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

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Phabricator update

For those of you who deal with bug reports and the like, the current, tentative notion is that Bugzilla will go offline on 21 November, and Phabricator will go live the following Monday or Tuesday, after importing things. You can read more about it at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T15

It would probably be a good idea to think about what needs to be updated here (e.g., the recommendation that bugs be reported at Bugzilla at the top of this page). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

The bugzilla page says "The migration from Bugzilla to Phabricator is planned to start on November 21st." So bugs are unavailable until "the following Monday or Tuesday, after importing things"? Really? --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 19:14, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Apparently it will take all weekend, and maybe a little longer, to import the entire database. It may be possible read everything, but you won't be able to add new information during that time. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:41, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not a simple task. Nobody has done a Bugzilla to Phabricator migration before, and ours needs to handle 73k reports. You have the planned sequence of steps at mw:Phabricator/versus_Bugzilla#Timeline. We hope you enjoy your bug-free weekend.  ;) --Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

revision history statistics

(I hate to bring this up again)hi , the "revision history statistics " link is down,its at "External tools" in page histories at the English Misplaced Pages for users with en or en-gb as language. It's made by and goes to (well it wont open).thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:48, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Should be back up now. Was fixed about an hour ago. --Glaisher (talk) 15:41, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

revision history link,,,,it's not my fault , I can only report it (5x in last month)

(I hate to bring this up again)hi , the "revision history statistics " link is down,its at "External tools" in page histories at the English Misplaced Pages for users with en or en-gb as language. It's made by and goes to (well it wont open).thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:36, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

(I hate to bring this up again)hi , the "revision history statistics " link is down,its at "External tools" in page histories at the English Misplaced Pages for users with en or en-gb as language. It's made by MediaWiki:Histlegend and goes to (well it wont open sometimes).thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:54, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Ozzie10aaaa: If there is some issue with something, please provide the URL/link that this is about. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/ec/.. (talk) it wont open so how do I tell you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:39, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• When I go to MediaWiki:Histlegend and click on the link for Revision history statistics, I get the following error in my console The character encoding of the HTML document was not declared. The document will render with garbled text in some browser configurations if the document contains characters from outside the US-ASCII range. The character encoding of the page must be declared in the document or in the transfer protocol. and a blank page. Hope this help clarify what the complaint here is... — {{U|Technical 13}} 18:50, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

what is problem

https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/ec/,, this link for "revision history statistics" still doesn't work (4 days now), the reason im interested in it is because I can keep track of edits and bytes on the article(s) I work on. I would fix it if I could, and Ive reported it a lot of times here at Village Pump Technical(am I in the wrong place?).--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:10, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

See the So... discussion, above, for an exhaustive explanation. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa: Repeatedly posting the same comment (I've seen you do it on five user talk: pages and the help desk) isn't going to make the problem go away any sooner. The thread to which TransporterMan refers is directly below this one; responses have also been provided in some of the places where you have previously posted on this matter. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

thank you its working again--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:48, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

So...

Any plans by the WMF to make their toolserver as reliable as the German one they "upgraded" from? Or are regular outages for tools like edit counter and page stats the new normal? --NeilN 01:36, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

@NeilN: I've had the same issue of those 2 tools working for a few days, and then being down or extremely slow the next couple of days. I'm not exactly sure if their toolserver will be upgraded; it would be a nice upgrade, though ;) -Fimatic (talk | contribs) 01:39, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

@Fimatic: I would suggest going back to the German toolserver would be an upgrade but that might be seen as churlish :-j --NeilN 01:49, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

@NeilN: So, it would kind of be like a cross-wiki tool server (hosted on another but used here)? -Fimatic (talk | contribs) 01:51, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

@Fimatic: Ah, you're new here. Welcome. Many tools, including the two specifically listed, used to run on a server in Germany, outside the direct control of the WMF: Misplaced Pages:Toolserver. The WMF, in its wisdom, declined to fund its continuing operation and in summer 2014 set up a new architecture in-house. The results have been less than stellar... --NeilN 02:09, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

"Edit count" in user contributions and "Revision history statistics" in page histories are both among the Xtools. Xtools have been on and off for a month. They are hosted at Tool Labs but made by volunteer editors. I don't know the cause of the down periods but many other tools at https://tools.wmflabs.org are currently working. One of the Xtools authors User:Cyberpower678 said at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#Xtools / edit counter that GitHub is the best place to report bugs. That means https://github.com/x-Tools/xtools/issues. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

What PrimeHunter said. If Xtools are not working but other tools on Tool Labs are, then it's probably something to do with Xtools' configuration rather than a problem with Tool Labs itself. But we will have to wait for someone to investigate before we can find out for sure what's happening. — Mr. Stradivarius 02:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

@NeilN: I'm newer than some people, but not exactly. My first edit with an IP was around 2 years ago (although I've only made a few with my IP), and I've had a past account here which was registered in early August. -Fimatic (talk | contribs) 03:43, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• There are no current outage of Tool Labs as a whole, though there was a brief (~4h) outage last week caused by a hardware fault; but my understanding is that the tool's maintainer, Cyberpower678, is currently away from the projects. I took the liberty of restarting the xtools's webservice – which appears to have hung for some reason – but I'm not in a position to debug the setup to diagnose the problem more precisely. — MPelletier (WMF) 20:51, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

NeilN this looks like typical nostalgia: first of all, closing toolserver was not a decision of wikimedia - it was a decision of the german chapter. as far as i remember, the maintainer of toolserver announce that the current setup (hw, hosting, infrastructure) was EOL, and the foundation decided not to pay for an upgrade (i did not see the projected budget/cost, but it wan an expensive setup). my guess is that the residual cost of wmflabs, being a par of much larger setup, is significantly lower. regarding "how great life was with toolserver" - this is not what i remember. even before the last days, when the setup was crumbling and outages were a daily occurrence, i do not remember toolserver as especially reliable, and it had many outages. it also had this annoying behavior of shutting down accounts of users who did not log in for 6 months, so tools written by people who became inactive would stop working at unpredictable times, and we had to hunt for the editor and beg them to login to their toolserver account, which gave us a "fix" for the next 6 months... (amusing anecdote: iirc, at one point some tools in Brion's account were shut down because he did not login to the toolserver for 6 months...). קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 21:32, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll tag along here rather than make a new section...something over a year ago, i noticed a couple of days worth of edits disappeared from the records; i put it down to Toolserver going away. The same thing happened a few days ago (27 October, to be precise), and about 80+ of my edits were (and are) no longer showing in either Xtools or others which presumably access the same data. While it's a bit annoying, a new question arises from it: How, if there are gaps in the database, is there a proper attribution record of everyone who has contributed? Isn't that potential lack of a record contrary to the terms of the licence? Cheers, Lindsay 12:27, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The page history on the "View history" tab is where the license should be satisfied. Holes in external tools don't seem like a license problem to me. Such tools could shut down completely at any time without affecting the attribution required by the license. It's possible that some reusers use an external tool for attribution and don't link to the wiki page or its page history. Stable external tools could reduce this problem slightly, but the number of reusers which give no attribution at all is far larger. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Oh, i see. So, the assorted tools get their data from a different location than the history page does? Fair enough. I wasn't really worried about it, more curious, and you have satisfied that; thank you. Cheers, Lindsay 23:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Last night the edit counter told me it was running 900+ minutes behind, so my edit count for the previous 24 hours was zero. Today (Philippines, UTC+8) edit stats says it is 1500+ minutes late, so my edit count is still zero. Seems like it has got stuck somewhere. Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Thu 08:49, wikitime= 00:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

...so they seem to be working right now. Woohoo! This is irritating beyond belief. We're doing volunteer work here, unpaid labor, and somewhere is a bankaccount where all these donations are coming in, out of which someone should pay someone smart so we can do this work decently. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. I don't care about chapters or organization or whatever. If folks used to do this for free, I thank them from the bottom of my heart. But someone in San Francisco needs to take an executive decision and make this work consistently and well. Drmies (talk) 18:15, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

...and it's not working again. Narutolovehinata5 14:15, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

... but keep those donations rolling in, folks! Even if they don't contribute directly to the content of Misplaced Pages, or provide the improvements its contributors have come to rely on. -- llywrch (talk) 00:42, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Do you think that the communities would appreciate the WMF taking over something that's popular, like X! Tools, or would this be perceived as the WMF encroaching on the volunteers' territory and disrespecting them? What if the WMF decides to re-write it (as volunteers periodically do), but you don't like the new version as well? Would you be able to live with that, in return for (possibly) more reliable maintenance (I say "possibly" because some volunteer devs and tool maintainers have been providing top-quality support for years, so in that case you can't really expect an improvement). What do you think? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:13, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd rather see the WMF just make Toollabs a more stable platform to host on, and let the tool creators maintain their tools. KonveyorBelt 03:19, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

