Project:Forum

Bot requests
I have set up this page, Project:Bot requests, as a place to log requests for bot activity, as well as the details about any active bots. Please feel free to tidy it up or add further requests. Also, please bring it to the attention of any known bot-writers/operators. Cheers. --HappyDog 19:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

SALTed titles
Hi, I have created this page so that particularly troublesome, recreated pages may be protected from recreation. Thanks. -- Anon  Diss  04:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, good idea, but this seems a lot like Project:Protected titles/list, and we might not need two pages listing deleted pages we don`t want re-created -or am I missing something? --Brian 05:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You aren't - I was ;). Thanks for telling me. -- Anon  Diss  23:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Problem with deletion template
Hi, there appears to ba problem with the delete template. Category:Candidates for deletion is empty, even though the template is trancluded on pages. I don`t know if this is the unintended result of recent edits to the template page, or something else. Any ideas? --Brian 00:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * My mistake. You're right - my recent edit contained an error which I have now fixed.  Hopefully everything is back to normal now - let me know if there are any other problems. --HappyDog 00:55, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Looks normal now, after I cleared the cache on the pages in the category. Thanks for your quick response! --Brian 01:43, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Welcoming template made; please mod and translate
Welcome. Regards, -- Anon  Diss  07:53, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Could Manual:Short_URL be a model way for setting up Help pages?
Here are the instructions for Manual:Short_URL:

The incredible advantage to the way Manual:Short_URL is set up is:
 * 1) By splitting up the solutions to problems to individual pages, we have been able to shorten the amount of clutter on the main page.
 * 2) By allowing users to rate each solution with a [[Image:Smiley.svg|20px]] or [[Image:Face-sad.svg|20px]], everyone quickly learns which help solutions are successful, and which solutions don't work and have bugs in there coding.
 * 3) The text is easy to understand, originally written by a newbies, who still don't understand how to the Short URL coding works.
 * 4) All complex and in-depth information is in the footnotes, under "Technical notes".
 * 5) Technical words are minimized, but when necessary, such terms as hosting provider, shared host, query string and runtime environment have links to their explanations.


 * What does everyone think? Any other suggestions?
 * Could Manual:Short_URL be a model for other help pages? Odessaukrain 12:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * No. Ultimately this page should consist of a small set of pages that give concise instructions on how to solve this problem in the most common situations, plus a 'troubleshooting' page that is presented as a FAQ to solve specific issues that people might encounter.  Currently there are dozens of bespoke solutions, and although the smiley idea is cute, there is no useful way of getting any information from them.  For example, are the frownies there because the user was not experienced enough to get it working, because their system was incompatible, because the instructions are not written well enough or because the instructions are actually wrong?  The current page is a useful (temporary) method of gathering information so that we can write up proper instructions that are based on fact and not just opinions, but should not be considered a permanent solution. --HappyDog 00:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. Optimally a "small set of pages that give concise instructions on how to solve this problem in the most common situations" is the ideal. The problem is that on many pages there are a myriad number of solutions. The meta.wikimedia.org page was a disaster before.
 * I also agree that the "current page is a useful (temporary) method of gathering information so that we can write up proper instructions". Sorry I wasn't clear on that point.
 * My question is how do you get from the disaster page to the "fact" end all solution [ignoring the assumption that there is only one solution]. How do you determine which solution is "fact"? I have never followed a page clear through before.
 * So far 100 people have voted with the "frownie system" which helps determine which solution is "fact". 100 people would not have commented on the talk pages.
 * I agree with the current frownie system there is no way to determine why these solutions didn't work. If there was some way to get users to add detailed explanations, that would be ideal [they won't all comment on the talk page]. Any suggestions how to do this?
 * I hope someday this page will have the one proper instructions. But this system is a temporary state until someone comes along and creates those ideal instructions. What is interesting is that it seems like multiple solutions work, not just one.
 * Thanks a lot for your input. You made some great points. Odessaukrain 17:07, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Edittools are worked
New system message MediaWiki:Edittools are worked - additional toolbar for quick insert more tags in edit area. Contetnt is copyed from Commons and slightly adapted. For drop-down menu used extra script MediaWiki:Edittools.js that is called from MediaWiki:Common.js. Section "extra buttons for edit dialog" of MediaWiki:Common.css used to decorate.

Please review and comment. Maybe some unnecessary functionality to be removed ? Maybe need different decorate for different skins ?--Kaganer 13:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * No objection to other people using it, but how do I disable this? --HappyDog 19:41, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * For hide (no traffic economy) this pane, add following string for your personal CSS file:
 * .mw-editTools {display:none}
 * For ability to disable Edittools need support this bug.
 * --Kaganer 18:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

As always, the main complaint about Edittools is it's size. Why do I need to fetch 120 extra kilobytes from the server on every edit and preview when I never use 95% of it? The solution is to get rid of MediaWiki:Edittools completely and implement everything with JavaScript. Then a character that's now represented with  will simply become   inside "insertable characters" arrray. And also very important, this will be cached. This has been proposed (with working scripts) in English Wikipedia at least three times, and there was no opposition, but nobody went ahead and implemented this either ∴ AlexSm 23:27, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

