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user:GimmeBot and template:article history

See this thread on my talk. A while back, {{ArticleHistory}} was moved to {{article history}} to get rid of the CamelCase (there had been a redirect at the new title for several years). Apparently user:GimmeBot, which keeps this template up to date, can only detect ArticleHistory and not the spaced version. This should be a trivial fix: could any friendly neighbourhood bot operators (or anyone who knows where to find one) help the operator of this one out? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 00:40, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd be happy to help. If the bot op is willing, I could take a look at the code and identify the changes that would be needed. 28bytes (talk) 04:37, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

This is a behaviuoral issue of User:Thumperward, who declared that his move 'will not break one single script nor bot of any sort', and '"Prominent" Gimme may be, but his understanding of how this will affect his bot is most certainly incorrect.' Then proceeded to make edits such as [1] to further interfere with the bot. His previous actions on the page include a unilateral move of the page despite prior discussions. User:Thmpeward also failed to notify me of this. Gimmetoo (talk) 13:44, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

(watching) you were in a discussion with User:Thumperward, linked above, it notified of this (I saw it), don't you think you should watchlist a discussion that you started? - Move or no move, the bot seems not to have functioned for the name "article history" during the time that is was a redirect, that needs to be changed, right? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:55, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

A redirect that wasn't being used (21 times out of >30k, a couple of which at the time had just been added by Thmperward.) This issue is one facet of the long-term disruption of the FA process, and it's time that disruption stopped. Gimmetoo (talk) 14:07, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's keep it technical, please. I am not interested in the past of the FA process but in the future. I think that the present name is the better name for that future (I am not the only one, see the move discussion), and the bot should be able to handle it, - should have handled it in the past also, if you ask me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:39, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, a move discussion supported by a number of people involved in the disruption of the FA process. Gimmetoo (talk) 14:45, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Please let's keep this technical, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:26, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

There is no technical reason why one name is better than the other. The onus is on those who promised, at the time of the proposed name change, to facilitate that change. They have to follow through on their promises. It's not Gimmetrow's job to clean up the mess left by their broken promises. Raul654 (talk) 16:51, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

The bot, which has not run since the 19th, closes all FACs, FLCs, GANs, PRs and more while updating articlehistory. I wasn't aware that Gerda Arendt had technical expertise, and there is no reason for one name to be preferred over another, particularly when it interferes with bot code. Jack Merridew did have technical expertise; if this is yet another extension of long-standing disruption of the FA process, which has been spread to other FA pages, it needs to stop. Please restore the template so that the bot can continue closing content review pages; FAs promoted since the 19th have not been closed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:06, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Excuse me, Sandy, what gives you the idea that I have technical expertise? I have a reason to prefer one name, as you can read in the move discussion, and I don't like to be reverted when I use that name, which the template has, that's all. I expected the bot owner to simply change, but he said "no" and got us here. Now the technical question is how to make the bot accept all names the template has (more than two). I can't help because I have no technical expertise, but 28bytes and Frietjes offered help. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:30, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

What "gave me the idea" was your repeated reference to "technical"; thanks for the explanation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:00, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I think we can agree that this is a page for technical, not personal, matters? If I read your comments below, we don't agree (yet) that the bot has to accept all names for the template, regardless of what is currently the name and what are redirects. The present bot doesn't do that and therefore needs to be changed. Help has been offered, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 00:26, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandy, I appreciate the support, but there is nothing particular stopping the bot from running. The technical issue here involves the name ("article history") and the spacing ({{ article history }}) that Thumperward chooses to use. The specific consequence is my code doesn't happen to recognize that particular combination of stuff in the text of a talk page, which means it won't update the existing data under that form (and so would likely create a second AH). Of course, I could write more code on my end to deal with yet more options, but more code means more code to maintain, more branches where things can go wrong, and slower code (when it has to check more options on big talk pages). I'm not interested in doing that, for reasons I imagine you can guess. I opposed the name change in October as unnecessary (and other reasons). It went though, in part, on the formal promise of Thumperward to fix all issues. There are a couple other solutions to this problem, but the easiest one is to put the template back where it was before October. Gimmetoo (talk) 18:03, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Gimme ... so that the bot works correctly, what do we need to watch for? Only article talk pages with article history instead of ArticleHistory (space) will affect the bot? Who is preventing the original from being restored? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:18, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

There was a rough consensus here to move the template title, but the closer said, "if any technical glitches and the like are not easily fixable, then I will move the template back". So it could be re-opened for discussion in light of the potential difficulties. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 18:37, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Torchiest; that seems to sum it up, then. The new template title is causing problems, and it doesn't appear that thumperward is addressing them, so it should be moved back. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:01, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

IMHO "the long-term disruption of the FA process" and causes for those disruptions are perhaps a matter of perspective and perception. — Ched :  ?  15:32, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I came to add that I believe in the "FA process disruption narration" as in Santa, but you worded it better, Ched, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:54, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure there is a good faith explanation for why the same users perennially show up in the same discussions; I'm just not aware of what that explanation might be. In the meantime, a bot that is important to closings in all content review processes is stalled over a triviality, which seems disruptive to me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:09, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Just to be clear, it's not stalled. Gimmetoo (talk) 18:07, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Is there a particular reason why the code for the bot cannot be updated? is it binary only or something? according to the BRFA it says it is using Python which would be trivial to update. Frietjes (talk) 16:16, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Several people have offered to update the bot code but it seems the bot owner prefers to keep the outdated CamelCase of "ArticleHistory" instead of an updated "article history".

Although there've been charges that the update is part of "the long-term disruption of the FA process", this doesn't seem to be the case. Gimmetoo (the bot owner) has repeatedly said that the bot is operating just fine for all FA processes and "there is nothing particular stopping the bot from running" and it is not "stalled". It's just that the bot code doesn't happen to recognize "article history".

I admit I've been put off by the "ArticleHistory", so when I pass an article for GA, I don't mess with updating it on the article talk page. But whatever. I guess the bot owner has the last say. MathewTownsend (talk) 23:49, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

CamelCase (for anyone interested). Mathew, I've not seen charges that the update is part of ""the long-term disruption of the FA process"; one question was why this was posted to WT:TFAR, a page that has nothing to do with GimmeBot, yet this unrelated issue was tacked on there to a thread about Gimmetrow being appointed delegate-- that is the issue. Looking over the move request, it appears that most editors opposed it (unclear to me why it was closed as a Move), and I will leave it to you to characterize the small group that supported it. I don't see this per se as part of "the long-term disruption of the FA process" at all; Merridew had numerous run-ins with Gimmetrow, and that move discussion occurred before Gimmetrow was appointed delegate at TFAR. So, again, the question is why an unrelated issue was re-visited upon WP:TFAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:10, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

whot? See your comment above: "if this is yet another extension of long-standing disruption of the FA process, which has been spread to other FA pages, it needs to stop."[2] MathewTownsend (talk) 00:13, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Yep, spread to other FA pages is the issue that needs to stop; the long-term issue of Merridew/Gimmetrow is no longer, as Merridew is community banned, but that discussion occurred before his ban. WP:TFAR has nothing to do with GimmeBot. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:23, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Nor does Br'er Rabbit have anything to do with this discussion. Is there some reason why you feel compelled so often to mention his name?--Wehwalt (talk) 00:30, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Do you consider misrepresentation to be appropriate to civil and honest discourse? Gimmetoo (talk) 02:17, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

(ec) I would like to pose a different question. Why is Gimmetoo turning away the offers of help he has received from three coding experts who have offered to amend the bot? -- Dianna (talk) 00:16, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe Gimme has already explained the difficulties that would impose. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:21, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I've notified Jenks24 (talk · contribs) (the admin who closed what looks like a no clear consensus saying he would move it back if needed) of this discussion; Jenks24 hasn't edited since November 22, so another admin may be needed to move it back. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:21, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

No, Gimmitroo hasn't explained the difficulties, just "Of course, I could write more code on my end to deal with yet more options, but more code means more code to maintain, more branches where things can go wrong, and slower code (when it has to check more options on big talk pages)." By his reasoning (which doesn't make much sense and assumes infinite changes, when this is one measly change), nothing would ever get updated. Why has he turned down all help? MathewTownsend (talk) 00:31, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Three different men have offered to look over the code; why are their offers of help being declined? What difficulties would accepting their help impose? -- Dianna (talk) 00:32, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

As is clear from the presence of numerous non-technical type editors in this discussion, there are clear non-technical issues involved. This is a behavioural issue centred around editors who supported an ill-considered template move, and their friends who support and enable them in various ways. Gimmetoo (talk) 02:14, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

This reply does not address my question, which was, Why do you not accept the help of the technical experts (Chris, 28bytes, and Frietjes) who have offered to help you go over the script and update it? This would be a Good Thing, and an example of collaboration that non-admins could emulate. -- Dianna (talk) 02:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Too bad collaboration is not happening. Use:Thumpeward has done exactly nothing so far. Nor has anyone else who has defended him. That lack of action is one bit of evidence that this is not, primarily, a technical issue, but one of behaviour by Thmnperward and his frienda and enablers, which includes you. Gimmetoo (talk) 03:17, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to make sure the situation is clear. There are two possible solutions to the problem:

1. undo the template move
2. change the bot's code to handle the new template name

Wouldn't the code change be a matter of having it look for another variation of the template name? Is the bot doing separate searches for each variation right now? Or does it do a case insensitive search? In the former case, it would increase the search time by, I think, 33%? If the latter, searching for spaced version would double the search time. Is that a significant problem in either case? —Torchiest ^talk_edits 03:31, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, cut the nonsense. Anyone with enough technical know-how to write a regex to parse "{{ArticleHistory}}" can tweak it to be case-insensitive and eat the space in the middle. (And it should be dealing with leading and trailing spaces anyway; it's silly to have a bot that breaks because someone fat-fingers and types "{{ Article History}}" by mistake.

