Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 208

Village pump
- Policy
- Technical
- Proposals (persistent)
- Idea lab
- WMF
- Miscellaneous

Village pump (technical) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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.

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212

Missing page history

At Talk:JSW Steel, I noticed a bare signature at the top of the page dated 2012, and went to the history to see if I could trace the message that it had become detached from. I discovered that the history has only two entries, with the earlier one being from 2022. There's also an entry on the talk page from 2018. What's the story here? Largoplazo (talk) 11:58, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Following the contributor, it's a copypaste from Talk:JSW Steel Ltd. We should be able to histmerge that. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:05, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

That does answer my question: it always was just that pair of signatures with no comment. Largoplazo (talk) 13:00, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

It's useful to know, that if you see a signature on a page, for example "59.165.83.8 (talk) 05:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)" by clicking on the blue link you can access all that editor's contributions. One line of information might be, for example, "05:58, 7 September 2012 (diff|hist) (+229)..Talk:JSW Steel Ltd. Clicking on any of the dates will bring up the version of the page that was current at that time, and clicking on "diff" provides the difference between that and the previous version. Clicking the "history" tab in the top right corner gives you access to a complete record of activity on that page. 80.47.73.217 (talk) 16:18, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Talk page archive button/userscript why isn't it working on...

Resolved

I was cleaning up and responding on Talk:Drew Barrymore. I manually created Talk:Drew Barrymore/Archive 2 in advance of moving some stale posts/threads because Archive 1 was getting too big. I then used the "Archive" button (I have the 'OneClickArchiver' userscript installed), intending to archive/move a post to Archive 2. However, when I used that button the stale post was instead moved to Archive 1, so I then had to clean up the misplacement. I have subsequently noticed that the "Archive" button is only seeing Archive 1 as its target. Why? Please someone tell me whyyyyy and how to fix it so I can then maybe remember the next time I run into the same situation. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 16:34, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Try adding Help:Archiving a talk page#Sequentially numbered archives to the top-ish of the page (folllowing MOS:TALKORDER). Then after that edit, do a second edit where you change counter=1 to counter=2. Then try a one click archive. I think this will fix it, but there is only one way to find out :) Can also lower maxarchivesize=75K if you want smaller archive pages. Warning: Adding the template will also set up a bot to do auto archiving, which is usually good, but just FYI in case you weren't expecting it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:41, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! I know that your workaround/strategy will work but I guess my question is why isn't the OneClickArchiver userscript working in this particular case on this talkpage? I've never seen this behavior before and am puzzled... Have contacted the Wikipedian who wrote the userscript to see if they could look in on the situation and tell me the why of it all. Shearonink (talk) 14:14, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

There's 4 or 5 OneClickArchivers. The one you're using is by Evad37, but I think they're inactive. If you think it's a bug, maybe make a section at User talk:Evad37/OneClickArchiver and include the exact steps to reproduce (link to the current revision of the talk page, archive 1 page, archive 2 page). Someone (maybe me) may someday get a burst of energy and start working on bug reports at that page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:45, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Evad37 is not inactive. I posted earlier today at their user talk page - see User talk:Evad37#Question about 'User:Evad37/OneClickArchiver' - and they responded with two ways to get this fixed. Since instituting auto-archiving didn't seem all that needful, I used Template:Archive basics. Per the template's page, "this template is used to provide an archive name and counter number to Technical 13's (Original by Equazcion) OneClickArchiver (Original) script, on pages where a {{User:MiszaBot/config}} configuration doesn't exist, or does not contain a numeric counter."

Works like a charm now. Shearonink (talk) 23:32, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Great. They had no edits in June, July, August, so I am glad to hear they are around. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:27, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

AFAIK the various OneClickArchiver scripts don't look for existing archive pages in order to know which one should be added to, they read one or another of the archiving bot templates at the top of the page. For {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} it's |archiveprefix= with |numberstart=; for {{User:MiszaBot/config}} it's |archive= with |counter=. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:14, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

XTools not working

Resolved

– The reported issue with toolforge has been resolved — closing this so that any new/unrelated issues are not incorrectly assumed to be related. fwiw, it looks like this was T346177

— TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 15:54, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I was browsing random pages for cleanup purposes, and I noticed that the XTools info was not showing up whatsoever. I tried turning it off and back on, no luck. I reset the browser, and still no luck. I am on Chrome v116.0.5845.179, and it has been working for the past several days, before stopping working about 30 minutes ago. Is anyone else having this issue? EDIT: it seems to be back to normal, but it sounds like some server issues are going on DrowssapSMM (talk) 13:34, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm also seeing this on my side. I'm also using Chrome, and trying to access the page gives a DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN error. Maybe WMF is having some server issues? Liu1126 (talk) 15:53, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

They must be. I saw several '503 Service Unavailable' errors when trying to get from the watchlist to this page, and had a similar problem several hours ago. There's no replag, and it's been long enough since the last time this happened I don't remember what else to look up. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 16:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

geohack.toolforge.org not working

Hi all, I don't know if it's something that you already know, but it looks like that geohack.toolforge.org doesn't work (impossible to contact server). -- bs (talk) 14:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Earwig and https://toolforge.org are both throwing 504 errors for me. – dudhhr^talk_contribs^she_her 16:25, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Firefly's CCI Tools are still working. – dudhhr^talk_contribs^she_her 16:32, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if related, the entire English Wikipedia was down earlier (est. 16:05 UTC) like for 3 mins throwing 504 errors for me. Currently, English Wikipedia and the toolforge's tools are up and working for me. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 16:37, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Never mind, reloaded w/ cache bypassed and it 504s. – dudhhr^talk_contribs^she_her 16:39, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Six hours on, geohack.toolforge.org is still throwing a HTTP 504, so it's not a short-term glitch. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Recent changes filters down?

Trying to check out vandalism using recent change filters and nothing has appeared since 11:34 AM EST (now 1:14 PM EST as of posting). Just wondering if it needs a restart. Kline | yes? 17:15, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

In general

It seems there was some sort of NFS issue this morning (I don't see an email about it, but there was mention on IRC and in wikitech:Nova Resource:Tools/SAL), and while it was resolved with a restart several hours ago it seems it made a lot of tools hang. Their maintainers will likely need to restart them. Anomie ⚔ 17:52, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Alright. Thanks! :) NotAGenious (talk) 17:54, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

good to know, thanks! DrowssapSMM (talk) 18:01, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

It looks like some of this is due to a DNS misconfiguration, see Phab:T346177. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 01:47, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

At first, I thought it was me. I brought it up to the teahouse. Then I was pointed to this. I'm glad to see the problem fixed. Cwater1 (talk) 14:25, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

This is not fixed at all. It still doesn't work. HandsomeFella (talk) 00:03, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

osm4wiki.toolforge.org

Still getting "504 Gateway timeout" errors when I try to invoke an OpenStreetMap link.
e.g. https://osm4wiki.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/wiki/wiki-osm.pl?project=en&article=Bow_Range&section=Peaks+and+mountains
RedWolf (talk) 18:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Still not working

504 Gateway Time-out

HandsomeFella (talk) 19:27, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Suppressing Template data notice when unnecessary

What is best practice for suppressing a warning in a template, when adding a template to an article it is suppressed? For example on visual editor when adding {{Siemens}} it warns me the following, but as no params are needed... I'd like to hide this altogether.

The "Siemens" template doesn't yet have a description, but there might be some information on the template's page. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:24, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Go to the template, click edit (source editor) and then there should be a button "add TemplateData" and you add some simple TemplateData, notable a description: "Navigational links covering the Siemens corporation" or something. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the editor's root question is: "How can I tell Wikipedia that navboxes don't need TemplateData and/or that the Visual Editor should not give me this message when I try to add one to an article?" Barring a good answer to that question, it looks like {{Navbox documentation}} can be added to any navbox's page, which should get rid of the message. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:45, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Temporary accounts

Anyone who maintains tools that differentiate between logged-in editors and logged-out editors will want to see m:Talk:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation#Username format settled. This is related to mw:Help:Temporary accounts and the introduction of a new user account type (so we can stop displaying IP addresses in the public page histories).

It'll be a few months before the English Wikipedia sees any of this directly, but for some tools, it is a significant change, and it's better to know about the change now than to be surprised at the last minute. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Just in case it wasn't clear: This is a wikt:breaking change, meaning that some tools are going to break. Tool maintainers, please don't wait until the last minute to read up on this project. You will hopefully be able to test these changes in December on one of the test wikis, and I encourage you to be talking to the devs in January. Don't wait until five minutes after the deployment happens. I know that the Twinkle and RedWarn maintainers have had this on their calendars for months now; if you run a similar tool, you should make sure it's on your calendar, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

When editing, pressing shift causes cursor to jumps to start of edit text box

I've been having a problem for a few years now where sometimes when I'm editing, holding shift and then typing anything (trying to access a capital or a special character) will cause the cursor to jump back to the beginning of the editing box, and type the special character or capital letter at the beginning of the box.

it most often happens when I press shift and the character is surrounded by spaces or is the leading character (first letter of a word, opening any kind of bracket),
somewhat less frequently if the character is at the end of a word or closing brackets, *least frequently if the character is inserted between two other characters

It happened once while typing this comment when i typed the "(" in "(first letter", but sometimes it happens constantly, and is very frustrating. What sort of documentation should I gather so I can submit a helpful ticket about this? -Furicorn (talk) 11:26, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Identifiers from TWL

The Wikipedia Libary returns this entry for a Bloomberg article from ebscohost. For ProQuest entries, one can enter an identifier in the citation using the id= paramater, eg, for ProQuest 2431212846. Is there a way to add an identifier to the citation template for ebsco entries like the Bloomberg article? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:37, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

{{EBSCOhost}}?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:59, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, but not sure how to make that work (which number to use), eg EBSCOhost 144342321 doesn't work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:09, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Maybe I also need a dbcode ?? I see something in the URL about bth? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:11, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Test EBSCOhost 144342321 SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:14, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Got it! Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

User:Trappist the monk can that info be added at Template:Cite_news#Identifiers, including that it needs a dbcode ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

It looks like one has to extract a dbcode from the URL, eg EBSCOhost 8Q3159833226. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:Cite news § Identifiers is a list of specific identifiers that cs1|2 supports: |pmc=12345 and the like. |id= is free-form so can (though too often shouldn't) accept any wikitext that editors want to add. If any documentation needs to be fixed regarding {{EBSCOhost}}, Template:EBSCOhost/doc is where that fixing should be done.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:36, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Thx (I'm not qualified enough to make those edits-- maybe someone will). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-38

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

MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions. [1][2]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [3]
All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. [4]

Future changes

The team investigating the Graph Extension posted a proposal for reenabling it and they need your input.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:17, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

List of featured articles

Are there lists of featured articles, featured lists and good articles for statistics across all Wikipedia versions? For example, which article has the most FA badge across all Wikipedia versions. Eurohunter (talk) 16:51, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Might be able to get this using Wikidata SPARQL. wikidata:Wikidata:Request a query –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:23, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

You could start at WP:FAOL and WP:GAOL. —Kusma (talk) 17:47, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

(Those are unfortunately named titles. Izno (talk) 19:00, 17 September 2023 (UTC))

Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 72#Featured content has some reports I ran last time this came up - Mars has 30x FAs in various language WPs, and there are 85 topics with ten or more FAs (report). GA numbers are a bit thinner - the most frequent one is Neptune with 11x (report) and there are only five with 10x GAs.

There are about twice as many GAs overall (77k vs 34k FAs) but more than half of them are on enWP so that massively spreads out the number of topics they cover.

The relative number of FA:GA on different projects is very variable as well - this report gives the relative rates of the two. 14% of "badged articles" on enWP are FAs, but 40% on deWP. Some projects have lots of GAs and hardly any FAs (jaWP, 99 to 1951) while others go the other way (hrWP, 821 to 14) Andrew Gray (talk) 22:42, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

To make a list, templates are needed. For example, {{NUMBEROF}} (and Module:NUMBEROF) are the basis of List of Wikipedias. And NUMBEROF is based on a bot that uploads data to Wikicommons 4x/day from the Wikimedia API. A similar thing could be done for featured articles, where a bot scrapes content about featured content from all the wikis, saves it to Commons as JSON, a template displays the data in whatever ways, then an article can be created "List of Wikipedia featured content" with a table of statistics. -- GreenC 05:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Does Category:FA-Class articles exist in all Wikipedias? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:33, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Not too many. A lot more wikis have Wikipedia:Featured articles. -- GreenC 13:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Thursday

Looks like toolforge just crashed. Abductive (reasoning) 15:10, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Broken since Tuesday; see #XTools not working above. Certes (talk) 15:35, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Other things broke. They've come back. It was a separate issue. Abductive (reasoning) 15:46, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

@Abductive: Everything working okay now? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 15:54, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Abductive (reasoning) 18:04, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Multiple toolforge tools still not working

Someone closed the toolforge discussion above, but I still can't get to https://signatures.toolforge.org/reports/en.wikipedia.org or https://templatecount.toolforge.org/index.php?lang=en&namespace=10&name=Cite_web or https://wlh.toolforge.org/pages/Cite_web?ns=10. I get "504 Gateway Time-out" on each page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:32, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

https://linksearch.toolforge.org/ doesn't work either ("502 Bad Gateway"), is that a temporary issue, or has it been moved? Markussep ^Talk 08:15, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 and Markussep: Ah, apologies, that was me — I was under the impression that the lasting effects of that issue had been resolved. I'll take a look at these mentioned tools and see if a simple webservice restart resolves it

— TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 08:45, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Linksearch has changed to "503 Service Temporarily Unavailable". The other three are OK now. Markussep ^Talk 13:24, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

https://templatetransclusioncheck.toolforge.org/?lang=en&name=Template:Deeg_district appears to have the 504 error still. Is there some systematic way to check all of the tools, or do we just post them here as we stumble upon them? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:52, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Another one: https://fireflytools.toolforge.org/linter/enwiki says "Internal Server Error", which may be a different problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:00, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 - fixed. firefly ( t · c ) 17:19, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Linksearch still doesn't work. Markussep ^Talk 07:14, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Apparently the user who maintained Linksearch, Gifti/de:Benutzerin:Giftpflanze, left Wikipedia. Could someone else check what’s the problem with this tool? Markussep ^Talk 19:39, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Strange linkages, piping through miscapitalized redirects

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T346920

I've been fixing quite a few odd linkages, such as in this edit, where the strange linkage [[Huffington post|Huffington Post]], piping through a miscapitalized redirect, is used instead of just linking Huffington Post. Or like this one, piping through miscapitalized redirect [[United states of america|United States of America]] instead of just United States of America. I'm finding and fixing about a half dozen every day (via Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations).

Any idea how these happen? Editors are not doing this on purpose. Dicklyon (talk) 21:25, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I just noticed both of those are Visual edits. Maybe that's where it comes from; I'll look at some more. Dicklyon (talk) 21:35, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Sure enough, and I see now how it's happening in the Visual editor. If I see magna cum laude, correctly capitalized in article text, and I select it and add link with the link icon, I get a popup of potential targets that includes the miscapitalized Magna cum Laude, but not the correct Magna cum laude. Is this a bug in the target selection logic? Shouldn't it prefer to use the text that's there over a piped link? And shouldn't it avoid redirects tagged as miscapitalizations? Dicklyon (talk) 21:47, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I just played with Visual Editor some more, and it's clear that these are coming from a misunderstanding of how it works. Lots of editors are making the same mistake I made, which is to click something in the list of links offered, instead of just hitting "Done" to accept the default, which would usually be right but is not shown to look like an actual target like the ones listed below it. This is a UI bug. Can we fix it? Dicklyon (talk) 21:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm also curious how this is happening through the Visual Editor when using the Wikicite function. In the HuffPo case, I had opened the citation manager and placed brackets around Huffington Post with correct capitalization. I'm not sure why the system would then choose to link the improper capitalization. ETA: Nevermind. That does not seem to be the case in the linked example above. Significa liberdade (talk) 22:07, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

VE is buggy, and always has been. You should never rely on it producing satisfactory results. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:27, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

can you give a bit more accurate step by step play through of the exact steps that trigger this ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:25, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

In VisualEditor, mark the unlinked text "United States of America" and click the link icon. If you don't know you can just click "Done" or press Enter, you may look for a good match in the list of suggested titles and click "United states of america" since "United States of America" is not in the list. The result is [[United states of america|United States of America]]. In my limited tests, if you marked an article title like "United States" then it's the first suggestion but if you marked a redirect title like "United States of America" then it may not be in the list of suggestions if there is another redirect which differs by capitalization. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:01, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Here is today's example of same. Dicklyon (talk) 05:07, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

If someone is able to look at this piece of code, a related feature might also be very helpful. I see a lot of links like [[United States of America|Untied Stats of Amecira]] where the editor has had a game stab at typing the title, located the correct article (presumably using VE) and successfully linked to it, but left the original typo on display. An option to make an unpiped link would allow editors to avoid such mistakes. Certes (talk) 10:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@Certes Typing command/control K and inserting a link before typing anything will insert a link without a pipe for example Unipiper. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:54, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Here's hoping more VE users discover that feature! Certes (talk) 15:49, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Another thing to add to WP:VE#Limitations ... InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:06, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

This should be fixed, but it can only be fixed by a developer working on the VisualEditor code. Per Wikipedia:VisualEditor, problems should be reported at Phabricator (as that is where developers learn of what needs fixing). I don't understand what is happening sufficiently to write a concise bug report that is likely to get actioned, but someone who does needs to do just that. Thryduulf (talk) 08:31, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

This seems to be a problem with the search API used by visual editor, not the editor itself. For some reason, when the search term matches several redirects, it only returns one of them, and it seems to pick the ones with bad capitalization.

For example:

a query for "Huffington Post" (even written in title case like this) returns Huffington post as the first result, but not Huffington Post: [5]
a query for "United States of America" returns United states of america but not United States of America: [6]

Visual editor link tool just lists the results from this API. Matma Rex talk 15:19, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if it would help to add Template:R from miscapitalisation (and its redirects: [7]) to MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates with a lower than normal weight. This feature is documented at mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Boost-templates, but it's not clear to me whether it applies to the prefix search used here, or only to normal searches. I think it's worth trying. Matma Rex talk 15:35, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

We tried it now: [8] – it didn't work :( Matma Rex talk 01:57, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The underlying search functionality is less important when the search is just used to navigate to a page and not to create code. I think this should be fixed in VisualEditor if possible and the underlying search feature is not changed. I have created phab:T346920. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Pages using WikiHiero

The article Djehutynakht appears in the red category Category:Pages using WikiHiero. There are about 15 pages in this category.

But I can't figure out what's causing this inclusion. Looks like it's related to {{Hiero}}, but I don't see any code in that template which involves the category. Is it because of the use of <heiro> tags, through the template? It took a while, but I found documentation for those tags at Help:WikiHiero syntax. They don't mention anything about a category, either.

Is the correct fix to create the category and update the documentation? Or is something else going on here, and something didn't quite get correctly or completely removed? -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:41, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

It seems that any page containing <hiero>...</hiero> will automatically be in that category, so I assume it is added by mw:Extension:WikiHiero. I'd suggest to create the category and hide it using {{Hidden category}}. —Kusma (talk) 20:55, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

This may be related to T344534, "Explore bot-replacing all WikiHiero uses with Unicode glyphs, and switching off the extension". There is a code change linked from that ticket that purports to add a tracking category, and it is Thursday. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:10, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Special:TrackingCategories says: "This category is automatically added to pages that use WikiHiero extension". The category name is determined by MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:17, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Cross-wiki transclusions?

Is there such a thing? I envision a page hosted on meta that is transcluded on many other wikis. -- GreenC 17:19, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

{{meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024}}. Nope, doesn't appear to work. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Only if you enable scary transclusion. Which is as it says on the tin and thus is unlikely ever to be enabled here. The task you're looking for-ish is in the direction of phab:T121470. Izno (talk) 18:01, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Exactly. I have used Synchronizer mentioned in the last comment, this needs more attention it's an awesome tool. However, it depends on the page being in Wikidata, and /doc pages are considered reserved names in Wikidata since they don't pass the notability guidelines, so they can't be used with Synchronizer unfortunately. It thought about creating /nodoc where the document actually lives and can be maintained by Synchronizer, then the /doc page transcludes it in for display. -- GreenC 19:53, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

You can host your user page on meta, see m:GUP. Transcluding an arbitrary page from an arbitrary wiki isn't just "somewhat inefficient" as the page says, but also scary for its potential for hard-to-find vandalism. —Kusma (talk) 18:25, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Maybe it could be made less scary with permissions? It would help maintaining some types of things. I maintain the /doc page for a Lua module on 80+ wikis and this is a major pain to update. Of course some wikis will localize it, they are on their own, but most retain the same English version. -- GreenC 19:47, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Sure cool, got a couple of months available to work on that ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:27, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I work daily on multi-year, or even multi decade projects pretty soon. What's your point, no one has time for this? It's a perennial wishlist request. -- GreenC 05:10, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@GreenC: Currently, scary transclusion doesn't exist on Wikimedia wikis (with the exception of global userpages).

I believe that there should be some sort of centralized template repository, like Commons is a central file repository. QuickQuokka ^{[⁠talk • contribs]} 00:30, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

What operating system do Wikipedia editors use?

Is there any statistics that shows what are the most common operating systems used by contributors? ԱշոտՏՆՂ (talk) 15:43, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't know. I use several: Windows, ChromeOS, ChromeOS Flex, Debian, arch Linux, FreeBSD, etc. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:54, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Statistics are available for the operating systems used by readers: https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/ but I can't find any for contributors. Matma Rex talk 16:18, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I normally use ArcaOS, a rebranded OS/2, but I also use a machine running openSUSE LEAP. A more interesting question might be what browsers editors use. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:54, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm trying to rewrite AWB using a cross-platform UI framework (Avalonia). I already have parts of it working (list providers, basic find-replace). I was wondering if it is worth it. ԱշոտՏՆՂ (talk) 19:49, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

User:ԱշոտՏՆՂ, are you aware of User:Joeytje50/JWB? Rewriting AWB for non-Windows platforms may not be necessary. Folly Mox (talk) 14:05, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

JWB works well, but is missing some features, I'm told. I have lots of good new feature ideas, too, in case someone is into Javascript development. Dicklyon (talk) 01:27, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Or if Avalonia is the way to go, I can discuss ideas for that. Dicklyon (talk) 01:33, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

@Dicklyon I went with Avalonia because it is a C# framework. AWB is also written in C# so I can reuse some parts (especially all those regexes and utility methods) of the existing code since it is GPL-2. Also, maintaining such a large software as a JavaScript gadget is going to be really hard. It doesn't have to be a AWB clone, if you have new ideas, I will be happy to implement them. ԱշոտՏՆՂ (talk) 07:56, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

TIL (a variant of) OS/2 is still in active development.. impressive! As to your question ԱշոտՏՆՂ, I don't believe contributor statistics are available anywhere, but I'd imagine the breakdown of OS usage would be similar to the expected OS market share — I personally use Windows, MacOS and [Debian] Linux to contribute — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 19:59, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Anybody for VMS? Or CP/M? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 05:39, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Statistics for market share and readers would be a good starting point for all contributors, but I'd suggest that users doing 'advanced' editing are not going to share the same characteristics. No one with any experience is going to be replacing 3,000 typos using a phone. And they're probably more likely to be geeks, and therefore more likely to use *nix. You'll want a specific subset of contributors, which almost certainly doesn't exist as an existing dataset. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 09:16, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

zzuuzz. I have corrected more than 3,000 typos using my phone, many of them my own typos. I have made nearly 100,000 edits on my phone. It's easy. The desktop site works just fine on Android smartphones. Cullen328 (talk) 01:39, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm impressed! I've done a few edits from my phone, but only when desperate. Dicklyon (talk) 04:51, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

This or this or this will give you some idea. Obviously, a very small self-selecting group in any event. Andre🚐 05:11, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

@Andrevan: This nervous has a serious flaw: Windows users almost never say they use Windows, because it is the norm, but Arch users inform people that they're Arch users constantly (that's coming from an active Arch user) QuickQuokka ^{[⁠talk • contribs]} 00:37, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Articles with photos in category

Is there an easy way to identify articles which contains photos in a particular category on Commons, other than going through that category manually? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria The glamorous tool can do this (example) - it's intended for crosswiki use and it's not possible to filter it to just enWP, but the list does break down which project & pages each file is used on ("file usage details" tab). Andrew Gray (talk) 12:04, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Help needed with saving pages to a web archive

I would like to save several pages of handball leagues to a web archive, but only partly succeed to do so.

The "fixtures", "results", "standings" and "matrix" (mix of fixtures and results) of those leagues can be viewed on the website of the Netherlands Handball Association (NHV).

As exampla I'll take the "Heren BENE-League":

Goto https://www.handbal.nl/
Select "PROGRAMMA/UITSLAGEN/STANDEN" (Fixtures/Results/Standings) from the menu in the top black bar.
Select "POULES" from the orange oval.
Select the "Zaal" (indoor) entry from the "NHV Landelijk" line/section.
Select the "Heren BENE-League" entry.
from the "Poule BENE 23-24" line/section select either
1. "Programma" (Fixtures) or
2. "Uitslagen" (Results) or
3. "Standen" (Standings) or
4. "Matrix"

After the last selection you get the related info. You can switch between "Programma" (Fixtures), "Uitslagen" (Results), "Standen" (Standings) and "Matrix" info by selecting the corresponding tab. Don't use your browser functionality to go to the previous page in your browsing history (left arrow button before the address bar), it will result in having to go thru the menu all over again.

To my knowledge none of these pages can be saved on a web archive service like Wayback Machine or Archive.Today. This is caused because these pages are retrieved using HTTP POST requests contrary to HTTP GET requests.

These pages can also be retrieved using CURL on the command line:

Page	CLI command
"Programma" (Fixtures)"	curl -s -X POST -d "page=poules&tab=programma&params[]=XXX&params[]=35670" "https://www.handbal.nl/export-uitslagen"
"Uitslagen" (Results)"	curl -s -X POST -d "page=poules&tab=uitslagen&params[]=XXX&params[]=35670" "https://www.handbal.nl/export-uitslagen"
"Standen" (Standings)	curl -s -X POST -d "page=poules&tab=standen&params[]=XXX&params[]=35670" "https://www.handbal.nl/export-uitslagen"
"Matrix"	curl -s -X POST -d "page=poules&tab=matrix&params[]=XXX&params[]=35670" "https://www.handbal.nl/export-uitslagen"

Where:

XXX	A display string, which is not really relevant. For the league above it would be "NHV+Landelijk+^%^7C+Zaal+^%^7C+Heren+BENE-League+^%^7C+BENE+23-24" ("NHV Landelijk \| Zaal \| Heren BENE-League \| BENE 23-24") without the double quotes.
35670	the ID of the league. Other leagues are e.g. 35674 for the "Heren Eredivisie" (Men Eredivisie) league or 35715 for the "Dames Eredivisie" (Women Eredivisie) league.

There's a undocumented way the request these pages in your browswer where an HTTP GET request is used:

Page	URL
"Programma" (Fixtures)"	https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/#poules:programma:XXX:35670
"Uitslagen" (Results)"	https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/#poules:uitslagen:XXX:35670
"Standen" (Standings)	https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/#poules:standen:XXX:35670
"Matrix"	https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/#poules:matrix:XXX:35670

Using these URL's clearly shows the effect of the display string XXX.

Changing 35670 into 35674 or 35715 will give the info for the other leagues mentioned above.

Using these URL's, the pages partly can be saved in a web archive.

Using:

Web Archive	Comment
WayBack Machine	None of the pages can be saved. WayBack cannot handle the "#" (anchor indicator) in the URL. Basically everything after the "#" is ignored.
Archive.Today	Creates a correct copy for the "Programma" (Fixtures) and "Uitslagen" (Results) pages. However not for the "Standen" (Standings) and "Matrix" pages.

It's exactly the 2 pages I'm mostly interested in, for which it's not possible to create a web archive copy. End of season the "Programma" (Fixtures) is empty anyway. The "Matrix" page only contains results at the end, and I prefer the matrix representation of the results above the list presentation on the "Uitslagen" (Results) page.

At the start of a new season the pages of the previous season are no longer available. Hence I would like to have a web archive copy to use as reference.

Does anyone have an idea how to create a web archive copy of the "Standen" (Standings) and "Matrix" page. I don't care which method and web archive is used, as long as I get a proper web archive copy.

Any help is appreciated. TIA.

--Sb008 (talk) 17:04, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

You will need to encode the URL. '#' is '%23'. I'v done one, leave you with the remainder (Wayback). Neils51 (talk) 13:38, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

@Neils51: Thanks for your effort tp come up with a solution. Unfortunately it doesn't give the desired result. I tried it for a different league, 35715=Women Eredivisie.

Page URL	Archive URL	Result
https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/%23poules:programma:XXX:35715	http://web.archive.org/web/20230911182502/https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/	OK
https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/%23poules:uitslagen:XXX:35715	http://web.archive.org/web/20230910143129/https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/	OK
https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/%23poules:standen:XXX:35715	https://web.archive.org/web/20230912110037/https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/	Shows all (layout), except for the actual data.
https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/%23poules:matrix:XXX:35715	http://web.archive.org/web/20230910084635/https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/	Shows all (layout), except for the actual data.

So, with HTML URL Encoding I get the same results on WayBack Machine as on Archive.Today without encoding. Actually, I normally already use encoding because instead of "XXX" I mostly use "%20".

Furthermore, there're 2 additional "problems" with using WayBack Machine suitable UEL's:

Browsers can't handle the encoded URL's, "%20" instead of "XXX" is no problem, but "%23" instead of "#" results in an HTTP 404 error.
Wayback Machine has issues anyway, too often it seems to make a copy, but you get the message "There was a delay in registering this snapshot with the Wayback Machine. You may be redirected to a previous version right now. This snapshot will be available later." And it seems to me that the snapshot never gets registered and you're always redirected.

Once again, thanks for your effort.

--Sb008 (talk) 11:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep open. Neils51 (talk) 22:32, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

User:Sb008: Does this work? Help:Archiving_a_source#Ghostarchive.org has more info. They use an advanced archiving engine that can save difficult UIs. We are supposed to use the long format URL, but when I try it, it doesn't display correctly. In which case you'll probably need to use the short form and add a {{cbignore}} to keep the bots from converting it to long form, and add a wiki comment that short is required.

If that is still not sufficient, Help:Archiving_a_source#Conifer will probably work, but, you have to sign up for a (free) account, and have limited though generous disk space, and need to use {{cbignore}} for the links otherwise IABot will delete them. -- GreenC 05:22, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@GreenC and Neils51: With Ghostarchive.org I get the exact same results as with Archive.Today and with WayBack Machine + URL encoding, The "programma" (fixtures) and "uitslagen" (results) pages archive fine, the "standen" (standings) and "matrix" pages not.

When I archive the pages with Conifer, the archived copies are placed into a "collection" linked to your account. Opening the archived copies from the container gives a correct result for all 4 pages. However when I open any of the 4 archived copies from a browser window (outside Conifer), e.g. Matrix I see 2 arrows forming a circle (similar indicator as an hourglass in other applications), turning forever and I never get the info it's about.

When selecting the pages at https://www.handbal.nl/ using the 6 steps as mentioned at the start of my initial post and I start pushing "ctrl"+"+" (grow screen), it's not a problem on the "programma" (fixtures) and "uitslagen" (results) pages. However on the "standen" (standings) and "matrix" pages, the actual data will disappear. It depends on your screen size how often you'll have to push "ctrl"+"+". You get the same visual effect as for the archives of those pages. Pushing "ctrl"+"-" (shrink screen) will result in the actual data reappearing. Unfortunately you don't get the same effect on the archives.

--Sb008 (talk) 21:57, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

When archiving at Conifer, try clicking around the site while the page is saving as it will save content interactively. Click on the tabs, scroll up and down the data windows, etc.. could feed it more data. Conifer can't save everything, in which case, that's really the best archive service for hard websites, some site may not be archiveable. You could contact the website owner who may be interested to learn this. -- GreenC 02:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

@GreenC and Neils51: Although the pages are generated based on the league ID, the final result is pretty static. Therefor I cannot click around, cause it would result in getting another page, one I'm not interested in. Only thing I can do is scroll up and down and that doesn't change the outcome.

Meanwhile I discovered something else. I mentioned that opening archived copies (links) from the container gives a correct result contrary to opening them from a browser window. I also noticed that when opening the pages from the container, I correctly get the 4 tabs "Programma", "Uitslagen", "Standen" and "Matrix". I can even switch between those tabs and for each of them I get the correct actual data. When I open any of those pages from a browser window, I don't get those 4 tabs but instead only 1 tab ("clubs"). "Clubs" can be a valid tab, however not at this stage. If I go back to the steps mentioned at the beginning of my initial post, "clubs" is the default tab after step 2.

I did some more experimenting, In Conifer, if I enter the URL https://www.handbal.nl/uitslagen-standen/, which brings me directly to step 2 of the 6 steps, and I continue with step 3. At step 6 I choose any on the 4 options. The saved archive I get then, allows me to retrieve all info from the saved archive. If after step 6, I select "CATEGORIE", I go back to step 5. Next instead of selecting "Heren BENE-League", I can select "Heren Senioren (L)" and next I can select again any of the 4 choices "Programma", "Uitslagen", "Standen" or "Matrix" for e.g. "Poule ED HS-A" (Eredivisie Men) and all info of this league is saved into this archive as well. Again choosing "CATEGORIE" and next "Dames Senioren (L)", and again 1 of the 4 choices for e.g. "Poule ED DS-A" (Eredivisie Women) results in that league to be added to the archive as well. This way, I end up with an archive with info of 3 leagues in it (3 league archive). I assume I could save any number of leagues in this way into an archive. When navigating to a league which wasn't selected during the archive process at Conifer, it results in the in the 2 arrows forming a circle, circling forever (hourglass). Which is kinda logical.

The disadvantage of this method is that I would have to add instructions to a reference with an archive URL like this (end of season before the info is removed on the NHV site.) But it beats all other options so far. The only other option I can think of is making screenprints of the league pages, put those images somewhere where I can create a free website and create archives from those pages, which should be no problem because pages only contain images.

Although this isn't the prefect solution, I'll close those thread for now. I would like to thank both of you for the your input and if you can up with a better option, feel free to contact me directly.

Resolved

--Sb008 (talk) 20:20, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Replag or Thursday issues?

