Talk:Wiki/Archive 3

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Relicense GFDL material while we have a chance?

Are we going to relicense GFDL-licensed pages such as Free The Postcode UK Coverage, WikiProject Germany/Landkreise and WikiProject United Kingdom Long Distance Paths to Creative Commons during the relicensing window? --Wynndale 15:59, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

No big deal really. Those pages are just stuff copied from wikipedia. The most helpful thing to do would probably be to copying the pages again from wikipedia some time, to update them. They pages should clearly indicate that they are based on wikipedia, and therefore licensed under whatever content license wikipedia is requiring. -- Harry Wood 10:44, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Russian spammer

Do we want to enable the SpamBlacklist extension or block IP addresses? - User:Wynndale 13:10, 11 July 2009

Is there a problem? We can block by IP address without installing anything -- Harry Wood 14:53, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

pt and pt-BR namespaces

I have noticed that there are no posibility to search in portuguese pages on the wiki. There have been translated a lot of pages from Map Features into pt-BR, and a few of them have redirects from pt namespace. Since there are no map feature translated to pt, I suggest that pt namespace could be made as an alias to pt-BR namespace, and these two to be allowed on the search page as a pt search. There are a general movement in the Brazilian comunity to get important parts of the wiki translated as an incentive to reqruite more Brazilian mappers, allowing a Portuguese search will be helpful in this process. It is also worth noting that many of the subpages of WikiProject Brazil are only written in Portuguese. --Skippern 12:40, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Some related discussion about this here: Talk:Searching the wiki
'"pt namespace could be made as an alias to pt-BR namespace". At the moment neither of them are namespaces. They're just page titles with colons in them. I think maybe the best thing would be if we got rid of all pages with pt-BR: prefixes, merging them until we only have PT: prefixs. Clearly that'll involve coming to some transatlantic agreements on wording things though (just as the wikipedia PT community do I believe)
The PT: prefix could be made into a proper searchable namespace either before or after that happens. I think User:Firefishy is doing this on the basis of number of wiki pages already present with prefix, so more likely to happen if progress is made with a merge
-- Harry Wood 15:45, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Once there are a reasonable number of pages to justify the namespace, send me a request to make the namespace. Creating the namespace requires the wiki to go readonly and could involve minor template + search breakage. -- Firefishy 13:30, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
In my opinion, pt and pt-BR are the same language (with minor orthographic or grammatical differences or more allowances in Brazilian) and do not require separate pages (it is perfectly possible to create versions of pages that can be read and accepted by native Portugueses and Brazilians, just like in Portuguese editions of Wikipedia, or Wiktionary).
The ony justified need for "Brazilian" pages is for the projects related to the mapping of Brazil itself (independantly of the language used for other translations). And even those pages should be translatable to other languages than Portuguese.
Just like in Wikimedia Commons, all page names should be in English (the only difference being the language code prefix used in this wiki, instead of subpage names, a solution that is superior, in my opinion, to language prefixes, when working in the same namespace).
However, it is justified to create a "PT:" namespace (or preferably "pt:" using lowercase) for allowing searches of pages written in Portuguese.
For searching pages related to the mapping of Brazil, or of Portugal, the ideal solution is not the namespaces, but a coherent set of categories and a good starting wikiproject page (which should be translatable).
— Verdy_p (talk) 03:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

That's an old discussion, but the idea of unifying the PT and pt-BR namespaces has come up again in discussion here: discussão sobre a unificação no prefixo Pt. -- Harry Wood (talk) 04:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

New Skin

Any chance of someone popping the new Vector skin on the Wiki which is developed by the Wikipedia Usability Initiative. Read the skins bit. It's really, really nice(I think!) & looks good. We're currently working on implementing it as default over at Wikinews. Just when someone gets a chance. Cheers! Tristan Thomas 22:33, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, will install once MW 1.16 goes stable. -- Firefishy 14:49, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

SineBot

Would there be interest in getting SineBot over here? Tristan Thomas 22:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Could be good, although the wiki server struggles a bit sometimes so it would have to be only running during quiet periods. -- Harry Wood 18:59, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Would love to have SignBot run against the OSM wiki. -- Firefishy 13:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Direct image URL whitelist

A long time ago we enabled direct image URLs for mapnik tiles. At the time MediaWiki only allowed a single domain to be whitelisted for this, but things have moved on a little now. wgAllowExternalImagesFrom can now be an array, or even better, the image URL whitelist can be wiki maintainable (but restricted to admins normally) by setting [1] to true. I'd recommend doing this.

There are some minor disadvantages/considerations when allowing external image URLs. See this manual page ...largely written by me actually :-) These are reasons for not allowing any direct image URL. But there's little harm in being quite liberal with a whitelist. The specific use which made me think of this again is discussed here: Talk:Addis Ababa/Yahoo, but there's all sorts of image trickery which would be easier with direct URLs. e.g. We could allow people to point the wiki directly at OJW's http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~ojw/StaticMap/ service.

