Help talk:Editing/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Help:Editing. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

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Archive 5

Misc early comments

The Quick reference page is concise and helpful, especially with the code producing the results to the left showing already. I like it. --KQ

Best solution yet! --StefanRybo

Yes, I like it a lot. If somebody would just complete the feature list (headers, for example, are missing), I think we should replace the relevant part of how does one edit a page with this. --LMS

Please everyone add missing features here:

headers
ascii art integrals
...

Where is the discussion of how to create sub-pages, and how to refer to sub pages in links? Also, what are appropriate Sub-pages?

How do I redirect a link to another page - for instance, how to I get all links to CIA to point to Central Intelligence Agency? -- Robert Merkel

To redirect an article, make the entry #REDIRECT [[the name of the article you want the article you're editing to be redirected to]] --KQ

Why doesn't someone revamp the how does one edit a page page with the "quick reference"? The latter is clearly better than the old page. Don't be shy, just do it. --LMS

I just removed the following example from the definition list section:

Fruit: pear; apple

The reason is that neither pear nor apple can serve as the definition of "fruit". The article already contains an example which makes the usage of definition lists clear. The additional indented "apple" has nothing to do with definition lists. --AxelBoldt

What is the escape code for a forward slash? (i.e. '/ ')--branko

Forward slashes aren't special, you can just type them in without escaping. Backslashes aren't special either, except at the end of a line, where the easiest way to escape them is by following them with a &amp;nbsp;.

Forward slashes are not special And/Or dangerous -- hey, I just created a sub page. The use of the slash like that in Dutch (and hence in the Dutch Wikipedia) is quite common.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that.--branko

Oh, I see. You have to surround the whole construct with <nowiki> and &lt;/nowiki>, as in <nowiki>And/Or&lt;/nowiki> --AxelBoldt

What happened to most of the mathematical symbols? Specifically, these:

∇ ∴ ℵ ∈ ∉ ∪ ⊂ ⊃ ⊆ ⊇ ∧ ∨ ∃ ∀ ⇒ ⇔

And more specifically again, I used ⇒ (&rArr) in a some maths articles!

What you wrote there still works for me. I guess it must have to do with your browser. Andre Engels

For those of us who don't yet have the guidelines committed to memory, it would be really useful to have a more direct and obvious way to get from this page (which is conveniently available from the editing screen) to the related pages that set out policy on questions like:

I know how to make an external link, but is it appropriate to do it here, or should it go at the bottom of the article?
What level of emphasis is appropriate to the "references" heading?
Is that new link to an as-yet unwritten article supposed to be to <<Imaginary Example>> or <<Imaginary example>>?

There are links to some of these things buried in the text, but it would be good to add at the bottom of this page where it's easy to find, a See also section. Best if this is created by a veteran, not a noob like me. Tannin

Is that any better? -- Tarquin 22:28 Dec 17, 2002 (UTC)

Excellent! Tannin

"Automatically hide stuff in parentheses: kingdom." This instruction is complete junk. Stuff in parentheses is NOT hidden automatically - indeed in the example here, it is hidden manually using the pipe construct.

Unless someone explains why I have got this wrong, I intend to delete that bit in 24 hours time. -- SGBailey 00:08 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

Seems to work. Essentially, the "automatic" part is that you don't need to specify an alias to use if all you want to do is hide the stuff in parentheses: You don't need to type the "post-pipe" part. (That, is, you typed an extra "kingdom" above.)

"Automatically hide stuff in parentheses: [[kingdom (biology)|]]." gives the same result as "Automatically hide stuff in parentheses: [[kingdom (biology)|kingdom]]." -- Someone else 00:22 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

Ah! It is the trailing pipe that does it. Here follows a test with nothing typed after the pipe - be interesting to see if it stays that way of if the server fills the data in (as it does with ~ ~ ~ ~ ): Berlin -- SGBailey 09:37 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

The server did fill the post pipe part of the link in. I now understand this. Thanks folk. -- SGBailey 09:39 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

I've been thinking... shouldn't the pipe trick also remove stuff after (and including) the first comma, so that [[St. Petersburg, Russia|]] becomes [[St. Petersburg, Russia|St. Petersburg]]? It would make entering all those geographical links much easier. Zocky 23:34 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

Out of all the wiki syntaxes, I enjoy Wikipedia's syntax the most. I remember the first time I came across a WikiWikiWeb. The early syntax was just shit. And most wikies still have really crappy syntax. Even though Wikipedia has evolved the syntax in a number of nice ways, it still feels lacking in many areas. It would also be nice to have a specification to standardize plaintext markups: a syntax so consistant, other projects will pick it up and use it. I've been brainstorming on this subject, and have created a markup I call m:Wikitax.

I wish this to be a sort of request for comments about the syntax. It takes a lot from Wikipedia's markup, but tries to ignore tradition and backwards compatibility to make things a bit more consistent, concise, easy, and useful.

