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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Is AutoEd safe

I installed the script and all of its modules, is it safe or not? Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 19:00, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

You're responsible equally for all the edits made with automated tools, if that's what you're asking. You still have to check to make sure your edits are correct and not disruptive. Remsense ‥ 论 19:04, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
The original poster is probably referring to the message that begins "Code that you insert on this page could contain malicious content capable of compromising your account ..." at MediaWiki:Userjsdangerous. To answer the original question, yes, it is safe. Graham87 (talk) 02:05, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
You can never be sure of that about user scripts (hence the warning). AutoEd and its modules are in the Wikipedia namespace and protected, which means they can be compromised if any admin's account is compromised. Nardog (talk) 02:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes, but the message @Graham87 linked to ends, If you are unsure whether code you are adding to this page is safe, you can ask at the appropriate village pump., which is what directed the OP here.
It's kind of pointless to do that if the answer is always going to be, "Weeeelll... you can never be completely certain..." — that's not helpful. The user was already warned, and while it's true that you never can be completely certain, the AutoEd code is currently safe. And since it's used by many Wikipedians, it will screw over a much larger portion of the community than just @Electrou in the unlikely event that it becomes unsafe, so it's probably not worth personally fretting over. FeRDNYC (talk) 17:35, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
Most scripts are either in the MediaWiki namespace where js pages can only be edited by interface administrators, or in userspace where they can only be edited by the user and interface administrators. AutoEd is in the Wikipedia namespace for some reason. The pages are fully protected but all administrators can edit them so it's less protected than most scripts. There are currently 847 administrators but only 10 interface administrators and it's a more trusted position. Apart from the risk of malice, ordinary administrators may also know less about JavaScript and security (including securing their account), and accidentally do something unsafe. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:46, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Table

How to make this table look like this one? I don't see any parameters which could be used. Eurohunter (talk) 20:52, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean "look like"? They look roughly the same to me, except for some styling applied by |namestyle=, |headingstyle=, |class=, and similar. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:24, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm gonna dissent from @Jonesey95's claim as those boxes look pretty significantly different to me, but I agree it's mostly a question of styling, all of which is done by parameters that most assuredly are there and being used ­— most of what's involved in making Template:Politics of Yemen look more like Template:Politics of Uzbekistan would involve removing the ugly style nightmare that's been imposed on the former. Places I'd start:
  • Lose the border: 1px double #8C959A from all of the style parameters where it's used (titlestyle, headingstyle, and listtitlestyle), because that just looks like trash.
  • Just remove |style=border 4px double var(--background-color-inverted, #101418); completely. (What is this obsession with double-lined borders?)
  • Use {{Politics sidebar title}} to set the |title= parameter, rather than hardcoding separate |title=, |image=, |namestyle=, |titlestyle=, etc. Specifically, you'd probably want this:
    |title={{Politics sidebar title|country=Yemen|image=Emblem of Yemen (2).svg|size=125px|title=Yemen}}
    replacing not only |title= itself but also those other three parameters.
  • Consider getting rid of the |headingstyle= and |listtitlestyle= entirely, as well. Beyond the border styling, all they do is set specific (and ugly) color parameters that ruin the look of the sidebar because content boxes of unequal dimensions are revealed. That makes for a very "ransom-note" kind of effect where different-sized yellow rectangles and red rectangles are slapped all over the place.
  • Finally, if you don't want the contents of each expandable heading to be presented as just a wrapped horizontal line of text, remove hlist from the |bodyclass= parameter, as that's what makes them format that way.
    (If you do that, you might consider using the {{hlist}} template to create horizontal lists out of some of the links in specific lists, like Template:Politics of Uzbekistan does in the |list6= contents.)
FeRDNYC (talk) 22:34, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Lua to generate information about a page

Hello, does lua template have the capability to get information like

  • page contributors
  • last date of edit to page

for a provided page name? If so, please send me an example? Thank you. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 07:23, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

@Gryllida: You don't need Lua for the second one, it is available as a variable. If you only need the last contributor, that also is available in the same way. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:40, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
Need this info for page and for page talk so I think variable will not work. Need a list of contributors not only last one. I can get this information using js but would prefer to avoid it. if possible. Thanks. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 14:16, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
Why do you think that a variable wouldn't work? Consider the article London - we can do this:
  • {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:London}} → 20241221034447
    {{#time: H:i, j F Y (e)|{{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:London}}}} → 03:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
  • {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:Talk:London}} → 20241201211624
    {{#time: H:i, j F Y (e)|{{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:Talk:London}}}} → 21:16, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
If either London or Talk:London get edited, the above examples will change when this page is next edited or WP:PURGEd. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:04, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
This is fabulous Thanks. I will go try to use it in my template now. Just need the nicks of contributors now if possible. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 22:59, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
No, Lua (Scribunto) does not have access to page history. One option would be to have a bot periodically build a list of contributors and update a page somewhere that a module could read. Or, have a JavaScript gadget which can use the API. All that is tricky. Johnuniq (talk) 00:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
Js is ok,I can write. I was hoping for Lua. Why not? Can it be implemented for Lua to have such access? Thanks for your insight. 🙂 Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 10:28, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
Part of the answer to that question is likely something vaguely along the lines of, "just as we expect of all wikipedians, Scribunto is here to create an encyclopedia, and no part of that goal ever requires access to edit history."
(Which... is actually kind of true. There are plenty of behind-the-scenes tasks/goals that could benefit from page history access, but none of them would ever directly affect article content.) While there are plenty of conceivable ways in which it would be useful to have history access (or other functionality) in Scribunto, the focus has primarily been on providing functional equivalents to what's achievable with template coding, but without the template-coding nightmares involved in building any sort of complex logic.
Templates similarly have no access to page history.
Another factor is that the results of Module {{#invoke:}} calls, like template transclusions, are meant to be cacheable. 'Dynamic' code that relies on making an external resource query, meaning it potentially changes each time the module is invoked, is a bad fit with the caching model. Lua results should ideally be fairly static unless a dependency is edited or the code is invoked with different parameters.
Not to say that these things couldn't, potentially, be implemented. They just haven't been, and adding them would be a significant development effort, it's not a matter of flipping a switch or inserting a line of code somewhere. In fact there's a Phabricator tracking bug (T50176) for bugs requesting new Lua functionality — it's a long list. Things like MediaWiki API query access, access to Category lists, Namespace indexes, etc. are already there. It doesn't look like edit history access has ever been directly requested. (But API queries would provide one potential path, since page history info is accessible via the API.)
It's important to note that none of those requests are actively being worked on, though. They're just that: Requests. Unfulfilled requests, with no predicted timeline for completion beyond "...probably never?" FeRDNYC (talk) 21:52, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
i wanted list of article authors to inquire about edit to the article, e.g. send @ pings on talk. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 03:35, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Your best bet will be to use xtools to generate a list of people who edited the article by using this link: [1] NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 03:41, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T376848

The message "This is an old revision of this page" or "This is the current revision of this page" at the top of a permalink has the cdx-message--warning class but is not styled unless the skin is Vector 2022 (example). Is there a Phab task for this? Nardog (talk) 06:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

There were several tasks about missing warning box styling in various places, but I don't think there was a task about this particular one. Please file it. :) Matma Rex talk 16:15, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: Done. Please add appropriate tags; I didn't file it earlier mainly because I didn't know what tags to use. Nardog (talk) 23:06, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Alternative to normal talkpage notification

Something I've been thinking about:

A lot of new people don't seem to see talkpage messages. The cause is not really important here; it may be a case of banner blindness, or our (mobile) interface is not clear enough, or whatever.

Would it be a good idea to implement a special message notification, perhaps one that:

  • is hard to ignore
  • can perhaps only be sent by an admin
  • requires confirmation of receipt to dismiss (so it is on every page you visit until you click a button)
  • takes up most if not all of the screen
  • would still appear on the talkpage as a normal message so others can see them as well
  • comes with a short explanation that someone is trying to reach them, translated in many languages

To prevent abuse in case of hijacked admin accounts we could restrict each message to only one recipient, and limit the amount you can send to 1 per minute. And perhaps it should only be possible to send such messages to people who are not extendedconfirmed. To prevent people receiving too many of these messages, perhaps limit them to, for example, 1 per hour per recipient.

Ideally those You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you... warnings would be sent via this alternative method of talkpage notification.

A potential downside is that its, in some cases, easier to give someone WP:ROPE and then not have to deal with them for the duration of their block.

I think that at least some people keep doing what they are doing, without ever noticing a growing list of messages on their talkpage of people trying to steer them in the right direction. Has such a feature been considered?

Polygnotus (talk) 02:51, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Works in Special:ExpandTemplates but fails in regular page?

As I am climbing the bumpy learning curve for templates I hit another road block. This code (with extra double curlies on the outside) evaluates when I use Special:ExpandTemplates but just sits there in a page like this:

  • {{
  • common:−4, −3, −2, −1, 0, +1, +2, +3, +4
  • notable:
  • predicted:
    }}

My goal was to have a database layer accept the name of a formatter and a selector, then return a template with that formatter and the selected data. It works in ExpandTemplates, but where it counts. Any hints? ([1])

Johnjbarton (talk) 21:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I unchecked Remove comments on the ExpandTemplates and the result is different. Still in the dark though. Johnjbarton (talk) 21:51, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
This is a known, and annoying, but in ExpandTemplates, which half-parses the text and then parses it fully. How the ordinary parser works is that if a template outputs wikitext that wikitext doesn't get parsed again. If you really want to run through the parser multiple times you can use {{expand wikitext}}, so {{expand wikitext|{{ {{User:Johnjbarton/sandbox/Infobox element/symbol-to-oxidation-state-data|os-formatter=User:Johnjbarton/sandbox/Infobox element/symbol-to-oxidation-state-echo|symbol=C}} }} -> (example removed since template changes made it obsolete). While I've done that in the past it's kind of hacky.
You also need to put a space between the two sets of curly brackets, or else the parser gets confused. {{{{1}}}} is parsed as { {{{1}}} } (take the value of a parameter and wrap it in curly brackets), not {{ {{1}} }} (evaluate Template:1 and then evaluate the result of it as the name of another template). * Pppery * it has begun... 22:22, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Also if you were to put the opening curly braces in User:Johnjbarton/sandbox/Infobox element/symbol-to-oxidation-state-data itself, then that would work. (this is similar to how {{country data United States}}) et al. work. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:36, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Ok great thanks! These are the kinds of things I need to learn:
  • "How the ordinary parser works is that if a template outputs wikitext that wikitext doesn't get parsed again."
I was able to base my prototype on {{country data United States}} by changing the design of the "data". This kind of system is much easier to use with good examples. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:39, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
You're welcome. Also, I misspoke - a better way of phrasing it is "How the ordinary parser works is that if a template outputs template calls those template calls don't get parsed again" - other wikitext like wikilinks, refs, etc. is of course parsed. There's a very long manual on how the parser works at mw:Help:Template and even more stuff at mw:Manual:Advanced templates if you want to really enter the weeds. * Pppery * it has begun... 04:51, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ ignore ref

youtu.be blacklist

When I share a youtube video with a timestamp I get a link like this:

https://youtu.be/Zl8BIUx8QW0?feature=shared&t=1

but when I try to post that on wikipedia it says the link is on a spam blacklist. I can't find it on meta:Spam blacklist or on MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist.

And it wouldn't even make sense to block it anyway because I can change the link to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl8BIUx8QW0#t=1

and suddenly it is allowed. Polygnotus (talk) 21:24, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Shorteners are categorically rejected. This one is rejected at meta:Spam blacklist \byoutu\.be\b. Izno (talk) 21:29, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. The spam blacklist is intended to blacklist spam, and shouldn't be hijacked by people with an irrational hatred for url shorteners. Polygnotus (talk) 21:36, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
URL shorteners are used to introduce spam, and aren't always particularly stable addresses, and they can lead to hijacked sites, which are much more dangerous than spam. These reasons for banning them are categorically rational, contrary to your hyperbole. No, they will remain banned. Whether specifically youtu.be should have an exception is perhaps a worthy question, but as you said, the expansion is trivial, so just use the full URL instead. Izno (talk) 21:48, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes. Shirley there Izno reason not to use the full URL. EEng 23:07, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
@Izno: I know what URL shorteners are. This particular URL shortener cannot be used for malicious purposes because it only redirects to youtube. So it is obviously irrational to block all url shorteners. It is rational to block attack vectors while leaving domain aliases unblocked. This kinda stuff should be decided on a case-by-case basis (e.g. block bit.ly and tinyurl but not youtu.be). I can use the full url, but others do not know how to do that. Polygnotus (talk) 22:00, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
If someone doesn't know what a URL is or how to copy and paste it, they definitely shouldn't be adding external links to articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:27, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien: If someone says something truly ridiculous, it is often wise to re-read it in its context. Polygnotus (talk) 06:30, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
URL shorterners are blacklisted for good reasons. They can be used to circumvent blacklisting of their target. MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist blacklists several specific videos at youtube.com, e.g. the entry \byoutube\.com\/watch\?v=W0a6L7hbD7U\b. We don't want spammers to use a youtu.be redirect instead. And there are other problems with URL shorternes, e.g. that they can be shut down and break all links. If you don't think YouTube's owner Google would do such a thing then think again. They are shutting down their URL Shortener goo.gl.[2] PrimeHunter (talk) 21:55, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
Gotta love https://killedbygoogle.com/ Polygnotus (talk) 22:00, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
I actually agree that youtu.be shouldn't be blacklisted. The solution to PrimeHunter's concern would be to just blacklist the string W0a6L7hbD7U instead - the blacklist doesn't have to point to the full URL. But despite being a Meta admin and thus having the technical power to action this I don't have the social power to do it myself. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:26, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
@Pppery: Thanks! The discussion continues at meta:Talk:Spam_blacklist#youtu.be. Another advantage of blocking W0a6L7hbD7U is that it would work for both the youtu.be/%id% and /watch?v=%id% format. Polygnotus (talk) 02:33, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
The key point here, which was (indirectly) mentioned by the OP, is that https://youtu.be/video_id links are provided by YouTube itself directly from their UI whenever a "Share" link is requested for a video. They are, in a certain sense, even more of a permalink than the actual https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id page they redirect to.
And while it's true Google could terminate support for https://youtu.be/ tomorrow, they could also redesign YouTube tomorrow so that the https://www.youtube.com/watch page is no longer functional, replaced by https://www.youtube.com/view or some other nonsense, which the https://youtu.be/ redirects get updated to point to.
Do I think that will happen? Absolutely not; I just think it's of equal unlikelihood (...ow) that anything will happen to https://youtu.be/, as that would break like a quarter of the entire frickin' internet.
The simple fact is, when requesting links to YouTube videos from YouTube itself, users are provided with https://youtu.be/ links, which IMHO we shouldn't make it unreasonably difficult to make use of.
Especially considering, if a user is viewing a video in the YouTube mobile app (which accounts for a very significant percentage of YouTube traffic, at a level that shames our own mobile app's laughable 2%-3% of monthly pageviews), the short URL is the only URL they can retrieve. The app doesn't expose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video_id URLs anywhere. FeRDNYC (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
Linking to invidious instance could be better, it loads faster and does not track the user as much. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 07:26, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
See Principle of least astonishment. Polygnotus (talk) 07:28, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
The two issues appear to be the general issue with url shorteners, and spamming of the shortened url.
Although this is a url shortener it's doesn't have the issues inherent in most shorteners. The only end point is a youtube video, so the usual concerns that it could link to anything do not apply here. Whether you use .com or .be you can't link to anything but a youtube video (correct me if that's wrong).
The spam issue is separate, and blacklisting individual videos is a poor option unless it's in a very particular situation. But the .com version could be spammed as well. I don't know how long ago the spamming and blacklisting were, but maybe unblacklisting as a test would be useful. If the past issues reappear it could be reapplied. I can see reasons why the .be link would be easier to spam, but beans. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:59, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
While it doesn't directly - it does procedurally. In many use cases using the youtube "share button" generates a shortener that also includes a tracker, which we don't want. And 'someone else can go back and remove trackers later' isn't a strong argument - bad edits that can easily be avoided (by just using the actual link) are much more desirable. — xaosflux Talk 10:29, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: In GDPR countries that tracking parameter is omitted. Polygnotus (talk) 10:37, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Sometimes sure, and in the rest of the world it's not. — xaosflux Talk 10:49, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
I would propose to develop a mechanism to expand the shortened URL to its full form. For example, either
  • write a bot that automatically expands certain short URL patterns upon user publishing an edit, and if the expanded URL hits the spam blacklist, revert the edit. There are already external Spam blacklist search tools [3]. Or,
  • integrate the short URL expansion mechanism into MediaWiki, automatically expand shortened URLs upon publishing. If the expanded URL hits blacklist then disallow the edit.
MilkyDefer 08:23, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Oh great, it is in idea lab. MilkyDefer 08:29, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Link for those curious: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#URL_expansion_bots Polygnotus (talk) 08:31, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Hot cat not working and visual editor not as easy

I was setting up the article at Gábor_Bálint and wanted to add the "category:Hungarian linguists" and it did not work because that category does not exist. I finally found "category:Linguists from Hungary" and I usually do not like this inconsistency (and especially do not see why American and English are special nationalities) so I added {{Category redirect|Linguists from Hungary}} at the wrong category. Now hot cat usually uses that and helpfully replaces the category if I typed "Hungarian linguists". Strangely hot cat does not seem to work at all today and the visual editor for categories does not have this automatic feature to suggest preferred category names. Perhaps someone knows a better way of explaining this or adding a suggestion for the visual editor folks. PS:hot cat now working!! Shyamal (talk) 12:48, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Adding section after closed discussions

I added a new section using the "*" tab with this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Fishing_cat&curid=7607570&diff=1250477244&oldid=1250369650

The new section is included within the closed discussion. I might be able to fix it in this case, but it seems to be a bug.  —  Jts1882 | talk  19:03, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It's not really a bug; the person who closed the GA review section forgot to match their {{atop}} template with an {{abot}} template, which means the "close" box didn't end. I've fixed it. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:10, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank-you. I knew there was a problem but couldn't identify it. It's too easy to cast blame on bugs.  —  Jts1882 | talk  19:18, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Matching tags in strings?

I need to create a series of ref tags from wikitext with refs. I'll settle for a very specific pattern of text removed. I tried things like: {{#invoke:string|replace|source=−4,<ref name="cn"/> −2,<ref name="cn"/>|pattern=[−+]%d,<.-><|replace=<|plain=false}} but the left angle bracket never matches. I think the match is being performed on a source or pattern after it has been converted to Help:strip markers. Thus the angle bracket is not in the source during the match. Is there a way around this? Johnjbarton (talk) 23:15, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Because <ref /> tags are replaced with stripmarkers before Module:String ever sees |source=:
{{#invoke:string|replace|source=−4,<ref name="cn"/> −2,<ref name="cn"/>|pattern=[−+]%d,<.-><|replace=<|plain=false}}
−4,'"`UNIQ--ref-00000025-QINU`"' −2,'"`UNIQ--ref-00000026-QINU`"'
no <ref /> tags to match.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:40, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, very helpful. On the plus side the issue I was concerned about, finding my digit-strings like ",9" inside refs, can't actually happen:
{{#invoke:string|replace|source=−4,<ref name="has9">,9</ref> −2,<ref name="cn"/>|pattern=[−+]%d,<.-><|replace=<|plain=false}}
−4,'"`UNIQ--ref-00000029-QINU`"' −2,'"`UNIQ--ref-0000002A-QINU`"'
On the minus side, templates can't manipulate contents of ref tags I guess. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference cn was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Help Escalating security issue with Webauthn

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T358771

With the help of WMF staff we identified a critical issue with webauthn that is likely locking users out of their accounts. The issue prevents webauthn activated on a device from being used on another device, or between browser sessions. This means users can be activating webauthn , intending to secure their account, and end up losing access to wikipedia. Because relatively few users activate this feature in the short term, the issue may not be getting the attention it deserves. It will also discourage future users from activating webauthn, which is a critical security feature to protect the community.

Please help me find the appropriate contact with WMF technical staff to help get the fix merged. It's a one-line fix from upstream repository so it should be low risk. Tonymetz 💬 16:50, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess that would be us, the Platform Team. I'll raise it with the team and we'll have a look. Matma Rex talk 19:30, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the note, webauthn has multiple known issues and is certainly in the "experimental" role. As far as our contributors and readers here at the English Wikipedia go: webauthn shouldn't be used by anyone for anything important. Technical reports in phabricator are of course welcome. — xaosflux Talk 00:09, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
thanks for the context. On the ticket , Reddy mentioned it was completed by a contractor and hasn't been supported. To whom could I appeal to have it turned off? I believe it's locking people out, so it's a liability. Tonymetz 💬 18:00, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
I think that would also be us. There's already a task: T376021 that lists some problems and suggests turning it off as one possible solution. I think that's currently waiting on some decisions about the new login system (code name "SUL3", see T348388 for some details), which may either let us fix it instead of disabling it, or force us to disable it, depending on which approach we end up going with. Matma Rex talk 01:10, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
thanks for sharing the context and I'm glad to hear that the concern is being addressed. Thanks again for the updates on that. Tonymetz 💬 02:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Sticky table headers placement issue for short/nested tables

It looks like someone tweaked the CSS for the sticky table headers — which can be enabled with the fourth checkbox at Special:Preferences#mw-htmlform-gadget-section-test — so that (if your browser also satisfies a @media screen and (min-width: 1000px) media query) it applies a top: 3.125rem offset to table headers when one is stickied, to prevent the sticky header from either covering or sliding under the also-sticky TOC button.

Nice idea, in theory. Problem is, on pages containing nested and/or short tables that don't exceed the height of the screen, the stickiness can kick in at unexpected times, particularly when there are multiple tables. And when that happens, all of the tables' headers jump down a distance of 3.125rem, potentially covering their first data row.

I first noticed this at Module:Sports results, in the documentation. The "What it looks like" areas of those docs all contain short tables. If you have the sticky headers gadget enabled, then no matter where you scroll on that page, each table's header row will be shoved down to cover the first data row below it.

That's a problem, as it obscures content, and the only way to make it visible is to defeat the CSS rule applying top: 3.125rem. FeRDNYC (talk) 16:16, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like this only affects nested tables, and it may be sufficient to augment the existing CSS rule: 
@media screen and (min-width: 1000px) {
  .skin-vector-2022.vector-sticky-header-visible .jquery-tablesorter > thead,
  .skin-vector-2022.vector-sticky-header-visible .mw-sticky-header > thead {
    top: 3.125rem;
  }
}
with a second one overriding the offset in nested tables:
@media screen and (min-width: 1000px) {
  .skin-vector-2022.vector-sticky-header-visible .jquery-tablesorter .jquery-tablesorter > thead,
  .skin-vector-2022.vector-sticky-header-visible .jquery-tablesorter .mw-sticky-header > thead,
  .skin-vector-2022.vector-sticky-header-visible .mw-sticky-header .mw-sticky-header > thead,
  .skin-vector-2022.vector-sticky-header-visible .mw-sticky-header .jquery-tablesorter > thead {
    top: 0;
  }
}
FeRDNYC (talk) 16:57, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
...Smaller issue, the nested table headings then end up passing on top of the sticky outer table headers when they cross, instead of underneath them. Looks like some z-index tweaking might also be needed. FeRDNYC (talk) 17:01, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
Ohh, now I see. The offset isn't to avoid the floating TOC button, but rather the full-width version of the .vector-sticky-header. But the weird thing is, that CSS doesn't kick in until @media screen and (min-width: 1120px), so there's this weird 120px limbo range of browser widths where the table headings are ducking under nothing at all. FeRDNYC (talk) 22:53, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
Those values change sometimes. I'll make an edit request. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ Nice, thanks!
The nested table issue is still a problem, though, whether the breakpoints are synced up or not. When a table's sticky-header activates and the top: 3.125rem; offset kicks in for its header rows, the header rows of all tables nested inside that table will also move down to obscure their own content, unless the offset is defeated for nested tables with something like my second CSS block above. FeRDNYC (talk) 09:18, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes, this is almost impossible to bypass. Sticky headers are relative to their scrolling context. So every time you introduce a new scrolling context (as done here at Module:Sports_results#L-277), you have to cancel out the offset of the main context. This is part of the reason why the sticky headers are not the default behavior. It is not really possible to make it work predictably in any and all contexts right now. If you want to override this specific situation, you need to make an override for this gadget's behavior in Module:Sports_results/styles.css. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
@FeRDNYC: The offset isn't a problem with the change request at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css#Interface-protected edit request on 10 September 2024, which adjusts "top" to 0 if the table is wrapped in an "overflow" style. Basically nothing is sticky at Module:Sports results/doc, which is better than unreadable content. Jroberson108 (talk) 05:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Battle of Helena

See Talk:Battle of Helena#In appropriate photo when viewing in app. Any idea what's going on with the issue the IP just reported? There were some image vandalism issues over a year ago. There's no infobox image in the article so I don't know what would be causing that. I am unable to really look into this because I am at work and do not want to replicate the reported issue. Hog Farm Talk 16:29, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

@Hog Farm the article was vandalized at some point (see the edit summary at Special:Permalink/1163371835) and while the vandalism was removed, it's likely that some resource the app is using didn't update their cache correctly. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:53, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

SuggestBot - is it running?

Hi, I submitted a request 20:32, 10 October 2024 (UTC) here, and awaiting a response of suggested articles wikitable. At User talk:SuggestBot I did include @Nettrom, the bot operator. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 21:41, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

It appears not - the recent contribs to User talk pages show that it typically runs twice a day, at 11:24 and 23:24 (UTC), but today's 11:24 run was missed. Have you contacted the botop directly? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Redrose64 - I did just now leave a message on Nettrom's talk page. JoeNMLC (talk) 00:10, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
Well its contribs show that it's making edits (permalink to contributions at time of writing). It seems to be taking its time. At least it's still carrying on the fourth-longest daily editing streak of any user here (I'm at #5 of out of all human editors). Graham87 (talk) 02:44, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
 Done at 11:26, 12 October 2024 (UTC). Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 11:50, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Queries

Hey, all,

Just a minor query but I hope someone will know. When I use to visit Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement or WP:ANI, in the top right corner of a discussion, there was a link to "Archive" the discussion. Instead, now, there is a link to "Subscribe". So, is there an easy way to archive discussions other than cutting and pasting them into an archive page? It used to be easy to do this but now I don't see a way to do this. Is it because of a skin or some setting I have opted into or was this a change to discussion format? There also use to be a Reply link on talk page discussions and I no longer see that link either.

Thanks for any explanation anyone can provide. Liz Read! Talk! 06:06, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I had this issue recently and I was told to update / use a new user script. Let me hunt that down for you. Ktin (talk) 06:25, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
See this post Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_214#User_Scripts_and_Template_Substitution. I ended up using User:Elli/OneClickArchiver and this works for me. Ktin (talk) 06:29, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
@Liz In User:Liz/common.js you are loading User:Technical 13/Scripts/OneClickArchiver.js on line 36. That particular version of the one click archiver was deleted in 2023 because it was broken and Technical 13 is arbcom blocked and unable to fix it. You'll need to replace it with an alternative, see Wikipedia:One click archiving for a list of maintained versions. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 17:11, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

‘Newcomer Tasks’ got a screw loose? Or is it the user?

Wikipedia:Growth Team features didn’t look like the right place to phone this in, so dragging it up here. If what looks like problems with the Newcomer kit, belongs somewhere else, please signpost accordingly.

See this and this. Is this the user making mistakes, or is Newcomer Tasks actually telling them to put refs at the top? MM (Give me info.) (Victories) 15:44, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

It seems to be just link spam, unrelated to Newcomer Tasks, even though the edits are tagged as such. —⁠andrybak (talk) 15:53, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Cpmrev- Jeez, how did I miss that… uw-spam1 it is. Cheers Andry. MM (Give me info.) (Victories) 15:57, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Standard width of appearance tool does not work properly

Hi, "Standard" width of "Appearance tool" does not work properly. It functions the same as "Wide" width. Please inspect. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:52, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I just tested and it works fine. Is your screen wide enough for the wide mode to even kick in ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:00, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ Sorry, I zoomed out my browser and the problem resolved. Please close the thread. Thanks. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:13, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ I really propose that we can disable this functionality in the case that zoom of browser is high, and this functionality does not work properly. We can implement that by a few JavaScript codes. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:33, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Cannot request a move

I have been unable to request a multiple-page move. It goes like this: I am using Wikipedia on an Xbox console (my computer is out of action at the moment), and attempting to request a multiple-page move does not work. Doing so instead yields a mere reply in the form of bare wikitext. You can find those three trainwrecks (or should it be planewrecks, given the topic?) on Talk:Microsoft Flight Simulator. I attempted to request a move of four pages relating to the series in question, as I had previously done with the first game: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2.0, Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0, Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0, and Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0 in a similar vein to my move of the 1982 game, as in moving them to something like "Microsoft Flight Simulator (19XX video game)".


Can someone request a move for me? Ægc's friendly xbox alt (talk) 08:30, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Turn off Visual Editor in all its myriad forms (it may be OK for articles, but it's hopeless on talk pages). Use MediaWiki's own plain text source editor - I use the oldest one that still exists (I think that it's called the 2003 wikitext editor), and have no problems at all. Template transclusions and substitutions do exactly what they're supposed to. Any typos are therefore my own fault. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:41, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
@Redrose64 I don't think this is good advice in general, and it's not relevant here, because Æ is not using the visual editor here to edit the talk page, but rather the new topic tool. Matma Rex talk 16:00, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
@Ægc's friendly xbox alt In the top-right corner of the interface for adding new topics, there are two tabs labelled "Visual" and "Source" – try switching to the "Source" tab before writing the move request. Matma Rex talk 15:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-42

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

Updates for editors

  • The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [4][5]
  • WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [6]
  • View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [7]
  • Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [8]
  • Advanced item Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [9]

In depth

  • The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
  • The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:17, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Preview weirdness

Use Navigation pop-ups. Point mouse at Aaron Brennan, an article about a bearded man, with a picture of a bearded man in the infobox, before any other pictures. Be surprised to see, in the pop-up, a picture of an unbearded young lady from several sections down the page. DuncanHill (talk) 11:37, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: And now? Polygnotus (talk) 12:46, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
@Polygnotus: Works as expected now, thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 23:50, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Navigation pop-ups doesn't have access to the result of parsing the wikitext but makes its own primitive analysis of the source text. It can detect file syntax and certain common infobox parameters like image and logo, but apparently not image1. Unlike Page Previews, it can select images outside the lead. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
It would only require adding |image1 to this line in MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js:
			'image|image_(?:file|skyline|name|flag|seal)|cover|badge|logo'
PrimeHunter (talk) 14:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Mysterious newline

At Wikipedia:Contents/Mathematics and logic § Glossaries, there's an unintended newline between Algebraic geometry and Algebraic topology. Looking at the source (Wikipedia:Contents/Glossaries/Mathematics and logic), there's a newline between all the entries, but all of them are ignored on the subpage, and all but the first are ignored when it's transcluded. Inspecting Wikipedia:Contents/Mathematics and logic in my browser, the first entry is outside the <div> that holds all the other entries. (And I've checked that this isn't skin-specific or browser-specific.) I've tried putting <nowiki /> at the start of Wikipedia:Contents/Glossaries/Mathematics and logic, because I vaguely remember a bug like that, but no dice. Does anybody know what's going on here? jlwoodwa (talk) 00:33, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I made the list use actual wikitext list formatting like the other sections. It was using bullet characters with line breaks, which may or may not work, as you saw. Does normal formatting work for you? – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:54, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, that did it. No point in debugging something if it's automatically solved by upgrading to semantic list markup. jlwoodwa (talk) 01:11, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

What is happening at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents? Of the last 100 edits 62 are tagged as having added disambiguation links - from random checking, most didn't?
The first edit that has it was this, which did add a disambiguation link (MOS:CONSISTENCY). – 2804:F1...D2:B7E7 (talk) 19:57, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

MOS:CONSISTENCY is a redirect to the disambiguation page Wikipedia:Consistency. MOS is a namespace here at the English Wikipedia while [[MOS:CONSISTENCY]] at other wikis would have been an interlanguage link to https://mos.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONSISTENCY. Maybe this confuses a piece of software. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
I've changed it to bypass the redirect, see if that works. – 2804:F1...D2:B7E7 (talk) 21:02, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
It worked. Your edit [10] was the last to be tagged, and the page still says [[WP:Consistency|MOS:CONSISTENCY]] many edits later. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
So it did. I'm guessing it isn't happening here because you also linked the redirect target ... interesting. – 2804:F1...D2:B7E7 (talk) 21:41, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Talk:Redhead (bird) also links MOS:CONSISTENCY and was tagged when it was added.[11] I made two dummy edits without triggering the tag so it seems hard to guess when it will be tagged. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:21, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
That's true. I also noticed at ANI that it had started tagging every edit, but after the bot archived 5 sections (diff), only every other edit or so was tagged. In that edit the bot removes some :MOS links, which, coincidentally, were made :MOS because a bot thought they were accidental language links.
Seems to be some combination with other unknown factors. – 2804:F1...D2:B7E7 (talk) 01:47, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm guessing it's a bug in mw:Extension:Disambiguator, since it's what sets the disambiguator-link-added tag. jlwoodwa (talk) 00:42, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
The relevant function is onLinksUpdateComplete. jlwoodwa (talk) 00:49, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
(To be precise, I mean a bug either directly in that extension, or in its dependencies.) jlwoodwa (talk) 00:51, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Newspapers.com

I've not been able to log in to Newspapers.com since February because I have free account there linked to my paid Ancestry account. I was told it was very hard to maintain that, for very good reasons. I found it very difficult to edit articles because I depended on Newspapers.com for sources. Now I don't even see it as an option in the Library anymore. Have we totally given up on that? I see Ancestry in the library. Is there some way to access newspapers.com for articles that aren't obituaries? I hope I'm asking this in the right place. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 01:09, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Have you applied for access as instructed here? Nardog (talk) 02:31, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Module:Nihongo and Module:Lang

Hey there. It looks like Japanese sword is having a Lua error. I am guessing that this may have to do with recent changes to either Module:Lang or Module:Nihongo. I can't edit those anyway, but maybe someone here has the ability and/or the ability to test what is going here. Sumurai8 (talk) 15:34, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Yup, something is wrong with Module:Nihongo. Many Nintendo-related articles are affected. Anyone with technical knowledge able to fix this? QuicoleJR (talk) 15:54, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Update: Everything is working properly now. Thank you, Trappist the monk, for fixing the module. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I am still seeing this on mobile with Module:Lang. It seems to only affect articles after it was changed to langx. "Lua error in Module:Lang at line 1422: attempt to concatenate a nil value" Mellk (talk) 17:05, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
WP:NULLEDIT is your friend.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. I suspected it was something to do with the cache. Mellk (talk) 07:13, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

How can I edit an article in full screen, not a column with preview to the left

I want to have to click preview to preview and have the full edit field available. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 12:16, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Ignore, figured it out. Doug Weller talk 12:21, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

This tool does not work. Is there any analogue? Kaiyr (talk) 18:54, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Kaiyr: Do you mean that you couldn't reach the site? Or that there was a server error? It currently appears to be online. Polygnotus (talk) 13:36, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
Ah when I click "Do it!" it says Server(ServerError { code: 1054, message: "Unknown column 'lt0.lt__namespace' in 'where clause'", state: "42S22" }).
You should probably report that issue over at https://github.com/magnusmanske/petscan_rs/issues Polygnotus (talk) 13:37, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Enhanced editnotice loader

I worked on a module that would serve as an enhanced editnotice loader for Wikipedia. See testwiki:Module:Editnotice_load and Module:Editnotice load (which is an exact copy). Features include category editnotices, better group notices, and editnotices by page ID (which would reduce the need to move pages around).

