Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 176

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216

Why doesn't SUBST: work here?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T4700

I'm trying to wrap my head around that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:42, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

See Help:Substitution#Limitation, substitution doesn't work within references. SD0001 (talk) 15:43, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Stupid bug. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:59, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

{{subst:#tag:ref|{{cite MIAR |title=FEMS Microbiology Reviews |issn=0168-6445 |access-date={{subst:TODAY}}}}}} will succeed. ―cobaltcigs 22:13, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Template:Infobox airline

I made an edit to {{Infobox airline}} here so that a second image the infobox. It works correctly but when I check preview I get the warnings "Warning: Page using Template:Infobox airline with unknown parameter "caption2" (this message is shown only in preview).", "Warning: Page using Template:Infobox airline with unknown parameter "image2" (this message is shown only in preview)." and "Warning: Page using Template:Infobox airline with unknown parameter "image2-width" (this message is shown only in preview).". So what did I do wrong. There's an example here, Summit Air. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 21:55, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

It uses Module:Check for unknown parameters so the new parameters must be added to the list of known parameters.[1] PrimeHunter (talk) 00:03, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing it. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 00:05, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

How do you search for where a Wikipedia article is mentioned elsewhere on the internet

If you search for, e.g. '"Bouncing Ball" +Wikipedia' on google, you get a ton of Wikipedia hits. Which is normally what most people would look like.

But what I want to know is where else on the internet Bouncing ball is mentioned. Does anyone know how to do that? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:51, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps by adding -site:wikipedia.org? Eman235/talk 03:53, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
You could try services like ahrefs (limited number of results for free). — xaosflux Talk 04:20, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Is there a way of displaying shapefile maps in infoboxes for species?

Hi all

I know that this is probably possible but I don't know exactly how to make it happen. I'm talking to an organisation with a huge number of shapefile maps of species distribution which could be imported in to Commons if they change the license (fingers crossed). I'd like to know is what would be the process of adding them to the infobox, I guess my main questions would be:

  1. Can shapefiles be displayed in English Wikipedia articles?
  2. Can they be displayed in infoboxes?
  3. Would I simply propose that the maps are added as a new section of the Species infobox template?
  4. Any other steps I'm missing?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:07, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

The Kartographer extension is installed in English Wikipedia. So, you can use them. Ruslik_Zero 08:16, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks very much @Ruslik0:, very helpful. John Cummings (talk) 09:21, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing

Hello, I have recently created the page of Tarık Biberovic however whoever I try to add my sources it says “error edit not saved”. How do I fix this? Thank you Wiki Facts fixer (talk) 13:19, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

I have just notified that it also says “(basketball)” beside his name. How do I remove this? Thanks Wiki Facts fixer (talk) 13:20, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi Wiki Facts fixer the best place to ask for help is Wikipedia:Teahouse or Wikipedia:Helpdesk. Please post your next questions there. You created the article at Tarık Biberovic (basketball) and you've successfully saved some edits. I've moved it to Tarık Biberovic, you should add the sources there. – Ammarpad (talk) 14:02, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you Wiki Facts fixer (talk) 14:53, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

How to load a userscript on m.wikipedia.org?

While common.js/.css will load when going to en.m.wikipedia.org on a desktop browser, on mobile these pages are not loaded. From my understanding, this was done because userscripts weren't written for mobile in mind, and has to do with the resourceLoader (related bugs: [2] [3] [4]). What I want is to use my userscript on the mobile site.

I've tried creating User:<username>/minerva.js and User:<username>/mobile.js pages, but using Chrome Remote Debugging, neither works. Opencooper (talk) 19:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@Opencooper: I added a popup to your minerva (User:Opencooper/minerva.js) - and verified that it worked on mine. Can you see it? (Feel free to revert of course). — xaosflux Talk 19:47, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I'm an idiot. Turns out I wasn't even logged in on mobile... Thanks for your help. It was PBKAC all along. Opencooper (talk) 20:13, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Lost deleted file?

Hi, I submited a request for undeletion of File:1917.mp3. Obviously you see that there is nothing in the deletion log. It is reported that there is a deleted description page but no deleted file. It is assumed that it was deleted before July 2006 and Mediawiki 1.7.0 which allowed to keep the deleted files archived. Does anyone have a hint on how to recover the deleted file? (Yes, I checked in my own hard disk it is not there 😃) - geraki (talk) 16:58, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

The deletion is from 2003 ((diff) 2003-09-30T15:36:31 . . Geraki (talk | contribs | block) 57 bytes (Eleftherios Venizelos speech to the Greek people in 1917.)). — xaosflux Talk 17:06, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Manually logged in Wikipedia:Upload log archive/September 2003. — xaosflux Talk 17:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
The 2003-09-30 is the upload date. There is no deletion log even for the description page. The file is mentioned in the article up to January 2006 [5]. - geraki (talk) 17:17, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
@Graham87: do you have any archeological insight in to this? — xaosflux Talk 17:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Based on my own observations, back in the day deleted files did not preserve the actual file in Special:Undelete, only the page history. Notice how other files on Wikipedia:Upload log archive/September 2003 show no file when you click (admin only) on the undelete link. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:52, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
That's my recollection, and it appears to be reinforced by the Mediawiki release notes from 2006 that I quoted over at Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion#File:1917.mp3. I was hoping I was wrong.
Unfortunately, I can't find the file on archive.org either. --kingboyk (talk) 17:57, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I've got nothing ... except sometimes deletions have happened without a deletion log entry, even post-2004. Graham87 03:40, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Geraki, where did you find this in the first place? Source? Anyway, you kind of lucked out that another editor made a copy at File:1917.ogg, which I've restored. As I also mentioned at refund, this assumed still under copyright, so please request that it be deleted again if you decide not to make use of it. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:38, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

