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In that previous message, we announced that dark mode on desktop would be rolled out in one step, for both logged-in and logged-out users, in the week of July 15 (that is, next week). However, we'd be more comfortable to enable it for logged-in users first. Articles here on English Wikipedia look very good in dark mode, and again, thanks to everyone who is contributing to it!
We are going to enable dark mode on desktop just for logged-in users this week. If everything goes well (it has been going very well so far!) we will enable it on desktop for logged-out users next week as we previously announced. It's gonna be exciting :D Thanks! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:35, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Oh, sorry, I wanted to give a quick answer and misread :D Dark mode will no longer be a beta feature. Font size control will continue to be a beta feature.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Correction: The font size control is already available by default. The beta feature will disappear from the list because after this rollout, all options will be available for everyone. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
If by "existing dark mode that does work in Monobook" you mean the gadget? No, that will continue to function. Izno (talk) 21:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Eww, this one caught me by surprise... The contrast doesn't seem quite right at the moment. I don't think "dark mode" should be black, it should be off black for the best ease on the eyes. Hopefully the WMF will get these things right in due course. — Amakuru (talk) 21:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
It's flicking black/white off-and-on for me. Page loads in dark & then seconds later turns white. The next page loads in white & seconds later flicks to black. Plus the diffs aren't visible in black. Instant migraine for me. Safari 16.6. Victoria (tk) 21:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Same. On my end, it was enabled by default and I had to go into preferences to enable the toggle just to turn it off in the interface. Now it flickers every time the page loads. Viriditas (talk) 22:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
I turned off the toggle in preferences, emptied my cached, restarted the machine. Still happening. Now the white pages render with the dark colors before turning completely black after about 5 seconds. I took screen shots. It seems to take 3 to 5 seconds to flick from white to black & then back again. Victoria (tk) 22:37, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, one wonders if this is causing seizures. "For 3% of people with epilepsy, exposure to flashing lights at certain intensities or to certain visual patterns can trigger seizures." Viriditas (talk) 22:50, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Makes me wonder why nobody else is reporting it or is the least bit concerned. I've got a brand new computer as well. Viriditas (talk) 22:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Hey there! I've added this to our FAQ. If you are seeing a flick from white to black, you have enabled the gadget AND have attempted to try out the new feature (possibly via preferences when it was in beta or via the new preference that now appears in the preferences page).
The number of people using the gadget is quite low compared to the number of viewers so I am not concerned that this is impacting a large amount of people. Jon (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Hi Jon (WMF), please re-read my message. I disabled the gadget, doublechecked that it's gone, emptied my cache, restarted my machine. It's still happening. I will have to log out to override this. If you would like to see screen shots taken with the gadget disabled I'm happy to send them on, but you'll have to contact me. Victoria (tk) 23:21, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
That's what I initially thought, but the gadgets were all unchecked when it went live. Now, I get dark mode by default unless I check the preferences. I'm in Vector legacy to avoid all of it, because I can't fix it. Viriditas (talk) 23:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Note, the dark-mode-toggle-pagestyles gadget is hidden on user preferences so it is possible you still have that enabled (it doesn't show up in preferences)
A few questions which will help us get to the bottom of this:
In legacy Vector are you seeing the dark mode gadget toggle in the top right?
If you enable Vector 2022, do you see the message "You're using a dark mode gadget". If yes, what happens when you click it and the page reloads?
Okay, I found it. There are two toggles for dark mode in preferences >> gadgets. One under "appearance" and then another one all the way under "utility". Both have to be turned off. Mine was still turned on under utility. The flickering only stops when they are both turned off. To find the control for dark/light mode now, one has to go to preferences >> appearance >> color. Color?? Seriously? In the meantime, Jon (WMF), I sent an email with screenshots, but it's now irrelevant. Victoria (tk) 23:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, that's in "gadgets", and doesn't work for me. I have both off, and I'm still in dark mode. If I switch them on, and then turn off dark mode, I get the flickering. If I switch them off, I'm in permanent dark mode. Viriditas (talk) 00:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Hmm really not a fan of this new default setting. Has this even been tested by a broad group of people including casual users (not just people heavily involved in Wikipedia?
The "dark mode" is ironically way too bright because this is a text-heavy site. So, what you get now is a mass of white text, not a dark page. It almost seems *more* white. The drastic differences between the colors make it difficult to skim. (I don't mind it so much when I'm reading closely, but skimming is important, too.)
Also - this is a little pet peeve, but important for research. The color of already-clicked links doesn't change in info boxes (sorry I don't know the exact term but in a bio page, it would be the box on the top right with basic info like DOB, city, parents, etc.). This isn't a browser issue because it works in Vector legacy. Jim0101 (talk) 04:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
K well it switched to dark mode without me choosing that option. So that's naturally why I assumed it was the default setting when it did in fact default to that for me. Jim0101 (talk) 12:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Hey @Jim0101 - apologies for this! We had switched some users whose devices were requesting dark mode automatically to follow the device preference (this is what the "automatic" toggle in the menu does). After hearing the reports here, we've not switched this back. Currently, the only way to see dark mode would be to explicitly opt-in. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 15:18, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
I am using a script which highlights different type of pages in different colors (sorry do not remember the name), this gives me as default blue on black, and this is not readable. I generally like the dark background, but here I had to switch back (using the appearance tab in the preferences). I can not switch off the script because I work a lot with category deletion, and categories need to be tagged.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Yes, re contrast and readability I concur. I used it for a bit last night and my eyes were hurting by the end with some of the text impossible to read. Per Ymblanter above, I think this needs to go out to a proper group of test readers and full feedback taken on board before we roll it out as a default. — Amakuru (talk) 08:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
The linkclassifier script's colors are easy to customize if you know CSS. The default User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css isn't even required to be used. If someone wants to suggest a full set of colors for dark mode, that could be useful to incorporate in the default. Anomie⚔11:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Has anyone raised an issue with new notifications background going from white to dark background upon read? The text is unreadable. – robertsky (talk) 06:37, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for your report @Robertsky! I'm wondering if you could give a bit more detail on where you're seeing this? Are you talking about notifications on the Special:Notifications page? Or within the menu in the top right? If possible, a screenshot would be really helpful as well so we can identify where the issues is. Thanks again. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 11:25, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
I've noticed that If you open "Notices" and then have new messages "from other wikis", that block in your notices shows a baby blue highlight color for 2 to 3 seconds or something, which is not yet dark mode compatible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:09, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for giving Wikipedia a dark mode option! The settings page saysExperimental version, high likelihood of experiencing issues--am i being helpful if i say i think i've found one?
Do we have (or should we have) a central thread where all of the discussions about the launch of dark mode should be in one place?
i've visited maybe a half dozen pages where dark mode seems to work, but the Willys 77 page still won't turn to the dark side, even after i:
reload the page,
close and reopen the tab,
open a new tab and type the URL into the address bar,
create a new link to that page (as in this post) and use that to open the page,
or retry the methods listed here, but in a different order.
Additionally, Wikipedia:Help desk is mostly dark. i'm not sure if it's the same issue mentioned here, but this part:
Welcome... (Am I in the right place?)... For other types of questions... Do not provide your email... New editors may prefer the Teahouse... [Ask a question] show/hide Wikipedia help pages
this part stays white.
Hello, thank you for reaching out here! I'm glad to see that the article turned black. It always takes a few days for new changes to be propagated across all pages because of caching. When we started running banners inviting logged-out users to switch to dark mode, the cache of just a few percent of the articles wasn't refreshed.
When it comes to the Help desk, I'm sure English Wikipedians will soon fix it. It is challenging, though. There are so many pages formatted with the assumption that the only mode is light, and there's a lot of special formatting on non-article pages. But reports like yours help technical editors prioritize their work.
Thanks again, for pointing at these issues, for your patience (so many steps to solve the problem of the persisting light mode), and kind words! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
The default foreground color for text is way too bright/white and more than a few page elements on certain pages are as bright as light mode. Overall, it does not seem like an improvement on the old beta dark mode. I'd simply disable it and stick with the old beta dark mode for now, but if I do that, there's a white flash at the start of every page load and page refresh, which defeats the purpose of using a dark mode.
Not having used the beta, the new version looks superior. A wp:village shrine should be erected to mark the occasion of implementation.
Though, the contrast issue may be a thing. Fiddling around with my monitor-settings, it feels like the default could be reduced quite significantly without other issues. JackTheSecond (talk) 09:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
It's not just about what looks good, it's about reducing eyestrain and improving legibility. The new white text is simply far too bright at #EAECF0 rather than the previous text color in the beta, which was #DFDEDD. If you refer to Material Design's recommendations for dark theme, you'll see they recommend 87% opacity on #FFFFFF for "high emphasis" text (their term for the main text), which equates to #DEDEDE, essentially the same as the beta. The new experimental dark mode seems to overlook decades of user design research. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Dark mode turned on for me yesterday evening, and I found it very difficult to read, especially the watchlist page, where I had great difficulty seeing which changed pages I had already looked at. I managed to turn dark mode off, except that each page loads in dark mode, and I have to wait several seconds until it switches to light mode. At least dark mode is not popping up this morning. Donald Albury12:07, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
templates that automatically change text colors from default settings?
i tried to make this clear, then i accidentally erased part of it and had to rewrite it. i hope it's (still) clear (again).
In dark mode, some sections of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style have dark text that's nearly invisible on the dark background. i can just barely read it when i zoom in, but i can read it, so it's not exactly the same color... but it's much too easy not to see it at all if you don't know to look for it. It's darker than gray or dark grey text, but the blackground is slightly darker (and apparently black black text is even darker than that). Some of the red and green text can be hard to read on the dark background, too; they might actually use dark red and dark green instead of red and green. These non-default colors seem to be products of templates; i am not very "fluent" in the use of templates. (For instance, in the examples transcribed below, are "Correct" and "Incorrect" two different templates, one green and one red? Are "Correct", "Accepted", "Acceptable", "Better", and "Clear" all versions of the same green template?)
Her albums Foo and Bar reached numbers one and three...
An exception is issue numbers of comic books, which unlike for other periodicals are conventionally given in general text in the form #1, unless a volume is also given, in which case write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7. Another exception are periodical publications carrying both, issue and number designations (typically one being a year-relative and the other an absolute value); they should be given in the form 2 #143 in citations, or be spelt out as Iss. 2, No. 143 in text. When using the abbreviations, write {{abbr|Vol.|Volume}}, {{abbr|Iss.|Issue}}, {{abbr|No.|Number}}, or {{abbr|Nos.|Numbers}}, at first occurrence.
Slovak returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985 after growing tired of What Is This?.
Acceptable:
Slovak returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985 after growing tired of What Is This?
Better:
Slovak, having grown tired of What Is This?, returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985.
Incorrect:
He made several films with Sammy Davis Jr..
Correct:
He made several films with Sammy Davis Jr.
aside: Would He and Sammy Davis Jr. made several films together. be better?
Honorable mention for dark mode (light text on dark background) including phrases of dark text on light background, as seen in MOS:AFFIXDASH (EDIT: i just realized this particular issue must be with the ‹template Cat is being considered for merging› bit, not the Manual of Style itself):
Honorable mention also for viewing a Difference between revisions, where the revised portion of the article appears in light text on a dark background, but the editor's name/IP address appear with select stats as dark text (well, blue links, mostly) on a light background. For example, the diff for the most recent edit to this page shows mostly in dark mode, but shows
Lowercase sigmabot III
BOTS, TEMPLATE EDITORS
2,189,332
EDITS
on a light background... and i didn't realize until i did that copy-paste that EDITS is there in text almost as light as the background.
Thanks to the people working on this.
aside: For my own amusement and future reference, i have been using my talk page (Learn more about this page) to test what names of colorsworkwiththisWikipediacode(andwhichdonot). Maybe that could help someone see which colors work best for light mode, dark mode, or both?
I have fixed all of the Linter dark mode issues at Wikipedia:Manual of Style, so it may display better now. However, the green text generated by {{xt}} appears to be #006400, which, when placed on the #202122 "black" background of dark mode, results in a contrast ratio of 2.16:1, a failing score. The red text generated by {{!xt}} appears to be #8B0000, which, when placed on the same black background, results in a contrast ratio of 1.61:1, another failing score. I'm not sure what to do about that. Either someone needs to find a green that works with both, or a style sheet could be created to deliver different greens and reds in light and dark mode, or something else. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:21, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, Jonesey.
If i'm going to keep reporting these issues, maybe i should learn how to fix them myself, but i don't even know what questions to ask or if i'd understand the answers. For example, what's Linter?
they should be given in the form 2 #143 in citations, or be spelt out as Iss. 2, No. 143 in text. When using the abbreviations, write {{abbr|Vol.|Volume}}, {{abbr|Iss.|Issue}}, {{abbr|No.|Number}}, or {{abbr|Nos.|Numbers}}, at first occurrence.
"2 #143" and "Iss. 2, No. 143" seem to be dark green in both light mode and dark mode, but "{{abbr|Vol.|Volume}}", "{{abbr|Iss.|Issue}}", "{{abbr|No.|Number}}", and "{{abbr|Nos.|Numbers}}" are dark green in dark mode and black in light mode? --173.67.42.107 (talk) 09:37, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
dark text on light background in dark mode
Seems many cells in episode tables (Template:Episode_table) have this problem, as seen on these pages:
i'm still figuring out how Wikipedia tables work and Web colors#Hex triplets go right over my head, but i think Template:Episode_table lets you override some default colors, which still leaves the problem of picking colors that suit both light mode and dark mode, or altering the template so it switches colors when the user toggles between light mode and dark mode.
--173.67.42.107 (talk) 09:19, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: I brought up this issue at {{Episode list}} with this discussion. Have not gotten any response there so maybe you can chime in. The IP is correct that the cell backgrounds are not adjusting properly in dark mode. Taking Nashville season 5 as an example, the "No. overall" column is rendering as I would expect in dark mode, while all the others are not. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 14:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Timeline for dark mode rollout
Re:
[...] In that previous message, we announced that dark mode on desktop would be rolled out in one step, for both logged-in and logged-out users, in the week of July 15 (that is, next week). However, we'd be more comfortable to enable it for logged-in users first. [...]
We are going to enable dark mode on desktop just for logged-in users this week. If everything goes well (it has been going very well so far!) we will enable it on desktop for logged-out users next week as we previously announced.
Is "next week" on WP:THURSDAY? Could you please give dates for these? There are at least three relevant places on mediawiki.org:
I started a section recently at WP:BLPN. Now BLPN is not showing up in results for my watchlist. I used my “find” button to confirm this. The only mention of WP:BLPN on my watchlist results is its talk page on July 13:
“
diffhist mb Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard 16:37 −2,321 Lowercase sigmabot III talk contribs (Archiving 1 discussion(s) to Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive 5) (bot) thank
This page is for discussing changes to the noticeboard. If you are having a technical problem please list on noticeboard itself. — xaosfluxTalk19:11, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Well, you're not quoting an extract from a piece of text, it's more of a sample output from a computer program, for which the <samp>...</samp> tags are more properly intended. But if you want to draw attention to one particular edit, why not simply post the diff link for the edit concerned? Also, those big blue quotemarks are very much out of place. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:30, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
An editor claimed there is an accessibility issue with mobile version when it comes to galleries [1][2], yet I see no issues when I tested with a mobile device. There's also MOS:ACCIM, which makes the same claim about galleries. I'm just curious how up-to-date this information is? Many Wikipedia:Featured articles such as Climate change make use of galleries.
I intermittently get some errors on a background bot job. The bot fails, more or less gracefully, and picks up again at the next run, so this is not urgent, but if there's a way to avoid these errors it would be good to know. The errors include:
pywikibot.exceptions.ServerError: 502 Server Error: Server Hangup
requests.exceptions.ConnectionError: ('Connection aborted.', RemoteDisconnected('Remote end closed connection without response'))
pywikibot.exceptions.ServerError: 503 Server Error: Service Unavailable
pymysql.err.OperationalError: (2006, "MySQL server has gone away (ConnectionResetError(104, 'Connection reset by peer'))")
Can be either. It can be an intermittent issue for 'any' request, or it can be a specific request that is trying to do something that the server isn't expecting or that is taking too long to eexecute.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:07, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Is there a way to edit/change the “Recommended articles” that appear at the bottom of articles in mobile view? Blueboar (talk) 19:19, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
@Blueboar For example, at New York City they have {{#related:Manhattan}} (and others) at the bottom of the article, written in the wikitext just above the categories.
I think it's setup like this (since 2015 when it was created) because it's intended to be useful to readers automatically, without any interaction needed (but with overrides available, like this, when required). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
Ok, I can see how it works at The NYC article… but take a look at Roberto Mogrovejo (just to pick an article at random)… there are NO “related” tags at all. The three “related articles” seem to just appear by magic. It isn’t very intuitive. Blueboar (talk) 01:26, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
I understand that (now)… my concern is that, while this is (poorly) explained on a page at meta, there is nothing at the article level to help editors.
Perhaps the easiest solution that I might suggest is to create a bot that would write the automatically chosen “related” tags somewhere in the article’s edit view (listed the way the manually chosen ones at the NYC article are listed). Then, if editors want to choose alternatives, they have something to edit right there on the page. Blueboar (talk) 12:19, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
It would be better to actually have an edit link on related article that opened the editor with the three currently algorithmically-defined articles pre-selected and appended to the page. It would be pretty straightforward to create a gadget that does this.
A bot doesn't sound like a good idea as the recommendations improve as new articles get edited or created.
I believe the reason they are currently not in the article or editing is encouraged is that they do not show on the desktop site. It would also be nice if these showed up on desktop experience as well to avoid confusion. 🐸Jdlrobson (talk) 23:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
Yeh I honestly can't remember why disabled on desktop, but yes it would be trivial to add these to English Wikipedia desktop for any skin if it was requested and it would likely lead to better recommendations on the long term.
