Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

MediaWiki feature requests and bug reports/Archive1

< MediaWiki feature requests and bug reports

See also: Development tasks, Meta-Wikimedia:Contact us

http://en.wikipedia.org/ and http://www.wikipedia.org/ look like they have crashed, while http://en2.wikipedia.org/ works. Nintendo

On September 10, noon PDT the link http://www.wikipedia.org is timing out. It looks like the server is down. Ray Van De Walker

The volapuk wikipedia is running a subscription web site for something called "The TV clubhouse." It looks like abuse to -me-. Volapuk is a synthetic international language with -very few- speakers, developed in the 1920s.

Question to Brion: now many pedias are running the same software, shoudl this page be the central bug-report page for all phase III pedias, or just for the meta wiki? -- Tarquin

Reporting general bugs should generally be done at the sourceforge bug tracker. This page is mainly for discussion of the latest excitement on the "can't use Wikipedia at all!" level. Assuming you can use the meta section, that is... :) --Brion VIBBER 20:50 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)

Has anybody thought of what to do with the links on the recent changes introtext? --Elian

See meta.wikipedia.org technical issues.

The Random Page bug edit

Is fixed.

"could not select database" edit

What does "Could not select database wikidb" mean? I can't access en.wiki at all. Anybody else have this problem? --mav

I saw it once, Pierre saw it a couple times. Presumably means the database server is busy; or else one of the other sysadmins dropped in and restarted it for some reason and you caught it just as it was down? I haven't seen it continuously, or during obvious periods of heavy use, so I can't really pair it with anything at the moment... --Brion VIBBER 07:44 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
I was getting some more fo those, both on English and on meta; I restarted mysqld, seems to be better. Still not sure what's wrong... --Brion VIBBER 10:55 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
Same problem on the dutch wikipedia "Selectie van database nlwiki niet mogelijk" Giskart 11:13 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
I've tweaked the code to include what may turn out to be a more useful error message. If you see it, please let me know what it says... --Brion VIBBER 11:23 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
got it ("Could not select database wikidb") most of the time, both on en and on nl. 80.79.97.145 11:54 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC). Seems to be solved now for en, not for nl.


Hmm, if that's all it says, I already know that. :( --Brion VIBBER

The Logout Bug edit

My userid TeunSpaans seems to have disappeared in en. 80.79.97.145 11:58 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
It's still there. You may be being bitten by the dreaded logout bug; try to log in again... Also note that user accounts are still separate on each wiki, including meta. --Brion VIBBER
After reboot of pc, I attempted to login again: 'There is no user by the name "TeunSpaans". Check your spelling, or use the form below to create a new user account.' 80.79.97.145 12:14 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)

And yes, I have (had?) identical accounts on both en and nl. Check articles on battle of lutzen, transport puzzles, battle of nordlingen, i.e.

When I try, I get "The password you entered is incorrect. Please try again." Are you sure you're talking about logging in on the en wiki and not this one (the meta wiki, which is for project meta-discussion and theoretically multilingual)? You currently have to create the account separately on the en wiki and the meta wiki, just as with the other languages. --Brion VIBBER 12:19 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
Now I get "Could not select database wikidb" on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page ~

again. Apologies, u are right, I inadvertently must have tried to log into meta (: (: 80.79.97.145 12:25 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)

No shame in that, it's a confusing system that needs login reform! ;) It's 5 in the morning here and I can't see straight anymore, I'm going to bed... If the system explodes before I wake up, e-mail the tech list. --Brion VIBBER 12:28 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)

I've put a band-aid on the system that might keep the error from preventing Wikipedia access in the future, without actually fixing the as-yet-undetermined underlying problem. --Brion VIBBER 20:50 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)



I get this when i request nl.wikipedia.org : 

Selectie van database nlwiki niet mogelijk

Commands out of sync; You can't run this command now

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers.

Clearing your browser cache does not help Giskart 23:33 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like a copied the wrong file in. *sigh* Try again. --Brion VIBBER 23:56 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)
After, on IE6, I not just cleared history, but also changed settings to 'refresh every page visit', the problem was solved. Thx, Brion!

