wondering if I can fix this by just "uploading" the file that is stored at commons under a different name? Wbm1058 (talk) 16:47, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Somehow I don't think re-uploading a commons file is a good idea. Why did the "file mover" software let this move happen? Couldn't the "file mover" software see that the file was on Commons? Now, if someone who has been entrusted with the file mover bit can't get this right, how does the foundation expect any average Joe editor to understand this complex process? Help! please. Can someone who understands WMF files make this right?? Wbm1058 (talk) 17:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now wait a minute, there is a history here, which seem to actually be physically located on English Wikipedia, not commons, right? An there is a "file" here too, it's just a single line transcluding {{DYKfile}}. And this "file" is on English Wikipedia, and it needs to be moved too? So moving a Commons file on English Wikipedia is really a two-step process, and I have just successfully requested one of two steps, moving everything except the image file itself. Now I need to go over to Commons, and make my first-ever edit there, to request the second step, moving the image itself. Is that right? Wbm1058 (talk) 17:35, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
a heads-up -- webcitation.org may go dark
There is a red notice on webcitation.org today -- they too need donors.
WebCite will stop accepting new submissions end of 2013, unless we reach our fundraising goals to modernize and expand this service.
Please support our crowdfunding campaign. If you are interested in keeping this service alive, please give generously - or at least share our campaign on Facebook. Funders supporting us with $250 or more will be acknowledged by name on our redesigned website.
Archive sites like webcitation.org, that will archive web pages to protect us from those sites going dark, are an important resources. But, occasionally, when I have gone to the trouble of adding an archive link, I have wondered -- wouldn't it be a drag if the archive site itself went permanently dark?
Ideally, webcitation.org, archive.org (the wayback machine) and any other mirroring/archiving sites out there were either making sure they mirrored all the pages mirrored by their opposite numbers. Failing that, it would be wonderful if the other sites stepped in and started making copies of the pages archived by webcitation.org -- in case it went dark.
They seem to be indicating that even if they stopped accepting new links they would still serve copies of pages already in their archive. But the notice is a very broad hint that the whole site might go dark.
Is there any value in checking to see how many pages archived at webcitation.org we are using are also archived at archive.org?
FWIW I tried to use external links special pages to get an idea of how many links we have to http://webcitation.org. It only reported 808 links, while the Citizendium, a wiki site about one 10000ths the size of the wikipedia has 3200 links. I think I may have made 800 links to webcitation.org just by myself.
WMF projects may make so many links to webcitation.org that it should consider stepping in and adopting webcitation.org if the alternative were to be it going dark?
WebCite is really useful for news sites, as they often can become unavailable online and their robots.txt files prevent archive.org from crawling the page. Chris857 (talk) 18:49, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have used WebCite numerous times for archiving Wikipedia citations and many citation links only exists there, since the original has died. I also think the WMF should consider a cooperation with WebCite and perhaps support them with part of their funds? If WebCite dies, this would definitely also hurt Wikipedia. Our content is only as good as the sources supporting it. -- ToshioYamaguchi18:54, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone give a clear indication that WebCite will be genuinely nonprofit? I'm looking at [12] and seeing "An increasing number of journal editors and publishers are currently joining the growing WebCite® Consortium. We are currently in the process of incorporating WebCite® as a distinct entity." This worries me because we don't want to be funding it if it turns out simply to be an Internet company. However, if it is nonprofit, then we should definitely find some way to help it continue to exist as a separate entity, because we wouldn't want to take all of its inevitable copyright squabbles with publishers and lump them together with our own Fair Use issues, infringing uploads, etc. Wnt (talk) 20:10, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The last paragraph under Copyright and Long-Term Preservation Issues at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550686/ says "All WebCite code is Open Source, and all documentation is licensed under Creative Commons licenses. Secondly, through collaborations with libraries and consortia interested in preservation of digital material, who may act as a curator, custodian or trustee for the WebCite project. These long-term preservation partners may have agreed to hold backups of the service and to legally assume the domain name, all intellectual property such as trademarks, and the service itself, should for any reason the original WebCite service go out of business. " -- ToshioYamaguchi20:22, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The information on Gunther Eysenbachs userpage (the initiator of the project, see this) says "WebCite is not a company, but a non-profit consortium of publishers (mostly open access publishers). WebCite in turn is member of an international community of archiving services, of which the Internet Archive, the Library of Congress and other institutions are a part of." -- ToshioYamaguchi20:29, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The higher Webcitation.org citation counts linked above sound more realistic; good search-fu! Note that the number of WebCites is even higher than that, because not all webcitation.org URLs are inserted in refs yet. I'm a prolific WebCiter using the bookmarklet, though my insertion rate into refs is low (frequently deferring insertion until a URL dies). ;) It's odd that they don't actually link to their "Facebook campaign". FYI donation info is at http://www.webcitation.org/mailform . --Lexein (talk) 21:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is just a heads up to let you know that we have undeployed Moodbar and the Feedback Dashboard from the English Wikipedia. As an experiment, Moodbar was a fair success but we have come to the conclusion that it will require a fair chunk of development work (on the Feedback Dashboard side) to make it fully usable as a mechanism for new user engagement.
