Wikipedia:Village pump/February 2003 archive

I've just noticed in the history of computer program that there is a revision from 2001 between two revisions from 2002. Is this a bug? Can the revisions be put back in the correct order?

(cur) (last) . . M 17:38 Sep 6, 2002 . . Andre Engels (nl:)

(cur) (last) . . 18:39 Jun 27, 2001 . . Larry_Sanger

(cur) (last) . . M 15:20 Aug 6, 2002 . . Aldie (hmmm)

Oliver P. 17:11 Feb 7, 2003 (UTC)

I saw a similar problem after I merged the histories of two different articles. A bug report on this has already been filed. --mav 20:34 Feb 7, 2003 (UTC)

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I found this attached to the watcfhlist for my own user page: "Oklah (FAT PIG CHECK YOUR HOLESTEROL)". I find this offensive.

This is coming from our vandal of the day. Check Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress for more. olivier 13:49 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

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There seems to be a bug where if i create a link to a page which does not exist and then later create the page, the earlier link is still directed to the edit page. Vera Cruz

Most likely a browser caching "problem" - your browser is showing you an old version of the article saved on your hard drive rather than the most recent version on the server. Hitting reload should fix it. --Camembert

It's not. Vera Cruz

I think that some browsers require you to hold down control or shift while you click "reload" in order for it to really reload. You might try that. If that still doesn't fix it, then I can't help you, but in any case, it isn't a server bug, because new pages I'm creating aren't resulting in this. --Camembert

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At emir, shaikh is listed as not having an article. There is an article at sheikh and selecting takes one to the edit page, isntead of the actual page. Vera Cruz

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Whatever happened to the feature at the bottom of each article stating how many 'hits' it has had? Just curious (and concerned) Arno

Look about halfway up the page. --Brion 08:18 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

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Okay, stupid question time. If one wants some text to appear next to a picture, and then some more text to appear below the same picture, is there any easy way of doing this without just inserting lots of <br>s? By the way, sorry if I've messed up the STS-107 article by trying to sort that out... -- Unsigned (due to shame)

Put in a single <br clear="all">, that will force following text down until the margins are free of floating images. --Brion

Thank you. :) -- Oliver P. 04:16 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

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When editing an article and creating new links, how do you link a word which may not be exactly the same as the title of a relevant page to that relevant page (e.g. if you write the word 'Epicureans' and want to link it to a page called 'Epicureanism', how do you do it?) Sorry, that's very badly explained; I hope someone knows what I mean!Olivia Curtis[?]

adslhadlhasjhdsakhdakjshdasjkjash click edit and see how this was done

You could write [[Epicureanism|Epicureans]], that will display what is after the | and link to wwhat is before the |. BTW, use 3 tildes (~) to sign, that will create a link to your user page -- Tarquin 22:00 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry? I'm afraid I'm more than a bit technologically backward. How do you get that vertical line symbol? I've found it on my keyboard, but there are two other symbols on that key and I only get one or the other of them when I try pressing shift and alt and things. And what's all that <nowiki business for? Thank you Olivia Curtis

you on mac or PC? on a PC it's to the left of Z. on my mac it's to the left of ENTER. The nowiki thing was a mistake, fixed, see above -- Tarquin 22:12 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

Aha! Or should I say Eureka (quite literally - you already know I'm a bit of a pretentious classicist). It was to the left of Z - I was looking at the wrong one. Thanks a lot (and sorry if you've just come rushing back to answer a query, only to find it's just a thank you note)|||||Olivia CurtisOlivia Curtis

that's cool. being a pretentious classicist is a Good Thing as far sa I'm concerned :-) -- Tarquin 22:23 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

at worse you can cut and paste the | ; is an html flag which allows one to write wikisoftcode which wont be processed such as <nowiki>==No headline== Vera Cruz

You could also do it another way, which is a bit more effort, but which would allow you to link directly to Epicurean[?] in future, if you wanted to. You could create a redirect at Epicurean[?] - i.e. a page which just contains the line "#REDIRECT [[Epicureanism]]". Then going to Epicurean[?] will automatically redirect you to Epicureanism. Then you can just write "[[Epicurean]]s" in articles in future. (The "s" automatically gets put into the link.) Hope this helps! -- Oliver P. 22:17 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

