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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Badminton module

Hi there. Could I get some help for improving Module:Sports table/Badminton team. I try to use these codes, but there are some columns with zero, which should be not shown, as the data might not be available. So I expect the column would be: Pos, Team, Pld, W, L, MF, MA, MD, Pts, Qualification (for uncomplete table, activated by "point_for_against_style=none". Any help would be appreciated. Regards. Medelam (talk) 13:49, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Pos Team Pld W L Pts Qualification
1  Indonesia 3 3 0 3 Advanced to knockout stage
2  England 3 2 1 2
3  Malaysia (H) 3 1 2 1
4  Japan 3 0 3 0
Source:  
(H) Host
Looks like you want |point_for_against_style=none and |game_for_against_style=none, which removes the header columns. However there doesn't seem to be code to disable the data rows in Module:Sports_table/Badminton_team. I've changed your example (above) and will I'll see if I can get it to work in the sandbox. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:32, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
@Medelam: Is the above now what you require? —  Jts1882 | talk  14:41, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
@Jts1882: Yes, that is exactly what I want. Appreciate your effort. Thank you and regards. Medelam (talk) 14:44, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
I've put it live. The header code was also hiding the points columns if the games columns were hidden, so I've done the same with the country rows for consistency. So |point_for_against_style=none is redundant when |game_for_against_style=none is set. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:18, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Skip to Top and Skip to Bottom arrows

A few project pages - and not all of them - have big arrows to click for "Skip to Top" and "Skip to Bottom". For me personally, they're just blocking text I want to read. How are these inserted on project pages, and how can I adjust so I don't have to see these arrows. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 15:53, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

@Maile66 see {{Skip to top and bottom}} - I think this is the template you're referring to. There are instructions there on how to hide them in your CSS. Nthep (talk) 16:01, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
Looks like it worked. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 16:43, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Looking for help from a Python dev to help getting ReFill to build and run

I volunteered to take over maintenance of WP:Refill as the original developer was no longer interested/able to do so. I am set up with Toolforge access via PuTTY etc. I'm having difficulties getting the code to build and run locally on my dev machine. I could really do with a Python dev to help me deal with NPM versioning issues (breaking changes in dependencies). Ideally, it would be someone who would be willing to be around longer than just to get me going, i.e. to field occasional subsequent questions. Hopefully, Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 16:54, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

@Curb Safe Charmer: Hey! I got that running locally not that long ago what's broken? ~TheresNoTime (to explain!) 17:04, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
Replied on TheresNoTime's talk page. Thanks - this is hopefully the help I need - if not, I will post again here. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 20:06, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
Just a note, if this gets into Pythonic Madness I may have to poke someone like Tamzin ~TheresNoTime (to explain!) 20:09, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Funny white bars in history previews, using green-on-black gadget

This seems to have started today. When I point my mouse at "hist" on my watchlist the pop-up shews more-or-less as usual, but with vertical white bars between cur prev | time | username | section. You can see a picture of it here. They are not visible if I switch the gadget off. DuncanHill (talk) 19:08, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: there was an update to Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups today - is that what you are using? Perhaps there is a conflict with something in MediaWiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css. As the former has ~55000 users and the later has ~6400, I'd rather someone propose a change to blackskin then rollback navpops though. — xaosflux Talk 19:20, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Yes, Navigation Pop-ups. DuncanHill (talk) 19:24, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
Apparently blackskin.css overrides the table background, and the cell background, but not the background-color of the table rows —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:24, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: we can just add this into the table section of the blackskin. 
table tr { 
    background-color: #000000!important;
    color: #00dd00!important;
}
—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:34, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ: thank you for the markup; @DuncanHill: I updated blackskin, please check in about 5 mins? — xaosflux Talk 20:44, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ: and @Xaosflux: Thank you, works as expected now. DuncanHill (talk) 20:59, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

wpTextbox1 equivalent in 2017 wikitext editor

What is it's equivalent? I don't find the element anywhere in the page and thus almost no user script in Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Editing doesn't work for me. The Wikipedia:User scripts/Guide seems to be written for the 2010 editor and isn't helpful for me in editing mode, when I try to develop a script on my own. Thanks for any help! — DaxServer (talk) 13:49, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

wpTextbox1 is present alright for the 2017 wikitext editor. You should use jQuery.textSelection API for textbox interactions as they'd work independently of the type of source editor. – SD0001 (talk) 15:06, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001 Thanks for the reply. I must have been doing something so wrong!! — DaxServer (talk) 15:21, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to turn the DYK helper into a gadget

There was consensus for the original proposal (to turn it into a gadget), following which the idea of using withJS was floated, and there seemed to be support for that too. So there is consensus for both of these options. Some editors were concerned that having to enable a gadget is not necessarily a great user experience either. Interested parties may wish to informally discuss (probably at WT:DYK) which idea would work better, after which that idea may be implemented. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:41, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This proposal arises out of ongoing efforts to simplify the process of making DYK nominations so that newcomers are able to complete it more easily (see here and here). Currently, one of the first obstacles is installing the DYK helper script, which requires editing your js page. If the helper were a gadget, all it'd require to activate is going to the settings page. The helper is very widely used and trusted (kudos to maintainer SD0001), so I propose turning it into a gadget. (Per here, this is the place to do that.) {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:48, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  • Support as proposer. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:48, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. The process of posting a Did you know nomination is currently very manual, which can put off people from submitting them, and automating it makes a lot of sense. I think this helper script is a good step forward with this, but asking (potentially new) editors to install it in their individual javascript pages is very off-putting and very technical: it becomes a lot easier if it's just an option to turn on in their preferences. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:55, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support In general, the entire DYK review process and feedback/comments also feels way too manual and different from talk page discussions which I would have expected. The less manual, the better overall! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:52, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
  • ? (1) @SD0001: are you good with this? (2) @Sdkb: confirming this would be for opt-in, correct? — xaosflux Talk 23:21, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
    For (1), see here. For (2), yes. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:25, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support - I'm all for simplifying any process, especially if it helps new users. — Maile (talk) 23:29, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support turning this excellent script into a gadget —valereee (talk) 00:01, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. I do not know the effort that goes into creating a gadget, but, I support this action that will greatly simplify the act of submitting a DYK nomination. Actually on that note if there is a way to simplify any other main page nomination (ITN nomination comes to mind) as a part of the same submission gadget, that would be welcome too. I am adding some ITN Admins just as an fyi. cc @Stephen, Spencer, PFHLai, Masem, and MSGJ: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ktin (talk • contribs) 00:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    @Stephen, Spencer, PFHLai, Masem, and MSGJ: as a courtesy to Ktin above. --Izno (talk) 01:08, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    I'm all for more automated tools to help make these sections easier to use. Don't know enough about the DYK side of things to specifically comment there. SpencerT•C 02:21, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Glad to see more tools and new ways to contribute. :-) --PFHLai (talk) 10:23, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Some non-blocking comments to this action (overall I want all the widely-used scripts to be gadgets): 1) I dislike the use of morebits.js. I am sure it is convenient, but it sure is so 2005 in looks. :^) 2) The name should be indicative of its purpose if possible; DYK "helper" is not. It appears to be exclusive to nominations, so, "DYK nominator" or even "DYKN.js" would be preferable. --Izno (talk) 01:03, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • I like the idea, but installing a gadget is still one more step than necessary - I imagine we could use a withJS link here? That way you'd just click on a button "submit a DYK" on the DYK page (that's probably the precise place where people have the idea to submit their article, after all) and have the form immediately open. That would also eliminate any need to hunt down the "DYK" menu item or link. It would require a little coding and add one form field (you'd need to write the name of the article), but I'd be happy to help out and I think the extra inconvenience is worth it. A gadget would still help power users who submit lots of DYKs, but I would imagine they would be experienced enough to be able to install a user script (especially with script-installer). (I also feel like the gadget list is getting a little long, but that's a really, really tiny concern.) If we go ahead with a gadget nonetheless (which I'm not opposed to! just proposing another solution), I agree with what Izno said about naming. For Ktin, I would absolutely be in favor of introducing forms for those other processes. Enterprisey (talk!) 02:20, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Thanks @Enterprisey: and apologies for the digression. I must admit I know the least about gadgets and user scripts. But, what is the best way to take this conversation forward? The folks above are the real gurus of the ITN page. Happy to help coordinate. Ktin (talk) 02:46, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    @Ktin, well, you're in luck! I just made Wikipedia:Workflow improvements, so we could talk further over there. Enterprisey (talk!) 10:10, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Is there something blocking having the gadget accessible from withJS? Probably means a little modification (autofill versus not of the page of interest), but that doesn't seem like a big deal. Izno (talk) 03:09, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Yes, that's the only thing blocking it as far as I'm aware. Not a big deal, yeah. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:21, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    The use case for this seems to be primarily using a single form entry for a task - as such I'm much more in favor of ?withJS if it will work. The primary benefit for end users is that they won't have to go enable anything - they would just get a button to click on. The downside (?) is that they would need to navigate to the page and push the button as opposed to say adding this to a tool menu on their interface. — xaosflux Talk 15:01, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    That's precisely what I told Sdkb when they approached me (see User_talk:Mike_Peel#DYK_nomination_instructions). But it will require extensive changes and is not something I see happening in the near future. This script uses Morebits.quickForm that's designed to work within modal windows. A full-page form would render oddly with quickForm (eg. you can't even limit the width of the textareas, they'll spread across the page). While morebits is a good framework for complex forms within small dialogs (which OOUI is really lousy at), for a full-page form it's better to use OOUI. There are lots of UI controls in this script (for handling multiple hooks, multiple nominators, multiple articles, ...) which would likely require custom OOUI widgets. Also, the prose size calculation relies on the article being open (it can be tweaked to load the article html via the API, but then what with the user being able to change the article ...). – SD0001 (talk) 16:17, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Sure, the "proper" way would be to convert it to a full-screen form, but honestly I don't think that's a requirement; it'll still work perfectly fine as a modal form, I'm guessing, even if it'll look a little weird. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) For the prose size, yes, that's inconvenient, but I'd imagine people would use the dedicated widget for that if they do it very often. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:29, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Hm. I think it would be semi-professional to open an all new page on which a modal pops up. But regarding the conversion to full-screen form, I think I may spoken too soon. Let me take a shot at that first – it's just that quickForm hasn't ever been used outside a modal (WP:TWPREF looks similar to other Twinkle windows that use quickForm, but actually it uses HTML built from the ground up!). It shouldn't be too hard to do some refactoring and have everything fit into a fixed-width div. Might need a couple of morebits patches. – SD0001 (talk) 09:31, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
    Nevertheless, I suppose one day it could be rewritten (maybe as part of WP:Workflow improvements) – which brings to the other point: when https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/Gadgets/+/730684 is merged (likely, since it just cleared a security review) it would be possible to load gadgets via URL – in a way that's quite more performant than the current withJS trick (resourceloader minimisation, caching, load being requested before page is ready, etc – basically all the advantages that gadgets have over user scripts). When both of these happen we can convert this to a hidden gadget and have it load only by URL. – SD0001 (talk) 16:26, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Awesome! Enterprisey (talk!) 22:29, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    It required some refactoring, but this is {{done}}. I posted a note on WT:DYK#DYK-helper_script_improvements_and_auto-loading which has instructions on testing it out. cc @Sdkb and Enterprisey:. – SD0001 (talk) 14:22, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment - I'm not entirely sure which part of the process this proposal is covering, but noting that DYK already has a fairly intuitive process at WP:DYKNOM where you fill in the name of your article and off you go. It seems like the hard part about that is that you have to then go and edit the newly created DYK nom template, and then also transclude the nomination on the appropriate page. So I think we should be focusing our efforts on automating the latter two steps to complete that process, while keeping the ease-of-use of the form at WP:DYKNOM. The above-mentioned solution, which as far as I can tell involves either installing a JS script or fiddling around with your settings, is the very opposite of an ease-of-use solution for newcomers. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 08:07, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
    @Amakuru This only creates the template, but does not actually link/transclude it anywhere which was confusing for me. Because I once created the template and expected it to transclude. I also noticed the preload template doesn't automatically autopopulate the title parameter, but I can fix that directly. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 09:52, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
    @Shushugah: yes, this is my point. Rather than creating an entirely new tool, which requires users to install something on their profiles, the page I mention should be expanded and updated so that it does all of the steps rather than just one of them. Either that, or have a bot do the heavy-lifting, which is what happens at WP:GAN - an example of a good user-friendly process IMHO. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 09:59, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
    I boldly edited Template:T:TDYK/preload to autopopulate the article name. Have a look ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:19, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
    To clarify, when @Shushugah says This only creates the template, ... they are talking about the inputbox at WP:DYKNOM, not the script. – SD0001 (talk) 16:15, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
    @Amakuru DYK-helper automates all of those steps. – SD0001 (talk) 16:14, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Uploading non-image files

After tagging an orphaned PDF for WP:F10, I noticed that the message that Twinkle posts on the uploader's talk page ({{Db-badfiletype-notice}} makes reference to Microsoft Word documents as a potential bad file type. But I thought I'd read somewhere that there's technical limitations in place that prevent the uploading of word documents (and generally non-image files other than PDFs). I guess if there are legacy ones hanging around, it might not be bad to keep the wording, but is it going to be possible to upload such file types? If not, I can change the template wording. Hog Farm Talk 06:12, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

@Hog Farm: you can see the list of supported file extensions here (click "make request" after ensuring we're not trying to trick you in to something nefarious - notably the action= in the left pane should say query to show it is only trying to read things). I suppose technically this isn't examining the file "type" just the name, but it is something to go off of. Improvements to that system are discussed in phab:T42479 and many linked tasks therein. — xaosflux Talk 11:44, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Had to look up what some of those file extensions meant. Mostly a bunch of obscure audio/video formats. Looks like the only F10-eligible filetype is .pdf and possibly .djvu. Hog Farm Talk 14:41, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Is this script safe to implement on the common.css page

I was wondering this script, found on Customizing watchlists for the Username:common.css files is safe to apply? Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:34, 20 October 2021 (UTC) 

a [title="pagename"] {
    color: white;
    background: red;
    font-size: 150%;
}

Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:34, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerty284651: yes, that would be "safe" to use on your User:Qwerty284651/common.css page. — xaosflux Talk 23:44, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I tried using both the full URL permalink and the abbreviated name of an actual Wiki page, but it gave an error stating Warning: Unqualified attribute selectors are known to be slow. I am not good with scripts, so I don't understand what it wants from me. Could you help me out, please? Qwerty284651 (talk) 00:10, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
The warning message is letting you know that since the [title="pagename"] selector will match against any HTML element, it will be slow to check all of them for the title attribute in question. You should remove the space between a and [title="pagename"], so only anchor elements will be checked. (I updated the Customizing watchlists page accordingly.) isaacl (talk) 04:37, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Indeed, this isn't a great script - but it isn't "dangerous". — xaosflux Talk 10:57, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, Xaosflux. I just run into this script, whilst looking for a way to highlight certain pages in my watchlist for easier navigation, but wasn't sure what was the problem with the error it was displaying. Thanks. Cheers, Qwerty284651 (talk) 11:32, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux Under pagename do I use the wikilink short version or the full URL permalink? Qwerty284651 (talk) 20:19, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
The "title" attribute on an HTML element is what shows up in the popup tooltip when you hover over the element. Thus you should use whatever shows up when you hover over the link. isaacl (talk) 21:15, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Qwerty284651: I moved this thread from WT:VPT, which is the talk page for discussing improvements to this page - basically, whether to alter the archive settings, almost nothing else goes there.
Anyway, please note that what you have provided above is not a script, it is a CSS rule. CSS rules, generally speaking, are harmless - the worst that could happen is that you make the whole page invisible. None of the three declarations in your rule goes anyway near to sdoing that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:18, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Thanks for clarifying it for me. Qwerty284651 (talk) 22:34, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Deal with bare URLs to files

Hi there! I've been working on expanding bare URLs in references recently. However, there have been lots of URLs that point to an external file (PDF, image, etc.), where automatic reference generating cannot work normally to grab information such as titles. Then what can I do to expand those references? Maybe, upload the original files? Or something else? -- UNITE TOGETHER, STRIVE FOR SURVIVAL! 02:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I think those have to be handled manually. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
FYI in the last year or so I've noticed that refill2 is now formatting a few PDFs. Reflinks can format quite a few of them and can also mark some that have gone dead with a "dead link" template. But, as Whatamidoing points out, there are still tons of them that have to be formatted manually. MarnetteD|Talk 00:00, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

IGN citation problem

Hi. The auto citation tool is having problems citing pages from the IGN site. See the example: "<ref>{{Citation|last=pm|first=Craig HarrisUpdated: 12 May 2012 11:41 amPosted: 20 Oct 2008 10:14|title=Legend of Kage 2 Review - IGN|url=https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/10/20/legend-of-kage-2-review|language=en|access-date=2021-10-18}}</ref>". Note that the "last" and "first", which serve respectively to put the last and first name of the author of the article, are showing quite wrong information. And this bug not only affects the enwiki, but other wikis, like ptwiki, are also being affected. ✍A.WagnerC (talk) 17:22, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

This is likely an issue with the Zotero configuration for IGN. See zotero.org for more information. Izno (talk) 00:59, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
@Scann or @Diegodlh could probably tell you more about what the problem is. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for flagging this. I'll defer to Diego to explain the problem but in the meantime I've added the URL to our list of "problematic URLs" to test with Web2Cit. --Scann (talk) 00:29, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Possible printability issue

I do have a possible issue that may be rooted in Wikipedia software. Or in the construction of lists with Wikipedia style elements. Some larger lists do not "nicely" print. With nicely I mean you can get the entire data to printer output without manually resizing (scaling). Fit to page size should do that, but it doesn't. While this can be OS related, I am a bit puzzled that it does not even work for PDF output (instead of printer output). As PDF carries an outer frame, in which all elements are placed, in theory it should not occur that certain information gets outside that frame.

This is Linux Mint (Ubuntu) version 19, and I see the issue with both the printer driver for Canon MX925 (which is a very reliable, well written driver). I have to scale below 87% (!) to get the entire content of a given page into that page without overspill at the right hand side. At the moment, I do not have a Windows machine at hand to verify this behaviour on Windows.

Browser is an up-to-date Firefox 93. Printing is done via Firefox' print function, which utilizes all installed drivers and a built-in PDF export. Mint/Ubuntu also offers PDF printer export as a driver, so I got three options: Canon, PDF export driver, built-in Firefox PDF export. All three show the issue...

The best example to showcase this is the list of Doctor Who serials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_episodes_(1963%E2%80%931989)

Thanks a lot. 2001:A61:BAC:F001:9C64:F645:CAA3:9003 (talk) 10:01, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Tooltip and dialog box text for suggested translation links in left sidebar is not all English

When an article at en-wiki doesn't exist in any other language, I usually get a few "suggested" languages to translate into in the left sidebar under the 'Languages' heading, where language links would appear had there been articles in other languages. In my case, French is one of those languages that often appears. The text in the left sidebar is français, exactly as it would be if a fr-wiki article existed. (Well, not exactly; the font is a lighter shade; approximately #72777D.) But the hover text is different.

Hovering over français in the language links section of the sidebar when there is no French article pops up the tooltip "Translate this page into français". Clicking the link pops up a dialog box, which starts off with the bold heading, This page does not exist in français yet. Do you want to create it?

This is English Wikipedia, and in my opinion, both the tooltip and the dialog box should both be written entirely in English (with the possible exception of adding a parenthetical appositive; e.g., "Translate this page into French (français)" would be fine. I don't have an objection to the long-standing practice of leaving the rendered text of language names in the list of language links in the native language; my question/complaint regards the language of the tooltip text, and of the pop-up dialog box. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:12, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

This seems like a reasonable task to put in Phabricator, starting with the Language-team team project. They should be able to sort it into an appropriate component project. Izno (talk) 20:45, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
We can also do it locally in MediaWiki:Cx-entrypoint-title and MediaWiki:Cx-entrypoint-dialog-page-doesnt-exist-yet by testing $1. We don't appear to currently have a feature to get the language code from the native language name like français, but we could make it. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:50, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Realistically, this suggestion is primarily intended for people fluent in the destination language - if you can't easily read the name of the destination language in its native format - you probably shouldn't be trying to create articles on that other project. Am I missing a part of this? — xaosflux Talk 13:31, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Creating a new user talk section using discussion tools unwatches the page

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T294122

Hi all, I've found that sometimes the quickest way of seeing if an issue is just me or not just me is by mentioning it here and waiting for the screaming.

Please see T294122, but in summary..

List of steps to reproduce:

What happens?:

  • The message is posted, and the previously watched talk page is unwatched

What should have happened instead?:

  • The message is posted without affecting the watched status

Can anyone else confirm? ~TheresNoTime (to explain!) 14:06, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime yep, confirmed - interestingly, when I tested on a page I had watchlisted before enabling discussion tools, the bug didn't trigger. When I tested watching a page after enabling discussion tools, things happened exactly as you describe. firefly ( t · c ) 14:12, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

mw.hook listener or list of all hooks

Is there is a list of all available hooks (mw.hook) or is there a listener that I can hook into to listen to all hook fires? I've looked at mw:Manual:Hooks, but that doesn't seem what I'm looking for. An example is User:BrandonXLF/EasySummary.js, where the script is hooked into ve.saveDialog.stateChanged Thanks! — DaxServer (talk) 11:48, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

The core ones are listed here in the mw.hook documentation. Other ones are considered to be 'private' but most can easily be found with codesearch. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:19, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
If you just want the names of all the hooks that have previously fired on the page you're on, you could also go to the function definition for mw.hook in your browser's dev tools and set a breakpoint on return hooks[name] right at the top of the function, hit the breakpoint by running mw.hook(), then look at the keys in the hooks object. – Rummskartoffel 14:58, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks @TheDJ and @Rummskartoffel. Both your solutions're quite useful! — DaxServer (talk) 16:45, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Redlink to existing page

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T293707

Hello! I'm seeing something rather peculiar. In Special:PageHistory/Template:COVID-19 data/data, there are links to User:TolBot/Task 5, a soft redirect to Meta-Wiki, in my bot's edit summaries — but, despite the page existing, the links are red. When I click on a diff, the link is blue, and anywhere outside of an edit summary it's also blue. I've tried with safemode, so I don't think it's me. Can anybody else verify this or help me figure out what's going on? Thanks. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:57, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I see the link in the most recent edit as blue, and the others as red. Moving to the previous 100, all are blue. Filtering by date to exclude today's two changes, all are blue. It looks like a minor bug. Certes (talk) 22:17, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
I only see one "Task 5" blue link at the history of Template:COVID-19 data/data. It is the most recent. The reason it is blue is that the wikitext is [[m:User:TolBot/Task 5|Task 5]] whereas the others omit m:. I tried to purge the history page but of course it only purged the template and that did not help. Weird. I don't see how it's related, but I asked about a red link problem here. Johnuniq (talk) 22:44, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
There was recently an overhaul of how edit summaries ("comments") are formatted on history pages, this might be another regression from that. I would suggest filing a bug in Phabricator for this, as the output clearly is wrong given User:TolBot/Task 5 exists on this wiki. Legoktm (talk) 05:50, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
And notably on other pages, such as the changevisibility controls page, the show as blue links. So looks like a bug of sorts on the history view page. — xaosflux Talk 15:46, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, everyone. I've filed a task. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:54, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
This also happens for user pages that don't exist here but do exist at Meta, when a cross-wiki transclusion occurs - see for instance the two links to Explicit's user page in these edits. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:08, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Edit summaries with characters not staying on its line

This anon is vandalizing and leaving non-linear edit summaries 93.106.154.191 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) which are visible in his contribution history. I am using Windows 10 Pro/64 w/ Firefox current version. It is also visible with Chrome. Should a fix be made to Wiki's html generator?

Some of the "offending" test
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Adakiko (talk) 07:08, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

See Zalgo text. Nardog (talk) 07:18, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
This could make for some interesting vandalism. Might need to request revdels so that other's edit summaries are readable? Adakiko (talk) 07:24, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
So far, all of the "offending" edits have been at WP:Sandbox, a page to which we extend a great degree of freedom; it is generally acknowledged that no edits to this page can constitute vandalism as it is normally understood. So long as they're not committing a great Wikicrime - such as making an attack page or posting a massive copyvio - we generally let it be. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:36, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
While in this case it appears not to be vandalism and may even be a legitimate test edit , the edits do present a problem which we may need to find solutions, to ensure that if someone does something similar on non-sandbox pages, it doesn't effect the usability of the page or of the page history to other legitimate users. Ideally we shouldn't have to rely on friendly admins rev-deleting things to fix issues like this.Nigel Ish (talk) 12:02, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
I doubt this kind of vandalism occurs frequently enough to warrant any preventative measures. You have to know how to do it, and there are much easier and quicker ways to vandalise. – Rummskartoffel 13:10, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Archive header not displayed at Talk:Air Koryo

Hi, could someone take a look at why the list of archives isn't displaying at the top of Talk:Air Koryo? I'm guessing it's due to the strange naming convention, e.g. Talk:Air Koryo/2012/Archive 1, but not sure how to fix it. -M.nelson (talk) 10:23, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Because you didn't put (and configured) one of the templates that do just that?
User:MiszaBot/config#After_you_have_set_up_archiving. MarMi wiki (talk) 15:21, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
 Fixed. Those archives are very small and should probably be merged into one archive with a standard name. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:29, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
Thank you. Good point, the standard format would be better; I'll try resetting it and then {{talk header}} might list them without an additional template. -M.nelson (talk) 15:57, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Missing history?

I received a message on User talk:BattyBot claiming that my bot created Draft:Manathi P Ganesan. However, my bot doesn't create drafts. I looked at the draft history, and the only edit listed is my bot's edit to add {{Draft categories}}. What happened to the rest of the edit history, and how can it be restored? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:38, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Based on the logs, the draft was history-merged into a user sandbox page, which basically moved all revisions to that page. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Jéské Couriano 02:53, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Anthony Appleyard used Special:MergeHistory to move the rest of the history to User:Mc.balamurugan/sandbox. It's still there, so there's nothing to restore. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:53, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
Click "View logs for this page" at top of the page history to see what happened. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:38, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

There is a draft for this article

When edited, dab Morgan White claims that "There is a draft for this article at Draft:Morgan White". That page does exist, but it's a redirect to Morgan White (gymnast). I see why {{Editnotices/Namespace/Main}} is invoking {{Draft at}}, but could we handle such cases better? Pinging BD2412 and SD0001 who contributed to a previous discussion. Certes (talk) 22:49, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and moved the draft title to Draft:Morgan White (gymnast) for consistency. BD2412 T 22:52, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
Feel free to suggest an edit at template talk:Editnotices/Namespace/Main. The logic has become rather complicated, though maybe not to the extent that a Lua module is needed. – SD0001 (talk) 11:51, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. This odd-looking behaviour seems correct then: the template is right to draw our attention to the minor issue of a malplaced redirect. If someone were preparing a BCA or other replacement for the dab, I'd want to know about it. Certes (talk) 14:54, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Attribution of tags

I made this edit just to fix a template date in a article split request so the article would be correctly categorized by the month/year. This got listed under Articles to be split at Wikipedia:WikiProject Singapore as proposed by me when it was in fact an IP that first added {{split-section}}. Another editor did a split, without there having been any discussion. After that, they discovered it was suggested by an IP, and mentioned on my TP that they were mislead and may not have done the split had they realized the request came from an IP (not to disparage all IPs). Regardless, the "proposer" of the split was listed incorrectly. I don't know what templates/bots are involved in this so asking here if this can be "fixed". MB 19:58, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

@MB: I think you are referring to this edit - and think that it should be better? If so, please bring it up at User talk:AAlertBot and / or Wikipedia talk:Article alerts to see how that could be improved. — xaosflux Talk 20:19, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
Asked at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts. Thanks. MB 20:26, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

GNU General Public License Flashcard Program to use on Wikipedia's glossaries.

Hi. Does anyone know of a GNU General Public License flashcard software program that can be used to run, share, and modify on Wikipedia? If so, please paste the code in your response. I would want to test it in the sandbox and then eventually place it on some of the glossaries and make flashcards within Wikipedia using the terms and definitions. The reader would be able to study the flashcards without leaving the page. It is an idea I have wanted to try for a long time. I think it would be a big hit. LearnMore (talk) 20:24, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikiversity has learning resources about Help:Quiz-Simple
@LearnMore: Wikipedia usually doesn't support that kind of interactive content, historically because it doesn't print in a reasonable way and is difficult to proofread. You can make quizzes on the Wikiversity sister project and link them as shown here. There is another technical reason that you don't want to host actual flashcards inside Mediawiki or its extensions: spaced repetition, a useful way to sequence flashcards, requires storage that doesn't fit into the Mediawiki database schema, nor in JavaScript storage in a way that would let a user migrate between browsers e.g. on different devices, and for large decks of flashcards such as for language vocabulary, it's not clear whether you could prevent bumping up against local storage limits even if you limited users to one browser. One very popular and widely supported free cross-platform flashcard app is Anki, decks of which you can link to with their AnkiWeb service which has limited collaboration features. 71.204.166.188 (talk) 04:43, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
Thank you very much for the response. I appreciate it. LearnMore (talk) 21:49, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Where to post SQL requests

I'm pretty sure there used to be a page somewhere to ask for SQL queries to be run. I did a cold search, and found Wikipedia:SQL requests, which led me on this amazing journey, via a 6-way soft redirect-cum-splashpage-cum-suggested page runaround:

but never found my answer. So my first question is, where should Wikipedia:SQL requests *really* [soft-]redirect to?

Secondly, if you happen to know SQL and your appointment tomorrow with the Prime Minister was canceled at the last minute, I'm looking for two queries, yielding a count, and a handful of sample pages:

  • count – how many non-existent pages in Draft space have one or more in-links from mainspace? (I.e., if Draft:Foo_123 has one in-link from mainspace, Draft:Bar_456 has five, and Draft:Baz_678 has one hundred, the total count is 3.)
  • sample – can I get a list of around a dozen non-existent PAGENAMEs in Draftspace from that set, somewhat randomly selected (i.e., not all starting with 'A').

Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 03:18, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

WP:Request a query. – SD0001 (talk) 03:29, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001:, thank you! Mathglot (talk) 05:31, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Moved to WP:Request a query § Non-existent Draft PAGENAMEs with in-links from mainspace

Tech News: 2021-43

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (calendar).

