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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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Need Windows 10 font advice

I just changed computers today. Mostly, everything looks like it should in Firefox, except in the edit screen, something is off on the font, and I don't know what I forgot to do. Under Options/Language and Appearance, I stuck to the Arial 16 I had on my other computer. The edit window text looks like it was done by one of those funky old typewriters. Also, if I open The Edge browser, without logging in. And, for instance look at WP:AIV ... just looking at the page without going into the edit screen. #4 where it says what the template should look like. The background is gray, and it has that same kind of lettering.

So, I'm pretty sure something isn't adjusted on my new computer. It's probably not browser-specific. Any ideas?

— Maile (talk) 23:00, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

@Maile66: This may be a case of Edge complying with the CSS standard better than your old browser, as for most people, "funky old typewriter" text (called monospaced text) is how most of us edit and most of us have edited since forever (and how WP:AIV's stuff is supposed to display). Alternatively, you recently changed from a Mac to a Windows computer. I don't have the exact CSS to hand which will fix it for you (if you indeed want it fixed), but it is pretty easy to fix. --Izno (talk) 23:12, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I was under the impression that a monospaced font was normal in those circumstances. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:13, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Correction. I did not change from a Mac to Windows. I had a Windows computer before, and changed to a new Windows computer today. Same brand, even. I've tried three browsers on this - Firefox, The Edge, and Chrome. Same result on all of them. I had Windows 10 on my old computer, and I have Windows 10 on this one. — Maile (talk) 23:16, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Complete list of edits made by a user to pages in a certain category?

Hey, I was wondering if anyone knows of a tool that can analyze my contribs to list all the edits I made to articles included in, say, Category:Star Trek episodes? Like how editorinteract can show me a complete list of edits I've made to pages that happened to have been edited by another editor. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:31, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Redirects connected to a Wikidata item

Anyone know why the redlinked Category:Redirects connected to a Wikidata item is suddenly appearing in redirects such as Revolution (roller coaster). Thanks. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 04:54, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

It's a tracking category and is put on there due to d:Q16877597 existing. Nihlus 05:00, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
But what's causing it to be added now, why isn't it a real category, and how can I fix the entries in which it is appearing so it goes away. Thanks. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 05:07, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Someone needed to create the category page. It is being added now because the change which makes the software add the category was rolled out recently (Thursday). The only way to correct the entries is to remove the redirect from the item listing it at Wikidata. I can help with this if you need it. However, there are some editors who do not think this is a bad thing, so this isn't really a category needing maintenance (just tracking). --Izno (talk) 14:01, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Template pass-through parameters

I am working on a template which generates a Template:Cite book. I would like for all unknown parameters to be passed on to {{Cite book}}, eg. {{Custom cite template|template-specific-parameter=true|author-mask=0|page=45}}, where author-mask and page aren't specified in advance. How can I do this? Daask (talk) 16:58, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Module:Citation/CS1/Wrapper.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:29, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Which should really have a more generic name. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:01, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Unsupported criticism isn't very helpful. Why is a more generic name better than the existing name? What would be a better name?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:12, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Is this Wikipedia?

Wikimedia received an email from someone asking a question about a page. The URL they provided started with: 

en.bywiki.com

It looks a lot like Wikipedia but is it?S Philbrick(Talk) 17:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Looks like a Wikipedia mirror to me. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 17:28, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Domain names run from right to left in descending hierarchical order. So en.bywiki.com is a different site than en.wikipedia.org on two levels; the top level domain and the second level domain. See https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=en.bywiki.com for more info. They've registered it to one of those privacy fronts, which is not a good sign. It's distinctly possible for them to have changed data between grabbing it off WP and displaying it on their site. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:35, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
It's a live mirror which adds advertisements to Wikipedia pages. It's not controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation and it violates several rules but the advertising part is allowed. I haven't seen the email but it's possible it applies equally to the corresponding real Wikipedia page. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:15, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
Which rules does it violate? I find Wikipedia mirrors all the time while looking for sources on lesser known subjects, and most of these follow the creative commons attribution rules of Wikipedia + advertisements, which is allowed under the standard CC license used by Wikipedia. --Donald Trung (Talk) (Articles) Respect mobile users. 11:15, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Many violate trademark law, by reusing the name and/or logos of Wikipedia. And when their attribution is proper, that is often more because they did a full copy and got our license pages and statements copied as well, rather than they actually intent to support the copyright :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:19, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Raw viewership stats not updating

Found at [1]. No updates since FEB-08. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 15:02, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@West.andrew.g: there is a version from 10-Feb-2018 up there now. Is that what you were looking for? — xaosflux Talk 15:36, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
I only see a line saying:
pagecounts-2018-02-08.bz2                          10-Feb-2018 04:27           395916459
I assume that means the file was stored 10-Feb-2018 but has page counts for 2018-02-08. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:08, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Xaosflux: I meant the last available data is from 08-FEB (coming on 10-FEB, strangely). Typical operation is a day's file is written just a couple hours after its UTC conclusion. Therefore we would expect to already have files up through 11-FEB. If you look at the consistently with which a day's file is written over the prior history, its clear something is amiss with the process right now. West.andrew.g (talk) 16:11, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
@West.andrew.g: looks to be something wrong, please open a phabricator ticket you can use phab:T132761 as a sample. — xaosflux Talk 16:26, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-ez/ says "Maintained by WMF Analytics". They have a mail list linked at wikitech:Analytics#Contact. There is already a thread about it with a reply and link to phab:T187073. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:28, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-07

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

  • TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator. [2][3][4]
  • Registration pages now collect keyboard/mouse usage information for research on identifying spambots.

Changes later this week

  • You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages. [5]
  • The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like {{reflist}}, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates. [6]
  • The abuse filter extension has a new feature contains_all that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string. [7]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item 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 February at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

21:59, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Two Column Edit Conflict view: New prototype ready for testing

The new paragraph-based approach

Hi, the Two Column Edit Conflict view has been a beta feature on all wikis for around 9 months now. More than 47.000 users have activated it as a beta feature. Feedback & data show that it's already an improvement to the default view of the edit conflict resolution page. But we also received mixed feedback, and we think we could do better - this is why we have developed an alternative prototype that is now ready for testing. It would be great if you find the time to try it out and comment on it! Feedback round is open until March 12, please see m:WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Edit_Conflicts/Feedback_Round_Paragraph-Based_Prototype for more information. Thanks a lot, --Birgit Müller (WMDE) (talk) 06:05, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Loss of session data while using Microsoft Edge?

I don't know if this is a problem with the browser or the connection, but sometimes when I try to save an edit while using Microsoft Edge, the edit page either reloads (minus the edits I had made), or I get the "session was lost" message. What's happening here? Is this a known issue with the browser, or could it just be my connection? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:22, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Years ago, I had problems like that going all the way back to IE 6. One of the reasons that I gave up using Microsoft browsers. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:35, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Browser issue: WikiProject banner content aligned to fill only left half of box

Moved from Template talk:WikiProject Economics § Banner content aligned to fill only left half of box
 – Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:33, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

A new alignment problem seems to have arisen; the banner content aligned to fill only left half of box. I'm using Chromium on Linux. Maybe be a problem with template WPBannerMeta rather than WikiProject_Economics. Jonpatterns (talk) 14:54, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Jonpatterns: Which pages are affected? Does it improve if you WP:PURGE an affected page? If not, do you see this problem with any other WikiProject banners on the same page? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:02, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Purge has no effect. I checked Firefox and the template displays correctly using that browser. Checking which pages are affected with Chromium. It seems many/all banners affected; for example economics banners: this page and Talk:Fundamental theorems of welfare economics, non-economics banners: Talk:Jeff Schroeder both the biograpghy and alternative music banner display the left alignment error. However, banners inside a bannershell display correct, such as those at Talk:Adam_Smith. Jonpatterns (talk) 22:50, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Update, sometimes on Chromium when I go to the page it displays correctly at first, but whenever I press refresh it reverts to left alignment error. Jonpatterns (talk) 23:00, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
It's OK in Chrome Version 49.0.2623.112 m. I'm certain that this is not a problem in Template:WikiProject Economics and that although it might be in Template:WPBannerMeta, it's probably out of scope for Template talk:WPBannerMeta too. I'll send it to VPT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:27, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
Looks like a bug with empty table cell dimensions in Chrome... We might have to kick this up to the Chromium project.. strange. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:35, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
Looking at page source when {{WikiProject banner shell}} is not in use, I find that the banner is a table having two rows, the first row (with non-relevant content omitted for clarity) is: 
<tr class="wpb-header">
  <td style="padding:0.3em 1em 0.3em 0.3em; width:50%;">WikiProject Economics</td>
  <th style="width:50%; padding:0.3em 0.3em 0.3em 0;">(Rated Start-class, Mid-importance)</th>
  <td class="mbox-empty-cell"><span style="display:none;">...</span></td>
</tr>
That, I think, is where the half-width is coming from. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:59, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
The version of Chromium I'm using is: Version 64.0.3282.140 (Developer Build) (64-bit). Jonpatterns (talk) 13:44, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

TOC suppression

Hi. Is some code in The Captive Slave suppressing the table of contents ( . . . or latest chapter in what am I missing)? Thanks? Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:10, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, so much, I knew I was missing something. Alanscottwalker (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:38, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Question

A few minutes ago, I received notification that there have been six failed attempts to log in to my Wikipedia account while I've been online. I'm not overly worried about this, because I already had a strong and long password and I changed it to something even longer — but I do still want to know if there's a way to track where the attempts came from, because obviously that's the kind of behaviour that we should be blocking editors for if we can track them down. Bearcat (talk) 22:57, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

@Bearcat: not at this time, it is only informative. As a sysop you may want to consider using WP:2FA though. — xaosflux Talk 00:51, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
And there are "blocks" of sorts on addresses that make lots of bad logon attempts - it is handled in the software as failed logon throttling. — xaosflux Talk 00:52, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Regex with template parameters

I would like to use a regex to determine if a template parameter value ends with numbers. The regex pattern itself is easy (\d+$) but I can't figure out how to test the input value. Basically, I want to do something like this (pseudo-code) 

{{#if: {{regex match|{{{param|}}}|\d+$}} |<!-- true -->|<!-- false -->}}

For the curious, this is for trying to incorporate Wikidata properties into {{Basketballstats}}. The problem is that the property value may be a number, a string which ends with a number, or just a string value, and the display is different depending on which it is. I assume this is possible with Lua but I never figured out how to use it. Thanks in advance. —howcheng {chat} 02:10, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

See {{String-handling templates}} and m:Help:Calculation#Checking for a number. Probably something like (fake code):
{{#ifeq:{{str rightc|{{{parameter|}}}|1}}|{{#expr:{{str rightc |{{{parameter|}}}|1}}|number|not a number}}}}
Try something like that. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:58, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
Module:String. These examples return the whole source (|s=) if it matches the lua |pattern=, an empty string else. For details on regex-similar lua patterns see mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua_reference_manual#Patterns
property value is a number:
{{#invoke:String|match|s=3 |pattern=^%d+$ |plain=false |nomatch=}} → 3
property value is a string with numeric suffix:
{{#invoke:String|match|s=property_val_3 |pattern=^[^%d]+%d+$ |plain=false |nomatch=}} → property_val_3
property value is a string:
{{#invoke:String|match|s=property_val_ |pattern=^[^%d]+$ |plain=false |nomatch=}} → property_val_
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:52, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Getting to the deletion log

Why doesn't Special:Deletion log work? Yes, I know it's at Special:Log/delete, but the other title should work to get you there. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:20, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Sheesh, it appears the deletion log isn't even mentioned at Special:SpecialPages. How do you expect people to find it without already knowing? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:21, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
Special:SpecialPages#Recent changes and logs, third bullet, gives a direct link to Special:Log. It's not broken down into the different kinds of log, because there are over thirty of them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:30, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Deletion log links to Special:Log/delete. We cannot create redirects on special pages here. You would have to suggest it at WP:Phabricator. There are some special page redirects, e.g. Special:PermaLink to Special:PermanentLink. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:41, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Font/margin problem

At this version of Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/Article alerts there is a box at the top containing centred text. Using Opera 36, I see all the text squeezed sideways (and stretched vertically) so that it's one word per line (even words like "a" are the sole occupants of their lines). This is (correctly) centred across the box width. Do other people experience the one-word-per-line problem?