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I'm running MSIE 5.5 on Win98SE. Becasue of the slowness of the wikiserver (or the SQL data base table or whatever) I'm often running several edits on related subjects at the same time. I find that when a page is updated it pops on top of whatever I'm doing at the time. Is there a way to stop this "pop on top" behaviour? -- SGBailey 22:57 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

We have a little JavaScript that puts the cursor in the edit box when creating new pages (the same thing Google does for the search field). We also have the floating quickbar, which also does some JavaScripty stuff I haven't looked into. Are you referring to newly created pages? If so, the JavaScript may cause the "popping" on some operating systems. Or are you perhaps using the floating sidebar? Does anyone else have this problem? --Eloquence 23:12 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

In Mozilla 1.3a on Linux (Red Hat 8, Gnome desktop), I get:

• open an edit link in a new tab (appears under the current tab, not focused) -- when the edit page finishes loading, the keyboard focus moves to the still-lowered tab, and keystrokes go into the edit box
• open an edit link in a new window (comes up focused, but I then click-focus back to the first window while it loads) -- when the edit page finishes loading, the edit window is brought to top unbidden, and focus goes to the edit box

This is new behavior; I don't recall it happening until recently. --Brion 23:20 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

The particular scenario that is frustrating me is hte list of Swedish municipalities. I am working my way down the list, using "open in new window" on three successive towns at a time. If they display properly, I close them, If the wikification is wrong, I tick minor edit and save page which fices whatever the bug was. Whilst all this is going on, the page I think I am working on gets hidden by whatever has newly loaded, be it edit page or finished article. -- SGBailey 23:26 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

I have similar behaviour to that described by Brion on Opera 6.05 on WinXP (spit), but turning off JavaScript fixes it. --Camembert

I don't fully understand what you are doing and how (are you editing or loading pages?), but I don't see a relation to the JavaScript if it happens during both edits and newly created pages. It may be an IE thing, but try turning off JavaScript and see if it still happens.

But Brion, the behavior you report is caused by the script. The same thing happens when you tab-load http://www.google.com. --Eloquence 23:44 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

I err. The pop-on-top behaviour only applies to edit pages. I had been clicking so furiously I was confused about what had happened. -- SGBailey 23:43 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

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Add option G (grammatical change) to the recent changes and edit modification choices. Vera Cruz

Yep, and let's also have S for spelling changes and P for punctuation changes and... Ahem, no, sorry, only joking. :) I'm not sure it's really necessary to distinguish between all the different types of minor change. It would just get annoying having to choose between the different tick boxes each time, I think. -- Oliver P. 22:17 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

The point is, Im using minor to refer to an edit of several sentences or the like, this being because people complained that I made too many major edits which weren't major enough. G should be used for truly minor edits, this way we can differentiate between a minor (but non-grammatical) change and an actual major change.

It might also be useful for someone who has made a string of edits on a page, to delete all interim pages, so it reads as if they made only one edit-this would be useful for eliminating complaints about "death by a thousand edits" as well as for making it easier to use the edit comparison features. Not to mention the space it would free up. Vera Cruz

Erm, I'm not really sure I follow you. If you're only correcting grammar, spelling, formatting, etc., then you should probably mark the edits as minor, regardless of how many corrections you make - as long as you're sure that the corrections will be uncontentious, that is. If you're changing the content - i.e. what the article is actually saying - then you should probably call that a major edit, regardless of how small in size it is. I think. Oh, and if you examine the "Preview" page more carefully, and make lots of changes in one go before clicking on "Save page", that would eliminate the "death by a thousand edits" thing. :) Hope this helps... Hmm, not sure it will, though. Jimbo's just e-mailed wikien-l, saying that you're still supposed to be banned, so you'll probably be off again shortly... Quick, send an e-mail to Jimbo, and promise to take on board those suggestions, and everyone else's about not getting into fights and so on, and he might let you stay! -- Oliver P. 14:02 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

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A heads up: I've noticed that some Wikipedia users seem to have started threatening libel suits against each other. Does anybody have anything to say about this? Btw, I don't seem to see any "minor edit" button, I used to, I wonder what happened to it :)

You only get the minor edit option when logged in. -- SGBailey 12:58 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

In answer to your first question - one user who has a recent history of communicating with users in manner best described as touchy threatened another member with a libel suit for suggesting that she was mistaken over a copyright issue. See the Juliette Binoche discussion page and Jimbo Wales'es discussion page for further details.

