Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 155

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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Restoring accidentally blanked Deletion review archives that hit the spam filter

A year ago, User:Pldx1 apparently accidentally blanked most of 2007's Deletion review archive as part of a campaign for getting pages off of Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded. I restored some of them, but some cannot be restored due to the presence of links to spam-blocked sites in the templates; January has multiple blocks, while February and April have one each. I will split to fix the template overflow issue, and I put in requests to remove the sites that are dead, but is there any way to get the spam-blocked templates back? I can't just get the pages unblocked, since I'll have to create new ones, and all of the ones blocking January definitely have to stay on the list. SilverbackNet ^talk 01:44, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Neither did Pldx1 blank the pages, nor were his edits an accident. He merely commented the templates out. I don't know if that's actually the appropriate way to respond to the issue, but it's not a huge deal either. Did you try asking Pldx1 about this? Someguy1221 (talk) 02:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Dear all. At 14:08, 13 March 2016, I wrote in the edit summary that:

The best person to maintain a page... is the owner of the page, or the owner of the boot that created the page. When someone else has to do the job instead of the owner, the said owner can simply revert and do the job by herself when she is not satisfied by the result.

A year ago, I have found a situation where the "Wiki Project Spam" was spamming the Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded. I have tried in cooperation with someone of this project to clear the mess. I have the impression that the problem is coming back. Good luck for fixing the situation ! Pldx1 (talk) 21:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Commenting out a page is still widely referred to as "blanking." Anyway, I really don't care how or why the problem happened, I'm not blaming anyone, I care more about fixing the problem and bringing the archives back by splitting them up, which is impossible while edits to archived disputes are blocked by the spam filter. I'm looking for advice on alternate ways to approach that, or whether I have to obtain page-level allowances. SilverbackNet ^talk 02:32, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

User:Beetstra has indicated on MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist that it is preferable to remove the bad links from the specific pages than to delist or workaround the blacklist. Will do, case closed. SilverbackNet ^talk 05:13, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

There are many blacklisted links on those pages, which only serve as convenience for the discussion. The domains/links have since been blacklisted. Of those, only two are now sites that are 'dead'. For me, the better solution is to disable the linking to all the blacklisted domains in those discussions - they do not serve much purpose (except for the very few cases where editors want to follow a 10-year old link, in which case they will have to copy-paste the url). (note: generally links in the content namespaces are removed, outside of that they are left as is as many are in archived pages which are not edited that much anymore (they are not re-added anyway). Every now and then there are archiving problems (as witnessed by the blacklist hits by our archiving bots), which I try to resolve in the same manner). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:46, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I think that rollback would work. 'Breaking' the pages in two will be problematic, as that would need page-creation, and hence fresh addition of the links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:47, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

User:Dirk Beetstra says "there are problems... which I try to resolve". User:SilverbackNet says: "I really don't care how or why the problem happened ... case closed". Going to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/Participants, one can see that Dirk Beetstra is registered, while SilverbackNet is not. Can we conclude that a registered member of the WikiProject Spam tends to be more friendly than an average person ?

By the way, working on the Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded problem should be one of the tasks of the San Francisco Administration, but... Pldx1 (talk) 09:13, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I think that the better solution for pages where template include size is exceeded is first to split them (archives in half). Where that is not possible, (partial) blanking is an option. The former leaves intact links to the subjects discussed, which makes them easier to find. Those are obviously gone when they are plainly blanked/commented out. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

SilverbackNet, if there's solid good reason to restore some blacklisted links, ask an administrator. I've discovered that delete-and-restore works — admin deletes page, admin restores the version immediately before the links were blanked, admin (or anyone else) edits that revision of the page to create a new "current" version, admin restores all deleted revisions. It's a pain, and it's not worth the effort for something tiny, but it's the only option in some situations. As Dirk notes, rollback will restore blacklisted links; I had to use it here, for example, to restore a blacklisted link which talk consensus had already agreed was useful because it was the closest we were going to get to having an official website. Nyttend (talk) 02:25, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

PS, I think I can do the page split for you, just by using a variant of delete-and-restore. If I delete the whole thing, restore one revision, move it to a new title, and edit it, we'll have the content at another page. This done, I can restore the rest of the content (still at the old title) and we'll have two complete copies of the list, which can then be pared down into separate half-lists. Let me know if you'd like me to attempt it. Nyttend (talk) 02:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

What should count as an edit?

Currently, MediaWiki keeps a tally of every registered user's edit count in the database. This edit count is used for various things like figuring out when a user is auto-confirmed or extended-confirmed. It is also used by various user scripts like User:PleaseStand/userinfo.js. Currently, this edit count is incremented every time a user does any of the following:

• Creating or editing modifying a MediaWiki page (even if the revision or page is later deleted)
• Creating or editing a post on a Flow board

The edit count is not incremented for the following:

• Moving a page to a new title
• Automatically creating a redirect during a page move
• Protecting or unprotecting a page

Should the MediaWiki software be modified to count any of those actions as "edits"? FWIW, the XTools Edit Counter counts page moves and automatic redirect creations as "edits", which is why its edit counts don't match those of MediaWiki. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 22:15, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Meh, I think we need to restrain editcountitis. I'd personally leave log actions out separate from the edit counters. 'tis all personal opinion. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:20, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Ryan Kaldari (WMF): There are many bug reports and feature requests that have been generated by the community; is this edit count question related to one of them?

Also, I changed the word "editing" to "modifying" above, since, AFAIK, WP:NULLEDITs do not count as edits for counting purposes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:14, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Thanks for fixing that. The related Phabricator tasks are T163966 and T163284. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 00:26, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I think anything that is listed in Special:Contributions and Special:DeletedContributions should be counted as an edit, including everything listed above plus page imports/imported edits, which is basically the way edits have always been counted by X!'s counter, its predecessors, and the historical lists of Wikipedians by edit count going back to September 2002. The database edit count field was added in December 2006 with [much reluctance (I can't find it now, but I'm sure there was a thread somewhere before that one where it was requested and flat-out declined). Like many MediaWiki features (e.g. the original oversight system, cascading protection, the 5,000-edit limit on page deletions), it was added in quite an ad hoc manner to assist with urgent circumstances. What I'm trying to say is: I don't think the current implementation of this field should be set in stone.

I kinda have a conflict of interest, however; because I've moved so many pages for my history-merging work, my edit count in the database and my edit count as reported by counting the number of edits that are in Special:Contributions differ quite dramatically (the latter being higher by far). I don't like having to answer the simple question of how many edits I've made with "Weeeeeeelll, it depends ...". Graham87 10:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that moving or protecting a page is "an edit".

But the automatically created redirect probably is (when the redirect is created, etc.) If your name appears in the (redirect) page's history as the person who put content (i.e., the #REDIRECT code) on that page, then it should probably get counted as "an edit". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Graham — the number given by the edit counter ought to equal the number you get if you accurately count up all the lines through your Special:Contributions, plus DeletedContributions if that's already the way it works. It's confusing to have two different counts of edits; we should have just one official count of edits. You should be able to say "I have 123456 live edits and 789 deleted edits" if asked, regardless of how you ascertained that number. Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

API query to determine page protections

I need to determine the edit/move protections on a page via the API (e.g., office, full, semi, pending-changes, etc).

It is not easy to do via category memberships. For example, although there is a top-level "Category:Wikipedia semi-protected pages", beneath that there is also a "Category:Wikipedia_indefinitely_semi-protected_pages" and many other variations. When recursing through to find sub-categories, you quickly encounter sub-categories that contain pages that aren't under protection, and a greater depth, almost listing every category on the encyclopedia.

I haven't been able to find an efficient way to do this on a per-page basis. Could I download the entire list of protected pages from the "Special:" function? Probably, but that seems like overkill for a quick task. West.andrew.g (talk) 02:21, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

mw:API:Info#inprop=protection. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:44, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the API is probably the best route. Membership of categories like Category:Wikipedia semi-protected pages does not necessarily mean that all the pages in that category are semi-protected, nor that all semi-protected pages are in that category. The category is merely a reflection of the templates on the page such as {{pp-semi}}. For example, User:Redrose64/Sandbox12 is semi-protected until 09:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC), but is not in any "protected pages" cats. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:30, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Global watchlist

Is there any Global watchlist for all wikimedia projects? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 08:36, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

No, see phab:T3492. --Malyacko (talk) 10:20, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

dash

Which one of the following is the correct dash?

• Moravian–Silesian Football League
• Moravian-Silesian Region

Maiō T. (talk) 19:11, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

That's a style issue—see WP:MOSDASH. If that's not clear, the people at WT:Manual of Style would offer advice. Johnuniq (talk) 01:06, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Johnuniq, thanks! Now it's clear, the correct sign is hyphen - . However, the page Moravian–Silesian Football League could not be moved: a page of that name (Moravian-Silesian Football League) already exists. Maiō T. (talk) 11:00, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Maiō T.: I think you have to ask at WP:RM. Johnuniq (talk) 11:10, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Next to last editors button

The next to last editors button on the diff page used to be broken in that it was always visible, but only showed the most recent editor no matter what page it was clicked on. Now it always show no difference, even though when you show the changes manually, it is obvious that changes were made. Natureium (talk) 18:37, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Natureium: I don't know which feature you refer to. Please describe it more carefully with an example link, say whether you see the feature if you log out, and whether it works in that case. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:44, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

When you are on your watchlist page and click "diff" or a View History page and click "compare selected revisions", one of the options underneath "previous edit" is "next-to-last editor". This button used to only work on the most recent edit even though it's visible on any page where an editor has edited more than once in a row. Now, clicking on it just takes you to a page that says "(No difference)". Natureium (talk) 21:17, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Natureium: I don't see that feature and you didn't do any of the three things I asked for but a search found User:DerHexer/revisionjumper#Function: ← next-to-last editor, a script by User:DerHexer. I assume you have enabled revisionjumper at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. MediaWiki:Gadget-revisionjumper.js shows it loads code from de:MediaWiki:Gadget-revisionjumper.js. Another time, please answer clarifying questions and realize that users see different things depending on various circumstances. Sorry for being grumpy but it's important information to helpers that you don't see the reported feature if you log out. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:12, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I came here for the same reason. It looks like you've identified the source code, but I'm not sure what the next step is for fixing this problem. Is there anyone here who can help with that? -- Irn (talk) 13:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I notified the script author DerHexer above by wikilinking the username. He is active and edited the German Wikipedia today. de:MediaWiki:Gadget-revisionjumper.js can only be edited by German administrators but others could post to the talk page. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:04, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Natureium, Irn, and PrimeHunter: I fixed the code. I hope everything is running again. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 23:32, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@DerHexer: It's still not working for me. It there a something I need to reset? Natureium (talk) 13:57, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

It's still not working for me, either. I'm also running into some technical issues on Wikidata (and having the same problem with the next-to-last editor button there), and I wonder if they might not be related? Also, for what it's worth, I'm having the issue with both Firefox and Chrome. -- Irn (talk) 00:53, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Woops, I only fixed changessincemylastedit, not penultimateeditor. Will look at it soon and will let you know when it'll be fixed. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 23:24, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

@Natureium, Irn, and PrimeHunter: Please try again. Both worked for me now on English Wikipedia as well as German Wikipedia. No clue about Wikidata. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 00:06, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

That did it! Thank you so much! -- Irn (talk) 02:07, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

It worked for me when I clicked on "next to last editor" on the most recent edit, but showed "(No difference)" again when I went back to a prior edit. When I tried again on a most recent edit, it's also showing "(No difference)". Natureium (talk) 14:05, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I find that it's working for me about maybe 80% of the time. I can't seem to figure out if there's anything in particular that's different when it doesn't work. While it's a little frustrating that it's not working 100% like it did for years, any editing tool that works most of the time is a wild success in my opinion, so I'm not complaining. :) -- Irn (talk) 13:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Category in mobiles

Why are cats not visible in mobiles? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 12:21, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Because Mobile hides oneheckuvalot of useful information for no readily apparent reason other than not using up screen space. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:49, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Is it possible to enable it? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 14:02, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes. But only if you can fight your way through the objections at phab: since it requires a MediaWiki software change that is outside our control. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:32, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Or rather, through this pile of work. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:38, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Template:Infobox settlement problem

Hello. I install Mediawiki 1.28.2 on XAMPP. I create this template. But when I try use I see that there is a problem. When I use settlement_type parametr then there is occur additional

</th></tr>

code.

Example 1 (without problem) :

{{Infobox settlement
| official_name=Istanbul
| native_name=''İstanbul''
| native_name_lang=tr
| image_skyline=Istanbul collage 5j.jpg
| imagesize=270px
| image_alt=See caption
| image_caption=Clockwise from top: View of the [[Golden Horn]] between [[Karaköy]] and [[Sarayburnu]] within the [[Historic Areas of Istanbul|historic areas]]; [[Maiden's Tower]]; a [[Istanbul nostalgic tramways|nostalgic tram]] on [[İstiklal Avenue]]; [[Levent]] business district with [[Dolmabahçe Palace]]; [[Ortaköy Mosque]] in front of the [[Bosphorus Bridge]]; and [[Hagia Sophia]].
}}

Example 2 (with problem) :

{{Infobox settlement
| official_name=Istanbul
| native_name=''İstanbul''
| native_name_lang=tr
| settlement_type=[[Metropolitan municipalities in Turkey|Metropolitan municipality]]
| image_skyline=Istanbul collage 5j.jpg
| imagesize=270px
| image_alt=See caption
| image_caption=Clockwise from top: View of the [[Golden Horn]] between [[Karaköy]] and [[Sarayburnu]] within the [[Historic Areas of Istanbul|historic areas]]; [[Maiden's Tower]]; a [[Istanbul nostalgic tramways|nostalgic tram]] on [[İstiklal Avenue]]; [[Levent]] business district with [[Dolmabahçe Palace]]; [[Ortaköy Mosque]] in front of the [[Bosphorus Bridge]]; and [[Hagia Sophia]].
}}

How I can fix it? --Drabdullayev17 (talk) 06:37, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Drabdullayev17: Please link to an example page where you see this problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:32, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I install Mediawiki on my localhost, so I can't link. But when I use old template, there is no problem. --Drabdullayev17 (talk) 08:51, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I have posted to Template talk:Infobox settlement#settlement_type problem. The difference may be that we use HTMLTidy. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

...for a little while longer. If this problem is indeed due to (the absence of) Tidy, then I hope this is the only infobox template that is affected by it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:48, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

As a first step, at enwiki, paste Example 2 into a sandbox with no other wikitext, then preview the result. At the bottom, examine "Templates used in this preview". Check you have the templates and modules shown, and check that your copies exactly match those here. That is, verify you have the latest revisions. Using Example 2 at enwiki gives two occurrences of "th" in the result. Are you saying that you have three? Johnuniq (talk) 10:26, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: See my post at Template talk:Infobox settlement#settlement_type problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:35, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I just posted there with a pretty html dump and it looks like you are correct. I think any further discussion should be at the other page. Johnuniq (talk) 11:13, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Coords in en.m.wikipedia.org

Why doesn't mobile display coords in all situations that desktop does? Wanting to find the location of the Battle of the Crater when visiting the area today, I loaded the article, but to my surprise it had no visible coords. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater has coordinates at top (as if they were done with |display=inline), but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater has no coordinates. Nyttend (talk) 02:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I do not know the current status, but the issue was discussed at August 2013 archive.

The article (Battle of the Crater) has the following near the bottom:

{{coord|37.2183|-77.3777|region:US_type:event|display=title}}

Johnuniq (talk) 02:25, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Mobile doesn't show coordinates, simply because no one has figured out a good spot to represent those coordinates inside a mobile page (Even my mobile vector skin hides them altogether). Thus if a page ONLY shows coordinates in the top right, as this page does, and not inline anywhere then the coordinates will not get a representation. I personally am of the opinion, that you never should have a coordinates with just display=title to begin with, but that's not the situation we are in right atm. Anyway. There is a tracking ticket at phab:T91481, and if anyone has any novel design ideas, they would be very welcome there. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:44, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Source editor hard-wrapping?

For the last week or two I've been having an intermittent issue where overlong lines of text in the Wiki source code editor get hard-wrapped, turning a space into newline+space, which causes whatever was after that point in the line to turn into an indented block of text. This is on MacOS X (10.12.4) and Chrome (58.0.3029.81) if that makes a difference. Has anyone else been seeing this or is it just me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Eppstein (talk • contribs) 00:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: That sounds like a user script or maybe even a browser extension is intermittently making this change. Clear them out, and try to narrow down by enabling stuff one by one (keep a log, as due to the intermittent nature, you might have to go back two or three steps at some point). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:48, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Using {{Rfd}}

When a redirect is being discussed, Template:Rfd is substituted per Template:Rfd/doc. When this is done, the redirect is intentionally broken while {{Rfd}} is in use. Is that the best we can do? Would it be possible for a bot to message the user on their talk page when they use a redirect that is being discussed instead? Would it be worth doing? Thank you for considering this.--John Cline (talk) 00:47, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

There's absolutely no way this would get approved, even if it's technically possible—the privacy implications of what effectively means a bot publicly logging which pages you've visited would be a legal and ethical nightmare. (As a concrete example, Animal pornography is currently a redirect. If I decide that it would be better served pointing towards Pornography rather than Zoophilia, and take it to RFD to discuss it, then from that point on every person visiting that redirect, including the participants in the discussion, will have their talk page graced with a public notification that "you recently searched for Animal pornography". Particularly for people who edit under their real names and thus have their talkpage as the top search result on their name, this may be somewhat undesirable.) Even using the Echo system to add add pings to your notification tab would be problematic, since it would mean the WMF keeping logs of which pages any given editor has visited which has serious privacy implications. ‑ Iridescent 08:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Iridescent: Agreed that this is indeed a particularly bad idea, but user talk pages are already noindexed. Graham87 09:14, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Graham, That's a symbolic gesture, since anything on en-wiki is mirrored by sites which don't respect the noindex attribute. Try putting the phrase "The fact that Greenapple220 posted on its talk page is reeeeeeeeally weird" into Google and your talkpage will immediately come up. ‑ Iridescent 09:25, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I also agree with Iridescent's reasoning. Is what we now have as good as it gets?--John Cline (talk) 09:53, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Upright

Would there be a possibility to globally add the "upright" option for embedding images? I think this could in fact be useful since that function is used not exactly rarely. Thanks in advance for commenting, best--Hubon (talk) 20:51, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

What do you mean by "globally add"? As far as I know the upright option at Wikipedia:Extended image syntax#Size works in all Wikimedia wikis. Is it about adding the option in some editing tool? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:20, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thank you for posting! And, yes indeed, I actually mean the regular editing surface – there you already find the option "embedded file", you know. By "globally" I just wanted to imply that this improvement should be implemented for all wikis. Best--Hubon (talk) 21:55, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

There are several ways to edit. It appears you mean Wikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0 for desktop source editing when "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)", "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" and "Enable wizards for links, formatting, tables, citations, and the search and replace function" are all enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:48, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I simply mean the surface you open by clicking the edit-button... In the toolbar, the icon to the right of the "add-link-button" is called "embedded file". When you click it, you can already chose from different alignments and formats – "upright" is still missing though. And that's exactly what my porposal here is about. Greetings--Hubon (talk) 08:17, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there are about a dozen things that are "simply the surface you open by clicking the edit-button", depending upon your device/prefs/etc. Please look at mw:Editor and see whether any of the screenshots look like what you're using. (The "WikiEditor", which was introduced in 2010 and has a pale blue toolbar, is probably the most commonly used at this wiki.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:42, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Thanks for posting. Yes indeed, I mean the "regular" 2010 vector editor. Best--Hubon (talk) 12:02, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

FB effectivity group

Hi, for those, who are on Facebook, I have founded Effectivity (Wikimedia) group, to share ideas, how to ease contributing to Wikimedia projects via technical tools and methodological ways.--Juandev (talk) 10:53, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Whatever for? We discuss Wikipedia matters on-wiki. As soon as people start discussing Wikipedia matters off-wiki, we get cliques, in-crowds ("we don't know you, so we won't let you post here"), WP:OWNership ("this change wasn't agreed on the Facebook forum, so it should be reverted"), bad feeling and rejection. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:14, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes. Of all the things to undermine a community- words fail me. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 11:26, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be considered, that efforts like these might be the response to a community already acting in many ways like you are warning about. If people are looking for 'external venues', then we are likely failing them on 'internal venues'. Personally, I don't see why Facebook is any worse than IRC, an IRL stamtisch meetup or OTRS. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:12, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Beta Feature Two Column Edit Conflict View

From May 9, the Two Column Edit Conflict View will be available as a beta feature on all wikis. The Two Column Edit Conflict View is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. It highlights differences between the editor's and the conflicting changes to make it easy to copy and paste pieces of the text and resolve the conflict. The feature fulfils a request for a more user-friendly edit conflict resolution from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Everyone is invited to test the feature and we hope that it will serve you well!

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Question about x-tools issue

Hi there, I just have a quick question regarding x-tools. Why do some accounts show as having 0 edits and load in a matter of seconds when they in fact have thousands of edits and (in some cases) are admins? An example of this can be found here. Thanks for your time --TheSandDoctor (talk) 19:50, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Update: The stats now load at that link, weird. This is not the first time I have come across the issue though. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 19:50, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-19

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

Problems

• Some users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on Hide categorization of pages in your watchlist preferences. You can turn off Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. [1]
• There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May. [2]

Changes this week

• When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say Visual editing and Source editing instead of Switch to visual editing and Switch to code editing. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. [3]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users. [4][5]
• Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use -{ in a template: {{1x| sad :-{ face }}. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. [6][7]

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

02:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Getting "warnings" meant for other editors.

I do a lot of disambiguation fixing and similar gnoming. Every once in a while, after fixing a bad link, I will get a "warning" that an edit has been reverted, with a message about adding spam or adding an incorrect genre. In fact, this message is intended for the previous editor who made to whichever edit I just made a link fix, whose addition was also reverted. I don't know whether the editor who actually made the offending edit also sees this warning, but I certainly don't need to see it. bd2412 T 02:26, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

How are these warnings arriving? On your talk page? In your notifications at the top of the page (the bell and inbox icons)? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:05, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Also if you can mention a page or two that you have edited where this happened it will help in tracking down what is going on. MarnetteD|Talk 03:08, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

It's the bell-icon notification. For example, this, this, and this. bd2412 T 04:22, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Technically, both edits were reverted. Keep in mind that in some cases, such as if 2 editors edit different parts of the same page and someone then restores the previous version, both editors should be notified; and the software ihas no way to know when the second editor doesn't need to be notified. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:02, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I get this too. It's totally normal, and it does not mean that you have done anything wrong. Here's what is happening:

1. Someone makes an edit, or multiple people make a series of edits.
2. You make a followup edit.
3. Someone else decides that the whole series of edits, including yours, needs to be reverted back to a previous version of the article, and performs that revert.
4. Everyone who was in the original chain of edits, including you, gets a notification (if they have the notification feature turned on).

In Captain America's shield, for example, someone added a bunch of (alleged) copyvio, you tidied it up, and then both edits were reverted. When this happens to me, it is typically because I have cleaned up a minor error that was made in one or more undesirable edits to a page. Since I was cleaning up an undesirable edit, my edit needs to be reverted. As long as the error I was fixing is still gone, I have no problem with this sequence of events. Checking the page history and the edit summaries will usually confirm that everything is fine and that you should move along and fix something else. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:03, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

What's up with the diff display?

Hi, is there something going on with the diff display? Over at Honeyguide, the following diff

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Honeyguide&curid=255432&diff=779422017&oldid=772944792

basically fails completely (to an embarrassing extent, to say the least). It's not been working specially well for a long while, but if it does this it really does need fixing as it's an important tool and at the moment not far off useless. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:47, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

It indeed looks like something has changed recently. I have added a newline that the IP removed so that the net diff is visible. I can report this on Phabricator. Nirmos (talk) 21:02, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

This is now phab:T164795, so we'll just have to wait and see what the MediaWiki developers say about it. Nirmos (talk) 21:08, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I keep WP:WikEdDiff installed for this issue. --Izno (talk) 22:34, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Is this really new behaviour? It's an old issue to get poor diffs when a paragraph is inserted, removed or moved, and the diff engine guesses wrong and tries to match the wrong paragraphs. A blank line can be treated like a paragraph. A blank line was removed here but the diff matched the old blank line to the next blank line in the new revision. phab:7072 from 2006 is "Paragraph splits and moves not identified in diffs". PrimeHunter (talk) 23:19, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

It's not new behaviour, this has been a problem for eight years at least. When you remove or add a blank line, and in the same edit you alter the paragraph that follows that blank line, the diff engine gets out of synch. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:36, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I imagine that everybody would like the diff engine to be able to cope with trivial changes like blank lines. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:59, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

"Merge" tab and Compact language links

Several months ago, I set up a "merge" tab (in Monobook) with the following code:

mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', mw.config.get('wgScriptPath') + '/index.php?title=Special:MergeHistory&target=' + encodeURIComponent(mw.config.get('wgRelevantPageName')), 'Merge');

Later on, when I was no longer using this tab much, I added the beta feature "Compact language links". More recently, I noticed that the "merge" tab has disappeared, and that I can only bring it back by disabling the "Compact language links". Can someone come up with a better fix for the problem? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:37, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

@Od Mishehu: better now ??? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:57, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

doubled-up entries in contribution history

This is C&P'ed form the helpdesk where I originally posted it. I'm not sure if it counts as a bug, so bringing it up here first:

I've just noticed that a big chunk of my edits appear twice in my contributions list. It appears to be a very specific cut-off - I made an edit at 2027h 4th September 2015 which only appears once, but then the next edit made at 2029h 4th September appears twice - and this continues up until 23rd August 2016.

They only appear once in the article history though, so I presume it's an error in retrieving the data? Chaheel Riens (talk) 13:39, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Wow, that's weird! Easy links to see this spanning date it stops.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:17, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I half expected to get responses along the lines of "Oh yeah - known issue" etc - but the only response came from Fuhghettaboutit, and that implies that it's not been seen before. Chaheel Riens (talk) 07:46, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Looks like old ORES duplicate rows that haven't been cleaned up yet. phab:T164530 seems to be the task for fixing the problem once and for all. Anomie⚔ 12:55, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Null edits via API

Has there been a change in how edits via the API are processed? Say I have a page with an out-of-date template transclusion (for example, a category page that contains {{Category redirect}} -- if the category has contents, the template will automatically categorize the page into Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories -- but if the contents are then recategorized, the template does not update until the page is edited again or a forcerecursivelinkupdate is performed). If I do a null edit on this page through the Web interface, the template updates and the inapplicable category is removed; but if I do a null edit through the API, nothing happens. At least until fairly recently, null edits through the API and through the Web interface worked the same way. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Ask TH button gadget

Hello tech helpers. I was attempting to clean up the header template at the teahouse and was informed that the changes somehow made the "ask a question" gadget not function. I was not able to see anything in the old or new template that would have changed the gadget function. Any advice? Gtstricky^{Talk or C} 14:58, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

You made significant structural changes, so the gadget could have indeed stopped working. Ruslik_Zero 16:40, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ and Mr. Stradivarius any suggestions? Looks like you guys are familiar with this code. Gtstricky^{Talk or C} 20:59, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Which new articles did I create?

This page purports to tell me how many new articles I have created. It doesn't say how it could have obtained such information. Is there some way to find a list that says WHICH new articles I created? Michael Hardy (talk) 05:37, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

At enwiki, Special:Contributions/Michael Hardy includes an "Articles created" link at the very bottom. That links to a wmflabs tool which looks up the info. It can take a couple of minutes to run if there are many pages. Johnuniq (talk) 05:56, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

On most wikis you can use the contributions filters as well, such as namespace=(Article) and Only page creations. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:52, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, @Johnuniq: and @Xaosflux:. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:41, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Not getting email notifications when an article on watchlist is changed

This has been happening sporadically (off/on) for the last year. It's been happening with more frequency this year, even though I pruned my watchlist in case having too many articles on it was the problem. Most recent example: one article on my watchlist (that I have been very actively involved in editing) was edited 3 times by one editor on "21 April", and by GreenC bot on 25 April -- but I did not receive emails about it. I only discovered the edits because I visited the article today (29 April 2017) and looked at its history. I double-checked my watchlist and, yes, the article is included in it.

I checked the Watchlist settings. It says:

You have 51 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages).

Email notification is enabled.

In Preferences > Advanced options only the following are checked:

• Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent
• Hide my edits from the watchlist
• Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist
• Add new files I upload to my watchlist
• Show Wikidata edits in your watchlist

There's nothing in the options preventing my receiving email notifications. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:56, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Did you check to see whether the notification was placed in a "spam" folder or the like? Anomie⚔ 15:32, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I use gmail and when something is in the Spam folder, the folder name appears in bold. After reading your reply I checked it, and it's empty. My experience in the last six months with a watchlist email notification has been either (1) I receive it two or three days after an article has been changed, or (2) I don't receive an email at all. I still haven't received an email regarding the 3 edits to the article I referred, nor the bot edit. There's a bug somewhere. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:25, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Do you make sure you visit each article after getting the email about a change to it? If you don't, you won't get any further emails about that article until you visit it. Graham87 12:26, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

If I don't get an email about a change to an article -- (which, my having a problem getting all emails I'm supposed to get is what my technical problem is about) -- then I will not know that a particular article has been changed. But when I do get an email about an article ... I visit the article to look at the change. I have 51 pages on my watchlist. Email notification is enabled for all 51. That's not happening because when I look at my watchlist I see that changes have been made to many of these 51 articles. There is a bug affecting the email notification settings, and it's Wikipedia that's causing the problem. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 06:55, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Are you having other problems with e-mail from the wikis? For example, if someone uses Special:EmailUser to send a note to you, does that work quickly and reliably? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

So far, I've had no problem in receiving emails from other Wikipedians. Come to think of it ... how am I to know if someone sent me an email and I did not get it? (What if someone thinks I ignored him/her? Damn.) Pyxis Solitary (talk) 11:48, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo and make sure that you have "Web" notifications enabled for "Email from other user". Then Echo (aka Notifications) will ping on wiki when someone sends an e-mail message to you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I checked. "Web" notifications was enabled. (Thanks for the suggestion.) Pyxis Solitary (talk) 06:21, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I think this is probably bug T29884 ("enotif doesn't send email if page on watchlist edited following a minor edit and enotif not configured to send minor edits.") -- Note: "enotif" is the name of the code that is used to email notifications about watchlist changes. It's an ancient system, and is completely separate from the newer "Notifications" system that we get in our personal toolbar at page-top -- That bug is old and complicated, and frustrates everyone who uses the enotif system (or attempts to fix it). It looks like the developers are having recent discussions about it, so hopefully they'll figure out a reliable way to resolve it.

