Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2011/April

Edit lead section gadget not working properly
I clicked on the [edit] button for the lead section (it indeed says 'edit lead section' when I put my cursor over it), but I got the second section. I had to manually change it to &section=0. Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 01:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Browser, OS? — μ 01:36, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Chrome (latest), Windows, Monobook skin. Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 01:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I changed the gadget to be more general. But it seems to do things slightly weirdly, and may not work in extreme edge cases. If it still doesn't work, could you list any pages it doesn't? Bawolff ☺☻ 04:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Works now, thanks. Kayau (talk &middot; contribs) 05:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

why does Comments:Iceland voters reject deal to repay billions to UK, Dutch not have threaded comments?
Can't figure out why. Could someone take a look? Thanks, Mattisse (talk) 15:32, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Because the user edited the page directly (using the edit header link) instead of clicking create new thread link. Bawolff ☺☻ 15:48, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

EtherPad Update
I've been emailing Philippe at the WMF about our EtherPad desires, and here's what he replied:

''Just to followup... We recently moved the etherpad installation to a new location on our hardware cluster, which was smaller, given our internal needs. Ops is kicking it around to decide whether it makes sense to expand this install or set you guys up with your own shiny installation of it. I don't know what the end result will be, but it looks like we'll spend some serious effort trying to get you access to the tool, one way or the other, in a method that won't be frightfully burdensome on the servers. I hope to have an answer shortly.''

Followed by:

''I haz an update! Please feel free to use http://etherpad.wikimedia.org, with our blessing!''

So it looks like we can use EtherPads more easily now for initial article creation:). Gopher65talk 00:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * yay for Philippe and ops team. Bawolff ☺☻ 02:06, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
 * All credit goes to the Ops team. I'm just a message passer.  Philippe (WMF) (talk) 08:33, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Template:T
T should automatically convert times into UTC. However, it doesn't work right with half-hour and quarter-hour offsets (see the last example). Could somebody who has time think about taking a look at it, please? I don't imagine those time zones will be used often, but it would be nice for them to work. DEN DODGE  19:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * What about savings time (the rules for which change from zone to zone and from year to year in semi-random ways)? --Pi zero (talk) 22:33, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
 * DST time zones have different names than the standard time zone. The UK, for example, switches from GMT to BST for half the year. DEN  DODGE  22:34, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * A thought. The time zone abbreviations are themselves error-prone.  One would like to have help in selecting them, and one would like the help arranged somehow to minimize messing up on savings-time issues.  --Pi zero (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * UTC+0100 etc. also doesn't work, as Wikipedia's naming convention is w:UTC+01:00. — μ 14:55, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If I recall correctly, UTC should be expressed without a colon. Not sure about expressing offsets with, or without. And, the rules don't change in semi-random ways. They were fixed until some moron in Washington decided that moving DST would save money on electricity. They overlooked the fact that millions of computing devices would need updated to handle the new switchover times. IIRC, it was going to take 10+ years of the electricity savings to cover the software costs and hardware replacement costs for things that could not be reprogrammed. --Brian McNeil / talk 15:08, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The whims of some moron in Washington are the prime example I had in mind when I chose the term "semi-random". --Pi zero (talk) 15:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Expressing it without a colon was the only way I could make the maths work. Using #time, we can change the format of the output, of course, but I didn't want to overcomplicate things. I thought WP had redirects from UTC+0100 to UTC+01:00. I only tried for that one, but assumed it would for them all. DEN  DODGE  16:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, maybe not. I'll go fiddle with it to see if I can change the output :-) DEN  DODGE  16:16, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Errr.... divide 0100 by 100, and round down to get the hours. Multiply that by 100 and deduct the result from the 0100 to get the minutes. And, tell Usians to stop sending random morons to Washington :P Most of them get there before they've paid off their student loans. --Brian McNeil / talk 16:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Er, whuh? I'm probably just failing to take in the method. Could you perhaps write it in terms of ParserFunctions and magic words? ;-) DEN  DODGE  16:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 *  * — μ 16:29, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * No, that doesn't work. It needs to be rounded to two decimal places at one point, I think. DEN  DODGE  16:30, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * See User:Pi zero/Categories/percent. --Pi zero (talk) 16:34, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I feel dumb now, but I really don't get this. I could probably do it by adding extra parameters, but that would mean rebuilding the whole thing. I think the hour of revision earlier has worn my brain out =P. Could somebody who does get it (probably everyone else, since it sounds like it should be simple, but I'm just not taking it in) perhaps do it for me? DEN  DODGE  16:49, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Quick mock-up:
 * -> 00:00
 * -> 00:00
 * --Pi zero (talk) 16:54, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Since this is supposed to be the (displayed) offset, is there a way to make it work with a + or - at the start of the string (e.g. +0100 or -0100)? (And preferably insert a + if no sign is specified, but I'm not sure that would be possible, and isn't really important). DEN  DODGE  16:59, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

