Teflpedia: teachers’ room

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Hello, and welcome to Teflpedia’s teachers’ room.

This is the place for general discussion about the Wiki — questions, chat, moaning about your school, praising your students or anything else that comes to mind.

Newest at bottom

To add a topic to bottom of this page: log in (top right) and then click + above

Upgrade to MediaWiki 1.35.1

I have upgraded Teflpedia to MediaWiki 1.35.1.

Visual Editor is only available in the following namespaces: User, File, Category, and Main (where Teflpedia articles are).

Please comment here if you find any issues with MediaWiki 1.35.1. --Roger (talk) 01:11, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Element bug

Visual Editor is sorta working (Edit <-goes to Visual Edit mode; Edit source <-goes to Wiki Text mode), but with a weird note at bottom of pages that "↵↵➞➞Sorry, this element can only↵↵↵↵↵" and if you hover over that it shows an alt box: [Sorry, this element can only be edited in source mode for now]. Alas, always something. I’ll leave Visual Editor enabled for a while to see if we can figure out what’s up with that. I may turn Visual Editor off after a few days of investigating that, if I can’t figure it out. Problem mitigated by hiding it with CSS. --Roger (talk) 19:36, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Not sure why you’re top-posting here, I thought we bottom-posted.

Quite right. I did it wrong. Bottom-posting is so old fashioned though. Kinda paper based tech. I know bottom posting has been a norm and is the way Add Section works. But this section was here from the last time I upgraded in 2019. So I repurposed it. Isn’t it sweet! I like top posting. But it may cause confusion. hm... yes... --Roger (talk) 07:10, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Thumb

Anyway, thumbnail rendering for newly uploaded images appears to be completely screwed. The full versions seem OK though. Duncan (talk) 05:46, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Good catch! Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have a look. --Roger (talk) 06:18, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Fixed it. Let me know if you find anything else not quite right. Yes, it was something I had done in the upgrade not quite right as rain, in LocalSettings.php I had set $wgGenerateThumbnailOnParse = false; // Roger. https://shorturls.redwerks.org/ said to set this false. on advice of redwerks.org’s Short URL config tool. Perhaps it was misplaced advice. In any case, I have unset that just now. Let me know if anything else is not quite right. Thank you! --Roger (talk) 06:50, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Something’s still not right:

JPG

Family moments

Error creating thumbnail: convert: Insufficient memory (case 4) ’/home/bilbo/public_html/teflpedia/images/b/b9/StockSnap_ERWVLD9KER_family_eating_breakfast.jpg' @ error/jpeg.c/JPEGErrorHandler/338. Error code: 1

Duncan (talk) 02:24, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Fixed. I increased Shell Memory Limit from 300MB to 400MB. Roger (talk) 04:19, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

SVG

SVG boy

Error creating thumbnail: libgomp: Thread creation failed: Resource temporarily unavailable

Oh dear. Duncan (talk) 02:52, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Fixed. I increased Shell Memory Limit from 300MB to 400MB. Roger (talk) 04:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

^ except Media Viewer not working with SVG files. Roger (talk) 04:30, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I’m getting this error on the full-size versions of a large SVG file (:

Duncan (talk) 03:23, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I will look into this SVG error in a few day. I have moved IRL this week and have a few balls still up in the air. So, time machine is in motion. So, a few days. Thanks for the heads up, and for keeping an eye on the wiki! Roger (talk) 22:10, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I tried increasing $wgMaxShellMemory to 700000 (700MB) but SVGs still would not display in Media Viewer. I have set it back to 400000 (400MB) which is closer to the default and probably safer. I don’t know what else to try. Could we perhaps just not use Media Viewer with SVGs? The SVGs are displaying on articles as PNGs correctly, right? That is how MediaWiki handles SVGs, for security reasons because SVGs can pack malicious code. Let me know if I can help with anything. --Roger (talk) 17:07, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Media viewer