I made these amendments with no visible effect. My alteration of the declaration font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif to font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif was in accordance with CSS Fonts Module Level 3 and also Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1. But I have narrowed it down: whichever version of Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/Article alerts that I start from, if I remove the first font family name so that the declaration is changed from either font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif or font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif to font-family: sans-serif, the problem disappears. I'm pretty sure that I have Trebuchet MS installed, but the browser's "inspect element" feature shows that Arial is being used, that being the default for sans-serif. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:07, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Redrose64, I added the underscored font-family: sans-serif above, which seemed to be missing. Is that what you intended? --Pipetricker (talk) 12:13, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, indeed, thanks. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:15, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
Have you solved this yet? --Pipetricker (talk) 20:08, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
It's behaving now, but I can't find anything that might have changed. Maybe a site CSS glitch - I don't know where to check those files. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:03, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Technical glitch

I'm currently using the Android application and have encountered a glitch. While clicking edit at any deletion discussion at WP:DSI, the message We're sorry. The Wikipedia app has experienced an error and was terminated. Would you like to Start over or Quit? is displayed. The edit button works fine for articles and other Wikipedia pages though. To add, individual discussions somehow won't open in the mobile browser (Firefox) either. I hope someone takes notice. Thanks, MT TrainDiscuss 13:49, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Howdy, MT Train, it looks like you've got two issues going on here. Let me see if I can separate them out. The first sounds novel. I don't see anything incredibly complicated about that page myself, so I'm not sure what is happening. I can't find anything related in our bug tracking system (Phabricator). So I created a new task to let the Android team know what's going on and to see if they can reproduce. If you can provide any more information about your device (OS and app version in particular) it would be helpful. To be clear, you're interacting with the section "Edit" links or the "Edit" link for the whole page?
Second issue, I'm sure there's a ticket for it, but could use some more information. Do you mean that on the same page (WP:DSI) you are having the issue with individual discussions, or in general anywhere on Wikipedia talk pages? Letting me know a little more would help me find and/or write a better task for the engineers. Thanks for the report! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:16, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
@CKoerner (WMF): I'm still facing the issue on the Android application (Android 7.0), though now I'm back to using the desktop. I got a screenshot which I can upload to Commons if needed for reference. Regarding web browser, the version is Firefox 54.0.1 for Android, where the edit icon at either WP:DSI or WP:Articles for deletion won't work upon touch. Touch and hold and then release opens up several options including Open link in new tab, which opens as Cannot find section. To edit the deletion discussions, I've to type the entire page in the search bar (eg: WP:Articles for deletion/XYZ), which is a bit tedious if I'm to reply at several of them. Thanks, MT TrainDiscuss 05:22, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Monobook.js is no longer loading

Hello. User:Magog the Ogre/monobook.js is failing to load reliably for some reason. I've noticed this for a few days. I see no console messages. Can anyone help me debug? Magog the Ogre (t • c) 23:31, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Not that I can help, but knowing which skin you use and which web browser (name and version) is likely to be helpful. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:51, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
knowing which skin you use -- presumably Monobook because otherwise User:Magog the Ogre/monobook.js wouldn't be loaded in the first place. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 12:27, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Look for a reference within existing references

I realize this is a bit inside-baseball, and perhaps OT, but here goes...

I'm editing an article and noticed that I failed to have a cite on something that should have one. Googling turns up new references that have it, but I hate adding new cites when an existing source has the same information.

So does anyone know of a way to search a topic, but use the links in the page as the source documents? Perhaps there is some sort of "one degree of separation" technique? Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:07, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

You mean like googling:
my uncited claim site:url-for-reference1-from-current-article OR site:url-for-reference2-from-current-article ...
(Example)
and someone could make a script which picks up the references from the current article. A couple of problems with that: Google's input limit is quickly exceeded, so for articles with many references there would have to be several search querys (and if there aren't many references, there's not much point to the script). And there are many URLs for which site: doesn't work, partly due to URL parameters after a ? or # being ignored.
Also, while reusing an existing source could save a bit of work, I don't think it's a bad thing to use different sources for two citations even if one of the sources could be used for both. --Pipetricker (talk) 12:28, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Archive box problem

Could somebody take a look at Talk:Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to figure out why the "archive box" template is listing a comprehensive directory of hundreds of pages that have nothing whatsoever to do with the archives of Talk:Canadian Broadcasting Corporation? Bearcat (talk) 18:37, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

User:ClueBot III/Master Detailed Indices/Talk:Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is the source of the list, but I don't know why it's populated that way. Chris857 (talk) 18:48, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
The bot made some mistake here. And that's not the only talk page where the problem exists, maybe because they are using the {{TALKPAGENAME}} as "archiveprefix"? Stryn (talk) 19:35, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
This edit is a quick fix, until ClueBot III overwrites it again. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:19, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
Has anybody informed Cobi (talk · contribs), or left a note at User talk:ClueBot Commons? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:32, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Would leaving the entire list but commenting out the wrong ones prevent the bot from repopulating it? Home Lander (talk) 23:01, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
archiveprefix={{TALKPAGENAME}} you can't do that. You need a real page name as a parameter, complete with the namespace. The bot passes that string verbatim to the Wikipedia API to generate a list of pages, and Wikipedia doesn't do template substitution for parameters sent to the API. I've seen this pop up a few times recently -- has someone added this to some docs or tool somewhere? Because it doesn't work, and should be corrected. It's not on the the documentation page. See User:ClueBot III#Required parameters. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 00:53, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
Most, if not all, of them seem to be added by DanielPenfield, and he was notified on January. Stryn (talk) 14:07, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Is there a very easy to use registration or sign your name function/gadget for new editors?

Hi all

I'm working on an fairly large event with new users and I'm trying to find a gadget that will allow new users to register on an English Wikipedia by signing their name that doesn't involve source editor and copying and pasting tildes. Can anyone suggest anything? Thanks very much John Cummings (talk) 23:07, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

It shouldn't be too complicated to ask for four tildes. Someone might be able to make a pre-filled link for you so that if the editor is logged in it will subst their username. Killiondude (talk) 00:33, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
What do you mean by "register"? Do you mean "sign in" or "create a user account" (both? something else?). — xaosflux Talk 00:50, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
I mean sign their name. Thanks, John Cummings (talk) 09:02, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
Why the need to copy and paste tildes? - X201 (talk) 09:05, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
A typicalOne of many standard computer keyboards (the key beneath the Esc button in blue)
John Cummings-Try asking the participants to press shift and the key just beneath the Esc button four times when on source editor (Assuming they are using laptops or desktops) 150.107.215.94 (talk) 10:21, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
That doesn't produce a tilde on any of my British, American or Swedish keyboards. See Tilde#Keyboards. And I'm sure John Cummings can find the tilde on a keyboard. He asked for something that doesn't involve source editor. So why the need to copy and paste tildes? --Pipetricker (talk) 11:43, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
FWIW, the tilde on the multilingual keyboard I've been accidentally supplied is below the semicolon to the right of L. If one were to set the appropriate setting I think it would be typed with AltCar+; but as I've overridden it to US standard I type it with the usual key below Esc (Échap on mine) which is labelled #. Good luck! Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:41, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
You could have them sign a Wikipedia project page, they can use the visual editor and it has a "sign" button right at the top of the interface. — xaosflux Talk 12:52, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, do you mean a project page where you don't need to use source editor to sign your name? Can you give an example? Thanks John Cummings (talk) 14:05, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
On my keyboard (UK desktop layout, virtually no change from the IBM PC/AT's UK layout, and indeed the same layout as the one illustrated above), the key below Esc, when shifted, produces the "¬" character. Tilde is ⇧ Shift+# and is just to the left of the ↵ Enter key. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:27, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
@John Cummings: hmmm - scratch that I was thinking of the "sign" button on the source edit tool menu. OK though I have a hacky workaround for you: Use a MailingList. You don't ever need to actually use it for mailing, and it is easy to use. Head over to Wikipedia_talk:Mass_message_senders and MOVE one of those shells to where you want. You can edit it to put some text directions at the top. Then anyone can go to the page and just type in "User:John Cummings" and it will put them on the list. Have the directions include using the "User:" (or User talk: if you plan on actually sending a mailing one day) prefix in the box, and it will actually autocomplete most of the name from the list of regitered users. Think this will work for you? — xaosflux Talk 14:35, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
If you event is really large, make an event page for it, and maybe even a WP: shortcut (even if it is shortlived something like WP:John-a-thon-2018 :D; you can include a wiki link to the "sign in" page then. — xaosflux Talk 14:37, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I found FormWizard does exactly what I want but the set up is very complicated and you need to be an admin or something called interface editor. John Cummings (talk) 15:44, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

yes, FromWizzard will take some development time - check out those MMS's though - there is no coding to do, it is literally type your username and hit enter. — xaosflux Talk 15:55, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, for the last couple of days I have been puzzled by this thread, wondering "why not teach them to use four tildes like everybody else does?". I have since come across Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red#Can I create an events page within Women in Red which makes it a lot clearer: the "fairly large event" mentioned above is Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Events/UNESCO 2018. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:08, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

nofollow

If nofollow were to be disabled (probably through an RFC, though it was enabled in 2007 without community consensus on the request of Jimmy Wales), would this still have negative effects related to search engine optimization? The English Wikipedia has obviously changed a lot in the intervening years, so removing it might be more feasible now, and it could possibly have positive side effects by somewhat increasing the page ranks of heavily-used sources relative to unreliable sources. Jc86035 (talk) 15:14, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

There is some discussion at phab:T44594 regarding the default status of the nofollow configuration parameter in MediaWiki. --Izno (talk) 15:43, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
There is some other chatter at phab:T54617 and elsewhere in this Phabricator search. --Izno (talk) 15:47, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
@Izno: Most of those are about removing it (or adding it) in default MediaWiki, Wikibase and/or Parsoid, which would be different to removing it from just the English Wikipedia, which is certainly better maintained than most other WMF wikis. I suppose without any evidence more recent than 2007, and very little recent discussion, it's difficult to tell whether nofollow has any harmful effects (perhaps a trial period like WP:ACTRIAL might be useful). Jc86035 (talk) 16:19, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Rangeblocklog

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T146628

Looking for a tool similar to rangecontribs that could condense and display all of the block logs for a given IP range. For example, if I supply the CIDR 192.168.105.0/24, it would output the block log of any IP address that has been blocked before in that range, as well as any blocks of sub-ranges within that range. Thoughts? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:41, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Ideally Special:Log would do this, see phab:T146628. I'm going to look into it, because it might be very similar to phab:T163562, which I worked on. In the meantime, it's probably possible to create an off-wiki tool, but it'd be quite slow. — MusikAnimal talk 19:44, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, that seems like what I have in mind. I can't contribute much to coding, but I make plenty of rangeblocks and can probably help test if/when needed. Following both tickets. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 07:33, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Is it possible with JS to automatically change the colour of the show/hide link in mw-collapsible divs which contain one mw-collapsible-content div and one other div (presumably the title)? I would have liked to change the colour of the show/hide button in {{Infobox YouTube personality/sandbox}}, which is currently dark blue on dark red. (For mw-collapsible tables and mw-collapsible divs, this is done by a few lines of JavaScript in MediaWiki:Common.js (lines 255–261 in the newer code editor); but this doesn't work if there's a mw-collapsible-content inner div and the colour of the title is handled by a separate inner div as in that template.) However for that template specifically it's probably better to use a table instead, since the div – previously a NavFrame – itself contains a table. Jc86035 (talk) 16:59, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Do you want this changed just for you, or for everyone? — xaosflux Talk 21:52, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: For everyone; it would make sense for the collapse button to have equivalent functionality in tables and divs. (An extra class might be needed to indicate the header div.) Jc86035 (talk) 11:53, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Header
Content
Header
Content
For some reason the collapse button in the div (on the right) isn't displaying, even though it's there in the page source. What's happened to it? Jc86035 (talk) 11:59, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

How to learn scripts

I would like to learn how to write scripts for use at en-wiki, probably just for my own use. I have long experience with multiple programming languages, but nothing web-based. Can anyone suggest on- and off-wiki learning resources? ―Mandruss ☎ 17:59, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mandruss: Do you mean JavaScript, or Scribunto modules (Lua), or something else? Jc86035 (talk) 13:29, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: I think I mean JavaScript. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:33, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Section protection