This is, as stated above, primarily a social issue: Thumperward wanted the template moved to get rid of CamelCase, Gimmetoo wanted it to stay where it is to avoid changing the bot. (This ties in to the greater "I'm from FAC, we're under attack, you can't make us change anything" partisan foodfight.) I don't feel terribly strongly about how the issue resolves; moving templates just to regularize the case seems like useless makework. On the other hand, this appears to be an attempt to overturn the results of a move by exaggerating the technical difficulties of coping with it. If Gimmetoo doesn't want to change his bot, then he should file to have the template moved back (and the redirect deleted) on those grounds, rather than pretending that this is some immense technical difficulty. Choess (talk) 06:16, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

of course you are correct that the actual code change is a non-issue to anyone with even a small amount of technical ability. (btw, this is also why the "offers to help" are meaningless). however, anyone with any technical experience also knows that writing the code is the smallest part of it, practically negligible. it's not enough to write code - you have to test it and maintain it, and for every future change or enhancement of the bot it means more test cases and more noise. this is not in itself unsurmountable obstacle, and if there was a good reason that requires such a change it's definitely reasonable to expect the bot maintainer to do it. the point here is that the bot maintainer does not think there really is any good reason for this extra work to be dropped on him, and i must admit, after superficially going over the move deliberation, i did not see any reason for this move other than "that's the way i like it". personally i do not care what the template is named (not crazy about camecase myself, but as far as i know it's not against the law of any jurisdiction i ever heard of), but i can definitely sympathize with a bot author/operator not willing to engage in busywork created by other people's whims, with nary a good reason. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 06:43, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Both the "harm" done by leaving the template name in camel case and the additional complexity required to parse the new title seem very trivial. What I dislike here is the notion that a bot operator can unilaterally overturn a community decision simply by being obstinate, a behavior that's rewarded altogether too much around here. Now, the original move was a very weak example of consensus (to put the best possible face on it), and I think it would be reasonable to "re-run" the discussion with a broader audience; that is, under the original assumption that the template should stay at "ArticleHistory" unless there's a consensus to move it. There should also be greater clarity as to what parties are and aren't willing to do; e.g., I read Thumperward's promise to fix things as implicitly assuming that Gimmetoo would cooperate at least to the extent of adding "article history" to this conditional; Gimmetoo seems to have interpreted it as a promise to magically fix his bot even if he obstructed any attempts to fulfill the promise. I think if it was clear how much disruption this would cause, it would be much more difficult to generate a consensus for moving away from camel case. Choess (talk) 09:34, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

My understanding is the following: Template:Article history existed since August 2010, the bot has to handle that name (and its lowercase version) also, NO MATTER what the actual template name is. Too simple? Help has been offered. It's not Thumperward whose action is required, but the "bot op" (also termed "bot owner"), --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:45, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Gerda, I'm struggling to understand how you could produce that diff without having seen this one immediately following, where the name was moved back to "ArticleHistory" after an RM failed. That does suggest to me that the path of least resistance might be to update the bot, rather than refighting an RM every year or two. The benefits of moving still seem very small, though. Choess (talk) 15:42, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm also struggling to understand how Gerda came up with that history on the template. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I seem to have a language problem, trying again: the bot has to handle both names (and the other redirects), it has nothing to do with a move. The bot should have handled both names since 2010, it's about time that it gets done. That's what you recommend as well, right? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:52, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The difference is that the version with the space in the name {{article history}} was not used until the last few months, so the bot didn't have to handle it. The redirect existed, but no articles were using that version of the template yet. It's only in the last few months that the spaced version has been inserted into talk pages, and it has been discovered that the bot doesn't process them. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 16:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can tell the bot has to be able to handle all existing names, template name and redirects (6 in the list), independent of whether they are used or not, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

So, by your logic, if folks keep creating new names, based on weak or no consensus, bot operators are forced to do the work to maintain the bot to account for community whim, even when they were part of designing the original name and template that was in use without problem for years until a small group decided they wanted a space and a capital letter change? Is that a reasonable demand to place on all bot writers? When the template and the bot were simultaneously designed, there was one name. Who is reponsible for getting that up to six, and why should bot writers have to accomodate that whim? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:39, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. Either the bot handles the names or they should be deleted. So long as the names exist, there is the possibility for them to be used. Gimmetoo is under no obligation to update their bot (we're all volunteers, no one is required to do anything). However, should they continue to refuse, someone else can write a new bot and get it approved at BRFA (requires someone willing). A new bot could completely replace GimmeBot (except task 3, which is unrelated), or simply clean up the talk pages where GimmeBot adds a second article history template. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 17:25, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Scary part is, I suspect that you really believe what you're saying. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I didn't say it would be easy (it would be easier if the bot's code were available). Nor did I say it would be desirable – it is rather overkill for something so trivial. If you're referring to my idea for one bot to clean-up after another bot, on reflection I think that was rather silly, so I've struck it out. For now, I think the template should be moved back, then the redirects not recognised by the bot should be deleted (changing any existing uses of them back to ArticleHistory). The point I was trying to make was if anyone really cares enough about the template's name, then they should be prepared to do the work to replace the bot if they cannot convince Gimmetoo to change their bot. I'll add to that the point you make below: Anyone trying to do this needs to understand all the work GimmeBot does, to be sure they get it right. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:22, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Some history of the articlehistory

Talk page clutter

Perhaps some accurate history will help with some of the misstatements and misconceptions on this page: from The Signpost, Taming talk page clutter. I hope everyone advocating that a bot that has done enormous amounts of productive grunt work for five or six years, without issues, reads that piece of history before advocating, "oh, someone else can just knock out a bot and do the work". As with all bot work, every content review process on Wikipedia has come to depend on something that didn't exist before Gimmetrow and two others designed the template, and the bot that comes through and records your peer review, GAN, FAC, etc in a format that didn't exist until Gimme, Dr pda and Raul654 set it up. I'm concerned about who is really going to do the work if this assault on GimmeBot for the sake of a space and a capital letter, when nothing was broken before, succeeds.

Way back in 2007, talk pages looked like the image on the left. Almost all of them looked like that, throughout Wikipedia. Raul654, Dr pda, Gimmetrow, Maralia and I got together to try to solve cluttered Featured article talk pages, the template was designed, and Gimmetrow worked through Every Single Featured Article and Former Featured Article on Wikipedia to make (for example) that talk page look like this. Then he moved on to GAs. Then to Peer reviews. Then to every other content review process like Featured Lists, Sounds, whatever, and more. Since 2007-- more than five years-- Gimmetrow and Gimmebot have been responsible for making sure that every single article touched by a content review process has a clutter-free history on its talk page. Folks take this for granted now ... a content review process happens, and no editor has to do a thing to get it added to article milestones. Gimme does it all, and has, singlehandedly as far as I know, for every single process for over five years. Why anyone is mentioning anything about "since 2010" is a mystery to me: Raul654, Gimmetrow and Dr pda designed the articlehistory template in 2007 and Gimmebot then began the maintenance. It started out as only for Featured Articles, but Gimmebot now does Everything.

FACT: Gimmetrow was part of the team that designed the template to begin with and gave it its original name. Then he wrote the bot to maintain it. Then he did the maintenance on not only FAs, but every content review process on Wikipedia for about five years.

Along comes someone years later, when there have been no problems, who decides the template needs a name change, creating work for Gimme, for all the reason of one space and one capital letter. And then the discussion is positioned as if Gimme is the one being difficult or obstinate or operating on a whim!!

Choess said: What I dislike here is the notion that a bot operator can unilaterally overturn a community decision simply by being obstinate, ... but that is not the case at all. GimmeBot was functioning fine for about five years, using the name that was used when the bot and the template were simultaneously developed, until someone else decided a template name needed to change, and then Gimme should do the work to satisfy that whim based on a Move Request that was closed on very weak consensus. There is no situation here of a bot operator being obstinate and overlooking great community consensus. The bot operator was part of the original design of the template, and then a very small group decided to make him do more work for a capital letter and a space.

IMO, the most sensible post on the page was when Kibod said: anyone with any technical experience also knows that writing the code is the smallest part of it, practically negligible. it's not enough to write code - you have to test it and maintain it, and for every future change or enhancement of the bot it means more test cases and more noise. this is not in itself unsurmountable obstacle, and if there was a good reason that requires such a change it's definitely reasonable to expect the bot maintainer to do it. the point here is that the bot maintainer does not think there really is any good reason for this extra work to be dropped on him, and i must admit, after superficially going over the move deliberation, i did not see any reason for this move other than "that's the way i like it". personally i do not care what the template is named (not crazy about camecase myself, but as far as i know it's not against the law of any jurisdiction i ever heard of), but i can definitely sympathize with a bot author/operator not willing to engage in busywork created by other people's whims, with nary a good reason. That is accurate. Someone (with Support from another who had long-standing issues with Gimme) wanted the name changed, no matter that there wasn't really a problem, no matter that this meant extra work for Gimme.

And Jenks24 said, when closing a move request on very weak consensus, including support from a now-banned prolific sockmaster who was the subject of numerous ANI reports where he followed Gimmetrow to article after article and hounded him, if any technical glitches and the like are not easily fixable, then I will move the template back. No one is fixing this, and in fact, even when the bot is operating without issue, we have unnecessary reverts of the bot when there was nothing wrong with what the bot installed.

Jenks said he would move it back; Jenks isn't editing. The notions expressed here about who is being obstinate, and who wants to create work for someone else based on a whim, are wrong. One person has done all of this work for five years, and done it well, to the point that most editors have no recollection of the work "they" used to have to do on talk pages to figure out what content review processes had been engaged. Then a very small group of people decided they wanted to change a name, consensus was weak, regardless of the work that would create for the bot operator. The idea that, oh, let someone else write a new bot in accordance with the new name ... right, and we are going to trust that that person has any idea of all of the work that Gimme does in closing every single content review process on Wikipedia, and has done that unfailingly for over five years, without mistake, and is going to keep at it as Gimme has for another five years? The solution is simple: move it back. Let Gimme keep doing what he has done well since he and Dr pda designed the template, and let us show some appreciation and respect for the work involved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:55, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for a diligent search, but find it scary or not, (repeating:) the bot has to support all valid names, that means, even if it is moved back, the bot has to support "article history" as a redirect, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:17, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean about "diligent search"; a good deal of the history of the development of the template and the bot happened on my talk page, and I still have some memory even if growin' old ain't for sissies. Do you think bot operators should have to do the work to support persons reverting a functioning bot creating functioning articlehistories to names of their personal choice which are very rare and based on very weak consensus? I agree with the person above who said all of these other names should just be deleted; let the bot operator code for one name only. Don't let community whim drive bot operators to endless testing, coding, tweaking, writing. It's such a disrespectful way to treat the folks who keep this place running. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:34, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry if you see lack of respect. I see six redirects that have to be handled, and they would need to be deleted to not do it, that means delete discussions first. Interesting topic on Christmas Eve, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:26, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Discussion of history of history

Six of the eleven templates on the example talk page are wikiproject templates, which have nothing at all to do with Gimmebot. Wikiproject templates are nowadays tied together with a {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. Only two of the templates on the sample page would be the sort of thing managed by Gimmebot.