@Konveyor Belt: The bug is probably in Xtools, not Tool Labs itself. The solution to this is for someone to find out whatever is making Xtools fail sporadically and fix it, and once it's fixed it will stay fixed. Tool Labs is actually showing itself to be a pretty reliable platform by not failing every time Xtools does. (And if anyone here likes debugging php/js, the code is on Github.) — Mr. Stradivarius 10:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I don't know which is more discouraging to think about: that donations to the Foundation do not directly help the volunteers create an encyclopedia & other reference sources, or that many volunteers don't trust the Foundation to actually help them achieve these goals. I would happily ignore the Foundation & its silliness, were it not for the fact it raises millions of dollars which it fritters away on badly-designed & unwanted projects it imposes on unwilling communities, while volunteers like me have to fund the research needed to write & improve content from our own pockets -- which is what the end users come to Misplaced Pages for, not K-RAD K3WL bells & whistles. -- llywrch (talk) 07:16, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I haven't spent much time looking at the budget, but I've got the impression that most of it is indeed helping volunteers fulfill educational goals—just not specifically helping established, first-world editors (like you and me) add content to the world's largest reference source. In addition to spending several million dollars just on basic operations (their "internet bill" is a couple million each year by itself), projects like Misplaced Pages Zero are not free, and they make a few million dollars in grants each year, with an emphasis on the Global South and developing countries. I believe that all of the "engineering and product" expenses amount to less than half the total expenses each year, and some of that work is definitely wanted by very willing communities. This year, they are spending more than a million dollars on making the sites run faster, and I haven't seen anyone complain about that. Note, too, that some projects are not paid for by donations, but by specific grants. The first years of VisualEditor's development were paid for by a grant, even though producing a rich-text editor was one of the top priorities identified by editors at strategy.wiki, and so you might have thought that spending money on it would mean spending money on what editors wanted. (As a side note: VisualEditor's popularity varies significantly by language. About half the editors at the Portuguese Misplaced Pages are using it on any given day, but it's only a quarter of users at some other languages. I wish that I knew why.)

You are, however, correct that the WMF never pays for content.

I asked this question because some WMF staff know that there are some great tools (or tools that could be great, with a re-write) in a few of the larger projects. Most of them aren't available at smaller projects. One conversation has been whether it would be desirable, from the perspective of the volunteers, to incorporate one or more of those tools into MediaWiki and for the WMF to provide support for it. HotCat has been mentioned as an example. It occurs to me that some users might get more value out of having one or more of the X! Tools supported. But it also occurs to me that if writing and maintaining a tool like that were what I did for fun, then I might not appreciate the WMF taking it over, and, as you say, providing a "revision history search" isn't exactly "directly help the volunteers create an encyclopedia", so maybe you would see that as just money "fritter away on…K3WL bells & whistles".

Anyway, if anything's going to happen with this idea, then there will be an opportunity for people to talk about which tools they think are most important, and I'll make sure to post a note here at VPT about it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

My guess is xtools has some sort of memory leak that eventually leads to timeouts. Supercount just a little bit less so, eventually giving a response. Judging by what MPelletier (WMF) and Cyberpower678 are saying, a restart seems to fix the problem? Whatamidoing (WMF) if an occasional restart is all that's needed, I wouldn't think the developers would be that offended, especially since they are trying to take an intentional break from the project. Anything beyond that may require a larger discussion on whether the WMF can takeover tools should the loss of the service be a detriment to the project. — MusikAnimal 06:19, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Given the history in the foundations deployment of software, and how well it's been received, echo, flow, the loss of the OBoD, I would be opposed to having the foundation take over xTools. Anyone is free to suggest patches on GitHub, to help fix memory leaks, if any. I think there might be too much load on xTools, given the restrictions imposed by tool labs, is causing the load times to increase, and some people try to refresh mid load, increasing memory usage, and eventually crashing the web service. xTools is a highly used tool. I think it's time for it to move to its own instance. As for super count, something I wrote on my own, I don't see memory leaks being an issue, but slow DBs do cause slow load times, which leads to refreshed mid-load, etc. I will do some thorough looking into next week to see what the culprit is.—cyberpower _Absent 14:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Supercount, albeit slow, is an adequate substitute for the regular edit counter, at least so long as there is an expectation that the regular edit counter will be fixed and back up to speed soon. But is there a alternate tool or tools for "Revision history statistics"? I've looked and can't find one. Also, I'm not a coder or database maven so what I'm about to ask may be roll-your-eyes stupid to those of you who are, but would it be possible to write a simple tool which, in the interim, restarts the Xtools every couple of hours? Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Hedonil wrote a gadget for the web service, called web watcher, which monitors the service of xtools, and did a pretty bang up job, until we all switched to Big Brother, another Labs concoction, that doesn't seem to be reliable. All tools are slow as long as the DB takes forever to deliver the results. Lately, the database has been working slowly and not been keeping up with replication. The WMF Labs staff in charge of those DBs really don't seem inclined to do anything about it, meaning you can expect slow results for a while longer. Supercount and xtools will operate faster if the DB responds as fast as it used to when replication was first introduced to labs. ATM, I wish I was on tool server. At least that seemed to be more stable.—cyberpower _Absent 15:50, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

supercount has pretty large security holes in it. I wouldn't advise anyone to use it. Legoktm (talk) 01:34, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

What do you meany by 'security holes' - apologies if I've missed something somewhere, genuinely curious! Reticulated Spline 01:58, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Cross-site scripting ones specifically that were reported to the maintainer nearly a month ago that still haven't been patched. Legoktm (talk) 02:36, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

If you haven't noticed, I haven't been very active. But even so, grabbing a the OAuth session cookie of a user OAuthed into the tool, will not get very far, because they need the secret key to get it to work, and the cookie does not save that. That made no sense actually since my tool reads the cookie and all a user has to do is replace their own with the stolen cookie. I advise not using OAuth on the tool for the time being and logging out if you're logged in, per Legoktm.—cyberpower _Absent 13:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Valuable tools should be turned into MediaWiki core features or MediaWiki extensions. In my opinion, relying on Wikimedia Labs is a bad idea for the same reason that relying on the Toolserver was a bad idea. It's great for quick scripts and demos and proofs-of-concept, but it simply doesn't have the same quality control and consequently the same level of uptime and performance as the production cluster. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Google thinks Neuron may be hacked

Neuron (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I just Googled "Neuron", and the first hit was Misplaced Pages's article. Under the article url, Google displayed the message "This site may be hacked", a phrase that doesn't appear in the Village Pump or Help Desk archives. Clicking the message took me here, which was uninformative. I couldn't see anything unusual at the article (not that I'd know what to look for), unless you count this bit of juvenile vandalism, which I guess Google might have interpreted as some kind of hack if it happened to crawl the article in the brief window while the vandalism was live.

Anyone got any idea what could be up? Is there anywhere this should be reported? Adrian J. Hunter 03:22, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm in Adelaide, Australia, in case it's an issue with a local server. Adrian J. Hunter 03:27, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I get the same message in Florida. --NE2 03:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Same in Hong Kong. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 03:36, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Googling "A typical neuron possesses a cell body" site:wikipedia.org and clicking "repeat the search with the omitted results included" shows Google has indexed the article at both https://en.wikipedia.org/Neuron and https://en.wikipedia.org/neuron?previous=yes. "This site may be hacked" is only displayed for the former. The latter was cached by Google 26 Oct 2014 22:12:30 GMT. The former does not show Google's cache on the little green down-arrow, maybe because Google suspects it is hacked. I don't know a direct way to see when they indexed it when their cache is not shown, but the search "This page was last modified" site:en.wikipedia.org/Neuron shows "This page was last modified on 24 June 2014 at 23:52." That should be this old version which was next edited 19 July. Google usually seems to index articles frequently. Did they stop revisiting it after they thought it was hacked? I have no idea why they think it. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:02, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Is there a Misplaced Pages administrator with a Google Webmaster Tools account? If so, they should be able to find out the reason why Google thinks the site is hacked. 71.178.51.4 (talk) 05:04, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

This was discovered by Krenair a week ago: search for "neuron" in the IRC log here. I don't know if anything was done about it. As you can see from the log, no-one seems to know if there is a Google Webmaster Tools account for English Misplaced Pages, or if there is, who can access it.