I want to get further feedback on this loader before it inevitably gets implemented. Please check out the testwiki. It should be backwards compatible with the way we do things, but I would like checks for this first.

If this is to be implemented, there will need to be a couple of changes made, including to:

This would make the editnotice loader much more robust.

Immediately, in preparation for this, I would consider adding the following category editnotices templates:

{{BLP editintro}}

{{Disambig editintro}}

Anything else? Awesome Aasim 19:06, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Some documentation on how it works from a user's perspective would be helpful, in order to understand the context and how it would be used in practice, including how security restrictions are enforced. On a side note, I'm not sure that its deployment is "inevitable". isaacl (talk) 22:03, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
I have some testcases on testwiki. For best results, view when logged out and inspect the HTML when logged in.
testwiki:Taylor Swift should be a good example of me getting category editnotices working. testwiki:Protected title and testwiki:Protected title2 show the protection editnotice on both the create screen and on the "does not exist" screen when a title is protected from creation for other reasons.
testwiki:Special:EditPage/A should show the page notice from testwiki:Template:Editnotices/PageID/54370 (which is for A). You can also see I renamed previous "page notice"s to "title notice"s because the way page notices are bound to currently are actually to titles, not pages. The new "page notice" will remain bound to a specific page because it uses PageID. There will be no need to update the title notices for pages that exist. On the other hand, for pages that don't exist, the title notice will need to be kept up to date. Awesome Aasim 04:01, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
I can't tell from the article page how to use the feature: where the edit notice lives, how will access be limited, and so forth. Thus it's hard to evaluate the feature without knowing the maintenance cost. isaacl (talk) 09:58, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
The editnotices live in the same pseudo-space: Template:Editnotices/. See testwiki:Module:Editnotice load/config.
I also moved the editnotice links to a collapsible box because the number of creatable editnotices has gotten relatively high after adding category notices. Awesome Aasim 13:16, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
OK, I see there's now a link above the edit notice point to its location, so category-based notices are grouped under a "Category" subpage. What are the enhancements for the group-based notices? isaacl (talk) 18:33, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
There is less ambiguity in how they are handled. For example, on testwiki:Template:A/B/C/D/E, there are five different group editnotices that can be created. So if there is a page where it is desirable that the group Template:A/B needs one group notice, and Template:A/B/C needs another group notice, and Template:A/B/D needs another group notice, that can now be done; there will be one common group notice and two separate group notices for subpages. Awesome Aasim 19:21, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I would suggest to phase the rollout into stages, and creating a test plan to ensure nothing regressed. Editing this many interface pages and fully protected templates at once sounds like too much work for an admin to volunteer to. For instance, the specific category editnotices you mention can be left for later as we already have a decent system to handle those categories.
Immediately, in preparation for this, I would consider adding the following category editnotices templates this cannot be done immediately as they also need to be removed from Module:Mainspace editnotice, else they would show up twice when the rest of the changes are deployed. – SD0001 (talk) 08:01, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
I actually think this might be something that is better done all in one go. Removing the two category editnotices from Module:Mainspace editnotice should be kind of a no-brainer after the rollout. The way that the module currently does these checks, checking the unparsed wikitext, currently sucks.
Do you have an idea for a Scribunto test runner for Module:Editnotice load to ensure that everything works with demo editnotices? Awesome Aasim 16:53, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I haven't noticed any bugs or regressions yet, if someone could take a second look at my code maybe then we will be able to identify potential problems. Awesome Aasim 12:52, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I submitted an edit request. I think this is something that could be botted by an admin opening up 8 edit windows and then saving all of the proposed changes at once. I have done this before, it gets annoying when you get rate limited but it is not impossible. Awesome Aasim 20:05, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

how do I restore the copy-paste function to the edit window? (dvorak keyboard)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T62928

This changed just recently. I first noticed it on Wikt-en, and at the time I had no problem on WP-en, but now it's spread here. It occurs on some other language wikis, like Wikt-ja, but not on Wikt-vi. In the edit window of a WP article or talk page, if I hit control-x I get bold formatting, with control-c I get italic, and with control-v I get superscript. Presumably this has something to do with me using a dvorak keyboard (dvorak x and c correspond to qwerty b and i), but other commands are unaffected. E.g. control-z and -y are still 'undo' and 'redo', despite corresponding to the qwerty keys for t and /. That means that I can't use the keys with qwerty x c v printed on them for cut-copy-paste, because they continue to act as dvorak q j k and either quit the browser or take me to the URL. It doesn't affect normal typing in an edit window, only commands where the 'ctrl' key is used.

This does not happen when I 'respond' to a thread on a talk page, so that a new window opens: Then all keys act as dvorak, both here and on wikt. The skin also does not seem to be the issue. Here I use Monobook, on Wikt I use Vector 2022. I tried Vector legacy on Wikt and the behaviour was the same.

Can I do something with my css to override this behaviour? — kwami (talk) 00:29, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

The patch that broke it is reverted and going out on the next train on Thursday. phab:T62928 You can turn on syntax highlighting to work around it for now. Izno (talk) 00:47, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks!
Syntax highlighter is good fix in the meantime. — kwami (talk) 01:27, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Keyboard shortcuts broken for alternative keyboard layouts (macOS, Safari)

For the last couple days, when editing an article and press 'Command-V' to Paste, the text below is inserted instead:

<sup>Superscript text</sup>

When I 'Command-C' to Copy, double single quotes are wrapped around the selected text.

''selected text''

Strangely, when editing THIS PAGE the shortcuts are working fine. But If I got to edit an article or talk page in mainspace, they do the above.

NOTE: macOS, Safari. I type using the Dvorak keyboard layout. Dvorak's C is in the same location as QWERTY's I. The italics issue above leads me to believe the shortcuts have been (recently) hardcoded to the QWERTY locations rather than taking the actual key/letter typed.

Does anyone know what could be wrong or have a better venue to raise this?

PK-WIKI (talk) 16:49, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

See above. — xaosflux Talk 16:51, 15 October 2024 (UTC)


Unable to use the visual editor for a specific article

For some reason the visual editor is not working on this article. getting the message "sorry this element can only be edited in source mode for now".

Why might this be the case?

Is this normal or is there a problem that has to be fixed? i was told to try clearing my cache and fit that didn't work to ask here.BruceSchaff (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 20:33, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Should be fine now. Someone had added some bold that doesn't work in the way it was added. Izno (talk) 20:48, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Template:Wikipedia stats issue

The template seems to be having issues with "mos" as a parameter, possibly due to the MOS namespace or related changes. Could someone please take a look at it? In particular, it's used on Wikipedia:List of Wikipedias, and the issue is visible if you uncomment that row of the table. Thanks. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 00:55, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

It's indeed the MOS namespace which caused problems. I have modified {{Wikipedia stats}} to link the mos wiki as m:mos: which works via a redirect at meta.[12] It's a hack but it works so I have uncommented the mos row.[13] I don't know whether it's possible to make a wikilink which goes directly to the mos wiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:42, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
phab:T363538 included a proposal for a mos-x-deconflict: interwiki, but (judging by how that's a redlink) it doesn't currently exist. Special:Interwiki doesn't show any other prefixes for https://mos.wikipedia.org, so I think m:mos: is the only solution for now. jlwoodwa (talk) 01:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
That was the solution I originally went with (and coded up). The WMF decided to instead embrace the concept of a namespace and an interwiki having the same name, rather than working around it. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:04, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Part of that included adding parser functions to explicitly indicate you wanted the interwiki link, but that part hasn't been code reviewed yet. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:05, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! Daniel Quinlan (talk) 02:29, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Accounts with no visible creation date on their contribs page

When I visit the contributions page of a user, it shows their account's creation date at the top. But some, like Dennis Brown and Muboshgu, don't. Why? Avessa (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Because those users were created before user creation times were being logged. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:20, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
But your account was created seven months earlier than Muboshgu's (21 April 2005 vs. 22 November 2005), and yet the creation date is visible on your contribs page. Then there are also Bearcat (created on 3 October 2003), BD2412 (20 February 2005), Koavf (5 March 2005), etc, which all were created before Muboshgu's account too, and yet have their creation date visible. Avessa (talk) 15:23, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
Strange things sometimes occur with logins created before WP:SUL went live in May 2008. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:18, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
I think the "creation date" for early accounts is a later guess that was added to the database at some point (I remember that it was not there in the beginning; for me, the date given is the date of my first edit, which is probably correct). The list of users by user ID claims to be "by creation date" but that is clearly incorrect. —Kusma (talk) 16:52, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
@Kusma: well it is by creation date ... in terms of the current database, which was implemented in January 2002 with the Phase II software. The previous UseModWiki login system was quite different, as described at the Wikipedia FAQ on the Nostalgia Wikipedia. Graham87 (talk) 01:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
The sorting is by actual creation date, not by the date given as "creation date". —Kusma (talk) 08:12, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
The user_registration column wasn't added until MediaWiki version 1.6, which was released on April 5, 2006. There's a script that backfills the column with each user's first edit, but - as best as I've been able to reconstruct - it apparently hasn't been run on enwiki since at least August 24, 2006. Users who registered before 1.6's deployment but didn't edit until after the last time the update script was run still have empty registration times. —Cryptic 16:52, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Redlinked category

Resolved
 – Categories removed by intadmin, user informed. — xaosflux Talk 15:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Special:WantedCategories has, not for the first time, a redlinked category populated solely by a user's .js settings page. The category is Category:New Pages — but obviously .js pages aren't supposed to be categorized at all, and there'd be no call for "creating" that category to serve any other purpose. So the category needs to come off the page, but I don't have the necessary privileges to edit other people's .js pages, and the user is a brand-new editor who so far has only edited their own .js and .css pages with absolutely no edits to anything else.

So could somebody who does have the necessary privileges remove the category from the page? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 13:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

This is User:Coderreyansh/vector-2022.js and you should make a request at WP:IAN. If they don't know what to do, they should (i) insert one line at the very top: 
// <!--
and (ii) append one at the very end: 
// -->
This will not alter how the page is interpreted as javascript, but will hide all the Wikicode and so decategorise the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:42, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
 Done — xaosflux Talk 15:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

XTools seems to be down again

Here - on Firefox it says "The connection has timed out". Achmad Rachmani (talk) 10:00, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Working here. GrabUp - Talk 10:01, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Might have just been a temporary issue — is it working for you now? — TheresNoTime-WMF (talk • they/them) 10:07, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
@TheresNoTime-WMF: No, it's not working for me now. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 10:45, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
@Achmad Rachmani According to our uptime stats, the last outage was on September 17, so I think it may be an issue on your end. This is assuming you're talking about xtools: as a whole, and not statistics for a specific user/page. Sometimes queries time out when you look up stats for a very prolific user, but I don't think that is what you're referring to. — MusikAnimal talk 16:51, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Text fragments

Some links contain #:~:text= and then a quote from the article, e.g. here. Should we keep or remove those? Polygnotus (talk) 11:54, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure this came up a year or two back, but I can't find it. I can't even remember if it's a browser-specific thing or a website-specific thing, but it's to help you find the right place on the page when there are no handy anchors. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:46, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
It used to be Chrome-specific (introduced in 2020), but Safari and Firefox have added support for it recently too (in 2022 and just this month, respectively). [14] Matma Rex talk 15:29, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
URL fragment text directives are defined by a W3C draft. As noted by Matma Rex, it does seem to be supported by the newer versions of many browsers (though Safari lacks CSS styling support, except in a prelease version on the desktop). isaacl (talk) 15:38, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
I would be in favour of removing it enmasse regardless of it being a W3C specification. Sohom (talk) 21:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Why is usually a good idea ;). My personal opinion is that it adds little value to the URL, especially above and beyond a quote in the relevant citation template where actually necessary. And that way we have a permanent record locally rather than relying on text which might change externally. Izno (talk) 21:25, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
If we are going to remove these, should we also remove traditional URL fragments that can only target either an id= attribute, or the name= attribute of an <a> tag? I don't see the point: both are harmless, both aid in reaching the appropriate part of a web page, neither of them is connected with tracking. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:25, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Traditional URL fragments have an implicit stability that random text does not. Izno (talk) 22:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
My why align with that of Izno :) I don't see text fragments as being stable over longer periods of time unlike anchors. I'm also unsure if they can be technically considered to be leaking identifiable information (since you could potentially reverse engineer what a person was searching for by looking at the highlighted text?) Sohom (talk) 01:01, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Adding a target to support an URI fragment is an intentional act to define an addressable subordinate resource, so I agree that is a more stable reference. I can see situations where using a text fragment may be helpful (say, to the specific text in a versioned legal document). I think for many cases, though, the advantages of a concise URI are, on balance, a higher priority than a less stable targeted destination. isaacl (talk) 01:40, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Infinite JS errors?

I happened to disable pop-ups on a Wikipedia page, using some unintended key combination. I now get an infinite number of the following pop-up messages 

 Javascript Error

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Manishearth/orphantabs.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript at line 125: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'document')

Hmm... All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:40, 15 October 2024 (UTC).

You can turn off your personal scripts, that one is loading from User:Rich Farmbrough/monobook.js, just comment it out. — xaosflux Talk 16:57, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, that really wasn't my point. I know where the error is coming from, more or less, and it is not an issue for me as I only had one page in this odd state. However the situation where the gadget "Show an alert when you encounter JavaScript errors" is popping up perpetually is indicative of some underlying design issues. Whether they should be addressed is up to anyone who thinks it's worth doing and has the ability, desire and time. Feel free to discuss. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:47, 17 October 2024 (UTC).

I need an advice how to split rows/lines in a wiki-userbox

I made a userbox draft

This user tries to reduce Gender bias on Wikipedia.

,

but I want to put a linebreak between "reduce" and "Gender". Anyone knows how to do this? Walter Tau (talk) 17:31, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

{{line break}}? MM (Give me info.) (Victories) 17:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. It worked ! Walter Tau (talk) 17:37, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Very good. Enjoy your breaking of many lines. Thumbs up icon MM (Give me info.) (Victories) 17:38, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
even simpler, just put <br />. — xaosflux Talk 19:21, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
There's an advantage to avoiding HTML. I think {{Break}} is probably the canonical way to do this. It supports multiple breaks too. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 15:18, 17 October 2024 (UTC).
How about a non-breaking space? Johnuniq (talk) 22:10, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

i want to get all articles that have the si:සැකිල්ල:Monarchs of the Sinhala Kingdom's navbox in it fall into a specific category. how to do that? the category is ප්‍රවර්ගය:සිංහලේ රජවරු(sinhala kings). if possible can someone edit the code?

so when its done, it will be like: every page that has this template which include this navbox get automatically added to that category. it would be nice if the category entering option was as in "asbox" so we can enter respective category to respective navboxs in templates. or is there and easy way to do this without editing the modules? VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 22:00, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Answered at Wikipedia:Help desk#navbox help. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:37, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Problem with cite web

There appears to be a problem with {{cite web}} and related templates on some pages - see, for example, Beroidae, where all the references display "Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2083: attempt to index a boolean value." rather than the reference. The references are displayed correctly in preview mode, with no template errors shown in the editor. I'm using Firefox with the Monobook skin. Tevildo (talk) 22:25, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I WP:NULLEDITed the page and the error went away. No idea of the cause. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:35, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
This is usually caused when the Citation Style 1 module components used by the cite templates are updated and are out of sync for a few moments. Some pages are re-rendered and cached during that short time, and they can throw errors when new code tries to call older code and fails in some way. With so many millions of pages, it is inevitable that at least a few pages will be affected. Null-editing affected articles re-renders them with all of the updated module components. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:45, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers, I'll try that if I come across this issue again. Tevildo (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Lua errors

Please have a look at @DannySI's problem report in T377379, it looks like something to do with Module:Citation/CS1. Matma Rex talk 18:20, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Same as above. A null edit should fix the problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:34, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
The code that is emitting that error message was first added at the 23 March 2024 module-suite update. There was another update 17 August 2024. I do not recall seeing this error message before the 17 August update. It is possible that Editor Jonesey95 is correct. Still, I wonder because that particular bit of code does not rely on any other cs1|2 module. It should work so long as there is a MediaWiki connection between commons and en.wiki.
The code uses tabular data stored at commons (c:Data:CS1/Identifier limits.tab). The data in that table are supposed to be returned by mw.ext.data.get() in a Lua sequence of sequences. The error message suggests that the call to mw.ext.data.get() is returning a boolean value; could be true, could be false. Don't know; a boolean return is not described in any of the (very limited) documentation that I can find about the function. Does anyone here know? If a boolean is a proper return, what does it mean?
If this persists, I'm afeared that I will need to revert the code that fetches the data from commons. Disappointing that. I prefer updating that small data table when necessary rather than editing both the sandbox and live cs1|2 modules...
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:10, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk This function seems to be implemented here:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/mediawiki/extensions/JsonConfig/+/refs/heads/master/includes/JCLuaLibrary.php
line 18 onwards. It seems like it can return false if it fails to load the table content? 86.23.109.101 (talk) 20:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I suspect that you are correct. Alas, I don't speak .php but it seems that at line 45 an attempt is made to fetch the raw page content from the local cache. Failing that, an attempt is made to query the database. If that too fails, I think that $result is set to false which is the return value that Scributo is complaining about. But, clearly, in this case, the page (and therefore its content) exists so JCLuaLibrary::get() should never return false, right?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:28, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk The various JCSingleton functions are in this file if you want to do a bit more digging.
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/mediawiki/extensions/JsonConfig/+/refs/heads/master/includes/JCSingleton.php
I also can't write php but getcontent appears to try to get the stuff from local cache again, then if that fails parses the title and then tries to retrieve the content from the database, setting the content to false if parsing the title fails?
I do see a comment in the parsetitle function about things being null in "wierd cases" followed by variables being set to false, so there might be some edge cases where the table data fails to show up even though the table exists? Either way it seems that there is some undocumented behaviour in that false is a valid output from mw.ext.data.get(), seemingly in the event of an error.
As far as fixing this goes I think the citation module would need to check if the result of mw.ext.data.get() is false and if so so just skip doing the bound checks? 86.23.109.101 (talk) 00:04, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Phab:T229742, reported on the Russian wikipedia, might be related? 86.23.109.101 (talk) 00:47, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Is this not just a server side connection issue though? English and Russian Wikipedia are not in the same server cluster as Wikimedia Commons. Snævar (talk) 15:41, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
just a server side connection issue? (emphasis added) I would think that that is not something trivial. If the problem is a connection issue, wouldn't we be seeing some sort of failure when attempting to fetch images from commons?
In this case, JCLuaLibrary::get() apparently knows that the tabular data page exists – try this in the Debug console:
=mw.ext.data.get ("CS1/Identifier limits.tab") → table
=mw.ext.data.get ("CS1/Identifier limits.ta") → Lua error: bad argument #1 to "get" (not a valid title).
I have not seen any of those error messages and, so far as I know, none have been reported. This suggests to me that there is something other than a connection issue that is causing =mw.ext.data.get() to return false.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:33, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
I mean an temporary connecting issue, as the cache of the article has expired, the pages are fetched again and just happen to stumble on an temp connection issue, which is then fixed minutes later, but by then it is too late. That is also why an purge/null edit works, because minutes or hours have allready passed and the connection is fine by that point. Checking the connection now would not tell me anything. I think only a WMF dev can be absolutely sure, users do not have the tools to check this.
I do not think thumbnails are a good comparision. The thumbnails are stored in Swift and chaching data centers (see wikitech:Media storage). The caching data center has the most popular files by usage in each region. As for where the caching data centers are, there are two in europe, one in asia, one in south america and one in the usa (assuming the main servers do not have one). Swift has its own servers and even English wikipedia files are there too. I do not think Swift is within the Wikimedia Commons cluster, which is s4 (https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=dblists/s4.dblist). English wikipedia is on s1 (https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=dblists/s1.dblist), on it's own, due to it's sheer size. Russian wikipedia is on s6 (https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=dblists/s6.dblist). I do not know how the data namespace on Wikimedia commons is stored, but I would assume it would be in s4. Snævar (talk) 05:20, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

If I search for "Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2083" 70 results are returned. If I purge the first entry and update the search there are 57 results. If I purge the first entry and update the search it goes back to 70 results, and purging and refreshing makes it 57 again. I can just keep repeating this, the same articles appear at the top of the search results (different articles for each set of search results). Without performing a purge or dummy edit the results stay the same.
The entries also don't update, very few of the entries actually had the error message and those were corrected by purging. This doesn't change the result. I thought this was just the search being slow to update, but this issue has been reported a couple of times previously at Help talk:Citation Style 1. So I've been searching and purging any I find. Some of the entries in the search haven't had this error in weeks. I don't know if this relates to the 2083 error, or a separate issue with search but it's repeatable and weird. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:09, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Search says it found 6 pages but only shows 5?

this search says it is displaying "Results 1 – 6 of 6" but is actually only showing 5 results: 

User:RoySmith/sandbox/test/foo/f2
f2...
2 bytes (1 word) - 17:11, 17 October 2024

User:RoySmith/sandbox/test/foo/f3
f3...
2 bytes (1 word) - 17:12, 17 October 2024

User:RoySmith/sandbox/xxx
foo...
3 bytes (1 word) - 22:10, 8 May 2024

User:RoySmith/sandbox/test/bar/b1
b1...
2 bytes (1 word) - 17:11, 17 October 2024

User:RoySmith/sandbox/test/foo/f1
f1...
2 bytes (1 word) - 17:12, 17 October 2024

RoySmith (talk) 17:34, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

WTF!? I just re-ran the search and now it's saying "Results 1 – 5 of 5". Is there some bizarre caching going on? RoySmith (talk) 17:37, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
May get confused by redirects, there are actually 7 subpages in all, with some being redirects. Special:PrefixIndex/User:RoySmith/sandbox/ is more reliable for this sort of query. — xaosflux Talk 18:19, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Feel free to open a bug on the search results off-by-one problem, your screen shot may help. — xaosflux Talk 18:27, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
T377501 RoySmith (talk) 18:59, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
This isn't uncommon. Search works by fragmenting itself over multiple nodes (and a result can be on multiple of those nodes), and then pulling in the results of those multiple nodes. It also works on a long delay in terms of updating. These features make it fast (faster then doing the same search on the main database) and it is why search uses a separate database, but they also can cause minor inconsistencies like these for fragments of time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Keep getting logged out

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T372702

Over the past few weeks I've been occasionally getting logged out unexpectedly, despite ticking the "remember me" option every time. Most recently it's happened twice in the past ~24 hours. It always happens when I've been idle for a while, but only on the order of hours not days. I'm not aware that I've changed any of my settings recently. Thryduulf (talk) 20:15, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Me too. I believe there is a phab ticket covering this issue. Let me go find it real quick NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 20:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
I've had the same issue for a week or so, I just rather lazily assumed it would get fixed at some point. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:08, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
Probably the same problem as T372702. Matma Rex talk 16:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
I don't know if this sequence of actions has a trigger in it.
  1. explicitly log out on one machine (this invalidates all login cookies on all devices)
  2. log in to en.wp on a different device, selecting "Keep me logged in (for up to one year)". I now have a fresh new login cookie
  3. Microsoft informs me that updates require installation, so I finish what I am doing ...
  4. ... close Firefox, go for "Start"→"Power"→"Update and restart", wait an age. Make coffee. Clear a pile of snailmail. Open Firefox ...
  5. ... and back to my watchlist. One edit adds an image to an article, which I am suspicious about, so:
  6. visit Commons. It says I am not logged in and should reload the page. In my experience, this never works, but following a different commons link does; so I go to the page history. I am now shown as logged in.
  7. Still on Commons, I follow a link to en.wp - I am not logged in
  8. Return to commons, visit another page, still logged in
  9. go to Meta - I am logged in there
  10. try en.wp again - not logged in
Why might en.wp stop recognising my login cookie when commons and meta are perfectly happy with it? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:17, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Not getting automatically logged in on some wikis sounds like some sort of anti-tracking protection in your browser. Commons and Meta share the same parent domain with login.wikimedia.org where the central session cookie is stored so browser restrictions on cross-wiki cookie access are more relaxed.
Does clicking on the login link at the top of the page on enwiki help? That should work in Firefox. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
@Tgr (WMF): I think you missed something - my proper login (asking me to enter name and password) was on English Wikipedia. When I went to Commons and logged in there, I became logged out on Wikipedia, but remained logged in on Commons. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:16, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Yeah the logged out part is the bug Matma Rex linked. I'm just saying Commons and Meta login being more "sticky" on some browsers is expected - your enwiki session somehow went missing, your central session on login.wikimedia.org remained, and then other wikimedia.org wikis can recover the session from there but wikis on other domains can't. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
OK it's not random but it is replicable:
  1. On en.wp, log in (full login using Special:UserLogin, with Username/Password)
  2. Click this link: commons: - observe that you are logged in
  3. Use the browser's "back" button to return to en.wp
  4. Press F5 to reload the page - observe that you are not logged in
  5. Click this link: commons: - observe that you are still logged in at Commons
This also causes loss of session data and more than one lost edit. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:54, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
@Redrose64 I cannot reproduce this behavior. RoySmith (talk) 00:49, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
@Redrose64 if you are able to reproduce it, would you mind doing it with the WikimediaDebug extension enabled and the "Verbose log" option checked? Tgr (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Tgr, but this is now working as expected - not sure when it began behaving again, yesterday, maybe? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:39, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure how this could be connected, but I've noticed recently (a few weeks?) that sometimes when I go back to my watchlist after looking at/editing a linked page, I get an earlier version of the watchlist. I've just assumed it has something to do with caching, as clearing the cache brings up the most recent version of the watchlist. Donald Albury 19:50, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Hindustan Times

HT sources can no longer be added automatically via ref gadgets like ProveIt and VisualEditor, only manually. Can't this be fixed, the way other websites like The Times of India were? Kailash29792 (talk) 05:20, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I have been getting the same problem with the HT sources for a few months now, although every other sources seem to work fine. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 12:12, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Add buttons to Reply Tool

How can I add buttons to the Reply Tool (part of DiscussionTools)? Polygnotus (talk) 17:38, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus The reply tool is not designed to be easily customizable by the end user. If you wish to request a new feature for everyone, you can do so at mw:Extension talk:DiscussionTools. If you're trying to write your own WP:USERSCRIPT to modify the reply tool, you'd need to do something like $('.oo-ui-toolbar-tools:not(.oo-ui-toolbar-after)').append(CODE_FOR_YOUR_NEW_BUTTON) . --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:42, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
@Ahecht: Thank you. I would've written my own userscript but they use some kinda weird dummy textarea while the real thing is actually a bunch of divs. Terribly confusing for a techdinosaur like myself. I would have to dive in the code to figure out a way to add my own buttons. I have posted a request on mediawiki.org. Polygnotus (talk) 17:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Quite complicated. 
if (mw.config.get('wgDiscussionToolsFeaturesEnabled')) {
	mw.loader.using('ext.discussionTools.ReplyWidget', () => {
		ve.ui.HelloWorldCommand = function VeUiHelloWorldCommand() {
			ve.ui.HelloWorldCommand.super.call(this, 'helloWorld');
		};
		OO.inheritClass(ve.ui.HelloWorldCommand, ve.ui.Command);
		ve.ui.HelloWorldCommand.prototype.execute = () => {
			alert('Hello world!');
			return true;
		};
		ve.ui.commandRegistry.register(new ve.ui.HelloWorldCommand());
		ve.ui.HelloWorldTool = function VeUiHelloWorldTool() {
			ve.ui.HelloWorldTool.super.apply(this, arguments);
		};
		OO.inheritClass(ve.ui.HelloWorldTool, ve.ui.Tool);
		ve.ui.HelloWorldTool.static.name = 'helloWorld';
		ve.ui.HelloWorldTool.static.icon = 'help';
		ve.ui.HelloWorldTool.static.title = 'Hello world';
		ve.ui.HelloWorldTool.static.commandName = 'helloWorld';
		ve.ui.toolFactory.register(ve.ui.HelloWorldTool);
		mw.loader.moduleRegistry['ext.discussionTools.ReplyWidget'].packageExports['dt-ve/CommentTarget.js'].static.toolbarGroups[3].include.push('helloWorld');
	});
}
Based off of mw:VisualEditor/Gadgets. Nardog (talk) 13:58, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Getting different fonts into wikipedia

inside the english wikipedia we are able to use several other types of fonts for userpage editings. in the si:wikipedia.org(sinhala wikipedia project) we only have one default font. is there someone who can make it so we can use other few famous free licensed sinhala fonts inside sinhala wikipedia?

i did ask the one and only most active admin in that project here, he says he dont have the technical knowledge for this, hence im seeking help here.

below are some free licensed sinhala fonts:

VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 13:19, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

The proper way is to ask on phabricator for those fonts to be added to "Universial Language Selector". Also, try to use the gear icon next to the "languages" heading in the left sidebar on old vector. If you are on new vector, then it is under languages next to the page title and then the gear icon. Sometimes people ask for fonts that are present, they might just not be the default font. Snævar (talk) 17:39, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Is there evidence suggesting Template:no spam works?

This has been something that has been bugging me for a while. I know that it is possible to match emails with just a bit of regex, namely (.*)?@(.*)?(\ |$), but is escaping with nospam actually reducing spam? My concern is really with OCR because although the literal character @ is escaped, it only takes a bit of OCR, which is at this point much, much better than a human, in order to get all the emails and continue sending that same spam.