Media viewer is not working. I’ll look into it... Roger (talk) 19:05, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Fixed. I increased Shell Memory Limit from 300MB to 400MB. Roger (talk) 04:26, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

^ except Media Viewer not working with SVG files. Roger (talk) 04:30, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Visual Editor hangs on some pages

To cancel Visual Editor without saving your edit, use your browser’s back button or your Esc key (top left key on most keyboards). There seems to be no "cancel" button in Visual Editor. --Roger (talk) 19:32, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Each time I try the visual editor on the conversations question pages it hangs (or at least takes longer to respond then the limit of my patience.) I have no problem with using "edit source" though. (edit) However I do have the browser extension "privacy badger" blocking 17 trackers on those pages. Maybe that’s it. Bob M (talk) 10:35, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Bob M - that’s normal. VisualEditor is slow and buggy. The WMF designed and implemented it top-down and it’s buggy and doesn’t work. Duncan (talk) 12:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

OK. I really have no experience with it.Bob M (talk) 16:26, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Let me know if you have any more trouble with Visual Editor. I worked on some CSS tuning, see #Element bug, above. Roger (talk) 07:35, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

People like you

Hello!

Nearly two thousand people come to Teflpedia, every day. Ships passing in the night? You and me tap into the Teacher’s room -- Welcome ashore! On my userpage you’ll see a little about me. Welcome to create an account and tell us a little on your userpage -- it is free -- open to teachers of English, like you. Welcome! --Roger (talk) 18:15, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

the article on mistake is all about error correction

can someone move it please?

Done. Thank you. Dag Gnome It! Where’s that stick! --Roger (talk) 17:36, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Please → Special:UserLogin

Hello loquacious anonymous user! Welcome to Teflpedia. Come in, come in! If I delete some of your pages, please know it is because I have gone triggger happy while spam hunting and didn’t see you. Sorry! I have been doing it for so long that I just shoot anything that moves that is not wearing a bright orange cap, ie that is not a username that I recognize. Just Special:UserLogin <- create an account and log in. You will then have a userpage on which to introduce yourself, and a user talk page where, well, somewhere! Meanwhile, come in out of that dark hallway, and tell me about yourself. This is the Teachers room, you are safe here -- just click the edit link on this section’s heading, above, and you will be in. How did you find Teflpedia, what is your connection to TEFL and how would you like to help us? (That could go on your userpage, but here till you create one) Have a bagel 🥯. 😀 —-Roger (talk) 21:13, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Reply here...

discrete v discreet

Call yourselves English teachers? You should hang your heads in shame! On the main page as well! It should be discreet on this page, not discrete. It’s almost as bad as all my colleagues who don’t know the difference between practice and practise.

It’s a wiki with low hanging fruit 🍎. Enjoy 😉. Edit. However, please be kind to the wikians. Roger (talk) 16:48, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

When you copy text from elsewhere, please say so in the edit summary

Dear editors,

When you copy content, such as a text snip copied from Wikipedia or elsewhere, to Teflpedia, please say so in the edit summary. Also, please only do it when the copyright license terms of the source permit it.

We are teachers. Please lead the way.

For example, on both Teflpedia and Wikipedia in the left sidebar under "Wiki tools" each article has a “Cite this page" link that is helpful. It contains, among other things, a "Permanent link" to that version of the article. You could use that "permanent link" to the Wikipedia article you copied text from to compose an edit summary attributing that copied text to that source, like this:

Text copied from Wikipedia page, Permanent link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fiction&oldid=891349937

Because Wikipedia is licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA), we must both provide that attribution and share alike, which we do − Teflpedia is also licensed CC BY-SA.

Plagiarism is also a consideration; fair use allows quoting other’s copyrighted material, and scholarly etiquette demands a citation when we do.

Also, please login when editing, via the menu at top right.

Thank you!

Roger (talk) 19:22, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: delete all the crappy articles about blogs that haven’t been updated since 2012

What do you think?