We didn't keep deleted versions of images/files until 1.7 as far as I know (only their related deleted pages were tracked). The database table keeping track of it was only introduced in 1.7 at least. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:45, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

When I go to Simon I (High Priest) and look at the bottom left, there is a Hebrew link to the page for שמעון השני (which is incorrect). When I click "Edit links", however, the Hebrew link that appears is to a different page (the correct page) שמעון הראשון. Why the inconsistency, and how can we make it link to the correct page? Ar2332 (talk) 08:23, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

The wikitext of Simon I (High Priest) says [[he:שמעון השני]] at the bottom. This overrides the Wikidata link. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:33, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, nice simple answer and deleting that text worked. Thank you! Ar2332 (talk) 05:59, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
@Ar2332: Did you understand PrimeHunter's response? it looks like someone added that particular bit of syntax to the article way back in 2007 with this edit, but I've got no way of knowing why because they didn't leave an edit summary. The editor who made the edit doesn't seem to be active any longer; so, you can can "fix" the syntax or maybe just remove it if you feel it's not needed. Maybe checking a few more similar aticles to see whether that syntax is needed might be a good idea before removing it altogether. Once the syntax problem has been "fixed", the links should work correctly. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:23, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
The only effect of the code is to add an interlanguage link to that article regardless of what the Wikidata item might say. Wikidata didn't exist at the time and all interlanguage links were made like that. See more at Help:Interlanguage links#Local links. I don't know Hebrew or ancient priests so I didn't evaluate whether there was justification for the link. I don't think there is. The link he:שמעון השני apparently goes to the Hebrew version of Simon II (High Priest). PrimeHunter (talk) 08:29, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Page-type link glitch

Moved to MediaWiki talk:Gadget-metadata.js
— xaosflux Talk 20:39, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

How does one edit this certain problem?

Hey, eveyone.😊 I'm gonna copy this question verbatim from where I originally posted it. I've ran into something wrong in Wikipedia, but I have no idea how to edit it.

If you are interested in helping, please visit these three links:

In the pages that open, you should be able to spot a grey box titled "Sherlock Holmes at Wikipedia's sister projects". The box looks okay on the first link, but not on the other two.

I understand the HTML side of this problem: The text labels are given an arbitrary width of 182 pixels, but the Minerva and Timeless skins add a padding of 1em to the box. Because of insufficient space, the label are placed on the next line. But I don't know where I must fix this problem. So far, I know how to edit articles. I know about templates too. But do I edit a skin? Or, do I need to edit a skin in the first place? If not, where must I edit? flowing dreams (talk page) 10:02, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Flowing dreams: alignment and overflow are hard :( The "182" value is coming from the template code directly: Template:Sister project links. Using 180 seems to fix it - what do you think? — xaosflux Talk 10:25, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
See also here. — xaosflux Talk 10:28, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
May need more tweaking for minerva, in any case feel free to test at Template:Sister project links/sandbox and check at Template:Sister project links/testcases - when you have something you like drop an edit request at Template talk:Sister project links. — xaosflux Talk 10:30, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:. Hi. Why reduce to 180? Why not remove the width altogether? flowing dreams (talk page) 10:37, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
NVM. I see why now. We're going to have to problem if the width gets larger than 180px, whether dynamically or otherwise. Maybe we should switch to table or flex grid. flowing dreams (talk page) 11:01, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
@Flowing dreams: feel free to try new designs in that sandbox. Another possible option would be to increase the width of the div around it (mbox-small class) however this appears to be heavily used elsewhere so I'm hesitant to touch it. — xaosflux Talk 13:00, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for everything, Xaosflux. I'll think of something. If I felt I need consultation or help, I'll ping you in the template talk page. Cheers. flowing dreams (talk page) 07:06, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Notifications freezing up on mobile Firefox (Android)

When I try to use notifications on mobile Firefox (Firefox 68.0.2 mobile version running on Android 9). I use the "desktop version" of the Wikimedia sites as I can't stand the mobile ones. When I click the notification button, the page locks up and I have to back out or refresh to continue, and I can't click to view the changes or anything like that. They work fine on desktop Firefox. Has anyone else encountered this issue? Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:03, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

I've created phab:T223609 3 months ago without any attention. Stryn (talk) 11:14, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Bot get a ref by its number

How would a bot retrieve a reference by its number, for example ref #7. The ref number is not in the wikitext. The number is in the HTML, but the source is HTML, not wikitext, so difficult to retrieve the original cite. Checking if there is something I am missing. -- GreenC 03:13, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Fetch the revision, preview it, parse the resulting HTML? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:47, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
The parsoid html output (example) carries information from the both the page's html as well as its wikitext. Should be useful as far as refs use the citation templates I guess. SD0001 (talk) 05:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
@GreenC: Assuming that yours was not a hypothetical question, one thing that is missing is context. Is this to do with Wikipedia:Bot requests#Fix or tag references that were incorrectly copied along due to a VisualEditor bug? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:28, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes. Need to retrieve the (wikitext) for a given citation number in a reliable way. Everything else for that bot is basically done/solved. -- GreenC 12:11, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Looks like a solution is REST API which lists the references by number with an HTML version of the ref. Then Parsoid to convert the reference to Wikitext. -- GreenC 13:11, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Eh this doesn't work, the REST API for references doesn't have Parsoid markup so it doesn't convert correctly from HTML to Wikitext. -- GreenC 14:22, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

They are numbered in order of first usage, which is not necessarily the order of definition. If you're sure you can avoid or exclude cases where footnote instance(s) from a template's wikitext are emitted to the article's reflist (which requires unusual syntax and is probably rare) you wouldn't actually have to run the parser. ―cobaltcigs 14:24, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Can't be sure. It will be thousands of articles. There are also refs transcluded from infoboxes for example, that are basically non-existent in the wikisource but show up in the final render. -- GreenC 14:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Working on a solution involving w3m, conversion to plain text and approximate grep. Fun times. -- GreenC 14:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist missing from new "advanced" mobile view?