-- Harry Wood 19:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

PL: namespace

Hi! Can you add PL: namespace for Polish language pages? I want to fill documentation in Polish but I don't want to move them after new namespace. Yarl 15:14, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

There's a handful of Polish pages already (pages with Pl: prefix) I think grant is setting up new language namespaces if there's a large number of pages already translated. Not sure if this qualifies. -- Harry Wood 23:01, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Add user group that does not need to enter captchas

When you edit Wiki pages frequently, it gets very annoying that you have to enter a captcha every time you add an external link. This is especially the case when you update pages about external OSM projects, which obviously contain several external links. Also, when you use a template (such as Template:Relation) that links to external tools, a captcha is asked. Sometimes it even happens to me that I close a page after pressing the Save button and the content is lost because I missed the Captcha.

A user group could be added to the Wiki whose users don’t have to enter captchas. Users could be added to this group either automatically (for example when they have made more than 50 edits and the first edit is more than two months ago) or manually on request. --Candid Dauth 18:33, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed this is very annoying (well I added >160 Software tools pages ;)) but a mechanism might result in Spam. What about creating this group and everybody has to ask the admins to get this flag? --!i! This user is member of the wiki team of OSM 09:10, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Or, at least, the captcha could be configured so that it is not required for known OSM tools (like those referenced in Template:Relation). --Mormegil 16:58, 4 May 2011 (BST)
Yeah we have that already: MediaWiki:Captcha-addurl-whitelist I just added the known OSM tools referenced in Template:Relation. See any other's we're missing? -- Harry Wood 17:43, 4 May 2011 (BST)
Yep, localhost (for JOSM RemoteControl), even though it would be funny to spam with localhost, captcha is still required for that one. --Mormegil 14:37, 6 May 2011 (BST)
OK added 'localhost'. Again I'm not sure if that works. -- Harry Wood 15:44, 6 May 2011 (BST)
I support the original idea of creating a group of users exempt from captcha solving, with users being added to that group automatically after a small number of edits (20 edits would be enough imo). I don't expect more spam because of that - blatant linkspammers, as many of those blocked previously, seem to be caught quickly anyway.
The whitelist is nice for a few very well-known sites, especially those used in common templates, but I'm still finding myself solving captchas all the time. Links to websites, programs, papers, news articles etc. tend to be pretty unique and make up a large share of the links that are being added manually, i.e. not as part of templates. --Tordanik 15:31, 31 July 2012 (BST)
Whitelisting of domains is a start at least, but I think there are some entries seem to be missing such as geofabrik.de (OSM inspector, download of OSM extracts). May I just add it myself (I have not touched any template before)? G0ldfish 11:28, 2 August 2012 (BST) (only 4 reloads to get a fairly readable one this time)
I've asked that question before, see #External URL Whitelist. That being said, whitelisting is not a sufficient replacement for what is being suggested here. The last 5 domains I linked to were br.de, x-plane.com, heise.de, h-online.com and futurezone.at, none of which are good candidates for whitelisting. --Tordanik 16:30, 2 August 2012 (BST)
$wgCaptchaTriggers['addurl'] = false; is now set. Hopefully spam does not become a problem. -- Firefishy 12:17, 16 August 2012 (BST)
Any progress on the original idea? I am getting older and do have a hard time reading these annoying captchas texts :-( -- Dirk 2014-03-17
We have several threads all over the wiki about those annoying captchas (which are bad for many(!) reasons). User group - I found a extension which would help: Talk:WikiProject_Cleanup#Captchas_are_annoying_-_please_switch_off. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 12:53, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Magic prefix for c2.com links

Links to certain external sites can be created using the syntax for internal links with magic prefixes. One popular example is wikipedia:, and I guess we all agree that this one is useful. However, there is also the wiki: prefix for creating links to the obscure site c2.com of the Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc. consultancy (specifically, the links point to their "ContentCreationWiki") that has no obvious connection to OSM. Is there a reason why that site gets special treatment? --Tordanik 08:59, 3 September 2012 (BST)

WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki in history and that's been MediaWiki's interwiki map default since the beginning of time, that's it. --Nemo 09:03, 3 September 2012 (BST)
Interesting, I've never heard of it for some reason. I just wondered because I've not seen these particular interwiki links used much except by accident. If people want to keep that interwiki prefix for historical reasons, that's fine I guess. --Tordanik 09:20, 3 September 2012 (BST)

Missing lines in diffs

I've noticed that there are often blank lines in diffs where there should be text. This seems to be particularly prevalent with (or even limited to?) templates that have one parameter per line, e.g. [2] and [3]. The yellow and green lines should contain the old and new text in that line, respectively, but appear blank. Can others confirm this? --Tordanik 15:36, 2 October 2012 (BST)

Yes I spotted that recently in this edit. As shown, I changed description on the page, but I also changed the version number within the template fields. -- Harry Wood 15:43, 2 October 2012 (BST)
Should be fixed. -- Firefishy (talk) 12:05, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately not fixed: [4] --Tordanik 17:54, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Fighting spam tips

Hi, over at the navit wiki we had to restrict edits/signups to manual confirmation, as a lot of hand made spam was entered. Can anybody give us tipps, how we can keep the wiki open, while avoiding spam attacks? How we does it here at OSM?
What we already tried is:

  • making links no_follow
  • captchas from different providers

Would be nice to hear your suggestions :) --!i! This user is member of the wiki team of OSM 10:36, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

