Wikipedia: General complaints
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This is a page for discussing all the little wikiwoes you may encounter in your travels here. This page is not for complaining about other users. See dispute resolution for that. Please list new problems on the bottom. Please place resolved articles on Wikipedia: General complaints (resolved)
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{{GC}}
and put a link back to it on this page. The code produces this banner:
- This article falls under a list of general complaints, and may be part of a bigger problem. To see how you can help, visit that page for details.
| Contents |
Main page broken in Mozilla 1.7.3 on Windows XP
The main page doesn't work in Mozilla. It worked yesterday, but today when I went to it, words didn't wrap (so the page was extremely wide), and the whole main content area functioned as a link to the Chinese edition. Internet Exploder had no problems with it, though. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 16:20, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- I've run it in IE and Firefox; it works fine in both of those. isn't Mozilla the same thing as FF? -Litefantastic 00:33, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- It works now. I'm not sure what was going on. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 21:23, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- I've run it in IE and Firefox; it works fine in both of those. isn't Mozilla the same thing as FF? -Litefantastic 00:33, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Search buttons: Why no ALT-text?
The search field has two buttons, "Go" and "Search", but unlike most other navigation elements they lack an ALT-text explaining their function. Also, the buttons are identical, and thus do not show which one is the default button (that is, the one that is activated when you use the Enter key rather than clicking on the buttons). I suggest adding an ALT-text to each button, and making the default button stand out somehow. (10/13/04)
Front Page: Featured Article
The featured article on the front page is extremely offensive, but I can't figure out how to change it... Is it even possible? (9/19/04)
- You mean the one about Cricket? -Litefantastic 12:48, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- No, it was early in the morning. On September 19th, a bunch of swears, and someone talking bad about the Chinese government was in huge red letters.
- You can comment on the featured article the day before it goes live at Wikipedia talk:Tomorrow's featured article. Angela.
Unseen images
All of a sudden i cant see images from wikipedia. None of them. can someone tell me how to fix it.
I see no images using Firefox 1.0, yet they do appear using IE. Is this a feature?
Gundam Universe
I went looking for the ships in the gundam universe, and for some reason they don't show up on general searches of on the disambiguation(?) page for gundam. Additionally, it seems that their may be more than one article about these ships floating over the sight. I m relativly new to Wikipedia, and feel uncomfortable doing anything major to other peoples pages, but I do feel obligated to point this out because it may be wating unessicary space. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Undesirable links
- I was adding new city in the list of Bulgarian cities (namely Elena). Once I saved the page, the new city was linked to some kind of a game by the same name, which has nothing to do with the Bulgarian city. What can I do to break that link and add the article I had in mind?
I did notice, the same problem exist with some of the rest of the city names.
Try making 'Elena' a disambiguation page. Move the city page to Elena (city) and the game to Elena (game). Is that the sort of thing you're shooting for? -Litefantastic 23:56, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Templates and Template-editing
Templates are a nuisance to edit throughout Wikipedia. You must first click "edit" in order to delve through the article and find the name of the specific Template you want to edit. You must then manually edit the URL line to include Template:(NAME OF TEMPLATE) and only then you can begin the normal process of editing the template. The other option is manually adding yourself an edit button within the content of the template -- but that's problematic for other reasons. For starters it goes against the natural division between the content and the mechanism for changing that content. Also it's often ugly to intrude an edit button within a template.
Can we please make it so that each page in Wikipedia *automatically* lists all templates used in that page, in a nice little box on the left side of the screen? The same way that Wikipedia currently says "other languages" and lists links to all the other-language wikipedia articles, it would be very convenient if it also said "This page utilises:" and then we got a listing of the templates of that page. e.g. This page utilises: Template: NATO - Template:EU_countries - Template:OECD
I think that would solve all problems.
