Wikipedia:Village pump/July 2003 archive 2

f(x) = x²; <---this is breaking apart (line break) at function, right after the f. Pizza Puzzle

Maybe you should think about getting a web browser that does not do that. Looks fine in Mozilla 1.3.1 and Opera 7. Any hack included to prevent it from happening on your browser is likely to uglify the code. -- Wapcaplet 13:19 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

As long as Im using Netscape or IE Im using what nearly every web user is using and the code should render properly for such browsers. Pizza Puzzle

Yes, but I don't think it should come at the cost of making the article harder to edit. No reasonable browser should be line-breaking on parentheses, and using workarounds to avoid it could have unforeseen effects in correct browsers; I think it would be bad to cater to users of broken browsers. By the way, which version(s) of Netscape and MSIE are you using? There are significant differences in behavior between various versions of MSIE; there are enormous differences between MSIE for Windows and MSIE for Mac. Netscape 4.x is almost a totally different browser than Netscape 6.x. According to some sources, MSIE 6 (presumably for Windows) has the largest market share at the moment, but that could change, and such statistics are notoriously unreliable. -- Wapcaplet 13:56 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You can find great browser statistics for the past year or month at the Google Zeitgeist. Scroll down to browsers. Its pretty accurate, because it tracks the browsers that are used to access google. You can also find info on the OS's used. The only source of unreliability is that many mozilla and opera users have special plug-ins to tell web servers that they are using IE. This is because of the unfortunate tendency for many webpages to instantly reject any browser that isn't IE. I myself use mozilla, mostly for the pop-up and ad blocking. Other than the fact that some websites have a javascript control that doesn't let you in unless you're using IE, I have not noticed a problem accessing sites. -DropDeadGorgias 14:17 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, the google statistics give a pretty good idea of prevalent browsers and operating systems for people who use Google, but do we have statistics anywhere for people who use Wikipedia? Being an open-content project, it may have a tendency to draw a proportionally larger percentage of, say, Linux users. Slashdot, or Linux.com, probably get a lot more than 1% Linux users, and consequently, fewer MSIE users. And of course, as you note, Opera's default behavior is to identify itself as MSIE. There are all sorts of things that can throw these statistics off. -- Wapcaplet 14:44 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia.org usage stats. Only the top 15 browsers are shown; MSIE 6.0 and 5.x dominate in the June statistics. -- Wapcaplet 15:00 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I don't what could be done about it. Putting a nonbreaking space between the f and the ( makes the function look wrong. Putting it between <math> tags means it no longer fits properly on the line. I reckon the best thing to do it put all functions on a line by themselves, but others might not like that. Other than that we could just live with breaks, it's not really the end of the world is it? Theresa knott 13:47 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Its a sign of the end. Soon Bush will blow the DOOMtrumpet. Pizza Puzzle

It looks fine in my regular Wikipedia browser. (Opera 6.05.)

It looks fine in my regular everything-else-except-Wikipedia (Mozilla 1.4b)

It looks fine in my 27-Opera-windows-open, 48-Mozilla-windows-open, better-use-another-browser-for-this-job browzer. (IE 6.0)

It looks ... well, "fine" is not the word for it, but perfectly readable and definately not broken in my test-this-page-for-ultimate-compatibility browser, Netscape 3.04.

So where is the issue? You've got a problem with your Internet Explorer installation, Pizza Puzzle. There are two ways you could fix that; (a) buggerise about with Windows fixes and patches and registry tweaks which almost never work and then wipe your drive and reinstall Windows, or (b) download Mozilla. Either method will work. (You can trust me on this: I do this stuff for a living.) Method (b) is one hell of a lot easier. Tannin 16:27 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But what exactly is looking fine? The specific problem I am referring to no longer exists at the page in question - its actually quite rare as certain spacing conditions have to exist in order for the incident to occur. In any case, Ill look at Mozilla. Pizza Puzzle