Has the ability to protect individual sections ever been discussed or investigated? One uncontroversial use would be to protect AfD tags from removal, while letting the rest of the page be edited. Technically feasible? —swpbT go beyond 20:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Not technically feasible; sections are arbitrary formatting things, not something that the software could separate out. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:00, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: That is incorrect. See mw:Extension:ProtectSection as one technically feasible option. Nihlus 21:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
phab:T6375 requested it for Wikisource in 2006. It had large support at OldWikisource:Wikisource:Vote on enabling the ProtectSection extension but was declined. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:41, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
That is basically using the editfilter, but monitoring every single edit for compliance would be technically expensive. — xaosflux Talk 05:31, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Almost everything is theoretically possible, but it would be very much against the design of wikicode and MediaWiki and is therefore extremely unlikely to ever be implemented (properly). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
To editor TheDJ: For curiosity, what makes mw:Extension:ProtectSection not a proper implementation? —swpbT go beyond 16:33, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Not TheDJ - but the big notes that it hasn't been maintained in 9 years is a red-flag for sure. — xaosflux Talk 16:47, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
@Swpb: Well almost everything in the infrastructure of MediaWiki makes assumptions about revisions of pages (this is also why section editing in VE, and watching sections are so hard to implement, as well as why Flow topics act like individual pages). A section is simply not a 'logistical unit' that can be used for anything in MediaWiki. There are three strategies to deal with this 1: Make sections pages and then collect/transclude them in a secondary page. This is what LQT did and then a page is suddenly a list of transclusions and an edit to a section would not show up in the main page when you edit the 'section' (by default). Flow does something similar and the magic required to make things like this work is.. challenging, lets put it that way, also we would jumpt from 40 million pages to some 500 million pages (just for en.wp). We can't scale to that level easily. 2: Properly retrofitting a concept of sections onto the entire infrastructure (that's a rather huge task, and would significantly change how people work with the wiki), 3: bolt on a fake concept of sections on top of every contact point where we deal with pages (which is basically what ProtectSection used to do), but that is very inefficient (you need to parse the entire page, wherever you deal with a page, while parsing a page is the most expensive operation possible within MediaWiki). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:45, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Couldn't edit article (Lyme disease) – possibly due to voting banner

I have been unable to make a null edit or even "show preview" on this page for a couple of days. Regards CV9933 (talk) 12:51, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

What happens when you try? It's only semi-protected and apart from being slow, I had no problems making a preview and a null edit with my autoconfirmred non-admin alternative account. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:57, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
If I click on edit, then preview and wait around a minute, the (Firefox) browser displays
The connection to en.wikipedia.org was interrupted while the page was loading.
  • The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
  • Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem.
Regards CV9933 (talk) 14:26, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
I logged in using Chrome and don't see an issue so it seems to be browser related, Cheers. CV9933 (talk) 16:39, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
I did a firefox update, as well as all the usual stuff - cleared the cache and cookies and rebooted my router with the same result.
Interestingly, I noticed a wikipedia voting banner at the top of the page and closed it. I then tried to edit the page and now all is fine. So it seems that with the banner, the time it was taking to refresh the page was too long for firefox and the error occurred. Cheers CV9933 (talk) 17:24, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
I wonder if its to do with the new code in that particular banner. This one makes an API call to see if you are an eligible voter. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 23:12, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Accidentally Changing the coin-notice Template

If I put the {{coin-notice}} template on an editor's talk page, and forget to subst it, and then add text below the template notice, it adds the added text to the template itself, which is certainly not what anyone would intend. I realize now that I should have put subst in front of the template, but if the template can be broken by a simple error, this seems to be a matter of excessive fragility that amounts to a bug. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:54, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Right, this is because you are transcluding the header with the template alongside the "edit" button. Since it is being transcluded, the edit button is linked to the actual template and not the page itself. I'm not sure a solution is necessary when that is the intended function of transclusions and you are using the template incorrectly. Nihlus 04:04, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, a solution is necessary, because the result of an accidentally incorrect use of the template is dangerous and undesirable. Yes, a solution is necessary. Just saying that a bug is a feature doesn't make a bug a feature. Yes, a solution is necessary. Just saying that the fault is that of the humans and not of tool design doesn't excuse tools that can do very undesirable things through ordinary errors. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:32, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
It's not a bug as it is working as intended. When you transclude the header, you transclude the links that come with it (because that's what it is meant to do). You could remove the header from the transclusion, but the other {{User noticeboard notices}} have worked up until now with their headers. Also, I wouldn't call it dangerous as any misused template has the potential to cause "undesirable" issues; that's why there are instructions on how to use it on each page. Restructuring every subst-required template to be non-subst safe doesn't seem productive (outside of recursive substitution). Plus, the issues are easily fixed. Nihlus 04:47, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

@Nihlus: and @Robert McClenon: I put in a request at RPP to have this template-protected; that should solve the issue. There's been no major changes for some time, and any future ones could be easily done by a template editor. Home Lander (talk) 18:46, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

User:Home Lander - Thank you. In that case, that implies that it was working as designed but wasn't really designed to meet the requirements, because it could be accidentally edited. I worked for 45 years in information technology, and just because something is working as designed doesn't mean that there isn't a bug; it means that there isn't a code bug, but there may be a design bug. This was a design bug. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:49, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm still baffled at your insistence that this is a design bug or any bug for that matter. And I'm not sure what you having spent any time anywhere has to do with anything when you were the one using it incorrectly despite clear instructions advising you on how to use it. I have no intentions of commenting further, as it is clear you are unwilling to take any responsibility and only want to put the blame on other people (and on something so ridiculously trivial at that). Nihlus 21:55, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it a bug either but it is possible to avoid the section edit link on transclusion. I tried adding __NOEDITSECTION__ to {{Coin-notice}} but that only removed the section edit link from the template page itself and not from pages where the template is transcluded. Then I generated the section header with a parser function.[9] That worked, for example at User talk:86.1.101.6#Notice of Conflict of interest noticeboard discussion which had a section edit link to the template before but has no edit link now. It is not possible to make a section edit link to the page itself since there is no section to edit there. The template call is just a part of the preceding section, in this case the lead. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:33, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Yep - looks good PrimeHunter, I tested it here and when I clicked "edit" by the section heading I was editing the correct page (note that "edit" isn't visible at my link because it's now an old page revision). Home Lander (talk) 02:11, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Your test used {{subst:coin-notice}}. The issue was with {{coin-notice}} without subst. This produces no section edit link at all after my change to the template. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:07, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
When looking at the workaround discussion linked from the NOEDITSECTION documentation, I noticed that a simple way to make a section heading without an [edit] link is to use <h2>Heading</h2> markup instead of == Heading ==. Other than lacking the edit link, it seems such headings are treated like other section headings (having class="mw-headline" and an id anchor (or two) for linking). --Pipetricker (talk) 13:34, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
That method would also omit the section edit link when {{coin-notice}} is substituted so it's not suited here. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:02, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Right, of course. I forgot about that ... --Pipetricker (talk) 16:59, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Good spot, PrimeHunter on my link. In looking at the templates listed at Template:User noticeboard notices, things are totally inconsistent (even AN and ANI are not the same). Wonder if we'd be better off removing the section headers from all of these, it would be easier to remember that a section header needs to be included on every type. Home Lander (talk) 18:00, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Other Noticeboard Notices

There are multiple noticeboards that have similar notices. Do others have the misfeature or whatever that they can be inserted in a way that renders the template subject to accidental editing? That is, what about ANI-notice and so on? Robert McClenon (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

I believe that the most common solution is "use WP:Twinkle".
I think I've also seen a method that changes the template to create a mess on the page when it's not been subst'd, which is another way of preventing people from transcluding and then editing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:23, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
User:WhatamIdoing - How do I use Twinkle to notify of a noticeboard filing? I have Twinkle, but I am not sure what tab to use to put a notice on a talk page. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:09, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: "tb" tab. --NeilN talk to me 21:12, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
User:NeilN, User:WhatamIdoing - Thank you. That is considerably more constructive than the comment above of another editor. I may ask to have the TB thingy expanded for other noticeboards. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:52, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Title Blacklist and Block Capitals - Stupid Message

If I try to move an Articles for Creation submission that is in a sandbox to draft space, and the title consists mostly of capital letters, I get a message saying that the move cannot be done because the title is on the title blacklist. This statement is literally true but stupid and non-helpful. The title blacklist includes a regexp that blocks titles that consist mostly of upper case. The title blacklist also includes a lot of other things. If the reason is a straightforward user issue, such as the title having too many upper-case letters, it would be far better to do something like printing a short name for the rule in the title blacklist. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:59, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

There is no "short name for the rule". The default message includes the rule itself, but the messages have been customized locally to remove that (since 2008, for the move message). You're welcome to seek consensus to re-add it in some form. Anomie⚔ 14:03, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
If it does list the rule, then it listed it only in the form of a regexp, and I didn't think that, as a user, I was expected to be parsing a regexp. It certainly didn't say anything to the effect that there were too many capital letters. It should display something that is meant to be understood by human beings who are not acting as programmers. Just saying that the title is on the title blacklist is literally true but stupid and non-helpful. Oh well. Maybe I am again being told that our tools are not meant to be user-friendly. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:13, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
If it gave specifics, it could encourage people to devise devious methods of circumvention. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:28, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Further Comment - It's Wrong

In looking at the message again very carefully, I see that nowhere does it say anything about what is wrong. Also, in the particular case, which is the use of too many capitals, I don't see BEANS as an issue at all. The problem is the use of block capitals, and just saying that means don't use block capitals, and, in that case, it will be okay. I also think that the general message, that the title is on the title blacklist, is wrong. The title isn't on a blacklist. That message always means that the title violates one of the rules about titles (of which there are many). A reasonable interpretation of what is meant by the title blacklist would be that the title is salted, but that isn't what it means. If the title is salted, there is a different error message. The error message should state that the title violates the rules on titles. If it says that, then that leaves to the author and the reviewer to figure out what the issue is, and that is all right. However, saying that the title is on the title blacklist may be accurate in a stupid pedantic sense only, but is fundamentally wrong as human interface. Change it! Robert McClenon (talk) 21:15, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

That's a BIG FL icon

The FL icon looked weird on on Grade II* listed buildings in Mendip (See this version) I corrected the icon by moving the {{Featured list}} template to the top of the page. (This violated MOS:ORDER, which requires the template to be down the bottom of the page.) The problem is Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included. You can see the effect down the bottom; the references and external links sections are not processed properly. Is there anything more that we can do? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:51, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: that page is in Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, meaning not all templates will work on the page. This normally means: remove some templates - what looks obvious to me is - every single ROW of that table is another template, convert to a normal table. — xaosflux Talk 21:47, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
I've done some work to reduce the include size. It is under the limit for now. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:54, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Rodw, is this one of the pages that we were discussing at Oxford in October?
Anyway, I have seen the huge FA/FL star twice before, see for instance Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 161#Featured Star looks extremely massive. In both cases, as here, it was a WP:TLIMIT problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:16, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes the whole series of sub lists of Grade II* listed buildings in Somerset follows the same pattern using Template:EH listed building header and Template:EH listed building row (as do sub lists of Grade I listed buildings in Somerset but these are smaller) and I would like to keep the consistent fromatting which also works for easy uploading of photos during Wiki Loves Monuments. I had a similar problem with List of civil parishes in Somerset which someone helped resolve. I thought the same issue would arise with List of ecclesiastical parishes in the Diocese of Bath and Wells but that doesn't seem to have been a problem.— Rod talk 08:38, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Grade II* listed buildings in South Somerset doesn't have a star (yet) but is the one we discussed and you helped with. It is showing the template problem & I still have loads more building articles to do on that one.— Rod talk 11:44, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Do you think it's worth changing MOS:ORDER to put the template at the top? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:27, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
How would that help? The {{featured article}} and {{featured list}} templates don't do much that would cause WP:TLIMIT to be hit, although both could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:03, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
It wouldn't help against breaking the template limit. It could help some pages display better when they do break the limit, but for some pages it might get worse depending on what is near the point where the limit is broken. I don't think the order of templates should be based on trying to guess the least bad result if the limit is broken. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:13, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Odd red category

this edit to Tibet adds the article to Category:Articles with text from the Turkic languages collective, which does not ever appear to have existed. I cannot see how the edit adds the article to the category. Can anyone see what is going on? I have asked the editor who made the edit, but he is not very active nowadays. DuncanHill (talk) 02:06, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: For what it's worth, there are four pages in that non-existent category. Trying to see what they have in common here... Home Lander (talk) 02:20, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
I have created the category. It's added by {{lang|trk|...}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:13, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 18:48, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist question

In the couple of months I was not editing Wikipedia there was a major change in the presentation of my Watchlist. Previously all changed pages would take up a single line, whether there were multiple edits or only a single one. Now, the articles with multiple edits show up as before but the ones with a single edit take up many lines - a minimum of 4 and some over 9 lines. It looks like the column width has been set to ~10 chars.