This wiki has sufficient editing activity, and sufficient number of users watching changes happening, that spam gets squashed quite quickly when it arrives. There is actually a background level of spam occurring on this wiki. (see the block log) , so it's not like we actually have a killer solution, other than having lots of active users. Lots of users means that A) spam gets noticed and removed quickly and B) wiki edits related to spam and spam cleanup will disappear off the radar quickly without irritating people too much.
On a less busy wiki it's harder. I was helping out the guys running http://www.openrelief.org/developer wiki which has very little editing activity. I found the only way to kill off spam to a reasonable level was to put a captcha on all edits (not just those containing a link). Even then some spammers will come along and fill in the captcha every few weeks. Very irritating. I guess on a medium-active wiki you might try to put the captcha just on edits containing links, but spammers will come along and add content even if it doesn't contain links, just because they're annoying like that.
I think an important thing to realise with spam fighting is that you need to clean up spam quickly and completely. If you leave spam lingering on your site, then google indexes it, and this encourages more spammers to come along. If you have a wiki riddled with spam, you need to use Extension:Nuke to get rid of it all, then after that, whatever solution you go for, you need to keep an eye on it, and aim to revert spam within a few hours when it comes.
No silver bullet solution sadly
-- Harry Wood 12:29, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Interesting experiences, thanks for your answer Harry! Will do our best :) --!i! This user is member of the wiki team of OSM 21:27, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
OSM wiki uses...
$wgSpamRegex = "/bunch of words I cannot save on the wiki here/i";
$wgDnsBlacklistUrls = array( 'http.dnsbl.sorbs.net.', 'opm.tornevall.org.' );
require_once( $IP.'/extensions/ConfirmEdit/ReCaptcha.php' );
$wgCaptchaClass = 'ReCaptcha';
require_once( $IP.'/extensions/TorBlock/TorBlock.php');

-- Firefishy (talk) 12:04, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Countdown clock template

D'you think this coundown clock template would work if we copied it here to use on the State Of The Map 2013 page? I'll give it a try some time, unless someone beats me to it. -- Harry Wood (talk) 15:20, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect license information for wiki

The text "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license" wiki's footer links to OpenStreetMap License, which is wrong. Same for the redirect in OpenStreetMap:Copyrights, which is shown to the user when editing a page. --Tordanik 11:44, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh yeah. Of course OpenStreetMap License page used to mention the wiki content ([5]), but the page got removed as duplicate of the website page, which I guess is fair enough.
So now the link in the footer needs fixing. I don't think we can do this through edits to mediawiki message pages. Maybe a server admin needs to look at what we have set for $wgRightsUrl and change it to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
-- Harry Wood (talk) 17:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. Any server admin reading this? --Tordanik 16:30, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

This issue was fixed at some point. The CC icon in the footer now links http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

We also now have a Wiki content license page which gives some more details (e.g. about image licenses). That is linked to when you're editing (under the edit box)

-- Harry Wood (talk) 12:41, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

VisualEditor

Wikimedia Commons has just rolled out the new, easy to use editor to EN pages of Wikipedia. This new editor (know as Visualeditor) is really simple to use [1] and will lower the entry to editing the wiki.

Following wikipedia's lead we should prepare to roll this out on our wiki (Wikipedia intends to complete their roll out within 1 month!). It installs as an extension [2] however currently requires a more up to date version of Mediawiki.

I have also created a Trac ticket [3]

1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:VisualEditor/User_guide
2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor
3] https://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/4920
--RobJN (talk) 17:33, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The logo in this project's user box, {{UserWikiTeam}}, is a Wikipedia-style Serif "W", which, I understand, is a Wikimedia Foundation trademark. It should probably be changed to something more neutral or OSM related. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:39, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

No response, so I've removed it. I suggest replacing it with the "magnifying glass" OSM wiki icon. Anyone know the file name? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:39, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
The logo with the word Wiki on it seems not to be in the File: namespace, certainly there is no osm_logo_wiki.png (using the name from the HTML) or osm_logo_wiki.svg, the plain logo is at File:Public-images-osm_logo.svg. --Andrew (talk) 12:28, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Double redirects

I'm just fixing these, do let me know if there are any problems, or indeed any similar tasks that would be useful to the OSM wiki. Rich Farmbrough (talk)

Thank you, Rich, and welcome to the OSM wiki! Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 07:53, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
A lot of wiki tasks can lead you down rabbit holes of increasing complexity/controversy, but yes, fixing double-redirects is a nice easy one. I tried list some similar nice easy tasks here: WikiProject Cleanup#Ongoing simple cleanup tasks. You're very welcome to get stuck in! -- Harry Wood (talk) 14:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

On a more general note, does this wiki allow bots freely, or is there an approval process? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:32, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Increase standard thumbnail size from 180 to 220 px

default / your user setting
set to 180 px (current default)
set to 220 px (proposed default)

Currently our standard thumbnail size is only 180 px (width) which is very small for today's screen resolutions. I frequently see thumbnails manually increased in size by our wiki page authors. Sadly, this usually is done by specifying a width in "px" which leads to ignoring of per-user settings and to ignoring of future default thumbnail size changes.

