Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2009/September

Welcome message gadget and Easy Peer Review 'unwatch'
Is there any way a script or something can be added to the Welcome message gadget and easy peer review that would make it so the talk pages of people you welcomed and articles are NOT watched? As of now, any welcome message I post or article I review using the gadgets, I have to 'unwatch' the page manually. IMO users should decide for themselves whether or not to 'watch' a page. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 21:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That is your settings, not the gadgets. I know for a fact that the user messages gadget doesn't watch by default.  Go to 'My Preferences' > 'Watchlist'.  See the lines titled " Add pages I edit to my watchlist" and " Add pages I review to my watchlist".  Those are probably checked, uncheck them, save.  Problem solved. PS, remember, the gadgets do nothing but EDIT on your behalf.  From mediawiki there is no difference between _you_ and _your javascript_.  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 21:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yup. You were correct. Done. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 18:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Can't delete a page
I was looking through Special:BrokenRedirects recently, and noticed the page Talk:Talk:Channel Seven loses control of audio/Comments. However, when I clicked the page link to delete it, it told me that the title was invalid. However, running a search reveals that the page does indeed exist. How to delete it? Tempodivalse [talk]  00:20, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably the restriction on page names became more strict after the page was created. Try asking the devs on #wikimedia-tech. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:29, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Doesn't work for me either. Odd... – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 01:17, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * "Bad title" ... can't even view it. I do see it on the Special:BrokenRedirects page. --SVTCobra 01:34, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Its the same with all pages with a double namespace: talk:talk:Food for example wouldn't work either. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:55, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * But how are we going to get rid of it? Will it require a developer going into the database and removing it manually? (p.s. there seems to be other content on the page other than the redirect. Although you can't actually open the page, i could preview its contents with lupin's popups and it showed an external link.) Tempodivalse [talk]  23:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thats the begining of the xhtml 1.0 transitional dtd reference. Its used at the begining of html pages to denote the version of html being used. Lupins popup uses the url http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Talk:Channel_Seven_loses_control_of_audio/Comments&action=raw&ctype=text/css&maxage=0&smaxage=0 to generate the preview. Normally this would generate just the unformatted wikimarkup, but in cases of a bad title it gives an html error page, and the lupin popup is interperting the html from the error page as wikimarkup. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:17, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅Ah ha. it works if you use the pageid instead of the title.