I wonder if maybe the best solution for this would be to have another CAPTCHA before a person is able to view an email or all the emails on the page. This is done on YouTube and more. This could be done for all mailto: links, etc. Awesome Aasim 18:45, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

My concern is really with OCR because although the literal character @ is escaped, it only takes a bit of OCR
would be to have another CAPTCHA
Did you think this one through? Izno (talk) 18:54, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
I am not thinking there should be one of those text CAPTCHAs. There are much smarter ones like GeeTest and ReCaptcha and etc. The reason we do not use one of these is that we are really, really concerned about privacy.
The text CAPTCHA was defeated over a decade ago, thanks to OCR. The current trend in CAPTCHAs I am seeing are those where one clicks on sliders. We unfortunately will have to collect more data to tell if someone isn't a human.
For example, YouTube's CAPTCHA to view a business email address on a channel is the standard "I'm not a robot" CAPTCHA.
If we do not want to go the CAPTCHA rabbit hole, we can rate limit. Rate limiting effectively stops spam, and we can go a step further by preventing people from viewing email addresses when using an open proxy or Tor. Awesome Aasim 21:25, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
It probably works at least some of the time. I doubt that it's cost-effective to even parse HTML correctly to harvest email addresses, much less render the whole page and run OCR on it. Here's an article by someone who tried a few simple techniques and found that some of them indeed work: https://spencermortensen.com/articles/email-obfuscation/ (although he didn't try the specific thing this template does). It'd be easy enough to test it yourself, if you don't mind waiting a few months for results: just create two unique email addresses and post them somewhere, one with this template's obfuscation, one without; then wait for the spam to arrive (or not). Matma Rex talk 19:10, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Another thing that could be tried is replacing each of the characters with their Unicode/ASCII values. It probably would make it even more confusing, while still allowing linked email addresses and the like. Awesome Aasim 20:54, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
An email link needs the literal email to be present in the link, so it can be passed to the email client. It can be obscured in the HTML source by rendering it with Javascript, but it's still going to be in the resulting page, and with the widespread prevelance of dynamic web pages nowadays, it's common for web crawlers to process retrieved pages after running any Javascript code on them. isaacl (talk) 22:24, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
As for OCR, there is a way to run browsers in headless mode; in other words, render the page without showing anything to the user. There are utilities that also can take scrolling screenshots of pages. With OCR so ubiquitous I doubt it wouldn't be hard to set up something that reads webpages like that. Awesome Aasim 20:56, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure why you're referring to headless browsers? Anyone harvesting email links isn't likely to be using a browser per se. (What might help deter some harvesters is including some obscured text on every page that is designed to produce a huge amount of back-tracking in typical email regexes, and perhaps causing memory overflow... except that it would confound uses by good-faith users, too.) Implementing an effective CAPTCHA system that is accessible and preserves user privacy is a challenge that the WMF has not resolved for many years now (see Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 56 § Captchas for some discussion). isaacl (talk) 21:56, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
I particularly liked T354234 on that front. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:01, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Is it something that the WMF alone could solve? We can just have a CAPTCHA system that is FOSS and that can be hosted on Wikimedia be done with it. Or choose one of the proprietary options that may or may not be the best (like GeeTest or reCAPTCHA or uCAPTCHA or etc.), although they technically collect more data, and be done. Maxmind (which is being used for IP information) is proprietary, as are all the other WHOIS sites. Don't those sites and "whatsmybrowser" and etc. collect browsing data? Even Wikipedia has some tracking used by the WMF.
The fundamental problem with data and privacy is a CAPTCHA has two opposing forces: On one side you need to collect as much data as possible to assess whether one is a human or not. On the other side you do not want to store that data indefinitely. There is not a good easy way to balance this. Awesome Aasim 23:06, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
If you have a good free, open source implementation in mind, please do go to the appropriate Phabricator ticket mentioned in the other thread and let the WMF know about it. Yes, the tension between keeping personal data private and using it as an identity check is why expanding the use of CAPTCHA may not be the best approach. isaacl (talk) 23:49, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Remember of course the principle that spam only works on the gullible, and those using techniques to hide their email address from spammers are likely to be the least gullible, so there's is surprisingly little incentive to circumvent such techniques. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:01, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Does the "gullible" include "those who naively think replacing characters with images to try to deter spam"?
BTW I actually think that a lot of the spammers have moved onto something else like impersonating Amazon or Google or Microsoft or whatever to do a phishing attack. I think they get these emails from actual data breaches, not just from random parts of the web. For phone numbers those are consecutive, so it isn't too hard to send spam via text. Nonetheless, we can all fall for phishing attacks. Where they somehow get email addresses is anyone's guess. Awesome Aasim 23:11, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Spammers don't generally use OCR because it adds processing time and cost. They get plenty of addresses to spam with simple web crawling. Captcha systems are either not accessible (for the blind for example), or they contribute to commercial AI-training (reCAPTCHA, others) that a free encyclopedia should not be involved with. And spammers have no problem getting captcha solutions. Many 'free' sites that show a captcha are really forwarding queries for a spammer who will use the solution on their real target. MrOllie (talk) 23:17, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Images looping

When I'm viewing images with the mediaviewer in any article, I often navigate to the next image using the arrows. And when I get to the end, there are no more arrows. This makes sense. But for the past few days, the images have been looping, which is especially confusing when there's only one image. How can this be fixed? Thanks, Cremastra — talk — c 19:55, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, looping with only one image would be confusing. Fixing it probably requires filing a task on Phabricator. Izno (talk) 20:09, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Please provide a link to the page you are seeing this problem on. — xaosflux Talk 20:28, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
As I said, it's every page. So try Thomas Cooke (actor) or Scolopendra alcyona. Cremastra — talk — c 20:39, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
A loop was requested at phab:T77877 with code by Simon04. It was deployed here yesterday. I don't know whether he considered it would give a "self-loop" when there is only one image like Scolopendra alcyona. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:36, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Is there a way to disable it for myself? I find it somewhat annoying to be flicking through a picture gallery and thinking there's more and then ending up back at the start. It's confusing and disorienting, as was pointed out on the phab ticket. Cremastra — talk — c 21:44, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
No, it cannot be disabled for yourself (at least non trivially). I have left a comment on the ticket. Izno (talk) 22:02, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
On some websites with photo loops, it shows "1 of 6", etc. somewhere on the screen (top right on IMDb), so you know how far through you are, and if you have cycled to the start. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:23, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Jdlrobson has replied on the ticket that they intend to add such numbering at the top right and will add CSS classes so users can disable the behaviour.  —  Jts1882 | talk  07:15, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I recently embedded https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data:Navajo_Nation.map into Navajo Nation by doing this:

image_map = {{maplink-road|from=Navajo Nation.map}}

The map was successfully embedded, however, the "fill" color (eg. data.features.0.properties.fill) is being ignored. At least in the embedded version. When I click on the map in the article the expanded map shows the filled color. So why doesn't the embedded map show the "fill" color and what can I do to fix that? TerraFrost (talk) 22:43, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Linkclassifier seems to be forcing page refresh

I'm not sure what is going on. I've only noticed this since yesterday (Oct 18). I have installed User:Anomie/linkclassifier from long time back. The code I use is updated to place the link in the sidebar/toolbox. When I click that link on any page, it appears to force the page to reload and does not highlight any of the links as it used to. I've tried using the current instructions for loading, but with no difference. I use Vector 2022 skin and I also checked in monobook; the reload still happens there, although it looks like at least some of the links get highlighted. Any help would be appreciated. older ≠ wiser 15:29, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

@Bkonrad: Well, have you asked Anomie (talk · contribs) directly? Their script may be old, but Anomie is still around (as of yesterday), so should be able to offer advice. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
I made some changes yesterday, but nothing that should have forced a page refresh... Ah, I had a typo. Sorry. Should be fixed now (you may need to WP:Bypass your cache). Anomie⚔ 16:27, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. All looks good now. I asked here first since my js has blend of things I picked up from others here. older ≠ wiser 23:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I dislike the visual changes to Mobile Wikipedia

I havent used the community pool before so Im sorry if this isnt in the right village. mobile wikipedia starting today as for some reason started auto directing me to en.m.wikipedia.org instead of the regular en.wikipedia.org. even if i directly remove the ".m" or "m.", it will just autodirect to it again. I really hate it, and find it unbearable to use and love the regular english language wikipedia much more. I dont know what is causing this problem. I havent seen anyone discussing this on either the wikipedia subreddit (where usually any updates are discussed) or on Wikipedia:News. I greatly appreciate any help with this, thank you! 92.236.211.53 (talk) 13:55, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Use the "Desktop" link at the bottom of mobile pages to request the desktop version. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:00, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for your quick response! I already tried this and it unfortunately results in it providing the literal desktop version of the website, resulting in large amounts of negative space and awkward text placement next to images due to website trying to work for the horizontal mobile. the site worked perfectly for mobile prior. is this happening on your phone too? 92.236.211.53 (talk) 14:07, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
im typing from desktop as i also learned today that my phone's ip (this same ip) was caught up in a rangeblock to block a specific user(but is now resolved?). i thought just now that this might be whats causing this but i just made account on mobile and it still autodirects to en.m.wikipedia. i have no idea what to do 92.236.211.53 (talk) 14:28, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Device name:Pixel 6a
Model:Pixel 6a
Android version:12
I wish this information perhaps helps in finding out how to reverse this. I sent this from my mobile. 92.236.211.53 (talk) 16:48, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
The behavior you're experiencing is how it has always worked. The "workaround" Primehunter provided is working how it has always worked. There isn't a way to "fix it". The closest thing you can do is have an account, change the account's skin preference, and then use the "use desktop" link when you are logged in and end up on the mobile website. Perhaps this is sufficient for you. Izno (talk) 18:31, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
I went back through screenshots I took and saw that you and Primehunter were right, it has always been "en.m.wikipedia". I think there's been an update to mobile Wikipedia's base, light colour scheme that caused the add-on I was using, darkreader to render it differently.
I do notice that the text on tables is larger, and colours are in my opinion not working well together either in the official dark mode or using my add-on on light mode.
Current, disliked Wikipedia (lightmode+darkreader) from today: https://imgur.com/a/wnNflgF
Correct Wikipedia, just darkmode with no add-ons, also today:https://imgur.com/a/4xdBsow
Previous mobile Wikipedia colour scheme (lightmode+darkreader), from 28th of April: https://imgur.com/a/up24a8G
Is there anyway to go back to how it was previously because I really do prefer how it was literally just yesterday? I'm sincerely sorry for the misunderstandings 92.236.211.53 (talk) 19:33, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
What specifically do you dislike about the "current" version? Izno (talk) 00:09, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
There is a higher contrast between the letters and the dark background, the purple that lists clicked-on links is a lighter purple so you have to strain your eyes more to discern it, the text on tables is larger than it needs to be while the text on the rest of the articles is currently still at their previous very good and readable size (shown in the imgur comparison linked above), and I dont get how that happened.
I dont know how else to describe it, but it looks like there is a white or blue filter over the articles that makes my eyes hurt. I can make another imgur comparison if that would help explain what im reffering to (just two image links this time tho). 92.236.211.53 (talk) 15:35, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
If you create an account or add ?useskin=timeless, then the desktop version is more mobile friendly a bit. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 07:29, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
Ive made an account and it hasn't reverted the UI to how it previously was sorry.
?useskin=timeless is working very well thank you. It's a hassle to paste it to the URL for each new article I click on since it resets to the awful default on every new link or page loaded or when the editl is opened. Is there anyway to make it the default, since it will also be bad for when I'm reading with mobile data, having to load the site twice. Thank you very much regardless! 92.236.211.53 (talk) 20:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes. You can make it the default by creating an account, logging in with it, then going to your Preferences, and under "Appearance" select the Timeless skin, then Save. But that's what Izno told you five days ago. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 21:03, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Sorry for the late reply. I've logged into this account and and selected timeless in appearance but despite that it's still not automatically going through! Also. I apologize to inzo, I don't think I understood what they are saying then. AssanEcho (talk) 20:37, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
Sorry for the very late reply, about auto directing me to en.m.wikipedia.org instead of the regular en.wikipedia.org: It might've occurred due to a recent update to chrome and other chromium browsers. After this update, browser will always try to give you the mobile view, only way avoid it is to turn on the "desktop view by default" option in the browser settings. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 12:03, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
its perfectly fine, The main issue now is me trying to find a way to get timeless skin to be the default on mobile as it still autodefaults to the standard, large text on tables and brightercontrast that i dislike. i used firefox on my mobile device as the default and primary browser. thank you very much for the help regardless! 92.236.211.53 (talk) 17:46, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
You can make Wikipedia always give you the Desktop view via User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/unmobilePlus.js. Some skins (for example Monobook with "responsive mode" enabled) are actually more suitable for use on my phone than the official "mobile" version. —Kusma (talk) 19:40, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
This script doesn't work on chromium mobile browsers with mobile view (at leasts not anymore), just tried it. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 09:57, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Is there a global way to display a logo based on Wikidata information? Should there be? Can it be made dark mode aware?

Sorry if this sounds like a strange or even stupid question, but please read to the end if it doesn't make sense, I promise you it does.

  • Wikipedia added dark mode WP:DARK recently.
  • I can access Wikidata via e.g. {{Infobox company| homepage = {{Official URL}}}}. This is nice and it saves time.
  • There doesn't appear to be a way to access Wikidata's logo image (P154) property[α] in an Infobox template in a similar named fashion.
    • I know {{Infobox company}} will "fall back" to P154 if it's defined
    • Other infoboxes like {{infobox hospital}} don't seem to be able to do the same thing.
    • I might be a dummy that just hasn't found that yet, but I don't think I've seen any examples in the wild like I have for {{Official URL}}
  • If there is and I just haven't been able to find it, is Wikipedia's dark mode smart enough to check for the for color scheme (P8798) property?
    • The only two values are dark-on-light color scheme and light-on-dark color scheme
    • i.e. P8798 is basically designed for this already

Being able to pull something like {{logo image}} without needing each infobox to implement it directly might be useful, and having it adapt to users' dark mode preferences would be pretty cool. I'm not entirely sure if there's even a way for MediaWiki to "check" if a user is using Dark Mode and "reply" with some kind of variable that could be used here.

Reading about Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia got me thinking about far simpler things that might already be common elsewhere online but not implemented here yet. Checking if a user's browser reports "preferring dark mode" is becoming more ubiquitous.

⚠ Disclaimer ⚠

I still use Vector legacy (2010) with Dark Reader because I didn't like the sidebars on the redesign

Just to make sure I wasn't being extra stupid,[β] I tested with Vector (2022), and it looks like some pages try and account for it. For example, Apple Inc.'s logo is black, so an editor used [[File:Apple logo black.svg|frameless|upright=0.4|class=skin-invert]] in their infobox - emphasis on class=skin-invert - but that really only works with Vector (2022)'s dark mode. Dark Reader doesn't pick up on it, and I imagine that one Chromium about:flags option to force dark mode everywhere doesn't either.

Footnotes

  1. ^ As in quickly via a named template like {{Official URL}}.
    The following code isn't exactly easy for a layman to parse:
    {{#invoke:InfoboxImage |InfoboxImage |image={{#ifeq:{{lc:{{{embed}}}}} | yes | {{{logo|{{{company_logo|}}}}}} |{{#invoke:WikidataIB |getValue |rank=best |P154 |name=logo |qid={{{qid|}}} |fetchwikidata={{{fetchwikidata|ALL}}} |suppressfields={{{suppressfields|}}} |onlysourced=no |noicon=yes |maxvals=1 |{{{logo|{{{company_logo|}}}}}} }} }} |size={{{logo_size|}}} |sizedefault=frameless |upright={{{logo_upright|1}}} |alt={{{logo_alt|{{{alt|}}}}}} }}

    and that code is specific to (and pasted directly from) {{infobox company}}

  2. ^ Wikipedia:Things that should not be surprising
    Miscellaneous - 2. The MediaWiki software can be fucking weird sometimes. 8. Wikipedia exists and is currently working (otherwise how are you here?)
    And finally - 1. A page documenting obvious facts exists somewhere. 2. People will actually look up and read a page documenting obvious facts, just like you are right now.

-αβοοδ (talk) 19:35, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Middot

OK, this is something that may be an issue that needs looking into (probably not by me) or it may not be important.

When I look at the source code of, for example Talk:Interpunct, using Chrome, and try to validate it at Free Formatter it finds invalid characters such as b7 (interpunct) - despite the fact that HTML clearly says <meta charset="UTF-8">. It could of course be Chrome's fault or Windows not letting me cut and paste UTF8, but both seem unlikely. Are we putting out illegal UTF8? All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:16, 18 October 2024 (UTC).

We're not, that validator's output is incorrect. Matma Rex talk 00:30, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

A smaller example: 

<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><meta charset="UTF-8"><title>a</title>
<body>
<div>This character '·' is valid</div>
</body></HTML>

Seems correct... still errors in the formatter, even when uploaded as a file with utf-8 encoding. Definitely a tool problem. – 2804:F1...ED:5881 (talk) 20:50, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Using a tilde inside <math></math>

I have a problem rendering a tilde inside a <math></math> tag:

Unsatisfactory !
Source code Result
<math>x</math> ~ <math>y</math> ~
<math>x ~ y</math>
<math>x \tilde y</math>
<math>x \tilde \ y</math>

The result should be as in the first line, but without breaking the code into two parts. Can that be done? AstroOgier (talk) 15:32, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

LaTeX uses \sim for "squiggly lines" that aren't diacritics. Like so: . jlwoodwa (talk) 15:41, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

No deletion log entry for office actions?

Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation has been blanked and office-protected. Its history is no longer visible, but I can't find any logs relating to the history's removal. How is this possible? Even oversighting generates a log entry. jlwoodwa (talk) 15:38, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Never mind, I misremembered. As explained in Wikipedia:Oversight § Logging, oversighting does generate a log entry – but in Special:Log/suppress, which normal editors cannot view. jlwoodwa (talk) 16:00, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Oversighting generates a log entry that is visible only to oversighters, everyone else sees nothing. See note 9 for item 5 of Wikipedia:Oversight#Operation on how deleting a page with a 'Suppress all edits' option makes the deletion log show at Special:Log/suppress (oversight log) instead. That's probably what they did. 2804:F1...EE:EFBD (talk) 16:00, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Missing tags for use in <math></math>

I am writing articles on astronomical subjects on Danish Wikipedia and am missing the possibility of inserting proper symbols representing degrees (°), arc minutes (′) and arc seconds (″) inside <nowiki><math></math></nowiki> (outside is no problem as you can see).

Unsatisfactory !
Source code Result
<math>\delta</math> = <math>-</math>67° 12′ 34.07″ = 67° 12′ 34.07″
<math>\delta = -67^\circ 12' 34.07''</math>
<math>\delta = -67</math>° <math>12</math>′ <math>34.07</math>″ ° ′ ″

The middle one comes closest by using a single <math></math> tag, but uses ^\circ as a workaround.

It would be proper to have tags \degree, \minute and \second for this purpose. Can that be fixed somehow, where should one apply? AstroOgier (talk) 15:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

@AstroOgier This would be raised at mw:Extension talk:Math or in a feature request at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/102/?projects=Math --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:34, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-43

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

Weekly highlight

  • The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.
iOS Wikipedia App's profile menu and contents

Updates for editors

  • Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
  • Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
  • View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the South Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Obolo, Iban and Tai Nüa Wikipedia languages were created last week. [15][16][17][18][19]
  • It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.

Updates for technical contributors

  • Advanced item Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new {{#timef:…}} parser function. For example, {{#timef:now|date|en}} will show as "26 December 2024". Previously, {{#time:…}} could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation. #timef (or #timefl for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [20][21]
  • Advanced item Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using {{USERLANGUAGE}} instead of using {{int:lang}}. [22]
  • The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [23]

In depth

  • The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
  • The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.

Meetings and events

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:49, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

So... why is this page suddenly squeezed into the header?

Checked previous revisions and it happens there too. Also can't click reply, the script gets confused. This is not happening with any of the other village pumps, is it something from the updates above(tech news)?
In case you don't see it, for me the div with id "villagepumpfaq", which is added manually in this page, is consuming the entire page. – 2804:F1...96:C2CF (talk) 23:21, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Fixed. Izno (talk) 23:31, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Ah, it was vandalism... of course it was (not even the first time). I went looking up the complete wrong tree thinking it was a template change, should have read Template:FAQ more carefully (or I guess just noticed there is a 'view' and an 'edit' button). Thank you for fixing it. – 2804:F1...96:C2CF (talk) 00:02, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

How to temporarily turn off a style?

At IUCN Red List endangered species (Animalia), most of the list text is in italics using {{columns-list|style=font-style:italic; as they are scientific names, but some text should not be, "(Kootenai River subpopulation)" for example. How do I change that back to roman text without messing up the existing pattern? Thank you.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:24, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Use {{noitalic}}, like this. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:31, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Maybe on another day I'd have figured that out, but for today I appreciate you pointing out the obvious. Thanks. SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:53, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
No problem. We're all here to help each other. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:10, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Is user_touched a thing?

According to mw:Manual:User_table#user_touched, there's a user.user_touched, but as far as I can tell, it's always NULL. What's the actual status of this field? RoySmith (talk) 22:37, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

The manual says it's the last time the user logged in. That's private data. Fields like this are redacted from the Toolforge replicas, so they appear null. – SD0001 (talk) 22:57, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
OK, that makes sense. Is there a list somewhere of redacted fields? It would be really nice if was visible in the "Database tables" menu of Quarry :-) RoySmith (talk) 23:01, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
@RoySmith Here's the code that controls what gets copied to the toolforge replicas:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/puppet/+/9e7303f945a7f665a50d6d745f40092a370c096c/modules/role/templates/labsdb/maintain-views.yaml
So for the user table:

user:
source: user
view: >
select user_id, user_name, user_real_name, NULL as user_password, NULL as user_newpassword,
NULL as user_email, NULL as user_options, NULL as user_touched, NULL as user_token,
NULL as user_email_authenticated, NULL as user_email_token, NULL as user_email_token_expires,
user_registration, NULL as user_newpass_time, user_editcount, NULL as user_password_expires

86.23.109.101 (talk) 23:38, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
We redact user_touched but not user_real_name??? RoySmith (talk) 23:45, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
If I'm understanding mw:Manual:$wgDefaultUserOptions correctly, it's an optional field for users to configure (and one that seems to be disabled on English Wikipedia), to be displayed in place of their user name, so by design it's intended to be known openly (and could be just another alias). isaacl (talk) 01:26, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
It is not possible to set user_real_name on Wikimedia wikis, so there is no need to redact it. It is disabled as to not encourage people to disclose more information than needed. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 02:12, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
It used to be the last time the user logged in. I'm pretty sure that is no longer true. I think now it is last time you changed your preferences. Bawolff (talk) 15:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Internet Archive / Wayback Machine

The site is coming back online in parts. Services may work, stop, restart, this is expected. Each day more lights come on. See "The world’s largest internet archive is under siege — and fighting back", The Washington Post, 18 October 2024 -- GreenC 15:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Retiring IPCheck

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this, but is it time to retire IPCheck? I certainly applaud SQL's efforts over the years, but they're essentially inactive, the code base as been frozen for years, and newer things like the built-in IP Information tool and bullseye have come along. But we've still got IPCheck built into the interface at the bottom of IP contributions pages. RoySmith (talk) 17:39, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It can be discussed at Template talk:Anontools. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:07, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Why so many edits in January and February 2024?

Wikistats says enwiki averages about 5 million edits/month, but we had 8.5 million in January and 9.4 million in February 2024 before going back down to the usual monthly average. Anybody know where those extra 10 million edits came from? A bot, I assume? Levivich (talk) 04:47, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

My guess is Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Cewbot 12/Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Qwerfjkl (bot) 26. * Pppery * it has begun... 05:07, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Ah ha, revising the wikiproject banners on six million article talk pages. Thanks! Levivich (talk) 05:51, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

unexpected blank line output in modul/template code.

BTW this is from sinhala wiki project and noone capable of technical help in there hence im here.

In this template "si:සැකිල්ල:Country with of" when you give {{Country with of|LK}}, it finds LK from si:Module:Country/data and get country name translation "ශ්‍රී ලංකාව" and inside si:Module:Country it goes through si:Template:ConvertToAe to get "ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ" (which means "of sri lanka").

But;
When used in template si:සැකිල්ල:Asia topic Test;

  • Note: i added a custom suffix for now to make the error clear

As {{#if:{{{LK|♦}}}|[[{{{LK|{{{1|{{{prefix|}}}}}}{{Country with of|LK|of=yes|article={{{article|yes}}}}}{{{2|{{{suffix|Gems}}}}}}}}}|{{ඉංග්‍රීසි පදය සිංහලට|Sri Lanka}}]]}}

The output is;
[[ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ
Gems|ශ්‍රී ලංකාව]]

With the second half going to next line. Just before the suffix. So its something wrong with either සැකිල්ල:Country with of, Module:Country/data, Module:Country or maybe Template:ConvertToAe.

Can anyone help in this matter? VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 11:55, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

@VihirLak007 Template:ConvertToAe has a new line between the end of the template code and the <noinclude> before the doccumentation. The <noinclude> needs to be on the same line as the end of the template, or a new line gets added to the template output. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 12:47, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Wow!!! Thank you so much for your time. Really grateful. VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 12:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Fixing Lua errors

List of members of the International Ice Hockey Federation has multiple Lua (programming language) errors: "too many expensive function calls." Could anyone fix it, or know where else to seek a resolution? These errors are beyond my knowledge. Thanks. Flibirigit (talk) 11:13, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

The culprit is probably {{IIHFteams}}, which is called many times and has a ton of #if and #ifexist calls in it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
If you "Show preview", at the top you will see a message saying "It should have less than 500 calls, there are now 604 calls." These seem to come mostly from the {{IIHF}} templates. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC).
It does look as if some of these are redundant, so this might not be a hard fix. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:04, 23 October 2024 (UTC).
I have no clue how to fix it. I did not create the problem, I just saw that it exists. Are you able to he a hero and repair it? Flibirigit (talk) 14:06, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm working on a fix and will come back. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
The code of {{IIHFteams}} had two ifexist tests for each linked article but only one of the tests were executed in each call so this could not be used to reduce the expensive parser function count. Instead I fixed it by skipping the tests for a list of countries which currently have all the tested articles.[24] If an article is later deleted then we just get a red link where there was unlinked text before, no biggie. List of members of the International Ice Hockey Federation now uses 435 of the 500 allowed expensive parser functions. Each country which isn't on the list uses six calls so there is currently room for ten more countries. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:02, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, @PrimeHunter:. I would never had figured that out. Flibirigit (talk) 15:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Help in modifying a module and a template.

BTW this is for Sinhala wiki project.
In English both situations "Sri Lanka" and "economy of Sri Lanka" has the country name without difference. But in Sinhala language we don't have a "of" separately. So its like "ශ්‍රී ලංකාව" and "ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ Economy".

In this navbox template සැකිල්ල:Asia topic Test,
when its used on another page as "{{Asia topic Test|Economy}}, it will lead every link to "country name + economy" as intended. But when its just "{{Asia topic Test}}", the countries links to its "of version", like "ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ(of Sri Lanka) and not "ශ්‍රී ලංකාව(Sri Lanka)".

Is there a way to modify the module or template so when a prefix or a suffix isn't assigned through the navbox template, the country links stay same (eg:ශ්‍රී ලංකාව) and not in its "of version" (eg:ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ)

Below are modules and template connected:


Need this help since it links to half of potential pages for sinhala wikipedia. VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 17:06, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

for now im using "{{#if|}}" for a output which do work as i want. if theres an easy way to do it through the module or the template itself, please suggest VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 18:12, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Bug with some anchors on mobile?

On an Android phone, Chrome browser I get odd behaviour following some anchor links. Eg MOS:OPEN doesn't take me to the right part of the page, it is about three screens too far below. Another example is the "Skip to current candidates" button at c:COM:FPC usually takes me the halfway down the third candidate. I would report this on Phabricator but I am not sure if it is a known issue with MediaWiki or perhaps my browser's fault. Commander Keane (talk) 01:55, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Try this mobile site link if you are trying to reproduce the COM:FPC button issue. Commander Keane (talk) 01:59, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
It's a problem which can happen when pages have collapsible content. Maybe your browser first takes you to the right position on the MOS:OPEN page but then the "Manual of Style (MoS)" box at the start collapses some parts. This shortens the page above your position so the content scrolls up while your browser remains the same length from the start. In my desktop browsers I can click the address bar and press enter after the page has loaded fully and done it's collapsing. Then the browser takes me to the right position without reloading the page and causing the same problem again. I don't know whether Android can do this. And in my normal browser Firefox on Windows 10 I rarely have the issue at all. I guess it either waits until the collapsing is done, or it automatically readjusts the position after the collapsing. I don't know whether our code could do more to avoid such issues but I assume there is already a Phabricator request about it. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Talk page dates, readability

Tlak page dates under monobook are not great contrat. Unfortunately under dark mode they are for me unreadable. Is this a widely seen (or unseen) issue? Is there a fix for one, other orp both of these issues, either at a system or user level? ext-discussiontools-init-timestamplink seems to be the applicable class.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 13:36, 23 October 2024 (UTC).

As you said monobook, I'm assuming you are using our gadget for dark mode, correct? If so, that can be locally customized, drop a request over at Wikipedia talk:Dark mode (gadget). Besides volunteers, User:Volker E. (WMF) may still work on requests there. — xaosflux Talk 13:41, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
For that class having bad contrast outside of that gadget running in monobook, I'm not seeing a bug open on that, please open one using this form. Including some screenshots may be helpful! — xaosflux Talk 13:47, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 11:51, 24 October 2024 (UTC).

Please help checking potential new article matches with Wikidata items by playing a game

Hi all. Would you have a bit of time to play a Wikidata game to match new Wikipedia articles against Wikidata items?

Pi bot automatically matches new biography articles with Wikidata where it can, and creates new items where there are no potential matches. The middle ground is more tricky, though, so it loads them into a game for checking by humans and waits for those to be checked before creating new items (to minimize duplicate items). A bit of a backlog has built up, though, and there are ~12,000 potential matches in the game. So if you have a bit of time, please do have a go! Matches will be directly saved as Wikidata edits by your account (using oauth). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:07, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

At it! Myrealnamm's Alternate Account (talk) 16:02, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Harv errors are so much fun...

The Sally Hemings article has 3 Harv errors. 3 referenced works with {{harvnb}} templates are throwing these errors. I know part of the issue is that all 3 cited works were erroneously placed in a "Further reading" section but since there is already a named "References" section that particular name can't be used for these harv cites. So. Someone please show me how to fix this here. Please don't fix it in the article yourself - explain it to me here and I'll go do it and then I'll be able to fix this issue myself the next time I come across it. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 17:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Shearonink: Change "Primary Sources" to "Sources", and move the three errant works into "Sources". I would have "Sources" as a Level 2 header (two equals signs before and after) instead of a Level 3 (three equals signs). DuncanHill (talk) 17:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Thankyou thankyou thankyou. I just couldn't figure out how to fix it. Yay for the Pump and DuncanHill! - Shearonink (talk) 17:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
My pleasure. DuncanHill (talk) 17:46, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Need help : Wikipedia:Content translation tool

Resolved
 – Reported states issue is solved. Possibly was a off-by-one issue with group adding. — xaosflux Talk 18:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I have exceeded the 500 contribution mark but I cannot activate the French to English translator of the articles. Is there a special procedure to follow? Kind regards Monsieur Patillo (talk) 23:24, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

You do need to turn it on in your preferences. If you have try again, if it fails let us know exactly what you are seeing. — xaosflux Talk 23:31, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Good evening. It seems to work, thank you! Kind regards. Monsieur Patillo (talk) 23:55, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Workaround for Safari bug with small caps?

  • H<span style="font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;">ELLO</span>. renders as HELLO.
  • H<span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant-caps: all-small-caps;">ELLO</span>. renders as HELLO.


In the second version, which is used in {{LORD}} (which renders as LORD), Safari 17.6 on MacOS creates extraneous whitespace after the end of the word. The first version is fine. Is there a good reason not to switch to the first one in templates like {{LORD}} and {{Kangxi radical}}? —Kusma (talk) 14:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

In particular, is there any browser where the first version breaks? —Kusma (talk) 05:52, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm viewing this on the Firefox app and I get the same results – first is good, second has extra whitespace. jlwoodwa (talk) 19:05, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
I have implemented this in {{LORD}}; @Remsense, do you think something similar can be done for Module:Kangxi radical? —Kusma (talk) 14:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping! I'll look into implementing this ASAP. Remsense ‥ 论 23:26, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
 Done Remsense ‥ 论 06:43, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Looks great, thanks! —Kusma (talk) 09:07, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Template_talk:Yes#Converting_to_templatestyles

You guys are invited to join at Template_talk:Yes#Converting_to_templatestyles to weigh in your opinion. —Matrix(!) ping onewhen replying {u - t? - uselessc} 10:47, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Blank image

Anyone else see this as a blank image[25]? If I expand it I see the image, but the preview is blank. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Any idea how long this has been happening? It could be related to phab:T265549, but that was back in June. Interestingly, the only version where the thumbnail works is a version that was reverted due to "rendering bugs". --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:35, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Is there like a 1 MB limit? The only version that's visible is smaller than that. 1.28 MB is huge for an SVG, though a lot of it seems to be whitespace, embedded fonts, and repeated styles. Nardog (talk) 17:43, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
@Nardog I fixed it. I believe the problem was there was an empty ViewBox attribute, which apparently browsers know to ignore by librsvg was getting hung up on. I also removed the embedded fonts since they appeared to be generating errors in the browser, but I believe that's an unrelated issue. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:58, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Oddly your first revision works for me, but not the second. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:06, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Bypass your cache. Nardog (talk) 10:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Yeah should have thought of that first, it's working correctly. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello everyone, I previously wrote on the 27th September to advise that the Wikidata item sitelink will change places in the sidebar menu, moving from the General section into the In Other Projects section. The scheduled rollout date of 04.10.2024 was delayed due to a necessary request for Mobile/MinervaNeue skin. I am happy to inform that the global rollout can now proceed and will occur later today, 22.10.2024 at 15:00 UTC-2. Please let us know if you notice any problems or bugs after this change. There should be no need for null-edits or purging cache for the changes to occur. Kind regards, -Danny Benjafield (WMDE) 11:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm disappointed with this regression. I suppose many Wikipedians frequently use the "Wikidata item" hyperlink, which has been on the right side near the top for a long while. I was disappointed to see that has been moved, almost hidden away, closer to the bottom of the side bar. Now I have to scroll to see if there is an associated Wikidata item to an article. This is an essential tool for multilingual editing of Wikipedia. Is it possible to get it back near the top? Why has ut been moved?
A related question: The "contributions" button is super-useful, but has also been hidden away in a sub-menu at the top of the page for a long time now. I miss it. However, the "user" page sits there big and shining, easy to click. I almost never visit my user page, but the contributions page however is super-useful for editors to be able to continue our work on refining articles, which I guess is why most of us are here. My hypothesis is that these two changes have made Wikipedia less productive. Is there any thought that goes into the placement of these buttons? Surely, looking at some usage metrics before moving buttons would be helpful to make the user interface more useful? Sauer202 (talk) 08:35, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
If we take "many editors" to mean "a large plurality or majority of active editors", then it has to be made clear that a supermajority of editors have never used Wikidata for anything. If any available data shows otherwise, I will apologize deeply. Your hypothesis seems untenable, since user space is more efficiently allocated for most editors: I'm more particular, but use of space is not value neutral: prominence has a cost even if it's not pushing anything else off the page. Remsense ‥ 论 09:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I use Wikidata all the time, and I think putting the link in "other projects" is the most logical and is still easily accessible — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:37, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Likewise. Remsense ‥ 论 09:38, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Without Wikidata readily accessible the amount of new articles will decrease. Why do we want to make it more cumbersome for article creators on Wikipedia? When the majoriity of readers never use the sidebar anyway, why do we care about them? The article contents is what is most important on the project. The link is not easily accessible when I have to scroll to the bottom of the sidebar to see if the Wikidata item EVEN EXISTS. All the other buttons I never use. Do we have any usage metric at all for the individual buttons? Why was this button "finally" moved? Finally according to who? Sauer202 (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

So place is at a premium.. While many of the other buttons are useful, none are near as useful as "Wikidata item"
  • Who downloads QR codes to Wikipedia when we can use URL links?
  • Who "Downloads as PDF"? Even so, this functionality is already integrated in all browsers, both on mobile and PC?
  • Why do we have "Printable version" of a page in 2024 (soon 2025), do many people print Wikipedia articles on paper nowadays? (did someone even do that at any time? The print may be outdated once it's out of the printer!)
  • Why do we have an own button to edit interlanguage links when that is one of the many features already covered by Wikidata? It is also accessible under the "Languages" bar and icon at the top, which would be the first logical place to look for anyone.
  • What the heck is "Related changes"? I could not deciper anything meaningful from it (not saying it is not useful, but I hold it is less so than "Wikidata item").
  • How often is "Cite this page" used? Could better be hidden in a sub-menu, if you ask me. It appears to just be different types of citation formats used academically, but how often do academics cite Wikipedia anyway?
It might be random why we have the buttons we have, and at the place they are, but the impression I get assuming they were placed deliberately is that the person(s) who decided it have a printer at home, they are not very good with computers, and they most certainly do not actively edit Wikipedia multilingually. Sauer202 (talk) 16:23, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
So you may be right about some of those other links. But the Wikidata link has not been removed, and it is now in a more consistent location, so that is a good move. Please be aware that your usage will match other people's. I use Related changes all the time, so don't touch it :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:34, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

How to block part of page from Wikipedia search engine

Please see: Template:Table help. It is a box list of table help pages at the top of the 9 main table help pages:

It has a search form ("Search all") to search those 9 pages, and other help pages with "table" in the title.