I just tried viewing Function in MSIE 4.0 and 5.0 (Windows). Re-sizing the window to just the right place does cause the line break to occur between "f" and "(x)". So Pizza Puzzle is not alone here (since it apparently also occurs in 6.0). Granted, the window has to be just the right size, but in a math article with lots of "f(x)"s occurring, it becomes pretty likely to happen regularly. MSIE 4/5/6 are pretty obviously botched in this respect (neither Opera nor Mozilla, nor, I presume, Netscape, suffer from the same problem), but it's definitely an issue to take under consideration. Unfortunately, I know of no way to prevent breaking from occurring, aside from placing chunks of text inside <span style="white-space: nowrap">, but it's unclear whether that would even matter, since it's not wrapping on whitespace. I think that users of MSIE 4/5/6 are just going to be SOL, if it happens. Sorry Pizza Puzzle, I've been doing web design for almost 10 years, and MSIE is a continual source of headaches; if anyone knows a good solution, I'd love to hear it, but this sounds like one of those that just can't be fixed. -- Wapcaplet 16:58 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi guys-

I've been trying to go through some of the articles here and correct grammar and facts. Generally, my experience has been pretty positive, but just recently, I've run into a particular user who seems very protective of his sentences. I feel bad accusing him of anti-wiki behaviour, and I don't want to post his user name, because he is generally very polite, and does not attack people, as some have historically done. Nevertheless, his entries are poorly worded, highly POV, and often with a disregard to facts. I have attempted to edit some of 'his' articles, and i have tried to post helpful comments on his user page, but he has so far been polite in Talk pages, but resistent in articles. He went through some of the articles and replaced some of the poorly worded, POV sentances that I had taken the trouble to remove/edit. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this guy? -DropDeadGorgias 14:17 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'll look into it, but based on your spelling in your post, you may not be the best person for the job ;). MB 17:24 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ouch... My wiki-ego is wounded. But thanks. ;)

While we're on the subject, has anyone requested a spellcheck feature? If you've ever submitted anything on the message boards of plastic.com, it highlights words that aren't in its dictionary. Something like that could be very useful here on wikipedia. -DropDeadGorgias 17:52 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, that would be great, and I am sure there is a GPL spell checker out there somewhere that could be adobted for our needs. MB 18:31 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Here's an amusing bug noticed by an anon. contributor to ASCII cows. <pre>\0</pre> becomes:

\0

-- Tim Starling 14:27 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it is a parsing error or something. I found a similar error related to images. See Wikipedia:Village pump/May 2003 archive 5 for more info. It really confused me. MB 18:38 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Our parser is a BigBallOfMud and contains many such errors due to bad interactions between different passes. The syntax needs to be more formally codified and the parser rewritten. In the meantime, these little bugs could probably be worked around, should anyone have the time and inclination to dig into them. --Brion 04:23 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

If a committee is formed to re-design the parser. I would be more than happy to help. Just let me know. MB 04:40 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I've suggested several times on Wiki-tech-L that we use Wookee as our parser, but nobody seems to pick up on it. :-( -- Tarquin 08:45 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, Wookee is in perl, meaning it would have to be adapted or otherwise shoved, bitten, and squished into the PHP code... That, and the code doesn't seem to be obviously online for perusal, so it's very mysterious. :) If someone familiar with it thinks this can be done and is willing to work on it... --Brion 08:54 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You could compile the Perl code to C and then link it to PHP at compile time. Well... I don't actually know if that's possible, it's just an idea. -- Tim Starling 09:06 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I thought Perl was interpreted? CGS 12:11 2 Jul 2003 (UTC).

Ah. A common misconception; PERL hasn't been interpretted for a while now (it's JIT compiled; this has been the case since, IIRC, version 5). -- James F. 12:58 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I thought Perl had a translator to C, but I can't find it now so maybe I was mistaken. This is the standard way to do it. -- Tim Starling 00:42 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I had figured that since Wookee just takes an input of wikitext and spits out the HTML at the other end, you could just call the perl script from PHP. However, I gather that it's not economical with memory because it's OO-based. At the very least, it might be a good model for a new PHP parser. I can email the script to anyone who wants, but its author (Mychaeel) prefers it not being publicly downloadable. -- Tarquin 09:15 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

PHP doesn't appear to have a Perl module, judging by its function reference. Maybe there's a third-party extension. -- Tim Starling 00:42 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Same for

\1

,

\3

or

\2

, it seems... Except, only the last one displays, all previous on the same page disappear... Didn't know bugs can get that strange... كسيپ Cyp 19:16 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Don't worry, I fixed it in CVS already. -- Tim Starling 14:06 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I've aked Mych to make the source for Wookee available: you can download it from http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Wookee -- Tarquin 11:49 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I just noticed something about the wiki timeline. The events in the year pages are not always shown in the decade pages. Is this intentional (lower threshold of significance for year pages), or is this something that someone needs to write a bot to fix? -Smack 23:17 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