Future changes

  • Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax. [1]
  • The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change. [2]

Meetings

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:06, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Styles of level 2 and level 3 headings

Recently completed the Compiler page in the Oberon tutorial. I expect higher level headings to be more prominent than lower level headings. For example, "Tutorial objective" and "Introduction" (level 2) should be more prominent than the subsection "A first example" (level 3). In appearance, prominence is reversed. Levels 2 and 3 headings are rendered in a similar font size but level 3 is bold. Can anyone explain? A bug in MediaWiki? Can it be corrected? Thx, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 14:35, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

@PeterEasthope: As far as I can tell, everything looks as intended in Vector, Monobook, and Timeless. Judging from your description, you're using Monobook, which is the only skin of the three that has bold h3s and regular h2s with the same font. If you just want to swap the font weight of the two (on your end only), you can add the following to your monobook.css on Wikibooks:
h2 {
  font-weight: bold;
}
h3 {
  font-weight: normal;
}
– Rummskartoffel 15:20, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Skin has examples of the four skins. Can the skin be identified visually? Something more certain? In Monobook, the links in the left margin are framed. In Vector, the links are listed with no frames. Please have a look at the UEFA Euro 2012 Final page. In default Vector style I see level 2, "Route to the final" in plain face; level 3, "Spain" in bold face. Why is the subordinate heading more prominent than the superordinate heading? Thx, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 04:51, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
I disagree that the level 3 headings are more prominent in any of these four skins, though they do look too similar for my taste in Timeless. I don't know the exact design decisions that went into making the headings look the way they do, since I'm not a developer; for that, consider asking a member of the Web team. In any case, I'm not seeing a bug here. – Rummskartoffel 12:09, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
I disagree that the level 3 headings are more prominent in any of these four skins
To the best of my understanding, J. Doe with a default environment will see level 2 headings in plain face; level 3 in bold face; similar or same font size in both. Most people will agree that bold is more prominent than plain.... PeterEasthope (talk) 17:47, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
... consider asking a member of the Web team.
Will do, thanks.... PeterEasthope (talk) 17:47, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
I also find level 3 more prominent than level 2. I'm used to it now, but was initially confused as L2 seemed to be a subsection within L3. I use Legacy Vector (if I'd wanted a narrow screen, I'd have bought one) but standard Vector has similar headings. Certes (talk) 13:09, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
Me to. I use Monobook and H3s are bold and look more prominent which always seemed wrong. MB 16:00, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
C>I'm used to it now, but was initially confused as L2 seemed to be a subsection within L3.
We all accepted it for too long. Ref. The Emperor's New Clothes. Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 17:47, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
I guess this is all a matter of subjective personal taste, but I, for one, see level 2 headings as clearly superior to the L3–L6s. After all, they're in a larger typeface and they have that great, big horizontal rule stretching all the way across the page. I think one of the Vector skins shows me no discernable difference between H5 and H6 (only), but in my usual skin, Monobook, all the levels are clearly and recognizably differently sized. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 22:00, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
It's certainly skin-dependent. I've checked out four properties (font-family, font-weight, border-bottom and font-size) for all six heading levels in four skins. Three properties are easily summarised:
  • MonoBook uses a normal-weight sans-serif font for all heading levels
  • Timeless uses a normal-weight serif font for all heading levels
  • Vector and Minerva use a serif font for levels 1 and 2 only, but sans-serif for levels 3, 4, 5 and 6
  • Vector and Minerva use bold for levels 3 and 4 only, normal weight for levels 1, 2, 5 and 6
  • MonoBook, Timeless and Vector show bottom borders (n.b. not horizontal rules) for levels 1 and 2 only, none for levels 3 to 6 - Minerva does not use borders at all.
The fourth is best presented as a table:
The font-size: property
Level MonoBook Timeless Vector Minerva
h1 188% 2em 1.8em 1.7em
h2 150% 1.8em 1.5em 1.5em
h3 128% 1.6em 1.2em 1.2em
h4 116% 1.4em 100% 100%
h5 108% 1.25em
h6 100% 1.2em
The Vector results are the same for "old" and "new" variants. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:02, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
"Old" is post-mw:Typography refresh Vector, rather than "original" Vector. The last major update to Vector was in late 2013 and 2014. That was when the ==Level 2 section headings== started using a serif font. If memory serves, this decision was driven by research (e.g., what font is easiest for people to read on a computer screen) rather than someone's aesthetic view.
About making changes: The archives for this page will show many people complaining about it the day that it hit, some people still complaining a week or two later, and only one or two editors still unhappy with it a month or two later. Apparently we hate having the fonts changed, but we get used to the new appearance on approximately the same time schedule that every other major website has found. I would expect the same outcome if similar changes are made in the future. Partly because of remembering that experience, I've stuck with the default skin at sites that have adopted New Vector. I've encountered some hiccups along the way, and re-locating the search box has proven to be surprisingly difficult for me to adapt to (but maybe if all the wikis were the same, I'd have gotten used to it faster?), but it no longer seems foreign and bad, and I have found one clear advantage: I haven't ever accidentally clicked the "Log out" button in New Vector.
(Important note to anyone thinking about changing the fonts in the future: Please don't.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Anarchism quality/ importance issues

Hi all - was pointed to come here with this question from the help desk. Currently, some articles that have an importance assessment are showing up as "NA", even though they have an importance scale assigned to them. I was wondering if there was a way to fix this? Wikipedia:WikiProject Anarchism Jamzze (talk) 20:05, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Please link to one or two articles with this problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:46, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
@Jamzze: And make sure they really are articles. I suspect the "articles" you have in mind are actually redirects but it's hard to tell without an example. Always include an example. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:54, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Yup, looks like they're redirects that have their class set. I just fixed one of them. --rchard2scout (talk) 12:43, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Hi all - thanks so much - I had no idea! Will have a look at the redirects and change that then. Jamzze (talk) 17:08, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@Rchard2scout and Jamzze: Explicitly setting |class=redirect is rarely necessary, because most WikiProject banners will autodetect it; Milhist is a rare exception. Unless the page is an actual article or a disambiguation page, it's normally best to omit the |class= parameter, or leave it blank. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:26, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Rollback on mobile devices

On two occasions lately I have fat-fingered rollback. On both occasions a dialog box opened that asked me if I really wanted to do that. On both occasions I answered “Cancel”, but it performed the rollback anyway. I need to disable this for myself, as I don’t tend to use rollback and obviously the option is causing more harm than good, but I thought maybe a technical-minded person could look into it. Thank you! 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 02:57, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@78.26: before diving in any further, would you please check Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and confirm if your option for Require confirmation before performing rollback on mobile devices is checked? — xaosflux Talk 17:07, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Yes, it is, thank you for asking. And in fact, the confirmation is popping up just like it should. The problem is that when "Cancel" is selected, the rollback is performed anyway. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 17:10, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@78.26: thank you, can you provide an example of the last time this occurred? I suspected it might have been Special:AbuseFilter/examine/1436794383? Can you be a bit more specific about your interface? Are you using the mobile application (ios or android), or the mobile web? If using a mobile device and web, are you using "desktop view"? — xaosflux Talk 17:23, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@78.26 Which browser, device, and skin are you using? — MusikAnimal talk 17:25, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, @MusikAnimal:, the last two examples are: [3] and [4]. This is on an Apple iPhone 6s, Software Version 14.6., Safari browser, "desktop view" (sorry, I really don't like mobile view). Does that help? 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 17:35, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@78.26: using that same browser, would you mind sharing your useragent? You can fetch that from sites such as Google using this link. Feel free to redact any version numbers in there. — xaosflux Talk 17:52, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Just a note, this is MediaWiki:Gadget-confirmationRollback-mobile.js. — xaosflux Talk 17:56, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 14_6 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko). 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 18:04, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@78.26 Thanks. I unfortunately have no way of testing the behaviour on an iPhone, but I do recall someone reporting this same issue before and they were also using an iPhone. Could you try using a different browser, such as Chrome or Firefox? That will at least narrow it down to a Safari issue. The gadget itself is extremely simple and should in theory work in virtually all browsers. — MusikAnimal talk 20:50, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Allright, I'll make some test edits with my alternate account and then try to "not-rollback" on both the Safari browser and Chrome. (I've never used Chrome on my mobile device, guess I'll see how I like it...) I'll ping you with the result. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 20:56, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: I presume this is bad news, but on both browsers (Safari, Chrome, both using Desktop view) I hit "rollback" and selected "Cancel" each time. I never selected "OK" on either browser. If you check my edit history you'll see the discouraging results. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 21:14, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@78.26: Yes, bad news :( That must mean it's an iPhone issue, I suppose. I will try to find a device (or virtual device) to debug this further. For now, since you say you rarely use rollback, you could hide the links entirely with User:MusikAnimal/rollbackTouch.js. — MusikAnimal talk 21:34, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal:Thanks! My next question was going to be if I could disable this (you can't in Preferences, already looked) because I can think of twice I've used rollback on purpose. Thank you also, Xaosflux. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 21:38, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
If you never use rollback on desktop either, you can simply hide them by adding 
.mw-rollback-link {
	display: none;
}
to your common.css. That would be simpler and faster than installing that script or enabling the gadget. Nardog (talk) 21:53, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, I was going to suggest that, but it leaves a lingering pipe character next to "undo". In order to remove that you need to remove the outer span which doesn't have a CSS class or ID. We could hide the first span under .mw-changeslist-links, but I'm not sure that accounts for rollback links in all places, or if there are cases where rollback isn't in the first span. Finally, the script only targets mobile devices (though 78.26 made it clear they don't use rollback on any device). But anyway, yes, a CSS-only solution is always more efficient. — MusikAnimal talk 22:22, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
That's only true on history. On Contributions, Watchlist and RecentChanges the whole list item gets removed. It also has the problem of not taking effect after a live update. Nardog (talk) 22:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Bah! Okay I've removed the .parent() (which I only added just before I commented here). A pity that the HTML isn't consistent across change lists. Thanks for pointing that out! I can do the special handling for history pages, I suppose.
Good point also about live update. This script I believe predates the live feature of Watchlist and RecentChanges, though of course other scripts/gadgets could dynamically add rollback links as well. I'll fix that, but for anyone reading this who wants to hide rollback links forever and always, like 78.26, use the CSS Nardog mentioned above :) I assume for most people the stray pipe characters on history pages is not much of a nuisance. — MusikAnimal talk 22:38, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
It would be simpler if you just added a class to <body> if the user agent indicates a mobile device and hid rollback links under that class in CSS. Nardog (talk) 22:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@Nardog Clever! That's a pure JS solution (assuming you'll use mw.util.addCSS(), so there's still a bit of delay as opposed to pure CSS, but that seems more than acceptable here. I'll give this a go when I find the time. If you wanted to write something yourself I'll happily review it and merge it into the gadget. Just ping me :) — MusikAnimal talk 05:38, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
It's really weird that the rollback gets performed despite choosing Cancel, as opposed to the gadget not taking effect at all. I can totally see the gadget failing when used on Ajax-updated pages though, since it's attaching the handler to .mw-rollback-link just once, directly. I think it should either make use of event delegation as in $(document.body).on('click', '.mw-rollback-link', function (e) {... or hook it to wikipage.content and attach the handler every time the page is updated.
$(".mw-rollback-link").parent().remove() removes not just the links but the whole list items with them (i.e. .parent() is unnecessary). But I don't understand why you wouldn't just hide them in CSS. Nardog (talk) 21:53, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Only after this lengthy discussion did I recall meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Rollback which has been around for a while now. In Preferences > Appearance, look for "Show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link". This makes it work much like the "Thank" button which requires a second click to confirm. However there appears to be some UI issues in the Advanced Mode on mobile. But for those who only work off of the desktop UI (be it on a mobile device or otherwise), this is a nice solution to the problem. — MusikAnimal talk 05:47, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: sorta - that will also force the link when not "on mobile" too. — xaosflux Talk 12:30, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Media Search is available for all users on Wikimedia Commons

Hello! We wanted to make a gentle reminder that, since last May, there is a new default way to search files and other media on Commons. Special:MediaSearch has been developed in the past year to make use of the structured data on Commons and information from Wikidata in order to provide users with more relevant and extensive results, regardless of the language used for the query.

The new interface allows users to access some of the file information (licensing, description…) directly on the page, gives users various options to better filter results, and relies on Wikidata's concept-linking abilities and multilingual labels. Special:Search remains available for users for cases when its purposeful wikitext-based search may be more appropriate to use.

MediaSearch is just one part of the larger Structured Data Across Wikimedia project, which aims to structure content on wikitext pages, to make reading, editing, and searching easier and more accessible across projects and on the Internet. If you want to learn more about the project, please visit the project pages on MediaWiki, subscribe to the SDAW Newsletter, or get in touch with us on the project's talk page. The Structured Data team looks forward to continuing work on opening up Wikimedia content. Thanks! -- Sannita (WMF) (talk) 13:58, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Difficulty in editing templates using the VisualEditor

Sorry, I'm not sure if this is the right place for this message but here goes. The VisualEditor is a more accesible way of editing and I really think we should make as many of our pages work with it as is possible. I have come across various templates such as List of listed buildings in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, aviation destination lists on airport pages, and multi-column templates, that make it harder or impossible to edit and add references using the VisualEditor. In frustration, I created a deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2021_July_11#Template:Airport_destination_list but it was kept, and to be honest I felt the keep arguments were unconvincing.

I suppose I want to see if anyone has the same feelings as me here, and if an argument could be made for removing these templates on the grounds of their negative impact on accessibility. Especially in the case of templates creating tables, I just don't think it's beneficial as experienced editors still know how to edit table syntax in the source code editor, but new editors or those who find the VisualEditor easier to use are locked out from editing. Could multiple columns be created using a div and CSS, avoiding the need for a template? If we want new editors to cite their sources, we need to make it easy for them to do so. NemesisAT (talk) 11:39, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't use VE, but doesn't {{Airport destination list}}'s documentation need a TemplateData section in order to make it usable with VE? I thought that was required, or at least required for ease of use. {{HS listed building row}}, which is used in the list article, is also lacking TemplateData code. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:11, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
I'm unable to experiment with TemplateData on {{Airport destination list}} as it has been locked, however my gripe with it was that you can't add citations, or indeed any formatting, unless you know the wikicode off-by-heart at which point you may as well use the source editor anyway. In fact, I believe it is not possible to add a citation or use WYSIWYG editing for any template paramter within the VisualEditor. Regarding the listed buildings template, that article is actually one template containing many more within it. It appears to be too much for the VisualEditor to load but again even if it did load, as the entire article is located within template parameters it is impossible to use VisualEditor tools to edit it, you're stuck with using source code within the VisualEditor. Hopefully this makes sense! TemplateData is good but I don't think it would resolve the issues I'm facing here. NemesisAT (talk) 16:20, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Somewhat perversely, TemplateData code is stored in the templates' documentation pages, which are not protected, so you should be able to add it yourself, to each of the templates in question. I don't think it makes sense to assume that the templates would not work with VE if they were properly equipped with TemplateData code; try it first before giving up. For help in adding that code, your best bet is probably Wikipedia:Help desk. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:37, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Ah of course, I forgot that it's on the documentation page. I'll have a look. NemesisAT (talk) 16:57, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
I have started a TemplateData for {{Airport destination list}}, but it will never be able to help you with adding a reference as the reference tools are all in the main VisualEditor toolbar, whereas the parameters of a template can only be edited in plain text. I should note that I am able to use the source code editor, in fact, I used to be opposed to the VisualEditor (both on here and on Wikia), but as it has developed, I've realised it is much easier for editing large tables and long pages with lots of references in them. NemesisAT (talk) 17:49, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Three thoughts:
  • @Johanna Strodt (WMDE) will want to see this, since WMDE is currently working on how to edit templates in the visual editor.
  • Most table-oriented templates were created a long time ago. MediaWiki originally used plain old HTML to create tables (a pair of <tr> tags for each row, a pair of <td> tags for each cell, etc.) The creation of a wikitext syntax (|-for a new row, || to separate cells on the same line) for made it easier, but it's still hard, especially when the table is large, or if you want any colors or other fancy formatting. Editors created table templates because it was easier than the wikitext for large or heavily formatted tables. However, now that the visual editor handles all of "code" parts for you, it is generally easier to edit tables in the visual editor than to wrangle templates (unless you want colored text). I particularly recommend the visual editor to anyone who needs to add, remove, or rearrange the columns in an existing table.
  • You can add and edit templates even if a TemplateData section doesn't exist. It's just (usually) more difficult.
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
That's interesting, I didn't know about the history of the table syntax. NemesisAT (talk) 17:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
The specific WMDE link is meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/VisualEditor template dialog improvements. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:42, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
Late to the party but... sending a template to TfD on the grounds that it's difficult to edit in VE could be seen as WP:POINTy. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:17, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
Here are some scatter brain thoughts (without reviewing that TFD):
  1. Templates can ensure intra-article consistency. While that is not something we necessarily need to preserve, it can be a nice benefit of table templates.
  2. Templates can indicate the good 'default' information to include. (A drawback is sometimes that's an infobox with 50 parameters. ;)
  3. Templates can restrict what is included, e.g. as in fan-driven wiki articles.
  4. They are easier even than wiki syntax to deal with by experienced editors. Just because we know how doesn't mean we prefer to know.
They have detracting points too of course.
  1. VE dislikes them. (BTW the Phab task you are looking for is phab:T52182 and related. It's old.)
  2. Do we really need standardization across all such articles for all such tables?
I know in the past that some of table templates have been deleted as being generally unnecessary, but certainly not all. And those have mostly been table-start, table-row, table-end type templates, not templates that compose the entire construct.
Another Phab task of interest might be phab:T54582 for the specific template.
A specific point: Could multiple columns be created using a div and CSS Yes, but we don't want users to do that. It's fundamentally gross and requires inline CSS. In the case of reference blocks, one might consider advocating to remove {{reflist}} in the general case in lieu of <references/> since most people probably don't need what it provides anymore (columns of references), and where they do they could instead use {{div col}}, which wouldn't make VE sad. Making general columns like {{col-begin}} does is somewhere on my to do list, but I don't know when I'll get to a nice version. Izno (talk) 17:00, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Number of editors per project

In one discussion somewhere I saw a graph of active editors in English Wikipedia compared to those of French Wikipedia. I think the graphs were a screenshot of one of the autogenerated statistics pages. Anyone know what that page might have been and could you provide a link? Regards, A Thousand Words (talk) 06:07, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea about that (I don't remember seeing any graphs), but at List of Wikipedias#Editions overview the table there has similar information for the more-or-less current moment. No idea if that satisfies your requirements. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 08:15, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
@1Kwords: Special:ActiveUsers gives a list of all the editors who have performed an edit on the English Wikipedia in the last 30 days, you can retrieve the number of active users using the {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}} magic word. Numbers for all projects are availiable on meta at meta:List of Wikipedias. 163.1.15.238 (talk) 12:23, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
The magicword only works on the local wiki, for any wiki: {{NUMBEROF|users|fr}} = 5076343 or {{NUMBEROF|activeusers|fr}} = 17185 -- GreenC 12:31, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
Found this page with Statistics, it shows number of active users over the last 12 months. The average is also shown, about 40K users for that time period. Found it via some searching and clicking the right links. A Thousand Words (talk) 19:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Mapframe border disappeared

Map
Campus map, showing the partial workaround for the boundary disappearance
Map
Campus map, showing the boundary disappearance bug

Following up from here, I'm continuing to have two issues with the Mapframe at Pomona College#Campus. The first (this thread) is that the boundary line has disappeared. The odd thing here is that it worked fine for a day or so when I first added it, but then it disappeared without any edits to the article/Wikidata item/OSM item I'm aware of, and it hasn't come back. The bug is replicated above at center.

The partial workaround I've found is to change |type=line to |type=shape, as shown above at right. However, even with the fill opacity set to zero, it still means anywhere in the interior of the campus becomes clickable with the title popping up. I'd much prefer it to return to the behavior from the line type before starting the FAC; does anyone know how to get that working again? Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:15, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

It's hard to say, but generally, I don't think shapes are supposed to be available in the line service. I'd be surprised if they were. Then again, our change in the osmdb sync has brought to light multiple changes already, so maybe there is an error. I really can't say. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:54, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ, the OSM feature from which the boundary is (I think) being derived is way 458898308, which is a line rather than a shape. I know some other institutions have a relation in addition to a way; I don't really understand what the difference is between those or if that might be related to the issue. Also, I'm not sure what you're referring to with "osmdb sync". {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:57, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ, okay, so I found phab:T285668. I'm still not quite sure what to do about this, though. Just drawing a line on the boundary rather than an infilled shape (using "service": "geoline" rather than "service": "geoshape") seems like something that ought to be possible, and it was possible until a week or so ago but now it seems it's not. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:42, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
That's not related, that ticket is about the toolforge OSM maps, which are way more broken than wikimedia maps at this point. There isn't a ticket about this particular issue yet, but i suspect it has something to do with the new way the import/update of the OSM database is being handled now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:51, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
Okay, thanks for the info; I created a phab ticket at phab:T294598. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:08, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Other admin deletion logs showing up on my watchlist

Filter options on recent changes, but the same interface can be found on the watchlist

I haven't lately checked - or unchecked - anything different on my Watchlist preferences. But my Watchlist is starting to show me the logs of Admin users. ANI suggested I uncheck the "logged actions" box. I don't see such a box, either on my Watchlist page, or on my Preferences. And it doesn't seem to be all admin logs that are showing up. Just two or three a day. Today's says "09:57 (Deletion log)‎ [Kusma‎; Favonian‎; Blablubbs‎]". And that's how it seems everyday. How do I stop this? — Maile (talk) 15:37, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Maile66: as far as I know, that happens when a page on your watchlist is deleted. At the top of your watchlist, there should be a box that says "Active filters". If it's hidden, click the "show" button. Then you can click the X next to "Logged actions" to stop showing them in your watchlist. I think that only lasts as long as you stay on the current watchlist page, but there's a bookmark icon to the right that allows you to save your filter preferences (mw:Help:New filters for edit review/Filtering). clpo13(talk) 15:55, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
Something is missing here. "Active filters" is not on mine, but I can click on "Show", but the drop down does not give me the option of "Logged actions". — Maile (talk) 16:10, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
Do you have the "Use non-JavaScript interface" option checked in your watchlist preferences? That would show the old watchlist options, which doesn't include the newer, advanced filters. clpo13(talk) 16:26, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
Aaahhhhhhhh ... I unchecked it, and the problem went away. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 16:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Color of "You have new messages" alert for IP editors

See MediaWiki talk:Common.css § Orange bar of doom now peach bar of doom. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:31, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Updating infobox templates

Scenario: 10k articles use the same infobox template. That template has code that hasn't been changed for 10 years (consider it deprecated). New template is ready. What are some advices and tips for the best workflow which causes the less amount of chaos with articles? Asking for cases outside of EnWiki. - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:57, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Tell us more about the changes. Are there incompatible parameters? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF), at most cases, no. But let's assume I have around 10 infoboxes suffering from the same problem and some of they may have totally new code syntax, for example having changed from traditional wiki text to Lua module invocations.
Real situation: Admin at SqWiki. Some infoboxes are outdated, we want to update them mirroring EnWiki. It's been month we've postponed that because we're worried about the chaos that my continue from that. Today I finally got the courage and updated the infobox related to musical artists, which was transcluded in +700 articles. The number of parameters and their type was more or less the same but in English so what I did was import the EnWiki version in a temporary name in SqWiki, get all the articles that it was transcluded on, feed that list on AWB together with 10 find and replace regex-es which would change the parameters on them (just translate them on English basically) and let my robot take over. Removed the old template, move the new one to the old name. Voila!
I was wondering if there are any other better ways I'm missing out on. - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:50, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
I think – and someone should please correct me if I'm wrong – that all of the good solutions inspire editors to improve the article on Vaporware, and that your current appropach is the most typical, and best, of the existing (poor) options. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF), thanks for the answer. I was thinking I never got an answer back in this post. Good to know I'm on the right track. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:18, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
Another potential option, for future use, would be to make the old template a wrapper for the new template. This ensures compatibility with the new parameters (and means you don't miss anything). Once this is done, you create a subst-only version of the old template, which then can be subst'ed away and replaced by the new template. Primefac (talk) 07:57, 31 October 2021 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

Article in mutually contradicting categories

Rehelim is in both Category:Short description matches Wikidata and Category:Short description is different from Wikidata. Any explanation? Abductive (reasoning) 23:14, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

There is no such thing as contradicting categories from a category system point of view... — xaosflux Talk 23:19, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
{{short description|Israeli settlement in the West Bank}} matches Wikidata but the infobox automatically adds the different short description "Place in Judea and Samaria Area". The first short description is used. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) In short - there are 2 templates that are pushing those categories, {{short description}} and {{Infobox Israel village}} - that later of which requires more patience than I have right now to unravel. — xaosflux Talk 23:28, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
This is a perennial topic at WT:Short description. Brilliant solutions are welcome. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:56, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
At the very least, update the documentation for Template:Infobox Israel village to let editors know what it is they are invoking when they use it? — xaosflux Talk 00:04, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 Done. Never let anyone say I didn't do the very least. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:31, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Advice regarding a template update

I am seeking advice regarding {{EB1911 poster}}. Currently the template does not function as described in the templat's documentation nor at Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating the template EB1911 poster with no parameters where it reluctantly states that failing to designate the article's title using the first unnamed parameter defaults to using {{PAGENAME}} albeit advisable to avoid. Currently, no such link is produced by such default although I have worked up a functioning solution in the templat's sandbox. Yet, because the template is protected, and I don't wish to use the TE flag inappropriately, I ask: would it be better for me to rewrite the instructions to correspond with the templat's functionality, or recode the template to correspond with the instructions? Additionally, the category's title makes it seem that the template was used without any parameters being used when in fact it only red flags and categorizes based on whether or not {{{1|}}} is used (even when other parameters are used). In this case I ask: should the category be moved to a more accurate title (like Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating the template EB1911 poster without designating the article's title for example) or here again, simply rewrite the instructions to accurately describe what triggers the categorization of member pages? Thank you for considering this request, and for any advice given. I appreciate the opportunity to learn from those regularly watching this page.--John Cline (talk) 10:19, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn't these questions be asked at Template talk:EB1911 poster. Doesn't seem like an appropriate topic for WP:VPT.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:37, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for your reply. I'll move the thread to that page. --John Cline (talk) 12:28, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
@John Cline: Yet, because the template is protected, and I don't wish to use the TE flag inappropriately... Template editor was granted to you because you are trusted to perform changes to pages protected so. Unless you have a COI of some sort (which it's hard to think would be applicable to a 110-year-old revision of Britannica), do what you think is best for the Wikipedia. Izno (talk) 12:35, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Thank you Izno, I appreciate your reply. I've already moved the discussion to Template talk:EB1911 poster#Advice regarding an update of this template so I'll leave it open for a little while and mark this thread as resolved. Thanks again.--John Cline (talk) 13:03, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Resolved

Indentation bug in mobile

Compare the mobile view and desktop view of an old version Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-10-31/Book review. For some reason, using a colon for indentation in the first para after the Signpost templates shows a large blank area in mobile view. I replaced the colon with <div style="margin-left:1em;"> which displays properly in mobile web. I have occassionally seen this type of bug in talk pages too. Any idea what's the reason behind this? ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 14:33, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

A colon is not for indentation. This is a bad habit we developed on talk pages, but generally a colon is part of a definition list. We generally use the template {{hatnote}} or any of it's more specific children templates for styling this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:11, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
The content there would probably better use {{block indent}}. --Izno (talk) 15:20, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Block new account creation only?

As a way to fight persistent creation of new socks on a /16 IP range with lots of legitimate traffic, I'm thinking the best tool might be to partial-block the /16 from some rarely-used namespace (say, "Gadget Definition Talk") and also tick the "Block account creation" box. I think that would have the effect of letting everybody, including IPs, continue to edit, yet prevent new socks from being generated. I assume that would work? Any reason not to do something like that? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:55, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

That's cute. I would use a namespace that most people can't edit such as Gadget or MediaWiki, not a talk namespace, leaning to MediaWiki because that one is guaranteed not to go anywhere. If I were to do something like this. And if it works. Izno (talk) 16:40, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
@RoySmith and Izno: you don't need that hack, you can just do what you want to do - see example at testwiki:Special:Redirect/logid/266527. — xaosflux Talk 16:58, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Interesting. Hey, could you give me a mop on testwiki so I can play with this? -- RoySmith (talk) 17:14, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Oh, I see what you did. Select "Partial", leave "Pages" and "Namespaces" both blank, and tick "Block account creation"? I just assumed you had to put something into one of Pages or Namespaces, but I guess not? -- RoySmith (talk) 17:17, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
 Done and nope - not required to actually include any "editing" blockage. — xaosflux Talk 17:36, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
That's pretty cool. I'll keep that in mind if I ever need to only prevent account creation from a range. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 18:17, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
This is a very neat trick! I wish I had known about this since partial blocks were introduced. I think this deserves documentation. For starters I've added a note at Wikipedia:Blocking IP addresses and Wikipedia:Partial blocks. — MusikAnimal talk 17:00, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-44

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • There is a limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse. [5]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 November. It will be on all wikis from 4 November (calendar).

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20:26, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Sprites?

Prompted by WP:VPM#Very big pages, I took a look at 2021 in mammal paleontology. A big chunk of the load time is a pile of tiny png files of national flags, many of which are smaller than 200 bytes (i.e. the HTTP headers swamp the data). This seems like a perfect use for sprites. Does the mediawiki software support that in any way? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:35, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

No, that's not how the web works. That said, the fix is obvious: Remove the "pile of tiny png files of national flags". Izno (talk) 16:12, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
There are around 58 different flags. That's not so bad. Many articles have around 200. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
CSS image sprites is one approach to convert loading multiple little images into loading a single image. In theory, someone could make a template to encapsulate the inner workings away for something like a composite image of all the national flags. More investigation is needed to determine how much savings it might provide, and weigh it against the cost of maintaining a composite image. isaacl (talk) 05:17, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
@Isaacl: could be a possible solution when template size is exceeded on some list pages as well. — xaosflux Talk 12:10, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
This is doable with TemplateStyles, IIRC. We'd need to put together a standard sheet with all the flags that an article might use, though. (We couldn't practically have a separate sheet specifically for the flags used in a particular article, nor is there a system for generating them like that.) I don't know if this would make sense to do from a performance perspective. --Yair rand (talk) 17:47, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
The problem with sprites for something like this, is that it only really works well if the same images are used a lot on the same page. Having a sprite with 500 different flags while most pages only use one flag or 0 flags, doesn't really make sense either. This is where optimising for Wikipedia becomes really difficult. Our pages are just all so different that many common optimisation strategies don't apply. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:24, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Tools down

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T294853

Just a heads up: There's a bunch of toolforge-based services (and possibly others?) down right now. I'm told there's a network issue in the toolforge infrastructure that's to blame and it's being worked on. So if something's not working, that's probably why. RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 12:55, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Latest update: "The incident has been resolved, all the alerts will start clearing up shortly. If you still see some issues, please ping us ... on IRC (#wikimedia-cloud on libera.chat)." -- RoySmith (talk) 14:15, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

[Read-only time] Wednesday 3rd November 06:00 AM UTC

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday 3rd November 06:00 AM UTC. It should only last for a few minutes. During this time, publishing edits will not be possible at English Wikipedia.