Are the maillinglists down? I have send 3 postings to wikitech-l, nothing. Also no post acknowledgement. Same thing whit wikiNL-l Giskart 21:04 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)

Weird. The last email post I made to wikipedia-l hasn't posted to the archive. I thought it was a quirk with Yahoo! Mail but it may be a problem here. Look at the wikitech archive, there is some talk about moving the lists around so maybe that is the cause... --Maveric149 21:27 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)
My email finally went through -- all is well. Did yours make it? --Maveric149 21:41 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)
I have recieved a lot of emails. It seems to work now. Giskart 21:56 Oct 24, 2002 (UTC)

Problem whit the Dutch Wikipedia; I can not remove a image or file.(yes, i am sysop there) Everthing looks good and i get the message that it is removed and it is listed in the deletions log but it is still on the "Image list".

Giskart 10:33 Oct 25, 2002 (UTC)

Are you using the "Delete page" or the little "del" in the list of image revisions at the bottom of the description page? Much to my surprise, they don't do the same thing... --Brion VIBBER 20:02 Oct 25, 2002 (UTC)
It works ! Thanks. Mayby somebody can start a "Wikipedia Manual Project" ... Giskart 23:11 Oct 25, 2002 (UTC)

Yikes! What happened to the gray backgroud? Is Meta now an encyclopedia? --mav

I overwrote the stylesheet with the new header sizes and forgot to set the meta background back to gray. Fixing... --Brion VIBBER 02:52 Nov 5, 2002 (UTC)
Thanks Brion! --mav

Multiline emphasis edit

In OutputPage.php , just change the following : 

At line 399 :

< $text = preg_replace( "/'''(.+)'''/mU", "<strong>\$1</strong>", $text );

> $text = preg_replace( "/'''(.+)'''/smU", "<strong>\$1</strong>", $text );

At line 400 :

< $text = preg_replace( "/''(.+)''/mU", "<em>\$1</em>", $text );

> $text = preg_replace( "/''(.+)''/smU", "<em>\$1</em>", $text );

I ever wonder if the 'm' option is really mandatory...(means I suppose it's unuseful ;-)

-- R4f 21:05 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, but there are two things wrong with it; first, multiline emphasis is usually an error rather than an intentional construct. Particularly in long talk pages, a rogue pair of quotes can send half a page into unexpected italics... Localized effects limits such errors and keeps down the surprise factor. Making it clear what's emphasized helps people keep track of what's what when editing the source text as well.
Secondly, the above code produces bad HTML, as the <em> tag would overlap <p> boundaries. We're hoping to improve our output so we can guarantee well-formed XHTML for any input (even if it's not what the writer intended ;) so we can do things like use inline MathML code for formulas instead of hackish rasterizations via TeX and ghostscript. --Brion VIBBER 21:48 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for your answer ! So, I suppose the only way of doing multiline emphasis is to enclose each paragraph with the appropriate characters... -- R4f 10:07 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
That's the preferred way, yes. But I think our current HTML parser will allow you to use inline <i>, <em>, etc tags that cross paragraph boundaries, if you really want. :) --Brion VIBBER 20:53 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

While looking for the lemma 'asbest' (that I know is there) I got this error message:

Bij het zoeken is een syntaxfout in de database opgetreden. Dit kan zijn veroorzaakt door een illegale zoekactie (zie Zoeken op Wikipedia), of het duidt op een fout in de software. De laatste zoekpoging in de database was:

SELECT cur_id,cur_namespace,cur_title,cur_text FROM cur,searchindex WHERE cur_id=si_page AND ( (MATCH (si_title) AGAINST ('asbest')) ) AND cur_namespace IN (0) LIMIT 0, 20 vanuit de functie "SearchEngine::showResults". MySQL gaf the foutmelding "1016: Can't open file: 'searchindex.MYI'. (errno: 145)". Jcwf nl.wiki

Should be all better now. --Brion VIBBER 21:43 9 May 2003 (UTC)

Taallinks only says: "No Database Selected". Rene Pijlman 10 mei 2003 21:17 (CEST)

What the... That's experimental code and should not be enabled. --Brion VIBBER 23:15 10 May 2003 (UTC)
It's enabled on WikiEN too. I saw it on the language.php list, and translated it, assuming that it would soon be implemented. Seems I was wrong (unfortunately). Andre Engels 12:48 12 May 2003 (UTC)