I opted into the new experimental mobile page. It seems to be missing a link to my watchlist: the old/standard mobile view had one. Thanks! Grover cleveland (talk) 15:52, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@Grover cleveland: please send your feedback on "advanced mode" to mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Advanced_mobile_contributions. — xaosflux Talk 15:55, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
It's under your account options (top right icon) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:09, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! It took me forever to realize that option even existed -- on my browser (Chrome / IOS) I have to slide the entire page to the left to make it appear. Grover cleveland (talk) 18:04, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Editor font

How can i change the editor font? i previously have tried putting these into common.css 

#wpTextbox1 {
  font-family: 'Consolas Regular';
}

.mw-editfont-monospace {
  font-family:'Consolas Regular';
}

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Erentar2002 (talk • contribs) 11:28, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Try increasing the specificity of the selectors by including the name of the element, textarea. You can also save some space by having both selectors share a declaration-list: 
textarea#wpTextbox1,
textarea.mw-editfont-monospace {
  font-family:'Consolas Regular';
}
Also ensure that the font concerned is installed on your device. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:17, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Version history just starts magically at a midpoint in 2001

Are we missing some early version histories? The oldest version of global warming I can find is from October 2001 but that's obviously not when the article was created. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:41, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:46, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 Done Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:34, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Better layout for wide material?

In List of countries by prevalence of genital cutting, there's two layout problems. One is the 2 x 2 table of maps, and the other is the large table of data below that. Both of these display poorly, especially on a mobile device. If anybody's a layout guru, could you take a look and see if you can do something better? Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Better layout for NARROW material, lol

I've noticed when I open the right-hand "developer tools" sidebar in Chromium (web browser) and drag the panel separator too far to the left, the MediaWiki interface layout changes from normal to total shit when given fewer than 551px horizontal space (compare red-circled areas in screenshots). Naturally this is annoying when I'm trying to inspect portlet elements (in the course of debugging CSS/JS). Any ideas on how to disable whatever triggers this behavior? Yes, I'm on a small-screen laptop. Yes, the skin is monobook. ―cobaltcigs 10:19, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

This is a deliberate feature in MonoBook called responsive web design. When your skin is MonoBook, "Enable responsive MonoBook design" is an option at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. You can disable it. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:45, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done Hard refresh needed, but I had no idea it would be that simple. Thanks. ―cobaltcigs 10:51, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Need css help

I created a customized version of a script recently and added it my User:MB/common.js and everything was working fine. Yesterday, I edited the script and immediately after that I saw some unexpected behavior - in the edit window I seem to have an unexpected very colorful syntax highligter and some other scripts I use frequently no longer work.

I tried to start over by reverting back to the prior version of my common.js, but that did not help. Have also tried switching to a different browser. Not sure what to try next. MB 14:11, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

There are several syntax highlighters. Does WP:HILITE help? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:57, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Joined 12 months ago on my user page on mobile version of the site

Directly under my user page, a subtitle reads: Joined 12 months ago. This isn't technically correct, as I registered an account on September 16, 2018 (and it's still August). Clovermoss (talk) 21:45, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: while the text of that message (in MediaWiki:mobile-frontend-joined-years) is controlled here, the value appears to be from mobile.common.js.map.json which uses rounding - I suspect it is rounding "up". If you would like to request a mediawiki developer change that you can submit a bug report at phabricator. — xaosflux Talk 23:18, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
The rounding appears a little odd. I currently see "11 months ago" for Bmlarred created 20 September 2018, and "12 months ago" for Pirerre1875 created 19 September 2018. If 11 months ago is 30 September 2018 then they are 11 months and respectively 10 and 11 days ago. Maybe it first computes days ago and then assumes every month is 30 days. With this assumption, 20 September 2018 is 11.47 months ago, and 19 September 2018 is 11.50 months ago. With normal rounding rules that becomes 11 months and 12 months like it says. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:07, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
The website should probably always round down. --Izno (talk) 18:44, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Some tool inserts useless ref names

Lately I've noticed identical ref markup like <ref name=":0">, originating from users who don't appear to be related or bots. This is actually less useful than the default numbering (e.g. cite_note-1, which at least matches the visible footnote number, even when moved around) when no name is given. Any idea what tool might do this and where to provide the above feedback? ―cobaltcigs 20:18, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