For now, the best workaround is to periodically visit your special:watchlist, and click the button at top "Mark all pages as visited". That will reset all pages, for enotif. Hope that helps, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I did as you advised and marked them all as visited. Thank you. I'll let everyone know if I'm receiving all emails again. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 06:21, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

So far, so good. I've received emails, but when an article is changed more than once in one day, I only receive one email for one change. But at least it's better than before! Pyxis Solitary (talk) 08:16, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Mobile: Redirect to editor after saving edit

After saving an edit in mobile, previously you would be sent to the section of the article that you were editing. This is good and convenient (though sometimes the way it loads means you end up with another section in the viewport, but that's a browser issue). Recently though it's been redirecting to the editor opening at that section, and the back button and the "cancel edit" button don't work. This is never what I want and makes it a huge pain to find my place again to carry on reading. I've found this happening in both Chrome and Firefox for Android. Hairy Dude (talk) 19:51, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I put it on Phab just in case. HTH, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:51, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Error: 503, Backend fetch failed

I just got a Error: 503, Backend fetch failed which cleared itself after a few moments. I've saved details about the problem, should I report them, and if so where? Mathglot (talk) 00:43, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Possibly related to phab:T164448, which in turn may or may not be related to phab:T164059. Nirmos (talk) 01:02, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Depends on which steps you performed before you got the HTTP 503 error. Might be a duplicate, or not. :) For general info, see mw:How to report a bug. --Malyacko (talk) 09:19, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Recent changes ORES filter link added by JS

Sharing a little JavaScript snippet that advanced users may find useful. This adds a RC link with the beta ORES filters pre-configured, and is done in a way that makes it easy to adjust the individual params. I've omitted all the "hidexxx=0" params for brevity (so they will use the wiki's defaults), but you can easily add any you prefer to change, or any other ORES options. It would go in your common.js or skin.js, and needs the usual mw.loader and document ready wrapper around it. This is needed because the beta filters can't currently save your configuration, and it's annoying to reconfigure it every time (yes, browser bookmarks would work, but I prefer this).

mw.util.addPortletLink(
	'p-interaction',
	mw.util.getUrl('Special:RecentChanges', {
		damaging: 'maybebad;likelybad;verylikelybad',
		goodfaith: 'maybebad;likelybad;verylikelybad',
		highlight: 1,
		damaging__likelygood_color: 'c1',
		damaging__maybebad_color: 'c3',
		damaging__likelybad_color: 'c4',
		damaging__verylikelybad_color: 'c5',
		goodfaith__likelygood_color: 'c2',
		goodfaith__maybebad_color: 'c3',
		goodfaith__likelybad_color: 'c4',
		goodfaith__verylikelybad_color: 'c5',
	}),
	'Recent changes (ORES)',
	'n-recentchanges-ores',
	'A list of recent changes in the wiki, with ORES filter enabled',
	null,
	document.getElementById('n-recentchanges').nextSibling
	);

Murph9000 (talk) 10:56, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

What Links Here vs.Templates

The Templates people said I should move this to PHAB. PHAB says I should try the Village Pump first. Therefore:

When I do a What Links here on Issik Qaghan or any page containing Template Göktürks I get everything in the template. The purpose of What Links Here is to find pages that say something about the base page. Things in the template usually say nothing about the base page, can be found from the template separately from What Links Here and make relevant pages hard to find. I often skip What Links Here rather than search 50 pages that are probably irrelevant. This make checking difficult and lowers the quality of our work. Would it be possible to make What Links Here point only to the template and not to the template contents? This would make important related pages easier to check and improve the quality of our work. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 23:22, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Benjamin Trovato: Do the filters on Special:WhatLinksHere help you, like "Hide transclusions"? Nirmos (talk) 23:37, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

No, that's not what he's looking for. --Izno (talk) 23:40, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Try using insource search. --Izno (talk) 23:40, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

And this can be combined with linksto: like so: 10 results including a link to the page. --Izno (talk) 23:46, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that {{Göktürks}} has a link to Issik Qaghan, so any page transcluding the template will also link to Issik Qaghan and therefore be listed at Special:WhatLinksHere/Issik Qaghan. The WhatLinksHere feature has no way to separate pages linking directly in their source from pages only linking via a transcluded template. It's a frequently requested feature. Here are some of the requests:

• Help talk:What links here#We need a way to hide/show links from templates
• Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 September 7#What links here - hide transclusions
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 147#What links here / templates
• Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 328#'what links here' question
• Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2015 March 25#Filtering "what links here"
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 139#Can links via navboxes be excluded from "what links here"?
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 132#What Links Here generating too many listings due to navboxes
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 132#Amount of work for "What links here" to distinguish between links from within templates and those that aren't.
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#Fix a problem with What Links Here?
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 126#"What links here" to group links from templates as it does with redirects
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 122#WhatLinksHere overwhelmed by links in navigation templates
• Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 104#What links here - templates
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 69#What links here and navboxes
• Help talk:What links here#Question. How do we hide excessive linkage?
• Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 June 20#What links here
• Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2012 May 9#"What links here"--is there a way to eliminate the nav box links?
• Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 January 18#how do I filter out template links from "what links here"
• Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 February 25#Incoming/Outgoing page links (Backlinks and What links here) issue
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive S#Whatlinkshere idea
• Phabricator:T3392: "What links here" should show only the template linking, not all pages containing the template. Same for "pages that use this image".
• Phabricator:T5241: Transclusion should produce tree-like results in "What links here"
• Phabricator:T14396: "what links here" should list the template, not the pages that use it
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates#what links here problem

PrimeHunter (talk) 23:43, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I have made User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js to search for pages where the link is in the source. To use the script, add the following line to your common JavaScript:

importScript('User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js]]

It has some limitations and could still use some tweaks. Regex searches are slow and can time out so for efficiency it first uses both linksto and a non-regex insource per mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Regular expression searches. On Issik Qaghan it produces this. We could also consider adding a search link to MediaWiki:Linkshere which is displayed on WhatLinksHere pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:46, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I would guess that the linksto directive is an indexed one, which significantly speeds up most searching. Usually, adding the plain-text version (search parameter of simply "name_of_article") can also help to speed up searches. However, linksto is case-sensitive, so perhaps that should be indicated to the user somehow. --Izno (talk) 12:10, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you have in mind. The script uses wpPageName so linksto automatically gets the correct case, but if users manually edit the search afterwards then they might write a wrong case. The regex insource is also case sensitive by default and that can miss some pages if the feature is used on non-mainspace pages and a source uses a namespace alias or doesn't use standard capitalization of the namespace. I did make the initial letter case insensitive so [[example]] and [[Example]] are both found. The whole name could be made case insensitive with insource:/regexp/i at mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Insource but that is less efficient. It could also give false positives but that should be very rare when only pages with the correct link are searched. It still wouldn't catch namespace aliases like File/Image and Wikipedia/WP. There are other ways to fool the search like using underscores instead of spaces, or having spaces around the page name inside the link brackets. Some of these could be caught with more complicated regex but I'm not sure it's worth it. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:52, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Sure, my thought is only that if a user is hoping to get all links (through redirects), they will need to change the title they're searching on. --Izno (talk) 13:59, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Better example: Under Bagha Qaghan to goal is to find the relevant Bahram Chobin without messing with Orkhon Inscriptions which is irrelevant and only in the Template. The main goal of WhatLinksHere is to find incoming links without outgoing links, for which I could not find a good example. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 21:01, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

WhatLinksHere/Pagename never displays outgoing links from Pagename. The problem is that it doesn't distinguish between incoming links directly from the source of page X and from a template displayed on page X. The rendered version of Orkhon inscriptions does contain a link to Bagha Qaghan in the navigation template at the bottom (not in mobile), so Orkhon inscriptions is listed at Special:WhatLinksHere/Bagha Qaghan. It wouldn't change anything to remove the template from Bagha Qaghan itself. But User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js produces Source links which does not list Orkhon inscriptions in the search results. I have made a similar template version {{Source links}}. {{Source links|Bagha Qaghan}} produces Source links which also omits Orkhon inscriptions and other pages which only link via a used template. We could add {{Source links}} in MediaWiki:Linkshere so it would show up next to "External tools: Show redirects only" at Special:WhatLinksHere/Bagha Qaghan. insource with regex is expensive and I don't whether the high visibility on all WhatLinksHere pages (except registered users with another interface language) would give performance problems. It starts by filtering with linksto so I guess it's only a serious problem on pages with huge numbers of incoming links. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:50, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2017

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Review your changes".

In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.

The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.

A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [8]

The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [9]

Other changes:

• You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [10]
• The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [11]
• The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the icon) for quicker access. [12] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [13]
• You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [14]
• Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [15]
• The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [16]
• A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [17]
• There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations: Control+Shift+K on a PC, or Command+Shift+K on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is Control+K on a PC or Command+K on a Mac. [18]

Future changes

• The VisualEditor team is working with the Community Tech team on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of <ref> tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [19]
• The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding &ooui=1 to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [20]
• The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [21]

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

The BIG blue button has just been deployed to the Persian Wikipedia. https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?action=edit&uselang=en should take you to the edit window for a random article, so you can see the changes. This change affects only the older wikitext editors, and you may need to update your gadgets or scripts as a result. See this diff to see how one script was adjusted in response to this change. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

ISBN citations now with autofill!

Hi all, in the Wikipedia Library program at the Wikimedia Foundation we have been working with OCLC to make autofilled ISBN citations available, through using their WorldCat database. We have deployed the feature on all language Wikipedias: you can learn more about it on the Wikimedia blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/11/wikimedia-oclc-partnership/

Cheers, Jake Ocaasi (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Nice!--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:43, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

This is a new feature in the mw:citoid service. You can currently use it in VisualEditor (visual and wikitext modes). In the future, it will probably be integrated into the 2010 wikitext editor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:22, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Help with custom sig settings

Could someone else please advise at User talk:Aetheling1125#Your signature? Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:05, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Done. Graham87 07:30, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

About some question of Wikipedia:Template_limits

1. Can $wgMaxArticleSize be splited to two variables?

   It seems that this variable controls the size of the page can be saved and the size of the wikicode can be expanded when parsing. Can it add a more variable to split the funtion of this variable? likely $wgMaxArticleSize controls the size of the page can be saved and the new one controls expanding size.

2. What happened if the $wgMaxArticleSize sets to 4MB (a time of current value, 2MB) on the wmf's production environment?

   I can't understand why is 2MB to set to the expanding size. And If it's 4MB, what trouble will it have on the production environment? Because it's easily to break the page with some large Navboxs or Infoboxs on the zh.wp, I want to request a larger size to evade it. I need some suggests and information to confirm the feasibility.

---

That is all. Thanks. --Cwek (talk) 07:12, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

With my developer hat on: it's to avoid making template transclusions a workaround for page size. We don't want to allow pages any bigger, 2MB of wikitext already results in huge HTML output that is a pain for some users to load, let's not exacerbate this problem any further. Max Semenik (talk) 18:18, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. --Cwek (talk) 02:07, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

@Cwek: Have you actually run up against the limit somewhere? I agree with having the limit in place, for the above reason and for performance, and 2MB feels like a reasonably generous limit. If it's causing a problem somewhere, maybe we can help with the templates and markup to keep something within the limit (assuming that the basic content involved is actually reasonable and does not need some heavy trimming or splitting). Murph9000 (talk) 08:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Cannot edit from mobile device

When I woke up this morning and checked in with a few ongoing discussions on articles I edit, I found that a lot of the articles had all of their sections expanded and editing was unavailable. I can edit some articles like 2017 World Rally Championship, but not others, such as 2017 Formula One season. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 09:48, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Okay, it appears to be fixed for now. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 10:04, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

What's up with edit conflicts?

So today I got an edit conflict, and a very different message than I'm used to seeing popped up. I should have taken a screen shot, but I didn't. At any rate, it did not behave like I expected and wouldn't let me save changes. I'd like to experiment with it further, but it's hard to intentionally create an edit conflict. Has any one else gotten a very different edit conflict message, or know anything about this? I'm thinking it has something to do with the community wishlist, where people had asked for improved handling of edit conflicts, but I'd like to see more documentation about what exactly has been implemented, because what I saw was not an improvement. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:22, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

@ONUnicorn: Did you turn the new "Two column edit conflict" beta preference on? Sounds like you might be seeing that. Sam Walton (talk) 15:24, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I have "Automatically enable all new beta features" checked, so probably. Thanks for pointing me that way. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:28, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

The feature was announced at #Beta Feature Two Column Edit Conflict View. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:30, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Has someone broken something?

… or is it just me? Hover-tips gives the message "Looks like there's no preview for this page" for all pages. DYK Check gives all page sizes as 0 bytes; on Safari, but not on Chrome, I also get an "API error" message. Has somebody changed something without testing it first? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:13, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Not just you, seeing it also. Mathglot (talk) 16:57, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Article not indexing in Google despite everything in order

Grace Banu, a prominent Dalit transgender activist was the first transgender woman to attend and earn an engineering degree from a university in Tamil Nadu, India. Very neat person. But despite everything I've tried, it simply doesn't show up in google, not when I search "Grace Banu" or more mysteriously, even "Grace Banu site:en.wikipedia.org", and even moreso "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Banu". The article:

• Is C-class and in 3 wikiprojects
• Has more than a dozen references
• Belongs to a dozen categories
• Doesn't have any template warnings
• Has proper person data sort
• Has a Wikidata item
• Is not an orphan and is linked from multiple lists

Any idea why this article seems to be invisible? Thanks! Jake Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:11, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Page information says it's indexed, so I assume this is a Google error? Sam Walton (talk) 17:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I submitted a request to Google to crawl and index that page, response Your request has been received and will be processed shortly.. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:38, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

New articles automatically get noindex for 30 days or until they are patrolled. See Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing#Indexing of articles ("mainspace"). Grace Banu was created 15 April 2017‎ and still has noindex. The feature to automatically noindex new pages is relatively new and has not been coordinated with the claim on "Page information" which only checks other ways to control indexing. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:38, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This new page has not yet been reviewed Special:NewPagesFeed shows it still pending - it has an additional noindex that will be in place until it is reviewed or is a month old. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:42, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I have now reviewed it.[22]. As expected, noindex was removed from the html source. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:45, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks PrimeHunter - note for anyone else, there is still a HUGE back log for new page review - if you want to help in this area go stop by WP:NPP to learn how. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:47, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

The setting controlling this is $wgPageTriageNoIndexUnreviewedNewArticles, documented at mw:Extension:PageTriage#Extension configuration. It's false by default but set true for Wikimedia in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=CommonSettings.php and https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. The feature was introduced at phab:T147544 in October 2016. Should we file a bug to request coordination with "Page information"? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:58, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

PrimeHunter I think having this indexing status included in the &actin=info would only be a net positive - perhaps a listing of EACH index control that is currently configured/overridden/disallowed - as well as what the "net result" is. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:35, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

I haved created phab:T165204: "Page information claims indexing allowed when PageTriage causes noindex on new articles". PrimeHunter (talk) 21:43, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

A new external MediaWiki editor

Hey guys, I've been working on a new external MediaWiki editor for a bit now, and would like to get some preliminary feedback. It's over here. Mind you, it's very beta, but I would like to see if it's useful for some, and what other features y'all might like in a tool like this. Mind you, this editor works quite a bit differently because it "truly" parses the MediaWiki markup, which means it will generate errors instead of simply showing it broken. Anywho, thanks in advance! Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 23:57, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

We don't need more editors, some might say that we need less. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:35, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Drewmutt, how did you decide how a given piece of wikitext "should" be parsed? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Mostly took a clue from Parsoid and documentation on the incomplete Mediawiki BNF docs. Although I understand that some MW markup is left to interpretation, so the lexer is pretty forgiving. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 19:45, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

You might also be interested in mw:Parsing/Replacing Tidy and related pages. There's quite a lot of changes happening this year. For the most part, I think that following Parsoid is going to be a relatively safe approach. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Good info! Come to think of it, MW is probably a better place for my discussion. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 19:29, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Can you give me more context for that? Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 19:29, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

@Drewmutt: We've got the 2003-era wikitext editor; the 2010 wikitext editor; the 2017 source editor; WikEd; the "code editor" that's used on JavaScript and Lua pages; Visual Editor; the one that the Teahouse people like; and that thing that comes with Flow. I make that eight when just one should be enough: we do not need yet another to have to learn. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:33, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Probably not surprisingly, I cordially disagree. I feel that each brings it's own advantages and shortcomings. I believe that's why you see the myriad of editors. Need to change something quickly? VisualEditor. Need to dig into a reference issue? Use the source editor. With the diversity of editors and needs, I'm actually surprised there isn't more. I feel mine fits in with more the "diagnostics" style of editing, in just testing it yesterday it found an error with the Donald Trump article which is a service no other editor provides (that I know of). Additionally, to be fair, no one is making anyone learn anything. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 20:42, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Does the editor require the installation of Java? I abandoned Java many years ago when it became apparent that it was a security nightmare. Its current status should be a consideration for anyone wanting to try the editor. Johnuniq (talk) 23:20, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: Technically no, because IntelliJ has a bundled JRE / JDK. But I don't know if that's any better from a security perspective. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 00:38, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T165209

I tried adding a page to my watchlist, and got this error message: mobile-frontend-watchlist-error Anyone know why this appears to be happening? Leggomygreggo8 (talk) 13:49, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

It's supposed to display MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-watchlist-error: "There was a problem watching this page. Please try again." Were you on the mobile version? Have you tried again? If it still doesn't work then which page is it and do other pages work? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:16, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Mobile, I've tried multiple pages multiple times, no pages work. Leggomygreggo8 (talk) 14:24, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Desktop works but mobile also fails for me. I get "mobile-frontend-watchlist-error" in both Microsoft Edge and Firefox, both when trying to watch and unwatch, both here and at commons:, and both in my normal account and an alternative account with an empty watchlist. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:06, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

On Thursday, a change went live that was meant to fix this kind of issue for a particular browser (Firefox for Android), but apparently it made it worse instead. I have filed phab:T165209. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 00:58, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Something odd at Category:Wikipedians looking for help

I just responded to a help request that had shown up in Category:Wikipedians looking for help - only after responding did I see the datestamp; the template I was responding to was placed back in October 2015. How did it not show up in the category until now? Yunshui ^雲_水 10:57, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Most likely the job to update the links after the edit to add the template somehow got lost back in 2015, and something recently triggered another such job for the page. As for what triggered it, there's probably no way to know for sure (but it may have been the recent edits to Module:No ping). Anomie⚔ 18:48, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

This is really really strange, since I went through all of {{help me}}'s transclusions in February 2017 off whatlinkshere... – Train2104 (t • c) 20:02, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

The job that failed to update the category membership would also have failed to update the record of template transclusions in that page. Anomie⚔ 11:53, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Could a tool read your Watchlist through OAuth and make changes? And if so, would someone want to create it?

Hi there. In a discussion I started on WT:Twinkle, Cabayi brought up the idea of removing closed XFDs and SPIs from your Watchlist (semi-)automatically. Does OAuth allow reading your Watchlist? And if so, could someone maybe create a tool that reads the Watchlist, filters out all pages of a certain kind (XFDs, SPIs etc.) and checks if they are still open (and removes them if they aren't)? I'm no expert but I assume that shouldn't be too hard for someone with some skill. Regards SoWhy 12:57, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, an OAuth consumer can view and edit your watchlist if you grant it the "View your watchlist" and "Edit your watchlist" grants. Anomie⚔ 11:56, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Deprecation of importScript

So, I've been thinking about the legacy status and future deprecation of importScript(), which has been floating around for a while. The suggested replacement at mw:ResourceLoader/Legacy JavaScript is:

mw.loader.load( '/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );

Now, as a coder, that really does not feel like a good replacement to me. It just looks unclean compared to giving a wiki page name. Yes, it's functional and works, but it's ugly. So, I've come up with the following, and I'm wondering if there's a good reason why it (or something similar) is not a suggested replacement for loading local scripts:

mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ).then( function () {
	var loadParamsJS = {
		action: 'raw',
		ctype: 'text/javascript'
	};
	var loadScript = function (page) {
		mw.loader.load( mw.util.getUrl( page, loadParamsJS ));
	};

	loadScript( 'User:Example/Pullson.js' );
	loadScript( 'User:Example/Fulminator.js' ); 
	loadScript( 'User:Example/Mark III.js' );
	…
});

Not a raw URL in sight, no hacky string manipulation, just (hopefully) clean code making good use of the available library functions. It can easily be extended to provide a loadStylesheet() function. So, any thoughts on that, have I failed to spot a snag? Is there a reason it's not being suggested in the MW docs as a possible replacement for loading local scripts (it does not know what an interwiki link is, so it's local-only)?

Murph9000 (talk) 13:06, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I really like neither.. The problem is that enabling a userscript should be as simple as enabling a gadget really. And currently it isn't, and with this deprecation it is going to be worse.... I've lately been thinking more like something like User:Equazcion/ScriptInstaller, but then instead of adding 'importScript' statements to your common.js, just have it write to your userpreferences. Then have a site wide gadget to read the values and load the scripts. We could easily make another gadget that would read people's existing script pages and guides them through a conversion. Wonder what Krinkle thinks of that... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:35, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: I don't like the idea of using preferences as-is, because they are user-private, that would severely limit the ability for others to offer assistance / make fixes / etc. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:08, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

UTF8 encoding

When my bot attempts to process KrioRus it produces garbage. For example at the top is

| native_name = КриоРус

.. the bot outputs

| native_name = ￐ﾚ￑ﾀ￐ﾸ￐ﾾ￐ﾠ￑ﾃ￑ﾁ

The bot is UTF-8 per specs but the article looks like it contains UTF-16/32 chars? Assuming this is accurate, how would one fix it? -- GreenC 19:13, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

The native_name at KrioRus appears to match the title and name used at ru:КриоРус and my editor does not complain about broken UTF-8 in the article, so my guess is that the problem is in the bot. My "appears to match" is based on using a tool to download both articles to separate files and comparing dumps of the text—I think that is reliable but haven't really tested it. Does the bot work on other articles with non-English characters? Johnuniq (talk) 01:43, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

The W3 validator comes back clean, and the page encoding (<meta charset="UTF-8"/>) is declared for UTF8. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:00, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah it's weird because this is the only article I've had trouble with and the bot has processed 100s of thousands of articles. Well, back to the drawing board. -- GreenC 02:41, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Figured it out, sort of. One of my bot's formatting fixes produced a garbage UTF-16/32 character due to something related to Cyrillic which caused something else to interpret the whole document as UTF-16/32. -- GreenC 03:07, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Cite book template

Can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong here?

Suarez, David L. (2009). [‬https://books.google.com/books?id=eZjFavPmuxAC&pg=PA3 "Influenza a Virus"]. In ‪David E. Swayne (ed.). Avian Influenza. John Wiley & Sons. p. 3. ISBN ‪9780813818665. {{cite book}}: Check |chapter-url= value (help); Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
Thanks. Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:45, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

There are 14 characters in |isbn=‪9780813818665. The first character is the invisible character U+202A Left-to-right Embedding Unicode Character. You copied and pasted this isbn from some other place?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:56, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Essentially the same issue with |chapter-url= except that the first character (also invisible) is U+202C Pop Directional Formatting Unicode Character.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:01, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, User:Trappist the monk. I removed the invisible characters, and it's still a bit messed up:

Suarez, David L. (2009). "Influenza a Virus". In ‪David E. Swayne (ed.). Avian Influenza. John Wiley & Sons. p. 3. ISBN 9780813818665.
Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

U+202C at position 14. Where are you getting the url and isbn? If this something that is going to be occuring commonly because Google or some other website has changed something, I want to modify Module:Citation/CS1 to detect these particular characters.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:33, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks again. Copied the isbn from here (bottom of page). Copied the URL by simply going to that URL and copying the material in the box at the top of the screen. Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:49, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

The invisible characters don't appear to have come from Google. What about the template itself? Did you type it all out or did you copy it from somewhere and then fill it in? Did you use one of the available citation creation tools?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:06, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Typed it out from scratch, on my iPhone, but pasting the URL and isbn. Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:15, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. Puzzling. The first character in |editor=‪David E. Swayne is the U+202A character. Also copy/pasted?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:40, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Yup. Copied from Google and pasted to the "Notes" thingy on my iPhone. Then copied from the "Notes" thingy to Wikipedia. Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:53, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

"Or edit a section"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T165390

Why do I keep getting this dialog popping up when I look at articles? Sam Walton (talk) 18:03, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9:Your recent contribs include (Tag: 2017 source edit). That seems like a likely place to start looking (e.g. try disabling that beta, and see what happens). Murph9000 (talk) 18:21, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Indeed - seems to have gone away now anyway. Sam Walton (talk) 18:36, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Can you tell me more about this? (A screenshot would be ideal, if you can re-trigger it.) That phrase seems to be from MediaWiki:Guidedtour-tour-gettingstartedtasktoolbar-edit-section-title/en, which is part of Guided Tours (which I thought was unused these days). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:34, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): It's gone away now so I'll have to do it from memory. I think, after I enabled the new source editor the other day, I started seeing - only on articles - a popup box linked to the top section with the header "Or edit a section" and some informational text in the box. It seemed to be the final box of an introductional series of boxes, and I can't remember whether I saw the others or not (I think I did, but I cant remember exactly). Looking at GuidedTour - specifically the video - I think that was what I saw. Sam Walton (talk) 17:03, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject JavaScript#I'm stumped: How do you save a location in the viewport to reposition the viewport later?

I've been stuck on a viewport repositioning problem. If this is something you have familiarity with, I could sure use your help. The Transhumanist 17:25, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Lists cleanup

Is there any bot or script that can replace redirects and deleted / updated pages on Index of Jainism-related articles. Further, is there any script to remove [[Some page|This label]] from links? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Capankajsmilyo (talk • contribs) 06:23, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

No, because WP:NOTBROKEN and WP:COSMETICBOT both forbid the indiscriminate bypassing of redirects. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:20, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

These policies are for articles. Do they apply on lists? It is not mentioned there. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 12:16, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

What makes you think that they apply only to articles? Alternatively, why do you think that they don't apply to lists (which are a subclass of articles)? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:48, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:BRINT also index is a type of navigational page. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 14:02, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

It says navigational templates, not pages. A navigational template is something like this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

What specifically are you referring to? Contrary to what Redrose stated above, changing links from [[target|redirect]] to [[redirect]] is allowed under WP:UNBROKEN (and generally preferred). You may also change links from [[redirect]] to [[target]] so long as context is maintained. What you may not do under WP:UNBROKEN is change [[redirect]] to [[target|redirect]]. —Farix (t | c) 10:55, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I am specifically proposing to change links to [[target]] on indexes, specifically Jainism index. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 12:26, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

You misunderstood what I wrote. I am advocating the use of [[redirect]] in mainspace pages, and am against changing that to [[target|redirect]] except in navigational templates. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:11, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Thge reason we fix these in the navboxes is thgat on the linked page the eidt is a significant one - that is, it affects user experience. Fixing this on an index doesn't have this result, because it isn't transcluded on any of the linked pages. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:46, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Categories does not have added labels, why should lists have them? What is the value additional labeling provide? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 20:16, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-20

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

Recent changes

• You can now use ISBNs to automatically generate citations in the visual editor. This works on wikis that have enabled Citoid. [23]
• The Two Column Edit Conflict View is available as a beta feature on all wikis. It is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. [24]

Problems

• The mediawiki.util library does not load automatically any more. Your Special:MyPage/common.js may use it. If you have technical problems that started a couple of weeks ago you can try adding mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ).done(function(){ as the first line in the file and }); as a last one. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/18 issue. [25]

Changes this week

• The RevisionSlider extension will be a default feature on all wikis. RevisionSlider is an easier way to move between changes in the page history. It has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia and a beta feature on all wikis. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences. [26]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Administrators will soon be able to search through deleted pages. [27][28]
• Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. Tech News wrote about this last week. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. You can now see the full list of wikis with this problem and help fix them to avoid that things break later this month. You might find false positives. You can read more about what to fix. [29][30]

Older unreported changes

• Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word __NOGLOBAL__ to your Meta user page to stop this. [31][32]

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

21:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Post-scriptpocalypse issue with mw.util.addPortletLink

After the recent scriptpocalypse I made all the requisite changes and everything was working again, but then a couple days ago some of my scripts stopped working again. After some testing, I saw that commenting out my mw.util.addPortletLink calls in common.js fixed the issues. Has anyone else run into this? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 19:06, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

What is in your browser console? Ruslik_Zero 12:24, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Please see the first section at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_154#Old_script-pocalypse, which particularly talks about mw.util.addPortletlink() and how it should be used vs, how many people are using it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:07, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks -- I implemented the related advice, and now it's all working. What's funny is that there were no problems with my mw.util.addPortletLink calls up to roughly May 11. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:25, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: See the newly added § Tech News: 2017-20, below. mediawiki.util was still being auto-loaded into the base JS environment until sometime in the last few days. For the record, this thread title makes me think of some horrible disaster involving a laser printer. Murph9000 (talk) 02:55, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Infobox location

I have noticed a change that seems to have happened the last week. Infoboxes started appearing to me, an android app user, in the very beginning of every article instead after a lead paragraph, which renders the article preview that appears when I press hyperlinks empty and useless. would anyone tell me what happened? please mention me with the {{ping}} template if you reply.  • Sammy Majed  • Talk  • Creations • Wikipedia Arabic  • 15:56, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

User:DBrant (WMF) will probably know the answer to your question. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi @SammyMajed:, This was actually a server-side issue caused by a recent update to the mobileview API. The issue has been fixed, and it looks like all the caches have been updated. The issue was tracked at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T165119. Please let us know if it's still happening. DBrant (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@DBrant (WMF): Thanks for your reply. The issue was resolved in most articles, but some remain, e.g. Eisenhower dollar.  • Sammy Majed  • Talk  • Creations • Wikipedia Arabic  • 04:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist not loading

Since yesterday my Watchlist has stopped loading. This is the only Wikipedia page I'm having trouble with. Occasionally it shows "This page isn’t working. en.wikipedia.org is currently unable to handle this request. HTTP ERROR 500." It loads if I disable the Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent option in my Preferences, but that's not ideal. Browser: Chrome Version 58.0.3029.110. --The1337gamer (talk) 06:21, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Upright

Wouldn't it make sense to globally (meaning for all wikis) add the "upright" option for embedding images with the corresponding tool in the "regular" 2010 vector editor toolbar? This function is used actually not so rarely and so a default function could be quite useful I think. What is your view?--Hubon (talk) 07:12, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Chrome issue with inserting character after backspacing

I don't know whether this is a browser issue or a Wikipedia issue, but it only occurs in Chrome. The issue occurs when editing. If I backspace to remove a character, then use Wikipedia's 'Insert' toolbar to insert a replacement character, the new character will be inserted in the wrong place - not where the mouse pointer is positioned, but after the next character. For example, in the phrase "Ecuadorian-Peruvian war", I want to replace the hyphen by an endash, so I backspace to remove the hyphen, then click on the endash from the toolbar; the result is "EcuadorianP–eruvian war" instead of "Ecuadorian–Peruvian war". I've tried this in Firefox, Edge and Opera - the problem doesn't arise. It's only Chrome. Another note: if instead I remove the unwanted character by positioning the pointer to the left of it and pressing Delete, there is no problem; the replacement character appears in the correct location. Colonies Chris (talk) 08:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki message / template confusion

I am having no luck figuring out an issue I noticed regarding the MW footer on IP contribution pages, MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon. The footer transcludes {{anontools}}, and the WHOIS link in the template calls tools.wmflabs.org/whois/gateway.py. However, the footer on IP contribution pages (example) is calling Robtex whois, which has recently gone from being a relatively useful tool to being almost useless. No amount of null edits or purging has been changed the link, so I've decided that I must be missing something, like I'm looking at the wrong footer code or something. Hopefully, someone can shed some light on this for me. Thanks. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 14:50, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@DoRD: Unless I'm missing something, the IP template comes from Template:Anontools/ipv6 or Template:Anontools/ipv4. While the ipv6 template has been updated, the ipv4 one still uses Robtex. Sam Walton (talk) 14:55, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

See, I did say that I was missing something. MW message pages are still somewhat of a mystery to me, but I've updated the v4 template to make it useful again. Thanks! ​—DoRD (talk)​ 15:01, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

*headdesk* I should have looked at the source for {{anontools}}. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 15:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Display title bug?

The page San Francisco (sans-serif typeface) is rendering its title (for me, anyway) with lowercase "san" ("san Francisco") and I can't figure out why, there's no DISPLAYTITLE on the page. Is this a bug? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:12, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• Same for me, on Chrome and IE, both logged-in and logged-out. Can't see the reason why either. Black Kite (talk) 14:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Fixed by moving {{lowercase title}} inside noinclude in a transcluded template.[33] PrimeHunter (talk) 14:21, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Good sleuthing. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:58, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Strange file upload history

Something odd is going on with File:Aleta Ogord.jpg. The oldest revision shows at the top of the upload history, and, while the file has been reduced in size, the older, larger image is what shows in the file preview. Any idea as to why this is happening and how best to deal with it? clpo13_(talk) 17:20, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

File:A.O..jpg shows the original file version was deleted and later restored. If the restoration of a file version is the most recent file action then I guess that version becomes current no matter the original upload order. I assume the version could just be deleted again. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Done. Bencherlite^Talk 17:50, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! clpo13_(talk) 18:50, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

STiki session log outs

I have been logged out of STiki twice in 5 minutes and then again 15 minutes later when I fired up STiki again. The error message says it is WMF problem not mine or STiki's. Is anyone else suffering? d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 03:00, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@L3X1: What is STiki? What is the exact error message? How is this related to the English Wikipedia? How to reduce the problem? --Malyacko (talk) 11:18, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

See WP:STiki. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:29, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

So this is just a me problem? I fired up STiki again and haven't had any issues. d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 19:48, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

<cite> vs. <span> and printed urls

Prior to 26 September 2015, cs1|2 templates ({{cite book}}, {{citation}}, ...) had their output wrapped in <span>...</span> tags that held class= and id= attributes. On that date, the wrapping changed to <cite>...</cite> tags because the forced italicization of the content of that tag had been removed and because <cite>...</cite> is more semantically correct. What we apparently did not notice is that with the change, cs1|2 citations lost rendered urls in the printable versions of an article.

Here are three examples:

1. without span or cite tags
2. with span tags
3. with cite tags

If, from the Print/export menu in the left sidebar I click Printable version, I get something that looks like this:

1. without span or cite tags (http://www.example.com)

2. with span tags (http://www.example.com)

3. with cite tags

If I look at the page source of the printable version, I see:

<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.example.com">without span or cite tags</a></li>
<li><span><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.example.com">with span tags</a></span></li>
<li><cite><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.example.com">with cite tags</a></cite></li>

Does that mean that this is a browser issue? an html issue? a css issue? a MediaWiki issue? something else?

I suspect that it is important for printed article pages to show the urls that are hidden behind title text in the online version.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:40, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

According to this cite tag in HTML5 is for titles of works but not for citations. So, I am not sure that it is semantically correct. Ruslik_Zero 12:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

For those interested in the history see this discussion at MediaWiki and this discussion at cs1|2.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:19, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Fixed. I'm not sure why that was there, as it wasn't really documented back then (pre-2010). Ping me if you find a problem due to this change. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:33, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Good. Thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:56, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ruslik0: Don't believe everything that you read at w3schools. If you check the HTML5 spec for the cite element, it says The cite element represents a reference to a creative work. It must include the title of the work or the name of the author(person, people or organization) or an URL reference, which may be in an abbreviated form as per the conventions used for the addition of citation metadata., so our usage, which does include at least one of these (where feasible), is valid. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Getting of list of the piped links used when associated with an article link?

Given a piped link such as [[Topic A|Name A]], is it possible to get a list of the different uses of "Name A" that are used with the link of "Topic A"? I'm sure there's some AWB magic that could be used but I'm curious if there's an on-wiki way.