/el
Among other significant languages, Greek is severely underrepresented translation wise on this site. Any help making some translations would be great. Cheers, -- Anon  Diss  14:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll leave a note on the greek wikimedia projects.  Mønobi 21:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: better notices
I humbly ask to improve some system messages. First, simple check in the big and annoying MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning could decrease it's size in half: ∴ AlexSm 16:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
 * for «Help» namespace it would say "… Help: namespace … public domain … check Project:Copyrights",
 * for other namespaces it would say " … GFDL … check Project:Copyrights"

Since we have an established system of subpages for translations (Project:Language policy), at least for «Help» namespace, MediaWiki:Newarticletext should check (with #titleparts) whether it a subpage, and then display something like "This translation is not available yet, please see English help page at …". Otherwise, when I translate something, I have to avoid red links to other future translations, and simply use links to English versions for now ∴ AlexSm 16:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Another note: any user who switched interface language will not see some important warnings (for example, will see standart GFDL notice) even on PD Help pages. These warnings need to be translated to appropriate interface subpages MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning/fr, MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning/de, etc. ∴ AlexSm 16:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Nobody against? Then i replaced english msg to following version... --Kaganer 10:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Wrapper
Is there a way to pull a website into one of Wiki's window? More clearly, I'd like to use Wiki to overlay onto a webpage, kind of like Joomla or Mambo does with it's "wrappers". I want to keep the navigation of Wiki, but pull up an external website into one of Wiki's frames. Does this make sense? Is it possible?

Enabling "all" Mode in CategoryTree
Is there any drawback to enabling "all" mode in CategoryTree for this site as described here Extension:CategoryTree? It would allow pages to show up as leaves in a category tree as well as subcategories which would help with browsing large categories like Category:Extensions by hook usage. --Cneubauer 20:46, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks like you can already do this at Special:CategoryTree. --Cneubauer 16:50, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Requested articles?
Both Wikipedia and (English) Wiktionary have places where anybody can request an article to be added. Does MediaWiki.org have such a place?

At Wiktionary we're setting up a dev wiki to work on extensions etc and learning how to set up and use MediaWiki as we go. We just noticed that  doesn't have an article here - so I'd like to request one please. &mdash; Hippietrail 13:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

PHPXref of MediaWiki
Hi, I used PHPXref on MediaWiki and put the results at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~erwin85/mediawiki. Might be interesting for you. --Erwin 22:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions page
It seems to me that a single "Suggestions page" on this site would be useful. E.g. I was thinking it would be useful to redirect from pages ending in /, and make it impossible to create pages ending in a slash, but I wasn't sure the best place to put it. --Chriswaterguy 01:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * What about the page we are on now? If not, howabout Project:Current_issues? Smaug [[Image:Tournesol.png|20px]] 01:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * That sounds like a MW software request, rather than a site request, in which case it see Bugzilla for details about requesting enhancements. If not, and it was a site request, here is the right place to discuss it.  (Current issues is for wider-reaching or ongoing concerns.) --HappyDog 14:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Directories
Hi, do we have any list that explains what which directory (includes, images, config, t, locale, ...) contains? --Flominator 11:30, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Today I received an answer by User:Raymond who told me at least some.

/bin ? /config - used for initial configuration during installation /docs - documentation /images - location for uploaded files /includes - general program files /includes/api - API program files /includes/cbt ? /includes/filrepo - program files for file management /includes/media - media handler, mainly for creating thumbs /includes/normal ? /includes/templates ? /includes/zhtabel ? /languages - language files /languages/classes - language specific conversion rountines (grammar, plurals, ...) /languages/messages - system messages /locale ? /maintenance - maintenance tools (normal have to be executed from a shell) /maintenance/archives - sql patches for changes in the database layout /maintenance/dtrace ? /maintenance/language - working with languages files /maintenance/mssql ? /maintenance/ora ? /maintenance/postgres ? /maintenance/sqlite ? /maintenance/storage ? /math - TeX module /serialized ? /skins - skins like monobook /t ? /tests ? Does anyone know some more? --Flominator 18:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Installation related pages
I recommend that Manual:Newcomers guide to installing on Windows, Manual:Simple Windows Apache Installation, and Manual:Streamlined Windows Install Guide be merged into one page. All the detail about specific versions of stuff should be pulled out. This would also prevent the instructions from going out of date every other month when a new version of something comes out. This new page and associated Windows installation pages should be renamed so the title describes the type of installation. For example, "...installing on Apache, PHP, and MySQL", "...installing on IIS and SQLServer", or "...installing on XAMPP". Manual:Simple Windows Apache Installation is probably the cleanest of these pages so we should start with it.

Also, the various pages associated with old versions of MediaWiki should be archived somehow or deleted. This includes Manual:Installing MediaWiki on Windows XP - MediaWiki 1.5, Manual:Installing MediaWiki on Windows XP - MediaWiki 1.7.1, and Manual:Installing MediaWiki on Windows XP - MediaWiki 1.9.2. --Cneubauer 18:58, 16 June 2008 (UTC)