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:03, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

When a revert isn't a revert

Hi! Can we all agree the software should only use the term revert to mean undoing somebody's edit to the previous state, you know like the word means? Currently it is possible to hit the undo button AND THEN MAKE ANY UNRELATED CHANGES, and the poor sob making the original change will see his changes "reverted". This is not a theoretical concern, I just got bitten by it. --Palosirkka (talk) 14:46, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

@Palosirkka: Could you explain what the issue is, because I'm not seeing the issue from that article's history. You fixed the logo size, but did so using the wrong syntax. Ahunt came along and fixed the syntax for you. You reverted his edit because ???, then Ahunt reverted your revert. The only diffs in that chain that are tagged as "undo" (i.e. having involved clicking the undo button) are your revert and Ahunt's revert of your revert. The only edits that are tagged as "reverted" Ahunt fixing the syntax and you removing Ahunt's fix. As far as I can see everything is correct? 192.76.8.77 (talk) 14:58, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
@192.76.8.77:The issue is Ahunt didnt revert my change returning the article to it's previous state but ALSO made other changes. Yet the software called it all misleadingly 'reverted'. Do you now see my point? I reverted precisely because of the word reverted was used without looking at the diff. This misleading lingo can lead to such silly reverts and even "edit wars". --Palosirkka (talk) 15:05, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
It's a partial reversion, or a "revert and do differently". However, the software does label any change made with the undo button a reversion, even if it keeps the previous edit intact and changes something unrelated. Please try not to take the "Reverted" tag personally. It doesn't necessarily mean your edit is being criticised. On this occasion, you spotted a problem and partially solved it, allowing another editor to stand on your shoulders and finish the job. Certes (talk) 15:12, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
And that should be changed. I don't take it personally at all but it causes unneccessary re-reverts. --Palosirkka (talk) 15:17, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
I reverted precisely because of the word reverted was used without looking at the diff. So you deliberately edit warred without reviewing the changes in the revision? That seems blockable. Maybe you shouldn't do that instead. Izno (talk) 15:13, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
lol, no. I reverted Ahunt's edit because the software claimed he had removed my useful change. --Palosirkka (talk) 15:17, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
I think your point is clear, but unfortunately, things aren't so simple in our world (and the "Undid revision 1052844..." text that appears in the edit summary field with "undo" is only a suggestion; editors are free to adapt that text as appropriate). In the world in which we're working, edit summaries are very often incomplete, misleading or missing altogether. It behooves us all to actually check the diffs we undo/revert/rollback; after all, we take responsibility for each and every edit we make based on content even more than ES or "Reverted" flags. I hope you can consider this one of those "lessons learned" and continue contributing to Wikipedia with this knowledge helping you. Technically, I think it'd be very hard to revise the system so that any edits before saving an "undone" edit negate the application of the "Reverted" marker in th histories. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 15:32, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Technically, I think it'd be very hard to revise the system so that any edits before saving an "undone" edit negate the application of the "Reverted" marker in th histories. No that's already been done (phab:T259014). Nardog (talk) 15:35, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
@Palosirkka: No he didn't - It's tagged as "reverted" because you reverted it - edits which are performing a revert are tagged "undo" or "manual revert" depending upon how you do them. The first edit he made to the page [6] is not a revert in any sense of the word - he just moved the 90px into it's correct section of the infobox. It was not performed using the undo button, it is not a manual revert and the software did not tag it as such. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 15:22, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
@192.76.8.77:Good catch! So, the example is wrong. Sorry for that folks... However I still think the undo button should only remove the edit in question without allowing other changes. --Palosirkka (talk) 15:31, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Just a note, there was a similar discussion here last week, which generally seems to indicate that such actions are perfectly acceptable, though obviously if further changes are made they are indicated in the edit summary. Primefac (talk) 16:01, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Just to chime in. I agree with the sentiment here. I also want to add that I think the word "revert" has gained a toxic overtone among the general public in relation to Wikipedia. I've seen people online complain "your edits get reverted by power users" countless times. That's probably because we overuse the term. It really should only be used for things like obvious vandalism. Good faith edits should not be "reverted" and a explanatory edit summary should be given. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:16, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Portal:Current_events is not formatted correctly at large screens

It seems that the image at the TITN is breaking the format of the whole page. Purging does nothing, but zooming until the TITN text is taller than the picture does display the page as it should be. - 49.147.242.233 (talk) 09:24, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Portal:Current events/Headlines/styles.css was fixed to correct for this error. - 49.147.242.233 (talk) 12:17, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Some diff-related user scripts may have been broken by https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T285857, which modified the HTML structure of diffs. New CSS classes were added, and there may have been other changes too. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:32, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. Based on the log, the changes AFAICS are:
  • <td>s (including headers) now have a diff-side-deleted or diff-side-added class to indicate which pane.
  • The markers (pluses and minuses) are now in the data-marker attribute, which is then shown in a pseudo-element.
  • Empty lines now have <br> instead of a non-breaking space
Nardog (talk) 07:41, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

IP constantly varying between an Ipv6 and an Ipv4 address

It's constantly switching between these two addresses. Why? --2A02:AA1:1625:94FC:19BF:E15A:695E:13F (talk) 14:41, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Two weeks later there still is no WD link. WD link enables link to Wikidata item next to name at Wikipedia page. Why there is no information about this gadget or redirect to certain description in Wikipedia space or Wikidata item? Eurohunter (talk) 18:38, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: quickly going through the archives, it looks like you are trying to load a personal user script from wikidata, in to your personal global javascript - and are having some trouble with it? I suggest you start by contacting the user who's script you are loading at the project they host it in. — xaosflux Talk 18:46, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: No. I have it enabled in ENWP preferences (probably) and it worked here for some months or years until last month. What happened? Eurohunter (talk) 18:59, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
It just started working again foor no reason. Eurohunter (talk) 19:19, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
I already told you that at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 192#WD link: "d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js is loaded in meta:User:Eurohunter/global.js". Please read old answers and link old discussions when you report an issue. In the old discussion you said "it works elsewhere" but didn't give an example. Always include an example. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:19, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Yes but it was loaded there long time ago so why it didn't worked for 2 weeks? "it works elsewhere" - I mean every Wikipedia version expect ENWP so what I was supposed to say? I thought "elsewhere" is abvious and means every version expect ENWP. Right? Eurohunter (talk) 16:25, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
It could be lots of things, you could start by unloading all of these and only loading the one script - sometimes there are timing issues or other conflicts between javascripts. See also mw:Help:Locating broken scripts. — xaosflux Talk 17:00, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
I asked about Simple and you said "it still doesn't works in ENWP and SimpleWP and it works elsewhere". That claims it doesn't work in the only other place I asked about. Now you apparently claim it did work at Simple. Claims that something works or doesn't work everywhere are often false. There are 325 Wikipedias and around 600 other Wikimedia wikis where meta:User:Eurohunter/global.js is loaded. You obviously didn't test all of them. "elsewhere" includes Commons and so on. Even if the claim is right, readers don't know that and may spend significant time testing it at various places to see if any of them give or don't give the reported problem for themselves. Always give an example. ALWAYS. Helpers waste a huge amount of time on posts which don't give examples. You are also more likely to get fast and relevant answers when you give an example. Something in your personal JavaScript or gadgets may conflict with the script. Scripts are loaded in partially random order and the order may affect the result. If it fails again then try to log out, view an example page, and enter mw.loader.load('https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=User:Yair_rand/WikidataInfo.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); in the web console (Ctrl+Shift+K in Firefox on Windows). PrimeHunter (talk) 17:14, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Mapframe references don't display within descriptions

Map
Campus map, showing the reference error bug

Following up from here, the second issue I've been having with the Mapframe at Pomona College#Campus (first in thread directly above) is that references don't display properly within the description field. Click on the pin at right to see how <ref>{{cite news|last1=Fitz|first1=Allison|date=14 February 2020|title=New Rains Center to be completed by 2022; 5Cs prepare for construction's effects|work=[[The Student Life]]|url=https://tsl.news/new-rains-center-to-be-remodeled/|access-date=2 December 2020}}</ref> gets mangled. The same thing happens with SFNs, which I'd also like to use. I haven't been able to make progress on this since last time, so it may require a phab ticket; if that's the case, I'm mostly looking to understand how to better present the issue to increase the likelihood it gets taken up. Thanks in advance for the help, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:15, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Courtesy pinging those who commented previously: @Izno, Ɱ, TheDJ, Tgr (WMF), and Krinkle: see also the thread immediately above. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:15, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb T28213 is the general class this bug belongs to. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 01:04, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
This problem is because the templates used here just dump wikitext into geojson. But geojson doesn't support wikitext or html, geojson only supports text only descriptions. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:05, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
The lua/template probably can use killMarkers to remove the references from the input. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:10, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
I tried that, but mw.text.killMarkers and mw.text.unstrip don't seem to work any more (only mw.text.unstripNoWiki seems still functional). Is there any downside to removing the stripmarker with gsub? —  Jts1882 | talk  15:55, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ and Jts1882: Mapframe does seem able to handle images, so I think that means it's able to convert at least some types of wikitext into proper output. Would getting it to do the same with references be feasible, or is that out of the question? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:00, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Map
Campus map, showing the reference error bug

@Sdkb, Jts1882, and Tgr (WMF): I think I fixed it in the sandbox ? Markers include control characters and because control characters cannot be in json, these were getting stripped from the input. By moving that logic to later in the flow and using killMarkers on content explictely meant for the json body, I think we can work around both problems. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:24, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

oh great, now the static map is broken again... Guess there is still a control char somewhere.... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:29, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
ah interesting.. moved the coord a fraction and it fixed itself. I think i know why.. the livepreview saved a copy of the image with a different hash, causing an incorrect group reference being generated that the static tile renderer then cannot use... This likely happens a lot and I think i might already have a patch for that particular problem somewhere.
Map
Campus map with mapframe tag directly
@TheDJ: I tried adding a ref within a direct call of mapframe HTML, as you suggested. It doesn't seem to have worked, though. Am I doing something wrong? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:34, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: there were just a few errors in the json. Importantly, the json values need to be escaped (esp. "), but also geojson flips the order of the latitude and longitude (apparently that's a thing in Cartesian geometry). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:21, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b c Fitz, Allison (14 February 2020). "New Rains Center to be completed by 2022; 5Cs prepare for construction's effects". The Student Life. Retrieved 2 December 2020.

Ref parameter

For anyone following along, after some discussion with TheDJ and others on Discord (around here), we'd like to add reference parameters (e.g. |ref2=, |ref3=) to Module:Mapframe. These would add <ref>reference content</ref> into the json appended to the end of the description parameter. This would bypass a parse cycle and make it so that the ref tag wouldn't be escaped when the JSON is made, resolving the bug. If anyone who knows Lua could help to code this, I would be grateful! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 07:55, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Map
Campus map, using a reference parameter
Map
Bug when multiple features are used
@Sdkb: Does this edit do what you want (see right)? I was puzzled why it didn't work until I saw that the stripmarkers were being stripped out in recent changes. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:53, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Jts1882, that looks fantastic; thanks so much! I did encounter a bug, though; it seems that if more than one feature is added, it goes back to displaying '"`UNIQ--ref-00000003-QINU`"' again. Any idea what's causing that? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:30, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb and TheDJ:Single features and multiple features are handled slightly differently. The latter are placed in an array and control characters stripped (in part of the code added to the sandbox by TheDJ to remove stripmarkers). I don't have access to your discussion on Discord, but am I right in thinking that these changes aren't needed with this reference solution. I've disabled the stripping of control characters (line 597) to show that the reference code otherwise works.
I think rather than removing stripmarkers in the code, it might be better to detect them and provide a warning or error message. If references it could suggest use of the reference parameters. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:18, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
I think there is a simpler solution. Escape the control characters on line 199 rather than replacing them with a blank.
Old:
cleanArgs[key] = (not util.matchesParam('text', key)) and val:gsub('%c',' ') or val
New:
cleanArgs[key] = (not util.matchesParam('text', key)) and val:gsub('(%c)','\%1') or val
Is there a problem with this? —  Jts1882 | talk  09:53, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
I guess that could work. let's try it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:17, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
@Jts1882, @TheDJ: The sandbox looks like it's working! Should we implement as is or do you want to try the simplification idea first? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:26, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
The current sandbox version makes a number of changes dealing with stripmarkers that might not be necessary. The simple solution of escaping stripmarkers might offer a more general solution and wouldn't be removing anything added to the template parameters. It worked for me in the tests I did in the editor. It's not clear to me why the control characters were replace by spaces rather than escaped before, as it seems to me this caused the stripmarkers to leak. If it works, then is the ref parameter needed? —  Jts1882 | talk  07:10, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Oh, if it makes the ref parameter unnecessary, that's even better! I'm good with implementing the simplified version then. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:59, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Map
Version with multiple features using new sandbox solution (no reference parameter)
Not quite as simple as I thought. My solution above breaks json queries in |raw= parameters. I've reset the sandbox and added special handling for the description parameter using the above method, leaving handing of |raw= and other parameters unchanged. This works in the examples we've being using (see right or User:Jts1882/sandbox#mapframe_test) and doesn't break any of the {{Maplink/testcases}}.
It was the replacement of control characters with spaces (to fix the issue of control characters in the json output) that cause the leak of stripmarkers. The |text= parameter was excluded from this process to protect stripmarkers, but stripmarkers in other parameters were corrupted. I'm not sure, but it seems that only the |raw= parameter needs special handling and that my fix could be used on the other parameters, which would allow references on titles as well. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:18, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
The technical part is over my head, but the behavior all looks good! I put a courtesy notice at the module talk page; if no one from there/here raises concerns, feel free to implement! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:26, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Fitz, Allison (14 February 2020). "New Rains Center to be completed by 2022; 5Cs prepare for construction's effects". The Student Life. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  2. ^ a b Fitz, Allison (14 February 2020). "New Rains Center to be completed by 2022; 5Cs prepare for construction's effects". The Student Life. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
  3. ^ a b Other, A.N. (14 February 2020). "Table Mountain Observatory to be completed by 2022; 5Cs prepare for construction's effects". The Student Life. Retrieved 2 December 2020.

I have created these eight pages, all redirects to Photoelasticity.

If someone comes along and changes one of them to a full-fledged article, then all of the others should redirect to that. But the creator may be unaware of those others. Is there some way we can use existing software to assure that that person will become aware of the situation? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:37, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

@Michael Hardy A comment? ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:58, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Space aliens ate my header!

In Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ineedtostopforgetting/Archive, the "11 October 2021" L3 heading doesn't render. My first guess is something broken in the immediately preceeding {{SPIpriorcases}}, but my eyes glaze over when I try to read that junk.

There is HTML being generated for it: 

<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="11_October_2021" data-mw-comment="{"type":"heading","level":0,"id":"h-11_October_2021-Ineedtostopforgetting","replies":["h-Suspected_sockpuppets-11_October_2021-2021-10-11T01:46:00.000Z","h-Comments_by_other_users-11_October_2021-2021-10-11T17:27:00.000Z","h-Clerk,_CheckUser,_and\/or_patrolling_admin_comments-11_October_2021-2021-10-29T13:56:00.000Z"],"headingLevel":3,"placeholderHeading":false}"><span data-mw-comment-start="" id="h-11_October_2021-Ineedtostopforgetting"></span>11 October 2021<span data-mw-comment-end="h-11_October_2021-Ineedtostopforgetting"></span></span><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Ineedtostopforgetting/Archive&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: 11 October 2021">edit source</a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span> <span class="arky" style="display:none"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a data-header="3" data-section="1" onclick="$(this).closest(":header").toggleClass("arkyhighlight");$(this).toggleClass("arkylink");var archivable = $(".arky a"); for(var i=archivable.index(this); i<archivable.length; ++i) { if (archivable[i] == this) { continue; } if ($(archivable[i]).attr("data-header") > 3 && $(archivable[i]).hasClass("arkylink") != $(this).hasClass("arkylink")) { $(archivable[i]).click(); } else { break; } }">archive</a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></span></h3>

but nothing actually displays. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:59, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps the most efficient thing to do is ask User:Vanjagenije, who just (~3 days ago) archived part of the archive to another page, according to this. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 21:29, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
The box generated by {{SPIpriorcases}} has the "infobox" class, which is floating. Looks like it floats right on top of the heading; using the dev tools to manually set float: none on the box causes the heading to show up again. A naïve way to fix this would be to add that style rule to the template, which I've done in the sandbox (to see how it looks, edit the SPI page, replace {{SPIpriorcases}} with {{SPIpriorcases/sandbox}}, and preview). Maybe there are better ways, though. – Rummskartoffel 21:40, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
(Don't use the infobox class for things that aren't infoboxes. This might better be using {{side box}}.) Izno (talk) 22:28, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
@Firefly: you were the last person to edit {{SPIpriorcases}}, but more importantly, you understand this stuff a lot better than I do. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:21, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
@RoySmith hmmm did I break something? I’m travelling at the moment but will have a look when I can get to a computer - assuming someone else doesn’t get there first :) firefly ( t · c ) 06:32, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

intake-analytics.wikimedia.org

Today (and yesterday) every time I save or preview an article I get the message "Microsoft Edge not responding - waiting for intake-analytics,wikimedia.org. The resulting delay ranges from a few seconds to two or more minutes, making even a simple edit a time-wasting process. What is going on, and when will it be fixed? This problem does not occur in Safari on iPad. Downsize43 (talk) 01:18, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

That domain is for metrics measuring. It shouldn't take that long to respond and I haven't heard more complaints about it yet. If it keeps up however, please do open a ticket in Phabricator. They might ask you for some more details about where you are located and the ISP, because likely this is an internet routing issue and somewhat specific to the path between your ISP and wikimedia. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:46, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I was having this problem just last month (c.f. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive_192#slow_pages_saves_waiting_for_intake-analytics.wikimedia.org) - ended up just blocking this domain locally. — xaosflux Talk 17:03, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Just how do I do that? Downsize43 (talk) 11:19, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@Downsize43: I used a software firewall, there are many ways you could do this - but none of them are Wikipedia-specific. — xaosflux Talk 11:36, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

My signature

Hello! So I'm here to write about an issue (That's mostly minor) with my signature. If you look at my signature, you'll notice a gap between my talk link and my discord username, and the timestamp. Anyone know what part of the code causes this to happen and how I can fix it? ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:19, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

It happens because position:relative doesn't change the space reserved for the text. {{Sup sub}} uses another approach but templates are disallowed in signatures and Special:ExpandTemplates shows it uses a lot of code. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:08, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
You could try to use "margin-right:-22q" on the subscript style: Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 but I don't know if that would be exceed the character limit. --rchard2scout (talk) 12:06, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Unfortunately it does. But thanks for trying. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:05, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@Blaze The Wolf: try [[User:Blaze The Wolf|<b style="background:#0d1125;color:#51aeff;padding:1q;border-radius:5q;">Blaze The Wolf</b>]][[User talk:Blaze The Wolf|<sup>Talk</sup>]]<sub title="Discord Username" style="margin-left:-22q;">Blaze Wolf#6545</sub>. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 15:32, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Non-functional reference parameters within a template

At {{Rotten Tomatoes prose}}, I can't get parameters like |access-date= to work. I'm guessing this may have something to do with the bug about stuff not working within tags, but the normal workaround of using {{#tag|ref|content=the ref}} doesn't work either.:L Any idea what's happening/how to fix it? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:48, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

You have skipped a few steps. Here's some tough love:
  1. Revert the recent non-working edits to the live template, which is transcluded on 131 pages, in case you broke anything.
  2. Create a sandbox version of the template.
  3. Create and populate a testcases page.
  4. Use Special:ExpandTemplates to figure out what the rendered version of the template's wikitext looks like.
  5. Modify the sandbox and testcases page until you fix the problem or have a better idea of where the problem resides.
  6. If necessary, repeat the previous two steps until you fix the problem or get stuck.
  7. If you fix the problem, copy the sandbox code to the live template.
  8. Post a note on the template's talk page asking for help.
I'm happy to help if you get stuck, but please be more careful when editing templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:01, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@Jonesey95, I'll go create the sandbox. Regarding carefulness/the possibility of breaking anything, I wouldn't have proceeded if there had been a possibility of that. The reference parameters only appear when |ref=yes is set, and that's only done on one page, which I previewed before saving to ensure that nothing was broken. The access date not appearing on that one page until this issue is resolved isn't a crisis. I also sense that you have a feeling that I just came immediately to the pump before trying to resolve the issue myself. That's again not true—I spent a good 15 minutes tinkering with |ref=/similar to see if I could get it to work; just since I did it in preview rather than in a sandbox doesn't mean it didn't happen. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:08, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: I've tried again with #tag: and it seems to work now. Certes (talk) 23:38, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, looks good; much thanks! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:44, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

VE not loading and editing menu buttons no longer visible on source editor

Hi techhies, I have two computers running Win 10 and the problem is only apparent on one of them (using Chrome), so not a bug at Wikipedia's end. Visual editor hangs up after loading 70% and never recovers. When editing in source mode, I have lost all the editing interface buttons (font size, italics, etc). Having already restarted a few times and ensured Java is updated, what is my next step for troubleshooting this? Loopy30 (talk) 19:57, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

@Loopy30: these don't require java - so it's not that. Try opening an "incognito" window in Chrome, don't even logon, and see if you can start editing that way (don't click publish). — xaosflux Talk 20:34, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Yep, works fine in "incognito" mode, what would be the setting that is stopping me normally? Loopy30 (talk) 01:23, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
@Loopy30: I've turned off your userscripts (just revert my edit at User:Loopy30/common.js to turn them back on). Other things that could be related to your account, see if you have any beta features enabled and turn off. Then in your browser, clear your cache and cookies from wikipedia (you will have to log on again afterwords). — xaosflux Talk 01:29, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Reply tool: "reply" button looks wrong on some pages

Hello! I've enabled discussion tools, and they've been working fine for a while. Today, though, the reply link started to act weirdly. On some pages (but not all), the "reply" button looks wrong (like reply instead of [ reply ]). For example, this page looks fine, but my talk page has the superscript-like style. I've tried safemode (and clearing my common.js) to no avail. Does anybody know what's going on? Thanks. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:09, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I cannot reproduce on your talk page. Please point to a specific thread and/or comment you are seeing the issue on. If this is an issue, it sounds like it is an issue with someone's signature having an unclosed <sub> element and not an actual problem with the system that generates reply links to me. Izno (talk) 01:13, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Well, it's gone now. Weird. It was formatted differently with every comment on my talk (and on Wikipedia:Bot requests). I still have no idea what happened. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:33, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
I saw it too. Dug around a little and couldn't figure out what was up. All's well that ends well... Enterprisey (talk!) 04:25, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
I can't be sure but it might've been connected to the missing TOC issue (discussion above). I saw the wonky reply links on discussion pages when I was wondering where the TOC had gone. I made null edits on a few pages to get the TOC to appear and the reply links were probably OK too after that. (It was late at night so I'm not 100 % sure of what I saw.) kyykaarme (talk) 08:28, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Is it possible to search archived versions of websites saved in Web Archive by content like in any web search? Eurohunter (talk) 18:28, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter:
arquivo.pt has that feature, but it cover less pages than the archive.org. Still better than nothing. MarMi wiki (talk) 14:22, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
@MarMi wiki: Very interesting. It has more results than I expected unfortunatelly search tool is not optimised too well. Anyway I think Arquivo.pt should be listed somewhere as useful archive. Eurohunter (talk) 15:13, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

How to fix issue with two different references by same author, one is a book reference and one a website reference.

Book reference using SFNREF, website is not, but it's creating a targeting error. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 16:19, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

If they are the same year then see Template:Sfn#More_than_one_work_in_a_year. A simpler fix is not to use the error-prone and reader-unfriendly sfn/harv system. DuncanHill (talk) 16:27, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, that worked. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 16:30, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Using |ref=none on the cite web template should also work if it isn't going to be called by sfn/harv.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:39, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Thank you, I knew I'd seen that before but I couldn't remember what the correct option was. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 16:48, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Hunk of text hidden in VPP/138

This search says that Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 138 includes the phrase User:SMcCandlish is claiming the untrue once again, but it's not on the page. Digging into the wikitext source, it is in the wikitext, added in Special:Diff/814672137. Actually, a big chunk of the wikitext is missing from the rendered page, but I've been unable to isolate exactly where the missing chunk starts and ends. The W3C validator comes up with a bunch of nit-picky stuff, but nothing that looks like is should drop a big hunk of text. Can anybody see what's going on? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:51, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

The wikitext not too far north of that line has {{collapse top|title=Collapsing a dispute which has been mooted.}}. --Izno (talk) 19:04, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Ah, thanks! -- RoySmith (talk) 19:08, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Missing TOC?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T295187

I just noticed that the table of contents was missing from Jacob Wohl, which has the requisite four headings that should autogenerate one. I've added __FORCETOC__ for now, but does anyone know what might've caused it? GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 21:50, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Multiple users are experiencing this, it has been reported by three people at WP:HD, I'll direct them here. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:55, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Huh, weird, I am experiencing this, but not consistently. I don't see a TOC at Jonestown or Alaska but do see one at Dune (2021 film) and History of Alaska. Weird. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:02, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
I see TOCs at all of those articles. I am using the legacy Vector skin. Check to see what skin the editors experiencing the problem are using. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:06, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Regular vector over here. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 23:19, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Oddly, the first time I looked at the Jonestown article there was no TOC. I made a change to fix the infobox, then I could see the TOC. Now, I see the TOC in all of the articles. I too use Real Vector — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 23:28, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
I am also using the legacy Vector skin, and I am also now seeing TOC on all four articles I mentioned above...so.... I dunno... Beeblebrox (talk) 01:16, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
In attempting to fix a different issue related to the ToC on language converter wikis (primarily Chinese), the revert ended up being worse and was un-reverted once the issue was realized. It should be fixed now, I added a link to the relevant Phab task. Legoktm (talk) 01:22, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Wonderful, thank you for clearing this up! I've removed __FORCETOC__ from Jacob Wohl and the TOC is showing up as expected without it. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 01:24, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
@Legoktm Awesome. It's back to normal for me too. -Oluwatalisman (talk) 02:22, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

"Contents" window having trouble

For some reason, the "Contents" index section on Wikipedia, which contains the heading section indexing, doesn't show up on a few pages for me (including for my talk page). I'm not sure why. Am I the only one? This has previously been discussed here.

EDIT: I just noticed a few people had already mentioned this issue above. WikiLinuz (talk) 23:20, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

The automatic generation of a contents list on talk-pages sees to kick in once a fourth section is added. Remove the fourth section and the contents list disappears. It's evidently part of the programming (whether or not it ought to be is another matter). See another example at Talk:Nero. Haploidavey (talk) 06:47, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
@Haploidavey: The TOC is automatically suppressed when there are fewer than four headings or subheadings (excluding the page title), by design. This is long-standing behaviour, and is mentioned at H:TOC. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:03, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Thanks for that, and for the notification. Very thoughtful of you! I'm sure the Notoc business is something I used to know. Or at least bits of it. But since I hit 70, I find these little biscuits of knowledge just fall into the cocoa of age, and are lost in a sludge of milky bedtime drinks. Haploidavey (talk) 14:20, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
@Haploidavey What???? -Oluwatalisman (talk) 18:56, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
@Talisman-white: Haploidavey has confused a long-standing feature (non-display of TOCs that would have three entries or fewer) with a recent bug (non-display of longer TOCs). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:47, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Viewing the latest diffs

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T295225

When viewing old diffs, there are convenient "← Previous edit" and "Next edit →" links for navigation between the edits. When viewing the latest diff, only a "← Previous edit" link is shown for obvious reasons. However, if the page is edited again while you're viewing that diff, it'd be nice if a "Next edit →" link appeared so that that a) you'd know that another edit had been made without needing to view the watchlist/history again, and b) that newer diff could be viewed in one click. Is there a preference somewhere to achieve this? Sod25 (talk) 21:28, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

@Sod25 No, but you could ask at WP:SCRIPTREQ ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:35, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
This would require performance-degrading JavaScript for general use, but yes, a user script could maybe do something like this. Izno (talk) 01:10, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
What's the important feature here: having a "Next edit" link, or making it appear only when that next edit occurs? The former would be easy and efficient, as it only needs the current revision id (...&diff=next&oldid=current revision). If there is no next edit, it shows a "no changes" diff between the current version and itself. The costly bit, both for the browser and the (API?) server, would be polling for a new revision appearing. That might happen many times if the user leaves the tab open whilst doing something else. Certes (talk) 13:59, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
The polling could be done only if the tab is active. – SD0001 (talk) 14:51, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies everyone, I won't ask for a script to be custom written for me as this is a want not a need. An important part of the idea was the "Next edit →" link appearing so that you'd notice that another edit had been made, similar to how "↻ View new changes since..." appears in the watchlist for the same reason. The watchlist only seems to poll for new changes when you're viewing that tab, so that would probably be the way to go about it. Sod25 (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

align=center|

align=center| or style="text-align: center;" ? If align=center| why without quotation marks if {| class="wikitable" has always quatation marks? <br /> or <br >? Eurohunter (talk) 10:05, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

style="text-align: center;" is preferable. align="center" is obsolete.[8] Quotes are optional if the value to the right of the equals sign doesn't contain spaces or special characters (class=wikitable would work as well). I personally prefer <br />, but both are equally correct. Rummskartoffel 14:58, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Alternative text for images

Did something change recently with alternative text for images? Using Firefox on a PC, I could see the alternative text displayed when I hovered over an image. But now it's not displaying. What's up with that? — Mudwater (Talk) 02:31, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Edited to add: Wait a minute. On the main page, I'm still seeing the alternative text. But I don't see it in album cover images in articles about albums. So, is something broken with the {{Infobox album}} template? — Mudwater (Talk) 02:34, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
Module:InfoboxImage was changed about 30 hours ago. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:07, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Yep, that was it. Thanks! Further reading: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums#Alternative text for album cover in infobox — Mudwater (Talk) 15:59, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Automatic counting in table

I know there is template for automatic counting in table but I don't remember its name and maybe there is other way t achieve it? Eurohunter (talk) 15:03, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Are you looking for {{row numbers}} or {{Static row numbers}}? * Pppery * it has begun... 15:36, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
@Pppery: What is the point of it if you have to count it manually? Eurohunter (talk) 15:55, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
Oh, sorry, I completely misunderstood what you were asking for. Ignore me. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:56, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
@Pppery: Do you have idea how to make it to count automatically? Eurohunter (talk) 16:14, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
I remember there was probably two templates one for add all wanted numbers in the table into one template and second template with result. Eurohunter (talk) 16:59, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

How to subst #if:

Moved from Wikipedia:Help desk § How to subst #if:
 –  ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:47, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I was trying to add an auto-categorising feature to a template, which works fine as 

{{#if:{{#invoke:String|match|s={{subst::{{subst:FULLPAGENAME}}}}|[[Category:Wikipedia scripts]]|plain=true|nomatch=}}||The Category}}


However when I try to subst into her a blank string. How do I fix this, and is there a better way to do this? ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:37, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

One of the regulars here might be able to help you, but I would suggest that WP:VPT is a better place to ask such a question. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:45, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
I can reproduce that behaviour. With subst:, it produces the text between the two pipes before "The Category", which happens to be blank. I don't understand the reason for that. (The other two subst: within s= don't seem to make any difference.) Certes (talk) 19:05, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
Are you forgetting to subst the #invoke? * Pppery * it has begun... 19:09, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
That fixes it for me (and makes the other two subst: within s= necessary too). Certes (talk) 19:17, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks @Pppery, I was sure I'd already tried that ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:08, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Automatically renamed users

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T219279

Hello! See User:Ʝ and User:DZoo — two users who seem to have disappeared during a rename from lowercase to capital letters. Their user pages' history show them being created by users with the lowercase name, but clicking their user link or contribs link brings you to the nonexistent username with the capital first character. I'm not sure what went wrong here. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:36, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Tol: This is being discussed at phab:T219279 - it isn't really about "lowercase" but a unicode problem that is being worked on, it may have some bugs that should be brought up at that phab task. — xaosflux Talk 14:34, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, @Xaosflux. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 14:47, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-45

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Mobile IP editors are now able to receive warning notices indicating they have a talk page message on the mobile website (similar to the orange banners available on desktop). These notices will be displayed on every page outside of the main namespace and every time the user attempts to edit. The notice on desktop now has a slightly different colour. [9][10]

Changes later this week

Future changes

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:34, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

why cant one merge two accounts

i want to merge two accounts but could i it's just mysql query bi (talk) 09:13, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: Short answer: No. We have never done this. Longer answer: we do not have the means to do this, and part of the reason that it was never provided is because of the requirements of CC BY-SA attribution - the same reason why we never delete accounts. As an example of a declined request to merge accounts, see phab:T154290. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:43, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

{{THISSECTIONNAME}}

There doesn't seem to be a magic word or template that returns the name of the section in which it is placed (but maybe I haven't searched with the right query terms), and it would be useful in a number of situations. Is there some elegant or at least decent way to do this? If not, I'm planning a template which would include a unique token as a param (or maybe auto-generate it as a subst'ed hash of concat( {{Time}}, {{SUBPAGENAME}} ), read the article with {{find page text}}, and match it against a regex pattern matching the last section header name before the token. But that seems hacky and wasteful to me, and there ought to be a better way to do it. Is there? Somewhere I seem to remember reading about "section numbers", but I think that was just an addressability issue, and not a retrieval one.

My current use case is to provide decent query terms for the 'find' params in templates like {{Unreferenced}} and {{Expand section}} and others, where the first query term (|find= = "exact string" match) uses the article title, and the second query term (|find2= = unquoted search) would be the section name. This generally gives very good results when done manually, but optional params don't get used a lot, and the ability to automatically provide current section name as an unquoted query term in these templates would be a big improvement in the quality of search results provided by those templates. I suspect there would be a lot of applications for such a template, and it would be useful to have it be as efficient as possible. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:13, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Today this is not possible. There is a future where Parsoid is the one parser that might be able to do something like this keyword. Izno (talk) 22:15, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, I thought not. In that case, as a fallback position of a template to replicate that functionality, can anyone find a better or more efficient solution than the one I have proposed? Mathglot (talk) 22:29, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Section names are not fixed, they may be altered at any time (example). When editing, sections are referred to by number (for example, this section is no. 29 as I type this), but those may change at any time if, for example, old threads are archived or new sub-sections added to earlier sections. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Recent Changes filters randomly disappear and reappear

For some reason, the "User intent predictions" filters on Recent Changes will just randomly stop working when you have them applied, and when you reload the page, they are nowhere to be seen on the list of filters. Then, after a while, they reappear and magically start working again, and the cycle repeats itself. Why and how on earth is this happening?? GMX(ping!) 01:42, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

How can I know how many page views species articles on English Wikipedia recieve per month?

Hi all

I'm working on a potential partnership with a large natural history organisation and I would like provide them with some metrics to give them an idea of the scale of readership of Wikipedia. If anyone is able to help me by giving me a metric of how many page views English Wikipedia articles on species receive per month I would really really appreciate it. I've tried using categories to get page views but I can't work out how to only get species articles, assume that there are a few infoboxes which could be used to identify species articles.

Many thanks

. John Cummings (talk) 21:23, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

All species pages should have a taxobox template. Searching for pages with template {{Speciesbox}} will pick up species pages using the automated taxobox system. If you also wanted subspecies and infraspecies you could also include template {{Subspeciesbox}} and template {{Infraspeciesbox}}. And pages using the older manual taxobox system could be found by searching for pages with template ({{Taxobox}} and parameter |species=. No idea about the page views side of things. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:24, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

A bug with "Syntax highlighting" capability

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T252342
Resolved

Hi, if we follow this scenario

  1. Go to the "Talk page" of an article, for example go to the talk page of Resolution (logic) i.e., the page Talk:Resolution (logic)
  2. Press "New section" from top menu bar
  3. Activate "Syntax highlighting" capability from the top toolbar, i.e., press the icon to activate it
  4. Enter a short subject

Now in this place of scenario, if we try to sign our message via four tildes by pressing hyperlink existing on the bottom of that page, i.e., the hyperlink existing in "Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~" the resulting four tildes is always inserted in the "Subject textbox". Even if we put the cursor in the "Message textbox", and then put the that hyperlink again to sign the message, still these four tildes is always inserted in the "Subject textbox" and not on its correct position that is on the "Message textbox". Please correct this bug. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 17:28, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Note: This bug is known and being tracked at phab:T252342. Rummskartoffel 18:03, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
I bet just adding 
			} ).on( 'focus', '.CodeMirror', function () {
				$currentFocused = $( '#wpTextbox1' );
after MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js#L-249 will do. Nardog (talk) 19:47, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
The CharInsert extension has code which seems to take care of CodeMirror compatibility, similar to what you suggest. We could copy that. Though I'm not sure what is the relationship between the charinsert gadget and charinsert extension. – SD0001 (talk) 04:49, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the relationship is either, but it's documented. It seems wrong to duplicate the code that should already be in the extension, but anyway I've copied over the extension's code per your suggestion and that seemed to fix it. Thanks for doing the research! — MusikAnimal talk 21:52, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Long tables causing a gray background to the right of the screen

A long table in a Wikipedia article is causing a gray background to the right of the screen.