Is there any way to fix this or, even better, just return to the old watchlist? I see no benefit in the new version and, with the column issue, quite a detriment and loss of functionality, such as color coding editors and articles, that hurts my workflow. -- Thank you. Jbh Talk 20:49, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

This watchlist link disables your personal css and js. Does that look better? User:Jbhunley/common.js imports User:UncleDouggie/smart watchlist.js which hasn't been edited since 2011, and UncleDouggie hasn't edited since 2011. That script would be my first suspect but I haven't examined it. If you still have problems after disabling it then please name your skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, the setting of "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist, and of "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:07, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
PrimeHunter Safemode fixes it. I will clean up my common.js. Thank you for the help. Jbh Talk 22:25, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Special:PrefixIndex/User:Jbhunley/ also shows other css and js pages. Some of them are unused depending on your skin. safemode also disables gadgets and site-wide css and js files but others haven't reported the problem so it's probably something in your own files. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
The offending script is User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/commonHistory.js [10]. I also disabled User:UncleDouggie/smart watchlist.js on general principles. Jbh Talk 22:51, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Writ Keeper is still active and may want to know the preferences I mentioned, and your browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:05, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
I have the issue using Chrome on Win10 and iOS 11.x. I think I ran into it using Safari and Firefox under iOS 10.x and 11.x as well but I have not used them recently and it is not something that stuck in my memory.

I am willing to try it using different OS/browser configurations if that would help. Jbh Talk 23:18, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. What skin are you using? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:20, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Vector. Jbh Talk 01:12, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, still can't reproduce (Chrome on Win10 as well). Maybe a passing bug? If it still happens after re-enabling the script, could you take a screenshot? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 02:56, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
I enabled the script and got the same error. One thing I noticed is that while the new filter system is running, right after a page refresh, the page looks fine. Once it has completed the error shows up in the same refresh that the filter header/menu is displayed. I took two screenshots of a single page refresh cycle. The first is the initial page load but while the filter system is still processing. The second is when it has finished and the filter menu and error show up. Where would you like me to send/upload the screenshots?

I sent you an email with my non-wiki email address since this may be easier to do via email. Also, I do not know how often I will be checking Wikipedia in the next couple of days. If you do not want to use email and I have not responded in a while leave a message on my talk page and I will get an email notice via my wiki-email. Jbh Talk 03:18, 12 February 2018 (UTC) Last edited: Added note about email. 03:32, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Jbhunley: For screenshots, please follow the directions at WP:WPSHOT. This makes them visible to all, so that all the followers of VPT can consider the matter; but it also keeps them within Wikimedia, since some people are unable to use third-party screenshot hosts. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:19, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Thank you for the link. I decided to send the shots directly to Writ Keeper. I am not too keen on the shots going up on Commons but I would be happy to email you copies if you want them. Jbh Talk 19:41, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Just to add, it seems to do the same thing on modern/OSX/firefox. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:35, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
of course i care :/ Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:17, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
@Jbhunley, @Amorymeltzer et al: that should do it, I think. Let me know if you see any other problems. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 21:14, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
@Writ Keeper: That got it. Thank you. Jbh Talk 21:26, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Pages Not Fully Loading?

I've been seeing a problem recently of Wikipedia pages not fully loading. Basically I see the title and a few paragraphs of the content, but nothing else. Not even the links along the left side. Has anybody else noticed this? It seems to be getting progressively worse. Praemonitus (talk) 15:39, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

I've seen the page content loaded but the browser still trying to load something. And I know my problem is related to Firefox version 58, but I have not reported it on Phabricator because I don't have a way to reproduce. It just randomly happens. Stryn (talk) 17:40, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
See the "Network" tab of your web browser's developer tools to debug where things get stalled. mw:Help:Locating broken scripts provides pointers. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm using Chrome 63.0.3239.132. Praemonitus (talk) 03:26, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
@Praemonitus: I'm running Chrome 64.0.3282.167 and it has sputtered a few times today when trying to load pages, particularly multiple tabs at one time, such as when I was tagging G13s earlier. Home Lander (talk) 04:16, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

This is just insane

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T187516

I know our system to create usernames has some limitations when it comes to creating a name that's too close to an existing name. While I don't know all the rules and per beans it's probably not a good idea to go into details, but I would've guessed that the system wouldn't allow there to be both user:Twisted Insane and user:TWISTED INSANE. I recently handled an OTRS inquiry from someone claiming to be Twisted Insane. I tracked down the account but the initial discussion did not go well. Eventually, I figured out that the username was TWISTED INSANE. Obviously, the system allowed both but should it have?

As an additional complication, the person contacting us has the name Twisted Insane, which now means we have a username corresponding to a real name but it's a different person (presumably).

User:Twisted Insane has no edits. Should anything be done or just ignore it and move on?S Philbrick(Talk) 21:37, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: I created phab:T187516 to request that antispoof apply in this type of situation. An older request is to outright disallow these, it has been stalled as phab:T64396. — xaosflux Talk 23:59, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. --S Philbrick(Talk) 02:39, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
To be fair, if the software had disallowed it, and the user had asked at WP:ACC for that name, I doubt any admin would have declined the request. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:46, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Correct. Per the ACC guide, ACC would create a similarly named account where the existing account is old with no edits even if AntiSpoof were triggered. — JJMC89 (T·C) (ACC admin) 08:13, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Single sign on failing

I have noticed a number of occasions where SSO hasn't worked. Today I edited Wiktionary anonymously, despite being logged in on Wikipedia. Is this a known issue?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:50, 14 February 2018 (UTC).

I've had this at random intervals for years. It can happen for various reasons, usually connected with your login cookie - maybe it's corrupt, maybe it didn't get through, maybe one of the Wikimedia servers is out of sync and didn't recognise it. To guard against this, I've set my skin on all Wikimedia sites to MonoBook, so that if I visit a site and get served the Vector skin, it's an instant reminder to check my logged-in status. Doesn't work for wmuk: where MonoBook is not available - it's not a Wikimedia Foundation site so the WMF login cookie is not sent either. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:29, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
This doesn't help answer or solve the issue, but for anyone hoping to avoid it another trick is to change the color of your edit button. For instance, I have:
input#wpSave {
background-color: #88FF88 !important;
color: #000 !important;
}
If you ever get logged out, saving becomes really obvious, skin choice aside. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:28, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
I added a missing }. The code goes in your CSS or a skin-specific css file. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:54, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Dates displying backwards

In the article List of Presidents of Israel, the vital dates of the presidents appear backwards. For example, for David Ben-Gurion {{small|(1886–1973)}} appears as 1973-1866. I suspect that this has something to do with the Hebrew text immediately before the dates. Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 14:01, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Appears fine in my browser. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:05, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
I am using Edge on Win10. It doesn't make any difference which skin I select. DuncanHill (talk) 14:14, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Macbook Pro winning. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:05, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Fine for me as well on Chrome on Win7. Report the bug to Microsoft? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:13, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
I fixed it by changing from {{Hebrew|<Hebrew letters>}} to {{lang|He|<Hebrew letters>}}. However, the Hebrew letters look less ornate in the new version. If anyone understands both Template:Hebrew and Hebrew could they please have a look? DuncanHill (talk) 16:43, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
I don't think you should make that change for your personal benefit, as you say the characters are now displayed much less ornately and offer a much less enjoyable experience. I would work on fixing your own setup before modifying it to the detriment of all the rest of us. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:03, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
The previous version did not follow the instructions at Template:Hebrew, and the version I have changed to does. "This template only marks a string as Hebrew script, not as Hebrew language. Therefore, it is not appropriate for actual words in Hebrew. Hebrew words are marked instead like this: ‹Hebrew language string›." DuncanHill (talk) 17:09, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Also, TRM, as you obviously have no idea what is going on here I'd appreciate if you stopped offering useless non-technical advice to someone who is asking for technical advice. DuncanHill (talk) 17:11, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
I obviously think you're obviously fixing things for yourself to the detriment of the rest of Wikipedia. Don't do it again. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:27, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
You want me never to use a template according to the instructions? Well, it's a point of view I suppose. DuncanHill (talk) 18:24, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: Can't you use {{script|Hebr|HEBREW TEXT}} for the ornate look of it? Nihlus 17:17, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
I tried that already, it still reverses the dates. DuncanHill (talk) 17:19, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Names are words. I used the format which according to the template documentation is appropriate for words, instead of the format the documentation says is not appropriate for words. DuncanHill (talk) 17:20, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
I never stated you didn't follow the instructions; I was merely offering an alternative that you had yet to say you had tried. That being said, my computer sees it the same with all of them, which is something I wasn't paying attention to. Nihlus 17:27, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Pretty sure that the matter of which template to use (and their differing effects) has come up in the last year or two on another talk page (possibly Template talk:Lang): it was certainly in connection with Hebrew. What we have is (a) a template that specifies what language a piece of text is written in, without specifying the font; and (b) a template that specifies which font should be used for displaying a piece of text, without specifying the language. One of them sets the dir=rtl attribute, the other doesn't. If it's not explicitly set, your browser guesses. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:53, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Numbers like years can both be displayed left-to-right and right-to-left depending on the text next to them. It varies what browsers choose when there are no Latin letters between right-to-left text and numbers. I have inserted left-to-right marks &lrm; between the righ-to-left text and the years to help browsers choose. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:12, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 20:17, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
{{lang}} outputs a left-to-right marker when |rtl=yes:
{{lang|he|rtl=yes|דוד בן-גוריון}} → <span title="Hebrew-language text"><span lang="he" dir="rtl">דוד בן-גוריון</span></span>
No need (in this case) to duplicate that.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:25, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:46, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Aha, it was Template talk:Lang/Archive 3#Rendering Hebrew - exactly a year ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:41, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
My take on this is that the ornateness is really useful - for Hebrew, it can help distinguish between certain letters. Currently, the code 
{{font|font=Ezra SIL|size=115%|{{lang|he|rtl=yes|דוד בן-גוריון}}}}
has the desired effect, while maintaining the lang parameter. But, it is ugly. It shouldn't be too hard to make a template that fixes the font, but doesn't pass judgement on the contents, which is probably the best way forward r/e not breaking stuff. Of course, if {{Hebrew}} can be fixed, it would be better. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 12:35, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist layout (follow-up)

@PrimeHunter, TheDJ, and Redrose64: If you remember, on 2nd February I posted a proposal/query titled Watchlist layout and the three of you replied. Well, using Redrose's suggestion and a little perseverance I cracked it! There are actually 2 parts to this; The first is extremely straightforward and I recommend everyone to do it, which is to add a single line to your common.css to remove a completely redundant bit of whitespace: 

.mw-changeslist-line-prefix { width:4px; }

The second part is slightly more drastic in that it makes much more of a difference to the layout. I suggest you try it, and if you don't like it you can remove it. Simply copy/paste the following script into your common.js: 

// Remove whitespace from watchlist margin
if (wgPageName=="Special:Watchlist") {
  var wlm=document.querySelectorAll("td.mw-enhanced-rc");
  for (var i=0; i<wlm.length; i++) {
    var wlmHTML=wlm[i].innerHTML.replace(/&nbsp;/g,""), wlmChar=wlmHTML.substr(wlmHTML.length-3,1);
    if ((wlmHTML.length>5) && (wlmChar==":")) { // Move timestamp to beginning
      wlm[i].innerHTML=wlmHTML.substr(wlmHTML.length-5,5)+"&nbsp;"+wlmHTML.substr(0,wlmHTML.length-5)+"&#x202F;"; }
    else wlm[i].innerHTML=wlmHTML+"&nbsp;" }}

First it strips away all the &nbsp; then, if necessary, it takes the timestamp from the end of the string and puts it at the beginning, so that any markers (m, b, etc.) are pushed into the start of the page name, leaving everything nicely aligned and clearly spaced. Enjoy! nagualdesign 07:54, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

You shouldn't modify the dom using innerHTML, it breaks all javascript logic that is attached to it (like thanks controls for instance). Use replaceChild, appendChild, removeChild and other DOM manipulation methods. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:39, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
The only changes are to the layout of table cells that have no JavaScript functionality, and having just done some preliminary tests everything appears to work fine. I appreciate your comment though and I'll read up about those methods. I'll try thanking you from my watchlist... nagualdesign 18:13, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Redirect help

I am trying to get to the page that redirects  Religious sisters to  Nun#Distinction between a nun and a religious sister  but I find no indication on the Nun page or in the instructions at  Wikipedia:Redirect#How to edit a redirect or convert it into an article  on how to get there. It says "you must use a special technique in order to get to the redirect page itself" but I don't see where it explains that technique. How do I get to this redirect page to edit or expand it (and so to learn the process)? Thanks for any help with this! Jzsj (talk) 17:31, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

After being redirected, scroll up to the top of the page, where is should say "redirected from Religious sister". Click on that link. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 17:34, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Pperry already explained it, but you can also add the "redirect=no" parameter to the url, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_sister?redirect=no or https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Religious_sisters&redirect=no ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:36, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
With your help I was able to create Brother (Catholic) but I still don't find any evidence of a redirect at Brother (Christian) (or at Nun, for Religious sisters). So I don't see how to find the Brother (Catholic) page to edit it. How to get back there, please. Jzsj (talk) 18:24, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
You only se "Redirected from" when you use the redirect so click on Brother (Catholic) and scroll to the top. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:43, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

How to create scripts?