On the advice of Nemo bis I filed a bug in Bugzilla: bugzilla:73305 Hopefully this gets some eyes on it. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Great, thanks all. Adrian J. Hunter 12:34, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

According to the Google Webmaster Tools:

Currently, we haven't detected any security issues with your site's content. If you want to learn more about security issues and how they could affect your site, review our resources for hacked sites.

I'm guessing whatever it was has either been fixed, or was a false positive... Reedy (talk) 13:03, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

ticket:2014110510000676, I had a user discuss this issue as well a week ago. ///EuroCarGT 03:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

@Reedy: Google still indexes the June 24 version and says "This site may be hacked". Can you resubmit http://en.wikipedia.org/Neuron with the procedure at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812? It says "You can submit up to 500 individual URLs per week in this way." Is there a general way for editors to request resubmission of an article in case of serious BLP vandalism or other problems in the version indexed by Google? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:58, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Not been granted enough rights. Poking ops to get more access... Reedy (talk) 12:36, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, done now. Reedy (talk) 14:28, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Google hasn't changed anything yet but I will post here if something happens. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:35, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Success! Within the last hours, the above Google search "This page was last modified" site:en.wikipedia.org/Neuron has changed to say "This page was last modified on 17 November 2014", and it no longer says "This site may be hacked". Thanks again Reedy. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:59, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Less intrusive video player icon

Reposted from here: Previously, videos could function as stand alone illustrations in addition to being videos, which made them more useful, especially when a thumbnail was manually selected. See for example here, where it could show both a famous image, and a video of the event. But for some reason, the player icon has become big and dark, obscuring much of the thumb. I think the previous version was much more useful, for the reason mentioned above. See also here, where the icon pretty much destroys the thumbnail.

Perhaps the icon could be moved to one of the corners of the thumbs, instead of smack in the middle? And be smaller, too. Or maybe there could be a parameter for making the icon either dark or light, depending on the thumbnail, so where wouldn't have to be a huge, dark bar around it to make it discernible? Or maybe the play icon could be moved to the caption field? Maybe videos should have their own kind of window, like sounds have, see for example here. A player bar like that, and with the thumb over it, would be much more useful, I think it looked more like this initially, if I recall correctly. FunkMonk (talk) 10:53, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Which problem do you try to solve? That the thumbnail of the video should be more recognizable? And is that more important than helping users to realize that the image displayed is actually not only an image but a video that could be watched? --Malyacko (talk) 11:40, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

If you want to work on this, then please just checkout the mw:TimedMediaHandler code and start fixing it. Discussing it probably won't get us really far. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:44, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that the icon as it is now prevents using thumbnails as standalone images. It has worked like that before, so I don't see why it would make it harder for users to play, and I've also proposed several ways it could be clear without obscuring the image. As for changing the code, I thought it would be better to get consensus, and I'm not a programmer. FunkMonk (talk) 11:47, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Before was 4,5 years ago... That's 1/3 the lifespan of the project. As for changing something like this: you need a programmer to do it, and that seems to be the scarcest resource, not wikipedia's ability to have discussions (just my disgruntled opinion :P ). My personal opinion would be a small camera icon inc the corner of the thumbnail and then show a play button when you hover the thumbnail. But that's desktop only, on touch screens, i'd always want to see what I see now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:18, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, what you suggest is good, anything that makes the file more useful will do. The problem is that many don't use video files because they take up so much space and look like total crap on top of that, therefore people use images instead. If the video could be used as an image as well, they would simply be more useful. FunkMonk (talk) 16:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Agree that TheDJ's suggestions are good place to start but I think the real roadblock to rectifying this issue goes back to the idea to use the "still image" thumbnail container for "motion video" files to begin with. Again, developing something like that just for "motion video" cases would need some considerable attention from programmers. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Seems it was like that before. And reusing what is now used for some auduo files would seem better than the regular image container. FunkMonk (talk) 09:22, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I just wanted to say I think this is an excellent idea that should probably go in the queue, if possible. I like TheDJ's proposed form factor - small camera icon in the corner with a play button in the center. With touch screens, I feel like the giant play button is really not doing a good job - it completely obscures the thumbnail image, generally essentially requiring you to press the button in order to see a clear image of what's in frame. I think people are generally smart enough to realize that if it has a "Play" button or a camera button in the corner, that's an indicator that this is a thumbnail from a video which will play if you click it. 0x0077BE 16:13, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• This was also discussed on the multimedia mailing list, and moving it to the bottom-left corner seems to be widely agreeable, perhaps in a similar style to that seen in http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30016007 - It is probably just a SMOP, and I've now filed bugzilla:73438 to collate these notes/links. "Patches welcome!" as they say. Quiddity (talk) 22:10, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• I'll see if I can dredge my PHP knowledge up from where it waits dreaming in the depths of my mind and propose a patch tomorrow. Reticulated Spline 01:49, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm sure videos will be more widely used as a result. They are quite useful on animal pages, but many don't use them for the reasons outlined above. FunkMonk (talk) 12:39, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Patch submitted, which will allow us to move the overlay and have it resize automatically for small videos. Reticulated Spline 23:52, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Seems (based on a comment at code review) that this would be better handled via CSS locally on en:wp - I'll experiment and then propose the change at MediaWiki_talk:Common.css. Reticulated Spline 20:10, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Request made on the talk page for common.css. Reticulated Spline 00:40, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

 Done thanks to the admins and CSS gurus over at the common.css talk page. Reticulated Spline 20:31, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

HotCat bug?

I have just used HotCat to add an article to Category:Youth organisations (with an "s"). That was automatically changed to Category:Redirects from alternative spellings. (The former is a redirect to Category:Youth organizations (with a "z")). What's broken? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:02, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Probably HotCat that's broken. It shouldn't offer cats that are in Category:Misplaced Pages soft redirected categories, nor should it offer cats bearing {{Category redirect}} --Redrose64 (talk) 20:52, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It appears that you found a bug in HotCat. You can report it at Commons:MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-HotCat.js. Ruslik_Zero 20:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Reported, and solution suggested. @Redrose64: I'd say it's OK that HotCat offers redirects (you can just type them in anyway), as long as it's properly resolving them. The latter failed here, but I think that can be fixed for all realistic cases. — HHHIPPO 22:13, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. May need making your browser reload its cache to get the change immediately; otherwise the fix will propagate as the MediaWiki servers see fit. Lupo 22:29, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

2x office hours about the Bugzilla to Phabricator migration

Hi, next week we will host two office hours to answer your questions about the Bugzilla to Phabricator migration:

• Tuesday 18 Novembre 16:00 UTC
• Tuesday 18 Novembre 23:00 UTC

On #wikimedia-office , as usual. The plan is to start the migration on Friday 21 November at 00:30 UTC. We will post more information, but in the meantime you can check the details at mw:Phabricator/versus_Bugzilla.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

History time stamps wrong

Why are the time stamps here one hour in the future? SpinningSpark 13:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm seeing them as 01:37 and 01:43 UTC, which is over 11 hours ago. It is now 13:16 UTC. What times are you seeing? -- John of Reading (talk) 13:17, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Aaargh. 24-hour clock. I thought they were just posted now. SpinningSpark 13:28, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Template help needed

While reading Green Line bus route 724, I found some severe mayhem halfway down the page: should be visible on this revision. I assume a template has gone funny somewhere. Can anybody help? Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 20:29, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

It was this edit, which I reverted some hours ago, but a number of pages are still broken as a result. All you need do is WP:PURGE. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:43, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Resolved Great, that's fixed it – thanks. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 20:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Insert symbol box vanished

The box of symbols on my editing page has disappeared. Rothorpe (talk) 21:21, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone help with this, please? Rothorpe (talk) 13:51, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Rothorpe, I had something similar and this discussion solved the problem. But if others are experiencing it, maybe it's worth looking into for more than a case-by-case basis. Victoria (tk) 14:09, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Victoria. Do you mean I shold try blanking the page User:Rothorpe/monobook.js? Rothorpe (talk) 15:10, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

worth trying, no? especially since its content is completely useless, and causes js errors which might be the reason other scripts fail for you, you got nothing to lose...

i'd say, blank User:Rothorpe/vector.js too while you are at it. it's just as useless (or just as harmful), and you might want to switch to vector someday, peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 15:17, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Success! Many thanks to you both. Rothorpe (talk) 16:13, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Rothorpe, yes, I blanked the page, got the symbols back (to my enormous relief) and then I started adding back the scripts I use the most, one at a time. I've managed to put back the dashes script and the page size script and haven't encountered problems. I use monobook, btw. Victoria (tk) 19:00, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't use scripts, but I've got all my symbols back, and more neatly arranged than before. Big thanks again! Rothorpe (talk) 19:08, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

@Rothorpe: You might assume that you don't use scripts because User:Rothorpe/monobook.js is empty; but the feature in question is a script, as are most of the other gadgets and some non-gadget features that are present on most pages (such as the code for expanding and collapsing boxes, or sorting tables).