Additionally, we have new tools that we are planning to roll out and test that will operate in the same space and we want to avoid conflicts.
Hi bugzilla:15434 (Periodical run of currently disabled special pages) has had some activity lately, resulting in a once-off refresh of the special pages. e.g. Special:Wantedpages. It looks like periodical refreshes may be coming, so I expect that there are some on-wiki prep work to be done to ensure these tools are able to be useful once again.
For example, I noticed that wanted pages is less useful than it could be because it is full of items from /todo pages. e.g. Special:WhatLinksHere/The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is high on the list because it is listed at Template:Birds tasks. The result is the ranking of wantedpages is caused by the number of pages claimed by a WikiProject, rather than the number of incoming links from content-space. We have two options here; either remove these 'wanted page listings' appearing on thousands of talk pages, or ask for a linked-from-namespace parameter on special:wantedpages.
I have manually generated this report at Wikipedia:Most_Wanted for the last few years. Eliminating common red links arising from other namespaces, in particular templates is a non-trivial task. The most useful single number for 'wantedness' of a red link seems to be the number of times the text of the red link appears as a wikilink in the raw source of all pages in namespace 0, or any page in namespace 10 that is transcluded into namespace 0 at least once. This is rather painful to calculate. A nearly-as-good approximation is for any red link that is not present in namespace 10, the number distinct namespace 0 articles that link to it. This is far easier to calculate and nobody's complained yet ;) - TB (talk) 10:06, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can a page notice undo a group notice?
We've got an RfC in the RfA namespace; is there any magicword I can put in a page notice that will keep the group notice for RfAs from showing up when people edit? - Dank (push to talk) 02:22, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, try something like {{#ifeq: {{FULLPAGENAME}} | <name of the RFC page here> || <group editnotice here> }}. That should hide it on that page. jcgoble3 (talk) 02:47, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pulling what's left of my hair out. The two references in User talk:Kww/BillboardURL should be identical, but obviously they are not. I cannot figure out why getting the text string from {{BillboardURL}} breaks the reference. I can't use plain <ref></ref> markup inside of {{singlechart}}, so I have to get the tag ref version to work.—Kww(talk) 06:04, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure what you're aiming for or how all the templates are meant to interact. But if you edit User talk:Kww/BillboardURL to replace
[{{BillboardURL|artist=Gotye|chartnum=305}} Gotye Album & Song Chart History]
with
[{{trim|{{BillboardURL|artist=Gotye|chartnum=305}}}} Gotye Album & Song Chart History]
wikimedia.org.
. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:44, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
Resolved
Have you tried the Computing section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialise in answering knowledge questions there; the page you are on is only for discussion of technical matters that relate to Wikipedia. I hope this helps. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
AtlantaAtlanta (the United States)
.gif){kind=link}
.jpg&diff=next&oldid=415764774){kind=link}
.jpg&diff=next&oldid=451236609){kind=link}
.jpg&diff=next&oldid=451689928){kind=link}
.jpg&diff=next&oldid=536696019){kind=link}
.jpg&action=history){kind=link}