Hello, VPT,

I was wondering if there are system problems today. I'm finding broken redirects that aren't showing up on the bot report that reports them and other pages that should show up on Quarry queries that are coming back as empty. Is there a system problem going on today that is preventing information from being updated? Thanks for anyone who knows enough to know whether to check if there are open tickets that could explain what's happening. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:58, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that XTools is also not updating counts. Not sure if this is related. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:27, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

There's a little bit of replication lag currently, but I'm not sure if that's causing the issues you describe — could you link to an example? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 20:35, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

A little bit of replication lag? It's up to three hours now. Is replication broken, or is it just on pause for a good reason? (I think I recall reading somewhere that schema updates cause replication to be stopped for a while, right?) --rchard2scout (talk) 22:31, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, I noticed in the examples I mentioned. The Quarry queries I run are coming up empty. For example, in this one, User:Monique_Brynnel ia indicated as a nonexistent user page but that page was deleted hours ago and no longer exists so it shouldn't show up as existing. Another Quarry query and AnomieBOT III's report shown 0 Broken redirects when I can easily find some broken redirects when looking at the Move logs. But most obviously, I've done a lot of page deletions today and according to XTools, I've only deleted 10 pages today when it's at least over 100 pages. My number hasn't increased for the past 12 hours. That's where I have noticed the anomalies. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:33, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The most recent revision on the replicas is currently Special:Diff/1176409855, a bit under nine hours old and twice what replag.toolforge.org is showing. I suspect phab:T343198 is to blame. —Cryptic 00:07, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Cryptic, as long as someone competent is looking into this. Also, Wikipedia:Database reports/Empty categories is showing no new empty categories all day today except those already at CFD which is highly unusual. I guess at some point in the next 24 hours, things will catch up. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:11, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't see the connection between T343198's issue and bot and Quarry reports and XTools but I'm no technical wizard. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:15, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

It's a database schema change to add a column, which, as noted above, may well cause issues like this. Graham87 (talk) 03:04, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Graham87, any idea when this problem will be resolved? None of the bot reports I rely upon are up-to-date today. The "special pages" are fine but all of the database reports are not updating. I can't believe that no one else has come to this board to comment upon these delays. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:31, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

No idea. Graham87 (talk) 06:22, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Currently caught up. There's still some maintenance to be done on s1 (which is where we are), but I am very much not "someone competent" for this purpose; I can't begin to predict the impact, if any, the part that's left will have. —Cryptic 23:19, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Tajik, optional istani

A few days ago, a user edited the existing Category:21st-century Tajikistani women writers to change it from the manual coding to the {{Women writers by nationality and century category header}} template so that its formatting and coding would be automatically imported by the template — however, this had the effect of turning a bunch of bluelinked "Tajikistani X" categories into redlinked "Tajik X" categories.

Now, it was a good faith edit, I'm not accusing the editor of doing anything improper here — but we obviously can't leave it that way if the template is going to break stuff. But as happens more and more with templates of this type, the nationality labels that it chooses to transclude are not coded directly in that template, but are farmed out to some other module — meaning I can't find it in the first place, and even if I could find it I might be at risk of breaking other stuff in the process of trying to fix this broken stuff, so my only option for resolving the redlinks was to revert the edit and flip the category back to the old coding so that it went back into the Tajikistani categories that exist and wasn't left in Tajik categories that don't.

Accordingly, could somebody with more knowledge in the automated module area look into fixing this, so that we can avoid content being moved from Tajikistani bluelinks to Tajik redlinks in the future? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 12:10, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: the same issue also resulted in a bunch of bluelinked "Luxembourgian X" categories turning into redlinked "Luxembourg X" categories at Category:21st-century Luxembourgian women writers. Bearcat (talk) 12:31, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I have never heard the word "Tajikistani" in any context--and I've been there. I've always heard the people called "Tajiks." It's not unprecedented that they're called "Tajiks" and not "Tajikistanis" or "Tajikis." The people of Afghanistan are called "Afghans" not "Afghanistanis." They're sometime erroneously called "Afghanis" which is the name of the the currency. Smallchief (talk) 14:27, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

One can see "Tajikistani" used e.g. in our article Tajiks, section Tajiks#Pakistan. The word "Tajik" is originally a name of ethnicity, and "Tajikistan" is a state of Tajiks. As a result, "Tajikistani" could describe citizens of Tajikistan, who are not necessarily ethnic Tajiks. (Warning: WP:OR starts here! Such distinction may work, if an original nationality prevails in a state. However, it is not universal, for example, there is (AFAIK) no distinction between Portuguese or Ukrainians as nationality and Portuguese or Ukrainians as citizenship; similar distinction is sometimes not even possible, if a country (a state) is multi-national, like Brazil, South Africa or former Yugoslavia.) --CiaPan (talk) 15:53, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the solution would be to ask a citizen of Tajikistan who is not a Tajik what they call themselves. I suspect it would not be Tajikistani. Tajikistani seems to me to only be used as an adjective not as a noun. Thus, in line with common usage and to avoid confusion, I changed the single use of the word "Tajikistani' in Tajiks#Pakistan to Tajik -- the word used throughout the article for the ethnic group. Smallchief (talk) 17:30, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I did not post here to spark a debate about what is or isn't the correct demonym for a person from Tajikistan — regardless of what name the categories should or shouldn't be at, the categories are where they are, so Tajikistan-related content has to use the categories that exist, and cannot be left sitting in redlinks that don't exist. Keep the category where it is or move it, that's none of my concern — but either way, whatever's done needs to be done across the board. Templates should not be autogenerating redlinked categories for one form that already exist as bluelinks at the other — so either the template has to be made to autogenerate the category that exists, or the category needs to be moved to the form that the template is going to autogenerate. A template autogenerating redlinks, because the category is actually at Form A while the template is coded to presume Form B instead of the form that the category is actually at, needs to never happen again. Bearcat (talk) 21:55, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm simply pointing out that, to my knowledge, the word "Tajikistani" is used incorrectly and a category using that incorrect name should be renamed. You're looking for a fix. I can't help you there, but part of that fix is renaming the category. Perhaps: "Women writers of Tajikistan" and another category called "Tajik women writers." (not all Tajiks are citizens of Tajikistan and not all citizens of Tajikistan are Tajiks) Smallchief (talk) 15:40, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
I believe that Wikipedia has traditionally maintained a consensus that since you're correct that not all ethnic Tajiks live in Tajikistan, and not all citizens of Tajikistan are ethnically Tajik, it was necessary for the category tree to uphold a distinction between ethnic Tajiks and Tajikistani nationals. Regardless, if you want the category to be renamed, then feel free to list it for a CFR discussion — but you don't get to make it my job to do that: my job here was limited to being Destroyer of Redlinks. Bearcat (talk) 02:25, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of what's going on above, I've fixed the template so it doesn't autogenerate redlinks in this case via an edit to Module:Find demonym. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:17, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:Cite Gnis2 problem

The second {{Cite gnis2}} template on Vindication Island links to https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/summary/8078 when it should link to https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-antarctica/public/summary/2826003. Specifying |type=antarid causes it to point to an archived webpage, instead of the correct URL. Checking Template:GNIS URL which controls the URL it seems like there is no way to link https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-antarctica/public/summary/2826003 through these templates; can it be changed so that it does? Or at least point to the correct template? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:05, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Dotted circle + combining diacritic displaying as tofu on Android web access

The dotted circle ⟨◌⟩ is used heavily as a neutral grey background to demonstrate combining diacritics. This can be done either directly or via a template such as {{unichar}} using cwith= option. For example, combining acute accent can be given as ⟨◌́⟩ or U+0301 ◌́ COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT ({{unichar |0301 |combining acute accent |cwith=◌}}) Right now, the article diacritic is an illegible mess when viewed via Chrome on an Android phone (it works fine when viewed via Chrome on a Chromebook). Any ideas? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:55, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Just to supplement: as seen from my mobile, the two freestanding dotted circles are displaying correctly but both cases where combining is used are tofu. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:58, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I can confirm this, but it seems to me that Chrome on my Android phone just doesn't have access to / use the right fonts. —Kusma (talk) 20:14, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how that can be the cause because it certainly has the glyph for both the dotted circle and the combining acute (U+0301 ́ COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT). It is not a precomposed character. What is displayed is a tofu with a correctly placed acute accent. "It does not compute, Captain". --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:04, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Here is a precomposed o acute: ⟨ó⟩

and this is using cwith=o: U+0301 ó COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT. Which displays correctly! So what's wrong with the dotted circle which is the standard method 'frame' a diacritic. Curiouser and curiouser. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Can confirm I'm seeing it as well (Chrome 117 on Android, fine elsewhere) - assuming that 'tofu' is the thing showing for me as [X]. However! Looking at diacritic, the examples in the lead are all broken, but further down the examples given for Hebrew niqqud etc are correctly showing the dotted circle. If we look at 'types', then they're mostly messed up but one or two are correct (interpunct, triangular colon, titlo) and for the combining ones, we get an [X] then the dotted circle for the second character. Mysterious indeed. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:24, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, "tofu" is a nickname for .notdef, see unicode input#Glyph availability. But the crazy thing is that it does have the glyph. If it can manage to place the diacritic correctly on the tofu or on a "normal" letter, why can't it just place it correctly on a dotted circle?

In the cases where the dotted circle is shown, the rendering is not actually being done correctly. See for example diacritic#Greek: the iota subscript is appearing after the circle rather than under it. I don't speak Hebrew but I suspect the same is happening with niqqud too. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:23, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Overall this sounds like something that should be reported upstream somewhere (although where exactly I don't know). A minimal reproduction seems to be an HTML file containing something like <span style="font-family: sans-serif">◌͝◌</span>, no need to bring Wikipedia or MediaWiki into it. Anomie ⚔ 12:07, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

A simple acute accent (<span style="font-family: sans-serif">◌́</span>) would be even simpler. I guess unless someone has a back channel to Google to make a bug report, we just have to accept it as a client end browser deficiency and so not something that we can fix here. A fix for your "two character spanning diacritic" would be icing on the cake.

For now, diacritic begins with {{Contains special characters}} and I will add (precomposed) examples where I can, in the cases where the rendering has failed.

I think we have taken this one as far as we can here, my thanks to all who contributed. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:25, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I see this problem on my Chrome for Android. I opened up remote debugging to check which font-families are being chosen. On my phone's Chrome, the correctly displaying dotted circle on its own displays in SEC Naskh Arabic (bizarre font choice), and the tofu dotted circle with non-tofu combining acute displays in Roboto. On my phone's Firefox, the dotted circle and the dotted circle with combining acute both display in Noto Naskh Arabic. In both browsers, the angle brackets are in Roboto. So Chrome is choosing to display the grapheme cluster in a font that contains a glyph for one code point but not the other, whereas Firefox chooses a font that works for both. — Eru·tuon 19:40, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, that explains well what is happening. As to why it is happening, God (aka Google) only knows. And to think that the Noto (No tofu) fonts were supposed to be the magic bullet for such issues! --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:35, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Roboto is the older font family that predates Noto. Some devices will use Noto, but many stylesheets still call for Arial. Andre🚐 20:44, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Result! That was the required hint. This syntax fixes the problem: <span style="font-family: Noto, Roboto, serif, sans-serif">◌́</span> produces ◌́. Checked on android phone and Chromebook, both using Chrome. Of course it probably wouldn't work on iPhones or Windows PCs now, but who cares?

But to be serious, would someone please suggest suitable fonts to add to the font family string, to keep other vendors on board. The fun part will be revising Unichar accordingly (come back, DePiep, all is forgiven?). — Preceding unsigned comment added by JMF (talk • contribs) 23:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

If we're going to mess around with the font string generated by the template, just <span style="font-family: serif"> was sufficient in the quick testing I did. OTOH, having random serif font in other places (like "áéíóú◌́" rather than "áéíóú◌́") might look odd or cause other problems. Anomie ⚔ 23:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

The problem is just because some devices have their default sans-serif font set to Roboto. It can be fixed by giving any font other than sans-serif. You wouldn't want serif because then you'll get serifs. I happen to have Noto Sans installed, so everything looked fine for me, but you could do Noto, sans-serif, which would display Noto to anyone who has Noto, and fallback to Roboto, or Arial or whatever font the device has set for sans-serif. Andre🚐 01:31, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I had already found the simple serif trick but I didn't have consistent results. But let's assume it will work. I don't speak templatish so this may be a hand-waving answer, but... The problem only arises in two cases:

in articles about diacritics, where the ◌ is being used as "neutral grey background". I see no difficulty here, indeed quite often serif is needed to properly distinguish the glyph. It will mean a series of manual updates but I am happy to do that.
{{unichar}} when cwith=◌ is used. This is again almost always to illustrate a diacritic. The 'fun' will be to revise that complex template to have a display that is conditional on the presence or otherwise of cwith=◌. But let me take that one back to template talk:unichar to see what might be involved.

Anything more to say? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:03, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

If there is a kind template wizard in the house, a small enhancement to {{unichar}} is needed, to handle cwith=◌ with a bit more style . I have stated the requirement at template talk:Unichar#emplate enhancement needed, please. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:45, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I have extended {{script}} which can be used as the use= option for unichar, to support use2 as {{script/Noto}} or {{script/Serif}} (pass as lowercase to the param) e.g.

{{unichar |0301 |combining acute accent |cwith=◌|use=script|use2=serif}}
- U+0301 ◌́ COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT
{{unichar |0301 |combining acute accent |cwith=◌|use=script|use2=noto}}
- U+0301 ◌́ COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT Andre🚐 20:03, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I have applied the above change to use "serif" whenever cwith=◌ is used. See if it works. Andre🚐 00:25, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Again, thank you for your help. The change to {{unichar}} is live and working well. I have begun the longwinded process of updating the individual diacritic articles that use the "dotted circle + combining diacritic" directly.

This discussion may now be regarded as concluded satisfactorily. My thanks to all who contributed, especially Andrevan. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:09, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

In which case,

Resolved

. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:35, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Extention to go directly to changed content from the watchlist?

While the watchlist can link to a specific section on a page, it can't go straight to the actual content that is changed. I can guess why this is the case— sections have anchors and arbitrary text does not— but I wonder if it's possible to hack something up like a) detect the first instance of changed content from the diff and b) insert a temporary anchor into the watchlist target and link directly to that. Or whatever. I frequently wish for this when people add comments to long, deep talk page conversations, where the diff doesn't allow me to naturally place the new comment in proper context. And yes, there are edge cases like multiple instances of changed content, but for my aforementioned scenario, going straight to the first instance of changed content would suffice. Does something like this exist, or could it ever? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 22:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

For signed posts, there is already an anchor, it's crucial to the reply feature - for instance this post. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:30, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Ah yes, there it is. Now to only get the watchlist to know about it and link accordingly... Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 00:18, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Not the same but similar: is there a way to go directly to the diff of unviewed changes from the watchlist? Or anything that can shorted the chain of watchlist -> history -> select last revision that doesn't say "updated since your last visit" -> click "compare selected revisions"? LittlePuppers (talk) 02:16, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

The grouping mode has this (Preferences → Recent changes →

Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist). Nardog (talk) 02:27, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Ah, excellent! I never thought about this as a consequence of that setting, but it makes sense. (I might see about doing something so the list of edit summaries is expanded by default, but I'll try it like this first.) LittlePuppers (talk) 02:33, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh, that only collapses edits that occur consecutively, without edits to other pages on my watchlist happening in the interim. LittlePuppers (talk) 04:04, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

If you want to see all the changes since your last visit, you can click on the "cur" link at the start of the history item corresponding to the last revision you've seen already, thus skipping selecting the radio button and clicking on "Compare selected revisions". isaacl (talk) 03:14, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Good suggestion, that makes sense. LittlePuppers (talk) 04:04, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

It's not exactly what you ask for, but I found that visual diffs are usually much nicer for reading new comments on talk pages than the wikitext diffs. You can view them by using the "Visual / Wikitext" toggle buttons in the top-right corner when viewing a diff. Matma Rex talk 15:39, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Module Routemap

Another redlink on the latest run of Special:WantedCategories for Category:Pages with errors of Module Routemap; both of the pages in it relate to a coding error in the same {{Main Western Line}} routemap. In both articles, the routemap is specifically displaying a "Missing start-Collapsible markup!" line near the bottom of the map; however, since I'm not knowledgeable about that module's coding, I don't know how to fix it myself, so I wanted to ask if somebody with more expertise can fix that.

But also, even if and when that error is fixed and the category becomes depopulated, I note that virtually all of the other "Pages with errors" maintenance categories that we do have are named errors in template-or-module, rather than errors of template-or-module. So even though this seems like a maintenance category that probably should exist to catch future errors in routemap usages, I don't want to create it at "of" if "in" is more standard. So if the category is desirable, then could somebody also ensure that the module generates it as "in" instead of "of", and then create it accordingly? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 13:20, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:22, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Please unfuck page history

The date picker in page histories sucks for two reasons.

One has to enter a full date YYYY-MM-DD. Not even entering a year and clicking on 1 January works.
After submitting a date, one cannot browse to edits that are more recent than the date selected.

The following gadget does not need a full date and allows browsing in both directions. One has to be on a page history in order for it to work. The date string may be one of the following:

YYYY

YYYYMM

YYYYMMDD

YYYYMMDDHH

YYYYMMDDHHMM

javascript:var pleaseunfuckpagehistory = new URL(location.href); pleaseunfuckpagehistory.searchParams.set('offset', prompt('Please enter date string','')); location.href = pleaseunfuckpagehistory;

I hope this will be useful to you. Utfor (talk) 19:36, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I edit the url manually instead of fighting with the date widget, too. —Cryptic 01:05, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

"Not even entering a year and clicking on 1 January works." – At least this seems easily fixable. Clicking on any other date actually works, it's just the first day of the year/month that confuses the widget. I filed T347319 and proposed a patch for it. Matma Rex talk 16:26, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:Coord at the top breaks page previews

See, for example, Niš. This would be fixed by removing {{Coord}} output from the parser by adding noexcerpt class, see the documentation for TextExtracts. stjn 19:45, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

@Stjn, Module_talk:Coordinates#Protected_edit_request_on_29_May_2023. You may wish to comment. Izno (talk) 20:47, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Dark Mode and hardcoded colors

Is there any way, for example, in lists of colors (like in iPhone 15) to exempt certain colors/markup from being converted to "dark mode"? It's undesirable to see a dark hue swapped for a light hue (or vice versa) on something that should be showing color accuracy. Like a CSS class or something that exempts an element from being modified? —Locke Cole • t • c 03:41, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

The class .mw-no-invert prevents color inversion. – SD0001 (talk) 04:53, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

@SD0001 Thank you! That got it. Implemented at iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 on just the table color cells and it survives swapping back and forth. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 04:05, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually, follow-up: it indeed works on the desktop site when using the dark mode gadget. However, in the Wikipedia app (on iOS anyways) dark mode seems to make the colors show as black. In light mode, the colors show as expected. Is there a way to suppress the Wikipedia app from changing the colors? —Locke Cole • t • c 05:31, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Oddly, it also doesn't seem to work when attempting to apply it to the colored cells in Interpol notice (in the notice types section). Even when applied to the table itself, every other cell remains light in dark mode, but the colors are still reversed. Very bizarre. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Consider filing a Phabricator ticket and tagging it "Wikipedia-Android-App-Backlog". Consider mentioning .mw-no-invert and suggest that they program the app to use it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:00, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Link Previews are failing

[iOS, Mobile Web]. In Safari, there is a feature where, if you continuously touch a link, a preview of the webpage will be downloaded and display. On English Wikipedia, however, the preview will display the same page the link is in. All other language Wikipedias, and other English Wikimedia sites, and the dektop version of WP accessed in Safari do not have this glitch Mach61 (talk) 01:22, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Example of such a link? Nardog (talk) 02:34, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

All wikilinks, regardless of namespace - but not external links Mach61 (talk) 04:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

have you tried this logged out ? Because the most likely cause is a userscript or gadget. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

@Mach61 I assumed you are refer to this iOS feature. I have iPhone (iOS 17) and is working for me on Safari. As this is iOS native feature, I don't see how it's related to Wikipedia. Considered trying on other website to see if you are able to link preview. If you are not referring to the iOS feature, then kindly provide the detailed steps to replicate. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 08:54, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

I am talking about that specific feature, and all other sites work with it, other than “en.m.wikipedia.org”. Again, both the desktop skin and other language mobile versions of Wikipedia work. Mach61 (talk) 13:41, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

@Mach61 My last available solution is try appending ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on the page you're viewing and hit enter, after page refresh, try touch and hold any wikilink to see if it works. If this works then it's your installed userscripts and/or gadgets blocking such behaviour which to me personally is unlikely/unexpected scenario since as far as I'm aware of, website cannot manipulate native iOS feature such as the Safari's link preview. Also check Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, enable page previews is ticked. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 16:09, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Appending “?safemode=1” doesn’t work. Will inquire into other solutions. Mach61 (talk) 17:17, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Please post an actual example instead of just claiming it's on all pages. You obviously haven't tested millions of pages. Always post an example if possible when you report a problem. It works correctly for me in iOS 16.6.1 on an iPhone 8, for example on Mach61 in your signature on this page. Does that fail for you? Does the link go to your user page when you tap it normally? PrimeHunter (talk) 18:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

No, clicking that link doesn’t preview my page; it previews VPT. Yes, links work normally. I have an iPhone 12 on IOS 17.0.1 Mach61 (talk) 01:24, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: a few minutes ago, I was directed to my Wikimedia central login via preview, with a message that my token was invalid. After clicking “dismiss” on that page, the bug still exists as before Mach61 (talk) 05:37, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Second update: at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard/Archive 49#, this link to a special page previews correctly. Other wikilinks still do not. Mach61 (talk) 02:48, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I think I’ve narrowed down the issue to having something to do with the preview working with the last page in my history/in my cache/????. This is because when I click Special:Random, previews for those links will also be for a different random page. Again, “en.m.wikipedia.org” is the only website this occurs with Mach61 (talk) 02:59, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Pages using WikiHiero category rename

Related to the above Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Pages using WikiHiero discussion, yesterday JJMC89bot was set loose on speedy renaming the category to Category:Pages using the WikiHiero extension — however, as that's a template-transcluded category, it did not have the result of moving any of the pages into the new category, so that the new category was empty and there were 546 pages left sitting in the redlinked old category, which was (obviously) thus sitting on the latest run of Special:WantedCategories.

Per past discussion on similar cases, however, JJMC89bot is not supposed to move categories that are template-transcluded if it can't make the necessary template edits to automatically move the contents over to the new category, and moves of that type have to be performed manually so that they don't create followup chaos like this.

But since I can't figure out what template to edit so that the pages move to the correct category, I've had to temporarily revert that category renaming so that it can be handled correctly by a human. Can somebody with more knowledge of that situation ensure that whatever template was transcluding the old category gets properly updated so that the category can be moved back to the updated name again? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 12:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I submitted an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category and listed the category at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Manual (although following the instructions led to unusual formatting). This was a speedy renaming request processed by Ymblanter, who maybe missed that it was not a normal category renaming for the bot. I don't usually get involved with category renames, so I'm stumbling in the dark a bit. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

We can not decline requests (speedy or not) just on the basis that the category is transcluded by template, and someone has to solve these cases afterwards (we have another bunch just hanging out there). Declining requests would amount to overwriting consensus. To be honest, I am already prepared to remove all these templates and add categories by hand. It might have been a brilliant idea, but it created more trouble what it is worth. Ymblanter (talk) 13:56, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think anybody is declining the request. The problem appears to be that the category renaming was assigned to a bot when it should have been handled manually. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:26, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Could you please point out to the discussion where such consensus was established? Ymblanter (talk) 13:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

The category renaming was proposed as a speedy rename because the name assigned by the WMF developers is suboptimal (I'm trying to be nice). There were no objections. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:29, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, but I was asking about a general consensus to not feed the template populated categories to a bot. Ymblanter (talk) 16:18, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't know of a discussion, but I would not recommend feeding such category renames to a bot on the grounds that it generally won't work. I don't think you need consensus to avoid doing something that doesn't work. Maybe I misunderstand. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:27, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, checking if every category is added manually or by a template increases the length of my workflow by a factor of three. And for the last month, I have been the only administrator dealing with speedy CFD. For the last few years, we were feeding such categories to a bot which would create the new category, and then someone (typically me) would fix the template so that the articles get to the new category. But there have been several cases recently when the template was too complicated. I do not think the solution is to force me to check every single category, especially if there is no consensus it is strictly necessary. Ymblanter (talk) 16:40, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Except that if you don't check, you increase the length of everybody else's workflow by a factor of three thousand, because it causes fusterclucks like this where a bot moves the category, but fails to move any of the category's contents over to the new category, so the new category is left empty while all of the contents are left malingering in a redlink. In other words, what you're saying is that your time is more valuable than everybody else's: you don't want to spend a few extra minutes to check if a category is being template-generated before throwing it to a bot, but you don't care about the couple of hours that everybody else has to put in to fix a problem that could have been prevented with a simple two-minute check? It's not terribly helpful to make messes that other people have to invest even more time into cleaninug up, you know.

So if you don't want to invest more time into speedy renamings than you already do, and I deserve to be able to invest a lot less time into redlinked category cleanup than I currently have to, then how about a compromise? Maybe, when you're speedy renaming categories, how about the bot doesn't delete the old category right away, and instead leaves it in place as a category redirect, which can then be revisited and deleted once it's been confirmed as emptied? Maybe it could even have its own special "categoryredirect" template different from the regular one, which would function like dated maintenance categories and automatically add the old category to the speedy deletion queue once it was emptied? That way the bot can freely move the category and thus save you some valuable time, but the old category doesn't become a redlink until after it's been depopulated so that my valuable time is also saved? Does that sound like a fair middle ground? Bearcat (talk) 19:29, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the Speedy CFD instructions could be enhanced to emphasize that adding "NO BOTS" to the beginning of a CFD nomination greatly improves the odds that everyone involved will do the right thing. Pppery did make a note in their nomination that a MediaWiki file would need to be edited, but that note apparently was missed by Ymblanter when they heroically processed the nomination. Gnomes can be thin on the ground sometimes, so I get it; some days, it feels like I'm the only one who cares about some essential chore. In this case, we could all decide to be on the same side against hasty work by the developers who made this work for us in the first place, but even better would be for us all to pull together. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:39, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Did you mean hieroically?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

It's a fair cop. I can't believe I missed that golden opportunity, especially given the missing "i" at MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category! – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:51, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, and as one of CFDW's two regular admins (Ymblanter being the other one - echoing Jonesey95's point about gnome tasks often being understaffed), I should have known that and I see the instructions do say to use NO BOTS. But I must have thought that pointing out the exact edit page that needed to be edited to carry out the proposal was sufficient. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:17, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

The botop thinks it's the listing's admin's responsibility not to feed the bot bad instructions (or at least did so the previous time you complained). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:17, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok, no problem, I will start checking every category I feed. But then nobody should be surprised the speed goes down factor of three. I only have so much time to invest every day. Every admin is of course welcome to help. Ymblanter (talk) 05:07, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

All over Wikipedia, but especially at CfD (as well as other places), there is a lack of admins either willing or competent to help. — Qwerfjkl talk 15:40, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

If a redirect is an acceptable temporary solution I can easily do it manually. But I am afraid on top of it we have empty new categories which then get deleted within seven days. Again, I am more and more thinking about just direct ban on the categories populated by templates. Ymblanter (talk) 05:09, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

(side note) Huh, these category names sure are a mess. I filed a bug to change the default ones to match the ones used here on English Wikipedia: T347324. Maybe someone is bored enough to work on this :) Matma Rex talk 16:48, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-39

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

The Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users. [9]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (calendar).
The ResourceLoader mediawiki.ui modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes

New variables will be added to AbuseFilter: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time. [10][11]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Reflinks not working?

None of the 69. links at WP:REFLINKS seem to be working. ♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:57, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Still not working. Is there any way to fix this, as User:Dispenser is not active nowadays.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:39, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

@Ianmacm, there is not. The code is not freely licensed so cannot be reused. — Qwerfjkl talk 15:39, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

In that case I'm officially pissed off, because it's one of my favourite tools.☹️--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:09, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

@Ianmacm: See the archives of this page, going back to mid/late 2013, for a number of threads concerning Dispenser's tools, why they are not hosted on WMF servers, and therefore why they cannot be maintained by anybody else.

Basically: Dispenser's tools were hosted on Toolserver, the hardware for which was owned by Wikimedia Deutschland and who took it down at the end of June 2014. The WMF provided Tool Labs as a replacement, but required that anything on there had to be freely-licensed and, I believe, open source as well, conditions that Dispenser refused to comply with. So Dispenser hosted their tools elsewhere, on hardware that has since become non-functional. Hence this edit, amongst others. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:33, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I've edited WP:REFLINKS to make clear that WP:REFILL is now the only similar tool that is available.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:47, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Providing supported replacements for Dispenser's invaluable tools is a perennial request at the annual Community Wishlist Survey, but would require a lot of work and has so far had no resource allocated. Certes (talk) 10:43, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Lua freaking out at Comparison of web browsers

Why are there big, red Lua "not enough memory" messages throughout Comparison of web browsers? Largoplazo (talk) 09:56, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Because the server ran out of memory budget to process the page. Reduce the size/complexity of the page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:59, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Is this a problem with {{wikidata}}? According to the NewPP limit report (accessible near the bottom of the rendered page's HTML source) calls of that template take comparatively most of the time to build the page (not sure about memory use). —Kusma (talk) 10:17, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

The problem might actually be the length of some of the Wikidata pages being used, compare Module_talk:Wd/Archive_1#COVID-19_pandemic_in_Luxembourg_totally_broken. —Kusma (talk) 10:26, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Taking the single row for the Edge browser as an example, it has ten calls to {{wikidata}} and that one row uses 12MB of Lua memory out of the total allowed 50MB. Not going to work. Some investigation of the history article would be interesting—do old versions have this problem? Has anything else recently changed? Johnuniq (talk) 10:51, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

The Wikidata item for Edge, d:Q18698690, has grown from ca. 180k to over 500k in the last three years. Seems we can't use this item anymore. It is a bit ironic that Wikidata's accumulation of more and more data is making that data unusable for Wikipedia. —Kusma (talk) 11:05, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

"Comparison of web browsers" should use the |sep parameter in the wikidata template, in order to get one transclusion per row, instead of two. Since memory from one transclusion is not accessable to the second transclusion, it will help quite a bit. Snævar (talk) 16:28, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Could you try to add some information about memory use and how to make the calls more efficient to the template documentation? It is not obvious at all to the casual observer with little knowledge of Lua memory issues that this would make a difference. —Kusma (talk) 16:37, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

That solution is probably not going to solve the issue as is, but it will help. When there are optimizations, often they both require using the functions less and using said optimization. The proposal is doing something like |sep=</td><td> and merge two transclusions that way. <td> is used and not || because lua does not process wikicode, unless asked specifically to do so. |sep= is in the documentation. I think mathing it out would be more effort than actually doing it, so I do not see the point. I am thinking about this logically, not mathematically. Snævar (talk) 16:39, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Is there a way to get all STEM pages on wikipedia?

Question - Imagine that I am a STEM educator and wanted to get a complete list of all on-topic categories, subcats, and page ids for just STEM articles on wikipedia. How would I do that?

My first attempt was looking at the categorylinks table - mw:Manual:Categorylinks_table, but anyone familiar with that would know that it's a dead end. Wikipedia is too over categorized (eg, "coat of arms with plants" is under botany->plants

I've also asked this in other places:

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Category_views; d:Wikidata:Project_chat#Is_there_a_way_to_get_all_STEM_pages_on_wikipedia?; Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Council#Get_a_complete_list_of_STEM_categories,_their_subcategories,_and_page_ids Wikiqrdl (talk) 00:33, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Since geology categories end up including continents which end up including countries and all things and people in those countries, category descent is not the way to go. You could attempt WikiProjects. EG https://wp1.openzim.org/#/project/Chemicals/articles gives all the chemicals project tagged pages. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:12, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett yeah, exactly. I've poked the wikiprojects people, though they are more about people than data. It's some combination of wikiprojects and portals, I think. I've pinged the dbpedia people as well, as I believe they were trying to solve this problem. Wikiqrdl (talk) 01:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I would use the templatelinkstable. Most pages under a wikiproject have an wikiproject template. (remove the colon in sql) The pages in the sql query below are talk pages, so not the page_id you are looking for. Since you did look at the categorytable, I suppose you can try to figure out to couple it with the sql, and find the correct page_id. After all, people do not learn by being fed every single detail.

select page_title from page
join templatelinks on tl_from = page_id
join linktarget on tl_target_id = lt_id and lt_title in ("maths_rating", "WikiProject_Technology", "WikiProject_Science", "WikiProject_Engineering")
where page_namespace = 1
and page_is_redirect = 0

--Snævar (talk) 02:27, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

ahh, I missed that. They're tagging the talk pages. Fascinating! Thanks. Wikiqrdl (talk) 05:29, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Not all relevant articles would necessarily be tagged, so there is probably value in using ORES topic predictions in addition to the wikiproject tagging. Now, running the model yourself on every article would be a massive inconvenience, but as it turns out, this is built into the default search function (as documented at mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Articletopic). Indeed, Special:Search/articletopic:stem returns slightly under 1.16 of the 6.72 million articles on the english wikipedia, and at a quick glance most results seem relevant. The best way to export that, I'm not yet sure, but it will probably be through the API. Alpha3031 (t • c) 11:28, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

In the end this is a lack of scope problem. There is no hard line where 'STEM' stops, so in a system like Wikipedia that means everything will bleed into your result set. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:36, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

PetScan may also be worth a look (though it appears to be down temporarily). It can limit to pages with any or all of certain templates, and there's an option to check the talk page rather than the article. Certes (talk) 13:01, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I've used PetScan + templates at scale before - it is a bit fiddly sometimes and prone to falling over, but it's an amazing tool for this and absolutely second the recommendation.

For something conceptually fuzzy like "STEM pages" inferring it from widely-used templates is probably going to be the best approach possible, short of text-classifying tools - if those templates exist. (I did an analysis on # of sports bios a while back that lucked out by being able to use article infoboxes, for example). You'll miss a lot of stuff, and get a lot of false positives, but it'll still be reasonably OK for a high-level approximation.

The category tree is hopelessly muddled and Wikidata is probably far too fine-grained and complex for this. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:28, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

WP:EFFPR INDEX

Recently I Google searched some material that was added at EFFPR and found out that Google displays a result for that page - but now that I've thought about it and examined WP:EFFP I've found that EFFP has __NOINDEX__.