SandyGeorgia, once again you are making vague accusations that people are editing on behalf of and at the direction of a banned user. This is a very serious accusation. If you have some proof that this is happening, you need to present it at one of the appropriate noticeboards or talk to one of the administrators who is most familiar with the case such as Elen or Courcelles or NYBrad. In the meantime, dropping this unsubstantiated accusation into conversation on talk pages is not an appropriate thing for you to be doing, and I politely request that you stop. -- Dianna (talk) 15:40, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad you read the article to see that, in that example yes, about half of the templates are related to another template we were simultaneously developing-- don't know what your point is on that, unless to show the broad collaboration that existed. I presume you're capable of abstraction and can understand what talk pages would look like today if every content review process added a separate template, even if the example we used when writing the Dispatch contained some of both.

Diannaa, once again you are making inaccurate accusations where you are reading things even though I didn't write them. This is a very serious accusation. If you have some proof that this is happening, please point out the specific phrase in my post above that troubles you. That now-banned Merridew and his many socks had a long-standing history with Gimmetrow across many pages is well documented in archives everywhere, including various ANIs, that is relevant, and my post above contains no "vague accusations that people are editing on behalf of and at the direction of a banned user", although it is curious that you read that into my post. In the meantime, dropping this unsubstantiated accusation into conversation on talk pages is not an appropriate thing for you to be doing, and I politely request that you stop.

The move request was closed with a qualifying statement from the closing admin based on roughly an equal number of supports and opposes, More significantly, considering that it is difficult to imagine any user who has not encountered the articlehistory template on talk, only eight supports showed up; is that not a very small consensus for a move that will create unnecessary work for a bot operator on a template that was working fine for years? Diannaa, you cannot continue to read things into my posts that aren't there; put up or shut up. If you don't point out which part of my statement you are misreading, I've no way to know what you misunderstand or what needs fixin'. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:21, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

The accusation is implied; that's why I used the word "vague". I will post further on your talk page since this is off-topic. -- Dianna (talk) 18:19, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

And since you are the one who took it off-topic here, it isn't welcome on my talk, and responses will be here. I asked you to point out where your accusations reside in the text I wrote. Put up or shut up; if you're reading text I'm not writing that is not my problem. Do you have something to say on the substance of the matter or are you just here to make accusations at me that result in stalling discussions of the substance of the issue? I started a fresh section here to start over focusing on history; look where you went with it. The accusation is implied when I didn't write what you're reading --> failure to AGF. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:33, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Diannaa, you don't get to make stuff up (your "implied" = your failure to either read or AGF or just plain old continuing old disputes instead of focusing on the history of the template, per the new section I started), and then spread it around. Answering the parts of my post above you didn't understand belongs here where you started it. There is no answer to your post, because it contains nothing but what you cooked up in your imagination: that is, what you decided to read between the lines. I have no indication whatsoever that "all of the people" who were in favor of moving the template were part of anything. Nor did I mention anything about "damaging the FA process" in my post above: you made that up, too. And then you, with the usual weak argument, start bringing in old posts from other parts of discussions, some on other pages, to justify your claim about what I'm saying when I try to restart a discussion. No, I can't see what you see, because my mind doesn't seem to work the way your mind works. What I do know is that the age-old issues that Merridew had with Gimmetrow are well documented, and it is not surprising that he would support something that would make Gimme's work harder. Stop bringing in old disputes; stop spreading disputes around to multiple pages; stop reading between the lines. Just Stop. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:03, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Re the statement by SandyGeorgia "it is difficult to imagine any user who has not encountered the articlehistory template on talk, only eight supports showed up" - yes, many users who have viewed a talk page will have seen the {{ArticleHistory}} at the top; but that doesn't mean that they have an opinion on what it's called. I suspect that the only ones who were aware that there was a move proposal were those that had the template on their watchlists, plus those who periodically check WP:RM.

I fall into the former camp - as may be verified by my contributions to other threads at Template talk:ArticleHistory - but I did not offer either support or oppose because I didn't consider it important enough to stick my oar in. I'm sure that I wasn't the only neutral who didn't have an opinion on what it's called. Perhaps if Gimmetoo had actually stated "this will break GimmeBot", instead of it being implied (not explicitly stated) by Rschen7754, some of us might have paid more attention. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:26, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I feel confident that if we can just get the distractions to stop, and keep the discussion here instead of moving all over the Wiki and involving old disputes (I originally encountered this on a page that has nothing to do with Gimmebot-- an irritation which impacted my first entries here), the bot and technical folk here who are neutral and previously uninvolved (assuming there are some who haven't been impacted by the dispute spread) will come up with a reasonable solution that encompasses all concerns. I just wanted to present the history, which seems to be misunderstood. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:38, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

See below: *Snotbot (or "Teh Dramahz break the wiki") Is there a reason while bot owners don't disclosed their code to the community? This leaves the community helpless if the bot owner leaves or refuses to cooperate, seems to me. MathewTownsend (talk) 15:39, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Bot needs to handle valid names

My understanding is that the name of the template and six valid redirects have to be supported by the bot, whatever the current name is, - the move history seems not relevant to that. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:10, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I would certainly say that pretty much everyone here agrees that situations where the GimmeBot code is confused by encountering names of the history template that it does not recognise, should be avoided. Therefore it would seem sensible that if the proponents of the 'status quo' ({{ArticleHistory}}) do not wish to see the bot's functionality expanded to recognise the alternative names, they should list them at RfD. The fact that they are/were unused is irrelevant, indeed a stronger reason to RfD them while it is still easy to do so. Happy‑melon 14:02, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Happy Melon. The problem is that one of the names that the bot does not recognise is the template's current name, {{Article history}}. In fact the only version that the bot does recognise is Gimmetoo's preferred version, {ArticleHistory}. There's also the following additional redirects, none of which are currently supported, and according to Gimmetoo's remarks above, none of them have ever been supported:

• T:AH - created April 2007
• Template:Article History - created May 2009
• Template:Article milestones - created October 2008
• Template:Articlehistory - created February 2007
• Template:Articlemilestones - created October 2008

I am pretty sure that the status quo doesn't have any proponents; since the template is at one name, and the bot only recognises a different name, and the bot owner has declined to modify his script, we are left with a non-functional system. -- Dianna (talk) 15:53, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'm familiar with the situation, I had some involvement in the migration to ArticleHistory myself (although a relatively minor role). I think the term "status quo" is too vague, I meant the 'historically consistent' status of the template being located at Template:ArticleHistory and none of its redirects (including Template:Article history) being supported, not the status at this precise moment. The question of whether the actual template code lives at the camel-case or non-camel-case version is separate to the question of whether the other 'spellings' should be valid template names; the fact that there are (or at least could be) instances of the template that the GimmeBot code does not recognise is not a new problem. Listing the other redirects at RfD would prompt a structured discussion that would be helpful for resolving the impasse here: if the redirects are deleted it would provide support for Gimmetrow's argument that there should be a minimum of variation in the template name, while if they are kept it would provide support for the argument that the bot should support multiple names. At the moment this discussion is not really being productive, but is perpetuating a completely broken middle ground which benefits no one at all. Happy‑melon 16:36, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The discussion has descended into a poo fight. Me finger is suffering severe 'MouseWheelChaffe'.

• 'CamelCase' is a symbol. 'Camel Case' is two words separated by white-space.
• In terms of technical Markup, I would rather read, write, and parse symbols. My eye see's 'CamelCase' as a symbol, where as I must read and parse 'Camel Case'. It is the same for a script bot. For a script bot, accurate parsing of 'Camel Case' adds SUBSTANTIALLY to the script's computing load.
• Under_Scores_In_Symbols sux. They are worse than whitspace, and should be banned to (that_place_which_dare_not_be_named).

Mark Bestland (talk) 04:13, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I have not read absolutely all of the above, but let me see if I got most of the idea.

• There is/was a bot that works/ed fine for some years
• Some users changed a template name
• Changing that name made the said bot to stop work properly
• The former users, want the bot owner to change the bot's code to conform to their change
• The later user, and bot owner, wants the template name to be changed back

That's it? If so I'd say both sides are right and wrong. If the name change was valid according to WP policies, the bot owner has no right to demand it to be reversed to keep their bot working; they either change the bot or give it up. OTOH the 'name changers' can not force the bot owner to change its code, it is not their bot. If they want the new name, and they can not convince the bot owner to change it, the either carry on without a bot or code their own and better bot.

Of course, the comunity should observe, consider how disruptive to WP is the behaviour of ALL the involved editors, and act accordingly - Nabla (talk) 16:22, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

To answer your post directly is to make this subsection basically a continuation of the discussion above, while I think Gerda meant it to be a different line. To continue more in that vein than the 'standard' (and IMO not very productive) line, the situation as I see it is:

1. There is a bot that worked fine for some years managing {{ArticleHistory}}
2. {{ArticleHistory}} has six redirects which the bot code does not handle; if the template is created on a page using one of the redirects, on editing the bot creates a duplicate template. Substantial problems have thus far been avoided because the redirects were almost completely unused.
3. As a result of a now-contested/disputed process, the template was moved so that one of the unsupported names ({{article history}} is now preferred. Incidents of the bot producing duplicate templates will now increase.
4. The former users, want the bot owner to change the bot's code to conform to their change
5. The later user, and bot owner, wants the template name to be changed back

There seems to be a complete impasse over which of #4 or #5 is the 'right' course of action, but my (and Gerda's) point is that the actual problem we are encountering is not new and is not caused by this template move, only highlighted by it. As such the 'platform' of the "move the template back" camp is incomplete: for their argument to be cohesive it should also include removing these unsupported redirects, not merely discouraging their use. If I go and find a talkpage and add the template to it using one of the unsupported redirects, I am not being disruptive but I am requiring work to be done in order for the 'status quo' to continue to function correctly, either that the bot code be updated, or that the wikitext be updated to work with the existing bot code. The "it's less work and more maintainable to keep things as they are" argument only holds water if it involves removing the redirects which are sources of good-faith disruption to the existing process. As such neither camp has the right to claim that they need to do nothing for their version of the system to work. So why has no one from the "move the template back" camp sent these redirects to RfD? Happy‑melon 18:14, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

You and Dianna above gave a good summary. I don't understand the function of the redirects (none of them new), but think it should be easy for the bot to just handle them all. I think sending redirect ArticleHistory to RfD would take things too far, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:33, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy-melon, sorry for possibly breaking the intended flow, I quite simply wrote "at the bottom". I don't know about RfD'ing or not RfD'ing anything, or whatever. But I think it is not to be expected that a _voluntary_ programmer changes a bot anytime some voting decides to change it. The community can not expect that. That said, yes it looks like there is a need for a bot to do the job, but it clearly is up to the people that changed something to guarantee that the change works, makes no sense to try to force others to finish up one's job, against their will (even if it does not look like a huge change, as this one does not)- Nabla (talk) 22:00, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm a stalwart proponent of WP:NOTCOMPULSORY etc: indeed no one is required to proactively do anything. The point is that the change under discussion is not the cause of these problems, so claims that it's solely up to the pro-change supporters to "finish the job" are disingenuous: the job has always been unfinished, and both sides have a step to take to complete it in their preferred fashion. Happy‑melon 22:18, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't see "sides", I see that, beginning in 2007, various names were around that should be accepted. The last move (from one of them to another of them, not to a new one) didn't change that at all, imo, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:46, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, if nothing caused no problem... what's the discussion about? May someone suggest a actionable solution (one that does not require anyone _else_ to act)? - Nabla (talk) 09:45, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Either the template is moved back, or the bot is changed. (short term solution: the name of the template is changed in the bot. long-term solution: the bot is told to distinguish template redirects and follow them to the real template, permanent solution: the bot owner releases the code and anyone can make the change).

