Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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Village pumps: Policy • Technical • Proposals (persistent) • Miscellaneous
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Village pump technical   post
The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues. Bugs and feature requests should be made at BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.

FAQ: Intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear, and cause the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. This is an ongoing issue we are working on.

Details about the occasional slow speeds and deadlock errors: here

Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar).

Please add new topics at the bottom of the page.
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Contents

Technical archive

Discussions older than 7 days (date of last made comment) are moved here. These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Better Upload Page to Get More Images Tagged

Over at the policy section, some people have crafted an idea for a better upload page to encourage people to tag their images or at least provide the information needed to tag them. You can go there for details, but basically we want a check box that says, "Is this a photograph you took yourself, or an image you created from scratch?" On the page where it says, "If you upload a file here to which you hold the copyright, you must license it under the GNU Free Documentation License or release it into the public domain. Alternately, you can upload your file to the Wikimedia Commons under a different free license." change it to "If you upload a file here to which you hold the copyright, you agree to license it under the GNU Free Documentation License, unless you specifically release it into the public domain. Alternately, you can upload your file to the Wikimedia Commons under a different free license." Then, say, "If not, do you have the image tag? If so, please enter it.". Then, "If you don't have a tag, please explain the source of this image in detail in the box below." Below can be the summary box that's always there. Server-side(not client JS) validation should ensure that either the first box is checked, the second contains text(preferably ensure there is a valid tag, but that's more difficult), or the third box contains text.

If the first is checked:

If there is nothing in the second, add {{GFDL-self}} to the summary. If there is something in the second, add

The uploader owns the copyright to this image. By uploading it to Wikipedia, he or she agreed to license it under the GFDL, unless he or she released it into the public domain below.

If the second is filled,

Check whether the form of the field is {{*}}. If it is, just add it to the summary. Otherwise, add {{<FIELD>}} to the summary.

If the third is filled,

Add it to the summary.


Can someone implement this, or at least provide feedback. If you are unsure what I am proposing, I can create an HTML mock-up. Superm401 | Talk 19:46, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea, and would urge others to show support/criticism so this idea can hopefully be acted upon. Martin (Bluemoose) 08:53, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Great idea. - Omegatron 19:02, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
Good thought; an element of a larger effort needed to shift more work onto the engine, in part by using form elements other than one giant editable text field. — Xiong熊talk* 21:07, 2005 August 14 (UTC)
Agreed. --Workman161
Okay, then. Developers, can this be implemented without a change to the MediaWiki software? Superm401 | Talk 04:26, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
Any objections from anyone? Superm401 | Talk 03:49, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
I appreciate the unanimous support from the entire Wikipedia community. With your support, I have created a new BugZilla bug at [1]. If for some reason you later decide discussion over major changes is beneficial, please post any comments there. Superm401 | Talk 21:41, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Page move vandalism is still a problem

Pagemove revert helps, but only up to a point. It needs to be improved.

The latest User:FREE ZOIDBERG ON WHEELS pagemove vandalism script ran from 17:58 to 18:02 today. The final fix (moving Tabuk, Kalinga ON WHEELS back to Tabuk, Kalinga at 19:52 was not done until nearly two hours later. This was not two hours of continuous effort: the page move log shows that some users moved some pages back for a while, then gave up.

One suggested improvement:

  • Pagemove revert should have the option of NOT creating a redir back. We really DON'T need a redir from Tabuk, Kalinga ON WHEELS back to Tabuk, Kalinga. This redir makes Tabuk, Kalinga ON WHEELS a bluelink, making it impossible to tell from examining the page move log whether this page has been moved back yet or not. A second time-consuming sweep is needed to delete these useless "ON WHEELS" back-redirs, just to turn all the "ON WHEELS" links red in the pagemove log so we can be sure everything was moved back properly. This would also avoid the dreaded double-revert bug (when two users pagemove revert at the same time, the article page gets turned into a redir to itself).

In fact, we should have a quick pagemove revert that automatically:

  1. does not create a back-redir
  2. does not detour through the Special:Movepage screen (prompting for a reason and requiring an extra click)
See Bugzilla:3185, Bugzilla:3231. Thryduulf 23:26, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

As long as pagemove vandals can create hours of disruption by running an automated script for a few minutes, they will keep at it. Worse, sooner or later we will get "ON WHEELS" pages that miss scrutiny and remain at the renamed title. -- Curps 20:27, 14 August 2005 (UTC)