It's the Visual editor that does it when an editor reuses a reference. Nthep (talk) 20:28, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
In addition, naming these references was one of the top 10 for the community survey this year. Who knows where that work is though.... --Izno (talk) 20:43, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
The Community Tech team keeps a list of what they work on here. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:39, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Could this also be the source of excess newline patterns like [[Category:Foo]]\n\n\n{{foo-stub}}? ―cobaltcigs 07:07, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Cobaltcigs: Three newlines produces two blank lines before the stub tags, which for many years (10+) has been accepted practice, and this is what is shown on some advice pages such as WP:TAGSTUB and WP:WSS#General rules. At one time, certain bots and scripts required these two blank lines; but AFAIK they're now more tolerant and won't choke if there is just one blank line before the stub tags. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:08, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Wow, that seems really misguided. One should adjust the .stub { margin-top:NNpx; } CSS for Template:Asbox if (for some reason) extra space is wanted. Rendering an empty paragraph (namely <p><br /></p>) above it on each page is just sloppy HTML. ―cobaltcigs 09:34, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Stub template CSS has been suggested before, it's fine when there is just one stub template but many articles have two or more and that would produce undesirable extra gaps. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Infobox layout

Unrelated: what about infobox parameters all on the same line? Is that a visual editor shibboleth as well? I suppose I should try using it someday to find these things out (and just be careful not to save anything, lol). ―cobaltcigs 09:34, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

To the infobox matter: that's usually due to incorrect or incomplete templatedata. In this case, Template:Infobox river/doc#Template Data does not have a "format":"block" name-value pair. WhatamIdoing (talk · contribs) can explain this better than me. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
User:Cobaltcigs, Redrose64 is correct, and you should totally try out the visual mode. Try inserting a column in a long wikitext table. If you're not going to save it, then there are plenty of tables in WP:FL. If you like to add images, then try out Insert > Media, which lets you search Commons without leaving the editing window. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Lake Huron map

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T231691

See [6] It appears to turn all of Lake Huron into land. Where and how to get this fixed? Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:45, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: This was surely vandalism on OpenStreetMap. I see all is back to normal over there. If I remember correctly the Wikimedia tile server is cached for 24 hours, so it may be a bit before it fixes itself. I'll try to poke someone on IRC to see if they can invalidate it manually. — MusikAnimal talk 21:47, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:54, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't know how the map is implemented but if you zoom in enough then Lake Huron changes to blue. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:59, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, probably those tiles for the higher zoom level have since been invalidated, or weren't replicated at the time the vandalism was still live. Anyway the Operations team is aware. Task at phab:T231691 — MusikAnimal talk 22:08, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

False edit conflict problem when saving

Most of the time when I save I get an edit conflict message although the edit has been saved - of course I have to check each time in case there really is an edit conflict. It happens with Firefox (where my wikEd) has died, and Chrome. Doug Weller talk 07:04, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: In the above, "has died" is hard to parse. I do not know what the problem might be but for troubleshooting I would try the following. I assume you click Publish to save an edit which then gives an edit conflict. Try an alternative: click in the edit summary box to position the cursor there, then press Enter. That should publish the edit. Does that make a difference? A second thing you might investigate is whether you can disable wikEd for a while and see if normal editing makes a difference. Johnuniq (talk) 01:42, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
The conflict is a problem of wikEd, which may need some update. Ruslik_Zero 06:10, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
@Johnuniq and Ruslik0: using the edit summary box and enter seems to work. By "died" I mean no longer showing at all, and nothing seems to work, even disabling and reenabling it. And cacycle hasn't been around for over two months. Doug Weller talk 15:44, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
I have the same problems - all my edits results in a reported edit conflict with my own edit. Thue (talk) 23:11, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Graph with margins of error

Greetings,

is there a way to make a graph (similar to the one produced by Template:Line chart) which shows error margins? It's intended for the Coropuna#Recent area and retreat section which currently has a long bulleted list with various data points (not all of which should go into the final graph), plus error margins. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:07, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Would an bar graph work? If so, check out https://vega.github.io/vega/examples/error-bars/ and https://vega.github.io/vega/examples/box-plot/ . Both of those should work here.--Snaevar (talk) 10:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
@Snaevar:Maybe, but I don't know how to turn that into a Wikipedia graph. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Help - I've broken my javascript (again)

I have a link in my menu to the long-gone grok page hit counter. I just tried to update my js page at User:Spinningspark/monobook.js to use the wmflabs version. My efforts have completely broken the js and I can't work out what the problem is. Anyone willing to take sympathy on me and help? This is the last version of the page that was working. SpinningSpark 09:22, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

You could import User:PrimeHunter/Pageviews.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:27, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Are you missing a '+' after '&end=' ? Someguy1221 (talk) 09:34, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Perfect. That was it. SpinningSpark 13:40, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Toolbox above/below "Publish changes"

Hi, I would like to add this to the da:wiktionary similar to the one on en:wiktionary but I have no idea how to do it. Any hints would be welcome.--So9q (talk) 15:18, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

So9q Are you refering to the box containing additional characters? --Trialpears (talk) 23:41, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Its mw:Extension:CharInsert. Though I have little idea on how to add it to another wiki. SD0001 (talk) 16:17, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I found out that they roll their own on wiktionary. It's here.--So9q (talk) 17:19, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Glitch at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user?