(duplicated markup suggestions snipped)

Head on over to m:Wikitax to comment and contribute. Jizzbug 03:53 Dec 21, 2002 (UTC)

== Date and name? ==

How do I automatically put my name and the date next to something (what is the markup for this?) kidburla2002 23:07 GMT

You can sign your username using three tildes (~~~). Use 4 to add the timestamp as well, or 5 for only a timestamp with no signature. Angela . 00:42, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

Parens/Autohide

Am I missing something, or is the "Automatically hide stuff in parentheses" thing completely wrong? (It's the 4th example under "Links, URLs, images".) Take a look at the source, the visible "What you type" section is really different from the real text source of the example, what gives? Gutza 23:57 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What you type is converted (just like the tildes for signing), so afterwards you can not see in the edit box what was typed. Try it! - Patrick 00:13 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Suggestion

Would it be a good idea to link the word "Summary" on the Edit page to the "Edit summary" page? As a newish contributor, I assumed this field was for a page content summary rather than an edit summary, even though it tried to find it on the help pages. Of course I have found it now, but the process wasn't idiot-proof. Lawrence Chard 03:48 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I had that little bit of confusion myself. (And I do think you're supposed to add new comments to the bottom of talk pages.) -Smack 18:50 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Footnotes

I have seen people use footnotes of some sort (if I remember correctly, most were just hyperlinks to outside pages, like so 1). Are there rules about using footnotes? Are footnotes desirable?--branko

I haven't seen any rules about footnotes, but personally I don't like the style you use above to refer to outside websites. When I see [1], I immediately think "footnote" or "references" and go to the end of the article to look up reference number 1. But there is none. I think it would be better to have a decent references section at the end of the article, listing outside sites (with URL, title, author, so that they can be found even if the URL changes), articles and books. If those references are numbered, you could actually use the [1] notation to refer to the first item. --AxelBoldt

Most new users don't understand how to generate an anchor for a hypertext link.

The method appears to be [<URL goes here> <Anchor goes here>]. However, I just did a modification of one of those [1] thingies, and it worked fine with just [<URL>] so maybe something's changing behind the scenes, because I don't remember this happening last week. User:David Martland

I agree. Is there a way, however, to link from a footnote to the reference it belongs to? In HTML you would use the name-attribute in an a-tag.--branko

This is doable using the <div id=name> tag and closing </div> tag in a similar way that you'd use <A name=></A>. You can then link to the anchor using a Wiki link, such as [[#name|Reference for this text]]. See the discussion by Merriam on this talk page.

I began using this method to produce footnotes as follows. In the text of the article, I'll have a sentence like: "George Washington was the general of the Continental Army."^[Smith] I use a footnote that, instead of numbering sequentially (1, 2, 3.. etc) has an abbreviated name of the author. Clicking on the footnote link will bring you to the corresponding entry in the References, targetted using the <div> tag. I use an abbreviated name in the footnote because the page might not jump exactly to the corresponding note in the footnotes and the reader will then need to know which I was referring to. So I might use the author name (if it's short) like "Smith", or an abbreviated author name (if it's long) so "Ist" for "Istanbul", or I might need to use a name+date if there are multiple articles by the same author, like "Smith1999".

References

This is a fake reference
... pretend there are a lot of references here
Smith, John. "George Washington" in Revolutionary War Generals, (1987).
more fake references

—Brim 19:26, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

I just spent 20 minutes changing the footnotes in an article to link directly rather than to a name-attribute: all I had was a link, with no author and article name. I agree that having those would be better; however I do not mind if the ^footnotes link directly, as long as the notes are still listed out at the end. My .02. And no, I don't think the name-attributes are working, though you might second the request. --Koyaanis Qatsi

Emphasis

I can see that what people use for italics and bold letters are the HTML codes (<i> etc.) and not the quotation marks that are given in the table. In fact, the quotation marks (or apostrophe or whatever) don't seem to work. Should't this be fixed? I dare not do it myself because I'm not very familiar with this. Calypso

They are quotation marks: two give italics, three give bold, five give bold italics. It should work fine. Here's an example: italics, bold, bold italics. AxelBoldt

Circular Redirects

How do I undo a circular redirect? Canada/cities is a redirect to Canadian cities, which is a redirect to Canada/cities. The content may be in a previous version Canadian cities, or may have been lost altogether. We can redo the content, if necessary, but not with the double redirect in place. (I can't get to Canadian cities to find its diffs/history.) Vicki Rosenzweig

If a page redirects you elsewhere, immediately below the title you will see ('Redirected from <pagename>'). This pagename is a link, leading you to the redirecting page but without being redirected. From there you can get to editing the redirect page, viewing its history, viewing its Talk page (if it has any)... Andre Engels

But if the redirection is circular, what page will you be on to read ('Redirected from <pagename>')? To solve that you would need a way to edit it from the outside, wouldn't you? (Aliter)

See m:MediaWiki_User's_Guide:_Using_redirects#Double_redirects. - Patrick 09:13, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Ah, you're only redirected once. So visiting the page you do not want to go to will send you directly to the intended page. (Aliter)

Capitalization

I seem to need to be careful with capitalization when referring to other articles using the [[ notation. This is annoying because in many cases the capitalization of the article I'm referring to is wrong. For instance, Appletalk is actually AppleTalk. Is there some way to...

1) fix the titles 2) make [[ non-case-sensitive

?

You should fix the title. It's a bit of work though. Here's how: In the article you're writing, create a link to AppleTalk. Save the article. You'll see a question mark after AppleTalk, since the article doesn't exist yet. Click on the question mark, then edit the new AppleTalk article. In another window, edit the old Appletalk article, cut-and-paste all material from Appletalk to AppleTalk. Save AppleTalk, then replace Appletalk with the text "#REDIRECT [[AppleTalk]]" in the first line. This way, all old links pointing to Appletalk will now point to AppleTalk. If Appletalk had an associated Talk page (Talk:Appletalk), you should also cut and paste the material from there into Talk:AppleTalk. AxelBoldt, Thursday, May 30, 2002

I believe this info is obsolete. No ?, just a link in red. To fix link, go to old article and "move this page" to the correct name. (also tick the checkbox to move the talk page). This will create a redirect to the new page at the old name. This preserves the history which cut'n'paste doesn't. -- 217.24.129.50 08:59 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

-==Add a paragraph== I would like to add a paragraph to a page, but mark it as being tentative, needing correction, needing editing, or incomplete. How to do this? David 10:26 Aug 1, 2002 (PDT)