If the decade pages included every event mentioned in the year pages, and the century pages included every event mentioned in the decade pages (every event mentioned in the year pages), I think you can see it would get a little unwieldy. :) They're meant to provide a general overview, with the more specific pages being, well, more specific. --Brion 04:23 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Colours on Wikipedia[edit]

(the colors aren't great either)

I've been experimenting with overriding the default colour settings of my browser (IE6). Wikipedia appears to ignore my settings for background, but respect my setting for text, meaning that if I set my browser to white-on-black, it all goes bit Pete Tong. Is this a browser bug with IE, a problem with Wikipedia, or just one of those things?

I can verify that this happens in Mozilla too, but only if the option to always override the webpage isn't set. Probably Wikipedia just needs to explicity state that body text is to be black. That way, the user can force override it if he wishes, but if he doesn't force the override, the colours will be as stated by the page... Evercat 19:06 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Using CSS to define your preferred colors might be a better solution (if MSIE supports it - I know Mozilla and Opera do). I am fairly certain that the colors that you can select in the preferences of Mozilla or MSIE only apply when no color is explicitly specified by the document itself. The background color is explicitly given in the body tag of Wikipedia articles (and talk pages), but the text color is not specified. At any rate, using CSS for your preferred look-and-feel is probably the way to go (that is part of the reason they were designed!) -- Wapcaplet 00:27 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

How to save new articles as draft?[edit]

Hi I'm new to the wonderful world of Wiki - and it is really great!

For new articles that need to be written over several sessions (I read the FAQ that said Wiki prefers longer articles), is it possible to save them in draft form before they are finished? If not I'll do the primitive thing and do it all on my PC in notepad and cut and paste when I'm finished! David Thrale 11:45 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The FAQ probably goes a bit too far -- I think most editors these days consider a single paragraph to be a quite acceptable first article. However, it is generally easier to type a long article offline, especially if you have a decent text editor. Other than that, your options are:

Say in the edit summary that you're not finished
Add a note to the bottom of the article saying you're not finished
Create the article as a subpage of your user page, then move it to the correct location when it's finished.

-- Tim Starling 03:55 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd say don't worry about saving a work-in-progress. There's a dislike of people who make too many saves, but that normally means people who save an article every minute or two. Take a look at the edit history of English/British coin Penny for example, which shows me building up a huge article which eventually had to be broken up into 8 chapters! -- Arwel 17:45 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Welcome to the wiki, and don't worry about saving an article that only covers part of a topic. We have plenty of those as it is. What is this article you're writing? -Smack 01:31 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Search function weirdness[edit]

When I search for the word "welcome", I get the following message:

"Search results

For query "welcome"

For more information about searching Wikipedia, see Searching Wikipedia. Badly formed search query

We could not process your query. This is probably because you have attempted to search for a word fewer than three letters long, which is not yet supported. It could also be that you have mistyped the expression, for example "fish and and scales". Please try another query."

However, searching for "welcomes", "wlecome", or "welcmoe" seems to work fine. This looks rather weird. Could that be a database bug? Nafnaf 10:13 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Common words, searching for which is not possible

OIC. Would it it desirable to make the error message a little more specific? (The page that the error message currently links to has the relevant information, though). Thanks. Nafnaf 10:24 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Fellow Wikipedians, here is a question in need of a fast answer. As requested by Brion on wikitech-l, date formats in special pages, ~~~~ signatures, etc. will soon be changed to suit your preferences. You will have the choice of:

Don't care (which is 15 Jan, 2001 for this language)
Jan 15, 2001
15 Jan, 2001
2001 Jan 15

The question is, for each format, should the time come before or after the date? And should there be a comma between time and date, or just a space? I want to get this done quickly because there's a broken copy in CVS and I want to upload a working one before I go to bed in an hour or two. People tend to get irate when the CVS copy is broken, so I don't want to leave it any longer. -- Tim Starling 12:53 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Time before date. -- Wapcaplet 13:00 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Like 13:00, 3 Jul 2003 (comma after time, but not between month and year in this date format) - Patrick 13:14 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. Patrick, well spotted with that extra comma. The formats as I now understand them are:

