Wiktionary:Grease pit/2006/November

Bot request

Tawker is doing other things right now, but he once said he'd write an archiving bot. Looks like we might need it actually, maintaining the Beer parlour, perhaps the Tea room, but certainly WT:CT. Any takers? Inspiration can be found here. — Vildricianus 19:52, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

WT:CT is self-rotating...messages over 30 days old are supposed to just disappear. --Connel MacKenzie T C 21:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Remains WT:TR and WT:BP. Or is it ideologically not feasible to let a bot handle this? — Vildricianus 21:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Lemme talk to someone, they have a bot that already archives my talk page on a bunch of wikis, maybe it can work here too :) -- Tawker 07:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

The WerdnaBot is in da house! -- Connel MacKenzie 19:35, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Where Is the spell-checker?

Hi I'm new, Is there a spell=checker? Like "you mean ..." --Paul kimm 06:05, 29 June 2006 (UTCUTC)

If you load the google toolbar, you get a spell-checker for all form-submitted text. --Connel MacKenzie 17:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

How do you do that? Andrew massyn 22:32, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

If instead, you are using IE, you can turn on the Wiktionary spellchecker at WT:PREFS to get a green checkmark icon on edit pages. (Still experimental.) --Connel MacKenzie 22:05, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried that and it seemed to go to your page. I then couldn't make it go to my page, so I am still without a spell checker. Sigh...Andrew massyn 22:32, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Andrew, it looks like "my" page because I have that "preferences" experiment there. Remember to try it with cookies and JS enabled.

Argh. http://toolserver.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=79

I'll let you know when it is working again. --Connel MacKenzie 15:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Statistics

Wouldn't it be great to know, week by week, what the 100 most frequently viewed NS:0 entries are? Wouldn't it be sweet to know how long it has been since an entry was viewed? For our larger sister project Wikipedia, the server load of generating such statistics would be enormous. But for Wiktionary, I don't think the same argument applies. At this point, because all WikiMedia traffic statistics are combined, we don't know how many visitors we get, nor how many page hits, etc., etc.

I would guess that a small (but visible,) image/logo hosted on my home server might not melt my linux box. We obviously don't get all of WikiMedia's 3,000 hits per second. I would guess we are somewhere between 3 and 30 hits per second.

Does anyone think this would be a worthwhile exercise? I'd have to add the image via JavaScript. And it would have to be easily revertable (for times when my server is down.) But I think the one week we got statistics for (what, two years ago) from somewhere was useful. Having some standard "Webalizer" statistics generated would also be very helpful, for relative comparisons, i.e. being able to say that ??.??% of WM traffic was en.wikt: on such-and-such a date.

--Connel MacKenzie 14:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see such statistics (so long as the user's page load time isn't noticeably affected, of course). Rod (A. Smith) 04:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Initially, I plan to just use my server. A backup plan is to use Coral cache (by appending ".nyud.net:8080" to then end of the host component of the url.) That would mean that my logs would get only HEAD httpd requests instead of GET httpd requests, but I'd still get them. Since I'll be adding it via JavaScript, I hope I won't get bombarded by non-humans. I'll leave the link right at the very top of Monobook.js so it can be commented out very quickly. I'll also do a test run of just one to five minutes before going much further, to tally the numbers, to see if it is likely to be sustainable. If I'm only getting about 3 per second (or less,) then I'll just leave it on...if I get over 300 per second, I'll probably have to discontine the experiment (without getting any useful numbers.) Anything less than that should not be noticable, but we won't know until I try it. --Connel MacKenzie 01:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll put this into my personal Monobook.js initially. Or my Common.js? Something like that. --Connel MacKenzie 19:18, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

So far, I'm getting very strange test results. When I preview User:Connel MacKenzie/statistics.js I get the image (resized, often in the wrong place.) But when I save it, nothing happens (no JS errors anywhere.) Will poke around some more. --Connel MacKenzie 22:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Long live the one character typo-bug. I have something working now. If this still is acceptable to everyone, I'll turn it on for anonymous users only next. Statistically, it doesn't make sense to let the regular contributors skew the results with 100,000,000,000 page loads of Special:Recentchanges and Wiktionary:Beer parlour; especially when the goal here is to find out what pages are actually *being* viewed by the rest of the world. If I don't hear any objections, I'll turn it on for an hour or two tomorrow, then assess 1) if the load is too small or too large 2) If my tweaked version of webalizer shows enough detail. --Connel MacKenzie 03:12, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

• I'm concerned that I've gotten only one comment, so far. Are there any objections to starting this test? --Connel MacKenzie 09:53, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
  • This seems inappropriate in the long term (because it uses web-bug images at all, and because it's hosted on a non-wikimedia server of unknown capacity), but I wouldn't complain about a short-term test (limited to a day or two). I, too, would love to see some page-view statistics. —scs 13:42, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, I certainly could have made it a web bug, but it is instead a noticable, visible image. The argument of it being of sufficent capacity, however, is my greatest concern - which is why I want to proceed with testing it. By the way, it is for anonymous users only. Having thought more about it, 'regular' contributors are only likely to skew the results. On the other hand, it would be of trivial interest to see which Help:/Wiktionary: pages are read the most, before editing...but that would mean turning it on for all users, and I am very leery of doing that. I'm not sure I understand your concerns about long-term viability. I don't think I could sustain this long term, but the larger the sample group, the more relevant the statistics become. Certainly, seeing changes from week-to-week would be helpful, right? (E.g. tracking 'elephant' related Colbert nonsense.) --Connel MacKenzie 16:52, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Perhaps my concerns about server load are overstated as well. WZ currently runs (sharing a server) on a server of comparable horsepower to my configuration. That is, the entire WZ-Wiki, not just a single (prominent) image. --Connel MacKenzie 20:28, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

All I meant by "long-term viability" was that if the technique shows promise or ends up suggesting better techniques, we might be able to build momentum for getting the statistics done more centrally, on the mediawiki servers, and therefore more appropriately. (But of course, you're right, the statistics only realize their full value if they can be compared over the long term.)

I just remembered, though, that I recently saw mention on the wikitech mailing list of some work being done to gather real page-hit statistics on the squid servers (which is to say, reversing the long-stated mantra that it would have to, but couldn't, be done there). See here. So if that's real, it might be another reason not to work too hard on ad-hoc interim stats. (But to your other point, I don't know if "real" mediawiki stats would ever be able to distinguish between hits of anonymous vs. logged-in users.) —scs 05:30, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm talking with him now - I'll try his out (see how feasible it is) in the next few minutes. --Connel MacKenzie 16:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, we'll see how this goes now, I guess. The toolserver version is turned on, sampling 1 out of 10 anonymous IP requests (randomly.) It took a few minutes, but eventually, an anon IP looked up the word fuck. Leon has a fair amount to do now, to split the statistics out from de.wiki. We should see something in a week or two (maybe much sooner.) --Connel MacKenzie 00:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

There you go. I'd like an admin to set counter_factor to 20 on MediaWiki:Monobook.js#Statistics, and remove the stupid comment in the line :) --84.179.196.181 14:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC) aka Leon.

Wow! That was fast! Thanks! (So Connel was wrong about "a week or two", and unless he was also wrong about "a fair amount to do", thanks for doing it all so quickly!)

But now, having actually looked at the statistics -- urk. Not to seem ungrateful or anything, but I'm starting to wonder if we really want to display these statistics after all! (Or even to know what they are.) It seems there are an awful lot of adolescent boys out there... —scs 14:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if Leon will be back to answer this, but: does anyone know exactly how this new mechanism works, or if it's documented anywhere? In particular, I'm wondering:

1. Is it in fact based on an extra fetch done in the user's browser by some JavaScript (and for only 1 out of N hits, where Leon is requesting changing N to 20)?
2. Does it filter out multiple hits from the same IP, so that if one user visits an article several times within (say) a one-day period, that only counts as one hit?

—scs 14:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a german docu. I'll write an english one tonight or tomorrow. --84.179.196.181 15:07, 25 August 2006 (UTC) aka Leon

Wo ist's? Darf ich mit der Übersetzung helfen? Ich hab ein bißchen Deutsch. —scs 15:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'm done. Here it is. Thanks for your offer, Scs :) Have fun with your new toy. --84.179.196.181 21:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

New RFC

New stuff. RFC will be easier to follow with {{rfc-date}} applied instead of {{rfc}}. Going to replace old instances with new template. That way, we won't need DPL to see the oldest entries. After a while, WT:RFC should be deprecated. — Vildricianus 10:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, the various templates like {{wikify}}, {{wikify-date}}, etc. should be merged into this. Perhaps also {{nolanguage}}. — Vildricianus 11:06, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Why? DPL work fine, and gives the two lists (one by date listed on WT:RFC, the other by date tag added.) Having the two lists side by side (sortof) does clarify things a bit. --Connel MacKenzie 06:52, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I like the ability to scan down WT:RFC, reading both the word in question and the reason for its referral, to see whether there are any I am sufficiently interested in, or care about, to work on. Having said that, I have done very little work on RFC, relative to RFD or RFV, so my preferences should not matter that much. --Enginear 15:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Ident

So, my attention was called to ident; while checking to see why the Wikipedia entry for Ident was so amazingly paltry (that it only mentioned one of the thousands of typical uses of the term 'ident',) I found that I could not use my "hop back to Wiktionary" link. My link goes to:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ident

Which for some reason, has the magic turned off. This is the typical external link that we'd expect from a "properly GFDL compliant" mirror site, right? Anyone know ehen/where it broke?