Does anyone know of a template or module which would allow me to give it two strings and simply return the one that comes first alphabetically (perhaps with a switch to choose between ascending or descending order)? Josh (talk) 22:28, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
@Xaosflux That would be exactly right. The ability to have more than 2 strings compared would be great, though I only had 2 in mind for my purpose. Josh (talk) 22:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, the thing is that I just want the first item returned because that value will be used in a template and further processed to format an output. Maybe I can process the list to strip all the rest of the list away but it would be a lot simpler if there were a way to just get the single value back. I looked at {{sort list}} but I don't have the Lua chops to modify the module to give me the single value back, or to be called without having to use multiple lines to provide the input. The functionality of {{min}} is exactly what would be most efficient to employ in the template I am developing, just I need it to work on strings. Josh (talk) 01:40, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Lua supports less-than comparison between strings, so it would be straightforward to implement. (The implementation from Module:Math could be copied with the code enforcing numeric arguments removed, but being comfortable with Lua would be helpful as it uses various implementation techniques for reusability and efficiency.) I believe the result, however, would be dependent on the installed locale on the server and thus I'm not sure if it would be consistent, or would work across all Unicode characters. The same issue also exists for {{sort list}}, though, so I don't know if this is a problem for your specific use case. isaacl (talk) 04:46, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Looks like modern MediaWiki forces the C.UTF-8 locale, so results should be consistent. Even before that, since phab:T107128 Wikimedia wikis have set that locale. Anomie⚔11:40, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
I'll be honest, I am not even at a beginner level with Lua. I've perused a few modules and made the slightest of tweaks to one or two of them, but I would rank my Lua fluency only about 3 microns above 0. I sure that for someone of even intermediate ability this function is probably child's play, but I'm barely at newborn level, so this is why I have appealed to the community to find out if this function is already out there somewhere. Josh (talk) 13:08, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Sure, I am working on a template that will determine complex category names based on elements provided and within the context of a given topic. In some topics, the elements are done alphabetically, so it needs to compare multiple elements and determine which comes first in the target category name. For example, say it knows it is combining 'children' and 'adult humans', it needs to know which to list first. The correct target is 'adult humans with children', as 'children with adult humans' would be a redirect or redlink. If I could simply use {{min|children|adult humans}} and get "adult humans" back, it would be super easy for the template to correctly form the target category name based on that. Of course {{min}} is only for numbers, so it'd need to be a function that worked on strings. Josh (talk) 14:37, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm a bit confused by the example, since the two don't seem equivalent and an alphabetical sort doesn't seem like a reasonable way to choose one over the other. It feels like the code would need to search through category hierarchies to find the most suitable category? isaacl (talk) 17:36, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't need it to do any category hierarchy searching, as the structure is already known and set. It doesn't really matter to me, or at least to this template, why the category names are arranged they way they are, that's already a fact of life. I have something that works now, so thank you again for the input! Josh (talk) 02:44, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
@Joshbaumgartner, see if {{Switch by pattern|_input= 'children' and 'adult humans' |adult humans|children|_returnall=x |_returncaptures=x |_outputsep=_with_}} → {{Switch by pattern|_input= 'children' and 'adult humans' |adult humans|children|_returnall=x |_returncaptures=x |_outputsep=_with_}} can help. You can use |_outputsep={{sp}}with{{sp}} as well. This way you may need no further processing for your category name. Ponor (talk) 18:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC) + 19:36, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
^-- this is important because of how parsing and nesting may work; especially if you are trying to input something dynamic, and use the output as in input to something else. Writing a lua to purely take some pieces of raw text (so long as they are not very long), sort, and display the first value isn't super hard -- however it may need to be written in different ways depending on if the inputs are just text and the format of the output. For example if the inputs are {bravo,[[alpha]],charlie,alphabet} does the link need to be delinked, or should the brackets be sorted? — xaosfluxTalk14:39, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
That makes sense. For my application, it will be getting raw text in all lowercase. Initially it should be only two values, but it would be nice if that had growth potential to all for more (as {{min}} does). I would not think any de-linking or other such formatting would be required on the function side. Josh (talk) 15:00, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you everyone for the input. The following code does the trick exactly:
local p = {}
:p.main = function ( frame )
: str1 = frame.args[1]
: str2 = frame.args[2]
: if str1 < str2 then
: return str1
: else
: return str2
: end
:end
:return p
Thanks (and for {{search link}} I'd not seen before). My goal is to find uses of {{sic}} embedded in URLs ie. hastemplate:sic insource:hide insource:/\| *hide *=/ insource:/[-]\{\{sic/, has about 80. To get them all I'd probably need to change the last regex to insource:/[^ ]{{sic/ then use a bot to see if it's in a URL, in which case might as well use the larger number from Jonesey95. Only trying to understand how widespread this intractable problem is. Employing {{sic}} or not in these situations is a bad choice either way, and I don't see a good solution. If you don't add {{sic}} then users and user scripts/AWB etc search and replace misspellings, breaking the URL. If you do add {{sic}}, it breaks bots and tools which can't parse multiple encoding schemes, it violates the IETF RFC on URL encoding standards. In theory bots and tools should account for it, but it's an edge case and difficult to program for, I'd be surprised if any tools or bots are aware of it. -- GreenC15:11, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't think {{nobots}} would make sense here. Even {{bots|deny=AWB}} would probably be excessive. WP:SPELLBOT basically prohibits spell-checking bots, and if a human editor is using AWB or some other tool or script (or even manual "fixing") to break URLs while spell-checking then WP:MEATBOT would apply if they refuse to be more careful with their edits. Anomie⚔13:01, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
OTOH, I suspect the editors adding {{sic}} inside URLs aren't trying to stop bots or scripts from fixing them so much as trying to clear a search for misspellings as they fix the ones that can correctly be fixed. Checking the first few from GreenC's search above finds allwereaddedbyUser:Federhalter, so pinging him in the hope he will elucidate his process and he and GreenC can come to a better solution. Anomie⚔13:14, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
OK thanks for pinging Federhalter, hope they respond.
Using this template or not has deleterious effects over the long term. How many URLs have been silently broken by spell checkers, we never know. How many URLs have been mangled by bots, or link rot incorrectly detected, because of the template. My intuition is the spell checker problem is more common because there are more editors running spell checks; and we hope bot writers are more expert to deal with the template. The template thus might have the advantage, though neither is a good solution. -- GreenC16:32, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Indeed, these edits were a (misguided) attempt to exclude misspellings from search results, e.g. Carribean insource:/carribean/i. At the time I was unaware this can cause problems. I learned since then. The reason for including the parameter 'insource' in the first place, instead of simply using Carribean, is that the latter returns (a lot of) results which are only a "redirect from" a misspelled title and do not contain an actual misspelling. I could not yet find an alternative search method for fixing this. Federhalter (talk) 07:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post a request. Could someone please check the page Dylan Dog and fix the infobox? I'm a bit out of practice with formatting standards. Also, what would have been the correct place to make this request? Thanks! 100.19.66.49 (talk) 15:30, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Help! I've somehow broken a friend's talkpage so that the indentations have turned into parentheses. I don't know how you even do that.... Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs.11:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I think something may be wrong with Lowercase sigmabot III. Looking at its contributions, it only archived 4 talk pages on the 19th, about 80 on the 20th, and only 4 so far today. For comparison, it usually seems to archive many hundreds or thousands (for example on the 18th it archived well over 700). Any insight? GhostOfNoMeme09:28, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Unfortunately, they seem MIA. No edits for 2 years, and no response to past messages on their talk page. I suppose there's nothing that can be done. GhostOfNoMeme10:36, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
That's pessimistic, GhostOfNoMeme. Well, the bot didn't start on the 19th, and I can't tell why, but it hasn't reoccurred, so let's not worry about it for now. On the 20th it ran into an issue partway through its run. I've put in a workaround so that is less likely going forward. And today it's been running fine. (It doesn't start until 12:00 UTC, so that's why you didn't see any activity when you started this thread.) — The Earwig (talk) 23:27, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Ah, good to know. Thanks! I'd seen a very recent mention on the creator's talk page of the impending deflagging of another of his bots due to activity. I'm not particularly familiar with how bots are created, maintained, or reviewed, so I assumed the worst. Appreciate the info The Earwig! GhostOfNoMeme13:35, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Hello, I'm working on a fairly large page that may be coming up against some technical limits. One may be the Unstrip post-expand size. But I can't say I understand much about this datum and the help files don't say much. Do these stats look problematic? Except for the Unstrip post-expand size value none are more than about 50% of the limit.
Does that count include the comments in that css file? Maybe it would help just minimizing it to a styles.min.css, and loading that instead? --rchard2scout (talk) 21:27, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do#description has a discussion about why we should prefer TemplateStyles categorically. But specific to numbers, no, we have something like 60 million pages and only 6 million of them carry a CS1 template.
I would object to changing anything here, for both the reasons espoused in the to do page and because we should not change general templates to suit the whims of arbitrary edge case pages. There are approximately 3 main space pages which are hitting an issue with this limit. Reduce their size per WP:SIZE/WP:SPLIT as expected of such pages. This is the standard response to such hard limits as are imposed by the software. To be honest, I'm shocked that any pages hit the unstrip limit, it's very hard to do that (almost always, a page will hit WP:PEIS first). Izno (talk) 01:38, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I can't find it now, but some years ago I expressed a concern that if a template was used multiple times then multiple copies of its template styles would be loaded. I was assured that this could not happen, only the first instance would be processed. It now seems that I was misinformed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:30, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Only the first instance in the page is served to the browser. The situation here, on the other hand, is counting on the server before the deduplication happens. See my comment in the section below for details. Anomie⚔23:23, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
The post-expansion inclusion size of that page is currently a bit above 50% of the limit. so that should not be much of an issue. OTOH, the Unstrip post-expand size is over 80% of the limit, which may or may not be an issue. See the previous thread. Yeah, we could use some informed technical advice, either here or at the talk page there. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 01:45, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Looks like much of the "Unstrip post-expand size" is it counting every repetition of the TemplateStyles stylesheets, even though these are deduplicated before the article is sent to the browser (somewhat unfortunately that's the direction T160563 wound up going in). Which means, for example, the minified version of Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css is counted 1113 times even though it's only included in the page output once. If the limit winds up being exceeded, then TemplateStyles <style> tags at the end of the article (like for the portal bar) might wind up broken. "Manual" deduplication for the cite template styles (i.e. sticking one <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css" /> before the <references /> and passing an arg to all the cite templates to have them not include that) might work, but in more general cases you'd want to be careful that the on-demand section loading for the mobile apps (if they still do that) doesn't break. Anomie⚔13:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Has anyone else been experiencing MediaWiki errors? I tried a few projects and got them across the board. I hope it's over now. ꧁Zanahary꧂00:18, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [34ac1401-8578-4b58-a1be-36b1278fa8bf] 2024-07-19 00:14:57: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
Help, I'm drowning. It keeps happening every edit I make! The edits do seem to go through though, so there's that. SilverserenC00:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
I cannot make this edit logged in. I got the error several times, changed my theme to Minerva, changed my theme to Vector 2022, and now cannot open any page while logged in. It's fine (I think?) logged out, and the Android app works but can't post to this page, 2600:1702:1C50:1360:18FA:42C0:F510:BE6A (talk) 00:48, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
The discussions I initiate are particularly robust and bugs know to leave them alone, out of reverence and disinterest. ꧁Zanahary꧂01:01, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
In between edits #1 and 2, I managed to save one edit. In trying to publish this edit, I got 12 3 more of these. Mathglot (talk) 00:56, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Fyi, exception codes are always different. One per page load. Even if the error msg is the same. I think they correspond to error log entries. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:58, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
According to some logs on IRC the database serving S4 (Commons) went down. For reasons I don't quite understand that caused pages with no relation to Commons to fail. Probably the devs will write up some docs on what happened soon. * Pppery *it has begun...19:24, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm experiencing this occasionally still. It could be a caching issue on my end from earlier errors I experienced this morning, though. Frustrating. Thankfully my talk page messages still seem to go through (eventually). GhostOfNoMeme13:01, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I currently can't open any pages while logged in. My account is basically disabled because of this. Are there any updates? 95.164.181.95 (talk) 01:28, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Folks are on it
I'll just note that the phab ticket is currently marked "Open, In Progress, Unbreak Now!". Translating from techno-speak, that basically means, "We know about it, we're working on it, and it's our highest priority issue at the moment". So we should just get out of their hair and let them work on it. RoySmith(talk)16:47, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I have been getting repeated "MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [d0d3b60c-5f72-4e07-ae15-3451f56eefcf] 2024-07-21 21:00:09: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information."
messages tonight, had them last night too. the bit inside the square brackets changes each time. Happens when I click on a page link on my watchlist. Edge on Win11, also happens on Chrome on Android. DuncanHill (talk) 21:07, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
There was an outage affecting mostly logged-in page views (but mostly not logged-out page views, or logged-in edits – so you might have been able to save your comment, but not see it afterwards). I'll merge this with the section above that discusses it. Matma Rextalk16:49, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
WMF sabotage?
I assume that since loads of stuff has stopped working with every skin except Vector (2022), this is a deliberate way of forcing editors to switch to it even though no one wanted it in the first place. Nice call! ——Serial Number 5412909:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Of course PrimeHunter, and apologies to WMF for the hyperbole. but it's blooming odd. I haven't touched my scripts for over a month—I know there's probably too many!—but over the last week (not sure absolutely since when), One-Click ArchiverandDiscussion Closer have disappeared from where they used to be. I noticed the latter's absence earlier when I tried to close a discussion. Tried all the available skins in preferences, the two scripts were missing in all of them except Vector 2022. Coincidence? Hence my outraged squawks of sabotage :) I'm using Vector 2010 btw. ——Serial Number 5412911:01, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Both scripts should have been updated for changes that have been communicated multiple times in the Tech News newsletter, scripts without active maintainers aren't the responsibility of the Foundation. Sjoerd de Bruin(talk)12:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129 The good news is that all this stuff will break for Vector 2022 in the near future as well. The markup changes that broke those scripts was implemented on older skins first, but will be implemented on Vector 2022 in MediaWiki 1.44. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)14:39, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Absolutely unacceptable opening comment. I just have to say it. F'ing 100k edits lets people get away with this shit I guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:11, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, this is ridiculous. How is "WMF sabotage" appropriate in any circumstance? @Serial Number 54129, if you were serious when you said "apologies to WMF for the hyperbole", you should've changed the section heading and struck your initial comments. Legoktm (talk) 04:49, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
The title of this thread is rather hyperbolic, but there is something to be said about how this breakage came to be. Wikipedia depends on hundreds (if not thousands) of add-on front-end scripts (and other back-end tools) to do essential work. I don't think it's hyperbolic at all to say that if all these tools were to suddenly stop working, it would be very difficult to keep things going. These tools depend on navigating (and in many cases, modifying) the structure of a rendered page. As such, the structure of the HTML is an essential API, just as much as any of the other documented APIs. The problem is, it's not documented. And as we've seen here, it's subject to change with little or no notice, breaking stuff willy-nilly. That needs to change. RoySmith(talk)14:29, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
All changes like this are clearly communicated wide ahead. That users keep using outdated scripts (or fork a existing script and never process the upstream changes) and we as the community have no way to force them to switch to a maintained version (or gadget) is a huge problem in the longer term. Sjoerd de Bruin(talk)14:53, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The issue here isn't little to no notice. The notice was given in Tech news updates and I had seen in the passing some repeated pings and conversations (or attempts to do so) on the various talk pages with the maintainers. Some of these userscripts as noted by some above were abandoned or maintainers not being active.
If anything, we should look at how the userscript system is being set up (by limitations of the software) to be dependent on bus factor of 1 editor, the maintainer to have the userscript updated. Are INTADMINS empowered to update these userscripts? If so, is having 9 INTADMINs (at the current count) sufficient to update and maintain the userscripts or even redirect these outdated userscripts to the updated ones when asked? – robertsky (talk) 14:56, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Is there a centralised place that lists all the common userscripts and who runs them? I think such a list might be helpful to track this sort of thing. Especially if you add maybe a "Last updated" + "How many editors use it" column. If a script is not updated and it falls behind, it's much easier to follow along or maybe notify editors. Soni (talk) 15:06, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
It's a pretty common problem with volunteer-written software. People often aren't great at succession planning, particularly when there is no financial incentive. Having the software be open source and thus available is probably good enough for small scripts. Once the tools become more elaborate, possibly with off-wiki build systems using languages other than Javascript, something more definite would be better. But it's a tradeoff: in the spirit of empowering anyone to build their own personal tools that can also be used by others, the community doesn't require any approvals that might be contingent on a long-term sustainable setup for maintenance (after all, the vast majority of scripts like the ones I wrote aren't ever going to need that). Human nature being what it is, it's hard to get backup developers ready unless they actually start taking over some of the development. But working in a team means some slowdown in development to co-ordinate and collaborate, though with the eventual benefit that there will be more redundancy in developers able to make fixes and enhancements. isaacl (talk) 16:25, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
There is seldom a backlog (see User:AnomieBOT/IPERTable) of ready-to-go bug fixes on abandoned user script pages. It is not up to intadmins to maintain the programming of everyone's personal scripts, but we will process bugfixes if the script owner has abandoned the project. In general, editors should never assume that another editor will make a future edit and could abandon or change their own personal scripts at anytime. — xaosfluxTalk18:27, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Yeap. I was just going to drop a link to the phab ticket you linked, thanks for linking it. The ideal workflow would have been to create this API first, THEN start deploying mw:Heading HTML changes. And anything that broke could be converted to the new API. But unfortunately that didn't happen. So now I have just been waiting for them to finish the staggered rollout, which will finally complete this Thursday July 18. At that point we can fix any remaining broken scripts. These scripts could have been fixed during the staggered rollout, but patching it to support 2 types of selectors is more complicated than just waiting for the rollout to finish, so the ideal time to fix all these is when the rollout is finished on Thursday. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:47, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
In dark mode, at {{Soulfly}}, the actual link for Soulfly is an extremely dark grey that is difficult to see on a black background. Also, when editing, anything that is NOT a link is grey text on a white background. It was not this way before. Does anyone know how to fix this? --Jax 0677 (talk) 21:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I get the same result. Any unvisited link is a helpful blue on a black background. Any visited link is dark gray (#202122, if I am reading my inspector correctly) on a black background (#101418, I think, which is "--background-color-base"). My inspector says that the contrast ratio is 1.14. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:29, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Jdlrobson made some edits to {{Navbox musical artist}} about a week ago that added color: #202122 to several parameter styles. I'm still using the Dark Mode gadget rather than the Foundation version, and I'm not experiencing the issue in Vector 2022. Folly Mox (talk) 10:17, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature News
Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [4]
Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [5]
Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [6]
Project Updates
Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.
Learn more
Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.
