RationalWiki:Technical support/Archive3

This is an archive page, last updated 1 August 2010. Please do not make edits to this page.

Archives for this talk page:

<1>, <2>, <4>, <5>, <6>, <7>, <8>, <9>, <10>, <11>, <12>, <13>, <14>, <15>, <16>, <17>, <18>, <19>, < List>, <20>, <21>, <22>, <23>, <24>, <25>, <26>

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Firefox issue?

I've been trying to log in for a few days now via Firefox, and each time I do it forces the value entered into the User Name field into lowercase. Since my ID is camelcase, this is a problem. Does this happen for anyone else, or is it just with my PC/Firefox setup?. It works fine under Chrome. --SpinyNorman 00:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I just logged in and out for nothing. What version are you running? Are you sober? etc? ^{— Sincerely, Neveruse513 (Dictated But Not Read) / Talk / Block} 00:55, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Try running firefox from a clean profile, see here. -- Nx / talk 09:46, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

indexer

why isn't {{Help:Index/indexer|keyword=Capture}} {{Help:Index/indexer|keyword=Image capture}} {{Help:Index/indexer|keyword=Website image capture}} {{Help:Index/indexer|keyword=Screenshot}}

working on User:Capturebot2? I know it's probably a silly typo on my part but I can't find it. ^{I am eating} _& honey^chat 21:38, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's working, but the indexer uses cached dpl, so you have to manually purge the cache when you add something to it (dpl can't automatically do it, so it normally disables the cache, but in this case the contents change rarely so it's better to cache it) -- Nx / talk 08:26, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Idle query

When using Javascripted Recent changes, what determines the order of the editors in the summary bit? ^{I am eating} _& honey^chat 00:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

"users are in ascending order of number of edits, and users with the same number of edits are ordered by date and time of last edit to the page (older first)". (metawikipedia:Help:Enhanced recent changes#Pages for which there are multiple edits) The last bit is obviously liberal deceit. It sorts the links to user pages, which means it should be alphabetical, but even that is not true. -- Nx / talk 10:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Mmm. Thought it looked fairly random. Thanx. ^{I am eating} _& honey^chat 16:52, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Printable

Is there a tag, either wiki or CSS, that will stop something appearing on the "Printable version" (as in the "toolbox")? ^{I am eating} _& honey^chat 15:38, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

-- Nx / talk 05:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanx. ^{I am eating} _& honey^chat 13:43, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

IPA span class on WP

Is there an easy way to replicate its effects without fiddling with Common.css or Common.js? Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 15:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

What effect? From what I understand WP policy is to use the IPA template to add a class to all IPAs so that people can style them differently or fix some IE bugs. That has nothing to do with Common.js/css -- Nx / talk 23:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

But can we replicate that class? Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 18:13, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean replicate? it's just <span class="IPAorwhatever"> -- Nx / talk 18:23, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I was confused between WP's and Wiktionary's. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 18:35, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok, that's still the same thing. -- Nx / talk 18:39, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Not to me. I'll upload screenshots. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 18:44, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

and . Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 19:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

No I mean it's still just a span with the class IPA. I have no idea why it looks different for you on Wiktionary, maybe you have some custom CSS? -- Nx / talk 19:09, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Or it might have something to do with the fonts on your system. Here's Wikt's common.css:

    .IPA {
        font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Code2000, Gentium, GentiumAlt, DejaVu Sans, Segoe UI, Lucida Grande, Charis SIL, Doulos SIL, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Lucida Sans Unicode, sans-serif;
        font-size: 110%;
        }

-- Nx / talk 19:11, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, I have the standard Ubuntu font settings. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 19:33, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, wait. I have Code2000, which appears before sans-serif. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 19:40, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

(EC - I wrote a long reply which is now irrelevant) just force the font-family to sans-serif in your monobook.css with !important. -- Nx / talk 19:53, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm fine. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 19:56, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

mp3/mp4/Nero

My Nero won't "save as" mp3 any longer, since it uses mp3PRO which requires either buying a cheap license or an even cheaper hack after the first 30 or so uses, so I saved my email being read on Malloy's radio show as an mp4 here. It plays fine, but doesn't work here in flashmp3 tags. Any suggestions, to turn it into an mp3, or to make it embeddable on the wiki? Thanks! ħuman 23:37, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

-- Nx / talk 23:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Oh, wait, that didn't actually answer my question. But it did solve the immediate issue. ħuman 00:33, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I used wp:oggconvert. -- Nx / talk 06:29, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, ok, thanks. Too bad I got no linux boxes kicking around... ħuman 21:43, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

There's probably a Windows-compatible version out there somewhere. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 21:46, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Ya think? I hope? I doubt it. Ogg-people aren't running around kissing Bill Gates' ass, as far as I can tell. I do appreciate Nx' "translating" my mp4 into a CC by SA format, however. I'll look into your suggestion, you never know... ħuman 03:49, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

A Google search for "windows ogg converter". Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 08:25, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

unwanted link

Maybe someone could block any edit with that lemonparty link? Real first name and last initial 12:36, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Not really we don't have a spam filter. Just keep reverting. Use the rollback button, it is faster than he can post. - π 13:19, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

User sub page comments

Is there a way of getting the "you have new messages" box for when people comment on user subpages? Totnesmartin 14:39, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe with JavaScript... Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 14:42, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Javascript, css, mediawiki, it's all hocus pocus to me. Totnesmartin 14:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Not really, not without rewriting large portions of the notification system. LiquidThreads will solve this by having a more flexible notification system. -- Nx / talk 15:01, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Martin, one crude solution would be to transclude the subtalk pages to your main talk page. You wouldn't get an orange box, but at they'd all be somewhere you'd be more likely to see changes? If you then gave each one a "super header" (single =blah= ), its edit button would edit the whole subtalk page. ħuman 19:41, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Essayspace

I was going through the essay category and noticed that (besides the fact it needs some organization and more subcategories, "rants", "short n sweet", "religion", "politics" etc.) under "E" there are some random things that clearly don't begin with E except for the "essay" in the namespace. Essays don't generally use DEFAULTSORT and it's worked fine with others so I was wondering what might be up with that; there are only a few essays beginning with E. ^gnostic 18:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:Essay adds defaultsort pagename. -- Nx / talk 12:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, so the template has the defaultsort, that'll be why I missed it. Thanks. I'll go ahead and add that to clear it up. ^gnostic 12:20, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete not working

