RationalWiki:Technical support
From RationalWiki
Autogenerated list of users with Tech rights: Special:ListUsers/tech.
[edit] Herein goeth anything regarding the technicalities of the wiki
FAQs & Problems:
- Problems with accessing the wiki
- Queries about extensions
- Javascript Help
- CSS Help
- Wikitalk Help
If you've written, or are using, some extension or script that either might give others problems or is giving you a problem, then either describe it or link to it on this page.
If you've written some piece of code that you want help with, ask here with linkage.
If your browser acts up with some code,ask here.
In short, anything techy, ask, tell or link on this page.
If you think it is a server-type issue, feel free to email the goat at ttoulouse@gmail.com or touloutm@mcmaster.ca for best results.
[edit] Edit conflicts
Has anyone else noticed weird edit conflict failures on talk pages where one person's changes are being overwritten when another updates? Such as [1] and [2]? -- Seth Peck (talk) 18:30, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Bot flag
Can somebody with the superpowers please give this account a bot flag? I've gotten fed up with forgetting to de-bot myself when making a comment. Thanks! Pizzabot (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Abuse filter: images
Pleas add a rule banning BoNs from adding images with certain words in the name (e.g. "anus"). Another possibility is to prevent adding the image tag with sizes larger than, let's say, 400.--ZooGuard (talk) 16:43, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
- Trent apparently did something after I posted that, but I can't see if it's related.--ZooGuard (talk) 16:57, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Certain things aren't appearing in recent changes
Like, user creation logs. Also, a BoN edited my talk page but that didn't show up on recent changes until I replied to him. I assume this is part of some sort of anti-vandal/troll measure?--"Shut up, Brx." 17:35, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
- Never mind, please ignore that, I'm just dumb--"Shut up, Brx." 17:38, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Another special thing to remove from watchlist (and recent changes?)
Is there a way to add "hide the block log" from WL/RC? Just to see what is actually happening to pages on the wiki once one has enjoyed whoever the fuck is using block comments to have a conversation? ħuman
00:30, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- Used Enhanced Recent Changes. And I agree that joke blocks are rather annoying, making discussions difficult to follow, among other things.--"Shut up, Brx." 02:57, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- I want to modify my watchlist. I rarely use RC, as I find it repetitive. Thanks for trying, though. ħuman
03:56, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- I tried the other day to make a js thing to screen out the block log from the watchlist, but it didn't work. You may have to resort to going through it namespace by namespace, or you could just not watch people's talk pages. Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 03:59, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- The namespace idea is a moderately good one, I suppose. I see the block log bits because their talk pages are on my watchlist? Interesting. Thanks for trying to help, I appreciate it. ħuman
02:22, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- The namespace idea is a moderately good one, I suppose. I see the block log bits because their talk pages are on my watchlist? Interesting. Thanks for trying to help, I appreciate it. ħuman
- I tried the other day to make a js thing to screen out the block log from the watchlist, but it didn't work. You may have to resort to going through it namespace by namespace, or you could just not watch people's talk pages. Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 03:59, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- I want to modify my watchlist. I rarely use RC, as I find it repetitive. Thanks for trying, though. ħuman
[edit] Renaming and contributions
I was renamed, but now none of my edits are listed in Special:Contributions under my current name. They're still listed under the old one, for some reason. Could you fix this please?
Radioactive Misanthrope 07:29, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- The same thing has happened to TOP now too. It's the third renaming that seems to do it. Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 02:09, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for fixing, Trent!