13:00, Jan 15, 2001
13:00, 15 Jan 2001
13:00, 2001 Jan 15

Correct? -- Tim Starling 13:36 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

looks good to me, Fantasy 14:15 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

So will this be a feature in the preferences? MB 16:03 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes. It will also convert dates typed in articles to the user's preference (or not change them, if the user has no stated preference). -- Tim Starling 00:17 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I would have thought 2001 Jan 15 13:00 would have been more appropriate, as that is sorted, from most significant time to least significant time, rather than all mixed up. (Or maybe ‮2001 Jan 15 13:00‬, but I don't think that's used anywhere.) كسيپ Cyp 17:30 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, Wapcaplet and Patrick seemed pretty sure of themselves. BTW, it's in CVS now, and hopefully will soon be up on test.wikipedia.org. -- Tim Starling 00:17 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Chinese Names in alphabetalized lists[edit]

There is a discussion over at Talk:Figure skating over the best way to list a chinese skater, that is probably relavent to more that just that page. Since the chinese call themselves by their family name then their given name do we list them under their first or last name or should we swap the names around to fit into our standard way of doing things. I don't want to clog up the pump so please add coments to figure skating. Theresa knott 14:42 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sig. Bug[edit]

I found an interesting bug when I edited a page, and I was logged out before saving the page. The sig is half me half my ip. Kinda wierd. See here MB 16:52 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Could we turn back on the disabled special features like Special:Lonelypages, since we now have 2 servers? MB 17:21 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Is everyone else experiencing several minutes of lag to the Wikipedia server, rather often, at the moment? كسيپ Cyp 18:11 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I am experiencing a little bit of lag. MB 18:27 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Then what makes you think it's a great time to turn on special pages that can take several minutes of database grinding to generate every time they're viewed? --Brion 18:41 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Wow, if they access the database evrytime they are viewed, that really sucks! What a crappy design (no offense to whoever designed that)! I guess they need to be redesigned? BTW, how do we know it is a database problem that is causing the lag? It could be that turning on these options won't slow down the wikipedia at all. I propose we turn them on over the 4th of July weekend to test them out. MB 18:59 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It's a lot more complicated than you think. You should probably read wikitech-l for a while, and maybe read up about the architecture, before you declare it "crappy". Optimization has been discussed at great length on wikitech-l, and various kinds of caching have been implemented. For example, there's an HTML cache for anonymous users, who make up the bulk of page-view requests. -- Tim Starling 00:17 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Since I don't think there's a talk page for Recent Changes, I'll post this here. Could we please not have the blue text in pink table on yellow background at the top of Special:Recentchanges? It looks really wrong... it was fine the way it was. Evercat 20:16 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I agree, it looked much better plain -- sannse 20:25 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You obviously don't know about Wikipedia:Recentchanges and its associated talk page. -- Tim Starling 01:15 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Color[edit]

Hooray. Color on the home page. The first time I landed here I thought I had gone back through a wormhole into gopherspace Rich J 00:49 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

*grumbles* Girly color that it is. They evidently didn't like my idea of making the colors grayer. -Smack 01:31 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Girly colors! OOKay. I've got my camera ready. Let me know when you're going to come swinging in on that vine. I guess any open venture (soc.history?) becomes captive to the unsmiling. Rich J 03:03 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I thought it was such a good idea that I even did it. But mav didn't like it. Note that the colour was entirely stripped off by Oliver P., a few minutes ago. -- Tim Starling 01:38 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Here we go with the edit wars... -Smack 01:44 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I reverted Oliver's stripping (Yikes! That sounds a lot different to what it was meant to mean. But it is 6.19am and I am tired!) and left a note on his page pointing out that over all the pages this change was discussed, the clear majority seems to favour the change. Oliver is a decent chap. I don't image him waging a colour war on the issue. Well I sure hope to hell not! FearÉIREANN 05:23 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Upload troubles[edit]

I found that, after I uploaded an image, it was still locked for editing. (The Windows error dialog said "source or destination file may be currently in use.") I tried to duplicate this by uploading another file to Yahoo, but the bug did not repeat itself, so this seems to be a Wikipedia bug, rather than a Mozilla bug. (If you really want to check, I'm using Moz Firebird 0.6.) -Smack 01:44 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

So first you uploaded to Wikipedia, then when you tried to edit the file immediately afterwards, it was locked. Correct? -- Tim Starling 01:54 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It's a browser bug. --Brion 03:59 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, and thanks. -Smack 04:40 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Agent Smith[edit]

(A. Smith) Question: why are people editing this?