There are 40+ userpages listed in this category. Most of them are not actually tagged with U1 or G7 and never have been. What gives? -- MelanieN (talk) 23:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, The category is empty now. How weird. Adam9007 (talk) 23:56, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, it is. I didn't make this up, honest! But it may have solved itself, or some invisible helper here fixed it. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
MelanieN, I know: I saw that the category had loads of pages, but they disappeared after I bypassed the page cache (though I don't think that did anything to fix it). Adam9007 (talk) 00:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Maybe you were the invisible helper? 0;-D There was no reason why they should have been in the cache either, since none of them had been U1'ed. Anyhow, case closed, I hope! -- MelanieN (talk) 00:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
MelanieN, I highly doubt it: reloading bypassing cache is one of the first things that occurs to me to do whenever something queer happens, as it makes sure the problem isn't at my end if that doesn't fix it. Adam9007 (talk) 00:09, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
It was probably a transcluded page like a userbox which had been tagged for deletion without using <noinclude>...</noinclude>, but it's hard to tell now when no example was given. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:13, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
PrimeHunter, I thought it's something like that, but the problem fixed itself before I could dig much further. Adam9007 (talk) 00:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
I examined the deletion log between 23:50 and 23:56. User:Doodoobutter/UBX/User Animaniacs was deleted after being tagged with {{db-user}}. Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Doodoobutter/UBX/User Animaniacs shows it was transcluded in around 40 user pages. Please always give an example when a problem is reported. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:26, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
So MelanieN, it seems that you fixed it . Adam9007 (talk) 00:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Sorry about that, PrimeHunter! I'll remember that next time. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Script to highlight certain text in Watchlist?

Is there a script that allows users to highlight certain phrases in their Watchlist? I already have a script that highlights admin names and my name but I also want to highlight certain kinds of pages that I might otherwise forget, such as GA nominations and FAC reviews I watchlisted. I know I can use the custom watchlist script but I don't really want to have a separate watchlist, just have certain phrases highlighted. Regards SoWhy 07:21, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@SoWhy: Depending on your requirements, you might be able to do this with just some custom css rules (as kinda described here). For example, the following rule will highlight in yellow all watchlist entries for pages in the Wikipedia talk namespace:
.mw-changeslist-line-inner a.mw-changeslist-title[href*="/Wikipedia_talk:"] {
  background-color: yellow;
}
That rule matches links to pages where the URL contains /Wikipedia_talk: somewhere (you could also change href to title to match against the article title). If you wanted to match subpages for good article reviews, you could just change "/Wikipedia_talk:" to "/GA". (Well, technically you might get a false positive if you have GABAA receptor on your watchlist. Though there are clever things you could do to avoid that if you really care.) Colin M (talk) 02:44, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
@Colin M: That looks indeed like a great solution, I hadn't seen that. Thanks for pointing it out! Regards SoWhy 07:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
It works but now User:Ais523/highlightmyname2.js does not seem to work on my Watchlist anymore Regards SoWhy 07:11, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Nvm, works again. Weird... Regards SoWhy 07:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Clicking on undo leads to the help page for reverts

At least it does for [7] - trying to undo the edit of a sock. Doug Weller talk 08:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I guess you clicked at "(Tag: Undo)". The edit was tagged because it was itself an undo. Links in tags at Special:Tags are meant to help understand the tag. Click "Undo" at the time stamp to revert the edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Of course. Doh! I don't know why I did that. Doug Weller talk 15:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Template/Transclusion Check

Does anyone know what needs to happen for https://tools.wmflabs.org/templatetransclusioncheck/index.php?lang=en&name=North-American+Interfraternity+Conference to work again?Naraht (talk) 18:27, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Naraht, seems to be working fine if you add the namespace. --Trialpears (talk) 18:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Trialpears Thank you for the correct assessment of my idiocy. I have it working now.Naraht (talk) 18:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Draft to article

Hello! How to move a draft to article? I am asking that for Draft:Terran Shield. --Țuțulișcă Vodă (talk) 19:28, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Checking if a page is watched using API

Is there a simple way to check if a given page is watched, using the API, short of pulling the entire list of watched pages and checking if the given page in that list? SD0001 (talk) 21:36, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@SD0001: I believe you'd want to use API:Info. Sam Walton (talk) 21:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, that works! SD0001 (talk) 21:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Redirects created upon pagemove

Resolved
 – Discussion will continue once reopened at the MediaWiki talk page linked below UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:55, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

The code that creates the redirect at the old page location whan a page is moved (unless the mover has suffcient permissions and chooses to suppress such creation) adds the {{R from move}} template to the newly created redirect. Could this be modified to include the {{rcat shell}} "wrapper" around the {{R from move}} template, so that the resulting code would be:

{{rcat shell |

{{R from move}}

}}

This would save editor steps if the redirect page subsequently needed additional rcats added to it. Let me know, and thanks, UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:45, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

  • Thanks for pointing to the prior discussion; I believe the functionality of the Rcat shell has changed significantly in the intervening 3 1/2 years, but in either event will consider opening a full revisiting discussion over there (pinging editors who commented here, of course). UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:51, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

So I've just read the documentation of this template, but can't understand why the hell it exists. Or why "help newer contributors learn the redirect category system" would be a priority for anyone anywhere. ―cobaltcigs 14:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

The documentation explains that inexperienced redirect categorizers can either tag a redirect with the plain template or add an rcat or two and leave an empty first parameter. Either way, the redirect is sorted to Category:Miscellaneous redirects. So the inexperienced user can learn how a more experienced user categorizes that redirect. Why wouldn't that be a priority? In addition, the Rcat shell applies protection rcats and sorts to protection categories automatically, and that's something admins like because it means that they don't have to categorize manually, nor do they have to change anything manually when protection is changed or lifted. So it's a shell template – like other shell templates – with benefits! P. I. Ellsworth, ed. put'r there 02:02, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Help needed to track parameter usage

I want to add a tracking category to {{Grading scheme}} to track any uses where A-Class has been disabled.