Automated tool that I can use to change headings to be one level down
I would like to edit the headings so that they are one level down like in here. I know I could probably do it the old-fashioned way, but it would probably take up a lot of time to do so. I'm looking for an easy solution that I can use so that it will bring the headings one level down. For example: if it is a level 2 heading, I would like it into a level 3 heading. What would you recommend I do? Please ping me in your response. Interstellarity (talk) 23:23, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
@Interstellarity, this will probably work with the regex find replace in the wikitext 2010 or 2017 editors: find ==([^=]*?)==, replace ===$1===, mark the find as a regex find, and then hit the appropriate go button. Izno (talk) 23:46, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
@Izno: How can I do this for turning level 1 headings into level 2 headings, level 2 headings into level 3 headings, and level 3 headings into level 4 headings, and so on? Interstellarity (talk) 00:26, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
Apologies if this is not the right place for my query. While using the Wikipedia app on iOS with a 4G connection, I received a notification from my provider stating I had only 5GB left in my data package. Eight minutes later, I received another message saying my data package was completely used up. Upon checking my cellular usage settings, I found that the Wikipedia app had consumed 6.8GB of data in just about 10 minutes. What could be the cause of this? 141.196.107.237 (talk) 05:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I visited articles including the 2024 US presidential elections, January 6 Capitol attack, Trump assassination attempt, Joe Biden presidential campaign 2024, and the 2024 presidential debate. I’m not sure that these articles would use 6.8GB of data in such a short time. 141.196.138.120 (talk) 07:04, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
141, do you happen to have a large Reading List of articles saved for offline viewing? Is it possible that it was syncing across devices or refreshing its contents for another reason?I'm afraid most of us editors at English Wikipedia have very little experience with the apps, since they don't support full editing functionality. Someone here may have answers for you, but in case none are forthcoming, you could always ask the iOS app team directly at mw:Talk:Wikimedia Apps or at the technical support email address listed at :mw:Wikimedia Apps/iOS FAQ § If I have a question or a suggestion, how do I get in touch?Folly Mox (talk) 09:58, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
No, I don’t have any reading lists saved for offline viewing. Thank you for providing the email address for further assistance. 141.196.138.120 (talk) 07:06, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Hello,
I'm Amal Ramadan, Senior Movement Communications Specialist supporting the mobile apps team at the foundation. After discussing this issue with our iOS engineer lead, we have created a ticket T370790 for further investigation. Please subscribe to it for updates. It would also be helpful if you could let us know if you were reading only or using multimedia options in the article as well. ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:13, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
Screen blacking-out on mobile app
So I rrecently used my iPhone to access the Teahouse and the scrreen flickered between normal and black for about 10 seconds before going all black. Restarting the app doesn't fix this either. Unfortunately I have no image of this, but to describe it:
The screen would flicker between being able to read, then white, then flickering black.
Then the screen would stop flickering and go all-black. This isn't an issue with my device, as only a few pages within the Wikipedia app in specific do it.
Every part of the screen was black except the upper search bar and the Wikipedia logo.
Then I atttempted to restart the app and see if the glitch would go away, but it kept doing it.
I noticed that extremely long pages or threads will completely black-out iPhone screens (including the Teahouse, which is notoriously long). This can be a serious issue when trying to access something in-the-moment, and the Teahouse still is completely broken on my phone. I have no idea if this is even a Wikipedia-side issue, but yea. Just anted to make ya'll aware of this. I'll try to get an image tomorrow, it's prretty hard to explain. Sir MemeGod ._. (talk - contribs - created articles) 04:16, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm Amal Ramadan, Senior Movement Communications Specialist supporting the mobile apps team at the foundation, can you send the model and iOS version of your device, please? I will forward it to our iOS engineers to work on solving it.
Also, you can follow with us through the iOS support email: ios-support@wikimedia.org
Perhaps this is impossible, but I noticed that Talk:AC/DC is technically a subpage of the unrelated Talk:AC disambiguation, merely due to the backslash's double function as a title & subpage sorter (classic Wikipedia shenanigans). Is this removable somehow? Not a huge issue, but certainly not ideal either. Aza24 (talk)06:18, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
We could hide the parent page link to Talk:AC with .page-Talk_AC_DC .subpages {display:none;} in MediaWiki:Common.css but I don't support it. Each unwanted link would need its own code and the increased CSS size doesn't seem worth it. It would still be a subpage with other associated features. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:41, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
Even if that weren't the case, doing it right in pure css would be difficult at best. Consider what would need to be done to get Talk:AC/DC/Archive 1's breadcrumbs to look right. —Cryptic18:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
When a wikilink on a page points to that same page, it displays as bold rather than regular blue. These are not clickable links, as one is already on that page. As of...recently...however, the mouse cursor over these items still turns from the normal pointer into the hand as if it were a regular link. Vector2022, Firefox-115.13.0esr. Examples tested are [[User:DMacks]] on User:DMacks and spot-checking several navboxes (mainspace pages that transclude templates with a link to the mainspace page). DMacks (talk) 22:38, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
Not using screen width
I use Wikipedia on my laptop and PC, which both have roughly the same size screens. Now, I haven't made any setting changes, and everything is fine on my laptop, but on my PC, out of the blue, Wikipedia is no longer using the full page width. For some things! Talk pages are fine, infoboxes are where they should be, same with end of article templates and category lists. It's just the article text itself (and any images in the article) that isn't using the full screen - its right-hand border is roughly in line with the standard infobox position. I've taken a few screenshots to illustrate the problem.
@Bertaut, this is something that I might expect to happen if you turn on the "Improved appearance for mobile, narrow and wide screens (documentation)" in your gadgets in Special:Preferences. Can you see that is unchecked?
Second step, if that is unchecked, please go to a page of interest and add ?safemode=1 in the URL bar and then hit your version of "go" and see if the issue persists. Izno (talk) 00:29, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
That appears to have fixed it; that option was checked. Can't believe it was that simple!! The fact that I didn't have the problem on the laptop made me think it wasn't a Wiki setting. Really appreciate that. Thanks. Bertaut (talk) 00:34, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Date editing tools?
I am often editing dates in citations manually, there might be tools to help? Specifically things like converting all |date= to mdy/dmy, and converting certain parameters to iso. Do tools like this exist? -- GreenC17:06, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
You know, there are reasons to edit the source, for instance there are editors with disabilities for whom the source code is already pretty unreadable. I recommend that editors continue to fix all instances of YYYY-MM-DD formatting until a system-wide solution can be found. Abductive (reasoning)04:48, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm a first-time technical contributor, so I'm not entirely sure if this is the best place for this request, but I believe kickstarting a conversation here is a good start. I've just created my first module in Lua and would welcome feedback and a review from the more experienced technical members of our community.
The module, Module:Korean transliteration notice, is designed to support articles about Korea. Unfortunately, there is no universal method for romanizing the Korean language, with the two Korean governments having different standards and Western academia preferring another.
According to the MOS:KO, there are established conventions for which articles should use which method, but there is currently no categorization, automation, enforcement, or awareness among many editors and a template like this would help greatly and be a good first step.
Don't know Korean? Don't worry. This module is designed to work very similarly to Module:English variant notice, which I used as a foundation for the transliteration module. Here are some key links to the documentation and example template outputs:
No globals. Add require('strict') at the top. Do you really mean to export all of the functions in the module? If not, then functionp.whatever() should be changed to localfunctionwhatever() (may require repositioning in the module).
Performance considerations There are some cases where you should worry about performance (templates widely used like millions of pages, or several hundred uses per page, or the modules are huge), but otherwise, don't worry about it. Izno (talk) 18:01, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Hello - I was using {avoided double redirect} incorrectly and creating redirect categorization redundancy on edits on my account from before July 19, 2024. I would like to request anyone with experience with automation to run a (hopefully already existing) script to prune redirects created by my account - that is, removing redundant categorization from redirects using {avoided double redirect}. Alternatively, any helpful pointers to completing this task on my own would be appreciated (should I try AWB?). Tule-hog (talk) 22:04, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
For dark mode: How should a template change the "background-color" property?
We have a dark mode now, but I'm confused about how templates should handle background colors. An editor raised a specific issue at Template_talk:Bar_chart#Dark_mode_error, and I asked that individual, but maybe other people will have this same confusion.
The issue is that many templates use a pale (but not white) background to set boxes aside from the main content. These templates typically leave the "color" property of text alone. The default color is black but becomes white in dark mode. The resulting pale text on a pale background is unreadable. For example, activate dark mode and check out Prince Albert, Saskatchewan#Demographics. The glowing template there is {{Canada census}}. It uses the background colors #f8f9fa and lavender and does not change the "color" property of the text.[11] This seems to be a bug in dark mode, but I see many similar templates listed at this bug-tracking page as if they are template bugs: [12]
The recommendations from the WMF seem to suggest defining a light and dark background color on each template?[13] If that's the answer, then that's the answer, but seems like a massive amount of work when templates exist for years without being fixed for mobile, screen readers, narrow screens, the new desktop theme, and so on.
Also, what does this mean for templates that allow a user to set the background? On {{bar chart}} this would make the text unreadable on at least one of the two modes, and so user-determined colors would need to be disabled.[14] I looked up a version of Elie Wiesel that I know has the background-color set at the page level for its {{quote box}}es.[15] I see "html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .quotebox:not(.notheme)" disabling both "background" and "color" properties at the site's theme level. This appears to have been done for many widely used templates (infoboxes and nav boxes), but what is expected for other templates?
I imagine the background colors cannot just be turned off because templates like {{legend}} use them for meaning. But is there no way for the site to automatically figure that black text with a custom background color should not become white? Rjjiii (talk) 05:57, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
The fact that stuff wasn't fixed for years isn't a reason to continue doing so. A lot of user selected colors don't pass WP:COLOR's AA minimal requirement. Gonnym (talk) 07:13, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Personal opinion is that setting color is generally unnecessary in 'structural' templates like infoboxes. Simply getting a template to output a background compatible with the theme is usually enough. Izno (talk) 17:34, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Finding the rest of the issues is a matter of finding contrast issues. Do not try to assign a text color to every background-color, it is a waste of time with no real benefit. Only assign a text color if the contrast is insufficient according to WCAG AA.
You want to take the hex color values of #101418 which is dark mode background and #6D8AF2 which is the link color. Hex values close to those have insufficient contrast. I recommend finding the first available contrast friendly color and search for everything that has less contrast (you can use https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ to find this color). The search can be done with an regex. Additionally "background:transparent" is also an issue, and should probably be removed on sight.
WCAG AA has an different contrast requirement for graphs than for text, so that applies to template:bar chart. Snævar (talk) 13:28, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
I think most of your questions are answered above. TheDJ links to the page most of interest to the question. Some specifics:
There is a design token background-color-neutral-subtle which in light mode is a near-white grey. I have been normalizing templates to that color as the base when I encounter a near-white. In the case of the census template, it is the exact same color in light mode as you have pointed out. (It's probable that I'm the one to blame: I would have added that color to the template when I was removing the use of infobox class from non-infoboxes.)
For the specific case of templates that allow the user to change the color:
Remove allowing the user to change the color. This may or may not be feasible either technically (because it does not fit the semantics of the template) or because you're afraid of screeching from users who have always done it that way and have not had a care in the world about how unable it makes us to provide a dark mode. Either way, if you think you can get away on the second axis, strongly go for the first.
Do a hard override in TemplateStyles (e.g. Template:Color/styles.css, because that template matches the first case above) or at a global level (we have some generic CSS in MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css that hits a bunch of cases).
seems like a massive amount of work when templates exist for years without being fixed for mobile, screen readers, narrow screens, the new desktop theme, and so on. Welcome to Wikipedia. Identify priorities and backlogs (for example, MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do), advertise that you're working on it ( ;) ), fix things that affect you personally when you find them, and ultimately, do what you can. Izno (talk) 17:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks all! Izno and TheDJ's post covered everything. Appreciate the explanations. I was hoping there would be a simple solution, but can accept there is not, Rjjiii (talk) 22:16, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Bot activity problem
DannyS712 bot, a bot which is supposed to look after various daily or weekly maintenance tasks, hasn't made any edits since July 1, including failing to update Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories (2) in eleven days despite that being a thing that's supposed to happen weekly, but the bot's maintainer says on their own userpage that they're not around much lately, and they haven't made any Wikipedia edits at all since July 3, so there's no way to know when they'll be back in order to look into it if I approach them personally (especially in July, when any editor could very well be on vacation for a couple of weeks). So could somebody take a quick gander into whether there's a problem with the bot, and maybe jumpstart it again if there is? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 15:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
I saw the ping, and have been meaning to get to this, but am aware of the issue - hopefully I'll have time this weekend, and sorry for the delays --DannyS712 (talk) 21:07, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
Nobody said otherwise. The problem is with a bot not functioning properly for purely technical reasons, and absolutely nobody accused Danny of anything improper. Bearcat (talk) 14:39, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
I guess I just got the weekend wrong, I was out of town for a while - I definitely should have time this week, maybe even tomorrow DannyS712 (talk) 02:40, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
No worries. I was able to use the substitute on-the-fly report provided above to work around the bot issue, so the delay hasn't been a major crisis. Bearcat (talk) 14:04, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
If that subject line does not look cryptic to you, I would love to have your advice. I am trying to spin off the table about License compatibility that you can view here, into a template so I can use it in multiple articles, and add user-configurable style, and I am running into problems using CSS to reproduce the blue background in the first row. Currently, the template is at Draft:License compatibility. I am busy on two tracks: adding parameters for user stylability, and moving the original style to Draft:License compatibility/styles.css as default style. In trying to reproduce the original table style with the blue background and bolded white font in the top row as seen here, I tried the following at Draft:License compatibility/styles.css:
but it doesn't seem to be working properly; instead of rendering the top row with blue background, it is rendering the *second row* with blue background, and I don't understand why. Thanks for any tips you can offer. Mathglot (talk) 09:33, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
All rows in a wikitext-generated table are in <tbody>, not <thead>, even if the first one(s) include only <th>s. If the table is sortable, jquery.tablesorter puts the first row in <thead> for JavaScript-enabled users. You should probably add a class to the row itself rather than rely on a pseudo-class. Nardog (talk) 09:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much from this response. The table is non-sortable. When I look at the generated Html, I see this:
Html for table
<tableclass="wikitable lic-comp"><tbody><tr><thcolspan="2">License Compatibility with Wikipedia<supid="cite_ref-1"class="reference"><ahref="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup></th></tr><tr><td><spanclass="heading">Licenses compatible with Wikipedia</span></td><td><spanclass="heading">Licenses <i>not</i> compatible with Wikipedia</span></td></tr><tr><thscope="row"colspan="2"><spanclass="lic-comp-label">Creative Commons licenses</span></th></tr><trstyle="vertical-align: top;"><td><ul><li>CC BY, all versions and ports, up to and including 4.0</li><li>CC BY-SA 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.0</li><li><arel="nofollow"class="external text"href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a></li></ul></td><td><ul><li>CC BY-NC</li><li>CC BY-NC-ND</li><li>CC BY-ND</li><li>CC BY-NC-SA</li></ul></td></tr><tr><thcolspan="2"><spanclass="lic-comp-label">Other licenses</span></th></tr><tr><td><ul><li>GFDL <b>and</b> CC BY or CC BY-SA</li></ul></td><td><ul><li>any GNU-only license (including GFDL)</li></ul></td></tr></tbody></table>
so it seems like the first tr child should be the top row, not the second one. Are you saying that jquery alters the Html after the capture posted here from right-click, view page source? Mathglot (talk) 09:55, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
If it's sortable, yes. I know it doesn't pertain to this table since it's not a data table and so is unlikely to be made sortable, but it's good practice to not rely on :first-child or :nth-child to select header rows because jquery.tablesorter modifies them for a subset of users. Nardog (talk) 10:00, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll try a different approach, although I'm not sure how to address a row in a wikitable, unless I convert it to an Html table first, and then I have the row and cell tags available which I can address. Maybe that's where this should go, at this point, unless there is an alternative. Mathglot (talk) 10:08, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Sjoerddebruin, you may be right, but as I am spinning off content written by another editor into a Template, I feel like the first effort should exactly reproduce their original design, so I can introduce the template into the article where they originally added the wikitext, without any changes to the rendered page. The parameters being added to the template will provide configurability to other users, to alter it as they see fit. Thanks for your comment. Mathglot (talk) 10:19, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't see any blue background or white text. Have you enabled "Make headers of tables display as long as the table is in view" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? That also messes with unsortable tables. I get blue background and white text in the top row with this which adds thto your code:
Oh, I must have misunderstood something then. I thought Mathglot was trying to turn "Licenses compatible with Wikipedia" and "Licenses not compatible with Wikipedia" blue. Nardog (talk) 10:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
They are blue now, that is the problem. For starters, I am trying to echo the original, which is here, using templatestyles instead of inline style. So far, I haven't managed to do it. That would be the baseline, from which user configurability could begin. Mathglot (talk) 10:46, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
At this point, I'm going to take a break, but I should add if anyone wants to play with the template, this is a wiki, so by all means, please try stuff out in the template, or the styles.css, if you have an idea how to progress with this. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 10:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I just made the draft table much simpler (and I believe more accessible), feel free to revert if it's too drastic a change. Nardog (talk) 11:09, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Oh, in that case it's because the default background applies to <th>, not <tr>, so it takes precedence over your custom style in TemplateStyles. .lic-comp tr:first-child > th is one way to do it. Nardog (talk) 10:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
@Mathglot: You didn't answer whether you have enabled "Make headers of tables display as long as the table is in view". If I enable it then I get the result you describe with blue in the second row. Without it, my code works for me, but it would be better to not rely on which table-altering features are used. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:00, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter:, Oh, thanks for thinking of that—yes, I do have header view enabled, so is that interfering somehow? I did check the page Html and didn't see anything suspicious, does the header gadget maybe change the th to something else after the page Html snapshot is taken for developer tools? In any case, what if I assign the row an id attribute, maybe I could use that to address the row uniquely regardless whether it was th or something else. Is that even possible in a wikitable, I'm not sure I've ever tried to assign a row an id attribute, and I don't see anything at Help:Table about it. Mathglot (talk) 07:45, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
@Mathglot: Page Source in Firefox shows the original html but when I right-click the heading and use Inspect Element, the gadget has changed <tbody> in the first row to <thead class="mw-sticky-header-element">. tbody is still in the second row so your CSS matches there instead. id's can be applied to rows like |- id="header" which can be targeted with #header th {...}. I often use row id's to link to a row. See Help:Tables and locations#Section link or map link to a row anchor. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:38, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter:, very cool; this is just the information I needed, on both counts. They ought to give out Affinity Cards or something, and questioners get to award points to responders, and after you win 10,000 points or something, they fly you out to the next Wikimania or something. I'll skip the virtual cookies and fruit, but really, big thank you; also to Nardog and others who took the time to respond. Mathglot (talk) 05:53, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
On this page, Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4, when I click the edit link on a particular section, any section, it brings me to the section before the one I clicked. I recently transcluded the sections so I'm not sure if this is part of the problem and it is buggy right now since this is new, but I am working on it to try to bring it so it can be stable and free from bugs. Interstellarity (talk) 22:00, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 The problem isn't with the subpages, it's with the main page of level 4 that I'm trying to figure out. I saw that you replicated the problem, but I am unaware of a null edit that caused the problem to go away. Interstellarity (talk) 22:17, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
@Interstellarity I would recommend undoing your transclusion of those sections, as it causes the page to be huge, take forever to load, and, most importantly, exceed the WP:PEIS limit so that the entire thing doesn't display properly. It also may have broken Cewbot, as seen at this edit right after your transclusion. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)13:58, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
When I edit admin-protected pages like Template:Disambig editnotice, I get nearly-white text on a very light pink background, and it's nearly invisible. Does anyone know where this color is set? Is that part of the skin CSS?