Actionable solution? Sure, just move the template back to the old name..... --Enric Naval (talk) 10:40, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Repeating again (Lord, give me patience): the move of the template has nothing to do with the "wish" that the bot may handle all names. The present name was a redirect since 2010 and should have been handled all this time, a move back wouldn't help, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:46, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

your "lord give me patience" comment is simultaneously condescending and ironic, as it seems to me that _you_ are the one taxing the community patience. you seem to think you can make demands on other people's actions ("The bot *should* do this and the bot *should* do that). IMO, this is not the case. anyone can create redirects to any article and to any template anytime they want, without any review process. true, these redirects may be subject to deletion, but the idea that merely by creating yet-another-redirect-to-the-template one can somehow "oblige" the bot operator to do something is just ridiculous. it really does not matter how long these redirects have existed - the bot operator is not obliged to take them into account ten seconds or ten years after they are created. of course, one can politely _ask_ the bot operator to take these redirects into account, an maybe it would even be nice of him if he did, but it seem you somehow presume you can actually *demand* it. if you believe that by not taking the redirects into account the bot is actually doing more harm than good, you can request for the bot to cease operating, but this is the limit of what you can *demand*.

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 16:45, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Peace is one of my favourite words, thank you! (English is not my first language, I didn't know that "should" translates to "demand", - what I mean is "wish".) Needless to say, we are here AFTER I asked the bot owner (politely, at least I thought so), to handle the former redirect which is at present the name, and he said no. It was not me who brought it here ;) He could have simply said yes, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:28, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

twisi, claiming over and over and over and over that something "should" happen, and adding the "lord give me patience" bit is _exactly_ "demanding".

seeing that you realize that the bot operator said "no", please let me ask: what is the point of all this?

it is my understanding that the community can do one of 3 things (here "it" means "the community"):

1. it can leave things as they are, i.e., the bot place {{ArticleHistory}} in talk pages, which happens to be a redirect, while ignoring all the other redirects to the template, including the current template name.
2. it can revert the template name change, and try to retire the dysfunctional redirects (some of them may not need to be retired, e.g., T:AH is meant as a shortcut, and was never intended to be used instead of the template itself)
3. it can tell the operator to cease running the bot.

what it *can't* do is force the bot operator do something they choose not to do.

from the discussion so far, it seems that the broad consensus is that choosing option #3 would be asinine. many people seem to think that option #1 is unacceptable.

so bottom line: what is the point of all this?

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:58, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Different backround color

I took the liberty of injecting this solution at the top of the article.

It would be easiest for this person to adjust his display brightness, which if lowered a bit, will be a permanent and manageable solution. Display brightness would apply at all times without having to code/configure applications.

Windows has a display brightness slider control somewhere in the control panel, you may have to dig for it, either in mobility settings, power settings, or somewhere else in the control panel. Not sure about the Mac or Linux Boxen.

I too have problems with bright white.--Mark Bestland (talk) 04:39, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello Village Pump Technical- I am writing to see what can be done regarding the white colored backround that is everpresent on Wikipedia. For many of us out here in cyberland we have extreme photosensitivity and this white backround quite literally feels like being stabbed in the eyes over and over. Is there any setting or preference that can be turned on, modified, changed, etc that would allow for the changing of the backround color? Thanks so much. A loyal reader. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.9.111 (talk) 00:32, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

if you have some sensitivity that makes the regular wikipedia unpleasant, you could register, and then edit your own "vector.css" page (Special:Mypage/vector.css). the would only affect the way wikipedia looks for you when you are logged in - whenever reading articles without logging in you will still see it like everyone else.

here is in example of css that would make wikipedia appear with disgusting brownish-oink or pinkish-brown background. you can play with the colors until you find something which sooth both your sensitivity and the readability of different elements (regular text, links, redlinks etc.):

body {
background-color: rgb(157, 137, 110); 
}

.catlinks,
div.vectorTabs li.selected, div.vectorTabs li.selected a, div.vectorTabs li.selected a:visited,
div.vectorTabs ul li,
div#mw-head-base,
div#mw-head,
div#mw-page-base,
div#content { background-color: transparent; }

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 02:17, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I honestly have no idea what you mean by vector, registering, whatever. Is it supposed to be that hard? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.9.111 (talk) 06:02, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

One of the benefits of having an account on Wikipedia is that you can give yourself your own custom CSS stylesheet, or webpage layout design. If you register an account here, this allows you to add the code that kipod posted to your custom CSS page, located at User:(insert your username)/vector.css. That code will set your background to a much less harsh color. (X! · talk)  · @300  ·  06:11, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Vector is one of several skins that Wikipedia provides. For users who are not logged in, it is the only one available for normal use (although you can try out others - for example, this page looks like this when viewed in the MonoBook skin); and for users who registered since about May 2010, Vector is the default, but may be altered.

But you need not worry about whether you're using Vector or not; once you have registered an account (and are logged in), go to this page, paste in the code shown above, and save it. The link that I have just given will work whatever your login name is, and also regardless of skin. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:40, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry but that's just too complicated. For being the most popular website on the internet can't wikipedia make it a lot simpler to do this? It's a miracle I got to this technical support page. Now you want me to become a programmer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.9.111 (talk) 18:41, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

To summarise: in order to customise the appearance of Wikipedia, you need to register an account. If you don't do that, you can't choose a different background colour, because IP addresses like 24.61.9.111 cannot be customised.

I wiil make this offer: if you do register an account, log in and then post here requesting that somebody set up your account so that all the page backgrounds become  this colour  - or any other colour that you like - I will gladly do that as soon as I can. But I cannot do that without knowing what name you have registered under.

Please bear in mind that I will not be available on 25 December, 31 December to 1 January, or between 23:00 and 11:00 (British time) any day. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:59, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Another option: Rather than using CSS, you can get green text on a black background by creating an account, then setting just two options in Preferences: First, set Preferences → Appearance → Skin = MonoBook, then scroll down to put a check next to Preferences → Gadgets → Appearance = Use a black background with green text. Click the Save button at the end of the page to save your changes. Before you can set any preferences, you must first create your account (click the link and follow the instructions).

If you don't want to create an account, look through the settings in your web browser for an option to always use your preferred colours. The exact name and location of this option depends on your browser. This will affect all websites you visit, of course. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:44, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

If you're using Firefox, you can also try the Stylish extension (try googling it), which will work regardless of whether you register and log in. More generally, you may wish to look into a solution that dims the display on your PC more generally. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 15:43, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Closing slashes

Unresolved

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese/ (for example; with a closing slash; see Cheese/) returns a 404 response and invites the user to create a new article. Should we not redirect such URLs to the version without the closing slash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese)? Do we have any articles where the closing slash is a significant part of the article name, and how could we cater for such a small minority of cases? Is this perhaps something for MediaWiki, via Bugzilla? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:16, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the benefit; /Cheese is a page, while /Cheese/ is a directory. I don't see any other webpages ending with "/index.html/". — Edokter (talk) — 19:18, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see what "/index.html/" has to do with this, as none of our article titles end in ".html"; nor why /Cheese/ has to be a directory. There are a good many sites where /foo/ and /foo are synonyms. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:23, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Examining the web logs for such cases, to determine the frequency with which people try to use them, might be an idea. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:28, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

We have 171 titles in namespace 0 (the main encyclopedia) ending with a forward-slash (/). Of these, 55 have corresponding titles with no slash at the end. In most cases the slash-less title is the target of a redirect from the slashed one (for example James Clerk Maxwell/ → James Clerk Maxwell), although some pairs are distinct (for example Apple_Monitor_/// / Apple_Monitor_///, F/ / F, Home/ / Home). Nothing that couldn't be worked around if the logs show a compelling need for this change. - TB (talk) 22:55, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. F/ is a redirect to F-number, with nothing linking to it (except this page!). Home/ is a pseudonym for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page - again, with no other links than this page; Home already has a hatnote for that. Apple Monitor /// could be dealt with by a hatnote on Apple Monitor II. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:15, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Despite being 404, Cheese/ has been viewed 27 times in the last 90 days; not counting today. Barack_Obama/ has been viewed 504 times in the last 90 days. Internet/ has been viewed 4209 times in the last 90 days. I think there's an issue here which we can resolve to the significant benefit of our readers, with a simple(ish!) server config change. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:21, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

When you go to a redlink like Thing (comics (note the unclosed parenthesis), a helpful "Did you mean" message directs you to Thing (comics). (Your language in preferences must be set to English for this to work.) Something similar could be done if removing the final character (regardless of what it is) results in a valid page name. The wikicode that generates the current "did you mean" is at MediaWiki:Newarticletext and Template:No article text. Changes would require an admin, of course. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

bugzilla:3368 is about this. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:47, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Resolved as "won't fix"; but that's for MediaWiki, an doesn't prevent us from applying a solution at en.Wikipedia (or Wikipedia) Level. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:58, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Though similar, that's not the same issue, being a typo, rather than a URL our users might reasonably expect to work. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:58, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

So, where now? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:45, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Translation issue for Template:Pp-meta

Hello.