If you have HHMM then:
 * Hour =
 * Minute =
 * If you need the +/-, then strip it out the string first. Where the hell did the bizzaro shtuff come from Pi? (/me notes he's talking to an irrational number). --Brian McNeil / talk 17:08, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Which bizarro stuff? Padleft?  It makes, say, five minutes after one come out to " " instead of " ".  --Pi zero (talk) 22:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Meh, the links aren't that useful. Rather than overloading the code with these nasty hacks, I'll just take them out ^_^. I think UTC+0100 is just as easy to understand as UTC+01:00, and means we can stick to just having a parameter sat there. I do intend to link the time zone abbreviations, however, and will go do those now (don't worry, I can use #switch!). DEN  DODGE  17:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Am I the only one here really disappointing that 0100 isn't considered base 8? Bawolff ☺☻ 22:17, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Problem making page for WIkipedia news importer bot
On Wikipedia, I'm trying to import news from here to Wikipedia's Portal:Bolivia. I'm following the instructions at w:User:Wikinews Importer Bot, which say to create a page here at Portal:Bolivia/Wikipedia. When I try to do so, I get an error message saying

You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason:

The title "Portal:Bolivia/Wikipedia" has been banned from creation. It matches the following blacklist entry: .*(?i:wikipedia|wiktionary|wikibooks|wikiquote|wikiversity|wikisource|wikinews|wikimedia|wikispecies)

Is this a new thing? I have successfully created these pages before that allow the Wikipedia Wikinews Importer Bot to work. Should I be doing something different?--Belovedfreak (talk) 13:26, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * In the meantime, Portal:Bolivia/Wikipedia has been created for your use. — μchip08 13:34, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That's... odd. That's supposed to apply only to new user accounts. I don't understand enough about such things to dare try and repair it, though. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 13:35, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much microchip, much obliged! --Belovedfreak (talk) 13:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Flagged Revs bug
I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but, I going through the articles for the UoW students I noted that every single one claimed there were pending revisions. There were not, it seems this is related to changes in templates included in those pages, and the templates had already been sighted. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:45, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Has anyone else looked at this? Just about every older article I look at shows as having pending changes when it does not. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:55, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I finally tracked this down to the COinS template. It was included in date, and had unreviewed revisions. I've unsighted all versions of it, commented it out in date, and I can happily click random page and don't get the pending changes warnings anymore.
 * DO NOT touch templates used in every single article without planning out what you're going to do very, very carefully. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:15, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Did it need commenting out? Couldn't you just sight the newest revision? DEN  DODGE  19:32, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Category RSS feeds
All the category RSS feeds have been down for a really long time. Anyone know what caused this, and whether it would be possible to fix it? --Yair rand (talk) 04:54, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * bug #21919 is for an extension originally built for Wikinews which creates RSS/Atom feeds and Google News Sitemaps using a technique very similar to Dynamic Page List (which is active on en.Wiktionary if you want to play with it.) This would allow RSS feeds for a certain category, or the intersection of multiple categories (which becomes a sort of meta-category.) The mediawiki page may be slightly out of date, but explains how to use the extension once it is implemented. The extension has been initially reviewed, and I believe there is work being done to address concerns by Bawolff. Please vote for it, and encourage it being reviewed by WMF devs, so we can get it up and working on WMF projects. -  Amgine | t 05:59, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The old category rss feeds were done by a toolserver tool maintained by CSpurrier. But his toolserver account expired, and he no longer is active. I will try to get another tool up sometime soon [mbjmr gave me the source to his] (until such a time as the GNSM thing can be deployed, which is much nicer than toolserver hacks). Bawolff ☺☻ 19:35, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You should be able to use http://toolserver.org/~bawolff/rss/rss.php in the mean time which i stole from CSpurrier. Bawolff ☺☻ 20:15, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
 * btw, GNSM is currently being tested on test wiki. (example: news sitemap: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:GoogleNewsSitemap example: atom feed http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:GoogleNewsSitemap?feed=atom ). Please test it and all. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * We're not afraid of chewing razor blades... Test it here! &lt;Go on hurt me!&gt;. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)