When you had this in your monobook.js, that isn't valid Javascript (if you had wanted a single character there, a semicolon would have been valid); and it broke some of the other scripts because the MediaWiki software takes your monobook.js, all the gadgets that you have enabled, and some more Javascript code too (collapse, sort, etc.) and makes one big JavaScript file. If your browser doesn't like one tiny part of that, it might chuck the lot out the window. Not all browsers are so picky though. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:33, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I think I more or less understand. Someone told me I needed to type something, anything there a long time ago, I forget why. So should I continue to leave it blank? Rothorpe (talk) 01:15, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

A blank file does nothing; a single semicolon also does nothing. It doesn't matter which you use. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:47, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, thank you. Rothorpe (talk) 20:53, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Languages & continents

When I hover the "Languages" menu item (say in main page; in the LH tool bar), I see that there is a continent added called "Middle East". Where can I ask about this? WP:VPT, enwiki, mw? -DePiep (talk) 12:05, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see it. It sounds odd. Are you saying it happens when you hover over the "Languages" heading at Main Page#p-lang without clicking anything? Where is the text placed? Does it say "continent" or list continents? Does it happen on all pages, for example Libartowo and Corwen F.C.? What is your browser and skin? Does it happen when you are logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:38, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I found it. With Preferences, Beta, Compact language links on, if you click the three dots under the short language list. Thincat (talk) 15:55, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I also had to disable the SidebarTranslate gadget to see it. DePiep, are you saying you see this when hovering and not clicking? Does it claim "continent"? They are regions, including "Worldwide" for some widespread languages, and "Pacific" on some articles, for example Cat. I get "About 160,000 results" on a Google search of "Middle Eastern Languages". It's a common concept. The feature is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures which has a "discussion" link to mw:Talk:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links. It mw:Talk:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links#It keeps annoying me. has a post mentioning the issue. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:32, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I have various betas enabled (ask me for more info). Excample page George W. Bush. Under some ten iw "Languages" mentioned, there is the "..." box/button (suggesting: more here); below that it says "139 more languages" - unlinked. Now when I click that button (not just hovering ), I get a popup(?) that lists languages "Language search; common languages; etc.". My question is where this is set or maintained. -DePiep (talk) 15:09, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

It's part of mw:Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector which is made by the Wikimedia Foundation. The source code can be downloaded but the English Misplaced Pages does not have access to change the code. I don't know whether it has a setting to choose language groups for a specific wiki but even if it does, I guess it would require a developer to set it. As mentioned, you can discuss the feature at mw:Talk:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links. mw:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links#Leave feedback specifically says "Please leave feedback at the talk page." PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Someone arrived

at a new article, The Sciences and The Arts Fountains, and placed geo-coordinates (?) in the middle of the text. It's a good idea to have them some where but I do not think that how it is done is how it should be done. Can you help? Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 14:53, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Technically it's a valid thing to do but in this case, because the two fountains are so close together, I think it would be better to have a single coordinate in the header. MOS:COORDS and WP:WikiProject Geographical coordinates may (or may not) help. Thincat (talk) 15:06, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I've put each one of them in their respective image caption. This looks clean enough. Cenarium (talk) 15:14, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

That looks fine to me as well. Thincat (talk) 15:18, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

"Template:flag|Islamic State"

Can you advise about how to get into and revise {{flag|Islamic State}}? The main article on Misplaced Pages on the topic is known by consensus as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and yet, for whatever reason/motivation, content is still in existence/being created under the non consensus name Islamic State. One usage of the template is at Template:Iraqi insurgency (2011–present) infobox. Any help to resolve this would be appreciated.

Gregkaye ✍♪ 16:30, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

{{flag|Islamic State}} produces  Islamic State with the piped link "Islamic State" going to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, so I'm not sure what the issue is. {{flag|Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant}} produces  Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant with an unpiped link to the same article. Are you saying {{flag}} should ignore which name is specified in the parameter and always display the long name? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:46, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Exactly yes. Just "Islamic State" (the non-consensus name) should never display regardless of what is input. Legacypac (talk) 16:34, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

{{flag|Islamic State}} invokes Template:Country data Islamic State, which redirects to Template:Country data Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Deleting the "Islamic State" redirects (Template:Country data The Islamic State is another) would prevent these aliases from being used but should be discussed at WP:RFD.

As an alternative to {{flag}}, which uses the given first parameter as displayed name by default, there is {{flagcountry}} which displays a standard name specified within the country data templates. {{flagcountry|Islamic State}} results in  Islamic State. The displayed name can be overridden using |name= in both templates. SiBr₄ (talk) 16:56, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Gregkaye: This works because "Islamic State" is an alias in Template:Country data Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and because Template:Country data Islamic State redirects to that template. Removing the alias from the template would break all the pages which use it, so instead you can just use {{flag|Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant}} (which produces  Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) on the pages you need to change. If that's too long you can use {{flag|ISIS}} as well (which produces  ISIS). You can also manually specify a name with the |name=, e.g. {{flag|ISIS|name=What was that place called again?}} (which produces  What was that place called again?). See more options at Template:Flag. — Mr. Stradivarius 17:00, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank youSiBr₄ and Mr. Stradivarius that's all a great help and appreciated. Gregkaye ✍♪ 17:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

On another point can anyone help with Template:Country data Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. In the "Redirect aliases" it would be really helpful to add "ISIL" and to remove "Iraq and the Levant", "The Islamic State" and "Islamic State". from the list. Any advice will be appreciated. Gregkaye ✍♪ 01:33, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

SiBr₄, Mr. Stradivarius, can you help? Gregkaye ✍♪ 09:57, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Legacypac already removed the "Islamic State" and "The Islamic State" redirects from the list in Template:Country data Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The actual redirects still exist though. Entries can be added and removed from redirect lists quite easily; see Template:Country showdata/doc#Redirect aliases. SiBr₄ (talk) 10:27, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Note that the "ISIL" redirect was already added in the template code with this edit, but it was not displayed because the five-redirect limit of Template:Country showdata was exceeded. SiBr₄ (talk) 10:43, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

My intent is exactly like Gregkaye. If someone inputs flag|Islamic State it needs to display "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant". I don't want it not to work at all. Now if I could just understand how to get that. Legacypac (talk) 16:30, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Ping SiBr₄ re: query by Legacypac if that's OK. I still have another issue that I will try and raise in a separate thread. The two of us have are amongst those that have been working against a lot of non-consensus editing. And this support would be appreciated. I have just gone through the article usages of Template:Country data The Islamic State and Template:Country data Islamic State and changed text either to ISIL or to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. I have not made changes on User pages that link to the templates but a simple delete of the templates may also be in order. However Legacypac's suggestion is preferable if possible. Thanks. Gregkaye ✍♪ 16:59, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Adding a simple parser function to the data template could prevent the name "Islamic State" from being the displayed name. | name = {{#ifeq:{{{name|}}}|Islamic State|Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant|{{{name|}}}}} should do that. |name = Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant would even set the displayed name to ISIL regardless of the first parameter and |name=, preventing any other name from being used. I doubt whether using either of these would be a good idea. SiBr₄ (talk) 21:06, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

SiBr₄, excellent. Is this ok? Gregkaye ✍♪ 09:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

This is, though again it would display ISIL even if the name is explicitly set, e.g. {{flag|ISIL|name=Islamic State}}. SiBr₄ (talk) 09:20, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Amount of work for "What links here" to distinguish between links from within templates and those that aren't.