Radioactive Misanthrope 23:14, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
- Ahem. please? Тyrannis 13:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Which account were edits stuck on for you Ty? Tmtoulouse (talk) 14:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Tyrannis for now. ТyTalk 14:54, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Whiny little bastards! Did yo' mamma say "go pick a new name?" NO! But now it's "I want to by Ty" this, and "Stabby is my better name" that. :-)
Godot Tout s'acheve par commencer un autre voyage 15:06, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks Trent! ТySerious Business Guy 17:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Nice work, Trent. ħuman
02:13, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- Nice work, Trent. ħuman
- Thanks Trent! ТySerious Business Guy 17:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Whiny little bastards! Did yo' mamma say "go pick a new name?" NO! But now it's "I want to by Ty" this, and "Stabby is my better name" that. :-)
- Tyrannis for now. ТyTalk 14:54, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Which account were edits stuck on for you Ty? Tmtoulouse (talk) 14:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Incompetent idiots
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:AbuseLog?title=Special%3AAbuseLog&wpSearchFilter=16 217.112.128.247 (talk) 16:57, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- Mmmh hmm. ArchieGoodwin (talk) 17:00, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Filter #16
Is catching quite a few legit edits by BoNs. ТyYarrr 14:53, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
- Is now disabled. Blue (talk) "...this soul hath been / Alone on a wide wide sea..." 18:57, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
- I look forward to the goatse. P-Foster Talk "The existing superstructure has handed out crumbs. We don’t want crumbs; we want the whole loaf now.” --Ras Frank I 18:59, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
- Can be reenabled in seconds if needed. Tmtoulouse (talk) 19:01, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
- I look forward to the goatse. P-Foster Talk "The existing superstructure has handed out crumbs. We don’t want crumbs; we want the whole loaf now.” --Ras Frank I 18:59, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
[edit] button to edit only section 0
where to find it in the default template? K61824"6+18=24" 15:25, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
- Go to prefereneces → Gadgets → Editing gadgets → 'Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page' and that should do it for you. Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 21:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
- apparently I tried that and the Vector Skin doesn't have it (only MonoBook and Modern has such a button). Should that be a problem? K61824Who is Terry Koeckritz anyways? 19:31, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- I use vector and it works fine. ТyrannisAn iron, but caring, fist 20:19, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- apparently I tried that and the Vector Skin doesn't have it (only MonoBook and Modern has such a button). Should that be a problem? K61824Who is Terry Koeckritz anyways? 19:31, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Carrying on conversations in block comments
I'll use the Nutty Roux persona's predilection for being an asshole as a cover for expressing my own genuine curiosity why the use of block comments to carry on chit chatty conversations nobody but the conversants give a fuck about is so rampant. It's gotten to the level of sometimes making it hard to look at recent changes for the sheer volume of mindless shit getting spammed by a few of you and it's nearly always something I wish could be hidden. It would be fine if it was limited to cheeky comments here and there but some of you all just go on and on and on with stuff you should just be IMing each other. It's the RW equivalent of talking loudly on your cellphone while on line at the market. I can only imagine what a stranger coming to visit might think. Trent, can you make it so that all blocks get marked as bot edits unless a box gets checked indicating they're "real"? Is that even possible? ![]()
03:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- If you want i can cut it down, I'm just to lazy usually to go to the talk pages. Plus with liquid thread it isn't like there's much of a difference--il'Dictator Mikal 03:50, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- You could just remove the block log from the page, like human wanted to - I worked out how to do that finally. Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 03:53, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- How?!?!?! If I want to see the block log, I'll um, go look at the block log... ħuman
02:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- Looks like the last function here. Тycommunications wire 02:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- Ty is correct. I finally got the js code working - the following code in your vector/monobook.js should scour the block log from your watchlist (and can be easily modified for RC):
- Looks like the last function here. Тycommunications wire 02:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- How?!?!?! If I want to see the block log, I'll um, go look at the block log... ħuman
- You could just remove the block log from the page, like human wanted to - I worked out how to do that finally. Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 03:53, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
Code function blocklog(){ if (wgCanonicalSpecialPageName == "Watchlist"){ var wlist = getElementsByClassName(document.getElementById('bodyContent'),"ul","special"); var x; for (x=0;x<wlist.length;++x){ var parent = wlist[x]; var list = parent.getElementsByTagName("li"); var i; for (i=list.length-1;i>=0;i=i-1) { var bads=list[i].getElementsByTagName("a"); var j=0; for (j=0;j<bads.length;++j) { if (bads[j].getAttribute("href")=="/wiki/Special:Log/block" && bads[j].childNodes.length > 0) { parent.removeChild(list[i]); } } } } } } addOnloadHook(blocklog);
- It also has the side affect of removing all entries where the person has included the link in their edit comment, but I don't think that will be a major problem. Anyway, if it's a problem for everyone I'll stop talking to Mikal so much using blocks, though as has been mentioned LQT is just as bad (though you can filter that out with the namespace thing). Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 02:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks! What's the syntax to add comments to the monobook.js file? ħuman
03:59, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- Single line javascript comments are of the form "<code> // <comment>". Multiline comments are like "/* ... */". Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 04:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you again. ħuman
04:33, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you again. ħuman
- Single line javascript comments are of the form "<code> // <comment>". Multiline comments are like "/* ... */". Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 04:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks! What's the syntax to add comments to the monobook.js file? ħuman
- It also has the side affect of removing all entries where the person has included the link in their edit comment, but I don't think that will be a major problem. Anyway, if it's a problem for everyone I'll stop talking to Mikal so much using blocks, though as has been mentioned LQT is just as bad (though you can filter that out with the namespace thing). Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 02:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- The problem with that is then you have to go out of your way to see the block log for real blocks.--il'Dictator Mikal 03:55, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- What real ones? These? Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 03:57, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- Nutty Roux, I have an idea for what you personally can do to reduce the lackadaisical overuse of blocking: cease contributing to it yourself.