Since this started on Jan 26, she (who by the way, says that she is a lawyer) has had her pages deleted and he has been talking of quitting.

In answer to the second question - only users with IDs can now use minor edits. In other words, anonymous users no longer have this facility.

Arno

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HOW DO I CHANGE AN ARTICLE TITLE?
Hi!! For accuracy, the Disneyland Paris article should be renamed to the new title Disneyland Resort Paris but, when I go into Edit for an article, there is no option to change the title. How do I do this?
Thanks Arpingstone 15:34 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page. - Patrick 15:49 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry Patrick, the instructions on the page you gave me (How to rename (move) a page) don't make sense. I quote - "When you've got your article up, click on the "Move page" link in the sidebar. You'll be asked for a new name for the article, and given the option to also move the article's talk page.". The problem is I can't find anything called "Move Page", not on the article page nor the Edit page. Help, again! - Arpingstone 16:20 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I just edited this page to correct an omission in it. Please check. - Patrick 16:26 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Patrick, all is well now.
I was on Nostalgic, now I've reset my prefs to give me a sidebar. Arpingstone 20:04 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

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Whenever I click on the "Recent changes" page I'm successfully logged out. What's wrong? KF 12:24 Feb 4, 2003 (UTC)

Immediately after posting this question I tried it again, and of course it's working now. Thanks anyway. KF 12:27 Feb 4, 2003 (UTC)

If you're using Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6+, the software now allows some pages to be cached by the browser (this cuts down on gazillions of unintentional reloads by people using the 'back' and 'forward' buttons, which under our previous 'never cache anything' setup causes those browsers to decide to reload every page when you push 'back' and 'forward'). Recentchanges will cache until a new edit has been committed; this is usually only a few seconds, though. ;) If you didn't do a full shift+reload, then during the time between edits merely clicking on Recentchanges again would continue to give you the copy of the page from prior to your login. --Brion 19:09 Feb 4, 2003 (UTC)

Not only Recent Changes, also other pages, I think. - Patrick 23:00 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

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Capitalization Rule

Why are some redirect pages for proper nouns, like JapaN, it's not just the beginning of the word capitalized, but the end as well? I've never seen a word's last letter capitalized. --Menchi 22:45 Feb 4, 2003 (UTC)

A relic of CamelCase, an old Wiki technique for creating links used in the early days of Wikipedia. I suppose such redirects might still be usefull just in case someone made a link to JapaN. -- Infrogmation 00:30 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

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I've just completed some minor edits to an article (Franz Josef of Austria). On linking to that article from some other page via a redirect (Franz Josef I of Austria) I found out that that way I'm faced with the older version. Is this the rule, an exception, or is my browser again playing tricks on me? KF 21:56 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

Try shift-F5 to reload. Pages are now cached (see above). - Patrick 23:00 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. KF 01:03 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

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So today I switched to Mac OS 10.2 (from 9.2) and upgraded my Mozilla to 1.2.1. I checked the advanced recent changes block in my preferences, and I like it... but why can't I find my watchlist? Tokerboy 02:27 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Um, where are you looking? Is there not a "My watchlist" link in the sidebar? Is there not a "Watchlist" item in the special pages dropdown at the top of the screen (or if using Cologne Blue skin, via the "Special pages" link at top of screen)? If not, under exactly what circumstances does it or does it not appear? --Brion 12:18 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps, just forgotten to login ? -- Youssefsan 12:27 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Aaah, I forgot I switched to Cologne Blue to see what it was like, and I never knew there was a link in the drop-down menu. Everything is under control. Tokerboy 19:13 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

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http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=world&cat=china

"[China] invoked an accusation that resonates loudly in today's world: terrorism. Wang Bingzhang, a Chinese citizen with permanent residency status in the United States, was convicted Monday of spying for Taiwan..." GustoMacphisto