--Connel MacKenzie 03:54, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Presumably you're aware of the difference in capitalization between your link and the proper destination page. When I try that link, I get a brief layover at the missing Ident entry, followed by what appears to be a Javascript redirect to ident. Did you get a 404 or what? Rod (A. Smith) 04:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I just get a "Wiktionary does not have an entry for this exact word yet." page.. no sign of Javascript or redirection of any sort. --Versageek 06:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Since I still get a fairly quick redirect, perhaps the behavior is browser-dependent. My browser is IE 6.0.2900 running on Windows XP. Rod (A. Smith) 06:34, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I've changed MediaWiki:Monobook.js#doRedirect from this:

if ( getCookie('WiktionaryDisableAutoRedirect') == 'false' ) {

to this:

if ( getCookie('WiktionaryDisableAutoRedirect') != 'true' ) {

since most of the time, the cookie is just undefined (especially for anonymous users.) Testing now... --Connel MacKenzie 14:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

That seems to have fixed it nicely. --Connel MacKenzie 15:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

What's wrong with

if ( !getCookie('WiktionaryDisableAutoRedirect') ) {

Surely this is clearer.

See also http://c-faq.com/bool/bool2.html.

Or does getCookie() have some strange three-way return value, true/false/undefined?

—scs 12:56, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I have getCookie() set to never return undefined, however, it does not return a boolean, but a string. --Connel MacKenzie 15:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Personal sidebar extension ready for testing

After much struggling with arcane and poorly designed JavaScript concepts, I finally have a working beta version of my new feature. Please test this, especially people like Connel, Vildicranius, rodasmith, etc.

All it does for now is provide a per-user equivalent of MediaWiki:Sidebar at Special:Mypage/MediaWiki:Sidebar. If you don't want all the links in the standard sidebar (Main page, Community portal, Requested entries, Recent changes, Random page, Discussion rooms, Help, Donations) you can remove some. Or maybe you want to link directly to Beer parlour and Grease pit. Or maybe you wan't to link to Connel's Random page in a certain language feature. Now you can do this without fiddling with JavaScript or CSS. There are some issues but I'd like feedback at this point from other js-dev typs anyway:

• Cache issues mean CTRL+F5 may not be enough. You must clear your whole browser cache after editing the config file. There are ways to fix this but I want to talk to some real devs.

• CTRL+F5? What's that? (Did you mean Shift-Apple-R? :-) ) —scs 13:08, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

• Both the Text and Link fields must be in the MediaWiki namespace. Suggestions welcome.
• Only a single sidebar can be defined and it will precede the standard one for now rather than replacing it which will be the final functionality.

This feature is a stepping stone toward making Edittools personalizable so testing it is important. Thanks for your feedback. — Hippietrail 14:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

• Mozilla - worked slowly (no caching)
• Konqueror - worked slowly (no caching)
• Netscape 7 - worked faster (caching)
• FireFox - worked a little faster (caching)
• IE7 - no workie at all. Numbers instead of labels (no caching)
• lynx, links - no JS - no workie.

--Connel MacKenzie 01:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

• It works for me, too, in both Firefox (Mac) and Safari. (Firefox was kinda slow at first; Safari was quite snappy. But I'm sure the slowness was just due to having to reload everything formerly cached.)
  Notes to anyone else who wants to try it:
  1. You have to put some magic stuff in your Special:Mypage/monobook.js; see mine for an example.
  2. I have no idea what you're allowed to put in your Special:Mypage/MediaWiki:Sidebar. But the obvious (i.e. analogous) progression from "discussionrooms" to "beerparlour" and/or "greasepit" seems to work.
     —scs 13:08, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

...er, seemed to work, but now it stopped. Whassup, HT? —scs 13:10, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. XMLHttpRequest is an arcane black art. For me it works well on Opera and Firefox now but msie6 stopped working. The requests are receiving no replies and I don't know why. — Hippietrail 13:45, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It just started working for me again (like, a minute or two ago). Did you do something? —scs 14:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• While I seek solutions for the serious bugs, I would also appreciate ideas on how to improve it as a feature. Currently it works just like MediaWiki:Sidebar which means it looks up a text and url field for each entry in the MediaWiki: namespace. It would obviously be better if a user didn't have to create two MediaWiki articles for each link that only they might use.
• Also I would like to extend the functionality without losing backward compatibility. One such was is to come up with a syntax for stating which specific languages you would like a Random page link to. Likewise for Requested entries. Can anybody suggest a syntax or other extended uses? — Hippietrail 01:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

1. Use Avar's AdvancedRandom extension to go to a random page within a given category. (I.e. English nouns, or Russian verbs or Swahili adjectives.)
2. Random page in Category:Requests for cleanup
3. Random page in Category:Requests for pronunciation
4. Random page in Category:Requests for verification

etc.

--Connel MacKenzie 02:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

1. Incorporate the various external links from {{artfl}}, user:Connel MacKenzie/sidebar.js User:Hippietrail:Monobook.js and User:Vildricanius/???.js.

--Connel MacKenzie 02:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

WOTD RSS Feed

Continuing diccussion from archived WOTD RSS

--Whats the deal with this feature...I don't see it anywhere? It should be under WT:RSS --69.110.136.194 01:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Fulltext search configuration

Several users have been trying to look up words written in (e.g.) Pinyin with tone numbers (tian1ti3, to find 天体). This isn't working as expected; the Pinyin-with-tones is in the entry wikitext. It appears that the search function is ignoring the numbers, looking for "ti" and "tian"; "ti" is too short for the index.

This isn't the default behavior of MySQL FULLTEXT, which considers any string of letters and digits to be a word. It must be modified somewhere in Mediawiki or in the en.wikt configuration, but I can't find out where. Hyphens are worse apparently, the default behavior of FULLTEXT is to treat them as word breaks; I'm sure we want them treated as components.

Anyone know where to dig deeper on this? Robert Ullmann 12:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Need CSS help

There have several discussions about {{IPA}} in the past, and although I thought they were resolved, I'm now seeing my Javascript console blitzed with errors (making routine debugging a worse nightmare than usual.)

Would a CSS guru please check and fix this: Template talk:IPA#CSS_guru. TIA. --Connel MacKenzie 17:23, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Japanese POS templates

We now have Template:ja-noun, Template:ja-verb, Template:ja-adj, and Template:ja-pos for other POS. They handle the inflection/conjugation/declensions (identifying them; the full forms are large tables that follow) as well as the various script forms for entries in kanji (shinjitai and kyūjitai), hiragana, katakana, and romaji. With the appropriate categorizations.

I added reference(s) to them to WT:AJ. Robert Ullmann 15:04, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Are wiktionary and wikiquote available as extensions to mediawiki?

I'd really like to combine all 3 in one cohesive site. Please email me: webmaster - @t - thesopranos dawt com

I don't understand. Are you interested in the software or the content? DAVilla 23:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

To clarify: at present, wikipedia, wiktionary, and wikiquote are all running essentially the same mediawiki software. They're three separate websites with three distinct user login databases, although a process to merge the logins is imminent. If you wanted to set up your own wiki into which people could enter encyclopedia articles, dictionary definitions, or quotes, in principle you could, with one copy of mediawiki running on one server. —scs 17:08, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

How could I accomplish this?

I'm not sure what you're asking -- how to set up mediawiki at all, or something beyond that?

Setting up (installing) your own instance of mediawiki is very easy. It literally installs itself; the developers have done a very good job on the automatic installation and initialization procedure. Once it's up and running, it's then up to you and your users what kind of content you decide to start putting in it.

(Or were you thinking of prepopulating it with a copy -- a "fork" -- of the current Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote? That'd be more work, and I'm not sure how to do it.) —scs 12:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

See also Wikia. DAVilla 18:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Did you mean Wikia = http://wikia.com? —scs 20:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Spanish inflection templates

Why am I seeing the output of {es-adj} as a table, rather than the usual inflection line as described at Template:es-adj? See e.g. casero, or frío. Widsith 10:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

• They look normal to me (bog-standard Internet Explorer and no Wiki customization) SemperBlotto 10:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The Spanish templates use the same dual headword/inflection style as the English templates. Since most users have not customized their prefered headword/inflection style, they will see a standard inflection line. Widsith has chosen to see table-style headword/inflections, though. Is sharing inflection style between English and non-English entries desirable? If not, we can split the headword/inflection style (a) into English vs. non-English inflection styles, (b) into one inflection style for each language, or (c) not at all (i.e. make all non-English headword/inflection lines display as a simple line). Should we raise this issue on BP to gather opinions? Rod (A. Smith) 14:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes please. I definitely don't want it across the board, since the table style used here is very different from the box display that comes up with English inflections. Widsith 14:51, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Template:es-adj is using the same CSS class (infl_table) as (e.g.) en-noun; it isn't doing that much different, except that the "box display" you refer to doesn't have the boxes in the table outlined. We have quite a few different table styles floating around. A technical solution might be to provide a standard infl-table style form (i.e. subtemplate) to be used by any POS templates that implement infl_table. But that depends on what people want.