I have encountered this problem in several articles.
Examples:
Tesla_Model_S#Sales_by_country
RGB_color_space#RGB_color_space_specifications
Asteroid#Size_distribution
Motion_picture_content_rating_system#Comparison_table
List of AMD accelerated processing units#Features overview
Fiddler on the Roof#Casts
List of country calling codes#Tree list
Ranjit Singh#Biography#Early life
Sanjay Leela Bhansali#Filmography#Frequent Actor and Artist Collaborations as Director

And I came here after having discussions at Talk:Tesla_Model_S#Page_Display, Talk:RGB_color_space#Page_Display, and Talk:Asteroid#Page_Display.

I am using the iPad mobile website.

I am using Safari.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Neel.arunabh (talk • contribs) 21:24, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

The grey background is the "natural" background colour for all Wikipedia pages. The white that you see in the main text area is specific to that area, it is superimposed on top of the grey and hides it. There's a trend at the moment to artificially constrain the width of displayed text, tables are not subject to that restriction so may protrude into the blank area on the right. Personally I would design web pages to use all of the available width, because if people really want the text to be narrower, they can resize the window by dragging the left or right edge. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:07, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
See Wbm1058's suggestion at Talk:Tesla Model S#Page Display, "The large number of footnotes included in some cells of the table is causing some columns of the table to be much wider than necessary. If all the citations were pulled from inside the individual cells and placed immediately below the table, the table would not require as much screen real estate.". We do not want last few columns of the table to cross the edge of the main text area. Neel.arunabh (talk) 01:14, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
What would you do instead? Cut it off level with the main text? No thanks. Space is there to be used, not set aside as fallow. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:46, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
I am really against the current structure of the tables. Imagine what it would be if the same thing happened in a Word document. Neel.arunabh (talk) 15:23, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
A skin level solution is basically required to fix this, as well as fixing our templates that use tables rather than e.g. divs (already on my long list of things to fix). For normal tables, only the first really fixes it; e.g. both Timeless and Minerva take care of the issue by overflow-x: scroll or some variant, while Vector probably does not have that code. phab:T131650 exists as one element of the issue, as does phab:T66577 (though the latter is written from the mobile perspective, the issue is relevant to New Vector's fixed content width). Maybe Jdlrobson knows the more recent task I'm pretty sure Alex was looking at a few months ago and which I can't find right now. Izno (talk) 15:33, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Neel.arunabh, have you tried choosing "Use Legacy Vector" under Preferences → Appearance? It looks like your choice of skin (Vector 2.0, I'm guessing) means that you are depriving yourself of screen width for the text. Please try it; you might like it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:54, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Jonesey95, "Use Legacy Vector" is already on in my preferences. Neel.arunabh (talk) 04:38, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Big ugly message I can't dismiss

When I go to my watchlist there's a big ugly message about my interface language telling me nothing I haven't known for years, but with no apparent way to dismiss it. It appeared today. Is there some way of getting rid of this waste of screen? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 12:50, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: the best way to get rid of it would be to change your interface language to a supported language. In Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_184#Discourage_en-xx_UI_variants - there was widespread support to actively "discourage" editors from using patently broken interface languages. I just added an id to it, watchlist-summary-enxx-warning which you could hide in your common.css file. — xaosflux Talk 12:57, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
One of the most obnoxious features of the message is the claim "With this setting you will not be able to see many local messages, such as announcements made here" - if that were true I wouldn't be able to see it. Now it's one thing not to bother to make Wikipedia work properly for people with the en-gb setting, but to go out of your way to make things worse by putting big ugly notices in the way is quite another. I see the notice is also intruding on this page. I wouldn't go so far as to call it vandalism, I'm sure whoever thought this up had good intentions, but we all know whither that road leads. How do I hide it - on watchlist and wherever else it has been intruded? DuncanHill (talk) 13:00, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

You can hide this with: 

#watchlist-summary-enxx-warning {display:none;}

In your Special:MyPage/common.css

— xaosflux Talk 13:06, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, that seems to work. DuncanHill (talk) 13:11, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm the one who added it, based on the discussion I linked to above that I think supports that we actually "discourage" editors from using such settings. (I'm certainly involved there - and open to reversal by anyone else that want's to "close" that discussion with a different finding). — xaosflux Talk 13:10, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
    I wouldn't call that warning/notice an "announcement" really - and the message you are seeing there is not part of any workflow that will actually show what is more traditionally displayed as community "announcements". — xaosflux Talk 13:11, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
  • I did pull it from the edit notice on VPT for now, that part may need some more work. — xaosflux Talk 13:12, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
There needs to be a button to dismiss it, at the very least. That wouldn't make me happy but it might make me less pissed off. You just can't go thrusting messages down people's throats all the time just because you don't approve of their use of the options you give them. DuncanHill (talk) 13:28, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
The one here on the VPT edit notice is gone, since it was messy anyway. As far as the watchlist header, the prior discussion appears to be quite supportive of actively discouraging people from picking that setting - we certainly disagree there but I'm open to more feedback from others below. — xaosflux Talk 13:52, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: You create problems for yourself by choosing en-gb. That's what happened at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 166#Unexpected behaviour of search/go where I asked you to please always mention it when you report issues with interface messages, and at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 67#Tags in Welsh where you didn't mention it. As one of the few users who both have en-gb and report interface issues, will you please either always mention it or change to en. At Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 184#Discourage en-xx UI variants I wrote:
"I once examined the full en-gb file and it only made around ten minor spelling and punctuation differences like color/colour, not different words like petrol/gasoline. For that you lose a lot of messages customized for the English Wikipedia, e.g. with links to our policies, processes and help pages. For example, compare the edit page for a fully protected page in en and en-gb (admins must log out to see it). en-gb users sometimes cause confusion when discussing the interface with others, and some help pages don't match what they see."
MediaWiki offers around 450 interface languages. All unregistered users and the large majority of registered users have en. We don't spend time customizing the interface for hundreds of languages here at the English Wikipedia. MediaWiki doesn't offer an option to automatically show a customized en message if there is no customized en-gb message. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:05, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
I finally specifically opened phab:T295164 about this problem - it could POSSIBLY be merged somewhere else - feel free to provide input there for now! — xaosflux Talk 15:21, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Starting off with "You create problems for yourself by choosing en-gb" really makes me not want to bother with you anymore. But I will say hundreds of languages which aren't English are pretty much irrelevant here, the problem is with a language which is. If I knew where to go and what to do to translate messages for en-gb I would lend a hand, but that does not seem to be wanted by anyone. DuncanHill (talk) 15:47, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: en-gb translations are done at translatewiki.net, you can help out there. Portal:En shows there was only 58 en-gb translations in the last 30 days, which is less than is necessary for a good user experience. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 16:21, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
ME TOO -Roxy the sceptical dog. wooF 16:43, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ: Thanks for the link. I think I've found the right place there - it's not entirely clear where things for en-wiki are. DuncanHill (talk) 17:40, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
From a technical note, I don't think that translatewiki is a solution to the problem: it is great for ensuring that default messages are accessible in all languages - it is not good for translating a single project's localized messages. — xaosflux Talk 17:55, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: you may find this useful for starting out in translatewiki. As Xaosflux said above, translatewiki is good for translating global default messages. Enwiki is unique in that we have a larger number of localised messages compared to other language projects. Translating them to en-gb is up to one of the admins of enwiki. For example MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat/de is the German translation of enwiki's localised MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat, which overrides the global MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat. Like this a separate interface message can be locally set up at MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat/en-gb and so on for other messages. Nobody seems to be interested in doing this, so you will have to depend on translatewiki. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 19:11, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Why don't we just run a bit to create /en-gb and /en-ca customizations identical to the English defaults for all of the currently-customzied MediaWiki messages? That would be easier than all of this arguing. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:47, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

@Pppery: well we did just discuss this at VPR (see link above) and the overwhelming feedback was to discourage these - not try to keep them going. — xaosflux Talk 16:50, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Why is this issue being re-litigated here? This is a perennial Village Pump issue (link to dozens of threads where en-gb is mentioned as an issue). The VPP thread was pretty much unanimous for discouraging the choice of en-gb in this context. It is now being discouraged. A CSS workaround has been provided for people who resist the discouragement. Any time this comes up again, we can respond with a boilerplate message explaining that the use of that preference is discouraged because en-gb interface messages are not maintained, instructions for setting it to a user-friendly option, a link to a relevant phab task that would make the whole thing moot if fixed, and CSS instructions for making the discouraging message go away (caveat customizer, of course). – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:09, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Why on Earth are we telling users to stop using the setting for their own language? If en-gb is provided as an option, it should be properly supported. If it is not supported, remove it from the list of options. If it is supported, stop discouraging people from using it. The watchlist notice is inappropriate. Did you actually speak to any en-gb users before slapping them with a warning message that makes no sense to them? A custom CSS workaround is not suitable because a) it's an obscure kludge and b) the vast majority of users won't known to use it. Modest Genius talk 13:12, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
@Modest Genius: There's a difference between saying that some feature should be "properly supported" and actually persuading people to perform that support. The people who maintain the various interface languages are volunteers, just like we editors are volunteers. If nobody is interested, it will at best stagnate, at worst deteriorate - as has been shown. As noted above, there was an RfC earlier this year. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:45, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
@Redrose64: I'm not asking you to support it. I'm saying there's no point in giving users the option if it just triggers an error message saying it isn't supported, particularly one that is confusing, self-contradictory, and cannot be dismissed. Either allow users to select en-gb without hassling them about it, or remove the option entirely. Telling them off for doing something we presented as a valid option is nonsensical. Modest Genius talk 19:38, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
So, when is the big ugly message going to vanish? -Roxy the dog. wooF 14:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
Might I ask why you are against selecting "en - English" as your language? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:03, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
Sure, and this for me is obviously the important point. It isn't clear which variety of english "en - English" is. I suspect it is probably american, in which case I want no truck with it as it is spelled rong. I hope that makes sense. -Roxy the dog. wooF 15:14, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
It's not American (if it were, it would be described as "American English" in the selection list), nor is it Australian, Indian or South African. It's an internationalised form that should be understandable to anybody for whom some variety of English is used in day to day communication.
Of greater problem to me as an editor is in talk page discussions where somebody describes a matter as "moot", the meaning of which in American is directly opposite to its meaning in British. It's the same problem when a motion is "tabled". Neither of those conflicts can be resoved by an interface language setting. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:31, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
User:Redrose64 thanks for responding, fyi I have changed from GB to En. If you want to stop the old farts like me from complaining, the best option is to remove GB altogether. Thanks again. -Roxy the dog. wooF 14:19, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Incompatibility between music scores w/ sound and the Listen template

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T295514

Graham Beards and I have observed that issues result when a single article uses both the score extensions with sound and the {{Listen}} template (e.g. FAC Symphony No. 4 (Mahler) and FA Piano Concerto No. 24 (Mozart), as well as articles with more traffic like Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)). On my end, the presence of the two causes the score's sound files to "reload" annoyingly before being formatted in a similar style to the sound file in the Listen template. On Graham Beards' end (using the latest version of Chrome browser), the presence of the two causes the scores' sound files to be unplayable. Furthermore, we both found that this problem disappears when the Listen template is removed from the articles. Any help with fixing this problem would be greatly appreciated, and would undoubtedly improve the reader experience on many music articles. GeneralPoxter (talk • contribs) 23:17, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

This seems to stem not from anything specific about {{Listen}} but from how Score and AV media embedded using [[File:... interact in general. If the page only has scores, the browser's native HTML5 player is used, but any media embedded via [[File:... triggers the loading of MediaWiki's own player, which replaces the HTML5 player, hence the delay.
I assume Graham Beards has turned "New video player" on in Preferences. The new player apparently doesn't work with Score at all (phab:T245377). Nardog (talk) 03:04, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
I've filed a task: phab:T295514. Nardog (talk) 23:40, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, good to hear. GeneralPoxter (talk • contribs) 00:23, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Listing contents of a category

In the text below, how can I display a list of the contents of the category as text, rather than just linking to the category ? If I remove the first colon, it just adds the page to the category; what I want is to produce a list of the articles at FAR. Thanks in advance, dumber than I look.

  • Articles listed at FAR are:

Category:Wikipedia featured article review candidates

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:44, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Does the categorytree extension do what you want? try {{#categorytree:Wikipedia featured article review candidates|mode=pages}} 192.76.8.91 (talk) 00:16, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Bingo ! Thank you so much, 192! Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:22, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: Minor point, but if you want you can add "hideprefix" onto the magic word to get rid of all the "talk:", like so: {{#categorytree:Wikipedia featured article review candidates|mode=pages|hideprefix}}. Doesn't really make any difference to the functionality, but it would look a bit better where you're using it. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 00:43, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
And to get it to just print out a list of titles use {{#categorytree:Wikipedia featured article review candidates|mode=pages|hideprefix|namespaces="1"|hideroot=on}} 192.76.8.91 (talk) 00:54, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Amazing! Now how do I barnstar the heck out of an IP ?? See the last green box in this mockup in my sandbox, where you can see I now have exactly what I want. Thank you! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:33, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Get page creator from API

Is there a straightforward way of getting the page creator of a page via the MW API? It's listed if I go to, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&action=info, but doesn't appear to be listed when doing &prop=info in the API. I could ask for the user that made the oldest revision via &prop=revisions&rvprop=user&rvlimit=1&rvdir=newer, but that would mean doing a second API call since I'm already asking for info on the most recent revision (and it comes with the other limitations of prop=revisions, such as only being able to query one page at a time). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:12, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The XTools gadget listed in Preferences can do it. I think its source code is at mw:XTools/ArticleInfo.js. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:04, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Interesting, although it looks like it's still going to have to be a separate API call, and a separate call for each page. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 00:59, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Using the MW API, I believe querying the user of the first edit is the only way. – SD0001 (talk) 11:21, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
@Ahecht: Are you checking all 6.5m and need to get through it quickly; or more interactive application of small numbers with high response speed? I can possibly help with the former, a regularly updated data dump. -- GreenC 22:58, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
@GreenC It's more the later. It's a userscript for for cleaning pages from your watchlist you haven't touched recently. Fetching revision info on a few thousand pages is quite slow via the API, I was trying to avoid having to do it twice to filter out pages that you created. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 02:48, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
If you're only looking for whether the pages were created by the current user, list=usercontribs&ucshow=new may be faster, though it obviously depends on the ratio between watchlist items and creations. I just tried mine and got lots of user talks, so you may want to specify ucnamespace. Nardog (talk) 02:58, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Special:Delete

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T295611
Resolved
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T233987

Why are there Special:RevisionDelete and Special:Undelete, but no Special:Delete nor Special:Protect? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 12:07, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

They just aren't built upstream. See phab:T233987 for Special:Delete work; if you want a similar request for Special:Protect you can file a feature request. In general, the workflow for using these functions normally stems from already being on a page and using an ?action value, or using the API. Don't think these would really get used much. — xaosflux Talk 12:40, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Paste and jump to top

Starting within the past couple of days, whenever I paste something into the edit window, my cursor immediately jumps to the top of the window. How can I prevent this? Using Modern skin in Firefox. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:03, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria are you using WikEd? If so, I think this is an incompatibility issue between FF & WikiEd as I'm having the same issue; but only in FF, swap to Chrome or Opera and there is no problem. Nthep (talk) 12:15, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Hm. Yes, but I've been using it for quite a while and this is a new issue. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
@Nikkimaria I think it's something to do with FF 79. Like you I had no problem with previous versions of FF. I'm just having to remember to switch WikiEd off when I want to paste something. Nthep (talk) 15:04, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
I am not using WikiEd, and am having similar problems. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:22, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T295517

Hi -- not sure if this problem is me or the Insert Link feature. When editing, if I paste a complete URL into the Target Page/URL box of the Insert Link tool in the edit window, I get the usual "The URL you specified looks like it was intended as a link to another wiki page. Do you want to make it an internal link?" message. However, when I click Internal Link, nothing happens. In the past, it would reformat a full URL to be a proper internal link and change the radio button. I used it constantly. Now it does nothing.

This change came as the same time as some other look-and-feel changes to this tool (I now see preview images, tool has a more DHTML feel to it) so I am wondering if it got updated and this is a bug, or there is something about my configuration that has maybe changed. I haven't knowingly changed anything in my configuration. I am using a Mac (Big Sur) and it happens across all three browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, latest non-beta versions of each). Vector skin. Here's two screenshots with examples. If I paste in a complete URL, when I click "internal link" in the second screenshot, nothing happens, it just returns me to the same window. Thanks for any help/advice.

what I type in to the box what the pop up message is

Jessamyn (talk) 00:15, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Yep, can reproduce, I bet this is the relevant line. Pinging Samwilson. Nardog (talk) 00:44, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
@Jessamyn and Nardog: Thanks for finding this bug and letting me know! Sorry about this. I've created T295517 and will try to get it fixed soon. —Sam Wilson 00:53, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
As I suspected, replacing the line with insertLinkTitleInputField.getField().setValue( match[ 1 ] ); seems to do the job. But I'm surprised the function 1) keeps underscores instead of turning them into spaces and 2) doesn't decode percent encodings. I bet users of wikis in other languages have found it useless. Nardog (talk) 05:14, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
@Jessamyn I just wanted to acknowledge and thank you for this exceptionally well-written and detailed bug report :) — MusikAnimal talk 02:52, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Awww thank you! I've worked in tech support before, so I like to think I can make a decent report. The little info box above the posting box really helps a lot. Jessamyn (talk) 04:13, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Random aside — This change came as the same time as some other look-and-feel changes Does anybody have a link for that change? Ta — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 12:44, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

@GhostInTheMachine This is part of the Warn when linking to disambiguation pages project from Community Tech, based on the #2 wish in the 2021 survey. The visual changes you speak of specifically were a result of phab:T289214. — MusikAnimal talk 15:26, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. So the change to the editor linky thing would have gone live in 1.38.0-wmf.5 on 21 October 2021? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 19:20, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
@GhostInTheMachine It looks like the first big change was deployed with wmf.4 which went live on October 14. There were subsequent patches that went out with wmf.5 which I think is why the Phabricator bot confusingly changed the tag to wmf.5. — MusikAnimal talk 16:49, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 17:49, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

WebSite: web caching of wiki pages and other objects might be improved

NOTE: this is a technical issue that should be evaluated by software engineers and webmasters of wikipedia website(s).

First of all, I do not want to be disrespectful to anyone so, please, take these user observations for what they are (maybe all of them are already well known): simple thoughts of an occasional user.

Introduction
In Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 68#Very_big_pages someone has arisen the problem of long delays (i.e. till 5..7 seconds) when visiting big wiki pages, specially the first time someone retrieves one of them after sometime (days or weeks?) nobody has visited it.

In practice the topic being discussed was about how to lower the size of big / long wiki pages because someone thought that most of the wait time was due to client browser struggling to retrieve and visually render such big pages (HTML code between 1MB and 1.6MB) and having a PC with CPUs not slow and enough RAM, he was worried about what could happen to smartphones and other mobile devices with much less HW resources.

Someone else replied that he did not notice such a long delays, at most 1..2 seconds, so I contributed to the discussion with my thoughts too and I found out that maybe something in wiki pages retrieval mechanism between web servers and browsers could be improved.

Here I do not want to discuss about the problem of long delays for the first time retrieval of big pages because it's a too technical thing that regards only wikipedia internal technical stuff; I have already written something about it in the above mentioned wiki section page.

Talking about the impact of slow response in user (web) interfaces, see also wiki article about responsiveness, I have noticed that web caching of wiki pages might be improved noticeably in order to decrease a lot of unnecessary web traffic load that probably burdens web applications and DB (database) too.

Caching assumptions
If a user is logged in, it looks like that wiki pages are never cached by browser (this is right, at least when editing a page), instead if user is logged out (not logged) pages are temporarily cached (this makes a noticeable difference) and so if they have already been retrieved (recently, within 1 minute) and they have not been modified then they are rendered in less than 0.2..0.3 seconds on a medium speed (high speed, single CPU) PC.

Right know cacheability of a wiki page depends also on:

  • type of content encoding format (compressed or not);
  • value of cookies;
  • authorization;

because of "Vary" header, which is right.

Cookies contain also a session identifier that usually is dismissed when client browser is closed, in any case caching of wiki pages will always be session bound (it will last only till browser is kept open and only for users not logged in).

Current behavior / problems detected
Current caching of wiki pages by browsers is far from being perfect because of the following technical issues:

  • wikipedia web servers look like to use a last modification date-time for wiki pages, maybe this is always sufficient to detect their changes but it requires absolute integrity of server(s) clock time;
  • at least one wikipedia web server used for static images (i.e. upload.wikimedia.org /common/thumb/*) sends neither "Last-Modified" nor "ETag" headers and so static images served by that web server are always fully reloaded when a page using them is displayed (as those images are rarely used in wiki pages this is not a big deal but anyway it is very odd and I guess really not necessary);
  • in some cases header "Date" is not updated in server responses, but I am not sure about this case, maybe it depends on behavior of some web cache;
  • caching of wiki pages depends also on cookies and cookies sent by browser change around once a minute, so when they change then browser has to invalidate all its cached copies of wiki pages, even those read just a few seconds before that event; this means that if the same wiki page is requested again by browser after its cookie has changed then the entire wiki page has to be retrieved, instead of just asking the web server if it has changed or not; this may be an issue that increases a lot web traffic and load of web servers, web applications, DB, etc. behind them.

In web server responses, it looks like that "Cache-control" and "Expires" headers already have proper settings.

Goal to improve website response times of wiki pages
The aim should be to always force browsers to ask web servers if a wiki page has been changed or not every time it is going to be displayed by browser (so statistics about number of pages showed by users should not be affected by this improvement) by avoiding the premature invalidation of cached wiki pages; of course just asking that is much faster than retrieving the whole page every time it is visited by a user, specially if wiki page is big (there are wiki pages that do not change for hours, days or even months).

Proposals to reach goal of good cacheability of wiki pages
These are a few proposals in order to improve cacheability of wiki pages.

Web / application server(s) side
1. Wiki pages accessed by logged out users are already cacheable (even if only for very short period of times right now);

2. Wiki pages accessed by logged in users might be cached (in a far future) and only when not in editing mode, by using a unique identifier for each version/presentation type of a certain page to be used in "ETag" header, i.e. it might be composed by wiki page revision number (or date-time of its modification) + user-id + user settings/customization revision used for the pages;

Client browser side
3. Value of Cookies should not change every minute (at least for users not logged in). The problem is to find out a solution to avoid this periodic change without loosing their information data (details on request).

Something about improving HTTP caching could be done also for scripts and stylesheets; they are not always cached by browsers as they should be and besides this fact, sometimes their retrieval is a bit slow; specially when you are logged in and wiki servers are under load, you can see that wiki page is first visually rendered with standard browser fonts and then, after 0.3 .. 0.6 seconds, with proper text fonts because download of some style sheet is completed after wiki page has started to be shown in browser.

Conclusions
Doing above 3 suggested modifications, could allow caching of wiki pages feasable for an entire user session (until browser is closed), thus decreasing a lot the size of HTTP responses for wiki pages and the load server side.

Thank you for your attention and I'm sorry if I bothered you with already known issues. Ade56facc 13:05, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Ade56facc I took the liberty of creating a Phab ticket T295556 which is better suited for discussions of this nature. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:23, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the ticket (I did not know about that reporting system). Ade56facc 14:40, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure these are all known and all have various reasons for being the way they are. For instance you make an assumption that a revision renders the same, but they do not for logged in users (for various historic reasons which are hard to undo (a 10 year project now)). But you are right that the biggest reason a page takes VERY long to load indeed is the complexity of turning wikitext into HTML when there is no cached copy of that available. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ thank you for your comment, anyway I did not make that kind of assumption because I already wrote that for users logged in wiki pages are never cached; I was referring to an identifier usable in "ETag" HTTP header (that can be unique only for its associated page name, i.e. it could also be a revision number of the wiki page); anyway I have found out that maybe it is really not possible that two users can update the same page in the same second (even if they edit different sections) so maybe also a "Last-Modified" page date-time would suffice for caching purposes; the important thing would be to have the same behavior for all web servers serving wiki pages. Ade56facc 21:30, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Ade56facc Did you only see the "Not-Modified" tag wrong when logged in, or also when logged out? It matters because there is more caching server side when logged out. Even an simple addition of an link to the sidebar changes the html of an page, making it hard to cache pages. IP users can't do customizations, so they can be cached server side more than logged in users. Just in case you are unaware, there are 3 cache servers, one in Europe, one in Asia and one in West USA, while the two main servers are in East USA (and one more planned in Europe). Also, please simplify the phabricator task by changing the description, it is not going to gain any traction like this.--Snævar (talk) 15:35, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
@Snævar Thank you for the info, as stated above I investigated things mainly for the "logged out" (IP users) case. Answering to your question, right now I am almost sure to have seen an "ETag" header instead of a "Last-Modified" header for a wiki page while not logged in, anyway as I had just logged out I cannot 100% bet that everything were OK on "Cookie" side. I'll verify in next future if it happens again. Talking about caching wiki pages for logged in users I'm almost sure that this could be done without too many complications; it's just a matter to use a unique cache identifier for each combination of wiki page revision number (or date-time of last modification) + user ID + customization level / revision made to the page by user, taking in account that skins / stylesheets, etc. are separate objects from page content. After all customized pages of logged in users should be cached only by their browsers (private caches), not by shared caches, and also this can be done easily.
I did not create the above mentioned ticket (see above, user Shushugah) and I do not know how to change its title or its description (because I am not allowed to), anyway I have added more details to that ticket, in a couple of comments, as requested. --Ade56facc 17:59, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

The end of the Modern Skin

I used to use this skin, yet later I found out that it no longer exists, thus I had to use Timeless instead, making WikiEd unusable. Later I used the new Vector instead, making WikiEd usable again, which delights me. But I still wonder why Modern, a very elegant skin, is not longer existent and why WikiEd can not be used while using Timeless. May fellow Wikipedians tell me?--RekishiEJ (talk) 12:45, 8 November 2021 (UTC) added "use" 05:39, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@RekishiEJ: It does still exist, but only for people who already have it selected - it's not available to those already using another skin (but see below). More info at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 191#modern skin on Commons and WT:Skin#'Modern' not selectable any longer. In short: the more skins that we have, the greater the maintenance burden - every new feature and bugfix needs to be tested against all existing skins to ensure compatibility. So when new skins get introduced - such as Timeless and Minerva - the older ones with the least use get retired.
But for the time being, there is an unofficial workaround:
  1. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences?useskin=modern#mw-prefsection-rendering
  2. Select "Modern"
  3. Click Save
This won't work forever, at some point you'll be forcibly switched to Vector and there will be no way back. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:31, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
And as far as "WikiEd" goes, that is a personal user script - you can follow up at User talk:Cacycle/wikEd. — xaosflux Talk 14:35, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects should no longer consider compatibility for older browsers (i.e. only the newest stable version of any non-discontinued browser should be considered), since doing so greatly reduced burden, some websites stop Internet Explorer support (some only support IE later than 8), and Modern can be revived.--RekishiEJ (talk) 15:16, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
And in fact, Wikipedia supports only IE9 and above presently (soon to change probably since little-to-no traffic is generated from either IE9 or 10). But that's still many, many versions of Internet browsers that need to have minimal support, because a world-top-15 website dedicated to the mission of knowledge does not have the luxury of eliminating support for arbitrary old browsers. --Izno (talk) 16:58, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
But this is irrelevant to whether Modern is directly support of course. Modern was not dropped because it did(n't) work in certain browsers but because it was totally unmaintained, little-used, and an ancient skin to boot. Izno (talk) 16:59, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
@Izno:I mean if Wikipedia drops support for all older browsers maintenance will become much simpler, thus keeping Modern does not make maintenance more burdensome than now.--RekishiEJ (talk) 05:39, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
The impending retirement of Cologne Blue and Modern is is nothing to do with browser support but the lack of willing maintainers - they're volunteers just like editors, under no compulsion. Skins are retired when few people are using them and nobody wants to maintain them, and their continued presence is a bigger burden than the disappointment of a few niche users. Having a choice of four or so skins is a luxury that other popular websites do not offer - Facebook, for example, periodically introduce a new skin (or "theme", I think they call it) and although they run two in parallel for a few weeks, they then drop the older one like a stone. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:21, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
And the Chinese edition still retains Modern, despite having Monobook, Vector, Timeless and Minerva.--RekishiEJ (talk) 15:26, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
@RekishiEJ: zhwiki no longer offers Modern to switch to (c.f. w:zh:Special:参数设置#mw-prefsection-rendering) - however just like here there is still a hack to put it in (for now) and if you already have it set it is still available (for now). — xaosflux Talk 15:37, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Xaosflux WikEd is offered as a gadget. --Izno (talk) 16:58, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Indeed, if WikEd does not work with Timeless, that means WikEd should be fixed/corrected. --Izno (talk) 16:58, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
@Izno: as WikEd is labeled as a gadget that is maintained by a single user - going to that user is still the primary place to ask for work to be done. I suppose if this is confirmed, we certainly can flag the skin dependencies in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition in the meantime. — xaosflux Talk 17:26, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
While the modern skin is no longer maintained for wikipedia, it is open source and still available at [12]. Most UI elements of modern could be recreated as a modification to the current default vector skin with user css and javascript, if someone with css knowledge wanted to take the time.Dialectric (talk) 10:02, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
The technique can also be used for Cologne Blue:
  1. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences?useskin=cologneblue#mw-prefsection-rendering
  2. Select "Cologne Blue"
  3. Click Save
The same caveats apply as for Modern. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:05, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Blue underlining in edit box

This just started happening. I don't think it's a software update on my end (Microsoft Edge, Windows 10). But certain words get underlined in blue when I edit.

Actually, it just happened with "edit" and I saw a message saying there should be a space after punctuation. Then I saw the word "ignore". I c;icked on that and it went away. Maybe it's not Wikipedia.

No, there it is again. It wants me to click again to ignore.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:53, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: that sounds like a spelling and grammar tool in your browser, likely Microsoft Editor. — xaosflux Talk 00:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
It doesn't say how to get rid of it.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 00:26, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Most likely the fix is something like this: Go to your web browser's Add-Ons or Extensions menu, and click to disable the add-on that is causing this message to appear. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:30, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
It doesn't seem to be listed, but Wikipedia is the only place where I'm seeing this.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 00:42, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Try using another browser to verify? — xaosflux Talk 01:19, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
It doesn't happen if I'm not signed in. I'm reluctant to sign in on two different browsers at the same time.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:21, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
You can have more than one browser open and be logged in on all of them simultaneously - each browser will require a separate login action. They won't conflict with one another, until you log out using the log out link at top right - which will log you out of all, because you can't log out selectively other than by going to the cookie management feature of one of the browsers, and deleting the login cookies. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:32, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
Everything looks very different here but I'm not getting the blue line.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 00:16, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Bottom line is, mediawiki doesn't include a spelling or grammar checker. So either you loaded some script from here, or it is your browser. — xaosflux Talk 00:28, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

data-sort value

The data-sort-value parameter for sortable wikitables does not work with negative numbers. It will sort lower negative numbers after higher negative numbers, while doing the reverse for positive numbers. For example, the parameter will sort 2 after 1, and at the same time -2 after -1. This results in a sequence similar to -1, -2, -3, 0, 1, 2, 3. What I want is -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3. Is this intended behaviour? How do I fix it? 122.61.79.96 (talk) 04:27, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

It should sort numerically if your code is correct:
Value
Q 1
Q 2
Q -1
Q -2
Q -3
Q 0
Q 3
Please post your real example as a table or link to it. Maybe you used another character for minus or had something in the column which made it choose alphabetical sorting instead of numerical sorting. See Help:Sorting#Configuring the sorting. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:25, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

wikidata

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54564

How to link (592044) 2014 MB70 to wikidata (as a redirection) ?

Look at (364171) 2006 JZ81 for instance.

--Io Herodotus (talk) 06:59, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

wikidata:Help:Sitelinks#Linking to Wikimedia site pages says: "If you really want to connect a redirect page to an item, you may first temporary deactivate the redirect page (e.g. blanking it), and connect it to the item, then restore the redirect." I don't know whether there are guidelines on when to do this. (592044) 2014 MB70 redirects to a single table row. The only sitelink in 592044 (2014 MB70) (Q30748802) is fr:(592044) 2014 MB70. Even if you know no French, you can get more information from the French article. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Thank you, it works (I'm the one who wrote the French article). --Io Herodotus (talk) 08:31, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Wikidata reached a consensus to allow redirects in 2018. Wikidata:Sitelinks to redirects suggests that links to redirects are prevented only by a Wikidata software deficiency which may be fixed later. We raised phab:T54564 in 2013, which has attracted useful comments but no action. (See also phab:T120778.) Certes (talk) 15:33, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Remove of content

I forgot where I can request it but I received entry on my talk page which I think should be removed for few reasons. Eurohunter (talk) 08:42, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: First, don't draw attention to it by posting on a public noticeboard (like this one). Second, undo the offending edit. Third, see CAT:REVDEL or if it's really sensitive, WP:OVERSIGHT. But I don't see anything in the recent history of your talk page that warrants anything stronger than a normal WP:UNDO. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:52, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
@Redrose64: True I had similar entry few years ago but I didn't remember where to go so I will save CAT:REVDEL this time. Eurohunter (talk) 20:31, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Stray curly bracket in Navigation pop-up

When I point my mouse at Kópavogur I see "Kópavogur ⋅ actions ⋅ popups Stub, 6.7kB, 45 wikiLinks, 6 images, 4 categories, 5 days 9 hours old {" but none of the article text. I can't see what is causing this in the article. Can anyone fix it? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 23:24, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: it is mad about the <mapframe> section - haven't found out why yet though. — xaosflux Talk 00:02, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
Converting that to {{Maplink}} may fix it, I'm not very familiar with that template though. — xaosflux Talk 00:07, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, Jonesey95 has moved the mapframe and it is now behaving properly. DuncanHill (talk) 17:48, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
What I did was a hacky workaround, but it mostly gets the job done. It seems like the Navigation pop-ups should be able to work around this apparently simple use of mapframes. Also, where does the strange capitalization of "wikiLinks" come from? I don't use nav pop-ups, but it smells a little beta to me. I don't see either of these bugs listed in the phab bug list, but I didn't look too extensively. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:53, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

An update on IP Masking implementation is available

Hello friends!