Why can't I delete this: http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:File-Atheist_bus.jpg&redirect=no Prometheus 19:10, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Nope, still there. Prometheus 19:26, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleting things doesn't delete things, exactly. So it will still look like it's there if you have sysop powers and can view deleted edits. ^gnostic 12:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a bug, redirects stay after deletion (if you blank the page before deleting it, it will work). Apparently they go away on their own after a while, because Genghis didn't blank it before deleting. -- Nx / talk 12:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

RGB color value formulas

As a possible replacement for the site background image, as discussed here, I'm trying to work out a way of generating gentle colors which change gradually with the day, month & time. I can do this:

<font color=RGB({{CURRENTHOUR}},{{CURRENTMONTH}},{{CURRENTDAY}})>

The results are essentially various shades of black, because the numbers generated are so low (up to 12, 24, or 31, out of 255). What I want is for the RGB values to be made up of formulas - e.g. 200+{{CURRENTDAY}} as a very simple example. But every way I've tried to do this fails. Any help? Wèàšèìòìď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 20:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Your code doesn't work on Firefox. Apparently it doesn't accept rgb colors in a font that, so I changed it to a span. What you want to do is this:

rgb({{#expr: trunc ((({{CURRENTHOUR}}-1)/23)*255) }},{{#expr: trunc ((({{CURRENTMONTH}}-1)/11)*255) }},{{#expr: trunc ((({{CURRENTDAY}}-1)/30)*255) }})

Alternatively you could select the color based on the month:

{{#switch: {{CURRENTMONTH}}
|01 = red
|02 = green
|03 = blue
|04 = yellow
|05 = orange
|06 = black
|07 = pink
|08 = purple
|09 = whatever
|10 = color
|11 = you
|12 = want
}}

However, this won't work in common.css or any other css file, because those are not parsed. -- Nx / talk 12:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Wèàšèìòìď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 18:50, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Why was there a dot missing in LocalSettings.php?

I demand to know. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 19:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Intentionally, to see if php errors were echoed. -- Nx / talk 19:32, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Seemingly random and (as yet) inexplicable problem browsing RW in Safari

I'm having a strange problem in recent weeks browsing this site. Typically I can arrive at the site, browse around a bit, and then all of a sudden no page on the site will load - I just get a blank white page. At this point, nothing will work. If I load pages from another site then come back, all will be fine and I can load pages here again. This doesn't happen at any other site anywhere on the net, and it doesn't happen at this site if I use Firefox. Disappointingly, I am always able to load CP and never see this effect. This started when I update to 10.6.x, so I'm pretty certain it's a Safari-specific issue with this particular site config. I've trashed caches, reset Safari, etc, but it just keeps happening. In the console, all I see is that webkit.pluginagent is calling its debugger, no further info. Any ideas? DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 05:32, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you reproduce this reliably? So if I change something and it fixes it can you be sure the problem is gone? Also see my reply to Concernedresident -- Nx / talk 19:32, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I've disabled something that might be causing this. Could you check if the problem is gone? -- Nx / talk 21:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is related, but I get the same problem with iCab on my iPhone. It can't load Traditional values - I just get a blank page. The page loads fine in Safari on iPhone and on 10.6.2. It could be worth checking to see if you have any additional plug-ins installed, and also try a new user account on the Mac. --^{Ask me about your mother} 19:09, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

A blank page usually means a php error - RW is set up so you will only see a blank page and the error is logged, but this can be changed so that the error is displayed to you too. There are some errors related to DPL in the php log, but that can't be Traditional values. I'm going to reenable php error output (tell me when you're here and ready, I wouldn't like to keep it enabled for very long) and if you get an error message instead of the blank page, please copy it here, and tell me which page caused it. -- Nx / talk 19:32, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I just tried it on iCab, and it's still giving me a blank page. It's really odd, since it blanks the URL as well.--^{Ask me about your mother} 21:08, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Didn't turn it on yet, wanted to make sure you're here. Try it now. -- Nx / talk 21:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Still getting a blank page. I wonder if this is just iCab behaving oddly, and not something related to DogP's problem? I think that iCab on iPhone isn't using webkit, so I'm downloading iCab for Mac OS right now to see if its rendering engine has the same problem. --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I've changed something else, I'd like you to try again -- Nx / talk 21:17, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Just tried again. Still getting a blank page. --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I've copied the contents of that article to User:Nx/sandbox4, do you get a blank page there as well? -- Nx / talk 21:22, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

It loads fine, and I think this is just browser oddness. The loading of Traditional values fails just before it redirects from the search URL to the article URL. I noticed that the same problem can occur with Google, so I doubt that my problem is related to DogP's. Thanks for testing it. I'll just switch back to Safari for RW browsing. --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, Chrome has a similar problem quite often, usually when I let a tab load in the background, it comes up blank, but then if I'm patient the contents will appear after a while. I don't know if this is a bug in webkit or if it's because of Chrome's process separation. I don't use Safari or iCab so I don't know if they are affected. -- Nx / talk 21:35, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks like there have been Safari-related bugs similar to this in the past, but I've tested quite a few of them, and the pages now load fine. DogP, if the stuff I suggested doesn't work, just pop to the Safari menu and choose the "Report bugs to Apple..." option. --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:48, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, back now - and so far so good Nx. I'll keep you posted. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 05:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

No, failed again. This time I further tried to prove my theory that it was this site only - so while I was unable to load any pages from RW, I opened another browser tab in Safari, and was happily able to surf anywhere I wanted without a hitch. So the session and general connectivity was OK, and it's definitely site-related. Eventually, after a few minutes, service from RW returned (as it always does) to normal. No error messages displayed. Thanks for looking into this Nx. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 07:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I've enabled php error output again, could you try again and see if you get an error this time? -- Nx / talk 07:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm...so it happened again, and this time instead of a blank page, the page simply would not refresh - I had been on Recent Changes, selected it again, but it would not reload and the existing version of the page remained displayed. While the progress indicator was spinning, I opened another two tabs and was happily able to surf anywhere in either of those. I eventually closed the RW tab, and returned a few minutes later and all was normal again. Still no explicit error messages. Let me know if there's something you want me to check Nx. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 16:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Script idea