The rendered meta tag for both are:
- <meta name="robots" content="max-image-preview:standard"> for Wikipedia:Edit filter/False positives/Reports; and
- <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow,max-image-preview:standard"> for Wikipedia:Edit filter/False positives.

My question is then:
- Is it actually intended for EFFPR to be displayed by search engines, or should it be like EFFP?

– 2804:F14:80FB:2E01:4CA1:2349:2447:241C (talk) 11:09, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Suffusion of Yellow added __NOINDEX__ in 2018.[12] I don't know why it was removed and the page history length makes it hard to find the removal but I guess there was no good reason so I have restored it.[13] PrimeHunter (talk) 00:13, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I hadn't thought about the possibility of it having been removed.

There is a filter for when NOINDEX or INDEX is added to a page (filter 1183), but there does not appear to be one for when one of those are removed.

Still, I used that to find the date of the last time it was added (July) and forward tracked after that (maybe a couple thousand edits, 500 at a time) and narrowed it down to this removal by an IP with no summary provided: <diff>.

I assume that's when it was last removed because the filter was not triggered again until your addition (although the filter does not trigger for bots)... seeing the IPs other contributions it doesn't seem like there was any good reason for removing it as you guessed, probably no good reason for removing the other lines the change removed either.

– 2804:F14:80BD:BF01:5D3B:7564:338E:A8AB (talk) 02:40, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Unexpectedly I'm one of the people who added NOINDEX (in a <revert> in June of this year!?) to the page - I had no memory of the page with the templates at the top intact... I guess I tricked myself into thinking it was just EFFP that had templates. – 2804:F14:80BD:BF01:5D3B:7564:338E:A8AB (talk) 02:50, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Bibliography import/export

Is there a tool that can translate $L a T e X$ BibLaTeX .bib files to wikipedia citation templates and vice versa? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:27, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Add a "year" parameter with a subcategorization function to Template:Non-free biog-pic

I propose to add a "year" parameter with a subcategorization function to Template:Non-free biog-pic, so that rather than classifying 25,000+ images in a single Category:Non-free biographical images, images would be categorized into, e.g., Category:Non-free biographical images published in 1939. This would be useful because all of these images will eventually fall into the public domain on a specific date. Publication year is a required parameter for uploading an image, so both the recategorization and the creation of the subcategories could be largely automated. It would only take someone with the template-editing skills to implement. BD2412 T 01:53, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Please keep discussions in one place. A version of the above was posted at Template talk:Non-free biog-pic. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:58, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I posted that, and immediately saw in the page history that no one has been responding to discussions posted there for years. BD2412 T 02:14, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: this is now favorably resolved. Cheers! BD2412 T 19:58, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Brackets in title in italics

I have encountered an unusual technical problem and don't know what to do. The page name of the article about the Picasso painting Bust of a Seated Woman (Jacqueline Roque) should be all in italics because the name in brackets is an integral part of the title. But the page name actually displays the italics only outside of the brackets, which makes it appear as if Jacqueline Roque was the author of a painting called Bust of a Seated Woman. @Johnbod: have you had this problem before? Edelseider (talk) 15:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The instructions at {{Infobox artwork}} were a bit confusing. I have improved them. The infobox needed |italic title=all to force italics on the parenthetical portion of the name. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:28, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Edelseider (talk) 16:29, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, just seen this - no, I don't think I have. Johnbod (talk) 20:17, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

XTools

Trying to look at my edit count on XTools leads to a message that

"Wikimedia Cloud Services Error

This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project.

Maintainers can find troubleshooting instructions from our documentation on Wikitech."

Any speculation on what the problem is and when it might get fixed? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 06:06, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Quary queries are also unsuccessful right now. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 07:09, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

This issue was reported at phab:T347665 :) Sohom (talk) 07:21, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

It also means that the Library Card Platform is unreachable. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:25, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Reclaiming my volunteer status

Hello, all,

At the end of this week, I will be reclaiming my volunteer status.

I joined the Wikimedia Foundation in 2013 because I believed that the introduction of the visual editor would significantly affect here at "my home on the internet". I wanted to be able to help the community through the inevitable bumps on the road, and to help the Editing team understand what experienced editors need. That path took longer than any of us had expected, and some parts of it were bumpier than any of us wanted, but the Editing team finished the deployment process last month. From the day it arrived here at the English Wikipedia on July 1, 2013 until when it finally got out of Beta Features at the very last wikis took 10 years and 53 days. Combined with the mobile visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, more than 120 million edits have used VisualEditor, including more than 27 million here at the English Wikipedia.

We have been down a few other paths together during that time (remember Typography refresh in 2014, or Special:LintErrors in 2016?), and as I think about transitioning back to volunteer life, I have two projects that I want you all here at VPT to keep in mind during the coming months.

The first is DiscussionTools, which was the main result of the massive Talk pages consultation in 2019. The last bits in active development are nearly finished, and the last piece will probably be deployed in the coming months. It will add information to Talk: pages (e.g., the number of comments in a section), and therefore it will change the appearance of the talk pages. It seems to be pretty popular and effective, so I don't expect you to get too many questions about it, but the key thing for folks on this page to know about this is: If you don't like it, you can turn it off in preferences. In fact, if you wanted to avoid it entirely, you could go to Beta Features now, enable Discussion tools, save your new prefs setting, and then go to the Editing prefs and turn it off (it'll be very last item in the list, "Show discussion activity"), save that change, and then you'd never even see it when it's deployed. You might, though, want to first give it a try for a few days, to see whether you like it; I do.

The other is that some time next year, all the IP addresses will be hidden, e.g., in page histories. Don't worry; almost everyone reading this page will still be able to see the IP addresses for unregistered editors; it's just the new editors and the general public who won't have access. The team working on the new Temporary accounts system has been talking to the stewards about patrolling needs this year, and they're working on a new-and-improved version of https://guc.toolforge.org/, which should help ease the transition. However, it'll still be a new workflow to learn, and that always requires some effort.

What you can do right now to help is to put the main project page on your watchlist at Meta-Wiki and to make sure that the owners of your favorite tools and scripts are aware of this change and ready to make any necessary updates in December or January. I don't expect this change to be visible here until April 2024 (and probably later than that), but this is a major change, and you shouldn't wait until the last minute. Tell your friends, watch for information, and be ready to adjust. If we all work together, we'll get through this, and at the end of that path, we should have better security for us plus better privacy for some contributors.

And, finally: Thank you. Thank you for answering my questions, thank you for making suggestions about software changes, and thank you for helping make the English Wikipedia truly one of the last best places on the internet. Volunteer-me will doubtless be back next month with more questions. ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:27, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

We look forward to sucking you in to some of our volunteer projects. I'm tempted to say something snarky as I often do about unfinished projects, but I recognize that if any of us were time-traveled back ten or fifteen years to the Wikipedia that was in production then, we sure would miss some of the progress that has been made. Thanks for working to communicate with the mess that is the tribe of technical editors here at en.WP. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:43, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Many kudos for all the work you've done, @Whatamidoing (WMF), and I echo Jonesey's sentiment! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:40, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), thanks for all the work you have done, even the thankless stuff. I hope we will not be descending into a new dark age when you leave. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:47, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Here’s to you, for all you do for Wikimedia communities. –xeno^talk 16:29, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

edwardbetts.com

73870 articles, like Graham Nesbitt, contain a link to the website edwardbetts.com. edwardbetts.com appears to be a tool to find mentions of an article in other articles, but as far as I can tell the link is not visible; I believe it is coming from either Module:Find sources or Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources mainspace, but I am not certain.

If we want to use this tool it may be useful to make the link accessible; otherwise, I think we should remove it. BilledMammal (talk) 15:06, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

On that particular article it's from {{orphan}}. Apparently it's intended that the content of that template is hidden by default in many cases but still able to be shown via overrides in an editor's common.css. See Template:Orphan#Visibility for more information. Anomie ⚔ 17:21, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

.Media web sites confusing the cite web template

Check this one out that appears to be a valid url, yet it triggers an error.^[1] STEMinfo (talk) 19:37, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

References

^ "UAE: e& and G42 merge data centre services under Khazna Data Centres". W.Media. 7 June 2022. Retrieved 29 August 2023.

STEMinfo (talk) 19:37, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

@STEMinfo bring this up at Help talk:Citation Style 1 - will need a hack to the validation script in Module:Citation/CS1; it isn't a problem with .media, it is that you have a 1-character hostname on that domain. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:26, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I have posted to Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 90#url=w.media false warning. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:59, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Odd infobox issue

I find myself unable to publish edits at John von Neumann which remove the lengthy "known for" list in the infobox; when I click the "publish changes" button after editing, the page just reloads with no change. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:06, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Worked for me. —Cryptic 19:19, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

What page reloads? Are you seeing the edit window again, or the saved, rendered page without your intended changes? If the former, have you enabled the preference to require an edit summary? I have that preference enabled, and when I try to save without an edit summary, I get the edit window again, with a tiny message that is easy to miss, reminding me to add an edit summary. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:28, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The preference to remind for an edit summary is a godsend, the tiny little box is very annoying. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Sadly it's the latter, Jonesey95. I do have the edit summary preference enabled, but that's not it. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:19, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

New problem, I cannot even edit the page properly—only two lines of text are visible, the others are missing! See c:File:Screenshot of John von Neumann Wikipedia editing page not loading.png for a screenshot. Any ideas what's causing this Jonesey95 Cryptic? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:25, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps it is time to restart your browser or computer. Occasionally I also see that the page is not updated after I edit. But after a reload it is updated. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29: I didn't see it the first time, but in your screenshot there's actually a tiny scrollbar on the right side of the 2 visible lines - I wonder if the text isn't still all there (and scrollable), just for some reason squished into the space of two lines, the bottom button for scrolling sure looks like it's enabled.

Question: What is the P inside yellow square brackets box in the bottom right in the image? (not that I have any idea what is causing these problems) – 2804:F14:80BD:BF01:D85F:3C72:7CA4:BA29 (talk) 21:56, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

The P is ProveIt, an optional tool for registered users at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. Demo on John von Neumann. It works for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:40, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

The problem of the edit box showing extremely few lines was also reported here a few weeks ago, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 207#Edit error. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:47, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29: Follow-up to my last post: at User:AirshipJungleman29/common.js, try disabling this line:

importScript('User:Lingzhi2/reviewsourcecheck-sb.js');

like this:

// importScript('User:Lingzhi2/reviewsourcecheck-sb.js');

- does it fix the issue of only two lines of text are visible, the others are missing? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:10, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

How to make a new template

How does wone go about making a new template for a sport. I am trying to make one for netball tours. I have though no idea where to begin. PicturePerfect666 (talk) 04:41, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

See Help:Templates#Writing templates Mach61 (talk) 05:32, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

What exactly do you want the template to show? There are lots of templates that show the results of matches or tables of results. There is probably some existing template that does approximately what you want and you can use that as the template for your template. — Jts1882 | talk 08:40, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Well in the same way cricket has a cricket series template I would like to generate a similar template for netball. cricket and rugby have tours, and so does netball and I am trying to create a template in the same vein for those tours. There is no existing template which does what I want. PicturePerfect666 (talk) 14:33, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Is there a way of getting an individual to help guide me through how to create a template? As I am struggling, Thank you in advance. PicturePerfect666 (talk) 16:12, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Can you describe exactly what the template should contain and how it should display? Some are easier than others. If one already exists which can be modified it can be relatively easy. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Sections not working correctly in mobile view

Desktop (with mobile view) screenshot, logged-in with gadgets and skin preferences (Firefox)

Desktop (with mobile view) screenshot, logged-out with default settings (Chrome)

On the article TFT LCD, the section headings past "Types" aren't working correctly when on the mobile website - they all get superseded by the Types section and can't be collapsed by themselves. This happens no matter the browser - I tried Firefox on Android and on desktop with mobile view enabled, as well as Chrome on desktop with mobile view. It happens both logged-in and logged-out (I thought a gadget or my common.css was messing with it, but that doesn't seem to be the case).

I'd put this on Phabricator, but I honestly don't know how to reproduce this other than that one article. I can't see anything wrong with the source. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 08:46, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Fixed by removing unclosed div tags. Nardog (talk) 08:56, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix! Looking at the page history, seems like this has gone unnoticed since 2009 :P Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 09:01, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

This is a good example of why it is useful for bots and human editors to fix "low priority" Linter errors, even though those edits may seem like noise in your watchlist. Missing end tags can sometimes result in the rest of a page being "swallowed up" or otherwise formatted incorrectly.

This page had two missing end tags. Gnomes have fixed all of the articles starting with A through G with two Linter errors (see report); this one, starting with T, was one of a few thousand left to tidy up. There are tens of thousands with a single Linter error as well. Thanks Nardog! – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:11, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Temporary accounts for unregistered editors

Read this in your language • Please help translate to other languages. • Please tell other users about these changes

Next year, unregistered editors will start using temporary accounts.

In 2024, editors who have not registered an account will automatically begin using temporary accounts. These editors are sometimes called "IP editors" because the IP address is displayed in the page history.

The Trust and Safety Product team gave a presentation at Wikimania about this change. You can watch it on YouTube.

There is more information at m:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

This'll be an interesting change. I just hope it doesn't make AV patrolling a complete nightmare. Deauthorized. ^(talk) 03:24, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Load a packaged gadget on another project

I'm looking for a way to retrieve the export value of a modular gadget on another project. What I mean by "modular gadget" is a gadget file with a module.exports declaration, i.e. a script file that's only reserved for variable/function declarations and doesn't call any function internally (see ja:MediaWiki:Gadget-testPackage.js that I created for experimental purposes).

When you load this file on the same project, either of the following just works:

var moduleName = 'ext.gadget.testPackage';
mw.loader.using(moduleName, function() {
	var testFunctions = mw.loader.require(moduleName);
	console.log(testFunctions);
});

var moduleName = 'ext.gadget.testPackage';
mw.loader.using(moduleName, function(require) {
	var testFunctions = require(moduleName);
	console.log(testFunctions);
});

But I don't know how I can do the same on another project on which the ResourceLoader doesn't recognize ext.gadget.testPackage as a module. Try, for instance on enwiki:

mw.loader.using('ext.gadget.testPackage').catch(function(err) {
	console.log(err); // Error: Unknown module: ext.gadget.testPackage
});

This result is taken for granted because enwiki doesn't have testPackage as a module name in gadgets-definition. So, for us to retrieve the export value of testPackage, we'll need to first make the system recognize testPackage as a module, and then call require. The only solution I have atm is:

var moduleName = 'ext.gadget.testPackage';
mw.loader.load('//ja.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?modules=' + moduleName);
setTimeout(function() {
	var testFunctions = mw.loader.require(moduleName);
	console.log(testFunctions); // OK
}, 3000);

But, it's ugly to use setTimeout because we want to do a "load the module, THEN" operation. Any idea how we can do this? FYI, the following doesn't work:

var moduleName = 'ext.gadget.testPackage';
mw.loader.load('//ja.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?modules=' + moduleName);
mw.loader.using(moduleName)
.then(function() {
	var testFunctions = mw.loader.require(moduleName);
	console.log(testFunctions);
})
.catch(function(err) {
	console.log(err); // Error: Unknown module: ext.gadget.testPackage
});

I'd appreciate any help. Dragoniez (talk) 08:17, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

You can use mw.loader.getScript() (which is a wrapper for $.ajax()). mw.loader.require() is "publicly exposed for debugging purposes only and must not be used in production code" btw. Nardog (talk) 08:25, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

@Nardog Thanks, the code below just worked.

var moduleName = 'ext.gadget.testPackage';
mw.loader.getScript('//ja.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?modules=' + moduleName)
.then(function() {
	mw.loader.using(moduleName)
	.then(function(require) {
		var testFunctions = require(moduleName);
		console.log(testFunctions);
	})
	.catch(function(err) {
		console.log(err);	
	});
})
.catch(function(err) {
	console.log(err);	
});

I guess I was a bit over-complicating things. Dragoniez (talk) 08:34, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Please help me adding new version of this graphic

I tried to upload the new corrected version of this graphic Media:Legal_framework_for_the_conscientious_objection_to_abortion_in_Europe.png but I don't know why the colours of my map has not been changed although I changed it in my new version of thi file. But Czechia and Bulgaria still are in blue omitting that fact, I changed their colours on red in my file The Wolak (talk) 11:23, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bypass your cache. Nardog (talk) 11:34, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Video Cut Tool login failure

I'm unable to login with OAuth to the Video Cut Tool, and get a 404 Page Not Found message each time I try. I left a comment on the related talk page, but have not yet had any response.

Any advice, or prompting that can be made to the developers would be most welcome! Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:00, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes I will take a look, assuming something in our (Video Cut Tool's) tech stack went down :( -- Sohom (talk) 07:22, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta Thanks: that'd be great. I'm desperate to trim down a webm file before I run an editathon next Tuesday. If you can fix it before then that'd be absolutely brill. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:57, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: I have now been able to login successfully. Thanks for looking into this for me. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:59, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

empty sitenotice dismiss dialog

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T347645

It appears there is a bug, likely with sitenotice, that may be triggering you to "dismiss" an empty notice on every page. If so, this is being looked in to in phab:T347722. It is safe to click dismiss there. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:38, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Now phab:T347645. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:41, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Hide

All of a sudden the "Hide" option is showing up at the top of my pages. Not knowing what it was for, I clicked on it in Chrome, and now it's gone there. I haven't touched it on Firefox or Edge. Why is it there, and should I care that it's suddenly popped up? It shows up as "Dismiss" on Wikisource. — Maile (talk) 04:07, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

See this section above; I noticed it too. Graham87 (talk) 04:16, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks.— Maile (talk) 04:19, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Note, a fix for this is expected next Thursday. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:35, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Hey, what's going on?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T347588

There's a problem here.

‍ ‍ Relativity ‍ ‍ 22:16, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I was able to get here by typing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse directly into my browser. ‍ ‍ Relativity ‍ ‍ 22:17, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

What's also weird is that the error comes up so far when I test "Maroon 5" but not "Apple", "Human" or "Benedict Arnold". ‍ ‍ Relativity ‍ ‍ 22:21, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Please write the error message out in text or at least briefly describe it (or maybe someone else here could do that). Not only is the video completely inaccessible to screen reader users like me, it also doesn't help with text searching should someone else get the same error message and try to search for it. Graham87 (talk) 06:45, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I see you also posted it at this teahouse thread without informing us, in violation of guidelines about multiple posting. From that thread it seems to be a normal maintenence error message. Graham87 (talk) 06:53, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

@Graham87 Thanks. And sorry about posting also on the Teahouse; I wasn't aware of that rule. ‍ ‍ Relativity ‍ ‍ 18:45, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

The error message looks the same as in T347588 ("Service Temporarily Unavailable"), perhaps it's the same issue (although the reporter there only noticed it happening when submitting the search with nothing entered). Matma Rex talk 19:30, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Vector 2022. Sticky page title covers top 2 lines of sticky table headers

Vector 2010 has no sticky title to cover up sticky table headers. Is there any way to fix this in Vector 2022? Or can it be fixed locally in the template:

{{Import style}}

See: Help:Table#Tables with sticky headers. That section has been much updated.

Can the sticky table header in the template be made to have priority over the page title bar? People can always go back to the top of the page to get that page title bar.

In Vector 2022 the only thing that needs to follow one down a page is the table of contents sandwich menu. And that is small enough that it could fit in the blank space on the left.

The sticky page title bar coexists with the sticky table headers on this German wikipedia page:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hot_Chili_Peppers/Diskografie

And it works with multi-row headers. And it has header cell borders.

Someone put a lot of work getting these sticky headers linked below to work. Look at relevant section in the CSS file.

https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Historic_Forbidden/Limited_Chart - has list of charts at the top with sticky headers. For example:
https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Historic_TCG_Limitations_Chart/2021%E2%80%93
https://yugipedia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css

--Timeshifter (talk) 05:53, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I have no idea what import style template is needed for, it seems overcomplicated for what it is trying to achieve, but this is a simple offset issue.

see also the gadget for sticky headers. MediaWiki:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css. unfortunately this causes other problems, when ppl start adding scrollable tables i side a scrollable page —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:24, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

TheDJ and Tol. I am not talking about scrolling tables. To avoid confusion I changed the name of the relevant Help:Table section to this:

Help:Table#Tables with sticky headers. I left an anchor to the old section name since it has been used elsewhere.

The most recent previous discussion at this Village Pump:

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 206#Vertical scrollable table with sticky headers

And there is the Phabricator task you, TheDJ, started in 2012: Phab:T42763: "Implement repeated/fixed/floating/sticky table headers".

I don't want to wait years more to have something that works, even if it isn't perfect. I want something that works for everybody without installing a gadget. So a template is one way to go that could be used now.

{{Import style}} was created by Tol.

See Global Search at Toolforge. Search for

"{{Import style|sticky}}" - in quotes. To get transclusion count and list of articles. It currently is used on 93 pages on various-language Wikipedias. Those sticky table headers work fairly well in Vector 2010.

{{Import style}} is also used for something else. Maybe it can be split off into a single-purpose template with a descriptive name like:

{{Sticky headers}}. With class=sticky-headers

I would be happy with just sticky column headers for now. How about somebody do that and incorporate the German Wikipedia method, and other methods, into it, too? Mostly pinging people participating in, or mentioned, in past sticky table header discussions: Jroberson108. TheDJ. Tol. Newslinger. Sdkb. Graeme Bartlett. Bawolff. GhostInTheMachine. Yair rand. Izno. Jts1882.

When this Village Pump discussion is done, people can continue here:

Help talk:Table#Tables with sticky headers. Discussions. It links to past discussions too.

Are there forums just for templates?

--Timeshifter (talk) 12:40, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:Import style was my attempt at providing a single template with which multiple different reusable styles could be imported for use (to reduce redundancy between different style-importing templates), but it is not all that widely used. As for now, I can work on using the German Wikipedia implementation here (as it seems to work quite well there). Tol (talk | contribs) @ 13:55, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Sticky table headers seem to be the norm on all of my devices and I have yet to see a page where this seemed to be a problem. Then again, I do not normally use Vector2022. However, after a couple of tests with Vector2022, I am solidly confirmed in my resolve to stay with Real Vector, but the sticky table headers vs stick article header thing still does not seem to be a problem. As such, I don't see any need for a template. Is there a specific browser that seems to have this problem? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

True for Firefox, Edge, Chrome, and Opera. It is in Vector 2022 that the problems lie. {{Import style|sticky}} works well in Vector 2010. See: Help:Table#Tables with sticky headers for details. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:27, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@Timeshifter, am I missing something here? I don't see any issues with the sticky header on List of countries by real population density based on food growing capacity — Qwerfjkl talk 18:46, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

For that list article you may need to narrow your browser width and/or increase the page's text size in order to better see the problems in Vector 2022. Here below is a simpler example: Part of a table from United States drug overdose death rates and totals over time#Comparisons to other countries. Note that when you scroll the page you can't see the sticky header in Vector 2022. But you can see it in Vector 2010.

Drug overdose deaths per year.
Location	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017
Austria	235	191	196	184	154
Belgium			168	152	148
Bulgaria	20	24	11	24	18
Croatia	77	99	97	85	65
Cyprus	10	6	5	12	16
Czech Republic	64	58	42	39	42
Denmark		197	202	183	239

--Timeshifter (talk) 20:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

You can also see it in MonoBook. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:54, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Redrose64. In Monobook skin are all the header lines sticky below in this table excerpt from United States drug overdose death rates and totals over time#1968–2021 overdose death rates and totals?:

1968–2020 US drug overdose deaths. 1,106,859 total.
Year	Deaths	Population (July 1 residents)	Crude death rate per 100,000	Age adjusted death rate per 100,000
1968	5,033	199,533,564	2.5	2.8
1969	6,006	201,568,206	3.0	3.3
1970	7,101	203,458,035	3.5	3.8
1971	6,771	206,782,970	3.3	3.5
1972	6,622	209,237,411	3.2	3.4

--Timeshifter (talk) 14:58, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The row with the sorting arrows is non-sticky. The stuff above is all sticky. Sorry for the delay - catching up on my watchlist after four eleven-hour shifts and one six-hour. Not in that order. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:44, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Potential fix

I have potentially fixed this by using:

body.vector-sticky-header-visible .is-sticky {
	top: 3.125rem;
}

This will only apply the additional 3.125rem vertical shift if the sticky header is visible at that time. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:13, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Tol! It works for me on Firefox, Edge, Chrome, and Opera.

Are there some simpler tables on German Wikipedia with sticky headers using the same template as the more complex table? And are they using a template above the table like here? Along with a class on the top line? I'd like to see how they are doing it. And how are they getting borders on headers?

I would prefer something simpler like {{sticky}} and class=sticky. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:13, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

No problem, @Timeshifter. I'm not entirely sure how the German Wikipedia does this, but it looks like (in this instance) it's applied through a part of their de:Modul:Musikcharts system, which makes the header sticky (through styles at de:Vorlage:Charttabelle/styles.css) once the table reaches a certain length. My intent with Template:Import style was that multiple styles could be imported to a page through one system, in the hope of reducing duplication and redundancy, but it hasn't become too widely used. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 20:25, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Tol. I updated Help:Table#Tables with sticky headers to acknowledge that it is now working on Vector 2022 also. So, on German Wikipedia it looks like they don't have a simple dedicated template just for sticky headers? I think if such a template were created on English Wikipedia it would be widely used, and would be copied to other-language wikis. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:44, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, @Timeshifter. I'm not aware of a widely used sticky-header template, though it looks like Template:Import style has been copied to some other language Wikipedias. Based on Wikidata (Template:Import style/sticky.css (Q110736505)), there are at least 5 other languages with Template:Import style/sticky.css. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 18:40, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Multi-row headers

Tol. I noticed that only the top row of multi-row headers is sticky. That is a problem in some cases. It is interesting that only the top row loses the borders.

2018 Bauxite production and reserves (kilotonnes)
Country	Production	Reserves
World	327,000	30,000,000
Australia	110,000	6,000,000
Guinea	82,000	7,400,000
China	60,000	1,000,000
Brazil	35,000	2,600,000
Indonesia	23,000	1,200,000
India	22,000	660,000

List of U.S. states and territories by incarceration
and correctional supervision rate has several multi-row tables.

Adult incarceration rates by state. Dec 31, 2018
Jurisdiction	2018 rate per 100,000 of all ages	2018 rate per 100,000 adults	2018. Adults in prison or jail
Federal	50	70	179,200
State	580	750	1,919,200
Louisiana *	980	1,280	45,700
Oklahoma *	970	1,290	38,500
Mississippi *	920	1,210	27,500
Georgia *	850	1,110	89,700
Kentucky *	840	1,080	37,500
Alabama *	820	1,060	40,400

Correctional supervision rates by state, 2018.
Jurisdiction	Total		Community supervision		Incarcerated
	Total, 12/31/2018	Rate per 100,000 adults	Probation or Parole, 12/31/2018	Rate per 100,000 adults	In prison or jail, 12/31/2018	Rate per 100,000 adults
Federal	302,100	90	122,800	40	179,200	50
State	6,083,300	1,850	4,276,200	1,300	1,919,200	580
Alabama *	99,200	2,030	60,900	1,240	40,400	820
Alaska *	7,800	1,060	3,400	460	4,400	600
Arizona *	136,800	1,890	84,300	1,170	54,600	750
Arkansas *	74,700	2,470	53,800	1,780	24,700	820
California *	513,100	1,290	312,400	790	200,700	510
Colorado *	122,600	2,140	91,300	1,590	32,700	570

--Timeshifter (talk) 23:17, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

@Timeshifter, yes, multiple lines of sticky headers are not going to work (and I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't have worked previously, either). Implementing an alternate method of styling to allow compatibility with multiple lines of sticky headers would probably not be compatible with the current implementation, but I can look into it to see if it would be feasible. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 17:29, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tol. I tested both Vector 2022 and 2010 and neither work with multi-row headers.

class=floatable-header works with multi-row headers here:

https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Historic_OCG_Limitations_Chart/2021%E2%80%93 - it is a very large wiki.

The other year ranges linked at the top also have multi-row headers that float. It seems they are based solely on CSS:

https://yugipedia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css - search for "floatable".

I see nothing about floatable headers in the JS:

https://yugipedia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js

I am curious to know if the CSS can be copied as is to a template style of the same name:

{{floatable header}}

If I knew enough about templates and CSS I would try it myself. Maybe you or someone else could try it.

{{Floatable header}} and class=floatable-header are easy to remember.

Unlike {{Import style|sticky}} and class=is-sticky

That is why I say a dedicated template with a simple name would be used much more widely. I have difficulty remembering the current template here. It will never be widely used in my opinion on the English Wikipedia. Other wikis will try it out, but I doubt it will have wide use on the other-language wikis either. For the same reason.

I also like that class=floatable-header is used on the same line as class=wikitable. That is easier to remember too.

--Timeshifter (talk) 19:44, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

@Timeshifter, taking a quick look at the Common.css you linked from the other wiki, it seems to be a collection of very messy workarounds (as acknowledged in the comments for the .floatable-header styles), and I would be very hesitant to use an implementation based on it. In particular, it is hard-coded to make each header row 29px below the previous one (resulting in it breaking quite badly when a header runs over multiple lines).
The reason that the floatable-header class is applied next to the wikitable class is because it is applied to the table, not to the row. This is because its CSS is done so that it applies to all header cells in the object (not to the object itself). Here, the CSS floats the object itself (the row).
I'm working on implementing an alternative style that would float the entire header (the thead element) of a table; this should be able to use the Vector 2022 header fix as well. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:58, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Just tested in Google Chrome (version 116.0.5845) with a Monobook skin, and scrolling seems to work perfectly: first, data rows slide up and hide beneath headers; then—when all data rows disappear—all header rows except the first one start hiding under the first one; finally only the first header row remains visible and it gets scrolled-out from view, too. --CiaPan (talk) 20:14, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

CiaPan. I just tested in Chrome (version 117.0.5938.92) with a Monobook skin. The only header (in the multi-row header tables) I see floating is the top row. The rest roll under it as I scroll up. This is the same thing I see in the other browsers I tested: Firefox, Edge, Opera. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:28, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Yugipedia floatable-header tests

Tol and all. See: https://yugipedia.com/wiki/User:Spaceshifter - (Timeshifter was taken). I tested some tables there. This is the best I could do. See file history for what was done. That floatable-header CSS depends on scope=col

I couldn't get more header rows to float beyond what is showing there.

I created {{header test}} to try out some ideas. Feel free to edit it further. I haven't had time to try much yet in a sandbox. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:59, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

@Timeshifter, as I mentioned above, the Yugipedia CSS works through a complicated and easily breakable workaround. The header scope parameters (scope="col") are there for accessibility reasons, and have their own meaning (see Mozilla docs); they really shouldn't be used for floating headers. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:03, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Multi-row headers implemented

Timeshifter, I have put together a basic working implementation of multi-row headers. See:

An example table
A header above other headers
Header 1	Header 2
Another header 1	Another header 2
Content 1	Content 2
More content 1	More content 2
Even more content 1	Even more content 2

This can be done by applying the class is-sticky-head to the table itself; this then makes the table's entire header (thead element) sticky. There are still some problems with borders that I'm sorting out. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:13, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

On second try, this seems to only work with sortable tables (as otherwise, there is no thead element, because MediaWiki doesn't implement HTML tables well). Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:18, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tol. It works in preview on all the tables in #Multi-row headers above. It does not work with {{Static row numbers table}}. Those subtemplates of {{Static row numbers}} are problematic and I don't use them anymore. I removed {{Static row numbers table}} from this thread. I substituted: class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers srn-white-background" style=text-align:right;

--Timeshifter (talk) 23:29, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tol. I updated Help:Table#Tables with sticky headers. I threw in rowspan. Your example table only had colspan. The template works with complex, multi-line, multi-row headers with both rowspan and colspan below. Scroll down slowly. I see that you figured out how to add borders for Chrome, Edge, and Opera! But not Firefox as of this writing. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:00, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Without sticky template

rowspan and colspan
Name	Data columns are below
Name	1	2	3
Name1	1-1	2-1	3-1
Name2	1-2	2-2	3-2
Name3	1-3	2-3	3-3
Name4	1-4	2-4	3-4
Name5	1-5	2-5	3-5
Name6	1-6	2-6	3-6

With sticky template

rowspan and colspan
Name	Data columns are below
Name	1	2	3
Name1	1-1	2-1	3-1
Name2	1-2	2-2	3-2
Name3	1-3	2-3	3-3
Name4	1-4	2-4	3-4
Name5	1-5	2-5	3-5
Name6	1-6	2-6	3-6

Wiki source excerpt:

{{mw-datatable}}{{sort under}}{{Import style|sticky}}
{| class="wikitable sortable mw-datatable sort-under is-sticky-head" 
|+ rowspan and colspan
|-
! rowspan=2 | Name
! colspan=3 style=max-width:8em | Data columns are below
|- 
! 1
! 2
! 3
|- 
...