I have a problem with translating the template above to the Malay Wikipedia here: ms:Templat:Pp-meta. Seems that the coding for the template won't work in the Malay Wikipedia. The full discussion is found at my talk page here: User talk:Pizza1016#Notification Pizza1016 (talk | contribs | uploads | logs) 01:12, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I suspect the issue may be the simple fact that the Malay template page is not protected. The template is designed to only show up when the page is actually protected, otherwise it shows nothing and categorizes the page into Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates—and the Malay template page itself is in that category because the category is not in noinclude tags (which there's no need for on the English version because the template is protected and thus doesn't trigger the category here). Simply protecting the template page (even semi-protection) will likely cause the template to come out of hiding. jcgoble3 (talk) 02:38, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I shall preview it on a protected page. Pizza1016 (talk | contribs | uploads | logs) 15:52, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Dead horse

Sorry to keep beating the proverbial deceased equid, but my complaint about the bug in the B function has not been addressed, except for one other editor confirming that it is a bug. To see what I mean, just click on the B and see what you get: five single quotes. Kdammers (talk) 06:59, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

You didn't say which B you click but a reply at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 40#Bold mark-up found that it happens for the B in the box added by wikEd. wikEd is disabled by default and can only be enabled by registered users. The B in the default toolbar works fine. wikEd bugs belong at User talk:Cacycle/wikEd. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:49, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for not specifying, but I only see on B' when I'm editing, as no. As I stated and another editor confirmed, does not work fine. It prints out five squotes when it is clicked on unless a text has already been selected. Kdammers (talk) 07:45, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The box made by wikEd is shown at File:WikEd screenshot.png. Is that the one? I reported the wikEd bug at User talk:Cacycle/wikEd#B icon makes five instead of six apostrophes. I see you have also copied this section there. wikEd is maintained by Cacycle and enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. You get the default toolbar at Help:Edit toolbar if you log out. If the B works for you there then there is nothing more to do but wait for Cacycle to examine the bug. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:49, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you are saying. At Help:Edit toolbar, when I log out, I get a frozen page (i.e., buttons are inactive). The text there says, "If you click a button without selecting any text, sample text will be inserted at the cursor's position (like so: Bold text). " This is also not what happens. What happens to me is that the five squotes appear in a gray field in which I cannot type until clicking some-where or hitting the space bar. If I click in the gray area, to type some-thing, I have to add a squote to get bolding. Kdammers (talk) 05:11, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm trying to establish that your problem is only with the wikEd B but you don't know which B you click, so I linked to pages displaying an image of the wikEd B (File:WikEd screenshot.png) and the default B (Help:Edit toolbar which displays File:Advanced toolbar of vector skin.png). You are not supposed to edit the pages but only use the images to identify your B. Which image looks like the box where you click B? If you log out and edit any page then you should get a working B looking like the one in File:Advanced toolbar of vector skin.png. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:06, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I see. It is the former. I checked the latter, and it works properly. Also, when I edit on Simple English, it works properly. Thanks for looking into this. I hope the bug gets fixed. 202.179.19.10 (talk) 03:25, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Easy table editing

Is there a way to easily edit wikitables, such as add or remove a column without having to go thru every single row? Heck is there a Dreamweaver type deal for wiki editing? Please talkback me when you respond because I might forget to come back here. Thanks.--Metallurgist (talk) 13:50, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

This has been brought up before. Here's a quick summary of the previous discussion: The VisualEditor will eventually allow WYSIWYG editing of tables, but doesn't do it yet. Wikid77 mentioned some tools for using wikitables in MS Word and Excel, though I'm not sure where to find these tools. Such tools would probably be more useful for creating new tables than editing existing ones, since I'm not sure they would fully preserve existing wikicode when converting to MS Word then back again (round-trip format conversion). – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 14:49, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Some tools for doing this can be found at Wikipedia:Tools/Editing tools# Wikisyntax conversion utilities and the pages linked from there. Graham87 05:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like the answer is not yet, but soon. I thought I had read that there was a few years ago, but I guess not. That Visual Editor sounds like it will be great. I just rotated a table from like 25 columns to 25 rows and it took hours, but it certainly looks better now and will be easier to manage. It was overdue by 5 years (back then it wouldve been a bit easier too with less columns). Now I have to eliminate two columns from a table, which involves digging thru dozens of rows. Thanks for your help.--Metallurgist (talk) 02:45, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

List of people

I am working on list of people with various sortable columns which I would like to appear in alphabetic order by their last names. If I enter the names as, for example, "John Able", "Mary Baker", "Edward Charles", and "John Doe", then the list will sort by first name. Should I enter the names as "Able, John", "Baker, Mary", "Charles, Edward", and "Doe, John", or is there some hidden mark-up to use that will let the names be sorted by last name? Thanks! Location (talk) 15:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

See {{sort}}. E.g. {{sort|Able, John|John Able}} – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 15:22, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

See also {{Sortname}}. E.g. {{Sortname|John|Able}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:34, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks for the quick reply, guys! Location (talk) 15:46, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Feedback protection oddities

I had difficulty enabling feedback protection for 1272; see here for a permlink to the discussion (scroll down a little to 1272). Short version: feedback protection works inconsistently. Has anyone else seen this behavior? I'm thinking of doing a little testing and filing a bug report. Thanks, Mackensen (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Footnotes in templates

Hi, the template {{katakana table}} previously used an arcane and unfriendly footnote style, which I recently changed to the "<ref>" style. It is required that the footnotes in the table are expanded immediately beneath the table when the template is included in an article. To that end, a <references> section is included at the end of the template. However, it has become apparent that unless the template uses a unique "group" in its "<ref>" tags, the references/footnotes for the whole article up to that point are expanded beneath the table. This is not what is required: the references/footnotes for the main article need to be kept separate and expanded at the end of the article. At the moment, by luck rather than judgement, the template footnotes do indeed have a unique "group". However, I would prefer to get rid of this and have a plain numbering system (i.e. ^[1] rather than the current ^{[† 1]}), which I currently cannot see how to do. An additional problem is that the article Transcription into Japanese includes two tables, {{katakana table}} and {{katakana table extended}}, both with their own separate footnotes. If I update {{katakana table extended}} to also use the "<ref>" style, rather than the peculiar existing style, then presumably I will have to choose another unique "group" name, which is undesirable since the visual appearance of the footnotes should be the same in both tables. Can anyone advise on the recommended way to handle this? 86.130.66.65 (talk) 03:14, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

The groupnames showing in the reference link is inherent to how references work, see WP:REFGROUP. You could use "lower-alpha" as the groupname and have single letters in the ref labels. — Edokter (talk) — 12:45, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Or {{efn}} and {{notelist}} which do the same thing. You can use multiple instances if you close the notelist: see Help:Footnotes#Multiple reference lists. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:15, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Note if you go the "lower-alpha" route, you can use the same thing in both templates because each template will "clear" the refs with its own <references group="lower-alpha" />. Conflict will only arise if an article tries to use the "lower-alpha" group for its own purposes. Anomie⚔ 14:17, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the information in the table (e.g. including IPA pronunciation codes like "[a]" and "[i]"), going the "lower-alpha" route would be too confusing. Is there no way I can have numbers like ^[1], but kept separate from the series in the main article? (The original method achieved this, but only at the expense of an unfriendly syntax that made maintenance a real pain.) 81.159.111.255 (talk) 14:56, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

You can also try "group=decimal". Scrap that, that will cause the article refs to be included. There are several options you can choose from, standard decimals is just not one of them. — Edokter (talk) — 15:19, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

It might be confusing, but group=decimal seems to work when I tried it here. Anomie⚔ 15:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Etymology of Psychotronics and a technicism about it?

Do you think that the Grecian linguistic root of the word Psychotronics: (from Ancient Greek ψυχή 'breath, soul, spirit' and ἤλεκτρον 'amber, electron') needs a reliable source, in order to justify its presence in a Wikipedia page? Is there a problem with the corresponding template?--Paritto (talk) 04:21, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

If someone is asking for a source for it - yes, it needs a source. "All quotations and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material" - from Wikipedia:Verifiability. The etymology has been challenged - and if we are to provide one, find a source for it. Given that you seem to have added the etymology in the first place, it shouldn't be too hard for you to cite the source you got it from. And no, the fact that we don't state that a source may be required in the template documentation is of no significance: Wikipedia:Verifiability is policy everywhere within an article. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:35, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Latex in MediaWiki?

Is there a tool, inside or outside Wikipedia, to incorporate Latex into MediaWiki?--Paritto (talk) 04:41, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

See Help:Displaying a formula. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:52, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok, is it possible to introduce the complete language, i.e. any kind of command, not just formulas? May you suggest me in which way? Is it feasible to "convert" Latex into Wikitext?--Paritto (talk) 05:17, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

No, only a select subset. Max Semenik (talk) 08:51, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at latex2wiki. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:54, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Snotbot (or "Teh Dramahz break the wiki")

Am I correct in assuming that Snotbot (task list · contribs) is no longer functioning, subsequent to Scotty's departure? At User:Snotbot/RFPP, BOT_RUN is set to "Yes", but Scotty's announced that he's shut down all of his bots and tools (which is definitely true for the tools), and Snotbot appears to be overdue on its tasks - see this RPP, for instance.

Anyways, so, what do we do? Can we get a new bot (or some reincarnation of the old bot, if the licensing is right) up and running before RPP gets swamped, or should we prepare to have to archive it *gasp* manually? — Francophonie&Androphilie^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 05:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

The loss of the tools impacts upon SPI as well, makes it a lot more difficult. Dougweller (talk) 07:50, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I'll do some of the manually archiving until this is resolved. -- Cheers, Riley 08:05, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I've come up with a working solution for RFPP. See here. To all users who know javascript - please please please find a way to fix the rolling archive issue I explain there.