PS, and how about throttling the rate of page moves... do we really need to allow a single user to move 25 pages per minute? -- Curps 20:29, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Limiting page move rates for non-admins may help. But perhaps what's needed (admins+ only!) is "mass reversion" of a user's contributions (all or a defined subset) - a sort of anti-bot-bot. (Maybe this exists already?) Rd232 21:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
That's a damn good idea. If it doesn't already exist, it should be added. For accounts which are created "indisputably" in bad faith and which commit only vandalism(and there are plenty), when blocking there should be an option to revert all edits for which they are last(and obviously if they have a chain of edits at the end, go to the last edit not from the bad account). That's not foolproof but it would be very helpful. If something similar already exists, forgive my ignorance(though I would like to hear more about the feature). Superm401 | Talk 03:57, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
I second the need for a single-click page move revert. In addition, we also need a way to see new user accounts (is there a way already I don't know?) since I think they need to age for a week or so before they can be used for page moves. Or how about requiring a certain number of edits (10? 25? 100?) before the account can be used for page moves? Page move vandalism is so much harder to deal with than the "regular" kind that I think some slightly higher bar must be reached for a new user before page moving is possible. Antandrus (talk) 19:47, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
I think that's reasonable. It's quite easy to get an admin or veteran editor to help and the need for page moves is much rarer than edits, obviously. Superm401 | Talk 03:57, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

(copied from WP:AN/I#Willy again) [re imposing a contribution limit of 20 or so edits] If they just created nonsense articles that were speedied it would be their first edit. 100 or 200 would give a much greater chance of spotting a pattern of nonsense articles than just 25. A requirement for 100 or 200 non-deleted edits would be even better. They could use multiple users, but they would take time to register and log in to - particularly if it was impossible to be logged into more than one account on a computer at once. I don't know if this is the case at the moment, but if it isn't I think it would be triviially easy to implement with cookies. Perhaps also we could impose a limit that meant that you could only create one account per computer per hour - again maybe implementable with cookies. Combined these would mean that to move 15 pages would a require a minium of five hours of preparation just to create the accounts, then a significant amount of time to accumulate the 100 or 200 articles per article, especially if they had to be edits that were not deleted. Remember that if they are persistently making bad edits or creating nonsense articles then they would be blocked, likely for 24 hours at a time. Add all this up and just to go on a 15 article moving spree would take probably a week of preparation. A 100-article spree would require 34 accounts, taking a minimum of 34 hours to create, assuming a dedicated vandal working constantly for 8 hours a day this would take 4¼ days. Assuming that 100 non-deleted edits are required for each account would take an average of 5 minutes each to avoid being blocked and to allow for ones that are deleted, this is would take 17,000 mintues which, working constantly 8 hours a day every day, would take about 36 days. Assuming 200 non-deleted edits and a vandal working on average 4 hours per day it would take over 4½ months of preparation. With a mass-rollback option this 4.5 months of effort by the vandal could be reverted in less than 2 minutes; using normal move rollback it would be fixable by the community in less than 30 minutes I suspect. 4½ months work for less than an hour's glory would not be worth it for any human, and bots would be spotted long before they became an issue. Thryduulf 11:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

see also Bugzilla:3185 and Bugzilla:3231. Thryduulf 23:31, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Blocks washing off in the rain?

I have a feeling that users are becoming unblocked without any admin action. For example, I know that an account of the Willy on Wheels vandal were blocked indefinitely several months ago, yet it was able to vandalize recently.

Also, on en-Wiktionary, the vandal "ConneI MacKenzie" (impersonating user Connel MacKenzie) was blocked indefinitely, yet he disappeared from the IP block list, and no record of him being unblocked could be found in the block log. --Ixfd64 22:23, 2005 August 16 (UTC)

When an account or IP is blocked more than once with differing lengths, it becomes unblocked when the shortest one expires. ConneI MacKenzie was blocked for one week and indefinitely; therefore his block ran out after one week. —Cryptic (talk) 23:19, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
That sounds backwards. Shouldn't it be when the longest one expires? — Nowhither 23:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
That's what I thought too. --Ixfd64 00:03, 2005 August 17 (UTC)
You'd think, but the software probably checks the database every x amount of time for expired blocks, and then unblocks those cases, causing this behavior. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 00:06, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
I should probably fix Wikipedia:Blocking policy then. --Ixfd64 01:15, 2005 August 18 (UTC)
No. This is a bug. I'm posting it to Zilla. Superm401 | Talk 04:13, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
Please don't comment further here for any reason. Post your comments at the BugZilla bug report. Superm401 | Talk 04:21, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

==Don't always get a notice when I have new messages==http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=edit For the last couple of days, sometimes (and I can't figure out when it does and doesn't happen), I haven't been getting a notice at the top of the page when I have new messages on my Talk page. I only notice it when I am looking through Recent changes and see that somebody has edited my Talk page. But like I said, it isn't consistantly a problem. Zoe 06:23, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