The specific case that I'd like this for is for video games: for articles on games that require an online connection, some editors have linked to Always-on DRM (Digital rights management) with the piped text of "online", which can be a bit of POV-pushing in some cases - DRM is generally seen as controversial, and just because a game is online-only doesn't mean it is attempting to control DRM, but players often see it as such, incorrectly. I'd like to review the cases where this specific [[Always-on DRM|online]] piped link is being used. --MASEM (t) 00:45, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

There are none saying exactly that. Maybe you are more interested in a search for all piped links: linksto:"Always-on DRM" insource:/\[Always-on DRM\|/i. See mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Insource. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:12, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Removing the "importance" parameter from a WikiProject banner

I'm planning to propose that a WikiProject I'm very involved with should discontinue using the "importance" parameter in the banner. It is of little to no actual value in managing the project, the rating is entirely subjective and leads to unhappiness and even fights as some people feel that a low rating is actually an insult to the article subject. Is it possible to actually remove/switch off the parameter so that it no longer displays in the banner or in the project's article assessment tables? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:50, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Some projects have deprecated "importance" parameters (@Iridescent: would be a person to ask about this, although I don't think they have Echo enabled), but I don't think there is current any function on Template:WPBannerMeta to turn off that parameter. I would endorse adding such code, though, in my opinion importance ratings are usually pointless. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject Visual arts is probably the most high-profile project to abandon an importance scale. AFAIK, all you'd need to do in practice is change the talkpage banner templates so that importance categories are no longer displayed and Category:low-importance foo articles etc are no longer populated; a bot can then go round and remove the ratings at leisure. ‑ Iridescent 17:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

It looks like this change would be all you'd need to do, depending on how the template in question is set up. ‑ Iridescent 17:07, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, now all I need is the consensus of the project members to do it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:37, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Dodger67 and Iridescent: That change won't do it, because |IMPORTANCE_SCALE=no is treated the same as |IMPORTANCE_SCALE=yes or |IMPORTANCE_SCALE=standard; even physically removing the parameter will simply be treated as if |IMPORTANCE_SCALE=standard (which is the default) were present. This is because {{WPBannerMeta/importance}} recognises only two values: inline and subpage - everything else, including no and absence, is treated as standard. To disable the importance scale, you need to remove the |importance={{{importance|}}} parameter. Removing the |IMPORTANCE_SCALE= parameter (if present) can be done as well, but is not essential.

For future ref, questions of this nature may be posted at Template talk:WPBannerMeta where experts in WikiProject banner construction - such as myself or MSGJ (talk · contribs) - will offer advice. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:05, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Redrose64 Thanks for the correction. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:09, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

User:Bethloe/common.js

Can anyone explain this to me please? It looks... Massive, compared to the scripts usually used. I assumed some kind of WP:NOTREPOSITORY or something, but would like a deeper understanding if that's possible. Cheers! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 06:26, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: I can't begin to understand the code, but the embedded messages suggest that the script is calculating some kind of readability index for the current article. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:49, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that; there's also User:Bethloe/common.css. A few newlines wouldn't go amiss. Has anybody asked Bethloe (talk · contribs) where these came from? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:08, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

It has been "minified", which makes it horrible to read but efficient when downloaded into the browser on each page view. It looks like it's directly related to Wikipedia, so should be free of "WP is not …" type concerns. Some sort of article quality analysis, as suggested above, seems like a reasonable bet. It's quite unusual as a first edit, to drop in some quite advanced JS & CSS. The only immediate concern I see with it is copyright and licensing. If it's the user's own work (which it could be, and I didn't spot anything to suggest otherwise), there's no issue there. That might seem implausible for a new account, but they may have been using and developing this script as an IP user (injecting it into WP page views using Greasemonkey or similar). If it is copied from somewhere, it's lacking license and attribution. Murph9000 (talk) 11:58, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

A keyword search on Wikipedia brings up another account, which seems to have had a role in developing it, and a description page. I'll not name names and leave it to others to search for themselves - from an admin viewpoint it doesn't seem worth pursuing. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:18, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• @Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: Ok, after a bit of detective work, it seems to be Quality Assisted Editor, which is MIT-licensed (so should be fine as far as copyright and licensing goes, I believe). I have no idea what the current status of that tool is (either with WMF or using it on EN-WP). I think I would recommend loading the CSS & JS from tools.wmflabs.org, rather than copying them directly into local personal CSS & JS. Or, if there's demand for it and the tool passes reasonable due diligence, they could be added as a gadget. Murph9000 (talk) 12:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading, Redrose64, Murph9000, and Zzuuzz: Thank you all for your help with this. It's all little out of my league, but suffice it to say that if you're assure as to its harmlessness, then I'm reassured. Mind you it does all seem rather interesting. Thanks! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 12:25, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

An admin might reasonably add attribution (either in the page history or the page-proper), because I would guess the MIT license requires it. (I suppose you could do it on talk page.) --Izno (talk) 12:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

If there's a concern there, that could be done. My own, unofficial, opinion is that when a MIT-licensed file is distributed from its home location without a license header / comment (as seems to be the case here), that obligation is implicitly waived by the copyright holder. If WP would prefer to take a stronger view on that, that's also ok. Murph9000 (talk) 12:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Categories on mobile

Hi, I've created a simple gadget that will load the categories and add them to a mobile interface page. You can test it from the Gadgets in your preferences section. If people think this is desirable, than the gadget can be made default on (for everyone or just for some specific usergroups). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

File Upload Wizard fails - something to do with js?

I am trying to use the Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard But one I click on "click here to start the upload wizard", nothing happens. Any thoughts?

I see that it ends in .JS so I assume it is JavaScript. I have separately noticed that my own JavaScript file doesn't seem to be working so I assume it's related. I vaguely recall some traffic about some issues but don't recall where I start or how to resolve it.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:45, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: When you add stuff to your Javascript pages, you should (be able to) maintain them. I'm not saying this to be annoying, but it's a wonder you were still able to use Wikipedia at all really, with all of this common.js changes, monobook.js changes, vector.js changes that I had to make. If you don't understand what's in there, then it's dangerous and can break a variety of things. Try to use Gadgets whenever possible. Remove things when you don't know/remember what they are doing. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:26, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

What does the file upload wizard have to do with my Mono book page? Perhaps it does but I didn't create the file upload wizard, so I don't understand why errors in my common JS file have anything to do with that file.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:29, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I see that the upload Wizard is now working again, so thanks for that. Sorry for my technical ignorance, but why would anything in my .js file affect a Wizard created by someone else, one that is presumably used by thousands of editors?--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:35, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Because all that code executes inside the same browser window. If one thing breaks, then it can interfere with all the other things that are meant to be running at the same time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it's time we expand MediaWiki:Jswarning, with some advice to use Gadgets when possible and be able to understand what Javascript is... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

It is an inherent flaw (or feature) of the internet (or at least html) that all pages (or most) consist of simple text. This means that browsers, javascript, browser extensions, and even the operating system can easily mangle (or change) just about anything you receive in the browser. It is what makes web development a nightmare compared to a native OS application. In this case it means that whenever people use javascript without understanding it well enough they can easily cause script errors that prevent "proper" rendering or display. In fact, a good number of errors reported in websites are actually caused by external factors (e.g. userscripts, extensions, network connections or ISP).

It is fortunate that readers can just disable javascript and escape from 90% of these problems, but unfortunate that +90% of them probably don't even know such a switch exists or what it does. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.88.223 (talk) 15:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

BIG blue button will break scripts

I've collected some information at mw:OOjs UI/Fixing scripts and gadgets about the upcoming change to the "Save" button (and some other buttons nearby). This is a technical change, not just a change to the color, and it appears that it will unfortunately break multiple editing-related scripts. If you maintain a script, please check that page and test your script (instructions on the page). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Changing links in sidebar

I have some trouble changing an link in the sidebar of is.wikisource, with the intent to link to is:s:Hjálp:Efnisyfirlit. Years ago I changed the help link on is.wikipedia like so, but when Ruslik did the same on is.wikisource after I asked him to do so, it did not work. Granted some years have passed since I made said change on is.wikipedia but I am still puzzled by this. Are the links in the sidebar supposed to be changed in some other way? Why is the change linked above on is.wikisource not working? --Snaevar (talk) 18:32, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

It seems to be working now. In my experience there can be a delay before changes to the MediaWiki namespace take effect. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:35, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Email return page

At the moment if you send an email via the 'Email this user' function, you have a choice when finished, of 'Return to User:Example' (or go, bizarrely, to main page!- I've always thought 'Back to where you were' would be most sensible). Since the same text also points out that you can let them know they have email using {{ygm}}, etc., wouldn't it be more useful if the choice was to 'Return to User talk:Example'? I mean, you are either going to want to leave a ygm notice or not. If you do, then you want to be on the talk page to do so. If you don't, then it doesn't matter what page is recommended! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:45, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by go to main page. I only get the option 'Return to User:Example'. It links to the user page no matter where in their userspace you clicked "Email this user". That may seem a little odd for a link saying "Return to". The part "You can notify users that you have emailed them by leaving them a talk page message. The {{You've got mail}} template is available for this purpose." is made by customizing MediaWiki:Emailsenttext for the English Wikipedia. The MediaWiki default only says "Your email message has been sent." The username is not available as a parameter in MediaWiki:Emailsenttext, and you are on Special:EmailUser at the time so it cannot use {{PAGENAME}} or similar to detect the username. The message "Return to User:Example" is probably made by MediaWiki:Returnto which is used in lots of other places. My conclusion: The MediaWiki default has no particular reason to link the user talk page, and I don't currently see a way we could do it at the English Wikipedia without a change in the MediaWiki software like a $1 parameter with the user name in the call of MediaWiki:Emailsenttext. It's possible a customized MediaWiki:Returnto could detect whether it's on Special:EmailUser and add a user talk link in that case, but I'm not sure it has access to analyze $1 to detect the username or manipulate the link. And it's a minor issue anyway, probably not worth the performance cost of customizing MediaWiki:Returnto with parser functions. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:15, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that thorough analysis, Primefac; I could've sworn it had a choice of going to the main page at some point. But never mind. Anyway, so you think that it's out of our hands where to direct the return page as? ah well- shame. BTW did you mean it would cost $1 to change the code; or was that the piece of code that would be changed?! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 14:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Wrong Prime ;) Primefac (talk) 14:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter and Primefac: Sorry ...! -too many primes for me to handle! ;) — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 14:43, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

$1, $2, ... is how MediaWiki messages access parameters from the caller, similar to {{{1}}}, {{{2}}}, ... for unnamed template parameters. For example, MediaWiki:Returnto says "Return to $1." where $1 is a value given by the MediaWiki software when the message is called. The problem is that MediaWiki:Emailsenttext does not get the username as a $1 parameter in the call (as far as I know anyway, https://translatewiki.net/wiki/MediaWiki:Emailsenttext/qqq would be my normal way to check parameters but translatewiki.net is not responding for me). We cannot add it locally but a general MediaWiki change to add it could be requested at phab:. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:35, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the detailed explanation! Appreciate that. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 14:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, see $1#Other uses and Dollar sign#Use in computer software; it's a broader computer-science use. Nyttend backup (talk) 12:17, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that Nyttend: I should've known that the liklihood of it only costing a quid was slightly unlikely! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 12:22, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

translatewiki.net is finally responding. To my surprise https://translatewiki.net/wiki/MediaWiki:Emailsenttext/qqq says: "$1 - (Optional) the recipient's username, for local customizations". We can still not change 'Return to User:Example' but we can add a user talk link to MediaWiki:Emailsenttext. I have done this including a preload link to use {{You've got mail}}.[34] I have tested it works after mailing myself. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:35, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

#invole:Chart looks terrible in mobile Wikipedia

Please help! The chart in the bottom of the article looks totally terrible in the mobile Wikipedia: https://bg.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B3

The same here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jeremy_Corbyn&oldid=731595817#Growth_in_the_Labour_Party

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Димитър Янков (talk • contribs) 09:04, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

The first one is bg:Фрайбург#Българска общност and in both cases, the "terrible" effect is that the x-axis labels are written vertically, as in

2
0
1
5

rather than horizontally. The enclosing <div>...</div> element has a style= attribute containing the declaration max-width:1px; (the Bulgarian one) or max-width:2px; (the Corbyn one) which I am fairly certain is the direct cause. There is also a bad CSS declaration veritical-align:top; in the same attribute: being invalid, this will be ignored. I'm no Lua expert, but searching Module: space for that spelling mistake "veritical" suggests that the drawXlegends function in Module:Chart would be a good place to start. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:23, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

The Corbyn example was reported by Rwendland at Module talk:Chart#Mobile wikipedia bar chart presentation terrible with no help. Module:Chart computes a max-width for x legends. It's apparently meant to be approximately the width of the displayed column. In my Firefox the max-width is ignored in desktop but followed in mobile so there the text can become vertical when the columns are narrow. If there are a lot of columns then max-width becomes negative and is ignored in both desktop and mobile. That happens for the last example at Module:Chart#Scale per group with max-width:-4px so it looks OK in mobile. If the same example is cut off before 1960 then you get a positive max-width:6px and mobile displays vertical text for me here:

5

10

15

20

25

30

1940

1950

The idea of setting max-width to the column width must be that if each column has a legend and it doesn't fit the column width then it has be vertical or run into the next legend. But if many of the columns have no legend like the above example then there is no need for max-width. If the module cannot determine this automatically then I think there should be an optional parameter to omit max-width. If we try to code the module to make it enforce max-width in desktop then I suspect many of our charts will suddenly get unnecessary vertical legends in desktop in addition to mobile. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:36, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! I changed to max-width:-1px in line 395 in Module:Chart (in the Bulgarian Wikipedia). Now mobile is fine (see: bg:Фрайбург#Българска общност) and I can't encounter any problems in desktop for now. Just an idea: is it possible to add the CSS word-break:keep-all somewhere in Module:Chart? --Димитър Янков (talk) 10:38, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

@Димитър Янков: The reason that max-width:-1px "works" for you is that negative values for that property are illegal, so that your browser is ignoring the declaration. This might not be the case for other browsers, so it's safer to remove the declaration entirely. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:00, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

A template to get only subpage name

Similar to template:PAGENAME, but instead gives you the subpage name. For example if the title is Evanescence/The Open Door, it gives you The Open Door only. Is there such template?—‎Lost Whispers _talk 16:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

There is a magic word: {{SUBPAGENAME}}. See mw:Help:Magic_words#Page_names

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:56, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you!—‎Lost Whispers _talk 19:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Or see WP:VAR. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Prototype for editing Wikidata infoboxes on Wikipedia

Hello,

One of the most requested features for Wikidata is to enable editing of Wikidata’s data directly from Wikipedia, so the editors can continue their workflow without switching websites.

The Wikidata development team has been working on a tool to achieve this goal: fill and edit the Wikipedia infoboxes with information from Wikidata, directly on Wikipedia, via the Visual Editor.

We already asked for feedback in 2015, and collected some interesting ideas which we shared with you in this thesis. We would like to present to you our first prototype and collect your feedback, in order to improve and continue the development of this feature.

We present this work to you very early, so we can include your feedback before and all along the development. You are the core users of this feature, so we want to make sure that it fits your needs and editing processes.

You will find the prototype, description of the features, and a demo video, on this page. Feel free to add any comment or feedback on the talk page. The page is currently not translated in every languages, but you can add your contribution by helping to translate it.

You can either add your feedback on the talk page on Wikidata, or add a comment here. I’ll follow this discussion to make sure that all of your feedback is taken into account. However, it would be better to write your message on the central Wikidata page so everyone can read your input.

Thanks, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 15:31, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

No, no, no! You stopped bolding right before the most important bit. "via the Visual Editor." 95% of manual editing on enwiki doesn't happen with VE but with the standard Wikitext editor, so why are you still pushing VE by releasing requested features only (or at least first) for VE? Fram (talk) 08:03, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

And of course, this only works somewhat intuitive when you want to use an URL as a source. As soon as you want to use e.g. a book as a source, or a newspaper article, or.... you run into trouble, as this is really not easy on Wikidata. It seems to be built around either unsourced items, imported items from other wikis, or url sourecs with a short title and nothing more. Referencing at the level we are used to? I get items which are supposedly sourced, and the source is "imported from Wikidata"example. I thought the "imported from nlwiki" and so on were poor example sof circular referencing, but this really is taking the piss. Basically, you are pushing the same tired VE down our throats in an umpteenth attempt to get it away from the tiny minority tool it has remained for years, to make it easier to edit data from a website we shouldn't be using as a source anyway as it is a poorly sourced and maintained wiki with a lack of even the most basic policies. Just drop both of them and you'll make a lot of wikipedia editors a lot happier than with this effort. Fram (talk) 08:23, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

WMDE is a) not the organization "pushing the same tired VE down [your] throats in an umpteenth attempt"; b) this is to be used on other wikis as well, not solely en.WP; and c) there is nothing anywhere to suggest that there must be feature parity except for regressions between the 2010 wikitext editor and VE, which I assume is the editor you believe that most editors are using (which I'll not dispute). There is also d) the 2017 wikitext editor built on Parsoid and no doubt also enabling this technology. I won't comment on the rest of that screed. --Izno (talk) 12:02, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

It is the umpteenth atempt to push VE down our throats, and this time it is done by WMDE instead of WMF. Wow, big deal. Most other wikis also use predominantly the wikitext editor, not VE, although the percentages are probably different from those here. Your point c misses the point as well: it may well be that fature parity isn't a must, but it is stupid (certainly because it is a common theme) to add features (and in general, smend much more time and resources) to a project that has failed to attract most editors, instead of adding features first to the most popular editor (and also, or later, or never, to minority editors). What is done here (and too often in the past) again smacks of disregard for what most editors actually use and need, and instead going for a pet project (or here two pet projects in one go) at once. Fram (talk) 12:20, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

As for the circular referencing issue, I've started a discussion on the Wikidata project chat. Seems to be largely the result of a single QuickStatements batch. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 12:14, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Fram (talk) 12:20, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Rather fundamental problem (one of many, but simply one I think of now): at the moment, when I go from enwiki to wikidata, I am logged in at enwiki, but not logged in at wikidata. If this happens with the easy editing tool, it looks as if my wikidata editing would not happen under my account but as an IP. Not good... Fram (talk) 12:42, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

That's strange, do you have that with other sister sites ? We have 2 methods making sure that people are logged into our various sister sites and it generally works rather well. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:06, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't happen with other languages (just tested via random article => Swedish wikipedia), but it seems to happen with e.g. Commons as well. And at meta. Fram (talk) 13:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Right, so just cross domain. We have two methods to do this. The first is using cookies and images. This method easily breaks on more modern browsers, where you have stricter rules for cookie exchange. Another reason it breaks could be privacy protecting (or adblocking) extensions. The reason is that we use 1pixel images for this, and sometimes these images are considered to be tracking pixels. Private browsing mode might also affect it.

The second method we use is Javascript. The javascript method is usually highly reliable and as far as we know can only be broken if you disable Javascript in your browser. If you did not disable JS and something were able to interfere with it, then we need to figure out what that is, because it might affect a lot more people than we are aware of. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:29, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

RevisionSlider

RevisionSlider will be available as a default feature for all users on all wikis from May 17. The RevisionSlider adds a slider view to the diff page so that you can easily move between revisions. The slider view is collapsed by default, and will load by clicking on it. It can also be turned off entirely in the user preferences. RevisionSlider has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia for 6 months and a beta feature on all wikis for 8 months. The feature fulfills a wish from the German Community’s Technical Wishlist. Thanks to everyone who tested RevisionSlider and gave valuable feedback to improve the feature! We hope that RevisionSlider will continue to serve you well in your work.

Birgit Müller (WMDE) 14:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Birgit Müller (WMDE): When you hover over one of the bars, there's a pop-up balloon showing some information about that revision. In Monobook it's unreadably small: I would like to fix it by adding a rule to my common.css - but I can't do that, because I can't find out anything at all about the HTML element in question. This is because when I use the "Inspect element" feature of Firefox, the popup vanishes, and I find that I'm inspecting whatever element that the popup was over. Whether I can fix it myself or not (at the moment it's "not"), I suggest that the font size be increased, because as it stands it's a serious accessibility issue. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:43, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Thanks for the feedback! I created a phab ticket for the accessibilty issue in general. For you common.css rule, you probably need the div with the class "oo-ui-popupWidget-popup" (you can get this on Firefox if you go to Extras > Web-Developers > Inspector, and then in the console that appears there is a button in the top left is a button that shows you all info immediately when you hover over an element). I hope this helps! Lea Voget (WMDE) (talk) 11:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

This seems to have some potential to be really useful. A couple of dumb questions: why doesn't it show up on the Revision history page, which is where it'd be most handy; and what determines the number of revisions shown? – obviously it isn't what it says here, "The tool only fetches data for revisions that are currently visible on the screen (maximum 500 revisions) and data about additional revisions is only loaded when the user navigates back or forth on the timeline using the arrows", because the number of revisions displayed on the screen in any diff is always either one (for new pages) or two. At the moment it's giving me 50, I'd like to know how/where to change that to 500. Actually, I'd also like to know how to get more than 500 revisions to display in the revision history page, other than by manually adding &limit=5000 or whatever into the url; is there a way to do that, a preference, whatever? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:15, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I would like to support that idea of moving it to the "View history" display, as opposed to being at the top of diffs. When I look at a diff, I'm really interested in seeing that single edit. Conversely, the slider seems like a very useful tool when examining the page revision history. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:28, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

It would probably be a better mechanism to browse the history, but I would not support moving it away from the diff screen. I use RevisionSlider as a workaround the obnoxious issue with watchlist (viz the split of days sometimes requiring multiple tabs to review a single page's changes since you last looked at that page). --Izno (talk) 20:33, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

What is this "split of days sometimes requiring multiple tabs to review a single page's changes"? I never need to do that. I open my watchlist, go to the bottom and look up the page until I reach the boldfaced entries - then I continue upwards, this time clicking the "diff" links as I go. It's all in one tab. If I see that there have been more than one edit, I might use the "hist" link, from where I can pick out one of the "cur" links. But no need for more than one tab. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:04, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: phab:T10681 describes the issue I'm working around--right now, the "N changes" gets divided up into day M and day M+1 (overnight, at least). If I click on the total diff for day M, then I need either a) second tab with the total diff for day M+1 or b) revisionslider or its predecessor, which allows me to include day M+1 in the same tab as day M. "cur" on the 'previous'-to-all-new revisions doesn't always work because sometimes I haven't marked as read anything so recent as the earliest edit stored in the watchlist (and I've got it set to 1k changes). --Izno (talk) 00:48, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Go to Preferences → Watchlist and enable "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" - disabling this causes too much trouble - for instance, if you have "Hide minor edits from the watchlist" enabled, and the most recent edit to a given page was marked as minor, you don't get anything for that page. Too easy to miss too much. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:48, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps there could be a user preferences setting that would, separately, allow it on diffs and/or on revision histories. Myself, I don't much like seeing it on diffs, but I'd be happy to have it on the revision history pages. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, a user preference would be fine. Lea Voget (WMDE), Birgit Müller (WMDE), any comment on this, or on my questions above about changing the number of revisions displayed? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tryptofish:, @Justlettersandnumbers: Thanks for your feedback! I added your suggestion to have a user preference to the relevant phabricator ticket. @Justlettersandnumbers: Do I understand you correctly, that you want to be able to reach more than 50 revisions with the RevisionSlider? Or do you want to see 500 bars at the same time? The first is already happening: The RevisionSlider loads the information of 500 revisions, which is much more than you see bars on the screen. Once you click the arrows on the side to navigate to older or newer revisions, it reloads more revisions to be able to show them to you if you want to go back even further in history. If this is not what you meant, please correct me :) Lea Voget (WMDE) (talk) 14:48, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist notifications

Is there a way to disable bot edits from triggering watchlist notifications ? - Mlpearc (open channel) 14:34, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mlpearc: Yes, there is. At the top of the watchlist there's a big box called "Watchlist options". In that box there's a place that says "Hide:" and then there are a bunch of radiocheckboxes. One of those says "bots". Put a checkmark in that and it'll hide bot edits. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 14:51, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Do you refer to emails enabled with "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal? I don't think bot edits can be omitted there. "Notifications" usually refers to Wikipedia:Notifications (formerly Echo) with settings at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo, but this feature does not include the watchlist. The actual watchlist can hide bot edits with a setting at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist or a checkbox at top of Special:Watchlist, but I guess it doesn't affect emails (I haven't tested it). PrimeHunter (talk) 14:54, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@ONUnicorn: I have that already checked, I should of been more precise, @PrimeHunter: yes, I am referring to getting emails when a bot makes changes to a page on my list. - Mlpearc (open channel) 15:03, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Strange format of sidebar at Walter Benjamin

The opening section after the lead section in Walter Benjamin is formatted with an error message printing in the text. Could someone take a look? ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 19:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Same thing seems to come up on the sibling article at The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction related to a sidebar malfunction. Any thoughts? ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 19:18, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@ManKnowsInfinity: Fixed Other articles will be fixed when their cache is cleared or they are purged. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Preserving hyperlinks when inserting RichText in Wikipedia

I have a RichText with hyperlinks, and I want to copy it into a Wiki page; specifically, I'm looking for some tool that transforms the links in the original text properly into Wiki Markup links. Any idea? — Pajz (talk) 05:39, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Maybe just pasting it into Wikipedia:VisualEditor will work ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Pajz: It's not entirely clear exactly what these links will be, so please note a few things which might be relevant. External links are generally not allowed in the content of an article (other than within references, subject to the various policies and guidelines on those). If the links are to other articles on English Wikipedia, they need to be converted to internal links. Interwiki links to other language Wikipedias are mostly discouraged in the middle of content, and should also be internal links rather than external. Lastly, please remember to clean out or convert the majority of formatting that may accompany the paste from a RTF document, and remember copyright issues. Murph9000 (talk) 11:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I'm aware of that, thanks. I often have to copy emails into our private (WMF) Wiki, and it's terribly annoying that I lose all the links in the process. VisualEditor doesn't preserve them either. I just wondered if perhaps there is a tool that properly converts them into our [url linktext] syntax. Best, — Pajz (talk) 22:59, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Pajz: Ahhh, ok, now it's a little clearer, thanks. It's not a direct solution, and not quite as convenient as a simple cut & paste, but mw:Extension:Html2Wiki might be worth a look, potentially giving you a RTF-->HTML-->MW route, since I guess extensions and import permissions are not necessarily ruled out. Murph9000 (talk) 23:20, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Pajz: One more thought, have you tried WP:WIKED / mw:Extension:WikEd? Murph9000 (talk) 23:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Missing Twinkle tab

The WP:Twinkle tab (TW) that normally appears at the top, to the right of the "More" tab, has vanished from user and user talk pages. It is still there on all other pages. If I look at the user contributions I get an abbreviated tab. But I would like the full tab back. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 11:45, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

What is your skin at Special:Preferences? Do you see a working "warn" link at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:CambridgeBayWeather&useskin=modern? (ignore everything else there) PrimeHunter (talk) 12:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm using Vector and yes the link works. Of course I tried all the other links as well! They worked. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 16:00, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

It may be something in User:CambridgeBayWeather/vector.js. Try previewing that page with the current and with no content. Do you get a Twinkle tab with no content but not with the current content? If so then you can try previewing without different parts to narrow it down. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:00, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I get the full Twinkle tab on the page. Just in case it is important I get the full tab on all my subpages, just not on the user and talk pages. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 18:11, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

PrimeHunter. Please feel free to tell me how stupid I am. I completely misunderstood what you were saying. Blanking User:CambridgeBayWeather/vector.js does restore the Twinkle tab. So now all I need to do is figure out which part. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 02:10, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather: This my be the issue and this also - Mlpearc (open channel) 02:33, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Turns out this was the problem. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 05:14, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

I actually thought you were also missing the Twinkle tab on User:CambridgeBayWeather/vector.js and could therefore make tests by previewing different parts of that page without having to save. If you preview a js or css page then the whole window is rendered as if the page contained what you preview. But if you have to view another page to see the result then you have to save (at least as far as I know). Good to hear you identified the problem code. I don't know how to fix the code. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:04, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Upload Wizard on sr.wiki

Could someone help on where to change target for the main sidebar link "Upload file" so that it leads to the Upload wizard instead of Special:Upload on sr.wiki? We've translated it and it's working (but on a separate page).

Also, could someone find a glitch that causes message about current uploading to stay even after an upload is finished (header should display other message, about finished upload).

Thanks. @Future Perfect at Sunrise: --Obsuser (talk) 18:08, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Make a request at phab: to set mw:Manual:$wgUploadNavigationUrl in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. Link to a discussion showing consensus. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:52, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

See meta:Requesting_wiki_configuration_changes for the procedure. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 12:55, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Blank Watchlist

Resolved

My watchlist is showing a blank white screen since 2 days. What is the issue, how to fix? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 10:15, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: It's not a certainty, but there's a reasonable possibility that one of your user scripts is causing a problem. I suggest a good first diagnostic step would be to comment out all of the scripts in User:Capankajsmilyo/common.js and User:Capankajsmilyo/vector.js, and see if that makes any difference. Add // to the start of each line to comment it out (temporarily disable it). If that fixes it, remove the comments one at a time (saving the JS file each time), until you find the script that is broken. There were changes to MediaWiki recently that have caused some old scripts to break. I don't know if the ones you are loading are some of the broken ones or not, it's just a good first step. If disabling them does not fix the problem, at least we know it isn't down to the scripts. Murph9000 (talk) 10:30, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: It did not fix the problem. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 10:36, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: Hmmm, ok. Well, next step is to also disable the scripts in meta:User:Capankajsmilyo/global.js (sorry, I forgot to check if you had a global JS in my earlier reply). Keep the other two disabled as well, until we're certain the JS is not the issue. Remember to Wikipedia:Bypass your cache, and give Special:Watchlist a good 60–120s to load (it really shouldn't take that long, but a larger watchlist can be slow, so it's good to rule that out as well by allowing a long time). You could also try another browser (e.g. Firefox instead of Chrome, or Safari, or just any other browser than the one you normally use). Murph9000 (talk) 10:44, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: Did not help, error is 500. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 10:47, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: Huh, ok, that's not good (a 500 error from the server). Well, at least we know that your JS is probably not the problem (can't really be 100% on that until things are working ok without it, but it's probably 90%+ likely not to be the JS at this point). How big is your watchlist? Can you load it for editing at either Special:EditWatchlist or Special:EditWatchlist/raw? Murph9000 (talk) 10:54, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist?safemode=1 work? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:02, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: & @PrimeHunter: I don't know the size, but it is quite large. Special:EditWatchlist/raw is working but Special:EditWatchlist & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist?safemode=1 are not. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 11:05, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: Ok, well the next step seems to be to copy your watchlist from Special:EditWatchlist/raw into a local text file on your computer. Once you have a copy safely saved locally, you can clear it on Wikipedia (Special:EditWatchlist/clear can be used for that), and see if that helps. If that clears the 500 error, then it's fairly certain that either the size or something in the watchlist is causing the problem. You can then either paste a reduced version back in, or paste it back in chunks until you find a problem. Please be careful doing all of that, we can't restore a lost watchlist if something goes wrong. Murph9000 (talk) 11:20, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: Clearing watchlist worked. But I can't re-add entries to my watchlist. It shows

“ Database error

To avoid creating high replication lag, this transaction was aborted because the write duration (11.156260490417) exceeded the 3 second limit. If you are changing many items at once, try doing multiple smaller operations instead.[WSAuMwpAMFUAAKXhtwIAAABX] 2017-05-20 11:53:38: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBTransactionSizeError"

”

-- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 11:55, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Are you having that problem only when trying to readd in bulk, or even if just adding a single page? About how many entries are you trying to add? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:06, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

If this was related to the size of the watchlist, phab:T142329 might be related bug report (though it's not the same error code). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:13, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

I have 8,493 items in my watchlist. Error is coming while trying to add all at once. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 14:00, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

So don't do it all at once. Split it in half; or if that doesn't work, try quarters; etc. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:35, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks a lot for help. It started working automatically now. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 19:40, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Table appearing in wrong place

For some reason, the table that's supposed to appear in the "Certifications" section in The Very Best of Kiss is appearing at the very bottom of the article. I'm using Safari 10.1.1 on OS X 10.12.5. Esszet (talk) 02:02, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

@Esszet:  Fixed someone had removed the {{Certification Table Bottom}} from it, causing the formatting failure. My gut says it was a good faith or unintended mistake. Murph9000 (talk) 02:09, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Default addition

Currently we have to add {{Authority control}} manually to pages. Is it possible to make it a default addition to pages? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 04:52, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

No. For a start, it's not relevant to all pages, and in some cases would be inappropriate (dab pages and redirs are the most obvious cases, as would be almost anything outside mainspace and Draft: space). Secondly, it would require a change to the MediaWiki software, so you would need to file a feature request at phab:. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:19, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

First & only section of article talk page isn't displayed

I clicked on New section to add the first section of an article's talk page but after finishing my edit, I don't see the section on the talk page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Elias_Beckingham&oldid=781319801

I'm experiencing this problem in Firefox 53.0.3 on a Windows 10 PC and on an up-to-date Chromebook. Thanks in advance. --Dyspeptic skeptic (talk) 14:46, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@Dyspeptic skeptic:  Fixed - the previous edit muddled the {{hat}} template. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:57, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. The fix worked but the problem has reoccurred now that DYKUpdateBot added Template:DYK talk:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Elias_Beckingham&oldid=781394036

I suppose I could edit the talk page myself to move that template out of the middle of the earlier one but I am concerned the problem could reoccur in the future and a better fix is needed. --Dyspeptic skeptic (talk) 09:36, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

@Dyspeptic skeptic:  Fixed-ish. I've moved the {{hat}} inside the subpage. Bots may still get confused by the transcluded GA page, and think it's part of the header (so may still add stuff below it). What should be completely fixed is stuff getting erroneously hidden inside the hat. Murph9000 (talk) 09:49, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Can a reflist be indented?