But I don't want the search results to show all the table help page titles (which it does). Because that causes there to be no room for the actual search results from elsewhere on the page. It almost makes the "Search all" form useless. Here it is below. Try it to see what I mean.


Template:Navbox. Are navboxes blocked from search results? If so, how? Is it classes like these?: hlist or list, etc.. I don't see anything in Help:Searching about any of this. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:35, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Timeshifter: I'm not sure what you mean. The page name will always be shown and linked in search results. A part of the page content is also shown for me. Example search on rowspan: [26] Is your concern that some of the results only show the context of "table" in the page content and not "rowspan"? You could avoid that with intitle:/table/i:
Search on rowspan: [27]. I don't think you can prevent it from bolding "table" in the page name.
I wasn't aware of issues with navboxes but you are right that something is going on. For example "solinas" finds no templates but insource:"solinas" finds three navboxes, and all of them have "solinas" in the rendered content. It also fails for group names in navboxes. "By integer sequence" finds nothing. insource:"By integer sequence" finds {{Prime number classes}}. I wondered whether it's deliberate since navbox hits in articles would rarely be helpful for a searcher (especially on mobile where the navbox isn't shown), but then I tried a mainspace search and 19 articles with {{Prime number classes}} show up on "By integer sequence". However, there are also many articles which don't show up, e.g. Quartan prime. I noticed a possible pattern: If the navbox is expanded by default then it does not show up, the opposite of what I would have guessed if there was a connection. I tested it on a navbox which is collapsed on its template page and {{Davis Cup}} does indeed show up on "World Groups play-offs". This is weird. Maybe somebody tried to hide navboxes in general but accidentally made code which only hides expanded navboxes. If they are hidden deliberately then it would be nice if template space was excluded from the hiding. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:55, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

PrimeHunter. Thanks! It looks like this works: 

<inputbox>
id=style-searchbox
width=18
break=no
type=fulltext
searchbuttonlabel=Search all
searchfilter=intitle:/table/i
namespaces=Help
</inputbox>

I added it to Template:Table help. I did a search for a common word ("sandbox") and the results are much better.

I wish there was a way to limit the results to stuff found in the pages listed in the template. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Timeshifter: It's annoying that MediaWiki's search doesn't have linkedfrom: (phab:T253642). hastemplate:"Table help" will only search pages which transclude {{Table help}}. Then you don't need intitle. You could also make a new template for the purpose and add it to exactly the wanted pages. It doesn't have to display anything but its template page should explain the purpose. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:12, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter The issue with navboxes could be due to Phab:T73562? In https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/CirrusSearch/+/164404 They marked elements with .autocollapse selectors as excluded from search indexing, but content marked as autocollapsed can either be expanded or collapsed dependent upon how many items are on the page. The articles that show up in the "by interger sequence" search use |state=collapsed in their template calls, so they use .collapsed instead, which for some reason is not excluded from indexing.
@Timeshifter Alternately you could make sure all the pages you want to search are in Category:Wikipedia tables, then use the incategory: search parameter. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 13:43, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks again. Combining the 2 works perfectly! I added it to the template. Search for "sandbox". Compare options and results:

hastemplate:"Table help"
intitle:/table/i 

<inputbox>
id=style-searchbox
width=18
break=no
type=fulltext
searchbuttonlabel=Search all
searchfilter=hastemplate:"Table help" intitle:/table/i
namespaces=Help
</inputbox>

This prevents getting results from minor table help found in help pages not dedicated to tables. That minor table help is not as good, or as vetted. See:

--Timeshifter (talk) 22:05, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Contribs not working

The Special:Contributions page is not showing any contributions. Who am I? / Talk to me! / What have I done? 12:25, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Browser: Duckduckgo Who am I? / Talk to me! / What have I done? 12:25, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Just to be clear, Special:Contributions/Anonymous1261 isn't showing any contributions? There were some server issues not long ago, so maybe give it another go now? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Still not working Who am I? / Talk to me! / What have I done? 12:32, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Try this link - also check in filters/ "Search for contributions" - you may have turned on a filter that is excluding all results. — xaosflux Talk 12:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
There were some server issues earlier today, might have impacted this. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 14:09, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Something's definitely changed in contributions (WP:THURSDAY). The <li> tag for each entry no longer has any classes, it used to have several, including mw-contributions-current if the edit concerned is the most recent for the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:26, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
The issue you describe is phab:T378132. Izno (talk) 22:35, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Mapframe seems to be glitching out with raw GeoJSON data

I created raw GeoJSON data for the mapframe in the article Lithodes aotearoa, and it doesn't seem to be cooperating. I see no logical or semantic issue with the map data itself, and I think the way I've used the 'maplink' template in the article is correct. I've been looking at the map data for 'Bristol West (UK Parliament constituency)' for comparison, and despite being structured exactly as mine is, it demonstrably works as intended (even if I transclude it within my own maplink template). I'm extremely confused; for the life of me, I can't figure out any difference here. It seems like I should be drawing a 4-sided polygon off the coast of North Island, but instead it just points to Null Island during the preview and then to Ceará, Brazil once the page is live. It doesn't even draw the polygon on the mapframe. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 00:55, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Through testing I found out it's your second values (178...) that aren't correct. If I am reading the GeoJSON standard correctly[28], then the problem is that that second value is limited to a value between or equal to -90 and 90 degrees and you used a value higher than 90.
Now if I use my brain for a second: You just swapped your latitude and longitude values around. That's the issue. – 2804:F1...DE:554A (talk) 01:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
I have swapped the values in your data(diff), it seems to be where you wanted it now if I try using it in the page (in preview). – 2804:F1...DE:554A (talk) 01:55, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
@2804:F14:80F1:A901:999E:CEEF:24DE:554A: Oooooh, that makes so much sense. Hugely appreciated! TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 02:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Seeking proper forum to start RfC to resolve dispute re most appropriate graph/chart format

I'm seeking the most proper forum for starting an RfC to resolve an ongoing dispute between charts of a more broadly accepted format (example: ) and charts of a relatively less experienced editor (example: ). The newer user is in good faith peppering various articles with what I think are unencyclopedically simplistic charts, sometimes bordering on cherry-picking, even replacing comprehensive charts with their simplistic charts. I can't seem to find the appropriate "Wikipedia:Wikiproject ___". Can an experienced editor please point me toward the most appropriate page to start an RfC? Thanks in advance. —RCraig09 (talk) 18:02, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
(Note that I'm referring to SVG etc. charts generated outside Wikipedia; I am not talking about the ~inflexible charts/graphs that Wikipedia generates internally.) —RCraig09 (talk) 18:02, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, if you've already tried to resolve it directly I'd just skip the RFC and go straight to ANI, if your two examples are representative of the issue. Izno (talk) 20:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Has a discussion occurred somewhere? Article talk or user talk? That needs to happen before ANI. Johnuniq (talk) 00:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Some discussion has occurred, for example here and here. I think User:Superb Owl is editing in good faith, and that ANI is probably premature. However, I think Superb Owl is enthusiastically favoring a personal graphical preference over Wikipedia standards and consensus. I'm still looking for a place to find a consensus that conclusively convinces Superb Owl how Wikipedia operates. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:15, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
User:RCraig09 has not convinced me that his preferred chart format is in any way due to a Wikipedia guideline (which I have asked about here and here) but just personal preference. He complained about maintaining his chart the last time I requested an update and so I took it on myself to replace it with an updated version after the September data release and remove the redundancies with another chart on the same articles that already covers Fiscal years 2020-2023. Also both the links shared by RCraig point to the same discussion, just fyi. Superb Owl (talk) 17:44, 24 October 2024 (UTC) Fixing link to second Talk Page discussion. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
It is not about Wikipedia guidelines; it's about editor consensus arrived at in many discussions over years. It is not my "personal preference"; yours is your personal preference, which as we discussed is different from most Google images and Wikimedia charts. The linked edit comment is not my "complaint". And the substituted chart is not only simplistic, but (short-term) cherry-picked. In the absence of advice from seasoned editors here, within a day or two I will simply find a reasonable place to initiate what looks like must be a formal RfC. —RCraig09 (talk) 03:05, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
@RCraig09, have you read through Wikipedia:Dispute resolution? There are options like third opinion, dispute resolution noticeboard and Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Commander Keane (talk) 03:19, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks to @Commander Keane: Your point is well taken, but this is such a graphics-specific issue and possibly topic-specific (immigration) that a targeted RfC is probably best. —RCraig09 (talk) 04:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
@RCraig09: I think the new charts extension is coming soon, see mw:Extension:Chart/Project/Updates which could change the game. Wikipedia:Graphs_and_charts#Accuracy is the closest thing to a guideline I could find and on its talk page there is an 11 year old RfC, maybe you could start there? I don't know if it is topic specific, if someone cherry picked (accidentally or otherwise) File:Chunnel_traffic.svg freight stats from 1994 to 2006 it would indicate a massive growth trend which is misleading. Also if you updated the Chunnel graph with up-to-date data data for just passengers and simplified the graph by removing the other 3 lines it would be bad. Commander Keane (talk) 05:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to all contributors. In the absence of a suitable "Wikipedia:Wikiproject ___", I've just opened a formal RfC at Talk:Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Request_for_comment_on_chart_content_and_form. OK to archive.

Resolved

—RCraig09 (talk) 03:20, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata interlanguage links not automatically updating after page moves

With two page moves, which I performed in the past two hours or so (Office of the Council of State (Thailand) to Office of the Council of State and 2024 Thai school bus fire to 2024 Thailand school bus fire), the Wikidata items have not been automatically updated. Not sure where the cause of the issue lies? --Paul_012 (talk) 08:52, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

In my recent quest to fix certain punctuation spacing errors throughout the project, I have coincidentally stumbled upon an inordinate number of situations where a link will occur along the lines of: "Bob speaks English, Spanish, and French"; or "Bob received degrees from Princeton University and the University of Texas". Now, obviously, we are not going to have an article on the combined topics of either redlink, but I am wondering if it is possible to generate a list of redlinks that are in fact combinations of what would be two (or more) blue links. BD2412 T 20:16, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Media Viewer can't be disabled - gear is gone

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T378400

The gear symbol that you click on to disable Media Viewer has disappeared from all the pages I tested. Is that intentional and if so where do I file a complaint? Media Viewer forces me to go through dozens of clicks in order to get to what I need every time I go to an image page and is a colossal headache as I do this daily. Logging in to save the setting isn't an option for my situation for various reasons (i.e. for daily use of image pages separate from logging in to post this message) and even if it was it shouldn't be required

Please note that the Wikipedia help pages still tell you to use the gear as they always have. Auenwald (talk) 22:47, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

@Auenwald: There's a direct setting at Preferences → Appearance, it's "Enable Media Viewer". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
Read my message again. I said logging in isn't an option. Auenwald (talk) 23:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Left side of table at Seaborgium is cut off on vertical mobile view

From Seaborgium (permanent link)

In vertical mobile view in Safari on iOS, I discovered a side table in the article Seaborgium that is cut off on the left-hand side, making the leftmost column impossible to read. This table is built using the {{Isotopes summary}} template system. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:14, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Should be fixed. Izno (talk) 01:31, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

How do I get rid of something I don't care about?

In my notifications, I got one telling me that a page I visited has data connected to Wikidata, where some relevant stuff can help or whatever. I do not care one single bit about that stuff. How do I stop these notifications and how can I delete a notification that I marked as read? Is Wikipedia tracking me? Nearly but not perfect (talk) 00:58, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo Izno (talk) 01:32, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Bug in "birth date and age" template?

The Walton Empey article has this template in the infobox:

{{birth date and age|df=yes|1934|10|26}}

which renders as "26 October 1934 (age 89)" for me here in Ireland where it's 27 October 2024. But his age should be shown as 90, not 89, unless I'm missing something. (Am wondering if it's due to the clocks changing (here in Europe at least)).--A bit iffy (talk)` A bit iffy (talk) 12:38, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

@A bit iffy: Template calculations are cached to improve performance. I have purged the page to force the calculation to be done from scratch, and it is now displaying "age 90". -- John of Reading (talk) 12:43, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. A bit iffy (talk) 13:16, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Mexican peso N$ in Template:Dollar sign

The article on Mexican peso uses the symbol $ or Mex$ in the lede. The template output for Mexican peso is N$ which I haven't encountered before. Is this something to be rectified or there's some rationale for N$? Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 11:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Looks like, when they introduced the nuevo peso in 1993, they used "N$" as the symbol to differentiate it from the old peso that had used "$". But it also seems they may have dropped the N in 1996 or so once they got rid of all the old pesos. Special:Diff/307360806 that changed the template's output from Mex$ to N$ has no edit summary to indicate why it was changed, the user hasn't edited since 2010, and I don't see any contemporary discussion about it. Anomie⚔ 13:46, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Check the notablity of this article and after approval then delete the speedy delete template

Hello dear Wikipedians. This article (Najmeddin Shariati) was created once before in an unprincipled manner and without citing reliable references. For this reason, it was deleted under the title of not notablity and fame with the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. But this time I created it with basic editing and citing more than 20 reliable references from official Iranian news agencies (Because this person is Iranian) that independently covered the news of this person. Please review this article and its references and after approval, delete the speedy deletion template. This person's article is available in Persian Wikipedia, and its notablity and  fame was confirmed by the administrators and editors of Persian Wikipedia according to the reliable sources mentioned in it. If you think this is a stub article. Add the stub template to it and let it stay. The final decision is yours. very thanks 4ipid (talk) 19:51, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

@4ipid, I do not see how any of that is part of a technical question or concern. Please feel free to request assistance at WP:VPM or elsewhere, perhaps WP:Peer review. Izno (talk) 21:55, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

What happened to the display of diffs in the article history?

In the Article History, "Compare selected revisions" brings up the Diff page. It used to be in two columns (as shown at Help:Diff#how it looks). Now for me in the last few days it has started showing just one column with the changes shown only by color. I don't like this, how can I change it back? I didn't change any preferences or anything. I fooled around with my preferences but nothing helped.

Help. Herostratus (talk) 00:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like you turned on the "Inline" toggle above the diff. Nardog (talk) 02:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Server lag

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T378320

All day long my bots have been complaining

Login failed (3) : Server has reported lag above the configured max_lag value of 5 value after 5 attempt(s). Last reported lag was - Waiting for 10.64.32.13: 33996.650783 seconds lagged

Any idea what is going on? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:23, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I reported the same problem earlier Special:Diff/1253816940/1253822334, then deleted it because the problem resolved, and now its back. It appears to be Enwiki specific with lag times of 6+ hours (normal should be 0-10 seconds). It looks like a DDOS or misconfig or something. The immediate solution is to simply remove &maxlag from your API requests. -- GreenC 04:39, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
This is also causing my bot which updates the case table at WP:SPI to go down starting around 18:40 Oct 27: CRITICAL: Exiting due to uncaught exception MaxlagTimeoutError: Maximum retries attempted due to maxlag without success. Is there a phab ticket for this yet? Mz7 (talk) 05:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Should be better now that I removed a broken replica from the calculations. Taavi (talk!) 06:08, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
@Taavi: Nice, looks good! [29] Waiting for 10.64.16.89: 0.378559 seconds lagged. Was just about to open a phab ticket when I noticed things were working now. :D Thanks so much! Mz7 (talk) 06:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

importer identification

Monkbot has been accused of making this edit at de:Reichman University. Monkbot does not, cannot, make interwiki edits. In that diff, the edit attribution is 'en>Monkbot'. That form of edit attribution indicates, as I understand it, that the edit was an import from en.wiki of text last edited by Monkbot. Since Monkbot did not do the import, is there a way to determine who or what did the import?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:22, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Special:Log shows the import log entry. Anomie⚔ 13:49, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
"View logs for this page" at top of page histories includes the import log. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:28, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Conditions for WP:MOVEOVERREDIRECT

Hi friends, do we know if there are any additional conditions to allow a WP:MOVEOVERREDIRECT, beyond the stated "single line in the page history"? In the last 24 hours I've tried to move three articles: two from draftspace to mainspace, and one within mainspace. All moves were to usurp redirects that only had one single line in their respective page history, however they all resulted in an error.

The functionality seems pretty inconsistent, wondering if there is any rhyme or reason RachelTensions (talk) 17:17, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@RachelTensions: You probably need the Wikipedia:Page mover user right. Per WP:Page mover#delete-redirect, if that page is a single revision redirect with a different target, the delete-redirect right may be used to eliminate the need for round-robin page moves by allowing page movers to delete the redirect, regardless of the redirect's target. – wbm1058 (talk) 18:06, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Ah ok that makes sense, single line in the page history and the redirect must already be pointing to the article attempting to be moved. Re-reading WP:MOVEOVERREDIRECT I must've overlooked that. Thank you! RachelTensions (talk) 18:13, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It states there is a redirect to the old title with a single line in the page history. Was that the case for the moves you attempted, or were the redirects you were trying to overwrite pointing elsewhere? Anomie⚔ 18:11, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

This template must be substituted.

Hello! When looking at Template:Single-purpose account, the page doesn't actually show what the template looks like, it just shows: This template must be substituted.

I looked at other templates that should be substituted and they show up as you'd expect them to. Even the (very similar) Template:AfD new user.

I assume there must be a way around that so we can show what the template outputs on the Template: page while still producing the warning elsewhere. Polygnotus (talk) 14:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus  Fixed here. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:09, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Changing the name and title of article

Hello dear Wikipedians, I request the users who have access to change the name and title of the article to change the title of the article Najmeddin Shariati (TV presenter) to Najmeddin Shariati. Because there is no other person with this name and there is no existing article with this name. thanks 4ipid (talk) 09:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done - You can make such requests at Wikipedia:Requested moves. William Avery (talk) 09:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
Note: this page was deleted as "Duplication of draftspace submission by editor with a paid COI". --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:11, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Template parameters question

Sorry if this has no value, but I've recently (yesterday?) discovered that things like {{AIV|=p}} transclude into (which is just {{p}}). Upon some investigation I've found that it appears to be that a |= parameter replaces all {{{|safesubst:}}} instances in the template being transcluded with the provided parameter (that's why it expanded as the emoji template).
Why does this happen? Is this documented anywhere/does it have an use? I've had trouble searching. – 2804:F1...F0:9FE8 (talk) 19:47, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

{{{x|y}}} means "the value of parameter x, otherwise 'y'". Therefore {{{|safesubst:}}} means "the value of the parameter with a blank name, otherwise 'safesubst:', and |=p is setting the value of the parameter with the blank name to "p". This is why you should use safesubst<noinclude />: instead to break up the substitution. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:55, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Ah, I see. I guess the noinclude thing is mentioned at Help:Substitution#Recursive substitution? Thank you for the detailed response. – 2804:F1...F0:9FE8 (talk) 20:32, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-44

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

Updates for editors

Updates for technical contributors

  • Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set emitTransitionOnStep to true to fix an old bug. They can use the new flag allowAutomaticBack to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [31]
  • Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [32]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Change user name to camelCaps?

My username Thisisnotatest is pronounced incorrectly by screen readers. Is there any way for me to change it to ThisIsNotATest, capitalizing each word "This Is Not A Test" so it will be pronounced correctly? Thisisnotatest (talk) 07:29, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

WP:CHU. You can request whatever name doesn't already exist, which you can check at Special:CentralAuth. I might suggest spaces, which I suspect will be more likely to be pronounced correctly.... Izno (talk) 07:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
I say what the admin says, read Changing Username. Should give info on changing your username. The Master of Hedgehogs (converse) (hedgehogs) 16:02, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Many screen readers, including the two most common ones for Windows, JAWS and NVDA pronounce each capitalised word in a CamelCase phrase separately. Screen reader users get used to all sorts of things being mispronounced; I don't think a single username on a website is that high a priority (I'd give it practically a 0 out of 10, honestly). Graham87 (talk) 02:48, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Not notified of reversion on Wikimedia Commons

I have my global settings to give me a web notification on edit reversions, as well as to show notifications cross-wiki. Indeed, I received a notification for a reversion on Wikipedia on October 1, 2024. However, an edit of mine on Wikimedia Commons was reverted on October 25, and I did not receive a notification. Would this be a bug I need to report on Phabricator or have notifications stopped being sent since October 21, my last notification? The number of notifications are the same on both platforms, which implies that particular cross-wiki setting is working. Thisisnotatest (talk) 08:15, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Was it [33]? Is it listed at commons:Special:Notifications? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:20, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
It was, and I see the notification is there, but I wasn't getting cross-wiki notifications and I rarely go to the commons site so I missed it. After some investigation, it appears to be related to my surfing Wikipedia with JavaScript off. But I also get some email notifications and that didn't happen. Thisisnotatest (talk) 06:52, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
@Thisisnotatest: If you disable JavaScript then many things will not work as intended. Is there an Email checkmark for "Edit revert" at commons:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo? If so then what does the top say under "Send me:"? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:39, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Yes, there is a checkmark. And the Send me reads A daily summary of notifications. Thisisnotatest (talk) 06:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Gadget/js to force me to ping

I want a gadget or custom js that forces me to ping at least one person everytime I reply to a message.

This is because I reply on help desks and patrol newcomer comments a lot and I feel they really need a notification from me as they are new. But I keep forgetting.

In its simplest form the script would check for the "@" symbol anywhere in my reply and if missing prompt me to add one. Of course the option to dismiss would be great. More complicated forms could use regex to check for at least one userpage link.

I would need it for en.wiki, commons and meta. Let me know if it's possible. I am mainly on a mobile device, using mobile and desktop interfaces interchangeably, if that makes a difference. Commander Keane (talk) 11:11, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Request to Move Draft for AfC Review

Hello, I'd like assistance moving my draft from my user sandbox (User:Abuibrahim100/sandbox) to Draft:Admas Pee for AfC review. My account isn’t autoconfirmed yet, so I’m unable to move it myself. Thank you for your help!

Abuibrahim100 (talk) 19:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Abuibrahim100 Your sandbox is already is the queue for review. There's no need to move it to Draft:Admas Pee yourself -- the reviewer will do that for you if necessary. That being said, your draft cannot be approved in its current state because it needs citations to significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article. All the sources cited are either to companies writing about themselves (which is not independent) or to Wikipedia articles (which are not considered reliable sources since anyone can edit them). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:08, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Recent changes on mobile

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T378142

On mobile - Starting a few days ago, When I go to “recent changes” on my watchlist tab and click on an article, I no longer get sent to a page with the changes highlighted Instead, I just see the current version (without changes highlighted) and must take the additional step of clicking the history button to see the changes highlighted. Is this intentional, or has something glitched? Blueboar (talk) 16:42, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh I thought that was just me (Sony mobile using most recent chrome on Android) Red Fiona (talk) 17:17, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I’m on an iPhone… so it’s something that has changed at the WP side of things… not our devices. Blueboar (talk) 18:03, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I think I see what happened here. If you can report this on Phab I can point the relevant people to it. 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 20:55, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I can not report it on Phab, because I have no clue what Phab is. Sorry. Blueboar (talk) 11:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
@Blueboar: Phab, or phab:, is Phabricator, which is where all MediaWiki bug reports and feature requests are filed. A ticket has already been raised (by Danbloch at 21:02, 24 October 2024 (UTC)) - it's phab:T378142, as shown at the top right of this section. It's public, so is available to read without logging in there, but Phab doesn't accept anon editing so you need to log in to Phab if you want to comment. Fortunately, this is easy: there's a "Log in" button at the top of the page, and also a "log in to comment" button after the last post; your login and password are the same as for Wikipedia. If you do comment, you're added as a subscriber, and you get an email every time somebody else comments or updates the status. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:07, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
Not only on "Recent changes", but also on the mobile version of "Watchlist". And this also happens at the mobile "Watchlist" of Wikivoyage. --FredTC (talk) 10:28, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
So… is this going to be fixed? Or is it an intentional change in the way our watchlist works? Blueboar (talk) 12:51, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
It has been fixed already, it will be deployed here this week. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:05, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
I can't speak for anyone else but it's working for me now. Thank you. Red Fiona (talk) 01:18, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
For me it is also back to normal. FredTC (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Script to highlight new users

Is there a script to specifically highlight new user (non-EC)? I know there are ones for highlighting by usergroup, but I'm looking just to highlight new users. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:25, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

mw-reverted tag is slowly showing

Hello everyone,

I'm noticing that the reverted tag is showing up slowly. When an edit is reverted, the edit has the "reverted" tag. However, I'm noticing that today it takes some time for it to show up. For example, I reverted two of an IP's edits, but the reverted tag is still not showing up. It will after a couple of minutes. Does anyone know why this is happening? Myrealnamm (💬pros · 📜cons) 22:23, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

(I think this is a MediaWiki issue. I have to go.) Myrealnamm (💬pros · 📜cons) 22:26, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
@Myrealnamm: A delay is normal. See mw:Manual:Reverts#Reverted tag. I don't know whether the delay is currently longer than usual but a couple of minutes doesn't sound bad. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:51, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter It's been 30 minutes since Special:Diff/1254153601 and the "reverted" tag is still not showing. Where should I take this? Myrealnamm's Alternate Account (talk) 17:58, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
Just want to report I am having the same exact issue; I cannot see the reverted tag anywhere, and it's pretty annoying... win8x (talking | spying) 20:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
@Win8x It will come up in ~45 minutes from the time of the revert. Perhaps the “job queue” for this tag is getting “backlogged”, if that’s how it works? Myrealnamm (💬pros · 📜cons) 20:55, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
Wow. Yeah. For someone who likes to revert vandalism in Recent Changes this isn't quite useful 😅 win8x (talking | spying) 20:58, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
Well as soon as I complain about it, it looks fine again. Nice! win8x (talking | spying) 21:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
The issue was https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T378385, fwiw. KHarlan (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
I use this CSS rule to make the "Reverted" tag stand out a bit: 
/* mark edits tagged as reverted */
span.mw-tag-marker-mw-reverted {
  text-decoration: wavy red underline;
}
If you want to try it out, it goes in your CSS. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:19, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
How's that going to help when the tag itself isn't showing up quickly enough? Nardog (talk) 00:01, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
I find that it helps me to notice them when they *do* show up. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:03, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
It has nothing to do with the OP then. Nardog (talk) 00:21, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm not forcing you to use it, nor am I saying anything along the lines of "your problem is that you have not done this". I offered the CSS rule not as a solution but as a potential visual aid for those who might find it useful - clearly the OP (see below) was interested enough to try it. Others may have done too, I don't know. But you're the only one who complained. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:59, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
@Redrose64 I'm trying it, it's not working, am I doing something wrong? User:Myrealnamm/common.css Myrealnamm (💬pros · 📜cons) 00:06, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
@Myrealnamm You have a typo in your css file. It should be span not spam. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 00:16, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! Myrealnamm (💬pros · 📜cons) 00:17, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
Well spam is usually reverted 😅. – 2804:F1...88:7F3B (talk) 01:04, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

"⚠️(insecure)" when installing AutoEd

I was trying to install AutoEd, specifically this preset using Enterprisey's script installer, however, it says "⚠️(insecure)" right beside the install button. Should I still install it? — ‎‎‎hhypeboyh 💬 • ✏️ 22:43, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

That script imports many additional scripts, including at least one personal user script of a retired user who would no longer maintains said personal script. I wouldn't use it for that reason, but I don't immediately see any thing malicious in it. The primary maintainer is listed as @Plastikspork:. (Perhaps Plastikspork can work on deprecating that load-in from retired user User:Jerome_Frank_Disciple). — xaosflux Talk 22:52, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
The specific technical reason script-installer is declaring the script insecure is that it can be edited by admins rather than interface admins as a result of being in the project namespace rather than the MediaWiki namespace. And I, back when I was still an admin, was the one responsible for adding someone's personal script to the mix - the script in question is so trivial it hardly needs "maintenance" so that's not really an issue. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:21, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
The general risk is that that account could be compromised, and with the account being unused this could be unnoticed, and then used to insert malicious code which would be executed by others who imported the prior codes. Just like with any imported script, you need to trust everyone who may modify the script. — xaosflux Talk 00:01, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Might be trivial, but some maintenance might be in order if it can do this:
[[:File:IL CONSOLE USA IN VISITA ALL’UNIVERSITÀ DI PAVIA (28250236188).jpg]] → [[:File:IL CONSOLE USA IN VISITA ALL'UNIVERSITÀ DI PAVIA (28250236188).jpg]]
File:IL CONSOLE USA IN VISITA ALL’UNIVERSITÀ DI PAVIA (28250236188).jpg → File:IL CONSOLE USA IN VISITA ALL'UNIVERSITÀ DI PAVIA (28250236188).jpg
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:15, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
I started a new version in Wikipedia:AutoEd/curlyfixer.js and will work on making it not change curlies inside of file links. Thanks for the suggestion! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk)

Are articles moved from userspace to mainspace not indexed?

So, recently I created FoodPharmer in my userspace and later moved to the mainspace. I keep noticing that search engines (Google, Bing) do not show this if you search "FoodPharmer Wikipedia" or "Revant Himatsingka Wikipedia". But the DYK page on him created 4 days after moving the page and his picture uploaded 8 days after (yesterday) shows up in the search results. This makes me wonder, is the article not showing up because it was initially in userspace (not-indexed)? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:35, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@CX Zoom Newly created articles are not indexed in search engines for 90 days, or until they have been patrolled. See Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing#Indexing of articles ("mainspace") 86.23.109.101 (talk) 16:43, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Ah, makes sense now. Thank you very much! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:57, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Adding article input to Template:Welcome cookie

Hello all,

When using Twinkle to welcome new users, I am unable to add an article input to the Welcome Cookie Template like I can for some of the other welcome templates (e.g., "I noticed your contributions to Article")- it would be great if I could do this so I don't have to leave a separate message. Let me know if I am making any sense.

Thank you!

JuxtaposedJacob (talk) | :) | he/him | 06:50, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

That template is protected, however you may discuss improvements to it and propose edit request on its talk page here: Template talk:Welcome cookie. — xaosflux Talk 17:14, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Notices not working

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T378261

So when I click on Notices a little popup show up and tells my notifications. According to it I have 7 new notifications.

But if I press on it says I have no notifications. If I click on all notices it shows an error message: 7ab4ef4a-e38b-462a-ab56-edfdc2d62732] 2024-10-27 04:43:21: Fatal exception of type "InvalidArgumentException"

I am not sure what is going on, does anyone have any idea's? User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 04:55, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I've also noticed that the hexadecimal changes every time I reload the page, although I don't know if that means anything. Procyon117 (talk) 14:32, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
This has been fixed, but the fix may take some days to arrive here. – Ammarpad (talk) 16:20, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
it is working for me now. Thank you to whoever fixed it!!! User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 06:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
It worked once, now it is not showing them on the popup window.
They do show up when I click All notifications. User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 06:55, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Weird. I have this problem, but they don't work when I click "all notifications". (If you reply to this, ping me - I still get those, for some reason.) -- asilvering (talk) 16:44, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Same now for me too. Procyon117 (talk) 16:46, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Same problem for me the notifications icon shows I have alerts, but when I click on it I get the error message: [2b363018-cbbb-45da-8f73-056cf4cbd0de] 2024-10-31 12:53:02: Fatal exception of type "InvalidArgumentException". and the icon greys out. A temporary work around is to go to Commons and click on your notifications from other wikis. Then they can be read, but only on Commons once, then they disappear from Commons. Mysterious! Netherzone (talk) 12:56, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
I've found that I can read them if they get over 30 notifs or so. So now I'm banking a truly stupid number of notifications so that I can at least tell what discussions the most recent ones are for. -- asilvering (talk) 14:43, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Don't let it get too high. If the counter reaches 99 and more notifs come in, the icon doesn't show 100, 101 etc. but 99+ and the only way to find out how many you really have is to delete some until it drops to 99 or lower. Unread notifs get automatically deleted after a while, I think that it's about 16 months. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Mine are working for now. Hope that they will start working for you guys too! User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 20:17, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Wokrking now BombCraft8 (talk) (contributions) 23:26, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Working now for me too. Procyon117 (talk) 02:47, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
same happens with me but 4 notices BombCraft8 (talk) (contributions) 15:01, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Problem with my alerts bell

Hello, when I click on my alerts bell at the top, it says "There are no notifications", even thought I can see there are. When I then click on "all notifications", I get the following: "[5aff3dcb-50f3-4b16-9566-60ba693bfa63] 2024-10-27 21:50:42: Fatal exception of type "InvalidArgumentException". Any help would be appreciated. Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 21:54, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Sounds just like my problem, just the other notification system.
I have been unable to test that one since I have no new Alerts. It does show my previous Alerts.
Hope that the fix gets released soon @Ammarpad.
User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 03:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Is there a technical page to report this?