Could we not add a script that automatically adds capture tags to CP links on TWIGO, given that TK has started oversighting anything we link to? Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 22:41, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

But we fake those screenshots anyway, don't we? ^gnostic 16:50, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Shh, we have to keep up the pretense. I'd hate TK to find out that RW is responsible for all of the vandalism that ever takes place on the web. It seems a decent idea, so long as the capture bot is limited to the WIGO. I've been wondering how much space is available for these screenies? --^{Ask me about your mother} 22:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Lots. I seem to remember it being given as a few hundred Gb. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 12:54, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

More than 200, and wigo images are usually small diffs that are below 100kb. I'll leave the rest of the math to you. As for the script, I think it's a bit overkill (and it'd be easier to implement within the wigo extension, as a magic word like __CAPTURELINKS__), but I've moved the notice on the top of the talk page to an edit notice, so people who don't know about it will hopefully start using it now. -- Nx / talk 13:56, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

More whining: can you modify botswitch so that it can use multiple accounts? Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 19:07, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Err

Collapsible boxes don't seem to be collapsing since the downance. _& marmite^chat 08:11, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Archived page seems to have disappeared?

I archived my talk page, and though /Archive2 exists, that link doesn't appear on my archivebot link with the <2> identifier on my actual talk page. Where's it gone? How do I get it to appear there? DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 18:27, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I see it. Maybe your cache is showing you the old version? ħuman 00:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Strange, I still don't see it after blowing away my cache and restarting Safari. Must be some Safari bug, it does have a very sticky cache - I've seen that before. Ta H. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 06:05, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I can see it fine, must be your cache. Go to your talkpage and add ?action=purge to the url. - π 08:14, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help H. But the problem 'went away' anyway - the internet elfs probably got up in the night and scrubbed my cache properly. I'd say that's it. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 20:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Screwed my user settings

I can't access RW when I enable JS support in my browser. All the browsers I've tried to seem to get stuck for ever trying to download any RW page when I'm logged in and JS is enabled. I played with my user settings before this occurred, and I can't seem to get them back to a working set. Could someone reset them back to the default (sans permissions of course). CS Miller 10:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm having the same problem. I've disabled the gadgets extension temporarily, it looks like if you have too many of them it doesn't work. -- Nx / talk 11:01, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm sure I disabled all the gadgets in my prefs. Still not working for me when JS is enabled. Looking at it more closely, when JS is disabled, my browser dosen't finish downloading RW pages, but at least renders what it has downloaded, so RW is usable. CS Miller 11:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Everything works fine for me in Chromium now, although it didn't when I first noticed the problem in Firefox. Firefox is still having troubles though. -- Nx / talk 13:31, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Scratch that, it's still not perfect, but it's a bit better in Firefox too now. Might be a problem with Trent's internet connection. I've reenabled gadgets now. -- Nx / talk 13:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Nx, it is working in Firefox for me now. However its not working in Konqueror for me :-{ CS Miller 14:29, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Can't search metadata

I asked about this a few months ago but didn't ask for what I really want. Now that it's pretty apparent to me that you can't search metadata of images, would someone with database access and the ability please make it so you can? 23:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Metadata isn't indexed, and I can't just run expensive SQL queries to search for it. However, the API can generate a list of images with metadata, and you can search that: [1] -- Nx / talk 11:09, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Nx, that's the stuff. I can figure out enough from the URL. Very helpful. 20:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

The favicon has disappeared

Explain. Professor Moriarty 19:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you left out a "must" and a "myself" there. ListenerX^TalkerX 19:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I can still see it - in Explorer, Firefox & Chrome. Wèàšèìòìď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Template adjustment proposed

Bofors I goes borking the real template, would some markup guru kindly check out the source code of this suggested change to Template:wp where there is a new parameter {{{adj}}} to replace "biased" with any adjective (or other string, duh) of the editor's choice. You may see an example of it working (I think) in my sandbox. Cheers! Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 18:51, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

That looks interesting, and could be quite useful. As long as existing iterations of the template all work fine it shouldn't hurt. ħuman 20:22, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

My tests so far show compatibility in that sense. I'll go live with it soon, and play for a bit. I'll be around on and off for a couple of hours, and then again after roughly 9:00 eastern US time. Knock wood this little alteration won't crash the whole verkakte wiki. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 21:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Well done. ^{— Sincerely, Neveruse513 / Talk / Block} 21:45, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm still goofing with pages that transclude the template, and the only hiccup I find is that if the adjective is too long, the text looks ugly in the template box, spilling over into another line. I tried putting "hair-raising" into the template in Chupacabra and thought better of it for that reason. Maybe it is better-behaved at different text sizes (firefox 3.0.11 here) but time will tell. "It will eventually become clear that 2+2=4." Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 21:52, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've looked at enough cases to believe it works. Thanks to Pi and Nx for simplifying and de-hiccupping it, respectively. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 22:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Self Block

As an admin, am I capable of blocking myself indefinetly such that I can't unblock myself? Chasanidya (talk) 02:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

No. Besides, why would you want to permaban yourself? AnarchoGoon ^{Swatting Assflys is how I earn my living} 02:55, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't. I guess I just want to know that I'm safe against my self, you know, that I have the freedom to say controversial things without fear of my own banhammer of censorship hanging over my head. Chasanidya (talk) 04:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist/Recent changes upgrade?

Can we have a box to tick off that "ignores" the blocks? ħuman 02:06, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

New article boilerplate text

Would it be possible to set things up so that, when clicking a red link, the following elements:

• {{stub}} ==Footnotes== <references/> ==See also== ==External links== Category:

were automatically placed on a page? Would it be a good idea to set it up so?--Bob^{Not Jim} 09:31, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think so, but the create new article inputbox on RW:TODO does, it preloads Template:Article -- Nx / talk 16:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

So can one use that like {{subst:template:article}} or some such for the first save to get all that stuff? ħuman 21:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but it's better to just use the inputbox on RW:TODO -- Nx / talk 21:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah right. Interesting. Did not know we had that. Thanks.--Bob^{Not Jim} 13:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Normal to leave open nowiki and pre tags in a template?