We have new information on IP Masking for you. Thank you for being patient as the project unfolds.

IP masking hides the IP addresses of unregistered editors on Wikimedia projects, fully or partially, from everyone except those who need access to fight spam, vandalism, harassment and disinformation.

So far, we have had conversations on why we are masking IPs and the tools you will need to continue fighting abuse. What is up next is, we want to share with you details about the implementation itself.

This update answers some likely questions you may have about who gets to view IP addresses and the various IP Masking implementation approaches and how each of them will impact the communities.

Please see this section for the latest information.

If you need a background on IP Masking, there’s a summary here for you.

–––

Best regards,

STei (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 15 November 2021 (UTC), on behalf of the Anti-Harassment Tools team.

Watch a page for a particular word or phrase

Is it possible to watch a page for the addition of a particular word or phrase? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 16:39, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: natively no; locally - in a round about way using the abusefilter; client-side: I suppose you could write a userscript tha fetches the diffs on your watchlist, and hides lines if conditions are met (e.g. page=X and diff !=(array of phrases)). I don't see any listed at Wikipedia:User_scripts/List#Watchlist - and this would likely be quite slow. — xaosflux Talk 17:01, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: OK thanks, I thought it was a bit of a long-shot! What I was hoping to do was find some way of alerting me if anyone asked at WP:RX about David Lloyd George, as I have a fairly decent library of works by or about him, and would be happy to help anyone looking for references within it. I do have the page watchlisted, and check it regularly, but some sort of specific notification would ensure I didn't miss anything. Mind you, I think it's usually me asking about him there, but you never know! DuncanHill (talk) 17:11, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Edit-summary autocomplete and unstoppable syntax highlighting

I have for quite a long time been frustrated by the behavior of autocomplete in search boxes, where I type my search string, type enter, and before my search is entered I get a different autocomplete string replacing it. This evening I saw the same misbehavior in an edit summary box, where I typed the edit summary I wanted, was about to type enter, and it was already replaced by something different that I didn't want. This is very dangerous behavior, endangering my browser privacy and making accidental incivility likely, not to mention a lot of confusion. Is there some way of disabling it? I didn't see anything in edit preferences. Is it something specific to my browser (OS X Firefox, or sometimes Chrome)? Is it something that affects other people and if so can it be disabled more generally? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:51, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

After posting this I found the search preference pane which at least controls the search box. I hope the edit summary replacement was just a glitch and not a harbinger of prolonged misbehavior. While I'm here: I've also starting today been unable to disable syntax highlighting in wikitext editing windows, no matter what I do to the "syntax highlighting" checkbox in the gadget preference pane. I don't want syntax highlighting at all. How do I make it stop? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:51, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Autocomplete in the edit summary is a browser feature. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:38, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
For syntax highlighting, click in the toolbar. Nardog (talk) 08:49, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, Nardog, that was it. I did try carefully going through all the things that looked possibly relevant in the toolbar but somehow didn't see that one. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:18, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

IP contribs within a /24

There is a vandal IP hopping within a /24 is there a way to search for contribs across all 256 IPs? I could write a quick script but there might be a better tool. -- GreenC 03:29, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: there's a gadget ("Allow /16, /24 and /27 – /32 CIDR ranges..." under Advanced) that adds that functionality to Special:Contributions. Once the gadget is enabled, you can see all the contributions per address by appending /24 to the IP, like Special:Contributions/106.67.34.0/24. clpo13(talk) 03:46, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
You no longer need the gadget; Special:Contributions supports ranges automatically. Izno (talk) 04:03, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
Cool, exactly what is needed, wish I knew of it years ago. If it's automatic without the gadget, there are no hints on the page for syntax. I initially tried just Special:Contributions/106.67.34.0 -- adding /24 seems obvious now, but wasn't at the time, figured if range was supported it would default to /24 when given a .0 in a Class C. Not that it should do that. Guess some sort of example syntax on the form page could help others know about IP range support because it is super useful when tracking vandals. -- GreenC 04:43, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
Seconded: I find this function very useful but it was hard to discover. Can we replace the "User" prompt by "User, IP or range", or even wikilink a short page about range syntax? Certes (talk) 12:53, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
You can suggest a change to MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-username. BTW the software default is "IP address or username:" – SD0001 (talk) 16:58, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
I've changed it to "Username, IP address or CIDR range" for now. Unfortunately this message is escaped and no wikitext can be used, though it should be simple to fix that in the software, if we really wanted to. — MusikAnimal talk 17:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-46

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Problems

  • Sometimes, edits made on iOS using the visual editor save groups of numbers as telephone number links, because of a feature in the operating system. This problem is under investigation. [13]
  • There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error. [14]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 November. It will be on all wikis from 18 November (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Category redirect populated by template

Category:Wikipedians in New York is a redirect to Category:Wikipedians in New York (state) but is being populated by users putting their location into Template:Infobox Wikipedia user which doesn't seem able to cope with the state being disambiguated. Does anyone know how to fix this mess? Timrollpickering (talk) 14:16, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps they could specify their location as New York (state) or New York City, depending whether they want to be in Category:Wikipedians in New York (state) or Category:Wikipedians in New York City. Certes (talk) 15:36, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 Fixed with this edit. There are probably edge cases, but the category is cleared, and the four pages that were in there are in the right category at this time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:12, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

FYI template is incompatible with my signature

Hello! So I attempted to add the {{fyi}} template after I separated 2 different sections on the teahouse, however it appears that something about my sig is preventing the template from showing up properly like this:

FYI

― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:09, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Blaze The Wolf: your signature has a lot of markup that may collide with templates, suggest simplifying it - but as far as this template goes, you can try to declare the paramter as such:
  • {{FYI|1=Test. ~~~~}}.
That should render as
FYI
 – Test ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:09, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Expect to run in to this problem again, removing the "title" element from your signature may help in many cases. — xaosflux Talk 15:37, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Template:FYI#Usage mentions it. The problem is equals signs in unnamed template parameters being interpreted as parameter assignments. See the second bullet at Help:Template#Usage hints and workarounds. It doesn't happen if the equals sign is inside a wikilink so most signatures with styling avoid it but your current signature will have this issue with many templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:43, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Take note, any of those tips that involve using another template are not appropriate inside a signature, which must not use a template. — xaosflux Talk 18:47, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Ah alright. SO are you saying my signature uses a template? If so I didn't know because I didn't make my signature myself and am willing to remove the template from my signature even if it causes it to not look as nice. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
Nevermind misread what you said. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Counting numbers in table

I know there was template in PLWP for counting numbers (not just numbering) in table but I don't remember its name and maybe there is other way to achieve it? I remember there was probably two templates one for add all wanted numbers in the table into one template and second template with result. Eurohunter (talk) 20:46, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

https://reftag.appspot.com/

Does anyone know why https://reftag.appspot.com/ isn't working anymore and when it might be functioning again? I use it to generate sfns and it's a pain to be without it. Thanks. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:14, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

See previous discussions Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 192#doi citation tool down and Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests#restore the Wikipedia Citation Tool for Google Books. There is a replacement for that tool at https://alyw234237.github.io/wiki-doi-gbooks-citation-maker/ – SD0001 (talk) 14:53, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
It doesn't work. I just tried "https://books.google.lu/books/about/Kvinden_k%C3%A6tteren_kunstneren_Karen_Blixe.html?id=453kDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y" and "https://books.google.lu/books?id=hn15xB1vMbwC&pg=PT158&lpg=PT158&dq=pligten+dansk+litteratur&source=bl&ots=49fY3KFWmk&sig=ACfU3U1-HWKri7G17t320mnIh-w8Dt8Mjg&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjUzbr-2JX0AhUYG-wKHRR-Bl0Q6AF6BAgPEAM#v=onepage&q=pligten%20dansk%20litteratur&f=false" and am told they are not valid. They would have worked under the old tool.--Ipigott (talk) 15:53, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
The tool is working when I try with https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Primate_Neuroethology/hv28p1tCnnEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA15&printsec=frontcover, but I get the same result as you with your link. Perhaps control characters to encode the german ae character is a problem. Regardless, it works for me just with the id 453kDwAAQBAJ. —  Jts1882 | talk 
Did you try using just the google books id? For
  • Brundbjerg (453kDwAAQBAJ) I got:
    <ref name="Brundbjerg2020">{{cite book | author = Else Brundbjerg | date = 29 May 2020 | title = Kvinden, kætteren, kunstneren Karen Blixen | publisher = Lindhardt og Ringhof | pages = | isbn = 9788726316247 | oclc = 1154625906 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=453kDwAAQBAJ}}</ref>
  • Bredsdorff (hn15xB1vMbwC) I got:
    <ref name="Bredsdorff2011">{{cite book | author = Thomas Bredsdorff | date = 1 March 2011 | title = Dansk litteratur set fra månen: Om sjælen i digtningen | publisher = Gyldendal A/S | pages = | isbn = 9788702108729 | oclc = 874799050 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=hn15xB1vMbwC}}</ref>
If you can figure out how to do it, you might want to tell the app's author, Alyw234237, about these urls. A quick search did not reveal a way to contact the author but perhaps someone here knows how to do that.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:31, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
@Ipigott I'm a bit confused about what kind of citation you're trying to generate. If you have the full URL, you can just use the "Cite" tool built into the editor. It supports autofill – see File:RefToolbar-URL-autofill.png (that screenshot is for web citation but it works for book citation too.) It worked for me for both the URLs you mention. – SD0001 (talk) 16:40, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Trappist the monk, SD0001: Then the interface, display, or whatever, needs to be improved. I simply followed the instructions and things didn't work. I don't know what you mean by using the Google books ID. I did not have to look for this before. The easy solution would be to restore to old tool which has worked perfectly for years with no problems. Why create new difficulties?--Ipigott (talk) 16:55, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
The old app's author has apparently gone away. Restoring that author's tool is not likely to happen so you are stuck with what we've got. Isn't a tool that does most of what you want with an adjustment to your work-flow better than not having any tool at all?
The google books id is embedded in the google books url. I'm pretty sure that the id is always preceded by ?id=:
https://books.google.lu/books/about/Kvinden_k%C3%A6tteren_kunstneren_Karen_Blixe.html?id=453kDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:07, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
The old tool's author is User:Apoc2400 who is the only one with the ability to restore it. Tools on external domains like that are always maintained by a single user – and can stop working anytime without warning. These difficulties can be avoided by adapting your workflow to use the tools embedded within Wikipedia. The "Cite" tool I mentioned above, 2017 wikitext editor, and VisualEditor can all generate citations from GBooks URLs – I would use one of those. – SD0001 (talk) 17:19, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
SD0001, the Wikipedia DOI and Google Books Citation Maker works fine for me as a citation maker -- as does the "Cite" tool built into editing en.wp. But "Wikipedia DOI and Google Books Citation Maker" doesn't generate sfns, and that's what I'm seeking. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:04, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
I didn't have any trouble getting this app to make citations, but one might as well type them manually, or just input the isbn in the drop down cite tool and let it fill in, because then at least you can fill in the appropriate fields, rather than having to manually type the information. Cite tool still makes errors, but the format is easier to correct fields. Problems with this tool are that it lists authors under the whole name rather than last/first format, making it difficult for proper citation (especially if you are using sfn) and alphabetization, requiring manual adjustments; does not distinguish between editors and authors and in fact, in one link I input added all contributors to the book, no editor at all; author-links must be manually input. And yes, Rosiestep, it doesn't give the sfn link. Format of last|last|last|date|p must be manually typed as well. It isn't as user friendly as the previous tool was. SusunW (talk) 18:06, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, SusunW. Indeed, none of the tools are perfect. As for sfns, it seems that we are all stuck with creating them (last|last|last|date|p) by hand these days unless/until reftag.appspot gets fixed. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:12, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Contributions - Live flow

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T234880

Hello! Would it be interesting to have the "live flow" function that we currently have implemented on the recent changes page also be implemented on user contribution pages? As far as I know, that's not currently possible. You need to continuously keep manually refreshing the page if you want to have the latest contributions show. For me it would be a needed feature when checking bot contributions for different reasons. I thought about asking at Phabricator for such a feature to be implemented but I wanted to have a discussion about it first. - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:13, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: see phab:T234880 to follow development on that feature request. — xaosflux Talk 14:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, oh, it's already being tracked. Okay then. Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:41, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

SQL for beta.wmflabs.org?

To connect via SQL requires two bits of info, for example on enwiki it is database="enwiki_p" and host="enwiki.analytics.db.svc.wikimedia.cloud". What would be the equivalent for https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/ and https://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org ? -- GreenC 18:55, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think databases of those wikis are mirrored to the toolforge replicas. – SD0001 (talk) 03:30, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Editng an older version of an article not possible on mobile?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T295979

It seems that editing an older version of any article is not possible in mobile mode. You do get an edit button[15], but then you get a "view source" page, not an actual editing page[16] (note; I picked a random article here, no need to actually edit this one). Anyone has any idea why this could be the case? Fram (talk) 11:39, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm, checking. — xaosflux Talk 11:54, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
@Fram: I've opened phab:T295979 on this. Do you know if this ever worked? — xaosflux Talk 12:03, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
FWIW, a workaround appears to be to change to the Visual Editor. — xaosflux Talk 12:04, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
I'll pass :-) Fram (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
No idea, I've only recently started using mobile editing a bit more often (though I still try to avoid it wherever possible). Thank you for checking and starting the phabricator ticket! Fram (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
@Fram: apparently this functionality was never built, I've udpated the phab ticket to a feature request. The only workaround right now is do the steps you've done, then pull down the source editor option to the visual editor option while on mobile web in an old version. — xaosflux Talk 14:28, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Or use desktop view even when on mobile, supposedly. Thanks, strange that this doesn't work (hard to imagine a reason for this). Fram (talk) 14:30, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Module with protection level higher than user has disables "Preview page with this template" section

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T60515
Declined

A module with a protection that is higher than I have does not have a "Preview page with this template" section. This is very useful in testing without needing to edit any live page, while also not causing any protection issues as none of the live module code is modified. Can this be changed? Gonnym (talk) 11:11, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

@Gonnym: this is not currently possible in the software, and a prior request to make it such was declined. You could try to reopen phab:T60515 if there are new arguments. A possible workaround is listed on that task. Most protected templates and modules should have sandbox versions unprotected that you should feel free to test on as well. — xaosflux Talk 11:29, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
You can use User:Jackmcbarn/advancedtemplatesandbox.js to preview a page as if the live version had changed while editing the sandbox. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:03, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Purging local browser cache doesn't work on the MediaViewer

Hello!

I sometimes upload files to already created file pages for improvements, updates etc. Because of phab:T38380 I often have to purge the browser cache to make the newly updated version to be displayed. This fixes the problem on both the file page itself and on the artile page where the file is used on. Purging does not however fix the problem on the MediaViewer page. For example purging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tingsryds_AIF_logo.svg#/media/File:Tingsryds_AIF_logo.svg still doesn't make the newly uploaded version to be displayed. Am I purging on the wrong page? Or is it just a bug?Jonteemil (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I had to do a page purge there. Shouldn't be needed normally, but I guess the purge request after the new upload got lost somehow. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:00, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ: What do you mean? My problem is that purging (Ctrl+F5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tingsryds_AIF_logo.svg#/media/File:Tingsryds_AIF_logo.svg doesn't change the fact that the old version is displayed. Did you manage to purge it?Jonteemil (talk) 00:40, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
@Jonteemil: "Cntrl+F5" is a request to purge your browser's cache, it does not necessarily ask the server to purge it's cache. See WP:PURGE for more information. — xaosflux Talk 14:06, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Okay, but how do I make the current version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tingsryds_AIF_logo.svg#/media/File:Tingsryds_AIF_logo.svg to appear?Jonteemil (talk) 20:44, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
The current version appears for example in Tingsryds AIF. — xaosflux Talk 20:52, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
I also opened a private browser, (not logged in), went to that article, clicked the image which opened in MV, and it was also the current. — xaosflux Talk 20:54, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I'm no computer expert but for the cache to have stored the old file and MV to show you it instead of the new version I think you have to have seen the file before it was overwritten otherwise how would the cache have stored it? Steps to reproduce: Go to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PNG_Test.png#/media/File:PNG_Test.png, you should right now see a red square here. Go to the file page and revert to the black page which I also uploaded. Go back to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PNG_Test.png#/media/File:PNG_Test.png, do you now see the black page, which you should, or the red page, which you shouldn't. Now on my phone when I do this there is no delay, I see the current file in MV always, I use Safari on iPhone. On my computer however, Windows with Chrome as browser, I see the red square even if I revert to the black one, and I can't purge MV to show the black square, this is my problem. On any page where the file is on the purge (Ctrl+F5) works, so The current version appears for example in Tingsryds AIF is not a problem.Jonteemil (talk) 00:46, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Regex search timeouts

What's up with search?

My regex searches usually work quite quickly, but in the last few hours I have been getting a lot timeouts on searches such as this one. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:56, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I've never known naked regex searches to work well, and if you've managed it, you might just have been lucky.
I'm not sure why you have the * metaclass on the first > bracket.
Anyway, this search completes within a second or two. It doesn't take a whole lot to get this kind of thing to complete. Izno (talk) 07:24, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
Many thanks, @Izno. I have hacked that search about dozens of times for different URLs, most of which include an optional square bracket before the URL: insource:/\<ref[^\>]*\>\s*\[?\s*https?:\/\/(www\.)?allafrica\.com/
However, where the numbers are big, I do it with and without square bracket ... and it seems that somewhere along the way I missed that stray *. Duh.
It's now working again, well enough for my purposes. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:35, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

image fails to load in specific revision of article after being deleted and redirected

I recently copied File:Francisc Chassaigne circa 1890.jpg to Commons and deleted the local file. But after realizing that a higher-resolution version already existed at Commons, I requested deletion of my upload and redirected it to the existing one. However, the image now fails to load in one specific revision of the article Francis Chassaigne. It seems to load correctly in all other revisions.

Any idea why this is happening? Ixfd64 (talk) 22:52, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ixfd64: works for me, probably a caching issue on your end. Elli (talk | contribs) 00:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, it works for me now as well. Somehow the file path to the image did not update in that particular revision. Ixfd64 (talk) 00:32, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
In general, don't rely on foreign repository file redirects - pointing the page at the destination file will give the best results. — xaosflux Talk 15:10, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

A problem in the new Vector skin

I've tested hovering the cursor over the FA badge of the Chinese edition link of Jianbing guozi with the new Vector skin with both Microsoft Edge 95.0.1020.53 and Mozilla Firefox 94.0.1 (64-bit) with Windows 10 21H1 Home, discovering that the tooltip is "中文" rather than "featured article badge", which is quite weird and does not make sense at all. When I use Modern or the old Vector, this problem does not happen. There must be a bug in the new Vector skin!--RekishiEJ (talk) 14:18, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@RekishiEJ: are you having this problem here on the English Wikipedia? If your problem is only on zhwiki, please report at w:zh:Project:互助客栈/技术. — xaosflux Talk 14:28, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I'm having this problem on the English Wikipedia.--RekishiEJ (talk) 15:18, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@RekishiEJ: would you either open a WP:BUG report, or put the step-by-step directions to reproduce the problem here, including what you do see vs what you expect to see, so we can open it for you? — xaosflux Talk 15:36, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
Here's how I was able to reproduce the difference between Vector and new Vector: Set your Appearance Preferences to "Vector" skin and select "Use Legacy Vector". Go to Jianbing guozi. On the left side rail, find the links to the article in other languages, and notice that there is a yellow FA star next to "Chinese". Hover your mouse arrow over the star, and you should see "featured article badge" as a tooltip. Now go to Appearance Preferences, uncheck "Use Legacy Vector", and reload Jianbing guozi. Go to the Languages menu at the upper right, pop it down, and notice a yellow FA star next to "Chinese". Hover over the star, and the tooltip says "Chinese". (Note: I think I have another gadget, "SidebarTranslate: display sidebar language links in English", selected that makes the languages appear in English, so I see "Chinese" instead of "中文" in the tooltip, but the difference is still there). – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:31, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

My back arrow is gone

I have edited with Android smartphones on the desktop site for many years. Currently, I use a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G which I have had for several months. Suddenly about 24 hours ago, the back arrow at the bottom of the screen disappeared, and that makes navigation much more complicated. How can I get my back arrow back? I tried restoring to the default settings but that did not work. Any ideas? Cullen328 (talk) 00:23, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I restarted my phone and that solved the problem. Cullen328 (talk) 01:17, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Bizarre bit of ancient history

Does anyone know why MediaWiki default (a system account controlled by the developers) created Category:Computer storage stubs in 2005? * Pppery * it has begun... 03:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Well at that time Wikipedia was being upgraded to MediaWiki 1.5, which was quite an undertaking, as I well remember. That article I just linked says that Wikipedia wasn't fully up until a few hours later, so the upgrade probably caused the problem here. Graham87 05:30, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
I didn't even know about this page until searching through Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive F, but there was an old page called MediaWiki 1.5 bugs, on which this was reported (see the section "Mystery history"), which also links to what is now T4559. Graham87 05:38, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
After looking into this a bit further (and properly reading the bug report, I found that almost all of these edidts had indeed been deleted, as the bug report said; this can be seen in the deleted main namespace edits (admin only). The ones that were visible to non-admins had been undeleted later, so I'd gone and redeleted them, including the example above. This can be verified by checking the edits by MediaWiki default that are not in the MediaWiki namespace. Graham87 16:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-47

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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20:00, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

"back" button no longer recovers edit when there is an edit conflict

In the past, if I typed some stuff into the edit window and clicked "save" and there was an edit conflict, I could click "back" to return to a copy of the edit window I had typed in. I would then copy my edit to the clipboard, advance to the latest version of the page, and paste my edit.

This seems to have gotten broken sometime recently, but more than a couple days ago. If there is an edit conflict, afaict my edit can't be re-done that way. If I don't feel like typing/writing it again, it is simply lost. This is pretty seriously broken. I have to write all my edits in an external editor and then paste them to the browser edit window. That's probably a good habit but it goes against the idea of a web UI, and anyway I usually forget to do it. Anyone else notice this? Am I overlooking something? I'm using Firefox 78.15 ESR. 2602:24A:DE47:B8E0:1B43:29FD:A863:33CA (talk) 19:42, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

The version of the page which you attempted to save should appear in a separate edit box at the foot of the page. It's read-only but you can copy the text you added and paste it into the main edit window, which will have updated to the latest version. Your edit summary should still be there too. (Don't just copy-paste the whole box, unless you wish to undo later edits.) This method doesn't involve the back button. Certes (talk) 19:52, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
The IP may be editing from the mobile version..as I recall (I stopped using the mobile version, even when on a mobile device, because I realised I much prefer the full version), when you get an edit conflict on mobile, it takes you to a page that has a one-sentence error message telling you that there was an edit conflict, and the entire rest of the page is blank. If the text in the edit screen is now lost after you click the back button, that would be a huge problem! It seems there's so few mobile view editors that it's difficult to confirm if multiple users are all having the same issue. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:6033:FF4F:6CE5:7BA8 (talk) 00:09, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Four tilde post-signing triggering an "edit conflict"

This has happened to me a few times recently..it is more of a minor annoyance than a serious problem, and it seems to be some kind of technical glitch, but since I only see it occasionally I don't know if it is happening to anyone else. When I go to post a talk page message, I get an "edit conflict" page, but the only so-called "conflict" is that "my version" contains the four tilde's and the "current saved version" contains the signature. So all that needs to be done is to "publish changes", no big deal, but it is still kind of annoying because it takes a minute to figure out that that's what happened. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:6033:FF4F:6CE5:7BA8 (talk) 00:16, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

If the displayed saved version contains your signed post then it sounds like the edit was already published and your second "Publish changes" just made a null edit which could have been omitted. If it happens again then check whether the live page already shows your post. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:37, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
I have experienced what I think is the same problem recently, where I had definitely not published my edit already (I didn't look at the diff close enough to see if there was a difference based on my signature). I believe that someone else had published another edit in another place in the same section, so I assumed this was triggering it. I also have the paragraph-based edit conflict beta feature enabled, so maybe that's a possible contributing factor (though I assume a non-logged in user wouldn't be able to enable this)? isaacl (talk) 16:00, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I should be blocked, but am not

I noticed that I was able to edit Wikipedia (even as an unregistered user) from the IP 154.16.168.187 while connected to Surfshark VPN. In fact, I wrote this post from that IP. It should be blocked under WP:PROXY, but isn't. Not sure this is the right place to post about this. NateNate60 (talk) 23:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@NateNate60: Special:Contributions/154.16.168.187 doesn't show that any edits were able to be made from unregistered users on this address, can you point to the edit you made while not logged in? — xaosflux Talk 23:37, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I did not actually make any edits from that IP while signed out, but I did make edits while logged in from that IP. The previous edit was made from that IP; I assumed it would be logged and viewable under one of the many administrator's tools. The VPN IP address has now changed, so I can't make one just now to prove it unfortunately. NateNate60 (talk) 23:48, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for the note, only a checkuser could confirm this, and they are unlikely to check in this case. It is possible that due to any number of networking reasons you didn't actually connect to us with the IP you thought you were using. — xaosflux Talk 00:07, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

wrong sort by coordinates in class "wikitable sortable" table

This is how the table should like after the first click on the "Coordinates" column: coordinates must increase from the Northern Pole to the Southern. (The second click on each column displays the reverse order; if you tried to click anything here, return to the default view via refreshing screen with F5).

Meteorological hardware on Mars
Landing order Mission Coordinates From To sols Device Zone
6 Phoenix 68°13′08″N 125°44′57″W / 68.2188°N 125.7492°W / 68.2188; -125.7492 25.05.2008 28.10.2008 152 MET subarctic
1 Viking-2 47°38′N 225°43′W / 47.64°N 225.71°W / 47.64; -225.71 04.09.1976 12.04.1980 1281 (NASA) moderate
10 Zhurong 25°06′N 109°54′E / 25.1°N 109.9°E / 25.1; 109.9 22.05.2021 1279 MCS moderate
2 Viking-1 22°16′N 312°03′E / 22.27°N 312.05°E / 22.27; 312.05 20.07.1976 11.11.1982 2243 (NASA) moderate
3 Pathfinder 19°7′48″N 33°13′12″W / 19.13000°N 33.22000°W / 19.13000; -33.22000 04.07.1997 27.09.1997 83 ASI/MET subtropical
9 Perseverance 18°26′41″N 77°27′03″E / 18.4447°N 77.4508°E / 18.4447; 77.4508 18.02.2021 1376 MEDA subtropical
8 InSight 4°30′09″N 135°37′24″E / 4.5024°N 135.6234°E / 4.5024; 135.6234 26.11.2018 2163 TWINS equatorial
5 Opportunity 1°56′46″S 354°28′24″E / 1.9462°S 354.4734°E / -1.9462; 354.4734 25.01.2004 10.06.2018 5110 solar panel equatorial
7 Curiosity 4°35′22″S 137°26′30″E / 4.5895°S 137.4417°E / -4.5895; 137.4417 06.08.2012 4404 REMS equatorial
4 Spirit 14°34′06″S 175°28′21″E / 14.5684°S 175.472636°E / -14.5684; 175.472636 04.01.2004 01.05.2009 1892 solar panel subtropical

However, now the sort engine of "wikitable sortable" treats the contents of cells with the {{coord|47.64|...}} template either as plain figures with a float decimal or as string constants. It brings the whole idea of sorting by coordinates to an absurd, because southern and nothern latitudes are mixed disregarding the value of the hemisphere parameter (N or S)

Foreseeing the questions like 'why latitude not longitude':
sorting by longitude (E or W) doesn't arise in the tables with geographic, climatic, astronomic etc. material. However the necessity to sort by latitude arises often when the readers to group the table contents. For these reasons I kindly ask the technicians to improve the "wikitable sortable" engine with a patch providing the accurate sorting by latitude (given the values are properly put into the "{{coord|...|...}}" template).

Programmatically this patch is short and easy:
- if the parser encounters the {{coord|...|...}} template in the cell =>
=> then it must search for additional hemisphere criteria (|N| or |S| enclosed in the straight brackets) =>
=> if the hemisphere is "S", the numeric key used for sorting does not change;
while if it equals "N", then the value must be converted to negative (multiply by –1).