You could add a note to the effect of "(this paragraph needs some work)". Or you might be to leave it in the talk page until you think it belongs in the article itself. --Brion VIBBER

<ins> and <del>

<del> and <ins> are slightly different from <s> and <u> — in particular, they are the correct form for the meanings attributed to them on this page (deleting old material and inserting new material). Indeed, <s> and <u> are now deprecated. The sticking point, unfortunately, is if <del> and <ins> are not supported by older browsers. They do appear to be newer than I thought; that's a damned shame. When will people stop using Netscape 4! — Toby 06:35 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)

IIRC They were in html 3.0, but removed from 3.2. Random832 13:05, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

Unexpected

Umm, [http://www.whatever.com] doesn't seem to produce unexpected results anymore... or am I just not noticing them?: [1]. Lezek

What's "unexpected"? Those *should* appear as numbered footnotes, as they always have. Looks like I broke them because that feature was mysteriously tied up with the offsite image code. I'll tweak it some more... --Brion 00:27 Nov 4, 2002 (UTC)

There, back to normal. --Brion 00:56 Nov 4, 2002 (UTC)

the edit page describes this as "unexpected". thanks for the fix anyway :) Lezek

Interlanguage Links

What is zh:Wikipedia:如何编辑页面? -- Zoe

It's an interlanguage link to Wikipedia:如何编辑页面 on the Chinese wiki. --Brion

Floating Images

There seem to be two possibilities: (a) I'm stupid, or (b) there is no current mechanism to allow flowing text around images. (i.e., no equivalent to the HTML ALIGN= ) and thus a lot of rather ugly pages. Can someone let me know which theory is correct? (And also, if this is the best place to ask this sort of thing.) Tannin

There's no special wiki syntax for it at present, but we do allow a subset of HTML. Some pages use a floating table, others a div: <div style="float:right">[[Image:foo.png]]</div>. --Brion

Thankyou Brion. Tannin

Suggestion for definition lists etc

In order to get the format of the source (edit) page cleaner, it would be nice to be able to start a new line without getting a blank line (or other effect of RETURN). This could be done by starting the new line with some character (say a pipe | which "undoes" the previous RETURN and is otherwise ignored.

This would allow ";subject:description" to be written as (ignore leading space)

;subject
|:description

which is cleaner.

I could also do

;subject
|:long description
that happens to wrap over
several lines
|
;nextsubject
|:next description

where the | (or whatever) allows for "blank" lines in the source but not the article. -- 217.24.129.50 09:11 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

Likewise, it would allow for:

  * This is a list item that is a paragraph long
   | and because I can concatenate these lines
   | the text need not run through the right edge of the
   | editor window (a draw-back when editing off-line
   | using a non-wrapping editor).
  * If this item were more than 250 characters long, 
   | it would currently require a line in the HTML-page that
   | was longer than 255 characters; something the
   | HTML-standard frowns upon.
  * Of course, this specific problem could probably also
   | be dealt with by changing the page-generation slightly. (Aliter)

It would also be nice if there was a "no leading vertical gap/margin/border" option (perhaps with !) so that I could type

Here is a list
!*Item
!*Another one

and get

Here is a list
  *Item
  *Another one

rather than

Here is a list

  *Item
  *Another one

-- 217.24.129.50 09:11 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

I'm afraid that's not a Wiki issue, but one of HTML. Browsers usually display HTML with a lot of white space; this is one example. There used to be a 'compact' attribute, but the current standard deprecates this. (Aliter)

Table Width

Any idea why these tables are so wide? How can we make them narrower? -- Zoe

It will be because one (or more) of the table entries is in a style which doesn't permit line breaks - probably done because that is a necessary feature of the format being explained. Once one entry is "that wide", everything else spreads out to use its width. -- SGBailey 10:00 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

<TABLE> and <PRE> elements don't mix very well. I don't know whether there is a good reason for those <PRE>-s, but otherwise, we could think of replacing them with <BR>-s and  -es. (Aliter)

Quotes in links

I have a how-to question that I can't seem to find an answer for: In the article on Charles Manson, I was going to turn the reference to Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme into a link -- but it's apparently not possible to put double brackets around anything that includes double quotes. Is this true? Is there a work-around, or what? ---Mksmith 16:41, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Not writing the quotes in the page name, but using one of the other conventions: Lynette -Squeaky- Fromme? Or maybe writting them as %22? (Or was that %24?) Aliter 04:07, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Center an image

Can anybody help me with center on a image. Can get it right and left, but not in the middle. Tryed the FAQ, but couldn't find any explanation there. I have tried putting the picture into a tabel, but no luck there. Tried also to find a allready centered picture, but no luck there.

Thanks in advance BrianHansen. (Danish wikipedia).

I think "

Centered image.

" should work, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone made a supposedly better way in the latest version of HTML. --Ellmist Sunday, January 19th, 02003

Table idea

There would be a more easy way to edit a table. I.e. the user could indicate "Insert table with Columns X Rows". A new window would be opened with a minibox for every cell. The user could include text in the cells. When finished, the coulde would be included in the main edition page where the cursor is. Mac 01:36 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

See m:Wiki markup tables for efforts to support tables better. Your idea isn't there, so you may want to add it. -- Toby 10:29 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

Hidden stuff

anyone else notice how odd it is how it says that it automatically hides namespaces and things in parens, and yet it simply doesn't... 24.62.131.217 07:12 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

Read it again and try it. --Brion 07:30 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

Bold apostrophe

Is there a way to make a title which ends in an apostrophe both italicized and bolded? See Burnin'. Tuf-Kat

Nobody knows or cares whether a space is bold or italic! --Brion

I would never in a million years have thought of that. A sheepish Tuf-Kat

Could be worse; see Wiki:SixSingleQuotes. ;) Also, if you need to abut a printing character (like punctuation), you can separate it with an empty HTML tag (Know what's great? Wikiin'!) --Brion

In page targets

I think that

== A section ==

with

===A subsection===

should produce A= targets -- like:

<H2><A NAME="A_Section">A Section</A></H1>
with
<H3><A NAME="A_Section__A_Subsection">A Section</A></H3>

which would allow people to produce links direct to the section marker
Darkonc 14:14 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Anchors?