BTW, I added class=skin-invert to that template, but the results are pretty ugly in dark mode. It (and many other templates) could probably use upgrading to CSS variables with the palette from [16], though it's very difficult for me to edit it safely at the moment. -- Beland (talk) 03:46, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
I've thrown Something at the problem now that I've been reminded about at least 5% of why I asked for int admin back. We're going to need to refine colors, these don't necessarily mesh well with syntaxhighlighting, which is still a known problem child. Izno (talk) 04:07, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
(Alternatively, we can ditch the pink for editing protected things and just use the base colors, but IDK how that will go down with Everyone.) Izno (talk) 04:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
I know what the purposes of the background is, I am just about convinced however that it isn't valuable to load for every user in the groups of interest. Izno (talk) 16:34, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm now getting white text on a dark red background in dark mode, which makes things a lot easier to edit in dark mode. Many thanks! I'm still curious where this fix was implemented, in case I run into similar problems elsewhere? -- Beland (talk) 19:03, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
As for the BTW, this template strongly needs to reconsider whether it should have the (coffee) color it does. It is intended as a system message (edit intro) and should be colored as expected for that series of templates. It looks like it was added based on "it would be more noticeable", which I think is a miss since most other edit notices are no more noticeable. But particularly to using a Codex color, there are no coffee colors in that palette. Izno (talk) 04:15, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
I've changed it to "background-color-warning-subtle" from the official palette, which is more or less the same hue. It still ends up as an ugly brown in dark mode, even without "class=skin-invert". Presumably there needs to be an official thinking up of a good subtle warning color for dark mode?
Whether this should be notionally colorized as a warning or as info I'm agnostic about. Looking through the templates in Category:Editnotice templates, the aesthetics are really all over the place. Some templates get attention by having a yellow icon, red icon, yellow border (which is nice even in dark mode), red words as internal headers, yellow background, or pink background. Some have no attention-getting colors at all. Should we start a discussion somewhere about making the visual conventions more uniform? If these are all going to need to be converted to use the new official palette, they'd need to be adjusted anyway. -- Beland (talk) 19:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't be surprised by an ugly brown being the flip for yellow. Using the skin-invert class should be used only for non-flipping colors, and this isn't one of those.
We don't need to convert to Codex per se, we just need to be sensitive to what colors we have and are providing in multiple color themes now. Having a standardized color scheme (which we in fact already have for the message box series, though as you point out it is often customized) is one way to be successful at that objective by default. Adding the customizations that we do is the issue, and could be solved either by removal of those colors, making some other standard templates/templatestyles, or using upstream variables from Codex or even Common.css. A discussion about the customizations is probably warranted somewhere, but I don't know how many people are interested in that kind of topic - often there is resistance along the lines of "it looks like how I wanted" (which would echo refrains from when the message boxes were standardized nearly 20 years ago). Izno (talk) 19:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
i read about half this thread and understood less than that, but one thing i think i understand was what Redrose64 said: The pink reminds me that I'm editing a protected page, and that I need to exercise extra caution. What if the pink were added as a border around the browser window or editing area instead of a background that potentially camouflages the text? Would that be an equally effective reminder? and maybe do similarly for other "alerts"? i don't know how many such color-coded alerts exist; i'm an anonymous IP rather than a registered user or admin, so i guess i don't see some of these things. But maybe instead of having light-mode-black-on-white-(and-sometimes-black-on-pink) change to dark-mode-white-on-black-(and-sometimes-white-on-dark-red-or-yellow-on-ugly-brown), maybe instead light mode and dark mode could just toggle black-on-white to white-on-black with both sharing the "double word score" pink border (or maybe a border of pink-and-red stripes like these, or Battenburg markings) for Alert Type X, and for Alert Type Y light and dark mode can share a "triple letter score" shade(s)-of-blue border, and so on like that?
I like the idea of moving the warning color out of the background and into a border or eye-injuring stripes above or below the edit box. That prevents any conflict with syntax highlighting, the authors of which probably aren't expecting a background color that only admins see. -- Beland (talk) 16:19, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Template:Tennis record expansion
I wasn't sure if the requested template page was monitored very often... it looks sort of dead. So just bringing it to my betters attention here.
The current and prior templates need to be merged into a catchall so we can have a percentage if we want but also have no percentage for many articles. I could simply make two separate templates and rename them so we could use either, if that's preferred at wikipedia. or we add an attribute to the current template that adds the (72.6%) after the win loss. We use the template because so many editors forget to use an ndash instead of a hyphen. If it's better or easier to have two templates just let me know. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:25, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Exploring this further... the "search the archives" function at NPOVN seems to be working fine. The problem seems to be that the "list of archives" for NPOVN appears to have been replaced with the "list of archives" for RSN. Blueboar (talk) 12:15, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Hi all at the Pump, it's easy to feel disconnected despite the fantastic and often thankless efforts you make to keep WP going behind the scenes. I don't do barnstars, but here's a pic of a huge medieval barn instead. Well done, and thank you again for all your tireless and often unacknowledged hard work. MinorProphet (talk)— Preceding undated comment added 13:24, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Removing the need for round robin moves
I am not sure if this is the right forum. Feel free to move it to a proper one, such as WP:Village pump (idea lab).
When page A needs to be renamed to B, but B redirects to A, what commonly happens is that B gets moved to C without leaving a redirect (so that page B is free), meaning A can then be renamed to B, and C can be renamed to B, also without leaving a redirect. This is called a round robin move. Alternatively, the redirect B can simply be deleted. Since this is commonly done, is it feasibility and technically possible to do the two moves at the same time (eg, A to B and B to A at the same time), removing the need for a third one? JuniperChill (talk) 19:35, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
That page also hassomecharts that are mostly white. Of course image files don't change color (well, GIF files might, but i don't think they're the solution here), but it's something else to consider.
Village pump (Policy - Technical - Proposals (persistent) - Idea lab - WMF - Miscellaneous)
and this part
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, ... 212, 213, 214
appear as dark text (including blue links that turn purple after clicking them) on a light background. The list of archives includes 42 as hard-to-see #light text on a light background in dark mode.
The GIF article has an infobox that says (more or less)
Filename extension: .gif Internet media type: image/gif Type code: GIFf Uniform Type Identifier (UTI): com.compuserve.gif Magic number: GIF87a/GIF89a
but ".gif", "image/gif", and "GIFf" appear as dark text on a light background. "GIF87a" and "GIF89a" seem to switch with light mode/dark mode, maybe by using <code>THIS</code> instead of {{code|THAT}}?
"Parts of these pages have dark text on a light background" yes this is expected. There is 25 years of legacy and fixing all these templates to have both a light AND a dark mode will take multiple years and require new decisions to be made. The highest priority however right now is to ensure we do not have dark on dark or light on light, as that effects readability. The 'is it pretty' issues will be dealt with in good time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:55, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Agreed: This is not a top priority. However, as someone unfamiliar with coding, i don't always know if a problem here is related to a problem there, so sometimes i ask others i think might know (or might know how to find out). Also, even if the issues are unrelated, a small issue might still deserve to be on the to do list (even if way, way down on the to do list), so i hope mentioning it is useful. --173.67.42.107 (talk) 19:44, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
TheDJ, well, in this case it's a combination of the SyntaxHighlight extension not supporting dark mode, which we can't do much about, and {{code}} using the syntaxhighlight tag, when it could use the code tag if no langauge is specified. — Qwerfjkltalk19:56, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
i've done a bit of Wikipedia browsing and editing on my smartphone, mostly in dark mode since i learned it was an option (Wednesday July 10?).
On my laptop, wikipedia.org addresses redirect by default to en.wikipedia.org and light mode, but i have sometimes edited the web address to en.m.wikipedia.org to get the mobile dark mode on my laptop.
Today (Saturday July 27) on my laptop, en.wikipedia.org (i think it was en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox if that matters) gave me a pop-up alert saying something along the lines of "dark mode is available in the Appearance link of the menu on the right side of the screen" but i can't find Appearance listed in any of the five menus i've found:
The upper right of the screen has three dots resembling an ellipsis... that gives me this drop down menu:
Pages for logged out editors (learn more)
Contributions
Talk
below that is the drop down menu for languages (obviously Appearance doesn't belong there)
below that is a Tools drop down menu (i can list its options if that would help, but Appearance isn't one of them, even when i scroll down as far as it goes, so...)
The upper left has what looks like a triple bar or 三 that reveals a drop down Main menu (again, i can list the options, but Appearance isn't there, even scrolling to the bottom)
below that is the drop down table of Contents, resembling a vertical ellipsis next to a triple bar, somewhat like ⋮Ξ (again, Appearance doesn't belong there, although as a pictograph it looks like it could be a settings menu)
Appearance is also not visibly part of the footer "menu":
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Code of Conduct
Developers
Statistics
Cookie statement
Mobile view
i also checked Wikipedia's Main Page with similar results (no Appearance nor ⋮三).
i exited the pop-up in search of the Appearance link and have not been able to get the pop-up again (which is normally a good thing, but right now means i can't double check anything about it, like, "did it say Appearance or appearances?")
If anyone knows what's going on here, please don't leave me in the dark. i mean, let me in on the dark. You know what i mean. ;-)
Note: I originally intended to ask the devs to make the system message add the category but this has been proposed in the past in phab:T289404 and was declined. This is why I think adding the template manually is the best approach. Nickps (talk) 16:03, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
The code for {{Documentation subpage}} has a test that looks like it tries to assign a category: ... [[Category:{{#switch:{{SUBJECTSPACE}} |Template=Template |Module=Module |User=User |#default=Wikipedia}} documentation pages]] .... My naive question is: why isn't that code working? Does an if statement need to be redesigned? Can something else be tweaked inside that template? I'm not clear on how the page-header page "adds" the doc subpage to the template without actually transcluding it; maybe the category could be "added" in the same way that the doc subpage template is "added". – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:19, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
I will stop. But you're not explaining what's so dangerous about them. They can be reverted as easily as I am doing them. Nickps (talk) 17:07, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
10 minutes of edits done manually can be reverted in less than half that by someone with AWB. I'm not creating a fait accompli and I'd like you to take that back. Nickps (talk) 17:11, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) What's dangerous is explained in the essay I linked - it inappropriately biases the situation toward the automatic documentation being removed later because the edits required to do it are already in place. The cost of this is that every time a module is created {{documentation subpage}} has to be manually added to the subpage forevermore, and I'm not seeing what the point of Category:Module documentation pages even is when the search I linked above can produce the same output in the unlikely event anyone cares. * Pppery *it has begun...17:12, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
On List of Anaheim Ducks seasons, when you view the page logged out and scroll down far enough, the year by year table partially covers up the appearance settings (in Google Chrome, Windows 11, for what it's worth). I'm guessing this probably isn't intended; is there a means of nudging the settings over so they are fully visible for users? Home Lander (talk) 17:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
This is a known issue that WMF developers have been poking at ever since they rolled out Vector 2022 as the default skin. The main task is T361737. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:38, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Per mw:Recommendations for mobile friendly articles on Wikimedia wikis you can mark large tables up so that they scroll (I did that for this article). This issue has been around for over a decade now for mobile users. Vector 2022 just brought the issue to a larger audience.
The referenced issue (if solved) will likely be resolved by marking up tables like this automatically but I don't think there is a silver bullet for fixing every table (this solution is incompatible with sticky headers for example). 🐸Jdlrobson (talk) 02:24, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Dark Mode doing strange things to Page History on pages where Pending Changes is active
This page has WP:Pending changes activated. The edit history listing now looks odd when Dark mode is activated. On edits that have been accepted, that line has a white background instead of black/dark and the text is light-colored, making it more hard to read. Instead, this should be a dark grey background, lighter than the standard background, so as to fit with the dark scheme, and make the text readable.
At Great Britain at the Olympics the sections are not collapsible as expected on the mobile interface. In my sandbox I tried removing sections until it worked again, then reinstating that section and removing everything else, only to find that it worked again. I also tried fixing the markup errors (specifically, invalid HTML attributes) but that didn't fix it either. So I can only assume the cause is the "Medals by sport" section just being excessively large. Is this a known limitation of the collapsing mechanism? Should that section be split up so the collapsing works? Hairy Dude (talk) 16:49, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
So every once and a while I come across a composer with 3–4 works on Wikipedia, but no navigational template, so I go ahead and make one. Is there any way to generate a list of composers who are missing one still? Not sure if this is a bot-request matter, AWB request or something else entirely. (see parent cat)
So essentially, I'd be looking for categories like [[Category:Compositions by Example Person]] which have more than 2 pages, but there is no corresponding {{Example Person}} that exists. Aza24 (talk)21:37, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
The three linked "related articles" at the bottom of each article page are showing their thumbnails in photographic negative for me. A temporary glitch, a problem on my end (mobile android chrome), I don't know -- standard images in-article look fine. I wanted to let someone know in case there is an issue to fix. See, e.g., bottom of Thomas Cromwell or Wyatt's rebellion. Al Begamut (talk) 17:04, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
This sounds like the behaviour of the dark mode gadget (rather than the WMF extension), which has always done this. Folly Mox (talk) 18:37, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:WikiProject Athletics, the subpages /leftpanel, /rightpanel, and /Members are supposed to be transcluded, but since recently they are shown as links. As far as I can tell, there were not any recent changes made to this project page or its subpages that could have triggered this. The issue with /leftpanel was reported on the project talk page on 28 July. Anyone know what caused it or how it could be fixed? – Editør (talk) 08:40, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, I'm assuming this identifies the cause. I'm not sure how to fix this though. – Editør (talk) 09:09, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Editør, I assume you'd need to simplify or remove some of these template calls: Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template) 100.00% 1838 242 1 -total 37.90% 696 694 1 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Athletics/rightpanel 28.63% 526 307 1 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Athletics/leftpanel 23.79% 437 326 1 Template:Scrolling_window 21.97% 403 905 1 User:AlexNewArtBot/AthleticsSearchResult 19.57% 359 777 1 Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Athletics_articles_by_quality_statistics 19.35% 355 777 1 User:WP_1.0_bot/Tables/Project/Athletics 16.46% 302 510 15 User:AlexNewArtBot/MaintDisplay 14.55% 267 473 196 Template:Pagelinks 14.43% 265 233 1 User:WP_1.0_bot/WikiWork — Qwerfjkltalk09:32, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the additional info. I don't think I understand enough about the issue to be able to fix this myself. – Editør (talk) 09:39, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
When I changed it to {{User:AlexNewArtBot/AthleticsSearchResult}} and purged the project page's cache, the transcluded content of /leftpanel was displayed again, so part of the issue seems to be caused by {{scrolling window}} making the project page exceed some limit as you indicated. I'm not sure why this happened now, maybe because there the transcluded contents were much longer than usual due to the Summer Olympics? I have reverted my edit, because the project page became too long without the scrolling window. However, the change and purge didn't fix the transclusion issue for /rightpanel and /Members. – Editør (talk) 10:53, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
The suggested solution with a div and CSS didn't work, I'm not sure why not. It even removed additional transcluded content from the project page, so I have reverted my edits for this. – Editør (talk) 11:40, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Ah I see, I missed that you meant direct in the project page. I'm afraid don't have time for the fiddling right now. – Editør (talk) 12:07, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Where do I report an error in trying to add a redirect category to an existing redirect using the Tag button?
I tried to add the {{R with possibilities}} tag to a redirect, and it created a second empty redirect shell. The original redirect had been Special:Permalink/1210632744. When I tried to add the additional category, using the Tag button, it applied this diff:
Special:Diff/1237443069. As can be seen, it moved the existing redirects into a new shell, leaving an empty shell.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Editors using the Visual Editor in languages that use non-Latin characters for numbers, such as Hindi, Manipuri and Eastern Arabic, may notice some changes in the formatting of reference numbers. This is a side effect of preparing a new sub-referencing feature, and will also allow fixing some general numbering issues in Visual Editor. If you notice any related problems on your wiki, please share details at the project talkpage.
Bugs status
Some logged-in editors were briefly unable to edit or load pages last week. These errors were mainly due to the addition of new linter rules which led to caching problems. Fixes have been applied and investigations are continuing.
Editors can use the IP Information tool to get information about IP addresses. This tool is available as a Beta Feature in your preferences. The tool was not available for a few days last week, but is now working again. Thank you to Shizhao for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (voy:cs:) [19]
Hi there, I was directed here after asking this question at the Teahouse.Roger Uren is a page I created for a former diplomat that was investigated by Australian intelligence services for alleged espionage. I told a friend to look it up, they searched for it in google as "Roger Uren Wikipedia". His page didn't pop up, but all mentions of him on other Wikipedia pages did. The Roger Uren page was created in early April (over 90 days ago). Is there any reason why it wouldn't appear? Another user told me that the Wikipedia page appears in a basic search of his name, but disappears when you add "Wikipedia" to the search. 30Four (talk) 05:04, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Probably a side effect of our logic that blocks the article from indexing when it is newly created. When this index'ing restriction is lifted, Google isn't as likely to pick up the article until someone looks for it, edits it, or links to it from outside of wikipedia. It seems to show up now however. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:33, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
If you were literally searching Google for "Roger Uren Wikipedia" it would be less likely to appear, as those 3 words aren't together. This page is the number one result when I search for "Roger Uren" site:wikipedia.org, so Google certainly knows about it. The page was also recently patrolled an hour or so ago (see Special:Redirect/logid/163473907), so that may help. — xaosfluxTalk09:53, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Table of contents
The table of contents behavior has changed, some time in the last few hours. I'm using Firefox on a Windows PC. Until now the table of contents has displayed on the left sidebar, which is what I want. Now I still see that when displaying Firefox full screen, but when it's not full screen, which is my usual way of working, I don't see the TOC. I can still get there by clicking the TOC icon in the upper left, or by expanding Firefox to full screen, but I strongly prefer the previous behavior. What has changed, and can it be set back to the way it was? (Note that I've not switched the TOC to "hide", it's still in "move to sidebar" mode.) — Mudwater (Talk)10:26, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
It depends on the width of your screen. Maybe you don't have the exact window width ? Or possibly you zoomed in the browser one nudge with the zoom function that a browser has ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:53, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Okay, I think I see what happened. I didn't realize this, but the width that I usually use for the browser window is slightly larger than the minimum for displaying the table of contents in the left sidebar. Then today, without noticing it, I was using a slightly narrower window for the browser, causing the TOC to mysteriously disappear. When I widen the window by a small amount, the "problem" is fixed. Thanks for your help. — Mudwater (Talk)12:08, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Dark mode images with transparent color
The UK Space Agency article has a logo at the top which is supposed to have the red, blue and white colors of the union jack, however the image doesn't actually use white, it uses transparent so it blends in with the off-white panel. However in dark mode the transparent area appears black so the logo appears red, blue and black which is wrong. The solution would be for images not to use transparent colors when they should be white although this would upset people who want the image to blend in with the off-white background panel. Termynaytor (talk) 04:45, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
If it should be white, someone needs to fix the logo. Misrepresenting logos is a miss on our part. Izno (talk) 04:59, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. If a logo is truly intended to be transparent background, we should use that, of course. But that is the rarity. I'm not one for "catering" to companies/organizations' preference, but in the display of their logos (whether it's a white background or otherwise) we should follow their press/media kits for displaying it - at least in the color department. The vast majority of organizations will have their logo as part of a press/media kit with guidance on how it is to be shaped, the colors to use (often with exact hex values) - and we should use logo images that comply with those even if they are public domain, in my opinion. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 05:23, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
@Termynaytor: SVG files are comparatively easy to edit, especially when they were not created with InkScape. Use a plain text editor such as WordPad. This SVG image had just three elements - the <svg>...</svg> element itself, plus one <path /> element each for the red and blue portions. There is nothing to specify either background or transparency - SVG images are implicitly transparent, except for those areas where an object has been drawn that is 100% opaque.