I'm not entirely used to the wiki code, and I think there may be a problem in one of the templates. Is it normal for Template:Flickr/doc to have a nowiki tag showing when it's being viewed, and to have a pre tag that doesn't get closed? --^{Ask me about your mother} 12:07, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

This has been answered. Thanks. --^{Ask me about your mother} 12:23, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Host?

What type of host does RW use? Thanks! --71.246.97.199 (talk) 08:46, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Is a PC in the domicile of our noble leader founder. ^{I have just eaten} _& stilton^talk 08:56, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I read in the history that Siteground is what you guys used, but that you moved. It goes on to say "We aren't that dumb, so within 24 hours Trent had moved the site to a new host.". Is that a different hosting company, or is it Trent's comp, which I still don't get how that works. --71.246.97.199 (talk) 08:59, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it moved to a different host, and then later to Trent's computer. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 09:07, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

It's Trent's m/c. The technicalities I don't know but I suppose it's a matter of registering RW as his IP? ^{I have just eaten} _& stilton^talk 09:11, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for the responses, much appreciated. --71.246.97.199 (talk) 09:14, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, he's on broadband (doh) and pays a bit extra for a static IP. There was an intermediate host between this and siteground which was ok, but this method is cheaper and allows him/us more control over the machinery. ħuman 21:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I have a new little friend

And I want him to be able to follow the screen as it goes down. At the time, my little friend is wandering in an infite figure 8 about 273 pixels from the top and 115 pixels from the left. What I am asking for is to be able to scroll the screen down, but the gnat would appear in the same place on the screen, while the text moves behind him. ĴαʊΆʃÇä₰ I know Anonymous user zaps on Xbox 360s. 15:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Like this? Wèàšèìòìď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 18:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I squished it three times and it keeps regenerating - it's zombie Jesus gnat! ħuman 21:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I guess that adds a new meaning to bug reports. ĴαʊΆʃÇä₰ is writing a comment 01:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Vandal brake issue

It does appear, based on a spam attack this morning, that the vandal brake does not prevent image uploads, nor does it limit the number of image uploads per hour. Any way this could get fixed? The Goonie Punk ^{Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!} 18:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The easiest solution will require an upgrade to the wiki software. TMTVandal (talk) 03:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

How long will that take, the vandal vandal-site leader? - π 03:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Upgrade is quick, but we have to do fairly extensive testing before implementing a substantial upgrade live. tmtoulouse 04:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Make it so. What has happened to Nx by the way? - π 04:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, make it so. Crundy wound up permabanning the guy this morning to get him to fuck off. Lord of the Goons ^{The official spikey-haired skeptical punk} 04:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Assume he is on hiatus, busy, or perhaps retired. The major issue is our substantial number of customizations and extensions, there is no guarantee that they are compatible. We have a test site here. And I will upgrade accordingly soon enough. tmtoulouse 04:30, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, what happened to Nx? I was thinking that earlier today... I don't think it was me, we seemed to get over our spat. I hope. ħuman 04:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

You people are an insatiable demanding horde, at the best of times. A break is well deserved and we will all welcome him back when and if he decides to return. tmtoulouse 05:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for looking into the vandal brake issue, Trent. The Goonie 1 ^{What's this button do? Uh oh....} 05:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Beta update

RationalBeta has been updated. Go try and break it. tmtoulouse 06:09, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

This might be a bit out of date, but I popped to that URL and fiddled around with the WIGO votes. There may be a problem with them. Taking Test 1 as an example, at the start it showed 10 votes. I click the up arrow and the score incremented by 2. I click the down arrow and it decrements by 2, returning it to the original 10. Clicking the down arrow again does nothing, but I can repeat the cycle by clicking up and down in turn. Basically, I can vote up and then change my mind to neutral, but I can't vote up and then decide to vote down. The same is true in reverse that I can vote down, but I can't change my mind and vote up - I can only go down or neutral. That was in Camino 2.0.1. --^{Ask me about your mother} 09:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

At the start it was 10, and you have already voted down. Then you click up: your down vote is changed to up, so now it's 12 (without your down vote it would be 11). That's why there's a neutral button, to zero out your vote. -- Nx / talk 09:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

This is about the fourth or fifth (including me) to demonstrate their lack of common sense:

Think:

Score before voting= (say) 8

I vote UP Score = 9

I change my UP vote to DOWN Score = 7

^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 09:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. It's early in the day and it confused my brain. --^{Ask me about your mother} 09:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Fixed

Fixed. Vandals can't upload images at all now. I can make it so they can upload every 30 mins if you want.

To Trent: I added a new feature to the vandal brake a while ago which allows you to specify which rights to completely remove and which ones to limit (i.e. remove if there was an edit in the last 30 minutes):

# which rights to remove from a vandal:
$wgVandalBrakeConfigRemoveRights = array ( 'move', 'skipcaptcha', 'rollback' );
# which rights to limit by the edit limit (i.e. they will be available only if more than $wgVandalBrakeConfigLimit seconds have passed since the user's last action): 
$wgVandalBrakeConfigLimitRights = array ( );

I used that to remove the upload right from vandals (you don't have to remove reupload et al because those require the upload right).

Our current configuration (in localsettings) is (in addition to the defaults above, which are in the extension):

$wgVandalBrakeConfigRemoveRights[] = 'intercom-sendmessage';
$wgVandalBrakeConfigRemoveRights[] = 'upload';

As for the update, 1.15.1 isn't really worth it. I've already backported some stuff (mostly fixes to some annoyances in regards to uploading). 1.16 will be much more interesting. -- Nx / talk 09:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes

I've just noticed "Expression error: Unrecognised word "expression"" at the top of Rc Immediately below

"The leukocyte of internet terrorist cells!