[21:51]		Special:Log/delete delete * Bawolff * deleted "Talk:Talk:Channel Seven loses control of audio/Comments": Redirect to a non-existent page: Muhuhuhu! i Reign superrior!!! content was: '#REDIRECTComments:Channel Seven loses control of audio' Bawolff ☺☻ 00:56, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Indef-blocked proxies
http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews:Water_cooler/technical&action=edit&section=14 I've just noticed that several thousand IPs/open proxies are blocked indefinitely. It is my understanding that IPs should never be indef'd, as even static IPs might be reassigned at some point, and not all proxies operate on static IPs. I think it would be a good idea to re-block them for 1 year or 5 years or whatever. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 21:38, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Open Proxies should stay dead... perma dead. If you want, you can leave proxyblock for them so they know what to do if they ever un proxify themselves.  Plus, you want to reblock thousands of IP's for X years, all at the same time.  So in X years, we'll have THOUSANDS of IP's that will need re-evaluation/unblocking... ALL at the same time. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 21:41, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Per ShakataGaNai. If they get changed, then the users can inform us on their talk page(s). DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 21:50, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I think a newcomer isn't very likely to figure out how to request an unblock when all they want to do is fix a typo. The editing process is complicated enough as-is; we don't need more potential contributors being driven off at the moment – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 21:56, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * As argued above. The only way to deal with these, given the numbers, is indefblocking. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 21:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * per above arguments. The chance that the IP will be reassigned and a legitimate user will be prevented from editing because of the block is slim, and in my opinion isn't enough to merit the enormous effort we'll need to put in to annually recheck and reblock all of the thousands of IPs we've banned over the past several years. Tempodivalse [talk]  22:07, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the page at meta says it best. Open proxies are disruptive by nature. Personally i prefer that they should be soft-blocked (but thats just imho), and the talk page (And block message) shold indicate the block is due to an open proxy. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:53, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikinews does not have the required volunteer hours available to devote to management of pests that might not be a pest anymore. I won't go into the reasons why they should be hard blocked instead of soft, suffice to say there's a "security through obscurity" aspect to it. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:25, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd be all for a review of proxyblock and a discussion on auto-adding it to IP talk pages when permablocked (widget?). --Brian McNeil / talk 23:27, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Proxyblock is in our user messages gadget. So if you turn that on, it is real easy to leave them the message. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 23:41, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * For those that don't know, a couple of us admins competed at flooding RC with proxyblock then we got smart and pulled out the bot. Right now User:ShakataBot is running about tagging proxyblock on userpages (not Subst'd, per BrianMC's suggestion).  I'm also skimming the lists and unblocking any indef'd IP for non-proxy reasons (vandalism, spamming, etc).  Most of them that got unblocked have been blocked for years anyways, so I figure that's enough punishment. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 00:52, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a good idea. Thanks, SGN. --SVTCobra 01:28, 10 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Run Is Done. ShakataBot tagged 6,675 user talk pages with proxyblock.  I'm really glad we didn't do that by hand... -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 15:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Google News ?
= Is Wikinews still regularly being seen in Google News hits? Cirt (talk) 20:17, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes and more yes -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 00:33, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Vector problems after mediawiki update
Well, the devs seem to have just finished some changes to the mediawiki interface - and it sucks when viewed in the Vector skin. The main page leads suddenly have big ugly spaces in them, the sidebar links have become tiny, and some gadgets (like WikiEd) don't work. Anything we can do about this? I don't want to have to revert to monobook. Tempodivalse [talk]  01:30, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * WikiEd we can't, thats maintained by people on wikipedia. I assume it will be fixed in due course, but I can't really do anything about that. Any other gadgets not working? I noticed that stuff in jsMsg (review alerts) is now huge, that can be fixed on our end. I don't see the tinyness on on sidebar link, or the spaces on the leads. I'll try to see if i can find the difference between the css somewhere to see what might be causing it though. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:36, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I changed it so stuff using jsMsg is at 80% font size (about normal text). I'm not seeing the other issues you mention though. From what i understand, vector changed from using fixed fonts to relative (resizable) fonts, so some font sizes have changed. Which gadgets (other than wikied) don't work? p.s. you may want to leave a message at the feedback page. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:04, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, maybe I exaggerated, it appears that only WikiEd doesn't work - I thought popups were broken too but they seem fine now. The other gadgets work ok, aside from the supersized reviewing widget, which I see you've fixed. I'll see if I can upload a screenshot of the main page spaces later. Tempodivalse [talk]  02:18, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:24, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ok, here's a screenshot: Image:Mainpagespaces.jpg. Note the wide spacing between lines in the leads and the unusually small text in the sidebar on the left. Tempodivalse [talk]  02:26, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean. Appears to be an issue with the line-height being different if text is in a paragraph (almost everything) vs if it is not (leads). They are both set to 1.5 em, but vector does some weird stuff with font size, so em is probably re-defined. this might be a bug with vector. Also gadgets that define tabs at the top of the page (like opinion/comments thing) seem to have broke. (should be easy to fix)
 * Line height on lead is fixed (I wrapped it in a p). that was probably a bug in vector. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC).
 * Comment/opinion system fixed. Other gadgets that add content to the top actions bar (but not those that add too the drop down) will also be broken (I'm not sure if any others exist, i don't think so). Please let me know if you see anything. small text in sidebar remains unresoloved, WikiEd is the wikied maintainers problem. we just steal it from Wikipedia Bawolff ☺☻ 03:51, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm, things are really wonky today. When i logged in, the system had placed my time zone 45 hours (?) ahead of UTC. I couldn't figure out why the RC showed changes from tomorrow. On a side note, WikiEd seems to be back working again. Also, the spacing issues still need to be sorted out on a few more pages: MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext still has the double spacing. Page titles seem to be unusually large too, can anything be done about that? Tempodivalse [talk]  16:51, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I added some rules to mediawiki:Vector.css which should sort out the line-height (Also made line-height on category box at bottom of article less, as well as in the caption of news in pictures template). (I also filed 20698). If you see any line-height related ugliness, try doing a hard refresh. Bawolff ☺☻ 19:36, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks better now, thanks! Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  21:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Comments are still broken in Vector. The comments themselves work, but I see no comments tab on any story (unless I am actively viewing the tab. As soon as I click to another tab it disappears again). Gopher65talk 03:07, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I responded on my talk page as well. Try to do a hard refresh of some page on wikinews. If that still doesn't work, do a hard refresh of and . If they still don't work tell me what browser your using, and if there are any js errors (generally you have to look that up in the js console, which is under tools in firefox, and hidden in other places in other browsers). Bawolff ☺☻ 12:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hard refresh of those two js pages worked. It's bullshit that that is necessary though:P. No regular reader is ever going to know to do that if they're having the same problem (using the latest stable FF3 release btw). Gopher65talk 16:44, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * "Regular Readers" probably wont notice most of our issues. -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 17:36, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Cache would of expired after about a month any how. Bawolff ☺☻ 17:39, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

(od) There are some other problems that need to be resolved, for instance boxed text

such as this

appears in annoying super-small letters to me, is this something we can fix ourselves or do we need to file a bugzilla request? <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  23:22, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅ -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 23:25, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That looks better. Thanks. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  23:33, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm, actually it's not completely fixed, for example the ); can that be fixed too? <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  00:47, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Bawolff ☺☻ 01:09, 19 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The <tt> code needs to be increased to a larger font size as well. <font face="Georgia">Tempodivalse <font face="Georgia">[talk]  13:33, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Bawolff ☺☻ 17:19, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Current events
The Wikinews sections at w:Portal:Current events are fudged up. They aren't showing the latest sutff; it's all days old. Anyone who has the vaguest idea how all this works fancy trying to sort all this out? It's beyond me, sorry. Blood Red Sandman (Talk)   (Contribs) 18:19, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikinews importer bot seems to have died. (it last edited on the 17th). I left the maintainer a note. If i was to geuss, due to the timing, I would geuss it has something to do with the mediawiki updates. I've been hearing rumours that some bots have been afected by them negativly. (but thats just a random geuss, could be anything, I really don't know). Hopefully it will be fixed soon. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:24, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Correct guess. Configuration updated to use the API where possible; bot back online. Cheers! Миша 13 22:36, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Good work, thanx all Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 13:35, 20 September 2009 (UTC)