One thing that I've look for almost since I started editing wikipedia about 10 years ago is the ability to tell which entries in "What links here" are from links in templates from those that aren't. Can someone please give me an estimate on how long it would take someone (or someones) who know what they are doing to implement that? (On a scale from, "Yeah, I've got a few minutes" to "tear down the entire coding of how the wiki software works")Naraht (talk) 15:02, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

@Naraht: A related thread was recently archived to Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#Fix a problem with What Links Here?. SiBr₄ (talk) 21:27, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Which in turn linked to an even more complete discussion in Archive 122. Would it be worthwhile to set up an Frequently Requested Features (FRF) page? Note the suggestion to get around this was a insource search with Regexp, but the insource search in Mainspace only of insource:"Alpha Phi Omega" does most of what I want.Naraht (talk) 21:45, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Pages not displaying

A user reports at WP:EAR that some pages such as collard green are not displaying on some devices in mobile view. Misplaced Pages:Editor assistance/Requests#Collard Greens article shows no text to anon users on mobile site. I thought it best to mention it here so it can be checked out. -- Diannaa (talk) 16:49, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

To provde a bit more information. I search Google for . That returns a link to a wikipedia article - not a scraper site or anything. I click the link. The page loads, but none of the article text is displayed. There's an imgur link in the above post (I really don't want to fight the captures to repost the link here, sorry). I am using latest version Google Chrome on iOS 7.1.2 on an iPhone 4s. My carrier is a UK carrier GiffGaff, who use O2. My Google Chrome is using the "reduce data usage" under settings -> advanced, which is causig another problem with blocks applied to the caching proxy. 82.132.214.221 (talk) 18:22, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, this is a bit odd... It certainly seems to be to do with the MediaWiki mobile view (Minerva) rather than mobile browsers, as you can replicate the issue in Chrome using the dev tools. I also observed the bug in various mobile device emulators (Safari on iOS 7, Android Browser on A4.4/5 and IE Mobile on WP 8.1). The content just isn't returned from the server - the response is a 200 OK, and everything is as it should be, but the main content element is empty! Addendum: It's also unclosed - you get the opening <div id="content" class="content" lang="en" dir="ltr"> but no corresponding closing tag. 18:58, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

What's even more strange, is that you can 'fix' the problem by shoving a query string on the end of the URL. It doesn't matter what, anything will do! For example, this link will display the bug: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/Collard_greens, whereas this one will not https://en.m.wikipedia.org/Collard_greens?what. For those who want to test, you'll probably need to open a new 'private' browser session to prevent data being pulled from your browser cache and polluting the test.

Do you know if any other pages are doing this? Reticulated Spline 18:47, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

hello and thank you for looking at this. I have noticed it in the past on a few articles but cannot remember what they were. I will post here if I see it again. Gustavail (but logged out) 82.132.214.221 (talk) 19:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Collard greens seems to be working as normal now for me - anyone else care to test? Reticulated Spline 00:03, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, working for me too. I tested the mobile version of the URL in an incognito browser. Thanks for looking at this. 82.132.239.148 (talk) 11:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Further Information please see this previous link of similar behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_131#Minimal_display_in_mobile_view I know that I've seen this behaviour before in different articles. I had considerable difficulty in reporting the collard greens article. I suspect this is an i termittant recurring bug. 82.132.239.204 (talk) 19:56, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Flag mouseovers and links from flags at Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

This is a follow on request from "Template:flag|Islamic State" above where greatly appreciated guidance was given by a SiBr₄ and Mr. Stradivarius. I was also wondering if it is possible to override the way that links to flag related articles work from Template:Infobox country. I understand that the flag link goes directly to "Flag of (name of article)". Is there anyway to override this?

If it can be worked out please advise on how the flags and links on the main Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant page can give mouse over indications related to "Black Standard" preferably with a reference such as "Black Standard variant" and that the links go directly to this page. The group do not have a unique flag of their own. The flags are set within a use of Template:Infobox country and I've been looking at it a lot and haven't been able to find the code elements that control the caption. I have raised the issue of the currently used name of the flag at User talk:Hedwig in Washington#Naming of the flag used by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as current the file name is erroneously titled File:Flag of the Islamic State.svg after some incomplete or inaccurate information was given. Hopefully soon the files will be titled as something like "Black Standard variant as adopted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" or "Black Standard variant as adopted by ISIL". Thanks for the help. Gregkaye ✍♪ 17:31, 16 November 2014 (UTC) ping also Legacypac

The template code that controls the flag caption is

<td align="center" style="font-size:85%;">{{#ifexist:Flag of {{{linking_name|{{{common_name|{{{name|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}}}}} |] |Flag }}</td>

. This shows there are three "name" parameters that can override the part after "Flag of" in the flag link, the outermost being |linking_name=. The |flag_caption= parameter overrides the link text "Flag". There is currently no way to change the entire link, though one could easily be added. SiBr₄ (talk) 21:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

SiBr₄ Perhaps, instead of inserting it as a flag, it could be inserted as an image with caption. Could this be made possible. It would be good to disable the mouseover on the image so that it displays the file name as normal. Gregkaye ✍♪ 09:04, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

The mouseover text uses the same "Flag of name" formula the flag link uses, again without an option to change or omit it. To be able to completely customize the flag image and caption, it could be moved to an |other_symbol= field like this:
|other_symbol = ]
|other_symbol_type = ] variant
If set this field appears further down the infobox, after the motto and anthem. Alternatively the infobox template could be changed to add more options for the flag. SiBr₄ (talk) 15:07, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levantالدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام (Arabic)
Flag Emblem of Village pump (technical) Emblem
Status	Unrecognized state

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levantالدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام (Arabic)
Emblem of Village pump (technical) Emblem
Motto: باقية وتتمدد (Arabic)
Anthem: Ummatī, qad lāha fajrun
Black Standard variant
Status	Unrecognized state

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام (Arabic)
File:Seal of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.png Flag Emblem
Status		Unrecognized state

SiBr₄, This may be causing trouble. I have added a cut down version of the infobox as is followed by a cut down version of infobox with the addition of the suggested code. I'm not sure how possible it is but, if practical, it would be great to get a set up like in the existing infobox but with the other mouse over info.

Gregkaye ✍♪ 18:00, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

For some reason your pings don't work anymore. The one earlier in this section didn't either.

I could add some parameters for the flag caption and mouseover text, though what should they be called? |flag_caption= is already in existence and use for the link text in the caption. SiBr₄ (talk) 19:47, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

SiBr₄ That would be great :)

Mouseover preferrably: Black Standard variant as adopted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

label preferably: Black Standard variant

Gregkaye ✍♪ 23:00, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

That wasn't exactly what I meant. Anyway I added a |flag_mouseover= parameter to the template as Template:Infobox country/sandbox2. In the sandbox |flag_caption= currently replaces the entire flag link if it itself contains a link; don't know if that really makes sense but it works here. SiBr₄ (talk) 09:33, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks SiBr₄ but something is going wrong. I placed the text exactly as you wrote it firstly as a replacement of the original flag text in is previous place in the infobox and then by moving the text to the end of the infobox information. Either way I got a mouseover result that still read "Flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" and a caption that read "]

I am not sure if content from other parts of the article are interferring. The article also uses "Infobox war faction" and imports template:History of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Is there any chance that you could install the text in place. It looks really great on this page but I am failing to get it fixed in context. Thanks. Gregkaye ✍♪ 16:35, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

The mouseover tooltip is generated differently in different browsers: if it's set up to work properly in e.g. Google Chrome, it might not work quite the same in Internet Explorer. Then there are things like WP:POPUPS which are known to interfere with mouseover. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:15, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

More likely it's because I made the change in a sandbox; I haven't changed the actual infobox (yet). SiBr₄ (talk) 20:01, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Creating automatically links

I have the idea of a bot which links automatically non-linked pages to a specific page by analysing what pages are visited after a specific page (which should be part of the same theme). Example: Many persons which were on the page tree visited after this the page plant to inform also about plants. Because there was no link in tree to plant they had to search for it in the searchbox. The bot would recognize that many persons visit plant after visting tree and turn the already, in the text of tree, existing word "plant" into a link. Is this possible? --Impériale (talk) 17:32, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

It is possible. But is it a good idea? See WP:OVERLINK for one side of it. Doing this automatically doesn't seem compelling. If you think a link should be added, it is the Encyclopedia which anyone can edit for a reason. —EncMstr (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I think the problem with the overlinking could be solved with a order that makes the bot only adding f.e. the 10 most often after-searched pages (and of course not linking already linked pages). Of course the links could also be added by ourselves but this bot would place links on pages where we, the authors, just don't know that a link should be placed. On the other side there are many readers which see pages with missing links but they're often just too unmotivated or don't know how to do it. Furthermore the bot would undertake much redundant work and because of that safe much time and nerves. --Impériale (talk) 22:09, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure we actually log this sort of user-specific browsing information in any useful way (and tbh, I'm not sure if we should). Andrew Gray (talk) 20:07, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Yahoo will be right back

Did anyone else have trouble over the last 10 minutes or so getting a Yahoo error message? I mean from any Misplaced Pages page, including previewing an edit. The core content was:

(Yahoo logo) Will be right back...