I've added a fourth element, being <rectx="0"y="0"width="500"height="140"fill="white"stroke="none"/> which draws a white background before the coloured bits.
Thanks for that. There are other images in the thread linked by WOSlinker above such as the Porsche and Apple logos but people might prefer to keep the transparency in those cases. Termynaytor (talk) 08:42, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
A commons gadget that allows us to add a white background to images via a single button click would be really useful here... 🐸Jdlrobson (talk) 21:52, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
@Jdlrobson: If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting a utility that, given the name of an existing image, will edit that image and save the amended image. My edit to File:UK Space Agency logo.svg wasn't difficult, but I don't think that it's something that could easily be automated in a way that fits all situations. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:20, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
That also may run afoul of c:COM:OVERWRITE, depending on specifics of the file, and the temptation of editors to use it widely on images of things that are not intrinsically "white background". DMacks (talk) 22:29, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
How to add a background color to an image in an infobox?
For example if a logo is all-white png it wouldn't be visible so a black background color is added to make it visible. Neocorelight (Talk) 03:24, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
You cannot rely on this because there is light and dark mode. Better to explicitly edit the image to have a background color. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:43, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Neocorelight, download the image and edit the background colour. Reupload the edited version to Wikimedia Commons, being sure to credit the original license holder, link to the version you remixed, and provide the same license as the original version.If you don't have image editing software on your device, you can probably use the free online tool Photopea.Folly Mox (talk) 10:33, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
On Wikispecies (where I am an admin), if I view the history of a page with multiple unpatrolled edits, I see an option to "Mark all revisions as patrolled". I do not see this here on en.Wikipedia, nor on Wikidata.
How can I enable this on the latter projects (where I am not an admin; if that is relevant)?
I searched for that string, and found only one discussion, from 2009, which refers to an "Enchanted [SIC: enhanced?] recent changes" option under preferences -> Recent changes, but I see no such option on any of the listed projects. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits12:20, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Usually the start discussion notice is displayed on talk pages with no comments; But, now its in all talk pages. Even in Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical), Don't know how long it has been but I just noticed it. Is it a glitch or something??? Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 11:48, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: With some browsers, the zoom setting is remembered in a non-intuitive way. For example, if you zoom out on one page, click through to another page, the zoom level is inherited; if on that you reset to normal zoom then return to the first page, it may be normal, or it may still be zoomed out. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:46, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
Recently and editor asked a question at WP:HD. I replied that the correct place to have asked that question was Help talk:Citation Style 1. In response, the editor said that they didn't because there is a notice that reads:
Attention
Talk pages in this namespace are generally not watched by many users. Please consider visiting the Help desk for a more prompt response or reviewing the Help contents for quick tips.
That message is displayed when the editor is seeing the edit view. Is there any way to suppress that warning/notice for a single Help talk: page?
Yes. I don't want editors to be scared away from the talk page where they can get cs1|2 help. All of the cs1|2 template and module talk pages redirect to Help talk: Citation Style 1. Editors should not arrive there and then think that they must go to some other page for help. If we wanted editors to ask questions at WP:HD, we'd have redirected the cs1|2 template and module talk pages there.
You assume correctly. I'm not convinced that conflicting messages are ever a good thing. Is it possible to create a template that does nothing but drag in a templatestyles css page that contains something like:
It looks like that should almost work, and work from the page-specific edit notice, but .visibility looks like it wouldn't be correct (also the !important should be unnecessary). As things are you'd want to target #Visibility, although personally I'd probably do .editnotice-namespace#Visibility just in case. Anomie⚔14:52, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk You could wrap the editnotice (or the "help" line in {{Visibility}}) in {{#ifeq:{{ROOTPAGENAME}}|Citation Style 1||...}} as long as there's only one (or a small handful) of pages that need to be excluded. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)14:33, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, that would probably work. But, but, I hate special cases ...
Hello, I found a problem on Commons. The problem is with images in SVG format, where there is distortion in the display of the text of the image, a change in the location of the text display, and a difference in the size of the text display.
This is a sample image, please click and view. So if you click on it, it will appear to you like this.
I thought the problem was due to the program I use to edit photos. For about a full day, I was experimenting with solving the problem, trying different size dimensions and so on, but it was not solved. Then in the end I discovered that the cause of the problem was the Commons website and not me.
I was also able to find out the reason for the problem on the Commons website. It occurs because the text is in a large size, and if you reduce it, the text size will be displayed at approximately the correct size.
Therefore, I ask that the technicians responsible please fix this defect, because it is a major problem. I have stopped editing images until the problem is fixed. Unfortunately, many people must have stopped designing images in this format and uploading them to Wikipedia articles because of this problem.
Note: I do not want to raise the discussion within the Commons project, because it is a very important problem related to the display of images in Wikipedia articles, and Because there is no interest from technicians within the Commons project. Mohmad Abdul sahibtalk☎talk21:55, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
How do you know technicians from the Commons project wouldn't be interested in this issue if you haven't raised it there? Tule-hog (talk) 22:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
@Tule-hogYou can take a look here There are problems raised a year ago that have not been answered. Also, the problem I raised is urgent and important. I have stopped all my projects until the bug is fixed. In addition, the problem is linked between the two projects. Mohmad Abdul sahibtalk☎talk19:42, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Not saying you shouldn't have raised it here, just that you might also try raising it there to increase coverage. Arabic's SVG rendering possibly not working is a serious, global bug to be sure. Have you happened to find any graphics that don't have the issue? Tule-hog (talk) 02:58, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
I think the problem is that your used the Arial font in your image, which is not a free font, and thus is not installed on the Wikimedia servers. Try changing the text in the image to use one of the fonts listed here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SVG_fonts – I suggest Liberation Sans, which was designed as an alternative to Arial – and see if that makes it display right. Matma Rextalk22:28, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: Nope. I have tried (LiberationSans-Bold), and the problem is the same. There has only been a slight difference in text measurements, but text distortion, positioning, and size are still there. Mohmad Abdul sahibtalk☎talk02:50, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Hmm, you're right. I uploaded a new version of the file (File:Anterior Thyroid - Arabic.svg) just to be sure, and it still looks very wrong. I want to try some other things, but I'm not sure how the result is supposed to look like – the SVG file on my computer also has slightly weird-looking text, and I'm not sure if it's a problem with the file or with my applications: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F56717722. Can you export it to PNG on your computer and upload that version to Commons too, so that we may compare? Matma Rextalk03:34, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: I think I discovered the cause of the problem, it is caused by a difference in dots per inch. Because I downloaded an image in SVG format for the year 2010 and wanted to modify it, but I saw this message inside the program:
was created in an older version of Inkscape (90 DPI) and we need to make it compatible with newer versions (96 DPI). Tell us about this file. This file contains digital artwork for screen display (Choose if unsure.) This file is intended for physical output, such as paper or 30 prints. Create a backup file in same directory. More details: We've updated Inkscape to follow the CSS standard of 36 OPI for better browser compatibility we used to use 50 DPI. Digital artwork for screen. display will be converted to 96 DPI without scaling and should be unaffected. Artwork drawn at 90 DPI for a specific physical size will be too small if converted to 96 DPI without any scaling. There are two scaling methods. Scaling the whole document: The least error-prone method, this preserves the appearance of the artwork, including filters and the position of masks etc. The scale of the artwork relative to the document size may not be accurate. Scaling individual elements in the artwork: This method is less reliable and can result in a changed appearance but is better for physical output that relles on accurate sizes and positions (for example for 3D printing. More information about this change are available in the Inliscape
I have installed Inkscape version 0.48 (2010). Then I tried editing the image and uploading it to Commons, and I did not see any distortion or any problems with the text.
__________________
There is another problem, which is when you open the image in this way, right-click on it and then download it directly, without clicking on the download icon, the image is not downloaded in SVG format, but rather in PNG format, and this is a big problem that should not happen. Mohmad Abdul sahibtalk☎talk04:55, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: This is the original image. We do not have distortion problems with PNG images because their texts are more like printed matter or more like hardsub, meaning that the text is not editable, nor are the image objects. As for SVG files, they are more like an image project that can be edited and translated, including the text. I work with SVG images so that they can be easily modified and translated into other languages. I hope in the future that Wikipedia's policy will change so that it does not allow uploading any PNG images of any images with text on them.
In fact, I suggest that Wikipedia provide the feature of translating SVG image texts without the need to upload them repeatedly for each language. This will facilitate the work and reduce the size of the Commons server data. I mean, if the Commons project provides us with the advantage of recognizing image texts and translating them so that they are displayed directly without the need to repeatedly upload the image in each language, then the matter will become easier and faster and will save space on the Commons project server. Mohmad Abdul sahibtalk☎talk05:16, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
SVG image rendering is done using librsvg, if you have problems with how the image renders it is probably a problem in the librsvg library. We don't do direct work on developing the software that renders the SVG (it is a dependency). If you find the issue, perhaps you can report it with the librsvg project. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:50, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
" I suggest that Wikipedia provide the feature of translating SVG image texts without the need to upload them repeatedly for each language" You are welcome to write such functionality for MediaWiki. Most of this kind of functionality is written by volunteers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:58, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
The user stated they wish to do this without having to reupload for each translation. While svg translate allows combining translations into a single upload, each edit to them or each new translation still requires a reupload. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:54, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
"right-click on it and then download it directly" then you are downloading the thumbnail, and this is expected. If you want the original file, you always need to use the link below it "original file" and choose Save file as. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:48, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for all this information.
@TheDJ: yes, I know this. I meant that the image must be downloaded in SVG format even if it is clicked directly without clicking on the download icon - otherwise some people may not pay attention to the download icon and a problem and suspicion will occur.
@The wubThe wub: This is something legendary, I didn't know about it. But I have a problem, which is when I access a Commons project in English, its interface will switch to Arabic. Unfortunately, the Commons project cannot be accessed according to the desired language، and unfortunately, the (Content Translation/V2) is not available in this project, and for this reason I cannot translate many explanatory articles in the Commons project. I hope that the Commons:SVG Translate tool icon is present on the information page of every SVG image uploaded to Commons, so that everyone knows that this feature exists, whether writing on images or translating them.
I have informed the members of the Librsvg project, and am waiting for their response to find out if the problem is due to the library. We still need to find out the cause of the malfunction, to determine the cause of the problem, any information about this would be helpful. I hope that we will cooperate in fixing the defect, because the problem is related to a major error related to Wikipedia, especially the display of images. I have currently stopped all my projects related to image design, because if I now upload images with small texts in them so that they will be displayed in a large size, it is expected that after fixing the defect, the text size will decrease.Mohmad Abdul sahibtalk☎talk08:05, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
I have opened a report here. I cannot handle the issue and follow up the problem programmatically, because I am not a programmer. By opening the issue in the Librsvg project forum, it becomes clear that following up on the problem and diagnosing its cause is the responsibility of Wikipedia members. I did everything I could do, and the rest requires your intervention. Mohmad Abdul sahibtalk☎talk17:40, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
There is a problem with the behaviour of User:Cobaltcigs's IllWill.js: If I fill in the edit summary as I go along editing an article, and then invoke that script, it overwrites my edit summary with its own. I'm no expert in JavaScript, but it occurs to me that changing in line 162 the operator = to += would fix that. Then again, it might need more elaborate coding.
It should be possible to specify the colour-scheme to be used when rasterising SVG files. This would influence the default styling applied to SVG elements and activate any CSS media queries that target prefers-color-scheme. For example, a background normally rendered as pale blue for white backgrounds might select a darker shade in night-mode to avoid the garish contrast:
The MediaWiki thumbnail generator already provides a means of specifying language when rendering multilingual SVGs by prefixing the thumbnail's filename with langid- (where id is the BCP 47 tag of the desired language). The same approach could be used to request a rendering of an SVG using a particular colour-scheme; for example, by supporting an optional dark- prefix in thumbnail URLs. Expressed in BNF, the format of thumbnail URLs would be:
<thumbnail-url>::=<base> "/" <name> "/" [<theme>] [<lang>] <size> "-" <name> ".png"
<base>::= "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/"
<theme>::= "dark-" | "light-"
<lang>::= "lang" <locale> "-"
<size>::=<width> "px-"
; Variables (values shown here by way of example)
<name>::= "Lang_Status_01-EX.svg"
<locale>::= "de"
<width>::= "480"
I'm aware of a CSS class named .skin-invert-image that inverts image colours for dark-mode users, but it's an inelegant and hacky solution that really only works for images with simple colour palettes (like this). A more robust and seamless approach would be to extend the image syntax to include a new parameter named theme that recognises one of three values: dark, light, and auto (the default). Auto would select either the dark or light rendering of an SVG based on the reader's display preferences, while dark or light specify motifs unconditionally (potentially facilitating the use of <picture> tags, should MediaWiki support them in the future). — Alhadis (talk) 23:07, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
That is pretty well written, but SVG´s are outputted as PNG´s to the client. So, either the "wgSVGNativeRenderingSizeLimit" or "wgSVGNativeRendering" server settings would be have to be on for this to work, as per phab:T208578. Snævar (talk) 01:53, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
That's a lot of extra complexity in the software, and equally important, requires editing and reuploading a lot of images. For that reason it is not very likely to happen soon. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:21, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure what Izno means. The newline is inserted by {{Welcome}} which could be changed to not insert a newline in the future. It wouldn't affect past substitutions, and I don't know whether the template is used in circumstances where it would be bad to omit the newline. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:01, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
AFAICS removing the newline would make it so that welcome normally substs like == Welcome ==Ipsum rather than the intended == Welcome ==\nIpsum. Perhaps you can make it work. Izno (talk) 22:11, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
The rules for whitespace stripping and rendering are complicated and the template actually leaves two newlines which is why it renders as extra whitespace. I have removed the first newline in the sandbox version with a method [23] which leaves behind a nowiki on substitution. Not elegant but are there real problems? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:47, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
That's pretty gross to be plopping on new editor talk pages. They don't need an introduction to nowiki in that way.... Izno (talk) 23:51, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Template:Welcome-Foreign/persian
Just thrown {{welcome-foreign/Persian}} on a user, and it hasn’t prompted a == Welcome == title to spawn. I’m pretty sure most use of welcome-foreign prompts a title? Unless I’m thinking of another template that Welcoming Committee often use? MM(Give me info.)(Victories)08:44, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Well that template does not include any header. So if you are able to write Persian, you could add in the header to the template. The header should have == translation of welcome == , though one I checked out had === instead of ==. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:41, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Germany categories
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 July 21#German Confederation has had the effect of leaving behind 56 non-empty redlinked categories for Special:WantedCategories cleanup, because "YYYY in Germany" categories were moved to "YYYY in the German Confederation", but then various subcategories were left behind in the redlinks because the category was template-transcluded onto them instead of being directly declared — and while it is technically possible for me to fix them by manually going around switching {{EstCatCountry|Germany}} to {{EstcatCountry|the German Confederation}}, doing that would have the side-effect of simultaneously breaking other categories on the same contents (e.g. "[Decade] establishments in Germany", "Establishments in Germany by year"), by turning them from bluelinks into redlinks because they still need the Estcatcountry template to be saying "Germany" rather than "the German Confederation".
So, essentially, there's no way for me to fix the existing redlinked categories without causing new redlinked categories in the process, and thus I need technical help getting them cleaned up. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 13:27, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Note that not even all the "YYYY in Germany" categories were renamed, only the ones for years prior to 1871. Category:1871 in Germany and later still exist. As for Template:EstcatCountry, its documentation suggests that passing Germany and having redirects from "[Decade] establishments in Germany" to "[Decade] establishments in the German Confederation" where appropriate should work. Or maybe vice versa, passing "the German Confederation" and having appropriate category redirects in the other direction. Anomie⚔14:24, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
That's fine, but with 56 of them, is there any way that a bot can be made to wham through recreating those redirects instead of it having to be my job? Bearcat (talk) 16:21, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
The template should really be reworked to get the country name from the category title. Having a template for automation, but then requiring users to manually enter the information seems incomplete. Gonnym (talk) 18:11, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Inflation template broken
I noticed on Hey Jude#Auctioned lyrics and memorabilia that the inflation conversion from pounds to US$ is showing "US$FXConvert/Wordify error: cannot parse value 'Unknown country code for year 2023: GBR '". Many of the GBR test cases on Template:FXConvert/testcases are similarly broken, so it's probably affecting a lot of articles. I can't tell where exactly this data is coming from or if there were recent changes causing this. hinnk (talk) 19:00, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
What Anomie is saying there is that FXConvert was already broken. The changes there just made it clear that it is. Izno (talk) 23:09, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
Oh my mistake, I had read it as the template working (or at least, not showing any errors) until the new data exposed a case it couldn't handle. Is there a more appropriate place to raise this issue then? I notice Template:FXConvert doesn't have a talk page. hinnk (talk) 23:58, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
There are many errors at {{FXConvert/doc}} and that template's testcases page. It looks like the error is generated by {{To USD/data/2023}}, which is much smaller than {{To USD/data/2021}}. It appears that if a country code is missing from the "/2023" template, it generates an error message. It is unclear to me how numbers are chosen for the /2023 template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:49, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Most of the pages currently transcluding errors have this problem. I noticed it started about a month ago with Canada (CAN) on a few pages. I tried to trace it but it became too much of a time sink to debug. Now it's really gotten bigger since GBR joined in. Where, oh, where is the editor who designed and implemented all this obscure complexity? – wbm1058 (talk) 04:05, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I see that Template:To USD/data/2023 is the template that's populating that category. That defaults to showing the error for any country that's not listed, and not very many countries are listed. I guess we look to the parent template Template:To USD for documentation. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:08, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
The WB data does not provide EUR. Somebody had added it without mentioning the source. I have restored that, but I will have to update the ECB data so that the conversion goes through ToEUR. Trigenibinion (talk) 15:02, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I think I don't have a script for the current European data, but only for the historical ECU data. Also, it seems the European data does not include the country name and code but only the currency name and/or code. The sites are not as easy to use as the WB. Trigenibinion (talk) 18:11, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
There's this recurring issue at Special:WantedCategories where a redlinked Category:Clean-up categories from YYYY gets generated because somebody has erroneously backdated a maintenance template to 15 or 20 years ago — following which a bot automatically recreates the resulting redlinked maintenance-queue category for that specific template, but then leaves the general "clean-up" container as a redlink that ends up becoming the category cleanup crew's job to fix.