--Timeshifter (talk) 23:00, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:Sticky header

Tol and all. I experimented at Template:Header test using your CSS at Template:Import style/sticky.css. I got it to work in a sandbox, and it has been adapted to work at Template:Sticky header (via another sandbox). See: Template:Sticky header/styles.css

I updated Help:Table#Tables with sticky headers to use Template:Sticky header. It is easy to remember, and thus easy to use:

{{sticky header}}
{| class="wikitable sortable sticky-header"

I have installed it in a few articles, and it is working fine in all 4 main browsers. I hope to replace the old template where it is being used as I find the time. There are many articles I want to use it in. It is much easier now that I don't have to keep looking back at Help:Table to remember the different names for the template and class for the old template. And I don't have to remember whether to use a bar or a slash as with
{{Import style|sticky}} And there is no need for a Lua module. Other wikis will find this much easier to copy. --Timeshifter (talk) 08:31, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Inline diff font-family change missed a class or something

I think it was two Thursdays ago this merge changed the inline diff display font to monospace from sans-serif. But as is demonstrated by e.g. Special:MobileDiff/1178149481, whatever class is used for text that is determined to have been moved around rather than altered, remains sans-serif. Is this intentional? It seems like an oversight. Folly Mox (talk) 22:22, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Because diffing didn't have inline diff display, mobile diff implements its own version of diffs (in a way) and with its own CSS. phab:T117279 is probably what you're looking for - mobile diff will go away Soon (or more likely redirect to Special:Diff). Izno (talk) 23:40, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

You can add this to Special:MyPage/minerva.css if you don't like the mixed fonts:

.mw-diff-inline-context, .mw-diff-inline-deleted, .mw-diff-inline-added {font-family: sans-serif !important;}

PrimeHunter (talk) 00:11, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! It's not super important to me what font-family the diffs are displayed in; I was just wondering if the display of the moved-about bits was intentionally different. Folly Mox (talk) 14:18, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting - this is fixed by https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/962664/1 which should be deployed in the next week or two. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Pop-up on talk pages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T347878

There has been a change where adding __NONEWSECTIONLINK__ no longer hides this popup that comes up on empty talk pages. Is there another way to get rid of it? 1989 (talk) 14:29, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

@1989 I don't see any "pop up" on my normal view or as a logged out editor, can you be more specific? The page you linked to is also not "empty". — xaosflux ^Talk 17:32, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps you are seeing something similar to phab:T344387? — xaosflux ^Talk 17:34, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

No. I'm referring to this popup saying "Start a discussion with..." with a flower image next to it. 1989 (talk) 17:38, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

That is made by "Enable quick topic adding" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. I don't know whether there is a way to only remove it on pages with __NONEWSECTIONLINK__. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

There was a way, for some reason it was changed to where that is no longer possible. Is there a way to get it reversed? 1989 (talk) 18:19, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

This seems wrong, this message shouldn't appear when the page doesn't have the "Add topic" tab. Want to file a bug? Matma Rex talk 19:41, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I filed phab:T347878. Matma Rex talk 14:58, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Fixed now. Thanks for spotting. Matma Rex talk 21:54, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Special:UrlShortener

I see that Special:UrlShortener has been enabled. Am I correct that this will give us random and unmemorable abbreviations? For example, if I use it on this page which has the perfectly good abbreviation VPT, I'll get something like w.wiki/k4W? If so, is there any way to reserve useful and memorable existing abbreviations so that, for example, w.wiki/VPT arrives here and not to some obscure page without the initials V, P or T for which it was randomly generated? This question/point probably applies to articles at least as much as to WP: namespace. Certes (talk) 09:59, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

@Certes short answer: no. They are not "random", but you can't pick them. You will get the same URL for a page if you use it again on the same page. Also note, shorturl's are global across all languages and project types. The primary causal use is for giving someone a link where sending the full URL is difficult, such as via a messaging app or when it requires actually typing it in somewhere else. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:37, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

They seem to be nice and short, especially for really important pages like https://w.wiki/tr and I assume the main point really is that they will not need to be blacklisted like other URL shorteners, so you can quote your messaging post onwiki without making changes. —Kusma (talk) 10:54, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Some of these don't look random:

https://w.wiki/a Alan Turing (https://w.wiki/A is Turing in Farsi)
https://w.wiki/b hu:Budapest
https://w.wiki/B de:Bier (B for beer in German)
https://w.wiki/c commons:
https://w.wiki/d wikidata:
https://w.wiki/e Easter egg and https://w.wiki/E for Easter egg (media)

Looks like people had some fun :) —Kusma (talk) 12:20, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

URLShortener is from 2019. I guess somebody picked targets for many one-character strings before it went public, including some digits like https://w.wiki/5 (Wikipedia:Five pillars). PrimeHunter (talk) 17:42, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Fair enough; here's hoping the short-to-long decoder lasts as long as Wikipedia. Certes (talk) 11:13, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

For this page use: https://w.wiki/4HJw Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:20, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

w.wiki/VPT leads to the ja.wiki article on Polyphenol, but in mobile view for some reason.
w.wiki/VPP leads to a user page on ar.wiki (a user with 52 edits)
w.wiki/VPPR does not exist.
w.wiki/VPWMF does not exist.
w.wiki/VPM leads to Electronic signatures and law.

Edward-Woodrow • talk 23:36, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-40

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 new user preference for "Always enable safe mode". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets. [14]
Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like wikitext or css. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Future changes

The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki. [15]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:24, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Vector 2022 CSS/JS changes

See Tech News above.
An intadmin needs to Copy any necessary content from MediaWiki:Vector.css into MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css.
There should probably also be a sitenotice / watchlist notice / mass mailing for users to:

CSS: Copy or migrate any necessary content from User:<username>/vector.css into User:<username>/vector-2022.css – OR – m:User:<username>/global.css.
JavaScript: Migrate any content from User:<username>/vector.js into User:<username>/common.js – OR – m:User:<username>/global.js. (NOT duplicating it, because that can cause errors, unless you know what you are doing.)

This should also be used as an opportunity to encourage housekeeping. E.g. deletion of local skin JS/CSS that is no longer used.— Frostly (talk) 02:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Tracking unreviewed new articles by user.

How difficult/costly/complicated would it be to track the unreviewed mainspace articles created by an editor. Primary target would be the number, but keeping track of which articles would be a nice extra. Real time (or within an hour) would be best, but daily might work well enough. (please ping) Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:57, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood, what specifically would you be wanting? For a given user? I assume this would be on a website. — Qwerfjkl talk 16:31, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Qwerfjkl, it would be an on-Wiki way of keeping track of the number, rate of creation and rate of assimilation into the Wiki of a user's new article contributions. I am brainstorming possible solutions to the "mass article creation" issue, and this is a question that arose. So I am interested in ways it could be done. Obviously a list could be stored on a user subpage, and updated by a bot, or several bots for different types of update. The initial population could be done by one bot, then additions to the list might be possible by a bot or other routine monitoring article creation, and removals by something monitoring deletions and something monitoring review status, which could be autoreview, NPP review through the toolset, or other possibilities. What Is less clear is what options there are for methods of doing this, and what the overheads would be. As this would be needed for all articles created, reviewed and deleted, there might be quite a high setup overhead and an ongoing overhead of unknown magnitude, so there would be a cost-benefit playoff of a size I cannot guess. The possible benefits of such a system would be a way to put a brake on high rate article creation automatically based on the NPP backlog, the number of articles the user has in the queue for review, and possibly input from ORES on article quality. People occasionally creating articles of reasonable quality might never notice the system, those creating large numbers of stubs in a small period would hit a wall until their articles were reviewed or deleted to make space in their personal list for more. List length could be extended on request if needed, or reduced in problem cases, or when NPP is overloaded. It might encourage more article creators to help with NPP if they had skin in the game, and were competent. Probably also factors I have not thought of yet, but that is where I am now. Some idea of feasibility and practicability would help decide if this is worth further investigation. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 04:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood, you could ask at WP:QUERY and use {{Database report}}. I think you mean that there would be one list that contains the users with the highest rate of new article creation?
Sorry for the delay in answering. — Qwerfjkl talk 09:47, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

One bit of information WP:QUERY would need: is there any way to distinguish an unreviewed page? I don't see anything in the obvious places such as page_props or change_tag_def, but there are many other places that information could be hidden. Certes (talk) 11:26, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

(after some digging) It's in the logging table. An entry with log_action="patrol" and log_type="patrol" means it's been reviewed. Certain actions (e.g. blank-and-redirect then overwrite with a new article) will quietly invalidate that entry. That's a regular occurrence on vandal magnets like Bears but rare in general, and no worse than creating a good article then overwriting it directly with crap which NPP was never designed to detect. Certes (talk) 11:44, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

You can sort of reconstruct it from logging, yes, but the canonical place is pagetriage_page. mw:Extension:PageTriage#Via SQL. —Cryptic 14:34, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

A quick way of getting a (rough) number could be to filter by username at Special:NewPagesFeed though they do drop off the feed eventually (not sure when and it's too late in the day for me to consult documentation today. Alpha3031 (t • c) 14:45, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I believe it's 90 days. — Qwerfjkl talk 16:05, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, it seems likely that such tracking would be technically feasible and unlikely that the overhead would be excessive. I now need to consider the arguments for and against actually doing something like this as a way to reduce pressure on NPP, while minimising disruption of useful page creation. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:49, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Site script code review request

I've proposed some changes at Wikipedia talk:File upload wizard#Use AJAX instead of <iframe> in the script and I'm wondering if anyone would like to review them before I turn my suggestion into an edit request. Matma Rex talk 16:09, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

lgtm — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 16:56, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex, there appear to be a few other uses of iframe in MediaWiki space and a lot more in user space. You may wish to review at least the MW space pages for the same issue. Izno (talk) 19:40, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

@Izno I had a look at the MediaWiki namespace scripts and they use other things in their iframes, which is just fine. I'm only trying to get rid of using api.php in an iframe, and it's very unlikely that any other script would do this, because it's such a chore to implement (but FileUploadWizard had it, because it was needed to support file uploads on IE 8 until we dropped support for it in 2016-ish – the technique wasn't needed for anything else since like… 2007). Matma Rex talk 20:59, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Cite Journal template

Hello, I hope this is the correct forum for this; if I should post elsewhere, please let me know.

Situation:

When editing an article you can click on the REFTOOLBAR and use CITE >> Templates >> Cite journal to add a reference.
I frequently add the DOI only to the form, insert, and then use the CITATIONS tool to fill in the details. This works well.
I sometimes have the JSTOR ID and not a DOI. For these I add the JSTOR ID to the DOI field, insert, change the name of the field to JSTOR, then use the CITATION tool.

Question: Would it be possible to add a JSTOR field to the insert citation form like the DOI field?

I hope my description is clear. Thanks, // Timothy :: talk 17:56, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

1. Are you aware, that you can just click the magnify icon next to the doi field there and it will fill the fields immediately?

2. Depends on the field definitions known to reftoolbar, and can likely be added. Probably somewhere in this page: mediawiki:RefToolbarConfig.js#L-158

—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:39, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

You can already put your JSTOR url into the URL box in the RefToolbar journal citation and click the magnifying glass. Eg for https://www.jstor.org/stable/1304899 to give <ref>{{cite journal |last1=Repetski |first1=John E. |title=Review of Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology: Part W, Miscellanea, Supplement 2, Conodonta |journal=Journal of Paleontology |date=1984 |volume=58 |issue=6 |pages=1538–1541 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1304899 |issn=0022-3360}}</ref> Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:31, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

This what I do, but once it's created I cut |URL=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1304899 down to |jstor=1304899. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Response: Thank you all, this is very helpful. For me putting the URL in is just as easy as the JSTOR ID. My vision is so bad I never knew there was a mag glass but I found it. Greetings from Los Angeles, // Timothy :: talk 12:45, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Bolding in Watchlist not working properly

In my Preferences, I have my watchlist view set up so that pages I have not visited since they have been edited are shown in boldface.

For the past several hours, that isn't working properly -- only the first 30 or so entries at the top get proper bolding, and then below that no bolding at all.

I have thousands of pages on my watchlist and often view more than 7 days' worth of changes if I've been away for a while, so this is a problem. Does anyone know what is happening and whether it is being fixed or looked into? Softlavender (talk) 08:45, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Softlavender: It works for me. It sounds like you accidentally clicked "Mark all changes as seen". The button can be hidden with the below in your CSS.

.mw-rcfilters-ui-markSeenButtonWidget {display:none !important;}

PrimeHunter (talk) 11:42, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I guess that's what happened. Thanks for the tip; I have implemented the script now. Softlavender (talk) 02:37, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Template-generated redlinked category problems, again

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories featured four redlinks of the "CS1 language sources" variety, all for various iterations of the Serbian language in different scripts. Of course, since I don't normally work in the CS1 area, I have no idea whether they're warranted or not, and since they're template-generated I can't just remove them without breaking other stuff — but one in particular, Category:CS1 српски (ћирилица)-language sources (sr-ec), is obviously problematic as the words in the category name need to be in English on the English Wikipedia. So I've had to "create" it for the time being since I don't know how to fix that but can't just leave it to simmer on articles as a redlink, but obviously it needs some attention to fix the name that the template is autogenerating for "sr-ec" code. As well, Category:CS1 srpski (latinica)-language sources (sr-el) also seems like that should be "Serbian" rather than "srpksi" for the same reason — but I also note that the other two categories I had to create were Category:CS1 Serbian (Latin script)-language sources (sr-latn) and Category:CS1 Serbian (Cyrillic script)-language sources (sr-cyrl), which both seem (from my admittedly limited knowledge of the subject area) like they might be the same things as the first two categories: they might actually be redundant categories for two scripts rather than genuinely distinct categories for four. So could somebody with more knowledge of this subject area than I've got look into this, and fix whatever needs to be fixed?

The other question is about Category:AfC pending submissions by age/2 weeks ago, which was being autogenerated by an AFC submission template even though that category was deleted three years ago per a CFD discussion due to a project decision to refine that into more detailed subcategories by number of days. I actually have brought a case of the exact same thing to VPT before, at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_194#Artificially-generated_redlinked_maintenance_category from February 2022, but after that the problem never recurred again until now (or at least I never came across it if it did). As it turns out, the category actually got emptied out once I rejected the draft that was in it (Draft:Maggie Fimia, if anybody needs that info) as not being properly sourced to establish the subject's notability — but the fact that the category came back at all is still a problem that should be looked into, because it was a bug in a module the last time I brought it here. (And, of course, even rejected drafts are still supposed to stay age-sorted anyway, so I'm not sure why rejecting the draft actually resolved a problem with an age-sorting category.) So could somebody check that one as well, if possible? Bearcat (talk) 13:43, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

For the cs1|2 categories phab:T117845 and phab:T348366.

So far as I can tell, sr-Cyrl is redundant to sr-ec and sr-Latn is redundant to sr-el but for reason of necessity at sr.wiki, sr-ec and sr-el are retained and only 'defined' with Serbian-language names. At en.wiki, sr-Cyrl and sr-Latn tags are preferred because they are valid IETF language tags and MediaWiki returns English language names for those tags. sr-ec and sr-el tags in cs1|2 templates should be replaced with sr-Cyrl or sr-Latn as appropriate.

Any further discussion on this topic (cs1|2) should take place at Help talk:Citation Style 1.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:14, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay, with that information I've redirected the ec and el categories to the cyrl and latn categories so that any future usages won't generate redlinks, and did an AWB run to switch the coding in use in the articles so that they would be moved over. Still think it's worth doing something at en to make ec and el automatically use the cyrl and latn categories instead of this having to be manually monitored over and over again, but I'll go to that other help talk page to pursue that. Bearcat (talk) 15:12, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

The two weeks one is really odd. The one draft in it was submitted at 20230916000020, which was (as of the time I investigated) 1869626 seconds ago, which is 21 days and 15 hours (so clearly more than 3 weeks, and was more than 3 weeks when this discussion started). Yet {{time ago|20230916000020|magnitude=weeks}} -> 31 weeks ago. It looks like the reason for this is that the draft was submitted only 20 seconds after midnight, which means that {{time ago}} thinks that it is being given a date without a time and thus fills in midnight yesterday/today as the time, which is 20 seconds short of 3 weeks after the draft was submitted, and rounds that down to two weeks. This bug has existed forever, but it only happens if someone submits a draft in the first minute of a day, and it happens to be exactly 3 weeks before a day when you check Wanted Categories (as the category would have cleared itself at midnight today/tomorrow if you hadn't declined it). I'm not at all surprised that took years to happen. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:40, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Wow. How weird. Bearcat (talk) 16:20, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

substring from strings

Hi! How can I return a substring from a string, beginning with the fourth character to the fourth-last character, using it in a template.

And I have a date string: "4. October 2023" and what to return the day (without point), the month (but numerical = 10) and the year separately. – Doc Taxon • Talk • 01:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

There's {{str right}}. Nardog (talk) 01:59, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

See more at {{String-handling templates}} and mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##time. {{#time:j|4. October 2023}} {{#time:n|4. October 2023}} {{#time:Y|4. October 2023}} produces 4 10 2023. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:28, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I noted that {{#time:j|4. October 2023}} works in Englisch, but in German the month spells "Oktober". So {{#time:j|4. Oktober 2023}} doesn't work. {{#timel:j|4. Oktober 2023|de}} doesn't work too. I get "Error: Invalid time". Can I format the German month "Oktober" to English month "October"? Sorry for this special question. – Doc Taxon • Talk • 03:22, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

See Module:User:Mr._Stradivarius/convertTime. Then in lua #time is mw.language.new('de'):formatDate( format, string, language ). This is also the long standing bug Phab:T21412. Snævar (talk) 10:36, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia. Always say if your post is about another wiki. You can translate to English and use #time. There may be easier ways with existing German Wikipedia templates but I don't know which templates you have. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:15, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you – Doc Taxon • Talk • 20:55, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

justify text

Hi, how can I justify a Text from the left to the right of a page or a div?

Please justify me. Thank you!

– Doc Taxon • Talk • 13:35, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Normally you would use text-align: justify as you attempted above, and as shown here:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

That intentionally doesn't justify the last line of a paragraph though, as it's easy for that line to be short and wind up looking silly if justification is attempted. text-align-last: justify can be used to specify that that's what you really want:

Please justify me.

Anomie ⚔ 13:51, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you – Doc Taxon • Talk • 20:55, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

Tech News: 2023-41

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

One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Fon (w:fon:) [16]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Swahili Wikipedia, Walloon Wikipedia, Waray Wikipedia, Wolof Wikipedia, Kalmyk Wikipedia, Xhosa Wikipedia, Mingrelian Wikipedia, Yiddish Wikipedia, Yoruba Wikipedia, Zhuang Wikipedia, Zeelandic Wikipedia, Min Nan Wikipedia, Zulu Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [17]
At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature. [18]
In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID #page-actions will be replaced with #p-views. This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 14:36, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Only display image if user is not using the Wikipedia mobile app

The app appears to always render images full-width by default, unlike Minerva. Compare F104 highway (Nigeria) on both mediums. {{if mobile}} does not seem to distinguish between the mobile apps and the mobile site, so is there a similar template or way specifically for the app? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:23, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

@Aaron Liu, I doubt anyone is going to download the app just to review your problem. Please take a screenshot and place it on an appropriate website so we can take a look without doing so, so that we can understand what the problem is. Izno (talk) 23:58, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, pick an article that doesn't have a "temporarily deleted for copyvio concerns". Izno (talk) 23:58, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Here. Installing an Android app should be trivial though and the Copyvio/core template was the best example I could find as it has a small, floating image and is in the article space. Compare that to the mobile view of the aforementioned article. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:18, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Is this an issue only with that template?

Whether you think installing an app is trivial is irrelevant. Izno (talk) 01:00, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I’ve viewed a lot of articles with floating pictures and they all do that. If you could find another template with an image used in mainspace that should also have it. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:16, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

That's not really what I'm asking. There are not many images that are floated in articles that aren't already thumbnails, for which the behavior between app and Minerva is identical (full width, and also Timeless).

If this is just the one template, I don't see a reason to spend time on it locally to work around the issue, nor do I wish to since it is ultimately an upstream issue. You can consider filing something in phab: for this case if you wish, but I do not anticipate them spending time on the problem. Izno (talk) 02:57, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

You can see an approximate preview of how the article looks in the mobile apps here: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html/F104_highway_(Nigeria) Matma Rex talk 20:16, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Please don't use if mobile. Things should generally work without those kinds of hacks. And if it doesn't we should make it work, but not by adding ALTERNATIVE content. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:17, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

How do I make it work on the app then? Aaron Liu (talk) 13:22, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that this is a warning template that was never converted to the mbox family of warning templates and is now trying to visually emulate one. As such the provisions taken to have these templates adapt, are missing. However mbox gets special behaviour in the app and minerva skin, which I'm not entirely certain will work icw the unclosed div hack that this template uses. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:22, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I did a convert at Template:Copyvio/core/sandbox (hacking in the title by making the entire thing inside the text= parameter). The [show] buttons are awkwardly pushed to the left. For some reason, on minerva, only the title is shown. The blanking div is outside of the ambox in my implementation, so it'll still work.
Also, as you probably know, mboxes disappear entirely on the app which might be confusing to mobile app readers seeing a blank page
You can see the version of this template before the mbox-mimicing here. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:29, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

How do I create an UPPERCASE title, please

Example is Euromod whose name is more correctly EUROMOD

Tried DISPLAYTITLE and retreated in disarray! 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 14:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

All you need to do is move the article to EUROMOD; I have done so for you :) BilledMammal (talk) 14:33, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

You really don't want to, unless "EUROMOD" is an acronym or initialism and the article doesn't mention it. WP:MOSTM, WP:MOSTITLE#Typographic effects. —Cryptic 14:36, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@Cryptic Hmm. The org's title appears to be all capitals. Thoughts, please?

@BilledMammal Duh! Thank you.

Facepalm 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 14:38, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

This is not an ancronym or initialism as far as I can tell. And it is pronounced as a word, not as the individual letters. Per MOS:TM and Cryptic please move it back. Jenks24 (talk) 21:05, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Done. I apologise that my question triggered a well intentioned but incorrect move. 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 21:17, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Making VE allow for longer alt texts in templates?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T348482

I'm looking at a {{Infobox officeholder}} right now, which has a long alt text. The problem is the visual editor puts up an edit dialog which only allows for a single line of text (i.e. it renders it as <input type="text">). You can enter text that's bigger than the box, but that's a pain to edit. I usually edit it off-wiki and paste it in. By comparison, the image caption field is rendered as a <textarea>, which is exactly what it should do for alt. I assume this distinction is encoded in the template somewhere, but the template code makes my brain hurt.

This is a generic problem that needs to be fixed in lots of templates, not just {{Infobox officeholder}}. This is related to T346835, but I suspect the solution is different. RoySmith (talk) 15:42, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I think that what you are seeing is caused by the type for |alt= being set to line in the TemplateData section of the template's documentation. Strangely, this part of the documentation is programming code that tells VisualEditor how to behave. The |caption= parameter has its type set to string. mw:Extension:TemplateData#Param object explains the difference between line and string. The documentation, even though it is programming code that affects how the template works with VisualEditor, is not protected, so you can edit it if you want. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:03, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. So now the next job will be to figure out how many templates have that (I suspect a boatload) and come up with an automated way to fix them all. RoySmith (talk) 16:39, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Um, please don't replace them indiscriminately. There certainly are parameters in which a line break can break the template and therefore the type should be set to line. Perhaps OOUI should provide a widget that uses <textarea> so the text wraps but rejects line feeds for VisualEditor/TemplateWizard (which I had to write myself for RefRenamer). Nardog (talk) 17:49, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? What about an alt text is different from the caption that makes a multi-line input box acceptable for one but not the other? I'm only vaguely aware of what OOUI is. Reading mw:OOUI mostly what I learn is that it's obsolete and being replaced by mw:Codex, which I know even less about. RoySmith (talk) 21:11, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

The point I was making with the sentence about OOUI is that this should be solved not by replacing line in TemplateData but by allowing text wrapping to occur in the GUI that receives input for a parameter that's marked as type: line. Nardog (talk) 21:18, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense, thanks. I've opened T348482 and subscribed you to it. RoySmith (talk) 22:03, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Have you actually tested a File invocation with |alt= on multiple lines? Here's what you get. Bad results. (I know I gave the answer above, but that was a "why" answer, not necessarily a "you should do this" answer. All technical answers should be tested to see if they result in good things happening.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:10, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand what's going on. That's part of what T348482 is about. My mind boggles that in 2023 we're still writing programs (and I consider a page of HTML to be a program) by smashing strings together and hoping nothing bad happens. RoySmith (talk) 00:18, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Using long alt text and the phrasing "Picture of" and "Pictogram" is generally discouraged. See for example this University: https://kb.iu.edu/d/arwg . Personally I think this request and the phab task is invalid. Snævar (talk) 20:21, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I tend to trust the advice I get at WT:ALT. In any case, the software should allow for convenient editing of longer text strings. How long we make the strings is an editorial decision, which should be driven by editorial judgement, not coerced by technical limitations of the software. RoySmith (talk) 22:09, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Did External links search (Special:LinkSearch) change?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T348324

Hi, back in 2020 I used Special:LinkSearch to find articles contaning certain URL patterns. I used it to search for articles that contain URLs that started with strictly "http://kb.nl" (so not "https://kb.nl", "http://www.kb.nl", "http://*.kb.nl" or similar patterns). Back then this query only returned URLs stricty starting with "http://kb.nl"

3 years later: I just tried this query again (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=500&offset=0&target=http%3A%2F%2Fkb.nl), but now I get results with URLS starting with http://www.kb.nl, http://liber-maps.kb.nl, http://poortman.kb.nl/, http://bltvn.kb.nl, http://opc4.kb.nl and other subdomains of http://kb.nl as well. That's not what I need.

Has the functionality of Special:LinkSearch indeed changed since 2020? And how can I get back the 'old' functionality? Can I tweak the API-call to serve the old functionality? OlafJanssen (talk) 13:02, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes it changed this year. Think of the search as being split into 3 parts. protocol, host and path. These all have separate context. Searching for kb.nl will include all hosts that end with kb.nl right now it seems. The wildcard seems to have become implicit. This is probably in oversight in the changes that were made to the logic when the table structure was modified. I'll file a ticket. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:27, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Results in the meantime. —Cryptic 13:43, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

And in Special:Search form. Izno (talk) 17:02, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for these helpful pointers, I'll check them out, it's a good opportunity to learn more about Quarry and the insource: parameter, I'm not yet very familiar with them OlafJanssen (talk) 09:28, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

@OlafJanssen: See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 206#Tech News: 2023-28 and phab:T14810. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:15, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Finding all IA-WayBackMachine URLs that match a certain URL pattern

In Dutch (or any language) Wikipedia I'm trying to find all external URLs that start with "http(s)://web.archive.org/web" AND contain a given URL pattern, for example "resolver.kb.nl"

I could theoretically do this by using https://nl.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=exturlusage&eunamespace=0&eulimit=max&euquery=web.archive.org/web&format=json and a Python script to loop over all (10.000s) articles that have external links starting with "http(s)://web.archive.org/web" and loop over that result set to filter for URLs containing "resolver.kb.nl". Is there a smarter, more direct approach (without looping over 10.000s articles) to match both URL patterns in 1 go? OlafJanssen (talk) 10:57, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

See this Quarry query. It should contain every such link on the Dutch Wikipedia; if you want it for a different Wikipedia you just need to change it from "nlwiki_p" to "enwiki_p" or similar. Note that it will take longer to run on the English Wikipedia than the Dutch; you will probably be waiting a few minutes.

Note that it only includes mainspace links outside of redirects; if you want a broader scope, let me know and I can expand it. BilledMammal (talk) 11:18, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

You're missing the trailing dot from the http url. Combined with the namespace, redirect, and especially path restrictions, that doesn't actually prevent any hits either on nl or en; but it still excludes about 166k hits on the url part too soon (compared to 13 million for https). —Cryptic 15:40, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal, @Cryptic Thanks for these Quarry examples, I just tried runnig them (I'm a Quarry noob, so not sure how to read the SQL and interpret the results, but a good opportunity to learn more about this topic. OlafJanssen (talk) 09:33, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

If you need to loop over your result set you should start with the more restrictive query:

Searching insource:web.archive.org/web yields 342,452 results.
Searching insource:resolver.kb.nl yields 10,626 results.

That's 32x fewer results to loop over. - Cabayi (talk) 12:18, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this idea, this order of doing things makes perfect sense. I'm playing with the insource paramater in the action API. (never used that param before). So far I'm trying things like

https://nl.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=search&srsearch=insource:web.archive.org&srwhat=text&format=json

Is there a way (within the API call) to get rid of all <span class="searchmatch"> in the json? OlafJanssen (talk) 09:42, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Seems some words have been nullified in my response above. It should read: "Is there a way (within the API call) to get rid of all <span class="searchmatch"> in the json?" OlafJanssen (talk) 09:48, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

You could add &srprop=size|wordcount|timestamp or the like to not include the snippet property. There doesn't seem to be a way to get the snippet without the markup though. Anomie ⚔ 11:55, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

If indeed you are specifically looking for archive.org addresses, they are sufficiently regular that you can probably wrestle up an actual insource search / Quarry query to find it. Here's what it would look like on en.wp. [19] Special:Search has an action API available as well. You may or may not need the quoted insource markers, those sometimes aid finding things quickly enough not to timeout but occasionally change the search results depending on how partial of a match they are to the rest of the 'word' they're in. This particular search doesn't need them on en.wp. Izno (talk) 18:28, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Excellent, this looks very much the ultimate solution of what I'm trying to achieve. Let my try translating this into an API call and see what the exact results are! Regards, OlafJanssen (talk) 09:46, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Account/IP blocks also block purging

On my iPhone, I use Apple's built-in VPN to read Wikipedia, which (since millions of other people are in the same IP range) is understandably blocked from editing. But I discovered today that that same block also prevents me from purging articles on my device (I'm guessing because it uses the same prefix of ?action=...?, though that could be wrong). Unlike editing, though, there are actually legitimate use cases for purging that can't be done elsewhere: mine in particular came from wp:Help desk#Why is the lead image in an article different than on Commons?, where I was experiencing the same bug described there on my phone, and where I suspected the issue was that the wrong image had been cached when I originally requested the page--but I couldn't purge the page on my device to fix it, nor could I perform a null edit (for obvious reasons), meaning I was stuck with the incorrect image.

Are purge blocks a built-in byproduct of IP/account blocking? If not, how should I go about requesting purging be reenabled for that IP range; otherwise if it is, how should I go about requesting that be changed? (I've heard people occasionally mention Phabricator, but the general impression I've gotten from seeing others discuss it is that it's largely a dev/null where even highly-impactful bugs/requests will sit for years before they are addressed, if they're ever seen at all--though again that might be completely wrong, I wouldn't have the slightest idea.) 2600:1012:B183:9AB6:7577:C3BA:1288:6250 (talk) 21:36, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Blocked users/IP's may not use purge by design, this is a security mechanism (slightly related to phab:T280232). If you want to issue actions that make changes (including invalidating the cache) you will need to stop using a blocked VPN first. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:03, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

The relevant task that removed it is phab:T280226, due to abuse. Izno (talk) 22:37, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

iPhones have a built-in VPN? InfiniteNexus (talk) 02:53, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

iCloud Private Relay. Izno (talk) 02:58, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that's a VPN, but I guess it works the same? InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:19, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Call it a "proxy" if you would, same impact from Wikipedia's point of view. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:45, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Prototype for readability improvements

Screenshot of the prototype

Introduction to a new project

As the Wikimedia Foundation Web team, we are beginning a project called Accessibility for reading. The goal is to make the wikis more accessible and comfortable for reading. We are starting with the font size and typography for articles. In the next phase, we will focus on color palette customizations, such as dark mode. All these will be available for both logged-in and logged-out users as settings, on both desktop and mobile web.

This project is a consequence of the many requests from volunteers. We would like to thank everyone who has asked about this. On the technical side, dark mode is easier now than the font size, but it will need more involvement from the communities. This is why we are asking you to follow our project. Watch the project page and subscribe to our newsletter. We'll share more details on that in the coming weeks and months.

Test out our prototype

Now, we would like to focus on making articles easier to read and scan for casual readers. We aim for:

Making the default font size bigger (but not too big) to improve readability
Increasing the information density to improve scanning
Increasing the space between paragraphs and sections to improve scanning
Allowing readers (including logged-out users!) to customize the density of text

This will apply to articles in the reading mode and in VisualEditor, but not in the wikitext editor. We are planning these changes to apply across all the wikis. The default may vary based on the language or script of the project. To confirm, we will also add preferences for logged-in and logged-out users.

We have prepared a prototype that allows for various changes in the font size and spacing. To use the prototype, force a banner to appear and click on it. Next, try out different combinations and share what works for you. This prototype is not a reflection of the final design. Instead, we would like to learn what font sizes Wikimedians want to see across languages. We will use this data to determine the proposed default and options. Read more about the test. OVasileva (WMF), SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF), my firefox is not letting me open the site/link. Every time I click on the banner, I get the following message: "Content Security Policy violation detected! Tried to load something from https://xtools.wmcloud.org/api/page/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?format=html&uselang=en" Ponor (talk) 00:17, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk I am getting errors on load. The full message is "Content Security Policy violation detected! Tried to load something from https://redwarn.toolforge.org/cdn/css/materialicons.css." NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 01:05, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

@User:NightWolf1223 and @Ponor both of those issues are gadget related, XTools and Redwarn. An error in those userscript might be preventing the prototype from loading. JDrewniak (WMF) (talk) 01:15, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

It works with safe mode on, but it is only broken with your banner. Also, the banner does not work. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 01:23, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

@NightWolf1223, if you saw the banner, clicked, and the page was reloaded, you will see the prototype widget as soon as you go to the main namespace. I hope this addresses your second sentence. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:32, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

And it looks like MediaWiki:Gadget-BugStatusUpdate.js. I am not entirely sure it's the fault of those scripts since those scripts don't cause issues otherwise..... Izno (talk) 05:00, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

The problem is phab:T199055, previewing a CentralNotice banner will cause CSP warnings for anyone loading external content. It's intended as a security feature for CentralNotice banner developers, but causes issues when sharing those links with others. the wub "?!" 12:45, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Ehm.. how do I get rid of this thing ? There doesn't seem to be a way to disable it ? I can dismiss but then it shows up again after a while. What cookie/LS key am I looking for ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:24, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF) please also see your metawiki talk. There are other problems with this banner as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:26, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

(it is being shown on all skins but doesn't appear to be working on all skins — xaosflux) Aaron Liu (talk) 13:33, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

This is not working for me either, when I click on the banner it just disappears and the same page reloads without any tool Ita140188 (talk) 22:01, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

It seems like it works for everyone else though. What browser are you using? Aaron Liu (talk) 23:27, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Change to wiki appearance

I just got a banner – something about changing the appearance of WMF wikis again – but, when I tried to click it, it vanished. Does anyone have a link please? (Alternatively, I'm really hoping someone will tell me I just nodded off and was only having a nightmare.) Certes (talk) 10:35, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps I should ask a more general question: is there anywhere one can see banners one has accidentally dismissed (short of creating a second account)? I've browsed a few random pages on Wiktionary, frwp, etc. but it didn't appear. Certes (talk) 12:26, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

All I know about opening it is that 1. it's JavaScript so you probably can't trigger it by link 2. It's not a skin redesign, just text, see mw:Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Community prototype testing 3. centralnotice banners should in theory be listed at m:CentralNotice/Calendar but this isn't there

TL;DR: IDK Aaron Liu (talk) 13:27, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. It says there that it's not a proposal for changes. (It's in bold, so it must be true.) I feared it was a another unwanted redesign, and was listing the things I need to turn off before retiring from Wikipedia (good practice anyway), but I'll assume good faith and take that assurance at face value. Certes (talk) 13:34, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Oh hey, look above! WMF gave us a link to force it! Aaron Liu (talk) 13:31, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

PD old auto without a death date

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features a redlink for Category:PD old auto without a death date, on the basis of one photo (File:Crozier, Edinburgh from Salisbury Crags.jpg) whose invocation of PD-old-auto-expired is with, not "without" a death date — and while I'm not an expert in template coding, even the PD-old-auto-expired template is clearly coded to add that category (except that templates shouldn't be transcluding redlinked categories at all, but I digress) only if any given call of the template fails to include the death date that this photo has not failed to include.