Specifically, en-noun uses border=0, width=100%, then a subtle background color on the rows; es-adj uses border=1px, a solid color, centered text, etc. The structure is the same. If I were to change es-adj to use the same table form as en-noun it would look very familiar ;-)

My point is that the is probably as simple as: es-adj is using the infl_table class option, but then using a "non-standard" table style we probably (?) don't want. Would you (Widsith) want to see it in a table if it looked like en-noun? For example, look at kitabu where sw-noun uses the en-noun style. Robert Ullmann 12:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I have missed this for so long. The answer is, yes, if it looked like the box display for en-noun it would be infinitely preferable. Just for consistency purposes if nothing else. The display as it is presently is so incongruous compared to the other inflection lines. Widsith 08:27, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

A couple of other comments. Firstly, {{es-adj}} is quite different from en templates in that it outputs as a 2x2 table, rather than a box display which goes across just one line. Secondly, {{es-adj}} seems to be broken as it currently outputs feminine plural the same as masculine plural (again I don't know if this is just with the table format). Widsith 07:59, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

WITN Image

What happened to the image on the Wiktionary:Words in the News page? It's now the old flag of Northern Ireland (St. Andrew's cross). --EncycloPetey 19:41, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Redundant image at Commons. Fixed? DAVilla 14:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

But you seemed to fix it from an out of date version - so I fixed it again. SemperBlotto 14:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Random language page

For those that like to test things, http://tools.wikimedia.de/~cmackenzie/rnd-wikt.html should be working now. If problems resurface, please nag me here. --Connel MacKenzie 16:29, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

{{en-noun}} cosmetic problem

• See Template talk:en-noun#Extraneous linebreak --Connel MacKenzie 23:31, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Patrolling edits

Now that bugzilla:7248 has been "turned on" we have patrolled edits. How should we use the new feature? Will we limit ourselves to patrolling anonymous edits only, initially? This, like everything in Wiktionary, is optional. So sysops not concerned about it can simply ignore the "!"s.

Do we want a user-preference thingy to hide the exclamation point?

Any other places we need links to "mark edit as patrolled?"

--Connel MacKenzie 17:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it is also important to define what makes an edit "patrolled." There are a few possibilities for what this may mean in my mind:

1. The revision is not vandalism.
2. The revision is not vandalism AND it is well formatted.
3. The revision is not vandalism AND the content is correct.
4. The revision is not vandalism AND it is well formatted AND the content is correct.
5. The revision is not vandalism AND something else.

Which of these makes most sense to people? - TheDaveRoss 17:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

IF I understand how this is supposed to work (and that is by no means certain) THEN I prefer:

1. The revision is not vandalism AND (it is well formatted OR the content is correct).

--EncycloPetey 17:56, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

EP: that would mean that the entries were allowed to be wrong and pretty or right and ugly, but not both and not neither :) We can't have any accurate, good looking entries? - TheDaveRoss 18:06, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I prefer:

1. The revision is not vandalism AND the appropriate cleanup tags (e.g. {{wikify}}) have been added OR it is well formatted.

I think claims of correctness are far beyond the remit of "patrolled."

--Connel MacKenzie 17:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Connel. (I knew it would happen one day!) However I think registered users should not have their edits marked as unpatrolled by default. Widsith 18:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Widsith. Regular users should have their edits patrolled as well. I sometimes often need my edits watched, particularly for {en-nouns} and things like that. Andrew massyn 18:43, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the previous three, depending on how we define patrolling (see above) not checking the auto-patrol button in prefs may just be causing more work for someone else. - TheDaveRoss 18:48, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

The beauty of it is, if someone patrolling wishes to review anon edits only, they can. If someone else wants to check all my edits, they are welcome to. (I think a few people here can attest that my edits are perfect FAR less than 100% of the time!) But I have set the "mark patrolled" flag in my user prefs, nevertheless. --Connel MacKenzie 20:36, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

They can also review only newly registered users' edits too! A pity it's a Special:Contributions page, not a Recentchanges one, so there ain't no "!"s. — Vildricianus 21:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Simply use common sense here. If you know someone else may need to have a look, don't mark it. If it looks like 90% of our entries (wrong, ill-formatted, inconsistent and ugly), mark it. — Vildricianus 21:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

No, we definitely don't want to use this feature to mean something is right or even pretty. Marking an edit as patrolled should mean simply that somebody besides its editor has looked at it and determined that it doesn't consist of obvious junk. Patrolled means that somebody looked, so probably somebody else doesn't urgently need to. That is, this edit looks like something belonging in a dictionary, as opposed to button-mashing, epithets, or other irrelevance. It is not an indication that I've verified the Telugu. It's a first pass indicating that a delete or a rollback probably isn't what's needed.

To clarify, who may mark an edit as patrolled? —Dvortygirl 22:32, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Sysops. - TheDaveRoss 22:35, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely agree with Dvorty, and with Connel, who said more or less the same thing farther up. This sort of a patrol should be an initial "sniff test"; it shouldn't be a complete review or "approval". There are several related reasons for this: (1) if it's more than a sniff test, it's too much work; it doesn't scale; (2) if it's a more comprehensive review, it wrongly concentrates the work (and responsibility) of this review in the hands of the sysops doing the patrolling, as opposed to the broader community; and (3) once it's more than a sniff test, it's too easy to slide down the slippery slope, right past "review" and down to "approval", to a mode where mere users may suggest changes but only administrators may approve them, to a mode where the project's content is shaped mostly by the ones doing the approving. That's not only too much work (see (1)), it's totally non-wiki. (Read up on Wikipedia's predecessor Nupedia sometime, if you haven't.) As others have said, if the patrol notices a contribution that's not garbage or vandalism but that needs work, all that should be required is to slap the appropriate cleanup tags on it, and let those be dealt with as part of the larger picture, as usual.

(With all of that said, I'm not suggesting that an administrator on patrol should be forbidden to make more sweeping cleanups on the spot. All I'm saying is that the patrolling procedure should not be thought of or described as suggesting that a patroller is in any way obligated to.) —scs 15:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Patrolled means it's not obvious junk, as Dvorty says. It's not possible to check for correctness on this pass, as Connel also says, and anyways shouldn't we be checking that content is correct before we go about formatting it? Having a dictionary that's pretty is a low priority to having one that's halfway legit, and I'd rather know I'm looking at a shaky entry by way of non-standard formatting than not being able to make that basic distinction. DAVilla 06:03, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I have summarized a few of the points made here on this page, anyone who wishes to add to or ammend that list of Q&A is more than welcome to. - TheDaveRoss 06:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

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Current time

Today is Friday, November 15, 2024; it is now 15:24 (UTC/GMT) Refresh

wot I stole from celloguy. But I want it to tell me South African Time (UTC +2). Can anyone tell me how to do it? Andrew massyn 20:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Which do you want? A clock on the top right corner of your window that updates continuously on every wikt: page? User:Vildricianus glommed one from somewhere on one of his sub-pages for that. I'll see if I can add something to Preferences to do that. I find the continuous update hightly annoying, myself. --Connel MacKenzie 21:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Nah. I just want to stick it on my user page, and to show SA time. I think its quite lekker if people want to know what time it is in e.g. CT or Moscow of New York, all simultaneously and at the same time. You can then go to the user page and find out. If the user has a clock! (and tells you where he lives) Andrew massyn 21:35, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

If you're using Firefox, there's some extension adding that stuff in your browser itself. — Vildricianus 21:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately I dont. (I had to look up what a browser was). I use the one that Bill gave me....Oh dear. Andrew massyn 18:53, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Now I'll steal your code too, with a few modifications to do what I believe you want it to do ;)

Current time

Today is Friday, November 15, 2024; it is now 17:24 (UTC+2) Refresh

(Code taken from m:ParserFunctions#.23time:). Let's just hope it'll work out correctly when it comes to updating day names etc at our midnight (UTC+2). \Mike 09:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

ParserFunctions get ever crazier. One day they'll inflect English nouns! :-) — Vildricianus 13:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Cool! Thanks. Andrew massyn 18:20, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Spellchecker

In your Wiktionary preferences I've added an option at the bottom for turning on the spell-check button in edit windows. The green checkmark appears on the right-hand side of the edit-toolbar. Refresh your browser cache with CRTL-reload (or whatever, for your browser) if you don't see the Spellcheck option.