It seems that some long articles would benefit from anchor links from an outline in the top. Are anchors a part of wiki markup? Can HTML anchors be used? BobCMU76 11:09 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Links already support anchors, but we don't have a wiki markup for defining them. :) You can cheat, though, if you really want to. See Wikipedia:Sandbox#anchor. (May not work on some very old browsers that don't fully support HTML 4.) --Brion 11:14 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

Is Netscape 4.7 considered 'very old'? I've not even tried to learn past 3.4 and not much of that either.

4.7 was released three years ago, and it was a couple years behind on standards even then. A series of 4.7x and 4.8 point releases have failed to make any improvements in this area. --Brion 15:28 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

I'm confused. If I want to place an anchor, what do I do?

<div id="anchor_test"> still works with Mediawiki 1.3.2. --merriam 01:52, 2004 Sep 10 (UTC)

And it works even better if you remember to close the tag. I also meant to say thanks, Brion, for recalling in IRC what you probably said sixteen months ago. --merriam 02:08, 2004 Sep 10 (UTC)

italic

I have a strategic question regarding the use of <i>...</i> as opposed to ''...''. I know that <i>...</i> has been deprecated, but it is endorsed by How to edit a page. If I'm writing a foreign-language expression (i.e. sine qua non, or something in Elvish), I want it to be italicized, as convention dictates, not just emphasized. I'm afraid that non-italics-supporting browsers would use a contra-conventional mode of formatting, thus obviating the reason why italics were deprecated in the first place. I'm bringing this up because I've been copyedited at least once after using <i>...</i>. Smack 05:50 30 May 2003 (UTC)

The only example here is in math, because that's the only place tha I know it to be used (and I wrote the text here). I would support you in using <i> in situations where it's clearly correct, especially if it's not one of the specially recognised meanings of '' in Wikipedia (see the Manual of Style too look for them). But for myself, I never italicise foreign phrases anyway. (The text should either be clear what the phrase is, used for a specific purpose, or an alternative in English would fit better in the encyclopaedia.) -- Toby Bartels 04:56 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

<i> has not been deprecated (at least, not according to the HTML spec), although the W3C does recommend em instead (equivalent to our double-apostrophes). u and strike are deprecated, though (How to edit suggests them in the context of inserted or deleted text, but ins and del should really apply here - though the Wiki code doesn't support 'em yet. Not really an issue for article text anyway.) The reason I like em over i is that it gives the contained text some semantic meaning along with some presentational meaning. So if there is no semantic meaning, I'd say i is fine. -- Wapcaplet 17:01 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Moved: alt text

Some discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Alternate text for images

Sup and Sub

since sub and sup change the spacing between lines, how about an option to give that spacing to all lines, regardless of whether they have exponents? Pizza Puzzle

Good idea - but it's an HTML issue (more precisely, it's an render issue), and nothing to do with the Wikipedia markup. You should suggest this to either W3 or the browser developers. CGS 23:44 6 Jul 2003 (UTC).

I think I already answered that question. Here:

blah blah blah blah blah blah^supscript blah_subscript blah blah blah blah blah blah^supscript blah blah_subscript blah blah blah blah blah blah^supscript blah_subscript blah blah blah^supscript blah blah_subscript

Accomplished easily using font-size and line-height style attributes. May require tweaking, if your fonts are (probably) different from mine.

-- Wapcaplet 01:07 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I would recommend highly against using absolute font sizes, as these won't scale in many browsers if the user tries to bump the page's font size up or down. Just use "line-height: 160%". --Brion 01:14 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Good point. I wouldn't personally do this at all, actually. Sub/superscripts don't bother me that much :) -- Wapcaplet 01:40 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Even if you can overcome the scaling problem, you may due with something like a^{b^c}. This is not really a HTML problem, it is a stylish problem for all types of publications!!! Wshun

mdash

I have tried using & mdash for dashes, but get "&mdash" (no quotes) in the article, not a dash. So far I ma using "--" Thanks for any info. User:Dino

It displays correctly on my browser, even though it's not valid HTML -- try it with a semicolon: — becomes "—". -- Tim Starling 02:28 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Same thing on my browser (Mozilla 1.4, Linux). The — entity is replaced by empty space. I read somewhere that authors are supposed to use the unicode reference —, but that's annoying to type (and edit). Double-hyphen is probably the safest thing to do (perhaps the Wiki-code script interpreter thingy can be made to convert double-hyphens to a proper em dash?) -- Wapcaplet 16:22 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Tildes/L'Arc

Wikipedia will not convert L'Arc~en~Ciel to a link. Example from Rurouni Kenshin. Submit a bug report?

Emperorbma 19:24 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Don't know why ~ is an invalid character in a link, but it seems to be one anyway... Changed link to [[L'Arc~en~Ciel]], which looks like L'Arc~en~Ciel. كسيپ Cyp 21:30 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Emperorbma 03:35 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Eth, Thorn, etc

Quoting Mungo added eth, ETH, thorn and THORN some edits ago, later it was removed as ?not considered safe? -- What is perticularly unsafe at those and why? I'd guess the solution would be using &#xxxx; instead. Still, my curiosity kills me. -- Ralesk 21:11 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The table of contents is screwed up

Hey folks, because this page demonstrates how to do headings and subheadings, the fake headings and subheadings show up in the table of contents. Is there any way to fix this behavior, or is it best to simply leave it alone as a demonstration?