I think we will do well to limit articles about blogs to either (a) none (and let people use search engines to find blogs) or, (b) possibly attempt to limit Teflpedia’s coverage of blogs to only a small set of highly valuable to teachers of English blogs. Teflpedia is not an internet directory. Please put {{delete | write reason for deletion here. ~~~~}} at top of any page you would like deleted. More at Template:delete. --Roger (talk) 16:19, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Database problem

There is a problem in the database; the articles on Twitter and LinkedIn appear to be affected. they are appearing in special:recentchanges but as an empty pagetitle.

Ah, so if I write <nowiki>[[Twitter]]</nowiki> it appears like this: Twitter. Helpful.

The Twitter and LinkedIn articles are appearing normally for me. No database problem I think. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Please sign Teachers’ room messages with ~~~~ so that your username and a date stamp will appear there. Cheers! Roger (talk) 17:54, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

No I think it’s onyl affecting linkedin (LinkedIn) and The website where people tweet (twitter) because there’s some kind of blacklist against these words?

I can edit Teflpedia’s LinkedIn and Twitter articles normally and the edits show up normally in Recent changes. If you are accessing the internet from a country that blocks access to LinkedIn or Twitter, that could explain the problem. If not, please explain further so that I can help. --Roger (talk) 23:41, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I now think it’s something funny with my browser, maybe a plugin. Thanks for taking a look. Duncan (talk) 06:28, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: Delete the debate namespace and all its content.

I note:

• Nobody is debating
• The Wiki format is not particularly suited to debates.
• Better debate formats are available - see for example Twitter, or a bulletin board type format.

It was a nice experiment, but it’s an experiment that hasn’t worked and isn’t working. Duncan (talk) 05:42, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

[trying again, yes, I see your point.] If anyone really want’s to keep the Debate namespace, do speak up here please. Thank you Duncan for this proposal. I like that the Debate namespace is a place I can send people if they overdo discussions elsewhere on the wiki. That’s not happening however, nor have I ever done it so don’t know if I would like what might happen if I did. Hm, there are technical details involved in removing a Namespace from the wiki that I do not want to play with right now. So, instead of removing the Debate content and namespace, I would rather simply remove mention of the Debate namespace from the sticky in the Teachers’ room, and any other high visibility place it is mentioned. We could perhaps use the sticky for something new, instead. Or just remove and not use the sticky for now. And of course, some day the Debate namespace could be dropped from the database and wiki configuration, after some study into how to do that. I don’t think I would miss the Debate namespace, myself. Roger (talk) 04:52, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. Duncan (talk) 05:55, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I've deleted the high visibility links to Debate namespace. As Duncan noted, it is not being used anyway. Anyone who wishes to use it for debating the finer points of TEFL, is welcome to. Thank you Duncan, for noticing what is, and isn’t, happening around here :). --Roger (talk) 23:57, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

I think we need to have a discussion about strategy in general, actually. I think if we get the strategy right, the rest will follow. Duncan (talk) 05:55, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

eZoic ads

Aha! We have been enduring eZoic ads since ~Feb 2019, on all pages everwhere on the site. Ag! I think I have managed to restrict eZoic ads from running on action pages (edit pages, etc), Talk: and Teflpeidia: namespace pages, Special: pages and probably more. I found a setting in eZoic to exclude pages by meta tag. I set it to exclude all pages that have meta tag: "name=robots; content=noindex,nofollow". That should do nicely to exclude ads from wiki work pages. Finally! --Roger (talk) 19:11, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Teflpedia:Main Page rainbow

Main Page color and layout development coming to a page near you... Teflpedia:Main Page rainbow... time permitting. There is a time machine around here somewhere. --Roger (talk) 18:12, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Sidebar organization

I have reorganized the Sidebar. Beer and wine are now separate from spirits! Booo. SCreech. Discuss if yo u d d dare > MediaWiki talk:Sidebar#Sidebar_organization. I hear the wind howling outside already! --Roger (talk) 21:26, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Obsolete conversation questions

I've been glancing at some of our conversation questions lately and it looks like some of them may have passed their sell by date.