The next time you edit a page, try the spellcheck (routed via spellcheck.net.) It does not return the results to your Wikt window, nor does it close gracefully. (I have no idea who runs spellcheck.net; it was a recommended site from a Wikipedia talk page.) Feedback is appreciated.

--Connel MacKenzie 05:50, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

One person so far has indicated that they don't use the "Toolbar" Special:Preferences → Editing tab, →→ Show edit toolbar (JavaScript). If you don't use the edittoolbar, you won't see the extra button added to it. --Connel MacKenzie 16:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

idiom page

I just added fishtail as an idiom. This is my first word. Anyway, I had to scroll through several pages of idioms to find f. Couldn't there be a linked alphabet for these idioms? The one at the top of the page, not only doesn't display right, but it appears to be only for languages with idioms listed and not for the actualy English idiom entrees. Bounton 08:56, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

There is the TOC at the top of the page; the problem is that Ff is two links, one for uppercase and one for lower, and it is fiddley to hit the right one. If you hit the capital F, it just starts from the language subcategory. I've wanted to tweak this for a while. Very good entry, BTW, thank you. (I'd like to see the translations when people add them!) Robert Ullmann 11:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Customizations

Since I'm the only one adding to WT:PREFS these days, I'm adding stuff willy-nilly. I've added a clock (mainly for Andrew) and a simple way to enable Lupin Popups (even for anonymous users!) --Connel MacKenzie 05:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

WT:RFD#Permanent_deletions

I'm fairly sure this section used to include a note that an entry (or is that non-entry) London weather (or something similar) was to remain unused as it was used on one of the Help pages as an example of a red link.

At some time (prior to 22 Jul, which as far back as I can go on History) the appropriate sentence has been removed. Does anyone remember which Help page used the example, and whether it is still current (in which case the note should be reinstated)? --Enginear 10:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that at some point in the past there was an example red link (maybe in "Help:Starting a new page") entitled "The weather in London". But I can't find it now (our help system is rather convoluted) SemperBlotto 10:29, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I removed the "Weather in London" link some time ago, as it was skewing Special:Wantedpages and was not the type of headword we want here. That was a Wikipedia-style title. I try to not link 'Unwritten article' from anywhere except those two places, so that Special:Wantedpages doesn't get thrown out of whack again. (The 'Weather in London' entry had been incorrectly linked from a template that was reused on many index pages.) --Connel MacKenzie 17:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Amusingly, since Weather in London and sometimes London weather were used on Wikipedia as examples of entirely inappropriate 'pedia articles, they have become valid ... Robert Ullmann 20:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd think red car has a better chance of being considered a valid entry here, than 'Weather in London'. --Connel MacKenzie 21:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

If only red car was the source of the place name Redcar ... but it isn't, there is no connection with either red or car. --Enginear 21:40, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Red car is a name of a streetcar or bus in Southern CA, after the old streetcar system. Robert Ullmann 21:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

How about blue car, green car, or beige car? --Jeffqyzt 22:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

plaid car - it would make an interesting visual for something that just isn't right as well --Versageek 23:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

preload templates

Just a note: I went to make a seemingly innocuous edit to one of the preload templates today. Instead, I ended up editing all of them to add the appropriate category. Then discovered that "noinclude" does not work for preload templates at all.

The various ParserFunctions work-arounds do not work either. I'm considering exploiting another bug (the temporary bug that allows redirects to be in a category) to do something whacky, like create Template:new-en-noun with the contents #REDIRECT [[Template:new en noun]] [[Category:Article creation templates|N]] so that the category contains semi-reasonable results. Nah, that's dumb.

I'll leave them alone for now. You can always see them at Special:Prefixindex/new_ anyhow.

The other minor change I did as I went throught them, was to replace the <!--fill in stem--> stuff with parameter arguments instead, so 'bots can share the preload templates. And so that humans have less to select and delete.

If this (what was supposed to be a single tiny edit, to begin with) rubs anyone the wrong way, please discuss here. --Connel MacKenzie 01:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Since you have to put the documentation on the Talk page (because noinclude doesn't work ...) you could categorize the Talk pages? Robert Ullmann 16:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

{{infl}}

In working on the templates for Mandarin, Min Nan, and Japanese it occured to me that there are a very large number of languages that will never have language-specific inflection templates. (we aren't going to have 7000+ sets ...). So a generic template might be very useful. At least for those of us who like templates.

So I've created {{infl}}, see Template Talk:infl.

It isn't quite where I want it yet, but close. If anyone is inclined to look and comment? Robert Ullmann 08:47, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Spellchecker again

The site recommended on Wikipedia for spellchecking died without warning. So I've created a similar component on toolserver that uses ispell instead. Since it is a page under my control, I will add genuinely useful features, such as returning the corrections to the wiki textarea of the editbox (soon.)

Until a minor problem is worked out with PHP scripting, there is a limit of approximately 10KB. So, I am eager to hear some feedback on how people find the interface (when section editing.)

Please try it out/help test the new spellcheck feature in WT:PREFS, before it is announced to a wider audience! --Connel MacKenzie 09:26, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Note: this even works for Internet Explorer 7. --Connel MacKenzie 17:43, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried to get it, but it seemed to be on your page. When I wanted to copy it, it didn't have the boxes, but just a line in <these brackets>. Is that what I am suposed to copy? Or do I use it from there? Or perhaps(and I wont be insulted) just leave it until it is idiot-proof? Andrew massyn 22:39, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

You aren't supposed to copy anything. Simply visit my sub-page WT:PREFS and check the FIRST checkbox, and the "spell check" box. As per suggestion from Brion, it now appears as a "Check spelling" button right next to "Show changes". Tested: IE 7, NS 7, FF 1.5, Safari. Please indicate other browsers that it also works (or fails!) for. --Connel MacKenzie 20:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Second level headers

Take a look at what the Vietnamese Wiktionary has done with its language headers 1. I think having the headers show up as a color bar (or at least with that option available) is really cool, and would help visually to parse pages with multiple languages. What would this take to implement? --EncycloPetey 20:30, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, disabling section editing is fine (apparently) for smaller Wiktionaries that prefer to use templates instead of headings. I'd oppose that here, though. --Connel MacKenzie 21:01, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I quite agree with you there, which is why I ask what it would take to implement something like that on this Wiktionary ;) --EncycloPetey 22:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Smiley noted. I'll try tomorrow, if no one beats me to it (but I am awful at CSS still.) --Connel MacKenzie 05:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Taking a different approach, those heading-bar colors can probably be added to WT:CUSTOM by one of our local CSS gurus. --Connel MacKenzie 21:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

{{wikipediapar}}

Since this was created, the parameters have been added to {{wikipedia}}, which also has a lang= parameter to reference a 'pedia in another language. As far as I can see, there isn't any reason why it can't just be a #REDIRECT to {{wikipedia}}. Then we will have the box/graphic code, documentation, etc. in one place. Anyone see a problem with this? Robert Ullmann 12:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Changed this to a redirect; seems okay. Robert Ullmann 19:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

IIRC, the objections (mine included) were regarding performance. (That complaint has since, been debunked.) Hopefully the JS auto-redirection stuff is not masking some strange side-effect. But, that would be for the return trip, anyway. So, I dunno...seems good. --Connel MacKenzie 20:04, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Edittools#Misc.

Should the contents of Category:Symbols be added to MediaWiki:Edittools' "Misc." section? --Connel MacKenzie 00:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Another WT:PREF: special characters in search box

I've added another item in WT:PREFS. Turning it on adds a "keyboard" thing to the left navigation column under the search button, that allows you to enter special characters in the search box. Please let me know 1) if it works for you, 2) if it doesn't work or 3) if it doesn't work the way you expect it to.

--Connel MacKenzie 21:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

(Firefox 1.5.0.7, Win XP) doesn't seem to do anything? Nothing appears. Robert Ullmann 18:56, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

ALT-SHIFT-"R" to refresh your JS cache. I'm using the exact same version for my main JS development, these days.  :-) Make sure the very first checkbox is also used. (Perhaps I should gray out all the rest, until that one is checked?) --Connel MacKenzie 19:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Is this dependent on your sidebar.js? Robert Ullmann 20:05, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Works now. Very nice. It doesn't return the input focus to the text entry box the way the one under the edit window does. Robert Ullmann 13:35, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Can we add hiragana and katakana to Mediawiki:Edittools? Robert Ullmann 13:45, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

{{temp}}

It was suggested on the talk page of {{temp}} that it really ought to direct people to the talk page of the template, not the template page. The documentation should be there, especially if any length. And length is good. This, however does not work for lots of small templates ({{yue}}.