But speaking of people who know how to program, I'd really like to know how long it'll take to get a new bot on the job. Does anyone have a copy of Snotbot's source code? And, if so, was it licensed in a way that it could just be folded into a new bot? — Francophonie&Androphilie^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 09:33, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

This seems like a pretty compelling case for us not tying the running of tools to individual users. Perhaps if this can happen another fifty times, someone at the Foundation will see a compelling use case for actually fixing this. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:04, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

If Scottywong approved, and gave me the source code, I have a Python instance installed, and run an adminbot using a python script. As this is not an admin task, I do have other inactive bot accounts that could take over the task. This would not require a new BFRA as the task is approved (✉→BWilkins←✎) 12:37, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think it would. I would gladly take over the bot, but I don't do much python. I'll see if Scottywong is willing to give up the code.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 14:22, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

That's correct, it would require a new BRFA. However, if the code hasn't changed and the new operator is already experienced, it could be speedily approved. Anomie⚔ 14:36, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Well guys, the bot is still functioning currently. The tasks (especially on RFPP) should be migrated to another bot but, no rush! ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 14:40, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Did not realise it was a backlog I just cleared so naturally the bots edits were still on the page, ignore me. ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 14:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Note - I've offered to take Scottywong's tools and put them on my toolserver account. I'm hoping I can get the web-based tools running at least, it appears people need them... ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Make a comment!} 15:56, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Calm down. Scottywong has reactivated all tools and bot tasks and will "likely" return himself sometime next year. |crisis=averted jcgoble3 (talk) 19:15, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Adding a new see also showing up as a revert

I gave someone a 3RR warning because their last edit was [[3]" which has the edit summary "(Undid revision 530265298 by Mikenorton"]. The editor doesn't understand this nor do I, as looking at the article the addition of a see also didn't revert its removal as revision 530265298 didn't have anything to do with the see also. It's a bit embarrassing to find that it wasn't a revert. I trusted the edit summary to be correct - is this a glitch or something we always have to be wary of? Dougweller (talk) 07:44, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

In theory, I can click "undo" and do anything with the edit (leaving the last edit in place and adding a line, as happened in this case), and unless I change the edit summary manually, it'll stay as Undid revision 123456789 by Username (talk). I can also do whatever edit I want and use that edit summary manually. Perhaps the user initially clicked undo to revert the last edit, changed his mind when he realized he was about to violate 3RR, and instead made a good edit but without navigating away from the page or fixing the edit summary to something else? I'm also concerned this might be a way to prove a point, although I'd obviously rather assume good faith from all parties and see no reason for that particular assumption. Salvidrim! 10:09, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Thannks,that makes sense. Good faith would be nice too, but the editor involved is continuing to accuse me of abusing the 3RR template. Ah well. Dougweller (talk) 11:49, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Spam filter rules

I just tried to add a youtu.be link to communicating sequential processes -- a recording of a technical talk by programming language designer Rob Pike. The spam filter then blocked my edit. That's all ok, as I got the regular URL in, but the spamfilter gave me no contact info -- I'd like to know to whom I should direct questions regarding the filter? Qwertyus (talk) 11:48, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

It is not a spam filter -- youtu.be is on Wikipedia's WP:blacklist. Salvidrim! 11:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

...from which you can request an exception. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:16, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

... which will be denied in the case of youtu.be, because it is trivial to use a direct link to youtube.com instead. The same goes for any other shortener/redirector. Anomie⚔ 17:25, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:Overlay

{{Overlay}} doesn't seem to be displaying it's output correctly. Compare how legend is show at Template:Overlay/doc with commons:Template:Overlay legend/doc. Neither seems to have been edited recently so I can't see why the discrepancy. NtheP (talk) 15:36, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I suspect the problem is generated at {{Colevel/item set}} or related template. What I see is that a whole table row with an arbitrary number is generated, but I can't trace it's origin. — Edokter (talk) — 17:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

On 22 November 2012, the subtemplate {{Colevel/process item}} had the following wikitext added by User:Wikid77:

{{!}}- style="height:0px;"
{{!}} {{{alphawidth}}}

I think this creates a spurious row containing the text "10" above each expected row of the legendbox.

— Richardguk (talk) 17:59, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

So if this is reverted is it likely to going anything else? NtheP (talk) 18:04, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

• Restored column-width format in {Colevel/display_item} for alpha/beta pairs: I have restored the table cell-width logic, as in the 2008/2009 calculations, for the column-width format in those 2 templates, {{Colevel/process_item}} and {{Colevel/display_item}}, which I had edited on 22 November 2012. I hope that fixes all the problems for the prior month. Apparently because the template had lacked documentation, I did not realize how the template was being used and was over-zealous in simplifying the format of the 2-column pairs, as used by the upgraded Template:Autonumbered_list (which I have bypassed with new, fast Template:Autotable5_big). Sorry for the conflicting changes. I suspect that Wikipedia should adopt minimal template-documentation standards, so that templates, in use for years, would no longer seem like experimental hack templates, but instead, link to text which explains the purpose, operation, and major applications with other templates. Currently, Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Colevel/process_item does not provide sufficient background information to clearly warn of other applications which might be affected by changes, such as by free-form alignment of table columns. We need more comprehensive documentation to wade through Wikipedia's vast primordial swamp of millions of once-upon-a-thought templates. I can forsee that pre-approved templates could stiffle innovation or hinder the offshoot improvements, but the current avalanche of teaming multitudes (of questionable, partial, undocumented templates) has led to a maintenance nightmare to prioritize changes, or even find a functioning utility template in the overwhelming ocean of current templates. No wonder there were formerly over 16,000 pages which were linked to the category for pages exceeding the expansion-depth limit of 41 levels. Template usage is basically out-of-control, and needs some more standards for documentation. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:27, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting this out. There probably does need to be some sort of version control and obligatory documentation update needed especially for templates. Updating the document probably isn't enough as that's about what it does for the lay user like me; but some sort of technical change log is needed so that the experts like you realise what has been intended in the past instead of having to guess and occasionally getting it slightly wrong. NtheP (talk) 22:11, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

View larger image with description upon mouse click.

When pressing the 'enlarge' button on an image the user is unable to view the description associated with the image, this is particularly inconvenient when viewing labelled diagrams.

Proposal: Using simple JavaScript code clicking on the enlarge button should expand the image to larger size with the description still visible; a second click should redirect the user to the 'File:' page.

Example: http://lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/

• Great idea but perhaps conflicts with current plans: I like that image-enlargement idea, and almost ten years ago, I had dynamic enlargement (20%) for mouseover response on images in websites which I developed. However, changing the underlying structure, to have hidden thumbnail centers 20% larger, to flash-display during button-click, might interfere with operations for sight-impaired users. Instead, I have put "right-click" links in the image-caption text (of some articles), to tell readers to click those text links for enlarged, or related, or animated/video images. There is no reason that a caption cannot contain 5 lines of text to explain various, optional right-click links. Meanwhile, sight-impaired readers can still depend on a single image-click to display the full description page of an image which they might be unable to view clearly. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Would having a hidden div that would be filled with the relevant HTML code upon mouseclick cause problems for sight impaired users? Just to be clear the lightbox link was just an example, I think we could achieve a similar effect with more simplicity. I agree with your "right-click" concept, but this would be a more universal solution. Obviously we will need a beta test before publishing the code, but surely that is true of any technical update to the encyclopaedia? -HeavyQuark (talk) 10:16, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Forking images

When a user has overwritten an image with a different version, and it would have been better to upload the latter version a a new, separately-named file, as at File:Franco-maroc 1915 genie.jpg, is there an easy way (a tool, perhaps) to fork or split the versions? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:12, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

A simple history split should do it, unless I'm overlooking any reason why it wouldn't work with files (my experience as an admin on Wookieepedia leads me to believe that it should work, though I've never actually tried it on a file). jcgoble3 (talk) 19:30, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Presumably, that needs an admin, then? any reading? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:44, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

For the record, {{split media}} can be used to tag these cases. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:45, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

System down

Where can editors go to find out why Wikipedia is down? Ottawahitech (talk) 02:03, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Not sure about the "why", but you can check status.wikimedia.org to see the status of things. (dunno if it has more information when a project goes down) EVula // talk // ☯ // 02:41, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Generally, if the site is down you can expect the topic in #wikimedia-tech on freenode to state why. Additionally, the server admin log will usually have the log messages from ops as they deal with the outage. For widespread outages, the @wikimedia account on Twitter tends to provide updates. Post-mortems from downtimes can usually be found on the blog (or discussions on wikitech-l). ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:33, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Template event list

It seems the template outputs an error as soon as the list of dates is strictly less than 25 (I know it sounds weird, just my theory...). Have a look at Oscar Werner Tiegs. The use of event list seems perfectly correct, however only an error is displayed. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 03:59, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

On 21 November 2012, User:Wikid77 edited the subtemplate {{Colevel/find first}} and seems to have introduced a logical error so that it wrongly returned 51 as the first item if item 25 was not specified. I have attempted to fix the error. See also the above section (#Template:Overlay) about similar errors with related subtemplates that were affecting the Overlay template and which were fixed yesterday. Hopefully {{Event list}} and {{Overlay}} are now both working. — Richardguk (talk) 04:50, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Yep, I know, I was the one reporting the Overlay bug at the Tea house. As I saw that it was reported here in turn, I came directly here... Thanks for the fix. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 12:30, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Link to Wiktionary didn't work

Several times in the past, I have inserted links to the Wiktionary definitions of words when I have been editing Wikipedia articles. They have worked just fine, e.g. in Solar cooker#Parabolic troughs. However, this morning, I tried doing this is Fire#Chemistry and it didn't work. Is there any known reason why? DOwenWilliams (talk) 16:07, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Your edit today was using the link in the form [[wikt:extinguish]]; the one before was [[wikt:single curve|single curve]]. This is a piped link, which displays the second element ("single curve") rather than the link itself ("wikt:single curve"). To make the first one look clean, you'd want to use [[wikt:extinguish|extinguish]]. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:15, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll fix it. DOwenWilliams (talk) 16:51, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Or you can use the pipe trick, which means that the text [[wikt:extinguish|]] is automatically expanded into [[wikt:extinguish|extinguish]]. It just saves a little time. Graham87 06:07, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

After a username change, some pages did not get moved

User:B. Jakob T. got renamed to User:SpeedReader on December 23, but some of the user's talk subpages didn't get moved. I checked MBisanz's contributions (the bureaucrat that performed the rename), and those pages indeed didn't get moved at all. For example, User talk:B. Jakob T./Archives/Signpost and User talk:B. Jakob T./Awards (I had to manually move them). They should have definitely been moved since they had been created weeks before the username change. Anybody know why this happened? The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 17:49, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd like some page in my watchlist but not its associated talk page

Some time ago I posted the following "Help me" on my talk page.

How do I add a page to my watchlist without adding to my watchlist the associated talk page?

For example I'd like to add the Main page but I don't want its talk page in my watchlist.

Is this an outrageously preposterous wish?