For example, Category:Articles with unsourced statements from July 2004 has been recreated four times within the past two weeks, just from people accidentally typing 2004 instead of 2024 in a {{citation needed}} template somewhere in an article, which is obviously just a disruptive pain in the badonkadonk to have to keep dealing with over and over.
I've asked here before, and was told that it was possible, but obviously it didn't happen: is there any way that maintenance templates like {{citation needed}} can be made to do an ifexist check on categories, and file nonexisters in an error-catcher category (e.g. "citation needed with dating problems" or something along those lines) instead of causing the recreation of a redlinked category that's already been cleaned up and deleted in the past? Bearcat (talk) 13:21, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Also, given that it's clearly possible for bots to detect and automatically create redlinked maintenance categories as needed, then can any of the following things that inevitably hit WantedCategories on a regular basis get farmed out to bots instead of becoming my job to fix?
"Wikipedia Today's featured article nominations from [Current Month and Year]", which consistently lands there at some point in the middle of every month without fail, and should really just be automatically created by a bot right off the top of the month if it's routinely expected to exist?
Any non-empty redlinks of the "Articles containing [Insert Language Here] text", "Pages with [Insert Language Here] IPA" and "CS1 [Insert Language Here]-language sources (lang code)" varieties?
Any non-empty redlinks for "Wikipedia sockpuppets of [User]" and "Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of [User]"? Bearcat (talk) 15:04, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
I'll comment on some of these.
Dated maintenance categories (such as Category:Articles with unsourced statements from July 2024) are created by AnomieBOT (talk·contribs) if either of two conditions apply: (i) it's now the last day of the preceding month; (ii) there's a page in the category and the date is valid - even if the year is a typo. I would expect that if you want different behaviour from AnomieBOT, your first contact should be Anomie (talk·contribs), who (unlike some botops I could name) is not only active but also replies to talk page messages.
Obviously sockpuppet ones should be the responsibility of the admin or clerk who tagged the page, but mistakes can and do happen — so there really needs to be a way to catch such mistakes before they become my problem to fix.
When it comes to the backdated maintenance templates, it's really a thing that the template needs to handle rather than the bot. The bot is just going to come along and create any non-empty redlink it finds, and can't easily modify a redlinked category to be different than what's there — it's the template that needs to be prevented from being able to generate a backdated redlink like that at all, so that there's nothing for the bot to have to recreate. So it's really that the template needs to have "if asked to regenerate outdated category that does not exist, then replace with problem-catcher category instead of redlinked date" code inside the template, because a bot can't make that happen if the template isn't already handling it. Bearcat (talk) 21:14, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
AnomieBOT won't create dated categories for any date, only dates since 2004. I forget why I picked that year specifically, beyond deciding that anything earlier was definitely not some ancient article being undeleted or some ancient edit removing a maintenance tag being reverted. I could bump it to 2010 easily enough if people typing "200X" instead of "202X" is a common thing.
The non-date examples would need to be considered case by case. "Wikipedia sockpuppets of" and Wikipedia suspected sockpuppets of" seem like reasonable prefixes to search for. Not sure about "Articles containing", "Pages with", or "CS1".
Regarding bumping from 2004 to 2010 – can the bot look up the earliest existing month/year category and not create categories which are earlier than that? —andrybak (talk) 15:00, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
OK, so the cutoff year could be the earliest existing category's year or {{CURRENTYEAR}} − 10, whichever is the latest (the maximum out of the two). —andrybak (talk) 18:00, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
I wonder how often people validly undelete, or unredirect, or otherwise revert to a revision that has a maintenance tag older than that. Or how often people change a tag from one category to another, suddenly populating the "another" category with a bunch of old dates. Also I'd rather have a consistent cutoff rather than having to try to look up an earliest date for every different category. Anomie⚔23:47, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Can I butt in here for a moment to ask if we're seriously considering making the lives of people who actually work the backlogged cleanup categories (I'm sure they exist) significantly harder, so that the people who keep Special:WantedCategories tidy are less inconvenienced? I've also had empty maint categories I've G6'd years ago pop back up, and that's a good thing, because it means someone's reverted an unsourced article that was made into a redirect years ago, or copy-pasted in an old version of a deleted article, or reverted a page to a really old version, and those all need to be dealt with. If we make the maintenance tags not categorize such edits, then they're going to be noticed by a lot fewer people. If it's just a matter of the bot not recreating redlinked grandfather cats, then have it make those. Or, y'know, deal with the underlying problem - most of the time the correct thing to do was a simple rollback or G4 speedy, in my experience - and then G6 the maintenance cat again. Even if you omit the last, it's not going to last an hour anyway; we've got admins who race each other for easy speedies like that. —Cryptic03:56, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
It is in no way whatsoever a "good thing" for the same backdated maintenance category to come back as a red link four times in the space of just two weeks, and not even one of those times resulted from anything that could have been simply "reverted back to the way it was" or "deleted" — every time required a full "edit article to find mistyped template date". Every single minute that anybody has to spend on redlinked category cleanup is one more minute than anybody should have to be spending on redlinked category cleanup — the ideal state of that report is "always empty because no redlinked categories are ever on any pages at all", and anything even slightly short of that is a problem.
Part of the rule against redlinked categories, in fact, is that templates are strictly forbidden from generating redlinked categories at all, and have to be modified if and when they are generating redlinked categories.
So it's not my job to just patiently redelete the same maintenance categories over and over again without asking for something to be done to prevent them from even recurring in the first place — my job is to take any and all steps necessary to get that report to a state of "always empty and never listing even one redlinked category because no redlinked categories ever exist to be listed". Bearcat (talk) 16:56, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't see any other way to read this other than as confirmation that you'd rather articles (which real people read) - remain broken, so that A) the bot-recreated maintenance categories, which only editors (and a tiny minority of those) use, don't need to be redeleted - and there's plenty of admins willing to do that, and B) maintenance reports of those maintenance categories, which are looked at by an even tinier number minority of editors, and which I'm not convinced are used by anybody at all, remain tidy. Oppose action, and may I suggest your priorities are seriously in need of adjustment. —Cryptic17:47, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I'll thank you to kindly not put words in my mouth. Not only did I not say that "articles should remain broken", I didn't say a single thing that could even possibly be interpreted that way. But literally by definition, any redlinked category that ends up on an article is also a broken thing — an article with a redlinked category on it is breaking the article, a template that generates and transcludes redlinked categories is breaking the article, and on and so forth. What I asked for is ways to fix broken stuff, not ways to "break" anything, because an error-checker category is not breaking anything, while the redlinked categories I'm trying to fix are the only thing that's "breaking" anything whatsoever in this equation. Nothing I asked for here "breaks" anything, while not doing anything about what I asked for here is breaking things, because templates adding redlinked categories to articles is breaking things while templates checking and applying error-checker categories if there's a potential problem to be checked for is not breaking anything. Bearcat (talk) 20:36, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Dark mode issues
In dark mode, at {{Stabbing Westward}}, the actual link for Stabbing Westward is an extremely dark grey that is difficult to see on a black background. Also, when editing, anything that is NOT a link is grey text on a white background. It was not this way before. Does anyone know how to fix this?
Grey text on white background when editingBlack text on black background when viewing
I don't edit templates, generally, but even when I edit regular pages after hours (when the site changes colours), I now have that white edit window with light-coloured text, rendering everything essentially unreadable. I've been eschewing editing when the site is dark (or, like right now, typing in a plain-text program and copying/pasting), thinking surely this is a widespread problem and will be fixed quickly, but maybe it's only tied to what you're discussing, here? You linked to a discussion about templates and navboxes; will that proposed fix also affect all white-background editing issues, too? — Fourthords | =Λ= |02:27, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
FWIW Jonesey95, I no longer have light text on a white edit-window, but it's now changed to dark-grey text on a black edit-window. Different, but equally unreadible. This was as of yesterday evening; I'll check again ronight and update if anything else's changed. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 16:45, 4 August 2024 (UTC) P.S. Confirming this state of affairs remains upon this evenings palette switch. — Fourthords | =Λ= |01:38, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply - The issue is fixed when I am logged in to my home computer. However, when I am in dark mode on a public computer, the title of a music navbox is very dark grey. --Jax 0677 (talk) 12:51, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Unicode direction weirdness
With Baghdad Conservatory in my Firefox edit the start of the line is left of the edit box. Previously this resulted in someone adding an extra "T" to yield "TThe". But now the "The" looks like "he" in the edit box. Somewhere in the Arabic text there is a left to right unicode direction indicator as I can tell by trying to add spaces to it. How can we find and remove such characters? And is that character messing up the edit box? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:33, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
It looks fine in my Firefox (128.0.3), with Monobook, Vector, or Vector2022, in the "2010 editor", with and without &safemode=true added to the URL. I don't see any LRM or similar characters in that article. Anomie⚔13:02, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
After seeing the discussion linked below, which mentions that it happens when the line starting with LTR text wraps within some RTL text, I was able to reproduce. I can reproduce in a plain textarea locally, so it doesn't seem to have anything to do with Wikipedia specifically. Anomie⚔17:11, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
This is one of the reasons that the cs1|2 templates support |script-title=. Try this:
{{cite news|script-title=ar:الراحل حنّا بطرس جزء من تاريخ الموسيقى في العهد الملكي |url=http://www.daraddustour.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%8A%D9%84/tabid/94/smid/604/ArticleID/31615/reftab/123/Default.aspx |accessdate=31 July 2011 |newspaper=Addustour |date=28 September 2010 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120328094702/http://www.daraddustour.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%8A%D9%84/tabid/94/smid/604/ArticleID/31615/reftab/123/Default.aspx |archivedate=28 March 2012}}
|script-title= causes cs1|2 to wrap the title in <bdi>...</bdi> (bidirectional isolate) tags:
'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000006F-QINU`"'<citeclass="citation news cs1 cs1-prop-script">[https://web.archive.org/web/20120328094702/http://www.daraddustour.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%8A%D9%84/tabid/94/smid/604/ArticleID/31615/reftab/123/Default.aspx <bdilang="ar">الراحل حنّا بطرس جزء من تاريخ الموسيقى في العهد الملكي</bdi>]. ''Addustour''. 28 September 2010. Archived from [http://www.daraddustour.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%8A%D9%84/tabid/94/smid/604/ArticleID/31615/reftab/123/Default.aspx the original] on 28 March 2012<spanclass="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <spanclass="nowrap">31 July</span> 2011</span>.</cite><spantitle="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=Addustour&rft.atitle=%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AD%D9%84+%D8%AD%D9%86%D9%91%D8%A7+%D8%A8%D8%B7%D8%B1%D8%B3+%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%A1+%D9%85%D9%86+%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AE+%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B3%D9%8A%D9%82%D9%89+%D9%81%D9%8A+%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D9%87%D8%AF+%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%84%D9%83%D9%8A&rft.date=2010-09-28&rft_id=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.daraddustour.com%2F%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D8%25AA%25D9%2581%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B5%25D9%258A%25D9%2584%2Ftabid%2F94%2Fsmid%2F604%2FArticleID%2F31615%2Freftab%2F123%2FDefault.aspx&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AWikipedia%3AVillage+pump+%28technical%29%2FArchive+214"class="Z3988"></span>
Browsers automatically display text in some scripts as right to left. This can cause different issues and confusion when editing. If you cannot read those scripts anyway then you may prefer to display them left-to-right with code like this in your CSS:
Something is suddenly causing various templates associated with WikiProjects to populate category redirects. Part of the problem is rooted in the template and category names not matching.
Works for me now too. The API endpoint was responding with 404s when I was trying to cite apnews.com, it looked like it went down. RAN1 (talk) 14:43, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-32
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Two new parser functions will be available this week: {{#dir}} and {{#bcp47}}. These will reduce the need for Template:Dir and Template:BCP47 on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [24][25]
Communities can request the activation of the visual editor on entire namespaces where discussions sometimes happen (for instance Wikipedia: or Wikisource: namespaces) if they understand the known limitations. For discussions, users can already use DiscussionTools in these namespaces.
The tracking category "Pages using Timeline" has been renamed to "Pages using the EasyTimeline extension" in TranslateWiki. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match.
Project updates
Editors who help to organize WikiProjects and similar on-wiki collaborations, are invited to share ideas and examples of successful collaborations with the Campaigns and Programs teams. You can fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage. The teams are particularly looking for details about successful collaborations on non-English wikis.
The new parser is being rolled out on Wikivoyage wikis over the next few months. The English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikivoyage were switched to Parsoid last week. For more information, see Parsoid/Parser Unification.
The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New design previews for Translatable pages; Updates about MinT for Wiki Readers; the release of Translation dumps; and more.
They're templates used by templates. Almost every file description page uses them indirectly when marking up the languages of file descriptions, for example. Probably many other translateable templates do as well. Matma Rextalk09:01, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Only templates that deal with multiple languages are likely to use these. Often as part of other templates. These are typical cases of templates that are used the most without people ever realizing they exist ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:28, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
User Scripts and Template Substitution
I have a minor issue that I need some assistance with. I used to have two scripts that would help with some non-admin closures and archives. I believe the scripts were Discussion closer and manual-archiver. I have been inactive for some time, but, when I checked today -- neither of them seem to be working. In the past I would find two links on the right hand side of a discussion "Archive" and "Close". I would use them to do some amount of non-admin closures to clear the backlog at WT:ITN. Did something change with these scripts? Am I doing something wrong?
Also, unrelated, at User:Ktin I see that the template substitution seems to be failing on most of the templates. Is that because there is a limit on the number of templates on an user page? This is obviously a minor issue. But was generally curious. Thanks. Ktin (talk) 00:36, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, PrimeHunter. The template evaluation workload makes sense. Appreciate you helping me get to the bottom of that. Will try updating that and the scripts over the weekend. Have a nice one! Ktin (talk) 15:23, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, it transcludes and recursively transcludes the target page. You might want to use something like {{Annotated link}} for better performance, though I'm not sure if that will help with the PEI limit. — Qwerfjkltalk12:10, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Editing problem
Hi. For about four days I have been unable to edit articles. When I click on either the edit tab at the top of a page or the section edit tags to the right of section headings, an edit box appears to open, but a blue progress bar appears at the top which stops about three-quarters of the way across the page. As a result, I have an edit box where I can work, but no way to save my changes. Exceptions that do work are: 1. on pages like this one, the tab at the top that opens a new section; 2. clicking on "reply" on a talk page; and 3. clicking on "undo" in an article history. Those open functional edit boxes (hence I can write this). But regular editing is effectively blocked. Does anyone have an idea what the problem might be? (Incidentally, for the last year I have successfully been using the 2017 wikitext editor. I don't know if that is the problem, but I can't find any way to access it to switch it off.) Doric Loon (talk) 00:25, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
The blue progress bar you describe is probably the loading animation for the Visual Editor. In your Preferences you can uncheck the checkbox named "Enable the visual editor". Then Save the changes with the Save button near the bottom of the page.
I am not sure what could cause this problem, and I never use the Visual Editor. Programmers often, but not always, put error messages in the Javascript console when something goes wrong. Depending on which browser you have you could try pressing F12 to open the Developer tools, and then clicking on "Console" and then loading a webpage with the Visual Editor enabled (which will fail) to see if it generates any error messages. If there are any error messages this may be useful to whoever tries to diagnose the problem. Polygnotus (talk) 12:34, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
OK, I seem to have solved it by unclicking "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor This is sometimes called the '2017 wikitext editor'" in Preferences. Perhaps this plug-in is no longer working. Shame, I did find it helpful, how it marked coding in different colours. Anyway, problem solved, thanks. Doric Loon (talk) 15:56, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
The 2010 wikitext editor also can use highlighting, see the marker icon in the middle of the editing bar. Izno (talk) 15:59, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
It sounds like the next step is to set this up to be a default gadget, and we should work out the details for that. In one discussion, MusikAnimal also suggested that this gadget only be loaded for pages that need it, and that this could be done using categories.
With these parameters in mind, is this how we should set up the MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition? Is everyone OK with moving forward?
Prior discussion was that perhaps these should be un-opt-out-able (i.e. hidden gadgets), primarily to not pollute the gadget list. I'm not sure that is needed though, and could always be revisited after this goes live. — xaosfluxTalk15:01, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
So barring any objections, the next steps are: update the pages to somehow include the category; move the gadget from test to template-gadgets with updated parameters. — xaosfluxTalk15:07, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Using a consistent template-gadget category naming convention isn't strictly necessary but I think it has benefits (in this case, just change the included trigger category, or add an additional cat, in Template:ImageStackPopup). — xaosfluxTalk15:13, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
I am unsure which talk page is the intended place to ask for this since most redirect to WT:RFPP (which, if it was the intended place, is protected), but is there any way to change the form (the Request protection button), so that it does this automatically? – 2804:F1...20:147 (talk) 20:26, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Is there any side effect to just adding the colon in the section titles there? It seems like that's what the pagelinks template already does (and many others).
Template:Efn used with basic parameters would usually be displayed as [a][b] etc. But, in the recent days it's being displayed as [lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2] etc. Why is it? Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 01:20, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
I see no problem with any of these articles, logged-in or logged-out. If no problem is apparent when logged-out, but you have a problem when logged-in, that tells me that there's something unusual about your custom settings. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:39, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't see how that happens. According to mw:Parsoid, it's something to do with converting Wikitext to HTML. So, as all of our pages are written using Wikitext, and all of our readers are served HTML, the conversion process should be the same for everybody, and Parsoid must be that process. So why do I get something different from Vestrian24Bio? Has one of us turned off Parsoid, and if so, how and why? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:21, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that would fix it, just a specificity issue it looks like. And the change looks deliberate, but 1) I'm not sure the impact was considered, and 2) I'm not sure that [style~="mw-Ref"] particularly is a nice selector for sundry reasons. Izno (talk) 01:11, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Getting Cite errors and CS1/CS2 errors for an article via the API
I want to get information about Cite errors and CS1/2 errors via the API. The input should be the title of a Wikipedia article and the output should be either a list of cite errors or a list of CS1/2 errors (or a combination).
On this article I can see that the API reports that there is a CS1 error, but not what the actual problem is. I have added the CSS found here so I can see the specific CS1 error when viewing the article in my browser. But how can I get this information via the API? It looks to me like Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration generates the error messages; does the fact that the error is generated by this Lua script mean I can't get this information via the API? Or do I have to get the rendered page to get the actual HTML and search that for error messages?
Is it possible to detect (via the API) if an edit causes a CS1/CS2 error before actually making the edit?