I've made {{temp}} link to the talk page if it exists. Do people like this? Robert Ullmann 18:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this is very reasonable. Well see how it pans out, I guess. --Connel MacKenzie 19:40, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it true that the documentation belongs on the talk page? There's a school of thought (to which I tend to subscribe) that says it belongs in the template proper, bracketed with <noinclude>. —scs 12:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it tends to depend on how long it is. When the documentation is several times the length of the template code, it reduces the amount of text to be transcluded significantly. It also has another advantage: you can use the template itself in the documentation examples, without worrying about messing up the <noinclude> tags and created an unconditional recursion. For just a couple of lines, sure. Robert Ullmann 13:12, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

WT:PREF - Popups

I've started experimenting with overriding certain classes in Lupin's popups. If you have used {{navpop}} I strongly suggest you remove it from your Special:Mypage/monobook.js and instead use the WT:PREFS version. Instead of listing the Wikipedia-style "Section zero" summary, it lists the "#" definition lines. Many, many, many more Wiktionary-specific enhancements are in the works. --Connel MacKenzie 03:14, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Special:New Pages

Could we have a modification to this so that we can exclude words added by a bot please. It is getting overwhelmed lately. SemperBlotto 07:27, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd look at http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/Newuserlog/ then see if I can find someone like Rodasmith or Brion, who has write privs to SVN, so features like http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialListusers.php?view=log has can be added. --Connel MacKenzie 08:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

refried beans

This word was added today. However, I'm sure that I added it about a year ago. "What links here" points to a discussion I had at the time with PaulG. Was it ever deleted? Or am I going mad? SemperBlotto 16:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I have here a copy of the 20060913 XML dump, and there's nothing like "refried beans" in it, so it sounds like it got deleted somehow. —scs 19:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

But -- hmm -- no evidence in the deletion log, or capitalized. Strange. —scs 21:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

That's what I thought - spooky. I wonder what else has disappeared into hyperspace. SemperBlotto 21:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The oldest entry in the deletion log here is 17:15, December 21, 2004. Very odd. --Connel MacKenzie 00:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I suspect you were discussing the usage note in the entry refry. In particular, this edit. --Connel MacKenzie 00:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Goofing around with the definition of a Bot

I've semi-automated patrolled edit whitelisting.

Note: this only applies to sysops.

To use the autopilot, visit WT:PREFS. Turn on "Patrolling enhancements" and, after you've visited Special:Recentchanges once to see what it does, go back and turn on "expert mode w/no alerts."

Next, open a new tab to Special:Recentchanges, click on "100" then put that window to the background. It will refresh once every five minutes. Any username on the whitelist will have their new edits 'auto-clicked as patrolled.'

Finally, open another tab, with Special:Recentchanges. Click the "Patrol anons" in the top right. Let me know if there are others I should whitelist. (Yes, I hope to make that list considerably more dynamic. Right now it is a hard coded list of the most frequent ones I saw while testing.) Or just add them to it yourself.

Note that if you turn on "Popups" in WT:PREFS (while you're there) you'll get the version customized for Wiktionary. When using that, you don't have to switch windows at all, as you can hover over "(diff)" to see the edit, and click "Mark?".

About a billion times faster than regular anon patrolling. But I think we could use a few more sysops these days, to try to keep up. --Connel MacKenzie 07:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Can't figure out how to get this to work. Regardless it'd be nice to be able to patrol consecutive edits by a user for a given page, just like rollback applies. DAVilla 12:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Community Portal

This page is not editable (by me), something on it needs fixing. There's a link near the bottom of the page to Wikipedia's Move to Wiktionary list, this wikipedia page hasn't been used for a long time, and should no longer be linked to here. You could link to w:Category:Copy to Wiktionary if you wished to, or you could remove the item from the community portal page altogether. --Xyzzyplugh 20:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll remove it. Hmmm, you probably want me to run another import about now. --Connel MacKenzie 20:06, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Fixing {{kanji}}

This template is used on pages for single kanji, after an L3 Kanji heading. It generates a Readings section at L4, but unfortunately generates the heading as well (a no-no). It also has been doing too many things; I included Izumi5's {{kanjigrade}}, it took the radical/stroke parameter to index, etc.

So I've broken it into {{ja-kanji}} (the correct name anyway) and {{ja-readings}}, and the Kanji header and kanji template now look like:

===Kanji===
{{ja-kanji|...}}
====Readings====
{{ja-readings|...}}}

The template is set up so it can be subst'd if we are happy with it, and the Readings header won't be in the template. Not yet though ... when we do, it must be replaced with {{subst:kanji|subst=subst:|...}}.

I haven't moved the documentation about yet. Robert Ullmann 18:43, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Dynamic feature on Wikinews

The Front Page of Wikinews has a nice dynamic feature for news more than a few days old whereby you can Show / Hide the section for a particular day. Could we make use of this? I was thinking that it would simplify some of our more complicated pages, For instance, we could hide complex translation sections for words that have multiple meanings and the user just hits "Show" to see them. Can anyone figure out how its done? The Wiki is going very slow at the moment and I got bored with nested templates. SemperBlotto 16:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Our Monobook.js has the dynamic thing already. --Connel MacKenzie 17:01, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It isn't too hard; it mostly just uses a CSS class on the table. See for example {{nav}}. We could add a class to {{top}}; but we'd also want to add the gloss as a parameter. There was a new user a couple of weeks ago who was trying to do this, but just didn't know enough. (he got very close, but didn't want advice ...). Would you (and/or others) like me to set up something that works so you can try it? (I'll just borrow the nav template's class to start with.) Robert Ullmann 17:08, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

When someone tried that a long time ago, it got a rather cool response. I personally would like to see it implemented here...yes, please be bold. --Connel MacKenzie 17:09, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Grease Pit, sense one

• Language One:
• Language Two:
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Language Three:
• Language Four:

Robert Ullmann 17:31, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• Very good. P.S. I don't know what I did to the Wiki, 'cause I didn't get a response. 18:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)SemperBlotto

the cosmetics are of course all changeable. This could be swapped into the existing templates if a small tweak is applied to {{top2}} through {{top4}} because they also use {{bottom}}. (The whole top, top2, mid2, mid4 thing is mostly silliness; could all be simplified to a top template, possibly specific to table type, and mid any desired number of times and bottom. Trying to do these templates in wikitable syntax was part of the problem.) But for now, play with them. Robert Ullmann 20:26, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I have used these templates in get as a first experiment. I think they look pretty good. SemperBlotto 21:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Does this still have the limitation of only working on the first section that has the show/hide thing? --Connel MacKenzie 09:10, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

No, look at get, you can show/hide any combination you like. (Each one has its own <div> frame.) Robert Ullmann 11:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I like it! I don't like the colors, (minor,) but being used on WikiNews I'm sure the code will be able to pass here. One suggestion: If there isn't anything to show, could you make the box disappear altogether? That way these things could be automatically added by bots on pages where there are no translations or where all translations need to be checked. I've noticed many edits by anons who will still add translations using numbers, and if we can package this all together then IMO the sooner it rolls out the better. DAVilla 10:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I love this. Widsith 10:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Archiving the Grease pit, part four

Today's DB errors on this page (cleared only by purging the page) indicate to me, that this page has gotten a little too big for its britches. The concept of subpaging this page hasn't worked out; can we try archiving it in the exact same manner as WT:BP from now on? --Connel MacKenzie 17:14, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. Robert Ullmann 12:10, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Or even better, I'd like to experiment with allowing WednaBot (from Wikipedia) to try archiving this page, rather than using my partially-manual process. --Connel MacKenzie 00:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:en-ad

Has anyone begun mounting an effort to replace the old {en-ad} template with the new {en-adj}? --EncycloPetey 22:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Nurse

HI I am wondering why the word Nurse, a profession, is so often written as nurse, ie lower case. Surely a Nurse who has many years of training, should be awarded the same professional dignity as that of her medical counterparts, ie Doctor. You do not see doctor. Can you please provide some rationale as to why Nurse seems to be written nurse. Indeed I was marked down in a Masters assignment for using Nurse. I would appreciate feedback. Cheers Polly.

I am a professional engineer, but I don't recall ever seeing "engineer" capitalised in English (except at the beginning of a sentence, etc. But there again, I don't recall seeing "doctor" capitalised except when used as a form of address. --Enginear 12:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Some redirects/merges

I'd like to merge and redirect [[Talk:Wiktionary:Main Page]], Wiktionary talk:Main Page and Talk:Main Page to Wiktionary:Information desk. At least one of those pages shouldn't be normally possible to even reach, yet somehow newbies are landing there? The character of the questions there never seems to pertain to the main page layout (as that is usually hashed out on the talk pages of the included templates/subpages.) I think the general questions that do get posted there have a better chance of soliciting a response if they are on the information desk. Anyone agree? Disagree? Comments? Be bold? --Connel MacKenzie 04:50, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Support. We have another area for proposed changes to the protected main page, don't we? Make sure to link to it big from the information desk.