Hi. I want to create a script that fixes pages in Category:CS1 errors: dates. Unfortunately, I don't know how to code on Javascript. I want the script to be able to compare the citation date with the page's history so that it can determine when the reference was added if the error is in the access-date parameter. If the error is in the date parameter, I want the script to compare the date of when the source in question has been created and fix the error by substituting the date in which the source has been created in the correct format so that the error is fixed. Can you please help me out. Thanks. Pkbwcgs (talk) 20:28, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Having done this manually, I'm not sure it is a task amenable to scripting. The problematic cases are partial or malformed access dates that are not close to the date of the edit which added them. — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 21:27, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Right, |access-date= must specify a day, not just a month or year. I just randomly checked one. Its access-date parameter just gives the year 2008. It's a dead link, and archive.org came back with an "try again later" error message... Seems like a very tedious and time consuming task to do manually, but we have coders who know how to interface with archive.org I think. Cyberpower678 comes to mind. access-date is not a required parameter, so one way to fix it would be to simply remove the date entirely when only a partial date is specified, as that's been deemed "not good enough". Once anyone goes to the trouble of verifying that it's still accessible then they would want to update the parameter with the current date. You can't really guess what day the original editor accessed it in 2008, and they're unlikely to remember. Unless you assume they accessed it on the day that they added the reference. Then you could have a bot search the edit history to find the day that the reference was added and use that day. I could do that in PHP using the API... but I have already have a to-do list that's a mile long. wbm1058 (talk) 22:30, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Mass rollback

The mass rollback script that I am currently using seems to be out of date, as it hasn't been working for a while. Does anyone know where I can finding a currently working version? Many thanks, Alex Shih (talk) 10:21, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

User:Writ_Keeper/Scripts/massRollback.js works Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:26, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
@Alex Shih: Yes, Writ Keeper's script is great. It gives you the rollback all option in a dropdown menu next to the Twinkle dropdown - but I think you told me you don't use that! Home Lander (talk) 16:10, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks guys. I thought I was using Writ Keeper's script. It was working for me before, but just stopped working all of sudden at one point for some strange reason. I'll try again. And yes, my despise of Twinkle is probably on the same level as Ritchie333. Alex Shih (talk) 22:35, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-08

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

Recent changes

  • The explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed. [11][12]
  • You can now see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table. [13]

Problems

  • Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed. [14]
  • Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like {{sfn}} are not visible in the references list whilst editing. [15][16]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item 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 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

22:54, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Greetings, WIkipedians. Now that I graduated WP:TWA what should I do with my contrib history? (16 Feb 2018)

Hi there, anyone who can help.

I just can't help but notice, and worry, and ponder about all of the stuff I did while in TWA, as they appear in your contribs history,and there is an army of them; AN ARMY! ; There appears to be over 50 edits made via the program (which I liked), though now it feels like a big clog. Considering that people look at your contributions, in a way, like your personal recors inspite of policy saying otherwise, thus I'm concered that I won't be able to progress here, because they seem repetious, a bit vandolous due to the quality, (considering the system tags me as doing those other wikipedians' edits [which on top of that makes it look very suspicious], among other things). Here's what it looks like:

Big list in here
  • Trial of template:

16 February 2018

After looking at those, I would start asking the user a lot of questions, which won't help things at User:Zanygenius/Please Adopt Me!, and thus I could be cabaled, blocked, or worse. Could you tell me, with this mess, what to do with it? Or frankly how? Thank you. Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 00:06, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is nothing you can do to change history. But I wouldn't worry about it. Your first week? As long as you weren't actively behaving badly, no one cares. Just start making good contributions. --Trovatore (talk) 00:30, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
@Zanygenius: nothing, once you have 10000 edits it will be nothing :D They are obviously marked as part of TWA and are 'normal'. — xaosflux Talk 01:46, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
However, if you REALLY want them gone, you can throw a {{db-userreq}} on the ones in your userspace and an admin will delete them for you. — xaosflux Talk 01:48, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks everyone, including @Trovatoere and Xaosflux:. This should do the trick. Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 15:33, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
@Zanygenius: Nobody cares about TWA, certainly not in a bad way. I do recent changes patrolling at times, and I skip right over the TWA stuff. I mean, in theory, there could be policy violations in it, but it's all in (your[1]) user space. It generally shows, I think, a beginner learning how Wikipedia works, and nobody is going to complain about that - the alternative is we have test edits on live pages. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 12:57, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
  1. ^ it doesn't belong to you, but it's about you, but you've basically got editorial control unless your silly
Should this discussion have more posts, is it within the WP:MOS (couldn't find anything about it) to unindent the conversation with an arrow, like some discussions on this page? Thanks.
@Bellezzasolo: Editors can see my "edits", though they can also see that's in TWA, this they can skip over this, right? I guess I'm all set, thanks. Just wondering. Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 14:35, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, dedents are fine. And yeah, it's quite clearly TWA, I don't think anybody would bother you with mistakes, unless you were using the pages as a platform for defamation or something. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 15:41, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Automated access to deleted content

I'm interested in analysing content in pages deleted per G11 in order to try and detect other spam pages as they are created. As an admin, I access deleted revisions in a browser, and could potentially write a script to scrape it out from Special:Undelete but that would mean typing my password in plaintext, which I'm sure everyone would agree is a bad idea (and using 2FA, I presume this wouldn't be possible anyway). So is there some other way I can get hold of the data? In theory this database query with the addition of join text on ar_text_id = text_id should work, but the text table isn't publicly available. Would someone at WMF be able to run the queries on the real databases and send me the data? SmartSE (talk) 12:49, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal (WMF) and Kaldari: (not sure what your staff name is kaldari). --Izno (talk) 15:33, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Use the action API (specifically, the prop=deletedrevisions module) to access the content, with OAuth for your script's authentication to avoid having to enter your password into it. Anomie⚔ 18:26, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Wikimedia uses external storage for content, so it's not in the text table, even in production. I'm not actually sure how to access content without using the API, so yeah, API is the way to go :) If you are having trouble getting your script to use OAuth, Special:BotPasswords is another option (though less secure). Also, not sure if you knew about mw:ORES? It does a fair job at identifying G11 spam, and there's an API. — MusikAnimal talk 03:48, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
@Anomie and MusikAnimal: Thanks. OAuth and API looks like the way to go and hopefully I can figure out how to make it work. I do know about ORES but I'm actually more interested in detecting UPE rather than the more blatant spam, but I'm curious to see whether word frequencies in G11s match up with UPE. There's an awful lot slipping through at the moment, so I presume this isn't being caught by ORES. SmartSE (talk) 13:27, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
@Anomie: I've gotten pretty close to getting it to work but adding my tokens to this gives me "mwoauth-invalid-authorization" "The authorization headers in your request are not valid: Invalid consumer". Had a look around but can't find any solutions. SmartSE (talk) 21:36, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
User:Halfak (WMF): Don't you already have a tool that does this, or is it for a different CSD criterion? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes. See mw:ORES#Curation_support. We have a model that is trained to detect G3 "vandalism", G10 "attack", and G11 "spam". You can use this model to detect problematic new page creations. --Halfak (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Hide semi-automated edits in contributions page

Hello all,

I was wondering if someone knew how I could add a checkbox to the Special:Contributions page that would hide all semi-automated edits. Is this something that can be achieved with the javascript functions? I know basic programming but don't know where to look to make that modification. Acebulf (talk) 23:22, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

@Acebulf: not really, as "semi-automated edits" aren't something that are explicitly declared. If the edits are tagged when/if phab:T174349 happens you could filter on that. — xaosflux Talk 23:34, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
You could also try to do them line by line with something like referenced in Wikipedia:Bots#How_to_hide_AWB_edits_from_your_watchlist. — xaosflux Talk 23:37, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Try XTools :) Example: https://xtools.wmflabs.org/autoedits/en.wikipedia.org/Acebulf Look for "Non-automated edits" at the bottom, which will allow you browse contributions. — MusikAnimal talk 00:18, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
And if anyone wanted to make a user script or gadget, there is an API available to get non-automated edits for a given user. Some 65+ (semi-)automated tools are filtered. — MusikAnimal talk 00:30, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Edit section

I'm having trouble with the "Edit section" links. They keep opening the wrong sections. Anybody know anything about this? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:32, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Can you tell us which pages and around which times? You will normally find issues if the number of sections on a page changes between the time you view it and the time you click the link. Nihlus 04:33, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Strange edit conflicts

I have had a couple of edit conflicts with myself on the same posting recently. Has anyone else had a similar problem? Firefox on Windows 10, source editor. Save takes a loooong time, ends in edit conflict screen. Comparison of content shows that the edit was saved then it seems to have tried to save it again. Only difference being unexpanded signature in second attempt. The latest conflict on a one line talk page edit. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:24, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

I had one today. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:26, 19 February 2018 (UTC).
Twice today here. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:48, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Changing skin

Can I change my default skin for Extension:MobileFrontend(Change it from MiniveraNeue to Timeless) শুভ দোলযাত্রা — FR™ 09:23, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Less space below the last message on an IP talk page

Is this some recent change to the software?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:27, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

That was the result of this edit request. The previous version used the line break tag, which is said to be generally best avoided. But if people think there should be a space, I suggest we use CSS to realize it instead of reverting the request. For instance:
Nardog (talk) 17:49, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
@Nardog: @Vchimpanzee: I added the 2em spacer as above, give it a few mins for caching and check it out. If you need more adjustments post at MediaWiki talk:Anontalkpagetext. — xaosflux Talk 14:44, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Looks better now. It's a little hard to tell here because I'm on Firefox. When I get home I'll have Edge.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:14, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks, but I don't think <div>...</div> is necessary any longer now that <hr /> has clear: both;. Nardog (talk) 23:24, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
@Nardog: removed. — xaosflux Talk 23:26, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
All good! Nardog (talk) 23:27, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
Looks good on Edge.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:07, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Is there a way to display a list of biographies of women which are stub or start articles?