Thank you for your patience.

Our engineers are working quickly to resolve the issue.

—EncMstr (talk) 18:48, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has no relation with Yahoo. If you get a Yahoo error, then you must be using one of their services (proxy, DNS), and one of those is having problems. -- ] {{talk}} 19:02, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I am well aware of the (non)relationship. However, either my browser has something seriously wrong, or there is an injection problem on some of the servers. I was wondering if it is only me. —EncMstr (talk) 19:28, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Strange. Maybe you were unable to reach the Misplaced Pages servers and your browser tried to fallback on a yahoo query? In case you want to dig further, most browser have now a developer console, accessible using the F12 key, with a network/net panel that will tell you what pages your browser is calling. -- Luk 10:26, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• I get it quite often actually. For me, it is because I have the Yahoo! 404 search assistant enabled for the Yahoo! Toolbar. I'm guessing you do as well. Just hit back a couple times and try again. — {{U|Technical 13}} 18:54, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Google Maps and {{GeoGroupTemplate}}

Please see this page from Google; we're about to be losing KML support for Google Maps classic, and apparently KML files can't be hosted on the ugly new version of Google Maps either. Cross-posting to Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. Nyttend (talk) 04:29, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

This was also brought up over at WT:USRD regarding KMLs more directly used in articles. Another editor has brought this up at meta:Tech#Google Maps changes to bring this to the attention of the WMF. We should consolidate these discussions in one place going forward. Imzadi 1979 → 20:48, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: enable opt-in two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication has become popular in the last few years as a number of big online service providers like Google, Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox and Apple's iCloud have enabled it to increase the security of user accounts. It makes it so that when you login you have to type in a one-time password that is generated, usually by an application installed on a mobile device. There are two extensions for MediaWiki available: OATHAuth and TwoFactorAuthentication that could provide two-factor authentication for users of Wikimedia wikis including Misplaced Pages.

I propose something like this: to increase user account security (especially for administrators, functionaries and others with elevated user rights), we ask the Wikimedia Foundation to consider installing an optional TOTP-based two-factor authentication solution on English Misplaced Pages (and other Wikimedia Foundation wikis subject to further community consultation) if an implementation can be found that passes reasonable security auditing and user testing and integrates reasonably with CentralAuth. Users would not be required to use two-factor authentication, and a reasonable recovery process should be instituted.

• Support as proposer. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:58, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support. It would be nice if it had Google Authenticator support, though I don't know how the backend verification works on that, and if you have to query Google servers in order to verify the time-based token, I wouldn't use it. 0x0077BE 15:01, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

  0x0077BE: Google Authenticator is a popular implementation of TOTP, but Google Authenticator does not (as far as I know) contact Google's servers when you authenticate (only way to be sure would be to use it and monitor traffic from the device to see). You can use it when your device is offline. I personally use Authy on iPhone but there are a variety of implementations including Red Hat's open source FreeOTP. There's a whole list of implementations on this article: Time-based One-time Password Algorithm. There may be broken (intentionally or not) implementations of TOTP, but it is up to the user which TOTP client they use. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:07, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I know that the Authenticator doesn't contact the servers, but I don't really know much about the back-end on the server side. If Misplaced Pages can generate Authenticator-compatible tokens on their own servers, then I'd be in favor of that, but if Misplaced Pages has to contact Google to get a token, I wouldn't use it. I imagine that no contact to Google will be necessary, since that would presumably significantly complicate the security by adding unnecessary connections that need to be secured. If Authenticator is just an implementation of a specific protocol (I had always thought of TOTP as referring to the class of time-based token generators, not a specific algorithm, but I never looked into it), then obviously it would be possible to have Authenticator support with no Google involvement. 0x0077BE 15:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

0x0077BE: Nope, the WMF wouldn't have to contact Google's servers (or anybody else's) to generate the keys. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:26, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. I like the idea, but my experience with OATHAuth on wikitech has been less than ideal. I've gotten locked out of my account more than once and I fear others will accidentally do the same. I'd like to see improvements to these extensions before using them wider. ^demon 15:24, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

  @^demon: Do you remember what led to you being locked out? Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:36, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

  Wiped my phone, got a new phone. Had lost my recovery key thingie. ^demon 18:58, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

  Yeah, it should probably provide more recovery options (SMS, email, etc.), and the UI of both extensions aren't exactly user-friendly IMO. Zhaofeng Li 22:41, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support in principle depending on sufficient and positive technical and user review of any implementation. -- KTC (talk) 15:57, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose: Both of these extensions seem to be at an early stage in development. Also, there is another much more serious reason not to enable them. That reason is that OATHauth will not work on wikipedia, as wikipedia does use MariaDB, and OATHauth only has support for MySQL, as can be seen in bugzilla:65658. I would not be surprised if the same applies to TwoFactorAuthentication as it is based on the former.--Snaevar (talk) 16:07, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

  Uhh, MariaDB is basically MySQL. Legoktm (talk) 17:04, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

  What Legoktm said. The bug referred to an issue with running on Postgresql. Postgres is very different from MySQL. MariaDB is not. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:10, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• Question: I would like the proposer to provide an explanation in a reliable source of the benefits of two-factor authentication. In particular, since this is to be an opt-in and most who opt-in will probably be using good security practices, how will this benefit the user who uses an encrypted connection, does not use the same password on all his/her accounts, and doesn't keep the password posted on a bulletin board next to the computer? Jc3s5h (talk) 17:15, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Using two-factor authentication is part of good security practices, and I don't think it's true that someone who otherwise uses good security will be immune to attacks. I imagine many people who would enable this do not disable Javascript and other scripting by default, making them immune to many zero-day attacks which could secretly harvest passwords. Additionally they may not be sufficiently careful about not logging in from potentially compromised terminals (or indeed they wish to be able to log in from potentially compromised terminals without allowing replay attacks) - both of which are attacks that could be mitigated by a TOTP or other two-factor authentication system. 0x0077BE 17:47, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Basically what 0x0077BE said. TOTP-based two-factor auth is a tool that a security-conscious user can add to their arsenal. You can't use it for every website, because not every website has it deployed. But it is worth enabling on key security assets—that is, accounts where you need enhanced security. We like to pretend that adminship is no big deal, but the ability to hand out blocks and the ability to view deleted content are important things that are entrusted to administrators. To me, anyway, though I've made some mistakes in the past, I try hard to go about doing my admin tasks in a trustworthy and responsible way. Having the ability to make my Misplaced Pages account as secure as, say, my Facebook account would be quite nice. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:48, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support The WMF uses this now on Wikitech, so we know there's no big problems. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:35, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-47

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf8) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 12. It will be on non-Misplaced Pages wikis from November 18, and on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
• The new search tool ("CirrusSearch") will be on the English Misplaced Pages from November 19.

Move from Bugzilla to Phabricator

• The tool to track bugs will change on November 21.
• You won't be able to add or edit bugs between November 21 and November 24.
• You can make the change easier for you by creating your account.
• Bugzilla will be frozen after the change. You will see, edit and report bugs in Phabricator.
• You can join two IRC chats to learn more about the change. The chats will be on Tuesday, November 18 at 16:00 (UTC) and 23:00 UTC.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:28, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Loading a special page used mediawiki guided tours

For The Misplaced Pages Adventure we need to load a specific url using mediawiki code that lets a user register and then returns them to the game at step 8 while suppressing the Getting Started tour (which is loading on top of The Misplaced Pages Adventure's tour).

The full guided tour is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/MediaWiki:Guidedtour-tour-twa1.js

I'm trying to have it load this url which works properly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Misplaced Pages:TWA/1/Start&returntoquery=tour%3Dtwa1%26step%3D8%26showGettingStarted%3Dfalse&type=signup

I'm using this code:

url: mw.util.getUrl( 'index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Misplaced Pages:TWA/1/Start&returntoquery=tour%3Dtwa1%26step%3D8%26showGettingStarted%3Dfalse&type=signup')

The url result is a bad title:

https://en.wikipedia.org/index.php%3Ftitle%3DSpecial:UserLogin%26returnto%3DWikipedia:TWA/1/Start%26returntoquery%3Dtour%253Dtwa1%2526step%253D8%2526showGettingStarted%253Dfalse%26type%3Dsignup

Because the url prefix is wrong:

That's partly due to the way mw.util.getUrl loads the url prefix, I get https://en.wikipedia.org/ rather than https://en.wikipedia.org/w/

But if I put in the entire prefix:

mw.util.getUrl( 'https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?

rather than starting at:

mw.util.getUrl( 'index.php

then it appends a double url prefix which doesn't work.