I'm lost. Can somebody fix whatever stupidity is going on here so that the redlink goes away? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 04:49, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Fixed The problem was that {{PD-art}} wasn't passing through the |deathyear= parameter. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:55, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Can't load documentation

https://doc.wikimedia.org/mediawiki-core/master/js/#!/api/mw.loader is not loading for me. I see spinning gears and that's it. I reported it in phab:T348605 which was closed as invalid because it's supposed to be a browser issue. Usually I have some idea of what to do, but this time I'm clueless. How can I troubleshoot this? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:24, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

It fixed itself. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:38, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

False-positive disambiguation tag

I posted about this at Wikipedia talk:Tags but received no response. Adding {{WikiProject Disambiguation}} to a page incorrectly triggers the disambiguator-link-added tag, for example here and here. I don't know what is causing the problem, could be the tag or the template or something else, but please fix this. Thanks. InfiniteNexus (talk) 02:48, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I expect it has something to do with the template transcluding its corresponding content page in an attempt to be more clever (see Special:Whatlinkshere/Private use area and Special:Whatlinkshere/Moderate Republicans).

Also, creating talk pages just to claim them for Wikiprojects is lame in general already - a bluelinked talk page used to mean something! - but for WikiProject Disambiguation it's specifically documented against. —Cryptic 03:01, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Now I'm really confused, because I checked Recent changes to see if others were creating talk pages just for WikiProject tags, and I can't figure out why this and this were flagged as having DAB links. The articles themselves are not DAB pages, and they aren't linked to any DAB pages either. Very strange. InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:18, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Mauro Morelli is because Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism/to do includes a link to Chiro, a dab page. Talk:Jonathan Carbe is because {{WikiProject Athletics}} calls Module:WikiProject banner, which checks if Athletics, a dab page, exists, which adds it to the list of outgoing links. Found via [20]. Nardog (talk) 03:39, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Wow. So any idea how this can be fixed? InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:47, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

There is nothing to fix. I've just shown you these are not false positives. An ability to check if a page exists without being counted as a link has been requested though. Nardog (talk) 04:58, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

If you really need to check whether a page exists without recording a link and understand the consequences, I created {{Linkless exists}}. Certes (talk) 09:00, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It is the intended behavior for an edit to be tagged as "disambiguation links added" when it adds a template that transcludes another template that includes a link to a disambiguation page which isn't not found on the original page?? I thought the purpose of a tag filter called "disambiguation links added" was to alert editors that a disambiguation link has been (accidentally) added and should be fixed. InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:43, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes and no. A way to distinguish direct from indirect links does not exist but has been requested. There are grey areas such as {{rws|Newtown}}, which creates a link to dab Newtown railway station. That's a template, but it's the article that should be fixed to something like {{rws|Newtown|Wales}}. Certes (talk) 22:37, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, do elaborate, what did it mean back then? Gonnym (talk) 09:12, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

That someone had actually talked about the article, e.g. suggested a change that required discussion? Certes (talk) 09:14, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

There are enough talk pages posts that clearly show otherwise (also, I wasn't really expecting an answer, as the premise of "back in the old days" comment is ridiculous seeing as how WikiProjects have been around since 2001 and Template:WPBannerMeta since 2008, so for at least 15 years it hasn't meant what they implied it did). Gonnym (talk) 09:23, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Cryptic and I have both been around since 2005. WikiProject tags didn't become really common until late-2005 or early 2006 or so. Before then a talk page's existence usually meant there was discussion on it. See my related ramblings in an idea lab archive. Graham87 (talk) 12:21, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

WikiProjects had nothing to do with content assessments before Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via WikiProjects started in 2005. Many WikiProjects were then founded mostly to do content assessments. I was part of the early tagging runs for WikiProject Germany, which started in October 2006. —Kusma (talk) 12:31, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Wow, I knew content assessment came from the Wikipedia 1.0 project to make a print/CD/DVD version of Wikipedia but didn't know about the mechanics of it until now. I also had a note on this subject on my personal Wikipedia timeline, which I've expanded. While checking the page history/logs of WikiProject Germany, I found Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany, which ... unbelievably even for me ... ended in delete! I've restored the old project history and first two talk page sections (at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Germany/Archive 1) because I think this sort of thing is interesting and the relevant history should be accessible to everyone. Graham87 (talk) 14:01, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Also see this 2008 Signpost article. Graham87 (talk) 16:40, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Also interesting that we have come full circle and have started taking the responsibility for assessing articles away from WikiProjects to a Wikipedia-wide assessment process. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:08, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Not so much taken away (after all, the editors most likely to assess an article are those interested in a related topic area), but by default, applying that assessment across all related topic areas, which alleviates redundancy in assessment effort. isaacl (talk) 14:59, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Here's a courtesy link to the section on Project-independent quality assessments, not just for historical reasons but also because I'd forgotten where the relevant info was myself. Graham87 (talk) 16:29, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

It's because {{WikiProject Disambiguation}} calls {{#invoke:Redirect|isRedirect}} with the name of the subject page, which adds the page to the list of outgoing links. Nardog (talk) 03:27, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

help with wikimedia API

is there any API that can show articles on wiki with most number of interwiki links (descending) with no iw to Farsi wikipedia? thanks for help WASP-Outis (talk) 13:59, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

This is something that can be requested on Wikidata, likely in the direction of d:WD:RAQ. Izno (talk) 16:33, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

thank you WASP-Outis (talk) 20:01, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

No right hand sidebar

UsuVector 2022, I have a left hand sidebar showing the top but no right hand sidebar with tools. Any suggestions to fix this? Thanks. Doug Weller talk 18:31, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I've customized my Vector 2022 a lot, so YMMV, but when I hide the right "Tools" sidebar, it goes up into the top menu bar and shows as an item called "Tools". There is an option inside the menu to move it to the sidebar. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:50, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 Thanks. Found it. Not sure why I didn't realise that was what that meant. Doug Weller talk 12:22, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

toolforge.org

Are there intermittent issues with toolforge this morning? When I try to open my https://afdstats.toolforge.org/afdstats.py?name=Maile66&max=&startdate=&altname=, it brings up an error message the first time. The second time it works fine. And iffy back and forth if I do a refresh on the page. — Maile (talk) 11:24, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Same for me. Maybe it's not toolforge but the application like the html routes or cookies or OAuth or something that needs the page to load twice. It is a repeatable error suggests that. -- GreenC 18:15, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

IABot reverted my changes?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T348762

Any idea what happened in Special:Diff/1179698559? Earlier today, I was having trouble with IABot timing out and returning various 50x responses. Now I look and see it ran (eventually) and reverted a bunch of changes I had made. For example, it restored The clubhouse was a French Second Empire-style building which overlooked the track and the oblique portion of the street's route follows the northern leg of the racecourse. And a few others. How did this happen? RoySmith (talk) 22:46, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Ask the bot op first. Izno (talk) 22:59, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678 and Harej: RoySmith (talk) 23:05, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

This looks like an edit conflict - I believe the software ignores edit conflicts with yourself in most circumstances, so if you told IABot to run and then made other edits while it was running it would overwrite them. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:18, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

How does IABot make edits as me? I'm assuming this is via OAuth somehow, but I don't remember going through an OAuth authorization. In any case, that seems broken. The problems I was having with IABot were hours before it finally did its thing in that edit. I'm guessing a job got queued somewhere and finally was able to run, but ignoring edit conflicts in a situation like that just seems wrong. RoySmith (talk) 23:27, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

It does indeed use OAuth. And I'm not disputing it's a bug, just trying to explain why it's happening. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:31, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

And your explanation is appreciated. I see a phab ticket on the horizon :-) RoySmith (talk) 23:32, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately this is an issue with the MediaWiki API. IABot does pass timestamps to the API that it uses to catch edit conflicts. The expected behavior is that instead of making the edit, the API returns an error that triggers IABot to reacquire the page and analyze it again. On very rare occasions, for some unknown reason, the API lets the edit go through, not catching the edit conflict. I've only ever seen this one other time, and I was able to confirm then that IABot is correctly passing data to the API.

As for the 504s, it’s currently being worked on. The problem has been identified, but the cause is still being investigated. Just know that if you do encounter those pesky 504s, an edut might appear within 24 hours. The bot is getting stuck in those instances and manages to shake itself free after some time. If the UI doesn’t return a 504, you don’t have to worry about that then as the process managed to finish without getting stuck.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 00:01, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

"On very rare occasions, for some unknown reason, the API lets the edit go through". As Pppery notes "the software [MediaWiki] ignores edit conflicts with yourself". As iabot makes edits as the user (via OAuth), that's most likely what happened in this case. What I find more interesting, is why it was working on such an old revision ? There were over 4 hours between the changes made by Roy and the IABot change. So why did IABot use a base revision from 5 hours before it made the change ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:22, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Presumably that's the version from when RoySmith ran IABot? Elli (talk | contribs) 14:31, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

This ^. It pulled the revision when Roy submitted the request, got stuck in transit, got itself unstuck, and simply finished doing what it started. These are not queued jobs. As soon as you make the request to analyze a page, the bot gets straight to work on it. It usually doesn't take more than a few minutes to handle the request. I'm working on fixing the issue that's causing the bot to get stuck in the pipeline. Once that is fixed, the bot using old revisions when making edits will become a moot one. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 14:39, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

It's a good thing to avoid getting into the edit-conflict situation, but the root causes here is that if you do get to an edit conflict, it's not detected. So you need to figure out why it's not detected and fix that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 15:14, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

"Detect edit conflicts" - after they are made? How would that work? -- GreenC 18:07, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Edit conflicts are typically detected and handled by the API. A properly made API request to perform an edit will allow the API to block the edit and report the edit conflict. InternetArchiveBot does this. In almost all cases, this exception being literally the second instance reported to me, made by IABot, the API blocks conflicting edits which triggers the bot to reacquire the page and run the process again. So I re-iterate that the API is the issue in this particular case, which is not something I have developmental jurisdiction over. This needs to be directed to the MW devs.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 22:50, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Can someone help clean up my mess?

I accidentally created a mess with [21], [22], [23], and [24]. I'm just trying to restore the 'Greg Harris (politician)' redirect after I messed a page move up. Thanks. Bremps... 05:20, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

I would attempt to fix it myself, but that's part of what got me into this mess. Bremps... 05:25, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Note: Greg Harris (Ohio politician) was PRODded, so Greg Harris (Illinois politician) should moved to Greg Harris (politician) (which I assume is what Bremps was trying to do). Nardog (talk) 05:31, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Also you don't have the pagemover right so you can't perform round-robin moves. Nardog (talk) 06:23, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Bremps... 23:26, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Hiding the minor edit tickbox

Hello, all, I have a question about the feasibility of something:

Related to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Proposal to remove "rearrangement of text" from definition of minor edit., would it be easy (e.g., in common.css) to hide the minor edit button only in the mainspace (or content namespaces)?

I am wondering whether we could give most editors the experience of it not being there (e.g., for a month), but having it still be available for use by bots, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:20, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

body.ns-0 div#mw-editpage-minoredit { display: none } (tested only in Vector and Cologne Blue).

The mark-edits-minor-by-default option is gone, right? I don't see it in Preferences:Editing, and we'd really not want to prevent people from unchecking it. —Cryptic 22:13, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

@Cryptic that option is hidden/disabled on enwiki. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:17, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Does it need a different bit of code for each editor (e.g., WikEd, the visual editor, etc.)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Likely. We would only remove it from the editors that come with the software I think; if e.g. WikEd supports minor edit markers, that should be removed from WikEd instead. Izno (talk) 23:24, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Since readers and logged out users can't use it anyway, it would be better to hack it in to MediaWiki:Group-user.css - as a purely technical answer here. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:26, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Or via a gadget (e.g. Hide the minor edit control) only for users, default on that hides this, but that would let people 'opt-in' by disabling the gadget for themselves. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:29, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

We now also have actions, so I would probably add the |actions=edit to it. Izno (talk) 22:35, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

That too. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:31, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Image with external link

Resolved

– Information provided. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:22, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

The Interstate Highway System extends 46,876 miles (75,440 km).^[1]

I noticed this image added here. The image appears like a normal image that links to the Commons, but in fact links to an external website. Does the image violate WP:EL? Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 14:11, 14 October 2023 (UTC) Magnolia677 (talk) 14:11, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this is a technical question @Magnolia677? It goes to an external link because the link parameter was used (c.f. mw:Help:Images/en#Altering_the_default_link_target). Side note, this image is public domain, so does not require any attribution. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:31, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I'll take it to a different forum. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 14:37, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

References

^ "Interstate FAQ (Question #3)". Federal Highway Administration. 2006. Retrieved March 4, 2009.

Template-added categories for the District of Columbia

I have to move three categories, Category:District of Columbia Wikipedians to Category:Washington, D.C. Wikipedians, Category:Wikipedians in the District of Columbia to Category:Wikipedians in Washington, D.C., and Category:Wikipedians interested in the District of Columbia to Category:Wikipedians interested in Washington, D.C. (note that two has been moved and another one not yet). The categories are added by some templates, but I can not figure out by which one. I edited {{User District of Columbia/par}}, {{User District of Columbia/doc1}}, and {{User WikiProject District of Columbia}}, and as a result I see for example that Alexandrecomas lost the old categories but did not acquire the new ones. Could someone have a look please. Thanks in advance. Ymblanter (talk) 06:43, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Alexandrecomas doesn't transclude any of those templates. It transcludes {{User in the District of Columbia}} which should be updated. It currently adds Category:Wikipedians interested in the District of Columbia if it exists so it's not added after the category was deleted but it needs an update to check for a new category name. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:38, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

This seems to work, great, thank you very much. Ymblanter (talk) 11:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Both Reflinks URLs have errors

Hmmm… can't reach this page 69.142.160.183 took too long to respond Try: Search the web for 69 142 160 183 Checking the connection Checking the proxy and the firewall Running Windows Network Diagnostics ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT --Jax 0677 (talk) 17:37, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, these tools are no longer reachable. There is no replacement. Izno (talk) 17:39, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Reply - So @Izno:, I assume that we are stuck with ONLY refill until further notice? --Jax 0677 (talk) 19:02, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Not Izno, but yes that's correct — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 11:53, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Request: please can someone copy Template:Flex columns to Meta?

Hi all

I'm trying to use Template:Flex columns some help pages and my user page which will appear on Wikipedia and Meta. However the template doesn't exist on Meta yet. It uses some other templates and I don't want to try to do it and make a mess I have to ask someone else to clean up, can I request someone else please copy it over for me? It will be really useful for creating documentation. I know this is a request for Meta fom Wikipedia but there are very few people who look at the notice boards there.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 08:51, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

@John Cummings that page has been twice deleted on meta-wiki, last time after meta:Special:PermaLink/23656316#Flex_columns. Please start a discussion at meta:Meta:Requests_for_deletion#Requests_for_undeletion asking for both Template:Flex columns and Module:Flex columns to be transwiki'd over. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:55, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi Xaosflux, thanks, yes I saw those, the issue is that there is nothing useful to undelete, the pages that were created were by 'vandals' so were not the actual working template, it says on the page 'broken import', which would just get deleted again. I'm asking for the real working templates to be created. John Cummings (talk) 10:27, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

@John Cummings I still suggest you discuss it with that project first, assuming there are no objections I'm sure someone (even me!) will transwiki them for you. I don't suggest just copy-pasting them over. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:34, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Xaosflux Thanks very much indeed, I've started a discussion there, please do add anything else you'd like, I feel like I covered everything? Thanks again for your help :) John Cummings (talk) 10:53, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

I replied there with general support.. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:42, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi Xaosflux, thanks very much, if you could copy over the template I would really appreciate it. If there's anything I can do in return please let me know. John Cummings (talk) 13:15, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Phabricator point value

A ticket (or task or something) that I'm interested in on Phabricator has just been given a "point value" of 3. I can't find any documentation but think this may be some sort of triage priority. Please does anyone have a clue how to find out whether a point value of 3 means "fix today" or "ignore indefinitely"? Certes (talk) 15:39, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

It's an Agile/Scrum thing which Phabricator supports — story points can be used to show the size of a task/amount of effort needed to complete a task. An example of what the points correlate to can be found at meta:Community Tech/Development#Estimation (though these are never hard and fast figures, and can vary between development methodologies/teams/etc.) — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 16:05, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Questions about Template:Round

Hi, I'm from Chinese Wikipedia. I've proposed an edit request in zh:Template talk:Rnd to change the template into a lua template. But there is a problem using Module:Math. For the new Template:Round, when I input {{Round|0.000020004|7}} (from Template:Round/doc), 000 instead of 2.00×10⁻⁵ is outputted. Is the bug harmless? Otherwise, are there any ways to fix it? 阿南之人 (talk) 12:56, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Known issue it seems. See also Template_talk:Round#Bug_in_rounding_0.000020004? and mediawikiwiki:Topic:W7twrsthkgll7gkj —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:01, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Reply tool broken?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T348834

Starting sometime in the last day or so (Thursday?), reply tool has stopped working for me. I click the "Reply" link, get a box with a "Subject" placeholder and below that "Loading...", which just hangs. In my javascript console, I get:

load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.discussionTools.init%7Cjquery%2Coojs-ui-core%7Cjquery.ui&skin=vector&version=gurih:359
jQuery.Deferred exception: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'Trigger') TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'Trigger')
   at ReplyWidgetPlain.ReplyWidget (eval at indirectEval (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:10:286), <anonymous>:5:756)
   at new ReplyWidgetPlain (eval at indirectEval (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:10:286), <anonymous>:1:304)
   at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.discussionTools.init%7Cjquery%2Coojs-ui-core%7Cjquery.ui&skin=vector&version=gurih:67:664
   at mightThrow (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.discussionTools.init%7Cjquery%2Coojs-ui-core%7Cjquery.ui&skin=vector&version=gurih:356:648)
   at process (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.discussionTools.init%7Cjquery%2Coojs-ui-core%7Cjquery.ui&skin=vector&version=gurih:357:309) undefined
jQuery.Deferred.exceptionHook @ load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.discussionTools.init%7Cjquery%2Coojs-ui-core%7Cjquery.ui&skin=vector&version=gurih:359

I get similar results if I try to add a new section. It works in an incognito window, but I can't think of anything I might have changed in the past day to cause this. I've cleared all my cookies, that didn't help. Any ideas? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 21:48, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I got it. I had unticked "Enable editing tools in source mode" in Special:Preferences / Editing / Discussion pages. Turning it back on makes reply tool work again. Apparently there's a JS dependency between the two. RoySmith (talk) 21:59, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

There's a fix worked out, which will be out on Monday (the joy of code-deployment-window schedules!). Until then, just leave "editing tools in source mode" enabled and you shouldn't see any problems. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 16:20, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. As a semi-tangent, it would be really nice if changes to preferences were logged in some user-visible place. When things break, being able to look back and see what you changed recently would be a real help. In this case, I happened to remember that I had changed something recently but it's only luck that I recognized what it was by looking through all the prefs pages. RoySmith (talk) 16:37, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

The issue causing the Reply and New Topic Tools to not work if you have the "Enable editing tools in source mode" setting disabled should now be fixed. If you're experiencing otherwise, please let us know. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 23:33, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

New section tab has stopped working

About 2 days ago, my "New section" tab stopped working properly. It gives me the first box with "Subject" in pale grey under which it says "Loading…" but even after 15 minutes nothing loads, so I can't continue. I've tried putting a title in the Subject box and pressing return, but that does not give the second box for the main text, so I have to edit the whole page. I'm using Vector Legacy (2010) on Edge on Windows 10. Any ideas? - Arjayay (talk) 14:26, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

@Arjayay, perhaps the same issue as #Reply tool broken? — Qwerfjkl talk 14:37, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Please try to turn off any personal scripts you have on in any of the pages that automatically load (see within your subpages) and try again to rule out your own customizations. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:41, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

(If your situation is different from what is described above and in T348834). — xaosflux ^Talk 14:42, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Qwerfjkl ticking that box has given me both the text box and some editing tools that I didn't have before. I certainly didn't turn that off, as shown by the fact that I didn't have any tools before - but that has solved the problem - thanks also to Xaosflux - Arjayay (talk) 15:04, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

@Arjayay: thank you for saying something about this issue and I'm sorry for the inconvenience. The issue should be fixed on Monday. In the meantime, great spot @Qwerfjkl, what you described [i] seems to restore functionality to both the Reply and New Topic Tools.

---

i. Turn on the Enable editing tools in source mode in Special:Preferences. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Reply and new section not working

Started today. I just get "Loading..." endlessly. I disabled discussion tools to no effect. I'm on Firefox v.118.0.1 if that's any help. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:54, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Have you tried turning on the Enable editing tools in source mode option in Special:Preferences? DLynch (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Also a couple of days ago, I had encountered what was evidently the same underlying problem on Wikipedia:Teahouse when trying to add a new section, except that for some reason it was observable if one clicked on "Question forum" before clicking on "Ask a question". (See WP:Teahouse#Teahouse "ask question" stuck on "loading".) Then today I ran into it just trying to add a new section, and happened upon this report with the workaround, which seem to have worked after a couple of tries. So thanks! Fabrickator (talk) 19:48, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-42

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

The Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome. [25]
Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Wikipedia. See more details in T316178.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Future changes

In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to addPortletLink and #p-namespaces that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Unable to delete audio files

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T348667

These four audio files should have been deleted today for being orphaned. However, I run into an internal error when trying to delete them:

[a7461411-2f2b-4780-b96b-014c9bc377f6] 2023-10-14 12:23:37: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"

Any ideas? ✗plicit 12:27, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

@Explicit: Yes, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/jF747IjMOaVY/#R in mw:Phabricator. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:20, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Looks like this has been resolved as I have now deleted them. Thanks to those who squashed this bug! ✗plicit 00:04, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Template:Tree chart issues in mobile view

An issue was raised at Template talk:Tree chart#Tree Chart in mobile view, with the way that family tree templates are displayed in mobile view. This looks like it might be to do with mobile view CSS styles (tables, etc.?) If so, what would be the best way to resolve it? Maybe separate CSS classes, to increase the padding/spacing for this template on mobile?

To be completely honestly, I'm not sure whether using tables is the best approach for this template (the spacing tends to be uneven and difficult, and it often compresses the right-side of the template, for example the "European style family tree bottom to top" at Help:Family trees#Tree chart template) and though it's probably beyond the scope of this discussion, I wonder if there would be any support to rewrite this template to use divs instead, maybe as a community wishlist request? (And ideally make some better way to create and edit these visually at the same time). --Yodin^T 13:58, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Probably someone should be able to build a Lua module that does this simply by input of parameters (a la the work that has gone into the various bracket templates). Right now Template:Ahnentafel does exist as a more responsive alternative. Izno (talk) 20:34, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

That would be amazing, how likely do you think this would be? And do you think there's any possibilty of tinkering with the CSS in the meantime? (I don't even know what the process for this would be.) Template:Ahnentafel is a good alternative to show just the direct ancestors of individuals, but I don't think it would work for many if not most of the ~9k current uses of Template:Tree chart. --Yodin^T 00:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

how likely? As likely as anything else in a volunteer environment where there is a scarcity of editors of a technical bent. :) I'd discuss any sketches of implementation be in the general Template:Tree chart/sandbox direction +- the module under it +- the section you started on the template talk page. And I'd document the existence of this discussion there as well, or even copy-paste relevant bits with reasonable attribution/{{tq2}}.

The CSS seems like it might possibly be able to be done in WP:TemplateStyles. Maybe. There's a lot of hardcoded styles in the module today and parameters that expect hardcoded styles and I'm not sure which qualities without indepth review need adjustment, particularly since this is in mobile land. But if something is to be done on the point, that's how to do it.

In general, ignoring the above, making tree structures and mathematical graphs in HTML + CSS is hard. Izno (talk) 02:51, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

References listing limited

Seems like the "References Section" ( in the 2023 in science article at => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_science#References ) has limits? - at Reference # 735 or so - any workaround(s)? - iac - Stay Safe and Healthy ! - Drbogdan (talk) 17:53, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:TLIMIT. Izno (talk) 18:05, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Redlinked template-generated categories, again

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features two redlinked tracking maintenance categories that are being autogenerated by templates on the page. They are Category:Pages type:city(1574) using infobox settlement with imprecise region codes and Category:Pages type:city(1606) using infobox settlement with imprecise region codes — but I can't create either of them, as I can find absolutely no evidence that we have any other categories of the sort, and even though they're obviously being generated by {{infobox settlement}}, trying to wrap the infobox in {{suppress categories}} failed to make the redlinks go away.

For what it's worth, both appear to have resulted from recent rewrites of communities in the breakaway Republic of Artsakh to flip them back into Azerbaijan following the recent cessation of the breakaway movement, so the categories are almost certainly being generated by the word "Azerbaijan" or a code related to it — but I don't know nearly enough about Azerbaijan to find the likely offender, and I also cannot find any evidence in either article as to what's different in their infoboxes to somehow generate two distinct redlinked categories for "city(1574)" and "city(1606)" instead of just one redlink for "city".

So could somebody look into this and either create the categories if they're actually warranted, or figure out how to banish them to the garbage can if they're not? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 13:56, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The original cause was changing {{xb|NKR}} to {{xb|AZ}} [26] or {{xb|AZE}} [27]. By itself it adds the blue Category:Pages using infobox settlement with imprecise region codes, but it's wrapped in code which then changes the category name to garbage while trying to make it part of an external url. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:27, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I found it why {{suppress categories}} fails here. Simplified example where Category:X1 is not removed: {{suppress categories|<indicator name="coordinates">[[Category:X1]]</indicator>}}. The indicator tag is a feature at mw:Help:Page status indicators. It's displayed outside the main content, and surrounding code does apparently not have access to change content inside <indicator>...</indicator>. For example, this use of Module:String#replace fails to change foo to bar: {{#invoke:String|replace|source=<indicator name="a">foo</indicator>|pattern=foo|replace=bar}}. I haven't activated the code but it would display "foo" at top right of the page. The replacement works if indicator is omitted or changed to another tag like span. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:14, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

When the suppress categories module reaches the indicator tag, that is not in fact a tag but a mw:strip marker. Which is not the content of interest to the suppress categories module. Izno (talk) 03:02, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for that. With this information, I tried going directly to the {{coord}} template that was wrapping the {{xb}} template mentioned here, and directly wrapping that in {{suppress categories}}, and it worked. In the long term, it may still be necessary for somebody with more coding expertise than I've got to find a way to prevent such nonsense categories from happening at all, but as it stands the current problem has been cleared. Bearcat (talk) 00:59, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

"Psychology Dictionary" is blacklisted

It is difficult to understand why the "Psychology Dictionary" is blacklisted and cannot be linked to Wikipedia articles. Arbabi second (talk) 09:29, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

@اربابی دوم: This is the English Wikipedia. Please always say if your post is about another wiki. I assume you refer to your attempt [28] to add https://psychologydictionary.org/sensory-cue/ to the Persian Wikipedia. psychologydictionary.org was added to meta:Spam blacklist at meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2017-06#psychologydictionary.org. You can request removal at meta but may need good arguments, or you can request a Persian override in fa:MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. I don't know their procedure for that. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:07, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. Arbabi second (talk) 10:15, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

WaybackMachine speed

The WaybackMachine has been running slowly for days. It is due to a front-end TLS server that is overloaded (ie. TLS/SSL/https). Until new capacity is added, you can significantly speed retrieval by using http instead of https. It's voluntary if you want to bypass the front-end TLS server by using http. Both https and http work, only the former takes much longer. The content is the same. Please don't change URLs in the wikitext to http this is not a permanent situation. -- GreenC 16:59, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

And the http one doesnt protect your privacy, other parties might be able to figure out what you are reading. Pretty important detail for some —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:12, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Exactly, which is why you don't want to change to http in the wikitext (and bots would eventually restore to https anyway). This recommendation is for a manual override in your browser's URL bar in case the link is taking a long time to load - and assuming you understand the potential privacy consequence. -- GreenC 15:09, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Strange and gross link preview image (in Casting couch article)

Moved from Talk:Casting couch § Strange and gross link preview image

– — Newslinger talk 02:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

The preview for random links appears to show this file, even though it isn't present in the pages themselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vomit_on_plate.jpg

It's gross. It appears for me in the link to victimless crime in the "Economics" section. In fact, the image is appearing on the link's mouseover preview in the edit preview right below where I'm typing now! The image also appears in the preview for insider trading, after following the previous link.

I don't know why this is happening. I don't know how to formally report this, so if any more experienced editors see this, please do that or let me know how. Please also let me know if no-one else sees it, in case it's only an issue on my end for some reason.

Thank you --2A00:23C6:9982:EE01:1CCA:DD96:B39A:6345 (talk) 14:46, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

That image has been used for a bit of vandalism lately, it's not just you. Sometimes the preview cache might take a bit to update once the vandalism is reverted. Best, CMD (talk) 02:38, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I know that there's an image blacklist somewhere, to prevent this kind of vandalism. Can this image be added to that blacklist? --rchard2scout (talk) 06:34, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Making a dummy edit on both articles seems to have removed the bad image from the cache. I think the same thing can be accomplished with a purge (by an account holder) - in fact, I remember someone round here once wrote a script to automatically purge all pages affected by such vandalism. 57.140.16.27 (talk) 13:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Ah, found it - I was remembering the wub's post near the end of this discussion, in response to an earlier incident. If someone could apply that to Template:Criminology and penology, it might be helpful? 57.140.16.27 (talk) 13:55, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Done, how's that looking? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:50, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

A spot check of the ~100 articles transcluding that template showed no unpleasant preview images, so it seems to've worked a treat. Thanks muchly @MSGJ! 57.140.16.27 (talk) 15:18, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Note: You don't have to make a dummy edit, you just have to make a null edit, which doesn't add to the page history or your contributions. Nardog (talk) 21:47, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Even purging will probably work, though thankfully we no longer have a case to test that on. Certes (talk) 22:04, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Hebrew text

Does this Hebrew text have some issues? It does not work well in citation templates:
"רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: "הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג
‎ -- Carnby (talk) 04:54, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/499649691714060299/1164790961021386812/image.png It works for me. I use the Monobook skin fwiw so I dunno if it that has anything to do with it. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 05:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Looks like that image for me here too, both logged in and in incognito mode. It might throw up something unexpected in a citation template of course. CMD (talk) 06:21, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@JCW555 and Chipmunkdavis: OP said it does not work well in citation templates, not in WP:VP pages. :) --CiaPan (talk) 06:49, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Hence the specific qualifier I used, I suppose. CMD (talk) 07:08, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@Carnby: It works wrong because it contains quotation marks, which have a special meaning of delimiting a parameter when you use the text in templates.

Replace double-quotes, for example with single quotes:

"רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: "הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג

'רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: 'הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג

then fix their positions:

רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: 'הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג'

finally surround the text with double quotes:

"רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: 'הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג'"

and use in a template, either as a title:

{{cite web| title="רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: 'הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג'" |trans-title="Rafi Peretz announced his retirement from political life: 'It's time to let new forces break through and lead'"| url=http://test.com/}}

""רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: 'הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג'"" ["Rafi Peretz announced his retirement from political life: 'It's time to let new forces break through and lead'"].

or as a quote:

{{cite web| title=test.com| quote="רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: 'הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג'"| url=http://test.com/}}

"test.com". רפי פרץ הודיע על פרישה מהחיים הפוליטיים: 'הזמן לתת לכוחות חדשים לפרוץ ולהנהיג'

:) CiaPan (talk) 06:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Project tag adding script creates blank pages

Sometimes, MediaWiki:AFC-add-project-tags.js appears to screw up and make blank pages like e.g Draft talk:Anunay Films which I've now deleted. I don't know JavaScript; can the script be changed so that it doesn't fail in this fashion? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:00, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Sometimes it even deletes existing tags, e.g Draft talk:Nehza Elnaz Rayya Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:06, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

This edit was done via another script altogether – WP:AFCSW. The edit that removed the wikiproject tag was from a resubmission. During resubmission, the script shows the existing project tags in the UI and allows the user to remove existing ones or add new ones. In this case, the user must have chosen to remove the one tag that was there on the page. – SD0001 (talk) 13:31, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

If the user submits the form at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Add WikiProject tags without selecting any tags, then sure - it'll create a blank talk page. I wouldn't call that a screw-up; blank talk pages do no harm. – SD0001 (talk) 13:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Deletion of never created content

So, an interesting finding at Category talk:Railway stations in Allahabad district - the page is currently empty after the deletion of 107 bytes of text ... except that there is no edit showing the addition of these 107 bytes. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:55, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

This was because of a history merge, see log. – SD0001 (talk) 13:35, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Gah, why do I keep doing unusual things that cause queries at VPT? This is the second time in only a few days (the other one being #The inevitable new redlinked category problems) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:22, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T341760

I have a ticket to create an entry in the page's history when a history merge occurs. Could help prevent confusion like this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:43, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Sticky header clips trailing f in page title

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T349436

While using Vector 2022, I saw that page titles ending with a lowercase f don't look right in the sticky header. This is really minor... but I thought I'd bring it up anyway and see if it's everyone or just me? I'm referring to titles like these:

It's much more noticeable on pages ending with italic f. By "sticky header", I mean the bar across the top of the screen when you've scrolled down the page a bit. It's the title as seen there that has the problem.