Hi

I'm running an editathon for International Womens Day and would like to help people to find articles to work on, is there a way of displaying a list of biographies of women which are stubs or start articles? Also perhaps a way of filtering them by profession or nationality or some other factor?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 21:31, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: Possibly of interest to you, given your recent comment on VPM. --Izno (talk) 21:42, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
There's a list of Stub articles that are part of WP:WOMEN, if that helps: [18] (one day Special:PageAssessments will let you filter by class, too). I think you could get more fine grained results with a database query (using categories and page assessments), but it'd require a little work. — MusikAnimal talk 21:51, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
Query actually runs pretty fast! See quarry:query/24919 for example, which is a list of stub-class female pop singers. You can Fork that query and change cl_to to the desired category (use underscores instead of spaces), and pa_class to the desired assessment class. — MusikAnimal talk 22:00, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal:, amazing, a couple of questions about the quarry query:

  • Is there a way of linking to the articles in the results so it could act as a worklist?
  • Where it says 'WHERE cl_to = 'American_female_pop_singers', is this a category? And I can just change the category to whatever I want?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 22:12, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@John Cummings: I've made it add brackets around the page title, so now you can use "Download data" > "Wikitext" and paste that on-wiki. And yes, "American_female_pop_singers" is Category:American_female_pop_singers, so feel free to replace with another valid category. I just went to Madonna (entertainer) and picked one out. Hope the event is a success! — MusikAnimal talk 22:26, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal:, thanks, is there a way to make the links in the query? I guess I'm trying to create links to dynamic lists rather than static pages that go out of date. Thanks, John Cummings (talk) 22:48, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
@John Cummings:-I don't think that is possible. The best you could do is to paste the info on the page and regenerate it every day by running the same query (and again pasting it on the page). You could also add a line at the top like:

''This list was last updated by {{REVISIONUSER}} on {{REVISIONDAY}} {{Revisionmonthname}} {{REVISIONYEAR}}''  শুভ দোলযাত্রা — FR™ 07:55, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Hovercards

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T187955

This is probably a dumb question, but: I thought there was a gadget or beta feature called hovercards or something like that, but now I can't find it in my prefs. So, question 1, what now gives me article previews when I hover over a wikilink (I don't have navigation popups enabled because I use reference tooltips and it says they're incompatible)? Question 2, why has it started showing a blurred white question mark on a blue ground for many (most?) articles? And question 3, can somebody please get it to stop doing that? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:25, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to enable hovercards, but you should try out navigation popups. The two gadgets display basically the same information, and navigation popups works for a broader range of links. Enterprisey (talk!) 00:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Hovercards was (again) renamed several months ago, and is now called "Page previews". You can find it under the "Appearance" section of your preferences (it left Beta). This particular problem is a bug that popped up this week. The fixes are being worked on. Not sure when they will arrive in production. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:03, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, TheDJ, that's what I wanted to know – who'd have thought of looking for it there? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:37, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Welcome banner


Hi - I just completely redesigned the gif displayed above and uploaded it. So upload was successful but old version still displays on my talk page, as well as above. Yet when I click on the gif on my talk page it displays my new version. How can both versions exist simultaneously on the same damned page? Someone please kill the old version - my new version should display on all associated pages. . MarkDask 18:03, 17 February 2018 (UTC). Answered - thanks. MarkDask 18:16, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

The animated gifs are hard to tell part for others when they don't have a constant image to compare but I think the new version is displaying now. If you still see the old then try to bypass your cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:05, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
There is a typo in your banner, at least I don't know what else "tervetulos" could mean than Finnish language. In Finnish it is correctly written as "tervetuloa". Stryn (talk) 19:11, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks PrimeHunter, and yes Stryn I saw that. I'll upload a corrected version some time today. MarkDask 01:20, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
@Markdask: welcome would be "Добро пожаловать" in Russian, not "желанный". Please run everything by native speakers, or the effect from the would be opposite to intended. Max Semenik (talk) 01:59, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Please assume good faith Max. I had worked with a linguist to get things right - and had uploaded 12 different versions. Unfortunately I picked up the wrong Russian from Google Translate, as opposed to the correct version, which Thnidu had supplied me. A simple mistake, just as your syntactical error above, (from the would). I'm fairly certain I've got the correct Arabic version, supplied to me by a young Iraqi, whose initial request, (of 5 months ago), to the original creator of the GIF, had gone unheeded. Considering all the effort I have put in to making the original GIF more appealing I feel your condescension is unwarranted. Thanks. MarkDask 11:50, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

autowikibrowser

1-Hi .there is any module or plug in awb that do translate ≠wikilink(en to pt or fa) 2-can somebody covert this file to dll file for me?https://github.com/leafnode/AWB-Translate-Plugin?files=1 --Monorodo (talk) 18:00, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@Monorodo: You will probably have more success asking at WT:AWB. --Izno (talk) 19:04, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Username breaks welcome template

The two exclamation marks in the username of Jman12345!! broke the welcome template. Please see User talk:Jman12345!!. Is there any fix? Thanks. Dr. K. 03:30, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I currently can't think of a way to fix the template. You'll have to wrap the username in the first instance with nowiki tags.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 03:44, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for your valiant efforts Cyberpower. Will do. Take care. Dr. K. 03:47, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Cyberpower couldn't the template always wrap usernames in nowiki? Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:12, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Ah indeed that's what you tried, was looking at the wrong template. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
But, y'know, the preview button exists - can preview {{subst:WelcomeMenu}} on Jman's page instead of using Jman's talk page like a sandbox :) Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:31, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
nowiki works on the first occurrence of the username where it just displays the name as text but the second occurrence is in a contributions link which breaks. Simplified broken result of current version of {{WelcomeMenu}} used on User talk:Jman12345!!:
[[Special:Contributions/Jman12345 contributions]]
nowiki also breaks:
[[Special:Contributions/Jman12345!!|contributions]]
Replacing ! by &#33; works:
contributions
The replacement can be made with Module:String#replace:
contributions
It's not elegant but the best I can think of. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:47, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks go to everyone. Thank you PrimeHunter for providing the solution, which I have implemented. Dr. K. 19:21, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Edit section without subsections

The [edit] link in a section header line takes me to an editor for just that section, via &section=section-number in the URL. If the section is a parent section with subsections, the editor contains those as well, which makes sense--they are "part of" the section I chose to edit. Is there a way to open the editor with only the parent section, not also including the (possibly many and/or large) subsections? The subsections have their own section-number (and I can edit them directly alone), so the server clearly knows they are distinctly accessible entities. For visual example:

Parent section [edit]

I want to edit this level2 section...

Subsection [edit]

...without also including this level3 section.

DMacks (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

This is not possible. --Izno (talk) 19:03, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
By design (some intentional reason)? Or is it worth a phab? DMacks (talk) 19:31, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure "this is not technically feasible" is the answer due to the way that HTML sectioning works. --Izno (talk) 19:54, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

And notably, there is no "end of section" marker in there so your section could have: 

== Section header 1 ==
Some section 1 text
=== section header 1a ===
1 a text

More section 1 text

— xaosflux Talk 22:10, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that's correct. Your "More section 1 text" is part of 1a because as you note, there is no end-of-section marker. It's not like a bullet/numbered-list that can be embedded in an on-going section. I can't think of anything in our style/layout guides that support the idea that subsections are closed containers with the parent section able to continue either because there is no indicator to the reader that the content is returning to the parent context. In terms of the html (caveat: I don't know the internal storage), it appears that each header and each content block is an independent chunk of data, rather than having the text encapsulated with its header, so I don't see any concept of "to which section content belongs" or "of which parent a section is a subsection" other than what the most recent higher-level header was. DMacks (talk) 22:28, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
@DMacks: So I popped over to Special:Random and ended up on The_Ugliest_Girl_in_Town, from the visual layout the lede and the stub marker are both in the same section, with subsections between. — xaosflux Talk 22:36, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
But according to editing the very last section it's part of the last section. Stub-tags might have some CSS to instruct layout, but otherwise there would be no way to have a multi-paragraph subsection (there again being no source-level indication when to return to the parent-section context). DMacks (talk) 00:12, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Yup, which it obviously "isn't" from a layout point of view - its just the way the edit section link works on here. I imagine this may be an "improvement" that might be able to get handled in Visual Editor (perhaps by "collapsing" other sections on its edit window) - but someone will need to build it. — xaosflux Talk 00:16, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
It appears from restore feature which loads all subsections of a section during section editing in 2004 that there was a period where subsections were not included. It seems straightforward to implement as an option in the source editor, e.g. with an optional url parameter like nosub=1 in edit links. I see no problems specifying what it should do: Just stop at the next section header and that's it. MediaWiki has no concept of a subsection ending without a section heading or end of page. Everything after the last section heading belongs to that section as far as the software is concerned. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:48, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

How do I have an IP address whitelisted so it can create more than 6 accounts in a day?

Hi all

I'm running a 100 person editathon for new users in a week and have just found out that the wifi makes it appear as though would all be editing from the same IP address. I know that there is a block on IP addresses for creating more than 6 IP addresses per day and that there is also a way to lift that temporarily. Please can someone tell me how to do it?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 18:34, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@John Cummings: you can request via phab, see example phab:T113519. Although @Krishna Chaitanya Velaga: was recently mentioning a new possible option via outreach. Krishna? — xaosflux Talk 18:42, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks @Xaosflux:, done here https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T188034 John Cummings (talk) 19:13, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks for the ping. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 03:42, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
@John Cummings: If you're familiar with the Outreach Dashboard, and as you already have account creator right, you can directly create accounts using the dashboard, without requesting any IP ban lift. To know more setting up an edit-a-thon on the dashboard, click here. Once the page is set-up, as you scroll down, you'll see Enable account requests button. "This will allow participants to enter their email address and desired username, instead of creating new accounts themselves. You will then be able to create the accounts from this Dashboard, and add them as program participants at the same time." Passwords will be emailed to the respective email addresses. Doing so will also help you to easily track the metrics of the event. A regular IP ban lift is risky if there is any chance for change of the Public IP address of the network. Such cases can also be avoided using this feature. Kindly ping me if you need any help. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 03:42, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga:, thanks very much for the explanation, I've requested the IP white list just in case. John Cummings (talk) 08:34, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Transclusion count by namespace?

Template:Infobox is used (transcluded) on over 3 million pages, per THIS tool. I'm interested in breaking that down by namespace. Is there a tool that does that? For example just under 2000 talk pages transclude it, and tens of thousands of user pages transclude it. What I'm looking for is the percentage of mainspace pages {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}: 6,908,424 that transclude it, which is a considerably smaller number than {{NUMBEROFPAGES}}: 61,811,553.

Not sure it's safe to say that 3 out of 5 article-space pages have infoboxes, though roughly that may be the case? wbm1058 (talk) 22:57, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: Special:Search is probably pretty close to the actual count. --Izno (talk) 23:08, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Cool, Izno, thanks! How did you find out about hastemplate:infobox – is that new? It's not documented at Help:Advanced search § Parameters where the three main search parameters prefix, intitle, and incategory are documented. Now I'm wondering what other parameters there are that I might not know about.
So about 2,916,970 of 3,039,916 {{infobox}} transclusions (96%) are in mainspace, and 2,916,970 of 6,908,424 pages in mainspace that qualify as articles transclude infoboxes (52%). – wbm1058 (talk) 23:49, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
mw:Help:CirrusSearch has more documentation. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: I follow this page. hastemplate appeared with the rollout of CirrusSearch, and was first-documented 30 December 2013. So, no, not new at all. It's a pretty useful proxy for counts since I haven't bothered to learn SQL. --Izno (talk) 14:18, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: Template:Infobox is transcluded 2,917,009 times in the main namespace, as per quarry (quarry.wmflabs.org).--Snaevar (talk) 23:42, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
That figure is pretty close to the one given by hastemplate:infobox – I suppose the difference could be explained by caching lags. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:49, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: - the unix command-line tool wikiget can do this and it will save the list of page names. It uses the MediaWiki API. The command would be:

./wikiget -b "Template:Infobox" -t t -n 1 > ns1.txt

This saves all -b (backlinks) of -t (type) transclusion in the -n (namespace) 1 to the file ns1.txt -- GreenC 02:07, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help. My main purpose in asking this question was to determine what percentage of articles use infoboxes, which are the subject of an Arbitration Committee case because their use has been the focus of many disputes over the years. I have enhanced the Template:Infobox documentation to indicate that that they are used on about 52% of articles (just over half). – wbm1058 (talk) 02:15, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
There are a few infoboxes which do not use {{infobox}}, so that number underestimates the total, at least one of which is in the 6 figures: taxobox is 250k and geobox is another 20k. --Izno (talk) 13:21, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Pageviews across all title variations of a moved article

Some months ago, I created a modest article at 2017 special counsel team. That article was expanded, moved, expanded more, moved more (sometimes unilaterally, sometimes with consensus), residing for a long stretch at 2017 Special Counsel investigation, until it reached its present title, Special Counsel investigation (2017–present). When I tried to get a sense of pageviews, I was stymied by the fact that the tool only reports views for moved articles at the current title as here, and attempts to add other previous titles default to the lowercase redirect, 2017 special counsel investigation, so I can't add the actual former 2017 Special Counsel investigation without actually going to the redirect, searching for pageviews there, and then adding the current title (compare default (wrong) capitalization, right capitalization). This option, of course, still forecloses adding other former titles with lowercase variations to which the tool defaults, so I don't know how many pageviews the article has received throughout its back-and-forth move history. Is it possible, without all the hassle of going through these steps, to add to the pageviews tool a functionality to allow a user to see the number of views for an article at all titles the article has actually occupied? bd2412 T 15:23, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