I've been having the same problem—only I notice it when I see the edit show up on my watchlist. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:26, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
Exactly the same thing here. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 02:31, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Likewise... it's not consistent, and it developed within the last two days. Antandrus (talk) 02:37, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Users who concur with this summary sign with ~~~~
  1. Tomer TALK 02:52, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
  2. In case it helps pin down the reason, this change didn't generate an alert. --RobertG ♬ talk 15:24, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
  3. BRIAN0918 • 2005-08-20 16:46

Don't always want a notice when I have new messages

I have disabled my yellow message, and wish I could do so in a more straightforward manner than creating a separate account to redirect my talk page to. It irritates me no end, affects the page layout when it comes up while editing as you can't reach the bold text etc horizontal line without scrolling, doesn't switch off if you access your talk page through diffs (from the watchlist, which I always do after somebody redirected my talk page to an obscene picture). Does noone else feel the same way? Is there an easier way to disable it? If not could one be added to preferences, SqueakBox 02:47, August 19, 2005 (UTC)
You can simply change your user stylesheet (if you are using the Monobook skin, it's at User:SqueakBox/monobook.css) and add a rule to not display these messages. I believe the correct rule to do so is ".usermessage { display: none }" (without the quotes). See Help:User styles for more information. --cesarb 17:58, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Fantastic. Works a treat. Cheers, SqueakBox 00:04, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Special:Ipblocklist

The IP Block List has "expires expires" for every block that isn't indefinite. Zoe 06:27, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

This is fixed. And welcome back, Zoe. -- Tim Starling 01:36, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

How to send messages

I have received messages, but do not know how to respond. How can I send a message to someone? - NWOG

Go to their talk page. Superm401 | Talk 15:22, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Complex Article support

For complex articles (Such as is Sustainable energy) which by definition refer to a list of other articles, I would like to see Articlespace partial transclusion. That is the ability to transclude only the opening section of a referenced article. This in general would expand lists to be readable articles without creating duplicate and forkable information. Benjamin Gatti

{{:Wind power/Main|noimage}} should produce the opening section
No. That just encourages lazy editing. If you're going to include information about a secondary topic, summarize it yourself and relate it to the main topic. You don't want the same information about coal power for the environmentalism article as you do for the fossil fuel article. This is why transclusion is strongly discouraged. Superm401 | Talk 16:12, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Random article bug?

I've been using the Random article link a bit and, with 2/3 million articles to choose from, the probability of seeing an artice twice should essentially be zero. However, I've just had Nacirema for a second time and am sure that a couple of others that I didn't make a note of have also repeated in the last few weeks. Has anyone else noted this behaviour? I presume the random number is intended to be from a Uniform Distribution? Dlyons493 16:03, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... Birthday paradox? anyway, it's really impossible to get really good random numbers: I doubt Wikipedia uses external sources (i.e. webcam/audio/static streams) to generate its random numbers: it might still be using PHP's internal pseudorandom number generator. Who knows? You can always take a look at MediaWiki yourself. ;-) — Ambush Commander(Talk) 19:51, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
Did some checking myself, it uses mt_rand called twice:
function wfRandom() {
	# The maximum random value is "only" 2^31-1, so get two random
	# values to reduce the chance of dupes
	$max = mt_getrandmax();
	$rand = number_format( mt_rand() * mt_rand()
		/ $max / $max, 12, '.', '' );
	return $rand;
}
Hope that helps. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 19:58, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
I damn well hope not. That random number function is demonstrably awful, and I thought I fixed it 6 months ago. I'll look into it. -- Tim Starling 02:45, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
It was fixed in 1.5. That function was introduced by someone who was worried about the 32-bit granularity of the previous random number function, a complaint which I ignored because of the extremely low probability of observing any related artifacts. Unfortunately, they replaced it with something far worse. I spent some time thinking about how bad that function is, as a mathematical game. There's two effects: firstly, the distribution is skewed towards zero because the probability distribution of X2 where X is uniformly distributed is not itself uniformly distributed. Secondly, the probability of the integer $rand*$max*$max having lots of prime factors is higher than the probability of it being a prime number. I seem to remember there's a simple relationship between the number of prime factors and the probability.
Dlysons493 may simply be seeing chance coincidences, you'd expect such coincidences after about √700,000 = 837 requests. -- Tim Starling 03:12, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Automated open proxy testing

When a block is applied to an anon IP address, the Mediawiki software should apply the block right away and then automatically queue an open proxy test to be done (either immediately or queued for later). If an open proxy is detected, the 24 hour block should be upgraded (automatically) to an indefinite block.