(Firefox 118) 3df (talk) 20:15, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

You are right. It's because .vector-sticky-header-context-bar-primary has overflow:hidden. Please file a bugreport in phabricator. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:49, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Sent 3df (talk) 21:55, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Italicized title

Hi, while doing npp, I came across the article Horse symbolism, which has an italicized title. When I tried to fix it, I noticed there wasn't an {{italic title}} anywhere in the article, so I'm a bit confused as to why the title is italicized. Anyone know what happened and how to fix it? Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 22:42, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

The several {{infobox artwork}}s in the page are doing so. I do not think those should be in there, especially since they seem to be serving as {{quote box}}s and not infoboxes. Izno (talk) 23:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

{{infobox artwork}} accepts |italic title=no but there are a lot and it's hard to know what future editors may do. Instead I have added {{DISPLAYTITLE:{{PAGENAME}}|noerror}} at the end to override whatever comes before it.[29] PrimeHunter (talk) 23:12, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! I'll take a shot at changing the infoboxes to quoteboxes. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:18, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

All infoboxes changed to other templates too. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:41, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The inevitable new redlinked category problems

Latest problems at Special:WantedCategories that are beyond my ken to fix:

Category:Proposed deletion as of 10 October 2023 is listed as a non-empty redlink with one member, even though the category itself is actually empty; I attempted a restore-and-redelete on it, but that failed to resolve the problem (or to reveal any contents).
As part of the ongoing process of moving wikiproject "members" categories to "participants", Category:WikiProject Apple Inc. members has already been moved to participants and mostly emptied out; the one straggler still in the dead category is a css settings page that I can't edit. Can somebody with the necessary level of editing privileges move User:Jake01756/csstest.css from "members" to "participants"? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:15, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Proposed deletion as of 10 October 2023}} looks like it's going to stay broken (at 0) for the time being. The usual way I use to fix it didn't work, I suspect because another page had been moved to Lyceum (software) after the initial problematic deletion. phab:T85696 has the flawed fix that lets action=purge fix this about one time out of ten (ping Legoktm, on the off chance he wants to update it; some analysis here). phab:T311744 is an open bug showing the same symptoms. phab:T18603 asks for a script specifically to fix this and is closed as a duplicate, but I can't find what bug it's a duplicate of (it's not the one mentioned); I vaguely recall seeing mention of such a script and that it gets run monthly, though that might just be my brain playing mean tricks on me again. —Cryptic 20:23, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

phab:T18603 says "duplicate of bug 16112". Many old bugs were once renumbered by adding 2000 so it's now a duplicate of phab:T18112. I think it was caused by a merge of two numbered bug systems using the same numbers below 2000. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:10, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

That looks plausible, thanks. Wasn't any help in finding the modern iteration of the script, though, which is indeed run monthly. So Category:Proposed deletion as of 10 October 2023 should get fixed without further manual intervention... eventually. —Cryptic 21:21, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Pretty much. When they switched from Bugzilla to Phabricator, people testing the latter started using it for real stuff pre-import and so when the bugs were later imported they had to be renumbered. Anomie ⚔ 13:24, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Bugzilla was the bug-tracking system used for just over ten years. The series of ticket numbers ran from bugzilla:1 (10 August 2004) up to bugzilla:73681 (21 November 2014). Some time before Bugzilla was dropped, it was decided to use Phabricator instead, and during the migration period tickets phab:T1 (5 February 2014) up to phab:T1391 (21 November 2014) were raised (mainly for issues connected with the migration) before all of the bugzilla tickets were imported over 21-22 November 2014, their numbers being increased by 2000 and prefixed with the letter T, hence phab:T2001 through phab:T75681 were all imported from Bugzilla. Tickets from phab:T75682 (22 November 2014) upwards were created directly in Phabricator. The numbers T1392 to T2000 inclusive were never issued. If links to Bugzilla tickets use the same format that I have used for the first two links in this post, an automatic redirection will occur, so there should be no beed for manual correction. Try out this link: bugzilla:16112. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:36, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Should I say sorry for having done something unusual that inadvertently broke the system? And I can't even resolve the other redlinked category issue as pennance because another Iadmin beat me to it. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:22, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Neener neener neeeeener Izno (talk) 23:25, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Bearcat say relax, weren't aimed at you. Bearcat (talk) 01:14, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Center babel box

Is there a way to center the {{babel}}’s box? I’ve tried |align=center but the lua module seems to only detect if the parameter exists and isn’t right. Also, how do I do the same for the #babel magic word? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:58, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Try using <center> before, and then </center> after that. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 13:13, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I've tried that, at least with the center template. It looks like this.

Wikipedia:Babel

You haven't set up any languages. Please see Template:Babel/doc for help.

Search user languages

Aaron Liu (talk) 14:49, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

This is a hack, but it works (for now):

Wikipedia:Babel

You haven't set up any languages. Please see Template:Babel/doc for help.

Search user languages

That's {{babel|extra-css=margin:auto;float:none}} – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:05, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I tried margin:unset but wow, I should've thought of that! Aaron Liu (talk) 15:17, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Still, is this not possible for the #babel magic word? Aaron Liu (talk) 15:21, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

My user page

I made some alternative user pages and redirected to my only active user page; i.e. I made user pages like User:Hamid.Hassani, User:Hamid Hassany, User:Hamid Hasany, and so on, with redirecting to the active one. Afterward, when I wanted to check my user page, I came accross this text: Hamidhassani1 is my former Wikipedia user. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hamid_Hassani, which I wrote ca. ten years ago. If I made a wrong action, please let me know to request deleting them via WP:SD request. Thank you. – Hamid Hassani (talk) 19:55, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Additional note: apparently, this edit happened unintentionally through the creation of redirect user pages! – Hamid Hassani (talk) 20:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I just fixed it. Thanks. – Hamid Hassani (talk) 20:36, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
@Hamid Hassani: Hi. I checked only User:Hamid.Hassani, and there is no user/account by that name. You basically created a random page in userspace, with no existent user. This is not allowed. You should create doppelganger account(s) WP:DOPP, but I am not sure about the similarity in the account names, or about number of doppelganger accounts. —usernamekiran (talk) 17:58, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: Thank you for your comment. As I mentioned, I fixed the occurred problem to my user page. Now, do I need to request speedy deletions for the created redirects? — Hamid Hassani (talk) 12:53, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Hamid Hassani: that depends. you can go to Special:CreateAccount, and create the accounts for the three redirects above. If you do not wish create these accounts, then you can request for speedy deletion. A lot of editors create doppelganger accounts to avoid impersonation. It is totally up to you. But I don't think creating doppelganger accounts is really necessary, so I think requesting speedy deletions would be the best choice here. —usernamekiran (talk) 14:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: Ok. I got the point. I will request WP:SD for some of them. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 17:21, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

css problem with category renaming

Moved to WP:IANB § Retired user populating deleted categories

Izno (talk) 20:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Janie Fricke

There's a stray right bracket at the very bottom of Janie Fricke that I can't seem to get rid of as I can't locate it on the page. Anyone able to get it for me? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:21, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, just a stray bracket.[30] Thincat (talk) 19:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 02:31, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

De & Fr WP articles to En

Two specimen print screens of the tool "tofawiki!"

I'm looking for a tool on the De & Fr WPs for the ease and reducing the time-consuming mechanical work in order to creating non-existent EnWP articles via translating articles, e.g., from the two mentioned WPs.
As far as I'm aware, there's a special tool in FaWP (named "tofawiki") that helps users to create a specific En article on the FaWiki. This tool, especially, helps transferring accordant references, categories, etc automatically in this regard. Is there any tool especially on the De and/or Fr Wiki(s) alike? Thanks in advance. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 04:44, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Requests for page importation which imports the markup and history. Then you can translate manually. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:40, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Importation can be done but isn't required here (I do most of the work on that page). I think you were looking for the Content translation tool. Graham87 (talk) 09:23, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Graham87: The WP page you mentioned is the nearest one to what I was seeking. Thank you indeed. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 05:37, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Global user page not showing in mobile app ( Android)

Hi,

I am using the global user page on all other languages except the English Wikipedia. When I view my user profile in another language via a browser, it correctly fetches the page from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anoopspeaks. However, if I try the same from the mobile app (Android), I end up on the non-existing local user page link, causing a 404 error. Is there a way to fix this? Anoop Bhatia (talk) 17:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-43

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

There is a new Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code. [31]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Citation clean up with bot

I recently started working with CSSP (Common_Symbiotic_Signaling_Pathway) but it requires referencing some references several times. I could not learn the "named reference" feature due to being obsessively focused on reading the journal articles (I am Autistic and immensely monotropic that makes it difficult for me to switch in between tasks). in this situation I have introduced several references with the citation button, and later on I am failing to visually scan the wall of text where I have introduced the duplicate/ redundant references. I apologise for this mistake. But is there any available wikipedia bot which can find duplicate references and can replace with appropriate named reference?

please help me out! RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 09:27, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved with wikimedia reFill tool https://refill.toolforge.org/ RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 11:05, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Undo button not showing auto text

I am not able to replicate it, but recently, I was able to "undo"/revert someone's edit without the typical Undid revision X by X showing up in the edit summary. It was this edit, where it marked it as a "minor edit" (Button was not clicked to be a minor edit). I tried to replicate it briefly in my sandbox to no luck. I also checked and this was not a redwarn style revert, as the edit summary wouldn't have been blank if, which it was. I doubt there is a instant "You did this" or "I can fix that" solution to this, but on the 0.1% chance there was, I wanted to alert y'all here. I was on Edge Browser, so if others report some similar problem, y'all got a report from me on it. Cheers. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 00:56, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

What is your point? It's always been possible to revert edits with no summary. Nardog (talk) 04:39, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

The default undo summary has never shown up when undoing multiple revisions, like that edit did. —Cryptic 04:49, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Has it always been possible to undo multiple edits, or is that a new thing? Came here to report the blank edit summary and realized I was undoing two edits. Feels like it's a new feature, but I could be wrong. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:50, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@WeatherWriter and Novem Linguae: It has always (or at last since May 2009, when I started editing) been possible to revert multiple edits as a single revert, and where two or more edits are reverted as a single action, the default edit summary is always blank, but Twinkle does supply one.

Assuming that you're not using Twinkle, such single reverts of multiple edits are normally done from the page history, either (i) when you have used the "cur" link on the third row or below and then used the "undo" link at upper right; or (ii) when you have selected radiobuttons on non-consecutive rows, then used the Compare selected revisions feature and then used the "undo" link as above.

In this case, the edit under discussion reverted these six edits all at once, and since the very next edit was the one under discussion, I suspect that the "undo" was preceded by using the "cur" link on the row directly beneath the ones that I have listed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:21, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Undoing multiple edits was added to Help:Reverting in November 2009.[32] PrimeHunter (talk) 21:44, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

That's when the help page was updated; I'm certain that the feature existed long before. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:54, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Kerem Shalom border crossing

Hello all - the Kerem Shalom border crossing is showing the correct geolocation, but as it stands the map only shows the city of Rafah, which has led some to confuse it with the Rafah Border Crossing (see talk page).

Not sure if anything can be done to remedy this or if this is the appropriate venue for this, but bringing this to editor attention. GnocchiFan (talk) 12:38, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

This is a point, and it's a bit hard sometimes to automatically determine an appropriate zoom level. I have set a different zoom level now. Map options could have been found in the template's documentation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:30, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much! That's much better now

GnocchiFan (talk) 14:54, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Adding a "death toll" in infobox of car models.

Hello, in United States, (and likely in other countries), there are statistics for death per million/miles, per 10 000 vehicules, or simply plain number aggregate numbers.

Once a vehicule reaches 20 accidents, official stats are made, on a vehicule.

I have tried to set up a parameter infobox [in the text editor] (in the sandbox), then to edit infoboxes, but it does not seem to change anything. I am very unsure, and the template tutorial didn't really feel so helpful. I tried as well editing by the graphical editor

The US road safety organisation has stats for several models.

I wanted to explore infobox options and death tolls in infoboxes, likely should not be limited to conflicts.

May anyone, please provide any guidance? Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 10:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Template:Infobox automobile/doc is the documentation, not the actual template. The edit would have to happen at Template:Infobox automobile ... and I think folks will ask whether this number is indeed important enough to be highlighted in the infobox. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:59, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it is because we have articles about road security, that security is major component of a car's design, and so. Yes, I do not think most would oppose so. Here is where I failed: Template:Infobox automobile/sandbox.

This number is indeed important, and there are yearly statistics made for car accidents and some vehicules are famous for their death toll. (F150 for example).

I try to set up a sandbox thing. But parameters when added stay as "Unknown" and do not change the display of the (sandbox) infobox. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 11:22, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Kamil Hasenfeller "Vehicule." Would that be a microscopically small car? You know, "vehiCLE" and "moleCULE"? Uporządnicki (talk) 11:14, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

My bad, here is a misspelling, I used too often. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 11:23, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Consensus would need to be obtained for the proposed change - probably at Template talk:Infobox automobile. Good luck with that.Nigel Ish (talk) 11:25, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Is consensus needed for attempting to edit the sandbox? I do not mean to change the template, just to try figure see HOW it is done. Later if included yes, it would need a policy consensus. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 11:30, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Anyone can edit the sandbox. It's a good idea to check that a change is technically feasible before proposing it, and to have an example to illustrate what's being suggested. My view is that this change would be very easy technically but might not attract consensus, both because the figure is not a core property of the car and because it may be specific to the U.S. when most cars are used in other countries. Certes (talk) 13:15, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

How about models mostly found in the US? It actually might be hard I found the figures for only 4 models. Is not safety a core property? Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 13:20, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

In my my own sandbox how must I proceed to add a new parameter?? (I have opened a sandbox). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kamil_Hasenfeller/sandbox — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamil Hasenfeller (talk • contribs) 11:36, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

--Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 12:59, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

{{Infobox automobile}} has no such parameter and it cannot be added in the call alone. It has to be supported by the template. For testing you could call your modified version at {{Infobox automobile/sandbox}}. This does not happen automatically just because the call is in a sandbox page. You have to include /sandbox when you make the call. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:56, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I would like to make the template support a new parameter. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 13:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

In the sandbox. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 13:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I told you to include /sandbox when you call {{Infobox automobile/sandbox}}. I have now done it for you [33] but if you cannot follow such a simple instruction then I suggest you don't try to edit infobox templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

There is more information at WP:TESTCASES. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

This page very few information about how to make a template. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 13:28, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:TESTCASES is about testing templates, not making them. See Help:Template for general help on making templates, and Template:Infobox for help on making infobox templates. WP:TESTCASES gives an efficient test method for users who know how it works but it may be too complicated for you and it isn't required. Instead you can just manually make test calls of a template. Make sure you are really calling the wanted template by its precise name. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:57, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

It's also about creating and updating /sandbox pages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:50, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

That's a pretty loaded number (implies deaths caused by the vehicle and who decides that?) and would probably need clarification / explanation and sourcing....i.e. (only) in the body because info boxes are bad at clarification / explanation and sourcing North8000 (talk) 19:45, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, both the weapon and the shooter are guilty. Well then it could be a list. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 16:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

updated since your last visit

The "updated since your last visit" I usually see when checking the history of a page I have watchlisted has changed to a migraine inducing vivid green, any idea how I can stop that so I can look at the page again? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:48, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Might be different rendering but its rather pleasant on my screen. In the short term if its causing a medical issue you could grayscale your display. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:55, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

There seems to be a move to the use of vivid colours, unfortunately not everyone finds them easy on the eye. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:59, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I will say that when I turn my blue filter off it is a much less pleasant shade of green. I too would prefer something closer to a pastel (something which compliments our soft blues). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:06, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested You could try

.updatedmarker{color:somthing more appealing; background-color:white};

in your common.css. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 20:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks I'll give it a try. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:43, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, NightWolf1223. It would be helpful if devs added a prefs setting when they made changes like this, rather than our having to deal with CSS. This looks very like the watchlist preference Subtle update marker: Tone down the "Changed since last visit" indicator on history pages. (By default it renders as a green-filled bar, enabling this gadget changes it to green text.) BlackcurrantTea (talk) 06:22, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, @BlackcurrantTea, I have that on, but it looks like they borked it. It renders as a a lime box rather than green text. I honestly have zero clue what is going on. Especially considering that my code is the exact same as the gadget. If anyone knows what is going on, please let me know. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 06:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

It's the fault of this change to the gadget definition -- looks like some gadgets got limited to the Special namespace. I think it'd be reasonable to remove that change for this specific gadget, since it really is supposed to apply outside of that namespace. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The issue seems to have been resolved by this edit[34]. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 16:58, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 21:45, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

History bullet points not working as they did

The History section bullet points no longer show as clear for unread versions, which was helpful, as they are near the "Compare selected revisions" radio buttons on the left side of my wide screen. The new messaging is off to the right, which makes it harder to determine which buttons to set. Why was that changed and can it be changed back? Dhtwiki (talk) 03:23, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

What "new messaging"? Nardog (talk) 07:45, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I have seen the same thing as Dhtwiki, I think. The article history no longer shows different colored bullet points for unread versions (yesterday, it did). The new messaging is a text box which displays "updated since your last visit" in green at the end of the revision line. I saw this starting yesterday (I don't recall changing any preferences for this), but it is gone now. My watchlist does indicate which articles have changes I have not seen; it's just the article history that doesn't. --Spiffy sperry (talk) 17:49, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Izno: Remove |namespaces=-1 from WatchlistGreenIndicators and WatchlistGreenIndicatorsMono as well (or replace it with |actions=view,history). Nardog (talk) 18:00, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Probably should consider splitting the gadget (at least the one loading on V22) if that makes sense since every line but one selector for one of those is specific to watchlist, and that's a lot of imagery loading. Izno (talk) 18:10, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

(And setting actions=view doesn't help in any great sense without also splitting.) Izno (talk) 18:12, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

in this diff, I think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

It's back to the way it was for me (and the bullet points show as green, not clear, which is what I put before). Thank you. Dhtwiki (talk) 01:00, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Firstly sorry for the unexpected breakage. I was investigating a small performance blip (increase in CSS bytes shipped on page) on Enwiki and that seemed liked an obvious optimization.

@Izno we could add

namespaces=-1,actions=history

if this is being used on the history page as well as watchlist. What do you think? Jdlrobson (talk) 15:00, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Wait, namespaces=-1,actions=history means "in the special namespace or on history pages"? If so the documentation needs updating, as that is contradictory to "only on the specified page actions"/"only on the specified namespaces". Nardog (talk) 17:01, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, separate RL parameters demarcate logical AND, not OR. I made this comment at phab:T63007#9192636 also, which gifted us the namespaces parameter. There has been some chatter about more complex loading functions which might allow logical OR. That's phab:T342567. I don't see an existing open task which specifically requests logical OR, but given Krinkle's general stewardship of the Phabricator project, someone might be able to find such in the declined pile. (Or not.) (Logical OR would also be difficult to shoehorn into the current gadget definitions. It might be something that could be done on its own if/when Gadget definition namespace is used.)

I will take a look at splitting this like I suggested above. The other thing I'm thinking about is turning this off as a default. We had so few responses here when it disappeared for the few days it did. Izno (talk) 17:23, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson I was investigating a small performance blip (increase in CSS bytes shipped on page) on Enwiki
That must be due to https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/964878 - purge is now an implicit right available to IPs as well. This means cached page views now ship geonotice, watchlist-notice and other gadgets that were previously restricted to registered users (using the rights=purge hack). We can update the condition to rights=createpage. – SD0001 (talk) 13:04, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I had been wondering about that patch and gadgets-definition. Probably worth saying something on task for that... Izno (talk) 16:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Nice catch User:SD0001 - that would explain the increase in gadget bundle we were seeing!

on subject of logical OR I created phab:T349654. Jdlrobson (talk) 17:36, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

En-dashes and em-dashes looking the same in the editor?

Let me know if this is just a me thing — but the en dash (–) and the em dash (—) look exactly the same to me in the edit window. They look obviously different in the preview, and they look different when I save the page, but the monospace font in the edit window (and the monospace font used with <code> tags) shows literally exactly the same glyph.

– (en)
— (em)

And I do mean exactly the same glyph. To the pixel. I'm using Firefox on Linux; is this just an implementation detail for me, or is this the case for everyone? If the latter, I would like to establish a petition, social movement, referendum, et cetera to slightly alter the monospace font we use to make them look slightly different. jp×g 00:40, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

What skin are you using? Are you using visual editor or wikitext editor? They look different to me on vector 2010, wikitext editor, Google Chrome for Windows. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:30, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Try different fonts.

There is no "monospace font we use". The CSS is just .mw-editfont-monospace { font-family: monospace, monospace; } (without the second monospace it becomes smaller) and it shows in whatever monospace font set in your browser. Nardog (talk) 04:35, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

They look different for me; I'm using the Consolas font. I tried a few other common fonts, and in DejaVu Sans Mono they look indistinguishable, so perhaps that's the one you're using. You can choose your preferred monospace font in Firefox settings: Fonts → Advanced… → Monospace. Matma Rex talk 16:36, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG: As per Matma Rex; plus, when I installed Firefox on my present machine, the default monospace font was unsatisfactory - I'm now using Courier New 13pt but don't recall what I altered it from. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Update: I updated a large number of softwares and the burning vulpine browser in question now uses a quite beautiful monospace font making the dashes easy and fun to distinguish. Canceling the plans for a protest march now... jp×g 20:49, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Resolved
–Novem Linguae (talk) 20:56, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:1CA "undefined"

I stumbled across a page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/undefined 2 obviously created in error. A quick search found that there are actually a few (maybe 30 or so) "undefined" pages created by 1CA. See archive intitle:undefined - Search results - Wikipedia. I bet the issue might be stale as the bug might have been fixed, but I wanted to raise the issue in case it has been noticed by other 1CA users. I am pretty sure all of these would be G6 eligible because these pages were created as a result of a malfunction of a user script. Awesome Aasim 23:15, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Awesome Aasim. Looks like that page was created by User:Technical 13/Scripts/OneClickArchiver.js. I found out the hard way how buggy that script is, and I recommend that everyone upgrade to User:Evad37/OneClickArchiver.js, which is a forked version with lots of bug fixes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:12, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae Can you consider G6'ing the pages accidentally created by that script? Of course, after moving the text from the "undefined" archives. Also would consider commenting out the last part of the Technical 13 1CA. Awesome Aasim 13:33, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I think we should 1) prevent this problem from happening in the future by doing something to Technical13's script. I started a discussion on that at Wikipedia:Interface administrators' noticeboard#OneClickArchiver old version is creating a mess. 2) After #1, make a post at WP:AWBREQ to get some help cleaning up the 30 pages in your list. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:05, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

#1 is now done. They ended up blanking the user script. I kicked off #2 by creating Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#Cleanup of 30 talk page archives with "undefined" in title. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:04, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

#2 is now also complete.

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 09:54, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Purge API broken?

I noticed that sub categories in Category:AfC pending submissions by age were not being updated by the bot that normally periodically updates by purging. I could not remember which bot it was so just assumed it was down. I run a program I wrote to do a purge on drafts in the wrong cats as a temp fix but that also failed to make any difference. I then tried a manual purge from the More > Purge menu and again no update to the categories. note that doing an Edit+Publish does get the categories to update.

This appears to have happed in the last few days so I assume it was possibly broken by the mw:MediaWiki 1.41/wmf.30 update - possibly Git 964563. I havn't had time to dig deeper, but thought I would report. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 11:24, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@KylieTastic: Purge only updates the purged page itself, not category pages and link tables. That requires a null edit (Edit+Publish). They would automatically be updated at some point but it can take a really long time. The time varies. I don't know whether it has generally been slower lately. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:38, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter I was not sure if the menu purge was working before, I agree from the text in Help:Purge it looks like it never did. However the bot used to work and I know my own program worked but I do a purge setting forcelinkupdate as well that I found was required to fix these category issues. That was working a week ago when I used it to clear Category:Automatic taxobox cleanup that was showing hundreds of issues that were no longer valid. I'll investigate more when I have time. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 11:50, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Pretty sure the purge API updates categories with forcelinkupdate=1. Nardog (talk) 14:19, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Out of interest, which bot normally does those purges? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 11:52, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime it used to be HasteurBot for a long time, then after Hasteur passed someone else did take up the task but I can't remember who or what the bot was called, and I've failed to find the past discussion at WT:AFC. KylieTastic (talk) 12:32, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime doh I remembered that is was Joe's Null Bot for a while which led me to this discussion - so I think the answer is ProcBot run by ProcrastinatingReader. KylieTastic (talk) 12:38, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's ProcBot. Category:AfC pending submissions by age is on the list located at User:ProcBot/PurgeList. I am not sure if the bot is still running though. Proc went inactive for awhile and the bot went down at least for awhile. The last time the AFC category stopped getting purged, I almost ended up writing a replacement bot. I forget what we did to fix it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:49, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Note for completeness that this appears to have been fixed again with the next release mw:MediaWiki 1.42/wmf.1 I believe with this. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 08:32, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
Possibly related: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SDZeroBot 12 –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:40, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Pywikibot-based bots hitting pywikibot.exceptions.UserRightsError: User "DYKUpdateBot" does not have required user right "purge" will be interested in phab:T349348 for the Pywikibot fix. Shubinator (talk) 05:40, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
My refresh-links bots Bot1058 task 8 quit working about a month ago, only about a month after SD0001 approved them after a lengthy trial/development process. Nobody bothered to alert me of any breaking change, and up till now I haven't made this a priority for investigation. I've shut down this bot's task because it stopped working; once I'm aware of a fix, I can restart it. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:28, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Note for completer completeness, mw:MediaWiki 1.42/wmf.1 also includes a related patch "PurgeAction: Properly report rate limiting – So far, PurgeAction would fail silently when the rate limit is exceeded. That's confusing and inconsistent with ApiPurge." I certainly would appreciate being informed if/when I exceed a rate limit, so that my bots don't needlessly spin their wheels doing nothing while appearing to still be doing something. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:54, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
fwiw, the English Wikipedia is currently using MediaWiki 1.42.0-wmf.1, so you will get rate limit errors. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 14:57, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Right, I just checked Special:Version#mw-version-software myself and saw that. I guess my next step is to review my code for how it handles rate limit errors and make any necessary adjustments, then restart that task. My objective is to push the system as hard as it can handle, but not harder than that, to ensure all links are refreshed as often as possible. My bot picks up the ones that the other bots missed. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:11, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Rate limits are not applicable for bot-flagged accounts. (Also, the patch is for PurgeAction which is the UI equivalent. The bot would be using ApiPurge instead.) – SD0001 (talk) 16:02, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
OK then, I've just restarted my refresh-links bots using the same configuration that they were using when running successfully in September. Will monitor them for their progress in catching up to where they were when they quit working. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:10, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Quick clarification on how this should work now, from the person who wrote the patches in question:

ActionPurge and ApiPurge should both enforce the rate limits for purge and linkpurge, which are both set to 30 purges per minute for each user (and each IP). But as far as I can tell this limit does not apply to bots, since the bot group has the noratelimit right set per default.
purge is now an "implicite right" (like linkpurge already was). This means that the right cannot be denied, just rate-limited. A message like User does not have required user right "purge" should be impossible.

If this is not the case, please file a ticket on Phabricator and assign it to me. -- DKinzler (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately this is not the case for #2, Pywikibot-based bots are still seeing that error message (phab:T349348). Shubinator (talk) 01:42, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

My bot is still spinning its wheels, repeatedly purging the same pages. I'm seeing no indication from the system reporting back to the bot that the pages were not successfully purged, and yet the page_links_updated value for these pages has not been updated, so my bots keep trying to update it... As I said, this behavior began around the end of September or the beginning of October, so you might look into what changed around that time. – wbm1058 (talk) 10:57, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I see "Use Authority to check rate limits in the API." was submitted on September 28, that matches the time frame when my purge bots stopped working, so that code change is my suspect: "Rate limit checks are now performed implicitly by UserAuthority, see T310476." Even though my bots are not rate limited(?). – wbm1058 (talk) 11:13, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

That went in the the mw:MediaWiki 1.41/wmf.29 update, the update before the one reported at the top of this thread. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:24, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Blurry SVG render with "frame"

It seems that [[File:...|frame|...]] doesn't work properly on high-density screens (often misnamed "HiDPI") by not including srcset in the output HTML, so that at least for SVG files, the rendered PNG size is based on "logical pixels" instead of device pixels. For an example, see the image in Uncanny#Related theories. Removing |frame makes it properly sharp (and I do see srcset with higher-resolution 1.5x and 2x in the HTML). I don't know whether it's a general MediaWiki or a local problem... — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 23:53, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T133489

Well, apparently nobody cares, but I've found this error already reported (T133489) in 2016, so in fact nobody really cared about it for 7 years... I did some investigation and described my findings in that task, so if anybody having access to the code base can test the proposed solution, please do. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 02:23, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Grammarly issues

On several occasions, I have experienced issues when using the pop-up box editor with Grammarly. The corrections are made but with errors. For example, a comma is inserted in the middle of a word instead of the end of the word, or a correction is placed randomly in the sentence or in the middle of the word I was attempting to replace. The problem is that you cannot see how the edits are inserted from the editor box, so it is something that I have to catch in a final visual check. This issue happened one day, but everything worked as expected the next day. Only to have the problem show up again several weeks later. Unfortunately, I did not document every time I experienced this. But we know for sure it happened in August when I saved this colossal mess by mistake on the Lamar University article. It is so bizarre that am I having a hard time figuring out what was supposed to change. Rublamb (talk) 00:00, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:Grammarly is a known issue. Izno (talk) 01:20, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing that link. Funny thing is, I came across it as a recommended tool for copyediting, as in Wikipedia:Spellchecking and Wikipedia:Basic copyediting. Rublamb (talk) 01:37, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

@Rublamb: Both of those pages say to use the tools carefully because they can introduce errors. RudolfRed (talk) 01:22, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@RudolfRed, That was added today after I brought this up to GOCE. Wikipedia:Basic copyediting is not a GOCE page, but GOCE links to it as part of their instruction for new members. The general decision was that the warning was needed, after @Izno shared the essay on Grammarly. Hopefully this will reduce unintentional errors. Rublamb (talk) 03:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Export reference lists from Wikipedia pages

I have a large page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Smooth_Island_(Tasmania) which I want to rewrite via Microsoft Word. I'll need to use a reference manager like EndNote or Zotero. How can I export the page, and it's reference list, to ensure the numbered inline citations don't become a complete mess once I start moving sections around in Microsoft Word?

I'd really love to be able to cleanly export the reflist from a wiki page into a RIS or BibTeX format.

Even better still, I'd love to be able to export a wikipedia page to a Word document, in such a way that the in-line citations hyperlinks are preserved and so that EndNote/Zotero etc can recognise them as true citations.

I'd be very grateful for any tools or solutions you could provide

Vitreology (talk) 03:04, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Most of the citations there appear to be using the citation templates in which case you can apply this Zotero KB article. Izno (talk) 03:14, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not following. How can I made Zotero extract the references from within the Wikipedia page? Vitreology (talk) 04:03, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Template for discussion invitation

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but since I didn't where else to ask it, I am asking it here.

Instead of writing manual invitations at project's talk pages asking other project members for comments and feedback on XYZ subjects, is there a template, I am not aware of, that would automatically formulate an invitation by substituting it? Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I personally make my notifications a one-liner. It just saves me time and dodges concerns of potential non-neutrality. I also use User:Newslinger/Notifier.js when I need to notify en masse. Izno (talk) 01:17, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

@Izno, would you say my invitation was non-neutral? Qwerty284651 (talk) 16:42, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I personally. It was not a comment about notifications you may have made before. Izno (talk) 17:09, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I know you were talking about in general. I was asking for feedback for my notification in the WT:TEN, whether it was worded as non-neutral. Qwerty284651 (talk) 22:05, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

It tends away from neutrality with to enable visitors and readers of tennis articles be given the best version of BLP's statistics that we possibly can. which is a common argument axis in many discussions. Izno (talk) 22:32, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

How do you propose I should reword it so it best fits the WP:NEUTRAL policy? Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:12, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I use {{subst:Please see|WP:TFD#Section}} or similar. Leaves a neutral notification without much typing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:46, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Admin afdstats down?

I refer to: https://afdstats.toolforge.org/afdstats.py?name=Maile66&max=&startdate=&altname= When I try to open that today, it just goes on an endless loop, and nothing ever happens. I don't readily see any other issues elsewhere. — Maile (talk) 11:34, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

@Maile66, it doesn't open for me. It appears that problems with that external tool may be reported here. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:33, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the input and info. — Maile (talk) 14:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Just saw this in passing and restarted the webservice — could you try again now Maile66? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 15:11, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Ta! Da! It works now. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 15:12, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 05:47, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Heads-up: Update to ICU Unicode library

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T345561

Hi everyone,

Starting on November 2, 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation Operations team will migrate the servers running the MediaWiki application servers to a new release of the ICU Unicode library (to version 67). This unblocks some future work on upgrading the servers to a new Operating System release and will also allow the use of improved internationalisation in the future (as wikis will then be able to use features introduced by the new ICU release such as new collation definitions; this will also allow us to use a more recent version of Unicode in MediaWiki).

This migration will cause some unavoidable temporary user-visible impact: The sorting of some category pages will be distorted – all pages which have been updated with the new software version will use the new sorting while untouched pages still use the old sorting. As such, Ops need to run a maintenance script to update the sorting for old entries.

The distortions may last from a few hours (on medium-sized wikis), up to a day (on the largest wikis), and a few days on English Wikipedia. The start-time will depend upon when the migration script reaches each wiki.

The detailed list and the task for the technical implementation is at T345561. If this message seems familiar before, it's because we've done similar updates in the past, the latest one three years ago.

Potential updates will be posted following this message.

This operation will be announced in Tech News. Other impacted wikis will also have a similar message. Please share this message where it needs to be posted! Johan (WMF) (talk) 11:11, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I see no one has updated Scribunto's pure-lua ustring library for changes like this since 2018. That doesn't really surprise me, I couldn't get people to review my attempts back in 2019 when I still worked there. Looks like the UtfNormal library hasn't been updated since 2018 either. Anomie ⚔ 12:25, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF) ^ Izno (talk) 18:15, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Anomie and Izno. I've passed this on to make sure more people see it. Johan (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Pageviews from search query

What are the most-viewed articles with "born" in their titles (e.g. Oscar (footballer, born 1991))? (or generally, how can one turn search results into pageview analysis?) Hameltion (talk | contribs) 16:28, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Someone could probably build a script that pulls interesting info.

The other alternative might be to see if pageviews can have another option titled "searchviews" or something. Or it could more gracefully integrate with e.g. Petscan or another one of our "big data comb" tools. Izno (talk) 16:55, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org already has a "Search" option under "Source". It may have problems for searches with a huge number of results. intitle:born includes articles which only match on a redirect like George Bush (born 1946) to George W. Bush. I don't know whether such redirects can be excluded. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:25, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

> Me totally missing I could change the source of massviews. Izno (talk) 21:37, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

100% me too. Thanks PrimeHunter. Redirects aren't too much of an issue for this (can just Ctrl+F on the results) but massviews definitely tends to clunk out when processing big batches.