Logged-in users can set their custom size (if they are aware of this setting), but others get the default. For example, Wikipedia has a default of 220 px. I suggest to increase to 220 px. This would be a moderate increase by 22 % (leads to circa 50 % more image area) compared to our current setting. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 14:18, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Should the default width depend on the proportions of the picture? A fixed width makes portrait images much bigger than landscape ones.--Andrew (talk) 10:32, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
example (1) "portrait" image with "upright" (and default / your user setting of the width)
Thanks for your comment, Andrew. You are right, basically. And this is the way it is currently (because Media is made that way). However, that's only the half truth. In fact there is a very simple solution to this: portrait images (I guess you mean ones which are higher than wide) should get the parameter "upright" in addition to "thumb". That is: |thumb|upright. That way they are automatically made smaller. See my example (1) image on the right side. If it really is needed the parameter upright can be specified so it takes the user setting (or the Wiki's default) as basis and multiplies this according to the parameter. This is in most cases much more flexible, user friendly and work-saving than specifying fixed pixel widths/heights. For more info see for example Wikipedia's Manual or Wikipedia's picture tutorial. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 21:47, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I approve this proposal I approve this proposal. I agree the thumbnails are too small and following wikipedia's default size sounds good to me. --Cantho (talk) 14:54, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
  • note the standard seems to have been changed to 300 px in the meantime (if I checked correctly). --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 22:08, 20 February 2016 (UTC)


Add link for Ukranian locale

Can anyone of admins also add some Ukranian translations below? 

   MediaWiki:Mainpage-url/uk (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Uk:Main_Page?uselang=uk)
   MediaWiki:Mapfeatures-url/uk (Uk:Map Features)
   MediaWiki:The map/uk (Мапа)
   MediaWiki:Map Features/uk (Об’єкти мапи)
   MediaWiki:Shop/uk (Магазин)
   MediaWiki:Donations/uk (Допомога проекту)
   MediaWiki:Portal/uk (Проекти)

Now we have link to the Russian userlang :( --Andygol (talk) 19:17, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

As far as I know, all locales have the same translation, but I also would love to have these menu itens translated. I tried to contact a wiki admin by email a few weeks ago, with no success. I hope this message reaches the admins --Jgpacker (talk) 19:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the translations guys. I've just put them in place for you. How does that look? -- Harry Wood (talk) 12:26, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Harry. It looks good!--Andygol (talk) 15:57, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Cool! I also would like an update to the brazilian portuguese locale :-). See below (not sure if I wrote the code correctly though). --Jgpacker (talk) 13:22, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
   MediaWiki:Mainpage-url/pt-br (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Pt-br:Main_Page)
   MediaWiki:The map/pt-br (O mapa)
   MediaWiki:The map-url/pt-br (http://www.openstreetmap.org/?locale=pt-BR#map=4/-15.19/-51.31) 
   MediaWiki:Map Features/pt-br (Características do mapa)  
   MediaWiki:Mapfeatures-url/pt-br (Pt-br:Map Features) 
   MediaWiki:Contributors/pt-br (Contribuidores)
   MediaWiki:Help-url/pt-br (Pt-br:Help:Contents)
   MediaWiki:Shop/pt-br (Loja)
   MediaWiki:Shop-url/pt-br (Pt-br:Merchandise)
   MediaWiki:Donations/pt-br (Doações)

OK done those these pt-br ones too. Obrigado! -- Harry Wood (talk) 14:46, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! It seems the links for The map, Shop and Map Features did not change. Could you take a look at that?
One other thing: Could you add a line-break in Características do mapa after the word do? It's a bit too big right now. It's in MediaWiki:Mapfeatures/pt-br. --Jgpacker (talk) 16:25, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
The page titles you're listing are not quite right. It's de-referenced several levels in a confusing way for some reason. Starting from Mediawiki:Sidebar, you can see that MediaWiki:Map is the correct page which sets the message, not "MediaWiki:The map". Likewise some of the other links given above are not quite right. Hopefully I've put the translations all in place correctly though (?) -- Harry Wood (talk) 01:46, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I had no idea how to get the correct page names. The titles I said above are the ones that are shown in the english locale. The code I put above was based on Andygol's code (that's why I said I wasn't sure if it was correct).
Looking at MediaWiki:Sidebar, I can see that the URLs I want to set are MediaWiki:shop-url/pt-br to Pt-br:Merchandise, MediaWiki:map-url/pt-br to http://www.openstreetmap.org/?locale=pt-BR#map=4/-15.19/-51.31 and MediaWiki:mapfeatures-url/pt-br to Pt-br:Map Features
When I was in another computer the phrase "Características do mapa" had an automatic line-break (in a monitor with a lower resolution), so perhaps it isn't needed to add a manual one.
Thanks for your help!
--Jgpacker (talk) 10:36, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Account clean-up

Hi,

I'm using a new account (pmailkeey_still) as I can't access my normal one (pmailkeey). I tried logging in on that one even going through password reset and got a message stating no e-address logged with the account! Anyone here sort this out for me ?

Hmm, your old user account never did add anything to this wiki. Is this right? Did you spell it differently maybe? Note that the wiki account is completely separated from your www.openstreetmap.org account.
And regarding email address: maybe you really did not specify one? I guess admins cannot do anything for you as you cannot prove that you are the right account owner.
And you (new account) can "add stuff" at your old user page because everybody can edit everybody's user page. You also could edit mine. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 02:56, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Add support for OverpassQL in Wiki_Help#Include_source_code

We need syntax highlighter for our main API language. Xxzme (talk) 17:36, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, then somebody needs to program this ;-) Try another "lang" parameter. Some may look okay. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 18:01, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
I have added a sentence at Wiki help. … Developing a dedicated syntax highlighter is not really needed! --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Wiki admin

How does one become an admin on this wiki? I'd like to do help out with routine cleanup, etc.