Resolved

Is it possible to get a {{reflist}} to indent for use on the talk page? For example if I am in the middle of a discussion four (4) colons deep, and I write this (silly example) in wiki-markup:

::::I agree completely<ref>Well, not completely, for example...</ref> with what was said<ref>The word "said" has a very interesting etymology. [Discourse on the word said.]</ref>above.<ref>Other thing that might interest you...</ref>

::::Notes:

:::::{{reflist}}

I get this:

I agree completely with what was saidabove.

Notes:

Everything indented nicely, except the reflist. This drives me nuts, because it looks so awful and distracting on the talk page. I looked in the documentation for {{reflist}} and searched for "indent" and nothing came up. I have never seen anyone indent a reflist. I have seen {{reflist talk}} but that isn't any better. Is there a way to do it?

--David Tornheim (talk) 10:26, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

<div style="margin-left: 4em;">{{reflist}}</div> could be used.

Notes:

I see no reason in mainspace but maybe an |indent= parameter should be added to {{reflist-talk}}. Template:Reflist-talk#Limitations mentions the problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:03, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks, that works! --David Tornheim (talk) 11:43, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

What is jsfiddle?

Please reply at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject JavaScript#What is jsfiddle?. The Transhumanist 20:46, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Scripting errors in page previews?

Having popped in to make an edit on Heinz Tomato Ketchup after being away for awhile, I just hit 'submit' and got suprised when - due to my having the 'remind me to leave edit summaries' box tixed - the reminder/preview page came up COMPLETELY unformatted. I think it's...CSS scripts that are related to this? It's consistent, both with that and staight-up hitting 'preview', and the same thing happens on this page when I hit preview. However the 'regular' page works fine, as does the regular edit box. What gives? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 00:44, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: CSS and scripts are different. What you describe seems like a CSS problem: Wikipedia pages are built from several documents - there is the page proper, which comprises the text of the page marked up with HTML; there are also some CSS files, which control the page appearance, such as fonts, colours, box sizes; and some JavaScript files, which do things that are not possible with either HTML or CSS such as making blocks collapsible and adding extra links. Each of these documents is retrieved separately, after the HTML page itself; and if just one of them (most likely a CSS file) fails to load, it can cause the effect that you describe. Loading failure can be caused any one of: document missing on server; document present on server but invalid; communications fault resulting in non-arrival of doc; doc arrives but becomes corrupted on the way to you. Usually reloading the page will fix it, in many browsers, such as Firefox, you can do this with F5. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:06, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

It's F5, and Ctrl+F5 to ignore cached files. Clearing your entire cache also works in some cases. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:04, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: are you using monobook btw ? Because your monobook userscripts are rather dated/broken. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:11, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• @The Bushranger: There were server or network problems earlier today which were making loading of pages, CSS, JS, and images unreliable. This could well relate to the issue reported. See today's history at https://status.wikimedia.org/. Things seem to be generally ok again now, so if you're still seeing problems they are probably not related to that. Murph9000 (talk) 13:22, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Belatedly as I was away - it's seemed to have cleared up now, so that must have been it. @TheDJ: - I am, but I haven't noticed any problems with scripts in my (admittedly limited) editing. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 23:30, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Notifications and Preferences no longer accessible without scripts?

Hello. I don't remember having this problem before. Using a netbook device with ff configured for extra security and without scripts, I could usually access my notifications and preferences. Now since the notifications page only shows a loading gif animation, I thought that perhaps it's because of a gadget or setting I recently enabled using a desktop with a ff instance on which I enabled scripts for Wikipedia. However, I also now noticed that only the main/default preferences tab is visible (so I cannot go into the gadgets or notifications settings from this netbook anymore; I see links to them but they simply point to the same page with other anchors to invisible components). — PaleoNeonate — 21:38, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

That might be. If you disable javascripts in a way that the website cannot detect that you did so (url blocking for instance), then you will still get the stylesheets that are supposed to accompany those javascripts, and your experience will be severely degraded. This is expected behavior. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:51, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

some tabs not appearing lately

The tabs to, for example, warn a user or report an account to AIV, have not been showing up for a while. I've tried my alternate account, which uses a different skin, and I've tried different browsers, clearing my cache, logging off/on, etc. It's been so long I don't remember if they were part of a userscript, Twinkle, or something else. Anyone know what might be the cause? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:03, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Your commons.js contains a lot of imports of javascript code. The problem is in one of them. Ruslik_Zero 14:20, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Reflist-talk

Adding {{reflist-talk}} to talk pages has produced a red link for me several times, most recently at Talk:Comma splice § "I came, I saw, I conquered". Please help. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 05:24, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

@Sangdeboeuf: You had some strange character on the end of the template name. With URL encoding, you were linking to "Template:Reflist-talk%E2%80%8B". It was unprintable for me, and I've not tried to figure out what character it is. It's either an intentionally blank Unicode character, or in some quite unusual part of the Unicode range, or similar. Murph9000 (talk) 05:36, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

According to r12a, %E2%80%8B is an encoding of U+200B, or zero-width space. I have expressed my dislike for such characters several times, most recently at User talk:Corinne#MoS. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:50, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Category Wikipedian librarians is giving funky output

Please check out Category:Wikipedian_librarians ([35]).

The output List I get starts like this:

• User:Aphilli
• User:Red Deathy

(

• User:(aeropagitica)
• User:(aeropagitica)/userboxes

*

• User:Jodi.a.schneider
• User:Nowimnthing/User library and information scientist
• User:Quartermaster/Userboxes/RefLibrarian

0–9

• User:8ABL
• User:564dude

A

• User:Aap1890
• User:Aaron of the Library

Any idea what is going on? I'm guessing some of the user names start with non-alphanumeric and/or non-standard, non-printing characters. I'm wondering if the code that processes the list of users in the categories is deliberately sorting some users into categories that start with "(" or "*", or if the code does not expect those characters in the user name and is acting funky like this. If anyone does decide to look at the display code, can you tell me where it is? I'm starting to get curious about what the code looks like and where to find it... --David Tornheim (talk) 12:52, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Leading space character in the sort key?

[[Category:Wikipedian_librarians| Aphilli]]

instead of:

[[Category:Wikipedian_librarians|Aphilli]]

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:59, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

You're right. Do you think it would be okay if I fixed it on their user page and told them at the talk page why I corrected it? It definitely looks like typos for five of them, not including those whose true user name starts with "(". I don't know what to make of people who put the category in their userbox. That seems weird, but might be acceptable. Do you know? --David Tornheim (talk) 13:11, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I just make the change boldly and usually nothing comes of it. --Izno (talk) 13:28, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

It seems sensible that userboxes adding a category are sorted separately under space or asterisk like User:Nowimnthing/User library and information scientist and User:Quartermaster/Userboxes/RefLibrarian. The pages are not there to help find librarians but to help users who want to say they are librarians. Userboxes are often added to the category text instead like Category:Wikipedian air traffic controllers. I would just remove the sort key in User:Jodi.a.schneider. The user may have copied the code without knowing what it means. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:58, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

cite template with script-title messing Hebrew title with embedded number

The {{cite news}} template with |script-title= is messing up the display of a Hebrew title with an embedded number and displaying the external link icon centered on the link anchor text instead of to its right. Here are three examples. The first two examples use |script-title= for the original Hebrew and |title= for the English translation. The third example uses |title= for the original Hebrew and |trans-title= for the English translation. The first example replaces the number, "1.5", in the Hebrew title, to an asterisk (*), and display is normal. The second and third examples use the correct Hebrew title with the number "1.5" . In the second example, using the full Hebrew title with |script-title=, the Hebrew title displays wrong near the number, extra white space is added to make up for the error, and the external link icon is misplaced. This would seem to be a bug. The third example displays normally. Note: surrounding the Hebrew title with <bdi lang="he" dir="rtl">...</bdi> does not help.

1. |script-title= and |title= (asterisk: *) (markup)<ref>{{cite news |author=Alexander Katz |url=http://www.ice.co.il/media/news/article/361862 |script-title=he:גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע * מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט |language=he |title=The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS * million on an Internet news edition |publisher=ICE.co.il |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=2013-11-21}}</ref> (display)
2. |script-title= and |title= (number: 1.5) (markup)<ref>{{cite news |author=Alexander Katz |url=http://www.ice.co.il/media/news/article/361862 |script-title=he:גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע 1.5 מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט |language=he |title=The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS 1.5 million on an Internet news edition |publisher=ICE.co.il |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=2013-11-21}}</ref> (display)
3. |title= and |trans-title= (markup)<ref>{{cite news |author=Alexander Katz |url=http://www.ice.co.il/media/news/article/361862 |title=גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע 1.5 מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט |language=he |trans-title=The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS 1.5 million on an Internet news edition |publisher=ICE.co.il |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=2013-11-21}}</ref> (display)

References

—Anomalocaris (talk) 00:50, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't read Hebrew so I can't really know if there is anything wrong with the Hebrew text in the title. I do know that when using |script-title=, you should tell it what language you are using. In this case, |script-title=he:... – the language code helps browsers to display it correctly; I do know that when using |script-title=, |title= is to be used for a transliteration of the original language title; I do know that |trans-title= is to hold the English language translation of the title in |script-title=.

In all three of your examples, the external link icon is at the right end of the linked text. I see no example that has the external link centered on the link anchor text.

Are we to understand that in your first example, the asterisk identifies the correct location of the 1.5 text? Perhaps because I don't read Hebrew, replacing '1.5' with '*' does not appear to have changed anything. Can you elaborate? Can you devise a very, very simple example that illustrates the problem. Can you show the same text, correctly formed, outside of a cs1|2 template so that the cs1|2 rendering can be compared to it.

I think that the correct parameter usage for this citation is this one:

{{cite news |author=Alexander Katz |url=http://www.ice.co.il/media/news/article/361862 |script-title=he:גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע 1.5 מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט |language=he |trans-title=The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS 1.5 million on an Internet news edition |publisher=ICE.co.il |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=2013-11-21}}

Alexander Katz (10 June 2013). גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע 1.5 מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט [The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS 1.5 million on an Internet news edition] (in Hebrew). ICE.co.il. Retrieved 2013-11-21.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:33, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Trappist the monk: Yes, the only difference between the first two examples is that in the first example, asterisk replaces "1.5". As you can see from your experiment, adding "he:" to the beginning of |script-title= helps a little. The external link symbol is not centered, but off to the right where it belongs, and the Hebrew letters near "1.5" are less scrunched. In fact, what seems to happen is that the Hebrew before (to the right of) "1.5" displays normally, starting from the right; then "1.5" displays, but instead of "1.5" being entirely to the left of the Hebrew preceding it, the "1" in "1.5" is just to the left of the last word before it, so that ".5" overwrites the right end of the last word before it, and then the Hebrew after (to the left of) "1.5" starts up, rather than entirely to the left of "1.5", just to the left of the "5", overwriting "1.". Here is a shorter example set:

1. |script-title= and |title= (asterisk: *) (markup)<ref>{{cite web |author=Johnny Appleseed |url=http://www.apple.org/ |script-title=he:הרופא: תאכל * תפוחים |language=he |title=Doctor: Eat * apples |publisher=apple.org |date=10 June 2017}}</ref> (display)
2. |script-title= and |title= (number: 2) (markup)<ref>{{cite web |author=Johnny Appleseed |url=http://www.apple.org/ |script-title=he:הרופא: תאכל 2 תפוחים |language=he |title=Doctor: Eat 2 apples |publisher=apple.org |date=10 June 2017}}</ref> (display)
3. |title= and |trans-title= (markup)<ref>{{cite web |author=Johnny Appleseed |url=http://www.apple.org/ |title=he:הרופא: תאכל 2 תפוחים |language=he |trans-title=Doctor: Eat 2 apples |publisher=apple.org |date=10 June 2017}}</ref> (display)

References

In this shorter example set, using |script-title=, the Hebrew near the number ("2") is scrunched and the external link symbol is misplaced, but when "2" is replaced with "*" it works fine, and it also works fine to avoid |script-title= entirely and use |title= and |trans-title=. The bug is: if |script-title= is in a right-to-left language and includes an embedded number, even if only one digit long, the display is messed up near the number. —Anomalocaris (talk) 05:03, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I get the links as can be seen at File:Image of Hebrew text in link.png. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:46, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

This is what I see File:WP VPT screencap 2017-05-23T04 15 37.png. Chrome on win7. Is this a browser issue?

You are still misusing |title= in these examples. The English translation of the Hebrew goes in |trans-title=; when |script-title= is used, |title= gets the transliteration of the original language title; in this case, Hebrew words written with Latin characters.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:44, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Trappist the monk: Yes, you're right that |trans-title= is for the English translation whether the foreign title is in |title= or |script-title=. That's irrelevant to the bug of bad display of |script-title= containing Hebrew with embedded digits. —16:00, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Mozilla Firefox problem, not Internet Explorer or Chrome

Thank you, עוד מישהו, for suggesting the possibility that it is browser-related. For all three browsers, it makes no difference if I am logged in or not. Can we make the output of |script-title= containing Hebrew with embedded digits render correctly for Mozilla Firefox? —16:00, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Follow-up to the RfC for sister projects in search results

Thank you for the constructive feedback and discussion during the recent RfC. The following sister project snippets will be displayed on enwiki are listed below (in no particular order):

• Wikisource
• Wiktionary
• Wikiquote
• Wikibooks
• Wikivoyage (title match only)

The following projects will not display on enwiki at this time:

• Commons multimedia
• Wikinews
• Wikiversity

Barring any unforeseen circumstances or significant new issues being raised, we’ll enable this new feature on the search results page for all Wikipedias during the week of May 30th, 2017. Cheers, DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 10:34, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@DTankersley (WMF): Thanks for this! This feature should really improve Wikipedia searches for the general public. I note, however, that the closure of the RfC states that there was a "strong consensus to oppose" the inclusion of Wikibooks. I disagree with the closer's assessment of "strong consensus", but I note that there was certainly a lack of support for the inclusion of Wikibooks. Would you be able to make a comment on this? — This, that and the other (talk) 03:57, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

@This, that and the other: Yes, I completely agree with you. I don't believe that there was a 'strong consensus' for not displaying Wikibooks; at the best, it got weak support. But, with only 4 people giving their opinion, I feel it's ok to display to our readers/editors/users if the content exists. I really liked @WhatamIdoing:'s response on the discussion...to note that Wikibooks is more of a site for "people seeking textbooks and related materials" and "provides non-fiction content for children" with simple concepts. The idea of displaying the sister projects is to promote discovery into new knowledge that users might not ever have seen before. Maybe we can even hope that they'll contribute and make those projects all the more better! :) DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Why do most of thumbs of this PDF file have wrong color?

Wrong color.

Correct color.

--fireattack (talk) 08:10, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@Fireattack: I don't see a difference.. Can you be more specific about which colours you are seeing, and where in which image ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:18, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: The green is totally different. In the first image it's oversaturated.-fireattack (talk) 08:21, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

They look exactly the same to me. Have you tried clearing your cache to check that you're not viewing an older version of one of the images? ‑ Iridescent 08:22, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

No I found it, it seems there were some old thumbnails laying around, which for some reason had a different color. I purged the image on Commons, forcing a re-render of all known thumbnails and once your browser cache catches up, it should be all fine. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:24, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

More to the point, why on earth are we using a pdf file for a map? ‑ Iridescent 08:25, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

It links to a pdf source https://www.nps.gov/gate/planyourvisit/upload/GATE-Locator-Map.pdf. But there is also a jpg version at https://www.nps.gov/gate/planyourvisit/images/GATE-Locator-Map.jpg. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:22, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, now after another ctrl+F5 it shows the right color. -fireattack (talk) 08:25, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Hide references when editing?

Is there a way to hide/collapse inline citations when editing an article? Sometimes they get in the way, and doing this would be a great help. Thanks. SharkD  Talk  12:00, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Yup. Try installing User:PleaseStand/References segregator - I use it all the time. Yunshui ^雲_水 12:05, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

And also annoys some other editors, who don't appreciate WP:LDR. You actually have to get explicit consensus on each and every article to make that switch, per the guideline.

You could try mw:User:Remember the dot/Syntax highlighter or WP:WikEd, which has syntax highlighting. A lot of people turn WikEd off pretty quickly again (it takes a few days to get used to, and it works best on a good computer), but if you have a good computer or don't mind waiting a few seconds here and there, then you might become one of its fans. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:18, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Confused; the script page says that it can change the format to list-defined, not that it has to. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 15:24, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

The script may have added some features since the last time I used it. Nobody cares about changes that don't affect what they're seeing when they edit later. But people do care about changes that move all of the refs out of the section they want to edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:32, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Linewrapping for very long URLs without breaking the link

Is there a way to make a very long URL wrap within the normal width of the page instead of doing this? -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:06, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

It wraps for me in Firefox but not in Edge. <div style="overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-all;">...</div> also wraps for me in Edge:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%81_%28%D0%90%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%BD%29_%28%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0%29.png/60px-%D0%9C%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%81_%28%D0%90%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%BD%29_%28%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0%29.png

PrimeHunter (talk) 12:59, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks PrimeHunter it also works in Chrome on an Android tablet. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:17, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@Dodger67: I would also strongly recommend decoding the URL, which both makes it human-readable and has around a 2:1 or 3:1 size reduction. Here is the above with minimal URL encoding: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Медаль_Прогресс_%28Азербайджан%29_%28лента%29.png/60px-Медаль_Прогресс_%28Азербайджан%29_%28лента%29.png That's still long enough that wrapping may be beneficial, but it's significantly less horrible, and more likely to correctly break into lines as there's actual words and punctuation there, rather than %-soup. Murph9000 (talk) 19:06, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Bugs in the new mobile update (1)

• Saved pages from the previous version are all erased
• Template:flagicon does not work anymore.
• Copy-Pasting from within edit screens is very buggy.
• template:Image map for The Situation Room gives very wierd results. It ignores the [[Article Name|Anything you want]] format. I am investigating it now.

will update
 • Sammy Majed  • Talk  • Creations • Wikipedia Arabic  • 08:58, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@SammyMajec: .. which mobile ? mobile web or mobile app ? Android or iOS ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:47, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@SammyMajed: —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:48, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@SammyMajed: Thanks for reporting! This is for the Android app, correct?

• • For the first issue, OS-level backups to preserve saved pages will be enabled beginning in the next beta release.
  • Could you explain a little more about what bugs you are seeing with copy/pasting from the editing activity?
  • For each the template problems, could you please provide an example of an article that shows the problem? —MHolloway (WMF) (talk) 13:36, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
    
    
    

@MHolloway (WMF): Indeed, Android.

• for copy-pasting, I find copying glitchy. sometime it successfully copies, sometimes it doesn't. I do not know why. I noticed that copying special symbols (&/@*#^![}>+÷%`~) almost never works.
• for templates, check the image map template. that template offers a famous picture of white house personnel and features a "click on the person to go to their article" feature. I know as a fact that it used to work because I am currently translating an article about the photo to Arabic. now it gives "there is no such article as this". also, I noticed that clicking on anywhere other than a person in the photo will give a very wierd result, while if you clicked so in the previous version it will just take you to the image file page. for flagicon, I do not know for certain where it is used, so check its usage in my userpage in the section named "places I'd like to go" or something like that.

I will do another report of bugs I encountered afterwards in the bottom of this page. please, remeber that while I report bugs to you do not expect technical knowledge from me.  • Sammy Majed  • Talk  • Creations • Wikipedia Arabic  • 05:02, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

bugs in the android app (2)

• First and foremost: The first tab in the tab list always resets to "main page" when restarting the app.
• The talk link in the bottom of userpages does not work. it apparently does [[Talk:User:Example]] instead of [[User Talk:Example]].
• I am still investigating several things, I will update.

 • Sammy Majed  • Talk  • Creations • Wikipedia Arabic  • 05:14, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Search: Links from

In the search facility there is the linksto:<page> clause.

Is there the opposite, or the equivalent to, that is, a linksfrom:<page> clause, that is, returning all the pages linked to from within an article ?

Eno Lirpa (talk) 14:44, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Any ideas anyone? Eno Lirpa (talk) 13:44, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

This is either an ultradifficult question to answer or a hyperboring one ? Eno Lirpa (talk) 12:04, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

What does Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONTENT_LENGTH_MISMATCH mean?

I gotthe error message (in my console) when an article failed to load except for the first sentence. I get these hangups once or twice a day. I'm going to try to renew all my scripts but would like to understand this message. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 12:26, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: I don't know, but Google suggests it is a message from the Chrome browser indicating a clash between the browser's expectation about the length of data the server should send and what the browser actually received. From stackoverflow: Before sending data, the server sends an HTTP header which may include a Content-Length value. The error message means that value disagrees with what was received, and a couple of remedies are suggested, although they may not apply to your case. They mention an add blocker possibly installed in your browser, or a proxy between your computer and Wikipedia, or hitting the limit of a data cache somewhere. Johnuniq (talk) 11:54, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: that's brilliant, I never even though to use Google, assuming it was something to do with a script. I think I can fix it then. Doug Weller talk 12:02, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Infobox placement in mobile view

I was just looking up some articles on my phone, when I noticed that the infobox is appearing below the first paragraph of the lead in mobile view, opposed to the first thing when looking at an article. See Captain America: Civil War, United Kingdom, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for some examples. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:51, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@Favre1fan93: As a frequent mobile user, I tell you it is most normal and most convenient. A bug arised in the last 2 weeks that made the infobox appear first, which totally destroyed the hyperlini view. It was thankfully fixed in this version. Regards;  • Sammy Majed  • Talk  • Creations • Wikipedia Arabic  • 05:11, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

This is not actually how it was, at least not for IOS users. It has always been infobox first. And While I can understand where it might be appropriate for some intense picture heavy articles, it does not at all flow naturally for others. For instance, TV shows, movies games, should have it come first. It's weird to read a paragraph about, say Agents of Shield, and then have to scroll past and infobox giving you mostly the same info. It should at least be toggleable . --Deathawk (talk) 07:21, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

phab:T143139, phab:T145216, phab:T150325. Nirmos (talk) 11:14, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I have also noticed this issue. It looks kind of odd to find the first paragraph at the top. I have used mobile phone but I have never seen this before. The infobox always appears first but its not the case recently. Please fix. Nyanchoka : talk 2 me 19:23, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I hope so too, or at least there should be an option to turn it back. --Deathawk (talk) 07:36, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

This is how the mobile apps (so not web) have been doing it for a while. For web it's new. The reasoning I have heard in the past is that it helps readability of an article to have the first paragraph as text. On web this is not a problem because they are side by side, but on mobile it's either one or the other. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:10, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

To confirm, this is an intended change recently deployed to the mobile website, it has been available on the iOS and Android apps for a while now. The main motivation is exposing introductory content, such as the lead paragraph, prior to more-detailed content available in the infobox - saving some scrolling time and focusing on consistency with the desktop website where infobox content is presented as secondary to text content. Another main motivator is for cases where users who are unfamiliar with the article content and have to scroll through the infobox only to realize they selected the wrong article. More details and examples are available on the project page. - OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 13:12, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Login problem on iPad

I accidentally logged myself out on my PC. I was able to log back in with no problem (had to get my 2FA code but that's all), but on my iPad I keep getting "There seems to be a problem with your login session, this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Go back to the previous page, reload that page and try again. But that doesn't work. Doug Weller talk 19:37, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

18 hours later, still getting the same message with both Safari and Chrome. Doug Weller talk 13:50, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: can you clear any local cookie stores and caches on the browsers you are having a problem with? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:01, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Perfect. Thanks very much. I'll remember next time I hope! Doug Weller talk 15:02, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Heading moved to wrong part of page

At Talk:Victoria Park & Bow railway station, the section heading "coordinates" appears at upper right, instead of the proper place at the top of its section. Why is this? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:19, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: It's caused by an insufficiently specific CSS rule for #coordinates at the top of MediaWiki:Vector.css. Capitalising the section heading solves that particular instance of it. Really the selector should be more specific, to avoid this problem. It needs some careful thought as to exactly what more specific selector (or possibly group of selectors) should be used, as there's a few scenarios to cover. My first guesses would be that it could be changed to element#coordinates, or .some-class#coordinates, possibly for several different classes. Murph9000 (talk) 22:36, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

From a fairly quick look at Module:Coordinates, I believe that changing the CSS to use span#coordinates is probably the appropriate fix. I'm not absolutely certain that module is the only place generating it, but it probably should be. Murph9000 (talk) 22:53, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

It happens in all skins due to similar code in MediaWiki:Monobook.css, MediaWiki:Modern.css and MediaWiki:Cologneblue.css. safemode=1 prevents it by not loading any of the skin modifications. It could be brought up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. In a search of all namespaces I get 13 hits on "coordinates" insource:/=coordinates=/, and 45 on "coordinates" insource:/= coordinates =/. None of them are in mainspace. All tested examples display the problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:01, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't see how changing the selector to span#coordinates would solve the problem. If we look at the heading structure in Special:PermanentLink/782185879, the element with the id "coordinates" is a span. However, changing it to span #coordinates might work, because proper coordinates are wrapped in an outer span that sets the font size to small. Nirmos (talk) 04:01, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Damn, you're right. Sorry, I mistakenly thought the heading id was on the h2 element, or used the traditional anchor for it, I was focussed on Module:Coordinates and should have checked the heading markup as well. Yes, checking for a parent span element would work, although span > #coordinates would be more efficient. Even better might be to change the module to add a class, then use .coordinates-title#coordinates, or something like that. Another alternative would be #coordinates:not(.mw-headline). Murph9000 (talk) 18:49, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Top images and infobox, no longer appear at top of article on mobile

This just started to happen today. I don't know if it's a glitch or a deliberate design change, but if it's the latter I'm not a fan. It's incredibly jarring to read about a game and then get through the intro only to have to scroll through the infobox. --Deathawk (talk) 04:21, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi Deathawk. There is some info above. Here is the thread Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Infobox placement in mobile view to save you a little scrolling. MarnetteD|Talk 04:29, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Why the need to scroll through? For me, the infobox is closed, so a a single line, easily skipped. Having said that, I'm talking mobile view on a mobile, not the mobile view on a desktop, which is different.--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:34, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Bot edits in watchlist

When I remove bot edits from my watchlist, I don't see the article even if on that same day an edit was made by a non-bot. Is this a bug? Debresser (talk) 21:10, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

The phab task to fix it has been open since 2007. I wouldn't hold your breath. ‑ Iridescent 21:30, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Debresser (talk) 10:30, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Will turning on "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" help? What will be the side effects of that? Debresser (talk) 10:32, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

It's a setting at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist currently called "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent". It will show all edits you are not hiding. It's often combined with "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc. There is no setting to only show the most recent edit you are not hiding. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:03, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I tried out combining these two settings. The result is interesting, and has more details as to how many edits and by whom, but has the problem that it also shows edits to pages which I edited afterwards (since I checked "hide my edits"). In any case, I understand there is no workaround. Strange, that this was never fixed. Debresser (talk) 11:55, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

There is a gadget that will fix this for you. I always forget who it is by. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:34, 28 May 2017 (UTC).

Template doc isn't transcluding

Hi, the doc page for {{X2 review help}} isn't transcluding onto the template page, after I moved the template out of my sandbox where the doc transclusion was working fine.

What I see when I look at {{X2 review help}} is just the arg-less expanded template, followed by a rump blue rectangle at the bottom labeled Template documentation and inviting me to " [Create]" the page. Clicking the 'Create' anchor goes to an edit window filled with the documentation page content. There is also a line at the bottom of the blue box saying, "Please add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template." where "/doc" is red and has this exact value: "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:X2_review_help/doc&action=edit&redlink=1" but clicking it goes right to the subpage, and clicking the "Subpages" link shows the doc (in blue) as the only subpage, and the blue link works. Somehow, the template page itself is the only one that can't see the doc, and doesn't transclude it. Why? I tried a fresh browser that has never seen that page, so doesn't appear to be a cache issue, at least not locally. Mathglot (talk) 06:06, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I purged the template page, and the documentation is now showing. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:10, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Thank you. I'll have to add "purge" to my tips page! Mathglot (talk) 06:47, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I have the option Add a "Purge" option to the top of the page, which purges the page's cache turned on in my gadgets. The option bypasses the confirmation page I would encounter if I simply added &action=purge to the end of the URL of the page I want to purge. — Gestrid (talk) 19:04, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading and Gestrid: Are you both familiar with that rump blue box that I was talking about, that apparently appears when either 1. There is no doc, or 2. there is, but a purge is needed? It seems to me, that that box would really be the ideal place to add a link to WP:Purge, as John did above. Just tweak the wording a bit: "Please [Create] the doc page. [Have a doc page but not seeing it? Try a purge.]". What do you think? Where should one go to ask for this? Surely lots of people fall into this trap all the time, and then waste their time and your time trying to solve it, when all that's needed is a link in the appropriate place. Where should one go to request this change? Mathglot (talk) 19:18, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I've copied your suggestion to Template talk:Documentation. It would need someone with more LUA experience than I have. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:30, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Help with Collapsible list in Basque Wikipedia

Hello! We have been using {{collapsible list}} in Basque Wikipedia for a while, and I have noticed that is not working anymore. You can see the effect in an infobox, for example at eu:Steven Spielberg. The module and template haven't been touched, so I think the problem is elsewhere. Could someone help us with this? Thanks! -Theklan (talk) 10:07, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

It seems that eu:Common.js was outdated. -Theklan (talk) 12:52, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

(I presume you mean eu:MediaWiki:common.js) Pppery 12:55, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

@Theklan: Also see mw:Help:Locating broken scripts. I get a ReferenceError: bklCheck is not defined. The only place where bklCheck is mentioned is eu:MediaWiki:Gadget-ArgipenBila.js. The code seems to be a copy of old code that once was on dewp but is not anymore according to de:Benutzer:Schnark/js/bkl-check. (Note: This problem might be unrelated to the actual problem you're facing.) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:15, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF): Thanks! The problem was another (I don't know which, but after changing eu:MediaWiki:common.js it works. About the other problem you mention... what could I do? -Theklan (talk) 22:48, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Misaligned diff hunks

Is it just me, or has the quality of diffs within the English Wikipedia declined recently? Maybe the quality is the same, but I have become more discerning...

Here is an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MalwareTech&diff=782456060&oldid=782449642 .

As you can see, both the left and right columns have hunks that begin "Following his work on the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017" and that are almost identical (edit distance: 3) but that have been aligned with other hunks instead of with each other, making it very hard to spot what has changed between them. (To spare you searching, it is "he's" to "he has".)

Is this a regression? Is it a known bug? Please WP:MENTION me in your reply. Thanks for your time :) zazpot (talk) 20:10, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@zazpot: I've noticed this, too, and it's rather annoying. Many of the pages I have watchlisted are watchlisted simply to look out for vandalism, and this makes it difficult to do so. If no one here knows the answer, the people over on Phabricator, Wikimedia's bug-tracking software, may know what, if anything, happened. — Gestrid (talk) 20:54, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

The gadget wikEdDiff gives a far better diff in this example. I recommend it. It doesn't hide the MediaWiki diff but just offers an alternative diff which is often better. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:18, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks for the suggestion, but I prefer not to run JavaScript if I can avoid doing so. zazpot (talk) 00:18, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Zazpot: It's neither new, nor regression, but the way that diffs have worked for at least eight years. The diff engine can only synch when it encounters identical lines/paragraphs: if you have four consecutive paragraphs, combine two together and alter the other two in some way, it aligns first old with first new, second old with second new, third old with third new, leaving fourth old on its own. It has no way of knowing that fourth old should be aligned with third new, since they are different: it's a tiny change ("he's" → "he has") but even one character is sufficient to cause a failure to match. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:40, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Thanks for the explanation. Well, at least it isn't a regression :) IMO it is a bug, though. Those paragraphs in my example really ought to be aligned, and I'm sure there are diff algorithms that would do a better job. As Gestrid confirms, this bug can make it hard to spot vandalism or errors in larger edits. I haven't yet been able to find a corresponding bug in Phabricator. Are you aware of one? If not, I'll file one. zazpot (talk) 00:22, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@zazpot: I would recommend just going ahead and opening a bug report. If someone finds one that was already open, they'll close yours as a duplicate and notify you of the correct bug report. Also, if you do open a bug report, please post the link here. I want it fixed, too. I'm not sure if you know this, but you can wikilink to Phabricator tickets by typing [[phab:TXXXXXX]]. The XXXXXX is the numbers after the T in the URL. — Gestrid (talk) 00:47, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

There are several related Phabricator tasks. Phab:T71097 (closed as duplicate of Phab:T26617) is a close match. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:50, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Phab:T90359 (closed as duplicate of Phab:T7072) may be more relevant. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:05, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: perfect. Thanks! zazpot (talk) 06:25, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Also see meta:Community Tech/Improved diffs from December 2015. Johnuniq (talk) 07:32, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Global blocks/locks displaying

Question: I recently encountered a case where an IP had been locally and globally blocked. On the user page (which had not been created), I saw the local block notice (the red box at the top) However, I did not see the global block notice until I looked at the IP's contributions page. Why do we have it setup that way? Shouldn't global block notices be able to be seen anywhere a local block notice is seen? — Gestrid (talk) 18:59, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

There is no technical way to make a template here notice a global (b)lock. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:31, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Meaning it would have to be requested at Phab: as a MediaWiki feature. For example, Special:Contributions/217.16.10.120 (uselang=qqx) displays MediaWiki:Globalblocking-contribs-notice, while User:217.16.10.120 (qqx) gives no indication of the global block. For comparison, User:14.96.111.113 (qqx) displays MediaWiki:Blocked-notice-logextract for a local block. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:29, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Yup. could either be an oversight, or possibly it's intentional, because we cannot purge user pages when the status of the global block/lock changes. Hard to say. But suggest filing a ticket: mw:How to report a bug. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:46, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

RfC on enabling two-factor verification for all users

There's an RfC on enabling two-factor verification (2FA) for all users across all Wikimedia projects. Please vote and comment! --Rezonansowy_akaRezy (talk | contribs) 13:34, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Best way to search (API) for articles within a category AND geographic area

Hi, I'm learning about the mediawiki query API and something I'd like to do is query for articles that are both within a certain radius around a given geographical location, and also within a given set of categories. What would be the best way to do that?