- Aris Katsaris 20:37, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
WikiSlow
Today it feels like Wikipedia has just eaten a tub of lard. Pages take ages to load, database errors abound. What's making Wikipedia sick today? Is it the Slashdotting (!)? --NightMonkey 04:28, Jul 29, 2004 (UTC)
This sort of thing happens now and again, and is generally attrbuted to heavy load or problems with the servers. However, since the "To help support Wikipedia, please visit our fundraising page" message is back up, I'm guessing that we're being featured somewhere, which is why a) the servers are slow and b) that wretched message is back up, begging all new visitors to donate. -Litefantastic 16:41, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- We intend to order some new hardware as soon as Jimbo is back from his holiday next week. The fundraising notice is up at the moment because we are featured on Slashdot, which tends to bring in a lot of potential donors. Angela. 18:22, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)
WikiSlow: The Monster Returns
Yes, I know this is annoying, but there's been no long-term improvement in speed. This is apparent on several networks, done at several times of day (though it is better in the North American nighttime). Note that I'm NOT saying that it makes Wikipedia totally unusable, but it really makes editing a pain and is somewhat embarrasing to introduce Wikipedia to lots of folks with every one of them saying something like, "Wow, that sounds really cool! <45+ seconds pass to load the page text> Pretty slow, but I'll check it out more later." I love Wikipedia. I'll give it cash. But, I hate to view it through lard-colored glasses ;).
Isn't everyone experiencing this sluggish response? --NightMonkey 20:54, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)
- OK, I never knew I liked crow as an entre before, let alone a whole buffet of it. After looking here, I see that today and yesterday a hardware move is in progress, along with a network bandwidth megaboost. Apologies for the complaint. Keep up the great work! --NightMonkey 21:17, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)
WikiSlow 3: With Apologies to NightMonkey
It's not as bad as before, but every twenty minutes or so the site just sort of seems to stall. I don't think we're on SlashDot again (how many times can we be featured, anyway?) but it just seems like the site is narcoleptic. -Litefantastic 14:47, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The printing option
In the olden days there used to be a "Print this page" button on all articles. What ever happened to that? Though most times today I'm at a computer when searching for or using knowledge, but not all the time. I would like to take certain Wiki pages with me to read, but as the Wiki stands now, you have to reformat most of the site. AFAIK it would be a simple task to implement this again, and I hope to see this in the future. --Gruesome 09:29, Aug 9, 2004 (CET)
- The other skins (you can change this in your preferences) still have a link to the printable version. The default "monobook" skin does not have one, but if you press print in your browser, the print stylesheet will be applied automatically. Angela. 21:30, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
- What about an export to PDF function? That would certainly be very useful for archival purposes. --STM 08:27, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
- See the wiki-to-pdf converter. Angela. 23:27, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)
On my browser, Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040917 Firefox/0.9.3, the printing stylesheet screws up badly around any font style change, causing massive text elements' overlap. Am I the only one, and is it a Firefox bug, or a CSS problem with the Monobook printing style? BACbKA 10:38, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- It's not just you; every now and again this happens in IE, too. However, if it happens to you constantly, you may wish to consider either switching browsers or an official complaint to the people who write the WP software. -Litefantastic 14:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Actually, neither Firefox nor Konqueror are good for me for any page, even without any embedded floaters. Konqueror seems better than Firefox, but also is a bit screwed up (sometimes inter-character spacing, but also with the pagination issue – it has massive overlaps between adjacent pages! or is that intentional?). It's either a browser bug, or a CSS bug, or both. The fact that you say it happens sometimes to you with the IE points to the CSS. Konqueror and Firefox use different rendering engines, so this is another clue against the CSS. Amaya doesn't support cookies :-) all the other mainstream options available that I know of on Linux are using one of the same layout engines as the ones already mentioned before, so I don't know what other browser to switch to :-( Can somebody else with a know-how of WP printing from Linux please step up and share the experience of successful (or insuccessful) printing, before I submit bug reports? BACbKA 19:39, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Mojave/Mohave
Kinda a "dumb question": a fellow (new) user/editor has placed a redirect on Mojave to go to the unincorporated community of Mojave, California. There is also a Mohave page, without a redirect, which goes to the Native American tribe. Both spellings are pronounced the same, BTW.
Some months ago, Menchi redirected Mojave to Mohave. But Anon changed it to go to the unincorporated California community, which (to add confusion) is in the Mojave Desert, (California), and not the Mohave Desert (Arizona).