People have requested a tag to disable the table of contents on selected pages, but I don't think one was implemented. I just mentioned this page as an example on the mailing list. -- Stephen Gilbert 19:05, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Use __NOTOC__. I did for this page. - Patrick 19:56, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But did we really want to disable the entire table of contents? or just the false entries in it due to the headings demonstration? --Nelson 18:36, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You can put the TOC back if you like; I do not know how to disable just the false entries, except with images for the example headers. - Patrick 01:03, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Moving page to meta soon

We need one place to develop MediaWiki documentation so I'm starting a project-neutral MediaWiki User's Guide in meta and think it would be a good idea to cross wiki redirect this page to meta:MediaWiki User's Guide: Editing pages as soon as I'm done with the conversion. --mav 04:41, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I accidentally edited this page but reverted the edits a minute later. I'm working with a local copy of the wikipedia software and edited in the wrong browser window. My apologies. --Zippy 20:17, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Downloadable Wiki markup text editor?

Is there a downloadable Wiki markup text editing utility available that allows text entered in Wiki markup to be previewed offline?

It seems that such a utility would reduce some of the load on the server by allowing edits to be checked offline first, eliminating the need to preview them online. Ideally, it would handle Wiki markup exactly the same as the Wikipedia website software, and be easily upgradable, to stay up-to-date when changes are made to the Wikipedia website software.Iseeaboar 22:34, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Change Font

How do I change the font in the edit box? Plz respond at my talk page. Lirath Q. Pynnor

How is that minor?

The definition of minor edit is "spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearranging of text." Now look at User:Frecklefoot's revision of 18 June 2003 for the Rebecca Romijn-Stamos entry. How can THAT be a minor edit?! -- RoyV 06:25, 22 Nov 2003

Well, other than the bit about the Stamos couple being sexually liberal and throwing nude parties, all he did was rearrange some text for flow and neutrality. There's a lot of red in the diff, but it's really a borderline case. This sort of thing is not a big deal as long as it's not both egregious and habitual. -- Cyan 06:32, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree with RoyV. I don't think it's borderline, "removal of POV text" as Frecklefoot puts it should always be marked major. -- Tim Starling 08:38, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Cyan that it's borderline. He hasn't really changed the content; just moved it around. Angela 12:47, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

He added "The Stamos' are widely known as one of Hollywood's most sexually liberal couples. They often throw nude parties at their California home." That's not rearrangement. -- Tim Starling 13:29, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, but adding one sentence could still be regarded as minor. Angela 14:23, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sometimes that's true. But not for that particular sentence, IMO.

It's not a big deal though is it? I make mistakes like marking minor as major and major as minor all the time - pointless worrying about single edits - only if it were a systematic attempt to make deceptive edit should we care. Pete 23:51, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It would be nice to get an idea of community opinion on this particular edit, even if there will clearly be no repercussions for Frecklefoot or anyone else doing a similar thing. We have a policy, but many Wikipedians seem to ignore it. Should it be altered to reflect the current trend? -- Tim Starling 07:50, Nov 23, 2003 (UTC)

I mark a change I make as minor if it doesn't change what the article says (or, if the problem is that it says it badly, my best guess as to what the article was intended to say). So spelling, grammar, most rearrangements, all minor, but if you're adding or removing words -- especially in groups -- it's probably not minor. Changing the information is not minor, changing the presentation of that information is minor. --Charles A. L. 19:03, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Where is this policy documented? I know it exists (or at least one does, maybe more), I've seen it, but I've lost count of the number of policy and guideline documents I've read. Perhaps one of those who refer to it could provide a link? This would also have the advantage of confirming that everyone is referring to the same policy, and that any duplicates we know of are consistent to it.

Relying on a vague memory of the policy and (more so) what I've seen others do in practice, I would personally not mark this edit as minor were I doing it, but neither do I object to its being so marked. The content is unchanged, or at least that seems to be the intention. Maybe that's what others mean by borderline. Do we really need to decide it? I think we'll always have borderline cases. The role of the "minor" flag is to help us to communicate with each other. Certainly it can be abused, but there's no suggestion of that here IMO. Andrewa 18:36, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Please look at Wikipedia:How to edit a page in the Minor Edits section. The gist of it is that changes which don't affect the meaning, or don't add or subtract information are minor edits. Obviously typos and simple rearrangement of text fall into that category. Everything else is a major edit. I agree with this view, and I believe the change I referenced originally was miscategorized. The only reason I asked about it here was to see if I was missing something (since I'm a Wikipedia newbie). I don't see anything in the replies to my question that indicate that I am. I'm also astonished that some people thought I was just referring to the rearrangement of text and not to the addition of new facts. It's not "borderline" at all. By the way, I'm not looking for "repercussions, " and I agree that the miscategorization could've been an honest mistake. However, it also crossed my mind that this could've been an attempt to "vandalize" a page and then marking it as minor to hide it (as suggested in the Minor Edits section). Note that I'm not saying whether the new facts ("sexually liberal", "nude parties") are true or false. I see today that those sentences have been removed. Ironically, I believe in some cases those sentences should stay in even if they are false, while in other cases they should be left out even if they are true! But I'll leave that discussion to the article's Talk Page.--RoyV 06:37, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. Agree that if you were adding new 'facts' (I looked at the diff display before and must have missed them, but I'll take your word for it that they are there), then it is not a minor edit, and others may wish to review the accuracy of those 'facts'. The page you refer to makes this quite clear IMO and also shows you how to fix such a mistake. Andrewa 08:58, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Adding certain html codes