I'm experiencing it as well. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 17:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Overlapping IP range blocks?

How do overlapping range blocks work? For example, with these two: 

51.191.128.0/17 blocked (block-evasion) on 2024-10-31T14:55:40Z by JBW until 2025-02-21T19:11:00Z. anononly: False, account creation blocked: False
51.191.0.0/16 blocked (block-evasion) on 2023-11-27T22:25:01Z by JBW until 2025-01-21T19:11:00Z. anononly: False, account creation blocked: False

An edit from 51.191.128.1 would (if I've done the math right) be in both ranges. In this particular case, both blocks have the same effect, but what if one was a hard block and the other a soft block? Which would apply? RoySmith (talk) 03:14, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

The union of the blocks applies - you have to be able to edit through both blocks in order for the edit to be allowed. * Pppery * it has begun... 03:22, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey all. This was raised at Wikipedia:Edit_filter_noticeboard#graph_links_broken, but it appears the edit filter graphs, seen at [34], are not currently working and display an internal error. Would anyone happen to have an idea what happened to it? One idea that was raised over at EFN was that the log table may have been messed up by protected variables being introduced, but I'm not sure if that's the case or it's something else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EggRoll97 (talk • contribs) 03:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

@EggRoll97: I'm about to get on a flight, but a quick look at the tool's error logs shows: 
Filters: 'raise errorclass(errno, errval): ProgrammingError: (1146, u"Table \'enwiki_p.abuse_filter_log\' doesn\'t exist")'
And a check of the replicas does indeed confirm enwiki_p.abuse_filter_log does not exist. Courtesy ping to the tool's maintainer Danilo.mac — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 04:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
The abuse_filter_log table was deliberately removed from the wiki replicas in gerrit:1077360, pointing to two Phabricator tasks I don't have access to. It's likely to remain broken unless Danilo.mac puts in an amount of effort that's basically rewriting the tool from scratch. * Pppery * it has begun... 04:30, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Hmm oddly enough, the graphs for dewiki still work: https://ptwikis.toolforge.org/Filters:dewiki XXBlackburnXx (talk) 17:44, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
An update, dewiki no longer works either. EggRoll97 (talk) 04:24, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
I can not do anything while the abuse_filter_log tables are inaccessible. They were removed from replicas databases because some data in those tables are restricted, se T375751. Danilo.mac (talk) 19:49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:HD § Red Links are All blue now. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:10, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps someone who hangs out at VPT could take a look at this HD discussion. The OP seems to be experiencing the same issue described here, but it's not clear whether the problem is on the OP's side or Wikipedia's side. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:12, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Script for parameter change

is there a script to change parameter mane on every wiki article in a wiki project (si.wikipedia.org). The change i want to do is; replace "deadurl" or "dead-url" with "url-status" on all wiki articles using the cite web template. Or can someone fix the module so it happen automatically? si:Module:Citation/CS1 VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 05:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@VihirLak007 I would recommend running WP:AWB or WP:JWB.
For JWB, once you have it up and running, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ahecht/Scripts/Replace_dead-url.json&action=raw&ctype=application/json and save it as a .json file on your computer. In JWB, on the Setup tab, click "Import" and choose the file you saved. In the "Load" drop-down, choose "Replace dead-url". Then click on the Generate button, make sure Wiki Search is checked with insource:/dead\-?url *= */ in the search box, and hit the Generate button. When it's done, click outside the Generate box to close it. Then go to the "Edit" tab and click "Start" to start going through all the pages.
Once you're done, you can go to this page to see the remaining pages that need to be manually fixed. You may need to wait a few minutes first as there can be some lag between when you edit pages and when the search results catch up. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:11, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
@Ahecht Thanks! All went well. VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 19:00, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Searching for pages by category and talk page content

Does anyone know how you would search for all of the pages in a certain category whose associated talk page contains a certain string in its source? So, for instance, what search would return all of the pages in Category:Princesses in Greek mythology which contain "WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome" in their talk page's source? – Michael Aurel (talk) 07:18, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Can be done in PetScan. Put that category name in "Categories", then go to "Templates&links" tab, put that template name there with " Use talk pages instead" checked. – SD0001 (talk) 08:25, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. – Michael Aurel (talk) 08:35, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
It would be great to have this feature in MediaWiki itself. I created phab:T378868 to track it. – SD0001 (talk) 04:42, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I have notifications but it shows that there are no notifications

Occasionally when I check my notifications, the popup that appears will display "There are no notifications." even when at least one notification is present. Here is a picture:

I'm using the latest version of Safari. I encounter this problem randomly whenever I check notifications. ‹hamster717🐉› (discuss anything!🐹✈️ • my contribs🌌🌠) 03:33, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

This issue has been fixed. See #Notices not working. Please check again. – Ammarpad (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 11:56, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
It happened again ‹hamster717🐉› (discuss anything!🐹✈️ • my contribs🌌🌠) 03:32, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
It's a new issue (but same error message). A fix would be deployed next week. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:56, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-45

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

Updates for editors

  • Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [35]
  • Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
  • The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [36]
  • View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.

Updates for technical contributors

  • XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [37]

In depth

  • Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
  • The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.

Meetings and events

  • MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Persistent snackbar

I'm on Firefox 131.0.3 on Android 14. I have User:SD0001/find-archived-section enabled in my gadgets (and also mw:Extension:DiscussionTools in my Beta features, which has no effect on mobile).

As of recently (probably last Thursday), the snackbar popup I get from an archived / missing section link has stopped unpopping-up until I navigate away from the page.

Can anyone replicate / report to phab? Folly Mox (talk) 11:59, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

For clarity, my other snackbars (e.g. "Redirected from Wikipedia:vpt") pop away normally. It's just the archived section one that persists. Folly Mox (talk) 13:03, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
@Folly Mox: User:SD0001/find-archived-section makes a message starting with "Looks like the discussion". Your screenshot is from a newer MediaWiki feature which starts with "This topic". The box goes away when I tap it outside the link in iOS on an iPhone, e.g. at User talk:Citation bot#Bot does nothing. Are you saying the tap doesn't work for you, or did you expect the box to disappear by itself? I don't have an Android device for testing. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:53, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
That popup is generated by DiscussionTools, not the gadget. You can dismiss a popup on Minerva by tapping it (around a link if it includes one). Nardog (talk) 00:26, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
You can also accidentally dismiss it by clicking the space between the lines of a multi-line link, which I've managed to do multiple times :c. – 2804:F1...9E:DCD8 (talk) 00:35, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
That's the DiscussionTools notification. It's supposed to stick around until you interact with it. Could you confirm whether it's dismissed if you directly tap on it? (If it is, it's working as-intended. If not, that's a bug we should fix.) DLynch (WMF) (talk) 02:45, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Apologies for the delay everyone; yesterday was exhausting. After constructing a test case, I can confirm that the snackbar disappears properly when tapped. I feel like the persistence is new behaviour(?) but understand why such a message would be intentionally left around until interacted with.
Perhaps removing the snackbar once e.g. the editing interface is opened might make more sense: it does look like a bug in the screenshots I posted (to me, anyway).
And apologies for throwing the find-archived-section gadget under the bus: I wasn't previously aware that Mediawiki had incorporated the same functionality until reviewing the documentation for my OP above.
I guess I was also wrong about DiscussionTools having no effect in Minerva: I don't see the "people in conversation" or "subscribe to thread", but upon reflection I suppose the linkable timestamps that point straight to a comment supplanting the prior requirement of diff hunting must be part of the extension as well. Folly Mox (talk) 12:58, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Mobile editing and the reply tool don't reload the page when editing and then the popup remains. I don't know whether something could be done to make it disappear automatically on those actions. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
mw:Help:SourceEditor is pretty uninformative on this point, but maybe one of the devs who frequent this venue knows which hook triggers the opening of the edit interface and can add a snackbar disappear function there? Folly Mox (talk) 17:49, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
The reply tool check in the background for the arrival of new comments. In this part it may be possible to dismiss the snackbar. 176.4.242.5 (talk) 19:26, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
Or at least hide it until it can be dismissed at cancelling or submission and the reload that is connected with either. 176.4.242.5 (talk) 19:30, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Recently the "Thank" link is missing from page histories and diffs. Safari 18.1.--AntientNestor (talk) 14:10, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

It works for me in Firefox. You have to be logged in. Are you sure your login is working when they are missing? Please post an example link. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:27, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter:You're right—working in Firefox, which would be a workaround. Still missing from Safari, though.--AntientNestor (talk) 15:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
It is present for me in Version 18.0.1 (19619.1.26.111.11, 19619) and in iOS's Safari 18.1 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:01, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Is it possible to find out a list of articles and redirects for Climate change in .... ?

Hi all

I'd like to spend a significant amount of time writing and working with experts on creating Climate change in NAME OF COUNTRY / STATE etc articles. First I would like to understand which do and don't exist. I tried making a simple list of all the countries to see redlinks however it seems that one or more users created a significant number of redirects so this doesn't work. I've been using List of sovereign states to create a list, but I'm sure there are other options like islands, states within countries etc. Is it possible to do a query or is there another way to find:

  1. A list of existing articles for Climate Change in ...
  2. A list of redirects for Climate change in ...
  3. A way to have a live list of missing Climate change in NAME OF COUNTRY articles since simple redlinks don't work because of the redirects that have been created (I guess I could make a table of redlinks with comments on which are redirects as a basic version)

Many thanks

John Cummings (talk) 11:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

You may be interested in User:BrandonXLF/GreenRedirects. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:37, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
PrimeHunter thanks so much :) you always know the right answer! I can create a manual to update page from this now I think, if you or anyone else has any ideas about creating an automated page please let em know. Thanks again. John Cummings (talk) 12:57, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter, @John Cummings You can also use the CSS code at the bottom of User:Ahecht/Scripts/RedirectID to add a icon next to redirects (similar to the icon next to external links). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:10, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
Hi Ahecht can I check something, does this redirect icon only appear for users who have installed this or does it appear for all users? John Cummings (talk) 23:33, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
@John Cummings For both my CSS and BrandonXLF's CSS users would have to have it installed. You could use WP:TemplateStyles to apply User:Ahecht/Scripts/Redirect_icon.css or User:BrandonXLF/GreenRedirects.css to a page for everyone, even logged out editors, but using it to style an entire mainspace page seems contrary to the usage guidelines. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:17, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
Redirects are in italics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AllPages?from=Climate+change+in&to=&namespace=0. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:53, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
{{Is redirect}} can test for redirects in wikitext. 500 calls are allowed in a page with no other expensive parser functions. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:22, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
PrimeHunter thanks again, super helpful. One final question, do you know if there is a template I could use to tell if a page includes a specific word or phrase? I would love a way to tell if articles for countries mention climate change. I know this is probably a very niche use case but I'm wondering if there is template that might do this for another reason. John Cummings (talk) 19:31, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
It's a search modifier, not a template, but WP:INSOURCE is close to what you're asking for. jlwoodwa (talk) 02:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Suggestion to improve search bar results

Would it be possible to have redirects show up at the same level of importance as they would if the article was at that title? This is a little weird to explain but basically from my level of understanding search bar results are currently sorted roughly by how likely a user is to need that article. For example when you type Apollo in looking for the Apollo missions the first relevant result is Apollo 11, then 13, then others. This makes a lot of sense to me but I want to know if it's possible to include redirects into this.

Right now redirects only show up in the search bar below all the possible exact match results until fully typed exactly. For example if you start typing "New York Times" into the search bar it puts a bunch of court cases involving the NYT before the newspaper right up until you type the final S, at which point the newspaper goes to the top like it should have been. This is not intuitive for readers and if "New York Times" showed up at the level of importance that "The New York Times" did, it would be better for navigation. Another example is the Edvard Munch painting The Scream. It's really iconic and notable but a reader could very easily forget the "the" and just type "scream", at which point they would have to remember exactly "Scream (painting)" before they get the one they want because there are a bunch of other less important articles that do start with exactly "scream". This is terrible for navigation, obviously. But if "Scream (painting)" showed up in the search results where it would if the article was called that, that would fix the issue.

I have no idea how this would be implemented or even if it's possible. Please let me know if this is even a feasible idea. Ladtrack (talk) 19:04, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Redirects vary greatly in relevance. Science Times also redirects to The New York Times but isn't mentioned there. The redirect currently has seven views in the last 30 days.[38] I don't think it should inherit the importance of the newspaper and rank high when you start typing "science". PrimeHunter (talk) 21:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
there are in principle two kinds of redirecting, the orthographic and the semantic one. The semantic redirect has one extraneous property. It can point to a part of the article, that is some semantically dependent section. An orthographic redirect is about different writing of the lemma,so it will never point to only a part of the article. So both kinds of redirects can be differentiated by the presence or absence of the "#" separator in the target. And if you need to set a semantic redirect to a whole article, then add the separator without a section name. 2A02:3035:B07:530:180:786A:E014:DDFD (talk) 13:12, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
I fear that weighting all redirects equally to the main article title would do more harm than good. Many popular articles have lots of redirects, and in particular redirects that start with different letters than the main title. If there are ten really popular articles with redirects starting xyz... then they could dominate the completion suggestions. If you typed bro into the search box, you might be disappointed to see the top suggestions being Youtube, Barack Obama, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, France, Brooklyn, Autism, HTTP cookie, Malcolm X, and Brooklyn Dodgers. (The relevant redirects are: Broadcast yourself, Brock Obama, Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, Bronx Bombers, Bro-C'hall, —, Broad Autism Phenotype, Browser cookie, Brother Malcolm, and —).
The common factor in your two examples are that they start with The. I think "ignoring common completion prefixes" might be a better approach. (It was #4 on our list of most promising tasks for working with an outside consultant in 2018.) Obvious ways to attempt this would be to ignore stop words (the, a, an, of, etc.), though we don't have stop word lists for all the languages we'd want to support, and it wouldn't catch wiki-specific common title prefixes like List of. Automatically finding candidates is possible, but I'd be afraid of blindly trusting them since, for example, Maria might be a very common prefix, since it is a very common name cross-culturally. You could also compare titles to existing redirects (The New York Times vs New York Times) for common ignorable prefixes, though there may not be enough data on smaller wikis. Implementation details require more thought, like preventing the "prefix" from being the whole title (The The) or everything up to a paren (To Be or Not to Be (book))—how do you know when to stop in those cases? What happens when a prefix-stripped title matches another title (The Dog vs Dog)? Do you require prefixes to be whole words (then you miss naj- in Polish, but you don't want to strip The off the front of Theater or Theodore)? If you automatically find el, la and los in Spanish, how do you make sure you get las? If you have à, le, la, and les, in French, should you add au and aux, and if so, how do you know? What do we do in Chinese or Japanese? Etc., etc., etc. Language is always complicated.
So, this is something that is on the Search Team's radar, but not currently near the top of our priority list. (Unfortunately we have a lot of infrastructure and query service work that needs our attention.) TJones (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Hi, thanks so much for the detailed reply. That's a great issue that I hadn't considered. Ignoring common prefixes isn't perfect (there are examples like Facebook, Inc. → Meta Platforms or Marquis de Lafayette → Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette that I think also need to be fixed) but given I have no idea how to solve the problem you've pointed out I would settle for ignoring prefixes.
I do think there are some feasible ways around the other issues, though. The obvious question would be, does the change have to roll out for every language at once? Starting with one and then adding more seems a lot easier. That way a lot of the rules can be placed manually; I'll go through possible solutions to each of these issues, and while I'm sure some of them won't work and there will be many more issues, this seems like a surmountable challenge to me.
Okay, one at a time:
  • Manually include wiki-specific prefixes like List of
  • Manually exclude anything that will obviously cause problems like Maria
  • Like you said, specifically rely on existing redirects and don't remove prefixes unless it matches an existing redirect (The (band) for this example, the book has no redirects and could be excluded). Remember, while this isn't perfect and a lot of redirects will be missing, any improvement is good for navigation.
  • Even though the title is stripped internally for navigation purposes, display the actual article title in the dropdown menu so people can differentiate; this is already done for redirects, so someone typing dog could easily see The Dog and realize it's not what they're looking for.
  • Do not strip off whole words in the English Wikipedia, in Polish Wikipedia naj- can be marked to be stripped off from the word itself without it affecting anything in other languages
  • For cases like las, au, and aux, again ensure that it must be matched with an existing redirect. I don't know nearly enough about Chinese or Japanese to even venture at a solution, but I'm sure one could be found, and while that is being worked on it could be implemented in other language Wikipedias.
Ladtrack (talk) 05:48, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Does anyone else have this possible bug?

When editing on mobile, I've noticed what I think is a bug, but I haven't posted to Phabricator, because I'm not entirely sure, so I wanted to hear others input. When I edit on my phone (which is a OnePlus phone runnning on Android, if that matters) in the browser Google (don't have the app, did not test with it and only tested Google), whether in visual or source editing I can't highlight a word or phrase that has the red wavy line underneath. If I try, the screen freezes and I get booted from Google. When I reenter, it's as though I never tried to edit in the first place. Doesn't occur on my computer editing with Google however.

Does anyone else have this bug? Its not like I can't just edit on computer, but I wanted to bring this to someone's attention, so it can be fixed in the future.Thank you in advance for replies. 90.133.232.139 (talk) 21:36, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi! Recently, all redlinks (such as this one) have started showing up as blue. This only seems to happen when using the Vector 2022 or Minerva skins on Firefox 77/Chrome 87 and below (haven't checked other browsers), and doesn't affect the original Vector.

Redlink color
Vector Vector 2022 Minerva
Firefox 78 Red Red Red
Firefox 77 Red Blue Blue
Chrome 88 Red Red Red
Chrome 87 Red Blue Blue

I saw the thread linked from a previous section on this page, but this issue appears to be different from T315347 which seems to have been a 2020 issue affecting mobile users, while the current problem just started happening recently and affects the desktop site. 2A00:807:E7:D39B:AD41:2CD8:279A:980F (talk) 11:11, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Red links have the CSS class new and get their color from loading a CSS rule from outside the page itself. CSS in Vector 2022:
@media screen {
  a:where(.new:not([role="button"])):visited {
    color: var(--color-destructive--visited,#9f5555);
  }
}
It's simpler in Vector legacy (sometimes just called Vector):
@media screen {
  a.new:visited {
    color: #a55858;
  }
}
If you know how to add a CSS rule to the viewed page in your browser, can you say whether one or both works? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:45, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
You may have to add !important to the color line to override existing rules:
@media screen {
  a:where(.new:not([role="button"])):visited {
    color: var(--color-destructive--visited,#9f5555) !important;
  }
}

@media screen {
  a.new:visited {
    color: #a55858 !important;
  }
}
PrimeHunter (talk) 11:54, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
The Firefox 77/78 and Chrome 87/88 dividing points line up with the introduction of the :where() CSS selector, which Vector 2022 and Minerva both use. Anomie⚔ 13:17, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
The question is, why is the user running those browser versions? Windows 7 (which is EOL) and up should be able to run Chrome 109 and Firefox 115. What OS are you using? Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 13:41, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
I'm actually using Firefox 66 on Estobuntu [et] 14.04 (which I know is really outdated, but I'm currently working on figuring out how to install a newer OS). I used this site to check what browser versions the issue happened on. I'll just use the original Vector skin as a workaround until I can install a newer browser. 2A00:807:E5:D017:AD41:2CD8:279A:980F (talk) 00:50, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
If you have to run the old browsers for some reason then you can create an account and save the last CSS version in your CSS to automatically load it on all English Wikipedia pages when you are logged in. Or save it in meta:Special:MyPage/global.css to load in all Wikipedia languages and Wikimedia wikis when you are logged in. Your account automatically works at all of them and keeps you logged in. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Which means the rule will not work for browsers from before that time.
MediaWiki does support some pretty old browsers, but skins are neither core nor does the level of support provided by core for old browsers require more than "you can read the page" for some value of "reasonable". See also mw:Compatibility. Izno (talk) 15:45, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

AfD Statistics for User down today

Voting matrix Stats for users not updating today. Thanks in advance for any info on this. — Maile (talk) 21:09, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Never mind. It seems to be working OK now. — Maile (talk) 00:53, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Being logout again

This happened awhile ago, cleared up, and has now started happening again. Anyone know what's going on? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:26, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

This sounds like phab:T372702 (though I don't think anyone else reported it clearing up for a bit); the latest update there (from about two weeks ago) is that the devs are having a hard time telling what the cause is, but added some additional logging to help track down the issue. 129.170.197.163 (talk) 02:24, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks I'll keep an eye on the phab ticket. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 02:30, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Script to add unrefernced tag

Is there any script to run through WP:AWB or WP:JWB to add the unreferenced tag to articles that has no references? VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 20:17, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Anyone? VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 06:19, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
Doing this is prone to false positives (since not all references are inline and/or correctly formatted, and there’s a number of special cases), and therefore should be done cautiously instead of blindly running through them. There have been bots that have flagged these in the past but they have had community-wide approval.  novov talk edits 12:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
Oh right. Yeah its better to go through each article in this matter. VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 12:59, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Graphs of categories

Is there a way to create a graph that shows how many pages are in a category (y-axis) over time (x-axis)? It would be particularly useful for error tracking categories. Failing that, a text-based way to monitor category population changes. -- GreenC 02:40, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Well, there's User:MusikBot/CategoryCounter — Qwerfjkltalk 13:30, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
"Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues" .. oh forgot about that. Maybe no graph option. Unless it was like an ascii bar graph:
Jan: ------|-------
Feb: ---|--
Mar: -------|----
Apr: -----|----
May: --|-
Jun: ----|---
Jul: --|-------------
Aug: ------------|---
Sep: ---|---
Oct: ---------|-
Nov: ------|--

▅▆▂▃▂▂▂▅▂▂▅▇▂▂▂▃▆▆▆▅▃▂▂▂▁▂▂▆▁▃
Source-- GreenC 14:15, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
User:MusikBot/CategoryCounter might work in 1-3 months. The team behind Mw:Extension:Chart is pushing for an deployment soon, see phab:T372081. Template:Articles lacking sources chart/data has to move to the Data namespace on Wikimedia commons, and you also need a new page, again in the data namespace on commons, that decides how the graph looks. Snævar (talk) 14:54, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. -- GreenC 15:37, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
There's also User:SDZeroBot/Category counter which I just finished setting up. Raw counts only, no graphs for now. (I noticed that the MusikBot task, apart from being disabled, stores the counts on-wiki which seems like an unsuitable place for large-scale storage, and it also requires an admin to enable new categories for counting.) – SD0001 (talk) 18:10, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
User:SD0001 this works for my purposes. Thank you! You could also store the data on Commons, in JSON, and it would be available to Lua templates on all 300+ wikis, which might make graphic presentation possible. The only limit is JSON file size so it probably would require a new file every year, with monthly and yearly totals included in the JSON for scaled views. Example JSON. Example module that reads it (here). -- GreenC 06:45, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Mysterious category in The Joke's on Us

Is there a reason The Joke's on Us is showing a redlinked category Pages using the JsonConfig extension? I can't figure out how to remove it. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 18:41, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

A WP:NULLEDIT did the trick. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:44, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Non-reviewed pages can appear in search results for articles they're redirected to

I recently made a chain of edits on the topic of the high school in Fultondale, Georgia, US. The page Fultondale High School was moved to Fultondale High School (1965–2021) - leaving a redirect at Fultondale High School. After this, the page Fultondale High School (2023–present) was created. Finally, a redirect from Fultondale High School to Fultondale High School (2023–present) was made.

I then decided to search Fultondale High School on Google. I saw that the Wikipedia result had remained at the 1965-2021 article. However, upon clicking on this, the page redirects to the 2023-present article, as a redirect from the Fultondale High School article (now a redirect, but formerly a reviewed article).

This is most likely unintended. I clicked on the search result for the 1965-2021 school but was redirected to the 2023-present article. I was using Google, and I haven't received the notification that the 2023-present article has been reviewed yet. Departure– (talk) 02:58, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of what search engines do, you should have made a disambiguation page instead of creating a WP:MISPLACED situation. I've done so, which moots this. * Pppery * it has begun... 03:10, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
I wasn't aware of WP:MISPLACED in this context, cheers! But the search engines still did what they probably shouldn't. Not much of an issue for a local high school in Alabama, but this could happen to rogue autoconfirmed users on pages where the Wikipedia result is the first on searches of major topics in potentially less-than-ideal circumstances. Departure– (talk) 03:15, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
Google cached https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fultondale_High_School when it was a redirect to Fultondale High School (1965–2021), so the title and excerpt on the Google search results page is from that article until they revisit the page and update their cache at an unknown time. I guess Google wouldn't have linked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fultondale_High_School on the result if MediaWiki made real HTTP redirects. It makes a "fake" redirect where it gives a HTTP 200 OK status code (redirects are 3xx) and stays on the page but displays the same content as the redirect target with "(Redirected from ...)" added at the top. If a browser has JavaScript enabled then MediaWiki rewrites the url in the address bar to the redirect target but that url is never actually loaded by the browser or Googlebot. I don't see an issue we should try to fix. The content of the unreviewed article is not indexed by Google. Somebody may merely click a link which leads to the article. Wikipedia itself has such links including in our own search results which do index unreviewed articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Is anyone able to explain or fix the issue behind this glitch? Is this a known issue that has occurred before? Left guide (talk) 10:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

A used template had added links to a disambiguation page since the article was last edited.[39] PrimeHunter (talk) 11:37, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Issues with template:Chloroplast DNA

I hope I am at the right place with this issue - if not, I would very much appreciate redirection! I have been trying to fix the appearance of template:Chloroplast DNA, which is supposed to provide a clickable version of File:Nicotiana tabacum Choroplast genome.svg, but I am failing to make it display properly on both desktop and mobile (see template talk:Chloroplast DNA). It is used on Chloroplast and Chloroplast DNA, two fairly important articles, the former of which is currently being tidied up. I have a nagging feeling that there should be a completely different way of doing this than how [[[:template:Chloroplast DNA]] goes about it.

I've mocked up the template on User:Felix QW/sandbox 2 with a test page at User:Felix QW/sandbox if anyone would like to mess about with it without affecting mainspace. Thanks in advance to anyone who would be happy to have a look into this! Felix QW (talk) 12:06, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

A template using a mass of display absolutes overtop an image is going to have a hard time on mobile, yes. Mobile has different assumptions about how wide an image is, even if you would prefer it to have a certain size. Izno (talk) 16:56, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps using mw:Extension:ImageMap instead would work. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:34, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Thank you very much for the pointer—That was exactly the sort of solution I was thinking off! Felix QW (talk) 22:37, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Having thought about it a bit more, I am not sure how ImageMap would work with an svg image that doesn't necessarily have an "original size". Is the "nominal size" of 1,125 × 960 pixels reported on Commons an "original size" in this sense? Felix QW (talk) 11:40, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
It does work, at least if the <svg>...</svg> element has width= and height= attributes having non-zero values without units, e.g. width="1125" height="960" as with c:File:Nicotiana tabacum Choroplast genome.svg. See also mw:Extension:ImageMap#Syntax description, which says All coordinates are according to the full-size image, not the visible image. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:36, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! I have also found Template:World image map, which is also an image map overlaying a svg. When I have some spare time, I will play around with ImageMapEdit and see what I can do. Felix QW (talk) 15:51, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

css style page turned into an article

On sinhala wikipedia i tried manually importing Help:Your first article/styles.css from here to there si:උදවු:Your first article/styles.css. But it turned into to an article type page. Never happened to me before. Can someone fix this? VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 19:45, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

can an admin please change the content model of this page si:උදවු:Your first article/styles.css VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 19:54, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
You need to ask someone who has admin rights on siwiki. Nobody here does. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:04, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Ah right. Thanks. BTW, aren't there admins in existence who have admin right all over every wikipedia project?who might be able to do this types of edits on cross wiki projects if asked for help. Just curious VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 20:12, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
m:Global sysops and m:Stewards do exist. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:16, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Got it done from a global sysop. VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 20:30, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Creating new css style pages

How to create a "sanitized css" page from scratch? Everytime i try, the page creating window is for a article type new page(don't know the technical term) and not a css content model page. VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 22:28, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

You can only create them in Template space, with the .css postfix. But after that, you can move them to another namespace. See also TemplateStyles usage. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:34, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
... you can also create them as such in the Module namespace. Izno (talk) 01:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
If you're an administrator, you can also use Special:ChangeContentModel and enter a title of a page that doesn't exist to create it with that content model. Matma Rex talk 21:06, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Protected filter discussion at the edit filter noticeboard

There is an ongoing discussion about protected filters and for consensus to add abusefilter-access-protected-vars to non-administrator edit filter helpers and managers. For more information or for participation, please see Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard#Protected filters. Codename Noreste 🤔 Talk 00:19, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-46

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

Updates for editors

Updates for technical contributors

  • Advanced item In 1.44.0-wmf-2, the logic of Wikibase function getAllStatements changed to behave like getBestStatements. Invoking the function now returns a copy of values which are immutable. [42]
  • Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. The API will be rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The impacted endpoints include getting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content. These changes will be available on testwiki later this week, with other projects to follow. This change should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints should verify behavior on testwiki, and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket.

In depth

  • Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions. This Superset dashboard calculates and aggregates metrics about Automoderator's behaviour on the projects in which it is deployed. Thanks to the Moderator Tools team for this Dashboard; you can visit the documentation page for more information about this work. [43]

Meetings and events

  • 21 November 2024 (8:00 UTC & 16:00 UTC) - Community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. The theme of this call is how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Duplicate, identical, and inconsistent system messages

For context: I have been scrolling through Special:AllMessages and noticed that "delete" and "protect" exist as substantial duplicate of messages. Likewise, I have never figured out why, but MediaWiki:Edit duplicates the contents of MediaWiki:Editthispage and is inconsistent with the message actually shown to most users MediaWiki:Skin-view-edit/MediaWiki:Vector-view-edit/MediaWiki:Editsection.

I am trying to figure out if these messages are actually used for some reason or if they are no longer and can safely be deleted. I recently withdrew my own MFD of all three of these pages because I need to get more help on this. And I also withdrew a speedy criteria idea discussion also. Doing some digging in the archives I found Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 195#Inconsistent tab names in monobook for the latter two. However, looking at the default, that appears to have been fixed.

As for MediaWiki:Edit there is phab:T310529. This behavior is getting quite confusing and I need to figure out what is going on.

I wonder if we can fish out more of these messages and maybe, on a rainy day, we can figure out what to do with them; send them to MFD, or what.

Pinging the users that previously were involved in this (at least in the past couple of days or whenever). @Pppery @Xaosflux @Thryduulf @Robert McClenon

I do have other questions about MediaWiki:Rollbacklinkcount (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and MediaWiki:Rollbacklinkcount-morethan (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), and I remember dropping the discussion because it is a stylistic thing, but I do have concerns about if any of these overrides (especially the minor ones, minor in teh sense that they just add a comma or change the case or whatever) are being made with consensus or not, and if they are to solve a temporary problem, why they aren't being undone once that temporary problem is fixed.

To be clear, I have no trouble whatsoever with the overrides made for Wikipedia's sake, like those that link to Wikipedia policies or Wikipedia help pages or adding appropriate styling. This is primarily about "minor edits" where different punctuation, capitalization, or phrasing is used as opposed to the original message. If there indeed is a problem with a system message for all wikis (not just Wikipedia), then the wording should be fixed in the software.