As I was sitting there next to my sign, an ambulance showed up that was driven by user Danger! who suggested:

See if this works. Danger! ^{High voltage!} 08:37, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It didn't. So I called a second ambulance that arrived, all lights flashing, driven by user Dreamyshade. I told her what I had done so far on the advice of the first ambulance driver:

• I have enhanced recent changes disabled (I suppose this is what you call enhanced recent changes: "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist (requires JavaScript)" and I do not have that checked in my preferences)
• I created the file User:Basemetal/vector.css
• In that file I inserted this line .watchlist-1-Main_page { display: none; } on a new line and by itself

Yet when I go to talk:Main page the star is still blue and when I look at my watchlist changes to that talk page still get displayed.

I also tried the Javascript method with Gary King's script and it also fails for me.

What could be the problem? Some unwanted interference? Do you know anyone who's actually made this work?

She said:

You could try posting your question at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), including a description of the steps you've tried so far. I have no idea how to do this, but people there may have ideas. Dreamyshade (talk) 13:03, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

So I walked, all battered and bruised, to this Village Pump (it took me 2 weeks), and here I am. Can anybody help? Anybody here who's actually made this work? Signed: Basemetal (write to me here) 17:58, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no way to watch only a page and not the talk page – you either have to watch both or neither. The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 18:03, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I'm going to try the CSS procedure and see if it works. The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 18:08, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The Anonymouse is technically correct, but there are tricks to hide certain pages, one of them being the CSS trick you tried. The reason why that didn't work is because the name of the page is Talk:Main Page, not Talk:Main page (note the capital P). Replacing the line in User:Basemetal/vector.css with .watchlist-1-Main_Page { display: none; } should fix it. jcgoble3 (talk) 18:10, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

For more general use, you can achieve this in effect without using your watchlist, and instead creating a page in your userspace containing links to all the pages that you want to watch, then bookmark the Related changes link in the sidebar of that page. Then, instead of adding or removing pages from your watchlist, you add or remove links to them from your user page.

But note that talk pages are automatically added to watchlists for good reason. There is a risk that you might miss out on significant discussions or announcements affecting the pages!

I appreciate that this technique might not be well suited to you if you only want to hide Talk:Main Page.

— Richardguk (talk) 18:18, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

please note that the test you used to see if the CSS "trick" works is the wrong test.

the css trick is supposed to hide the pages when you open Special:Watchlist, but it will *not* prevent the little star from appearing blue when you actually open the talkpage, nor will it remove it from the pages you see when you click "View and edit watchlis". the trick does not *really* remove the page from your watchlist - it just hides it on the page that opens when you click "Watchlist", namely Special:Watchlist. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:23, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to all who responded. All fixed. Note, for those who want to try this but want "enhanced recent changes" enabled, that the line .watchlist-1-Main_Page { display: none; } needs to be replaced with .mw-changeslist-ns1-Main_Page { display: none; }. I'll also give user Richardguk's method a try some time soon. Thanks again to all who responded. Signed: Basemetal (write to me here) 20:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Great, and I also was able to get the CSS to work (it didn't work at first – maybe I didn't fully bypass the cache). However, the CSS (as קיפודנחש said) only hides the page on the watchlist, but you are still actually watching the page. Thanks for the CSS trick, by the way – I hadn't heard of it before. The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 22:13, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

New HTML5 elements; custom data attributes

From the last MediaWiki update, we now have <data>^[4], <markup>^[5] and <time>^[6].

I have also noted that MediaWiki will pass HTML5 custom data attributes.^[7]

I don't know where these will be useful, but I am sure someone will figure it out. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:30, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

The data attributes data-sort-type and data-sort-value have been in use for sortable tables for several months.

However, the documentation at Help:Sorting and elsewhere has only partly been updated, and most editors continue to apply more familiar sorting templates which use CSS to hide sortkey text.

— Richardguk (talk) 18:51, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I've dropped a note at WikiProject Microformats, since they might have a use for these elements. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 19:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:dropdown

Is there any reason why {{Dropimage}} couldn't be modified to work and appear in the same way as the similar template at Wikibooks (b:Template:Dropdown) The wikibooks template has a better look e.g. dropdown arrow rather than show/hide, and operates in a better way e.g. click anywhere to show/hide rather than on the prompt. NtheP (talk) 17:11, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Template link font

I have noticed that as of today, on many templates, the font of them is Aerial Black instead of the usual font. Strangely this does not affect all templates, only many within the transport projects. Simply south...... walking into bells for just 6 years 21:22, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

What templates? --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:17, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Does the text look like this? If so, it's because its a link pointing to the same page. An example would be nice, though. (X! · talk)  · @996  ·  22:54, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Screenshot

Actually it has also been happening in the {{S-line}} but I can't seem to find what is wrong. And no, the "preceding" and "following stations" are not linking to the article. Simply south...... walking into bells for just 6 years 23:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm looking at Stoke Mandeville railway station and everything looks fine. I'm using Google Chrome. Mackensen (talk) 23:42, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Firefox latest version. Simply south...... walking into bells for just 6 years 23:44, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I think this is a browser issue rather than a problem with templates (though the template styling might benefit from removing redundant bolding). You're seeing extra-bold where a <TH> table header contains text with bold or strong formatting. The logic, presumably, is that the boldness of a table header should combine to make the content extra-bold, and Arial Black is an extra-bold font.

This might be caused by whether the browser defines the default TH style as font-weight:bold; or font-weight:bolder; – the latter definition would combine with bold elements to render as extra-bold. From a quick search, it appear that bolder was recommended by CSS2.1 for HTML4, but bold is recommended by WHATWG for HTML5 (but the latter spec recommended bolder for <b>; maybe "bolder" has no effect if it is the child of a bold parent but has an effect if the parent of a bold child). Anyway, I'm not an expert on this, but it seems related.

Test case:

<table>
 <tr class="wikitable">
  <th>TH normal</th>
  <th>TH <b>bold</b> and <strong>strong</strong> and <b><strong>combined</strong></b></th>
  <th>TH <span style="font-weight:bolder;">bolder <b>bold</b> and <strong>strong</strong> and <b><strong>combined</strong></b></span></th>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>TD normal</td>
  <td>TD <b>bold</b> and <strong>strong</strong> and <b><strong>combined</strong></b></td>
  <td>TD <span style="font-weight:bolder;">bolder <b>bold</b> and <strong>strong</strong> and <b><strong>combined</strong></b></span></td>
 </tr>
</table>

TH normal	TH bold and strong and combined	TH bolder bold and strong and combined
TD normal	TD bold and strong and combined	TD bolder bold and strong and combined

For me, this renders everything in standard bold, except for those words in the TD row that are neither bold, strong, combined nor bolder (all of which I see rendered in a normal weight).

— Richardguk (talk) 03:02, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Toolserver PHP and python version

What php version is used on the toolserver (is there a phpinfo() link somewhere?) Also, what python version is used?Smallman12q (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I have a toolserver account and just logged in to get this information:

PHP and Python on the toolserver machines

System	Machines	PHP	Python
Solaris	login servers, web servers	5.3.8	2.7.1 (default), 3.1.3, 3.2
Linux	nightshade, yarrow	5.3.3	2.5.5, 2.6.6 (default), 3.1.1

You can get the full phpinfo() output on the web servers from this page I just created. --dapete 11:10, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!Smallman12q (talk) 00:51, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Brief little template coding question regarding previous editor′s coding

Hi, brief little question,

given that {{Ja help icon}} takes no parameters, really is there any difference between these:

{{Ja help icon|{{
      #if:{{{help|}}}|{{{help}}}
      }}
}}

{{Ja help icon|{{{help}}} }}

Forgive me if i'm missing something, about undefined values etc., but i thought i knew template coding just about enough for this. ——--macropneuma 02:55, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

No, there is no difference because the parameter will be ignored. But why would you want to use either example when the {{{help}}} parameter gets ignored either way? Why not just type {{Ja help icon}} as intended?

Your first example sets parameter {{{1}}}} of {{Ja help icon}} to the value of {{{help}}} if the help parameter is neither missing nor blank, or sets it to blank if not. But then it gets ignored because {{{1}}} is not referred to in the template code for {{Ja help icon}}, so it is pointless!

Your second example sets parameter {{{1}}}} to the value of {{{help}}} regardless of whether it is blank or missing, which means that it will be set to the literal text {{{help}}} if the help parameter has not been defined (the equivalent of an error message). But then, as before, it gets ignored, so it is still pointless!

— Richardguk (talk) 03:18, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, thank you. I did not think i was missing something (also i didn't ask a leading question). Since i saw it i thought what's the point of that. Wanted to get a second opinion, in case i was stupid or missing something, thankyou. It'll be deleted for just {{Ja help icon}} or more perhaps {{{help}}}{{Ja help icon}}, if help= any values in any of the real uses in any article, of this template: {{Eigo}} which i'm fixing up. i'm learning more, and now beyond this one. --macropneuma 03:50, 2 January 2013 (UTC)——

Navboxes and touch devices

Here are some collapsed navboxes:

As a user of touch devices I have a great problem with collapsed navboxes. The [show] link appears for me in 8 point type. It is very small and difficult to touch accurately. In some cases the [show] link coincides with a natural "blind spot" of the touch screen, and I have to scroll the page before having another few stabs at the link. In the worst cases I have been forced to focus a nearby link and "tab" to the one I want (which is, of course, difficult on a tablet!).

Touch devices are becoming increasingly more common, and so I feel we need to solve this usability issue. Here are some ideas:

1. I love browsing Wiktionary on a touch device, because its collapsible boxes can be opened by clicking anywhere along them. See wikt:háček, for example. The problem with doing so here is our {{navbar}} (the V · T · E links); it needs some non-clickable space around it to give the user a margin of error.
2. A more reasonable improvement would be to increase the type size of [show] from 8 to 9 points (in terms of CSS, from 100% to 110%) and to include the square brackets as part of the clickable link.
3. We could even add a small arrow (again like Wiktionary) to give even more visual feedback and increase clickable area even further. However, this is certainly not at the heart of my request.

I can see no reason not to implement the second idea... what do people think? — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:25, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Calculating a percentage in a table from the number of articles in a category

I have some progress tables showing the percentage of completeness for Olympic articles. Here's an example:

Olympics	Athletes	Current	% Complete
Fencing at the 2012 Summer Olympics	244	246	88%

IE, 244 people are listed to have competed at the 2012 Olympics in fencing, currently 215 have an article, making this category 88% complete. Is there a way to automatically calculate the percentage if you know how many articles should be in a specfic category? Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 20:19, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

{{#expr:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Fencers at the 2012 Summer Olympics}}/244*100 round 0}}% = 101%. For more information on using #expr, see Help:Calculation. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) the gnome beat me to it. the only thing i wanted to add is that the "PAGESINCATEGORY" which is used for the calculation, and which you also use elsewhere in the table, is marked "expensive!", so you want to use it sparingly. using it once in a category seems reasonable, but it wouldn't be a good idea to use in in a template that's used widely.