The template displays A-Class by default or with |A=yes (case sensitive); if any other value is used, or if |A= is defined but left blank, A-Class is removed from the table.

I tried using the following code:

{{#ifeq:{{{A|}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}

How do I get it to ignore the default usage (i.e. where |A= is not used at all)? PC78 (talk) 12:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Just to add, I did come up with a solution in the sandbox but that alters the behaviour of the template somewhat (for the better I think, but still); if possible I'm keen not to break any transclusions where a blank |A= might be used intentionally to disable A-Class. PC78 (talk) 12:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
{{{A|}}} evaluates to empty both if A is set to empty and not set at all so you cannot use that alone. You need {{{A}}} which evaluates to the value of A if it's set (empty if A is set to empty), but evaluates to the same seven characters {{{A}}} if A is not set. You could nest if and ifeq, or combine the cases in a switch: {{#switch:{{{A}}}||yes=|#default=[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}. This code only uses that {{{A}}} evaluates to something non-empty when A is not set. It says: If A is set to empty or yes then return empty, otherwise the category. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
I tried your switch but it doesn't work as intended: the category is added by default if |A= is not set at all (it shouldn't be) but is not added if |A= is set to empty (it should be). See test example at User:PC78/grading scheme. Tried a few other things but still can't nail it. PC78 (talk) 14:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, I misread the goal and coded what I described: "If A is set to empty or yes then return empty, otherwise the category." This should do what you actually requested: {{#ifeq:{{{A}}}|{{{A|}}}|{{#ifeq:{{{A}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}}}. "If A is set but A is not set to yes then return the category." PrimeHunter (talk) 15:32, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Gotcha, thanks for the help! PC78 (talk) 15:37, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
@PC78: It works but I made it more complicated than necessary. We don't have to test whether A is set, only whether it's set to something other than yes, so your original code can just use yes as default in the comparison: {{#ifeq:{{{A|yes}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 at line 802: Argument map not defined for this variable.

Resolved

This may be related to the above somehow. At David_M._Bennett and Dennis_Relojo-Howell I am seeing this error in place of every reference. Clicking on it gives: Backtrace:

  1. [C]: in function "eror"
  2. Module:Citation/CS1:802: ?
  3. Module:Citation/CS1:2276: in function "citation0"
  4. Module:Citation/CS1:3765: in function "chunk"
  5. mw.lua:511: ?
  6. [C]: ?

Replacing {{reflist}} with <references /> fixes it. SmartSE (talk) 13:16, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

This has been fixed: this was due to an unfortunate edit (discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Is_there_a_semi-automated_tool_that_could_fix_these_annoying_"Cite_Web"_errors?). It has been reverted now, but in case Lua errors are still visible anywhere, you can just make a null edit to the article to force reparsing. – Uanfala (talk) 13:23, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
@Uanfala: Thanks. Just came across that myself. SmartSE (talk) 13:26, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

See: Old revision of Wikipedia:Sandbox —this shows the result of omitting refs= for named group reflist. whereas using the refs= results in an error msg.

Decomposing the templates to: {{#tag:references||group=}} and {{#tag:ref||group=|name=}} —produces the same error msg. as "using the refs=", as noted above. --2db (talk) 00:09, 3 September 2019 (UTC) && 13:56, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

2db, the parser doesn't seem to be able to deal with list-defined references that are nested. When you leave out "refs=" it tries but is generating an extra backlink, maybe because it has to go through everything twice. This may have once worked. A few years ago a change to the MediaWiki software broke nested footnotes completely - the parsing order of the page had changed significantly. This was repaired but still does not operate in quite the same way. StarryGrandma (talk) 15:04, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
However moving the nested refn out of the named reflist to the article space works perfectly (see: Old revision of Wikipedia:Sandbox). --2db (talk) 18:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

(disclaimer: yeah, I'm a super experienced Wikipedian, but I have never taken the time to learn how to cite webpages the "new" way and still do it the way it was done over a decade ago, which is probably why this is happening) The page in question is Swan Lake fire. I recently added a reference to an article on TIME's website. It got tagged as a dead link only a day later, and sure enough when I click on it it goes to a 404. So, I searched the article title "About 2.5 Million Acres in Alaska Have Burned. The State's Wildfire Seasons Are Getting Worse, Experts Say" and found the article again. When I copied the URL it was...the same as the one that led to the 404 error. I don't get it. Lil help? Beeblebrox (talk) 18:51, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The URL you want is https://time.com/5657188/alaska-fires-long-climate-change/ -- GreenC 19:05, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) There should be a space where the url ends and the title begins, otherwise the link is malformed. SD0001 (talk) 19:07, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Now that, I actually did know but for some reason just didn't see it as the problem. How silly of me. Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Block edits that contain a VisualEditor bug

RFC notice: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RFC: Block edits that contain a VisualEditor bug -- GreenC 00:01, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Search and replace altered?