So of (partial) results, most viewed this year: Paul Mullin (footballer, born 1994), Rodri (footballer, born 1996), Jorginho (footballer, born December 1991). Of non-footballers: Princess Charlotte of Wales (born 2015), Peyton List (actress, born 1998), Samyuktha (actress, born 1995), Jung Kyung-ho (actor, born 1983), Jason Williams (basketball, born 1975). Others of note: Sophia Smith (soccer, born 2000), Alex Scott (footballer, born 1984), Chris Jones (defensive tackle, born 1994), Barbara Bush (born 1981). Hameltion (talk | contribs) 21:49, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

@Hameltion@PrimeHunter I was curious to see if I could do it offline, bypassing massviews, so took a different approach which might be of interest - processing the main pageviews file.

The top 10 for May 2023 (the file I had handy):

Princess Charlotte of Wales (born 2015) - 346029
Rob Edwards (footballer, born 1982) - 194983
Samyuktha (actress, born 1995) - 193229
Phil Jones (footballer, born 1992) - 185277
Julio Enciso (footballer, born 2004) - 121867
Rodri (footballer, born 1996) - 120566
Paul Mullin (footballer, born 1994) - 115044
Jason Williams (basketball, born 1975) - 111845
Jack Hughes (ice hockey, born 2001) - 105469
Prince Ernst August of Hanover (born 1954) - 98698

For a single month it took about a few minutes to process. It can't identify namespaces (other than by manually parsing the label) but in practice that's not much of an issue. In case it's useful, this is the bash commands to process the dump

$ grep "^en.wikipedia" pageviews-202305-user > pageviews-enwikionly-2023
$ grep "_(born_" pageviews-enwikionly-2023 | cut -d " " -f 2,5 > sample
$ grep ",_born_" pageviews-enwikionly-2023 | cut -d " " -f 2,5 >> sample
$ awk '{count[$1]+=$2} END {for (i in count) print count[i],"\t",i}' sample | sort -gr > report

Replace the red bits and add new copies of the third line as appropriate. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:48, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Izno as well, sorry! (since they were the one who suggested a script...) Andrew Gray (talk) 17:51, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Andrew Gray: Wow, thanks for looking into this. If it's not too much trouble would you mind copying the top (200 or 300) results into my userspace for posterity? At User:Hameltion/the born identity works. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 18:08, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Hameltion Sure - I've pulled down the August and September files so will generate it with the last two months data. Are there any other strings you think it should look for? (Eg I'm not sure if (athlete born 1950), no comma, is a widely used format). Andrew Gray (talk) 18:17, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Andrew Gray: Thanks in advance then. Nothing comes to mind; no comma isn't common, especially not in high-traffic pages. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 18:21, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Hameltion and done! Top 300 almost exactly comes out at 15000 over two months, just under 250/day, which seems like a nice round threshold anyway.

There's definitely some traffic-spike anomalies there and running over a few more months might help smooth it out, but it'll hopefully be good enough to be going on with. If you'd like a full year for comparison I can see about arranging it. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:24, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks again, no need to run more unless you feel so inclined. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 19:56, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Adjusting margins between images in galleries

See this discussion: is it possible to display images in galleries without empty spaces between them? Jarble (talk) 18:30, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I was hoping to reply with some custom CSS to put in your User:Jarble/common.css file or in a <div style=""> tag. But whatever is creating that spacing isn't obvious to me on quick inspection. Turning margin off, changing to flex, etc. did not compact them. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:14, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Why is text formatted incorrectly inside an image frame?

See this discussion: is it possible to correctly display groups of images with multiple captions inside an image frame? Jarble (talk) 15:18, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Sometimes-not-loading javascript

My common.js.

Hello, I have been trying to set up AutoEd with custom user scripts, such that I am defining my own autoEdFunctions. The issue is that sometimes AutoEd works, and sometimes it does not work, and I get a console message about autoEdHeadlines not having been defined(/loaded). Is importScript lazy or async, such that my defining of autoEdFunctions may not have those imported functions in scope yet? Or am I missing something else? Thanks, Kimen8 (talk) 01:16, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Is importScript lazy or async Yes. Izno (talk) 02:59, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

So then, how am I to define autoEdFunctions such that it has the functions from the imported scripts in scope when it gets defined? Kimen8 (talk) 12:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

You can't, not without some changes to Wikipedia:AutoEd/core.js, so that it could be made to wait for your scripts to load before running autoEdFunctions(). Perhaps the easiest way would be to allow autoEdFunctions to return a promise, and wait for that promise to be resolved before continuing – that way, you could load whatever you want, and wait for it however you want. Matma Rex talk 21:39, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I have rearranged a few things and it seems to be working more reliably now; I know I'm not the only person using AutoEd, even with custom functions, so I'm curious how those people are making it work reliably. Kimen8 (talk) 21:41, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 207 § Is importScript asynchronous? for discussion on customizing AutoEd. The standard set of helper files don't use any code from the core script, so the helper files can be loaded first and the core script after them. I suggested having a document ready callback load all helper files within a Promise, and then loading the core script within the callback for that Promise. Rublov implemented a slightly different order (see User:Rublov/common.js), where the helper files are loaded first in a Promise, and in its callback, a document ready callback loads the core script. isaacl (talk) 22:43, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your detailed response. These resources seem to be the answer. Kimen8 (talk) 22:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Problems with links on Special:NewPagesFeed

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T349850

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T347732

I have since a few days (last Thursday perhaps?) some issues with links on Special:NewPagesFeed, I'll try to describe the most obvious ones. I don't have these issues on other pages (e.g. the watchlist), so it seems to be page-specific and not some general browser issue. I use Windows, Firefox, desktop.

The issues happen especially when the entry on the feed only takes up 2 or three lines (so with only one line of text, or no text at all), not when you get more lines of text. I use "old" vector, widescreen, so this may not happen on "new" Vector which is smaller and thus will probably show more lines of text in most cases.

Links are very "fussy", I don't get the link-indicator (the link getting underlined and clickable, arrow becomes a hand) across the whole height of the text, but only near the top of the words, across only a few pixels really, when there is only one line of text.
When there is no text, e.g. with a redirect which is nominated for deletion (in the current feed, the entry for "14:28, 26 October 2023" and below), I get no link at all for the username, talk and contribs links, and a very limited one for the page title. I also get, on the far right, the "Review" button obscuring most of the date.

Fram (talk) 15:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed it as well. Haven't bothered to write out the problem yet as a Phabricator ticket. It's the new Vue.js-based page triage interface. See Wikipedia:Page_Curation/2023_Moderator_Tools_project#October_20,_2023:_Final_update! for discussion/links. You can use the old one, for now, at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPagesFeed?pagetriage_ui=old>. Skynxnex (talk) 16:44, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae ^ Izno (talk) 18:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting. Special:NewPagesFeed is in the middle of a rewrite and it probably created some bugs. This sounds like it might be T349852: Links for page titles are offset high when a page has no autgenerated summary and T349850 Review button overlapping creation time to me. If so, feel free to add some detail to the tickets. If not, let's try to gather enough info to start a new ticket. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:50, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you (all). I don't edit phabricator, too much passive-agressive behaviour from some of the people ruling over there, rules which only get imposed when it suits them and so on. Fram (talk) 07:49, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm planning to include fixes for these as part of the planned redesign :) Wrt to phabricator, I am unsure as to what you are reffering to, but there should be very little friction if you stick to the bug reporting template for PageTriage for anything concerning NPP. Do file bug reports/feature requests, since otherwise it becomes hard to fix the issues and they get lost :( Sohom (talk) 12:23, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Possible to just get a list of changes to a page?

It'd be really great if there was a way to just get a simple list of changes to a page. Right now you have to weed through 'compare versions', but if there was a way to get an ordered list of additions and subtractions - without all the surrounding text (user, timestamp, changed text) - I believe that would be quite useful. Yes, it won't always make perfect sense, but over all I believe it would, especially for current / ongoing event type pages. Note the summaries on the history page are rarely useful or informative. Wikiqrdl (talk) 18:58, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

You could try a comparison (diff) that includes multiple revisions instead of just one revision at a time. WP:POPUPS is also a good tool for viewing diffs in one's watchlist without clicking on them, saving a couple clicks. Setting one's watchlist to show every diff, grouped together by page, is also a good trick. Then you can uncollapse a page and it will show every individual edit, and you can read edit summaries and use popups to view the ones of interest. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Wikiqrdl: At Preferences → Appearance → Diffs, disable "Don't show the revision slider". Then when you go to any diff, you get a collapsed box at the top labelled "Browse history interactively". Click that, and it expands, showing a horizontal line across the middle. Bars projecting above the line indicate a net increase in page size; bars projecting below the line indicate a net decrease. Hover your mose over any bar to get date, time, username, edit summary etc. for that edit. You also have two sliders, a yellow and a blue, which you can move about to compare any two revisions of a page; as you move them, the diff shown at the bottom changes to show the cumulative diff. There's more info at mw:Extension:RevisionSlider. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:47, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Are scripts like commonHistory and ExpandDiffs what you're looking for? Nardog (talk) 15:31, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Main page sr.wiki - help needed

Hi. I would like to ask for a help with Serbian Wikipedia Main Page visual output. The problem we encounter is that low lines of boxes with content are not vertically aligned left-with-right and that looks ugly. There is a scratch version at this page, pretty much working except that we do not know how to align buttons and icons and text and three dots to stick to the lower part of any of the boxes i.e. their low line. Please check w:sr:Шаблон:Одељци Главне стране/тест, as well as w:sr:Шаблон:Главна страна/styles.css and w:sr:Шаблон:Одељци Главне стране/styles.css where problem can be resolved by someone who knows how to float css element at the bottom of the div container. This is pretty much what we aim to do. Thank you in advance! — Sadko (words are wind) 20:45, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

@Sadko you want each box on the left to start and begin in the same place as the box on the right? You may use CSS grid. Here's a guide at CSS tricks and a similar guide at MDN. Izno (talk) 20:59, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

As for attaching items to the bottom of a box, see this DDG search which mostly suggests the use of CSS bottom. I don't know if you can use CSS clear with that, which you would probably need to ensure Stuff attached doesn't overlap with other content. Izno (talk) 21:02, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Ty. fellow editor Izno. I'll write to you some more if I have any more questions. Thanks once again.. — Sadko (words are wind) 00:44, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Reference tool cannot reuse citations from infobox

The new reference tool is so much better than manually typing and copying the <ref name=...>, but I noticed that references defined in templates do not show up on the list of existing references that I can reuse. C9mVio9JRy (talk) 07:27, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-44

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

The Structured Content team, as part of its project of improving UploadWizard on Commons, made some UX improvements to the upload step of choosing own vs not own work (T347590), as well as to the licensing step for own work (T347756).
The Design Systems team has released version 1.0.0 of Codex, the new design system for Wikimedia. See the full announcement about the release of Codex 1.0.0.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).
Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [35][36]
Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months. [37]

Future changes

There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. You can help by reviewing this proposal and sharing what you think about it.
The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Oho! Stand by for new threads like "Categories are sorting in the wrong order", as has happened several times before. These may also be posted at VPM, AN and Teahouse. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:59, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Didn't we recently get a feature that lets us put a message on the top of every page in a given namespace (originally requested for Draft:, IIRC)? Is it worth putting an alert at the top of Category: pages about this while they're in flux? —Cryptic 03:06, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

It's not in production wikis yet – enabling it on enwiki needs another phab ticket (gentle nudge to @Sdkb for that). – SD0001 (talk) 03:44, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Edit conflicts with myself

I saw this after an unintentional mouse double-click

Something annoying has started happening lately; this has happened to me multiple times in the last several days.

I click undo to undo another editor's edit, and check the diff, then when I click save I see:

"Someone else has changed this page since you started editing it, resulting in an edit conflict."

That someone else was me, and my edit was successfully saved, despite this message popping up telling me otherwise! wbm1058 (talk) 15:44, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Do you have a cheap mouse that sometimes gives you two clicks when one would have been enough?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:20, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I was on my desktop using a wireless Microsoft mouse; my biggest issue with it is that it burns through batteries too quickly. I suppose I could try intentionally double-clicking to see whether that duplicates the issue. But I've been using the same mouse for years and don't recall having the problem until recently. Is there such a thing as an expensive mouse? Could also be an issue with too many tabs open and bots running using up memory or something. I'd suggest that before claiming "someone else" that the software could do a quick checkuser to confirm that it really was someone else though. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:17, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, I confirmed the cause. My intentional double-click saving the above post duplicated the problem. Wikimedia software should check the user ID or IP address and just ignore the second click when they're the same. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:21, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Adding a screenshot. The software is obviously confused. The "Stored revision" is exactly the revision before I clicked Publish changes. "Your text" is exactly the change I published. It did publish this change before putting up the Edit conflict: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) page on my PC. If this is coming from my second click, then why isn't the "Stored revision" what my first click saved, and why wasn't my second click treated as a null edit? wbm1058 (talk) 14:19, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: What browser are you using, and on what OS? And are you using the WP:WikEd gadget? This is possibly related to Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard/Archive 12#Filter 1253: False positive ratio. I've never been been able to reproduce this (long-standing) self-conflict bug, or the filter bug, in Firefox on Linux. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:01, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I haven't used WikEd in years. I still have some WikEd stuff in my common.css from back when I did some work for another user. Heh, I'm still running Windows 7 and the last version of Google Chrome that runs on 7. I like and still use the Windows Media Center even though it's lost its program directory. And I'm proud that the PC I built from parts (BYOPC) thirteen years ago is still cooking. I don't really know what I'm missing by not having a Windows 11 machine, and I had a machine that ran Ubuntu, which I never came to like as much as Windows, until it died on me. I think I'm gonna get a new rechargeable mouse now that I see that's an option. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:40, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, found this in the source:

                                $this->isConflict = true;
                                if ( $this->section === 'new' ) {
                                        if ( $this->page->getUserText() === $requestUser->getName() &&
                                                $this->page->getComment() === $this->summary
                                        ) {
                                                // Probably a duplicate submission of a new comment.
                                                // This can happen when CDN resends a request after
                                                // a timeout but the first one actually went through.
                                                $editConflictLogger->debug(
                                                        'Duplicate new section submission; trigger edit conflict!'
                                                );
                                        } else {
                                                // New comment; suppress conflict.
                                                $this->isConflict = false;
                                                $editConflictLogger->debug( 'Conflict suppressed; new section' );
                                        }
                                }

Can someone with logstash access check if wbm1058 is triggering lots of Duplicate new section submission; trigger edit conflict!" errors? That would at least narrow down part of the problem (but still doesn't explain why this could happen when undoing an edit). Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:37, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I admit my Logstash skills aren't great, but at quick glance I only found a single entry in the "EditConflict" channel over the past two weeks, and it was not from wbm1058 or even on this wiki for that matter. Here's a permalink for those who have access. There definitely have been more edit conflicts than that, so clearly my query is wrong, or these are intentionally not getting logged. Sorry I'm not of much help! I suggest reaching out to the Editing team or simply filing a bug if this persists. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:44, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Update: I bought and started using a $99 rechargeable "gaming (Esports)" mouse (plus: it has "forward" and "back" buttons. minus: now another USB port is tied up, as mouse and keyboard have separate receivers). I tried intentional double-clicks a couple times yesterday, and they worked fine (second click ignored). But then late last night, I unintentionally double-clicked on a "rollback" link, and saw the screenshot posted above. I was tired, miffed at the vandal, whatever, my aging finger got "twitchy". Is there ever a valid use for double-clicks on MediaWiki? I know that some software supports them. If there is never a valid use then whatever the software front end is that's receiving my mouse signals should just ignore any signal received say, less than a second after another signal. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:59, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Defaulted edit window colors

Reporting that about 1/2 hour ago, my edit window colors changed to "defaults". White background, blue text, different font, font size. Timeless skin at User:JoeNMLC/timeless.css.

textarea[style] { height: 46em; color: #32cd32; font-family: 'Noto Mono'; font-size: 110%; } /* color Lime green text */

textarea { caret-color: red; }

textarea { background-color: #000000; } /* color Black */

Before posting here, I did the usual "Purge", Log Out/Log In. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 18:23, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Did you accidentally turn on syntax highlighting? It will be a marker-pen-like symbol in the toolbar. (Or, the gadget or two available?) That would have dis-enabled your customizations and would explain you seeing it in blue text. Izno (talk) 19:25, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@Izno, Yes - it was that syntax highlight. (my not so good typing) Still learning something new daily. Thanks a bunch. Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk) 19:32, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

When not signed in, three lines to left of article titles

At the top of the page, when I was on a computer where I had not yet signed in, I found that there were always three short lines to the left of the article name. That seems to have gone away. I was just curious what happened. I also tried signing in with an alternate account that I use to see what newcomers see, but that feature wasn't there.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:01, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

It's an icon in the default skin Vector 2022 to show the table of contents when it's hidden. It can also be seen if you are logged in. It usually remembers your choice and remains like that until you click it and select "move to sidebar". PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

See Hamburger button for what it's supposed to signify in general. Nardog (talk) 23:29, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Not quite. A hamburger button only has the lines and indicates a menu. This looks similar but also has dots and is a bulleted list icon

. There is also one under "Advanced" in the default editor toolbar. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:11, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I think this

was what I saw.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:01, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

It's an odd choice for an icon, since they took away the useful TOC numbering in Vector 2022, and I don't know of any skins that use bullets in the TOC. See T44059 for the task that took away numbering, despite testimony from editors about its usefulness, and T307316, which is requesting an easy way for editors to see them again in Vector 2022 (i.e. easier than customizing your CSS and hoping that the developers do not change the class names in the master style sheets). – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:24, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps this is phab:T349988 ? Jdlrobson (talk) 18:52, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Information.svg, linked to by eight million pages, is TEN THOUSAND BYTES?

File:Information.svg -- see how huge this is? Same for File:Information icon4.svg which is 1 kilobyte for an extremely basic shape.

Definitely big if true. But is it true? The impression I get is that it's not actually being loaded by that many pages, and MediaWiki caches a .png render which is what people actually get served, so it's not an actual 10kb image getting loaded or rendered each time a page with them on it is served. Is this a thing, or nah? jp×g 🗯️ 10:14, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

MediaWiki caches png versions in different sizes. A typical use says [[File:Information.svg|30px]] and produces

which loads the 1834 byte https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/28/Information.svg/30px-Information.svg.png. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:35, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

If a browser has already read it once then the browser will often read it from its own cache and not from a Wikimedia server. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:39, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Everything that PrimeHunter says. But also, even when you do get the 10KB version by clicking the original file, you'll receive it with on the fly compression applied to it, which will reduce the size. In this case, 3050 bytes will be actually transmitted, so not that far off from that 1800 bytes of the PNG at 30px. Having said that, there are a lot of unoptimised SVGs in our file catalogue. Because of the png thumbnailing this isn't a problem, but there is a long wish by the community to remove the png thumbnailing and to allow SVG directly (something I've been working on a bit over the last year). And then this would be a potential risk that we might have to account for. The current idea is to set a limit of 50 or 100KB per SVG and if SVGs are larger than that, they would still be forced to be rendered as PNGs. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:25, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Breaking database change: pagelinks table

There is a longstanding plan to move some columns from the pagelinks table to the linktarget_table in enwiki and other databases used by Wikipedia and similar projects. Imminent release has now been announced. This change will break some regular and ad hoc database reports, Quarry queries and perhaps other software. A similar change has already taken place for templatelinks, and is planned for categorylinks in future. Certes (talk) 14:27, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Slack vulnerability via Wikipedia

This article, dated yesterday at Security Week ("Attackers Can Use Modified Wikipedia Pages to Mount Redirection Attacks on Slack"), seems concerning and maybe to be something Wikipedia can help with. What say you? SchreiberBike | ⌨ 12:35, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: Unfortunately it's unlikely Wikipedia (or Medium, as the article mentions) can do anything to help — this sounds like an issue with Slack more than anything. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

The Wiki-Slack Attack requires 2 conditions: the Wikipedia article be formatted in a particular way. And lots of pages this way. The formatting requirement has two elements. A footnote at the end of the first paragraph - which is impossible to detect since that's normal. It also requires "the first word of the second paragraph is a top-level domain (TLD)". Unclear what that means, like ".com" or "com" or "foo.com" or "Com". Even if it's not our job to fix Slack's problem, "we" (bots?) could monitor for it to prevent what is essentially vandalism. -- GreenC 13:37, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

The original vulnerability description goes into more detail; the researchers say they found over a thousand natural occurrences of the pattern (not maliciously) exposing Slack to its preview bug. By the nature of the bug, it looks quite indistinguishable from legitimate edits. This seems to pretty clearly be a Slack vulnerability, not Wikipedia. StereoFolic (talk) 14:00, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Yes confirmed with Slack and Lemmatization, this is a thing. User:TheresNoTime is correct, this needs to be resolved by Slack. They have been sending pop-up notices for the past few days of a forced update coming soon, could be related. -- GreenC 14:15, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Looks easily fixable by Slack. They should change their algorithm to replace line breaks with spaces instead of just deleting them. With a space in between "form." and "In", their linking algorithm wouldn't get confused anymore. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:14, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

The link destination isn't exactly hidden. The victim sees a blue link such as (in the Lemmatization example) form.In and, although that style normally leads to another Wikipedia article, they can't have too many complaints if clicking it takes them to the form.in domain. Certes (talk) 15:28, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems like a Rube Goldberg way to achieve the same result as <span class="plainlinks">. I'm struggling to see how "user clicking on a link is taken to the target of the link" is a even a security flaw. I stopped reading the esentire article at Browser-based attacks are a new underestimated threat surface... what what what? "New"? Have these people never heard of Internet Explorer? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:14, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

In terms of what it does, yes. However, class=plainlinks https://evil.hacker.example.com/virus.exe is more likely to get reverted. Certes (talk) 21:19, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Reminded of this today as I had a text reminder on my phone to remind me of an appointment "...at X Pharmacy.To change..." and the phone helpfully tried to treat that missing space as a link to "pharmacy.to". I'm pretty sure bad parsers have been doing this for a decade or two by now.

From the WP side, their description of the scaled-up threat relies on someone going around using chatGPT to rewrite high-visibility articles to get a desired pair of words in specific constrained places in the lead paragraph... I can't see that actually happening on any kind of meaningful scale? Andrew Gray (talk) 13:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

This appears to be a Slack problem, not a Wikipedia problem. If an app misbehaves when the words "pharmacy" and "to" appear together on the internet, the solution is not for every website owner to reword their pages avoiding that combination. Certes (talk) 14:04, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. I guess it sounds more dramatic if the author gets to call it a WP vulnerability and give it a catchy name as a result! Andrew Gray (talk) 14:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

login.wikimedia.org

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

– RoySmith (talk) 16:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I was curious:

What is login.wikimedia.org used for?

Some accounts say that they exist on this wiki, but it's not really clear what it is? LOOKSQUARE (👤️·🗨️) talk 16:10, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

It's a part of the unified login system connecting all Wikimedia wikis, and every account should also exist there. When you log in on any project (such as English Wikipedia), you also get logged-in at the login wiki. Then when you visit another project, such as Meta-Wiki, your browser checks with the login wiki and if you're logged-in there, it also automatically logs you in on the project you visited. Matma Rex talk 16:37, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Draftification

Ever since the idea of immediately moving inadequate articles to draftspace emerged as a common alternative to deletion, the amount of time that has had to be invested in cleaning up polluted categories that have draftspace pages in them has gone way up, because the people who do the sandboxing frequently forget to remove or disable the categories in the process — so I wanted to ask if there's any way that a bot can be made to clean up any overlooked stuff.

Since there's already a bot, JJMC89bot, that detects main-to-draft page moves and tags them as {{Drafts moved from mainspace}}, the obvious thing would be to just have that bot automatically disable any categories on the page at the same time as it's tagging it — but when I directly approached that bot's maintainer earlier this year to ask if this could be implemented, they declined on the basis that the bot hadn't already been approved to perform that task, while failing to give me any explanation of why taking the steps necessary to get the bot approved to perform that task was somehow not an option. As an alternative, I then approached the maintainer of DannyS712bot, which catches and disables categories on drafts that are in the active AFC submission queue (which newly sandboxed former articles generally aren't, and thus don't get caught by it), but was basically told to buzz off and talk to JJMC89bot.

So, since I've already been rebuffed by the maintainers of both of the obvious candidate bots, I wanted to ask if there's any other way to either get one of those two bots on the task or make a new bot for the task, so that editors can cut down on the amount of time we have to spend on DRAFTNOCAT cleanup. Bearcat (talk) 16:10, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

As a stopgap solution, encouraging people to use a script like User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft (which automatically disables the categories) might be a good way to go? Elli (talk | contribs) 16:23, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I feel like there might have been a bot for this in the past. Might be worth checking some diffs and see if that bot can be tracked down. I'd recommend WP:BOTREQ as the next step. Then can probably help both with coding up a brand new bot, and remembering which old bot used to do this. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:13, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

?debug=1 reveals normally hidden console errors

When I turn on JavaScript debug mode by adding ?debug=1 to the URL, a bunch of different user scripts and gadgets throw errors for me:

Query.Deferred exception: mw.Api is not a constructor TypeError: mw.Api is not a constructor
Uncaught TypeError: mw.Api is not a constructor
Uncaught ReferenceError: OO is not defined

Try it if you want and see how many WP:CONSOLEERRORs you get.

I'm wondering why these don't throw normally but only with debug mode on. Anyone know?

I would suggest that throwing these in normal mode too may be the best approach. I think most folks do not use debug mode during development, so would never see these console errors and therefore would not know to fix the issues. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:28, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Most likely because dependencies that require declaration (i.e. all modules except ones already loaded by the time common/skin/global.js run) are not properly declared in those user scripts and gadgets. Popular modules like mediawiki.util and mediawiki.api are loaded on most pages anyway, so references to mw.Api etc. work without the required declarations in most circumstances, but fail in debug mode where modules are loaded in sequence. There's no way to "throw[] these in normal mode too" because the same lines of code don't result in errors if the modules are already loaded. The solution is simply to add dependencies in the scripts or gadget definition. Nardog (talk) 22:44, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

So the reason is that debug mode loads modules more synchronously than regular mode? And the fix is mw.loader.using type code? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes and yes (though not sure if "more synchronously" is the right terminology). Nardog (talk) 23:23, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

To add to Nardog's answer, this is what you actually need:

$.when( mw.loader.using( ['mediawiki.util','mediawiki.api'] ), $.ready ).then( function () {
	if (mw.util.isIPv4Address( '192.0.2.0' )){
		console.log('this is an IPv4 address');
	}
	var api = new mw.Api();
});

— Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:21, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I've been using the below, but I think I like your way better since it's one line:

$(async function() {
    await mw.loader.using(['mediawiki.api'], async () => {
        //
    });
});

–Novem Linguae (talk) 23:44, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

For anyone who is interested in these things, there are more examples at mw:ResourceLoader/Core modules. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:14, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Patrice Blanc-Francard

"Deputy general director Jean-Martial Lefranc Director of programming Patrice Blanc-Francard TV6's share capital was FRF 10,000,000,000, 25% held by Publicis."

not in page !

..... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 04:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

It is: TV6 (French TV channel)#Capital. Nardog (talk) 04:47, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Page stuck in pending changes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T350527

Pending changes protection for List of World Series champions expired at 21:37, 3 November 2023 (UTC), and MusikBot II removed the pp-pc template at 23:20, 3 November 2023. It remains on the list of pages with edits awaiting review, despite four edits in the hours since then, two of them from pending changes reviewers. There doesn't seem to be a way to purge the special page. Is there a way to fix this? BlackcurrantTea (talk) 06:14, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I think I fixed this by turning PC protection back on, accepting an edit, then turning it back off again. Will test a bit on testwiki and see if I can reproduce this. If so it should get a phab ticket. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:47, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 06:53, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I was able to replicate the bug. I filed phab:T350527. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:16, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

San Pier Niceto serious error

some serious error going on in San Pier Niceto article under the "Demographic evolution" section. Therapyisgood (talk) 07:05, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Fixed. The changes made by an IP on 10 February 2022 broke the EasyTimeline. When you see something unusual like this, it's worth looking at the article history to see if the problem can be resolved by reverting an edit (or several). Happy editing! BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:23, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Searching "Unable to compile EasyTimeline input" returned 85 pages, 9 of which were articles. Surprised the extension does not have a dedicated error category (though T137291 makes this rather moot). Nardog (talk) 09:37, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Can we automatically split categories?

See this discussion: is it possible to automatically redirect (or "split") a category into more than one other category? Jarble (talk) 17:10, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

No page can be redirected to more than one other page. Izno (talk) 18:02, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Also how would the bot know which page went where? If you mean merge on category into two others (copying all members to both), then WP:CFDW's bot can do that if you follow the proper process. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:06, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Izno and Pppery: I don't think {{category redirect}} supports multiple targets for category redirects, but I wish it did; isn't it possible to implement a feature like this? Jarble (talk) 19:17, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

{{Category disambiguation}}? An example would really help make your point clearer. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:17, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Pppery: If {{category redirect}} supported multiple targets, I would use it to split overly specific categories like Category:Software developers from New York City:

{{category redirect|Category:People from New York City|Category:American software developers}}

Then every page in that category would be automatically moved into the other two categories. Jarble (talk) 19:35, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

That is an interesting idea, but it's not currently supported by the system as it stands. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:36, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Pppery: I requested this feature seven years ago, but it was never implemented. Jarble (talk) 19:41, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Edit count

I'm not happy with the public disclosure of my edit count in my contributions as if edit count is a defining feature of an editor's worth. The vast bulk of my edits were done as a virtual bot over ten years ago. I think I and other editors should have the right not to disclose our edit count to the general public in our preferences.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:47, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

The feature was added under phab:T324166. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:43, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I understand your wish but the problem is the assumption that lots of edits = worthy person. My edits are also mainly minor but, for those who make such misjudgements, my edit count flatters rather than upsets me. I'd be more worried about someone who has a few dozen edits, each one a decent article which took weeks to write, but is mislabelled as an insignificant newbie. Certes (talk) 15:00, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

No new private information is being disclosed here, Special:Contributions has always been able to identify all of someone's edits and anyone would have been able to readily count them at any time. As far as the concept of being able to hide your quantity of edits from review - the quantity is simply a side effect of them existing, and having all of your contributions transparently available to any and everyone is a core principal of the project. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:07, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

User contributions also have edit count links. If you don't want to see the edit count of other users directly on their contributions page then add this to your CSS:

.mw-contributions-editor-info {display:none;}

It also hides the account creation date which doesn't have a separate class. I don't expect there would be support for adding this to the default CSS of the English Wikipedia. If we want to give users a choice to hide their own count from others without a MediaWiki change then it would require extra JavaScript to run for all users. I don't think this purpose is worth that. And without a MediaWiki preference the choice would have to be stored somewhere else like a user subpage or a central list. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:15, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks PrimeHunter, yes it's not something I want to see for other editors either! The point though Xao is that I don't mind people checking if they really want to, but I disagree that it's necessary to disclose this information to everybody every time they click on an editor's contributions, and would argue that it actually runs the risk of worsening Editcounteritis and people trying to quickly notch up a lot of edits to look more valued on here. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:26, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld if there is consensus, we could hide this client-side for all users via local CSS hack. Personally, I'd be opposed to that on the basis of not including more display hacks that could cause page jumping, but it could gain support. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:45, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

It was well-supported at the community wishlist survey in 2022. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:29, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: For that matter, if we wanted to we could edit MediaWiki:contributions-edit-count to prevent the count from being included in the first place. Anomie ⚔ 19:53, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Anomie yup, that would turn it off for everyone. We could also add some hint text in there, such as to Wikipedia:Edit count that explains the subject more. @Dr. Blofeld - think adding such a link would help? — xaosflux ^Talk 20:00, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

And of course, the link parser doesn't work there - so if we want this to be anything other than plain text we will need a feature request (unless Novem Linguae wants to just start working on this some more :D ) — xaosflux ^Talk 20:12, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be worth a debate to see what the general outlook is, given a possible risk of it encouraging editcounteritis, even if people generally don't find it invasive. The problem with disclosing raw edit count is that it doesn't say anything about what you've edited and type or quality of edits and puts AWB or bot-type mass edits and talk/wiki page edits on par with really substantial content additions to the project. I think I have less than 100k edits in the last 13 years on here!♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:54, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I would say though that most editors have WP:POPUPS installed which by default shows the edit count of any user by simply hovering over them. So I don't know how much of a difference this makes. Galobtter (talk) 17:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Personally it's quite useful. Knowing a user's general experience helps phrase any questions I need to ask them. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:00, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

There are a lot of editors not using the navigation popups gadget. As of the moment I checked, Special:GadgetUsage shows the navigation popups gadget has been enabled by 58,581 users (other than the default gadgets, topped only by the dark mode toggle). According to Special:Statistics (again, as of the moment I checked), there are 122,331 active users (usres who have performed an action in the last 30 days). (The first number divided by the second is 48%, but that's an upper bound, since the first number isn't restricted to active users.) isaacl (talk) 23:04, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Just a quick note that "Show edit count at Special:Contributions" was #45 on the community wishlist for 2022 and had 48 supports. The change seems well-supported. Although as the person that wrote the code for it, I am sorry that the change bugs you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:26, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

That's odd as in my experience on here there is usually a significant consensus to hide edit counts and discourage people from viewing figures to the point that the old tables were replaced with placeholders or even deleted. Not your fault NovemLingae, if you were following consensus, but I'm surprised that only Bilorv raised a point about its value. and nobody even showed a concern about it potentially encouraging edit counteritis. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:10, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

To be fair, the software change for this, and the large support referenced - was for a mediawiki feature, used on all WMF's 800+ projects and non-WMF instances - it wasn't about enwiki; we just get the feature like everyone else does. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:53, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

the old tables were replaced with placeholders or even deleted WP:EDITS isn't hidden, it's updated daily. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:55, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I must be thinking of Article count then? I could have sworn Edit count was turned into placeholders too. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:01, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

As a demonstration of a possible CSS solution, User:PrimeHunter/Hide edit count.css hides the edit count for a hard-coded list of users who have requested it, currently only Dr. Blofeld. I'm not sure where this will go in the future. Users who want to respect the requests could install it with this in your common JavaScript:

importStylesheet('User:PrimeHunter/Hide edit count.css'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Hide edit count.css]]

There will probably be very few users who install it unless it becomes a gadget or included in something widely used. The edit count will be hidden from Special:Contributions/Dr. Blofeld which is linked in several places in the MediaWiki interface, but not from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Dr._Blofeld which is linked by some tools. I don't know whether MediaWiki itself makes any links to the latter. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:53, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

A note that many people are already using scripts such as User:Amorymeltzer/scripts#User Info, User:PleaseStand/User info, User:Enterprisey/userinfo, m:User:SMcCandlish/userinfo, and m:User:Perhelion/userstatus, which does the same thing as the recently introduced feature (and more, actually). InfiniteNexus (talk) 22:54, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
Not to mention popups that just have it in the hover. I suppose those are just "opt in" things though... — xaosflux ^Talk 01:36, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
Templates and parser functions seem to work in MediaWiki:contributions-edit-count. What if we show the exact edit count up to a fixed limit, maybe 10000, and after that show "over 10000 edits". As WP:Requests for adminship/0xDeadbeef suggests, after 10000 edits or so, the community mostly considers edit count to be irrelevant. People who want more detail can still use a script or gadget. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:18, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Judging from the wishlist page, I think there is a significant silent consensus, and I would recommend an RFC before making changes that make this patch go from "really buried" (tiny and gray on a special page) to "extremely buried" (blurs after 10,000 edits, feature flag to turn it off, etc.) –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:46, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
Fully agree. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:24, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's a useful feature which can be easily ignored and feasibly turned off by the minority who dislike it. The only real objection is from those who don't want their edit count shown despite it being freely available elsewhere. Removing it, either totally or by default, would need consensus. Certes (talk) 13:24, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

This is apropos of nothing, but back in the day, when SomethingAwful posters were starting to let post count get to their head, they made it so that posting in fyad made your post count go down by one every time you did it. Maybe we can do the same with the drama boards etc ;^) jp×g 🗯️ 10:12, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

edit counts can be misleading, but hiding them seems to flaut the spirit of openness and verifiability .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 04:24, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Just a driveby note to say as an admin I find this change extremely useful. It enables me to check whether editors or patrollers I don't recognise are experienced or not, without having to wait for tools to load or click further. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:31, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Duplicate GAN

Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Adem Jashari/2 seems to have been created in error, as the first GAN was created around the same time by the same user. How should this be taken care of? G6? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:54, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Done, but a question more appropriate for WP:ANI or simply by tagging the extra. Izno (talk) 17:57, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Username canonicalization of User:გასპუერა

The first character of a username is basically automatically capitalized by the MediaWiki software, but I came across the username in the title whose first character isn't capitalized (which is probably related to Language.php#2520).