There are somewhere around less than 1000 overrides going from the data on AllMessages. Reviewing them all is probably going to be a pain, especially because most of these messages don't have adequate documentation on MediaWiki. Awesome Aasim 02:19, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for withdrawing the MFD nominations pending further research. I don't understand the details of how those files are used, and I would prefer. before voting on whether to delete something, to know what it is and what it is used for:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Robert McClenon (talk) 03:47, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

These three are very old messages, and I don't have time to code search anywhere they could be in play. As phab:T310529 noted, at least one of them is still being imported in the current skins. Most of the use of these has been migrated to newer messages, but something could still be using them. Unless there is an actual problem, I'd leave them along. Code problems certainly should be raised on phab. — xaosflux Talk 10:48, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Let's actually see... Vector 2022 Vector 2010 Monobook Timeless Minerva
I am not seeing (edit) anywhere. (skin-view-edit) yes, but not (edit). Maybe there is something that is missing? Awesome Aasim 14:58, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Previewing the use of a message in the place you think it will appear does not correctly assess whether it will appear there. mw:Codesearch is the appropriate tool. Izno (talk) 16:58, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
And even with codesearch, some messages are used in pretty unconventional ways and can be difficult to locate (Dynamic definitions and compound definitions exist). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:31, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
In any case, changing MediaWiki:Edit to say "Edit" does have advantages, namely that it permits editors to use the system message in templates. Same with MediaWiki:Protect and MediaWiki:Delete.
Any administrators: Is "delete" and "protect" appearing in lowercase when you are using a skin that is not MonoBook? By default it should be capitalized. Awesome Aasim 19:18, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
Vector 2022 shows capitalized Delete and Protect from fallback messages: Mediawiki:Vector-2022-action-delete / Mediawiki:Skin-action-delete and Mediawiki:Vector-2022-action-protect / Mediawiki:Skin-action-protect. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:11, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

No pictures show on wikipedia for me

Example.png

pictures do not show on any page Topjimz (talk) 01:20, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like an issue with your browser or the way it is configured, unless you have taken measures to suppress the display of images(per WP:NOSEE). 331dot (talk) 01:58, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
@Topjimz: Images are loaded from upload.wikimedia.org, e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Example.png which I see here in this section. If you see it at upload.wikimedia.org but not here then your browser may be blocking images if they are loaded from another domain. If you don't see it at upload.wikimedia.org then your browser or Internet connection may be blocking that domain. Some interface images are loaded from en.wikipedia.org, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/resources/assets/poweredby_mediawiki.svg. Do you see that? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:03, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
what I meant was, when I view a person on your site, I can't see the picture of them.
Topjimz 174.251.64.54 (talk) 05:40, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
what I meant was, when I view a person on your site, I can't see the picture of them.
Topjimz Topjimz (talk) 05:42, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
What kind of person? Are you talking about biographical articles about well-known people, or other users of the site? Do you have a link to a page where you have this problem? Nardog (talk) 07:24, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
All people I look up, there picture does not come up, but a little box is in place of the picture where the picture of the person usually is. Topjimz (talk) 08:34, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Can you give a specific example of an article you looked at? 331dot (talk) 08:52, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Is this happening only when logged in, or both logged in and logged out? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Both. Topjimz (talk) 10:02, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
It sounds like then that your browser is configured in some manner to block images, perhaps as PrimeHunter suggests above. 331dot (talk) 10:11, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
@Topjimz: We need more information to give more help.
  1. Do you see an image saying "This is just an example" in this section?
  2. Do you see it at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Example.png?
  3. Do you see an image at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/resources/assets/poweredby_mediawiki.svg
  4. Do you see images at unrelated websites like the Google logo at https://www.google.com/?
  5. What is your browser and device?
  6. Can you try another browser?
  7. Can you try another Internet connection?
PrimeHunter (talk) 11:56, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
I use Chrome that has the problem and use Firefox very rarely. To much drain from firefox. Topjimz (talk) 12:44, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Import taxonomy templates

is there a way to import all the taxonomy templates to a different wikipedia project (eg: Sinhala wikipedia) in one go? I've been manually making one by one when someone make a new article for an animal or plant and the infobox error popup saying missing template. There's no translation of names going on since they're are scientific names and in rare cases they get directed to the same name written in local letters. it there a way to import all these way easier so later ppl can make the relevant missing article pages of clades, genus, families etc and not have to copy paste each template one by one. Hope i was clear VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 09:35, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

The ability of other Wikipedias to use the taxonomy templates comes up quite often. There are currently 119k taxonomy templates. I assume one could get a list using the API, but don't know if that can be used get a bulk download and then import them elsewhere. There is a category: Category:Taxonomy_templates.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
I've done a little research and think it can be done in two steps.
  • First, export the taxonomy templates from English Wikipedia to an XML file. Use Special:Export and export file from Category:Taxonomy_templates. I tested this and downloaded a 4Mb file.
  • Second, import into target wikipedia. This needs special permissions so only can be done by an administrator. I can't even access the page to see the options, but I assume there is an option to import the downloaded XML file.
Hope this helps. I would be interested in knowing if it works as we often get asked about interwike use on the automated taxobox talk pages.  —  Jts1882 | talk  16:38, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Do keep in mind that English Wikipedia doesn't have taxonomy templates for all taxa with articles (let alone the taxa that don't have articles). There are around 20,000 taxa with articles that don't have a taxonomy template yet. Plantdrew (talk) 20:49, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
I see. Noted VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 05:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
So i asked for importer/inter wiki importer rights from an admin there, they said they don't have power to give me that right but a steward can. where can i find stewards VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 05:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
To receive importer rights yourself, you would first need to make a request on your wiki to demonstrate there is consensus for you to be given this permission. This request must meet the requirements laid out in meta:Steward requests/Permissions/Minimum voting requirements § Temporary Importer (per meta:Importer, permanent importer access will not be granted unless the local community has a policy specifically allowing it). As an example, the most recent request for importer access on enwiki is here, though that was a request for permanent access. Then, you would file a request to the stewards at meta:SRP. Note that this is a very sensitive permission—it essentially gives the ability to add fake edits to a page's history—so standards for granting it are (or at least should be) high.
If you don't anticipate using this permission frequently, I believe you could instead start a discussion on your wiki seeking approval for these specific imports. If that discussion were successful, you would then file a request at meta:SRM for a steward to handle the imports. The other alternative, which avoids the issue of import permissions entirely, would be to have a bot copy the templates to your wiki (subject to your local bot policy, of course). 50.223.140.130 (talk) 07:55, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
Yeah. A steward handling the imports sounds better. Ill try that way. Safer too. VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 08:31, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
That should work, but note that importing from an XML file can only be done by importers (or more specifically, users with the importupload right); other admins can only import via an interwiki, which can only do one page at a time. 50.223.140.130 (talk) 07:15, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Syncing across different wikis

Is there a way to sync template/list contents across wikis?
Eg: Template:Totd, Imagine another wikiproject has this template too, is there a code we can enter so whatever that is updated/added/changed/showed in the Template on the english wiki also updates/adds/changes/shows on the other wiki through their template. Gonna be useful for things like technical news, Totd etc VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 11:41, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

It's a long-standing wish, see phab:T121470. CMD (talk) 13:27, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Oh maaaan. Thanks btw VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 05:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
@VihirLak007 There was a bot providing this functionality, but I think it broke. I think now this functionality only syncs Modules (which makes sense, cause these are easier to make language and wiki independent than templates). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:47, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
There are two aspects of this, one is the global template wiki/synchronization, the other is multilingual support. Usually modules with '/config' or '/configuration' sub pages are easier to sync, as the multilingual settings and translations are on those config pages. Then on top of that you have modules changing the arguments, prompting a change in the transclusions on all of the wikis. So, not a copy/paste job. Snævar (talk) 14:03, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Script error on mobile causing headings to stop rendering

If you check https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election on Chrome with developer tools and Galaxy S20 turned on, no headings under Results render, and the debugger pauses on a jQuery error. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

The headings should be fixed now. Not sure of the jQuery error. It might be from a user script. – Ammarpad (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Font color not changing in infoboxes when darkmode is turned on

On sinhala wiki few infoboxes doesn't change font color to white in darkmode, so they aren't readable. How to fix this and where to exacly find the code which determine the font color according to the mode a user is using? If its possible can someone fix?

VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 07:48, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

si:මාධ්‍යවිකි:Common.css has hardcoded colors, I would start there and replace them with Codex tokens as per mw:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 08:50, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Problems with dark mode

Class mw-no-invert, used to ensure that colors display correctly in dark mode, does not seem to work on International Fujita scale anywhere except in the side tables titled "Tornado rating classifications". –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 20:18, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

The page looks great to me in dark mode (Brave browser on Mac OS). Can you give a specific example of one part of the article that does not display as expected? What part of the article, what is it doing, and what were you hoping it would do? – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:29, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
LaundryPizza03, I'm not seeing |class="mw-no-invert" in e.g. the table at International Fujita scale § Three second measurement. The right-floated "Tornado classification" tables at e.g. § 2018 version do include it, and display as presumably intended (differently, at least).
I think the inverted colours look fine— in fact I'd characterise them as "more interesting" than the played-out yellow–red gradient typically employed. This is good since Template:Storm colour has like 5300 transclusions. Folly Mox (talk) 13:57, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Actually, it occurred to me earlier (when I was already too late to work to type it out) that since most of these storm insensity colours are realised as bgcolor="#{{storm colour|value}}", someone could modify {{Storm colour}} to output after the hex string retrieved from Module:Storm categories/categories " class="mw-no-invert. Of course, this is bad design, and will probably break (or at least upset the linter about) some subset of transclusions called without enclosing quotes, or which already contain a |class= parameter in the table cell style. Should alter all the articles in one go, though. Folly Mox (talk) 17:16, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Way to enforce a ban from article creation using the software?

Looking at this ANI case, I wonder if there is a way to enforce a ban from creating pages from the software, as if the user under sanction had lost their autoconfirmation (but without losing the ability to edit semi-protected pages). This could also be extended to other namespaces, such as the Draft: or User: namespace if necessary. FMecha (to talk|to see log) 18:22, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

It is technically possible to partial block from creating any type of page. It is technically possible to partial block from editing the entire article namespace. Anything else could be done only using an edit filter, which is generally not done in this situation.
Restrictions that are so simple a computer could (even in theory) enforce them are rare - the community tends to rely on topic bans which are inherently subjective in nature, so I don't think it's worth spending time coding up any new MediaWiki features to implement this. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:27, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Sanskrit

Hello,

There are some issues with the templates in the header of the page. No clear idea of what the issues could be, but some templates don't seem to exist, or some parameters are wrong.

Thank you 212.195.53.63 (talk) 20:16, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to ping @Trappist the monk here to double check, but I am pretty sure the issue is that the parameter was never supported. I don't really understand how it wasn't caught before today, which is perhaps the more interesting question I would have. Izno (talk) 21:17, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
|translit-standard= is not a supported parameter; use |translit-std=. Not caught before today because only today did I update Module:Lang to catch these kinds of unknown parameters.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:44, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Republican Party's infobox

I can't get any response at the page-in-question, so maybe I can get help here. Over at the Republican Party (United States) page, the infobox is failing to show Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell. Even though you do see him in the edit-window. GoodDay (talk) 19:52, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't see McConnell in the edit window in the context of the infobox. Izno (talk) 21:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
@Izno: I re-added him & now the infobox won't show the House Majority leader, Steve Scalise. GoodDay (talk) 23:08, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
I believe I found the solution. I lowered the leaders' entries from 1-6 to 0-5. GoodDay (talk) 23:14, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

question about partial blocking and page creation

There's a discussion at ANI right now that is heading in the direction of banning a user from creating new articles, a sub-proposal has emerged to allow them to use WP:AFC instead. My question would be this: if you check the "Creating new pages and uploading new files" is that sitewide or will it only apply to the namespace selected for the partial block? Or would we have to just consider it an traditional topic ban with no technical implementation? Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 22:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@Just Step Sideways that is a sitewide control. The 'namespace' blocks are only about editing. — xaosflux Talk 23:39, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
I kinda figured that was the answer, thanks. Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 23:40, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae will trout me for suggesting this: Edit Filter to stop that editor from creating new articles in the mainspace. (But no, don't please. If the editor has no self-control after the consensus to topic ban them, they might just earn a ticket to being blocked.) – robertsky (talk) 14:11, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
Edit filters are expensive in terms of performance when submitting an edit, and of maintaining them, so should not typically be written to stop a single user from doing something. So yes, probably better to have the user just exercise some self-control :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:15, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
+2. abusefilter shouldn't be used to restrict a single named user. — xaosflux Talk 14:32, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
+3, though I have no idea which user you're referring to (I don't frequent AN/ANI). Presumably the solution to this is just to tell the user to stop creating articles in mainspace, enforced via a block of sitewide page creation if they continue in spite of a ban. A bit more than the ban would be covered, but it would undoubtedly enforce the ban. EggRoll97 (talk) 01:44, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Lua help needed at Template:Text diff

The {{Text diff}} template is causing some Linter misnested tag errors that do not appear to be fixable locally in pages. This is not a new problem, but we have fixed most of the high-priority fixable Linter problems and are trying to clean up the last few stubborn cases. I am looking for people with Lua knowledge to help over at Template talk:Text diff#Lint errors. Any clues will be appreciated. Thanks in advance. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:57, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

What causes these "bot_manager" links?

What are these links? Something to do with bots? – 2804:F1...F5:391A (::/32) (talk) 17:41, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Radware sells anti DDoS software, I would guess that these editors were using an automated tool to fill in citations (i.e. the automatic citation tool in visual editor), which Radware's software detected as bot traffic and blocked. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 17:53, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Ah, that does make sense. – 2804:F1...F5:391A (::/32) (talk) 18:05, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Pages with reference errors that trigger visual diffs

There's a redlinked category, Category:Pages with reference errors that trigger visual diffs, suddenly appearing out of nowhere on over 2,000 pages and growing — I came across it with an unrelated edit to another page which didn't have that on it when I started to edit the page, but suddenly did have that on it as soon as I saved my edit, and attempting to "expand templates" on the page failed to identify where it was coming from.

The last time something like this happened, a couple of weeks ago, it was an utterly unhelpful and unwanted Category:Pages using the JsonConfig extension that got created and then speedy-deleted within days as unhelpful and unwanted.

But, of course, pages can't be left sitting in redlinked categories, so this has to either get created or go away. So could somebody look into this, and either create the category right away if it's actually desired or figure out how to make it go away if it isn't? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 21:53, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

It's listed at Special:TrackingCategories so it's added automatically by MediaWiki and doesn't appear in the wikitext. I have created the category page with display of MediaWiki:Cite-tracking-category-cite-diffing-error-desc which is all I know. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:16, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Fished out one page, Brisbane Airport, which has a group reference without a reference list. I suspect that will be a majority of the cases. In the current parser, that note appears not to render in any list, instead an error renders at the bottom of the page. In Parsoid, both it and the error render at the bottom. Izno (talk) 22:28, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Looks to have been a result of activity in the context of phab:T372709 and/or its child phab:T378386. Probably the old parser needs an update to be outputting the same as Parsoid. Izno (talk) 22:44, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
And others in article space Special:Search/incategory:"Pages with reference errors that trigger visual diffs". Currently just half of a percent of the category's contents. Izno (talk) 22:31, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes, this is all that was necessary on one randomly-chosen talk page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:32, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Creating a new set of templates for STV elections

Hi folks. I am currently trying to put together a new set of templates for STV elections.

The templates would be primarily intended for use in Northern Ireland elections, where there are three blocs (unionist, nationalist and 'other'), but they could be adapted to other contexts.

By way of illustration, here is the 2022 Assembly election result for the West Tyrone constituency, as it appears on Wikipedia currently.

2022 Assembly election: West Tyrone – 5 seats[1]
Party Candidate FPv% Count
1 2 3 4 5 6
Sinn Féin Nicola Brogan 18.75% 8,626          
SDLP Daniel McCrossan 11.92% 5,483 5,555 5,849 6,330 6,508 8,288
DUP Thomas Buchanan 14.44% 6,640 6,642 6,739 6,751 7,634 7,798
Sinn Féin Maoliosa McHugh 14.48% 6,658 7,047 7,189 7,567 7,571 7,731
Sinn Féin Declan McAleer 13.79% 6,343 6,731 6,888 7,111 7,113 7,592
TUV Trevor Clarke 9.06% 4,166 4,166 4,199 4,207 4,704 4,885
Alliance Stephen Donnelly 6.45% 2,967 3,026 3,327 3,476 3,777  
UUP Ian Marshall 4.08% 1,876 1,877 1,911 1,918    
Independent Paul Gallagher 3.66% 1,682 1,688 1,895      
Aontú James Hope 1.43% 657 661        
People Before Profit Carol Gallagher 0.77% 354 358        
Green (NI) Susan Glass 0.55% 252 255        
Socialist Party Amy Ferguson 0.37% 171 173        
Independent Barry Brown 0.26% 119 125        
Electorate: 69,702   Valid: 45,994 (65.99%)   Spoilt: 635   Quota: 7,666   Turnout: 46,629 (66.90%)  

This is how I'd like the template to look - and also how I'd like all templates to look for all Northern Ireland STV election results.

2022 Assembly election – West Tyrone: 5 seats
Party Candidate FPv% Count
1 2 3 4 5 6
N SF Nicola Brogan 18.75% 8,626          
N SDLP Daniel McCrossan 11.92% 5,483 5,555 5,849 6,330 6,508 8,288
U DUP Thomas Buchanan 14.44% 6,640 6,642 6,739 6,751 7,634 7,798
N SF Maoliosa McHugh 14.48% 6,658 7,047 7,189 7,567 7,571 7,731
N SF Declan McAleer 13.79% 6,343 6,731 6,888 7,111 7,113 7,592
U TUV Trevor Clarke 9.06% 4,166 4,166 4,199 4,207 4,704 4,885
O APNI Stephen Donnelly 6.45% 2,967 3,026 3,327 3,476 3,777  
U UUP Ian Marshall 4.08% 1,876 1,877 1,911 1,918    
N Ind Paul Gallagher 3.66% 1,682 1,688 1,895      
N Aontú James Hope 1.43% 657 661        
O PBP Carol Gallagher 0.77% 354 358        
O Green (NI) Susan Glass 0.55% 252 255        
O SP Amy Ferguson 0.37% 171 173        
O Ind Barry Brown 0.26% 119 125        
Results by party
Party S ± FPv ± % ±%
N SF 3 - 21,627 +306 47.02 -1.08
U DUP 1 - 6,640 -2,424 14.44 -6.01
N SDLP 1 - 5,483 -800 11.92 -2.25
U TUV - - 4,166 +3,315 9.06 +7.14
O AP - - 2,967 +1,715 6.45 +3.63
U UUP - - 1,876 -1,778 4.08 -4.16
N Ind. - - 1,682 +720 3.66 +1.49
N AO - - 657 +657 1.43 +1.43
O PBP - - 354 +354 0.77 +0.77
O GP - - 252 -160 0.55 -0.38
O SP - - 171 +171 0.37 +0.37
O Ind. - - 119 +34 0.26 +0.07
O CISTA - - N/A -373 N/A -0.84
U Ind. - - N/A -41 N/A -0.09
U Con - - N/A -27 N/A -0.06
Party majority 14,987 +2,730 32.58 +4.93
N SF plurality Swing +2.47%
Results by bloc
Bloc S ± FPv ± % ±%
N 4 - 29,449 +883 64.03 -0.41
U 1 - 12,682 -955 27.57 -3.20
O - - 3,863 +1,741 8.40 +3.61
X - - - - - -
Bloc majority 16,767 +1,838 36.45 +2.77
Nat. majority Swing +1.40
No. ± % ±%
Electors 69,702 +5,444 100 +8.47
Turnout 46,629 +1,722 66.90 -2.99
Spoilt 635 +53 0.91 ±0.00
Valid 45,994 +1,669 65.99 -2.99
Seats 5 - 100 -
Quota 7,666 +278 16.67 -
No change in seats between parties / blocs
SF: Brogan replaces McElduff following co-options
SF: McHugh replaces Boyle following co-option

Note that I would also want party colour and bloc colour to display in the 'Results by party', 'Results by bloc', and summary pane at the bottom-right also, and I'd probably prefer that the abbreviations for each party display, rather than each party's short name (I've free-typed the abbreviations in the middle panel, but the actual abbreviations differ).

Note the following additions:

  1. Each candidate and party would have its bloc listed (unionist, nationalist or 'other'). There would also be an 'unclassified' option (denoted by an X), intended for obscure independents whose alignment cannot be determined through any sources.
  2. Total first preference vote count and vote share, and change thereof from the last election, would be shown for each party and each bloc, rather than only explicitly showing vote count/vote share for each individual candidate.
  3. 'Party majority' and 'bloc majority' would show the margin between the largest party/bloc in the constituency.
  4. 'Swing' between the two largest parties, and also between the two largest blocs, is also shown.
  5. The panels note the largest party and largest bloc, and whether they have a plurality or a majority, respectively.
  6. A summary of electors, turnout, valid votes, etc is shown, with full percentage breakdowns and numerical/percentage change between that election and the previous one.
  7. A summary results panel at the bottom right would indicate whether there have been any changes in seats between parties/blocs, and change in the elected MLAs within each party compared to the previous election.

So far, I've made the templates for the leftmost panel, but not for any of the other panels yet.

To be clear, I'd like to be able to put something together using Lua/the templates, which takes the first preference vote counts from the leftmost table, sums these for each party (and also for independents of each bloc - I do not want independents of different blocs summed collectively), and automatically outputs total vote count and vote share for each party, and also for each bloc, on the relevant panels.

It'd also be cool if the candidate first preference votes can be summed to produce the valid vote, and if the numerical input for electors, turnout, spoilt votes, valid votes etc could be automatically displayed as percentages of the electors figure, and if the quota can automatically be calculated based on the number of seats and valid vote.

References

  1. ^ "Statement of Persons Nominated – West Tyrone". Retrieved 8 April 2022.

I'd appreciate any guidance on this, and any constructive feedback on proposed design - I've done the best I can based on what I know but there may be a way to make it look better. Many thanks! PointUnderstander (talk) 18:59, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Change the table around the tables "2022 Assembly election – West Tyrone: 5 seats", "Results by party" and "Results by bloc" to use a div. That way, mobile can throw the tables down the page, whereas there is not available width on mobile for all three. Snævar (talk) 23:56, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Many of these questions about how it looks, what columns should be kept, if new ones should be added is more of a question for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums. This forum is more for how to achive this layout. There is one or more templates that sum up numbers, I am not keeping enough track of them to know which ones. Snævar (talk) 10:49, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Snævar, That way, mobile can throw the tables down the page - and desktop. — Qwerfjkltalk 11:11, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Specify PDF page for thumbnail?

I have uploaded File:More Public Parks (booklet).pdf which I want to link into an article. The problem is, the first few pages of the PDF are boilerplate. I want the thumbnail to show page 6 Is that possible? RoySmith (talk) 18:29, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

@RoySmith: See WP:EIS#Page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:29, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Interesting. That certainly looks like what I need, but for some reason, this PDF isn't showing up as a thumbnail at all. See my original post in this thread and also Special:Diff/1257813566. In both of those, "File:More Public Parks (booklet).pdf" just gets run in with the text. RoySmith (talk) 19:41, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Doing a quick Wikisource version, even if incomplete, sounds like what you want here. Could link directly to the one page / section you want, that way. (Or if you just want the image, then extracting the image to a separate file on Commons, and showing that.) SnowFire (talk) 20:14, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
For some reason, we're not properly picking it up from Commons. Compare File:More Public Parks (booklet).pdf, which shows a default PDF icon and says "0 × 0 pixels", with c:File:More Public Parks (booklet).pdf, which shows page 1 and says "810 × 1,350 pixels". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:17, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Even more interesting. Is this the kind of thing that might just take a while to percolate through the system? Is it worth a phab ticket? RoySmith (talk) 20:26, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Wikisource has the same issue - can't start a transcription there because the "local" version Wikisource sees is empty with 0 pages. Definitely something funky afoot here. SnowFire (talk) 20:46, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
The thumbnail generating slowly sounds like a thumbor issue to me. At the time of upload pdfs where generating thumbnails in 1.67 seconds. Images do consistently generate faster than pdfs, djvus and tiffs. Some thumbnail sizes are generated immediately, regardless of whether they are in use, 320px is one of those.
Not sure what causes enwiki showing 0pixels and commons showing a thumbnail, but it is definitely not thumbor. Snævar (talk) 00:15, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
The problem ended up being solved by purging the enwiki File page. And then purging the pages which included that File. RoySmith (talk) 00:29, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
Hmmm, I managed it alright using 
[[File:Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.djvu|page=117|thumb|Some of my friends, yesterday]]
at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 228#Indentation. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:32, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Sortable table: "Short" text for merged cells?

This comes up from time to time - with merged cells there is often a huge size difference in the default-sort view (where they are merged) and after sorting (which unmerged all merged cells). This leads to the situation where you have to decide between either putting in a very terse / abbreviated, which avoids the table blowing up in size during sorting, but is less clear to readers and wastes the space you gain from merged cells in the first place; or you use the space provided by a merged cell, but then sorting the table might increase the size a lot.

My current exhibit A for this is this table: Nikon_Z-mount#Z-mount_cameras

In the default sort the "DX (APS-C)" and "FX (full frame)" provides useful information. But if you sort the table, this increases the row height a ton and it would be better to just make it say "DX" or "FX" (for example).

=> Is there a template or a similar solution for this? Phiarc (talk) 16:07, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Your issue is caused by using tilted text in the far left column. The only solution is not to do that. Izno (talk) 16:37, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Portal:Maldives/Selected articles template loop error

At Portal:Maldives/Selected articles the "Selected articles 12" section shows a template loop error. That error isn't shown at Portal:Maldives/Selected articles/12 or the article it transcludes (Ibrahim Nasir). Can't figure out where the error is from. Gonnym (talk) 00:44, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Portal:Maldives/Selected articles uses {{For loop}} to run thorugh the 25 selected articles. Portal:Maldives/Selected articles/12 transcludes content from the lead of Ibrahim Nasir which uses {{post-nominals}} which uses {{For loop}}. That's enough to give a template loop error per WP:TEMPLATELOOP. One way to fix it is to replace the for loop in Portal:Maldives/Selected articles with 25 calls:
{{subpage|1|SPAN=true}}
...
{{subpage|25|SPAN=true}}
In particular, {{subpage|12|SPAN=true}} does not give an error. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:00, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Technical glitch with the NPP page curation tool?

Hello my friends. I am a New Page Patroller and use the excellent page curation tool. Masterhatch kindly alerted me to the fact that, when I add an "uncategorised" or "improve categories" tag, the curation tool automatically adds a space at the top of the article above the SD. I am now having to manually close the space at the top. Is anyone else having this problem? Is there a solution? Apologies if I have brought this to the wrong discussion page. Best regards, BoyTheKingCanDance (talk) 06:16, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Page history link in Watchlist email

Hey people,

Wouldn't it be helpful if the email received when a page on our watchlist is updated, to have a link to the page history as well?

Current it shows the following: 

Dear Bunnypranav
The Wikipedia page Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects has been
changed on 18 November 2024 by anonymous user 122.43.189.14, see
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Redirects>
for the current revision. 

To view this change, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Redirects&diff=next&oldid=1258162746

For all changes since your last visit, see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Redirects&diff=0&oldid=1258162746

~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 13:25, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Weird CSS making pages more narrow?

Can an interface admin please remove this weird css that seemingly makes my pages narrow (even on old vector)? I want to read in full width instead TheWikipedetalk 19:58, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Request for comment on the relationship between WP:CRITERIA and WP:TITLEFORMAT

Please see subject RfC. Cinderella157 (talk) 22:21, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-47

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

Updates for editors

  • Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn't exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [44]
  • View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [45]

Updates for technical contributors

  • On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [46][47]

In depth

  • There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.

Meetings and events

  • Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
  • Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
  • A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:57, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Unexpercted change in Diff format

As of yesterday, I am seeing an unexpected much more compact format in Diffs that is much more difficult than the traditional one for me to work from. Is there any way to get back to the old format? I am using "Vector legacy (2010)" skin. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:01, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

If this is what I think it is, there should be a toggle labeled 'inline' that you can switch off. Izno (talk) 02:23, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
That toggle is on the top right, below the right end of "Browse history interactively". There is also a triangle in the middle of the page (slightly left and above the right-side "Line X" statement) which turns on/off a similar smaller preview. CMD (talk) 03:03, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
The triangle is a gadget or script that you have installed. It is not a native feature. Izno (talk) 03:10, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, looks like it's the wikEdDiff gadget. (I do find it hard to describe the toggleable gadgets as non-native features though.) CMD (talk) 08:12, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Identifying duplicate named refs with identical body content

The current software does not flag duplicate named refs with identical body content, as this is not considered a significant problem. However:

  • It wastes wikitext space.
  • It adds visual clutter in an edit window.
  • If an editor changes the body content of one of the duplicates in any way, we now have a big red cite error that is visible to readers but may go unnoticed by editors for some time. Few editors have the time to frequently scan the entire References section for such errors.

Looking for a way to identify any such duplicates so they can be eliminated using <ref name="foo" />. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Editors who are interested in identifying duplicate reference issues faster, can add the automatic Category:Pages with duplicate reference names to their watchlist. There's also a manual Category:All articles with duplicate citations which is added by template {{Duplicated citations}}. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:14, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. The first cat is for duplicate refs with different content. That's not what I'm talking about, hence my italics emphasis above. Regardless, no category is going to identify the duplicates. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:04, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
There is also the automatic toollabs:checkwiki/cgi-bin/checkwiki.cgi?project=enwiki&view=only&id=81. The bot tools AWB and WPCleaner can do this task. Snævar (talk) 11:45, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
I'm not looking for automated fix; I can do that manually and I actually prefer that. I just want to identify what I need to fix manually, within a single specific article—and without a big learning curve. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:04, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
The toollabs checkwiki tool does list what to fix, a code exerpt of the reference that is duplicated. It is just a matter of doing the edit manually and clicking the done link to the entry you fixed. The latter sentance in my first sentance on AWB is not what you are looking for. Snævar (talk) 21:19, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
@Mandruss: You'll need a script, and examine each article on a case-by-case basis. This is because if a suitable category did exist, it would contain many of these articles - the {{sfn}} template relies on the fact that it is not an error (or even a warning) for two refs to have the same content. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:05, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks.
  • You'll need a script - I assumed as much. I was hoping:
    • Such a script already existed. Or,
    • A script-qualified editor could be persuaded to create such a script with a barnstar and personal satisfaction as their rewards. Obviously the script would then benefit others in the same way, forever. That would be a significant contribution to the project, probably more than spending the same amount of time editing articles. (I'd certainly do it if I were script-qualified.)
  • I'm only interested in one article at this point, so I have no need for categories.
  • I neglected to mention: Said article is nearing its WP:PEIS limit, and the elimination of these duplicates would also help address that. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:13, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Social media post template

There's a discussion over at Template talk:Tweet#Post template about creating a new social media post template, that would look an act the same as the current {{Tweet}} template but extended for other social sites. A result of this was {{SocialMediaPost}}, but this seems like a very manual solution, liable to breaking and inconsistencies. I was wondering if something could be created which could, given a "website" param, automatically select the correct "site logo", "article Link", "reference format" and "prefix", similar to the way {{Political party}}s or {{Infobox legislation}} are done. Or if I'm other thinking it and the manual method is fine. Cakelot1 ☞️ talk 09:50, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

It is possible, sure. It will require some work. Izno (talk) 17:16, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Hi! Sorry for kind of jumping the gun on moving this to the template space. I'm not the best at templates, but I'll definitely take a look at those ones you linked and see if i can do anything to automate the process. It's been a bit since I've actually used Lua, but I'll try. Generating that information off of a 'website' parameter seems doable, and i'll let y'all know if i manage to make progress. Tantomile (talk) 19:41, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Lua errors

Can someone explain what's wrong here? si:විකිපීඩියා:Templates for discussion VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 15:31, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

It looks like Lee imported a load of templates and modules from the English wikipedia which are designed to take English language inputs. The "time errors" for example, are because si:Module:YMD to ISO converts English date strings to an ISO formatted date, but you are giving it Sinhala month names (because the output of {{#time: depends upon the language of your wiki). You either need to go through and localise all the templates that were imported, or make new ones for your wiki. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 17:49, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Sounds like it gonna take a while to solve the issues tho VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 18:37, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Any idea how to localize and what templates/modules to localize? VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 19:02, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
@VihirLak007 It would probably be amount the same amount of work to start from scratch rather than getting that module to work. The module takes input in the form 19 November 2024 or 19 Nov 2024, i.e. two numbers followed by the month name or abbreviation, followed by four numbers. The output of {{#time: on your wiki seems to be 2 Sinhala numerals (I think? I don't speak Sinhala) followed by the month in Sinhala, and the year. At a minimum you would need to translate the month names, add new logic to convert the Sinhala numerals to Arabic numerals, re-write all the input checks to account for the difference in format, possibly remove the logic for the month name abbreviations ... 86.23.109.101 (talk) 19:02, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
in sinhala, the numerals are same, arabic numerals. i think if i add sinhala month names alongside where it takes english names, it might work? The thing is i've no idea where to edit VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 19:05, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
@VihirLak007 In that case you would need to add the Sinhala names alongside the English ones, and also change the pattern matching checks at the bottom (the bit that goes arg1:match('^%d%d%d%d %a%a%a%a?%.?%a?%a?%a?%a?%a?%a? *%d%d?$')) to allow the new date formats. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 19:09, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Sorry for being lost minded here. Where should i add the sinhala names? i know how to add but not sure where. VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 19:15, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
The Sinhala names would just replace the English ones in the months_full variable. I'm not sure what you'd need to do to update the pattern matching, sorry. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 19:20, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Any idea where to find the place that controls the output of {{#time on Sinhala wiki? VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 20:11, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
@VihirLak007 See MW:help:parserfunctions##time. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 20:40, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
{{#time:...|en}} will format the output in English at any wiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:26, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Strip marker problem with template

It looks like 92 articles (possibly more) with {{election box candidate with party link}} templates are exposing strip markers (?UNIQ...QINU?). It seems like the issue is related to ref tags being used within the template. Example articles include Sussex East (European Parliament constituency), 1970 Florida Attorney General election, and Kocaeli (electoral district). I’m not sure how to resolve this, so I'm posting here. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:09, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Probably has to do with the string replacement on the |change= parameter. Probably the easiest is to create a |change_note= parameter so it doesn't clash with that. Gonnym (talk) 23:27, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
{{Election box candidate with party link}} says {{#invoke:String|replace|source={{{change|}}}|-|−}} to change a hyphen to a minus sign in a negative number. If the parameter has a reference then its strip marker code has four hyphens which are also changed and this breaks the code. I suggest {{#invoke:String|replace|source={{{change|}}}|^-|−|plain=false}} to only change a hyphen if it's the first character. Then the articles don't need a new parameter for a note. Before editing a template used in 29,000 pages, does anyone have objections or a better solution? The bad cell in 1970 Florida Attorney General election#Results uses {{Election box winning candidate with party link}} which would need the same fix. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:08, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
Could it be further restricted to also require the hyphen to be followed by a digit? Daniel Quinlan (talk) 00:29, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
To elaborate, I was thinking something like {{#invoke:String|replace|source={{{change|}}}|^%s*-(%d)|−%1|plain=false}}. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 02:30, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
I see you also strip whitespace at the start. It should probably be done by a new template so complicated code doesn't have to be duplicated. This search finds 20 cases just in Category:Election and referendum infobox templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:40, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

In-line citation tag

Helo! I have spent way too much time trying to find the template which askes for more in-line citations in the sourcing of an article. Wading through page after page hasn't done the trick. Can anyone here please help me find it? SergeWoodzing (talk) 13:09, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

{{No footnotes}}? DMacks (talk) 13:14, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! --SergeWoodzing (talk) 13:19, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
If it has some inline cites but could use more there's {{more footnotes needed}}. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:40, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you were already aware of it, but just in case you're not: WP:TC is a very useful list for this sort of thing. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 18:23, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

RfC notice: Log the use of the HistMerge tool at both the merge target and merge source

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) regarding the logging functionality of the Special:MergeHistory tool. The thread is RfC: Log the use of the HistMerge tool at both the merge target and merge source. Thank you. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 16:00, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

RFC references in Further Reading

@Neko-chan: Recent edits to § Further Reading by Neko-chan have changed some, but not all,RFC references to {{IETF RFC}}. Should this not be consistent?