@BD2412: The search automatically tries to resolve redirects since people enter typos, etc. In your "Settings", under "Search method", choose "Autocompletion including redirects". But in your case I think you want redirect views, which combines all redirects and the target page into one report. This won't account for old locations that became a different article, for instance, but it in most cases it will suffice. Querying the page move log is a complicated problem, due to how MediaWiki works. There's a phab ticket at phab:T141332, if you are interested — MusikAnimal talk 16:13, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
The "Redirect views" report appears to be around 200,000 views short for the life of the article at previous titles - is it limited to the life of the current title? bd2412 T 16:23, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
@BD2412: Sorry, I just used the default date range. Hit the "Do another query" button and choose your options accordingly. E.g. here are the all-time pageviews. Note also you can get to this tool for the main toolforge:pageviews interface. When looking at the pageviews of an article, there's a link "Redirects" on the right side which will bring you to the Redirect Views tool. — MusikAnimal talk 16:28, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Got it, thanks! bd2412 T 16:30, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
You bet. See also phab:T163621 where we hope to get the main Pageviews tool to automatically include all redirects. Before this was not feasible because the Pageviews API was relatively slow. It has since matured, so we might do away with Redirect Views altogether. Ideally however this would be done with phab:T121912, where the API itself accounts for redirects. Not sure if or when that will happen. — MusikAnimal talk 16:33, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Blocking VE for specific pages

Is it possible to prevent Visual Editor from being used on individual pages? Each time it gets used on pages like List of airline codes (S), it moves the </onlyinclude> to be before the <onlyinclude> instead of after it, which trashes List of airline codes, where the page is transcluded. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:05, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Was this issue reported at any time ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
No idea. I don't know how to search phab, and I stay away from VE discussion pages on enwp. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:00, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Better question: Why does VE do this? {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 22:04, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm not seeing this listed as a bug, feel free to create one by following these directions: mw:How to report a bug. — xaosflux Talk 22:07, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
I would also be very interested in knowing if this is possible, currently Wikiprojects can use VE (very useful for tables etc) because some (I think around 10?) of the admin pages are broken by editing them with VE. John Cummings (talk) 22:59, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
If you put the <onlyinclude> on its own line (see here), then it doesn't seem to rearrange the tags. I don't know what, if any, effect that might have on the transcluded table. The stray |- at the end of the table should probably be removed, too. "New row, end of table" doesn't make any sense, and the old software that's been cleaning up accidents like that is being removed, so tables with that ending might start displaying strangely.
I don't know of any currently working hack for blocking the visual editor on a particular page. However, it's blocked for the entire Template: namespace, so if you put the content into the Template: namespace and then transcluded it into both pages, then that would have the same effect. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
I repositioned the <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> tags. Let's see what happens nex time somebody uses VE on the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:57, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Resolved
 – URL encoding was updated in Template:Sp-contributions-footer. — xaosflux Talk 18:46, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

The special:contributions results page "articles created" link is busted again. It takes one to xtools but without the username filled in. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:07, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

@Bri:  Works for me I just followed the link on your own page and ended up at a working link. Can you provide an example of it not working? — xaosflux Talk 18:16, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Sure, I'm doing cleanup after UPE -- so have been running it on Special:Contributions/Plot Spoiler. They are indeffed so maybe that has an effect on it? ☆ Bri (talk) 18:18, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Space in their name, the link should be Plot%20Spoiler not Plot+Spoiler. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:21, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
@Bri: I updated the encoding style for names with spaces, try again now. — xaosflux Talk 18:26, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Perfect, thank you ☆ Bri (talk) 18:35, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Sorry about that. With the new XTools, we're using paths instead of query params (although the old query params still work). So it would be something like https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/en.wikipedia.org/{{urlencode:{{{1|Example}}}|PATH}} where PATH will force spaces to be %20 instead of +, as needed for this sort of routing, but WIKI (turning spaces to underscores) works just as well. I'm going to see if there are any other templates that need updating. I already did this for the Edit Counter, so all of those links should be working. — MusikAnimal talk 20:47, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Anonymous wiki spam

I received this. Issue: there is no sender link. There is no wiki-link homepage I can click. What now? -DePiep (talk) 22:20, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

This message was sent by User:Evad37. @DePiep: I'm not exactly sure what you are asking for, can you elaborate? — xaosflux Talk 22:50, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
It specifically says Message sent by User:Evad37@enwiki using the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Subscribe&oldid=825050571 , you have been subscribed to this mailing since at least early 2016. — xaosflux Talk 22:52, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
You subscribed in 2016. Admin-only link to your subscription on a deleted page. The edit summary was "subscribe User:DePiep -- wow, alphabetically I am ten places above Doc James! ;-)"
The post you link says: "Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 February 2018 (UTC)"
Your above post has a source comment saying saying bet: someone will come along and say: "but you can opt-out!". but you can opt-out! OK, you won the bet. Not sure what your point is. Maybe you forgot you opted in. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:09, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
So the answer to my Q is? -DePiep (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Everything seems in order here - What do you need help with, please be specific. — xaosflux Talk 23:37, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Your Q was "What now?". Xaosflux and I both made it clear we don't what your post is about but you made no attempt to clarify it. I still don't know what you want so I cannot say what now. My best guess: Use the unsubscribe link in the post. If you are not referring to the Signpost but the Facto Post then it also has a link to remove your name from their mailing list. You were added by Charles Matthews in [19]. I haven't investigated why. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:40, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Still trying to guess what you want. You said "There is no wiki-link homepage I can click". If you want more information about the subject of the Facto Post then click the link in "WikiFactMine pages on Wikidata are at WD:WFM". PrimeHunter (talk) 23:45, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Hi all of you. None of you won a price.
As I wrote: There is no sender's link --DePiep (talk) 00:36, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I've seen this many times before. It is easier to ignore DePiep when they get like this, rather than try to pry information out of them, or (God forbid) archive the thread. They will rant about how useless we are for a while, but eventually will go back to being productive elsewhere. You can keep asking them to clarify if you really want to, but the odds are extraordinarily good they will not stop being cryptic, and will blame you for not understanding their question immediately. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:39, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
A Personal attack, Floquenbeam. -DePiep (talk) 01:45, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
  • We try, we try! Note, biggest "confusing" item from this initial response is that the "diff" is actually a combination of 3 diffs. Unless given some specific information I'm leaving with this: Messages sent via mass message will have the logged id of the initiating editor as an html comment, depending on the message it MAY also be a wikilink but in some cases the wikilink will be to a group page (like the Signpost). — xaosflux Talk 00:48, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
    Yeah, I still don't know what "sender link" DePiep wants but I give up asking for clarification. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:52, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
The certainty that I received this. Issue: there is no sender link. will threat you for whatever. For covering their friends. But arguments? What? -DePiep (talk) 00:59, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Do you think we haven't read your one-line post and repeating it counts as clarification? At least three administrators have unsuccessfully tried to guess what you want. All three posts were sent by User:MediaWiki message delivery which is linked at top of the diff and in a signature in each post. I assume you have already seen the link and want something else but I still don't know what and you have never tried to explain it. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:43, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
??? Do you think we haven't read .... Hi. Enough. Stop harassing me. -DePiep (talk) 03:01, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
@DePiep: Your diff shows the delivery of three separate messages, I am assuming that "there is no sender link" means that these three messages were signed by MediaWiki message delivery (talk · contribs) rather than by the person who prepared the message itself. This is correct, since all three messages were delivered by MediaWiki message delivery, which must not sign as if it were from somebody else, since that would violate WP:SIGFORGE.
Examining the last line of each post (either in the diff that you provided, or by editing the page) shows that the first and third were delivered on behalf of Evad37 (talk · contribs) and you were selected because a link to User talk:DePiep appears at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Subscribe; whereas the second one was delivered on behalf of Charles Matthews (talk · contribs) and you were selected because a link to User talk:DePiep appears at Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. Do you wish to be removed from these lists, or would you like instructions on how to do it yourself? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:56, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the research. By "sender" I meant to say: the publisher (likely a Wikipedia project), not the mail delivery mechanism. For example, in similar posts the Signpost has its homepage linked showing. So far, only user:Evad37 has been found (through research and code inspection), and that page does not show as the publication's (home)page. Quite simple, I wanted to look for: "What is this publication?". As I said, this is not about sub/unsubscription (which is available by links all right BTW). Consider closed please. -DePiep (talk) 16:29, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Twinkle is not working, but it is enabled in Preferences

I was making a JavaScript tool and enabled it at my common.js page. Twinkle then did not work. I removed the script and disabled Twinkle. I enabled it again but

  • It does not sometimes load
  • At the diff section, it sometimes appear double
  • When it appears normally, clicking on any of the Twinkle links does not result in anything

I use Safari.  Anchorvale T@lk | Contributions  06:59, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Hm, it's working fine for me. Have you tried removing RecentChanges.js from your common.js? Have you tried clearing your temporary internet files? From the menu bar: Safari -> Clear History (be sure option for all history is selected)? Are you using the most recent version of macOS (High Sierra/10.13.3)? -FASTILY 08:58, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Try also WP:BYPASS to make sure that all scripts etc. are flushed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:49, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
I did that, but I don’t see an “empty cache” button.  Anchorvale T@lk | Contributions  05:01, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
The actual method used to clear/bypass your cache varies between browsers, and sometimes varies between different versions of the same browser. It's usually a two- or three-key sequence, but might be a menu option. Some browsers will silently clear the cache straight away; others will present a box, either asking if you want to do it, or saying that it's been done. Without knowing which browser and version you are using, I can't really offer any more. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:42, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Is there a way of having an image inside a clickable button

Hi all

I'm trying to create a help button for an event I'm running and have been using Template:Clickable button 2 which looks great. I want to add an icon inside the button to create a very noticeable help button.


I want to add a white version of to the button Have a question or need help?
Visit the Teahouse but it breaks when I use {{Clickable button 2|<center>[[File:Noun Project question mark icon (white) 1101884 cc.svg|40px]]</center>Have a question or need help?<br>Visit the Teahouse|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse|class=mw-ui-progressive}}

Any ideas? Any workarounds?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 22:31, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

John Cummings-I used another image to create a work around for the button. Putting the noun project image made the button look ugly.
<span class="mw-ui-button mw-ui-progressive">[[File:Blue Question.svg|80px|link=WP:Teahouse]]<br />[[Wikipedia: Teahouse|{{font|color=white|Have a question or need help?}}<br>{{font|color=white|Visit the Teahouse}}]]</span>

Have a question or need help?
Visit the Teahouse
 শুভ দোলযাত্রা — FR™ 05:16, 24 February 2018 (UTC)


@Force Radical:, thanks very much, I also need to use it on Meta and the font template does not exist, I can't work out how to make the font white another way, attempt below....