• Do a geosearch query that also grabs the categories and then filter (in my code) by category?
• Do a categorymembers query that also grabs the coordinates and then filter by location?
• Some more efficient way that combines the two search conditions at the API level? —Keenan Pepper 19:02, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Password suddenly stopped working

On Friday I went to log in to my account, and the password didn't work. It was a different computer than I usually use, but I was logged into my Chrome account, and the passwords are synced between devices. I even went to my password manager and directly copy-pasted to be absolutely sure I had the right password, but the login attempts still failed.

Fearing a possible hack, I reset my password, as well as my email account's password; and Reedy was kind enough to run a script server-side that logged out every session I had open. So now that that's handled, I find myself wondering what caused the initial problem, and was wondering if anyone here has any ideas.

The way I figure it, there are five possible ways my password could have stopped working:

1. Someone could have hacked my account. This doesn't make much sense, though, as they didn't use it to commit any mischief, and didn't take any action to prevent me from regaining access (e.g. changing the email address it's associated with). There's also no way to verify this, since CUs can't see IPs someone logged in from without editing. (DeltaQuad told me that stewards might be able to see this, but said she wasn't sure.)
2. Someone could have submitted a password reset request for my account using the "forgot your password?" feature. However, I would have gotten an email regarding this unless a) some bug prevented that from happening or b) someone compromised my email. Without getting into the details of my personal InfoSec practices, I can assure you that the latter is extremely unlikely.
3. A sysadmin could have ordered that the password be reset. Reedy told me that this is unlikely. I'm mentioning it only in the interest of completeness in listing every possible cause I can think of.
4. I somehow accidentally edited the password that was saved in my password manager. Admittedly, it was a random string, so I can't say with 100% certainty that it didn't happen, but it also seems very very unlikely.
5. Some sort of bug occurred, or there is some undocumented feature of the password system at work.

So all of this leaves me suspecting it's number five, which is what brings me here. Any thoughts? — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 18:39, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

No idea if related or not, but in case it is: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Login_problem_on_iPad in this instance it seems that stale cookies may have been responsible, but there also was a special message about suspension. — PaleoNeonate — 19:04, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

No talk notification

Yesterday a user left me a barnstar and I thanked them in a reply. They replied back on my talkpage later but I didn't get the normal notification. I'm wondering if this is a bug? I only noticed because I saw it on my watch list. White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 20:17, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Tracklist templates display "Track listing error: Time value does not contain a colon"

Template {{tracklist}} displays "Track listing error: Time value does not contain a colon" when a time is not inserted into the line for a particular song. Case in point, Prevail I. --Jax 0677 (talk) 01:33, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

See Template talk:Track listing#Error message "Track listing error: Time value does not contain a colon". — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:41, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Template transcluding a non-free image

It appears that Template:Infobox road is somehow transcluding the non-free File:Alberta Yellowhead Highway.png into the article Yellowhead Trail (Edmonton). Each use of a non-free image is required to be provided with a separate specific non-free use rationale per WP:NFCC#10c and setting templates up to transcude a non-free image is problematic because it assumes the the file's use will be non-free compliant by default in any article where this particular version of the template is used which may not always be the case per WP:NFCC#9 and other remaining non-free cirteria. I've been searching for the file somewhere in the template so that I can remove it, but have not been able to find it. Does anyone know how the template is using this particular file and where to find it? -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:42, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: I've removed it from {{Infobox road/shieldmain/CAN}}. I found it using insource:"Alberta Yellowhead Highway.png". — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:02, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a look at this and figuring out how to resolve it JJMC89. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:46, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-22

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

Problems

• Last week’s MediaWiki version was rolled back from some wikis because of a problem. This means planned changes did not happen. [36]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 30 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to control who can notify you on the Wikimedia wikis. You will have a user blacklist. When you add a user to the blacklist you will not get a notification when they mention you. You can test this on Beta Wikipedia. You can read more and give feedback on Meta. [37]

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

12:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Village pump header in mobile view has idle links

Village pump pages (like this VPT) have a navigation header with four #local links:

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page

However, when in mobile view the links TOC and EoPage are idle. Can they be made to function, or otherwise be hidden in mobile view? The header is {{Village pump page header}}. -DePiep (talk) 11:33, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

 Done —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:51, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Tracking category incorrectly displaying from Wikidata

Category:MusicBrainz artist not in Wikidata includes Magnapop but sure enough, they have a MusicBrainz ID on Wikidata. Can anyone explain (and please {{Ping}} me)? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:07, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Koavf: The documentation for Module:WikidataCheck at Template:WikidataCheck/doc by Legoktm says:

• |property= is the p### of the property. The "p" should be lowercase.

{{MusicBrainz artist}} says |wdc-property=p434 with lowercase p as requested in a parameter later passed to Module:WikidataCheck by {{MusicBrainz meta}}. But uppercase P434 seems to work better. Nearly all templates call Module:WikidataCheck with uppercase property=P.... I suspect the documentation is wrong. The documentation also says a wrong number in the example with property=p343 but {{MusicBrainz artist}} correctly uses 434 and not 343. There is no Wikidata:Property:P343 while Wikidata:Property:P434 is MusicBrainz artist ID. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:17, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I don't see "P343" anywhere but I amended that documentation and the template. The article is still in the tracking category, tho (and presumably, several hundred other false positives). Can you help me fix this? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

"P343" was only mentioned in documentation and not used anywhere. Category:MusicBrainz artist not in Wikidata is gone from Magnapop now and should also disappear from most of the others when the job queue propagates the template edit to the articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:49, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-21

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
• There will be a <div> tag around HTML from the MediaWiki wikitext parser. Gadgets with code that does not follow recommendations could have problems with this. You can report new problems you think are related to this. [38]

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

22:02, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF): What does this mean? Surely we already have <div>...</div> elements that enclose the parsed page content? Indeed, when I view the source for this page, I find that this section - like all the other sections - is five divs deep:

<div id="globalWrapper">
  <div id="column-content">
    <div id="content" class="mw-body" role="main">
      <div id="bodyContent" class="mw-body-content">
        <div id="mw-content-text" lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">

Are you adding a sixth layer? Why would that cause us problems? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:02, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF): Gadgets with code that does not follow recommendations… It might be useful if you could provide a pointer to these recommendations, please, to help everyone know what to look for. Thanks. Murph9000 (talk) 23:07, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Redrose64, Murph9000:

• Surely we already have <div>...</div> elements that enclose the parsed page content?
  • The problem is that #mw-content-text does not only contain parsed page content. It also contains .diff, .diff-hr and .diff-currentversion-title in diffs and .patrollink on unpatrolled pages.
• Are you adding a sixth layer?
  • The exact HTML structure depends on skin – Vector does not have #column-content or #globalWrapper – but yes.
• Why would that cause us problems?
  • Any CSS or JavaScript that relies on parsed page content being directly in #mw-content-text will break. In other words, any CSS like #mw-content-text > .infobox or JavaScript like $( '#mw-content-text' ).children( '.infobox' ) would need to be changed to #mw-content-text .infobox and $( '#mw-content-text' ).find( '.infobox' ) respectively.

Nirmos (talk) 07:33, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Why is there so much overhead on Wiki pages? They should be served lean and mean, for speed, and for those on metered access.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:36, 28 May 2017 (UTC).

Certainly something has recently happened to cause the amount of overhead to shoot up. Firefox now takes an inordinate amount of time to retrieve a page, and often times out. Even using the "back" button - which should redisplay a cached copy almost instantly - can take several minutes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:36, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not having the same problem in Firefox. Have you tried loading pages in safemode to see whether that helps? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Change in font in edit window

I have Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge. Earlier today the computer went through a major update that took an hour to complete. When it was done, the font looked less like what a text from an older typewriter looked like, and more like the electric typewriter I used when taking a business class in high school in 1978. I'm probably asking in the wrong place since this is likely not Wikipedia-related, but I was curious what happened.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:28, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

The Windows update changed your default fixed width font would be my guess.- MrX 21:34, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: Yup, MediaWiki / Wikipedia just defines the monospace font for editing as font-family: monospace;, so it will normally use whatever your browser feels like using by default. Your browser may have a config option for the default monospace font. You can control this from WP by adding something to your common.css (the precise selectors needed may vary with different skins and editor options), e.g.

form#editform textarea.mw-editfont-monospace { font-family: 'Courier', monospace; }

Murph9000 (talk) 21:57, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing has a setting "Edit area font style" where you can choose between different types of fonts but the specific font for each type is determined by your browser unless you make personal CSS like above. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:09, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee:, did your font possibly change from Courier New, like this to Consolas, like this? I seem to remember that happened in the most recent major Windows 10 update (the Creators Update). — This, that and the other (talk) 10:53, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, that's the one.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:15, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Asking for expert help; Teahouse "Guests" page cleanup

Greetings, Recently I have started updating Teahouse ( WP:TH ) pages with a new "Header 2" wikicode. For the Wikipedia:Teahouse/Guests page there is complex wikicode. Specifically, for the "Introduce yourself" button. If someone could please cleanup the old header wikicode without that button disappearing? Whenever I attempted a cleanup the "Introduce yourself" goes away & I have no idea how to keep it there. Thanks. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:45, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The button is made by Wikipedia:Teahouse/Question-form/1 transcluding Wikipedia:Teahouse/Question-form. Below is a stand-alone version. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:22, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Introduce yourself

Thankyou PrimeHunter for your help. I updated the TH Guests page and all is good. I could not have figured that wikicode answer in a million years... Cheers! — JoeHebda • (talk) 23:45, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Upload Wizard

Could someone help on why successfull upload message is not displayed after a successful upload on sr.wiki? Message about current upload in progress is getting displayed all time... (sr:Википедија:Водич за отпремање)

Also, both on en.wiki and sr.wiki, title attribute for tag a generating hover text in image-present-on-Commons file description is not supplied but stays "File:Example.svg". Maybe adding thumbA[i].setAttribute('title', 'File:' .. name); and thumbA.title = 'File:' .. name; can be added in Mediawiki:FileUploadWizard.js to fix this.

Maybe magic word gender can be used in module for username of the user who uploaded file on Commons in this message, and it can be linked by "[[c:User:Username]]", instead of displaying only unlinked username and not differentiating gender (gender is issue for other languages, including Serbian, that have different verb suffixes for male and female sexes). @Future Perfect at Sunrise: --Obsuser (talk) 02:37, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Redlinks at user pages

Hello. I would like a tool please that ensures redlinked categories at user pages do not end up in Special:WantedCategories. Thanks. The reason for this is that Wikipedia has a fun tradition of users putting humorous redlinked categories on their user pages, but this clogs up the list of more serious redlinks that must be dealt with by serious editors. Anythingyouwant (talk) 01:17, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

As noted elsewhere, a redlinked category in an error per WP:REDNOT, which should be fixed either by creating the categ page or by removing the redlink.

This request amounts to asking that editors be assisted in their desire to intentionally generate an error in the category system, for the purpose of either breaching WP:USERCAT's guidance that user categories should not be used as "bottom-of-the-page" notices or the policy WP:NOTSOCIAL.

And you want the programming resources of he community and/or WMF to be used to add complexity to the code to facilitate this? Boggle.

If somebody somewhere wanted to program this, how do you propose that such a tool distinguish between deliberate redlinks and the many types of legitimate user categories which my initially be redlinked? Those legitimate usercats include sockpuppet categories, translator and proof-reader category, language proficiency categories, categories by location, nationlity, skill, interest etc. We need Special:WantedCategories to include redlinks of those legit ucats, so a blanket exclusion of all redlinked user categories won't work.

Yes, I know that redlinked user cats existed for years. I had two myself (2009 to early 2017), but I removed them in January 2017 when I became aware that they impeded enyclopedic maintenance. I GF that most editors who add such categories were, like me, unaware of adverse effects. Most editors who have become aware of this have been happy to remove the redlinks, because they don't want to be disruptive.

A tiny minority of editors have chosen to be selfish extremists, intentionally creating redlinked usercats specifically in order to troll and create work for the editors engaged in this form of maintenance.

Thankfully, most of the editors who still want to see redlinked ucats are, like Anythingyouwant, keen to avoid disruption, and I thank Anythingyouwant for their courtesy and consideration in pursuing this idea. But I am still bewildered by the amount of effort they want to expend in having a redlinked category rather than a userbox or some text or a graphic. Is a redlinked categ 'really so hilariously funny that all this effort is justified? Really? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:20, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Keep on personally attacking people who disagree with you, BHG. It's really doing wonders for your credibility. "Selfish extremists" my ass. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:13, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I saw the notification from BHG to user categories discussion, and am disappointed to read the same flawed arguments being made. When the category for Gay Wikipedians was deleted, retaining the red link was not a deliberate creation of an error in the category system, it was a protest against an action that was unprincipled and homophobic in its effect. Many of the editors involved did not recognise that this would be the effect, but it was. Protesting homophobia is justified, and the protests were vindicated in that the correct solution of re-creation of the category eventually occurred. Applying the current "solution" of placing gay Wikipedians (but not Christian Wikipedians, say) in a category for "idiosyncratic Wikipedians" would hardly have been inoffensive, nor was emptying the category. Those Wikipedians were not a tiny minority of editors [who chose] to be selfish extremists, intentionally creating redlinked usercats specifically in order to troll and create work for the editors engaged in this form of maintenance – seriously, BHG, you can't see the failure of AGF in your statement?

Another example I have raised with BHG before was the Wikipedians who are not Wikipedians category, a deliberate protest against a shocking statement from an Arbitrator that was part of debates / discussions around Wiki-governance. Part of its point was made by being red because it invoke the idea of an unperson. Neither of the dictates of "solutions" according to REDNOT applies, which is a fault in REDNOT, not a campaign of Wiki-destabilisation against the closed shop of editors interested in category work who act as though their decisions have the consensus support of the entire community.

This latter problem is well illustrated by this ongoing CfD where the idea that not notifying editors in user categories of deletion proposals is somehow not problematic. It has been argued elsewhere that telling editors who are in user categories of deletion proposals would amount to canvassing or votestacking.

I don't doubt there are (were?) many pointless red categories that were unfunny jokes, but the notion that a red category is inherently an error and a deliberate disruption in many cases is neither true nor fair. A technical solution is much better than the one BHG has adopted, especially given the consensus at the user categories discussion appears unlikely to favour the category regulars. There are people behind each editor name, and treating them like sheep to be managed by the routine exercise of inflexible rules is both harmful and not the wiki way. The ease-of-use of the special Wanted Category page is not the only consideration, and even here where a technical fix is sought to help with that tool, the editors who disagree with BHG's views are disrespected and criticised. Seriously, if an editor is willing to do the work to address the technical issue, that would be great. EdChem (talk) 13:29, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@EdChem: I am sorry to have offended you, but please re-read what I wrote. You have taken offence at something I didn't say, because you misunderstood the scope of my comments.

My comment about "selfish extremists" was directed at a small set of editors such as MjolnirPants who specifically announced their intention to create redlinked usercats to "get under the skin" of another editor[39], and promptly created such a category[40] purely to make work for others. One or two other editors behaved similarly deplorably, but as I noted above the vast majority of editors who created redlinked ucats had no such disruptive intent. I tried to be quite clear about that, and am sorry if my wording wasn't clear enough.

I did not invent the notion that a redlinked category is an error. It is inherent to the nature of the category system, and is a long-standing point of WP:REDNOT, for the simple reason that the central goal of the category system is to provide navigational links to all Wikipedia pages in a hierarchy of categories which readers, knowing essential—defining—characteristics of a topic, can browse and quickly find sets of pages on topics that are defined by those characteristics. If the category page doesn't exist, that central goal is broken, regardless of the type of category.

As to the 2007 deletion of Category:Gay Wikipedians etc, I can well understand why gay editors were irate about that -- especially since there was no parallel deletion of the categories for Wikipedians by religion, which is significant because religions have played a leading role in the historical persecution of LGBT people. If the ide is to get rid of identity categories, we should be consistent.

However, I'm sure that an experienced editor like yourself is well aware that consensus can be flawed, sometimes badly so. I have long since lost count of he number of really bad consensus decisions I have seen over the years. But the point about consensus is that we don't have to like the outcome, just accept that it stands until overturned. Some issues where I have felt sore about being on the losing side have come right years later, and Category:Gay Wikipedians is one of those which later came right.

So what to do when there is a bad decision? The long-standing principle is Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Create uerboxes is fine. Mention the grievance in discussions is also fine. Rising the issue at the village pump is fine. There are many other non-disruptive ways of making the point.

But populating redlinked category does have a disruptive effect, by creating an error which clutters up cleanup lists. I have reason to believe that any editors who populated a redlinked Category:Gay Wikipedians had any desire to cause disruption, and I think it is likely that none of them knew of any disruptive effect. But now that the disruptive effect is understood, please don't defend it -- because defending it now, knowing the effects, is WP:POINTy. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:38, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl: You can be assured that I did read what you wrote, but unfortunately you have not recognised that your comments very much like yours can have been used in other scopes and are problematic because of this. You referred to "selfish extremists" who deliberately created redlinked categories in response to a decision with which they disagree. When the gay wikipedians categories were deleted, exactly the same thing occurred. New categories were created and the editors who did so were labelled as disruptive and criticised. They were criticised, just as you have made criticisms, for not respecting consensus, for introducing errors into the category system, and for being POINTy. In the gay wikipedians case, you are correct that consensus was flawed, and it was driven primarily driven by a smallish group of editors who held or hold strong views about the importance of the category system and the correctness of their views. This has decided similarities to the present situation, in my opinion. I have chosen not to take actions that can be described as POINTy, I have restricted myself to expressing my views, but I am strongly of the view that the assumption of the editing community focussed on categories that it is representative of the community at a whole is going to be tested.

I do not agree with your position that the point about consensus is that we don't have to like the outcome, just accept that it stands until overturned. Sometimes, a "consensus" is so wrong that IAR mandates it be rejected or ignored. The consensus of the gay wikipedians deletion was, whatever the participants may have thought, in effect a consensus that discrimination against LGBT editors was acceptable. There are US Supreme Court decisions described as "anti-canon", cases that are so flawed that they are now taken as exemplars of bad legal decision making, and were wrong on their face at the time they were taken – examples include Dred Scott and Korematsu. Though not on that level of seriousness, the gay wikipedians decision is similar in that it was wrong on its face at the time. Sometimes, wrong decisions must be called out and met with Rosa Parks-like defiance... and in those cases, we don't applaud the idea that sitting and waiting to be treated fairly is the only approach. Sometimes, if the source of the discrimination is a decision about categories, the way to highlight it is through categories.

I also find the argument made at WT:CANVASS#Inappropriate Actions / Secret and this ongoing CfD that alerting members of user categories just interferes with efficiently deleting them is an example of the belief that category editors are right and the rest of the community should just leave you along because you know what's best. I know, telling people involved might lead to disagreement (imagine that, editors in user categories knowing something about how they might lead to collaboration) but not telling them just makes for a flawed consensus.

I don't doubt that you are acting from the best of motives, and believe in the importance of the category systems, but it is past time to recognise that there are other things of importance. Yes, I am offended because the arguments being made are thinly-modified versions of the ones that had a discriminatory effect and which place category structures as more important that the people who edit the encyclopaedia. Surely there are ways to work on categories that not only supports article content but also values the editors who, like you, contribute to it. EdChem (talk) 04:23, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

@EdChem: see this comment of mine. The technical work which BHG thinks is all but impossible is actually very trivial. I wrote that in C# off the top of my head in about 45 seconds. I could re-write it in almost any C-type language rather quickly. I could build an interface and set up an offsite tool that WMF would be free to "steal" and incorporate into their code whenever they could. It would not be difficult, unless there is some unknown factor going on with the way categories are stored, or named, or something similar. Even then, it could be done. It would just take longer. But I am highly disinclined to attempt to work with BHG for what should be obvious reasons. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:05, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

@MjolnirPants: Writing a few lines of code to exclude categs from one namespace is of course trivial. But this job involves more than that.

I look fwd to seeing:

1. how a tool can distinguish between a) valid usercats which may be initially redlinked, and b) jokey redcats which are only ever intended to be redlinks
2. how you intend to persuade WMF to add this extra complexity to the code, or
3. how an offsite tool can replicate the functionality of Special:WantedCategories, which updates the category count in real time

You first mentioned this months ago. You don't need any involvement with me to set it up. If it's all as trivial as you claim, why can't you show us a working demo to evaluate? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:50, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

why can't you show us a working demo to evaluate? Because I have no interest in doing anything to make your life easier. I've said this before (which you've quoted out of context to fallaciously "justify" yet another personal attack against me). I find your behavior in this matter to be utterly reprehensible and will do nothing to encourage it. Not to mention the fact that there's no need for it, as bluelinked and categorized user cats fixes the problem quite nicely. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:48, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

(e/c)Except that it turns Wikipedia into a social networking site to some extent, where users can not only put frivolous categories on their user pages, but can easily see who else is in those cats, and can browse other such cats and their memberships. Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:54, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

So you boast for months that it would be ever-so-easy for you to create a solution to a technical problem ... but when challenged to actually implement it, you refuse because it would help those who seek a solution. Not a very mature response.

The comments by you which I cited were not out-of-context. They show very clearly that you set out to create an error in the category system purely in order to annoy another editor.[41][42]

If you want to call other editors utterly reprehensible, you do well to clean up your own act. That includes cleaning up behavior like your comment to which I responded at WT:UCAT[43], where your response to evidence of flaws in your code was yet more personal attacks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:50, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I'll just comment briefly in response to User:BrownHairedGirl's mention of WP:NOTSOCIAL. I don't think that continuing to tolerate humorous redlinks at user pages promotes social networks or cliques or anything like that. In contrast, it seems to me that BHG and other editors have recently set up a system that does do those things by changing those humorous redlinks to bluelinks, see, e.g., Category:Wikipedians who do not feel the need to use the category namespace to convey their feelings of pleasure, annoyance or boredom about the state of the world or about Wikipedia's processes, and who wonder if anyone pays any attention to such things anyway which now enables users to see who else is in the "cat", and to also see a list of the other humorous cats including lists of which users are in those cats. Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:37, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Maybe what is wanted is a MediaWiki:Wanted-categories-exceptionlist page analogous to MediaWiki:Uncategorized-categories-exceptionlist. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:08, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

That might work, thanks. I hope someone can make such an exceptionlist and then we can be done with this matter. Cheers. Anythingyouwant (talk) 15:21, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

It might work. But as noted before, I'd want to see it in action. The first substantive suggestion I have seen of how to define the exceptions is in MJP's code snippet[44] posted earlier today. As I noted in reply[45], MJP's proposal to exclude categories containing the word "users", "wikipedians" or "editors" is waay too simplistic. It would generate a huge number of false positives. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:59, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with much of what BHG has to say here. While I don't per se oppose a "technical solution" to have these categories not show up in Special:Wantedcategories, I echo BHG's worry that this encourages categories that don't further the encyclopedia to be considered more acceptable, in violation of WP:REDNOT. To me, while I consider the redlinks a problem, I think the bigger problem is that these categories don't help improve Wikipedia and in fact likely impede collaboration. With joke categories allowed, there's no reasonable expectation to be able to use the user category system to go seek out others to improve content. The proper recourse should be deleting them all and removing the users from any that have been deleted, and disciplining those who are disruptively intentionally creating redlinks with no reasonable expectation of improving the encyclopedia. There are various RfCs and other forums discussing these issues. I also take issue with the above allegation that those supporting the deletion of Category:Gay Wikipedians were somehow homophobic. I don't disagree that there have been some double standards in regards to keeping categories, which if that is what you are getting at I would agree that perhaps homophobia plays a role in those that would delete that but keep other similarly situated categories. However, I supported deletion then, I support deletion today, and I'll support deletion 50 years from now - Just as I would support deletion of Category:Wikipedians by religion and all subcategories. In fact, I would delete every user category that does not have a clear and obvious benefit the encyclopedia, and support a standard naming convention such as "Wikipedians interested in collaborating on topics related to x" to be the norm for user categories. We are building an encyclopedia and should be using the category tool to that end - not for jokes, telling people what we like or don't like, etc. We can freely do that on our userpages already, I see no reason to bleed into the category namespace for this sort of thing, especially when it likely has the practical effect of dissuading people who would use to to actually collaborate on content. A true technical solution would not be what is proposed here, but to add a "User Category" namespace. VegaDark (talk) 02:57, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

@VegaDark: You wrote that I also take issue with the above allegation that those supporting the deletion of Category:Gay Wikipedians were somehow homophobic. I ask that you note that I was careful to say that those supporting the deletion were supporting an action that had the effect of anti-LGBT discrimination, not that their intent was homophobic per se. As a group, the editors participating in the deletion and DRv discussions did not cover themselves in glory... to put it mildly... but I am certain that those advocating deletion were and are not necessarily motivated by discrimination / homophobia nor was prejudice necessarily their motivation in their comments. EdChem (talk) 04:31, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Can we please keep this discussion focused on the technical request? This is VPT. The link to the RFC is below, if you would like to discuss the categories themselves. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:49, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

The guideline should answer this question

We have a guideline at Wikipedia:User categories#Overcategorization (substantially duplicated or forked at Wikipedia:Overcategorization/User categories) that should provide enough guidance to tell whether these redlinked categories should be created or removed from pages. If it does not provide such guidance, the guideline should be improved. Excluding them from a report is not provided as an option in the guideline. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:30, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

My request does not involve inserting or deleting any redlinks or any bluelinks related to categories that are jokes/nonsense. The request is merely to modify a tool. Can a redlink really be a category anyway? At most it seems like a request for a category, or a humorous suggestion of a category. Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:13, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I see one category that has more than one transclusion and is a joke in that report: Wikipedians with red-linked categories on their user talk page‏‎. Are there more red links that you are worried about? If that is the only one, I suggest that you either live with it, or create it (and put a note on the top of the category page that editors should style the link using {{red}} or some other geeky workaround), or go on a crusade to remove those links from user pages (not recommended). – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:20, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

What Report are you referring to? The Wanted Categories Report? BHG and others have turned many of the humorous usercat redlinks into bluelinks or deleted them. In any event, the issue of joke redlinks on user pages is currently a HUGE issue at Wikipedia, and there is substantial support for changing the guidelines so as to turn them into allowed bluelinks.[46] If the tool that I'm requesting is created, the whole controversy may well go away. Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:25, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

"A HUGE issue".. sorry, but most people won't lose a night of sleep over it. Huge in your point of view, but there is something "huge" in every single contributors view and together that makes up thousands of issues. And still everything sorta still work. Let's keep a bit of perspective :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:29, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

All I meant is that the RFC I linked to is huge. Just count the words. Jonesey95 was saying it involves one measly redlink, which is incorrect. I have sleep problems, but not because of this.🙂 Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:50, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I am surprised that you did not link to that 32,000-word discussion in your original request. It would have helped provide some context for your technical request, and it may have reduced the amount of policy-related back and forth that has been forked onto this page from that discussion. In my experience, following guidelines like WP:MULTI has gotten me better results with less friction, especially from people who haunt the village pumps. I wish you luck with your quest, and thank you for working to clean up the wanted categories list. Having worked on Special:WantedTemplates myself, I know it can be a thankless and never-ending project. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:17, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. That RFC did not ask about improving the Wanted Categories Report, and so it did not seem useful or necessary to mention it initially. Anyway, I look forward to seeing if anyone here can help with my initial request above. Cheers. Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:36, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

• There is a related discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 May 23#Category:Wikipedians who retain on their userpages categories which have been deleted by consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:17, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

• I think this request for a technical solution is more work that it is worth, and it supports the continuance of a silly inefficient method of editor networking. Instead, I propose, subject to consensus support expressed here, that:

• All single member redlinked usercategories are to be converted to red wikilinks, by insertion of a leading colon (eg Category:Silly category), thus removing interplay with the category system.
• All multi-membered redlinked subcategories of remotely plausible networking function be Listified to a dedicated subpage of Wikipedia:Wikipedians, where, unlike in a category, members can interact, post comments, and use watchlisting.
• All other multiple membered redlinked subcategories be Listified to a dedicated subpage of Wikipedia:Department of Fun, whether or not you appreciate the humour involved.
• All future deletions of bluelinked silly usercategories include consideration of Listification as above.

By Listified, I mean "Listified, deleted, and de-populated with prejudice to any future addition of members to the deleted category". Networking in all cases can be equally well done, and usually better done, using a signup page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:39, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm curious whether a technical solution would be a lot of work. Do you know firsthand that's the case? If not, I hope we can get an opinion from someone who knows. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:17, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

cite template with script-title messing Hebrew title with embedded number

The {{cite news}} template with |script-title= is messing up the display of a Hebrew title with an embedded number and displaying the external link icon centered on the link anchor text instead of to its right. Here are three examples. The first two examples use |script-title= for the original Hebrew and |title= for the English translation. The third example uses |title= for the original Hebrew and |trans-title= for the English translation. The first example replaces the number, "1.5", in the Hebrew title, to an asterisk (*), and display is normal. The second and third examples use the correct Hebrew title with the number "1.5" . In the second example, using the full Hebrew title wit h |script-title=, the Hebrew title displays wrong near the number, extra white space is added to make up for the error, and the external link icon is misplaced. This would seem to be a bug. The third example displays normally. Note: surrounding the Hebrew title with <bdi lang="he" dir="rtl">...</bdi> does not help.

1. |script-title= and |title= (asterisk: *) (markup)<ref>{{cite news |author=Alexander Katz |url=http://www.ice.co.il/media/news/article/361862 |script-title=he:גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע * מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט |language=he |title=The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS * million on an Internet news edition |publisher=ICE.co.il |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=2013-11-21}}</ref> (display)
2. |script-title= and |title= (number: 1.5) (markup)<ref>{{cite news |author=Alexander Katz |url=http://www.ice.co.il/media/news/article/361862 |script-title=he:גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע 1.5 מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט |language=he |title=The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS 1.5 million on an Internet news edition |publisher=ICE.co.il |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=2013-11-21}}</ref> (display)
3. |title= and |trans-title= (markup)<ref>{{cite news |author=Alexander Katz |url=http://www.ice.co.il/media/news/article/361862 |title=גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע 1.5 מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט |language=he |trans-title=The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS 1.5 million on an Internet news edition |publisher=ICE.co.il |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=2013-11-21}}</ref> (display)

References

—Anomalocaris (talk) 00:50, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't read Hebrew so I can't really know if there is anything wrong with the Hebrew text in the title. I do know that when using |script-title=, you should tell it what language you are using. In this case, |script-title=he:... – the language code helps browsers to display it correctly; I do know that when using |script-title=, |title= is to be used for a transliteration of the original language title; I do know that |trans-title= is to hold the English language translation of the title in |script-title=.

In all three of your examples, the external link icon is at the right end of the linked text. I see no example that has the external link centered on the link anchor text.

Are we to understand that in your first example, the asterisk identifies the correct location of the 1.5 text? Perhaps because I don't read Hebrew, replacing '1.5' with '*' does not appear to have changed anything. Can you elaborate? Can you devise a very, very simple example that illustrates the problem. Can you show the same text, correctly formed, outside of a cs1|2 template so that the cs1|2 rendering can be compared to it.