To do list • New pages • Short articles • Lonely pages • Dead ends • Entry points"

Coments? ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 14:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for spotting that. -- Nx / talk 15:03, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It's there again! ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 01:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Fixed again. - π 01:23, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What

Does the Linux syscall read do on EoF? It doesn't seem to be -1. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 19:40, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

rtfm: On success, the number of bytes read is returned (zero indicates end of file) -- Nx / talk 20:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It didn't occur to me to read the fm. Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 20:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Backup is running

Early morning (6:30 - 8:00 ish UTC) I can't access RW. According to the blog, backup is running then - any connection? ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 08:42, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

It normally only takes half an hour, but its starting time is random. There are connections and I have got on before, but it is slow and quite because other users are getting blocked if you are getting through. Look on the bright side we have never lost a week or two worth of edits. - π 08:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

It's only inaccessible while the mysql database is locked, which is about 15-20 minutes (whenever you view a page, the view counter has to be updated, which can't be done while the db is locked, hence it hangs waiting for the db to be unlocked). After that the site is a bit slow while the backup is uploaded to the backup server (we're talking about 10+ Gb of data here), but should be accessible.

I think Trent still does the backups manually, so it's not always exactly at the same time. -- Nx / talk 08:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Should I just delete this borked image?

There seems to be something wrong with the File:The-new-godspeed.jpg. It's giving the following error when trying to render the image: "Error creating thumbnail: convert: unable to open image `/home/rational/public_html/wiki/images/f/fe/The-new-godspeed.jpg': No such file or directory. convert: missing an image filename `/home/rational/public_html/wiki/images/thumb/f/fe/The-new-godspeed.jpg/800px-The-new-godspeed.jpg'."

Shall I go ahead and delete it, or is there anything that can be done to recover the image? I've no idea what the image is, or even if it's worth saving. --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:10, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

How ...

... did two edits by a BON get flagged as bot? Rather unsettling if BONs are hiding like that. Or was it the reversion wot done it? Explanation please.   ^Contribs_Talk 01:19, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Sysops can flag edits as bot edits on rollback. - π 01:20, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

mediawikiwiki:Manual:Parameters_to_index.php#cite_note-3 -- Nx / talk 01:21, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Not a good thing to do. Leads to paranoia - on my part anyhow. If someone's blocked or binned I wanna be able to see it (without messing about with Rc.   ^Contribs_Talk 01:26, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

It only works on rollback. - π 01:29, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Unless you're a bot... -- Nx / talk 01:31, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

True. - π 01:32, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Still having that Safari problem

Visit RW - load a page - any page. 7 times out of 10 (guesstimate), the Safari page load indicator spins, and the page doesn't load - complete hang. Sometimes the page blanks, then hangs - leaving me with a blank unloaded page. I can at any moment move to any other website and immediately load pages - this is only happening on RW. Once it has happened to one page on RW, no other page on RW will load. Always, the problem eventually goes away and I can finally load the requested page, but not for usually five or ten minutes. Once it's 'fixed' like this, I get a few minutes of RW working fine, then it will happen again. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 18:34, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

If you allow it to time-out, do you ever see a 404 error or something similar? I'm noticing an occasional problem with Camino in that it'll refuse to load a page, but if I open a new window and try again it works fine. --^{Ask me about your mother} 13:59, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I never see a 404. If I wait perhaps three or four minutes, it eventually 'gives up' and simply doesn't deliver the page, usually leaving me with a blank window. But I can at any moment in the same session (in another tab, for e.g.) surf anywhere else successfully - this is an RW-only issue. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 15:40, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm unable to reproduce the problem on Safari Windows. Do you also experience it if you log out or if you disable javascript completely? -- Nx / talk 21:52, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Get a proper browser? Educated evil Phantom Hoover! 22:00, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I have Safari as well, everything seems fine for me. Tetronian ^{you're clueless} 22:02, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Nx - this is Safari on a Mac. Yes, I see it under any user's account. I'll check without javascript. Phantom - I think we all know better than to get into that lame debate. Tet - what version OSX are you on? DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 07:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Update: OK, yes, it does seem to help if I turn off Javascript. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 08:18, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Does it eliminate the problem entirely? What if you turn off all gadgets (that's why I asked you to try logged out) -- Nx / talk 08:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

It's hard to be definitive ad say that it entirely eliminates the problem, but it looks like it - I haven't yet had any problems with pages not loading if I disable Javascript. Next, I'll try being logged out. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 15:49, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, after a few days testing of this, I think I would have expected to see the problem again, so I can confirm that I do not experience the issue either a) with Javascript turned off, or b) when logged out as a user. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 16:21, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any gadgets? Are you using Monobook or a different skin? I seem to remember you said you tried with different users, and that you still had the problem, is that correct? -- Nx / talk 09:50, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I use Safari on Mac OS Snow Leopard and don't have this problem. There are times when I can't access RW but I think that's to do with the odd few minutes of RW server downtime rather than my browser. Have you tried using Firefox, DogP? I think you can download it for free somewhere and it works quite well on Mac as far as I understand. SJ ^Debaser 16:28, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Nx, I've got Nav popups, HotCat, wikEd and AutoWIGO turned on, then a few other random gadgets. Maybe I should try turning some of those off? I'm using Monobook. I haven't tried with different users, no. Josh - no problems with Firefox - but I get more pleasure out of fixing potholes than I do from driving around them, so I want to get to the bottom of this. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 16:21, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, definitely try disabling them all. If you can, try enabling only one gadget, starting with the bigger ones (navpop, wiked, hotcat). Also open the resource view in developer tools, which gives you a timeline of page loading, and see if you can spot anything there, e.g. does it hang on the same file every time, is there an error message etc (this is how it looks).

Every time I had problems like this it was independent of the browser. One time I can confirm it was due to a connection problem (ping showed dropped packages, and other websites at the same ISP had problems), but it only manifested if I had a lot of gadgets. The problem is that the web browser won't display anything until all the scripts have been downloaded. If you have a lot of gadgets, it increases the chance of a package getting lost, and then the page won't load, while disabling javascript/gadgets reduces this chance so the problem appears to go away entirely. The second time though I couldn't find any problems with the connection, and it was driving me mad, but it fixed itself in a few days (and again, it was browser independent).