You don't need to be an admin to help with cleanup, just start editing! To get started, read up on Wiki Help and Wiki guidelines. Lightsider 11:18, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Supporters probably outdated or incomplete

This page linked at http://www.openstreetmap.org/about but it almost empty/silent about companies who help OSM. We should be more verbose and give credit to supporters.

  1. We need to mention: ~15 companies who host tile servers (see Servers).
  2. Probably many other companies who help OSM by providing ready-to-use services (recent example will be routing results provided by multiple vendors at osm.org frontpage). Xxzme (talk) 04:54, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Editing policy

The intro at the top of this page says If you have ideas for the wiki, you can generally just do them, by editing the wiki! ...we would encourage you to be bold.

My experience is that does not reflect current practice; I've had edits reverted by others, despite their being no objection in in preceding discussion (and by editors who were in the minority when they subsequently raised one), and by an admin 'who immediately protected the page to prevent anyone else from editing it.

More generally. there seems to be a very conservative ethos, resistant to any change, especially with regard to the functionality or style of the wiki (rather than to content discussing mapping standards, which is a separate issue).

How can we return to the situation described in the intro? If we cannot, should we not have a more honest statement of policy?

-- User:Pigsonthewing 18:01, 30 April 2015

I partially agree. I'm not sure how to word it, but I would say the policy in practice is "be bold, except on well-established pages, significant change of tag definitions and templates in widespread use; these cases should be handled more carefully because there aren't many people available to review". Personally I'm a bit resistant against change in functionality or style of the wiki, because I believe it should be reasonably simple, since it's far from being the focus of OSM. --Jgpacker (talk) 20:44, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
It's true that the simple statement doesn't really represent reality with all its nuances. In the past, I assumed that people would naturally know that "being bold" has its limits, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. In addition to what you said, I would like to add that actions which are hard to undo (especially deletions, but also e.g. moving a page and changing dozens of links leading to it) really should be discussed beforehand except in the most obvious circumstances. The Delete template already contains a similar statement, by the way. --Tordanik 17:09, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
Exactly. Too bad there persons who mess up wiki by "reverting" edits without beforehand discussion. Including text in wiki that that contradicts Main Page and http://www.openstreetmap.org/about.
I not surprised why some communities decided to created theirs own learning materials outside wiki and not to deal with issues like this. Xxzme (talk) 05:26, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Reverts are a natural occurrence in a wiki. Wikipedia calls this the "BOLD, revert, discuss cycle". Basically, it describes a common practice where users can freely make changes ("be bold"), but if the edit is seen as a bad idea by another user, it can also easily be reverted. The differences then need to be resolved in a discussion
What is problematic, though, is reverting a revert. That simply constitutes an edit war and imo justifies admin intervention. --Tordanik 12:42, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Even Wikipedians state that this optional method ("optional method of reaching consensus. It can sometimes be useful for identifying objections"). They also refer to Revert only when necessary at this page.
I was placing cross-link and you revert my edits as "incorrect spelling"? How this valid reason to revert all of my edits? Why your revert with invalid reason cannot be reverted? Correct spelling instead of reverting everything if I missed notice from the spell-checker. I don't edit wiki just to see my edits reverted due to some imperfection. Xxzme (talk) 13:51, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Of course there are other methods of reaching consensus. One example would be starting a discussion before making far-reaching changes, as I said before. Perhaps you can consider using that method in the future? And no, an "invalid reason" (aka a reason you don't agree with) does not justify starting an edit war. If you don't agree with the reason given for a revert, then please offer counter-arguments in a discussion on the talk page.
As for that spelling revert you bring up repeatedly, I did not revert all your edits, as you claim, but put the extra effort in to only edit the problematic changes. --Tordanik 16:29, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
Problem is you ignore talk pages anyway [6] - I changed "map">"geo data" and placed explanation at talk page [7] but you removed my work [8] without prior discussion (as you insist) winch I stared already Talk:What_is_OpenStreetMap?#.22free.2C_editable_map.22_vs_.22free_geographic_data.22_at_this_page.3F. Xxzme (talk) 16:40, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Beginers' guide vs Beginners' guide?

Personally I don't see why we should repeat almost same job twice. After it was done at wiki. By introducing multiple "beginner guides" we increase out work to: maintain guide, translate in 20(?) languages + maintain 20 translations.

I have nothing against LearnOSM but IMO we confuse wiki readers when refer to 2 different guides. Wiki is more complete than LearnOSM. At wiki reader can get more cross-links and useful categories (even for Category:JOSM).

Personally I see solution in main beginner guide at wiki (simplified, but with references to big topics like "JOSM" and "GPS") and additional guide from groups: We are cyclists, here is Beginners' guide and here is Guide:How to map features for cyclists

My personal opinion about learnosm materials even they are good and well designed, they lack cross-links from wiki. Wiki depth evident: simple link Contributors will lead to 60K page and more importantly, well maintained page!