I think that the correct parameter usage for this citation is this one:

{{cite news |author=Alexander Katz |url=http://www.ice.co.il/media/news/article/361862 |script-title=he:גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע 1.5 מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט |language=he |trans-title=The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS 1.5 million on an Internet news edition |publisher=ICE.co.il |date=10 June 2013 |accessdate=2013-11-21}}

Alexander Katz (10 June 2013). גם ג'רוזלם פוסט נכנס לטרנד: השקיע 1.5 מיליון ש' במהדורת חדשות באינטרנט [The Jerusalem Post also enters trend: it invested NIS 1.5 million on an Internet news edition] (in Hebrew). ICE.co.il. Retrieved 2013-11-21.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:33, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Trappist the monk: Yes, the only difference between the first two examples is that in the first example, asterisk replaces "1.5". As you can see from your experiment, adding "he:" to the beginning of |script-title= helps a little. The external link symbol is not centered, but off to the right where it belongs, and the Hebrew letters near "1.5" are less scrunched. In fact, what seems to happen is that the Hebrew before (to the right of) "1.5" displays normally, starting from the right; then "1.5" displays, but instead of "1.5" being entirely to the left of the Hebrew preceding it, the "1" in "1.5" is just to the left of the last word before it, so that ".5" overwrites the right end of the last word before it, and then the Hebrew after (to the left of) "1.5" starts up, rather than entirely to the left of "1.5", just to the left of the "5", overwriting "1.". Here is a shorter example set:

1. |script-title= and |title= (asterisk: *) (markup)<ref>{{cite web |author=Johnny Appleseed |url=http://www.apple.org/ |script-title=he:הרופא: תאכל * תפוחים |language=he |title=Doctor: Eat * apples |publisher=apple.org |date=10 June 2017}}</ref> (display)
2. |script-title= and |title= (number: 2) (markup)<ref>{{cite web |author=Johnny Appleseed |url=http://www.apple.org/ |script-title=he:הרופא: תאכל 2 תפוחים |language=he |title=Doctor: Eat 2 apples |publisher=apple.org |date=10 June 2017}}</ref> (display)
3. |title= and |trans-title= (markup)<ref>{{cite web |author=Johnny Appleseed |url=http://www.apple.org/ |title=he:הרופא: תאכל 2 תפוחים |language=he |trans-title=Doctor: Eat 2 apples |publisher=apple.org |date=10 June 2017}}</ref> (display)

References

In this shorter example set, using |script-title=, the Hebrew near the number ("2") is scrunched and the external link symbol is misplaced, but when "2" is replaced with "*" it works fine, and it also works fine to avoid |script-title= entirely and use |title= and |trans-title=. The bug is: if |script-title= is in a right-to-left language and includes an embedded number, even if only one digit long, the display is messed up near the number. —Anomalocaris (talk) 05:03, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

I get the links as can be seen at File:Image of Hebrew text in link.png. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:46, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

This is what I see File:WP VPT screencap 2017-05-23T04 15 37.png. Chrome on win7. Is this a browser issue?

You are still misusing |title= in these examples. The English translation of the Hebrew goes in |trans-title=; when |script-title= is used, |title= gets the transliteration of the original language title; in this case, Hebrew words written with Latin characters.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:44, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Trappist the monk: Yes, you're right that |trans-title= is for the English translation whether the foreign title is in |title= or |script-title=. That's irrelevant to the bug of bad display of |script-title= containing Hebrew with embedded digits. —16:00, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Mozilla Firefox problem, not Internet Explorer or Chrome

Thank you, עוד מישהו, for suggesting the possibility that it is browser-related. For all three browsers, it makes no difference if I am logged in or not. Can we make the output of |script-title= containing Hebrew with embedded digits render correctly for Mozilla Firefox? —16:00, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

This issue remains unresolved; so I am un-archiving it.

—Anomalocaris (talk) 03:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

This issue needs to be reported to Firefox. I wasn't able to figure out a workaround for it either unfortunately. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:25, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ: Thank you for your efforts. I have another clue. It happens in Firefox only if the |url= parameter is included. Does this help? —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:04, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Whatamidoing (WMF) for turning my attention to this.

A simpler test case: User:Amire80/Trend

It indeed appears to happen only in Firefox.

I'll try to investigate and I'll report to Mozilla if I can't resolve it in the template. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:33, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The HTML that the template generates seems valid. The <bdi> is a bit overkill, but it's not really a problem (and without it it may get broken in Chrome).

It works well in Chrome and in Firefox Nightly. It's probably a bug just in the current stable Firefox release.

I suggest simply waiting patiently for the next Firefox version. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:53, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Amir E. Aharoni: If <bdi>...</bdi> is overkill, is there a better solution when it is necessary to mix rtl scripts with English or other ltr scripts within a citation?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

... So, some updates from the last few hours: I talked about this with some true Mozilla right-to-left experts, and they found some very odd things. It's an important bug, thanks for bringing this up (and thanks again to User:Whatamidoing (WMF) for pinging me). I'll update later this week.

It's possible that <bdi> should be replaced with something like <span lang="he" dir="rtl">, but let's not touch it yet. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 06:46, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Nested parser expression fails only when substituted

The following wikitext fails with Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "{". when substituted, but not when transcluded:

{{{{{|safesubst:}}}#ifexpr:{{#if:{{{param|}}}|1|0}}|yes}}

I'm sure I'm missing something very simple, but I can't figure out what's causing this behaviour. TheDragonFire (talk) 08:29, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

You have to safesubst all functions:

{{{{{|safesubst:}}}#ifexpr:{{{{{|safesubst:}}}#if:{{{param|}}}|1|0}}|yes}}

See Wikipedia:Advanced template coding#Coding a template to allow WP:Subst substitution. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:00, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Notifications page taking forever to show

Is there any chance we can persuade TPTB to fix this relatively long running problem? It's more important than deprecating ISBN, which we don't want, but perhaps not on the WMF agenda...

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:39, 28 May 2017 (UTC).

Can you give a more detailed description of the problem and preferably a link to a ticket filed in phabricator ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:13, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

See mw:How to report a bug - steps to reproduce needed. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Is your problem basically "It takes forever for Special:Notifications to load?"

I had that problem a few months ago, and I believe that the problem was resolved when one of the popular user scripts got updated. Try mw:Help:Locating broken scripts. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes I think this was mentioned at VP before. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:30, 31 May 2017 (UTC).

phab:T153011 applies. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:38, 31 May 2017 (UTC).

Bing gives broken www.en.wikipedia.org results

The Bing search site:www.en.wikipedia.org says 12200 results but the links like https://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Lamela are broken. The right link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Lamela. The bad url's can show up in normal searches like https://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Ragusa in a search on Michele Ragusa. The issue was reported at Wikipedia:Help desk#Search engines adding a "www" to wikipage where I posted more details. Is this Bing's fault or do our servers sometimes give results (lacking styling according to Bing's cache) on the bad url's? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:06, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Incorrect positions of en-dashes

Resolved

It is annoyingly commonplace to to see things like the following in Wikipedia articles:

during the years 2005-12

. . .

pp. 25-32

of course one immediately corrects it so that it says

during the years 2005–12

. . .

pp. 25–32

But for about the last week, if you put the cursor where the hyphen had been, so that you see 200512, and click on the en-dash in the "insert" menu below the edit window, instead of 2005–12, you see 20051–2.

Has no one else noticed this? I've seen it several times every day for about a week, and never before then. What's going on? Michael Hardy (talk) 13:47, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

 Works for me Just tried on your examples above, no issue. Are you using the wikieditor? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:29, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this happens for me as well. I'm not using the visual editor. FWIW, it also happens with the emdash. older ≠ wiser 14:51, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Strange. I can't reproduce it. Tell us what browser and OS you are using. The date should be 2005–2012, by the way. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:54, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

This happens with any of the symbols on the insert bar that appears below the edit window. It only happens in conjunction with using a backspace to delete the preceding character. Using current version of Chrome on Windows 10. older ≠ wiser 14:57, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

This was previously reported at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 155#Chrome issue with inserting character after backspacing but didn't receive any comments. — JJMC89 (T·C) 15:19, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

There is a similar Chrome report at Wikipedia:Help desk#Defaultsort glitch. If I insert a new line in Chrome and click {{DEFAULTSORT:}} or something else then it's inserted in the line above the cursor. If I insert 5 new lines and click then it's inserted 5 lines above, and so on. I can also reproduce the problem reported here. If I backspace 5 characters and click a symbol to insert something then it's inserted 5 charaters to the right, and so on. Tested with the current Chrome Version 58.0.3029.110 (64-bit) on Windows 10. It also happens logged out. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:39, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't happen for the toolbar above the edit box so I guess something in MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js is not fully compatible with the current Chrome version. It also happens for "Edittools" at commons:Commons:Sandbox. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:58, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

There are no recent changes to MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js nor obvious problematic changes to mw:extension:charinsert, and I can reproduce this at Frwiki, so I'd hesitantly guess this might be an upstream bug? I've filed phab:T166708 just in case. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Confirmed (by TheDJ) as an upstream (Chrome) issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=714425 - I.e. Just wait for the browser update. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:34, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. older ≠ wiser 00:15, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

My Reddit AMA about Wikipedia and ethical, transparent AI.

Hey folks, I'm doing an experimental Reddit AMA ("ask me anything") in r/IAmA on June 1st at 21:00 UTC. For those who don't know, I create artificial intelligences that support the volunteers who edit Wikipedia. I've been studying the ways that crowds of volunteers build massive, high quality information resources like Wikipedia for over ten years. This AMA will allow me to channel that for new audiences in a different (for us) way. I'll be talking about the work I'm doing with the ethics and transparency of the design of AI, how we think about artificial intelligence on Wikipedia, and ways we’re working to counteract vandalism. I'd love to have your feedback, comments, and questions—preferably when the AMA begins, but also through the ORES talkpage on MediaWiki.

If you'd like to know more about what I do, see my WMF staff user page, this Wired piece about my work or my paper, "The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s reaction to popularity is causing its decline". --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 14:50, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Here's the reddit AMA! I'll be around for about 2 hours answering questions. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/6epiid/im_the_principal_research_scientist_at_the/ --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 20:26, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Strange wikEd behavior - Inserting dozens of non-breaking spaces

Resolved

Has anyone else experienced a bug wherein wikEd inserts dozens of non-breaking spaces when making an otherwise trivial edit? See this edit by WereSpielChequers, which I reverted and then attempted to reinstate the typo correction only to experience the same issue. I'm using Chrome 58.0.3029.110.- MrX 21:07, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Funnily enough now you mention it, just had the same problem using Firefox and Ubuntu. I reported it at User_talk:Cacycle/wikEd#wikEd_bug_report:_The_new_version_add_non_breaking_space_on_wikitext, and have opted out of Wiked. ϢereSpielChequers 21:12, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

I've confirmed the issue in Chrome for MacOS and Windows 10; Firefox for Windows 10, but not Edge for Windows 10. Oddly, I've only experienced the issue in the article Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.- MrX 21:32, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Those probably were non-breaking spaces. WikEd automagically replaces all nbsp's (which are very easy to unknowingly create on a Mac, as the keyboard shortcut is option-spacebar) with the HTML code. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up, Whatamidoing (WMF). It looks like the non-breaking space characters were introduced in these edits by Jasonanaggie.- MrX 11:46, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

New section tag

When you insert a new section into a page, it creates a kind of pseudo-tag called, oddly enough, new section. However, although it looks like a tag, it doesn't function like one; you cannot use it to filter user contributions, for example. Could we turn that function on? It would likely be of limited value in article-space, but it would greatly help searching through contributions and article histories in Wikipedia spaces such as the RefDesk, the Help Desk, and similar areas. Although it's not something I do much of, I imagine it would also help searching through the page histories of extensive talk pages. Really, any area where the user would like to search through extensive histories by the beginnings of discussions. Matt Deres (talk) 23:37, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

@Matt Deres: It's not a tag, it's just plain text. For instance, when creating this section, you probably used the "new section" tab at the top - but you could have merely edited the existing section that was last on the page, adding the new heading and your text, and having done so altered its edit summary from

/* My Reddit AMA about Wikipedia and ethical, transparent AI. */

to

/* New section tag */ new section

and the effect (both visually and on the stored data) would have been exactly the same as using the "new section" tab. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:13, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

It's an automatic edit summary made by MediaWiki:Newsectionsummary. I don't see much reason for a tag but it should be possible. Special:AbuseFilter/197 checked for addition of a new section by looking for an automatic edit summary with ("*/ new section" in summary). There could be rare false positives when users manually enter "new section" as edit summary. If you really want to look for new section additions now then many desktop browsers can search a string on the current page with Ctrl+F. This method would be limited to edits currently displayed in the window so a tag could do much more but I doubt it would be used enough to justify the performance cost. An edit filter to add a tag can be requested at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested. If you want the MediaWiki software itself to add a tag then it's a request for phab:. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:41, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you both for your expertise. It had actually occurred to me that it might be a canned edit summary, but when it didn't show up in the summary box, I figure I was wrong. :) @PrimeHunter:, could you expand a bit on the performance cost associated? I obviously don't want to harm the project; what kind of effect are we talking about? Matt Deres (talk) 20:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested says: "Each filter takes time to run, making editing (and to some extent other things) slightly slower. The time is only a few milliseconds per filter, but with enough filters that adds up. When the system is near its limit, adding a new filter may require removing another filter in order to keep the system within its limits." PrimeHunter (talk) 20:50, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Usernames containing wikimarkup and {{db-meta}}

I noticed that usernames containing potential wikimarkup (such as *Treker) will render as such in {{db-meta}} (see example). Can someone with more template skills please fix that? Regards SoWhy 11:14, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The problem appears to be that the magic word {{REVISIONUSER}} doesn't escape a leading asterisk. Special:ExpandTemplates shows that {{REVISIONUSER:User:*Treker/sandbox}} produces *Treker, while {{PAGENAME:*Lisp}} produces *Lisp. A post in phab:T28781 says: "r80511 and r80512 should fix the issue of insufficient escaping of the output of {{PAGENAME}} and friends". It appears {{REVISIONUSER}} wasn't included in friends. This means Last edited by [[User:{{REVISIONUSER:User:*Treker/sandbox}}]] produces:

Last edited by User:Xaosflux

For comparison, Last edited by [[User:{{PAGENAME:*Lisp}}]] produces:

Last edited by User:*Lisp

The wikilink still works after escaping the asterisk.

I guess a Phabricator ticket should be filed. We can make an ugly workaround by making our own escaping. Last edited by [[User:{{replace|{{REVISIONUSER:User:*Treker/sandbox}}|*|*}}]] produces:

Last edited by User:Xaosflux

I haven't found a better workaround by just inserting a nowiki, comment or something like that. Some usernames with special characters should be blacklisted for interfering with wikitext syntax, like starting with an asterisk or containing an equals sign. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:43, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Maybe you can deploy that "ugly workaround" until it's fixed in the software? I reopened the phab-ticket with the new information, hopefully the guys who fixed the others can easily fix this too. Regards SoWhy 13:40, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

I have created {{REVISIONUSER2}} with a version of the ugly workaround. Pages can use that instead of the magic word {{REVISIONUSER}} like in this fix of {{Db-meta}}. The example from the original post works now. Hopefully there are no bad side effects. Last edited by [[User:{{REVISIONUSER2|User:*Treker/sandbox}}]] produces:

Last edited by User:Xaosflux

That also works while the earlier version with {{REVISIONUSER:User:*Treker/sandbox}} was broken. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:39, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Refresh and erase in the edit window

This is recent and sporadic. I've only noticed in the last week or so. I'll be typing in the edit window, and suddenly the screen does a refresh on its own. When it does that, everything I just typed is gone, and I have to start all over. I use Firefox, but I'm not sure that's the cause of the oddity. Windows 10 did an install of its latest version a little over a week ago, so it could be that. Or it could be something Wikipedia did in an update. The only time this happens, is in Wikipedia, when an edit window is open and I'm actively typing in it. As I say, it's just now and then, but it sure is a time waster. — Maile (talk) 17:52, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

This is likely caused by either a slow-running script or gadget that interacts with the edit window, or one that interacts with the edit window that isn't itself slow but runs after another script or gadget that is. When I was seeing it several months ago - and I agree, it's infuriating to deal with - I was able to narrow it down to the syntax highlighter gadget. —Cryptic 18:36, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the original poster uses the visual editor or wikied, etc. But I too disabled the syntax highlighter (and am not using those fancy editors), although I didn't experience this bug, it was often clumsy and auto-disabling itself automatically for latency timeout, even on a fast modern desktop. It appears to not be efficient enough for large articles (I often have to edit the whole article instead of only sections when doing citation cleanup). — PaleoNeonate — 18:41, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Don't use visual editor, and unchecked the regular wiked a few years back because of quirkiness. But I see I was using WikedDiff, so I just unchecked that. We'll see if this works. Thanks for all the input. — Maile (talk) 18:52, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

• Well, apparently unchecking the WikedDiff didn't resolve this problem. My edit window just did it again, but it was the first time since May 31. — Maile (talk) 13:48, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

• Does it only happen when you are logged in? In every browsers? You can try to disable some of the tools on your common.js file (Btw your common.css imports a non-https page of Wikipedia). Also, if you know how to see the browser console, there you can possible find the cause of problem quickly. Stryn (talk) 16:48, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

• I only edit logged in, and I only use Firefox to edit Wikipedia. Don't know if I've checked the browser console last time (I know how), but will if this happens again. Thanks for the heads up about the common.css - I've changed it. — Maile (talk) 20:38, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
  • mw:Help:Locating broken scripts has information about the new safemode option, which might save you some time in determining whether a script or gadget is the problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:47, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Pageview Analysis help

I am looking at this chart generated by the Pageview Analysis tool for the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games. I am wondering, why are the numbers so low for the first few months and then jump higher afterward? Did the tool experience downtime during this period? Is there another explanation? Can I get further info regarding all periods of downtime? Thanks! SharkD  Talk  13:28, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I haven't heard of significant periods with missing data. Other examined WikiProject pages don't have a jump there. It happened 3 May 2016.[47] I don't know the reason but sometimes it only takes one link in a highly viewed page or high use template. For example, 26 April 2016 one edit caused this to Help:Maintenance template removal. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:08, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Enable wizards for links, formatting, tables, citations, and the search and replace function

Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing

"Enable wizards for links, formatting, tables, citations, and the search and replace function"

Can this be broken up in preferences? I would like to try out the table wizard for now. But not the rest. They just get in the way. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:02, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

i don't think that's likely to happen. considering the eternal struggle to reduce options. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:14, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Why is it so often "Just Say No"? What is the point of the wizards if they don't get used that much. The links wizard is irritating after one no longer needs it. It slows things down. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:53, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Risk aversion. It's a typical "lemme spend 2 hours on this" issue that will eventually take you weeks to deal with due to fallout of unexpected issues it will trigger in gadgets or user scripts etc... I personally avoid such problems at all cost when it is not part of some bigger goal or vision that it helps to fulfil, since as a volunteer I don't have the time to support such problems. And more options equals more variance, further increasing the complexity of the next change that has to be made in that area. Besides, I think there is a bigger problem here. This proposed change seems like a typical "lets add an option, instead of doing user interface design/research", which just seems like a shortsighted approach.

But in order to get anywhere significant with this editor, you can always try to convince Jdforrester as the product manager for the editors. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:53, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the informative reply. I was thinking that an easier solution would be just to make the table wizard a default part of the mediawiki software. It doesn't slow things down. In fact it speeds things up when making tables. Maybe you can put in a word with Jdforrester. :) --Timeshifter (talk) 09:49, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

(unindent). In the last few days it looks like "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" has incorporated "Enable wizards for links, formatting, tables, citations, and the search and replace function". Because this no longer exists as a preference: "Enable wizards for links, formatting, tables, citations, and the search and replace function". Those wizards are now part of the enhanced editing toolbar. It has to be chosen in preferences. It is not default. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:09, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Pages created versus overwritten by the content creation tool

(unarchived from Archive 155 by Mathglot (talk) 09:57, 30 May 2017 (UTC))

Hello Everyone,

A while back, the content translation tool was behaving undesirably (context). This left us with about 5000 articles which were either newly created by this tool, or were overwritten by this tool. The articles are listed here: [48]. The edit which either created or overwrite the page has an edit summary that looks something like this: (Created by translating the page "[Name of article on foreign language wiki]") (thank) (Tag: ContentTranslation). I need to know which of these edits were overwrites, and which were creations, so we can check to see if the overwritten page was acceptable. To do this, either I need the full edit summary where the CXT edit happened for each article (overwrites will have undo), the revision history for each article, including full edit summaries in a form I can edit (a .txt file, for example, I can do regex on this to extract the information), or a list of which articles had (or preferably, didn't have) the CXT edit as their first edit. I suspect a quarry search will be a good attack on this problem, as that's how the original list was generated. Pinging @Xaosflux:, who ran that Quarry search. Pinging @Mathglot:. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:21, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I did a lot of coordination there, but I think the report you are looking for was generated by @There'sNoTime:. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:31, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

FYI: The current abuse filter only prevents brand new creations by non-extendedconfirmed users in the article space. Overwrites (e.g. Tudor Chirilă from today) are are not stopped. They are of course logged and can be reviewed by recent change patrollers. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:37, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:CXT/PTR#CX Translation report, mightn't the Quarry report have been Samtar (talk · contribs)? There are three more of Samtar's ContentTranslation-related queries linked from his Quarry userpage. Mathglot (talk) 02:32, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion, We're going back through the pre-edit filter archives to try and spot where the articles were overwritten by raw machine translations. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:47, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

(unarchived from Archive 155 by Mathglot (talk) 09:57, 30 May 2017 (UTC))

I don't believe it was Tazerdadog's intention to imply that this was no longer a problem, and I believe they may have been misunderstood, since there were no further responses, and the thread was archived. This problem remains, and needs to be addressed. Shall we start over with a restatement of the existing problem?

We are in the process of assessing articles created by CXT to see whether to retain them or not under CSD X2 via a mass delete. When CXT overwrites a previously existing, good article with a bad one, then if we delete that article, that is the wrong outcome—we should keep the article instead. But it's not easy to find those articles manually, we'll probably miss some (or a lot) of them, and some good articles will get deleted. A db query returning titles of articles that are in the current list and tagged in some rev other than the first, would highlight that article list, and allow us to examine those articles for this exact situation so we don't delete the clobbers. Did I state that correctly, Tazerdadog? Mathglot (talk) 10:41, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

That is accurate. Tazerdadog (talk) 04:26, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

By pure chance, I ran across #2863 on our list: Sunni Cultural Center, Karanthur, and it is a typical example of this phenomenon. This article was created in 2004, clobbered in May 2016 by cxt, and quickly reverted. It would have fallen in the mass-delete, had I not recognized that it is a member of this set, and rescued it. How many similar articles like this one remain, is unknown. We need help from someone with db query access. Mathglot (talk) 09:36, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: CTX revisions that are not the first revision. I'm not sure how this deals with pages that have previously deleted content etc.. But it's probably close enough. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:13, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

That's a saner query then the one I just cobbled together at quarry:query/19058, though yours (like the original) omits the namespace, and I'm curious how we came up with a different number of affected pages. —Cryptic 10:22, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

(At least some of the explanation: Ali Mitgutsch was history-merged after creation, so its CXT edit has rev_parent_id==0 even though there's now an older revision for the page. —Cryptic 11:06, 31 May 2017 (UTC))

Now we're getting somewhere. Two issues: one thing I had not seen before, is titles whose oldest two revs were both ContentTranslation, and I immediately found several, such as Hassan_Hosny and Edmund Heldut-Tarnasiewicz. So, User:TheDJ, could we modify it slightly so that at least one rev exists that does not have ContentTranslation tag, that is older than the one that does? (I.e., it would be sufficient, that the very first rev is not Ctx, and some other rev is.) The second issue is more bothersome: since the WHERE on TheDJ's query/19057 is more selective than on Samtar's query/11275, the former should be a strict subset of the latter, but it isn't. I'm seeing tons of titles I've not seen in the older query; for example the first 10 results listed at query/19057. That doesn't make sense to me, unless these are all recent. I suppose you could add another WHERE page creation date preceded date of Samtar's query, but I doubt that will make up the difference, because I hardly see *any* titles in the result set of query/19057 that I recognize from the earlier one; they may be completely disjoint, and that makes no sense to me at all, as it ought to be a proper subset (modulo recent-page issues) Does anyone have an explanation for this? Mathglot (talk) 10:36, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Before or after sorting? Before sorting, the first is Papua (province), which definitely does appear in both Samtar's query and on WP:AN/CXT/PTR (#24). If you sort the column, the first is 1,2-Dioxetane, which overwrote its article in January (and was reverted), so that's after the PTR page was created. —Cryptic 10:58, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Also, quarry:query/19060 for cxt overwrites of articles whose first revision wasn't itself a cxt edit. —Cryptic 11:02, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah, so it was the sorting tripping me up, then? And thanks for query/19060, that looks like just what we are looking for, thanks a million! Mathglot (talk) 01:24, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Editors who wish to help with tagging the overwritten articles on the list, please see WP:CXT/PTR/Clobbers. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 06:23, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

This is now complete. Housekeeping: removed {{DNAU}}. Mathglot (talk) 19:18, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Missing ping alerts

Has anyone noticed a problem with {{ping}}? I am getting ping alerts, mostly, I believe, (but then again, how would I know for sure?), but I've suspected that there are sporadically some missing alerts. For example, here's an edit I spotted from my watchlist that pings me, but I don't see it in my alert notifications.

On the flip side, I've occasionally pinged lots of users (13 in this case) and not gotten any response. Perhaps they're just busy or chose not to respond. I'm loathe to ping twice, that could be seen as being bothersome, but now I can't help wonder if all of those notifications were delivered. Mathglot (talk) 20:26, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Notes

Pings only work when you sign your post the same edit and do nothing other than add content. Pppery 21:43, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Exactly, and Zwq950117 (talk · contribs) didn't sign it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:30, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

At Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo you can choose to be notified of Failed and/or Successful pings made by yourself. Pings may fail for obscure reasons but your 13-ping looks to me like it satisfies mw:Manual:Echo#Technical details. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:08, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh, so the unsigned pings don't go, I see. Is it only pings that are linked to a signed post that way? What if they put [[User:Mathglot]] on an unsigned post on their own user page, then do I get notified regardless, or does it still require a sig? And thanks for the responses. Mathglot (talk) 23:59, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

The edit always has to be signed. "ping" is a general term for an edit which links a userpage to generate a notification. It doesn't matter whether the link is made with a template like {{ping}} or written directly like [[User:Mathglot]]. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:11, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't like to see the term "ping" used in this context, in my line of work it has a very different and somewhat older meaning. It's entered everyday life via a management buzzword that originated when an engineer's boss overheard the engineer using that term, and misunderstood what they were talking about.

Mathglot: The three essential features for a notification to succeed are: (i) there must be at least one new line in your post; (ii) one of the new lines must be signed with three or four tildes; (iii) at least one of the new lines must include a link to the user page of the person which you are intending to notify.

Regarding (i), changes to existing lines are permitted, but this has no effect on the outcome. Regarding (iii), it doesn't matter whether a plain link like [[User:Mathglot]] or a template (such as {{reply to}}, {{user}}, {{user link}}, or one of their redirects) is used, the crucial feature is that the user page be linked in some way.

You will have been notified by this, even though I didn't use a template to name you. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:31, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Android App Bug Report (3)

1. Again I repeat: The first tab always resets to main page when closing and reopening the app.
2. Copy pasting from within the edit screen is nearly impossible.
3. Pressing "go to file page" when selecting the drop down menu when previewing an image does nothing.
4. Page does not automatically refresh after an edit.
5. Red links appear blue (added 09:09, 3 June 2017 (UTC))

Will update  • Sammy Majed  • Talk  • Creations • Wikipedia Arabic  • 13:32, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

• @SammyMajed: See mw:Wikimedia Apps/Team/Bug reporting if you'd like to help developers with good and clear bug reports. --Malyacko (talk) 10:07, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Archive search results

Is it possible to render archive searches in date order? I sometimes need to refer back to a post I made on discussion pages such as VP, HD, etc. When I search the archives for my username the resulting list is apparently in a random order. This is not helpful when I know the post I'm looking for was in the last month or two. So, I think the ability to search a specific date range or have the search results sorted in date order by default would be far more useful than the current random order. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:19, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The search function cannot order by date of archiving or the archive number. It can usually order by date of last edit with prefer-recent:1,1 from mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Prefer-recent but old archives sometimes have a recent edit. If the last edits are close to eachother then precise sorting may require a fraction as second argument like prefer-recent:1,0.1. For discussion pages you can include something like "May 2017" in the search to find pages with posts signed that month, or "May 2017 UTC" to reduce the risk of false positives for pages mentioning the month outside a signature. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:37, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that the order is random; I believe that it's in the order of the page ID. Page IDs are progressive, and are allocated when the page is created (e.g. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 153 is 53132117; Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 154 is 53692078; and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 155 is 54023415), so the most recently created pages will be towards the end of the list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:52, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Search results are in order of relevance but our search engine is less good than Google at estimating this. WhatLinksHere is in order of page ID. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Can't find the source of a message

The "Move succeeded" page contains text strings such as You should also update the associated Wikidata item to maintain language links on moved page and A redirect has been created. They don't appear in MediaWiki:Movepage-moved and I can't find where they are generated. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:19, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Probably this one: MediaWiki:Wikibase-after-page-move. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Jo-Jo Eumerus: Found these via translatewiki.net. Not 100% guaranteed that those are the message tags actually used in the instance you saw, but quite likely they are the ones. The text certainly matches, but occasionally there are multiple tags with very similar messages, and EN-WP sometimes has some oddities.

MediaWiki:Wikibase-after-page-move

Your move should now be [$1 reflected in the Wikidata item] language link.

MediaWiki:Movepage-moved-redirect

A redirect has been created.

Murph9000 (talk) 12:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Oy. I was hoping that the Wikidata text was something that could be removed. Wikibase automatically adjusts the sitelink in response to a pagemove, there is no reason to add a notification on the screen which takes up space. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Hmm, it might be a bug that you're seeing. There's also this:

MediaWiki:Wikibase-after-page-move-queued

⧼wikibase-after-page-move-queued⧽

I've not looked at the code to see if that message is actually used, but it seems like our config should use that alternate message. Either that, or the message should be suppressed for our config. Possibly worth raising a ticket for it on Phab. Murph9000 (talk) 12:51, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The message seems to come from phab:diffusion/EWBA/browse/master/client/includes/Hooks/MovePageNotice.php, which does use the -queued variant for some cases (in the latest version, at least). Murph9000 (talk) 13:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The message was created before Wikibase started taking care of moves automatically. It can probably be changed locally if not at Translatewiki. I might recommend that it continue to say "check back in a day or two to make sure everything got changed correctly at Wikidata". --Izno (talk) 15:27, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Footer is not expanding

On Aquaman, {{Aquaman}} is not expanded, even tho I have |state=expanded in the text. I have also tried |state=uncollapsed with the same result. Can someone please explain what is happening and {{ping}} me? Thank you. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:16, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Koavf: The state parameter in the template was not coded correctly. It needs to be | state = {{{state|autocollapse}}} (which I just changed it to). The previous coding was ignoring any state parameter. Murph9000 (talk) 21:22, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:26, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Double nbsp

Please tell me what's wrong with the third line

• USA ← {{flag|USA|size=23x14px}}
• USA ← {{flag|USA|size=23x15px}}
• USA ← {{flag|USA|size=23x16px}}
• USA ← {{flag|USA|size=23x17px}}

Maiō T. (talk) 11:45, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

An extra nbsp is deliberately inserted for 23x16px.[49] I think it's part of an attempt to approximately align country names when different countries are displayed below eachother at default flagicon sizes for flags with different width to height ratios. See e.g. Template talk:Flag#Fix Swiss/Nepal/Vatican flag height. I don't know whether the current settings satisfy the goals. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:31, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I'm testing those alignments at {{flag/sandbox}}. I've edited just one word and here is the result:

• ← {{flag/sandbox|USA}}
• ← {{flag/sandbox|Switzerland}}
• ← {{flag/sandbox|Nepal}}
• ← {{flag/sandbox|Vatican}}
• ← {{flag/sandbox|FRA}}

I think it's worth to edit the protected template {{flag}}. Maiō T. (talk) 15:39, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I haven't followed the details. It seems like a discussion for Template talk:Flag. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:26, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

It's come up on this page before, it'll be in the archives. Try threads from 2015 and if not, try first half of 2016 or last half of 2014. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:17, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

The current hybrid situation is not very good:

• Switzerland ← {{flag|Switzerland}}
• Niger ← {{flag|Niger}}
• Nepal ← {{flag|Nepal}}
• Monaco ← {{flag|Monaco}}
• France ← {{flag|France}}

We should remove those NBSPs at Nepal & Switzerland flags, or use the aligning method as a default. Maiō T. (talk) 11:11, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Why not use CSS? You could add some margin to the smaller images. SharkD  Talk  13:31, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm thinking the same thing. Using nbsp for alignment feels like an ugly and unreliable hack to me, which should really be done through some form of CSS (probably setting some form of width, padding, or margin on the element or a container around the element). That's not to say that doing it via CSS is necessarily easy (having not poked around inside the template before making this comment), it's just the better way of doing it if reasonably feasible. Murph9000 (talk) 23:04, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Can one do calculations inside templates? You could set a maximum size, and if a flag is smaller than this maximum, add a few extra pixels of margin to the side using CSS. SharkD  Talk  23:58, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, use the #expr parser function. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:36, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-23

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

Recent changes

• You can see new files on Special:NewFiles. You can now pick which dates you want to see files from. [50]
• When you read Wikipedia on a mobile device the first paragraph now comes before the infobox. [51]
• You can now remove navigation elements from your results when you search. This could for example be part of an infobox that is only there to help you find the previous or next article. [52]
• New users on Wikivoyages and Wikipedias (except French, English and German) now get a notification when a page they created is connected to Wikidata. Other wikis will get it 13 June. [53]

Problems

• The MediaWiki version from two weeks ago was rolled back. It was fixed late last week. Changes that were planned to go out last week did not happen. [54]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia wikis can show fewer links to articles in other languages. This is to make it easier to find the languages likely to be useful to the reader or editor. Everyone can still click to see the full list. Logged-in users who use the compact language links will see languages they have in their Babel box on their user page in the first, shorter list. You can turn the compact language list off or on in your preferences. [55]
• You can choose what dates to look at when you look at a user's contributions. [56]
• When you click on your watchlist in the mobile view you get a list of all pages in the watchlist instead of the latest changes to them. Logged-in users with at least ten edits will now get the latest changes instead. [57]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
• String comparisons in Scribunto modules are now always done case-insensitively by byte order. Before they were sometimes in a case-sensitive US-English collation order. This could break some modules. [58]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2006 wikitext editor will be removed the week of 27 June. This is the old toolbar with small square blue buttons. You can see a picture of it. 0.03% of active Wikimedia editors use this old tool. They will not see a toolbar at all. [59][60]
• Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron already works on German Wikipedia. It will be on English Wikipedia later this week so you can test it there too. [61]
• The Architecture Committee will change and get a new name. You can read and comment on the draft that describes the new committee.