I believe such proxy checking software already exists and was running at one time. However, some ISPs objected to random, "unsolicited" probes of their address range to detect open proxies. But if it's one specific IP address that has visited our site very recently (ie, Internet traffic has been exchanged between our IP address and the ISP's) and has done something to warrant blocking, then a proxy check is perfectly appropriate and there would be no grounds for objection by the ISP. -- Curps 16:41, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

We can just scan every editor if we want to, the unofficial word from our colo is that they will stand up for us in the face of complaints. The only thing we're missing is software and a bit of system administration -- all proxy scans should be run from a single IP address. -- Tim Starling 23:27, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
Wasn't that already done before, and abandoned because too many IP blocks slowed MediaWiki down? --cesarb 23:56, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
It was abandoned because admins at other sites were complaining that we were probing them for vulnerabilities. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:17, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
As far as I can see, it was because it was slowing things down. See Jamesday's comment at Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Archive_5#OpenProxyBlockerBot. (Other attempts: User:Proxy blocker and meta:Proxy blocking). --cesarb 01:49, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Don't pay too much attention to Jamesday's speculation. Maybe that's why he wanted it switched off, but it's certainly not why it was switched off. Proxy scanning was switched off because Jimbo asked us to switch it off, and not to switch it back on again without asking him. He did this because of the large number of complaints received, and he was worried that it would jeopardise our internet access. More recently, a colo staff member told us that our internet access was not at risk, and that they have no problem with us doing this, as long as we warn them first. -- Tim Starling 02:36, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyright_problems Page Needs Sectioned

I just displayed the Copyright_problems page to check for an image on August 22nd. Even though I have a broadband connection the page took at least 15 minutes to fully download, possibly longer since I was tired of waiting and did something else. I noticed the comment about Wikipedia being slow and took that into account but the Copyright_problems page is just too slow to download because of its size and gets bigger every day. Also, the Village_pump_(technical) page is very slow too. I don't have any problems with much shorter pages.

My proposal is to separate each day on its own page with a link pointing to it from the main page. I know with regular coding this would be easy but with a table of contents and Wiki special coding to deal with I don't know if it can be done. If I knew how I would do this myself but I'm fairly new and still learning.

I'm using Firefox 1.0.6 and noticed the same results in IE 6.0 under Windows XP Home.

Rogerqcaz 07:26, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Transparent infoboxes??

printscreen

Section header underlines are now crossing through infoboxes (since yesterday evening) - it's never happened before on en wikipedia, tho' I have seen it on some other language wikis. Anyone any idea why this has started happening, and how it can be remedied? It looks awful! - MPF 13:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

The problem has stopped now, as mysteriously as it began. Thanks, whoever solved it! - MPF 12:37, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Where’ve my messages gone?

I’ve had two messages on my talk page, but I wasn’t notified either time. Any ideas? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 16:18, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

See above. --cesarb 17:18, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Sandbox auto-purge

I was wondering, in MediaWiki, how do you set up a system to automatically delete the sandbox every 12 hours, like wikipedia does? If you know, could you please tell me here. Thanks, Shardsofmetal 01:45, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

this task is performed by a bot. if you follow the link from the history to the bots user page you should be able to find its owner and ask them exactly what they are running. Plugwash 01:48, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
It is User:Sandbot which is run by AllyUnion. Angela. 14:07, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Unicode in Article Titles?

Sorry, clueless oldie question (too frustrated to keep searching for what i've seen before somewhere).

Zürich has a legible URL but Emperor Yūryaku has what i take to be "hex C5AB" in the middle; i take that to be Unicode for the char i thot was an umlauted U before i moved Emperor Yuryaku to Emperor Yūryaku, and then started gleefully byp'g the multiple dbl rdrs.

Are we trying to avoid such titles? The hex coding looks like a bad sign, and there are other places where my MS IE uses different ugly representations of the title. Seems like i probably should put them back like i found them.

--Jerzy•t 02:56, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

Emperor Yūryaku displays fine in my Mozilla browser. *Dan* 03:19, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
No, we should be happy that Unicode in titles is finally possible. A scrambled url is a small price for not having to romanize every other foreign word. (And eventually, even IE will extend its Unicode support.) — Sverdrup 10:44, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

If there were no redirect from Emperor Yuryaku, and someone searched for that article, would a match be done to Emperor Yūryaku? In other words, does a non-unicode search match a unicode title? BTW, it looks fine for me, using Firefox as well. Zoe 22:45, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not completely sure about Search, but Go doesn't find it without the redirect (see User:Rick Block/Yūryaku, a Go search for "User:Rick Block/Yuryaku" doesn't find it). My guess is that Search wouldn't find it either ("ū" is as different from "u", as "u" is from "v"). I'm further guessing that in a category listing, "ū" would sort alphabetically after "z". There is a Unicode sort algorithm, which basically takes a character sort order as input (and, I think allows sets of characters, like "ū" and "u" to be treated as the same for sort purposes). I'd be happy if I'm wrong, but I'd be surprised if we're currently using it which would mean characters will sort by their Unicode character number (i.e. any accented character sorts following "z"). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:25, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
The sort order is as I suspected. I just created an article Zzrich (perhaps speedy deleted by now) which I put in category:Cities in Switzerland, and it sorts before Zürich (i.e. "z" comes before "ü"). The sort order issue is a known bug, see bugzilla:164. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:39, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
The workaround is to use [[Category:Cities in Switzerland|Zurich]] in the Zürich article, to make sorting independent of diacritics. A bit of extra work, but we already have to do category sorting for personal names, as in: [[Category:The Flintstones characters|Flintstone, Fred]] at Fred Flintstone. -- Curps 03:32, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Link Spam blocking