Thank you in advance, Cherurbino (talk) 13:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

You may use data-sort-value="arbitrary value" to force a sort order if you are having issues, as in e.g. | data-sort-value="68.2188" | 68.2188 N X E or | data-sort-value="-68.2188" | 68.2188 S X W. Izno (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
thank you, but this code shall not work until the values inside the {{coord|...}} shall be converted into the numeric array from -90 (Northern Pole) to +90 (Southern Pole). This array should not be explicitly visible for the readers; it should be kept within the virtual code space Cherurbino (talk) 13:26, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
Or, if the trick is in the | data-sort-value="-68.2188" | 68.2188 S X W clause, could you show it directly by editing my sample here (or in my sandbox)& Cherurbino (talk) 13:28, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
Try that. --Izno (talk) 13:34, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
Of course, you can be less precise if you have few enough values that you don't think any of them will sort wrongly. I would suggest you avoid trying to stuff the longitude into the data-sort-value in any way since several digits of precision of the latitude should be enough to separate all the values cleanly, but if you really want you could probably make it work out somehow. Izno (talk) 13:37, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
Keeping the manual opened)) I kept on trying with the header line in my sandbox. However the pipe (straight quote "|") in your argument "-68.2188" | 68.2188 S X W messed all my table. Now I see, your solution is in inserting this clause in each line of the table. Of course, it shall work - but only for one table, while there are hundreds of other tables with the "coords" templates. This is a palliative, while I seeked for the universal solution for everybody. Thank you, anyway, for your time and kind attention Cherurbino (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
A "universal" solution is probably not forthcoming. At least one dev I know has complained about the complexity of the code in this area. :^) Izno (talk) 14:54, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Could it be a good idea to amend the WP:TABLESORT help page with the sample for the coordinates' values? Cherurbino (talk) 14:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Instead of a bare pipe | try using the special five-character sequence {{!}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:54, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
The table sorter is client-side JavaScript. That means it cannot see the wikisource or the template-expanded wikitext. It can only see the HTML sent to your browser. In your example, {{coord|68.2188|N|125.7492|W|globe:Mars}} becomes:
<style data-mw-deduplicate="TemplateStyles:r994658806">.mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}</style><span class="plainlinks nourlexpansion"><a class="external text" href="//geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?pagename=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&params=68.2188_N_125.7492_W_globe:Mars"><span class="geo-nondefault"><span class="geo-dms" title="Maps, aerial photos, and other data for this location"><span class="latitude">68°13′08″N</span> <span class="longitude">125°44′57″W</span></span></span><span class="geo-multi-punct"> / </span><span class="geo-default"><span class="geo-dec" title="Maps, aerial photos, and other data for this location">68.2188°N 125.7492°W</span><span style="display:none"> / <span class="geo">68.2188; -125.7492</span></span></span></a></span>
That's the output of a specific template at a specific wiki. The table sorter is used by many wikis in many languages. I don't think it would be good use of developer time to try to make this work when it's only relevant for sortable columns of coordinates on both hemispheres. However, outputting a sortkey could be an optional feature of {{coord}}. Then there could also be a choice between North-South and West-East sorting. It can be suggested on the talk page. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:47, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
Distinguishing between the hemispheres is the language-indepenent issue. Pure mathematics common to the whole world. Now sorting by coordinates returns wrong output: north is mixed with south. Solution of this problem is purely mathematical: if table sorter comes across the 'coord' template, then values for 'N' within it should be treated as negative. Cherurbino (talk) 18:45, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
Were it "purely mathematical", you would not have multiple editors tell you that what you are asking for is not going to happen as you wish. I have provided an alternative as has PrimeHunter; I suggest that you look into one or the other. Izno (talk) 18:51, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
Were this problem unsolvable, we would not see the examples, that it is already solved in some of the wiki engines. Let's take the Template:Mars map and the services putting the 'dots' on this map. This template dosn't mix N and S; it means that somebody has already written the code assigning negative values for 'N' in order to pass this argument to the proc, that calculates X and Y offsets necessary to set these 'dots'. Cherurbino (talk) 19:01, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
I didn't say this problem was unsolvable, I said you weren't going to get what you want. Please do not put words in my mouth. Izno (talk) 19:05, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, I also didn't mean personally you constatating the unsolvability. It was a mere rhetorics when the fact 'nobody solves' is spread within the undistinguished community; nothing pesonal. Meanwhile, another example of solutions already found are infoboxes like {{Infobox crater data. User wraps the coordinates into the 'coord' template, and passes then to some underlying procedure which converts N and S values into the numeric offsets to place red 'dots' over the canvas of MOLA map. Cherurbino (talk) 19:18, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
Re: you would not have multiple editors tell you that what you are asking for is not going to happen as you wish - the arguments of PrimeHunter were not based on the subject. He told me about 'multiple wikies' while distinguising N and S is not a matter of national localization, and the long snippet he quoted does not contain the code relevant to sorting procedure. Which occurs later, maybe at geohack.toolforge.org — Cherurbino (talk) 19:26, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Dear Izno, I feel we shall not find the answer here, so I propose to close the discussion topic. Thank you for your attention, as well as for the palliative you proposed. Best regards, Cherurbino (talk) 19:32, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

@Cherurbino: As regards whether north or south is negative, there's a simple test. Omit the hemispheres from {{coord}}, and use negative values instead - see where you end up. For example, {{coord|-22.911|-43.205|type:city|display=inline}} → 22°54′40″S 43°12′18″W / 22.911°S 43.205°W / -22.911; -43.205. So there you are, negative is south and we won't change that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:52, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
Dear Redrose64! Thanks for your sample I found the way to override the problem which didn't allow me to use the numeric +/- syntax before:
source code result comments
Cherurbino {{coord|68.2188|N|125.7492|W|globe:Mars}} 68°13′08″N 125°44′57″W / 68.2188°N 125.7492°W / 68.2188; -125.7492 present state
Redrose64 {{coord|-22.911|-43.205|type:city|display=inline}} 22°54′40″S 43°12′18″W / 22.911°S 43.205°W / -22.911; -43.205 sample
Cherurbino {{coord|68.2188|-125.7492|type:city|display=inline}} 68°13′08″N 125°44′57″W / 68.2188°N 125.7492°W / 68.2188; -125.7492 test OK
Cherurbino {{coord|68.2188|-125.7492|globe:Mars|display=inline}} 68°13′08″N 125°44′57″W / 68.2188°N 125.7492°W / 68.2188; -125.7492{{#coordinates:}}: invalid longitude test fails due to the

The parser does not allow to use purely numeric coordinates' values for globe:Mars parameter! OK, I shall declare Mars as a kind of 'city'))). Thank you very-very much for this lifehack... and I gotta feeling that our respected colleagues Izno and PrimeHunter shall breathe a sigh of relief after such a boring interlocutor like me shall leave the thread completely satisfied that his problem was solved. Thank you, everybody! Cherurbino (talk) Cherurbino (talk) 11:51, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

You apparently didn't understand what I wrote. Let me repeat in bold: The table sorter is client-side JavaScript. That means it cannot see the wikisource or the template-expanded wikitext. It can only see the HTML sent to your browser. "client-side" means it runs in your own browser on your own computer. It doesn't run on a Wikimedia server where the wikitext is stored. You wrote "if table sorter comes across the 'coord' template". It doesn't. It never comes across any template. It only comes across HTML. I quoted the exact HTML it comes across in your example at the English Wikipedia. In other wikis there will be different HTML, and sometimes local terms instead of N and S. Coordinates can also be formatted in several ways. It would be difficult to make the table sorter work reasonably reliably on coordinates across languages and formats. I can think of many more useful table sorter features the developers could use time on. Here are ten:
  1. Descend: Option to sort a column in descending order on the first click (often best for numbers).
  2. Surname: Sort by surname, e.g. sort "first names surname" by "surname, first names" when no sortkey is given.
  3. Ignore: Specify words/strings to ignore in sorting, e.g "more than", "less than", "circa" in number sorting.
  4. Regex: Specify a regular expression replacement to apply to each cell to make the sortkey.
  5. Empty: Option to sort empty cells at the end in both ascending and descending (empty often means missing data, usually no reason to sort it at top in ascending).
  6. Hide: Hide selected rows in sorting (instead of just sortbottom).
  7. Colspan: Option to give a colspan cell different sort keys for different columns.
  8. Transpose: Make sortable rows instead of or in addition to sortable columns.
  9. Restore: Restore the original display, including rowspans and sort-bottom rows in their original position.
  10. Initial: Specify a column to initially sort by before clicking anything.
Some of these can be accomplished in specific tables with sort keys but so can your coordinates. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:31, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
Dear PrimeHunter! As you see above, the problem has found its solution. I apologize for dragging you into the discussion of the specific programming side of the problem. It was not useless for those who have read it, includind myself. Now I know more than before coming here, and everybody has got an example of finding non-trivial solution for the non-trivial problem. As for you personally: you demonstrated the high level of professionalism in your field, and Wikipedia must be proud of such volunteers like you. Thank you, everybody! Cherurbino (talk) Cherurbino (talk) 11:51, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

After leaving a tab open in the background, memory usage spikes

Hello. I hope this is the right place to report technical problems. For a while I have noticed that when I leave a tab of Wikipedia (or Wiktionary, or Wikimedia Commons) open in the background, after a while, the memory usage according to Chromium's task manager goes way up. Sometimes in the single digit gigabytes. However, the CPU usage remains low. I wonder if anyone else has encountered this issue. It is quite frustrating. 70.175.192.217 (talk) 05:09, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

This is a Chromium issue IMO, not a Wikipedia issue. Feel free to read more about Chromium's memory model here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/memory/key_concepts.md Try a different browser, like Firefox, old Edge (new Edge is Chrome skin), or something Webkit based (like safari). And if you insist on Chromium, make sure you don't have many tabs open, and make sure you have as less extensions as possible enabled. But, for someone who may want to see if its something on wikipedia side, maybe post the exact article/image that caused your memory to spike. Rlink2 (talk) 05:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
No other website has the same problem, though, so I think there must be something with Wikimedia's JavaScript. It happens on every article after long enough, like a ticking time bomb. I'll try other browsers. 70.175.192.217 (talk) 05:54, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Can't use my current password to add an email or change my password even though I used it to sign in

Does anyone know why it is that I was able to use my password to sign in, but now I can't use it to add an email so that I don't lose this account, or to change my email? I have my password written down right in front me and I think it's strong, but now it's not working. The only reason I'm signed in now is because I chose to stay signed in when entering my password. What could be the issue? And could pinging someone cause some technical or security issue regarding a person's password? If I log out now, I'll lose this account. And I already recently lost my User:SangXurWan account. Is there a way to prevent losing this account while I'm still logged in? SangXuriWan (talk) 06:14, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

And the weird thing is...I tested this password before logging off in my last session. Oh well. So I'm going to make one final account, as I need to get moving, and I'll sign up with an email right then so that I won't get locked out again. SangXuriWan (talk) 07:02, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Gadget-CollapsibleNav (Allow navigation menus to be collapsed) needs to be updated

Could someone update the MediaWiki:Gadget-CollapsibleNav.js (and most likely css too - the current style used in menu, .vector-menu-portal h3: background-size: 100% 1px;, turns the collapse arrow into a line) using the source from the mw:Extension:CollapsibleVector (same base code)?

Because the version from Gadget-CollapsibleNav doesn't work for me even if enabled as the gadget (How to test it without turning it on).

Of course if someone wants to use it (I only enabled it temporary). MarMi wiki (talk) 00:19, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

@MarMi wiki: What am I missing here, Special:Version doesn't show CollapsibleVector as an installed extension to be colliding with anything here. — xaosflux Talk 00:35, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
I think they're saying that the gadget version no longer works and we should update its code to match that of the extension (which supposedly works). – SD0001 (talk) 04:14, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I wanted to say.
Both (gadget and extension) are based on the same code (by the looks of it). MarMi wiki (talk) 13:14, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
After testing with a userscript, improvements to the gadget are welcome - please drop an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-CollapsibleNav.js with the changes you would like. — xaosflux Talk 10:47, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-CollapsibleNav.js#Update of code MarMi wiki (talk) 13:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

VisualEditor duplicating named citations

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T296044

VisualEditor turns 

Lorem<ref name="smth">{{Cite web|...}}</ref> ipsum<ref name="smth" /> dolor<ref name="smth" /> sit amet.<ref name="smth" />

into 

Lorem<ref name="smth">{{Cite web|...}}</ref> ipsum<ref name="smth">{{Cite web|...}}</ref> dolor<ref name="smth">{{Cite web|...}}</ref> sit amet.<ref name="smth">{{Cite web|...}}</ref>

causing citation errors. See Special:Diff/1055956630 and Special:Diff/1055958474 for examples. Is this a new bug? Kleinpecan (talk) 21:55, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm seeing this too. E.g., [17] EvergreenFir (talk) 22:25, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Oh good, not just me. I came across it here and here. Schazjmd (talk) 22:30, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Pinging xaosflux as this will cause a big mess if not dealt with soon. EvergreenFir (talk) 22:35, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Reported on phabricator —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:51, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Tip: in the meantime, it's useful to have the diffedit installed, for rescuing good edits; makes it easy to see and undo the added ref definitions without having to revert the entire edit. Schazjmd (talk) 23:52, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Do you think we should leave our edits as they are, with the bugged refs? From what I understand, it is a global problem among at least a few Wikipedia; thus, it is likely to get fixed globally by a bot. Veverve (talk) 00:53, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Veverve: it is a problem that is in multiple places and is being actively worked on. However, don't assume some bot is going to fix it (certainly not a global bot). — xaosflux Talk 00:55, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: as we are speaking, the buggy refs seem to get more and more numerous accross the WP afflicted by this bug. If a bot does not fix those, then I am afraid in many cases no one will. Veverve (talk) 01:00, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
This bug is marked as highest priority, and will have a fix deployed soon. — xaosflux Talk 01:02, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
I have no doubt the WP technicians will soon fix the bug. What I meant was that what I am concerned with is the edits which have been made while the bug was present and have broken the references in the articles. It is those broken references I think a bot should fix. Veverve (talk) 01:15, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@Veverve: WP:BOTREQ is right around the corner, feel free to drop a request there. — xaosflux Talk 01:35, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
Done at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Fixing the references broken by the Phabricator bug (T296044). Veverve (talk) 03:20, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
Wow, what a mess. I think I'm gonna give up editing until this is fixed. Graywalls (talk) 01:44, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
The phab ticket says that this was fixed at 02:00, 19 November 2021 (UTC), or 3.5 hours before this time stamp, if I'm doing my math right. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:34, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, the bug seems fixed to me. Veverve (talk) 07:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Just noting for the record that hopefully all affected articles have now been cleaned up thanks to this bot run. If it seems I've missed some, let me know and I can do another run - I initially limited the scope to the times I believed the bug to be in production, but I may have mis-estimated. firefly ( t · c ) 09:36, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Narrator "They were not". I don't believe these many more, at least causing cite errors. So I doubt anything more needs to be done. At least I know why I keep comin across them. ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 23:03, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Unable to login to the secure poll for the ACE

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T296349

After following the link from my user talk page to the 2021 ACE secure poll, I was instructed to log in. Three attempts failed to match my username and password while I am absolutely certain that I correctly entered the information. What can I do to overcome this issue, and what could explain why this is happening? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 11:09, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: Normal accounts cannot log in at https://vote.wikimedia.org. If you click the button at Special:SecurePoll/vote/801 while logged in then vote.wikimedia.org should greet you by username and allow you to vote without being logged in there. Don't try to log in. It's not supposed to work. Only try the button at Special:SecurePoll/vote/801, maybe in different browsers and devices or with other cookie settings, and always while logged in here. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:26, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
Thank you PrimeHunter, I am unable to overcome this issue. I have tried your suggestions (which I appreciate your compassionate efforts in trying) and followed them with deliberate diligence; and then tried again, just to be sure. I am never greeted by name, never given an option to vote, and always instructed to log in. I doubt that I've ever been more frustrated by malfunctioning technical requisites throughout my entire life; something's gone terribly awry. Hopefully, no one else will have to endure things similar same.--John Cline (talk) 15:31, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
John Cline, let's talk through this - I'd like to figure out where this is going wrong. So you click on the link on your userpage, then what happens? Is that when you're greeted with a login prompt, or does that happen later? SubjectiveNotability a GN franchise (talk to the boss) 15:49, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
I guess John clicks voting page at User talk:John Cline#ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message and does get a "Go to the voting server" button there, but clicking the button fails. The button takes me to https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1303 but if I go directly there in a browser which hasn't already taken the right route through Special:SecurePoll/vote/801 then I get the message "You must log in to vote in this election - please try following the link from your Special:SecurePoll on your local Wikimedia site." The first part is misleading. You must log in at your local Wikimedia site, not at vote.wikimedia.org. If the button at Special:SecurePoll/vote/801 works then you get a page which includes the link Report problems or issues. There are no current reports about this issue but you don't get the report link if you have the issue... A cookie issue would be my first guess but it's odd if it fails in multiple browsers and devices. It works for me in three tested browsers on a Windows 10 PC and Safari on iPhone. Does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/801?safemode=1 work? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:14, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
  • @John Cline: Something else to try:
    1. Open a private browsing/incognito browser.
    2. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org (If you are already logged in start over, something is wrong)
    3. Log in.
    4. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/801
    5. Click on "Go to the voting server"
    6. You should now see the ballot.
  • If this doesn't work, please indicate where this process broke down for you. Client-side things that can also break this include refusing or blocking cookies, refusing or blocking javascript. — xaosflux Talk 16:44, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
    I got the same error but for some reason the link had sent me to the mobile site https://vote.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1303 despite me being on a desktop PC. Simply changing to the desktop site brought up the correct view. Nthep (talk) 17:02, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
    I want to thank everyone for their efforts in trying to help me overcome this issue! I apologise for my absence after my last posting but a respite was badly needed to regain composure and sane cognition. I am trying to catch-up with suggested things now but wanted to say that I am using my phone for editing right now and that other options are not readily available for me. Any other devices I might be able to use will, in all cases, need to go through my phone's hot-spot for internet access (in case that is a relevant factor. The safemode link did not resolve matters. So far, I always arrive at the same page with the same options. From the secure poll login page, if I use the back arrow to secure poll, a page opens with many options including one for the 2021 ACE but the only links that are blue is "translate" and "list", there is a "vote" link but it is regular black text, not blue. I'm having trouble finding the incognito mode so I haven't been able to try that yet. Is there any possibility that somehow I'm ineligible to vote? I haven't seen an "eligibility tab" anywhere either. I did return from a prolonged absence in June of this year. Thanks again.--John Cline (talk) 17:31, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

BINGO, thank you Nthep!!! That exactly fixed all problems. FWIW, I was in desktop mode when I launched the secure poll link from here, it seems peculiar that I should arrive there in mobile mode. I think this condition has the potential to aggrieve many users who might get caught in its blindsided way. Thanks to everyone, again. Best.--John Cline (talk) 17:44, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: thank you for the updated information. If you don't mind sharing, could you let us know what browser, browser version, mobile operating system, mobile operating system version? Also, do you know if you are using any sort of "accelerators" / "proxies" / or "VPN"s on your mobile device? This would include things like Apple's iCloud Private Relay service. — xaosflux Talk 18:26, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
I can reproduce this in Safari on iPhone 8 with iOS 14.7.1. If I view Special:SecurePoll/vote/801 in desktop mode and click the button then I go to https://vote.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1303 and see "You must log in to vote in this election - please try following the link from your Special:SecurePoll on your local Wikimedia site." I dont know of any "accelerators" / "proxies" / or "VPN"s. It works when I view Special:SecurePoll/vote/801 in mobile mode on iPhone, or in desktop mode on a Windows PC. I don't have iCloud Private Relay which only exists in iOS 15. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:17, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
I don't mind sharing information Xaosflux, but my technical fluency is grounded at 101 for life and all things tech serve me better when written "for dummies". Aside that: I primary use Chrome where this link may answer some particulars specific to it and I use Firefox intermittently as well, where this link has particulars. There would almost certainly not be anything added to my service or manner thereof unless it was added or changed without my realization. Please re-ask for information you may still need. FWIW, the information Nthep provided above seems relevant and useful as well considering that he was directed to the mobile site while actually using a PC, which is even more worrisome to me. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 19:42, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
Addendum - I realize that the links I just provided partially reveal my IP address and geo-location; I am not concerned because of this and release it as free information.--John Cline (talk) 19:57, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
I can also reproduce this in Firefox on desktop Linux in responsive design mode:
  1. Open a new private window
  2. Enter responsive design mode (Crtl-Shift-M)
  3. Select "iPad" from the drop-down (user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 14_7_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.1.2 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1)
  4. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)
  5. Click the "Desktop" link at the bottom of the page
  6. Log in
  7. Click on this link: Special:SecurePoll/vote/801
  8. Click "Go to the voting server"
I see "You must log in to vote in this election - please try following the link from your Special:SecurePoll on your local Wikimedia site." Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:59, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: would you please raise a WP:BUG on this? — xaosflux Talk 20:03, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Go to do a few IRL things right now; but I will within a few hours. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:06, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: FWIW, I just tried those step-by-step instructions with my account and could not reproduce the failure. — xaosflux Talk 20:18, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
Can somebody add a helpful message to Votewiki:MediaWiki:Securepoll-not-logged-in? Something like "If you are at vote.m.wikimedia.org then try removing m. from the url." PrimeHunter (talk) 20:27, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: That doesn't work either. IIRC, the "Go to the voting server" link sends a one-time token that allows the voting server to create a session for you; if the session wasn't created, there's nothing you can do at vote.wikimedia.org to fix that. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:25, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: At step 7, do you end up and the mobile (.m) site? If not, what if you try a different device in step 3 (e.g. a small phone)? Oops I realize I left out an important step, "Log in", but I assume you did that anyway. It may be relevant that I logged in after switching to the desktop view. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:39, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
I had this issue when voting earlier from an iOS device - I assumed it was a limitation of SecurePoll not working in Minerva and changed to desktop view to vote. Interesting that it should have worked. Happy to do more testing if it would be useful. firefly ( t · c ) 20:57, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
  • In case another data point is useful: Last night, on my phone, when I first got the ACE watchlist notice, I clicked the link to vote in the notice, and it took me to Special:SecurePoll/vote/801. I was definitely logged in (if not, I wouldn't have had a watchlist). From there, clicking on the "go to voting server" button took me to the mobile version, rather than the desktop version, of the voting page, even though I had been logged into the desktop version of en.wiki. I got the same "not logged in" error message people are reporting above. I tried from my laptop a few minutes later and it worked fine, taking me to the desktop version of the voting page without problem. I was about to report it last night, but I couldn't reproduce the error (clicking the same links as before now took me to the desktop version of the voting wiki, and I was logged in as Floquenbeam, even on my phone), so I assumed it was some kind of one-off glitch. Safari on iOS 15.1. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:51, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
  • An ironic finding related to my last reply - not long ago, I filed a VPT thread titled "Desktop inconsistencies in mobile editing" which you participated in Xaosflux,[18] and the reason I always and only use the "desktop" link at the lower right footer is directly resultant to that discussion. The other "desktop" link is optionally available using the "three vertical dot control" at the upper right corner of the page. That archived thread has images and discussion that are worthy of review, in light of the problems highlighted in this thread. The irony is that in spite of the detractors from using the upper right control to launch the "desktop" mode determined in that discussion, in this situation, when I launch the desktop from the upper right control, and then click the 801 link to the secure poll, everything works and you are presented with the ballot and voting opportunity in spite of arriving in the mobile view. And so, here again, inexplicably you have desktop inconsistencies in mobile editing depending on which desktop link you happen to use. Only this time the inconsistent behavior favors the upper right control instead of the lower right footer regarding which link to use. For now, I think I'll just call it "crazy craziness".--John Cline (talk) 04:39, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

RESOLVED - Xaosflux, Suffusion of Yellow, and others, I just tested the bug under the conditions that previously presented the problems described and instead of the problems, everything worked, and works, as they otherwise should always have had. Although I have not seen anything on the phab ticket, as of this posting, describing the resolving fix or patch, I am certain that some action has occurred resolving the matter, and that the matter, as it had affected me, is resolved. My sincere thanks to everyone who helped bring this resolution about. Best.--John Cline (talk) 09:23, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Is this available by year? Wikipedia - all rated article quality and importance data

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics ( The project quality and importance table half way down - but it's for all WP Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 09:33, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

@Wakelamp Yes, that table is from User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/OverallArticles. You can view the history going back to 2010. the wub "?!" 13:06, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
@The wub Thank-you. I was trying to work out the change between various quality assessments, but I had forgotten about new articles. Is there a report that shows the number of quality changes for a day:-(e.g. today 100 items moved stub to start etc) I am interested to know if the majority of stub articles ever move, and whether adding "this stub is part of a project" does changes the odds Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:57, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
@Wakelamp I'm not aware of any reports which show that. the wub "?!" 10:38, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Search also getting Wikidata results

I was looking at the correspondence between items on Wikidata and different language Wikipedias and stumbled across this search at the Slovenian (?) Wikipedia, which also showed some relevant Wikidata results. Is there a way of doing this here? —  Jts1882 | talk  12:29, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

It appears that this is being done by this gadget: MediaWiki:Wdsearch.js. Kleinpecan (talk) 13:05, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
Excellent. That is exactly what I wanted. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:28, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Auto shortdescs in infoboxes causing incorrect additions to Category:Articles with long short description

The maintenance category Category:Articles with long short description is added to pages with a short description of over 100 characters by {{Short description}}. Several infoboxes like {{Infobox dam}} and {{Infobox song}} auto-transclude {{Short description}} with a generated shortdesc that may be longer than 100 characters, such as in the case of Lock and Dam No. 22 (which is producing the short description "Dam in Cincinnati Township, Pike County, Illinois / Saverton Township, Ralls County, Missouri,<br /> near Saverton, Missouri") and Los 12 Discípulos (which I assume is producing something like "2004 single by Eddie Dee featuring Daddy Yankee, Ivy Queen, Tego Calderón, Voltio, Vico C, Zion, Lennox, Nicky Jam, Johnny Prez, Gallego, and Wiso G", but Special:ExpandTemplates isn't showing anything). These are obviously not optimal and have been overridden by a short shortdesc; however, these articles are still appearing in Category:Articles with long short description due to the automatic one. Is there any technical way for these auto-shortdescs to check if one has been supplied already, and if so not add the page to that category? Or, alternatively, could the shortdesc template somehow remove a category (which I don't think is possible, but I don't really know)? Thanks, eviolite (talk) 22:55, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Discussion about this issue is already in progress at WT Talk: Short description. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:02, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
I see, thanks for the pointer. eviolite (talk) 23:18, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Unable to remove the final extra line in Template:Antimatter.

In {{Antimatter}} the end of the template reads 

...
}}
<noinclude>
[[Category:Physics sidebar templates]]
</noinclude>

I want to remove the final empty line, so it ends with 

...
}}
<noinclude>
[[Category:Physics sidebar templates]]
</noinclude>

But whenever I click save, no change is registered. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:44, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

That can't be done. MW follows the standard Unix convention and ensures there's a single newline at the end of every page (if you put in multiple newlines, they'll be compressed down to one). Why does it matter, though? It shouldn't have any visible impact. – SD0001 (talk) 05:22, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
@Headbomb: You're looking in the wrong place. You need to remove the newline that is before the <noinclude>, i.e. 
...
}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Physics sidebar templates]]
</noinclude>
This is because when the page is parsed, the noinclude blocks are not removed before template transclusion but afterwards, so any newlines that occur between the "real" template code and the noinclude will be preserved. This is why you'll occasionally find me making edits like this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:52, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Toolforge archive claims I'm blocked

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T274050
Screenshot

Hey, so I was adding references on To Fly! and went to https://iabot.toolforge.org/index.php?page=runbotsingle to automatically archive links, as I always do. However after minutes of loading, it then says that I'm blocked and thus it couldn't archive. Apparently according to this previous discussion I had, it happens all the time to other users too and before this I just practice patience, but I can't help but wonder: why does this issue even exist and can it be fixed? If it helps, I'm using Google Chrome version 96.0.4664.45. There's also the screenshot of the block message at the right. GeraldWL 11:00, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps your underlying IP address is blocked? Try getting it from here and see if you can find it in wikitech:Special:BlockList or Special:BlockList. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:11, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
Jo-Jo Eumerus, no blocks found on both checkers. And I don't think IP address is an issue here, since my laptop's been in this table all day; if I can edit I must be able to archive too. GeraldWL 11:30, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
At the bottom of the tool you linked, it says the maintainer is Cyberpower678. Pinging in case they can help. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:41, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
Novem Linguae, it’s a bug with the MediaWiki API. It happens at random. —CYBERPOWER (Around) 12:37, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
This is tracked at phab:T274050, long-time issue with IAbot. – SD0001 (talk) 12:40, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
Got it. Cyberpower678 and SD0001, thanks for the response! GeraldWL 12:43, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Template:WPBS causing expansion depth errors

Hi, in this edit the talk page is populating into Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded. But when one removes the Template:WPBS, then the page is not within that category. Just wondering why there is an error? --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:54, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that previewing an edit to Talk:Roger Slifer containing only {{WikiProject Comics|Creators-work-group=yes|class=start|importance=low|US=yes}} shows "Highest expansion depth 34/40". Therefore when other templates are included, it is close to or over the limit. That template needs fixing. The edit you mention did not contribute to the problem—it just caused the page to be reparsed which put it in the error category. Johnuniq (talk) 22:33, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

US Census Bot needed

I think we need a census bot for the US census, to allow for automated updates every 10 years, for all the census designated places in the US that are also in Wikipedia. I have no idea how to go about making any of that happen, but it is definitely something to consider doing, and while we're at it, we can figure out how to use reliable external sources for other population data that is periodically revised by the authoritative source that a bot can then go about and update the data in WP. Hires an editor (talk) 19:31, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:Bot requests. I think this topic has been requested before, but you can search the archives to see. Izno (talk) 19:42, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
Absolutely. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cities/Archive_22#US_Cities_-_Census_info. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:59, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Elements in custom CSS disabled

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T296598

originally posted on Wikipedia:Help desk

Hi guys. I don't know when did such a code became included for the Minerva skin, but it disabled my custom style for headers in history pages: 

.ns-special h1, .ns-special h2 {
font-family: -apple-system,'BlinkMacSystemFont','Segoe UI','Roboto','Lato','Helvetica','Arial',
sans-serif !important;
}

Specifically, the !important is the problem. I tried endlessly to tweak my codes, but it was useless in face of the !important phrase. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:55, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mahmudmasri: Hi there! It might be better to ask this question at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 01:28, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I tested writing the code in my common CSS and it worked. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 04:16, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mahmudmasri: I'm not seeing the !important when loading a random page in minerva; I do see a normal sans-serif in the font-family. Tried logged in and logged out, with en.m.wikipedia and with ?useskin=minerva. One odd thing I see for you, is you have imported your local css as your global css via meta:User:Mahmudmasri/global.css, which will also re-apply it here (which includes many !importants). If you think there is a bad !important coming from the software or local skin settings - try logging our and checking that it isn't something you did with all your personal scripting; then let us know where it is presenting. — xaosflux Talk 05:51, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello. Thanks for answering. The code with its important are not mine. I never added such fonts in my codes -apple-system,'BlinkMacSystemFont','Roboto','Lato','Helvetica'. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 16:09, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

OK, to look in to this more, please log out (or use a private browser), and then point to exactly where you are seeing this. Specify which URL you are accessing, and if you are using the WEBUI or an app, specify if you are using a "mobile browser" and if so, if you have it requesting a mobile view or a desktop view. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 16:38, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
It seems pretty clear to me. The rule is coming from Minerva (the mobile website skin) and affects Special namespace pages: History on the mobile site is one of these. Example link. Unfortunately I don't know how to override it, User:Mahmudmasri/common.css#L-122 looks like it should work, but maybe it gets loaded before the Minerva rule and overridden by it. the wub "?!" 17:51, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
Still looking, verified that these rules are not being sent from testwiki or sample other project eswiki. — xaosflux Talk 18:39, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I thank you all for following up.

  • Open any page, let's browse the history of the page Wikipedia [19].
  • Mark the words Page history at the top left of the page, for example, and "inspect element".
  • Take a look at the inspected code:
  • On the left, Under the <!DOCTYPE> you would see:
<h1 id="section_0">Page history</h1>

and on the right, under the Style Attribute {, from the many lines, you would see: 

.ns-special h1, .ns-special h2 {
font-family: -apple-system,'BlinkMacSystemFont','Segoe UI','Roboto','Lato','Helvetica','Arial',sans-serif !important
}
  • Try disabling that line of code, these fonts will not be applied, re-enable it, they will be reactivated.

It seems it was written to switch off the previous line: 

.pre-content h1, .content h1, .content h2 {
font-family: 'Linux Libertine','Georgia','Times',serif;
}
  • Note that I couldn't "inspect" the element from my smartphone, as its browsers lack that function, however, the same (sans-serif) fonts were displayed from my PC.

I don't know where that line of code is, I searched the Mediawiki:Minerva.css and Mediawiki:Common.css, but didn't find it. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 22:19, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Allow me to correct the disctiption in Phabricator. The problem is all over Wikipedia in other languages. Take for example the history of a page on the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia [20] or the page for I on the English Wiktionary [21], follow the same steps I mentioned, you would find the same code I mentioned. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 22:23, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Izno found it. [22] --Mahmudmasri (talk) 22:48, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Navigation templates and categories are important parts of Wikipedia. In 2021, it's frankly embarrassing that they are still not present in the mobile versions, both web and app. The mobile view doesn't even give an indication that they're missing. It seems obvious that the goal for mobile should be to convey as much of the desktop content as possible, but these omissions result in an impoverished mobile version. Are the developers working on addressing this problem? I know there are complicated layout issues at stake (more for nav templates than for categories), but surely they can be surmounted given the WMF's resources. If a fix is already in the works, I'd be grateful to hear about it. Thanks. --Albany NY (talk) 02:58, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Categories are available, you just have to look for them apparently. (I haven't.)
Navboxes have two issues:
  1. Mobile layout design. I have a sketch to start on the structure that gets us there, but there are likely to be many many rabbit holes to deal with because it is a fundamental difference from how navboxes are generated today and there are likely to be breakages. This is a community problem to solve, not the WMF's.
  2. They are hundreds of links that most readers neither need nor want and so they are not even sent down the wire to users, which have a vastly different use case on mobile than navboxes are applicable for (to wit, get some information and get out). This is the larger reason they are not on mobile and is actually in the WMF's remit. You will need to convince them that there is a solution to this problem, but so far, no-one has been forthcoming. (I have suggested one solution on the Phab task of interest, but it would require an overhaul of all 150k navboxes we have floating around.)
The Phabricator task of interest is phab:T124168. Izno (talk) 04:24, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the background and for your work on this. I'm looking at the mobile web view of today's featured article and don't see the categories anywhere. Nowadays it's common for people to use phones as their primary web browsing device, so I'm certain that there are many who use mobile for long Wikipedia sessions, reading a number of articles and following links from one to another (not just looking one thing up). Nav templates are important for this type of browsing. --Albany NY (talk) 05:37, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
Unregistered users cannot see categories on mobile. Registered users can only see them by enabling "Advanced mode" in mobile settings. One of the reasons navboxes would look bad on mobile is that mobile doesn't have collapsible tables. I would like an option to include a high-relevance navbox in mobile. It could be passed on from articles or test the article title in the navbox, e.g. to display {{Nobel Prize in Physics}} on Nobel Prize in Physics but not on all the laureates. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:27, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer about Advanced Mode. It makes no sense to me that categories, talk pages, history, etc. are hidden where most mobile readers will never know they exist. When Wikipedia was designed, they were purposefully prominent to encourage readers to turn into editors. --Albany NY (talk) 02:31, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Table sorting issue

Could someone help me decipher why the final "Notes" column in the table at, for example, this section of WP:URFA/2020 won't sort correctly?