Your problem is different yet similar, so it's very puzzling. -- Nx / talk 19:07, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, this is making sense now, as I only turned those on a few months back, and IIRC it was around then I started to notice this problem. I'll go through them one by one and see if I can identify the troublemaker. One of these gadgets may believe in God or something, so it may need some reeducation, if you get my drift. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 21:52, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. First, I turned off all the gadgets for a day. No page load fails. Then I turned them all back on again. Still no hangs. It seems like simply reloading them has solved the problem. One presumes memory cruft clogging up the tubes. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 04:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so sure about that, you did clear you cache a while back, and that didn't help. But if the problem goes away, then I'm not complaining. BTW, the more gadgets you have, the slower page loads will be. I used to have a ton, but I've recently cut back on my gadget addiction. -- Nx / talk 07:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I log on under a gadgetless sock on my phone now & also use Myskin skin. Surprising the difference it makes. ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 08:16, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Some more knowledge - it just happened again, and this time the only gadget I had enabled was Navigation Popups. So I guess that's it? DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 17:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I consider this case closed - since I've turned all the gadgets off, I've not had a single problem with page loads or anything else. And NavPopups seems to be the principle culprit. Thanks for helping me get to the bottom of it Nx. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 16:44, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't notice your previous update... navpopup is huge, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's why it doesn't work. -- Nx / talk 16:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Drop down

Is it possible to put a drop-down box in an article (like the "block reasons" etc). I'm thinking about using them here to select the Blog & author.   ^Contribs_Talk 16:23, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

"No answer", came the swift reply! 02:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)   ^Contribs_Talk

It's surely possible. Look at how Nx implemented the file copyright choices in common.css perhaps? ħuman 03:42, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

But no-one's telling me! (stamps feet & scowls) 03:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)   ^Contribs_Talk

Why do you want ruin my wiki? ħuman 04:28, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I didn't implement it, I just enabled it. And it's a in a form which you have to submit. That wouldn't work so well in this case I think. -- Nx / talk 08:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

DOES NOT COMPUTE. DOES NOT COMPUTE. DOES NOT COMPUTE. DOES NOT COMPUTE. DOES NOT COMPUTE. ħuman 09:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It does, I see what he means: its as a form, I think. 09:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)   ^Contribs_Talk

Well we have the Simple Forms extension installed, but all I can get it to do is generate the html, which looks good, but doesn't really help :) Worm^{(t | c)} 09:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

We do? Do we use it anywhere? Anyway, I think that won't help because it's still a form you have to submit. (To human: every time you select something you have to click button then page reloads and displays result. What Susan wants is instant change without reload without button-clicky) -- Nx / talk 09:26, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Nx hath it right. 09:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)   ^Contribs_Talk

Well, it can be done using javascript. Specify which columns to filter using classes (the same way sorting works, which can be done on a per-column basis, see wikipedia:Help:Table#Sorting), find them the same way sorting does, get all the cells in column, remove duplicates, build dropdown and insert it above/below column with javascript even handler that filters out everything not matching stuff in dropdown. The only tricky part is multiple filtered columns interfering with each other (e.g. you select one option from dropdown 1, it hides stuff. Then you select option from dropdown 2, it hides stuff too. Ok so far, but then select no filtering from dropdown 1, it unhides everything. Maybe by hiding both the cell and the entire row the script can figure out if the row was hidden by another column, since it can just check the other cells in a row to see if there's a hidden cell, and leave the row hidden if there is) -- Nx / talk 09:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

"Obviously"? To you, mayhap. To me "WTF"! 09:47, 11 March 2010 (UTC)   ^Contribs_Talk

The obviously was referring to my statement that it can be done using javscript. -- Nx / talk 10:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I know: I's teasing! 10:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)   ^Contribs_Talk

Request for magic

Can someone build a thing that shows the date of a user's most recent edit and is linked to the diff? It would be nice to have a thing for the RW:Shrine that says "Last edit: dd/mm/yy; all edits" and perhaps floats off to the right. (obviously "all edits" is easy, that's just a link to their contribs) ħuman 20:50, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Probably Certainly DPLable. Also probably very slow. -- Nx / talk 20:55, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Hiding trolls

I don't use facebook a lot but I do sometimes. There was one person who used to post all the time and I got fed up with seeing his comments, but I didn't want to "unfriend" him. I discovered that there is an option to simply make him invisible - I can simply banish him from my life and not see his comments. He posts but I don't see it.

There have been times when I'd like to simply not see certain posters here. When certain trolls get going for example. Is there any way we could have a "hide this user" feature? I know that you'd still see people responding to them which could be weird though. On the other hand, something to get them off my recent changes? Doable? Popular? Insane?--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 21:54, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I believe it's possible to hide the recent changes of certain users. I saw some scripting to that effect when a particular person was at his worst. Unfortunately I can't seem to locate the script, but I suspect it was Mr Nx or someone with a similar level of wiki-fu. --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:58, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like something one would do in one's monobook file. Google it? ħuman 01:27, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I was working on a javascript to do this, but it I kind of dropped it in its alpha stage. It can block one user though. - π 02:32, 27 March 2010 (UTC) 02:31, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

In here place:

importScript('User:Π/Scripts/TrollBeGone.js');
function troll(){
  TrollBeGone("Human");
}
addOnloadHook(troll);

I might try to improve it so you can block more than one troll at a time. - π 02:36, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

It might have the undesired effect that when trolls turn to vandals, you don't notice it. And if everyone does it, it could go unnoticed for some time. ^gnostic 02:42, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

By using it you agree to the EULA hidden in the top draw of my desk, that absolves me of all responsibility. - π 03:01, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Can several iterations of it be copied in, perhaps? Oh, and happy to see you knew who Bob is sick of seeing in RC! Does it work on watchlists too? ħuman 03:12, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, an interesting bit of mind reading there. :-) --Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 07:59, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't work on watchlist. Multiple iterations seems to cut out edit you want to see and leaves edits you don't want to see. I can hazard a guess why, but that won't fix it. I just need to finish it one day. - π 03:18, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Email in prefs

I changed my email ac in prefs & didn't receive an email. Did it back & didn't get an email. Redid it and still no email (over 3 weeks approx) ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 01:02, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Check your spam folder. - π 01:05, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Dunnit! ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 01:06, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the site emails you when you do that, if that's what you mean. Gonna send you a test now. ħuman 04:39, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Oops, can't, no "spam this user" link apparently. ħuman 04:40, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Query

I never thought about it before but do RW & RWβ sit on the same server? If so do they use seperate instances of mediawiki or share one? I have my reasons for asking which might, or might not, become known at a later date) ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 22:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, same server, and yes they are both completely independent installations of MW. tmtoulouse 22:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Cheers! ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)} 22:10, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Need some help with licensing