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

19:04, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the removal of the "2006 wikitext editor", I regularly use this and have a few custom buttons that are inserted via User:Huntster/monobook.js. Is it possible to transition these custom buttons over to the "enhanced editing toolbar"? I'm not that savvy on scripting. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:02, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Try the below to get the buttons under "Advanced" after selecting "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. The icons were designed for the old toolbar so they may look a little out of place. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:00, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

JavaScript for extra toolbar buttons

var customizeToolbar = function () {
    $( '#wpTextbox1' ).wikiEditor( 'addToToolbar', {
        section: 'advanced',
        group: 'format',
        tools: {
            buttonId: {
                label: 'Nowrap',
                type: 'button',
                icon: '//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Button_template_join.png',
                action: {
                    type: 'encapsulate',
                    options: {
                        pre: '{{nowrap|',
                        peri: '',
                        post: '}}'
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    } );
    $( '#wpTextbox1' ).wikiEditor( 'addToToolbar', {
        section: 'advanced',
        group: 'format',
        tools: {
            buttonId: {
                label: 'Uncertainty',
                type: 'button',
                icon: '//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Button_template_dev.png',
                action: {
                    type: 'encapsulate',
                    options: {
                        pre: '{{±|',
                        peri: '',
                        post: '}}'
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    } );
    $( '#wpTextbox1' ).wikiEditor( 'addToToolbar', {
        section: 'advanced',
        group: 'format',
        tools: {
            buttonId: {
                label: 'Small',
                type: 'button',
                icon: '//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Button_small.png',
                action: {
                    type: 'encapsulate',
                    options: {
                        pre: '{{small|',
                        peri: '',
                        post: '}}'
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    } );
};

/* Check if view is in edit mode and that the required modules are available. Then, customize the toolbar … */
if ( $.inArray( mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ), [ 'edit', 'submit' ] ) !== -1 ) {
	mw.loader.using( 'user.options' ).then( function () {
		// This can be the string "0" if the user disabled the preference ([[phab:T54542#555387]])
		if ( mw.user.options.get( 'usebetatoolbar' ) == 1 ) {
			$.when(
				mw.loader.using( 'ext.wikiEditor.toolbar' ), $.ready
			).then( customizeToolbar );
		}
	} );
}

PrimeHunter, it works perfectly, thank you so much! — Huntster (t @ c) 09:40, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Correcting author name in a few hundred pages (references)

(This discussion was moved from the Reference Desk/Computing, where I started it by mistake- darthbunk pakt dunft) Hi, I am wondering if someone knows an easy and fast way (a bot?) to correct Paulin Martin's name in the bblg footnotes of literally hundreds of articles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Paulin_Martin) where it is erroneously spelled Jean-Pierre-Paul Martin? The most simple way would be to change it to the form it has on books i.e Jean P.P. Martin or even more simply J.P.P. Martin. Thanks. darthbunk pakt dunft 20:58, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I would check to make sure that the incorrect spelling wasn't the attributed name from the publisher. If it was, then correcting it would introduce an error, making it more difficult to locate the sources. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:06, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

WP:AWB. 14.2.224.5 (talk) 01:21, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi, thanks. Not sure my current navigator likes AWB. However, I checked and the Jean-Pierre-Paul Martin version, although existing in some directories (obviously it has spread), is not the one the publisher had (back then and I don't think it was published again, and all pages with that name I checked did NOT mention the edition). Googlebooks has (for the book that the tremendous majority of tis linked pages refer to) his name complete ( https://books.google.es/books?id=mBOvXrCyVF4C&q=Description+technique+des+manuscrits+grecs+relatifs+au+N.+T.,+conserv%C3%A9s+dans+les+biblioth%C3%A8ques+des+Paris&dq=Description+technique+des+manuscrits+grecs+relatifs+au+N.+T.,+conserv%C3%A9s+dans+les+biblioth%C3%A8ques+des+Paris&hl=fr&sa=X&redir_esc=y ) (ie Jean Pierre Paulin Martin). If you think the change is not absolutely uncontroversial, we can leave that in stand by but changing it to J.P.P. Martin as the title page of the original shows in the link above, seemed harmless and useful to me. Thanks, darthbunk pakt dunft 23:01, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Italic title for a ship (DISPLAYTITLE conflict)

Hi, I renamed Nuestra Señora de Encarnación today (removing Spanish Ship from the title). The original (and wrong) title was displaying correctly with Nuestra Señora de Encarnación only in italic. But now, the template italic title I had put on the page is overriden by a DISPLAYTITLE somewhere... but I can't find it. If someone could fix that, I'd be grateful. Thanks in advance.darthbunk pakt dunft 22:46, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Fixed. {{Infobox ship begin}} includes its own display title formatting code, which I had to override with a |display title= param. Pppery 00:07, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

@Pppery: Cool. Thanks.darthbunk pakt dunft 00:19, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Table coding problem

Could somebody with more expertise in table coding than I have take a look at Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Award for Best Live Action Short Drama?

For reasons I've never really understood, the table code I used to format the pages always required me to set the rowspan number for the first column one higher than the number of rows I actually wanted that header to span — if there were five nominees for the award in a given year, I had to set the year column's rowspan number to 6, not 5, for the table to work correctly. In some years, however, I needed to include a single row to indicate that the award was not presented that year so go to this other article instead — for those instances, rowspan=2 formerly worked correctly, but something appears to have changed: the box around that text now occupies about half of the "row" for its year, leaving weird blank spaces scattered throughout the table and stuttering the right margin. But neither changing the rowspan on the year header from 2 to 1 nor changing the rowspan on the content line from 1 to 2 actually fixes the issue; doing either of those things just borks the table even worse.

So does anybody know how to fix this? Or what it is about this table code that made me have to set the rowspan numbers one higher than the number of rows being spanned, even though I haven't had to do that in most other tables on most other articles? Bearcat (talk) 06:22, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Fixed.[62] If the first cell in a row has rowspan then the row still goes all the way across the table. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:17, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Help:Table#Combined use of COLSPAN and ROWSPAN may help understand it. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:24, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Article revision history stats link

Is there some way to make the "Revision history statistics" link go to this tool rather than this tool? Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:26, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Someone above my pay grade will explain how, but if the change is wanted it would be desirable to outline the difference. Here is an example for Acupuncture:

xtools

sigma

Johnuniq (talk) 04:13, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

The external links at top of page histories are made by MediaWiki:Histlegend. xtools articleinfo is unstable and has been removed several times.[63][64][65] Has xtools stability improved? PrimeHunter (talk) 07:55, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

It appears so to me, but I don't use it all that often. When I do, the information provided by the xtools tool is more complete that that provided by the sigma tool. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:55, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Can't turn visual editor off

I unchecked the "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" option in preferences to turn Visual Editor on for a while. But now I can't turn it off! It's stuck. Can anyone help? SharkD  Talk  23:54, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Does "always give me the source editor" choice of the "editor" preferences tab work? This is what I use. —PaleoNeonate - 04:49, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Have you double-checked your preferences, to make sure that your changes were saved? Have you reloaded the page? (If you just use your browser's back button to go back to the page, then you will get the old preferences.) If none of that works, then open a page, find the pencil-shaped icon next to the Save button, and switch to wikitext that way. It will probably (depending on some details about your prefs settings) do what you want after that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Never mind. I forgot I had enabled "New wikitext mode" in settings. SharkD  Talk  07:20, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Graphs

Is it possible to create a chart like {{Game of Thrones ratings}} in Vega or with Module:Chart, without any odd spacing issues? EasyTimeline is problematic since the y-axis only allows integer spacings and is therefore inflexible since 0.1 spacings are better for some of the bar charts. (The module used to create those charts, Module:Television ratings graph, can convert the values to thousands but it would be preferable not to so as to remain consistent with other data.) —Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 07:59, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Template parameters

As a Wikiproject we use the template {{location map~|Dorset|label =|mark = |position = |lat = |long = |caption =|float = |marksize = }} to add icons to this map Wikipedia:WikiProject Dorset/Map. Is there anyway a parameter can be added so that, when hovering the cursor over the icons, the corresponding article names are revealed? There is currently an option to label but because it is permanent, using it creates a mess. If this isn't the right place for such a question, please can someone let me know where is. Thanks--Ykraps (talk) 07:02, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@Ykraps: I think {{Location map many}} has this feature. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 08:01, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Use |link = to make clickable links to the articles. It will depend on browser and user settings what happens when you hover over the link. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:04, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you both for your input. I tried inserting 'link', which also appears to be the parameter at {{Location map many}}. This provides a clickable link to the article but when the mouse pointer hovers over the mark 'Wikipedia:WikiProject Dorset/Map' is displayed instead of the name of the linked article. But you are saying this is because of my browser settings?--Ykraps (talk) 12:18, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Add |label=HOVERTEXT and |position=none to the parameters and then it should work. -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:33, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah, perfect! Thanks--Ykraps (talk) 12:47, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Protocol relative URLs

Wikipedia is forcing HTTPS with protocol relative URLs, even when the underlying URL doesn't support HTTPS. Example:

[66] (//americanbilliardclub.com/about/history/)

This is breaking untold 10s or 100s of thousands of links. See the messed up American rotation. It also makes using protocol relative URLs useless, in essence Wikipedia is saying we don't support protocol relative URLs. WP:PRURL has some past discussions about PRURLs on certain sites, but I can't find anything about forcing HTTPS. It looks like we need to convert all the PRURLs to https/http as appropriate. Comments, thoughts? -- GreenC 15:14, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@Green Cardamom: Why would you use a protocol relative url for linking to a site that only supports a single protocol ? That maks no sense, they are only supposed to be used for linking to sites that support both protocols. But since we ourselves only support https these days, you might as well just use a full https or http link. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:52, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Many sites once had HTTPS but for whatever reason (financial, technical) stopped supporting it. Or some editors might think it's future proofing the link in case the site ever added HTTPS. Regardless we have these links in the system. The solutions are either stop forcing HTTPS on PRULS (preferable and simple) or create a bot to try to find/fix all the broken links one by one (messy and incomplete and difficult). -- GreenC 16:23, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Honestly, nobody should ever use protocol-relative URLs. They're ugly and confusing to most people. They were useful during a migration period here at Wikimedia sites when we went from HTTP -> HTTP/HTTPS -> HTTPS (mostly so we didn't bust the parser cache). There's not a ton of reason for anyone to use them these days. FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY ^[u+1F602] 17:40, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Agreed as a best practice but MediaWiki supports them. It would be great if this changed to HTTP. Forcing HTTPS breaks a lot of links. -- GreenC 19:01, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

It can't. Protocol relative means, relative to where you currently are. Wikimedia only supports https, so for any protocol relative link, the browser can only ever direct you at https. There is no other option. Just fix the links to point at the right url, and avoid using protocol relative links. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:18, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah I thought it was relative to the source site but you're right it would have to be relative to Wikipedia and when it switched to HTTPS-only that ended up breaking many HTTP-only protocol relative URLs. Sounds like a job for BOTREQ. -- GreenC 20:43, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I updated WP:PRURL. This problem is 2 years old, the hard-enable of HTTPS occurred in June 2015. -- GreenC 20:54, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

What are usernames made all of hexadecimal digits and colons?

Sometimes I come across usernames made all of hexadecimal digits and colons, e.g. 2601:584:100:E310:51CC:3CBD:F2D2:F25 . This example made no sense when I tried to decode it, treating it as hexadecimal codes for Unicode characters, whether as big-endian or as little-endian. What are such usernames? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:05, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

IPv6 may be of interest, these are Internet Protocol version 6 addresses. —PaleoNeonate - 05:08, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Anthony Appleyard: These are IPv6 addresses, a 128-bit number space. Unfortunately the lower (right-hand) 64-bits are literally randomised and frequently changing for a not insignificant number of people, with only the upper (left-hand) 64-bits being meaningful. The 8 groups of 16 bits (4 nibbles / hex digits, missing digits taken to be 0) is the standard representation for them. In the current MW implementation, this creates a significant communication (i.e. can't reliably talk to them) and WP:SCRUTINY problem that is far worse than IPv4 shared and dynamic address pools. In theory, individual end users should be given a "/48" by their ISP (per physical connection), i.e. the first 48 bits (or 3 groups of digits) should identify the end user, but in reality there are /56 and /64 end-user allocations, and some end users incorrectly only get given a /128. Murph9000 (talk) 05:19, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

The automatic address randomisation is RFC 4941 (Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6). The RFC specifies a default address lifetime of 1 day, but operating systems can be configured to values much shorter than that (and the behaviour is often enabled by default where a connection configuration supports it). Murph9000 (talk) 05:35, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Also see Classless Inter-Domain Routing#Subnet masks for more information about the notation Murph9000 used. Also of interest are mw:Help:Range blocks and mw:Help:Range blocks/IPv6. —PaleoNeonate - 05:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Anthony Appleyard, also see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User:2001:718:1E03:5184:8CA3:8DDA:38D5:6D2B and Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive756#Mistaken_IPv6_block_needs_to_be_undone. Nyttend (talk) 00:38, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Upright

Wouldn't it make sense to globally (meaning for all wikis) add the "upright" option for embedding images with the corresponding tool in the "regular" 2010 vector editor toolbar? This function is used actually not so rarely and so a default function could be quite useful I think. What is your view?--Hubon (talk) 22:42, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

There was an RFC two years ago about the "upright" option. The decision was to replace it with something else. User:cscott could probably tell you want the current ideas are about the replacement, and perhaps how long it will be until we see them.

In the meantime, though, I recommend against advertising a feature that will (likely) be removed. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

We're a little bit too late for that though. upright is even the advised method of defining non-standard sizes in all en.wp articles. Also as far as I know, there is no work ongoing on the actual replacing of upright and neither is there a timeline. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:43, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

It's not the same. The |upright option sets the width to 75% of the |thumb width (set by user preference, or 220px for logged-out users), and used with a value sets a scale factor - so |upright=1.25 increases the width by 25%. But it's based purely on width - image height cannot be set directly, it is scaled by the same factor as the width. An image whose natural size is 360x640, scaled |upright=0.75, will be displayed taller than an image whose natural size is 960x1280 scaled to the same factor: both will be displayed 165px wide. Square bounding boxes, on the other hand, would have set the longer dimension - whether that be width or height. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:35, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

That RFC, regardless of its seemingly irrelevant name, appears to be the place where the decision to (someday) remove |upright was actually taken. The first replacement option has also been rejected, but the need for a better solution doesn't invalidate the decision to deprecate |upright. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:19, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Indexing user pages

So... following this discussion, at least my own user pages were in fact indexed by google. Is... there a particular reason for this? I thought userspace and draftspace were invisible? TimothyJosephWood 22:29, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

@Timothyjosephwood: See Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing. We request search providers to not index user pages, but this may be overridden by users. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:42, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

User:Xaosflux: Well, I certainly don't remember ever overriding mine. I didn't even realize that was an option until exactly 15 minutes ago. Ah that's over dramatic. I did know it was an option, but I never exercised it. TimothyJosephWood 22:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

So I guess my question is, is this being overridden by some template, and is there a way to find out what that is? TimothyJosephWood 23:00, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Apart from undocumented claims by others, do you have any evidence your user pages are or were indexed by Google? I see no sign of indexing. Special:PrefixIndex/User:Timothyjosephwood shows a bunch of pages but Google shows nothing on site:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Timothyjosephwood. There are other Wikimedia wikis which allow userspace indexing by default but not us. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:28, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I searched my username no spaces and found it, which is why I added the noindex. I find it unlikely that Google picked up my noindex in the past half hour on its own, but I don't see my en.wiki anymore. I do see my wikiquote, commons, and meta:talk (and pt.wiki talk?). Maybe it's a cookie thing or a chrome account thing? I think I've logged into my google account on literally every device in my home, so I don't know if I can test that. Or maybe another project allows indexing and connected it to everything else? TimothyJosephWood 23:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually, on second look, I've edited 88 total wikiprojects, so... it may be untelling. But searching your username I do find this. TimothyJosephWood 00:05, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Indexing/noindexing can vary from project to project. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:13, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I searched my username and got my user page on various projects; starting with #1 result: Simple, Commons, Wikisource, Mediawiki, Wiktionary. No occurrence of 'en.wikipedia' in top 100 results. I'm going to add a meta description tag to some of my other user pages as a test and see what happens. I know it'll be out of the main <head> section, but you never know how they parse. Mathglot (talk) 00:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't work; it must escape the tags, they come out as text content. Mathglot (talk) 00:21, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Assuming that you mean this edit, it didn't work because the <head>...</head> and <meta> tags are not whitelisted. As far as I am aware, the only HTML tags that are whitelisted are those that are normally found between <body>...</body> tags - and not all of those, either; the most familiar examples of not being whitelisted are <a>...</a> and <img />. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:46, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, see more at mw:HTML restriction. It links to meta:Help:HTML in wikitext#Permitted HTML but that list is inaccurate. <link> and <meta> are not permitted. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

They actually are permitted with special attributes.[67] <meta /> is generally not permitted and renders as plain text: <meta />. But <meta itemprop="test" content="test" /> is permitted and added to the html instead of rendering here: . <link /> is generally not permitted and renders as plain text: <link />. But <link itemprop="test" href="test" /> is permitted and added to the html instead of rendering here: . PrimeHunter (talk) 11:09, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I have updated the documentation.[68] PrimeHunter (talk) 11:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I searched forme, got this search result"en.wikipedia.org // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PermanentLink/776158918 //We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us."Dlohcierekim (talk) 00:46, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

• Well, User:Xaosflux gives straight up user page, User:Dlohcierekim gives RfA and a lot of commons files, User:Mathglot gives all the things. I guess my question is, as far as en.wiki is concerned, can we just make a bot to tag user pages with noindex? Or is that even necessary? Apparently we have people patrolling user drafts, and I'm not sure if they're justified or not. TimothyJosephWood 01:51, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

  As others have mentioned user pages, like user talk pages, are all noindexed by default. It is still useful to 'patrol' (ie check) new user pages, as noindex is not magic - for example you can always find snippets from my user talk page on Google.[69] Spammers and vandals will still get some value from a noindexed page. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 09:57, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

• @Timothyjosephwood: did you get to read all of Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing yet? It explains most of this. A few points: (1) The settings we are talking about are for the English Wikipedia, all other projects can have their own indexing policies. (2) User: namespaces are NOINDEX by default (3) Wikipedia: namespaces are INDEX by default. (4) User pages MAY be indexed if they are manually tagged as such (like mine is). If you can show an example of something not working as documented, please share with the steps to demonstrate it so we can get it fixed. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:31, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I've poked around in about every way I can think of. My intuition was that maybe there was a template floating around with an INDEX somewhere. Oddly enough, Template:WikEd does show up on Category:Indexed pages, but I... have absolutely no idea why. I don't see anything in the template itself or the doc that would indicate it should be on that list. But it does seem to be adding user pages as indexed when its used (e.g., [70], [71]).

But WikiEd seems to be the only actively used template in the category anyway. So I guess it's possible that some other user page template was doing something similar in the past and it was switched off, but only after being passed around a bit. TimothyJosephWood 14:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The {{WikEd}} documentation transcludes User:Cacycle/wikEd template which added __INDEX__ until I changed it now. Templates are indexed anyway so it doesn't matter. The {{WikEd}} documentation is in noinclude tags so it had no effect on pages transcluding {{WikEd}}, but userspace pages transcluding User:Cacycle/wikEd template were indexed. This is an unexpected effect for the users so I have coded the page to only add __INDEX__ in Cacycle's userspace.[72] PrimeHunter (talk) 14:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Probably purely out of curiosity, if there is an INDEX added, and the page is indexed, but then the INDEX is removed, but no NOINDEX is ever added, it doesn't actually make a difference does it? The INDEX switches the light on, and the absence of a NOINDEX never switches it off? TimothyJosephWood 21:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Timothyjosephwood: Yes, until the search engine spider next crawls the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I would say removing __INDEX__ in userspace does switch off the light. The default for English Wikipedia userspace is for MediaWiki to automatically add the html noindex to the page with <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/>. This always happens if the page doesn't have __INDEX__ in the wikitext. The effect of __INDEX__ in userspace is to remove the default noindex tag. There is no "index tag" in html to say you allow indexing. It's assumed to be allowed when there isn't a noindex. It doesn't matter in userspace whether there is a __NOINDEX__ or nothing. But as Redrose64 says, if a page has been indexed by a search engine when it was allowed then it remains indexed by that search engine until it visits the page again and dicovers indexing is now disallowed. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:58, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

There's a recent thread about the userspace indexing problem here. Yeryry (talk) 12:03, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

That discussion is quite interesting.. I totally missed it. Thanks —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:40, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Inclusion of non-encyclopedic pages in mainspace as a technical workaround

There is an AfD here hinging on the question of whether non-encyclopedic pages can be retained in mainspace as a technical workaround. It's not clear yet how the community feels about this, but it is clear that more attention is needed to the matter. —swpb^T 12:47, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

User:Mr.Z-man's closeAFD script

User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD2.js

Since Mr.Z-man has been gone for a while: when closing as "redirect" (and presumably "delete and redirect", which isn't available to me as a non-admin) for a page that's already a redirect, the script will apply the effect of the close to the redirect target - see this for example. I think it's because when the script was written, the URL you'd get when visiting a redirect was the title of the redirect, whereas now it's the title of the target article. I don't know Javascript, so I'm not sure why this is and how to fix it; could someone see what can be done? My thought is to check if the article on which the script is about to carry out the task is the same as the one it's meant to be for, but I'm not sure how delete-and-redirect would work after that. ansh666 04:00, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

@Ansh666: You should try my new(-ish) script XFDcloser – as well as working at all XfD venues, it will let the user decide whether to apply actions to the redirect target or the redirect itself, if the nominated article is found to be a redirect. This sort of decision can't really be automated, because a script can't tell why an AFD-d article was redirected. It could be a page move e.g. to follow a naming convention, like "Foo (Bar)"→"Foo (bar)", or it could be an out-of-process redirection before the AFD was closed e.g. "Foo (bar)"→"List of bars". In the first case, actions like redirecting or deleting should be applied to the target article; but in the second case, they should be applied to the redirect, not the target. - Evad37 [talk] 05:09, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try it out and see how it goes. I know that many admins still use Mr.Z-man's script though (which has other bugs as well), so hopefully it can be fixed eventually. ansh666 05:16, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I've recently started just redirecting no longer maintained, but widely used user scripts to maintained ones. No one's complained yet, and it fixes tons of problems. If Xfdcloser has a good user base, and is similar enough that people wouldn't be too bothered by a replace, I'm willing to make such a redirect. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:31, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

They seem to be pretty similar; the main user-facing difference is that closeAFD uses the drop-down menus in the upper right and XFDcloser adds links on the discussion page itself, next to the nomination templates. ansh666 00:02, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: That is the main difference, but its the same fundamental concept – fill out and choose options from a form, and then the script will automate the required edits/actions. As for userbase, these users have the script installed, and it is regularly used by Czar, Primefac, Tavix, and others. Plus I'm pretty responsive to bug reports and feature requests, see WT:XFDC and its archive. - Evad37 [talk] 02:27, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Evad37: - I just had the opportunity to try your script for a procedural close, but it didn't seem to give me the choice of where to apply the actions - there was an option for whether to carry out the tasks or not (which I chose) and then when it detected the page was a redirect it offered me a choice of either proceeding or cancelling the entire process. I proceeded and it added the old-afd-multi to the target page. Never mind, looked through the code and I guess I read the prompt wrong - not proceeding will offer a choice between using the redirect or cancelling altogether. Thanks! ansh666 23:57, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I should really get around to coding a single confirmation prompt with three buttons - Evad37 [talk] 02:27, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

• Evad's script is the best. I've moved on from the others. (If they're not working properly, I'd boldly deprecate them.) czar 03:09, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Allowing user creation on blocked IP address

A user is unable to create an account on Commons due to a range block. I would like this user to be able to create an account, and I provide IP block exempt. Is this possible? See User talk:Xandtha, c:User talk:101.127.231.19. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 03:25, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

WP:ACC. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:08, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Since the account already exists, ACC cannot create it. Xandtha could log in to Commons from an IP address outside the blocked range once to get an attached account. If that is not possible, you could temporarily modify the block to allow account creation so that Xandtha can attach an account at Commons. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:05, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Recent Changes namespace

After finding out I could save filters on Recent Changes. I had the namespace set to "Article", but sometimes when I click "Show" it automatically sets the namespace to "all" and gives me changes for non-articles too. (but it does follow my filter) So the question either is "what's causing the bug" or "how do I get around the bug". -- MrHumanPersonGuy (talk) 00:23, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

PS. The bug also makes it to where it will only fetch 50 revisions from the last 7 days. (when I click on a number it still bolds the default number) -- MrHumanPersonGuy (talk) 01:11, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

PSS. When I type into the tag filter, the bug also automatically empties it and goes on to fetch results that include those that don't have the tag in particular. -- MrHumanPersonGuy (talk) 01:19, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

 Note:Moved from teahouseDoABarrelRoll.dev(Chat!)(Contrib's)(Email)(???) 01:13, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

• @MrHumanPersonGuy and DoABarrelRoll.dev: See mw:Talk:Edit Review Improvements/New filters for edit review, it's a known bug with the current beta ORES filters. Disable the beta if you need to filter RC by namespace. You can still get basic ORES highlighting without the beta enabled, and filter results to damaging-only, configured in the watchlist/RC prefs. Murph9000 (talk) 06:16, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Number of GA reviews

Is it possible to find out which articles Wikipedia thinks I have reviewed for GA? When I start a new review, it says 39 on the WP:GAN page, but this appears to be about 6 more than I think I have done. Bob1960evens (talk) 12:32, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I noticed the same thing myself. The count has been off at least the last two years. Last time I did a GA review, it said I had done 31 prior reviews. In fact, I keep my own log that shows I had 23 reviews up to that review. — Maile (talk) 13:26, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Likewise, I keep a log, which is how I spotted it was wrong. Presumably there is nothing that can be done, then. Thanks. Bob1960evens (talk) 15:41, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

The counts are made by Legobot and listed at User:GA bot/Stats but I doubt a manual update would be respected. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:10, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

The counts are indeed maintained by Legobot (talk · contribs), but it sometimes gets them wrong. There may be several reasons for this, but I have noticed two in particular. One is a misformatting of the {{GA nominee}} template; the other is people attempting to manually update pages that should be left for Legobot, which becomes confused, and can double-count an action. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:44, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Possibly related: Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 21#Legobot error?; Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 10#Legobot error: Good article nominations. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:44, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

templatecount

Is anyone maintaining the templatecount tool on Tool Labs? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 15:27, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Jarry1250: Pppery 15:35, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

This is this. @Krinkle: - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 16:30, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Template inside external link didn't quite work right

See this edit. Where I wrote

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:King_of_Hearts&diff=prev&oldid=783623376 your comment to {{U|King of Hearts}}]

the rendered text shows the link ending after "to", and the "King of Hearts" part not being in the link. Is this a problem with how the template is defined, or just working as expected? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:36, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@RoySmith: You can't have an internal link in the middle of an external link. {{U|username}} generates a link to the user, e.g. {{U|RoySmith}} produces RoySmith. The parser is doing its best to guess what you wanted, so giving you both links, split at the point of impossibility. It's not just a MediaWiki thing, HTML does not provide a way to have a link somehow embedded inside a link. I'm not sure about "working as expected", as it's essentially invalid markup, but it's certainly working about as well as it could ever hope to work. You can use templates inside external link wiki markup, but they can't generate anything which would be invalid as contents of a HTML <a> element. Murph9000 (talk) 16:50, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

That makes perfect sense, thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:02, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

It was explicitly forbidden in HTML 4, but not in HTML 5, with the implication that HTML5 permits links inside links. This being so, our own notifications system actually makes use of this:

<div>
  <a href="(url for markasread)">
    <div>
      <div>
        <div>‪
          Example mentioned you on <strong>‪(pagename)</strong> in "<strong>(section name)‬</strong>".
        </div>
        First part of post...
      </div>
      <div>
        <div>
          <a href="(url to user page)">Example</a>
        </div>
        <div>
          <a href="(url of diff)">View changes</a>
        </div>
      </div>(time)
    </div>
  </a>
</div>

- this is heavily simplified, but it does illustrate that the outer <a>...</a> element encloses a <div>...</div> that ultimately contains two more <a>...</a> elements. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:26, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh, ok, I stand corrected. I knew HTML5 threw away quite a few rules, but didn't realise that was one of them. Murph9000 (talk) 23:02, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

An anchor inside an anchor is an "abuse" or violation of the html5 recommendation, and the reason is pretty simple. It becomes ambiguous as to what should happen when a user clicks on anything. To give an example, if a link surrounds a video, and the user clicks on the video surface area, what should happen, should the video play or should the browser navigate to a new page? The same applies to nested links, as theoretically the outer one should take precedence.

Also, some clarification:

1. The Html5 spec is a recommendation
2. Browser vendors (and no-one really) aren't forced to follow the html5 spec (there's no internet police to force them).
3. Any interactive content (e.g. anchor, video) inside an anchor is disallowed by the html5 spec. (http://w3c.github.io/html/single-page.html#interactive-content). Indeed, users in talk pages violate the spec every time they use "dl" to indent their comments.
4. Mediawiki developers are abusing html5 spec, and taking advantage of the fact that browser vendors are not following its recommendation to implement their notifications (using nested anchors).

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.90.57 (talk) 23:47, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Actually, this caught my curiosity, so I did a little digging. Both HTML5 and HTML 5.1 from W3C prohibit it in the content model for the a element. HTML5 says Transparent, but there must be no interactive content descendant. HTML5.1 strengthens that to Transparent, but there must be no interactive content or a element descendants. The other fork of the standard similarly restricts it, currently with the stronger restriction from HTML 5.1. Murph9000 (talk) 23:49, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

References

RfC Announce: Wikimedia referrer policy

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical) § RfC Announce: Wikimedia referrer policy

 – Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:49, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

In February of 2016 the Wikimedia foundation started sending information to all of the websites we link to that allow the owner of the website (or someone who hacks the website, or law enforcement with a search warrant / subpoena) to figure out what Wikipedia page the user was reading when they clicked on the external link.

The WMF is not bound by Wikipedia RfCs, but we can use an advisory-only RfC to decide what information, if any, we want to send to websites we link to and then put in a request to the WMF. I have posted such an advisory-only RfC, which may be found here:

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy

Please comment so that we can determine the consensus of the Wikipedia community on this matter. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:45, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Unless I'm very much mistaken, the standard functionality of the web has been providing full referrer information since the beginnings of Wikipedia, not starting in Feb 2016. Maybe they did something to disable it between the forced HTTPS and Feb 2016, but prior to forced HTTPS it would have been provided per the long standing (back to the origins of the web) default behaviour (excepting the subset of situations where it would be blocked by default). WMF apparently made a change which enabled it for the subset of situations where it was previously blocked by default, they did not change it from completely disabled to completely enabled. Murph9000 (talk) 00:32, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Erm… you might want to actually read the RFC on which you're commenting before commenting. In particular the part that says Before 2011, Wikipedia was an HTTP site with full URLs sent in the referrer. In 2011, Wikipedia added support for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). Users who accessed Wikipedia with HTTP still sent full URLs in the referrer. Users who accessed Wikipedia through HTTPS and clicked on an HTTPS external link also sent full URLs in the referrer. Users who accessed Wikipedia through HTTPS and clicked on an HTTP external link sent no referrer information. In 2015, Wikipedia stopped offering HTTP and only offered access to the site with HTTPS. It's not like this is some kind of revelation; what has changed is that we're now aware that spammers and government agencies are aggressively harvesting referred data. ‑ Iridescent 00:47, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I did read it. I'm commenting on the wording used to present it here, which describes it as something completely new in Feb 2016, rather than an ancient standard web feature which got a config tweak. Murph9000 (talk) 00:54, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

script hickups?