How do I turn on the Link Spamming on my wiki? I know it has something to do with assigning a value to $wgSpamRegex in LocalSettings.php, but I don't know what the value is. I have copied the wikipedia spam list to spamblacklist.txt, but I don't know php. pstudier 03:10, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

Please direct questions about running other wikis using the wikimedia software to the wikitech-l mediawiki-l mailing list. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:22, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
It should be mediawiki-l. Wikitech-l is about technical issues on our own sites. You need to install the Spam Blacklist extension. Angela. 14:02, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Today's featured article

I was wondering how Wikipedia creates their featured article page. Is it an automated process, or does somebody write the page every day? (If it is automated, please tell me how this is done.)

Thank You, Shardsofmetal 03:24, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The snippet from the featured article is prepared in advance and submitted to Wikipedia:Today's featured article -- you can look at the past and future articles to be featured at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 2005. The text corresponding to the day's featured article is then automatically trancluded on the Main Page. Note that there is one user responsible for preparing the blurbs and determining which articles to feature, but anyone can really help if they want. — Sverdrup 03:46, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Adding navigation links

In MediaWiki 1.5, how do you add links to the navigation bar?

Thanks, shardsofmetal 08:09, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

You start by asking MediaWiki-l. This isn't a support forum. -- Cyrius|✎ 11:01, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Just edit MediaWiki:Sidebar. Angela. 14:00, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Non-redirect spams Broken redirects

If you can get to Special:BrokenRedirects without timing out, it repeatedly lists Wikipedia:Deletion log archive/November 2004 (1) at the bottom, although it isn’t a redirect page at all. Any ideas? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 11:19, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Its not just that one, the first entry (actually the first four entries) has the same problem
# User talk: uriyan (Edit) → Israeli nuclear capability
User talk: uriyan is not a redirect, nor does it ever appear to have been. Thryduulf 12:40, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism by worms?

Is there any defense measure against a worm (like Code Red) that vandalizes random articles in Wikipedia from infected machines, for example by inserting (or replacing existing text with) random paragraphs generated with something like SCIgen? If you change the site layout, the worm writer might also issue "updates" that might spread or be retrieved by the infected machines in a distributed way. If you block the IP of infected machines, the man-power needed for identifying (vandalism may be very hard to identify when SCIgen-like tools are used and they can update themselves), de-vandalizing, blocking and unblocking may well be unaffordable when millions of machines become infected. We might have to disable editing and the registration of new accounts indefinitely if such a thing happens, which would change Wikipedia into a closed community.

I do not know whether such worm vandalism has ever occurred, nor do I intend to commit such :) I'm just curious. R6144 12:39, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there is any defense in place. Probably we'll wait until it happens before establishing formal procedures. In any case, it's not like there is a disaster waiting to happen; all edits of all articles are backed up, so fixing even widespread damage is always possible. But it will be interesting to see how Wikipedia deals with such things once they begin to happen (and they will!). One possibility, which would reduce vandalism of all sorts, is to allow edits only by registered accounts, and only (say) at least 24 hours after they were registered. — Nowhither 18:41, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
It's basically pure, simple DOS with an extra spin that no site ever in the world has ever had to deal with ever before. If indeed millions of machines get infected, first thing we'll have to do is salvage a crashed system. ;-) — Ambush Commander(Talk) 18:54, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

We'd cope. As pointed out, worst-case we can put the database in read-only mode and subtly change the edit page form so the worm no longer works. I think we have a lot more to fear from subtle vandalism than any sort of all-out attack. --fvw* 18:58, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Just a little note: subtly change the edit page form so the worm no longer works wouldn't work if the worm is able to be patched by the writer, or if we set up an API (which was announced a while ago... although we could always disable the API too). I think we have a lot more to fear from subtle vandalism than any sort of all-out attack. Agreed. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 19:10, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
Well, we could always introduce "captcha"s I suppose. Anyway, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it. --fvw* 19:13, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
I'm going to play the devil's advocate here: easy captchas have been broken before, and making our captchas hard will simply make editing more laborious. Captcha's also limit Wikipedia's accessibility. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 19:17, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
an evil idea i had (which i don't plan to implement) would be a botnet that repeatedly re-vandalised a page and if it saw the page was protected checked the what links here for the page and added all the pages from it to its list of pages to vandalise.
in other words the more admins tried to protect pages from the vandal botnet the worse the vandalism would get. Plugwash 19:33, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Shhh! It is in the opinion of the Cabal that discussions like this are counterproductive towards the future health of Wikipedia! About your "evil idea", it would be interesting because it leaves a small imprint at first but grows larger: subtlety always wins. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 19:50, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
Any decent hacker could take Wikipedia down with nothing but a single computer and a fast internet connection. But no-one has ever tried it. I'm forced to conclude that hackers all love Wikipedia. Britannica, on the other hand, should watch out. -- Tim Starling 00:46, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
All hackers love Wikipedia - could that be our new slogan? Really, I think the only people out to get us are kooks and script kiddies. Alphax τεχ 04:38, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't know about you, but I've not met many hackers (in the classic sense) who don't love Wikipedia... Shimgray 15:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
The Wikipedia community has contributes from all over the world, so no matter where and hacker/cracker lives they will be found and vigilante justice served. --Clawed 05:37, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