Is there an option for "semi-namespaces"? WT: doesn't need to have a WT Talk: space, and Talk:X: should always redirect to X talk: it seems. DAVilla 08:52, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, there is no support for additional namespaces without a talk space. --Connel MacKenzie 18:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Support (as above) --EncycloPetey 21:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Rats. Anyone remember where those conversations got to? --Connel MacKenzie 18:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Which conversations? I made a comment here, and we had an earlier exchange with regard to Beer_parlour/Revisions, but I don't think it was ever really discussed discussed. DAVilla 19:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Links

So, any reason why the ‘Discussion Rooms’ link has disappeared from my Navigation box? Widsith 07:54, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Conditional wikilinks

The code used in {{en-noun}} and {{wlink}} (used in the CJ templates) stopped working sometime in the last 12 hours. Have we gotten some kind of software change? (Did we just get 1.7.0? How can we tell?)

I'm going to be in Rwanda for 4 days, so it will be a bit harder for me to follow this up, can someone please dig into it? Thanks! Robert Ullmann 09:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oh, is this why {{en-noun|-}} doesn't give "uncountable" any more? SemperBlotto 10:10, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, it broke {{isValidPageName}} and {{wlink}}. If we did get 1.7.0 in the last day, it may have something to do with a fix referenced in the release notes about not allowing inclusion of Special pages; these templates don't include a Special page, but they do use the name, comparing Special:Whatlinkshere with raw:Special:Whatlinkshere. If we didn't get a s/w upgrade, then who knows? Robert Ullmann 10:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, {{en-adj}} now seems to be giving none (absolute) as the default superlative term (at least on table view). Widsith 11:02, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The same problem also affects {{en-adv}}. Also, {{en-adj}} no longer reacts properly to {{en-adj|er|est}} which, I believe, used to do "worder", "wordest" for the comparative/superlative. Whatever the change was, it's breaking several templates! ---Jeffqyzt 13:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why isValidPageName is necessary to check for - as a parameter. For the near term, can't these be immediately rewritten so that they're right at least some of the time? DAVilla 14:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

We've been running 1.8a for quite some time now (see Special:Version ). We many have gotten a new build, but I'm not sure. --Versageek 14:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, {{en-verb}} is broken too - it displays hyphens instead of inflections. — Paul G 15:10, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I haven't seen any indication of a recent change in any of the likely places. Expanding investigation... --Connel MacKenzie 16:16, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

{{en-adj-more}} expands to "X (comparative "more X", superlative not comparable)" which makes no sense - superlatives can't be described as comparable, and if the comparative exists, then so must the superlative. — Paul G 16:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

All these various problems are just symptoms of a single bug. It seems to be the logic that checks if a particular word (such as a plural) exists or not. The various pieces of logic gets the wrong result and makes inappropriate decisions. SemperBlotto 16:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

almost done...stay tuned...--Connel MacKenzie 16:48, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

bugzilla:7529 seems to have had this secondary effect. I think it is fixed in the major places now. Please report further problems here. --Connel MacKenzie 17:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The wikilinking of the target in the {present participle of} template is no longer working. Is that this same bug? --Jeffqyzt 15:45, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I think so. That's becasue {wlink} isn't working anymore. It was broken and I simplified it some, but I swear I didn't break it! DAVilla 21:17, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how I missed this one yesterday. Moments ago, I added the colon after {{#ifeq:[[ and before Special to match the other changes. --Connel MacKenzie 21:35, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you so much for chasing this, A-Cai had told me about it minutes before I laft for the Nairobi airport, and it took quite a while to get back on-line. Robert Ullmann 10:01, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

templates gone mad!!! :)

Provided that the entry for Lack of realism stays on Wiktionary, I don't think the template works for this one. A-cai 00:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Lack of realism was, well - lacking. --Versageek 00:56, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

User:DblRedirBot

I’ve just looked at a few changes made by User:DblRedirBot and almost every single one I looked at was in error. For example, it changes capitalized German nouns (all German nouns are capitalized) to lowercase. Apparently if it finds a lowercase page in some language such as Icelandic, it will change similar but capitalized words in other languages such as German and Indonesian to lowercase, so that they link to the Icelandic word. I’ve only looked at about ten or so entries, but so far they are all wrong. —Stephen 14:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

In addition, whoever its maintainer is might have a look at what it's doing with whitespace. It inserted some extra carriage returns in WT:ELE that broke the formatting of that page. I fixed the three instances I found there, but it might be worth a look to see if it's had an adverse effect on any other non-Definition page. --Jeffqyzt 14:19, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I also see that if a gender template follows one of the words it changes, the User:DblRedirBot adds a hard return before the gender template. For instance, it turns correct "*Breton: Sul m" into this:

• Breton: Sul

m

It should not redirect to a lowercase sul, and the gender note should be on the same line. —Stephen 14:35, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I had a complaint earlier too. These are all "minor" times infinity minus 1. Here it is: Why is this bot making changes to links in talk spaces when there is a single redirect outside of the main dictionary space which probably shouldn't get deleted anyways? This seems very distant from the original task. DAVilla 18:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments. I stopped and restarted the followup task several times, but aborted it again after only the preliminary tests. I'll roll the remaining changes back (that haven't been rolled back already.

I haven't narrowed down why replace.py is inserting a linebreak, whenever there is text following the "]]" characters.

DAVilla, the conversation is still at Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2006/June#KillRedirectsBot. Yes, one of the errors was not limiting it to NS:0.

--Connel MacKenzie 18:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, you did ask for permission, just the name of the bot threw me. It doesn't have to be limited to NS:0, but it probably shouldn't make changes in the talk spaces in a good number of cases. DAVilla 21:54, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Now what's happened?

What's happened now? The format of all entries has changed (I'm using all defaults) - there is a dummy [edit] above the English line (on the left), then a real [edit] above each section (also on the left). It looks nasty! SemperBlotto 21:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

On Wikipedia too. Probably a universal software change gone awry. --Connel MacKenzie 21:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Back to normal, now. SemperBlotto 21:20, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

iPod dump?

Would it be possible to create a dump of wiktionary in a ipod notes compatiple way? Perhaps by building a script to process the raw xml dump data? I'm sure this would be popular... Obviously the Wiktionary would not be conatined within one files but could use directories for organization...--K33l0r 22:04, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

If you give me (on my talk page) an example or two of what format you'd like these in, I'll throw something together. --Connel MacKenzie 02:52, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

You'll find all the necessary info on formatting at [1] and [2]. I think that we should have entries separated alphabetically into folders and in each folder have a separate file for each definition. It's probably easiest for the user if almost only the definiton is kept... (not sure about what symbols are understood by the ipod?)--K33l0r 22:04, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Special:Randompage/Transwiki and the ever growing backlog

Now that the transwiki import process is stabilizing, it is probably a good time to review the overall transwiki process. Currently, the Transwiki namespace has well over 2,000 entries.

Since we no longer need to maintain the transwiki log, per se, using the above link will give you a random entry to clean up. How to do it?

1. Verify that the entry/sense does not already exist.
   1. If it does, you need to delete the existing entry, to merge the history from the transwiki namespace, then restore the wiktionary version, then merge the new sense in.
   2. If it does not, move the entry to main namespace, then begin reformatting.
2. If the entry is nonsense, delete it (and talk page), or nominate it for RFD, or RFV as the situation warrants.

There is no need to delete the residual redirect in the transwiki namespace; leaving it behind allows Wikipedians to find their entries.

I don't think any one person should do more than a few a day; some are rather elaborate, and for some reason, when on a roll, you can get a lot of nonsense terms in a row. Be careful not to burn out on these, but please do help. Thanks in advance, --Connel MacKenzie 08:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Annoying templates

Several templates (such as {{alternative spelling of}}) no longer yield red links if the related word does not yet exist. Instead we get plain text. This makes it just that little bit more difficult to add the missing word. What is the rationale for doing this? SemperBlotto 17:51, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Connel and TheDaveRoss have added #ifexist, apparently so that they can wikilink the parameter on the page optionally; this so that these pages don't show up as dead-ends, pages without links. The problem is that then the link only shows up if the page exists. If they would use {{wlink}} instead, you would still see the Template:wlink, it tests to see if the link is a valid page name, not if it exists. One problem is that the template takes two parameters to do a piped-alternate link, instead of (as well as) simply taking a parameter with a piped wikilink. But I don't know if that is actually used. Robert Ullmann 18:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, that is exactly what is intended. Excellent detective work, Robert! --Connel MacKenzie 03:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Is it supposed to be a straight replacement of #ifexsist: with wlink|? --Connel MacKenzie 05:03, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

But are they going to be fixed? SemperBlotto 09:16, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The issue is whether any entries use the form:

• {{alternate spelling of|foo|bar}} to get [[foo|bar]]

If not, or if a few that can be fixed, then it is easy. If the link-alternation is not used, we add wlink, and one can use:

• {{alternate spelling of|[[foo|bar]]}} if desired.