These include The euro conversation questions, Global financial crisis conversation questions and possibly European Union conversation questions. Though I’m not sure about the last one.

There was a brief chat about this at Talk:The euro conversation questions.

As I see it we can update, put an obsolete template or delete them. In the first two cases updating would be difficult.

But a couple of other things occur to me: we don’t actually have an AFD process (that I know) but I guess there would need to be a consensus among the three of us who seem to be active.

The second thing is that I don’t know if anyone is actually looking at these pages for topic inspiration or whatever. Because if they are actually getting (significant) hits then we wouldn’t want to delete them. (From my time in the “back end" I recall that the conversation questions were far and away the most popular hits.)

So first of all we need to know from User:Roger if anybody is reading them and then decide what to do. My personal preference would be an "obsolete" template - but if we went for putting them our of their misery I wouldn’t object.Bob M (talk) 14:52, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Visitor numbers fresh from the back yard this morning. Roger (talk) 19:26, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Viewed -- number of times article viewed
Size   -- of article
Entry  -- these visitors entered Teflpedia here (I think)
Exit   -- these visitors left Teflpedia next (I think; ask mouse)
Time   -- (the time machine is broken; toss me a wrench)

                            January 2021
                 Totals for the whole month per page

Viewed    Size    Entry   Exit               Article
  18    7.67 KB      8      4    The euro conversation questions
 106    6.71 KB     24     25    Global financial crisis conversation questions
 175    7.68 KB     60     47    European Union conversation questions

 We get ~60,000 views per month; popular pages get 1,000+ views each per month.
 These three pages are among the less popular ones.
 Bob, okay to delete and okay to keep. Roger

^ Wiki tip, start with white space to get this style

Do we delete a page that has readers? I think not, unless we disapprove of what they are reading. We are editors. Some discretion is in our nature -- use it to keep the garden pleasant and airy. Weeding is good gardening. Also, okay with me Bob if you decide to delete. I feel the Euro is an interesting conversation topic, just not as hot as when it was new. One option would be to have a Hot category and a More category, but idk how that would work. Roger (talk) 19:26, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

So people are viewing the page, but are they really using its contents? By which I mean, is anyone actually copying the questions (perhaps with slight modification) and then putting them in a ppt? Or are they just getting there via special:randomincategory/conversation_questions, thinking "this isn’t what I need" and clicking on special:randomincategory/conversation_questions again? If they aren’t actually using them, then can they be either (1) improved, so as to be topical or (2) quietly removed? Duncan (talk) 09:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

It would certainly be fantastic if we knew what people are actually doing with them, but short of asking people to fill out a questionnaire I can’t see any way of getting at that.

As far as the first two topics are concerned I would guess that a good percentage of those hits would be me looking at them and wondering could be done! Bob M (talk) 15:03, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

What if we could, with a little oompah, do that? By leveraging the Add Section action for a page’s talk page? I’m going to pull my hat down over my eyes now. But what 👍 if 👎? Roger (talk) 00:10, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I remember quite some time ago we tried to get some user response, but we never got a lot.

Having once been an active time-stressed teacher myself I understand the desire to quickly grab something to create a quick class and then start formatting it for use. The last thing I would have wanted was to stop to answer questions. But if you can find some way to get people to respond to what they are taking from the site that would obviously be very useful.Bob M (talk) 11:26, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Short "Recent changes" page

It is not broken. At first I though it was. I was testing recentChanges in my iPhone to see how long it takes to load (2 seconds) and couldn’t scroll down. Huh? Oh! it just has lots of items collapsed in the > 19:29 (Block log)‎ [Duncan‎ (47×)]. 47 of them. Open that and there is plenty of scroll. It is a curiosity I had not seen lately on Tp, a "Recent changes" page with only 3 lines in it and nothing to scroll.