And no, I don't expect to hear "our territories are different" "our infrastructure is different", "our workflows are different", "our interest are different". Yes they are.

  1. we can use http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Transclusion
  2. we can write
List of features common in savannah (empty list? two links to Buildings and Key:natural?)
List of features relevant in crisis situation X
List of features relevant in crisis situation Y and show these links after reader finishes Beginners' guide.

There 52 references to "learnosm" keyword, most of them refer to "good resource to learn about OSM". What should we do? Isn't wiki enough? If not then why?

Just numbers:

Xxzme (talk) 07:03, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Delete DE:Bicycle_use_sidepath

Dear Teamers, please delete the page DE:Bicycle_use_sidepath. It had a redirection from Proposed_features/use_sidepath to bicycle=use_sidepath (de). But that tag description page is not a translation of the proposal. The redirect target is the German version of bicycle=use_sidepath (en) and accessible from there. Hb (talk) 10:36, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Add visible links for the "wiki" page (aka this exact page)

Hi,

I've been searching around the last couple of days on how to find information about this wiki and how to contact the wiki community. Problem is: All the "About" or "Help" pages you find on the right sidebar / the Main Page are related only to mapping. I finally found this page by searching for "wiki" (I know, could've done this earlier). Nevertheless, I think it might be a good idea to include a link to this page either in the right sidebar and/or the Main page to give a good starting point for people who want to contribute not only to maps, but also to this wiki.

cheerio, Charel (talk) 09:01, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

The link is displayed as "Documentation" directly from the top bar of the site. May be you'd like "Wiki" but this site is a documentation site.
Not all wikis have "wiki" in their sitename. — Verdy_p (talk) 11:40, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for answering, but I'm sorry I can't find it. You sure mean the top bar where the "Talk" "Preferences" "Watchlist" "Contributions" etc. are? I don't have it there. Neither do I find it on the main page nor any other.
I don't care if the link is named "documentation", "help", "readme" or whatever, I just want to be able to see it right away. Charel (talk) 15:46, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
The link from the top page (or hamburger menu on some devices) is called “help” on English language computers, with an onwards link to this site.--Andrew (talk) 15:52, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Oh, you mean that tiny link in the "available languages" box that links to Wiki_Translation? You're right, I didn't see that.
I just think that this may not be the place where you go looking for general Information about how to edit the wiki (considering the plentiness of help / about / how to contribute pages and considering that most wikis have some information on how to contribute to the wiki itself on their sidebar / main page), but that may be only me.
btw, thanks Andrew for the clarifications. Cheers, Charel (talk) 18:13, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
I guess the "help" link in the top bar menu of https://www.openstreetmap.org/ is meant by Verdy p. Charel, do you mean the "right sidebar" here on wiki pages? I only have one on the left?! --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 19:53, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Ouch, touché! Of course I mean the left sidebar :)
As far as I can see, the link at https://www.openstreetmap.org/ leads to https://www.openstreetmap.org/help. But anyway, I just wanted to point out that as a wikipedia-used OSM newbie it has been difficult for me to find the Wiki page, and that I think it would be sensible if everybody who wants to contribute to the OSM wiki would read these few pages. If now I'm the only one who had problems finding it, then -hooray- I have found it now, problem solved :) Charel (talk) 21:35, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Okay, fine, at least we see the same sidebars. ;-) Yes, and https://www.openstreetmap.org/help lists the wiki ... which is, as far as I understand, not the thing you are looking for. I understand the problem and agree. Will think about it the next days. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 05:23, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Right, I see now how I wasn't exactly clear. Yes, I meant links from the wiki's Main Page/sidebar to this exact wiki page (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Wiki). Thanks Aseerel4c26! Charel (talk) 08:21, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Bug: "type the two words you see in the box below" but no box

A user is breaking character encoding when editing, so I want to let them know. I wrote a message on their talk page, but I can't save.

I am told "To protect the wiki against automated page creation, we kindly ask you to type the two words you see in the box below".

PROBLEM: There is no box. See screenshot. This bug is not new, it has already been talked about here.

Note: My account has existed for a long time but I only confirmed an email address today in order to create that talk page.

Nicolas Raoul (talk) 07:24, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. That's strange. You're not seeing the captcha properly. You should be seeing an old-style google reCaptcha
It look like you're looking at a mobile version of the site? What kind of device are you using? Can you try going to your preferences of wiki appearance. Normally that should be set to "Vector". Is it set that for you? Maybe you could experiment with the older "MonoBook" and see if that gets it show the captcha.
-- Harry Wood (talk) 10:49, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
Do you use third-party content blocking? Disabled JavaScript (NoScript)? Disabled cookies (not sure if this could interfere here)? Which browser do you use? --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 20:22, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
Not mobile, just Firefox 45 on Ubuntu 2016.04 with JavaScript enabled (only Adblock installed) and Vector setting. Nicolas Raoul (talk) 03:29, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
It could be possible that you have a privacy-centered blocklist loaded in adblock, which blocks stuff from google. If it still happens for you, try without adblock. It might also be worth to inspect the HTML source (right click on the area where the captcha should be and then the "inspect entry (Q)"). The wiki refuses to register a new test account for me - with a junk mail address... so, sorry, I cannot try it. I saw a captcha on the registration page. Do you see one there (on bottom)? (log out first, of course) --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 18:32, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
My Adblock has the out-of-the-box setting of only EasyList. Yes, I can see the captcha on the "Create account" page. The missing captcha is the new page creation step. Thanks for trying to reproduce it! Nicolas Raoul (talk) 00:55, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
Hi, I encountered this problem too. Strangely, after clicking "Save page" 2-5 times in a row, the captcha always finished by showing up on top of the page. It also somtimes showed up below the editing window, but didn't work in that case. I'm also using Firefox (64bit with AdBlock,on Windows 7) Charel (talk) 08:40, 20 April 2016 (UTC)