Does anyone experience 'script hickups' with a.o. Twinkle? Sometimes when I load a contributions page I do not have the 'more' and 'TW' dropdown menus (vector skin / Chrome browser), and one of my user scripts is sometimes not loading through to the next part it needs to execute. Things then tend to work after reloading the page one or two times. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:48, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Which parts of mw:Help:Locating broken scripts have you done so far? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I haven't tried turning things off (which would for sure not make them show up, thing is the whole 'More' menu is gone together with the 'TW' menu). I have tried debugging my script (which made me think that there was something bigger at play), also in debugging mode it sometimes does not come through. Moreover, it is erratic, generally they show but only sometimes they do not. Seeing that there are not a lot of people saying 'me too' suggests that it is something installed on my account. Will run the debugger again, maybe an awkward line in one of my scripts. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:38, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: What errors and warnings do you get in your JS console when you encounter the issue (ignore various CSS warnings you may see, they are mostly due to hacks to cope with MS-IE's outdated garbage)? My guess regarding the erratic behaviour is that one of the scripts you are using is missing a required mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.something' ) wrapper, causing it to intermittently fail if it happens to complete loading prior to something else which loads the necessary module. Some modules were loaded by default until relatively recently, and scripts which have not been updated can fail now that they are not being automatically pre-loaded. Here's a generic outer wrapper for scripts which isolates them from global namespace, loads various MW modules, and waits for document ready:

/**
 * Example generic script wrapper, with basic debugging
 */
( function ( mw, $ ) {
	'use strict';
	var FILE = 'User:Example/example.js';
	console.info( FILE, 'starting' );

	$.when(
		mw.loader.using( [
			// Modules your code uses, for example:
			'mediawiki.Title',
			'mediawiki.Uri',
			'mediawiki.util',
		] ),
		$.ready
	).done( function () {
		console.log( FILE, 'ready' );

		// Your code here
		// Listed modules have been loaded
		// Document is ready (DOM fully loaded)

		console.log( FILE, 'done' );
	} );
} )( mediaWiki, jQuery );

Murph9000 (talk) 05:42, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

N.B. Not everything should necessarily wait for $.ready, for example loading other scripts should not wait for document ready (unless those scripts are broken and that is being used as a workaround for them). Murph9000 (talk) 05:47, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: Ah, that may be the problem, I'll check the console when it has the hickup. Cheers. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:33, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: Whee .. errors:

load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:176 ReferenceError: addPortletLink is not defined ReferenceError: addPortletLink is not defined

at eval (eval at <anonymous> (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:4), <anonymous>:2:140)

at HTMLDocument.<anonymous> (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:177)

at fire (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:45)

at Object.add [as done] (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:45)

at jQuery.fn.init.jQuery.fn.ready (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:49)

at jQuery.fn.init (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:41)

at jQuery (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:1)

at load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:177

at eval (eval at <anonymous> (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:4), <anonymous>:2:5)

at eval (<anonymous>)

Which happens at a missing 'More' and 'TW' page and

index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:179 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'hasClass' of null

at index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:179

at fire (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:45)

at Object.fireWith (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:46)

at Object.fire (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:175)

at HTMLDocument.eval (eval at <anonymous> (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:1), <anonymous>:1:9452)

at fire (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:45)

at Object.fireWith [as resolveWith] (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:46)

at Function.ready (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:49)

at completed (load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki|mediawiki.legacy.wikibits&only=scripts&skin…:49)

Which happens when I load VPT. Just pasting here, I'll try to digest that as well. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:21, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: Ok, first thing (which may be the second error above) that seems worth looking at. You are loading ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js at the top of User:Beetstra/vector.js (assuming you are using the Vector skin). We have MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js in our locally installed gadgets. I suggest removing the Russian one (which does not seem to have a mw.loader wrapper in it), and using our local one, unless you have a good reason for that.

Next, and possibly the first error above, is your addOnloadHook( … addPortletLink() ) at the bottom of your vector.js. I suggest replacing it with the following:

$.when(
	mw.loader.using( [ 'mediawiki.util' ] ),
	$.ready
).done( function () {
	if ( mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Contributions' ) {
		mw.util.addPortletLink(
			'p-cactions',
			'javascript:hidetopcontrib()',
			'show/hide top',
			'ca-hidetop',
			"Show/hide pages for which you're the top contributor"
		);
	}
	// You can use this loader / ready wrapper for any additional
	// mw.util.addPortletLink() calls in the future.
} );

That subsection was certainly in need of modernisation. I've given you the minimal modernisation to address the likely issue of using a bare addPortletLink() instead of a wrapped mw.util.addPortletLink(). If I was going for a more complete overhaul, I'd also wrap the function above it in a global immediate function, and change from a javascript:hidetopcontrib() URL to a click event handler. The minimal overhaul addresses the things which are quite likely to be problematic, the other bits are less likely to be an immediate issue.

Now, because the errors are not entirely precise, in terms of pinpointing the problems, there's some guesswork above, but the fixes I'm suggesting are basically consistent with the errors I'm seeing. It's also not guaranteed that those are the only problematic bits of code in your JS environment, just what I'm seeing right now.

Murph9000 (talk) 04:34, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: I've replaced the first one, and a first reasonably fail-save way of triggering the lack of menus (go to my contributions, click a diff, click 'back' to go back to contributions - first they are there, when I come back they are often gone) seems now to work. If I have continuing problems, I will see whether I have to solve the second one. Thanks so far! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:22, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Beetstra: Good, I'm glad there's some progress, and happy to help. It's guaranteed that addOnloadHook() and addPortletLink() will be going away at some point (see mw:ResourceLoader/Legacy JavaScript), and they have been deprecated for quite a while now. Cautious updating is perfectly reasonable, but you'll need to deal with those eventually (could be as soon as the next big update, could be longer, I'm not certain of the timescale). Murph9000 (talk) 05:39, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Changes failing to reflect

My most recent changes to the following 2 articles fail to reflect:

• Kettle Restaurants — Removed website link still appears in infobox.
• Baylor University sexual assault scandal — Parameter "access-date" corrected to "accessdate," but errors still reflect in References section.

Am I doing something wrong? →Wordbuilder (talk) 18:24, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

The first one comes from Wikidata, and has done for almost a year now, following this edit by Codename Lisa (talk · contribs). As for the second, there is no difference between |accessdate= and |access-date= - the message does not concern the parameter name, but the value that is being fed in. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) #1 - the link is still on Wikidata: D:Q6395529.

#2 - the problem is not in the hyphen in access-date, but in the contents: dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format need leading zeroes. Daß Wölf 18:31, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, both. I appreciate the assistance. →Wordbuilder (talk) 18:33, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Main Page views oddity

It was suggested at this discussion that VPT may be a better venue, so here goes. The average views that the main page receives has shown an odd pattern over the last few months. The views average ~25M a day till 18 March, then 20M a day till 24 May, and 16M a day after that; and the declines happen stepwise, seemingly separate from the day-to-day variation. Personally, I find this quite strange. Is this an artifact of the counter? Or is this something else? Vanamonde (talk) 02:25, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

The first decline is related to mobile app views [73], which suddenly jumped up into the millions about 20 Dec 16, before a just as sudden decline about 24 Mar 17. - Evad37 [talk] 03:50, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-24

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

Recent changes

• Some wikis have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. When you write an edit summary there you can now see how many bytes you have left before the summary is too long. [74]
• When you search on Wikipedia you can now find pages on other Wikimedia projects that could be relevant. You see them next to the search results. [75]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will soon be able to get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account. You can test this on the test wiki. This will only work if they fail to log in to your account. [76]
• Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron now works on all Wikimedia projects. [77]
• Administrators can soon search for deleted page titles and find results that are similar to what they searched for. Today the search only finds pages that are exactly the same as what you search for. This is to make it easier to find pages when you don't know the exact title. Administrators on Arabic, Catalan, English, Persian, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian Wikipedia and on mediawiki.org can test this by adding &fuzzy=1 to the end of the web address when looking at Special:Undelete. [78][79]

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

15:29, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Can this huge canned edit summary issue with Wikipedia be fixed?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T71168

When Wikipedia previews your edit on mobile, there is a text box with your edit summary. It has "example: Fixed typo, added content". This leads to over 400,000 actions on the edit filter, and that's just "Fixed typo", "added content", or two word edit summaries. There is and will be much more, including "content", "added facts", etc. The majority of these canned edit summaries are unconstructive edits. This misleads people, which is what I hate. So instead of making this problem worse, can someone change "Example: Fixed typo, added content" to "Describe your changes" or something? That is what it reads on visual editor: "Describe your changes". That is why there is (almost) no canned edit summary issues on Visual editor. Someone please make the mobile edit look that way. Wikipedia will look significantly better because of less misleading edit summaries. Is there anywhere else I can put these comments, too? What I suggested here will help Wikipedia look so much better. Examples

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_M%C3%BCller&diff=783988446&oldid=783362248

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Captain_Underpants&diff=784001544&oldid=783954424

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=In_the_House_(TV_series)&diff=784067332&oldid=784029543

Wikipedia vandalism may still exist after these changes are made, but at least they don't have these edit summaries. No more "facts" "content" etc. 68.228.254.131 (talk) 05:38, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

We could configure the default to be "Vandalised page", or "Unconstructive edit", then they would no longer be misleading for a significant number of cases where they are used. I pretty much have a mental filter which translates them into that anyway (but do still check the diff and occasionally do find a constructive edit which just hasn't been correctly described). Murph9000 (talk) 05:42, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Murph9000 (talk · contribs) Why not "Describe your changes"? That looks best, especially it's like that on Visual editor. Having examples is what causes this issue. 68.228.254.131 (talk) 05:47, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

This is tracked at phab:T71168. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:44, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I have done this before, but those edits were constructive and not having a lying summary. So these false ones need to stop somehow. Having an example will not work, like Murph9000 suggested. Also, I know there are other issues, but let's stop making Wikipedia edit history pages look bad because of these things. This is 2017, not August 2014, where over 400,000 (and counting - that's only edit filter; in fact, probably over a million including others) have been made, and we should stop this from being the #1 triggered edit filter.68.228.254.131 (talk) 15:50, 7 June 2017 (UTC)4

To be honest, vandalism can even be reduced because many pages receiving high amounts of disruptive edits have summaries like "Typo" "Content" etc.68.228.254.131 (talk) 15:52, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

The real problem in this edit histories is not the canned summaries, but the unconstructive edits beneath a significant proportion of them. Removing the canned summaries won't help at all with reducing vandalism. Murph9000 (talk) 15:59, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not saying it will significantly reduce vandalism, maybe a little. But my main point is they change "Example: Fixed typo, added content" to "Explain your changes".68.228.254.131 (talk) 16:10, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

A little late to the party, but I'm in favour of getting rid of this altogether. It seems that IPs not just use these for vandalism, but also often just click them randomly when making any minor constructive change (e.g. here or here), to the degree that this kind of edit summary is as meaningless as no summary. Daß Wölf 01:12, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

DYKcheck is broken

The tool seems to be broken and now it's a bit harder to check eligibility for DYK articles, particularly those that were expanded. Could someone try and fix the problem? The tool's creator hasn't been active much lately. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:10, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: For the start, linking to the tool and describing how it is broken would be welcome. --Malyacko (talk) 09:50, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Shubinator's talk page thread on this. Looks like he just tried a fix, and the tool seems to be working correctly now. — Maile (talk) 11:50, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

"Thank" feature

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53303

Is there any way the "thank" feature can be ghosted after it's used? I'm guilty of forgetting I already thanked someone for an edit and end up thanking them 2ce or more. ^{Atsme📞📧} 14:56, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

For me it already changes "thank" to an unlinked "thanked" shortly after the page has loaded. But it only happens in a recent test and not for old thanks. At [80] you can see who you thanked when, but not for what. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:16, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

A double Thank is possible, see phab:T53303. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:37, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

What I'm hoping for is a feature that prevents an editor from being thanked twice for the same post. I'm not tech savvy enough to know how to ask for it properly but what I'm thinking (hoping for) is that when you go into View History, and there's a particular edit you want to thank someone for, and you click on thank, it stays ghosted in the View History so that you can't go back a day or two later and thank them again. I guess I could check in my thank log, but it would be super nice if the thank feature simply stayed ghosted once it's used for that edit. Just curious...can we add a good luck symbol just for vandals like so: (undo 🖕🏼| thank ) ^{Atsme📞📧} 21:07, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Let me clarify - a double Thank is possible, but it is not designed to be; that is what phab:T53303 is about.

@PrimeHunter: The thanks log has not changed: it has always recorded who thanked whom, and has never recorded the "why". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:44, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Why doesn't MathML display?

On any article with <math> tags, I see SVGPNG images, despite having "MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools)" selected in my preferences. The image that displays has the class "mwe-math-fallback-image-inline", suggesting that I'm seeing the SVGPNG fallback decribed in the settings. I don't see why I should be though: there are MathML tags on the page too, with display: none set and the class mwe-math-mathml-a11y. If I get rid of that, then I can see the MathML content absolutely fine. Why are these classes being applied? User:GKFX^talk 14:19, 13 June 2017 (UTC) (edited 21:43, 13 June 2017 (UTC))

@GKFX: What browser? --Izno (talk) 14:25, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Firefox 53.0 on Linux. User:GKFX^talk 14:27, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@GKFX: Could you please provide a link to a test case? Also, any browser add-ons involved? --Malyacko (talk) 20:29, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I really do see this on any page that uses <math> tags, so any such page would be a good test case, if that's what you mean. Euler–Mascheroni constant is a page I've just double-checked shows this. I see the same issue without browser add-ons. User:GKFX^talk 20:37, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

The first math image (in the lead) is https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/3f317452f7f808f2ab7d786ed34cfcb5904bdae9 for me in Firefox 53/macOS 10.12.5, which I think means that I'm seeing SVG instead of PNG (except where the {{math}} template is used). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, it is an SVG and not a PNG. Apologies for the confusion. That said, the MathML is definitely still hidden. User:GKFX^talk 21:43, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

So I have this little snippet in my vector.css file. I don't know where or who originated it (it was certainly in a Math-related discussion), but it should fix the problem in Firefox:

/* hack for svg -> mathml in firefox */
.mwe-math-fallback-image-inline {
    display: none !important;
}

.mwe-math-mathml-a11y {
    display:inherit;
    position: inherit;
    clip:inherit;
    width:inherit;
    height:inherit;
    opacity:inherit
}

--Izno (talk) 03:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: Thanks very much for that code, I will add it to my vector.css. I just feel that it shouldn't be necessary. User:GKFX^talk 11:52, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

@GKFX: (Maybe you really see this on any page that uses <math> tags, but if you want to allow others to try reproducing, others might want to click on a link instead of having to search themselves for any page that uses <math> tags.) Euler–Mascheroni constant at the top displays in two lines an SVG image here. I'm running Firefox 53 on Linux. On Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering I have set "MathML with SVG or PNG fallback". Hence cannot reproduce. Maybe check the Network tab in Firefox' Developer Tools if the SVG image is actually delivered to your machine? --Malyacko (talk) 07:33, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

@Malyacko: I'm afraid my original report was wrong (it's now corrected). I do see SVG, not PNG. However, what I'd like to see is MathML, and I think the CSS currently being applied to hide it on accessibility grounds (going by the a11y in the class name) is wrong and should be removed for all users who don't have accessibility issues. Clearly Izno can reproduce since he's obtained a CSS snippet to fix it. Thanks for your help, User:GKFX^talk 11:52, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

The snippet came from a discussion on Help talk:Displaying a formula#MathML broken again?, I worked out what was needed.--Salix alba (talk): 22:16, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

When I look at Euler–Mascheroni constant, I see the svg image. In preferences, MathML... is checked. In the page-source I find this line at the top of the MathML markup:

<dd><span class="mwe-math-element"><span class="mwe-math-mathml-inline mwe-math-mathml-a11y" style="display: none;"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" >

This in Chrome 58.0.3029.110 so perhaps not a browser specific issue.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:40, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math#Viewing_math or https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T147319 . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.84.235 (talk) 15:07, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Help with mw-datatable

Moved from User talk:Redrose64 § Help with mw-datatable

 – Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you again Redrose, but would you mind taking a look at this technical issue?

1	2
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.	A
	B
C	D
E	F

Per Help:Table#mw-datatable, this style of table formatting allows for row highlighting, yet there is a slight problem concerning the rowspan option. If one hovers cell C then cell D is also highlighted. Yet highlighting the rowspanned Lorem ipsum text only highlights cell A not B. I may be missing something here. I'd much appreciate your thoughts on this. Warm regards.--Nevé–selbert 18:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

The rowapan= attribute doesn't actually merge rows; the Lorem cell still belongs to just one row. This should be clear from the markup: each row has two cells, except for the middle one which has just one cell - in the second column. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:25, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Could there be a way to hack or tweak the table so that all three are highlighted? Thanks for the help anyway.--Nevé–selbert 22:48, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I really don't think so. I'm going to send this to WP:VPT though, just in case. But don't hold your breath. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:22, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

The below is more than a bit shoddy (add more CSS if you want it nicer), but works:

1	2
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.	style="vertical-align:top"| A B
C	D
E	F

The relevant code being: | {{Lorem ipsum}} ||style="vertical-align:top"| A<hr/>B User:GKFX^talk 23:38, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

A and B are no longer distinct cells, and that is an accessibility problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:50, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Other ways to set a referrer policy

[ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Referrer-Policy ] says:

Other ways to set a referrer policy:

• A referrerpolicy attribute on an <a>, <area>, <img>, <iframe>, or <link> element.
• The noreferrer link relation on an a, area, or link element (rel="noreferrer").

This comes from [ https://www.w3.org/TR/referrer-policy/ ],section 4.3.

I am trying to figure out which browsers allow setting a referrer policy on a standard HTML A link, but I can't seem to find any references that say which browsers support it. Does anyone know the answer? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:15, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

http://caniuse.com/#search=noreferrer Max Semenik (talk) 18:37, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5743723954569216 But that's only last time chrome updated that table of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:11, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I found that Firefox 50 and higher support this attribute as well. It's still marked as experimental however (which usually means it can still disappear if it's unpopular). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:48, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Also of interest would be Content Security Policy —PaleoNeonate - 20:27, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Nested categories

Are there guidelines about nested categories?

I was looking at Category:Assassinated British politicians and see it has 4 sub categories including Category:Assassinated English politicians. The 4 sub categories only have around 50 entries which along with the ~10 at the top level would comfortably fit onto one page.

Is there a way of getting an exploded view of all the articles in one list?

Is it right that a person should be both in a sub-category and in the top level category (eg Richard Sharples)?

-- SGBailey (talk) 07:04, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Exploded view: Try WP:Petscan. As for sub- vs. top-level-category, take a read through of WP:CAT#Category tree organization. ---Izno (talk) 11:57, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Possible issue with 2FA token checking

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T168064
Resolved

Hi all, not sure if anyone else has experienced this but when trying to log in on a new computer all my 2FA tokens are saying "Invalid". This has also happened to Chrissymad, and as she kept her scratch codes (unlike me, derp) she tried using them to log in, however they too are apparently "Invalid" ~TNT^Public 13:13, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Not sure if this is related, but Phabricator is down as well. I'm getting the following message:

Upgrade MySQL Schema
Run the storage upgrade script to upgrade databases (host "m3-master.eqiad.wmnet" is out of date). Missing patches: phabricator:20170528.maniphestdupes.php, phabricator:20170612.repository.image.01.sql.
Run this command:

phabricator/ $ ./bin/storage upgrade

—k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 13:25, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Nevermind, it's fixed and seems to be unrelated. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 13:32, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

One for the notebook here, if your phone or app's time is out by more than a couple of minutes, a TOTP client will give invalid codes. On Google Authenticator, the fix is Google Authenticator --> Settings --> Time correction for codes --> Sync now ~TNT^Public 14:11, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

One Click archiver

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical) § One Click archiver

 – Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Is itpossible for someone to pop over to my talk and give an opinion? Much appreciated if possible. Cheers! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 15:44, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

The discussion referred to is now at User talk:Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi/Archive 8#One-click archiving. Graham87 03:23, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes. And is now, by the nature of archiving, closed. Many thanks, — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 16:12, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Reporting - Subject bar template, Wikivoyage override, not working

Greetings, When I added the "Subject bar" template to article University of Notre Dame, the override "v-search" still defaults to article name, and is ignoring "South Bend" search value. Wondering if there is something that I'm missing? Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:53, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

@JoeHebda:  Fixed Your syntax on voy-search was invalid. I also removed d-search, as I'm fairly certain it's not intended to be used with the entity ID like that. Murph9000 (talk) 15:05, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Murph9000, Thanks for catching my typo. For d-search, the article # parameter is needed to return that specific UND article, otherwise it shows a number of UND and related entries. Cheers! — JoeHebda • (talk) 18:10, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

@JoeHebda: Well, in that case, I don't think you should be including the Wikidata search at all (in that template). The entity is already directly linked from the navigation sidebar, linking it as a not-a-search in a search box does not seem appropriate to me. Murph9000 (talk) 18:14, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: Thanks for the feedback. I removed the d-search from subject bar. — JoeHebda • (talk) 18:30, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Deletion nominations not appearing in page log

Deletion nominations originating from Twinkle are not appearing in the page log. For instance Endrit Braimllari is currently at AFD and the nomination is listed in the logs. However, Karl Holluba, also currently at AFD, is not listed in the logs. The difference is that the first example was nominated through Page Curation and the second one was nominated through Twinkle. The same thing is happening with CSD and Prod, and possibly other Twinkle processes. Is this a bug with Twinkle, with the Wikimedia software, or with the templates being used? In other words, where is the best place to report it? SpinningSpark 17:42, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

For comparison, the diffs are Endrit Braimllari which is in the Deletion tag log [81] and Karl Holluba which is not.[82] Tallulah (singer) was nominated manually and isn't logged either.[83] It looks like the deciding factor is whether page curation is used. According to mw:Page Curation#Log:Marked for Deletion it shouldn't be necessary to use page curation. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:45, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

AFAIK only page curation has ever been able to use the log. It was added to the documentation in 2012 by Jorm, but this feature request suggests that the documentation is incorrect. — JJMC89 (T·C) 22:25, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Odd cite error

Before an editor made this edit, the references displayed in the Notes okay, now they don't. Reflist 30em looks okay. Some hidden control characters lurking somewhere? CV9933 (talk) 19:18, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

A purge fixed it. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:21, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah thanks - that one does catch me out from time to time. regards CV9933 (talk) 20:43, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Template:Periodic table borders

Why Periodic table legend displays improperly on mobile view (right border is not complete and box is not centered)? --5.43.106.119 (talk) 21:34, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Which legend? I see several but no good match to your description. What is your browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 08:51, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Here, next to the lanthanides and actinides there is a right border but is broken on vertical between Oganesson and Lutetium and below Lawrencium, all the way to the Unknown chemical properties in the legend where there is no *bottom border either (*down below Oganesson and right to the Unknown chemical properties cell).

The problem I described occurs in Chrome but not Firefox. In IE11 there are no borders at all, only 4 above and below three main legend rows and 1 extra border below legend (so there is double border below bottom row of the legend). All browsers are updated to latest versions (Chrome: 59.0.3071.104; Firefox: 54.0; IE: 11.0.9600.18665). --5.43.106.119 (talk) 09:33, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

There was an issue where a small minority of the table rows were 19 cells wide, and the remainder were 20. I've changed it so that they are all 20 cells wide; that's HTML table cells, nothing to do with the scientific column count just the web markup. Does that fix it for you? Murph9000 (talk) 09:50, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, now borders are complete in Chrome. With IE it's same, no borders, but it's not important as this browser is not used very often. --5.43.106.119 (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope!! (Referrers again)

At Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#A solution that satisfies privacy and GLAM requirements? (which is a section of Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Wikimedia referrer policy I have an editor who claimed without evidence that a particular feature is supported only by the chrome browser. my research suggests that it is supported by all major browsers, but the ref I am basing that on is is to searchengineland, and I really am hoping to find a better source. I could really use some technical help here.

In particular, if Wikipedia puts the following in the head of the HTML...

<meta name="referrer" content="same-origin">

...thus sending no referrer information when a user clicks on a link to a non-Wikipedia page, and then Wikipedia adds the following to selected links...

<a href="http://example.com" referrerpolicy="always">

..to override the meta tag in the head, what browsers support this?

According to [ https://caniuse.com/#feat=referrer-policy ] Referrer Policy is supported by Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, iOS Safari, Android Browser, and Chrome for Android and (maybe) Microsoft Edge. (It is not supported by Internet Explorer, but because Internet Explorer doesn't support the referrer meta tag or referrerpolicy on the link, IE will always have the default HTTP/HTTPS behavior no matter what we do with our meta tags and links.)

According to [ http://searchengineland.com/need-know-referrer-policy-276185 ], There are many ways you can deliver the referrer policy:

• Via the Referrer-Policy HTTP header
• Via a meta element with a name of referrer
• Via a referrerpolicy content attribute on an a, area, img, iframe, or link element (emphasis added)
• Via the noreferrer link relation (rel=) on an a, area, or link element
• Implicitly, via inheritance

I have searched and searched and cannot find a shred of evidence that this is only supported by chrome, but I am also lacking good, strong evidence that it is supported by other browsers.

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope!! :) --Guy Macon (talk) 13:35, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

We can crowdsource evidence: editors with the different browsers can use browser developer tools to look at what gets sent out when they click on a link with the attribute in question. If someone could create a suitable example page for everyone to use, it would help. (On a side note, my understanding of the cited "Can I Use" page is that it is explicitly talking about the meta element, and not an attribute on the link.) isaacl (talk) 00:16, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I will not answer this question as I think i'm the "an editor" in question. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:40, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Let's review, shall we? First you refused to back up your claim[84] with any sort of citation or other evidence, then another editor[85] provided multiple sources that refute your claim, and your response was to... not answer the question?[86] And to strike your !vote?[87] Your attempt to withdraw from the dispute is admirable, but it would be a better strategy to do so without any final, snarky "parting shot" comments. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:00, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Other_ways_to_set_a_referrer_policy —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:18, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Nothing in the link you just posted contains even a shred of evidence supporting your claim that "Only Chrome supports this attribute so far, and none of the other vendors have indicated they are going to be adding this any time soon."^{[Citation Needed]}"

[ https://caniuse.com/#search=referrer ] says that all major browsers support rel="noreferrer" on links. While it doesn't specifically say whether the same browsers support referrerpolicy="always" on links, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and your claim that no major browsers other than chrome follow the spec at [ https://www.w3.org/TR/referrer-policy/ ] really sounds like something you just made up to win an argument.

The fact that you cannot provide a shred of evidence supporting your claim adds weight to my theory thhat you just made it up. That being said, I could be wrong. Post evidence supporting the specific claim you made and I will admit that I was wrong and apologize. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:56, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-25

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

Problems

• ORES had some problems on 13 June between 16:00 and 19:40 UTC. It has now been fixed. [88]

Changes this week

• irc.wikimedia.org has to be rebooted. This will probably happen on 21 June. It may be postponed. Some tools use this to get the recent changes feed. They will not work when it is down. [89]
• Special:PageData will be an entry point for machine-readable page data. [90]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 June. It will be on all wikis from 22 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• CSS in templates will be stored in a separate page in the future. You can now see how the TemplateStyles extension works on Beta Labs.

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

15:44, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Regex "don't match string"

While it's fairly easy to match a string in regex, it's quite hard to not match it.

For instance, let's say <ABC> marks the start of a string and <XYZ>, and I want to match the first part in

<ABC>abc<def>[9-7];<t><XYZ>

How do I do that? My mind thinks <ABC>[^(<XYZ>)]+<XYZ> (e.g. match <ABC>, match NOT <XYZ>, match <XYZ>), but that's not valid regex. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:31, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The all-characters character . should work. If you want to grab all text up to the first instance of <XYZ>, use \<ABC\>.*?\<XYZ\>. If you want to grab all text up to the last instance of <XYZ> (including all intervening <XYZ>s), use \<ABC\>.*\<XYZ\>, without the ? from my first example. Of course, the best practice is, if possible, try to eliminate the use of . by enumerating all the potential characters. . can also be set to either include or exclude \r\n characters, depending on your application.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:50, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Negative lookahead assertions — (?!pattern to not match) — can be used to ensure a specific pattern does not match, but they can be tricky to use as they do not consume any characters from the string being examined. Using a non-greedy wildcard as suggested by Tom.Reding will often be easier. isaacl (talk) 19:42, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

The negative lookahead might just be what is needed. I'll test that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:48, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to work. Trying "doi:(?!<\/ref>)" on doi:10.1324/12345<asdf;12-12>-asd[4]2;3245</ref> and I get no match. Trying "doi:.*(?!<\/ref>)" matches the whole thing, rather than just the doi:10.1324/12345<asdf;12-12>-asd[4]2;3245 part. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:52, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Got it, "doi:.*(?=<\/ref>)" works. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Your first pattern doesn't work because the lookahead assertion doesn't consume any characters, so it's only going to match the doi:. The second matches everything first and greedily, so the negative lookahead at the end doesn't matter. The third pattern matches greedily, which may or may not be what you want; you can use .*? for a non-greedy match.

To consume characters while checking for the negative lookahead assertion at each step, you need something like ((?!<\/ref>).)* . Warning: I didn't test that; just something off the top of my head. But checking for a trailing sentinel value (as you've done with the positive lookahead assertion, and Tom.Reding did with his example) is typically easier to understand. As long as there are no nesting issues it is often good enough combined with a non-greedy match. isaacl (talk) 20:41, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Nesting issues exist. But I've managed something which seems to work by using multiple regex that kick off in a specific order. It might not be the most elegant solution, but it seems to work so far. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:51, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

If you want to get a better insight into regex, I can highly advise https://regex101.com It's a great site to validate and debug various regex flavors. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:22, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm quite familiar with the regex tester, but it's rather unhelpful when your regex hopelessly fails to achieve anything to start with. The above gave me a good lead though, and I've hacked a solution. While it may not be the soundest of regex, it works. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:39, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

It won't let me log in

I can't log in with Firefox anymore.

The WP login window keeps giving me this message:

"There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Go back to the previous page, reload that page and then try again."

I followed those instructions, but I keep getting the same message.

So I loaded chromium, and was able to log in fine with that.

But I still can't log in with my Firefox browser.

Please help! The Transhumanist 03:50, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

So good news, your account is fine. In firefox, delete your cache and cookies and try again. See their help article. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:53, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Good point about the account, that was a relief. Thanks for the link. I'll let you know if I can fix it. The Transhumanist 04:00, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Cookies were disabled. It's fixed now. *Sigh* The Transhumanist 04:22, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Search edit summaries?

Is there a way to search edit summaries (not the entire edit histories), not just for one article, but for all articles? Thanks. SharkD  Talk  14:35, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

You could use dumps or maybe labs DB replicas. But no, it's not in the actual search index. FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY ^[u+1F602] 20:13, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Also see WP:RAQ. —PaleoNeonate - 21:27, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

@SharkD: At the bottom of your contribs, there's a link "Edit summary search". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:39, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Centering infobox titles

Why infobox titles in mobile view, e.g. for article YouTube (uses {{Infobox website}}, leads directly to {{Infobox}} i.e. Module:Infobox), display uncentered and not enlarged? --5.43.106.119 (talk) 21:34, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

A simplified example for the alignment with <table><caption>YouTube</caption><tr><td>Video hosting service</td></tr></table>:

YouTube

Video hosting service

The caption is centered in desktop but not in mobile. The same happens at hz:Special:ExpandTemplates versus https://hz.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates in a wiki with no pages except the main page. The mobile skin has this by default:

.content table caption {
 display:block;
 text-align:left
}

The html default is centering. The mobile skin makes lots of changes from desktop. I don't know the reason for left-aligning captions but I guess somebody thinks it works better on small mobile screens. It could be changed in MediaWiki:Mobile.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:41, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Is it known who or why? How would it "work better on small mobile screens" if it is aligned left? Only resizing can have effect (having smaller or resetting normal, 100% font size); I think that uncentering cannot save extra space or help by any means. --5.43.106.119 (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it's known why. The mobile site prevents large tables from overflowing the entire viewport, and instead turns a table that is wider than the viewport into it scrollable box. If you center the caption or such a wide table that is made scrollabe, then this might result in the caption being partly or completely invisible (as it would overflow on the right side into the invisible area that is only reachable by scrolling). The caption is therefor left aligned, so that it is always visible and readable. There is also no CSS-only way to make something like the caption respond to the fact that the table is overflowing. It's not really an ideal solution, but large tables are incredibly problematic on smaller screens and dealing with that problem has the effect of left centering all captions. If better solutions are found, then these can be considered. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:34, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: OK, that's a reasonable explanation. Could solution be to exclude title from overflow div or other element, so that it is centered above the element (relative to its part-that-is-viewable width)? And where can this be achieved, in module Infobox or Mediawiki .css? --5.43.106.119 (talk) 09:25, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Not as far as I am aware. captions are part of the table (even though rendered visually 'outside' of the table). Some things were tried with targeting just the table body in the past, but that was creating other problems. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:14, 20 June 2017 (UTC)