TANS Peru Flight 204

someone changed the commons picture? Aleichem 20:59, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

It's fixed; clear your cache and it will be okay again. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:02, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

search for ICE should give results

I just did a search that came up with no results. So I clicked Google and it brought up a Wikipedia page. What the ?????? What I typed in the search field was ICE and the page that I wanted to find was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_case_of_emergency Can you explain and/or correct this? Thanks!

I typed "ICE" into the search box and clicked on "Go" and it took me to ICE, which, right now, redirects to InterCity Express. We should probably make it a disambiguation page, if somebody wants to write an article on ICE (cell phone) or some similar title. Zoe 22:49, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Clicking on "Search" instead of "Go" comes up with "You searched for "ICE" [Index]". If you click on Index, it will take you to a page, the first entry of which is ICE. Zoe 22:51, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

InterCity Express has a top link to ICE (disambiguation) which covers all this. Dragons flight 22:58, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Well, then ICE should redirect to the disambig page. I'll go and do that. Zoe 23:23, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Make history less cluttered by reverts

Currently a large part of the history is cluttered by vandalism and reverts thereof. This is inconvenient when I want to simply look at the history in order to (for example) see where some inaccurate fact comes from. I think there should be a way for the history UI to show identical versions in the history, and a way to hide all the versions in between (in edit wars this would only help those agreeing with the current HEAD version, but it does no harm anyway). Of course, something similar to "svn blame" would be even better. R6144 05:14, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

An excellent idea. It would also be lovely to be able to see when a particular bit of text worked its way into an article (i.e. without needing to perform the manual binary search that I currently use). Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 17:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

What is "svn blame" ? StuRat 21:02, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

A photo on Wikimedia Commons seems to have been overruled by a photo uploaded directly to Wikipedia -- help!

Hello all-

I uploaded the photo here [2] to the Wikimedia commons for an article I did on Charles Village, a Baltimore neighborhood. The photo is of Guilford Street.

Today, someone uploaded this photo [3] of Lorne Calvert to, I'm guessing, Wikipedia, not the Commons. The two have the same filename -- Calvert.jpg. Now the image link on the Charles Village shows Mr. Calvert rather than Calvert St. (Or at least it did -- I commented it out pending the resolution of this issue.)

What's the best way to deal with this? Should I re-upload the photo to the commons and give it a more specific name? Should I contact the user who uploaded the second photo? Is there a syntax for making sure an image referenced comes from the commons? Aren't we supposed to be uploading all media to the commons anyway? Help! --Jfruh 05:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I would say change the name to a more specific one. If, during an upload, it didn't prompt the user that an image already existed under that name, then we have a bug that should be fixed. If it did, and the user chose to ignore the warning and overwrite the image, then that's rather rude behaviour on their part. I'm not sure which is the case, however, so I wouldn't yell at them until you know. A nicely worded inquiry to find out if it warned them might be appropriate, however. Alternatively you could do your own test, by uploading images with the same name to both places to see if you get a warning. Once you know if we have a bug, then you will know whether it was a bug or just rudeness. StuRat 06:52, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
OK, reuploaded. I shall enquire with the other pic's uploader later. --Jfruh 16:11, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't think you get overwrite warnings for Commons images unless they have had physical pages made here (for example to cat them) , but I could be wrong. Regardless, a very descriptive filename ensures no clashes; I often end up using ridiculously long filenames like Image:Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories box.jpg. A bit too wordy, but it's an exact description of what it shows, and it won't ever clash. GarrettTalk 12:48, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