Is there a trick to get around mw.util.getUrl or a different way to load the correct link? Or am I making a small error anyone can see in the url? Thanks and cheers, Jake Ocaasi 21:10, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• (edit conflict × 2) Yep:

url = mw.config.get('wgServer') + mw.config.get('wgScriptPath') + '/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Misplaced Pages:TWA/1/Start&returntoquery=tour%3Dtwa1%26step%3D8%26showGettingStarted%3Dfalse&type=signup';

Should work for you as it will return:

//en.wikipedia.org + /w + /index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Misplaced Pages:TWA/1/Start&returntoquery=tour%3Dtwa1%26step%3D8%26showGettingStarted%3Dfalse&type=signup

== //en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Misplaced Pages:TWA/1/Start&returntoquery=tour%3Dtwa1%26step%3D8%26showGettingStarted%3Dfalse&type=signup

== //en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Misplaced Pages:TWA/1/Start&returntoquery=tour%3Dtwa1%26step%3D8%26showGettingStarted%3Dfalse&type=signup

Happy editing. — {{U|Technical 13}} 21:30, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

• Afterthought, you may also want to make use of &wpReason= for noting that the account was created as part of TWA. I know we make use of it for tracking accounts made through ACC. If you need help with the parameters for index.php for Special:UserLogin, I've done some research on it as part of my script creation for my ACC userscript. Let me know. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} 21:35, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Gosh you are useful! Thanks a lot. This was completely breaking the tour and you fixed it! I also like the idea of &wpReason, I will look into that simple addition. Best, Jake Ocaasi 22:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Help! Unable to Log In

I've been attempting to Log In periodically starting approx. 15 hours ago, but have not been able to do so because the Log In pages simply will not load. (This happens whether I try to log in thru the links at the upper right of different articles, or if I try to go directly to http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:UserLogin.) Every time I try, I get the same error message, "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" -- which normally only displays if my DSL connection has been interrupted. I've never run into this issue before, and I'm not having any problem with other Misplaced Pages pages, they all load & display properly. Thanks in advance for any help! User:Cgingold

This may be connected with Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#SSL 3.0 discontinued. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:13, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Hey there - good guess, Redrose. I wasn't feeling very hopeful after reading the discussion you linked, since that happened a month ago and my Login problem only cropped up in the last day. But I gave it a try anyway, and it seems to have done the trick. (It's strange, though, that my error message didn't say anything about SSL. That sure would have helped!) Well, thanks for your very helpful suggestion. Much appreciated! Cgingold (talk) 05:46, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Template "not rendering correctly"

Case clerk: TBD Drafting arbitrator: TBD

Misplaced Pages Arbitration
About arbitrationTalk Arbitration policy (CU/OS) Guide to arbitration Noticeboard + Talk Search archived proceedings Ban appealsReport
Open proceedings All open requests Case requests Clarification and Amendment requests Arbitrator motion requests Enforcement requests
Active sanctions Contentious topics (Log) General sanctions Editor sanctions
Arbitration Committee Discuss+ Contact Members Procedures ElectionsTalk History Clerks+ Talk Clerk procedures Conflict of interest reports
Audit Talk StatisticsTalk Reports (pre-2016)
Track related changes
v t e

I have been told that the code at {{Casenav/sandbox}} "does not render correctly" but no details have been supplied.

{{Casenav/sandbox}} is a fix for {{Casenav}}, which has a parameter case name = which is not fully implemented - shortcut, schedule and staff are not working.

The comparison between the two is at {{Casenav/testcases}}, where you can see with a case name set, the sandbox version works correctly, the live version doesn't. (Without a case name both break, because it is not an arbitration case page.)

The same comparison has been on the talk page of the template Template talk:Casenav for 14 days and no-one has identified any problems.

I have also tested the sandbox template with "preview" on 17 arbitration case pages, and have seen no issues. I have even tab-switched between the livepage and the preview, I can still see no difference.

Can someone point me in the direction of the error?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:33, 18 November 2014 (UTC).

What was the issue (as I noticed the change was reverted)? Also, the main template uses a number of subtemplates. May be the problem is in them? Ruslik_Zero 03:18, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what the issue was, other than "box now renders inconsistently" the edit summary of the reverter. I left a question, but they did not answer. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 04:25, 18 November 2014 (UTC).

Where did you leave the question? I couldn't see it. I suggest you leave it on the template talk page. If there is no response within a week, try {{editprotected}}. It's not the first time I have seen these ownership issues with ARBCOM-related stuff and it's disappointing to see it again. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:37, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I left the question on the talk page of the editor who reverted. I have asked the Clerkes also, I will take your advice and add a question on the talk page of the template. The ownership issues I will deal with later, but thanks for confirming it's not just me seeing them. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:10, 20 November 2014 (UTC).

• I've gone through and made it HTML5 compliant, in case it was a bad piece of code that was causing the issue. It seems to be rendering find for me on a Win7 machine in the latest Firefox and also on my android phone with Firefox. I'd be happy to fix any issues, but I'll need more details as to what appears to be not rendering correctly for others. — {{U|Technical 13}} 00:43, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Talkpage archiving

I have tried to set up archiving on my talk page, but it isn't working. I'm sure there is a simple fix, but I don't know what it is. Can somebody help me? Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 04:02, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

It will only archive to subpages (unless key mentioned at User:MiszaBot/config is set). I have corrected the username. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:10, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Facepalm Well, I guess that's what I get for being unable to properly type my own username! Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 04:11, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Chrome vs. Firefox Misplaced Pages rendering

I don't know if it's a MediaWiki bug or just Misplaced Pages, but it's time to code same appearance for major browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. There are some bugs:

• different font sizes
• white-space break doesn't work in Chrome in Infobox

--Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 13:11, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

1. Actually, it's a different font; Firefox seems to use Verdana as default sans-serif; browser setting.
2. The wider infobox is caused by the URL at the bottom of the infobox; Firefox handles this better.

Different browsers will always handle stuff slightly differently. -- ] {{talk}} 14:36, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

You could add "word-break: break-word;" to either the infobox table cell containing links, or to the Module:URL. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:56, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

That will get you ugly breaks like "pd<break>f_links". How about a descriptive link instead? -- ] {{talk}} 19:46, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

And we should also set default font for Misplaced Pages (it could be changed via common.css). Please support me, Chrome users should see the same thing as the others. --Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 17:12, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Remember Typography refresh? We tried setting a font... it did not go to well. As far as I can see, Chrome uses the same fonts as the "other" browsers (on Windows at least). -- ] {{talk}} 19:46, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm reminded of <http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/>. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:25, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Just fix this word-break bug and will be ok. --Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 12:15, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Weird user page view stats

There are a number of user pages (all?) getting anomalous view stats in the last few days. . I could be wrong, but the size of the spike seems to corrolate with the number of page watchers or maybe edit count. No big deal. Just curious if anyone knows what's going on. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:17, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Substituting complex templates

The template Subst:itution I made in this edit left behind a load of conditional statement markup and other crud. Is there a way to substitute templates, which doesn't do that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

As far as I know, nothing except manual action. But there is quite a lot I don't know, and agree some sort of deep/recursive substitution mechanism would be useful, so I'm listening along. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:33, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

In the template change all the {{#if: to {{{{{|safesubst:}}}#if: and do something similar for #switch as well and then when you subst, it will be neater. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:40, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

If you're willing to do some copying and pasting, then you can use Special:ExpandTemplates. If not, you have to change the template code; you need to add {{{|safesubst:}}} or <includeonly>safesubst:</includeonly> to the start of every template and parser function (anything with double curly braces). — Mr. Stradivarius 21:55, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

• Also note that if the template you are subst:ing uses other templates, you may have to subst, save, subst, save, repeat until there are no more sub templates and parser functions. — {{U|Technical 13}} 22:27, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Can not log in on AT&T

See bugzilla report. Long story short, I've eliminated all possibilities on my end, and some other AT&T subscribers in South Carolina are lagging too. I can also no longer log back into bugzilla, but attempting to log in from the main page, it takes:

• 3 second before displaying an error, reloading takes an additional 7 seconds,
• 10 minutes to load "load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.uls.nojs|ext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.noscript|ext.wikihiero,wikimediaBadonly=styles&skin=vector&*"
• 46 seconds to load "load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector&*"
• 2 seconds to load "load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery.makeCollapsible|mediawiki.special.userlogin.common.js&skin=vector&version=20141119T150924Z&*"
• 0.6 seconds to load "checkLoggedIn?type=script&wikiid=enwiki&proto=https&return=1&returnTo=Main+Page"