Well, after viewing a long article, and wanting to make a link into a certain section, which couldn't be defined in the table of contents with the double = sign without making the article all screwed up (Namely, I'm trying to link to the part in Modem about echo cancellation in the history section

So, rather than split it, I thought I would try changing 'Echo Cancellation' to '<a name=echo>Echo Cancellation</a>' so I could link from Cancellation to Modem#echo

Any way to go about this other than to split the article --Fizscy46 14:46, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not allow manual insertion of anchors. However, for general stylistic reasons, the words Echo cancellation should be made a heading, using ===heading=== syntax. It is my understanding that such a heading is automatically made an anchor. -Smack 01:39, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The new Table markup language

If the new wiki markup language for tables is considered stable, this page should point to its description, MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables. MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables should then have a link to the older method of creating tables via HTML, Wikipedia:How to use tables, rather than the other way around.

As a newbie, I didn't think that was a change I should make myself, particularly because it goes across wikis. Perhaps someone more official should make the change.
NickP 13:01, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

Be bold! You don't need to be anything "official" to do this. Anyway, I thought it was a great suggestion so I've made the change. Angela . 21:25, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

Feature Request: Image maps

This would IMHO be a great addition e.g. to the World map to "zoom in" on continents, islands and oceans. Aragorn2 20:28, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Why not to rename pages boldly

I have been noticing the messy situations created by users merging or moving pages w/o understanding the loss of history entailed. In response, i've added

* Why not to rename pages boldly, at Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page

just below "How to edit a page" in the meta-article Wikipedia:How to edit a page at least as a starting point for discussion. --Jerzy 01:30, 2004 Jan 19 (UTC)

Please add stub macro and table info

While browsing dozens of how-to pages, I've seen at least 2 wiki macros for automatically including "this is a stub" messages. Would like to have a list of this sort of thing on this page, since this is where I come to find markup. I don't even see a link to stubs here. Maybe I wouldn't be so concerned about doign a search for stub if (a) searches weren't disabled, so currently it's a 2-step process, and (b) with all the server problems since I've joined, it takes forever to switch pages.

Would also like at least a link to wiki markup for formatting tables. Elf 17:19, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There's a link to m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables in the tables section of this page. I've added a little bit on how to use the messages like {{msg:stub}} in the transclusion section. Angela . 21:47, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

Upcoming change in section titles rendering

Hi folks. There's a fix going in for the problem with the empty space after ==Titles== being dependent on whether there's a empty line or not after the title. So, I need to know which one of the following you'd prefer as the standard behaviour for titles:

This is a title

And this is some text, without an empty line after the title.

This is another title

And this is some text, this time with an empty line after the title.

// E23 12:52, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC) (developer)

I prefer an empty line after the title always. (Second example.) Jo r 13:08, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

same here Exploding Boy 13:14, Feb 3, 2004 (UTC)

Real typographers use a half line. That's the way the professionals do it. So should we. (I forget where, but we had a long discussion of this once.) Tannin 13:26, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Empty line please. :) fabiform | talk 13:53, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Me too. Bmills 14:00, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If we can do it, I'd prefer a half line (could be done with CSS and a specific h2-class, and no "real" line in the output). If that'*s not possible, I'd vote for a line inbetween. -- till we *) 14:54, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Prefer second example. There should be some separating white space after the title. Prefer a half line rather than a full line if it is feasible, but there should be some space. Dpbsmith 17:28, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I prefer the current behaviour, but I guess I've missed the boat on that one... Onebyone 21:42, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Me too. Anthony DiPierro 18:44, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I prefer to write text directly under the == header (no blank space), because in the wikitext it looks better - it keeps the text with the header, and makes it easy to distinguish what text belongs to which header. The way it displays matters less to me :) Dysprosia 00:43, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

After years of creating default formats--I've found that it's often easier to *not* put the space because you can always add it later if it's really necessary, and I think it looks better & scans better without a full space (for various reasons that others have cited). Elf 01:10, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Elf. If you want an extra space, add an extra space, but don't make it standard default. RickK 02:59, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

~~Me too.~~ [Now that this has been moved, I suppose I'm too late] .. -- User:Docu

I changed my mind. Actually, it's just in on the edit side that I prefer not to have a line after the section header. -- User:Docu

Pages look a lot clearer with the space under the title. If it isn't made the default, there will be problems caused by the fact that some people will add it anyway. At least if is the default, people can't take it away, so pages will be consistent. Angela . 07:02, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

I prefer the second, I think there should definitely be some gap (either full line or half line). -- Ams80 23:21, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I totally agree - some space makes the page look cleaner and is what a professional type-setter would use.Tompagenet 23:34, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I prefer to have no space under the heading in the markup, with any space added by the site-wide stylesheet. As to whether or not a space is actually added under headings by the stylesheet, I prefer a half space (not a full line), but won't insist on it, since that can easily be changed over all articles by changing the stylesheet when need be. silsor 23:39, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

I prefer half a space over no space but no space over a full space. Having a smaller space under the heading makes it easier to tell which section the heading refers to. Since having a space in the markup above bullet or numbered lists has no effect on the actual appearance, having a space there is a waste of time. --Jia ng 23:42, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Actually, putting a space above a bulleted or numbered list results in two blank lines before the list, at least on the web browser that I use most often. I remove these spaces when I see them. silsor 00:02, Feb 5, 2004 (UTC)

I think there should be space of some kind between the header and the paragraph below, otherwise my eyes sometimes slip right over the header without registering it separately at first. That's kind of distracting. I have always manually added blank lines after headers whenever I edit a page that lacks them. Bryan 08:33, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The important point is that the headline is not rendered floating inbetween two chunks of text, but is clearly seen to belong to the text it heads. Hence more space before the headline than after. --Ruhrjung 13:43, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I can't see whether this has been discussed above or not (there's so much on here), but I've switched over to the third (and least nice) version of the headings demonstration. I initially went to edit something, and got hid by a bug that plagued the Village pump recently, where some parts of the software count HTML headings as sections, and others don't - the upshot being all the little [edit] links on the sections go wrong. As somebody long ago realised, we don't want the fake headings in the table of contents, so we'll have to go with manually imitating the style for now.