...is the nice way that this user is respnding to edits. I hope he realizes this is a collaborative work! -- cimon avaro

I think Cimon refers to User talk:Agent Smith. -- Tim Starling 06:32 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Capitalization in titles[edit]

I haven't been able to find a page saying what kind of standard we follow in capitalizing movie titles, book titles and so on. Is there? I started seeing this as a problem when I've seen Once More, With Feeling changed, I'd created it with a lower "with", I always thought that "with" was to be used like "of" or "the", that are never capitalized in the middle of a title. But I guess that I was wrong. So, is there a standard? I've searched on the net, but I found nothing, just this page stating several different ways, none of them "official". What's wikipedia's standard? Lazarus Long 11:31 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Use the capitalization used by the work itself. If there are conflicts, between editions then... panic! -- Tarquin 14:05 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But what if the title is ALL CAPS? It happens very often, especially with movies... I think a standard to follow would be better! Lazarus Long 20:16 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

A Hydrogen Peroxide Question[edit]

Can people take a look at Hydrogen peroxide? There's currently all sorts of strange stuff about cures for AIDS in there: looks very dodgy to me. -- The Anome 11:58 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia Emails from confused people[edit]

Come to think of it, do the wikipædia-people ever get e-mails, asking them to correct an error in a page, from people who haven't noticed the edit this page button? كسيپ Cyp 14:35 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

E-mails? No. Bug reports? About once a month [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. I've no idea what makes some people find it easier to file a bug report on SourceForge than to click "edit page" and fix it themselves... --Brion 18:20 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd theorize that it is due to the SEP field created by an "edit this page" link on a public encyclopædia... Being able to completely edit public internet sites is relatively unusual, being able to report a bug is relatively normal, and therefore not covered by the SEP field. Should be possible to test the theory, by adding an extra "Bug reports" link, and seeing if putting a lot of "edit this page" links around one of the "Bug reports" links affects the ratio of how many people follow each "Bug reports" link. كسيپ Cyp 15:29 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

A Map for US cities and Counties[edit]

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Counties (all the way at the bottom). -- Wapcaplet 13:51 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Vote time (again) - this time about the garish ameteurishness of the new Main Page design. Given that the redesign wasn't announced (AFAIAA - certainly, I wasn't aware of it), I thought I should make sure everyone (who reads the VP) is at least aware of its existence. Get voting. (BTW, I take neither credit nor blame for starting this vote, merely being the first voter :-)) -- James F. 01:28 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

In case the new design gets reverted again, the modified version may be seen at Main Page/Temp. -Smack 03:42 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have a new flag which should be added to Recent Changes. T should be a third selectable option [] Text Removed - which should be used to indicate any edit which involves a substantial deletion of text - let the border grey area have reasonable sway - but any user who cuts and deletes several paragraphs, should select this option. Pizza Puzzle

Maybe D for deleted text, perhaps automatic, in case people "forget" to mark it... Perhaps people could select in preferences, how many bytes the page can be reduced by, without them seeing a D (or something similar)... كسيپ Cyp 19:16 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Good idea. I favor Cyp's version. -Smack 03:42 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Move page bug[edit]

I attempted to move Rulers of Kievan Rus to Rulers of Kievan Rus'. (The latter spelling is more correct; the apostrophe denotes a special character in the Cyrillic alphabet; if you're curious, look up soft sign in that article.)
Here's what seems to have happened. The editable source text was moved to the new page, while the displayable HTML code remained at the old page. The new page is still officially blank. When you try to view it, you are taken directly to the edit box, as though you were creating a page from scratch, but the edit box has an article in it.
I almost feel sorry for digging up such an out-of-the-way bug :p -Smack 06:19 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

A caching bug, it seems. I'll look at it... --Brion 06:42 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Smack, take a look at it again if you're still around and tell me how Rulers of Kievan Rus' looks. It _should_ reload correctly now. (But I've still got to fix the underlying bug...) --Brion 06:46 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Works fine now, for me at any rate; thanks. -Smack 07:02 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)