I'm trying to upload a file that has been declared freeware and has no other license attached to it. It isn't my own work, so which license do I attach to the file when I upload it? Thanks.-- ^{Spirit of the Cherry Blossom} 15:10, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Source? -- Nx / talk 15:17, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Here. The problem is that the site owner has copyrighted his own work and made it clear that it's use is freeware, but doesn't make it clear about the work of other contributors. Presumably the work is copyrighted to them, released as freeware and, given that there is no licensing restrictions, free to be used as the user wishes. How that translates into describing it's license is leaving me stumped.-- ^{Spirit of the Cherry Blossom} 15:23, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that freeware is one thing, uploading it to a website and serving it to users (I'm guessing you want to use it in your sig using font-face) is a completely different thing. It'd probably be okay though, because they say you can offer the fonts on your website for download. The other problem is that some people are going to get annoyed if you try to put personal stuff into Common.css -- Nx / talk 15:32, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem is I'm trying to conform to the bottom two sections on Wikisigs. As it says on the bottom I shouldn't be using Imagelinks, rather I should use the Downloadable Fonts section. Hence wanting to upload the font, and trying to find the right license for it. Oh, and thanks for the help on the sig page.-- ^{Spirit of the Cherry Blossom} 15:35, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that section probably shouldn't be there any more. There was an argument about this, since every user could spam Common.css with their favorite font (this wasn't my original intention), and I don't know what the final decision was, but I am certainly not going to put it into Common.css (nothing personal, just don't want the drama), and you're not a bureaucrat, so you can't. Sorry. -- Nx / talk 15:40, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thank Zeus, I can ignore it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Of course, it doesn't remove the reverse imprint of 'qwerty' across my forehead, but meh.-- ^{Spirit of the Cherry Blossom} 15:41, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You're a nerd. 16:44, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I see dotted boxes

I am seeing various number of dotted boxes around sections of the quote in Fun:Schlafly_Quote_Generator. It has a different number of dotted boxes each time I generate a new quote .I am using Fedora 12, Firefox 3.5.9/Seamonkey 2.0.4/epiphany 2.28.2 (all 3 of them has dotted boxes). Should I worry about it? (I'll get a screencap if you ask for it, once I figure out how to get a screencap) [[User:K61824|]][[User_talk:K61824|]] 16:20, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Like this?

I am seeing various number of dotted boxes around sections of the quote in Fun:Schlafly_Quote_Generator. 

It's probably a space somewhere which gets on a new line when rendered -- Nx / talk 16:24, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah, yes. Those spaces. Should we try fixing it? [[User:K61824|]][[User_talk:K61824|]] 16:52, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually it might be my fault. I recently rewrote the random generator to take advantage of dead branch skipping (previously, everything was parsed, then an option selected, now the option is selected first, and it's the only thing that is parsed) -- Nx / talk 17:05, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, should be fixed now. -- Nx / talk 17:21, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the right place for this....

Is there any way to know when you have been blocked without checking the block log? Most blocks are 0 or 3 seconds so unless I look at the log, I'm not even aware of it. I looked through mypreferences and didn't see any options for block notification. Keegscee (talk) 22:42, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Not that I know of. -- Nx / talk 22:58, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

External links

External link formatting does not appear to be working properly. I was looking around the Saloon Bar, and many peoples' external links appear to have been formatted wrong. Lets see if my link to google does the same thing in tech support. It appears not to. But it is still a glitch somehow in the saloon bar. AnarchoGoon ^{Swatting Assflys is how I earn my living} 04:48, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Hah! I was just gonna put out an intercom about it. Somewhere someone's cocked up a link above the dodgy ones Either put in a <return> or missed a "]" or something. I can't find it. 04:54, 28 April 2010 (UTC) ^Contribs_Talk

Fixed. tmtoulouse 04:55, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! The Goonie Punk ^{Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!} 04:56, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Cheers! 04:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC) ^yummy &  ^honey_{(or marmalade)}

Battening down the hatches

I see we're getting a battering again. I'm curious as to how our installation is hardened - do you have any sort of caching in front of the Apache that runs the PHP? e.g. Squid or Varnish set up as HTTP accelerators? (We use Varnish where I work for our public-facing WordPress blogs and Plone sites.) This means that casual anonymous browsers only hit MediaWiki once, not every page view. Skews the page counter, of course, but on balance having the site up is a better thing IMO. Do we have anything like this in place? - David Gerard (talk) 16:03, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Memcached and eaccelerator; mediawiki is set to use memcached. Squid would be a bit of overkill with only one server, no? -- Nx / talk 16:40, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Here's what I'm talking about. The only noticeable side-effect would be how to get the page view counters accurate again. (Cron job going through Varnish logs?) - David Gerard (talk) 17:30, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it looks like we don't have the memory for it. For our normal usage I don't think we really need it though - 90% of our traffic during regular operation is to pages which are very bad for caching - WIGO:CP which has to be purged after every vote, and discussion pages like the Saloon bar. In addition, since we're running on a 32 bit server, getting more memory is not so simple. -- Nx / talk 20:36, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

God damn this wiki is bush league. ^{— Sincerely, Neveruse / Talk / Block} 20:56, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Wtf? Trent didn't use 64-bit? Why the hell not? Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 21:27, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Buying as much memory as will fit and going 64-bit appears to be the plan ;-) I hadn't realised the CPU wasn't getting stressed - I just assumed it was 'cos melting CPUs is what Mediawiki does ... - David Gerard (talk) 21:37, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

It does melt the CPU - just look at the Saloon bar and my woes over signature templates. But in this case there's not much for the CPU to do - the page is extremely small, and it's already in memcached. -- Nx / talk 21:40, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

You know, we really need to start fundraising so we can buy Trent a server more powerful than my mother's laptop. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 21:57, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Hey! My ABD status means that in month now I will be able to get that super sweet post-doc position, and if rumor mill is right I can get in awesome server install on my yacht. tmtoulouse 22:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Database dumps?