-one solution. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Preferences I restored all default settings (in all sections), then the box came up. - Ching_mtn

Anything new here? I'm facing the exact same issue. User:Anttit 12:43, 16 July 2016 UTC
Seems a few people were hitting this, perhaps related to a slow connection failing to load the javascript in the expected order or something, but anyway...
We've just updated to the new type of ReCaptcha on here. Hopefully that will solve this issue (and hopefully it will be prompting people to help google maps read addresses less often!)
Let us know if you're still not seeing the ReCaptcha
-- Harry Wood (talk) 16:29, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Profiling Map Features

Would it be possible to profile the Map Features page in several languages where it is slow to respond, including Japanese, Russian and Ukrainian where it doesn’t render completely?--Andrew (talk) 11:09, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

It's not a reason of performance but simply of volume of this page that has accumulated too many things, by transcluding multiple levels of complex templates.
The generated page is also very huge.
There's only a solution: split its content into more relevant pages. A single page to host all features is not sustainable. We need a better navigtion system than this old unstructured page, that was designed in a time where there were still not a lot of things documented.
The issue is not specific to some languages but general for all languages (including English). We've hit the Mediawiki limits for a single page (see the statistics in the HTML comments at end of the generated "content" div) — Verdy_p (talk) 15:43, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Wiki bugs: map display, OpenLayers.Control.Button error, ResourceLoader deprecations

Hi, something on the wiki suggested I report issues in git, so I did at https://github.com/openstreetmap/mediawiki-skins-osmf/issues/ , but Tom Hughes closed the issues saying they're not with the skin. So here they are. This is all visiting South Bay (SF), California in chromium and Firefox Nightly (49.0a1 (2016-05-30)) running on my Kubuntu desktop.

If they are all bugs in the SlippyMaps extension, I guess they can be filed in the Phabricator extension-SlippyMaps project.

Cheers,
-- Skierpage (talk) 00:19, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Bug: map appears below map div at normal desktop window sizes

No map appears "above the fold" in the space for the map (<div id="map" class="olMap">) unless I resize my browser really wide. Instead the map displays partway through the first paragraph, obscuring several paragraphs and headings.

This page specifies <slippymap h=480 w=720 z=11 lat=37.35 lon=-121.98 layer=cycle></slippymap> and in most portrait windows there isn't room for a 720-pixel wide map alongside the place table. You could move the {{Place}} template invocation below this to avoid the problem, or insert a <div style="clear:both;"></div> between them, or rethink the CSS of Slippymap and the {{Place}} template.

Bug: JavaScript error

If I turn on my browser's JavaScript console, I see 

 TypeError: OpenLayers.Control.Button is not a constructor
  slippymap_init()      South_Bay_(SF),_California:87:1096 [in the page HTML]
  <anonymous>

Mr. Hughes comments this is probably a bug in the SlippyMap extension.

The slippymap extension is full of bugs, including with very bad HTML/CSS layout. In addition it can only be used only ONCE per page. Trying to display two maps on the page will incorrectly place the children elements or will cause the interaction with one map to affect another map due to collision (no unicity of the generated "id" attributes per slippymap instance).
This local gadget on this wiki is in fact unmaintained since long and nobody seems to be working on it (and it is not part of the standard MediaWiki distribuion, not used by Wikimedia on its sites that uses other extensions and is developing new ones for integrating maps in Wikipedia: for now there's a couple of extensions used to render maps in a popup that you open by clicking on a "map" icon at top of page at end of the title bar.).
Probably it will be replaced later using a new installed gadget or extension. But for now, if you need several maps, use separate wiki pages.
Additionally the slippymap also uses deprecated features of MediaWiki and unsupported internal features that no longer exist. And yes the use of the OpenLayers framework is also non-conforming (as it also uses internal variables in a non-clean way not matching the documentation). slippymaps on this wiki have very limited usage, just to show a basic locator map for the country, region or city which is the main topic of the page. In most cases one one map may be useful; for the rest, create directly a link to the OSM site to render maps in a separate page: you can use templates like {{Node}}, {{Way}}, {{Relation}} to create such links to the OSM map or to a few other tools with specific renderings. — Verdy_p (talk) 15:57, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

ResourceLoader warnings

I also see in the console the warnings 

 Use of "addOnloadHook" is deprecated. Use jQuery instead.
 Use of "wgNamespaceNumber" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead.
 Use of "addOnloadHook" is deprecated. Use jQuery instead.

Probably some extension is calling these. The ResourceLoader Migration guide has advice on updating to avoid these deprecation warnings. In some future MediaWiki release they will all become errors.