There are roundabout ways, but otherwise, the answer to does the fact that the error is generated by this Lua script mean I can't get this information via the API is yes. Each error emits a category but you will only know which categories go with which citations by using something like the mw:API:Expandtemplates on the source wikitext. If you don't care about knowing which templates have which issues, you can use the categories API. Another solution is to get the HTML and then search for the relevant classes with e.g. mw:API:REST API though I think there are other APIs one could use (even ignoring screen scraping).
Is it possible to detect (via the API) if an edit causes a CS1/CS2 error before actually making the edit? Only with something like the above. Izno (talk) 02:27, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Cite error
On Brainwashing I see a cite error on ref 87: Cite error: The named reference they-never-said-it was invoked but never defined (see the help page). Which API call should I make to get this information? I assumed it was this (Sandbox).
Is this also handled by a Lua script somewhere? What is the URL? It looks like its using MediaWiki:Cite error references no text but I can't seem to find a Lua module referencing that. Is it in a MediaWiki extension written in PHP?
Do I have to get the rendered page to get the actual HTML and search that for error messages?
How would I detect (via the API) if an edit causes a cite error before actually making the edit?
It looks like I am at least able to find errors before they happen with action=parse, but those are warnings from the parser, not the Lua script(s). Is that correct?
These errors originate from mw:Extension:Cite. You can explore the documentation there, but I do not think there is anything to indicate errors in an API. Besides whatever categories are emitted, as discussed above, but that would not tell you which references caused an error I believe. Izno (talk) 02:30, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
The obvious method is to make a long list of all the templates, and all redirect to those templates (and filter out those that are not used in mainspace), that should appear above the maintenance templates. But that quickly turns into a giant list and a lot of work. Isn't there a smarter way to do this? Is there some kind of Javascript library I can import? Polygnotus (talk) 16:09, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Figured it out (somewhat) by stealing getting inspiration from Twinkle's code. [28] which uses morebits [29]
When a link to an article someone has created is added to a navbox, and someone subsequently edits any page in such navbox, regardless of the content of that edit, the user who created said article which was added to the navbox gets a notice that a "link was added" to that article, when that is not the case. I'm guessing the reason as to why mediawiki doesn't "register" that a link was added to a navbox in each transclusion of it has to do with the page not being purged until the next edit is made to it, but is there a way this can be fixed for link added notices? I'm aware one could just turn these off, but it does nevertheless seem like a bug. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 08:44, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Not currently. From the perspective of Mediawiki, there is no difference between a link included in a page vs included via a templat, or rather what u describe a specific subset of templates. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:15, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm having a similar problem; I got two notifications earlier today,
A link was made from 2027 Cricket World Cup qualification to 2027 Cricket World Cup Qualifier Play-off. [30]
A link was made from 2027 Cricket World Cup Qualifier to 2027 Cricket World Cup Qualifier Play-off. [31]
I'm also confused because whenever a new notification arrives its also sent as a mail notification (only to those who preferred it). But, no mail notification is received when "A link was made" notification arrives... Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 10:06, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at the Warburg Institute article? The title is being italicized (when it should not be); it uses {{infobox journal}} later in the article, which auto-italicizes, but it's set to "no" as the template says so presumably this should not be happening. Aza24 (talk)01:35, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I have noticed a problem with accessing all of the tag options when using Twinkle.
I switch between mobile to desktop when I need to use Twinkle, in most instances the full drop down menu is fine, I can scroll up or down to find the correct message I need. When trying to add a welcome message for new users the scroll doesn't work though. I can only access the initial few welcome messages but that's it.
I also have the same problem with tagging articles in the mainspace. I've found an article published to the mainspace and it doesn't have any references. I wanted to tag it as such but I am unable to scroll down the menu to the correct option.
Most of the Twinkle options are fine, such as CSD, I can scroll down to view all the options. It seems to be a problem with Welcome messages and article tagging. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance, Knitsey (talk) 15:42, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Polygnotus, I completely missed the OS bit! Android, version 14 if that makes a difference. The scroll down options always used to work. I've been on a Wikipedia break for about 8 months, come back and those two sections no longer scroll. Knitsey (talk) 02:13, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
So you're on a mobile device or tablet? And nothing happens even if you swipe down? Is the desktop mode on? Nardog (talk) 02:49, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I use my mobile. Switch to desktop to use Twinkle. It is just those two menus that I can't scroll down... Welcome messages for new users and the tag menu on articles.
The Twinkle menu for vandalism warnings is fine, I can scroll down on that. The same for CSD, I can scroll down on that too.
With Welcome messages, I can always go back to using templates for now. I'm just curious as to why those two drop downs and whether it cwn be fixed. Knitsey (talk) 03:01, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Some of the entries are referring to historic/stale accounts. It's hard to gauge. I was thinking add a column, "Page last edited". Is this information available somehow, given the name of a page, return the date of last edit? It's not a perfect solution but some information is better than none, recent activity will be more visible. -- GreenC04:19, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I believe it is mw:API:Revisions: example. In my limited experience, it can foul up if strange things occur. I forget exactly what but it was something like the user had been renamed, or maybe a revision deletion? Johnuniq (talk) 05:59, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
What's the technical or by design reason for the limitations of the editing tools on the mobile version? Many of the tools that you can add through code particularly don't seem to show up in any form in the mobile format. Is there any features pipeline to introducing this functionality? Iskandar323 (talk) 10:47, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Countervandalism, Twinkle and a few other tools work recently on mobile. I would recommend making a wish entry at Meta:Community Wishlist/Wishes. In short I agree that mobile lags behind desktop which is concerning considering the future of editors is mobile. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 12:18, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
In large degree this is due to having to make very conscious decisions about where to provide such options, as space per page is limited. As very few people think about this, there is also very little progress on it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:02, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
How are you searching? If you search a viewed page with a browser menu or a shortcut like Ctrl+f then you are using a browser feature and not a MediaWiki feature. The browser will determine what happens. I get the same result in Firefox. If you search a source edit box with the magnifying glass icon to the far right after clicking "Advanced" in the default toolbar then it's a MediaWiki feature. It works for me, e.g. when editing Linear B. There are also other tools which can make searches. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
𝕲𝕵𝕺𝕭𝕬𝕵 𝕺𝕽𝕯𝕰𝕶 𝕺𝕱 𝕾𝕬𝕿𝕬𝕹's account is global locked, even though their name is in title blacklist for only on English Wikipedia.[1] Also, why was their account even given the permission to be created, so that they can make three edits and then get globally locked? Thanks, ExclusiveEditorNotify Me!16:11, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
^.*[^\0-\x{FFFF}].* <casesensitive> in # Very few characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane are useful in titles on local
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change by the Trust and Safety Product Team, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.
I just copy-edited the article on Philip Noel-Baker, which had a separate infobox (actually the {{MedalTableTop}}) with Olympic medals, which I embedded into the main infobox.
It's possible to embed a medal table in an infobox without using those templates but there were other problems. A separate medal table looks OK to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:26, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
There isn't bad code in MedalTableTop as far as I know, you just used it wrong. It was never intended for infoboxes but for stand-alone tables. It adds a table start {| but an infobox is already a table. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:33, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
@HandsomeFella: OK, I worked it out. In this edit, you were trying to stuff the whole medal table into the caption of an embedded infobox, viz. the |name= parameter of the {{infobox sportsperson}}, and a <caption>...</caption> element may not contain tables as descendants. Instead, you should have used the |medaltemplates= parameter, and omitted the {{MedalTableTop}}, as in
| awards = [[Nobel Peace Prize]]
| module = {{infobox sportsperson| embed = y
| name = Philip Baker
| medaltemplates ={{Medal|Sport|[[Athletics (sport)|Athletics]]}}{{Medal|Country|{{GBN}}}}{{Medal|Competition|[[Athletics at the Summer Olympics|Olympic Games]]}}{{Medal|Silver|[[1920 Summer Olympics|1920 Antwerp]]|[[Athletics at the 1920 Summer Olympics – Men's 1500 metres|1500 m]]}}}}
}}
'''Philip John Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker''', {{post-nominals|country=GBR|PC}} (1 November 1889 – 8 October 1982),
Thanks. That fixed the problem that I mentioned below. Now my problem is that the sportsperson box ignores the name= parameter. Like so many other people, peers included, he competed under another name, so it's needed. HandsomeFella (talk) 17:46, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
The main name parameter is for display above the infobox but that doesn't work for an embedded infobox so it's omitted there. The other name parameters can be used but the field label displays as Native name, Birth name, Full name, or Nickname. The label cannot be changed and none of them apply here. I see no good option and would just omit it. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:04, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. But if the Native name, Birth name, Full name, and Nickname parameters are available in embedded mode, surely the Name parameter could be made available too, couldn't it? HandsomeFella (talk) 19:04, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
It could be suggested at Template talk:Infobox sportsperson. Native name, Birth name, Full name, and Nickname are treated the same in embedded and non-embedded: As fields inside the infobox. Name is outside the box in non-embedded so it's not possible to treat it the same in embedded. It would be possible to place it inside the box instead of skipping it, or to introduce another parameter. What should the field label be? I think "Name" alone is a little confusing when the whole infobox is already named. Is there any common term like "Athlete name", "Competing as", or something? What if they competed under two names, e.g. new surname after marrying? And if the name is a variation of an already shown name then is it really necessary to show it? Your example article is called Philip Noel-Baker, the infobox says "Born Philip John Baker", and you want to add "Philip Baker" to his sports career in the infobox. That seems a little redundant to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. I have tested it now (in preview), and it seems that the "sportsbox"
1) does not "fill out" the main infobox – in this case infobox officeholder – to its full width, and
2) aligns to the right within the main infobox.
Is there any way to fix that? I found no align parameter in either infobox. In the sportsperson box, the width parameter goes to the image. The double-border situation feels like a minor problem. HandsomeFella (talk) 17:43, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Why is Wikipedia going backwards?
First, you removed the article title when you hover a link, now when you click a link while previewing or close a tab/window when editing there's no more warning message. Can they please be restored? Nearly but not perfect (talk) 20:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Works for me. Perhaps you inadvertently altered your Preferences? Or forgot to log in, so you have only default preferences? Mathglot (talk) 20:18, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
For the first, try: Appearance > Reading preferences > Enable page previews. Or, are you talking about the page url appearing in the status bar of your browser (often at the bottom border)? That would be a browser preference, I believe. Mathglot (talk) 20:32, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I don't quite understand the other question, about closing a tab. It sounds like it might be a browser question, but I don't know for sure what you are seeing. Can you explain step-by-step what you are doing, using a concrete example? E.g.: 1. open the NameOfArticle article in (name of my browser) on (type of my device). 2. (do this) 3. (then do that) 4. ... . RESULTS: Expected: (what you expected to happen) Result: (what happened instead). Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
For some years now, Windows has had a feature where the taskbar shows icons for currently-running applications, and if you hover over one of them it shows you what is currently displayed by that application, in miniature - scaled at a ratio of approx. 6:1.
The latest release of Firefox (129.0) has added a similar feature: if you have two or more tabs open, and hover over a tab that doesn't have the current focus, it shows you what is currently in that tab - but scaled at approx. 4:1. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:45, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
If "Enable page previews" is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering or "Navigation popups" is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets then you are supposed to get a preview of the page content when you hover over a link to an article. If they are both disabled then you are supposed to see the page name. Or more accurately, the html for the link has a title attribute which is the page name, and most browsers will display the title attribute when you hover over a link. Are both preview preferences disabled? If you still don't see the page name then what is your browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
@Mathglot: When I'm editing something, I would make a change. Before I save it, especially when I'm previewing, when I close the tab, there used to be a warning on Chrome (I'm using Chrome on Windows 10) "Leave page? Changes may not be saved" or something. That disappeared. Nearly but not perfect (talk) 04:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
193.133.134.xxx (talk·contribs) – couple hundred edits, 2001–2002; but if you click that contribs link, no edits are listed
The anomalies/question:
why is CIDR search even picking up the second one, if that's just a normal, registered username, which to my understanding, it should be?
Otoh, maybe it isn't, because the link User:193.133.134.xxx doesn't do what I expect, namely going to a user page or to a create-page preview, but it does neither, instead going to the Contributions page. Huh??
Clicking the contribs link Special:Contributions/193.133.134.xxx shows an empty page, but the CIDR/24 link shows a couple hundred edits; wtf? Following any of the links shows they really did make early edits to those pages, such as:
rev. 427352463 at Motorcycle on 15:06, 8 October 2001 (-43,537b, ok, but that anomaly I'm aware of)
Bonus question: that rev id for Motorcycle above has a lot more digits than I would expect for an early edit. What's up with that?
If you go to the contribs link for 193.133.134.xxx and click Search (link) the result shows a red warning complaining about invalid username. But if you replace 'xxx' with 'yyy' and Search, it is valid. udpated to add #6; by Mathglot (talk) 22:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Some very old versions of the software stored IP addresses with the last octet replaced by .xxx, and the current software still recognizes them as IP addresses. I don't know why they aren't showing up in contributions, though. The reason the Motorcycle revision has so many digits is because it was manually imported in 2011. * Pppery *it has begun...20:42, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Either someone fixed #2 super-quick, or something else is going on, because now the red link in #2 goes to a create-page preview, as I expect, but it didn't before. Mathglot (talk) 20:51, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
The accounts aren't, but that doesn't mean there haven't been refactorings to support them that are live. Izno (talk) 22:02, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Redacted addition point #6 might support that, as IP-xxx seems to be supported in some places (CIDR contribs) but not others (point 6). Mathglot (talk) 22:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
@Graham87: Thanks. The CIDR/24 link will show, if you go to Preferences > Gadgets > Advanced, and check "Allow /16, /24 and /27 – /32 CIDR ranges on Special:Contributions forms". Mathglot (talk) 07:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
So, you do see the contributions for the range, now? If not, maybe this is a case where the native support doesn't match the gadget in one circumstance? Mathglot (talk) 07:55, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
How does that gadget work? Perhaps it is just doing a prefix search? If so, it would find 193.133.134.xxx and that would be a problem in the gadget. Johnuniq (talk) 08:22, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Harv warning issues...
Reba McEntire has 13 "Harv warnings" in its references. (I have Wikipedia:User_scripts/Requests/Archive_4#HarvErrors.js installed.) All the warnings are coming from the multi-reference sources - Ref #205, #210, #211, #214, #216, #222, and #224. The sfn/Harvard cite system can be tricky to get the coding right...
I have run into this issue before on another article and I still cannot figure out how to fix it. Could some of you technical/referencing/wikicoding wizards take a look at the article and respond here with what is wrong and how to fix it. I would very much appreciate learning 1) exactly what is going wrong and 2)learning (and then remembering) how to fix the issue so 3) please let me fix the problem at the Reba article myself. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 16:28, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
It appears to have been the asterisk (*) inside <ref>...</ref>. I removed the asterisks and added a line break between the two cites in one place, which cleared the problem. See the Medley citation. I didn't fix the other cases. Donald Albury17:05, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
That is not the correct fix. The warning message is telling you that the citation is notlinked from an {{sfn}} or {{harv}}-family template. If you want to suppress the messages, in the cs1|2 template set |ref=none:
But why then is "ref=none" necessary for the second citation below, but not for the first?
*Reba in Concert (1992)Sources for 1992 tour:
*{{cite magazine|date=February 22, 1992|title=Reba in Concert|magazine=Billboard|volume=104|issue=8|page=31|location=Nashville, Tennessee|publisher=BPI Communications|issn=0006-2510|access-date=October 23, 2020|url=https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Billboard/90s/1992/Billboard-1992-02-22.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200808083051/https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Billboard/90s/1992/Billboard-1992-02-22.pdf|archive-date=August 8, 2020}}
:::*{{cite news |last1=Pareles |first1=Jon | title=Taking the Country Out of the Country Singer |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/26/news/review-music-taking-the-country-out-of-the-country-singer.html |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |location=[[New York City]], [[New York (state)|New York]] |date=October 26, 1992 |access-date=October 23, 2020|archive-url=https://archive.today/20201023023153/https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/26/news/review-music-taking-the-country-out-of-the-country-singer.html |archive-date=October 23, 2020|ref=none}}
Each cs1|2 template creates a CITEREF anchor id as a link target for {{sfn}} etc templates. The anchor id is listed in the warning message, for example, the anchor id for your second example is: CITEREFPareles1992. The CITEREF anchor id is created from author names (only the first four) and the year portion of the date. The Billboard template does not have any authors so a CITEREF anchor id is not created. The warning script is smart enough to recognize that nothing can link to a cs1|2 template that does not have a CITEREF anchor id. Because there is no CITEREF anchor id, it is not necessary to suppress it with |ref=none.
OK. So there are fixes that will take care of the "Harv warning" issues. I'll puzzle my way through and fix stuff. But can someone again explain, as if to a non-coder - lol which I certainly *am* - 1) exactly why the bundled cites are not working as intended and 2)why this issue isn't discussed and explained as if to a non-coder in the Help:References and page numbers#Shortened footnotes & in Help:Shortened footnotes#Bundling citations & in Wikipedia:Citing sources#Bundling citations. If I've noticed - and I am certainly not one of the most prolific editors around here - at least 2 instances where the bundled citations are throwing Harv warnings then there have to be many, many more. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 01:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
What do you mean by: the bundled cites are not working as intended? What about those cites is not working? Are you claiming that they don't work because the user script is marking them with warning messages? (this version (permalink) of the article)
Likely because these messages are only available to those editors who have included a user script in their common.js that emits such messages. In your common.js you have installed User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js. That script has a documentation page (current version not authored by me so perhaps more understandable than what I might write).
When the warning message appears, it is generally not necessary to do anything except to look for typos in the surnames and dates. If {{sfn|Green|2024}} is supposed to link to {{cite book|last=Greene |date=2024 |title=...}} and these are the only pair for Green(e) 2024 you will get three messages:
For the sfn: sfn error: no target: CITEREFGreen2024 (help)Harv error: link from CITEREFGreen2024 doesn't point to any citation.
For the full citation: Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFGreene2024.
All because of a simple misspelling. When there really isn't Greene 2024 (with an 'e') short-form citation linking to a long-form citation, the script doesn't know that so it prompts editors to check. This same applies to the date; Green 2023 will cause the script to emit the same basic messages. If a short-form is not needed, editors can set |ref=none to suppress the warning message. It is not necessary, but is a courtesy to editors coming after you so they don't waste their time trying to find a matching short-form citation.