Have a question or need help?
Visit the Teahouse
Thanks again
John Cummings (talk) 08:55, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
You need to be careful how you construct the attributes of HTML tags. <span style=color:''white''> should be constructed as <span style='color:white'>. The apostrophes enclose the whole of the value of the attribute, not just the value of the declaration; and must not be doubled. Alternatively, you may use <span style="color:white"> with quotes instead of apostrophes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:02, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
John Cummings-As Redrose64 said above, also I would advice you to link the image using |link=Wikipedia: Teahouse inside the image square brackets so that clicking on the image takes you to the expected destination and not to MediaVeiwer(I have made the changes to the prototype you showed above)PS:If you're using this at Meta be sure to preface the links with en:  শুভ দোলযাত্রা — FR™ 09:18, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
The proper method is omit the link (|link=]]) so HTML tidy (our HTML fixer) doesn't attempt to rewrite the double links. Then {{Clickable button 2}} could be used again (ensuring the code is kept up to date). — Dispenser 12:51, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much @Force Radical: and @Redrose64:, you've saved me hours of trial and error :) John Cummings (talk) 09:35, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@John Cummings: File:Noun Project question mark icon 1101884 cc.svg uses the CC-BY-SA license requiring attribution which is normally done by linking to the image. I would suggest adding {{PD-ineligible}}, but have gotten flack for it. — Dispenser 12:45, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@Force Radical:, @Redrose64:, do you know if there is a way of doing this same image clicking on image to to a link for images in <gallery>s? John Cummings (talk) 16:36, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@John Cummings: You should be able to do it with |link=Example page. See Wikipedia:Images linking to articles. — Dispenser 18:11, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
@Dispenser:, thanks very much, works perfectly. John Cummings (talk) 23:51, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Finding edits with specific edit summary

Is it possible to find a list of all edits with a specific edit summary? Alternatively, is it possible to find a list of all edits whose edit summary contains a specific wikilink? Thanks, AdA&D ★ 14:27, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@Anne drew Andrew and Drew: Edits made by one specific user, or do you need to check the edit summaries of all users? If the first, it's quite easy: go to the user's contributions page (yours is at Special:Contributions/Anne drew Andrew and Drew). At the bottom there is a box containing several links beginning with the user name. One of these links is Edit summary search. Give that a try. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:56, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
I meant edits of all users, but I figured it out using quarry. Thanks anyway! AdA&D ★ 05:01, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Note lists

On Commons, {{efn}} (content is the same) generates [a] reference links, but the reference list still uses 1. 2. numbering. Is there a MediaWiki namespace page that needs to be imported? Jc86035 (talk) 11:36, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Since c:Template:Notelist matches our Template:Notelist exactly, and there are no relevant differences between c:Template:Reflist and our Template:Reflist, I would say that it's a style sheet issue: one or more rules that we have set up are absent from Commons. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:46, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
Specifically, the following rule is needed in c:MediaWiki:Common.css:
div.reflist ol.references {
	list-style-type: inherit;  /* Enable custom list style types */
}
At least in Firefox. Anomie⚔ 14:17, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Watchlisting only one page

Is it possible to watchlist only only one page, and not the associated page? Like watchlisting only (article) Pluto, and not Talk:Pluto; or warchlisting only a userpage, but not the associated user talkpage; and other way around. Is it possible? Regards, —usernamekiran(talk) 14:07, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Usernamekiran Do you see "Watchlilst options" at the top of your Watchlist page? In Namespace, change it to (Article), and it limits your watchlist to articles without talk page. It also eliminates everything else that isn't an article. — Maile (talk) 14:34, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
This seems to be a perennial request for the community. You can find more info at phab:T2738 and m:2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Watchlists/Allow watching (or unwatching) just the page or just the talk page and m:2016 Community Wishlist Survey/Categories/Watchlists#CW2016-R178. Nihlus 14:42, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
@Maile66:Hi. Thanks for the tip. It is good only when I am on desktop. Not so good for mobile. I use this function while on computer, as well as User:MusikAnimal/customWatchlists. It is extremely useful for keeping the pages separate by topic/interest. I havent used it much in recent days though.
Thanks Nihlus it is what I was trying to say. See you guys around :) —usernamekiran(talk) 20:04, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Strike out usernames that have been blocked

Hi, This option (Preferences > Gadgets > Appearance) is no longer working for me. Previously the anchoring of table headers broke and now this. :( Terrorist96 (talk) 03:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@Terrorist96: It's currently working for me no problem. Have you made changes to one of your script pages that could have broken it? Home Lander (talk) 04:12, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
@Home Lander: Yeah, I see it works on the talk page of a banned person (example: User talk:Wastemessbigfatmistake) and the edit history page (NRA edit history) but not on the diff page (NRA diff page). I feel like it used to work on the diff page as well, but I may be mistaken. Edit: I also see it works when linking to a banned user here.Terrorist96 (talk) 22:57, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
@Terrorist96: I don't recall it ever working on diff pages. Home Lander (talk) 23:40, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
@Home Lander: Do you know if there is some technical limitation that prevents it from working on diff pages?Terrorist96 (talk) 02:44, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 Works for me on all pages even diffs — Frc Rdl 12:36, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
Strangely, it is now working on diffs for me as well. Don't recall seeing that before. Home Lander (talk) 14:46, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Interesting. I don't have the gadget turned on but I have the strikeout functionality provided by a script in my common.js (vector.js, actually). I'm not sure which one it is though. Haven't noticed any problems on diff pages or otherwise, though sometimes it doesn't work in history if I'm using a filtered view (also a script, also don't know which one). Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:13, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-09

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

  • Checkusers and stewards can now view private data such as the IP address in the abuse log. This data is removed regularly. [20]

Problems

  • Last week's MediaWiki version was rolled back because of a bug. [21][22]
  • Since the deployment train last week until late evening on 20 February UTC, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed. [23]
  • Special:Statistics did not take newly created pages into account since 13 February 2018. Because of this the statistics are recreated. [24][25][26]

Changes later this week

  • Users with version 10 of the Internet Explorer browser will no longer get JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis. If you use this browser on your computer, you can try upgrading to a newer version. [27]
  • Advanced item The Wikinews wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 27 February. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [28][29]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 1 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item 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 27 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Interwiki (problem)

Hello everyone, i tried to link articles 1257 Samalas eruption & article "Самалас" in russian wiki. It shows me the message "The link ruwiki:Самалас is already used by item Q16694081. You may remove it from Q16694081 if it does not belong there or merge the items if they are about the exact same topic." I followed the link but didn't see the usage of this article somethere or any conflict (they don't intersect with each other). Can you please help or give me adivise how it will be better to resolve this conflict? TIA. Anton Kopiev (talk) 03:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Please pass to the person who does sidebar language links. Sidebar language links, apparently two Q numbers for the same thing. I tried Wp:Wikidata, Q4, activated Merge gadget, then could not find it. I did not use Mergelitems because I did not understand what it would do. Any clarification?

Justification: I want to add ru:Список касимовских правителей to the left language links of List of Qasim Khans. From EN: currently linked to en,tr,ur. When add error message=already uses Q4434287 which is hu,lv,ru,tt From Ru: currently linked to ru,hu,lv,tt. When add error message=already uses Q10956594 which is en,tr,ur To the extent that I can read the languages they are all list of Qasim khans.Benjamin Trovato (talk) 21:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Benjamin Trovato: You may get a faster answer at Wikidata. --Izno (talk) 23:01, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Adjust infobox width

Can anybody provide further support with this issue? Thanks a lot in advance--Boczi (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:05, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Global preferences available for testing

Greetings,

Global preferences, a highly request feature in the 2016 Community Wishlist, is available for testing.

  1. Read over the help page, it is brief and has screenshots
  2. Login or register an account on Beta English Wikipedia
  3. Visit Global Preferences and try enabling and disabling some settings
  4. Visit some other language and project test wikis such as English Wikivoyage, the Hebrew Wikipedia and test the settings
  5. Report your findings, experience, bugs, and other observations

Once the team has feedback on design issues, bugs, and other things that might need worked out, the problems will be addressed and global preferences will be sent to the wikis.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! --Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Old Upload page code

Hello. In the old file upload page, there was this code <div style="display: none" id="newusers"> to show this element specifically to IP and new users. I wonder how does this work and how to make it work in other wiki? I can't find associating css or anything that make this work. Regards, --Horus (talk) 14:04, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

See mw:Manual:User group CSS and Javascript. I think this is supported on all wikis. Here on English Wikipedia, going by MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.css we can use the CSS class unconfirmed-show to target new users. You can set it up to work for any user group, however. For instance we also have anonymous-show (IPs only), and user-show (registered users only), done through MediaWiki:Group-user.css. The code you mention seems to be non-standard, as "newusers" is an ID, not a class. — MusikAnimal talk 16:20, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware of user group CSS. But the problem is IPs seem not to be affected by "user-show". When I use both "user-show" and "anonymous-show", IPs will still see both (I tried it myself), while users will see only user-show. Hence the question. --Horus (talk) 17:26, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Having more than one of the *-show classes causes the results to get ORed together. Including both user-show and anonymous-show would include everyone who is either logged in or not logged in, AKA everyone. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 17:46, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
I mean I put "user-show" and "anonymous-show" on two different divs, yet IPs still see both. --Horus (talk) 18:06, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
(←) @Horus: Sorry I forgot one critical component. In your MediaWiki:Common.css add the following:
.sysop-show,
.templateeditor-show,
.autoconfirmed-show,
.user-show {
	display: none;
}
...one for each of your user groups, except anonymous-show (since that's not a real user group). In the corresponding user group CSS, we override these rules and force them to be visible. In MediaWiki:Group-user.css anonymous-show is hidden, since all non-anonymous users are a "user", if that makes sense. Note that showing the content with display: block may not always be what you want (for instance a <table> would need to be shown with display:table), see MediaWiki:Group-user.css for an example. Hope this helps — MusikAnimal talk 17:59, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. --Horus (talk) 07:39, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Uneditable sections on article talk?

—specifically, here. The only ediayble section is the first one, all the others can only be edited from the main "edit source" tab. Double-click on any of the section headers themselves and see "This section cannot be edited automatically because it uses HTML formatting. Please edit manually." This is really odd; I can't see what HTML formatting is being referred to...?

Any ideas will be happily listened to. ...SerialNumber54129...speculates 11:58, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: I've stuck <nowiki>...</nowiki> around two curly brackets, and I think that's fixed it. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:12, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
@John of Reading: Thanks very much for the prompt advice and assistance. In my continuing naivity, I never stop being amazed at the amount of damage a stray bracket can do around here! :D —and I se, embarassingly, that it was my own edit that caused the problem in the first place...D'oh. Cheers! ...SerialNumber54129...speculates 12:21, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Timeless skin to all Wikimedia websites

How do I apply the Timeless skin to all Wikimedia websites as long as I'm logged in?

Also, how do I turn off Arial and change to the default typeface in the browser settings? JSH-alive/talk/cont/mail 16:00, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

@JSH-alive: We do not have global preferences on the Mediawiki wikis (this is currently being worked), so you will need to change it at each wiki that you visit regularly. --Izno (talk) 16:10, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Okay. How do I change Timeless skin's body text typeface to browser-default ones on global CSS? JSH-alive/talk/cont/mail 18:03, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Via custom stylesheets. mw:Skin talk:Timeless might be a better place to ask about Timeless as the topic is not en.wp-specific. --Malyacko (talk) 06:59, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Never mind. I think I found the way. JSH-alive/talk/cont/mail 15:03, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Inability to see beyond 10,000th entry in a search

I have been correcting instances of duplicate a's in articles, using the "absolute duplicates "a a" search" in Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings/Repetitions but changing the number of entries per page to 500 - as there are 41,660 results to look through; albeit that the vast majority are "valid" duplications that do not need correcting.
This works for the first 10,000 entries - when I have a page URL of this but clicking the "next 500" at the bottom of that page gives me "There were no results matching the query" as seen here
Is there any way of accessing the outstanding 31,660 results in order to correct/remove the erroneous duplications?
(W10, Edge, Vector if that makes any difference) - Arjayay (talk) 13:26, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

@Arjayay: Try a regex search. :) --Izno (talk) 14:06, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Izno that certainly helps. Given the incidence in the 10K I have checked, I suspect some are missing from this search, but it is a "Painting the Forth Bridge" task in any case. - Arjayay (talk) 16:05, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

My school ip address

HI! i made this to ask why the ip address for my school is blocked. Many people want to use this website for research but the ip address is blocked and people including me can't make a account on it or contribute to articles. Can someone tell me why it was blocked and can you find a solution for this problem The account i am on i made a home because i could not make a account at school. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CanadiaNinja (talk • contribs) 18:10, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Please, specify the ip address of your school. We can not answer your question unless we know the address. Ruslik_Zero 18:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Or more probably, the IP range.Tvx1 18:21, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
As the previous responses say, we need your IP address to give a specific answer. But here is some general information about school IP addresses.
  • School IP addresses are usually blocked because people make inappropriate edits from the school's computers.
  • Being blocked does not affect reading Wikipedia. Everyone, blocked or not, can read Wikipedia without any problems.
  • In most cases, the block only affects people who are not logged in. Try logging in with your account at school and check if you can edit. If you can, then the solution is to have people make accounts at home and then log in at school.
I hope this helps. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 01:27, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
User:199.235.239.13/16 is indeed a school range block. Ruslik_Zero 18:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Combining two blocks

Hi

I'm trying to create a title for pages I'm working on for an event I'm running in a few weeks. I want to add a button to go back to the main page but the page is getting very cluttered. Does anyone know how to join these two blocks together so the title appears in the middle on the block and then it says '<Back to main page' on the left hand side (both on the same line)?

⇦ Back to main page

Improve Wikipedia articles

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 10:54, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

⇦ Back to main page

Improve Wikipedia articles

I don't think there is a way to nicely center the button vertically other than to manually tweak the "margin-top:0.5em" value. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:49, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
thanks very much @This, that and the other:, this is great :) It doesn't have to be a button, it can just be text that does the same thing. John Cummings (talk) 23:41, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
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