ListenerXTalkerX 03:58, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- ^I saw others doing it which is why I started doing it actually. ^^Whatever it is Nutty thinks is real i would assume. --il'Dictator Mikal 03:59, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- ListenerX, I have an idea for what you personally can do when you feel the urge to say something as ridiculous as this solely for the sake of being a contrarian, as usual: don't. I issue a few bullying and harassing blocks a week tops.

04:02, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- (EC) Frivolous block wars are a long-standing RationalWiki tradition; a reaction to the banhammer being wielded so ruthlessly at Conservapedia.
- I issue a few bullying and harassing blocks... Which, many would say, are more of a problem than frivolous block wars.
ListenerXTalkerX 04:06, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- They very well might. What's that got to do with recent changes clogged up with conversations? Block wars are so markedly different than chit chatting in block messages that I wonder if you're being serious. Anyhow, if people are going to get defensive and make me a target I'll just use my watchlist. Wutevs.

04:09, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- Because the harassing blocks do clog up Recent Changes at times, especially when those making them wheel-war over them. Furthermore, the messages attached to those blocks tend to have even less content in them than these frivolous IM-style exchanges (half of them are variations on "User X is a tw**").
ListenerXTalkerX 04:30, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- Sigh. What are you doing? There's no honest way to compare the volume of blocks in what you call "wheel wars" with the chit chat. I'm acutely sensitive to being a buzz kill here.You al obviously don't need permission from some dick on the Internet to do whatever you want. Like I said, I'll just use my watch list when RC gets clogged. If anyone else cares to actually add something to this discussion rather than make a silly attempt to flip it, that's great. If not, I'll still just use my watchlist when RC gets clogged. CoopMe 04:52, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- Because the harassing blocks do clog up Recent Changes at times, especially when those making them wheel-war over them. Furthermore, the messages attached to those blocks tend to have even less content in them than these frivolous IM-style exchanges (half of them are variations on "User X is a tw**").
- They very well might. What's that got to do with recent changes clogged up with conversations? Block wars are so markedly different than chit chatting in block messages that I wonder if you're being serious. Anyhow, if people are going to get defensive and make me a target I'll just use my watchlist. Wutevs.
- ListenerX, I have an idea for what you personally can do when you feel the urge to say something as ridiculous as this solely for the sake of being a contrarian, as usual: don't. I issue a few bullying and harassing blocks a week tops.
- ^I saw others doing it which is why I started doing it actually. ^^Whatever it is Nutty thinks is real i would assume. --il'Dictator Mikal 03:59, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
- Nutty Roux, I have an idea for what you personally can do to reduce the lackadaisical overuse of blocking: cease contributing to it yourself.
- What real ones? These? Peter tanquam ex ungue leonem 03:57, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
LX, shut up, you are being a less than useless contrarian. Slutty, the WL doesn't help much, hence my above request. Ideally, people would just slow down and stop using "block this user" to carry on a "conversation". In this less than ideal world, it would be nice to be able to ignore them. Your idea of marking blocks as bot edits by default might be a very good solution. ħuman
02:29, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- As long as if Maratrean returns, we (or, uh, I mean the "critters") can have another Maratrean "religion" menagerie block war. (and PS, I do understand Nutty's frustration). sterileevolutionist story telling 02:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Stray div in holydaze template
There's a stray </div> in the holydaze displayed on the watchlist. I tried tracing through the horrors of the holydaze templates and went "what the shit" and gave up. Anyone feeling sufficiently intrepid to fix the breakage? - David Gerard (talk) 19:25, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe if you explain what intrepid means ;) --"Shut up, Brx." 19:28, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
- Bizarre side-effect of it stacking two on top of each other by the looks of it. I'll see if there's anything that can be done to remedy it.
theist 19:34, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
- No, it was an unclosed <font> tag in the St George's Day one. Fixed now. Wēāŝēīōīď
Methinks it is a Weasel 20:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
- No, it was an unclosed <font> tag in the St George's Day one. Fixed now. Wēāŝēīōīď
- Bizarre side-effect of it stacking two on top of each other by the looks of it. I'll see if there's anything that can be done to remedy it.