Since yesterday, when I bring up my Edit Count from XTools, nothing has updated in two days. Specifically, the Actrion, Patrol figure. On the Basic information, it says "Latest edit 2024-08-03 03:11" which is in error. It also lists "Latest logged action" as 2024-08-03 03:06. Something on the stats end not working? — Maile (talk) 18:48, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, there has been a high replag on both English Wikipedia and the Commons for two days now. It seems to have something to do with this. It's lasting longer than it was expected to take. LizRead!Talk!00:21, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. It's been so many years since I've seen this happen, that I forgot the possibility of it. — Maile (talk) 01:39, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Actually, it seems to happen fairly frequently, I'd guess monthly or every other month. It usually happens on Thursdays or Fridays. It becomes very evident if your editing relies on bot reports. They seem the most directly affected by these system lags. LizRead!Talk!01:50, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
So the replication lag has reached three and a half days. Is this situation normal or has something gone wrong and needs to be attended to? Can an end date be predicted or is it indeterminate? Nurg (talk) 22:25, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
I poked around and was unable to find a phabricator bug report, but my searching on phabricator does not work well. It looks T367856 accounts for this outage, but there has been no communication from WMF explaining why it is taking longer than the expected 26 hours and when it might be over. Maybe there is chatter on an e-mail list. Does anyone know if the WMF has uptime targets for their servers, including replag? With this one outage, currently at 92 hours, they will be below 99% uptime for the year. We had a 3+ hour outage in May 2024, a 4+ hour outage in June 2024, a 4+ hour outage in September 2023, and probably more. That's a good four and a half days of known downtime in the last twelve months for this valuable service. Not ideal. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:34, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
There is no guarantees for replag. It is a best effort. We are seeing a lot of this over the last 2 years because Wikimedia are doing major rearchitecting of various database tables to enable them to keep scaling, and unlike the production environment the tools environment does not have the same level of support that would allow to execute these changes without impact. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:32, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Hooray, we are over 168 hours (one full week)! (175 hours at this writing.) That's more than a full week of database reports being out of date. It's going to be fun to mop up over a week's worth of mess when this outage finally gets sorted. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I'm assuming that WP:PETSCAN is affected by the same problem as well, because articles that I fixed a few days ago are still showing in the search results. - X201 (talk) 08:05, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Add A Fact experimental tool from Future Audiences
The Future Audiences team at the foundation is launching Add A Fact, an experimental tool for adding information to English Wikipedia from outside the website. You can download the extension from the Chrome store here: Add A Fact. For now, an (auto)confirmed English Wikipedia account is required to submit facts with this extension.
The idea was developed and workshopped with Wikipedians at WCNA 2023, demoed and tested with Wikipedia community members as part of our team’s regular monthly community calls.
Here is a short demo video on the extension:
A quick how-to —
While reading any secondary source on the web (a news item, a scholarly article, etc.), you can open Add A Fact and highlight a short claim that you may want to add to Wikipedia.
An LLM will check if the selected claim is related to any existing Wikipedia articles, and will present information about whether the fact is fully, partially, or not present in these articles. You may also search for an article of your choosing.
Once you select a Wikipedia article to add your fact to, Add A Fact will give you the option of sending a pre-filled template message to the talk page of the article, which includes the selected text, any additional comments you’d like to add, and a structured citation. This message will be signed under your Wikipedia username.
If the URL of the source you are on appears on WP:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources, you will receive a warning message about your source’s reliability (but will still be able to add a suggested fact from this source). If the URL of the source you are on appears on the spam blocklist, you will not be able to add a suggested fact from this source.
To limit any potential misuse/spam, Add A Fact users will be limited to sending a maximum of 10 facts per day during this early experimental period.
Add A Fact seeks to prove or disprove a hypothesis about how we might continue to sustain and grow Wikimedia projects in a changing online knowledge landscape. In this case, we’re seeking to understand how people can make editorial contributions off-platform (that is, without going directly to Wikipedia.org), and if generative AI can support or hinder this process.
If it's a a chrome extension, it will work on Vivaldi, which is better than all previously mentioned browsers, imho. Another possibility is Opera, which can also use the extension, but Vivaldi is better. (We can take this offline to my UTP, or yours, if you wish to go into more detail about browsers.) Mathglot (talk) 00:01, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
It is unfortunate that the video demo shows someone suggesting a press release for a source on a medical topic, which would surely not pass WP:MEDRS. MrOllie (talk) 21:33, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
That's a good point. We tried to have the tool warn you about unacceptable sources but encoding all the nuances of the rules is hard. But doing this better is something we should look more into. DErenrich-WMF (talk) 23:05, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Having the demo advertise a kind of edit that should never be done is hardly a "nuance". Wikipedia got a good reputation for how it handled the COVID crisis precisely because editors stuck to standards that your demo tells people to avoid. XOR'easter (talk) 21:11, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
The message left on the talk page, will that include some template or tracking category, so that editors can easily find a list of facts to be added, and act upon them? Otherwise, especially if the facts are posted on lesser-watched talkpages, it'll be like shouting into the void. --rchard2scout (talk) 06:30, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Will we be able to find out how many facts posted to talk pages have been reviewed and used in articles, as opposed to rejected, and how many have not been considered at all (eg because of being on a less-watched page)? In what other ways will this tool be evaluated? For example, how might we detect an increase in, as the close of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1160#User:Drbogdan, persistent low-quality editing, and WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK issues put it, mass-adding content based on low-quality popular science churnalism to our science articles, expecting that other editors will review it and determine whether to improve or remove it, leading to an indefinite community block? NebY (talk) 01:56, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Once the experiment is complete (probably in a few months) we will put together a report with our findings. See for example the report for the last project we did. The metrics we're looking at are the kind of things you'd expect: number of users, number of edits, number of reverts, etc. But probably more importantly we're also collecting qualitative evidence (e.g. discussions like this one, feedback forms or by manually looking at the edits being made). DErenrich-WMF (talk) 04:09, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
@DErenrich-WMF Reverts aren't a meaningful metric for this tool. The tool will post on the talk page and talk page posts are rarely reverted. The only revert metric that would be useful would be the number of resulting additions to the article that are reverted, but that would be very difficult to collect.
Instead, a viable metric would be the proportions of talk page facts that were implemented, rejected, or not acted on. If tool postings used a format similar to {{Edit semi-protected}}, this might be feasible. It would also be immediately helpful to reviewing editors.
It is a bit surprising that the experiment hasn't been designed to allow meaningful reporting and evaluation. Is there some need to to start the experiment regardless, or can you build suitable metrics into it before release? NebY (talk) 14:45, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Let's please find a way to make this tool avoid good and featured articles. The last thing we need is to be experimenting with new users and our content that has actually gone through some sort of content peer review. Hog FarmTalk21:21, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that's interesting; I have it installed (on Vivaldi) and will be trying it out.
But I have a proposal for you, that imho, would be far more useful that I would like to bring to your attention. Basically, it means flipping the script on Find-A-Fact and doing it in the other direction. That is, finding an assertion on Wikipedia (possibly with the aid of the Category populated by {{cn}} tags), highlighting it, opening your next extension, which goes to AI and tries to find a reliable source to verify it. (It would possibly use WikiProjects listed on the Talk page to better target its search, and would be aware of perennial sources, as well as the WP blacklist, WP mirror sites, and other helpful exclude- or include-criteria.) It would read the source(s) (up to max-sources maybe?) and then pop up or fill a box with the citations, optionally augmented with better wording (Reword (y/n)?) for the assertion that currently exists in the article. At that point, there could be two paths (Talk or Article?): if user wants to go the Talk page route (default) then you do something similar to what Find-a-Fact does, and compose something for the talk page. If they want to go the Article page route, then you open the article in Preview mode, add the citation(s), optionally replace the existing assertion if AI was able to compose a better one and user selected that option, and show a Diff of the new version you are proposing, along with a canned edit summary. (Note that this flow, i.e., OpenPage-AddChanges-Preview-Diff-and-Wait, is similar to what some user scripts do currently, such as Nardog's RefRenamer script.) Then, user either accepts the change, optionally modifies the edit summary, and hits Publish, or they Cancel, or they go back to the extension box, altering options and checkboxes and hit Apply to try again with a different set of options. How does that sound? Mathglot (talk) 00:35, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Hi, I have noticed that my contributions stats on English Wikipedia haven't updated on Wikiscan since November 2023. [34] However, they still update for my contributions on other projects, like French Wikipedia. [35] Is there anything I can do to fix this? Thanks! – Odjob16Talk17:40, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Is this possible to hide "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" description at the very top of each article? Also is this possible to hide description "This page was last edited on 10 August 2024, at 23:16." at the very bottom of the each page? #f-list #lastmod {display: none;} doesn't works. Eurohunter (talk) 18:25, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
About 24 hours ago, I accessed Wikipedia on my cell phone from a car for hire, but was logged out. I went through the process of entering my password for my mobile account, and was logged back on. I then received an email saying that I had accessed Wikipedia from a device that I had not used recently. That wasn't accurate; it was the same cell phone as I have been using for about six months. My question is whether that message really means that I logged on to Wikipedia from an IP address in an unfamiliar IP address range, because I was using a satellite connection. Or was my device unfamiliar because I hadn't logged on in a few months because I had stayed logged on?
I do not have a security issue. I am just wondering whether it really means that I accessed Wikipedia from an unfamiliar IP address range, or whether it means that my device is unfamiliar because I haven't logged on from it for months because I have been continuously logged on. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:29, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
I know this must be an extremely dumb question, but please bear with me.
I have just finished drafting a long article (7,000 words readable prose) in my User space. I asked a friend for comments and was told there is no Table of Contents (TOC). This seems to be the case: unless you are logged in (which my friend wasn't), an article displays with no TOC. This seems to hold for any article, in mainspace or otherwise.
Can this really be true? It makes long articles very difficult to read for readers who are not logged in (i.e. most of them). I have tried forcing a Table of Contents with but it makes no difference.
It seems kind of difficult to believe that the average, casual reader of Wikipedia articles doesn't see a Table of Contents (unless he/she knows to force the display).
Thank you, I believe you are right that it has to do with the default vector-2022 skiin. That said, it doesn't fix the basic problem i.e. the Average Joe doesn't get to see a TOC. My friend has a big, wide laptop. Ttocserp23:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Ok, I now see that the problem is not what I thought it was. A TOC does display down the left-hand side, but only a rudimentary one (only level 2 headings). So I guess to fix that I have some learning to do.Ttocserp00:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Some of the headings, for example the one for Add A Fact experimental tool from Future Audiences on this page, should have > symbols beside them. Clicking the symbol opens the further levels. NebY (talk) 00:47, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
The TOC is collapsed on that page because there are more than the number of headings that allow for an automatically expanded TOC (I think 19). See T333801, T317818, T333017, and probably more tasks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:08, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Clicking the cross would remove the template and clicking the checkmark would implement the change and remove the template and then reload the page.
But the downside of a javascript is having to convince everyone to put it in their common.js. If I write the javascript, do you think it could be turned into a gadget? How does that procedure (if any) work? Polygnotus (talk) 01:47, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
@Pppery: Script is here: User:Polygnotus/verify.js (I am abusing the |reason= because there is no suggestion parameter yet). I've tested it on my userpage with
This seems silly - when would one ever use that template if one knew the typo fix, rather than fixing the typo themselves. If the template adder wasn't sure enough to fix the typo then driveby JavaScript users won't be either. Yes, this is close to an argument to delete {{verify spelling}}. * Pppery *it has begun...04:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
generate possible misspellings. The result looks like this:
description,deescription
description,desscription
description,desccription
check if those misspellings occur in the latest dump and delete all lines that occur 0 or more than 50 times.
check them against the Action API to see if they still exist and which articles they are on.
category|catgeory|David F. Walker
category|cateogry|Natasha Bedingfield
category|cateogry|Giovanni Falcone
I then use a seriously unhealthy amount of regex to see if they should be fixed or not (e.g. they are not in a comment, certain templates, certain parameters and the article does not use stuff like {{nobots}} or [sic] et cetera.
I end up with an insane amount of possible typos.
I can fix em myself with my AWB module or turn them into wikilinks and solve em with my javascript (see User:Polygnotus/typos) or I can use my homebrew AWB-like thing based on Selenium and ducttape. But there are simply too many for me myself and I to fix.
In some cases I have no clue if something is a typo and if so, how to fix it. Figuring that out can take a decent amount of time. No problem for one or two, but if you have tens of thousands it becomes a bit much, you know? Polygnotus (talk) 04:55, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
@Pppery: Aaah you fixed it. Anyway, while Correct typos in one click is super cool, I can still find tens of thousands of typos. So the problem hasn't been solved yet by its existence.
This is a different approach; Correct typos in one click hinges on luring people to an external website to do a pretty boring task. You could improve that model by offering them barnstars at certain levels of achievement and gamifying it and the like. But attracting people to an external website without an advertising budget is always gonna be hard. And typofixing is not sexy. There will be some hardcore users who return, but who is gonna make a calender event to return monthly when the new dump has been parsed?
External tools will always have a huge discoverability and user retention problem. People adopt bots when their owners disappear so that would also increase the bus factor. Polygnotus (talk) 05:01, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Adding transparency to make templates more dark-mode friendly
As someone who has witnessed the transition to Fandom Desktop which had a dark mode included, I want to suggest something that might actually be good for templates, and that is adding transparency to backgrounds (not to the font, just to backgrounds using rgba or hex codes) This could be done automatically but it might be better to do so in wikitext and may be a good addition to the manual of style. This would allow the text to be colored white (or whatever) and we would not have to auto-color stuff with backgrounds black. I wonder what level of transparency would be good for this. I was thinking 0.1 but there isn't a good way to check. Maybe this could be done as a bot task for inline styles and by interface admins for CSS sheets. AwesomeAasim19:34, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Wait that is so weird. Why is the text color being changed to this black color when background tags are used? I am just testing with safe mode and it is happening. Thoughts? AwesomeAasim22:48, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
@Awesome Aasim: The text color is changed to black because a CSS rule was put into MediaWiki that automatically sets the text color to #202122 in dark mode if no text color is specified locally. If you don't want this to happen, you can simply add color:inherit; like this: Green. Andumé (talk) 01:06, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
I am still confused why was that task implemented? They probably should have just consulted with communities first as to how they would like templates and whatnot to be implemented. Using a light/dark mode switch would be ideal but having partial transparency would be easier to implement for template designers. Especially for the number of templates that use a combination of inline styles and TemplateStyles. I think there should probably be a task for adding transparency to inline elements. AwesomeAasim16:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Adding 'display:transparent' is a later stage thing and too soon to do now. Since you are mentioning templates and templatestyles, pages in the template namespace that are not redirects or subpages are 3047 and number of "styles.css" pages in the template namespace are 570. Disabling night mode styles from Wikimedia Messages needs to be done with other changes that make the whole stylesheet unnecessary. Snævar (talk) 02:27, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
That CSS does not work. There is the opacity property but that is not what we should use. We should be adding transparency to just the background colors, like I showed above, not to the entire elements. AwesomeAasim18:52, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Smileys
These smileys look fine in light mode, but they look weird and vaguely racist in dark mode. Does someone know how to fix that?
I'm pretty sure that the appearance (including the colouring) is browser-specific. What I mean is, if I view this page in Firefox and also in Edge, those emojis look different in colour and also in other ways, such as the shape of the teeth. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:55, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Official dark mode is supported on Vector 2022 and on Minerva. It is not supported/provided elsewhere today, but like all the software deployed, the skins are open source. Izno (talk) 20:44, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. I hope official dark mode support comes to Vector2010 soon but that appears to be unlikely (if I understand Phabricator correctly, haven't done much digging). Polygnotus (talk) 21:12, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
If I write the same thing at fr.wiki, it does not work. The page appears to be there: fr:MediaWiki:Vector-toc-beginning. My code should set content to 'Début'. I'm guessing that the content of the fr.wiki page comes from translatewiki. I can also write:
That, at least, returns a value: 'Beginning'. Yay, but not what I want. Changing my interface language at fr.wiki from English to French gets me the result that I want: 'Début'.
Is there any way to get the French interface message without it gets translated to the reader's interface language? There is a move afoot to internationalize Module:Section sizes. The content of MediaWiki:Vector-toc-beginning (at en.wiki) is used to name the unnamed lede section in the module's output table. That lede section name should always render in the same language as the local wiki regardless of the user's interface language setting.
Try mw.message.new('vector-toc-beginning'):inLanguage(mw.language.getContentLanguage()):plain(). The title_obj:getContent() method only works when the message has been locally customized; if it's using the MediaWiki default, it doesn't work because the page doesn't exist. P.S. Doing just mw.message.new('vector-toc-beginning'):plain() is much like the int method, using the user's interface language. Anomie⚔17:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
The site recently began darkening its countenance at night. I don't have a personal preference one way or another, but it benefits those around me, so I don't want to use hacky methods to undo it. The editing window's colouration has fluctuated several times (see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 214#Dark mode issues), but has settled recently. Unfortunately, mine is still showing dark-grey text against a black editing-window-background; I'm typing this in a separate program and will copy/paste it when done, hoping it'll save properly. I assume this isn't widespread, else there'd be a rapid fix, but I'd really like to find a solution soon. Anybody know what and why I'm experiencing? Much obliged, — Fourthords | =Λ= |01:47, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
@Fourthords If you are seeing normal text in dark-grey but wiki-syntax like double-square-brackets in colors (e.g. like this screenshot), then this is a bug related to the extension which powers that syntax-highlight feature, phab:T365311. That bug is being worked on and should be fixed soon (next week or two I'd guess, from the latest comments there), but for now you can toggle off the syntaxhighlight with the 7th button in the toolbar (a marker-pen shape). I hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm seeing! I thought the colour-coding behaviour had been the default for... I don't know, a decade or more? Is this not affecting an outsized amount of the editing community? Regardless, at least that'll let me edit within the browser again (and it's not like I have those color-indicating features in the word processor I've been using during the nighttime hours, anyway!). I'll test it in the next couple of days. Thanks for the heads-up! — Fourthords | =Λ= |19:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
Preloading text
It is possible to preload a template, but how can I preload specific text? Preloading a template is useful, but sometimes you don't know the text you want to preload in advance.
Do you mean when viewing Special:Watchlist? Here's a CSS rule that hides both:
/* hide edits to redirects and redlinked pages from watchlist */li.mw-changeslist-line:has(a.mw-redirect),li.mw-changeslist-line:has(a.mw-changeslist-title.new){display:none;}
If you are willing to copy-paste Special:EditWatchlist/raw to a public wiki page like User:Bubba73/Watchlist then I can look at trimming it with some regex, ifexist and Module:Redirect#IsRedirect, probably 500 or 250 pages at a time due to a MediaWiki limit. Then you can copy it back. I may not have time today. If there are pages you watch with a time limit then I don't know whether the limit will be remembered. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Allow everyone to move pages in draftspace. Nickps (talk) 16:58, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
Works for me, and please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 213#The time allocated for running scripts has expired. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:15, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources § Can I copy from open license or public domain sources?
Done It wasn't. Just fixed it. •Shawnqual• 📚 • 💭 00:21, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 17:22, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Two new parser functions will be available this week: 
![[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Example_of_fragmented_image_display_in_mobile_view.png){kind=link}
.png){kind=link}
.svg){kind=link}
![[28]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wisdom_of_the_ancients.png){kind=link}
Resolved