I guess I should submit a bug at sourceforge, really, so that things like <h1>Is this a heading or not?</h1> are at least dealt with consistently. Now, what was it I was going to change in the first place...? - IMSoP 19:15, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's a known bug. Eloquence said he was intending to fix this recently. As a temporary solution, you could just type __NOEDITSECTION__ to disallow section editing on the page. Angela . 08:19, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

Numbering

Maybe I have overlooked something, but I really did not find how to number entries like this (in wikipedia transcript!):

1.
 1.1
 1.2
2.
 2.1
 2.2
 2.3
etc.

Can anybody help me out? An additon to this page might be useful. Lambert, 13.03.2004

Probably because the HTML standard does not define that kind of automatic numbering. The closest thing we have to it is nested ordered lists, like this:

# Heading
## Sub-heading
## Foo
# Another heading
## Sub-heading

Which gives:

Heading
1. Sub-heading
2. Foo
Another heading
1. Sub-heading

However, the CSS specification does permit customization of numbers, so it would be feasible to use a style sheet to define numbering like this (which would be automatically used on all ordered lists). You could make your own style sheet for such numbering and tell your browser to use it for Wikipedia, if you know how. If you're really interested in having this kind of format, consider becoming a [Wikipedia:Developers Wikipedia developer] so you can get involved with working on the Wiki code. -- Wapcaplet 03:37, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Strange Formatting

Maybe it's just me, but for some strange reason the portion that gets automagically added to the end of the page winds up indented, rather than flush left to the rest of the text. I'm still learning wiki markup, so maybe I'm missing something obvious ... but I don't see why this is happening.

Joe Sewell 05:02, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Date format

It says in there

[[July 20]], [[1969]] , [[20 July]] [[1969]]

and [[1969]]-[[07-20]]

will all appear as [[20 July]] [[1969]] if you set your date display preference to 1 January 2001.

but I see "will all appear as July 20, 1969 if you set your date display preference to 1 January 2001." instead, since I have my display preference set differently, when obviously the intent is to have it show "20 July 1969", but with the appropriate links. The closest way I can think of to get the desired results with links intact would be will all appear as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_20 July 20], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969 1969] if you set your date display preference to 1 January 2001.", which would give "will all appear as July 20, 1969 if you set your date display preference to 1 January 2001.". Not ideal, it wouldn't look quite the same since it'll look like an external link instead of the internal wikilink that's intended. Does anyone have a better solution for this? - John Owens (talk) 05:20, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)

Yep, I seem to remember reading somewhere (although it doesn't seem to be here - I'll have to track it down and link to it some time) that if you use a piped link - [[20 July|20 July]] - it is left alone by the software. An important ability, for instance, if you're directly quoting somebody, since they will have referred to the date in a specific format, and having it reformatted would make the quote incorrect. Can you just confirm that the page now shows as intended (I've put this piping in)? - IMSoP 12:10, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

CSS background images

I was playing around in the Sandbox when I realized that wikipedia dosen't support image CSS at all - I tried applying background-image to everything on my page. In fact, wikipedia ignores ALL the inline CSS for an element when I try to use background-image (and I know I'm writing it correctly: it validates).

Was this done on purpose?

68.209.104.192 21:05, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Query string arguments and localurl

At Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Variables, shouldn't "{{localurl:Wikipedia:Sandbox|edit}}" be "{{localurl:Wikipedia:Sandbox|action=edit}}" instead? The former generates "/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&edit", while the latter gives "/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit". It looks like the MediaWiki software is expecting "name=value" pairs. --Diberri | Talk 04:05, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I corrected it.--Patrick 10:34, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

&sup1-3 question

Question: (¹ ² ³ &sup4; &sup5; &sup6;) Why does the footnote superscript shorthand stop working at number 3? Should it be fixed somehow? When I need more than three footnotes, I do something like this: text text ⁴ text text, which is:

<font size=-2><sup>4</sup></font>

The solution is inferior but nicer, I think, than dislocating the preceding line in the paragraph.... Trc | [msg] 03:59, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Only 1-3 exist in html. --Random|832 02:29, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Indeed. They are not magic shortcuts, but merely character entities referring to symbols that are incorporated in many typefaces. They are in there (I imagine) because of common use in maths for squared and cubed - although that doesn't explain sup1, does it. Anyway, the point is, there generally isn't such a character for "power of 4"/"superscript 4", so you have to do what you say to tell the browser to draw an ordinary digit as superscript. Hope that makes sense. - IMSoP 11:56, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Trc, your main concern seems to be with the messed up line spacing that results from the default rendering of the <sup> tag. If this is a Wikipedia issue at all, it's one that should be addressed in the style sheets, not in the source text of articles (IMHO). - dcljr 07:15, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

User Contributions

Someone needs to develope a variable to measure the number of contributions a user has made. So we can all put this notise on a userpage: as of this date, I have currently made 617 contributions. Or the specialpage for user contributions should be numbered instead of bulleted.--216.228.163.41 22:29, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Superheadings

=Superheadings=

What is the purpose of headings like the one above?

