Author: tahrey
Description:
Not sure whether this is mediawiki or a wikipedia fault, or something with my browser, but it warrants looking into.
In at least this case, a UK-formatted phone number (example number, not valid to call) can be typed into the page edit box, and will persist between edits, but not show up on the article mainpage. At least, not after the page is loaded. It will appear briefly, before vanishing. Having wikimedia.org blocked by NoScript prevents it from appearing at all. All other text on the page, including that immediately around the number, and other number blocks (including some superficially similar to the vanishing one) display correctly.
For further detail, a copy and paste of my entry on the wikipedia help request page:
Go to UK telephone code misconceptions and check the earlier revision before I started my long string of edits, trying to work out what the "strange" effect was. Note that the phone number I keep changing between revisions displays briefly whilst the page loads, but then disappears. Yes, that's right, stuff written otherwise in plain text in the edit box does not display on the article. Or at least, it doesn't on my system.
I'm using Firefox 3.6.11 under Windows, with NoScript and little else. What I'd think is a reasonably normal setup. At first, it didn't display at all, but when I allowed wikimedia.org as well as wikipedia itself, the brief initial appearance manifested. So it may be reasonable to assume something's not quite right with wikimedia... but why is it getting involved with a data string that's nothing more than 34 ASCII characters? (11 numbers, 2 parentheses, 2 non breaking spaces and a bold/unbold tag pair, if all's gone to plan)
The wierdest thing is that no other number on the page is (as far as I can easily tell) affected, including other similar ones. Only that one, in that position, under certain conditions, as seen during the edit series (all annotated in the page history). Which sort of rules out any general "phone number ban" policy or a general purpose highlighter going wrong. Something in that peculiar arrangement of characters is glitching the server's database parsing and html-forming routines (I haven't actually scanned the output html, didn't have time) and making it "hide" the number somehow.
This could be an entirely isolated incident, or indicative of a problem that may manifest and hide other phone, or phone-like numbers on different pages, and possibly even be a security weakness.
Or, is there just some tag I have to put around those kinds of numbers in order to mark them as "do not hide"? They're not real ones, after all - they're equivalent to american "555" dummy numbers and only in there for example purposes. Not being used for promotional purposes or anything.
Thanks...
Version: unspecified
Severity: normal
OS: Windows XP
Platform: PC
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_telephone_code_misconceptions