Special:CentralAuth/გასპუერა (exists)
Special:CentralAuth/Გასპუერა (doesn't exist)

I'm not sure whether or not this is intended. Any idea? Dragoniez (talk) 18:46, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

{{uc:გ}} produces Გ and not the original character გ, but გ and Გ are different redirect pages (with the same target). I thought {{uc:}} automatically made the same character conversions as the first character in page names but apparently not. I suspect it's a bug but I'm not sure. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:59, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I'm not sure either. Maybe this is yet another issue with the capitalization of Georgian characters related to phab:T254470, but I'm after all not sure if this is a bug. Dragoniez (talk) 19:04, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

From Georgian Extended: Unlike all other casing scripts in Unicode, there is no title casing between Mkhedruli and Mtavruli letters, because Mtavruli is typically used only in all-caps text. In other words, since Georgian orthography doesn't have the same concept of capitalization Latin/Cyrillic/etc. do, Unicode doesn't capitalize გ to Გ in title case. So {{uc:გ}} produces Გ but {{ucfirst:გ}} just returns the input: გ. Nardog (talk) 19:15, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

UTC timestamps in Wikipedia edition?

Greetings.
This is a question, not a problem. I haven't found the answer, not even in Wikipedia.
I am writing a scholarly paper about a piece of news from 2009 that was a subject of misinformation. It requires following how the news was presented to the public by the media, and how Wikipedia editions mirrored that.
I have noticed, even as I write now, that the date and time of my inquiry is given automatically in UTC time. The question is, are the timestamps of the editions in a Wikipedia article as they appear on the article's history also in UTC time? An article that was heavily edited in 2009?
I have found that in that year Wikipedia's servers were in Tampa, Florida, so I wonder whether an article being edited with new sources at 14:30 hours of a given day in 2009, that means UTC time, Tampa time, or another kind of time zone.
A link to a source supporting the answer to cite it in the paper would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks. Maykiwi (talk) 23:18, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

If you are logged out, those times are in UTC.

If you are logged in, you can change your preferences so that the time stamps are in whatever time zone you please (and then some). The default for that is the same as logged out. Izno (talk) 23:52, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Maykiwi: For a cite, Help:Page history says "in UTC by default" and said "in UTC" in 2009.[38] The user preference to change it is at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. For the more technical side, the time zone is determined by the setting of mw:Manual:$wgLocaltimezone. https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php sets it for Wikimedia wikis with:

'wgLocaltimezone' => [
	'default' => 'UTC',
...

The default is changed in ... for a long list of wikis but not the English Wikipedia which is called enwiki. Many other Wikipedia languages change it so be careful if you include non-English sources. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:13, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Also, how Wikipedia displayed the time in 2009 wouldn't affect how it's displayed now - if that was changed in the software, it would change how all previous timestamps are displayed too. In other words, there will never be a page history where some revisions are in one time zone and some are in another. LittlePuppers (talk) 03:06, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Re the last sentence: that's actually not quite true, for certain times in 2002, from some time in that year until 6 September. There's also the very occasional apparent time zone bug like this one in 2005 (see the revision ID numbers in the URL). This sort of thing is completely irrelevant to the original question, though. Graham87 (talk) 09:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

...Huh, that's interesting. LittlePuppers (talk) 16:38, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Maykiwi (talk) 21:57, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

@Maykiwi: Wikipedia was conceived as a global project, but the choice of a geographically-based timestamp may have conferred some kind of superiority to people in that time zone; by contrast, UTC is geographically-neutral. That said, for people in some countries, UTC coincides with local clock time for all or part of the year. UTC itself does not have any daylight-saving adjustment, regardless of where you live, so the issue of daylight-saving time having different dates in various countries is avoided entirely. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:59, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

A weird automatically generated summary and tag

I found the revision Special:Diff/1179684236 on Attorney-General of Alberta automatically tagged by mw-removed-redirect and summarized by "←Removed redirect to Attorney General of Alberta" when I was filtering revisions by tag name. However, it should have been tagged by mw-changed-redirect-target because the new target List of Alberta provincial ministers has been there for a long time and hasn't been deleted (see its log) or even edited recently. I'm not sure what happened here and if there is actually a bug, please fix it. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 05:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

The fact the previous revision was a double redirect may have some to do with it. Nardog (talk) 22:07, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I made an experiment of retargeting a redirect created as a double redirect in my user page User:NmWTfs85lXusaybq/Example of a double redirect while all things work fine with a reasonable tag and summary generated automatically. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 08:10, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Highly visible mobile bug

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T316670

Several times, I have noticed a bug on the mobile Wikipedia (website) involving misdisplaying section heading when preceded by an image with the right option, e.g. here. I've tried to search for it in Phabricator, but I haven't found anything similar. Could somebody reproduce the issue? Given its visibility (if it isn't exclusive to me), I can't believe it hasn't already been reported. Janhrach (talk) 17:11, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a problem. Can you post a WP:SCREENSHOT? – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:46, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

This was the problem: (imgur screenshot). I believe this was more of an article layout and missing-wikitext issue than a software bug. It was missing the 'thumb' parameter for the image, which meant the caption was not being displayed, and the image was treated as a 'no format' image (docs) ~~and hence rendered inline instead of floating~~. After two fixes, it looks like this (imgur link). That appears to have fixed it at all window-widths. Quiddity (talk) 19:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. Janhrach (talk) 19:41, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

The screen shot looks like a bug to me. Unless I am misreading it, mw:Help:Images says that the right option is supposed to render the image as a floating block, but the header text is clearly superimposed on the image. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:58, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah, right, I mis-read the docs page. Error struck-out above. Sorry/Thanks. Quiddity (talk) 18:57, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

You said this happened "several times". How widespread do you think this is? If it can be fixed by changing wikicode on 10 pages, then let's just do that. If it affects thousands of pages or something like that, then maybe a phab ticket would make sense. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:08, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I read Wikipedia for years, and I think that I have come across this about 10 times, however this may not be representative of the whole wiki, as, of course, I read only on a small fraction of topics. Janhrach (talk) 20:17, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: the issue also affects your user page. Janhrach (talk) 07:45, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

It's a known problem, filed as T316670. I suggested a fix there a few weeks ago. Matma Rex talk 21:39, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I would not find that. Janhrach (talk) 07:19, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Your edit to Orihon broke the image again. Was it intentional? Janhrach (talk) 07:22, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

No; I can't see the problem in mobile view, but I assumed (wrongly, I guess) that frameless would work the same as thumb. The thumb view looks awkward without a caption, and the previous caption was not valid. That's a nice little bug; I hope that someone can fix it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-45

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

In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content. [39]

Problems

Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem. [40]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).
The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly. [41][42]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposal (on MW.org) to bring back the graph extension

If this was previously posted here, I apologize. I just saw it in the Signpost and could not remember seeing it before. There is a proposal over on mediawiki.org about bringing back the graph extension, which has been disabled since April 2023 (see T334940 for details on that). – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:00, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I believe last week's tech news had a line for it. Izno (talk) 17:07, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

They are also asking how long it takes to convert the graphs from Vega2 to Vega5? For reference, Here there are hundreds of graphs on 18k pages. Snævar (talk) 17:47, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd imagine that most of those graphs use a template such as {{Graph:Chart}} that can be updated once to Vega5 without having to update each individual graph. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:19, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

True, templates count for more than half of the affected pages, but it also does not really answer the question. Snævar (talk) 19:47, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

An insource search of mainspace and template space only gives 239 hits on <graph and 34 on tag:graph. Is that all we would have to fix or did I miss something? 273 pages sounds easy. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:57, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I thought there would be a lot more pages if all namespaces were included, but I get just 538 pages and 66 pages, respectively, when I search all namespaces. That looks like a pretty small set of pages to convert, especially if there are scripty tools to help us. Snævar, if there are 18K affected pages and only half of them are due to templates, how does that square with the search results above that show only 600 individual pages using the graph extension directly? – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:11, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Snævar, if you want a direct answer to the "how long" question, without seeing what the process actually looks like, I would estimate with 95% confidence that it will take somewhere between a few days and a month to convert all in-use pages. I don't know if we will care about user sandboxes and stale drafts, so those might linger. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:16, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I said "more than half", so that logic is still valid. Module:Graph alone is half. Snævar (talk) 21:43, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. When I see "more than half", my brain thinks "something like 51% to maybe as much as 80%", not 97%. I'm happy that there are so few pages that actually need to be edited. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:42, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

numbers in section headings

Resolved

Yes, it is something I have customized - but before I start the troubleshooting steps anyone know any maybe popular script/gadget that is now outputting numbers in to the section headers that I could just turn off? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:29, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Fixed, I somehow turned on the obvious-named "autonum" testing gadget. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:38, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

A few months ago I had a preference seemingly get set on its own, and there have been some other people raising this on this page. Is it possible there is some back-end issue with the preference storage? isaacl (talk) 23:43, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Port of Savannah

At Port of Savannah, there are two maps, one in the infobox, and one in the article. There isn't enough space for two maps, along with a few pictures, and the second map pokes down into the reference section. The bottom map is more detailed, and I've tried to move it into the infobox (as a module), to replace the infobox map. Unfortunately, the only way to remove the infobox map is by removing the coordinates, which seem to auto-generate a map. I've looked at Template:Infobox port, but haven't had much luck. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 10:46, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

This seems to be the result of several edits last month by @Bluealbion who disabled the |pushpin_map= parameter to make the map always appear whenever coordinates are specified. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:07, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ: Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 15:46, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Search problem

Hello, there appears to be a problem with the search picking-up old versions. For example Draft:Emily Breza was moved to main space on 3 November, yet when you search for "CS1 errors: dates" it gets returned even though it is now a redirect and does not show in the category. I have tried a null edit on page but it still stays there. Keith D (talk) 19:01, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Search: "CS1 errors: dates". It also happens for a string from the body: "Breza received her BA". The search result for Emily Breza says "03:15, 5 November 2023" which is the current version. The search result for Draft:Emily Breza says "20:06, 3 November 2023" which is the time of the move, and still the time of the current version of the redirect from the move. So the search feature failed to remove the draft page from results when it was moved and became a redirect. It has only been four days and I guess it will eventually be sorted out automatically. If it's not a widespread issue then I wouldn't bother reporting it at Phabricator. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:49, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Editor stopped working

The WikEd stopped working this morning, throwing me back into the older 2005 editor. I cannot edit with that, and don't know what to do. Any help would be appreciated. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:23, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Is wikEd enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? wikEd has a pencil icon at the top right of pages to toggle between active (yellow) and disabled (grey). Is it active? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:26, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. Not seeing the pencil icon. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:34, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

When logged out I thought that there was an option for the Visual Editor, but that is not there either. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:37, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T350519

I'm having a similar problem where none of my user scripts are working (including scripts in Preferences). What browser are you using? The issue is occurring for me on an old version of Safari (iOS 12) but not on latest Firefox on MacOS Ventura. – dudhhr^talk_contribs^she_her 04:36, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Firefox 119 on both MacOS and Windows. Checked Safari - not working there either - which implies that the issue is with Mediawiki. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 Your issue is possibly not dudhhr's issue given the newness of your browser. You will need to troubleshoot yourself. Clear your JS pages and turn off your gadgets (but not WikEd). If it works after a cache refresh, then we know it's not WikEd at cause. You can add other gadgets/scripts one-by-one (more quick would be a binary search - enable half and see if that works or doesn't, then repeat) until you identify the script at issue.

Instead, if it doesn't work, disable WikEd and then re-enable the rest of everything. If all those work, then the issue is with WikEd. If none of them work, it's probably the case that there is an issue in MediaWiki (and/or the one we figured out below).

Given its general level of maintenance (~0), I expect WikEd has finally keeled over. FWIW I can't get any of the functionality to display that should either in Firefox, without touching any of my gadgets besides turning off the toolbar that would impact the space directly. So I suspect that's a bad sign. Izno (talk) 17:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

This may help finding out what is going wrong: Locating broken scripts —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:57, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I have the same problem on an old browser, PaleMoon version 29 – Popups, Preferences tabs, WikEd, subscribe links, etc etc all stopped working yesterday. In my case enabling the javascript console shows an error in load.php: SyntaxError: expected expression, got '?' in the line labelDiv.innerHTML=label.textContent??'';. A bit of googling shows that the '??' operator is the "nullish coalescing operator", which apparently isn't recognised by older browsers. I suppose it was introduced in the latest version of MediaWiki (Tech News: 2023-44 above). It's probably time to retire this old browser (all works as expected here on Firefox 118). —Small jim 17:17, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

This same issue would cause dudhhr's issue. I'm not sure that should be used even in the JavaScript that MediaWiki allows per mw:Compatibility supporting versions at grade A below the minimum version of that operator and a task should likely be filed if it's in core.

Since you know how, can you pick a page where that was happening, set ?debug=1 on the page and say which script/file it's coming from? Izno (talk) 18:01, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Izno. I did say it's in load.php – that's https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php (line 16178). —Small jim 19:22, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Smalljim Load.php generally isn't going to be useful since it varies based on the gadgets and scripts each user loads (basically, it concatenates the sum of all system JS, Common.js, Skin.js, personal skin.js, any preferences adding JS, and gadgets with JS). So I'm looking for a bit more context like the function that the line of interest is in, and the general context of that function.

Take for example the CSS console, you'll see load.php divided into a couple dozen pages that you can usually look at the top and get an idea of what's going on. JS console I believe does similarly. Izno (talk) 07:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

You can tell I don't know what I'm doing! Hopefully Nardog's reply below is what's needed, but for what it's worth, the "??" appears in the function that creates a default portlet: function addDefaultPortlet( portlet ).

If this is going to be fixed and you'd like me to check that it works in my ancient browser, just ping me. —Small jim 11:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

It's gerrit:963165 and gerrit:967991. ??, the nullish coalescing operator, is from ES2020, so I'm at a loss as to how this got in (@Jdlrobson and Jon (WMF)). Nardog (talk) 08:27, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping! Im not sure how that snuck in. Either I have been writing too much PHP or my IDE is playing up. I will get this addressed with Mo on Monday and work out why our linter didnt catch this as a follow up.

Sorry for the disruption here. Jdlrobson (talk) 15:31, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Hey all this should be fixed now. Please let me know if any issues still remain. Jdlrobson (talk) 22:24, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy fix! The old browser is working as normal here again. —Small jim 22:43, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

The issue is also fixed on my ancient phone. Thanks! :) – dudhhr^talk_contribs^she_her 02:12, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

For 1/40 of its existence, Wikipedia's graphs have been disabled

Seriously, when are we going to get this fixed?? Is anyone even doing anything about this? It's hard to believe anything is being done about this. Jishiboka1 (talk) 14:58, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Happily, something is being done about it. See the section #Proposal (on MW.org) to bring back the graph extension above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:18, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Also, for about 2/3 of its existence, Wikipedia didn't even have a graph extension. For most of humanity's existence, we didn't even have Wikipedia. And so on and so forth. Graham87 (talk) 10:31, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Special:BookSources

Is there a page to request changes to Special:BookSources, or do we need a Phabricator ticket? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:48, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Which type of changes? You may want Wikipedia:Book sources. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Creating a category that includes articles affected by a template parameter

How do I create a category that includes all articles affected by a talk page template argument, such as in Category:B-Class biography articles? I’m thinking that I could create Category:Former featured articles as an FFA equivalent of Category:Delisted good articles, but I don’t quite know how to do it. — Mugtheboss (talk) 16:07, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

@Mugtheboss: You always have to edit the template to add the wanted category code in the wanted circumstances. Nothing in the category page can control it. You can use Wikipedia:Requested templates if you don't know how to do it, or Wikipedia:Edit requests if you lack access. For some things it may also be a good idea to seek consensus first in an appropriate place. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I had a sneaking suspicion that it may be controlled by the template itself. I’ll have to place an edit request on the talk page of the template in question as it is template-protected. I’m starting to see why this hasn’t been done yet. — Mugtheboss (talk) 20:40, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I think you are missing Category:Wikipedia former featured articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:44, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Undesired newline and missing space at Template:R

Please see Template talk:R#Space before colon in pop-up if you are the sort of person who likes the detective work of figuring out why there is an extra newline in the output from a template sometimes, and a missing space other times, depending on the input. The job may require knowledge of Lua. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:16, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

This has been resolved. Aidan9382 _(talk) 16:10, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 18:46, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Exclude images in navboxes/sidebars from PageImages

Someone noticed that when Magical Negro is linked from Slack off-site, Barack Obama's portrait shows up in the link preview. This was because of the {{Barack Obama}} navbox at the bottom (now removed). I am thinking that, more generally, images in navboxes or sidebars should never be used for off-site image previews. If the image is representative enough of the subject to be used for this purpose, it should be in the article body somewhere.

The PageImages extension is responsible for picking this image, and there is a notpageimage class we can add to Module:Navbox and Module:Sidebar to prevent this site-wide. Any objections? — The Earwig (talk) 17:13, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

@The Earwig, Module talk:Sidebar/Archive 6#Removing sidebar images as page image. If you can figure out how to add it, we should definitely do it. Izno (talk) 17:46, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

The navbox was removed from the external links section at the end.[43] It should be impossible to have a page image from outside the lead, and I have never seen it. wgPageImagesLeadSectionOnly at mw:Extension:PageImages is set to true for all wikipedia in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. I guess Slack has their own method to pick an image. We don't control that and have no legal right to prevent it with our license. We should not design our pages based on how external sites might use them. The stated argument for removing it was WP:BIDI but exceptions are common and Obama has a whole section Magical Negro#Barack Obama. A less notable person without such a large navbox would probably have included Magical Negro in {{Barack Obama}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:47, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Desktop view on smartphone browser seems to be behaving differently lately

Hi

I've noticed in the past few days that Wikipedia isn't rendering well in my smartphone browser (Android Chrome) when I view it in desktop mode. When first rendered, pages are appearing fully zoomed out - [44] (which looks OK on a desktop but is unreadable on a small screen) and then when I zoom in, they don't adapt well to the screen size, with text being clipped off the sides of the page - [45] - which makes it very difficult to read and interact with the pages.

Unfortunately, I can't recall exactly how this behaved last week, but the experience feels different to me so I assume something has changed, and it's making the experience more difficult. Noting that we had a similar issue last year with [46] which was eventually resolved.

Also, they may be some who say "using Wikipedia on desktop mode on a mobile isn't supported", but given that I (and I think many many others) have been doing this for years without issue, and the actual mobile view honestly isn't really fit-for-purpose for general editing, I think this is a genuine issue. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 09:57, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

What skin are you using (vector, vector-2022, monobook, etc.)? Do you have problems in all skins or just one skin? –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:21, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

It's vector-2022... I did just try switching back to Vector 2010 though, but seems like the same issues there. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 11:01, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Have you tried disabling scripts? I'm another desktop on mobile user (android chrome, vector 2010), and the same page formats correctly for me. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:20, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Automatic login Not Working

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T350695
Resolved

Hi, For many months, I was able to run Query 38614 here. When I clicked on "Fork" it would do an automatic login. Tonight instead, it goes to a login page here and the login fails. Before asking for help here I did the Purge cache, Logout and Login. With same problem. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 02:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Fails how? A pink "there was a problem with your session" box, perchance? —Cryptic 03:01, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

@Cryptic - When I click on "Fork" instead of autologin it shows:

First box = "You need to log into your Meta account to authorize applications to access it.

After I type in my PWD & click on blue "Log in" button, it displays (red-stop-sign) "There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been cancelled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please resubmit the form." JoeNMLC (talk) 03:14, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

OK. I was getting the same, both at commons and at meta, earlier today. (I'd logged out the other day to test a problem with a fresh account.) Usually when this happens, just trying to login again works; today, it just kept giving me the problem-with-your-session box.

What finally worked was to delete my cookies for meta.wikimedia.org and commons.wikimedia.org and try logging in again. —Cryptic 03:15, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

An aside: you don't have to fork a query on Quarry every time you want to run it, only the first time. You can just click the blue "Submit Query" box again for subsequent runs, once you have your own copy. —Cryptic 03:18, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

@Cryptic -

Done Yes, I did delete browser cookies for commons, meta and quarry.wmcloud.org so now all is good. Thanks for your help. Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk) 03:34, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

@JoeNMLC @Cryptic We fixed this problem on Tuesday, and I forgot to thank you for reporting it. It was caused by a mistake in configuration of global login, as we're working on fixing problems with global login in the mobile version. There are more details in T350695. Matma Rex talk 19:20, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Notices spam (november articles for creation backlog drive)

For some reasons, the last few days my notices are full of pings with this text: "Topic "‪November Articles for creation backlog drive‬" was archived or removed from ‪User talk:X. You might no longer receive notifications about this topic." ex. [47]. I am sure I have never subscribed to notifications about this. X = usernames of various editors. Right now I have 11 notices like this. Any idea what caused (causes) this error? Maybe something the bot which delivered these notices did? They have the following text: "Message sent by User:Illusion Flame@enwiki using the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/November_2023_Backlog_Drive/Invite_list&oldid=1182798216" I sincerely hope I am not going to be getting few hundred more of those... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:50, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I think section subscriptions are by heading name and timestamp of the signature. This is combined and used as a unique key. So if there's a section called "AFC backlog drive" and it has a timestamp "2023-11-01 01:00:00", and you click subscribe to it, then any changes to a section with that name and timestamp will show up as a notification.

Do the messages in question have the same timestamps? Anyway, if my theory is correct, clicking "unsubscribe" on any one of these should stop further notifications. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:46, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Yup, that's correct. It's tracked at phab:T334906. TLDR, from the current penultimate comment there: "It's not a bug per-se, it's working-as-designed because it's supposed to allow subscriptions to survive a page-move. But MassMessages specifically hit an edge case on it because they wind up with identical topic IDs on multiple pages...". -- They're investigating the various possible solutions. Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

One-click autoarchiving problem at FAC talk page

See Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Archive mess up

Although the autoarchiver appears to be correctly configured, it is sending archive material to /Archive N, rather than the format used by that page, which is /archiveN ... if anyone can figure out why, responding there would be helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:18, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Quoting myself from the linked page: ~~"I believe the problem may be in line 95 of the script." Next step is to ask Evad37 to comment.~~ Mathglot (talk) 23:37, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

That line is just the default; not the problem. Probably all comments should go to Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Archive mess up, not here. Mathglot (talk) 23:48, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

All solved now ... it seems either archive basics was never installed, or it got deleted when I wasn't looking. Thx! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:57, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the script, it uses regular expression patterns to try to pick out the archive and counter parameters from the archiving bot templates. However, since the Mizrabot configuration uses |archive=Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive%(counter)2d, the regular expression is failing, as it doesn't handle the field width specifier, 2. The script doesn't support the field width specifier in any case. This is a difference between the bot and the script, but since the archive number is already 2 digits, it has no effect. isaacl (talk) 00:21, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 05:00, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Infobox reformatting

I generally want large templates to have the source "block" formatted – one parameter per line and generally with some whitespace. I often encounter infoboxen that have been created all-in-one-line and I assume this is due to use of the Visual Editor? I currently use macros in an external editor to reformat the template prior to further edits, but is there a standard/simple WP-way instead? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:40, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Unable to reproduce in Visual Editor. Diff. Got a diff? –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:49, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I have no idea how all-in-one-line infoboxen get created. No sensible human would do such a thing and so I had assumed that it must be an artefact of one of the WYSIWYG editors. The Visual Editor seems to have a human-friendly widget for inserting big templates, but I could not get it to edit an existing template. Same for the Template Wizard in this "2010 wikitext editor" — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:07, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

If you have diffs, feel free to share. It's all just guessing until we can look at some of the tags on these problematic edits. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:09, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I am happy to just accept that it is a mystery — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:23, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: FWIW here's an old diff of infobox munging which I subsequently tried to fix. As noted below, it can still happen these days. Graham87 (talk) 06:58, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. That one was by an IP and done manually. Hopefully that's a fairly rare situation. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:53, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

It has "a tag "Visual edit: Switched". Indeed I think it's pretty rare, especially these days. Graham87 (talk) 06:37, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

That usually happens when "Suggested wikitext formatting" in the TemplateData for the infobox isn't properly set to "Block" and someone edits it through VE. Nardog (talk) 15:00, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

My main interest is finding a simple gadget that will reformat an existing all-in-one-line infobox template so that it is one parameter per line — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:23, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Should be quite doable. Just need a user script that finds {{Infobox and then adds line breaks before every vertical bar. Nested templates would be the hard part, although could possibly use the Parsoid API or something similar to handle that. Next steps are WP:US/L to see if it's already made, WP:US/R to request it if it isn't. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:37, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

That is what my macros currently do, but they are indeed dumb around nested templates. I was hoping there was already a WP gadget that would do a better job. Wikipedia:User_scripts/List#Template_editing does not have a specific script, but I can probably borrow some code from others script to create something. Failing that, I will try WP:US/R — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 15:05, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Over at WP:US/L, Nardog suggested the User:Taavi/Aligner user script. It is exactly what I needed. Thank you @Nardog: and @Taavi: — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 19:45, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Infobox § How can I use the English Wikipedia "infobox template" for another Wikipedia project (in the Incubator)?

You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Infobox § How can I use the English Wikipedia "infobox template" for another Wikipedia project (in the Incubator)?. Anaxicrates (talk) 15:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Minor visual issue on John Wick (film)

For some reason on the John Wick article, and it seems to only be on this one of the ones I've checked, I can scroll sidewards to a gap of empty space as seen nyah. I assume there's an errant code or something somewhere, any one have any idea what may be causing it? I'm on Edge, but I've tried other articles and it doesn't seem to happen elsewhere. It's not a big deal I'd just like to fix it if possible. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 11:23, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I am unable to replicate this in Vector or in Vector 2022. What happens if you add ?safemode=1 to the URL? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:21, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Nothing, just breaks the infobox. It's not doing it on Firefox so it seems like it must be an Edge glitch. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 19:17, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Tools/Optimum tool set revamp

I've restarted WP:OTS nearly from scratch.

Please take a look at this set of tools and techniques.

Is the explanation for each tool clear?

And, what "must have" tools are missing?

I look forward to your responses. Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 22:40, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Best practice for transcluding Wikitext for Mainspace?

I created 2023 Israel–Hamas war/casualty and transcluded it correctly, but other editors seem to think it is meant to be a stand-alone article instead of a handy "template" meant solely to be transcluded. Should I move this to a template, categorise this somehow or what is the best practice here? I didn't find any documentation and would love to update that, for the next person across. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 20:15, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

@Shushugah: Subpages are disabled in mainspace. The slash doesn't make it a subpage but a poorly named article. 2023 Israel–Hamas war/casualty is a full article in the encyclopedia and readers may read it by itself without seeing 2023 Israel–Hamas war. That's bad. If you want content which isn't a proper article by itself to be transcluded in multiple places then there are two options. 1) Make it a template in the template namespace starting with "Template:". 2) Choose a proper article where it can be maintained, and transclude it to other articles from there with onlyinclude or labeled section transclusion. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:48, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you and fixed! I did not realize that! I think because the Main Talk space subpages are still valid... e.g. Talk:A/B links to Talk:A as parent page. I've moved it to Template:2023 Israel–Hamas war casualties and re-requested page protection, in case you can re-enable that. Cheers! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:52, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Language codes and Redirect to/from alternative language category

Concerning: Category:Redirects to Māori-language terms / Category:Redirects from Māori-language terms, asking here because the template and category talk pages appear to be sparsely attended.

Note: I'm looking at doing some tidying / categorisation of redirects using queries like https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/77966 and want to understand the rules before I go too far. Some of these categories are sparsely populated, but I'm planning on categorising more redirects into them.

(a) In the Māori language (language code 'mi') there are three orthographies all using the Latin script: one historically used in the colonial period (which didn't mark vowel length), that of Bruce Biggs from the 1960s which indicated vowel lengths using double vowels and the modern one regulated by the Māori Language Commission which uses macrons on vowels to indicate long vowels. Thus Kohinuraakau in Bigg's orthography redirects to Kohinurākau in modern orthography and is referred to as 'Kohinurakau' in sources from the 1860s.

As part of the Māori renaissance and Treaty of Waitangi claims and settlements, modern-orthography Māori language terms are increasingly entering New Zealand English, particularly in the names of places, organisations, sports teams, legal concepts, etc. These are increasingly the WP:COMMONNAMEs of the topics New Zealand English and thus wikipedia.

It would be very useful to be able to be able to tag redirects using the historical or Biggs orthographies as such, allowing them to be seen as deprecated.

I believe RFC 4646 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4646 is the canonical place to mint these and have them registered at https://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry As of 2023-10-16, this has not been done. Do I have any options other than wait for the IETF? I'm assuming that while this is too-public a forum for using private-use language subtags tags ('mi-x-historic' , 'mi-x-biggs' and 'mi-x-modern') ?

(b) There is a closely related language, Cook Islands Māori (language code 'rar' or 'mi-CK') which shares many words. If I generate the appropriate categories, can I use 'rar' in this framework?

(c) Where two or more languages share a word with similar meaning can I categorise a redirect into multiple 'Category:Redirects from XXXX-language terms' categories?

cheers. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:24, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Addition: Just found https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_language_codes which implies that within the wiki community we're not even following the RFC 4646 spec for private use language subtags. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:37, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

With regards to point (a), I'd note that iwi dialects may also play into it. The main one which comes to mind is Waikato-Tainui, which tend to use double vowels in place of macrons (so you quite often see kiingitanga instead of kīngitanga, or other double vowels at play for articles relating to that particular area. There's also South Island Māori, which can often use k- instead of ng-, but I think that's more distinct spelling rather than orthographical choices. Totally in favour of cleaning it up and tagging older terms, but just conscious that not all double-vowel terms will necessarily be relics of historical orthography. Turnagra (talk) 21:35, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Regianal / iwi variations are another whole kettle of fish and significantly more political. I'm just going to steer clear of those. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:21, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Totally fair, I was meaning more with regard to the potential asterisk for double-voweled terms re. Tainui, in that they're not necessarily just going to be a result of historical orthography choices. Turnagra (talk) 00:31, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Seems highly unlikely that IETF would create anything with private-use subtags (mi-x-historic, mi-x-biggs, mi-x-modern). If IETF were to create anything, it would be variant subtag (ca-valencia for Valencian). I think you're right, for IETF to act you might be waiting a long time. If all you want is to have {{R from alternative language}} distinguish the various forms of Māori that you have enumerated, private use subtags for those language variants can be created with minimal difficulty by changing Module:Lang/data.

If that's not what you're looking for then, nevermind.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:53, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. I was previously unaware of Module:Lang/data and it looks like at least a part of the puzzle. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:11, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

A tool for store, compile and deploy gadgets

Greetings, esteemed individuals. I have developed a tool for MediaWiki websites, with the goal of centralizing the storage, management, and compilation of all site-wide gadgets. This tool supports TypeScript and Less, allowing developers and maintainers to immerse themselves in the refined artistry of code implementation for their gadgets. With this tool, developers can employ contemporary syntactical constructs and avant-garde techniques, even referencing npm packages in their gadgets. For example, a timeworn script like zh:MediaWiki:Gadget-AdvancedSiteNotices.js has been rewritten into a new version, which is modular, uses TypeScript, and Less.

This tool can automatically check syntax, compile the source code using esbuild, and transpile it with babel to generate syntax compatible with MediaWiki, then deploys the gadgets to the MediaWiki website. You can find more details about it here (Github repository link).

Migrating to a new architecture is not an easy task, but I assure you that everything will become exceptionally simple afterwards. The compatibility of this tool, or whether it can support a large MediaWiki site, has been tested on another large MediaWiki site that also uses this tool (Github repository link).

I understand that in Wikipedia, any changes require consensus from the community, but I believe that those who understand the technical details would be interested in giving it a try. I am primarily active on the zhwiki, so if you need to reach me, please use {{ping}}. Thank you. AnYiLin^Talk 12:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

[1] "UAE: e& and G42 merge data centre services under Khazna Data Centres". W.Media. 7 June 2022. Retrieved 29 August 2023.

[2] "Interstate FAQ (Question #3)". Federal Highway Administration. 2006. Retrieved March 4, 2009.

[1]

[1]