A longer name will certainly make it less likely that it will be reused, but it's still possible. This could happen if it's a picture of the same thing, but showing a different aspect of that thing. I also have a related problem dealing with images ... I added 3 images to Wikipedia and linked to them from inflection point, but afterwards realized I should have put them in Wiki commons. I loaded the 3 images there, under the same name, but I can't get rid of the images I uploaded to Wikipedia. How do I get rid of those and redirect the inflection point article to find the illustrations under the same name in Wiki commons ? StuRat 16:58, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Put the {{NowCommons}} template on the en.wikipedia copies, and (at some undetermined point in the future) they'll be deleted. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:16, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I added that tag. Will the links to those images automatically be redirected to the Wiki commons versions of each image with the same name, once the en.wikipedia copies are deleted, or do I need to so something else ? StuRat 19:08, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, as long as they're both exactly the same names. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:15, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
They are, so I'm all set, thanks ! I do wish there was a way to explicitly specify a Wiki commons image, say with "c:" in front of the image name, to avoid problems with different images in en.wikimedia overwriting the intended Wiki commons image. I will propose this in a new section under proposals. StuRat 19:52, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Ok, proposal has been made, please add your support: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) (→Allow explicit links to Wikimedia Commons images). StuRat 20:55, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

To Do List Woes

When using to-do lists with the {{todo}} script I've now encountered twice a situation where I can click edit on the to do list box, make changes and not have it appear in the list. If I click edit again, the changes DO appear in the edit window. Please see my user page for an example. Why is this happening and how do I fix it? Flehmen 17:27, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Sigh, nevermind. It appears to be db lag as my edit appeared after 15 min., but it only strikes my todo lists. Flehmen 18:18, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki links in plain English

Interwiki links are of course, great. Despire the fact that I can rarely read any of the other languages, I'm often interested to see whether the other Wikis have more contents or better pictures on a particular article. However, because the interwiki links are given in their native language, I frequently find it dificult to tell what language some of the more obscure links are. That's fine - their main use is for people who can read that language. However, would it also be possible to label them with a tool tip pop-up showing the English name for each language. You can figure them out from the 2-letter country codes in the linked URLs, but this isn't particularly convenient. -- Solipsist 19:05, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Um, when you're viewing the page you already see all the interwiki language links with their English names. When you're editing the page, you see the codes like de:, fr:, etc. I don't think you can get a browser edit window to display popups when you cursor over any particular section of text. -- Curps 16:04, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Really? When I'm viewing a page, I see interwiki links in their native language, such as Deutsch and Русский, and 日本語. Most of the other items on the left hand panel have tool tip pop-ups showing keyboard shortcuts and the like, so I would have thought it was feasible, although the interwiki links are more dynamic. -- Solipsist 16:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
You're quite right. I'm suffering from a severe lack of sleep. The tool-tip sounds like a good idea. -- Curps 16:20, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

"Name of page" variable and templates

I'm working on this template Template:History_of_the_DRC, and I want the main image in the template to change according to which page the template is on. For instance, when on the Congo Crisis page, the image would show the flag of that period in the template. The only way I can think of doing this (except editing each individual page which has the template) would be if there was a "name of page" variable which I could put into the template, which would in turn link to an image of the same name.

Sot the template would have something like: image=$NameOfPage$.png

Which on the Congo Crisis page would translate to "Congo Crisis.png"

Is this possible. Or is there another way?

- Xed 21:27, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Is {{PAGENAME}} what you're looking for? --fvw* 21:33, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
All the available mediawiki variables are documented at m:Help:Variable. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:35, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
Template:History of Spain has a separate image for each page, you could always copy what was done there. - SimonP 13:13, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Disallowing page redirects to self

A page should not be allowed to redirect to itself. This happens as a side-effect when two pagemove reverts happen closely spaced together, when the second admin doesn't notice that the button says "Delete and move" instead of just "Move". The page ends up as a redirect to itself, with all of the valid article history deleted, requiring a restore and content revert to the last good version. Doing a sanity check to disallow a page to redirect to itself might prevent this scenario. For an example of this, see the history of User:Tim Starling. -- Curps 16:01, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

see Bugzilla:3231. Thryduulf 16:18, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm aware of that bug report, but I'm proposing something much simpler here: reject any modification which turns a page into a redirect into itself (this could happen as the result of an ordinary user edit as well). A page redirecting to itself is always an error, under all circumstances.
I'm not aware of how the Mediawiki code is structured, but if the error condition get propagated upward in the calling function stack, this simple sanity check would also have the effect of preventing the double-pagemove-revert bug, without having to make any major changes to the pagemove revert functinality. -- Curps 12:54, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

"Activity level indicator" in watchlist is desired

I would be a very happy chap if each entry on my watchlist had some kind of "activity level indicator" which tells me roughly "how much" activity has been going on in that article recently. The current system is binary: either the article is on the watchlist, or it isn't. A simple improvement would be to give the number of edits to that article in the last 24 hours. A more complex indicator might be (say) a weighted sum of the size of the recent diffs to that article, the weight decreasing exponentially with age. The activity indicator could be a number, or a coloured box (red means very active, blue means pretty quiet), etc.