We set up standardized entries for the Notes column, intending for them to sort, but they are not sorting by the text entered, rather (as far as I can tell) by the date that follows the note. So, for example, it should be pulling up a sort by those that have notes, have been noticed, are at FAR, or are Satisfactory when sorted, but won't do that. Thanks in advance, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:41, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

The script tries its best to guess what kind of data is in the cells it will be sorting. Sometimes it doesn't do so great, so it needs a little help. I've made an edit that looks like it does what you want now. See also Help:Sorting#Forcing a column to have a particular data type. Izno (talk) 05:23, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
That did the trick; thank you so much ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:58, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Copy-paste

The following article has been renamed using copy-paste:

Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 07:48, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. I've merged the page histories. In the future, consider using the process at WP:HISTMERGE#Instructions for tagging a page for history merging to let an admin know. Izno (talk) 08:32, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Auto watch transcluded templates on watched page?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T55525

Currently when I watch an article, it only watches that article, despite the fact that content changes may be transcluded from templates. I think this is appropriate default behaviour, but I would like the option to change my setting, to follow additional templates automatically. Anyone know if this is a setting? The reasons range from spotting vandalism more quickly, to simply getting more templates in my watchlist, since they tend to be edited less often anyways (not always), but with fewer eyes due to their higher technical inaccessibility. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 08:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

@Shushugah: a page can have many many many templates, which themselves can have templates as well. Many of them are just for formatting, not so much "content". If you preview a page in edit mode, you can see a list of all the templates used at the bottom of the page, follow them and watch the ones you are interested in. cascade-watch is an open feature request, see phab:T55525 for some more discussion on it. — xaosflux Talk 16:18, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

TwinkleMobile

I made a script which enables Twinkle on mobile view (Minerva skin). It may be useful for mobile users. See discussion. P.T.Đ (talk) 18:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-48

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 December. It will be on all wikis from 2 December (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:13, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there a report on what happens to new articles?

New article created, RFD, deleted, hoax, scam Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 08:00, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

There's WP:AALERTS that covers a lot of this. User:InceptionBot covers some of it too. Also this listing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:54, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Advice on scripts

I have added various scripts to User:Dudley Miles/common.js over the years, some of which I do not remember what they do. I should be grateful if an expert would take a look and tell me whether they all still useful and whether there are any other scripts worth importing. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

You can replace User:Ucucha/duplinks.js with the maintained version User:Evad37/duplinks-alt.js; and the two HarvErrors scripts with User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js – a serious bug is fixed in Trappist's version. As for prosesize, it is now available as a gadget (Wikipedia:Prosesize) so you can enable that instead. The rest looks fine. – SD0001 (talk) 17:20, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Many thanks SD0001. Dudley Miles (talk) 22:43, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
SD0001 I have replaced the Harverrors script and confirmed that I have the prosesize gadget, but I have a problem User:Evad37/duplinks-alt.js. The documentation page at User:Evad37/duplinks-alt says that I should add {{subst:lusc|User:Evad37/duplinks-alt.js}}, but when I try to save I get a message, "The document containts errors. Are you sure you want to publish?". Can you advise please? Thanks. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:35, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@Dudley Miles the template will subst on save to produce error-free javascript. So that warning can be ignored. – SD0001 (talk) 13:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks again SD0001. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:32, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Archival bot only archives to one archive

Hello! So I've noticed that on Talk:Roblox, the archival bot only seems to be archiving convos to Talk:Roblox/Archive 1, despite there being Archives 2-5. Anyone know why it's doing this or if it's completely normal? ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:22, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The MiszaBot instructions in the header are asking the bot to use Archive 1. This seems unusual, given that *five* archives exist. As of late 2020 the bot was still putting things in Archive 5. Somebody must have changed the instructions between then and now. EdJohnston (talk) 15:47, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@EdJohnston: How odd. Would it be a good idea to change it at this point, and if so how would i do so? ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:01, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
The correct archiving was removed in this edit (presumably by accident), & when added back in this later edit the counter wasn't set appropriately. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Ah ok. I would assume it wouldn't be a good idea to move all archives added to the first archive after it was added back to the 5th archive. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:18, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
That's the easiest solution, & X201 has done it & corrected the counter. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:20, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
I've moved the articles incorrectly archived in Archive 1 to Archive 5 so that they're in chronological order. everything should return to normal now - X201 (talk) 16:24, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Alright! Thanks! ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Bug with "new topic"

  1. Create a new section ending in <!--
  2. Create another new section
  3. Bug: "another new section" doesn't display (is commented out).

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Sandbox&diff=prev&oldid=1057955259&diffmode=source  AltoStev (talk) 16:50, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

That's not a bug. What else would you expect to happen? – SD0001 (talk) 16:52, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
It should autoclose the comment? Plus, when editing in the new section it shows my signature, but the ~~~~ doesn't turn into my signature, contrary to expectation, making sinebot autosign for me.  AltoStev (talk) 17:01, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
It may confuse some users but it's not a bug. Sometimes you want to comment out a significant part of a page including section headings. And should removal of a section heading suddenly comment out previously displayed text after the removed heading? That would also be confusing. Preview always shows the previewed text by itself. What else should it do? Many types of open tags, references, template limits and so on can affect how it looks in context when it's saved. As long as discussion pages work as whole wiki pages and not separate posts, we have to live with things like this. There has been attempts to rework discussions with new software but the implementations have been unpopular so far. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:08, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
I would characterize this scenario as garbage in, garbage out, in addition to what's already been said. Legoktm (talk) 18:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Fractionally interesting

I note that Garsdale is 51+1⁄4 miles (82 km) miles from Carlisle. However, when I hover over the link, the mileage displays as "51+1/4", which is the raw text entered into the {{Convert}} template. Is there an issue with how templates are evaluated for rollover text? The template must be working, as the conversion to kilometers is present.--Verbarson (talk) 19:51, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

It uses TemplateStyles to display the fraction, which presumably do not load in page previews. Kleinpecan (talk) 19:58, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Actually no bug for PagePreviews yet, though there are other incompatible systems documented (MediaViewer and indicators currently of this particular sort, Notifications of a separate sort). Izno (talk) 20:11, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
The wikitext is {{Convert|51+1/4|mi|km|0}} which renders as: 51+1⁄4 miles (82 km). Special:ExpandTemplates shows it produces: <templatestyles src="Fraction/styles.css"></templatestyles><span class="frac" role="math">51<span class="sr-only">+</span><span class="num">1</span>⁄<span class="den">4</span></span> miles (82 km). Template:Fraction/styles.css has code to hide sr-only (screen reader-only) from view. I don't know whether there is a way to include '+' in screen readers (where it's needed to make sense?) but exclude it from Page Previews. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:29, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Another feature of the "+" is that if text is copied from the rendered article, the fraction will be pasted as "51+1/4" except that I've used a plain slash so it shows what characters are involved, whereas it's actually a fraction slash which causes many browsers to display it as a fraction, like so: "51+1⁄4". Johnuniq (talk) 23:09, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Unicode characters outside the BMP in MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js

I recently requested that the musical double-flat 𝄫 (U+1D12B) and double-sharp 𝄪 (U+1D12A) symbols be added to the symbols palette, at MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#Double-sharp_and_double-flat, since they're necessary for talking about a good deal of 19th-century classical music: xaosflux very kindly made the additions. However, they didn't seem to show up right when I actually pulled up the symbols palette below the edit window now – instead of the intended series 𝄫 ♭ ♮ ♯ 𝄪 from lowest to highest, I saw � � ♭ ♮ ♯ � � with pairs of replacement characters.

Is there something breaking these high-numbered characters down into their UTF-16 decompositions and creating mojibake? My suspicions were raised by the fact that if I clicked the 1st, then the 2nd replacement character there, I did get a 𝄫 that I could see; and if I clicked the 3rd, then the 4th, I got a 𝄪. But I couldn't see these in the toolbar. The UTF-16 decompositions are respectively 0xD834 0xDD2B and 0xD834 0xDD2A, and consistent with that theory, clicking them in the order 3rd-2nd or 1st-4th also worked and created 𝄫 and 𝄪 respectively. That's just a hypothesis on my part, though.

Xaosflux has reverted the additions since, as they don't work properly, but I'd like to ask if there's any way they could be made to work. Double sharp (talk) 16:10, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

JavaScript uses UTF-16 internally and many of its primitives access the code units individually. The code at MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js lines 168 to 171 would need to be updated to use characters rather than code units. I don't know which browser versions we want to support these days, but something like this (replacing lines 168 to 174) should work in reasonably modern browsers.
                } else {
                    var chars = [ ...token ];
                    if ( chars.length > 2 && token.charCodeAt( 0 ) > 127 ) { // a string of insertable characters
                        for ( var j = 0; j < chars.length; j++ ) {
                            addLink( chars[ j ], '' );
                        }
                    } else {
                        addLink( token, '' );
                    }
                }
The [ ...token ] is the bit that needs a "reasonably modern" browser. Chrome 46, Edge 12, Firefox 16, Safari 8 or 9 I think. Anomie⚔ 23:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Aren't gadgets minified so you can't use ES6 (or perhaps it has to be explicitly allowed in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition)? But if you are splitting a string into an array of characters, can't you just use .split('')? Nardog (talk) 12:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
ES6 is not allowed at all in gadgets as of now. Someone needs to rewrite MW's user-js validator (which is different from the minifier which does support ES6 now) before that's a possibility. – SD0001 (talk) 13:16, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
No, that'll still separate the surrogate code units: "💕".split("") yields [ "\ud83d", "\udc95" ]. — Eru·tuon 18:02, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
[ ...token ] doesn't pass the linter, which is stuck on ECMAScript 5 still, but the code should work on similarly recent browsers if you replace that with Array.from(token). (The linter doesn't check properties of objects apparently.) — Eru·tuon 18:00, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Doesn't WP provide web fonts so that articles and symbols are displayed for those who don't have font support? I don't know where to go for such things, but if that's the case, we could make templates that supply SMP symbols. A complaint with the Earth symbol (ubiquitous in astronomy in the units M🜨 and R🜨) is that some ppl still don't have proper font support, so I assume we'd need to add it to our web-font set somehow. Also, it seems that the fonts in some Mac products have the symbol, but display it incorrectly. I don't know if that could be addressed with web fonts. — kwami (talk) 02:37, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

WP does not do so, no. Izno (talk) 03:54, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
TemplateStyles supports the @font-face rule, but to avoid templates redefining fonts in use elsewhere on the page, the font-family property must start with TemplateStyles. Thus the Toolforge font server proxy for Google's font server can't be used to serve the font, as it doesn't let you rename the font-family property to something other than the name of the font being downloaded. To avoid accessing a non-WMF controlled server, someone would have to host an appropriate font on Toolforge or another WMF server. (For purposes of discussion, I'm ignoring page load efficiency issues.) isaacl (talk) 23:44, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Website showing as dead

I'm having an issue with an editor who sourced content using this source. This website shows up as out-of-service, though the editor claims it's a valid and working website. The discussion is at User talk:Magnolia677#Allen Texas Election History Edit Reversion. If anyone there is able to check the site I would appreciate it. Thank you very much. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I tried going on the site. Saw a 404 error. So i checked the Wayback machine, and they seemed to have a copy - https://web.archive.org/web/20200919023009/https://www.collincountytx.gov/elections/election_results/Pages/result_archive.aspx If you think a link is dead, the Internet archive is always the best place to check. Rlink2 (talk) 23:42, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
That specific webpage is live for me. Izno (talk) 23:47, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
I know that some websites can only be accessed from certain geographic areas, but I also tried using a US based proxy and it still didn't work. Odd. Thank you for your help, and for the link to the wayback machine. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:50, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Help in mobile view

Hello! I recently imported {{Infobox military person}} to my homewiki (SqWiki). It works perfectly fine on desktop view. However, when rendered on articles on mobile view, the name of the person appears aligned left (instead of being centered). You can check for yourself on any article here when switched to mobile view. I checked some articles here and the same effect didn't happen here. Any idea what might be causing that? My experience with the mobile aspect is almost 0. - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:46, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

The hidden CSS is in MediaWiki:Mobile.css. If at all possible to wait, wait for Module:Infobox to be moved from global CSS to WP:TemplateStyles. (I might be busier than not sooner rather than later, so I don't know when that might be happen.) See also MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do#Infobox. Izno (talk) 00:51, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
That said, I can maybe help you clean/sort out your local templates/modules so you don't have to wait. --Izno (talk) 00:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
Nope, looking over what's there, it will take a little more work than I'm willing to invest on it to clean it. If you can get your wiki clean, I'm willing to provide you the right CSS etc. Izno (talk) 00:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@Izno, apparently that system message had never been created for us. As with the other system messages (Common.css, Common.js) I just copy-pasted the EnWiki version. It's been a while we mirror (and update periodically) the EnWiki common pages and we haven't had any problems, I doubt this will be any different. This was more or less my question: Where is the mobile version getting that extra css rule for that kind of rendering. You answered that with Mobile.css so we're good now. Thank you! :)) - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:07, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
Just for confirmation, I just checked and the specific error mentioned above is fixed. Thanks again! - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:11, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

From sometime yesterday (or maybe longer)

getting the 503 error. Helpful to de-orphan articles. Not sure where to notify so posting here. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:56, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

After further investigating, I found User talk:Edward/Find link so will notify there. JoeNMLC (talk) 15:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@JoeNMLC: I had the issue as well, but it seems to be resolved now. GoingBatty (talk) 06:04, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

JS: Startup module failed to load

Resolved
 – Resolved by updating the common.js. Close by nom. --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 18:15, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I keep getting the following error message shown in the browser's console under Linux/Google Chrome. I don't get it' in Firefox. It appears that the problem is chrome-specific. Clearing cache didn't help. Anyone else? --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 17:35, 1 December 2021 (UTC) 

VM887:26 Uncaught SyntaxError: missing ) after argument list
    at domEval (load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:10)
    at load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:16
domEval @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:10
(anonymous) @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:16
requestIdleCallback (async)
asyncEval @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:16
work @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:17
enqueue @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:11
load @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:19
(anonymous) @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:63
(anonymous) @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:64
Show 8 more frames

--AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 17:35, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Alexander Davronov: first turn off all of these: User:Alexander Davronov/common.js, User:Alexander Davronov/vector.js. Does it stop? — xaosflux Talk 18:08, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks. I've commented out and then uncommented one entry and it started to work. Weirdly. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 18:14, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Dynamic maps with certain OSM Wikidata items have a lot of grey markers

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292613

For a few weeks now imported route relations from OpenStreetMap also include nodes (e.g. trains stations), which makes the map a lot less intuitive to understand.

This technical change should be undone in my opinion. It only clutters the map and has no advantage to the reader. --Renek78 (talk) 10:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

This is phab:T292613 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:58, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, TheDJ!--Renek78 (talk) 21:48, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
As suggested in the phab discussion, changing geoline to geomask in {{MRT Sungai Buloh-Putrajaya Line mapframe}} removes the grey symbols (in edit preview). —  Jts1882 | talk  12:38, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
I tried it but it didn't work for "MRT Sungai Buloh-Putrajaya Line mapframe". Everything disappears. --Renek78 (talk) 21:48, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Directing users to VE or Wiki Markup help pages based on what they actually use

Our tutorial system is split into two tracks, one for Wiki Markup and the other for VisualEditor, e.g. Help:Introduction to images with Wiki Markup and Help:Introduction to images with VisualEditor. However, when pointing users to it from another page, we often end up listing both, since we're not sure what editor a given user is actually using. I suspect that this is quite confusing for many newcomers, since they may not know which editor they are using. What would need to be done to create functionality where Help:Introduction to images would redirect to either the Wiki Markup page or the VisualEditor page based on automatic detection of which editor you have set as your default in your preferences? I'm assuming it would take at least some WMF involvement, so courtesy pinging MMiller (WMF) for the Growth Team. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:50, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

is there a WP report on new pages per day - (Wikistats report varies between 16 k to 200k)

about 200k versus about 16 K Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:36, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

First one is "content" plus "non-content", second one is only "content". See the "filter by page type" near the bottom of the left-hand column. Both are by month, not by day though. Fram (talk) 12:41, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
What happened in March 2015. There were almost twice as many non-content pages created as in any other month. There was no similar spike in content pages. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
To be precise, 19 and especially 20 March 2015, no other dates. Either an error in the data, or some group of pages (some forgotten namespace) which weren't counted previousky and were added then, would be my guess. We haven't had page creating bots which went on such a rampage, so that seems out of the question. Fram (talk) 14:35, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
It was very likely caused by mass-notices like this as part of the Single User Login finalisation announcement. Here's a brief explanation of how I found it: it's possible to use index.php to go to a specific page ID. I did this iteratively until zeroing in on the date I wanted and the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46000000 had the pay dirt. Graham87 06:22, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
(@Fram thank-you for the explanation.
That is a huge amount of non-content pages!!!! Are they from Commons or new users?? And does each new non content create 5 pages?? (4 pages (article/article history, talk/talk history)and page information?
Is there a report on articles created (reviewed by NPP, AfD, or deleted) by editor type (new, ip, experienced). I am trying to work out whether changing the new article wizard to check for reliability would help new editors. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:25, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
Content pages are basically just technical jargon for articles. Non content are pages that are not articles (redirects, files, help pages and so on). I am writing "basically articles" since there is no gurantee that the count is 100% accurate. The statistic page you are using has an "editor type" checkbox that shows how many articles where created by IPs, users and bots. You can post an request to Wikipedia:Request a query if that data is not sufficent for your needs.--Snævar (talk) 18:25, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank-you for explaining this. It made me realize that 200 K per month should not be compared to the number of new articles, but to the number of existing articles if they are redirects and help.... but it's still a lot. If I find something interesting I will report back. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 23:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Ping question

Are pings working fine or did I do something wrong here and here? I didn't get a notification for either edit. Daß Wölf 18:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Are you referring to a notification about outgoing pings if you have enabled "Successful mention" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo? I think the first diff should work but maybe the software has become smarter at detecting copies of old posts to avoid pinging everybody who is linked there, e.g. in old signatures. The second diff didn't add new lines so it shouldn't ping per mw:Manual:Echo#Technical details. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:23, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Conditionals in template

"I am trying to learn some advanced tempalate editing but code-ese at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template:If is too much :(

In the infobox-like template I am desigining, I want to have a paramter, let's say nationality. Based on that, I'd like to display a flag icon and the name of the country in a given color. I got the fisrt part, with the right thumb displaying, but I can't get the text part to work.

The code is |[[File:{{{Nationality}}}.png|thumb|40px|center]]<br/><small><center>{{#if:{{{Nationality|}}}=Polish|{{!}} style="color: white";{{{Nationality}}}|}} {{#if:{{{Nationality|}}}=Russian|{{!}} style="color: red";{{{Nationality}}}</center></small>

Clearly I am messing somethign wrong, but I after one hour of monkeying with the code I couldn't find the way to make this work. The thumb is displayed (for files Polish.png / Russian.png) but instead of getting the text Polish or Russian in white/red I am getting the string "| style="color: #AFE1AF";Polish" displayed instead. FYI the current version of the template should accomodate four nationality-like parameters.

Can anyone fix this code? Thanks in advance, and please ping me if you reply here. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:57, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you have a /sandbox setup where the code you are working on is there? That will help. Unrelated to the code, but specific to your example, please see MOS:INFOBOXFLAG and MOS:FONTSIZE. Gonnym (talk) 12:14, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
{{#if:{{{Nationality|}}}=Polish - the way the if syntax works here is like this: {{#if: checks if the parameter is not empty | do if true | do if false }}. There is no "if something=something" like in other languages. Gonnym (talk) 12:18, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
There is {{#ifeq:{{{Nationality|}}}|Polish|do something|else}}. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:43, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
@Jts1882 @Gonnym Thank you. The simple design which I am using to teach myself template coding is here: User:Piotrus/sandbox#Template_test displays the tiny template at User:Piotrus/Templates/Test. Any idea how to make it display Polish/Russian/German etc. in specific colors? When the parameter nationality=Polish, use color A, when =Russian, color B, etc. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:01, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
If your want more countries, you wight want to look at {{#switch|{{{Nationality|}}}| ... }}(see Help:Conditional_expressions##Using_#switch). —  Jts1882 | talk  13:10, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
@Piotrus: You were looking at the wrong MediaWiki page. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template:If is a template created at the MediaWiki wiki, just like we create templates here. It is not part of the MediaWiki software and does not have documentation of MediaWiki parser functions like #if and #ifeq. For that, see mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions. As others say, you can make comparisons with #ifeq and #switch but not with #if. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:05, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter @Jts1882 Thanks! Any chance an experienced coder could fix my code at User:Piotrus/Templates/Test so that I can see how a proper code for making text colored and switching it would look in the wiki code? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 18:38, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
@Piotrus I added a #switch statement to your template test. It should be fairly self-explanatory. The lines without an equals sign use the values of them line below them, and the #default line is used if none of the other lines match. See mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##switch for more. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:15, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Links to page on non-English Wikipedias

Is there any way to achieve link like Mix 1 [de] or no link with Template:Interlanguage link? Eurohunter (talk) 23:13, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you mean {{ill|GfK Entertainment charts|de|Mix 1}}? The [de] part does not show here, because enwp has an article called GfK Entertainment charts. We only show the non-English link if there is no English article. Certes (talk) 23:30, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Page Info gadget

Page Info gadget seems to be broken, I see an animated dot, moving horizontally, instead of page views per month, and other statistics. .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 03:07, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean by "Page Info gadget"? Please always include an example. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:44, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
Do you mean the XTools gadget? (MediaWiki:Gadget-XTools-ArticleInfo.js). If it is unable to load its info, it moves a dot back and forth horizontally. It's working for me at the moment. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:17, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Mouseover tooltips

We're working on detecting when you are hovering your hand over your phone, but need a bit more access to your device first! — xaosflux Talk 19:27, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Is it possible, when editing with a mobile device, to hover over a link to discern tooltips and other navigation popups? If so could someone tell me how or suggest a link that will? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 14:16, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Basically no, this is one reason tooltips should never be used to provide critical information. Izno (talk) 18:45, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Navigation popups will display for me on mobile (android, firefox) when I hold down on the link to bring up the link menu, then exit the menu (after which the popup will appear). Enterprisey (talk!) 20:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for sharing your insight with me; I've learned a valuable thing from each of you! Izno, I think you are correct about tooltips being practically indiscernible to those interfacing with a mobile device (like me) and your caution regarding its use is sound and sage. Enterprisey, the method you've outlined that works for you (regarding navigation popups and link previews) also works for me (using Android, Chrome) quite efficient and well. And Xaosflux, for showing that you are not only a wizard at all things technical, but also pretty darn keen at spotting "gaffe of the week" contenders and apportioning fame where it's due. To ensure the most mileage possible: I wouldn't have noticed my error in context had you not made it clear (in good faith, spirit, and taste). I had counted myself ahead on that by not using "mouse over". If it's good to chuckle at yourself every now and then, I got that chance today. Best regards.--John Cline (talk) 14:00, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Can anyone help with a calculation tool?

I'm currently looking at the copyright expiry year in the US in relation to photographs taken in Australia. The policies involved are quite complex, and I'm keen to simplify the task with a calculator on a How-to page. It will be a crucial tool for ensuring accuracy in establishing the correct date, with all its variations, for many years.

I would be most grateful for expert help. Details are in my sandbox.  Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 12:46, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if it's possible to do it as a calculator on a wiki page (although someone more knowledgeable than me is welcome to weigh in). The methods that come to mind are 1) a template that uses a module, 2) a user script, or 3) an off wiki website (hosted on ToolForge perhaps). Are you interested in one of those? –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for your prompt response, NL. This is entirely outside my field in Wikipedia, so I'm not sure how to respond to your questions -- except perhaps not to favour #3. Maybe it's best to wait till some others chime in. Thanks again, SCHolar44 (talk) 13:03, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
It appears from commons:Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Australia that the rules are more complicated and you need more information. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:09, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
You're spot on (of course), PrimeHunter. But rather than provide a lot more detail that would unnecessarily take up the time of someone who could create the calculation tool, I specified only enough to allow me to expand it with the necessary extra detail. Thank you for your interest. SCHolar44 (talk) 00:02, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Also: as mentioned, the tool is intended to determine copyright expiry years in the US in relation to photographs taken in Australia -- which is significant for acceptibility in Commons and alternatively for applicability of fair use in Wikipedia. For example, the passing of the 1996 URAA date is significant for Australian images made between 1946 and 1954 inclusive -- when expiry in the US jumps to 95 years -- whereas before and after that, the US copyright expires 70 years after creation. The tool is intended to eliminate mistakes and make clear which policy applies in a particular year, which otherwise involves combing through the grinding detail. SCHolar44 (talk) 00:39, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
MediaWiki doesn't have interactivity like this with the currently installed extensions. I think an on-wiki tool would require a user script or a less elegant preview-based interface like Calculate which uses Special:ExpandTemplates to preview a call of User:PrimeHunter/Copyright expiry Australia. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:09, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you, PrimeHunter! Seems a good approach to me -- as long as something works and isn't too difficult for the user, I'm not concerned about the appearance. SCHolar44 (talk) 01:22, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

SVG Political World Map

why is the SVG Political World Map in this image within World map article, blurred?. Gfigs (talk) 10:14, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it just renders a PNG thumbnail until you click on it. A thumbnail is of course smaller, and PNG is raster not vector, thus the blurring. Size of this PNG preview of this SVG file: 800 × 407 pixels.) –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:26, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
thanks, have downloaded the SVG (6.53mb), opened it in the browser (Chrome mobile), zoomed in, and it's blurred..why should this be?. Gfigs (talk) 08:54, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
Looks fine in my browser, Google Chrome, which only goes to 500% zoom. But once I open it in Inkscape and go to 3000% zoom, I see what you mean. I suspect that someone copy pasted a raster image into the SVG, instead of doing it properly with vectors. That is likely the source of the pixellation. Screenshots. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:20, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
ok, thank you.. Gfigs (talk) 09:54, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
It's not a true SVG, but a JPEG image that has been wrapped in some SVG code: 
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" width="1920" height="976.63" viewBox="0 0 1440 732.47" version="1.2" id="svg8">
    <defs id="defs3">
        <image id="image5" width="8192" height="4166" xlink:href="data:image/jpeg;base64,..."/>
    </defs>
    <g id="surface1" transform="scale(.12534)">
        <use xlink:href="#image5" transform="scale(1.40247 1.40278)" id="use5" x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%"/>
    </g>
</svg>
That ellipsis in the <image /> tag on line 3 is where I have removed the base64 data of the JPEG, which is huge. Since the entire displayable content of this alleged SVG consists of that JPEG, it's no surprise that quality is lost at different scales. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:42, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
I've marked it as a fake SVG on the Commons description page. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:47, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
I think it's CIA agent M.Bitton who posted it..xx? Gfigs (talk) 04:46, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Any way to enable navigation popups across wikis?

Hi all, does anyone know if it's possible to enable navigation popups across wikis, without having to go into the preferences? I often go to other projects chasing LTA socks, and it's quite a pain that I have to enable popups on all those wikis. I once tried adding the following to m:Special:MyPage/global.js but it didn't work. 

// Navigation popups on all wikis (?)
importScriptURI('http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

I would appreciate any help. --Dragoniez (talk) 19:32, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Try mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); along with mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-navpop.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css', 'text/css'); – SD0001 (talk) 20:26, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001 Worked like a charm! Thank you. --Dragoniez (talk) 20:47, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
The longer answer as to why that version doesn't work is because importScriptURI is deprecated on all wikis and removed on most/all. SD's is the way forward. Izno (talk) 21:49, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
@Izno: Thanks for your comment. I now see why. But actually, I once tried replacing importScriptURI with mw.loader.load to see if it works but it didn't, so I'm guessing it was pretty much more like a matter of the css script. --Dragoniez (talk) 07:00, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Performance issue with syntax highlighting

Hi! In the last few days, I've started noticing a performance issue while editing. It starts out OK, but within a few minutes, it starts slowing down so much that it becomes unbearable. It seems to be worse on large / complicated pages. As part of my troubleshooting, I've found that turning off syntax highlighting (provided by the CodeMirror extension?) makes the problem go away. I've also tried using safemode, but that didn't help at all.

As far as I can tell, I'm using the 2010 editor (I've got a bar with some buttons, which matches with this image). I'm using Chrome 96.0.4664.45 on Windows 10. Oh, and to be sure, I just tested in Edge, and there it seems to work just fine. No performance issues at all. So this looks like it could be Chrome-specific. --rchard2scout (talk) 11:00, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

@Rchard2scout: can you try a Chrome incognito window to see if it still happens for you? (This will cause most local chrome extensions etc to not load). — xaosflux Talk 14:04, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, unfortunately. Opened an incognito window and tried to edit User:Rchard2scout/linterrors, and within about half a minute of scrolling up and down the page almost completely stopped responding, and CPU usage for that tab jumped to 100%. I've tried both logged in and logged out, no change. --rchard2scout (talk) 14:17, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
Might possibly be related to https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome-96-breaks-twitter-discord-video-rendering-and-more/ – SD0001 (talk) 15:46, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
I tried the fix they mentioned (setting a flag to disabled), but it didn't fix it for me. From what I can tell, it looks unrelated to my issue. That flag has to do with cross-origin loading, and I don't think that should impact performance. --rchard2scout (talk) 09:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
@Rchard2scout I suggest creating a ticket on phab if the issue is unresolved. – SD0001 (talk) 04:15, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
Thumbing up. I can confirm this for Google Chrome. I'm experiencing similar issues when editing in both modes: visual and text-mode. I even have found a culprit responsible for the bottleneck: it's a CodeMirror v.5.58.3 (it's used by Mediawiki, learn more here). The bug was introduced no later than that version. In huge articles (e.g. Russian COVID-19 response) it makes unbearably hard or completely impossible to edit. If anyone from technical team is interested, here is a culprit function that is slowing down the whole editor: ContentEditableInput.showPrimarySelection. An update of the CodeMirror should probably cure it. Regards. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 18:36, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
@Alexander Davronov Have you filed a phabricator ticket? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 04:17, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, I have no account for that. Ain't gonna register out there either... AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 06:37, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
If you have a Wikimedia account (you do), Phabricator accepts OAUTH authentication. Izno (talk) 07:08, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
@Alexander Davronov Your Wikipedia account works just fine at phabricator. Just choose "Log in or register Mediawiki". If you're already logged in to Wikipedia, you just have to hit the "Allow" button. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:01, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
@Ahecht and Izno: Thanks. I strongly suspect that it's Google Chrome-only issue. I tried to edit some big articles by using Firefox and it was smooth and fast. I'll reply in #1271918 . Everyone is welcome to do the same. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 09:17, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
It seems likely that https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1271918 is the Chrome bug that some folks are experiencing. -- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 00:29, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
I don't think that is has to do anything with spelling correction. But who knows though... AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 06:37, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
@Alexander Davronov: I made a formatted test page with no spelling errors and still experienced the issue. Schierbecker (talk) 17:18, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@Schierbecker: Well I can confirm that I have the same issue on the said page. It appears that it has nothing to do with spelling. I think the Chrome Team already working hard on related issue #1271918. It's number 1 priority now. Let's see if they fix it. --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 17:41, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@Alexander Davronov: Turning off spell check in Chrome appears to fix it for me. Not sure of a way to do the same in Edge. So it seems the spellchecker causes problems whether or not there are any actual typos. Schierbecker (talk) 23:52, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
I'm experiencing the same issue in Microsoft Edge: #Editing Humvee slows my browser to a halt. Schierbecker (talk) 17:08, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@Schierbecker: Well I think you can work-around the problem by trying to disable spellchecker in the Chrome settings. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 18:43, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Editing Humvee slows my browser to a halt