Do we have database dumps, or at least main article space exports? I feel like putting up an article space mirror site - David Gerard (talk) 22:10, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

No. We do have mediawikiwiki:Extension:OAIRepository installed (for Lucene). Does that help you? -- Nx / talk 22:14, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Ooh, I might have a look into that. If it won't hammer RW - David Gerard (talk) 22:33, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

This is another plan in the works, I want to start providing database dumps for download. Just hard to work into the priority list. So much to do...tmtoulouse 22:51, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Sympathy for the Sysadmin

I am kind of ashamed that merely changing my signature results in the job queue length jumping to over 2,000. I can see why Nx frets about signatures now. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 23:32, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

That's not the main reason I don't like them. And it's not (just) my problem if the saloon bar takes twice as much time to load. -- Nx / talk 23:53, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Redirecting. How Concernedresident broke a little part of Human's wiki

I may have done something odd here. I relocated the Conservapedia:Liberal Style to Conservapedia:Liberal Style/Archived version, in order to make room for the rewrite. The main pages are working fine, but the talk page for the new version appears to be linking to the talk page for the archive. Is that normal/desirable, and if not, should I do something to fix it? --^{Ask me about our diode} 18:40, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

When you move a page, its talk page is also moved, you have to uncheck the option if you don't want that. -- Nx / talk 18:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Rereading your question, I'm not sure if you wanted to move the talk page also. In any case, I don't think that's a good idea, talk pages have their separate archive system. -- Nx / talk 19:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it is probably best that the talk page remains. I just got a bit confused by the redirecting stuff and was worried that it'd break something in the background. I'll look for that tick box next time, but would you say I'm better off just relocating the talk page to its original location? --^{Ask me about our Turing machine} 19:03, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Ignore that question. I just noticed that you've fixed it. Cheers. --^{Ask me about our handstand} 19:04, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Top level domain move

I didn't know we were moving from .com to .org. Cool. What caused it? Was there a discussion? I have no objection whatsoever, just catching up. DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 18:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

There was one heck of a lot of discussion, which began when Trent suggested it in the SB. Indeed, it is pretty cool. Tetronian ^{you're clueless} 18:11, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

rationalwiki.com is correctly redirecting, but paths, such as http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/RationalWiki:Saloon_bar no-longer load. Is that expected and intended behaviour for now? --ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 19:43, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

That link works now, but your browser has a cache and is probably remembering the wrong redirect from when I was trying to hack the idiotic behavior of apache which breaks urls with ? in them. -- Nx / talk 19:47, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Yep, it's working now. Thanks for that. --ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 09:11, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You done broke it

The redirect from .com to .org strips special characters from the end of URLs. This can be seen in WIGO CP and ASK... the WIGO CP link only works because the URL without a question mark at the end is a redirect to the real WIGO page, while WIGO ASK .com links are broken. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 08:59, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I know. It's only ? that's broken. I can't figure out how to do it. I think it's impossible. You are welcome to prove me wrong. -- Nx / talk 21:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.rationalwiki\.(com|org|net)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://rationalwiki.org/$1 [R=301,L,NE]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^rationalwiki\.(com|net)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://rationalwiki.org/$1 [R=301,L,NE]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^rationalwiki\.org$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^wiki/(.+)$ /wiki/index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA,B]

Not impossible, in fact I think you have a work around for this very issue in your last rewrite rule. Try adding the QSA flag to all your rewrite rules. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 07:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't get it. QSA does absolutely nothing. Removing it has no effect. Adding it has no effect. What the fuck is QSA for? -- Nx / talk 10:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, I figured it out. It makes http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Technical_support?action=edit work. Unfortunately that won't help me, because http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/RationalWiki:What_is_going_on_at_ASK%3F has no query string. I could solve this by rewriting the .com etc. short urls into full urls in one step (i.e. just copying the last rule but putting http://rationalwiki.org in front of it) but I don't want to change the short url into a full url in the address bar of the user. -- Nx / talk 10:32, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hey, possibly an odd off-topic question. I'm curious to know how hacked around this MediaWiki installation is? i.e. are we the same basic thing with patches or would it be a more accurately described as a fork? I know sod-all about Mediawiki, so I don't know if what you're changing are config files or the actual code itself. --ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 10:46, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

MW1.14.1 with some backports and a few small patches by me. Hardly enough to call it a fork. The major stuff is in extensions. -- Nx / talk 11:01, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Nx. Curiosity satisfied. --ConcernedResident ^{omg ponies!!!} 15:25, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hitting save after being blocked

Fucks sake. This is the second time I've had this. I'm editing a page (making a large edit) and then when I hit save I get the "Oh noes, you've been blocked" message, and only have the latest source in the box and the back button reloads the page, thus I have lost everything because of a "fun" block from someone. Can we not edit the system to show your changes like in the conflict page so we don't lose anything? Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 12:39, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Get a better browser? Firefox saves form content so hitting back doesn't destroy your comment. Alternatively, make yourself unblockable (you don't have to be a bureaucrat) -- Nx / talk 11:29, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, can't help you, request the feature at WP:WP:BUG -- Nx / talk 21:27, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

That answer went from uselessly rude to obnoxiously heavy-handed. ħuman 11:53, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Umm yeah. Sorry to have upset you. I'll make myself "unblockable" then. Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 11:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Upset who? -- Nx / talk 11:58, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

You seemed offended at the idea that I might be using anything other than FF. Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 12:06, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't, sorry if it sounded like that. -- Nx / talk 12:11, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

OK. I went off FireFox a while ago. I think if I work out how to disable the "check for updates for every damn plugin every fucking time you start FF" option then I might be happier. Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 12:15, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I thought any decent modern browser would restore form contents when you go back. The reason I didn't implement what you suggested is that it's much more complicated and involves delving into the bowels of mediawiki, whereas this took 5 minutes of modifying an extension I already made. And it also prevents interruptions caused by joke blocks. -- Nx / talk 12:46, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I think Chrome keeps content. EddyP (talk) 12:51, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but if you accidentally hit F5, say goodbye to your post. Couple that with the ability to scroll on the tab bar to switch tabs (only on Linux, extremely useful feature otherwise) and 4-5 recent changes tabs beside the one where you are editing, and it's a recipe for disaster. -- Nx / talk 12:55, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Call me overcautious but I write every edit over a certain length in notepad and then cut and paste into my browser (Firefox) - it saves the heartaches. Bob Soles (talk) 12:54, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I do that with really big edits just in case. Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 13:08, 3 June 2010 (UTC)