This has been signaled already, and simple to solve:
  • addOnloadHook(function) must be replaced by $(document).load(function) (this will effectively use the resource loader in a predictable load order to avoid collisions of scripts, or bad effects produces by browser and proxy caches where the order of loading defpendant scripts is unpredictable: a dependant script may not be loaded when another script needing it will start referencing a feature)
  • wgNamespaceNumber must be replaced by mw.config.get('wgNamespaceNumber') (this nas no relation to the resource loader but to a more modern use of the global variables (keeping only "mw" as a global for the builtin MediaWiki environment, it becomes much simpler to isolate only this one to sandbox some behavior, without having to rebuild long lists of variables in the environment; notably using the get() method allows simpler overrides, that will be consistant across extensions or for custom plugins, without causing plugins to have side effects, as all that will be needed is to override the get() method to define a specific behavior; this is needed for the various editoes or for helping the development of betters skins, or better tune the interface for mobiles, or to simplify the work in customized user-specific behavior and preserving a wider compatibility with other skins or between the modile and desktop version of the wiki, by using more selecting remappings, easier to define).
— Verdy_p (talk) 10:13, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Is the searching engine still alive?

Hello all, Since a few days I noticed that I can't find anything using the search engine. No result is provided, whatever I type. Example : "tree_row", "natural=tree_row", nothing works, even to look for pages that I know to exist. I checked all the check-boxes but nothing shows up. Do you guys have the same problem please? Thanks. --Thaïti Bob (talk) 21:55, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

the wiki had technical problems in the last days (not available at all). PLease just wait a few days. I have the same problem, yes. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=tree_row . Typing Tag:natural=tree_row works - sends me to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:natural%3Dtree_row --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 22:14, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
There are other problems such as several javascripts no longer working since the recent (unannounced and untested) upgrade of the MediaWiki version which no longer supports several old MEdiaWiki functions that were deprecated several years ago (such as "onLoadHook".
Those javascript must use now jQuery event handler, and must use the ordered "resource loader" of MediaWiki. Various globals javascript variables are also disappeared, and are isolated in their namespace (no logner replicated at the global scope.
You can see those many errors that this upgrade ahas caused: open your browser's javascript console and look for the various exceptions caused now by undefined objects (all of them were deprecated and their depracation was announced since long and documented in MediaWiki).
Upgrading MediaWiki without performing some minimum compatibily test, and not taking care about deprecations signaled for months or years is the cause of these problems.
Unfortunately this wiki had not any upgrade since very long, and all deprecations were constantly ignored (and the fixes for preventing errors after upgrades could not even be implemented early as this wiki was really very late).
I think this wiki was upgrade only in emergency, possibly for security reasons, but stepping through many several major versions and changes that have been ignored since years, for lack of maintenance or because admins still did not care about why it was important to follow the upgrades and monitor all warnings or errors in the Javascript console of browsers !
This new version of MEdiaWiki also changes several CSS classes that may be expected by existing javascripts. jQuery being itself upgraded too, as well as the look and feel of the UI in the "Vector" layout, and many changes for improving the accessibility of for adding support for the new visual editor, and support for rendering on mobile devices. — Verdy_p (talk) 02:41, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Limiting TOCs

Hi, I putted Template:TOC_limit from mediawiki here to control the depth of TOCs but it doesn't work. Can anybody please take a look if I did something wrong? --!i! This user is member of the wiki team of OSM 08:27, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The template does not do anything interesting, it only marks your wish. The real work is done by the relevant part of MediaWiki:Common.css (search for toclimit there), which would need to be copied here as well. --Mormegil 16:55, 4 May 2011 (BST)
Ah ok, well I dont think it's not that important. You can tweak the formating using bold lines. --!i! This user is member of the wiki team of OSM 07:50, 7 May 2011 (BST)
I am in strong need of this ToC-depth-limiting functionality - I need to add some content to a page which would make the ToC very long, on account of many level 4 headings in the content. Can someone please add it as soon as convenient? --Contrapunctus (talk) 18:39, 4 May 2018 (UTC)
☑Y fixed --Tigerfell This user is member of the wiki team of OSM (Let's talk) 14:25, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Map_Features not available - HTTP Error 500

Hi,
since a couple of days I am frequently facing issues to access the articel Map_Features. The issue occurs for the artikel in EN as well as for DE. Usually the error ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE returns, today I got once HTTP error 500. I tried different devices PC and Android as well as different access points. In very rare cases the page is loaded sucessfully. Am I doing somenthing wrong or are others facing similar issues? --Meinf (talk) 15:56, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Well, the page seems fairly long and full of links. Could that be the cause for the problems? I could view both versions on my computer today but it took some time to load. Maybe the server was under heavy load when you requested the pages? U30303020 (talk) 22:15, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

269 categories for Belgium

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Regions_of_Belgium&namespace=14&limit=500

This number doesn’t include categories such as category:Brussels that don’t use the template.

--Andrew (talk) 18:48, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Error? Seems ok to me. Tigerfell This user is member of the wiki team of OSM (Let's talk) 20:38, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Reworking Delete

I expanded this article. It describes the general setup of the deletion process. My main source was my experience during clean up actions, so you may want to recheck that and assure that I got everything right. Thx. U30303020 (talk) 21:36, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

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