Because the spellings are different (but pronounced the same) and considering the word means different things to different people - especially when adding the word "tribe" or "desert" to it. . . Would there be some way to do a disambiguation page to straighten out this mess? (friendly grin) Granted, the spellings aren't the same, but the pronounciation sameness causes some difficulty - perhaps along the lines of "Joaquin" (as in San Joaquin Valley and "walking." You get the drift? Your thoughts, please. --avnative 18:10, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)
White Skins
Does no one else think wikipedia is too white? I spend a lot of time reading it, and it would be easier on the eyes if a dark alternative were available. For example, Microsoft word has the option of "White text on a dark blue background", which works very well.
Getting pnm: RealAudio links to work in Wikipedia
Normally, if you put a URL: resource address in [brackets] the wiki server side process will properly format a buried link for the browser. However, there are many more URL: resource addresses than just those that begin with "http:". For example, the wiki server side process does not properly format the following [pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra URL: resource], as you can see. If you paste the URL: resource address
pnm://rm.content.loudeye.com/~a-600111/0676330_0104_07_0002.ra
into your browser address window, you will see from the browser reaction how the wiki server side process should format that pnm: URL: resource address as a link in the above examples. Could you please add pnm: to the table of allowed external URL: resource prefixes, such as http:, https:, ftp:, etc.? Thank you. ---Rednblu 20:17, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Cleanup
I always love it when project pages fight each other. Remember that time Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion tried to kill us? Yeah. Well, I really have to point out that Cleanup is, infact, itself in serious need of help.
- . It's a mess. There really out to be some sort of organizing. over in Wikipedia:Requests they organize things by topic, not by date.
- . Too big. My second complaint is the same reason I can't fix this. In my opinion, it ought to be archived by months (and by topic); the page is huge, I have dial-up, and I just can't find my way around.
Best of luck. -Litefantastic 01:36, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Spelling Spelling
I believe the correct phrase is spelling check rather than the word-processor-shortened spell check. The use of check in this manner is usually (always?) [noun] check such as reality check, sanity check, price check, or correctness check. Given this, a spell check would be something Harry Potter does, so I suggest the use of the more correct phrase spelling check. The How-To index is one of many places where the wizarding version is used.
Peter (Cactus Pete) 18:04, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Okay... what would you like us to do about it? -Litefantastic 12:23, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, and they also have street signs that say "drive slow." We'd need Harry Potter to change popular breeches of the rules of grammar.
The &$*# Search Engine is Broken Again
- -.-; -Litefantastic 12:47, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
VRML Files for Polyhedra pages
I was browsing the pages on polyhedra, and noticed that the pages have links to animations of polyhedra, but not to manipulatable files such as VRML files, that those with the proper plugins can use. I find that such files help understand the polyhedra better, and plugins for your browser can be downloaded free of charge. If it is simply that no one has added the files, I've got a couple of files I could adapt (wireframe-ish only).
Searching Problem for ZigBee
When searching for the word "zigbee" the page produces no results. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=zigbee However when searching for "ZigBee" the page is found. Seems to be a case problem.
James (Jeodesic) 15:33, 20 Sep 2004
- Go ahead. It's not like you have to ask for permission. Be bold! -Litefantastic 16:54, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Will do. I was just checking there was no technical reason for the lack of VRML files. James (Jeodesic) 17:58 21 Sep 2004
- Laziness. -Litefantastic 19:47, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Bug
Intended to post this on Bugzilla under Wikipedia, but I'm receiving no registration email. On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zegunder there is an error where [[Gil Cohen]] produces no wikilink.
- Usually due to misbracketing earlier on in the article. Let's see... Well, a CRT and spaces in a link will break it, uh? JFW | T@lk 20:30, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Searching
Is it possible to stop the search function or links being case sensitive? CheeseDreams 17:26, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Apparantly not. That complaint was the problem that started General Complaints. -Litefantastic 01:48, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hide edit section
As explained in the How-to page it is possible to hide all edit links with the code __NOEDITSECTION__ in a document. According to the same How-to page, it is also possible to hide a section from the Table of contents by using HTML-tags like <h2>sectionhead</h2> instead of ==sectionhead==.
Bug:
The edit link is hidden using HTML tags, but the next edit link links to the edit page of the first section marked by the HTML-tags, which was not editable. The second edit link to the second section marked by HTML, and so forth.
Ilse@ 12:51, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