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:42, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Nice one - thanks! Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 20:48, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (edit conflict) (edit conflict) Something like this would do: "{{#expr: trunc ( {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Fencers at the 2012 Summer Olympics|R}} / 244 * 100 ) }}%", which produces: "100%" More complicated expressions could also handle special cases such as the number of pages being zero.

Use of "|R" to ensure that the number of pages does not contain commas if {{PAGESINCATEGORY}} exceeds 999 (punctuation might confuse the caluclator).

"Expensive" parser functions (such as {{PAGESINCATEGORY}}) cannot be used more than 500 times on a single page, to prevent excessive database load.

— Richardguk (talk) 20:54, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Changes with Firefox

A number of things have just changed for me in the last few minutes, using Firefox/Monobook (but fine using Chrome). For example, the edit link in the lead has gone, when I hover over a footnote I no longer see the citation, and collapsed templates are showing uncollapsed. Has something changed centrally or is it just me? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:18, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried a reboot ? StuRat (talk) 02:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I just tried that, and it looks even worse now. I can't describe what is happening now, but everything is different; Monobook not loading or something (if that makes sense). WP has been very slow for me today, with several images not loading. I wonder if that's connected. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:30, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I just changed my preferences to Vector, and the very strange appearance has disappeared, but the templates are still uncollapsed, etc (as described in my first post), so it's not only a Monobook issue. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:34, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The appearance changed again; it's neither Monobook nor Vector. Don't know what it is; it's not something I've seen before. I've moved to a different computer to see if I can see it here too, different operating system, still Firefox but different version, but it's the same. I'm surprised that I'm the only person who's reporting this. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:41, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a JavaScript problem. Have you tried bypassing your cache? jcgoble3 (talk) 03:58, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I've tried that, thanks, and I've uninstalled and reinstalled various things that might be causing it, but with no resolution so far. If I really am the only person who's noticing this, it may be something to do with my internet connection. It slowed down yesterday and then suddenly I had these problems with Wikipedia's appearance. Many thanks to you and StuRat for the replies. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:29, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Assuming that you have definitely cleared your cache (which is the most common cause of sudden problems like this; not meaning to be patronising, but caches sometimes persist unexpectedly if the instructions aren't followed fully!):

The symptoms you describe all indicate that your JavaScript has stopped working. This is reinforced by the problem persisting when you change computers. (Can you see if it persists when you log in from a browser other than Firefox? It seems unlikely that Firefox itself would cause a sudden change, unless you had just installed an update or browser extension before things broke.)

Your monobook javascript is separate from your vector javascript. But most of your two scripts are identical, so the persistence when you change skins is consistent with an error in one of the common parts of the script.

You report that you have uninstalled various things, but you don't seem to have tried editing your script pages. So:

1. Start by blanking the script page of your current skin.
2. Is everything working as it should for a user with no JavaScript? In particular, you should find that you can now expand and collapse infoboxes in the normal way (though of course your custom helper tools will be missing).
3. Assuming that things are now working, then try adding in the scripts you want, block by block, until you find the block which stops everything from functioning. If it is a script imported from another user, you can then contact the script maintainer. You might even find that you no longer need that script (you have a lot of custom javascript and I'm guessing that some of it duplicates other parts, and that some of it was written several years ago and is effectively obsolete).
4. If blanking your script pages isn't the problem, then it is caused either by an unusual gadget or user preference (so disable all your gadgets, and re-enable one-by-one to find the cause), or else by an unusual Firefox setting (so uninstall any browser extensions and/or reinstall Firefox).

As an alternative to reinstating your javascript line-by-line, if you know enough about Firefox then you could see what error messages are reported on your browser's JavaScript console (adding ?debug=true to the end of the article URL will make it easier to track down the relevant component). But I'm guessing that you would have tried this already if you knew enough to be able to do so, so eliminating all your scripts and reinstating bit-by-bit is probably easier to try.

— Richardguk (talk) 01:27, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• SlimVirgin, it's not just you. I have Modern skin and have not been having this problem. But if I change to Monobook, I get the same results you do. Firefox 17.0.1, Windows XP. But if we both get this in Monobook, it's probably not your browser. Maybe something funky happened with Monobook skin. — Maile (talk) 01:48, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

  @User:Maile66: There is an error in 2 of your custom CSS pages: a line of JavaScript, which is invalid for a stylesheet. Edit User:Maile66/modern.css and User:Maile66/monobook.css to remove the line importScriptURI('http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&title=User:Haza-w/cactions.js');. Not sure whether that's the cause of your problem, but it can't be good to mix JS with your CSS! Guessing wildly, I suppose it's possible that this has coincidentally produced an error in your Monobook browsing at the same time as User:SlimVirgin suffered an unrelated error, though it might be that there is another underlying problem in one of the scripts used by both of you (you have custom scripts in User:Maile66/common.js and User:Maile66/modern.js, but you have indicated that you are not using Modern). — Richardguk (talk) 02:57, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

A little advice

Hi Wiki,

When checking the webpage of Wiki, found that we don't have the button or option "to the TOP/UP" that can convenient us quickly back to TOP, just a little advice for your amazing site. Happy new year to you all!

Kind regards,

Paul Wang Harbin, China. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.171.77.65 (talk) 02:33, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello Paul. This has been brought up in the past, with many editors saying you should just use the "home" key on your keyboard or some other means. But it would actually be really good if we had a "back to top" link at the bottom of our pages. Many articles are very long, and scrolling back up to the top will seem frustrating for users who are accustomed to the "back to top" link seen on very many websites. Additionally, users of tablets have to "swipe" their way to the top of the page, which can be time-consuming. It would be ridiculously simple for us to implement a "back to top" link and it is something we should do. — This, that, and the other (talk) 03:30, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I support this proposal, which has accessibility benefits. I'd go further, and put such a link alongside the "edit" link on each section - as I've done at for each section of http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/belvide/latest-2011 for example. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:11, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Today's stats not working?

I looked up statistics and found nothing. Other stats do not work, as well. Is there something wrong? --George Ho (talk) 05:48, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

They all work for me. January 1 is the only day this month with stats yet, but if I click latest 30 then I see stats for December 4 to January 1. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I noticed an absence of stats for 2/1 as well, checking a couple of hours ago. I vaguely remember it's taken a few hours to get daily stats up in the past on occasion, so it may not yet be a problem. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Stats of January 2 are fixed, but at the compensation of December 2012 statistics. --George Ho (talk) 02:26, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Category for external link templates to linked data sites with reciprocal links

I have just created Category:External link templates to linked data sites with reciprocal links. If you know of such a template, please add it. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

SFN formatting

In John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, I am having trouble with one of my shortened footnotes. I was wondering if someone could take a look at the following to see what I've done wrong. This one...

{{sfn|Broderick|2008|pp=206–207}}

...is supposed to point or highlight to this one...

<ref name="Broderick">{{cite book |last1=Broderick |first1=James F.|last2=Miller |first2=Darren W. |title=Web of Conspiracy: A Guide to Conspiracy Theory Sites on the Internet |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=hOLDnJM91bkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false |year=2008 |publisher=Information Today, Inc./CyberAge Books |location=Medford, New Jersey |isbn=978-0-910965-81-1 |page=203 |chapter=Chapter 16: The JFK Assassination |chapterurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=hOLDnJM91bkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA203#v=onepage&q&f=false |ref=harv}}</ref>

...but it doesn't. Thanks! Location (talk) 15:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I've fixed it. When the book has last1=Broderick and last2=Miller, the {{sfn}} call must mention both: {{sfn|Broderick|Miller|2008|pp=206–207}} -- John of Reading (talk) 16:13, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! I didn't realize that I need both. Thanks again! Location (talk) 16:37, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Search confusion

Two questions, the first I think I know the answer to, but the second is the main question.

I knew I had asked a question in this page, and wanted to link it on my to-do list, so I wouldn't forget about it. I checked my contributions, and saw I asked the question on 28 Dec. I looked at the TOC and didn't see it. I noticed that the oldest item dates back to 21 December, so I was initially puzzled, but I think I know the answer. I assume that the archiving process happens based upon the date of the last entry to the section, not the first, so the section created 21 December is not yet archived because it has 1 January responses.

However, when I did a search for the section heading, the first entry is the one I want. It has two links. The first link implies that it is not yet archived and is in the current page, but that isn't the case. The second is a specific link to the section, but when I click on it, I am brought to this page. I managed to find it by going to an archive Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 106, but I am unclear why clicking on the link in the search failed to bring me there. Did I do something wrong?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Part one - yes, that's my understanding. Part two - the index used by Special:Search is updated at most once a day, and the thread was moved from this page to the archive earlier today. So the search is currently giving you out-of-date links. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:04, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

User:MiszaBot/config says "counting from newest timestamp".

Your search result currently says "03:58, 3 January 2013" (if you log out or have UTC as time zone). See Help:Searching#Delay in updating the search index. At the stated time, it was indeed here.[8] It was archived later in [9]. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:11, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, I get it, thanks.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Error saving

I have been making fairly time-consuming edits to Paris, but every time I click save page it thinks for a few minutes and then comes up with the Wikimedia error screen, saying this: If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paris&action=submit, from REDACTED via knsq23.knams.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE9) to 91.198.174.55 (91.198.174.55) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:06:42 GMT

Sometimes the edit goes through, but only about 50% of the time.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 01:09, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Recent changes search

FYI - A new tool has been created at http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/rcsearch.html which allows arbitrary searches through the recent changes table, with some additional search options that don't appear on Special:RecentChanges. Take a look and let me know if you have any questions/comments. You can see a list of most of my tools at http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/ Thanks. ‑Scottywong| verbalize _ 01:14, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

advertisements on Wikipedia

Hello to anyone who may visit my post. I thought Wikipedia did not have adds. I have no idea if this is the place for the following. In some places I've visited, when I hover over certain words I get a pop up advertising about the word.. For instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelhelm The word 'grant' brings up an add about the 2013 government grants. It's from Canada. When I click on the add I get this site. http://grants-canada.org/apply1.php This has happened on other articles but I didn't make a note of them. I'm using Firefox. Thanks Elaine. dorel341