The MySQL error reported (and fixed) on May 9 has returned on nl.wikipedia.org. 24.132.24.57 12:04 12 May 2003 (UTC)

Humm, this reoccuring is starting to worry me. I'll repair the tables again... --Brion VIBBER 12:15 12 May 2003 (UTC)

--- WINOR has a dead download link for downloading the offlinereader. --Nerd 20:15 28 May 2003 (UTC)~

The mailing lists; the lists used to advertise there existence. Now almost no lists are listed anymore. See http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo The lists under my care are not listed but the setting is set to advertise the list. Giskart Walter 22:49 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

User:Hooft
It is not possible to use a colon in a link that is used in a description list item. nl:Gebruiker:Hooft 213.84.188.48 05:19 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Please use the bug report system at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia ... this is a known problem.

The following resolved issues were removed on April 17th:

  • Knecht Ruprecht as resolved (was a 'clear your cache' issue)
  • blok user= - this was due to username blocked not being enabled. It has been enabled now
  • "what links here" breaking for VfD listings= known bug with the links table
  • Protection against accidental page protections= (duplicate request)
  • BC Liberal Party broken= works fine now
  • Feature request: footnotes= moved to Talk:Footnotes
  • MediaWiki bug - special characters work now
  • Image size - image size is shown on image pages
  • Too slow as no longer relevant now things aren't slow
  • NOTOC causing problems? - fixed 4 months ago
  • Search Results Page - fixed by editing the mediawiki msg
  • Reverting= - no longer relevant as diff page shows rollback button
  • Bad Title= - fixed

Removed as fixed, no longer a problem or not in the right place edit

Pronounciation of words edit

Would it be possible to have pronouciation of certain words available?
Have an icon next to a word that is hard to pronounce to hear how to proparly say it?

This is already possible; upload an .ogg file and add a link to it next to the relevant word. MrJones 19:24, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


Article type suggestion edit

I notice some articles have a common article type (i.e. animals, countries etc...). How about a similar template for football teams with a side bar showing their crest and basic details (honours, location etc...)

See en:Wikipedia:Mediawiki namespace for instructions on how to do this, or ask at the help desk. It isn't a feature of the software. It's just something you can create using the mediawiki namespace. Angela 02:07, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Automatic subject inventor edit

I would also like the software to create a subject, if the subject line was left blank, possibly using a changed sentence as the topic, or if a new heading is added, include the new heading as the subject. Green Mountain 19:23, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)


It would be nice to have a search by name/sort by name command for images. 24.65.177.33 00:34, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That's called Special:Imagelist. --Brion VIBBER 01:25, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)


  • Put a "revert" button on the diff page
Why not
This has been done now.

Article title bug? edit

Have a look at en:Mellieħa, click page history, what links here or some other link, notice the name of the article. Dori | Talk 22:40, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This is typical of somebody putting non-latin1 characters into a link on a latin-1 wiki and clicking it. The outgoing link is converted to [sent to the browser as] utf-8, but it [the wiki] doesn't understand them [utf-8 characters] coming in. --Brion VIBBER 23:14, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

who's "Proxy blocker"? edit

user:Samuel say, I found that "17:12 2004年3月17日，Proxy blocker查封210.77.221.6 (贡献) (解封) (Your IP address has been blocked because it is an open proxy. Please contact your Internet service provider or tech support and inform them of this serious security problem.)" on the block log, who's zh:User:Proxy blocker? See zh:Special:Ipblocklist and zh:Wikipedia:Block log.--Shizhao 06:16, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You might found the answer already, but in case you haven't, this posting by Brion at Intlwiki-l would help [1]. This is a response to the spider-bot. Regarding this bot, this posting by Tim would help [2]. Tomos 20:52, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

See en:User:Proxy blocker. The name "Proxy blocker", and the various text strings associated with it, are configurable. Specifically MediaWiki:proxyblocker, MediaWiki:proxyblockreason and MediaWiki:proxyblocksuccess. The message update script hasn't been run for a while, so those articles are currently non-existent. -- Tim Starling 06:52, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki_feature_requests_and_bug_reports/Archive1&oldid=24936054"