I was going to suggest ussing {{Ref RFC}}, but it is still a stub, e.g., {{Ref RFC|5321}} produces "[1]". -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 09:41, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out some things I missed, can you link to exactly which article? That further reading link doesn't go anywhere. ~ฅ(ↀωↀ=)neko-channyan 16:14, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
Oh, it's still pretty early in my time zone and I misread. Maybe I should get some coffee.
If this is Email_address#Further_reading, then they're not references, they're inline links which is what {{IETF RFC}} is for. It's not inconsistent, they have different purposes. I also didn't swap the {{cite IETF}} citations because {{ref RFC}} doesn't handle section cites properly. ~ฅ(ↀωↀ=)neko-channyan 16:26, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
Sorry, the template I used, {{alink|Further Reading}}, is only valid in Talk:Email address; I should have used {{slink|Email address|Further Reading}}yielding Email address § Further Reading.
The inconsistency I referred to is the one that you corrected with permalink/1258604111. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:49, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ J. Klensin (October 2008). Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC5321. RFC 5321. Draft Standard. Updated by RFC 7504. Obsoletes RFC 2821. Updates RFC 1123.

Search autocomplete selects random results when arrowing down

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T379983
Resolved

I've recently tried to search a few things, and noticed that if I press arrow down on the autocomplete results, it selects a random result, rather than the expected outcome of it selecting the first in the list (then going down one if pressed again, etcetera). For example, to test this, I typed in "AS" into the search bar, which displayed "AS", "Association football", "Associated Press", "Assassination of John F. Kennedy", among others. I pressed the arrow down, and it highlighted the last result, "ASEAN". I pressed it again, and it highlighted "Asperger syndrome", which is the 6th result in the list, and 4 results up from "ASEAN". This continues for some time, but it generally jumps through the list at random intervals. I checked that I had safemode on before trying this, and I am on the latest version of 64-bit Chrome, version 131.0.6778.70. EggRoll97 (talk) 01:11, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Given the day, by the way, it may be WP:THURSDAY, but I'm not necessarily sure if that indeed is the case. EggRoll97 (talk) 01:13, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Me too, Windows 10 version 22H2, Firefox 132.0.2 (recent upgrade), all skins except Vector-2022 and Minerva Neue, logged in and logged out. The main symptom seems to be that in the search box, the functions of the up and down arrows are exchanged. Also affects commons:. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 01:22, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
This is probably related to phab:T379983 though of course you can report a separate task. Izno (talk) 01:33, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Looks like it, and it appears a change has been merged so this should (hopefully) resolve itself fairly soon. EggRoll97 (talk) 01:38, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
I'm facing the same issue, on Vivaldi (7.0.3495.11 (64-bit)) on Windows 11 Home 23H2. Are you on Wikipedia's 2010 Vector legacy skin (the old default GUI) by any chance? I have this issue on that skin but not on Wikipedia's new Vector skin. Tube·of·Light 11:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
I'm having the same issue on Firefox 128.4.0 with Vector 2010 on macOS 12.7.6. – dudhhr talkcontribssheher 22:57, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
I don’t see anyone mentioning it anywhere, but I am also having the same issue on Timeless. win8x (talking | spying) 14:46, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
@Win8x: As I wrote above, all skins except Vector-2022 and Minerva Neue. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:52, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Oops I didn't properly read. Glad a change has been merged though. win8x (talk) 16:53, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
Resolved

Now working as expected. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:05, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Does Pending Changes disable edit conflict checking?

I haven't found any documentation about this at Wikipedia:Pending Changes, mw:Help:Extension:FlaggedRevs, mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs, or phab:T185664. (I am an idiot though, and frequently miss obvious information.)

But here's what happened (all these diffs are sequentially uninterrupted BTW): while WP:HD was under PC protection (LTA disruption), T=00 I reply to a thread. T+02 minutes, PrimeHunter replies. T+17 minutes, OP replies to my reply, removing PrimeHunter's reply with no edit summary (edit tagged as "2017 wikitext editor"). A bit later, I notice this and enter the source editor within Minerva to restore PrimeHunter's edit without automatically adding my sig. T+44 PrimeHunter restores the edit. T+46 I do too. Despite the edit summary of my immediate self-revert, I was never shown an edit conflict error (these do work in Minerva: I had three recently at heavily trafficked pages, all in ns4).

My interpretation of this sequence is that since FlaggedRevs are "automatically accepted" when the editor permissions allow, checking for edit conflicts is disabled or hampered in some way, at least in some editing interfaces. Can anyone confirm this? Folly Mox (talk) 18:13, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Well, PrimeHunter restored text above the 2 lines :I think this was [...] and :: I haven't had this [...], while you restored it below those 2 lines, that's why there was no edit conflict. I actually don't know the exact logic, though something is mentioned at mw:Help:Edit conflict#Preventing edit conflicts - I've always assumed that it's the same logic that governs if you can still undo a revision after new revisions have been made (which from experience is when the diff of that revision would not have revealed lines that changed in later revisions). – 2804:F1...C6:3070 (::/32) (talk) 22:46, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
For clarity, here is a multi-revision diff of both of your restorations: Special:Diff/1257208774/1257214231. – 2804:F1...C6:3070 (::/32) (talk) 22:56, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
2804:F14:8085:6D01:BC4B:E524:C2C6:3070, I assume it's paragraph-based like the diffs. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:06, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
Huh, ok; I thought edit conflicts were partitioned by subheading, but the "same line" implementation makes sense here, while also making sense at the other three edit conflicts I did experience, since other editors and I were adding text to the same (empty) line. Thanks both for the information 🙏🏽 Folly Mox (talk) 13:47, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Special:Badtitle in pending changes notice

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T380519
Resolved

Over at Silk Road (marketplace) where there was a pending changes notice on the history tab, the links in it were all broken with Special:Badtitle being used. Looking at Special:PendingChanges this seems to affect other article titles as well. It seems to be an issue with mw-fr-revision-tag-edit: 

<div id="mw-fr-revision-tag-edit" class="cdx-message mw-fr-message-box cdx-message--block cdx-message--notice flaggedrevs_notice plainlinks"><span class="cdx-message__icon"></span><div class="cdx-message__content">The <a class="external text" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Badtitle/Message&amp;stable=1">latest accepted version</a> was <a class="external text" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&amp;type=review&amp;page=Special:Badtitle/Message">reviewed</a> on <i>20 November 2024</i>. There is <a class="external text" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Badtitle/Message&amp;oldid=1258565930&amp;diff=cur&amp;diffonly=0">1 pending revision</a> awaiting review.</div></div>

SmartSE (talk) 12:22, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Pisco is currently listed at Special:PendingChanges so https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pisco&action=history shows the issue right now. The message is made by MediaWiki:Revreview-pending-basic. We have customized it but the links are generated in the same way as the default message and the problem is also seen for an uncostumized message with uselang=de (German). The message uses {{FULLPAGENAMEE}} which apparently returns Special:Badtitle/Message in that message. The same history page uses MediaWiki:Histlegend where {{FULLPAGENAMEE}} works correctly. MediaWiki:Revreview-pending-basic is from an extension. Maybe that causes the difference. We got 1.44.0-wmf.4 today. If the issue started today then it sounds like WP:ITSTHURSDAY with a problem in something at mw:MediaWiki 1.44/wmf.4. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:15, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
Here is a quick and dirty fix for your common JavaScript:
document.body.innerHTML = document.body.innerHTML.replace(/Special:Badtitle\/Message/g, mw.config.get('wgPageName'));
It changes Special:Badtitle/Message everywhere (maybe the bug affects other messages) including in the edit window for this section, so don't edit it if you add the fix. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:56, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
I don't see a phabricator ticket. PrimeHunter, do you want to write something up? I'm wondering if this has something to do with * git #016644c4 - Do not pre-parse MessageValue arguments (T380045) by Isabelle Hurbain-Palatin? I did do a quick test to confirm that {{FULLPAGENAMEE}} (or {{FULLPAGENAME}}) are directly producing the Special:Badtitle/Message text, it's not just happening when passed through {{fullurl:}} or when linked.--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:06, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
I have created phab:T380519. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:13, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
I have made a partial fix [48]. It fixes the third and most important link in the message by omitting the bad title. A title is unnecessary in diff links. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:34, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

code editor

Yep, I know, Thursday. Something has happened to the code editor. When I start typing, the code editor now pops up a window that shows a list of text strings that may match what it is that I'm typing. This list is not constrained to Lua keywords but apparently is a list of all words in the module. How do I turn that off?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:15, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Try this in your CSS:
.ace_autocomplete {display:none;}
PrimeHunter (talk) 01:30, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Copying from the phab:T377663 phab comment:
  • You can disable it by pressing Ctrl + , and unticking "Live Autocompletion".
(I was looking to see why the change hadn't been proposed for Tech News, and I see someone has just tagged it yesterday, so it will be included next week.) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:57, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks both, Ctrl + , worked. I wonder who thought that key combination is intuitive? Wasn't there a Dilbert comic about such shortcuts?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:32, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
@Quiddity (WMF) That's useless because, even if it were documented somewhere, it doesn't persist. You have to re-set that preference every time you load the editor, even if you just hit the "preview" button. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:18, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Mobile wikipedia images problem

Images on the sides of articles don't show up with Javscript disabled on en.m.wikipedia.org, only their captions. Images in the infobox and the main page load normally. If you don't want to show images in articles to users who disable Javascript in Firefox please remove the captions too so there's no clutter. 31.217.45.191 (talk) 14:34, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

It works for me with Firefox 132.0.2 (64-bit) on Windows 10, JavaScript disabled, both logged in and out. For example, I see File:SN1998aq max spectra.svg at Type Ia supernova#Consensus model. Do you see the image on the article? On the file page? At https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/SN1998aq_max_spectra.svg? If you see it on the article then please give an example you don't see. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:21, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
My bad, I accidentally disabled <noscript> tags too in my browser. Sorry 31.217.45.191 (talk) 19:35, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Concern involving User:MusikBot II/TemplateProtector

Moved to User talk:MusikAnimal

JJPMaster (she/they) 19:49, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Electcom seeks technical assistance

Resolved
 – Thank you everybody for your input. I think we've got this resolved now. RoySmith (talk) 16:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

In dealing with an issue, electcom implemented Special:Diff/1258984383 which unfortunately broke the question numbering. I'd appreciate any suggestions on what wikimarkup could be used to keep the hatted text hatted and also preserve the question numbering sequence. RoySmith (talk) 00:19, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Is this still a problem? I see the question numbers, including the collapsed one at question 21. If still an issue, please describe the problem a bit more. — xaosflux Talk 00:38, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
Try uncollapsing the text, and then try adding a new question beneath the old one. Izno (talk) 00:41, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
{{ACE Question}} is implemented in a way which makes this practically impossible without something in the hatted text looking off if you collapse things. It basically assumes the structure of the container (an ordered list) and then indents the answer with wikitext #:. That is a flaw of that template that cannot be corrected without some non-0 study. Izno (talk) 00:41, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
Not only that, but {{hab}} only works if it's added at a new line, which would break the numbering either way.
The way it is currently the hat just swallows new questions, the hab having no effect. – 2804:F1...86:EF41 (::/32) (talk) 03:01, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
The easy answer is just to remove the text instead of collapsing it. —Cryptic 00:45, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
OK, thank you all for the assistance. We'll put our heads together off-wiki and figure out a plan. RoySmith (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
You could create a wrapper div for the questions after 21 with a special class name, then create a style sheet (using Wikipedia:TemplateStyles) that sets the starting number of the ordered list within that div. isaacl (talk) 01:52, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
More kludgily, since the list would be the second ordered list in the content area, the corresponding style sheet rule could be written to target the second ordered list. That would avoid the need for a wrapper div. isaacl (talk) 02:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
The style rule would be something like the following:
.mw-body-content ol:nth-of-type(2) li:nth-of-type(1)
{
  counter-set: list-item 22;
}
isaacl (talk) 02:45, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
@Isaacl: You don't need to go to those lengths. Ordered lists can be fudged directly, check this out: 
Here is a list:
#This is the first item
#Second item
#<li value=4>Not the third item
#List continues
with text after.
It's demonstrated at WP:Sandbox. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:49, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
From an accessibility point of view, is any other choice other than replacing with text (maybe with a permalink if you want it to be accessible) even good?
The only thing I found that sorta works is wrapping it all in a {{efn|1= ... }}, but then you have to add a notelist somewhere where the question will actually appear (collapse and all). That doesn't break the numbering of the questions afterwards. – 2804:F1...86:EF41 (::/32) (talk) 03:40, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Problems with WP:Twinkle

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Twinkle § Problems with WP:Twinkle
 – – SD0001 (talk) 16:56, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Article incorrectly marked as List class

I noticed that the article Femke is wrongly marked as List class on the talk page, where it should have been marked as GA class, like I believe it was previously, but now the class in the banner shell appears to be overridden. I suspect that this is somehow caused by / related to the {{given name}} template, despite the section=y parameter that indicates only one section and not the whole article contains a list of given names. Could this be fixed? – Editør (talk) 09:21, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

@Editør: This is due to recent changes at Module:Banner shell. You should see if there's anything on the matter at Template talk:WikiProject banner shell. If there isn't, raise a thread on that page and and notify MSGJ (talk · contribs) when doing so. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:16, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. I couldn't find this topic on the talk page, so I added it as advised. – Editør (talk) 17:17, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
The first sentence of that template says Template:given name is only for use on Wikipedia set index articles. If Femke isn't a set index article, then that template shouldn't be used there. Misusing templates can and usually does, break other things. Remove the template from that page and the banner should work. Gonnym (talk) 14:49, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for your comment, I've replied here. – Editør (talk) 18:24, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Lockout script misbehaving

I have a forked version of User:Anomie/lockout.js in my common.js which only blocks editing, not viewing. However, if the edit page is opened by DraftCleaner, the edit page isn't blocked and I can edit as usual, including if other scripts refresh the page. Why does this happen, and is there a way to block the edit page in this case? Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 03:31, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Suntooooth, that's because DraftCleaner uses ?action=submit to open the editor, while your lockout script only checks for ?action=edit. You could change the condition of the if-statement to something like !["edit", "submit"].includes(mw.config.get("wgAction")). Rummskartoffel 21:21, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
I'll try that out, thank you! :] Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 18:46, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Proposed change to tabs on redirect pages

I am proposing in phab:T5324#10347051 that the page tabs on redirect pages (‘Article/Talk’ and ‘View’ depending on the page) get a small improvement: they would link to redirect pages themselves by default. Currently they link to their targets with a possibility of navigating back. The change should improve navigation from other actions, like going from history page for "WOW" redirect to the redirect page itself. This should be especially beneficial for English Wikipedia since this community has a system of redirect templates. You would still be able to navigate to redirect target, just with an additional click.

Please let me know either here or on Phabricator (by awarding a token or leaving a comment there) if you are for, against or indifferent to this potential change. It was previously announced in Tech News in 2020 but no one went on to actually review the change. Hopefully this time would be different. stjn 01:24, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, I agree with the change, having reopened the Phabricator task in 2019. I was using this one-liner to mitigate for a while.
The talk page behavior is likely more contentious: essentially this turns talk page redirects into soft redirects when clicking on the 'Talk' tab, which is probably the most common way of accessing them. Numerous closely-related templates use redirects to centralize discussion (example: Template talk:Cite news and related templates). Bot talk pages often redirect to the bot operator's talk page (5/10 of the top 10 active bots by edits do this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Also in Wikipedia namespace you can find cases like AN and ANI that have a merged talk. Retro (talk | contribs) 06:56, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Those are all cases where a normal page has a redirected talk page. I think the proposed change would only apply to redirects with redirected talk pages. jlwoodwa (talk) 07:32, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, if that's the case, there's no issue. Retro (talk | contribs) 07:52, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
If I understood correctly even in the case of going from a redirected article to a redirected talk page it would go to the target of the redirected talk page. The change as I understood would be:
  • When going from history, info,... of a redirected article to the article itself it would stay in the redirect
  • When going from history, info,... of a redirected talk page to the talk itself it would stay in the redirect
Going from a redirected article to the redirected talk page would still behave as it does now. -- Agabi10 (talk) 09:07, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
Looking at the current version (Patchset 2) of gerrit:r/1094077, your second bullet is not correct. The behavior is simpler:
  • The talk tab would still follow the redirect, except when the talk tab is the current tab (e.g. you're already on the talk page with &redirect=no, or viewing the talk page history).
  • The subject tab would always stay in the redirect.
  • Extra tabs, such as TimedText on Commons or Source on Wikisource, will work similarly: stay on redirect if pointing to a subject namespace or are the current tab, follow redirect if pointing to a talk namespace and non-current.
Personally, I'm not so sure of this behavior change. When I'm already at a &redirect=no, I tend to click on the tab to follow the redirect. Clicking the link in the "soft-redirect" on the redirect=no page has different behavior in some edge cases (e.g. double redirects) and won't show the "redirected from" on the target page. OTOH, it's better than the more-consistent alternative that Retro was concerned about above, which would have made it much more likely for people to start commenting on redirected talk pages. Anomie⚔ 13:01, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
The current Gerrit patchset is a first attempt at implementing this. It should not be referenced as what I want to achieve. Ideally, only the tabs related to the currently viewed page would have redirect=no added. So TimedText/Source etc. should only be affected when they are the current page and user is viewing something related to the redirect.
Currently, there is no way to get to view the redirect page in one click even if you are on edit/history pages. That is more unacceptable than someone being a bit inconvenienced by having to click to the big article name and not the tab. stjn 13:23, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
How often do people really need to get to view the redirect page that one click rather than two for this use case outweighs the drawbacks of increasing the inconsistency of the UI and requiring editing the URL to follow the redirect as a reader would? Anomie⚔ 13:11, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
‘Increasing inconsistency’ is your personal opinion that multiple people already disagreed with. In my opinion, it would decrease the inconsistency, as all the other page tabs relate and point to the current page, and not to the redirect target, so the main ones should, too. Currently people are already required to edit the URL, just in the other direction. stjn 14:32, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
The inconsistency I referred to is that, with your proposed change, the tab will sometimes follow the redirect and sometimes not. PS6 seems intended to make it more sometimes-and-sometimes-not. As for URL editing, people don't have to edit the URL to get to the redirect page now, but they do need two clicks: one on the tab, following the redirect, and then one the "Redirected from" under the page title to get to the redirect itself. Anomie⚔ 23:59, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
When I started on Wikipedia, waaaay back in May 2009, if you clicked on a link for a redirect, the redirection would occur client-side and your browsing history would get two entries: one for the redirect page, and one for where you got redirected to. An effect of this was that you needed to use the browser's "back" feature twice in order to return to where you first came from. A bonus side effect was that if you only used "back" once, you could then work on the redirect page directly - "edit", "history", etc., even "move" if you were that silly. Nowadays the redirection is performed server-side, which in some ways makes it harder. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:31, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
The tab will follow the redirect when you are not looking at the redirect page and won’t when you are. That is not inconsistent.
The workflow you described in the last sentence can also be described as requiring people to edit the URL to get to the redirect page, since it is much easier to copy the URL and then add ?redirect=no than it is to aim at the barely visible ‘Redirected from’ notice (especially for section redirects, which do not show it at all, see phab:T360255 / phab:T169282). stjn 21:19, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
Section redirects do show it, they're in the usual place below the page title. You just have to hit the Home key, that's all. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:46, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
Gerrit patch was improved to not affect the non-current or extra tabs. stjn 15:41, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
I only mean that if someone is on the redirect talk page, they should be able to navigate to it from ‘Talk’ tab. Otherwise (‘Talk’ page on non-talk pages) there should be no change. stjn 12:42, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
My initial thought is that this seems fine, since it'll only affect editors (readers have basically no reason to end up at a redirect page). But overall we should be careful not to focus unduly on our editing needs over their reading needs. Sdkb talk 17:04, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
I'm confused about what is being proposed here, so I'll just say that if the URL of the page I'm viewing includes "redirect=no" then I want that to be preserved when I click the article or talk tabs. When I'm viewing the non-redirected talk page of a redirect and click the article tab I could be wanting either the reidrect or its target, probably the former about two thirds to three quarters of the time, but as someone who does a lot of work with redirects I don't know how typical my workflow is. Thryduulf (talk) 13:55, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Editnotice § adding a backlink to edit notices. Sdkb talk 06:23, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Revision slider missing?

I am not sure if I changed something, but I've checked my common.js and preferences ("Don't show the revision slider" not checked) but the revision slider ("Browse history interactively") is not showing. Did I do something wrong or is it disabled? </MarkiPoli> <talk /><cont /> 11:38, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, it seems to be only on diff pages, not the "old revision" pages.</MarkiPoli> <talk /><cont /> 11:44, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

RevDel Error Message

I'm noticing a very unusual error, when I compare diffs between a deleted revision LTA and a live revision, it won't show, obviously, because I'm not an admin, but then it also pops up the following in a red box:

User doesn't have access to the requested revision (The revision #1259514017 belongs to a deleted page. You can [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Wikipedia:Help_desk×tamp=20241125161251&diff=prev view it]; details can be found in the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Wikipedia:Help_desk deletion log].).

(I've nowikied the above, because the error box literally shows that).

Screenshot of an error where the red box shows content that was supposed to include links, but links failed.

MediaWiki:Rest-permission-denied-revision would be the closest match to the error, I think. Myrealnamm's Alternate Account (talk) 16:40, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

For reference, this is the diff: [49]
I can reproduce the problem, it seems to be caused by trying to display a visual diff, which neither you nor I can view. I found a similar bug report at T337817, although the error message has apparently changed since 2023. Matma Rex talk 16:57, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
Huh. I remember clearly that days ago, perhaps weeks, the error message was still "Invalid response from server", like desribed at phab.
If you go to a random diff, like this one: Special:Diff/1259521939, and you select Visual Editor, then go to [50], the error will show. If you go back to Special:Diff/1259521939, and select source editor, then if you return to [3] and reload the page, the error will not show. Myrealnamm's Alternate Account (talk) 17:05, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-48

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

Updates for editors

  • Wishlist item A new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature later this week. This brings many new features and bug fixes, including right-to-left support, template folding, autocompletion, and an improved search panel. You can learn more on the help page.
  • The 2010 wikitext editor now supports common keyboard shortcuts such Ctrl+B for bold and Ctrl+I for italics. A full list of all six shortcuts is available. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. [51]
  • Starting November 28, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: bswiki, elwiki, euwiki, fawiki, fiwiki, frwikiquote, frwikisource, frwikiversity, frwikivoyage, idwiki, lvwiki, plwiki, ptwiki, urwiki, viwikisource, zhwikisource. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF).
  • View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a user creating a new AbuseFilter can now only set the filter to "protected" if it includes a protected variable.

Updates for technical contributors

  • The CodeEditor, which can be used in JavaScript, CSS, JSON, and Lua pages, now offers live autocompletion. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. The feature can be temporarily disabled on a page by pressing Ctrl+, and un-selecting "Live Autocompletion".
  • Advanced item Tool-maintainers who use the Graphite system for tracking metrics, need to migrate to the newer Prometheus system. They can check this dashboard and the list in the Description of the task T350592 to see if their tools are listed, and they should claim metrics and dashboards connected to their tools. They can then disable or migrate all existing metrics by following the instructions in the task. The Graphite service will become read-only in April. [52]
  • Advanced item The New PreProcessor parser performance report has been fixed to give an accurate count for the number of Wikibase entities accessed. It had previously been resetting after 400 entities. [53]

Meetings and events

  • A Language community meeting will take place November 29 at 16:00 UTC. There will be presentations on topics like developing language keyboards, the creation of the Mooré Wikipedia, the language support track at Wiki Indaba, and a report from the Wayuunaiki community on their experiences with the Incubator and as a new community over the last 3 years. This meeting will be in English and will also have Spanish interpretation.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:39, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Drafts dashboard

I saw a discussion about a useful-sounding Drafts dashboard . The link is a 404: https://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/dashboards/enwiki-metrics#pages-graphs-tab . Does anyone know what happened to it? Cheers and thanks, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:47, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

The wikitech:EE Dashboard seems to have been closed about 10 year ago. — xaosflux Talk 21:41, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. I checked a few URLs on the Wayback Machine and can't find anything archived either. Whatamidoing (WMF) do you know any way to get this resurrected? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:22, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
You could try asking over at mw:Talk:Editing team. — xaosflux Talk 11:37, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Batch reversion of edits by a single user

(Note: Sorry, if this is a FAQ. Just provide the link and I'll be on my way.)

Does Wikipedia provide some means of reverting several edits by a single user in one go? As a concrete example, I cite the instance of the following user:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Estradadarwin15

The user appears to have made several edits within the span of a few days designed to assert or to falsely establish as fact that a number of large multinational drug companies are subsidiaries of a small privately held Philippine drug company.

Here's one particular instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hisamitsu_Pharmaceutical&oldid=1259299932

One of his edits (URL below) appear to have been reverted but there are at least three more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pfizer&oldid=1259300235 MeshLearning (talk) 17:19, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

MeshLearning, try User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/massRollback or Wikipedia:Kill-It-With-Fire. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:26, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Most common language tags and TemplateData suggested values capacity

I'm wondering if there is a way to produce a list of the most frequently used IETF BCP 47 language tags in use on English Wikipedia. By "in use", I mean values for the HTML lang attribute in current published articles. Such a list would be useful so that we could populate the TemplateData suggested values of the many templates that have a language parameter with the values that editors are most likely to use. To be clear, I mean the full language tags with subtags, and not just the language code.

I'd also welcome guidance on how many suggested values is advisable for usability purposes. Instead of using most common values, I could include the 183 ISO 639-1 codes. Is that too many? Daask (talk) 23:00, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

I was expecting the answer would be to do a search on the HTML output of English Wikipedia, but I see that the subcategories of Category:Articles containing non-English-language text are fairly detailed and include at least some subtags. I suppose an answer could be produced by finding the largest of these subcategories and then converting them from names back to language tags (probably with the same Module:Lang that populates them). I'm not sure how to do that. Daask (talk) 23:17, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Non-free image uploaded to Wikipedia claims to be hosted on commons

This is kind of a strange issue. I uploaded File:Katana Engine Material Editor.png using Wikipedia:File upload wizard's non-free image form and gave a rationale and now the rationale is gone. I used the software screenshot template. And when I click on "Create source" I get a dialog saying

"This media file is on Wikimedia Commons—not on the English Wikipedia. Descriptions should be placed there. This page should rarely be used except to indicate featured pictures. Please see the description page on Commons for file information, a list of pages that use this file, or the direct link to this file."

Yet commons:File:Katana Engine Material Editor.png does not show anything at all and says "No file by this name exists." I gave the basic points of rationale in File talk:Katana Engine Material Editor.png. I'm wondering what happened here and how to fix it. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 02:09, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@J2UDY7r00CRjH that edit notice is in error, we will need to look in to that. In the meantime, just ignore it and update your file description directly. — xaosflux Talk 02:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
It looks like that edit message comes if the local description page doesn't exist, even if the file is local. I created a blank page for that file for now, please be sure to update it with licensing information. — xaosflux Talk 02:28, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know. Worth noting there may be two errors: one that causes the rationale to not be added to the page and another that gives that notice pointing to a commons page that does not exist. Although more likely is that there is a single root cause. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 02:28, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Watchlist

Resolved

Today I've been getting many articles regarding Uganda popping up on my watchlist, I have no idea how these articles got on my list, is there something (like compromising whatchlist) going on. I keep a copy of my list in notepad++, I just copied my backup to my list, and the first thing to po up was a Ugandan article. I guess I just asking if there a know issue. - FlightTime (open channel) 01:02, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Are they articles you have edited? — xaosflux Talk 02:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
If so, check your settings in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist to see if "add pages I ...." are set where you don't want it to be. — xaosflux Talk 02:29, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
Could it be that you edited a template they use? Johnbod (talk) 02:55, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
I've already checked those, thanx for your responses, I'll just weed them out as they come up. Cheers, - FlightTime (open channel) 06:41, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Why solidpixels.com is blocked?

If adding references to websites, which were created by solidpixels.com, Citoid adds to the reference also solidpixels URL and ends up with the following message "This site is blocked". Why that website is blocked, and is it at Wikimedia blacklist or Zotero black list? The reference links to try are:

  • https://www.dox.cz/program/daniel-pesta-determination
  • https://www.resite.org/speakers/mirik-milan
  • https://www.visitbanat.com/srbsko

Note:

  • If I tried to add here an external url as an example, there was this error message: "People at this wiki decided to block links to this site. Please try another link"
  • If I add here the above links as plain links I got the following error: "Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist or Wikimedia's global blacklist." But nor dox.cz neither solidpixels.cz are listed on those black lists

Juandev (talk) 14:54, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@Juandev: Links to dox.cz are blocked by \bdox\.\w{2,5}\ at meta:Spam blacklist. The other links are allowed. The HTML source of https://www.dox.cz/program/daniel-pesta-determination says <meta name="author" content="solidpixels., https://www.solidpixels.com" />. That's why Citoid places https://www.solidpixels.com in an author parameter. It's not the cause of the block. https://www.solidpixels.com is allowed. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:08, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
thx. Juandev (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Questions about dark mode

I have two questions about dark mode:

  • I seem to remember that when dark mode was initially made generally available to logged-in users, there was a link to give feedback and report problematic visuals. Is that link still alive somewhere?
  • Some pages have images that are inverted when using dark mode. For instance, the infobox image on Canadian Aboriginal syllabics is inverted. Other images on that page are not. What causes the infobox image to be inverted and not the others? I couldn’t find a tag in the template arguments or the Commons page.

Anselm Schüler (talk) 23:57, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Anselm Schüler. I see one problem with the infobox on this version of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. From Help:Table: Avoid using background: none or background: transparent. See:
mw:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis#Avoid using background: none or background: transparent
There is more info at Help:Table#Colors in tables and the subsections that follow.
I only know a little about this stuff. I don't know what is going on with the PNG image in the infobox. Transparency?
I see background: transparent in several places in the infobox. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:12, 28 November 2024 (UTC)
Images that are inverted use the "skin-invert" class and that does apply to your example. They are typically only used if we know that the image will work inverted. Inverting all diagrams, for example, would be a bad idea. Most monochrome diagrams, like signatures, will work inverted. Snævar (talk) 10:28, 28 November 2024 (UTC)
Where is the skin-invert class applied? In the template invocation? The template definition? The image page? Anselm Schüler (talk) 10:49, 28 November 2024 (UTC)
Skin-invert is in the template Template:Infobox_writing_system, line 33. That also explains why the other images do not have one, since it is less work to addd it to a template than image syntax on one page. Snævar (talk) 13:42, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources § Amendments needed to the transclusion splitting plan

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources § Amendments needed to the transclusion splitting plan. Not sure who to notify, but I'm not confident in putting another merge banner onto the page, and this does involve technical. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:15, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Standard parameter name for Wikidata IDs

Some time ago, we standardised large numbers of templates so that they all used the same parameter names for the same thing; for example |birth_date= instead of |birth-date=, |birthdate=, |birth=, |dob=, etc.

I now find that we have a number of parameter names for a Wikidata item about a subject, for example:

This causes confusion for editors who use more than one of these templates, on a regular or occasional basis.

I propose that we standardise these to |qid=, while keeping existing names as aliases for backwards compatibility. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:44, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

We also standardized on |coordinates= in infoboxes a few years ago, which was a nice improvement. |qid= makes the most sense to me for this purpose. I get 227 hits in template space for {qid|, only 10 hits for {WD|, and 66 hits for {from| (most of which are not Wikidata-related). – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:08, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Max lag on Enwiki API requests

This is happening again ("13926.578336 seconds lagged"). Previously reported Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_216#Server_lag responded by User:Taavi. Same problem with a broken replica? -- GreenC 05:11, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Works for me. * Pppery * it has begun... 05:34, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
Still an issue? Taavi (talk!) 06:27, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
It appears to happen intermittently almost every week nowadays. – SD0001 (talk) 13:43, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

For me it's normally a + sign. Doug Weller talk 14:00, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

It is working fine for me atleast The AP (talk) 15:53, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Extra letter "R" between C and D in category listing

See Category:All portals. The list first shows portals starting with 0-9, then starting with A, B, C (including things not starting with C, but with a sortkey starting with a C), then continues through the alphabet with R, D, E, ..., P, Q, R, S, ... What is this extra letter "R" between C and D?