Opinions on the desirability and technical feasibility of this proposal are hereby solicited. Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 18:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

edit on double-click doesn't work on move-protected pages

For pages that are protected from moves only, editing on double-click doesn't seem to work. --Ixfd64 20:52, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

I don't understand (and, from the lack of replies, I'm guessing that no one else does, either). What is "editing on double-click"? — Nowhither 05:58, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

does there exist a central linkspam-fighting server?

If not, shouldn't someone build one?

I imagine it would work like this:

Every time somebody inserts an external link into an article on Wikipedia (or any participating wiki), the wiki software notifies the central server. No blocking yet; just notification. The central server looks out for links which have been reported numerous times over short periods of time, and makes publicly available a list of "highly suspicious URLs". This would be a very useful resource for sites like Wikipedia to help them quickly update spam blacklists --- close to automatically. Dmharvey File:User dmharvey sig.png Talk 00:04, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

That seems like a wonderful idea. Are you able to make a test version? I'd love to see it... JesseW 20:57, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
We do have m:Spam blacklist which is managed by hand. Dragons flight 21:01, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Create account / log in link

I was just wondering how wikipedia gets the login link at the top of the page to appear bold. I tried this on my MediaWiki, and you could see the code, whether it was ''' or <b> I would appreciate any input on this matter. Thank you, Shardsofmetal 02:29, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Bot problems

I operate N-Bot. When an article it is editing is deleted while being edited (as happens occasionally), it fails on that article on that run, because it gets a "This article has been deleted while you were editing it" page, which it doesn't understand. This is just fine. However, when I restart it (minutes later) and it gets to the same page, it gets the same response and the same error, and I have to fix the page manually from my own account. Any ideas? ~~ N (t/c) 19:53, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

If you are using pywikipedia, you will get that error if the article has ever been deleted (even years ago). There was some change to Mediawiki 1.5 which broke pywikipedia slightly. I think it has to do with the wpStarttime input which now has to be supplied. I looked at the pywikipedia code briefly but didn't attempt a fix. -- Curps 20:12, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
It's actually a Perl script (User:N-Bot/listredir.pl) using LWP directly (no sort of bot framework). However, I bet you're right; I hadn't noticed the wpStarttime field. I'll have to add that. ~~ N (t/c) 21:15, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

linked spelled wrong

Helloes this is Flatchestedmama writing to let you know that my link in the Mail Art article is incorrect. I am very pleased to have been included in the piece as I do love postal treats. Please correct the misspelling so people may link to my site.

currently reads with the ch in chested being switched please correct to read: www.flatchestedmama.com

Thank you!

Flatchestedmama

I fixed the link, but you could have done this yourself (about as easily as asking for it to be fixed here). Unlike a regular, boring, website that no one can change except the "owner", wikipedia is a collaboration among everyone in the world. Anyone can edit any page, see Wikipedia:Introduction. Next time, please try clicking "edit". Note that the syntax is not HTML. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:04, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Is my password vulnerable?

Yesterday, someone I know told me that he uses Wikipedia but won't tell me his username because there's a vulnerability I could use to get his password, and that I could find more information in Bugzilla. He's very knowledgeable and qualified to make this statement, but also quite paranoid, so I don't know how seriously to take his statement. A Bugzilla search for "password" turns up nothing like this. Any comments? ~~ N (t/c) 04:36, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Just the usual PW advice:
1) Don't use anything obvious, like your username or real name.
2) Don't use English words.
3) Use a combo of letters and numbers.
4) Make it as long as possible.
5) The "remember password" option does store it as a cookie, which makes it more vulnerable.
StuRat 04:57, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I know, this question is about a technical bug in MediaWiki. And I'm pretty sure the "remember password" option only stores a session ID in a cookie, which would allow someone else to use my account (temporarily) but not read my password. ~~ N (t/c) 05:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
We used to send out the MD5 hash of the password in a cookie, if you selected "remember me" checkbox as you logged in. This, combined with a few XSS vulnerabilities that we hadn't bothered fixing, is probably what led to the compromise of some passwords by a brute-force attack on the hash. All the XSS vulnerabilities are fixed now (we hope), and contrary to what StuRat says, we no longer send out the password hash under any circumstances, so arbitrary HTML is not really a problem anymore. We've also had some very weak passwords (most often blank) broken by dictionary attacks against the server. This attack is only feasible if the target password is one of the few hundred most common passwords used. -- Tim Starling 05:17, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
Well, how about an SSL login then? That's still a major sniffing vulnerability. -- Curps 06:26, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Not one that's specific to MediaWiki. Our cluster design makes SSL difficult to implement, although we may do so concurrently with m:SUL support. JavaScript password hashing would be much simpler and would provide reasonable security. -- Tim Starling 08:21, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

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