The log in page has loaded incorrectly as well, displaying only text and hyperlinks, and the login field. I can now only access Wikimedia based sites from my Sprint phone, which has a crappy keyboard, so if someone could relay this to the Bugzilla report, I'd be greatful. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Sweet lord, we're playing the "go complain at the other desk" game today aren't we? Others may (hopefully) still be able to help you here, but I'd also like to transfer you through to #wikimedia-tech , especially since you indicate you aren't the only person affected. Terribly sorry about sending you all kinds of different places. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:00, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Attempts to do so only get the message "irc.freenode.net: Terminated". Ian.thomson (talk) 17:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

It's stopped locking up, but it's still lagging (this site and bugzilla.wikimedia, but not non-Wikimedia sites). It must be a problem with AT&T handling Wikimedia sites in South Carolina. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Wait, no, it's starting to lag to the point of locking up again. I can post if I restart my browser after every post and go straight to where I'm making the post. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:39, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

"Enbolding" or "normalising" parameter info in infobox country

I have another question related to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Sorry about this but the situation is made tricky as we have a group in this case with no legitimacy with articles that use Misplaced Pages facilities that are relevantly used in connection to legitimate groups. sigh.

As a group with no legal or recognised right to territory it cannot have a capital. The problem is that Administration center gets presented as normal while Largest city as following gets presented as bold.

Is it possible to get Administration center to be presented as bold or, as a second option, to get Largest city to be presented as normal?

Thanks Gregkaye ✍♪ 17:10, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Yup - {{Infobox country}} has a capital_type parameter. You can assign an arbitrary string to it, and that gets used in place of Capital in the infobox. Reticulated Spline 21:29, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Reticulated Spline Thank you Gregkaye ✍♪ 03:39, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Reference wraping to the next line

Depending on how a screen is set, a reference may wrap to the next line, which looks awkward and strange. See Reference 41 from the end of the paragraph in this screenshot File:Screenshot_showing_ref_wrap.jpg from Philae (spacecraft). There is no space between "November." and the start of the reference. Is there a way to keep this from happening? Bubba73 01:23, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

@Bubba73: What browser are you using? For me, In Firefox and IE9 on Win7, the reference always appeared on the same line as the preceding word and full stop. — Mr. Stradivarius 01:55, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm using IE11 on Windows 8.1. Bubba73 02:57, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Couldn't help but chime after trying to reproduce the same effect using the same Philae (spacecraft) article earlier with no luck and now see we happen to have the same setup. Fiddled with the basic IE11 font families & browser widths but no matter what I tried, the point where it decided to wrap was never after the period and opening bracket of the ref but seemed to always happen between the word "at" and the 00:36 time stamp that followed.

Seems like a css thing to me but I'm not up on the latest dealing with inline elements & no-break-before attributes to be honest. -- George Orwell III (talk) 03:38, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

For me the problem goes away if I make the text larger or smaller. But then it might happen somewhere else. I think I've seen it elsewhere. I think I have my Windows font size set at 125%, if that could matter. Bubba73 03:57, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

This is one of those things that has come up previously; there's something in the archives of this page (such as Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)/Archive 125#Superscript numbers are going onto the next line of text). The point at which wrapping occurs (and the decision to wrap) varies a great deal. Factors that influence it (some of which were mantioned above) include: physical screen resolution; operating system; installed fonts; browser; window sizing; zoom level; style sheets; page layout. The only ones we can exercise any control over are the last two; and trying to get it "right" for one user may well get it "wrong" for others. We try to satisfy the majority, but can never achieve universal success. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:35, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Help:Reference display customization has two methods for resolving this. Looks like IE 8+ should support the before pseudo-element. --  Gadget850 13:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

An "Allegiance to" parameter in Template:Infobox war faction

Sorry but this is another question relating to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It relates to groups like Ansar Bait al-Maqdis that have declared allegiance to ISIL but which are marked as being part of the group which seems to be an overstatement of the fact but they are still more than allies. Can something be added such as "Allegiance to"? Thanks Gregkaye ✍♪ 07:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Really strange bug: Missing initial letter H

Today I came across a really weird bug. On all articles that start with the letter H, the H in the title is missing. Its place is empty instead. This happens in all browsers I've tested on my computer, but not on my mobile phone or my colleagues' computers. Does anyone know why this is happening?

--Shandris 08:25, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not technical but like your colleagues, np here. I tried on Windows 7 to successfully load Hippopotamus onto Explorer 11. Chrome38.02125.111 (2014), and a 2014 version of Firefox. Gregkaye ✍♪ 10:23, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

@Shandris: Try running a virus checker. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:45, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

That's refreshingly strange. Something is "wonky", probably with either your system, or your account. Could you check if it happens both when logged in and logged out? If it only happens logged in, it has something to do with your personal stylesheets/js, otherwise, something with your system. We can try and minimize from there. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Could you save a copy of one of the pages on which you see the oddity (File > Save page as in most browsers) and upload it somewhere? Copying and pasting the raw HTML from within the file into something like PasteBin would be ideal. Reticulated Spline 12:18, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

I've done some investigating and it seems to have something to do with the font that is used for titles in Misplaced Pages - Linux Libertine. Strange though that it only occurs on my computer, regardless of the browser I'm using. @Redrose64 I don't think it has to do with a virus, my computer runs just fine. --Shandris 12:24, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps your computer has simply run out of "H"s in that font! More seriously I doubt it is virus related, though your computer will usually appear to run "just fine" even with several dozen viruses.

If you install/uninstall that font does the problem go away? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:00, 20 November 2014 (UTC).

There are many computer viruses; the number passed 1000 more than twenty years ago. Their effects are varied; some target just one kind of program, others look for data to corrupt. It might be that one has decided to hook itself into the page renderer of your browser, where it look for <h1>...</h1> elements where the first character is "H" and munges those. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:08, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Linux Libertine is the first font that we have defined for h1 elements. If it is installed on your computer, then that is the font that is used to render. If it's not, it takes the next font in line, which is Georgia. IMO the easiest way to check which font is actually used is in chrome, inspect element on the title element, then on the pane on the bottom right selected computed, and scroll all the way down to "Rendered fonts". That will show the font your browser is actually using to display. If that is Linux Libertine, and you're not using that font for anything else, I recommand uninstalling it; apparently there is brokenness there. If you remember where you got that font, it would be good to know. I'd like to be able to reproduce, and file a bug where the actual bug is (probably the font packaging, but I can't say for sure). 15:46, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

That is Georgia (no need to test). My first thought is that perhaps your Georgia font is corrupt, or is not rendered correctly. Is this Windows 7? It has a component called DirectWrite, which may have bugs. -- ] {{talk}} 16:21, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Transclusion

A now banned editor has set up a transclusion on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant page and consensus is that people want its length changed.

The article text that anchors (my word) the transclusion is {{:Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events}} but when I looked up Template:Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events all I got was an option to create a page. I hope there are no more transclusions for me to have to deal with but would appreciate instructions as to how to change the settings on this one. It is currently set to display 15 days worth of text. Looking at developments I'd aim for 5 days if its easily changeable. Otherwise 7 days covers the previous decision. Also the timeline article is a currently in request move procedure so I will also need to make changes if a change happens.

related discussion: Talk:Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant#Propose scrapping timeline from main article

Thanks Gregkaye ✍♪ 13:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

A colon right after the opening curly brackets ({{:...) indicates that not a template but a mainspace page is being transcluded. The code {{:Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events}} does not transclude Template:Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events, but the article Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events. See WP:TRANS#Basic syntax point 2. SiBr₄ (talk) 13:32, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Where there is a colon such as in {{:Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events}} then it transcludes the article, in this case Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events. That article has content wrapped in <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>, so only that content is transcluded. A more versatile way to do this is with . --  Gadget850 13:37, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

SiBr₄, Gadget850 Thank you I will raise all this at the ISIL page. Resolved nicely! Gregkaye ✍♪ 16:19, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Extra tab for merge pages

I would like to add a tab (in Monobook skin) for the merge page (the url would be https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:MergeHistory&target={{urlencode:{{FULLPAGENAME}}}}) before the Twinkle tabs. How can I do it? (I assume it would be some relatively simple javascript, but I don't know.) עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages noticeboards
• Pages automatically checked for accidental language links