I've fixed that one, #if (2) present. Would be good to do away with the second parameter, it isn't in the doc. What others are there to fix? (or you can copy from that one ;-) Robert Ullmann 11:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Fixed {{plural of}}. What else? Robert Ullmann 13:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC) (is easy, just copy one of those)

Drat, I don't remember. I'm pretty sure there were three like {{plural of}}, while all the rest used {{form of}}. They probably all should use form of for consistency. --Connel MacKenzie 17:07, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Some notes to myself, from IRC

Just so I don't forget, here are things on my distant "todo" list regarding WT:PREFS:

1. cookies don't delete properly. Give expiration date of NOW+one minute, instead.
2. Cookies don't persist properly. Any reference to them should refresh them for a month. Currently they expire 30 days from the date they were first set.
3. document.cookies is a finite length. Combine all prefernce cookies into one big cookie.
4. save cookie values using XMLHttpRequest to a user preference page (hashed?) to go from one browser to another
5. add option to not have cookies migrate from browser to browser
6. add cookies for random language pages, e.g. http://connelm.homelinux.com/cgi-bin/randompage?lang=es
7. add cookies for color preferences
8. Move whole shebang to Wiktionary:Preferences / Wiktionary:Prefernces/javascripts.js etc.

--Connel MacKenzie 04:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Tiscali UK

Would it be possible to treat Tiscali UK users (i.e. Wonderfool) in the same way as AOL? The IP address used seems to be dynamic and changes from session to session, but is always in the range 80.40.0.0 - 80.47.255.255

I was just wondering about that, as you might suspect. It worries me what I see IP-block "infinite" on an IP address not an open proxy; (Connel gets annoyed and does this and I understand), but what about the poot sot who knows nothing of all this and tries to use the wikt 2 years from now? Our policy pretty clearly says not to, as it should. But OTOH, there seems to be more than one annoying Tiscali user. Robert Ullmann 11:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

(Sorry, the infinite block was a mistake - finger trouble - it was meant to be a month) SemperBlotto 11:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

(And - I must learn how to use range blocks). SemperBlotto 11:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the Tiscali dyn IPs only last a few hours or a day; they don't try to re-associate IPs with users (the way a local DCHP configuration usually works: the host tries to renew the IP address it last had, and only gets a new one if it has been reassigned). So blocking a Tiscali IP for more than a few days only serves to hit someone else. The "one day" sort-of-default in WT:BLOCK seems okay to me. Robert Ullmann 11:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The AOL technique, AFAIK, works only for AOL - they have a farm of proxy servers that get bypassed for https: connections. I have no idea if Tiscali uses a similar proxy server arrangement or not. A one-day block seems best, in this situation. --Connel MacKenzie 18:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The new irc gateway

http://www.wikizine.org/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi

This one particular gateway is not currently blocked. Abusive users that connect via this gateway can be blocked individually (their originating IP address is hashed into the username component) so it has a decent chance of remaining unblocked for some time. Should I add something in monobook, (or preferences, or somewhere) to stuff in wgUserName and connect to #wiktionary automatically? --Connel MacKenzie 18:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say don't force people to use their wikt username, for those folks who are truly paranoid about being connected to their IP...but looks good. - TheDaveRoss 19:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Categories for Deletion?

Is there an equivalent of w:WP:CFD? I ask because there's Category:de:Male Given names and Category:de:Male given names, and Category:es:Male Given names and Category:es:Male given names. Probably others, too. Anna 02:22, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Others (aka WT:RFDO) Robert Ullmann 13:25, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Catscan

Here's a new toy: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php?wikilang=en&wikifam=.wiktionary.org&basecat=English+nouns&basedeep=3&mode=cs&tagcat=English+irregular+plurals&tagdeep=3&go=Scan&userlang=en

--Connel MacKenzie 04:10, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Trouble creating an account

I have just tried to create an account but cannot because the image of the confirmation code is blank (no trace of it). I have tried using Internet Explorer and also firefox. I have cookies enabled. Is there a problem? 82.18.21.208 13:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The image appears to have been replaced with text (a simple math question), meaning someone's aware of the problem and looking into it. 59.112.58.192 15:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, it's a math question. The same is true for other members of the Wiki family: I had the same thing come up recently when I created my accounts on Wikibooks and Wikitravel. Anna 15:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Judaism and Christianity templates

Why does Template:Christianity tag entries with the category 'Christianity', whilst Template:Judaism does not tag entries with the category 'Judaism'? (Or is this only a peculiarity of my computer?) See Abdon for an example. I looked at both templates and they seem technically identical, so I cannot figure out why one would insert a category and the other would not. -- Beobach972 01:34, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no [[Category:Judaism]] page. I believe the behaviour would be the same if the category existed. --Jeffqyzt 02:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Aha! Thanks for the help. I checked Abdon, and the template now categorises it properly. Category:Judaism appears blank, but I assume that is a cache issue specific to my browser. Beobach972 02:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Abdon is missing from the cat for me as well. The first and only entry there is (appropriately enough) Abraham. It appears to only be adding to the category when the page is re-saved. Not sure if this is how it's supposed to work, but on the upside, all the little bots scurrying around are bound to hit most pages sooner or later :-) --Jeffqyzt 03:08, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Strangely enough, only a few entries use the template, so I just 'prodded' them all. I suppose -- especially now that it works -- we'll have to use it more often! Beobach972 03:17, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, you would think so, eh? But then Wonderfool created Category:Jewish and stuffed some things into it. And some other people followed. You are welcome to add the template to them and then we can get rid of the (mis-named) "Jewish" category ... Oh, and there is a background job queue. The trick is to edit the template. (Make some innocuous change) Robert Ullmann 16:28, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:simple past of

moved from WT:BP.

Why does template:simple past of not like having an argument in brackets but template:past of does? RJFJR 18:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

It was lost in the shuffle. Updating now... --Connel MacKenzie 18:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

MacOS announcement

A little birdy pointed this out to me:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/wiktionarywidget.html

--Connel MacKenzie 19:00, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

...pulls up Wiktionary articles, the free and collaborative online dictionary.

That latter phrase is modifying the wrong noun, but oddly, I wasn't able to edit it. :-P DAVilla 15:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

'bot help

I need to find the correct locations for:

• The page to seek approval for a wiktionary bot. I can only seem to find a page for wikipedia bots.
• The location of the actual API for writing a 'bot. I can find information about using various languages but as none of them are 'C++' which is what I use, they are no use. If I can get to the nuts and bolts documentation (i.e. e.g. "Open port 80 and send "xxx,yyy,zzz" and the result will be in the format "aaa"), I'll be alright

— This unsigned comment was added by Moglex (talk • contribs).

The python suite of tools (see http://sf.net/) is in the project 'pywikipediabot' framework. Some minor proposals were made for some Wiktionary-specific tools within that, but were abandoned in favor of the more generic pywikipediabot approach.

The framework allows for most of the common needs. The irc://freenode.net/pywikipediabot channel is where you can discuss it with those developers. Everything about it, is done over HTTP. The framework emulates a user, simply automating the more basic tasks. This is done for security reasons (to prevent anyone from needing direct database access.) I use my programming language of choice for my tasks, then interface to pywikipediabot to do the reads and writes to Wiktionary. This allows for community accepted throttling, blocking, retries, etc., etc., etc.

--Connel MacKenzie 18:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to seem picky, but is there any documentation for this stuff? Specifically, how to use it from other languages and the sequence of calls needed to do a particular job? I cannot find any documentation at all. Moglex 10:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Translation tool: announcement

A few months ago I started working on translations on the Dutch wiktionary. My first experiences were that is was a hard job to copy wiki-code of translations between wiktionary's. In addition, I did not know different wiktionary's have different rules for the lay-out. Therefore, I have written a tool which can be found on the toolserver: Transtool (explanation and examples: User:Annabelleke/Transtool).

This tool can be used for copying translations between the English, French, Dutch and German with a minimum of effort. Another example is reverting the insertion of the trad template, while retaining the addition of new translations. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

Annabelleke 21:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd really like to start using this. (I like cool tools!) I'd like to implement a WT:PREFS button to link to this, kindof similar to the [Check spelling] button. I'm not precisely sure where to begin though.

In the meantime, can you add an option (or maybe no option, just do it) to use the new "trans-top/trans-mid/trans-bottom" templates' format instead? --Connel MacKenzie 22:34, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

disappearing accounts?

Very strange... I popped in to do a search, found I was logged out, then found (even curiouser) that my account now doesn't exist!

I don't think I ever made any edits with the account (before this one), but I did have my search preferences set up for lurking. Are "unused" accounts being purged? --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 11:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

JavaScript error

I get a JavaScript error at the following bit of code:

if (ht.search(/editsection/) != -1) {
    ht = ht.split('<span class="mw-headline">')[1];
    ht = ht.split('</span>')[0];
}

The span does exist, put the code can't find it because it's too restrictive. Please try:

... .split(/<span\s+class="?mw-headline"?>/i)[1]
... .split(/<\/span>/i)[0] ...