Duncan, what prompted you to unblock all those users? And thank you for figuring it out.

Those users appear to not be registered and to not have contributed any edits. Last week as part of maintenance I deleted all accounts that have never contributed any edits. There is a maintenance script for that. I run it only once every several years. So that could explain how these users do not have accounts and yet Duncan was able to "unblock" them. Duncan, was there a special page that prompted you to unblock these?

Mysteries of the deep. 🦦 Roger (talk) 05:09, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Minor ongoing vandlism by user "selectrongo

Someone appears to be making minor vandalistic/test changes to the wiki. This includes adding the text <!-- [selectrongo:done]--> to every edit this makes. I am reverting such changes. Users shouldn’t add comments containing their name to articles.

Minor ongoing vandalism by "user:selectrongo”

Someone appears to be making minor vandalistic/test changes to the wiki. This includes adding the text <!-- [selectrongo:done]--> to every edit this makes. I am reverting such changes. Users shouldn’t add comments containing their name to articles. Duncan (talk) 09:38, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

That is a bug in Visual Editor. I hope it goes away next time I upgrade MediaWiki. It is not a vandal. Okay to ignore it for now. Thank you for looking after the wiki. —Roger (talk) 16:40, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this VisualEditor bug went away when I upgrade from MW1.35.1 to MW1.39.1 a few days ago. Goodbye strange bug. Roger (talk) 18:55, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Where do you live?

- Where do you live? - How long have you lived there? - When did you move from your hometown?

In a land, far, far away. user:Ronysalles. Duncan (talk) 09:36, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I can’t edit my watchlist

I get the error:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 327680 bytes) in /home/bilbo/public_html/teflpedia/vendor/oojs/oojs-ui/php/Tag.php on line 221.

Duncan (talk) 09:48, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Duncan, can you edit it now? Roger (talk) 18:58, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I've worked out what’s (not) happening with the ads

Basically, they’re being delivered with the Timeless skin (the default one) enabled, but not if you switch to other skins in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. Since I've switched to Vector, they don’t show up for me. Duncan (talk) 06:15, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I managed to install a Teflpedia:Gadget

I’m very proud of myself.

It’s called wikEd (I guess /waɪkt/) and gives Syntax highlighting through Javascript. Duncan (talk) 09:17, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Need to turn off subpages in main namespace

Not like this!

This is a task that needs to be performed.

It is a bit strange. The default is that these should be turned off in the main namespace

This causes problems with pages with a forward slash in their title, e.g. linking /r/ links back to linking. Also affects pages like yes/no question

I think there is code in LocalSettings.php that has to be changed:

$wgNamespacesWithSubpages[NS_MAIN] = false;

Duncan (talk) 08:38, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Also need to upgrade MedaWiki to version 1.37

There are some security fixes in version 1.37 here [1]. Duncan (talk) 08:49, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I upgraded us to MW1.39.1 a couple days ago. Roger (talk) 18:59, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

$wgFixDoubleRedirects

Can you turn on $wgFixDoubleRedirects as this allows automatic fixing of teflpedia:double redirects on page move execution rather than having to fix them afterwards.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgFixDoubleRedirects

• Unlike Wikipedia, we don’t have any bots that do this automatically.
• There may be a problem with page move vandalism, but we don’t have a problem with page move vandalism, so...

Duncan (talk) 03:17, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Special:DoubleRedirects has a eleven items in it today. Duncan, would you still like me to turn on $wgFixDoubleRedirects? Sorry I did not see this request when it was posted. Best to email me as I don't check the wiki regularly. Roger (talk) 19:07, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, $wgFixDoubleRedirects, which you have turned on, only fixes double redirects caused by moving a page, not those accidentally created by accident. There should be a warning when you do this, but there isn’t.

Oh yes, I see that you did email me a year ago about this and I turned it on then. Gmail has the memory of an elephant. Where's my elephant? Roger (talk) 19:17, 12 February 2023 (UTC)