Cheers,

Acegikmo1 00:43, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Whatever the purpose, they screw up the table of contents. I've changed your heading to a regular one with what you typed as displayed source below it. - dcljr 09:01, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Superheaders should not be used. Wiki will convert a single equal sign pair (as noted above) to a HTML H1 header pair which is already used at the top of every article page. Article headers should always start with at least two equal signs. (See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(headings).) Two equal signs convert to HTML H2, three equal signs convert to HTML H3, and so on. Articles with more than three headings will have a table of contents automatically generated. However, having more than one HTML H1 headers will interfere with the table of contents as noted above by restarting the TOC numbering at 1 where the superheader is located on the page or TOC. See TOC example of what had happened to this page at [2] Petersam 07:47, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Image

The page is wrong. Directly quoted from the page:

or, floating to the right side of the page and with a caption.

That image at right is supposed to have a caption. No caption appears. Perhaps some kind soul who actually understands the horrible new image syntax could correct the help, so that those of us who only know HTML can stop using divs? Tannin 22:14, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I added "frame|right|" which forces the caption but keeps it the same size as normal. Does it look ok now? Angela . 16:27, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

Nope: There is still no caption, Angela. No, wait - it's in the code but not in the text: I've fixed that now. Thankyou. Tannin 20:48, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

pre autoflow

Can we make the monobook css file include autoflow for pre sections? The bottom one is autoflowed:

IF a line starts with a space THEN
  it will be formatted exactly
    as typed; in a fixed-width font; lines won't wrap; ENDIF this is useful for: * pasting preformatted text;
ENDIF
this is useful for:
  * pasting preformatted text;
  * algorithm descriptions;
  * program source code;

 IF a line starts with a space THEN
   it will be formatted exactly
     as typed; in a fixed-width font; lines won't wrap; ENDIF this is useful for: * pasting preformatted text;
 ENDIF
 this is useful for:
   * pasting preformatted text;
   * algorithm descriptions;
   * program source code;

If you resize your window so it wraps, you can see that the bottom one has a scroll bar instead of resizing the whole page uglily with an overlapping border. I know I can put this in my personal monobook.css (and i will) but it should be global shouldn't it? - Omegatron 17:04, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. I've copied it to MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css to see if there are any objections. Angela . 07:54, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Not on my browser (MSIE5.5). - dcljr 09:04, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css for an IE example that works (mostly). - Omegatron 21:05, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

Character formatting section edits

I just edited the "Character formatting" section to standardize the HTML a bit and correct what I saw as problems:

Top-valigned all rows and inserted an initial <br/> break in the "What you type" column on rows starting with bold "titles" (e.g., Umlauts and accents:). — Hmm... this worked fine as I was previewing, but now I don't see the linefeeds after saving the page. Oh, well...
Changed "technical terms" to "monospace text".
Made all comments in the table bulleted.
Added comment about indenting "displayed" formulas and showed the indenting (colon) in the "What you type" column. If you think this may be confusing to users, please change it.
Warned in Commenting page source: that most comments should go on the Talk page.
Made other substantive changes in the entries on subscripts/superscripts and non-breaking spaces in formulas.

- dcljr 08:57, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Your changes look fine to me. I didn't even know that ¹, ², and ³ existed before reading that section! --Ardonik 09:16, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

Insert tab A into slot B

I love how the intro states that "It is very easy to edit a Wiki page"... followed by a 70-word sentence with the incredibly complex structure:

Simply
- click on the "Edit this page" tab at the top
  - (or the edit links on the right)
- of a Wiki page to change the page itself,
or
- click on the "Discussion tab"
- and then on the "+ tab"
  - (or, on the original classic skin,
    - click on the "Discuss this page" link
    - and then on "Edit this page")
- to add a comment to the discussion on the corresponding talk page.

Oh, yeah. What could be simpler? ;)

- dcljr 23:40, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tab A should be going into slot A, slot B is for tab B. :-) - Omegatron 00:25, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)

I've changed the intro, separating it into three distinct tasks:

getting to the edit textbox
saving your changes
getting to the talk page and adding a comment

- dcljr 06:40, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Linking to history pages

Hi,

The "Wiki Markup" section on "Links and URLs" doesn't mention how to make a link to a previous version of a page, for example when you're in an article's talk page and talking about previous edits. Is there a more detailed description of the Wiki Markup somewhere? Is that even possible to do? Thanks,

-- Creidieki 07:59, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You have to go into the history and copy the URL of the page that you want, and treat it as an external link. For instance, here is this page before you edited it - Omegatron 13:20, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

Unicode

I made a template to help get Unicode displaying right on some of the more deficient browsers (e.g. IE6). This is most useful for pages using the International Phonetic Alphabet, but there's probably other applications as well. Here's an example of the usage: The template {{Unicode}} has been deprecated since 11 May 2016, and is retained only for old revisions. If this page is a current revision, please remove the template. (of course, if you're not using a deficient browser, you won't notice any improvement from the normal behavior...).

I wonder if this is worth adding to the edit instructions? It's definitely helpful for some browsers, and it's not hard to learn. I implemented it using font tags, since we can't use spans, but the nice thing about the template is that if there's a better way it can always be changed.

~~Ah crap, I totally forgot about the 5 template limit per page. I guess there's no great way around that. Too bad; any suggestions. -Chinasaur 06:38, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)~~

I guess this will probably start working soon as betatesting has started on dropping the template restriction (see Meta). --Chinasaur 07:14, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

--Chinasaur 06:30, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)