The issue was reported by User:JoeNMLC at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Portals#Curious_about_"Portal_category_list" but this looks like it could use some wider attention. —Kusma (talk) 11:00, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Fixed with forcing update of the category member by removing/readding to the category. — xaosflux Talk 11:33, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! So it was some kind of database hiccup? —Kusma (talk) 11:58, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
It looks like a hiccup or MediaWiki bug I haven't seen before. The Internet Archive shows [54] the issue 19 September with an R heading between the C and D headings. Special:ExpandTemplates shows Portal:Reformed Christianity just adds a normal [[Category:All portals]] with no sortkey and no DEFAULTSORT. It's added by a template but even if the template had different code at the time, it should not be possible to create an R heading between C and D on a category page. The Internet Archive shows a normal Latin letter R and not some special Unicode character. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:11, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
Here is HTML source from the Internet Archive:
<li><a href="/web/20240919122212/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Czech_Republic" title="Portal:Czech Republic">Portal:Czech Republic</a></li></ul></div><div class="mw-category-group"><h3>R</h3>
<ul><li><a href="/web/20240919122212/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Reformed_Christianity" title="Portal:Reformed Christianity">Portal:Reformed Christianity</a></li></ul></div><div class="mw-category-group"><h3>D</h3>
<ul><li><a href="/web/20240919122212/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Delaware" title="Portal:Delaware">Portal:Delaware</a></li>
It looks as you would expect if R was actually a letter betwen C and D and there was only one portal starting with R. The category collation system determining how to sort characters is sometimes changed and can be set differently for different wikis. Maybe this page was cached in the middle of a change or accidental setting. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:23, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
 Done - Thank you! JoeNMLC (talk) 17:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect diff description when edits in between are suppressed or revision deleted

I know I should just make an account to report stuff, but instead I just want to ask, is this bug something anyone would even care about fixing?:

  • On Special:Diff/1258722312/1258757481 it says the obviously wrong message One intermediate revision by 22 users not shown
  • If I don't include the one revision that is not suppressed in between, then it just says nothing, even though there are 37 (I think?) revisions in between.

I chose a suppressed one as the example, but it happens with revdels too, though maybe not if you are an admin. – 2804:F1...6D:D079 (::/32) (talk) 00:53, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I doubt any devs are going to get to work on that one right away, but sure go file a WP:BUG if you'd like. Problem statement seems to be that when there are deleted versions, inaccurate counts are passed to diff-multi-otherusers. — xaosflux Talk 02:32, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
It's an interesting bug. If you look at this range of edits in the page history: [55] you can see more clearly that only the content of the revisions has been hidden, but not their authors. We might be querying the data for this message slightly incorrectly. As a dev, I'd be curious enough to look into why this happens, even if it turns out to be too complicated for a quick fix. Also, I found a Phabricator report that sounds quite similar to this problem: T277920. Matma Rex talk 08:09, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
I figured out why it happens: T277920#10368811 but it is indeed a bit tricky to fix, and it will probably stay unfixed for now, unless someone volunteers to implement it. Matma Rex talk 22:55, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Faulty interwiki formula

ProofWiki has altered its URL structure (dropping the 'www') without preserving a redirect such that the current interwiki format (e.g., proofwiki:Definition:Set) doesn't work. Can this be changed from Wikipedia, or should I go to phab:? Tule-hog (talk) 21:59, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

@Tule-hog These are defined at Meta:Interwiki map, updates can be requested on the talk page. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 22:40, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Rangeblock tool

Hello. Following this Teahouse thread in which it was revealed Fastily's departure from the project also resulted in the shutdown of their Toolforge services (thus causing a bit of confusion), DreamRimmer has created this tool that supersedes Fastily's tool over (seems close enough). However, Mediawiki:Blocklogtext still has the link to Fastily's now-defunct tool instead, which could cause some aforementioned confusion when some people wish to calculate rangeblocks. Therefore, I recommend changing [[:toolforge:ip-range-calc]] to [[:toolforge:galaxybots/iprangecalculator]] on the aforementioned interface page. Thanks. — 3PPYB6 (T / C / L) — 06:26, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

You can use {{edit protected}} on the talk page in the future. Izno (talk) 06:30, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
@Izno – I do realize that, and I've done that before, but the Editnotice explicitly stated that requests could be brought here because the MediaWiki talk namespace is generally not monitored very actively. Thank you so much for answering this quickly though! — 3PPYB6 (T / C / L) — 06:33, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I think that edit notice is more about talk page posting in general rather than specific edit requests; simple/straightforward requests are taken care of pretty quickly from tracking on User:AnomieBOT/PERTable et al. Izno (talk) 06:35, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

After Login, goes to WP home page

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T381216

Greetings, Recently I noticed that after 1. Log out; 2. Log In; 3. Browser now goes to Wikipedia home page instead of previously "remembered" page. Usually it was my Watchlist. Not a major concern, just curious of this change. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

This is likely unintentional change. Reported at phab:T381216. – Ammarpad (talk) 09:34, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines

Can anyone work out why Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines has so much white text on a light green background, to the extent that the text is virtually invisible. Nthep (talk) 15:05, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @TheDJ:, is this in any way related to your changes to Wikipedia:Contents/styles.css and dark mode? Nthep (talk) 15:10, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
That change would have caused it, yes. Headers particularly have some opinionated CSS that you have to take some effort to override. It's not hard to fix, I will look at it in the morning in TheDJ doesn't beat me to it. Izno (talk) 06:40, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
This should be fixed ish now. Izno (talk) 19:11, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Nthep (talk) 19:24, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

This is crazy one. The category tree for Category:Introductions by year causes a hatnote to appear on the category page with text along the lines of:

This category is for introductions in the year XXXX.

The problem is that introductions links to a disambiguation page. Through arduous layers of substitution, I have isolated the problematic string to:

This [[Help:Categories|category]] is for {{#invoke:ustring|gsub|\{{#if:1|'''[[{{#invoke:String|replace|{{PAGENAME}}|^%d%d%d%d (%a.-)$|%1|1|false}}]]''' in the '''year XXXX'''}}|%.$|}}.

Apparently, this causes the invoked string to link to the category name minus the year (so Category:1649 introductions gets reduced in the string to introductions). I have no idea how to solve this so that rather than linking to the disambiguation page, it links to a relevant meaning of "introduction". Which meaning that would be is a separate question; for now my concern is how does the linked term become editable at all. Cheers! BD2412 T 20:50, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Which meaning that would be is a separate question probably the main question. If you know which link it should go to, Category:Introductions can be moved per WP:C2D as will its sub-categories, which will cause the template to work correctly. Gonnym (talk) 20:56, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
On further review, the category itself may indeed be somewhat problematic, as it appears to mix different kinds of introductions (of products, of ideas, of logos). Alternatively, perhaps it makes sense to create a WP:Broad concept article generally covering the concept of introduction itself. BD2412 T 21:31, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Okay, forget the technical solution, I have started Draft:Introduction, and will work on that this week. BD2412 T 21:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
If it seems hard to adapt a template to give a wanted output in a special case then a possible but not ideal alternative is to just change the output at the call with {{replace}}. In this case, {{YYYY introductions category header}} could for example change {{YYYY foos category header|beginnings}} to {{replace|{{YYYY foos category header|beginnings}}|'''[[introductions]]'''|introductions}}, if there is no suitable link target and we don't want a link at all. The replacement may fail later if a change means that the exact output no longer says '''[[introductions]]'''. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:03, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikispecies Template/ Module assistance needed

On Wikispecies, we are told (at species:Wikispecies:Village Pump#Switching to the Vector 2022 skin: the final date):

Module:Authority control uses the deprecated toccolours class. A navbox class with some styling should be used instead. This is how they did it on English Wikipedia. For more context: phab:T314254.

Wikispecies is a small project; can someone assist there, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:00, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 202#class="toccolours" does not render formatting in Vector 2022 suggests that the magic incantation is "Pinging @Izno and TheDJ". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:32, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
I can look at it in the morning. The good news is that there aren't many uses if you exclude user and user talk pages. (And still not that many even including those.) In most cases the easiest solution is to swap to wikitable, but that may not be appropriate for all pages. Izno (talk) 06:45, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
I've cleaned out the remaining uses of necessary toccolours on Wikispecies. You may review my edits there at your leisure. Izno (talk) 05:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Seems to be working well. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:30, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Checkmark This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:55, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

User:Awesome Aasim/xfdvote

This script I created seems to be drifting more and more and not working on newer formats of XfD pages, and I don't seem to be using it as much, so I want to know if someone might be up for forking the (six) scripts and making it better. It might need a complete rewrite. Thanks. Awesome Aasim 19:05, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Conclave (film)

I cannot work out what it is about this edit [56] that causes all references to display the error "Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2083: attempt to index a boolean value.". Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 16:56, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I can't reproduce the error now. It seems to be a known bug that occasionally something goes wrong in CS1 rendering and that happens. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:30, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
@Pppery There was a previous discussion about this here: [57]. As best I can tell the issue is that mw.ext.data.get() has an undocumented "feature" in that it can sometimes return false instead of returning the data table? 86.23.109.101 (talk) 18:22, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
This is in the process of being fixed, see Help talk:Citation Style 1#spurious errors when fetching identifier limit data from commons. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:01, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-49

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

Updates for editors

  • Two new parser functions were added this week. The {{#interwikilink}} function adds an interwiki link and the {{#interlanguagelink}} function adds an interlanguage link. These parser functions are useful on wikis where namespaces conflict with interwiki prefixes. For example, links beginning with MOS: on English Wikipedia conflict with the mos language code prefix of Mooré Wikipedia.
  • Starting this week, Wikimedia wikis no longer support connections using old RSA-based HTTPS certificates, specifically rsa-2048. This change is to improve security for all users. Some older, unsupported browser or smartphone devices will be unable to connect; Instead, they will display a connectivity error. See the HTTPS Browser Recommendations page for more-detailed information. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [58]
  • Starting December 16, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: arwiki, cawiki, frwiki, mediawikiwiki, orwiki, wawiki, wawiktionary, wikidatawiki, zhwiki. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF). [59]
  • This month the Chart extension was deployed to production and is now available on Commons and Testwiki. With the security review complete, pilot wiki deployment is expected to start in the first week of December. You can see a working version on Testwiki and read the November project update for more details.
  • View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug with the "Download as PDF" system was fixed. [60]

Updates for technical contributors

  • In late February, temporary accounts will be rolled out on at least 10 large wikis. This deployment will have a significant effect on the community-maintained code. This is about Toolforge tools, bots, gadgets, and user scripts that use IP address data or that are available for logged-out users. The Trust and Safety Product team wants to identify this code, monitor it, and assist in updating it ahead of the deployment to minimize disruption to workflows. The team asks technical editors and volunteer developers to help identify such tools by adding them to this list. In addition, review the updated documentation to learn how to adjust the tools. Join the discussions on the project talk page or in the dedicated thread on the Wikimedia Community Discord server (in English) for support and to share feedback.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

eparticle action in log?

Any idea what this log entry is about? It corresponds to https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/88408. RoySmith (talk) 17:33, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

The former education program extension, which was uninstalled years ago. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:00, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
They were adding the target article to their course list, in the uninstalled Education Program extension. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:06, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

trimming watchlist not working

So, I realized I have way, way too many things on my watchlist. I spent an hour last night going through it and removing a lot of it, but it when I hit the "remove pages button" it just sits there for a minute and then reloads the list, complete with the same checked items. I'm assuming I was trying to do too much at once, just wondering if anyone knows exactly where the line is as I don't want to waste too much time on this. (I'm aware I could also edit the raw watchlist but that seems even more tedious.) Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 21:52, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

There's no exact line, no. I would expect most database operations to succeed if you're modifying fewer than 500 things, but if it was less than that you can try stepping it down by some reasonable number. Izno (talk) 22:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
When I tried to do it all at once it was for sure well over five hundred items. I clearly haven't done a serious trim since timed watchlisting became a thing however long ago that was, there's old ArbCom cases on there, old afds, at least fifty usernames I blocked for having "poop" in them, and so on. I'll try going a little slower I guess. Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 22:52, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
I use Special:EditWatchlist/raw. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:49, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Yeah for my recent watchlist purge that many people in this thread would know about, I edited my raw watchlist to remove 1,173 pages and had no problem. I thought using the check-box interface would be more tedious and error-prone (also pages that big don't work too well on my setup). I didn't remove inactive/barely active pages/old user pages though. And it took way more than an hour for me; more like seven (I know this because I have a chat log about it).Graham87 (talk) 04:30, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
Also the raw watchlist is ordered a bit weirdly. From personal experience it seems to be ordered alphabetically for pages added to the watchlist before 2017, and then by the date the page was added after then. Graham87 (talk) 04:39, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
I noticed that happening at a time when I had about 24,000 pages in my watchlist. Since I trimmed it to about 16,000 it behaves normally - primary sort is by namespace (main, talk, user, user talk, etc.) secondary sort is alphabetical. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:21, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
Even my previous watchlist had 3,247 pages on it (but as I said before, a lot of the pages on it now are for all intents and purposes inactive). Graham87 (talk) 14:49, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
@Just Step Sideways I'll add a plug for User:Ahecht/Scripts/watchlistcleaner which can help with removing a lot of the cruft. If you use any of the "slow" options, you might need to let it run overnight if you have a 5-figure watchlist page count. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:39, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
It's at about five thousand currently, I've managed to clear it out some already but I'd like to remove pretty much all the user/talk pages and start over on that front as half of it is people who were blocked for username violations years ago and most of the other half is "why did I have this person's page watched?" Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 20:37, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
If you're like me, you'll spot somebody doing something dubious, go to their user talk page only to find that somebody else has messaged them three minutes ago, and watch the page anyway in case the situation escalates to the point where stronger action is called for. First user stops misbehaving, then six months later another post appears telling them that a draft they started hasn't been touched and is liable for speedy deletion under WP:G13. You check their contribs, and find that not only did they stop misbehaving, they left entirely. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:42, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
If a change actually pops up when looking at my list, I'll go see if I made any of the last hundred edits, or posted there in the past year, if neither of those is true I unwatch, but that's a very slow way to narrow it down. Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 03:08, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Transliteration template not accepting some Latin characters

As seen in Bashkortostan's infobox, {{Transliteration}} is throwing an error at text containing some rarer Latin characters—"transliteration text not Latin script". This example: {{transliteration|ba|Başqortostan Respublikahınıñ Dәwlәt gimnı}}. Does anyone know why this is and if it's intentional? If not, can it be fixed? Ookap (talk) 05:56, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

You did the literal textbook example of that error (on the help page): For example, <text> has Cyrillic shwa (ә; U+04D9) instead of the Latin shwa (ə; U+0259).. * Pppery * it has begun... 07:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
You can copy-paste the string to the text area at https://r12a.github.io/uniview/ and click the down arrow to see this. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:36, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Some issues in dark 2022 theme

Hi. I have been read this page Frank Grillo and see there yellow-white is including in template's background. Please fix it in dark theme. VollyM (talk) 23:00, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Template:Pending is the culprit, it does not support dark theme. Also see Template:Partial/styles.css. Snævar (talk) 01:01, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
{{Pending}} is working fine for me in dark mode; I see black text on a yellow background in the cell containing "Hard Matter". Please be more specific about the problem description, and maybe post a screen shot. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:46, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
I see blue text on a black background for "Hard Matter", in both Vector2010 and Vector2022. Odd. CMD (talk) 02:38, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 black text on yellow background in dark theme.
https://imgur.com/a/oVpwbmR VollyM (talk) 10:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
I see the same black on yellow that shows in VollyM's screen shot. It looks fine. As for Chipmunkdavis's blue on black, please make sure that you are logged out when you check on the colors. If you are still seeing blue on black, let us know what browser you are using. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:53, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
How do I use dark theme when logged out? CMD (talk) 14:22, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
For me, there is a sidebar on the right side with radio buttons under the header "Color (beta)". If you don't see it, look under the confusing "glasses" icon at the upper right, next to the "Donate" link. For me, an easy way to check how things look when I am not logged in is to open a different web browser (Safari, Brave, Chrome, etc.) than I usually use for editing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:18, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis: Some browsers provide a "private browsing" feature, or similar. In Firefox, right-click a link and select "Open Link in New Private Window". It opens a new instance of the browser and loads the page reached through the right-clicked link, but does not send any cookies. The effect of this is that if the right-clicked link is a Wikimedia page, it's loaded exactly as for a logged-out user - Vector 2022 and all that bother. Important: if you intend to use the "Restore Previous Session" feature when opening Firefox at the start of the next day's netsurfing, make sure that you close the new private window before closing the main window, otherwise, the next time you open Firefox, and use the "Restore Previous Session" feature, it'll restore that private window and not the main one. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:53, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Back on track, this is about the tables in Frank Grillo#Filmography. So you have a table that uses template:pending film and template:pending series, which in turn both use template:pending. Making the background color change with dark mode pretty much requires templatestyles. Adding a templatestyles tag to any of the templates will not work, because it is a part of a table. Adding a templatestyles tag to the page itself would require an edit to all of the pages these template use, is probably a Manual of Style error and is ugly. Other options or bite the bullet and ask for a bot run? Snævar (talk) 14:48, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
Also, I am letting someone else fix this. Snævar (talk) 11:23, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

PEIS on List of public art in the City of London

See also: Template talk:Public art

I am trying to work out why the post-expand include size is so high on List of public art in the City of London (1,814,737 out of 2,097,152). We are trying to do some work on the table columns, which is not possible, because everything we do exceeeds the PEIS limit. Is there a easy way to work out which templates are causing the most problem? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

@MSGJ Looks like it's the 400 uses of {{Public art/row}}. Substing them reduces the PEIS by 650kB. Also, {{coord}} has a huge PEIS footprint, which gets double-counted because it's inside {{Public art/row}} and an additional bump because that template wraps it in an {{#if:. Switching them out for {{#invoke:Coordinates|coord}} saves about 200kb, but it breaks {{Maplink}}. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:52, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
@MSGJ I've fixed {{Maplink}} so that it no longer breaks when you use {{#invoke:Coordinates|coord}} --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:39, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
@MSGJ I also modified the two Navboxes at the bottom to remove about 150kb of WP:PEIS. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:53, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect robots meta tag on live article

The article "It's Coming (film)" has a "noindex,nofollow" robots meta tag despite being a live article, not a draft. This is preventing Google indexing. Could someone please help remove this incorrect tag? The article is at It's Coming (film). Thank you. Stan1900 (talk) 21:13, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

These are being appropriately applied. The page will not be indexed until new page patroller approves it. Izno (talk) 21:29, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the information. Could you tell me the typical timeframe for new page patrol review? Also, would resolving the paid editing template discussion help speed up this process? Stan1900 (talk) 21:39, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
Why are you concerned with when Google indexes it? RoySmith (talk) 23:28, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the response. The article documents a recent release, and I want to ensure that accurate information is properly indexed and visible for readers and contributors seeking details about the film. Any guidance on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated. Stan1900 (talk) 23:49, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
My guidance would be to concentrate on writing good articles, let the new page patrollers do their jobs, and don't worry about what Google does. RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 13:37, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
@Stan1900: Be patient. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:18, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

patents.com lapsed

patents.com lapsed and is for sale. Searching for insource:"patents.com" shows 26 pages affected. {Cite patent|...} was not an instant fix for the one I rescued, so I linked to the Google Patent page. -A876 (talk) 01:49, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

You are looking for WP:URLREQ. Izno (talk) 01:56, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. I wondered where to look. Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests -A876 (talk) 01:11, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Login errors

My bots are reporting an unusually large number of "Server has reported lag above the configured max_lag value of 5 value after 5 attempt(s)." errors. Is something going on? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:08, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, one of the english wikipedia servers - db1240 is lagging behind at 30 minutes (was 2 hours at 2:00 GMT0), however this has happened several times over the course of last 30 days, resolving itself whithin the hour. Snævar (talk) 02:23, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
Not a login error, but been getting a lot of "Wikimedia error" pages over the last 10 minutes.' - The Bushranger One ping only 04:25, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
I get this when trying to preview my changes. Brilliant, because it lost what I was working on. Mellk (talk) 04:38, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
I could barely post this message, I got system error so many times. Liz Read! Talk! 04:53, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
I likewise encountered this around 45 minutes ago.
Request from [my IP] via cp1106.eqiad.wmnet, ATS/9.2.6
Error: 502, Broken pipe at 2024-12-05 04:14:39 GMT JayCubby 05:04, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
Downdetector thinks the error is beginning to resolve itself. https://downdetector.com/status/wikipedia/ JayCubby 05:05, 5 December 2024 (UTC) See phab:T381547 for one of the bug reports
Apparently there was a database problem (incident link)? penguinencounter2@enwiki:~/talk/contrib$ 05:09, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
You beat me to it by a minute! JayCubby 05:11, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
At the incident link it says, "A primary database server for cached data experienced an issue serving requests." For a 2-minute problem I would probably be satisfied with that explanation, but being unable to use any WM site, and nursing an unsaved edit, for 40 minutes (withdrawal symptoms!), I'm left wondering whether anything can be done to try to avoid it happening again. I'm also wondering what the story is with so-called unified login. I was unifiedly logged in to all the wikis, but evidently not to Phabricator, so I couldn't report the problem to Phab (not to mention here at the Pump). Login that is only partly "unified" doesn't seem very unified. How does one report a problem in these circumstances? Nurg (talk) 09:33, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

The mystery of the disappearing I

So if I add this text it all works fine:

In May 2009,

and this text also works fine:

Weiss announced the opening of Yeshivat Maharat, a new school to train women as Maharat, an acronym for the Hebrew מנהיגה הלכתית רוחנית תורנית

But if I combine these two you get:

In May 2009, Weiss announced the opening of Yeshivat Maharat, a new school to train women as Maharat, an acronym for the Hebrew מנהיגה הלכתית רוחנית תורנית

This displays fine but when you edit this section you can see how the first letter (the "I" from "In May 2009") disappeared in the Wiki Editor. Latest Firefox on Win11, it works fine in Chrome on Win11.

If I, instead of the letter "I" use { then I can still see the right side of it poking out. For a real world example, check out Open Orthodoxy. Polygnotus (talk) 08:01, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus. Presumably this section, Open Orthodoxy#Ordination of women? I look at that and I just see the opening word misspelt as "IIn" where you've compensated for an "I" you can't see. This is both in the rendered text and the edit window. As you say you can partially see a character like {, I suspect this is your browser settings. That it's only happening in a paragraph which has Hebrew script in it makes me think it's to do with the right to left rendering of the Hebrew content that is causing your problem. Nthep (talk) 08:17, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
@Nthep: (excellent name) Exactly. I got rid of the "extra" I and now, to me, it looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/aRmgXjD.png Polygnotus (talk) 08:35, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Now I see the "I" but the "W" from Weiss disappeared. https://i.imgur.com/bXHPWuO.png Polygnotus (talk) 08:12, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

And now both have gone https://i.imgur.com/wnzTVE2.png It is not darkmode and its not ublock origin and its not Tampermonkey. It's also not my scripts. And if I Inspect Element then the problem disappears. Hmmm. Polygnotus (talk) 08:40, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus remove or nowiki out the Hebrew template in the paragraph that's giving you problems and see if it is still a problem then. Nthep (talk) 09:44, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't see your particular issue in Firefox with the default editor but right-to-left text can cause different shenanigans in browsers when it's mixed with left-to-right, including that characters are moved and keyboard arrows and Delete/Backspace suddenly move in the opposite direction. If you cannot read right-to-left scripts anyway then consider trying this in your CSS to display them left-to-right without shenanigans:
textarea {unicode-bidi: bidi-override;}
PrimeHunter (talk) 10:29, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Internal error on move

I am trying to move Draft:Miss Universe 2025 to Miss Universe 2025 after merging two pages following a cut and paste move, but I am getting an internal error when performing the move. The error is [5478442a-5bc7-4ba5-ac35-eebdbb681267] 2024-12-05 18:54:33: Fatal exception of type "UnexpectedValueException". Can someone take a look at this please? The draft also has a redirect in its deleted history which has some content that should be restored behind a redirect to the article; I can do that part if someone else can get the move to succeed. Thanks. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:57, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Never mind, it worked after a few minutes. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:00, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Determining browser page size

WP:ARTICLESIZE speaks of "browser page size". How to determine this value in Firefox? ―Mandruss ☎ 10:12, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Mandruss, I assume it means this? — Qwerfjkltalk 10:19, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't know exactly what it means; I didn't write it. Based on my limited understanding, I'm guessing it corresponds to the number of bytes downloaded, which should correspond to the file size in one's browser cache, which is aka HTML page size. Regardless of what it means, it's one of the measures of article size deemed significant by the community, and I need to know how to determine it in Firefox. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:38, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Mandruss, in much the same way as on chrome. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:41, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. If I were a web developer, that might help. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:44, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
WP:ARTICLESIZE mentions "browser page size" once in the lead and never refers to it again. I guess the author just wanted to clarify that the used sizes are something different. I have never seen browser page size used in Wikipedia discussions about size. I suggest you just ignore it. Anyway, in Firefox the "Tools" tab (you may need to press Alt to see the tabs) has "Page info" which includes size, but I'm not sure how it's defined. It's far smaller then the HTML file if you save it. Is it a download size for a compressed version? If I open a HTML file stored on my own computer then Firefox doesn't even show the size field. That makes sense if it's a download size and Firefox didn't download anything. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:25, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Neither readable prose size nor wiki markup size is a direct measure of performance impact. So I gather technology advances have rendered performance issues insignificant, at least within technical size limits imposed by the PEIS limit etc. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:37, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
@Mandruss The WP:PEIS limit has nothing to do with browser page size. You could easily have the longest article on Wikipedia with a PEIS of 0 if it had no templates, and I have also seen very short articles that exceed the limit due to multi-level transclusions. As to your second point, I have seen several pages recently that ended up being split because users with high-end computers complained about trouble loading the page (Talk:2024 United States presidential election#Merge of international reactions list is the most recent one I can remember). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Very much not rendered insignificant, bloated pages can be a major issue for mobile users. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:25, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
Order of operations to get browser size:
1. Tools > Browser Tools > Web Developer tools
2. A thing pops up at the bottom of the screen
3. Select Networking in the tabs of the newly popped up thing
4. Visit the page you wanted to know the size of, or refresh it
5. The size is in the bottom left corner after the number of requests as x kB / x kB transferred. Snævar (talk) 14:08, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. For the current article in question, that yields 4.33 MB / 365.03 kB transferred. As a direct measure of performance impact, I'm guessing the second number is more meaningful. Agree? ―Mandruss ☎ 14:20, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
I think the first number is more meaningful. The difference in the two numbers is just how much your browser has kept since the last visits (technical jargon: browser cache). The latter number is the first number minus this cache size. Snævar (talk) 14:46, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Ok. What would you call that first number in four words or less? ―Mandruss ☎ 15:52, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
The first number is the decompressed page size, the second is the amount of data transferred, taking into account compression and cached data. I added instructions at Wikipedia:Article size#Browser page size on getting more objective versions of both numbers that bypass caching and Wikipedia preferences. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:38, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Simple math in template

This change throws an ugly red error message in the template's page, but it works when the template is actually used. I assume that there is something obvious and simple that I've missed, and I would appreciate diffs to the fixes or other advice.

Secondly, what I'd like to accomplish is a bit more ambitious. I'm open to being told to give it up. But where we have this now:

Village pump (technical)/Archive 216
Revenue12345 (2023)
Expenses13399 (2023)

I'd like it to be able to handle currency formatting ("$12,345"). This might require a bot/AWB run to convert all of the manually written |revenue $12.3 million to |revenue=12300000 |currency=$ |revenue-note=<ref>source goes here</ref>, which will then be displayed as $12.3 million[1] to the reader.

I want to highlight overspending in red ("108.5% of revenue" or "8.5% excess") and underspending in green. The usual rule of thumb in non-profit land is that spending 90% of revenue is ideal, and that both overspending and significant underspending are bad. So perhaps <80% is amber or (uncolored), 80–100% is green, and >101% is red.

I also want to introduce a third field, "Reserves" with an Operating reserve ratio calculated from the existing Expenses field. This would highlight <6 months in red, 6–12 months in amber, 12–24 months in green, and >24 in purple. (These are the generally recommended ranges for most non-profit organizations. To put this in context, private colleges with an operating reserve ratio of less than 12 months are at risk of joining the growing list in Category:Defunct universities and colleges in the United States, and if it's <6 months, that could happen soon and with no warning.)

What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I fixed the first issue (including issues you didn't know).[61] PrimeHunter (talk) 00:00, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Either a module or an AWB run will be required for what you want, yes. The AWB run will be easier probably. I thought we had a template that handles currency already though? (Or perhaps we don't and that's what has caused so much grief with {{formatnum:}}). Izno (talk) 06:49, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't know if we have something that already handles it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing {{Currency}} or {{Format price}}? The currency template converts values written in words to comma or space separated numbers, format price converts numerical inputs to words. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 11:48, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Maybe the first one? If we did an AWB run to change $12,345 into 12345, then having the template wrap it in {{currency}} should restore the human-readable format. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:27, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing Rather than doing an AWB run you could use {{Digits}} to strip all the formatting from the input. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 00:02, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Reference numbering

Hello, there appears to be a problem with the reference numbering in List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cornwall, reference 8 at the end of Note C of the article is given as 142 in the References section. DuncanHill does not see the problem. See Talk:List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cornwall#Reference numbering for conversation on this. Keith D (talk) 12:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Shows as 128 for me, current Firefox. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:22, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Shows as 97 to me, Firefox 133. Nthep (talk) 13:03, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
We're making progress. Four more replies at this rate will get us down to 8. ;) ―Mandruss ☎ 13:50, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
It appears to be a bug in Firefox. When there's a list, inside a <div style="column-width: XXX;"> that splits the contained list into multiple columns, inside a list item, then it seems to get confused about the numbering on some kinds of recalculation (e.g. due to JS adding or deleting a list item) but not others (e.g. JS changing CSS). When it gets confused, any list items in the inner list that are not in the first column seem to use the counter for the outer list rather than the inner one. That explains the different numbering different people see, it depends on how many items in the inner list are in the non-first columns.
Something like this, completely non-MediaWiki, seems enough to show the bug.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head></head>
    <body>
        <ol>
            <li>1</li>
            <li>2</li>
            <li>3</li>
            <li>4
                <div style="column-count: 3;">
                    <ol>
                        <li>i1</li>
                        <li>i2</li>
                        <li>i3</li>
                        <li>i4</li>
                        <li>i5</li>
                    </ol>
                </div>
            </li>
            <li>5</li>
        </ol>
        <ul><li onclick="this.remove()">deleteme</li></ul>
    </body>
</html>
Anomie⚔ 14:29, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

How many pages in a given namespace

How can I know how many pages are in a given namespace, without getting the list of all of them? Ideally via an API. Polygnotus (talk) 07:11, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus: Wikipedia:Database reports/Page count by namespace is updated weekly. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:03, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you that is perfect! Polygnotus (talk) 09:05, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

More template-smuggled redlinked categories

Pursuant to my post above a few days ago, today's run of Special:WantedCategories was a high-casualty trainwreck with 444 entries (more than double the usual, because a normal-sized run is 150-200), with nearly all of the overrun caused by "FM-Class [WikiProject] articles" → "FM-Class [WikiProject] pages" stuff again. Luckily, the majority of these in actual fact turned out to be cases where the redlinked category already wasn't on the page anymore and the jobs queue had just lagged in actually depopulating the redlink, so they were resolvable simply by doing a "null edit category members" run — but there were still a handful that didn't clear out that way because the redlinked old "articles" category is still on some pages:

Also the original Category:FM-Class articles that I raised the other day, which I recreated as a categoryredirect to resolve the redlink, has been vastly reduced in size but still isn't completely empty, as there are still 32 subcategories in it that still have both the "articles" and "pages" forms on them.

Also, there's a small handful of redlinks caused by the move of "Short track speed skaters at the [Year] Winter Olympics" categories to "Short-track", because the module that handles category generation for {{Fooers at the YYYY Winter Olympics category}} doesn't recognize the hyphenated form and is thus generating broken categories instead of "short-track" categories:

So, again, somebody who can edit modules will need to fix that, which again isn't me because I don't have that privilege.

We've had this discussion before, where bots aren't supposed to be handling the moves of template-generated categories, but the maintainer of the bot considered it an excessive imposition on their time to have to check whether each category was template-generated or not before throwing it to the bot, and didn't seem bothered by the fact that it's also an excessive imposition on everybody else's time to have to clean up this redlinked kludge after the fact. So could we maybe institute a new middle-ground rule whereby instead of leaving the old category as a redlink, the bot needs to leave the old form in place as a categoryredirect to the new one, which can then be deleted after it's already been fully emptied out instead of before? Perhaps with a dedicated "category redirects resulting from renaming" tracking category so that people who want to work on that kind of stuff can figure out how to fix any non-empty redirects and delete the emptied ones, and it stops becoming a recurring WantedCategories problem? Bearcat (talk) 18:36, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Fixed the Olympics batch. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:42, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
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