That will probably work better. You also could do this in one regex, using ( ) to capture the content of the span:

... .match(/<span\s+class="?mw-headline"?>(.*?)<\/span>/i)[1] ...

Shinobu 01:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I will try that. I forget which browser it was, where the regex functions were not working correctly (IE7, perhaps?)

If you'd like to code-review all my junk sometime, I'd appreciate it! --Connel MacKenzie 21:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I backed out the [[MediaWiki:Monobook.js#Wiktionary-specific_tooltips change] for now; the rest of that section of code seems to have problems with the recent skin changes so I'll have to look closer at it. --Connel MacKenzie 21:21, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It isn't that the regex functions work incorrectly, it's innerHTML and consorts who return normalized HTML text. The jokers in the regexen compensate for possible differences in the way browsers handle that. Of course one should use the DOM for this kind of thing - in that case these problems won't be an issue anymore. Shinobu 10:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Tor run

Will run in less than 30 seconds, moving everything to allow logged in users to edit from behind a tor proxy. This will flood the block log for 30s or so... -- Tawker 21:14, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks again. Nice to hear that WP got the mechanism worked out cleaner than I had, initially. --Connel MacKenzie 21:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Quest For A Better Definition Of Hispanic/Latino....

(Moved to Tea Room) Robert Ullmann 13:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for Chinese templates

Proposal to improve the readability of Chinese romanization templates: 1) provide name of romanization without italics; 2) separate romanizations from one another by semicolons rather than commas; 3) separate name of romanization from romanization itself by a colon rather than nothing. This minor fix will bring our visual presentation of these linguistic elements in line with Wikipedia articles on similar subjects, and be much more readable and clear. I have made proposals regarding these punctuation issues at the discussion pages of several of the templates but there has been no response there. Badagnani 08:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Examples:

Old method:

且 (pinyin qiě (qie3), Wade-Giles ch'ieh3)

New method:

且 (pinyin: qiě (qie3); Wade-Giles: ch'ieh3) Badagnani 08:12, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

As is often the case at English Wikipedia, the name of the romanizations could also be Wikilinked in this new method:

且 (pinyin: qiě (qie3); Wade-Giles: ch'ieh3) Badagnani 08:33, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

A similar layout and precedent for the new method, from the English Wikipedia article on Kai-lan, specifically focusing on the lack of italics, use of colons to separate the name of the romanization from the romanization itself, and the use of semicolons to separate discrete examples within the parenthetical section:

Kai-lan (Traditional Chinese: 芥蘭; Simplified Chinese: 芥兰; Pinyin: jièlán or gaìlán; Cantonese Yale: gaailàahn; literally "mustard orchid") Badagnani 08:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

It isn't a question of being "in line" with the Wikipedia articles, it is a question of following the established en.wikt style for inflection lines: the descriptive text is in italics, there aren't any colons or semicolons. Either the descriptive text or the forms can be be wikilinked as appropriate; these forms don't get wikilinked, since (e.g. Wade-Giles romanization) shouldn't be an entry.

Grease pit (plural Grease pits)

Grease pit (uncountable)

e.g.:

且 (pinyin qiě (qie3), Wade-Giles ch'ieh3)

I'm perfectly happy to improve them, consistently with en.wikt style. Robert Ullmann 12:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

(note: creating entries like this leaving out the inflection line entirely and putting the pinyin on the def line, where you know it doesn't belong, presumably because you don't like the way the {{cmn-noun}} template appears now is not helpful; it just means someone has to tag it with RfC and someone else has to clean it up. Robert Ullmann 13:31, 26 November 2006 (UTC))

(see my talk page for context) Badagnani: I am happy to respond to suggestions. But this is not my day job, and I have several dozen other things I'd like to do. Has it occurred to you that telling someone that what they have done is bad/wrong/ugly, and that Your Way is Better, and Must Be Used is unlikely to meet with a favourable response? If I was being paid to reply to your demands I would, of course. But I'm not, and I can just do other, more pleasant, things. (Which, you might note, is about the same response you get from everyone else, especially on the 'pedia.) Robert Ullmann 05:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Error message I don't understand

In 四面楚歌 I get an error message in the status line since I entered another table in the page. The same table doesn't cause any trouble in other pages (like the sandbox). I'm pretty clueless there. --84.63.38.192 22:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Can't Edit

I've lately had the problem that I find myself unable to edit Wiktionary at times. I can get a preview, no problem, but when I click submit, it takes forever and ultimately takes me to "The page cannot be displayed". Trying again and again doesn't make a difference. I have no idea why this is happening, or what's causing it. 128.187.140.148 18:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Spellcheck bug fixed

I fixed a couple bugs with the "Wiktionary" spell-checker tonight. Now, instead of overwhelming the toolserver's apache request, the text is truncated to only check the last 4KB, in the newly opened window. If you don't have a [Check spelling] button at the bottom of your edit panels here (immediately to the right of [Show changes],) then you can turn it on at WT:PREFS. Note that it is nowhere near as nice as the spell-checker integrated into FireFox 1.5 / FireFox 2.0. Remember that if you do have overflow text, you can cut-n-paste the desired sections you want to check, after the new window is opened. Please report bugs, feature requests, etc., here or in WT:BR. I'll add a custom dictionary at some point (for words not in the standard iSpell dictionary, like 'Wiktionary' and 'Wikipedia') soon. Enjoy! --Connel MacKenzie 07:47, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow, special:Linksearch!

http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Linksearch&target=%2A.info&limit=100&offset=0

How long have we had this cool feature? --Connel MacKenzie 08:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Brain-dead spam filter

When I tried to add monthly section headers to Wiktionary:Tea room/2006 just now, I got the following message:

Spam protection filter

The page you wanted to save was blocked by the spam filter. This is probably caused by a link to an external site.

The following text is what triggered our spam filter: http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)edoctusdigital(dot)netfirms(dot)com

(I've mangled the URL to get this post past the filter.) Now, the only text I added to the page was 4 new section headers with the month names January–April, so I wasn't even responsible for the link referred to in the message. Why in the world would a legitimate edit by a registered user be flagged in this way with no mechanism for overriding the "decision" of the software (as is given, for example, when you try to save a page without an edit summary— in that case you can just save it again and it will be accepted). Sorry, but this is just bad spam filter implementation. It needs to be changed. Speaking of which, where is the spam filter discussed on this wiki? I couldn't find any relevant page here. - dcljr 18:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The WMF spam filter was implemented quite a while ago. Spammers have been very aggressive, so I'm not surprised the anti-spam filter is heavy handed. I don't know that it was specifically discussed on individual projects. I am very glad it is in place (99.1% of the time.)

Since that particular spammer was identified after that spam had already been added here, you (the next person to edit that page) are presented with the spamfilter dialog, so that you know there is spam that needs to be removed. Or did I miss something - are you saying that is a valid url, for that page? --Connel MacKenzie 18:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

It certainly appears to be legit. Check for yourself: it's a numbered link ("[3]") used as a reference in a discussion of a religious term, and the target page, in Spanish, is talking about that term. Here's the diff for the edit in which the link was added. The comment, the link, and the user who added them all seem to be legit. - dcljr 18:41, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

netfirms.com is a hosting company, urls from there get used in wiki-spam a lot (I don't see a lot of wiki-spam here, but we get it on wikiHow.. ). Maybe all of netfirms.com is blacklisted? --Versageek 19:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, that the filter points out the spam is not the problem. The problem is that he shouldn't be blocked from making a legitimate edit to the page because of pre-existing spam. Whether the link is legitimately spam or not is irrelevant. DAVilla 23:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that was my original objection. The only way I'll be able to make the edit I wanted is to either remove the link entirely or "disguise" it in such a way that the software doesn't flag it as spam (and then it would no longer be a clickable link either), neither of which seems like a good solution given that the link is actually a legitimate reference. - dcljr 21:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

pywikipediabot access via a proxy

I'm forced to use a local provider proxy (proxy.iconnect.co.ke) right now because there is a link down, and it provides a route around it. Firefox works fine, as does IE.

The pywikipediabot Python code can read pages just fine, but gets "Access denied", "Access control configuration prevents your request from being allowed at this time." generated by wikimedia.org on a POST/submit. Of course, neither meta nor mediawiki actually document this message. Anyone have any idea? Robert Ullmann 08:18, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I re-coded most of wikipedia.putPage, and it works now. Of course, now I can 'bot edit anonymously through an arbitrary proxy, so I won't be sharing the code ;-). (see history of User:Robert Ullmann/Korean Yale) Still don't know what the problem was; it ought to be able to do what a browser does, neither more nor less? Robert Ullmann 11:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Self-reference

In order to the project grows thanks to newcomers, we should have a template like in Wikipedia (Template:selfref) to help them to find help on a particular word that they would have typped in the searchbar. So i'm gonna create it: Template:selfref16@r 20:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)