[edit] Purging mediawiki files
Can't that be done automatically?--"Shut up, Brx." 03:33, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
- So, can we do that? Maybe every few days a bot can hit purge on all commons images. Is that feasible? Would it take too much processing power or memory or whatever?--"Shut up, Brx." 03:07, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- The problem is that it's your cache, and not a server-side thing. A bot wouldn't work—at least not in the way you describe—though there may be other options. Like detaching ourselves from commons altogether, and having a bot-upload system for requested commons images similar to capturebot's sandbox. Peter is procrastinating. 03:11, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- But the other day, you did the purge for me [3]--"Shut up, Brx." 03:13, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- No, I had to push purge to clear my own cache. I can't do it 'for' you. Peter is procrastinating. 03:16, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- Oh. I misunderstood. A shame. Perhaps you could bring up your idea with the big heads? Nx is gone, but I'm sure Blue and Tmt will have opinions.--"Shut up, Brx." 03:19, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- One day, maybe—it wouldn't be all that easy to do, at least if you wanted to be able to copy over the license information as part of the upload (which would be ideal). Peter is procrastinating. 03:45, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- Oh. I misunderstood. A shame. Perhaps you could bring up your idea with the big heads? Nx is gone, but I'm sure Blue and Tmt will have opinions.--"Shut up, Brx." 03:19, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- No, I had to push purge to clear my own cache. I can't do it 'for' you. Peter is procrastinating. 03:16, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- Errm, no. Purge purges the server-side cache. The problem with the blurry/missing images is somewhere in the caching of thumbnails.--ZooGuard (talk) 06:07, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- Ok, I didn't know that. Then what do you think we should do? Peter is procrastinating. 06:18, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- Someone with server access and the requisite knowledge should sit down and either find out as much as possible about the bug and report it to the developers of MediaWiki, or try to fix it. Another option is contacting some of the developers of the "use Commons images anywhere" feature or the caching feature and asking for help. Another option is to have a bot patrolling the Commons images, checking somehow if the image is visible and purging them. All of these require different, but non-minimal amounts of time, skill and effort.--ZooGuard (talk) 08:26, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- So Trent, in other words. When it comes to the bot thing, wouldn't it be better to do that on the server itself? Doing it with a bot seems... inefficient. Peter is procrastinating. 08:36, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- So it's possible to just go about purging everything? Great! When can we start?--"Shut up, Brx." 11:30, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- So Trent, in other words. When it comes to the bot thing, wouldn't it be better to do that on the server itself? Doing it with a bot seems... inefficient. Peter is procrastinating. 08:36, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- But the other day, you did the purge for me [3]--"Shut up, Brx." 03:13, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- The problem is that it's your cache, and not a server-side thing. A bot wouldn't work—at least not in the way you describe—though there may be other options. Like detaching ourselves from commons altogether, and having a bot-upload system for requested commons images similar to capturebot's sandbox. Peter is procrastinating. 03:11, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Adding userspace from $wgExemptFromUserRobotsControl
I'm putting this here as part of a larger discussion we need to have about how we wish to present RW's image to people coming in from searches rather than direct links from forums, etc. Bootmii recently resurrected and put in his userspace a number of articles from the Conservapedia space that were deleted by consensus following an extensive review. I deleted them (and was nearly immediately overruled) because it seems to me that permitting a user to have articles of this nature in his userspace completely undermines the policy behind building a consensus to delete them in the first place: getting rid of material that paints RW in a negative light or that in any event is from a period we've grown out of. I'm not "post-Conservapedia" and I'm not trying to have a mission discussion here. This is solely directed at deleted material of this particular nature being resurrected to userspace.
I would like to see this material omitted from Google searches. It's not. It is possible that Mediwiki permits individual pages to be excluded using metatags, but my understanding is that not all robots obey noindex and it is nonetheless too much to be going through userspace and unilaterally deciding what does and doesn't get tagged.
I suggest Trent add userspace to $wgExemptFromUserRobotsControl so we don't have to worry about this. I'll suggest elsewhere that funspace be added as well. ![]()
16:39, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
- You're an idiot. Brxbrx has the right answer, $wgExemptFromUserRobotsControl just makes the parser ignore the __INDEX__/__NOINDEX__ magic words if you put them on the page.
- Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. You're concerned about RW's image, really? RW has bigger problems than a few crappy articles that someone is saving in their userspace.
- If you're so concerned about those pages, just desysop and block Bootmii. Problem solved. 109.61.82.156 (talk) 18:36, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
$wgNamespaceRobotPolicies should work fine for this. Tmtoulouse (talk) 06:12, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
[edit] WikiBlame
Anyone willing to install WikiBlame, here or at RWW?--ZooGuard (talk) 11:57, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
- I can give it a shot @rww later. ТyrannisAn iron, but caring, fist 12:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Search default
Before this goes into the archive at the Saloon Bar, is there any one who can address this issue? sterileevolutionist story telling 05:11, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
- It's gone. What was the issue? ħuman
02:27, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- This issue larronsicut fur in nocte 05:25, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
[edit] should special:random exclude pages like...
This? I was rolling random pages and that comes up. K61824Practicing involuntary celibacy 13:32, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