I can't edit this page in Microsoft Edge or Chrome. I can edit one section at a time, but I can't change the lede. My performance monitor doesn't show my memory (32GB) or CPU (i9) getting taxed too crazy, but my case fan goes kinda nuts. Tried this on two computers. Weird. Any guesses what's going on? Schierbecker (talk) 07:17, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Schierbecker. I am editing on Chrome using an Android device, namely a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G. The article loads almost instantly for me and I was able to make a test edit almost instantly. I suspect that the problem is at your end. Cullen328 (talk) 07:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Cullen328 Did you edit by clicking "edit source" using the desktop version of the site? Appears your edit was only to the top section. If you click the edit button in mobile, you are only editing one section at a time (including the lede). Schierbecker (talk) 08:02, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Schierbecker, yes. I only use the fully functional but misnamed "desktop version" which works just fine on modern Android devices. Why would anyone want to edit more than one section at the same time? Just make your edit and move on to the next section that you want to edit. Cullen328 (talk) 08:17, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
For one, you would certainly need the whole-article view if you are editing a page with potentially conflicting tables and graphical elements. The edit preview can be drastically different from the final product when you are in section-edit view. Schierbecker (talk) 08:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Not a solution to your problem, but there is a gadget that adds an edit link to the lede section. Under Preferences > Gadgets > Appearance, select "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page". Then you can edit the lede like any other section. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:43, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Jts1882 I used to use that! That's the work-around. Schierbecker (talk) 08:02, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Is your problem with loading the edit screen, or with submitting the edit? Are you using source editor or visual editor? –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:52, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Novem Linguae I can submit edits, but the typing lag is atrocious. When I open the source editor, everything is fine at first. After about 10-15 seconds the lag kicks in hard. Source editor, Windows 11. Schierbecker (talk) 08:02, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
I came to this page to report the same experience. Over the past week, especially when I'm on longer pages, and regardless of whether it's source editing or visual editing, I've been getting tremendous lag when editing some pages. I'll click on a spot in the text, and it can take up to maybe 30 seconds before the insertion point appears there. I'll type some characters and, again, it'll take that long for them to appear. The latest occurrence of this just happened to me at Albania. My first assumption was that it was on my end but it persisted after I'd rebooted my computer. I'm using Chrome on Windows 10. I've had this machine for a couple of years; this behavior has only just begun; and I haven't observed anything else slowing down on this computer. Largoplazo (talk) 08:38, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Largoplazo Are you noticing this more on pages with infoboxes?? I was suspecting an issue with Template:infobox weapon because M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System also just crashed my browser. Schierbecker (talk) 08:43, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@Schierbecker: I hadn't gotten as far as recording the conditions under which this is happening yet, but it's possible—though none of them would have had the weapons infobox. It's certainly the longer articles, and it would make sense that they'd have an infobox. Largoplazo (talk) 08:52, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Browser lag of this type could be JavaScript of some kind. Are either of you using text highlighters such as the gadget Syntax highlighter? –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:58, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: I don't have syntax highlighter turned on. The editing gadgets I have turned on are "add two new dropdown boxes ...", citation expander, HotCat, ProveIt, Shortdesc Helper, wikEd, CharInsert, Add Extra Buttons, and refToolbar. The one I added most recently, possibly in the past month, is Shortdesc Helper, though that operates when the page is not in edit mode, right? Largoplazo (talk) 09:04, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Problem appears to still be present when logged out. Schierbecker (talk) 09:24, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
It would help if the Gadgets were wrapped in a check that goes over whether the user is on a page where the gadget would be used. Probably start with shortdesc since it was added by the user last. If that is not enough, there might be hints in the browser console, the browser does detect some performance issues. See Wikipedia:Reporting JavaScript errors on how to open that up.--Snævar (talk) 11:23, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip. Largoplazo (talk) 14:09, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Largoplazo, There is a default wikisyntax highlighter other than the one in gadgets. Does turning it off improve your performance? I saw an immediate improvement. (the highlighter button that should be to the left of ">Advanced" in your toolbar if you have one.) Schierbecker (talk) 16:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
Schierbecker, I opened Albania, where I had experienced brief but unmistakable lag, in source editing mode. I have a different toolbar , not the short one that I managed to discover by chance and then somehow lost, with Advanced and Characters and so forth on it, but a full-width one with several groups of many buttons displayed. Still, I found the one for syntax highlighting in the rightmost group, and it displayed as pressed. I clicked it and it took at least ten seconds to remove syntax highlighting, but then the lag did disappear.
Then, for the sake of experimentation, I clicked the button to reactivate highlighting—and the browser displayed a series of four timeout warnings in a row that I dismissed before giving up and refreshing the page. At this point, syntax highlighting was back on and the lag had resumed. I turned off highlighting again, and the lag was again gone.
Still, of note: I've only been experiencing the lag over maybe the last week or two. Has the syntax highlighting code been updated recently? UPDATE: I see below it's being attributed to a Google Chrome bug. Largoplazo (talk) 17:33, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
I went through Wikipedia:Featured articles/By length. Lag starts becoming noticeable around 40,000 bytes. 90k seems to be the upper limit before editing goes from frustrating to down-right difficult. Schierbecker (talk) 09:20, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
This sounds similar to #Performance issue with syntax highlighting which I reported almost two weeks ago. --rchard2scout (talk) 10:15, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
^ I would guess it's this issue. Izno (talk) 20:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes, see my latest note above: turning off syntax highlighting also eliminated the lag for me; and I'd been experiencing it for only the last week or two, as best I can recall. Largoplazo (talk) 17:34, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@Cullen328: This is probably due to a Google Chrome bug introduced recently. See discussion above: #Performance issue with syntax highlighting --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 17:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I had found that when I edited a large article (over 100K) using a laptop over a mobile-hotspot connection (while on the go), there were significant (unworkable) time lags, while the same computer and browser using a typical/ordinary high speed WiFi connection (like at home or office) didn't have the same time lagging. Platonk (talk) 10:15, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I now have syntax highlighting turned off, yet it took me about five minutes to copyedit one section heading and one sentence at Martinique. Details: I started in visual editing, then switched to source editing. Equally slow both ways. Largoplazo (talk) 23:55, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
Turning off the Chrome spellchecking feature seems to have been effective. Largoplazo (talk) 23:04, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Serious lag editing articles with Google Chrome

So for the past few weeks I've found it almost impossible to work on articles in Google Chrome. Anything larger than a few kilobytes quickly becomes bogged down with lag to the point where it takes several seconds to scroll, select, or add/delete text (but only in the text box, the overall page still works fine if the text box isn't in focus). This only started happening last month, so I'm wondering if anyone else is having this problem or if it's something on my end? Not having this problem with Firefox. - Floydian τ ¢ 18:32, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Have you tried mw:safemode, which turns off user scripts, which might help you blame or rule out user scripts? Are you using a syntax highlighter? Possibly related: #Performance issue with syntax highlighting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:49, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
Try turning off the spellcheck and see if it goes away. Nardog (talk) 18:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
The problem mentioned in the syntax highlighter thread describes exactly what is happening to me, and I do indeed use it. It appears that turning spellcheck off fixes the issue, with or without syntax highlighting. - Floydian τ ¢ 19:11, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

PageImages

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageImages#Image_choice

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)&oldid=866390029#Determination_of_the_image

I am trying to edit the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine page, so that the "page image" that is associated with the page would be of the vaccine vial instead of the generic coronavirus image from the pandemic sidebar template.

You can see the current "page image" associated with the page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janssen_COVID-19_vaccine?action=info

I tried changing the dimensions of the vial image in the infobox to appease the PageImages algorithm (ratio over 0.5) so that the infobox image of the vaccine would score higher than the coronavirus image in the pandemic sidebar template, but still the "page image" is from the pandemic sidebar template, instead of the more appropriate vial of the vaccine.

I am puzzled, what am I missing here? Is the license of the vial image to blame here?

Thank you. Ryebreadforscale (talk) 00:39, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Whatever dimensions you changed, they are the wrong ones; you would need to modify the actual image, which is File:Coronavirus._SARS-CoV-2.png. Izno (talk) 01:57, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
No Ryebreadforscale is asking why this didn't work despite File:Janssen COVID-19 vaccine (2021) F (cropped) 2.jpg being the first image on the page and having >0.5 ratio. Nardog (talk) 02:07, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Is there a way to view the actual scores mentioned in the MediaWiki page, described as $wgPageImagesScores['width']? – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:15, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
The documentation is inaccurate. The width/height ratio is effectively rounded down to one decimal. For File:Janssen COVID-19 vaccine (2021) F (cropped) 2.jpg, 584/984 = 0.5935 is treated as 0.5 and given a poor score. You need at least 0.6 to get the same ratio score as the other image. Then the first image to appear will be chosen. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
I have updated the documentation.[23] PrimeHunter (talk) 09:23, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, updated the dimensions again, now the ratio is over 0.6. Ryebreadforscale (talk) 10:09, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
I have made a null edit of Janssen COVID-19 vaccine to update the page image. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

autocollapse in navboxes

I've just introduced the usual "autocollapse" thing in a couple of navbox templates (diff, diff), but somehow it happens that autocollapse doesn't work in Victory Day (9 May) article, the navboxes stay expanded there. Even removing <noinclude>expanded</noinclude> doesn't seem to help (in preview). How come? Sorry in advance if I've missed something obvious. — Mike Novikoff 15:50, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

They're collapsed for me. Could this have been a caching delay? —  Jts1882 | talk  16:26, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
I guess it's rather an issue with my browser (Opera 12 aka Presto, officially unsupported). Unfortunately I can't currently check it with any other one, but I'll believe there's no real problem [with my recent edits] then. Thank you. — Mike Novikoff 17:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

String find bug

I've encountered a bug with {{str find}}: if it searches a page with references but no reference list, it returns them even if they're not part of the string being searched.

As an example, I set up User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage with a simple ref. Adding the code {{Str find|{{User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage}}|Nonexistent string}}, as I'll do below, returns -1, as it should, but also the ref, which it shouldn't. If {{Reflist}} is added to my testpage, the bug goes away. Does anyone know why this is happening or how to fix it?

-1

References

Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:07, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

How about {{#invoke:String|find|source={{User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage}} |target=Nonexistent string}} instead? ⇒0⇐ — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 23:23, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
Looks like we have the same error, so that means it's with Module:String? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:48, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

References

I believe that won't work either because the issue is with the code {{User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage}}. Even if a reference is not shown, it has to be shown in a reference list in the wikitext of the page (even if the reference list is never actually outputted) or else if will default to being displayed at the bottom of the page. In your case you should be able to use {{Str find|{{User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage}}{{#if:<references />}}|Nonexistent string}}. The reference list in the {{#if}} functions first field will still prevent the reference from being shown at the bottom of the page (or another reference list), but it won't be outputted to the page because the first field of a {{#if}} function is not shown. It should be noted that any references defined earlier on the page will also be added to the invisible reference list. – BrandonXLF (talk) 23:49, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
BrandonXLF's solution is an amazing trick but the underlying problem (not a string find bug) is easy to see. This section of VPT contains the following
{{Str find|{{User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage}}|Nonexistent string}}
That means the wikitext from User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage is processed as if it were in this section on this page. That wikitext contains a reference and MediaWiki always displays the reference unless there is a references tag to show where the references should go. Johnuniq (talk) 02:43, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Not always - on Special:ExpandTemplates the ref isn't added. MarMi wiki (talk) 20:29, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-49

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

  • MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (calendar).
  • At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at Special:MentorDashboard. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project.
  • Advanced item The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), action=ajax, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module. [24]
  • Advanced item An old ResourceLoader module, jquery.jStorage, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to mediawiki.storage instead. [25]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:57, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Search is currently too busy, try later

Getting the following boxed red error message when searching for an article by name: An error has occurred while searching: Search is currently too busy. Please try again later. Tried three times, same result. Search was: John Milam. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:52, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

It's probably due the fact the system administrators did some maintance on en.wikipedia (enwiki) between 19 and 20 UTC (https://grafana.wikimedia.org/d/000000303/mysql-replication-lag s1 is enwiki). That maintainance will be continued later, but it is done for the day. The bug for that one is phab:T277354.--Snævar (talk) 06:47, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank this user

In an article history page, there appears (undo|thank) links after an edit; clicking on 'thank' produces a clickable Publicly send thanks?. If only myself and the recipient can see it, where does publicly enter into it? What am I missing, if anything? I suspect this was changed a few years ago to include publicly, but I wouldn't know how to search for this, consequently wouldn't know the developer.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 12:21, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

It shows up in the thanks log. I can't really think of a situation where anyone would check the log and go digging though. So for the most part, thanks will be between you and the recipient. Looks like the log doesn't show the article/diff you thanked for either, just the recipient. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:31, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Many thanks (! - no pun intended), Novem Linguae.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 12:53, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
You can search for Wikipedia features and terms with wp: in front, e.g. wp:thank. WP is a namespace alias for Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:21, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Not that I have a problem with it, but what is the purpose of the thanks log? Is it (effectively) just raw data that gets used in counters and so on?Theknightwho (talk) 16:08, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
@Theknightwho: its just evidence of the action. "Thanks" can be used disruptively - and that log would help shed light on such a situation. — xaosflux Talk 16:13, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Makes sense. I suppose my question was really why it’s publicly available and not just for abuse filters, but I guess that can be answered by “why not?” Theknightwho (talk) 16:24, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
"Now Thank We All Our Jimbo"... with hearts and hands and thank-buttons. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Feature request: another layer of Recent Changes filtering

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T174349
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T119072

Currently, the MediaWiki software does not allow for the removal of certain actions based on tags, etc. I propose that there be a way to filter searches by exclusion.

How this works: In the normal filtering option, you can choose to filter results so only those results appear. For example, filtering on "May be bad faith" will only show the edits that are caught by that editing filter, and nothing else. While this works in simple filtering, it does not allow for some complex filters such as in patrolling recent changes, where there needs to be a way to hide "Reverted" edits. Thus, clicking a checked filter should change it to a crossed filter, and edits hit by that filter will no longer appear (in the example provided, edits that have already been reverted will not be shown).

172.112.210.32 (talk) 01:42, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

That's phab:T174349. Izno (talk) 02:30, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
And/or phab:T119072. — xaosflux Talk 18:19, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

section headers

Apologies for bugging y'all - but why and how is →top generated? I've seen this for years without understanding. What do they do to create this, and what does it achieve? I can't see anyway to access the infobox without clicking on the main edit tab. Thank you.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 03:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@Rocknrollmancer If you check "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, there will be an edit link next to every page title that allows you to edit just the top section of the page (including the infobox). This produces →top in the edit summary by default. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 06:07, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
@Rocknrollmancer: In case you don't know, the section name in edit summaries is a clickable link to the section heading. "top" is an anchor MediaWiki automatically inserts at the page heading: #top. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:16, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
By the way, I have occasionally written /* top */ manually at the start of the edit summary when I made a full page edit but only changed the lead. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:25, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
The anchor top exists in all pages generated by the MediaWiki software. We made use of that fact seven or so years ago when we amended the "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" gadget so that the edit summary entry box would be pre-filled with /* top */ so that the link in contribs, watchlist, history etc. would have the → link both be described appropriately and would reach the correct section. See for example my comments at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-edittop.js#Translation of "top" in summary and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 123#Editing the lede as opposed to editing the whole article. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:17, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks to you all - I have now checked the box in preferences, together with another (common edit summaries). I had only three enabled manually, so I have looked at preferences before now, but not digested it as perhaps I intended to. There is something else I intended to suggest as a development, but I should check it doesn't yet exist.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 21:41, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Search tools

Hi, are there any tools that allow searching through some page's history using keywords or phrases? For example, some pages (e.g. WP:RSN) has a long list of archives, but they seem to have no tools that would allow us to check is some source had already been discussed previously. Thank you in advance, Paul Siebert (talk) 19:59, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

A little bit of recursion: I wanted to check if this question had been asked on this page previously, but I couldn't find any tool to check it :) Paul Siebert (talk) 20:01, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
You can restrict a Cirrus search to page titles with a certain prefix, e.g. example. Certes (talk) 20:13, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) WP:RSN has a search box for the archives. So do the various Village pump pages. I am sure a similar search box could be added to any other page with archives — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:16, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you all. That was helpful. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:34, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Edit summaries in Twinkle reverts

If I remember correctly, back in the day when you selected "vandalism" when reverting with Twinkle, the automatic edit summary was "Reverting vandalism by Foo to foo version". Now when I select "vandalism", the revert becomes marked as minor and the edit summary is "Reverted 1 edit by Foo to last revision by Foo". Was there any decision to exclude the word "vandalism" from the revert edit summary? Brandmeistertalk 12:09, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@Brandmeister I vaguely remember yes, because vandalism implies malintent when in some cases, it's disruptive and should be reverted but isn't vandalism. Unsure about positive impact of this change tho but would be curious to know. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 13:19, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
I see. Also unsure of the positive impact, perhaps a nod to political correctness. Brandmeistertalk 13:46, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Yes - Wikipedia_talk:Twinkle/Archive_32#Please_remove_the_"vandalism"_summary. – SD0001 (talk) 18:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. Brandmeistertalk 12:27, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

"Disambiguation needed" adds article to "Harv and Sfn no-target errors"

I have Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors watchlisted, and try to fix recent additions to it when I notice them. The article David Berman (musician) was added to the category by this edit, which disambiguated one link and requested another dab. I could not see what, if anything, caused it to be in the category, but was able to fix the requested disambiguation here, and magically the article was removed from the category. What is going on here? Why/how does {{dn}} add an article to Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors? Thanks. As I typed the preceding, it struck me that perhaps this is behind some of the members of the category that I haven't been able to see the error in DuncanHill (talk) 15:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

There were about 30 edits to the article in the preceding day, some of which added sources. Could one of those have added the article to the categories, rather than the disambiguation tag? Certes (talk) 15:35, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
See the documentation for {{Disambiguation needed}}; that template should not be used inside citation templates. In this case, the dn tag changed the value of |author2-link=, which in turn broke the ability of the sfn template to validate its link to the full citation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:36, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
@Certes: No, the timestamp on my watchlist was for the edit I linked, and by looking at the preceding version I could confirm that it was that edit which added it. @Jonesey95: Thanks, I'll tell the editor who added it. DuncanHill (talk) 15:44, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

The edit I made which caused this was using Dab Solver, which was developed by Dispenser (see User:Dispenser/Dab solver). I wonder if tweaks could be made there but that editor hasn't edited since March 2020.— Rod talk 16:04, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Odd section

Hello! So I'm taking a look at User talk:162.127.32.57 (which I came across for reasons I will not say due to the IP being related to me in a way however I'm not involved with any vandalism related to the IP, if you want run a CU on me) and I noticed that the warning header for August 2013 appears like 

this

and I've tried fixing it, however it appears to be exactly like the other headers on the page so I can't seem to see what's wrong. Adding {{clear}} doesn't fix it either. Anyone mind helping me out here? ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Blaze The Wolf: There was a space at the beginning of the line (before ==August 2013== and this caused the problem. I fixed it with this edit. DuncanHill (talk) 16:03, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks! For whatever reason I wasn't able to catch the space while looking at it. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:04, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Brighton and Hove

I am trying to adapt the [ [Template:Southampton suburbs map]] to produce a similar version for Brighton and Hove using [ [File:BrightonHove OSM1.jpg]] by substituting BrightonHove in the appropriate place as per fragment below. This inevitably brings up LUA errors. Is what I am trying to do feasible or am I attempting the impossible?

{ {Location map+
|BrightonHove
|caption=Areas of Brighton and Hove
|width=460
|float={{{float|}}}
|places=
} }

Murgatroyd49 (talk) 13:15, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

You need to create the Module:Location map/data/BrightonHove page. See Special:Diff/623327214 how that works, on the left side is the wikicode and to the right is how we write the same thing (except for the noinclude part) in Lua/modules. It should be simple enough. Top, bottom, left and right are coordinates. Once that is done, you should be able to create the template you wanted.--Snævar (talk) 14:17, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
See also Module:Location map/data/United Kingdom Southampton, which you can use as a model. You need to figure out the coordinates of the four edges of the map. It looks like Module:Location map/data/United Kingdom Brighton and Hove exists, so if you change "BrightonHove" in your code above to "United Kingdom Brighton and Hove", you may get the results you want. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:29, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
Many thanks both of you, I will give it a whirl and see what happens. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 16:23, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
Works, now comes the difficult bit… Murgatroyd49 (talk) 16:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

Bots Newsletter, December 2021
BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

  • Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Green checkmarkY 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (Dark red X symbolN2 3 denied, Blue question mark? 3 withdrawn, and Expired 2 expired).

September 2019

Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!
  • Green checkmarkY Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · Dark red X symbolN2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · Blue question mark? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
  • TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
  • Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

November 2019

Now you're thinking with portals.

December 2019

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

  • What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
  • What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
  • Will reFill ever get fixed?
  • What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
  • Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

@JPxG: 2019 ?? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:30, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Editing issues with shift key

Been having issues with editing in general - a lot of times using the shift key will throw my cursor to the beginning of a paragraph or line instead of acting as the shift key. Happens w/ both visual and source editing. Had someone mention syntax highlighting, happens both when it is on and off. Any ideas/solutions? A Magical Badger (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Knowing how many bytes are being added or removed

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T20703

Is there a tool that can help someone know how many bytes are being added or removed before an edit is published? Page previews help see how a page will look like but they do not show the new size of the page after the edit is published. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 12:56, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this exists yet, but phab:T20703 seems like it would create it. — xaosflux Talk 18:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Broken log page?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T115303

Is it just me or is the log page for the community portal completely broken? [26] When I open it all I see is a load of entries that say "protect" 192.76.8.80 (talk) 18:15, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Those are leftover from WP:AFTv5, which was removed. Legoktm (talk) 18:32, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
There is a request to purge these at phab:T115303. — xaosflux Talk 18:49, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you both. I assume that the page protection has been in place so long that it predates mediawiki logging it? I was looking at the protection log to try to see if there is a specific reason why the page was only semi-protected, given the amount of vandalism it seems to attract. 192.76.8.80 (talk) 00:34, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
The protection log is at a former title before a move in 2008.[27] PrimeHunter (talk) 00:46, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
Old protections became visible later in 2008: phab:T10296. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:38, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello! Can someone help me by saying where can I change the link of this page?

I thought I could change it from here but apparently I was wrong. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:07, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: Submit a request like this. --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 23:35, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
@আফতাবুজ্জামান, oh... Is Phab the only way? The reason I ask is because there may be multiple cases like these. It doesn't look very efficient if we'd have to file request for each of them. I mean, if there's no other way, we'll do it but... - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:41, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
You should directly file patches on Gerrit. If you put it on phab, someone else may file a patch for you, but why create work for others when you could do it yourself? See mw:Gerrit/Tutorial for how. – SD0001 (talk) 03:19, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, can you guide me on filing a patch for this particular case? I use Git continuously for working in Tool Forge but I've never used Gerrit before so I'd need some advice on my first time to make sure I'm not ruining anything. I can then replicate the procedure for other cases as well, gradually learning more in the process. - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:33, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
The file to be edited has a name of the form /languages/messages/MessagesSq.php (if it's in mw core). See mw:Gerrit/Tutorial for filing a patch. If you use Windows, you can use PuttyGen to generate an SSH key and upload it in gerrit settings. After that you should be able to clone the mediawiki repo. Let us know if you're stuck anywhere. – SD0001 (talk) 09:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, I tried following the steps there. I went straight to #Download code using Git because I already have a working public key (I checked my preferences and the public key was the same as the one I had on my machine). I tried following the example there. I get this:
fatal: could not create work tree dir 'sandbox': Permission denied
What am I doing wrong? - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:14, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, tried running Git Bash as admin.
I get this. - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:50, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi Are you sure KleinMuci is your username? I don't think it can have uppercase letters. The correct one is shown at https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/settings/ as "Username". – SD0001 (talk) 12:16, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, apparently, no. It shows another one. How can I change that to be KleinMuci (or a permitted variant of it)? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:18, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi Don't think it's possible. Even my username is just sd, because at the time of selecting it, I had no idea what I was doing. Anyway it's your "Full name" (from that link) that's shown everywhere so the username doesn't really matter. – SD0001 (talk) 12:22, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, hah! I used my tool's name at that time because I was learning and it would be extra confusing to ssh up with another name and then become another name (in Toolforge) but alrighty then. Thank you! I'll try to continue with the steps and be back here if I'm stuck again. :P :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:25, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, I was able to clone and access the sandbox repo. Now I'm trying to install git-review. I installed Python, I selected Add python.exe to Path and typed
pip install git-review to install it. I get this:
bash: /c/Users/user/AppData/Local/Microsoft/WindowsApps/pip: Permission denied
What am I doing wrong? - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:09, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
Needed to upgrade pip. I'm back on track. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:42, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, so I was trying to commit some changes in the sandbox repo and in the last step I got halted again. I get this. What exactly is wrong with my email and what should I do about my lacking permissions?
After I complete that step 1-2 times, I'll go and try to deal with the specific problem that started this thread. - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:18, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi It looks like your email address is misspelled (gmai.com). Is that address what shows up when you do git log? If so, you'll need to set the right address in git using git config command. – SD0001 (talk) 14:23, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, thanks a lot! I was able to make my first ever commit because of your help. Can you take a look here and see if everything is alright in general? If so, I'll retry doing it 1-2 more times and then start dealing with the actual problem. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:16, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, made a few other changes in the sandbox repo. Do I fully understand everything? No. But I'm good enough just to start. So, last questions (hopefully):
I was able to locate this page. Is it the right page? How do I clone it? And what do I do after cloning it? Do I need to create a new branch? Do I just send 1 commit with the needed translations? After sending the commit, do I do anything else, like mentioning any reviewers or anything similar or is my work done with that and I'll be able to see the change soon? - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:56, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
Well, clone the right repo (mediawiki/core) instead of sandbox. See mw:Gerrit/Tutorial#Submit_a_patch after that. I don't think reviewers are needed for translation commits – they tend to get approved soon based on AGF even if no one is around that speaks the language. – SD0001 (talk) 04:36, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, thank you! My activity is still rather clumsy because I just started. Can you confirm that I've done everything correctly here and all I need to do now is just wait for the change to happen? Assuming I need to add more translations at that page, do I do the same thing (clone + submit steps) every time? Or do I just edit that change with the Edit button on the web interface?
After this I suppose I'm free to go on with my job uninterrupted. - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:15, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
You'd need to write a more detailed commit message than just "Translation". Cloning is done just once. You can add more translations by amending the commit (it updates the existing patch). For unrelated changes to other files, fork a new branch from master to send a new patch. – SD0001 (talk) 14:28, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, what would be a good example of a better commit message in translation cases? Somewhere I can learn or some examples I can see?
Do I need to fork branches even for small changes like what we're discussing?
And... after all that jazz, I just wait? - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:36, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
How about "Update specialPageAliases for language sq"? https://cbea.ms/git-commit/
As I said for adding more translations before the patch gets merged, it's better to just update the existing patch.
Did you fork a branch for creating that patch? If not, then I guess it isn't required. But it will be needed if you want to send a second patch before this one gets merged. – SD0001 (talk) 14:53, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
@SD0001, I didn't. Thanks a lot for everything! You basically taught me commits 101 in 2 days. :P :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:04, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Coodinates issue in article

Hello, can someone help fix the {{coord}} template in Oeam in the infobox? I am not sure what the problem is, it gives an error. Thanks a lot, Xia talk to me 16:36, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

It uses area data, which was malformed. This edit fixes it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:44, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you! Xia talk to me 17:48, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Content dump

Could somebody check a recent dump and provide me with a list of the contents of the following categories prior to deletion on December 11?

The issue here is that I proposed a CFD merger of the seven year-specific categories into the general parent category, on the grounds that subcategorizing a relatively small group of people by every individual election they ran in isn't necessary when Canada doesn't even categorize actual MPs by every individual parliament they sat in — but instead of upmerging, CFD consensus leaned toward deleting the parent category too. However, the problem is that if that category doesn't exist, then every person who was formerly in all of these categories has to appear directly in Category:Co-operative Commonwealth Federation politicians, but the articles weren't upmerged there either, so I need a list of everybody who was formerly in these categories so that I can readd the general politicians category to them. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:06, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@Bearcat: a on-page text search (e.g. for Canadian federal election) of these results may be quicker, there seem to be <100. — xaosflux Talk 17:51, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
Okay, thanks, I'll do that. It didn't occur to me on my own, because I had no way of knowing whether the removal was done by a bot or a human editor (the deletion of the category itself doesn't imply anything about that question either way.) But thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:53, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Annoying vertical strands of text

Can we put a stop to stuff like this? It's disruptive. Binksternet (talk) 01:03, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

...As seen at Talk:Pentakill. Binksternet (talk) 01:05, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Nothing was done at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 193#Edit summaries with characters not staying on its line. It seems like a minor issue if it isn't frequent. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

User signatures

Is there any way to calculate the percentage of the number of bytes occupied by signatures on a given talk page? On some talk pages they seem to take up more server space than the actual discussion content, or they at least take up far more space than necessary to do the basic job of a signature (link to user- and talk page, plus timestamp).

Can someone design a bot that can do this? Please ping me. -- Valjean (talk) 15:48, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Valjean: not natively, as "signatures" are just wikitext on a page like everything else. But to put things in perspective, here is the output (not "server space" but bandwidth and reader space) of your own question above:
HTML output
<h2 class="ext-discussiontools-init-section">
	<span class="mw-headline" id="User_signatures" data-mw-comment="{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;heading&quot;,&quot;level&quot;:0,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;h-User_signatures-2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z&quot;,&quot;replies&quot;:[&quot;c-Valjean-2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z-User_signatures&quot;],&quot;headingLevel&quot;:2,&quot;placeholderHeading&quot;:false}">
	<span data-mw-comment-start="" id="h-User_signatures-2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z"></span>
	User signatures
		<span data-mw-comment-end="h-User_signatures-2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z"></span>
		</span>
	<span class="mw-editsection">
		<span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span>
		<a href="/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&amp;action=edit&amp;section=20" title="Edit section: User signatures">edit</a>
		<span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span>
	</span>
	<!--__DTSUBSCRIBE__h-Valjean-2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z-->
</h2>
<p>
	<span data-mw-comment-start="" id="c-Valjean-2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z-User_signatures"></span>
	Is there any way to calculate the percentage of the number of bytes occupied by signatures on a given talk page? On some talk pages they seem to take up more server space than the actual discussion content, or they at least take up far more space than necessary to do the basic job of a signature (link to user- and talk page, plus timestamp).
</p>
<p>
	Can someone design a bot that can do this? Please ping me. -- 
	<a href="/wiki/User:Valjean" title="User:Valjean">Valjean</a> (
	<a href="/wiki/User_talk:Valjean" title="User talk:Valjean">talk</a>
	) 15:48, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
	<span class="ext-discussiontools-init-replylink-buttons">
		<span class="ext-discussiontools-init-replylink-bracket">
			<!--__DTREPLYBRACKETOPEN__-->
		</span>
		<a class="ext-discussiontools-init-replylink-reply" role="button" tabindex="0" data-mw-comment="{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;comment&quot;,&quot;level&quot;:1,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;c-Valjean-2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z-User_signatures&quot;,&quot;replies&quot;:[],&quot;timestamp&quot;:&quot;2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z&quot;,&quot;author&quot;:&quot;Valjean&quot;}" href="">
			<!--__DTREPLY__-->
		</a>
		<span class="ext-discussiontools-init-replylink-bracket">
			<!--__DTREPLYBRACKETCLOSE__-->
		</span>
	</span>
	<span data-mw-comment-end="c-Valjean-2021-12-11T15:48:00.000Z-User_signatures">
	</span>
</p>
Note, your "actual discussion" is ~472 characters, while the output is ~2400 characters (80% of it is not "the discussion"); throwing even another hundred characters of signature styling is rather negligible to the final output. A bot could scan pages and attempt to decipher what part of them are "signatures" and produce a report. All that being said, you could try asking over at User talk:Kephir/gadgets/unclutter - which is a userscript which already tries to isolate signatures (others may be able to build upon that as well). — xaosflux Talk 16:21, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
If you enable c:User:JWBTH/CD, it isolates signatures with span class=cd-signature. – SD0001 (talk) 16:43, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks to all. Xaosflux and SD0001, I'm obviously rather ignorant of this stuff, so any help is appreciated. I assume, possibly incorrectly, several things, so let's see if I can learn more from you. Is it correct to assume that any given server can only hold up to a certain amount of bytes or bandwidth, and that we could save money and number of servers if we only allowed signatures of a certain complexity? I often see extremely fancy ones, and in editing mode they fill a dozen or more lines, while the comment may only fill one line. Not only does it add more clutter and difficulty when searching or editing a page, that seems like a waste of donors money. I'm not saying we should forbid all types of customization, but shouldn't it be kept to a minimum? -- Valjean (talk) 21:14, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
There would be no noticeable server savings if signatures were simpler IMO. It would probably simplify code that needs to detect user signatures, saving engineering time, which might correspond to saving donors' money...but most of that was already solved with the new requirements for user signatures. WP:DEFAULTSIG#Pros has good reasons to use simpler signatures, but server performance isn't one of them. Legoktm (talk) 22:04, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
That's good to know. Thanks. -- Valjean (talk) 22:09, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
It is mostly becuase they are actually very small. For example, when I publish this reply, an entire new version of this page gets saved. Right now it is ~66700 characters being saved; if I simplified my signature and cut say 100 characters off of it, it would only be about ~1/10 of 1% less storage for this specific revision of this page. Most revisions saved don't even have signatures (becuase they are article edits) - so the amount of extra space used by fancy signatures as a percent of all revisions is so small. — xaosflux Talk 22:13, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
mw:Manual:MediaWiki architecture#Database and text storage actually says:
"Wikimedia sites use a MySQL-backed external storage cluster with blobs of a few dozen revisions. The first revision of the blob is stored in full, and following revisions to the same page are stored as diffs relative to the previous revision; the blobs are then gzipped. Because the revisions are grouped per page, they tend to be similar, so the diffs are relatively small and gzip works well. The compression ratio achieved on Wikimedia sites nears 98%."
But I think signatures fall under Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. Signatures are limited to 255 characters by MediaWiki, most users have short signatures, and most edits aren't signed. Some users like fancy signatures and it probably increases contribution a little to allow users to add a personal touch. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:48, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the update Prime, guess I won't recaption File:Server-kitty.jpg for sigs just yet ;) — xaosflux Talk 04:24, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Reporting Find Link tool 503 service unavailable error, on-going (on & off) since 30 November. Wondering if not solvable, would it be possible to transfer the software to run on one of the Wikipedia servers instead? JoeNMLC (talk) 15:07, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@JoeNMLC: the source code seems available, but I'm not sure under what license. Either the maintainer could request to bring it to toolforge, or someone could possible fork it and do so - but in either case someone would need to take responsibility to maintain it there. — xaosflux Talk 15:35, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
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