Hi, I gnome a lot of foreign translated articles. The French leave a space before their colon : like that, often on every line in long lists. It's been so easy to fix until now, using the search–replace function at the top of the edit box: search for space+colon, replace with colon (spelled out here for clarity). But today I find the search function will not pick up space+colon. Any ideas? Tony (talk) 00:11, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

It works for me. There are different editors. Are you referring to the default editor where the search and replace icon is to the far right but only displayed when "Advanced" is selected? If "Match whole word" is checked then uncheck it. Please link a page where it fails and specify a location in the page. Maybe it has special characters. What is your browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:27, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
PH, thanks. Yes, it does work now (in my sandbox). That's odd. Safari for the Mac. Tony (talk) 08:57, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-36

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

Recent changes

  • You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [9]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
  • The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [10]
  • The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [11]
  • The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [12]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
  • When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [13]

Meetings

Future changes

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

09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Languagetool wikicheck

Is somebody running this? This is how it looks like, seems useful to me. Apparently the author ran out of resources. He did try hosting it on Wikimedia Tool Labs but had some issues. The source is available at https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool-wikicheck (GNU LGPL) 2001:14BA:984A:F200:0:0:0:8EA (talk) 12:41, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Admin highlighter script

seems to have stopped. Or perhaps all the admins have gone undergound. Anyone else got the same issue? ——SerialNumber54129 16:12, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: just checked, it works for me. What specific page are you looking at, and what admin isn't highlighted? DannyS712 (talk) 04:34, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
All pages incl watchlist, none of them. But it's back now. ——SerialNumber54129 06:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
To clarify, I'm on mobile right now, and it occurs to me that ^^^was on desktop. Will check that soonish. ——SerialNumber54129 06:05, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Template overflow on right side - Basque conflict

Greetings, Recently User:PrimeHunter helped me with titleclass = wraplinks to solve a template spilling beyond the right margins. A more complicated template is {{Basque conflict}} where it looks like the two right-most columns should be stacked underneath the first "Participants in the Basque сonflict" column. The template is linked from article Marian Beitialarrangoitia. I tried several templates updates, and this is way beyond my ability. So I'm asking for expert help here. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 15:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Five columns with long nowraplinks is a lot. A simple solution would be changing listclass = plainlist to listclass = plainlist wraplinks. A narrow window would get many wrapped links which doesn't look good so a more complicated redesign with fewer columns is also an option. I'm not doing that. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:55, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
You could also consider a complete rewrite to rotate it 90 degrees, as is often done with complex topics that have many articles. See Template:Mammals and Template:Queen for examples. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
 Done - @Jonesey95 and PrimeHunter: - Thanks for your suggestions. Being a "cloner" I copied {{Pre-Roman peoples in Spain}} into my sandbox to rewrite. Hoping not to repeat, but at least I have some experience. Cheers! JoeHebda (talk) 19:37, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Breaking change in image inclusions?

This morning I noticed that many of my articles with thumbed-images have large amounts of whitespace in the text they are part of. As of the time I'm writing this, examples can be seen in AMES Type 80, and formerly in Dowding system. There appear to be no related edits to the articles that would have caused this. Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:58, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

They look normal to me. Does it happen if you log out? Try to bypass your cache, using Ctrl+F5 in many browsers, not just F5 alone. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:05, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

New editor's contributions page not working

For some reason, when I click on "New editors' contribs" at Special:RecentChanges, I get a page with no contributions. Did something change on WP's end or am I out of the loop on something? shoy (reactions) 14:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

That is in MediaWiki:Recentchangestext - and was referenced in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_174#A_"special"_page_is_taking_a_very_long_time_to_load - I think I saw this was recently deprecated? (If so we can remove it from that box). — xaosflux Talk 15:03, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
See also phab:T220447. I can't look in to this right now, but that may be enough for someone else to start. — xaosflux Talk 15:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
You can now filter on RC by newcomers, learners and experienced. This should make things easier and, imo, removes the need for the new editor's contribs page. Agent00x (talk) 16:51, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
@Agent00x: @Xaosflux: Thanks, I must have missed that new feature. shoy (reactions) 18:14, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
@Shoy: I've removed that link from that header, as it was deprecated. If you have some other link you'd like to see up there, you can drop an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Recentchangestext. — xaosflux Talk 17:24, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T232173

The radio button for selecting new editor contribution mode is still present beside the User field. Can this be removed as well? --Trialpears (talk) 19:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Trialpears: do you mean the checkbox in Special:RecentChanges for "Newcomers"? that one works, if it is somewhere else can you provide a link to the page you see it on? — xaosflux Talk 13:51, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Xaosflux no the lonley radio button beside the user field at Special:Contributions. It's now useless since the other choice, the new editor contributions mode, has been removed. I can add a screenshot if necessary --Trialpears (talk) 15:50, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
@Trialpears: OK, someone is working on that already, I subscribed you to phab:T232173 for progress. — xaosflux Talk 17:10, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Nina Helou

I am not even sure if this is where I should be posting this issue and though I did try to search for it, I couldn't find the conversation the last time this happened. I know that the problem has to do with the use of both left-right and right-left text, but have no idea how to solve it so that the original titles to articles in the references section (and her name variants) are in the proper order without doing weird flipping things. Can someone please wave a magic wand and fix this technical problem for this article or tell me where to go to get it fixed? It is highly unlikely that I will comprehend an explanation of coding. Thank you. SusunW (talk) 20:33, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Start by using |script-title= in the cs1|2 templates. That will isolate the Arabic (?) script (rtl) from the Latin script (ltr). Read abot this parameter in the cs1|2 template documentation.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:42, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Trappist the monk Thank you, that fixed most of the issue and surprisingly, I was able to do it myself. Appreciate your pointing me in the right direction. SusunW (talk) 21:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Talkpage banner question

I have a technical question related to the template code that generates WikiProject banners on talkpages. Any experienced editor knowledgeable in that area willing to spend some time helping me out? UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:44, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@UnitedStatesian: think you are looking for: Template:WPBannerMeta. @WOSlinker and Happy-melon: have done a lot of work on it. — xaosflux Talk 18:13, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
I also know quite a lot about how it works. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:37, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Complex citations

The citations at Ancestry.com can get very complex. For example:

Webpage name: "Joe Blow in the 1930 United States Federal Census".

Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Buffalo, Erie, New York; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 0242; FHL microfilm: 2341165

Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.

Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.

I can't figure out how to fit all this information into a standard citation template, can anybody assist? Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 12:46, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. You got it from Ancestry.com, so you cite Ancestry.com. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:15, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
Sort of...the problem is that Ancestry.Com is considered a user-edited source so when an original reliable source - US Census or whatnot - is cited by an Ancestry.Com user then that original source should somehow be clearly delineated within the cite.
I like the example posted within SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT:
John Smith (2009). Name of Book I Haven't Seen, Cambridge University Press, p. 99, cited in Paul Jones (2010). Name of Encyclopedia I Have Seen, Oxford University Press, p. 29.
but confess I don't know how that particular cite style is supposed to fit within one of the existing/pre-loaded templates (cite web/cite news/cite book/cite journal)... Shearonink (talk) 17:40, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
You still should should cite it as Ancestry.com because that's where you got your information, and you didn't check the sources Ancestry.com based itself on. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:10, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
... Unless you really did check that book, obviously. And yeah, Ancestry.com is user-submitted and generally considered unreliable, and that extends to material it cites as a reference (i.e. users also fill in citations, there are no guarantees they actually checked those sources). AFAIK U.S. census data is easy to find online, you should just verify and cite it directly. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:15, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1930 -- RoySmith (talk) 15:47, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Ivanvector, the user-submitted pages at Ancestry.com are unreliable, obviously, but the site incorporates scans of the original census pages and other government documents and there is nothing unreliable about those. RoySmith, thank you for the link, I will take a closer look at that, though I doubt it provides the ease of access to a host of government records that Ancestry does (though it would be preferable to use the government site where possible as the latter requires a subscription). Gatoclass (talk) 16:50, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Oh absolutely, I don't doubt the reliability of the census. I do doubt the reliability of some transcriptions, and some conclusions that are drawn on census data from different years, but that's besides the point. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:54, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
My personal take on this (i.e. may not even be correct) is that if all ancestry.com is doing is hosting a mechanical reproduction of the census data (i.e. a scan of the microfilm), then what you want to do is cite the census data directly, with some sort of "archived at" or "via" entry which points to the ancestory.com repository. In much the same way I would cite something I found in newspapers.com, or JSTOR. It's like if I went to my local library and looked at their collection of New York Times on microfilm. If I found something I wanted to use, I would cite the NY Times, I wouldn't cite the library. I would only cite ancestory.com if they provided some editorial input. I stand willing to be corrected by people who actually know what they're talking about, however. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Well I guess if one thing can be gleaned from this discussion it's that there is no obvious solution, so it looks as if I will have to find one of my own. Thank you RoySmith and everybody else for your input. Gatoclass (talk) 12:50, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: I'd like to help with this one but I'm a bit busy. Maybe you can work out how it would be cited in CS1/2. --Izno (talk) 18:40, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure that I can answer this without details about what is really being cited. I get the sense that ancestry.com is not a reliable source so shouldn't be cited unless it can be shown that whatever it is that OP wants to cite is clearly a faithful copy of a source that meets WP:RS. Without knowing what that is and the necessary details, it is difficult to suggest how cs1|2 should be used.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:53, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
As I stated above Trappist the monk, Ancestry.com is definitely a reliable source, as it provides scans of the original documents - much like hathitrust or archive.org. However, it also allows the public to create family trees, individual life histories and so on, on its website, using those documents. The documents themselves are obviously reliable, the user-created content is not. Gatoclass (talk) 15:17, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@Gatoclass:, remember that the <ref> tag is one thing, and the various {{cite}} templates are another. You can embed between <ref> tags, whatever you need to properly establish verifiability, including more than one {{cite}} tag. For something this complex, it might be advantageous to use two {{cite}} templates, where the first one cites Ancestry, as Headbomb and others have pointed out, followed by some connecting text, such as, "citing:", or, "taken from:", or whatever makes sense, followed by a second {{cite}} template for the source that Ancestry (or their editors) got it from. Even if there is a way to combine everything in one, huge, complex template, there's no need to knock yourself out. If you just keep your eyes on the prize (WP:V), and do it whatever way makes sense to you, that's the main thing. Heck, if it's that complicated, just write the citation in plain text if you want, and embed the plain text between <ref> tags. That's a perfectly acceptable solution. Best of luck, Mathglot (talk) 23:38, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Desperately seeking M*A*S*H (TV series)

Why is the article so hard to find? Is it the asterisks? There should be some check, e.g., before treating the asterisks as wild cards, try taking them literally and see if there's a match there.

Here's why I ask:
Lieutenant Kijé contains the paragraph

Parody
The story is often parodied in fictional works making fun of bureaucracies, most famously in the form of the M*A*S*H episode "Tuttle", featuring a fictional captain of similar provenance.

After several diversions, I searched Wikipedia for [[M*A*S*H (TV series)]]. This is what I got:

Search results Results 1 – 20 of 11,140

(Each of these entries was followed by a paragraph of description and, I think, a line of datestamp.)

Results from sister projects

  • television show
  • show (plural television shows) A live or recorded broadcast or program, or series of broadcasts or programs, meant to be viewed on television. 1995, Margaret.
    Word definitions from Wiktionary

... (And finally)

Wikipedia has an article about: M*A*S*H (TV series)

Quotes from Wikiquote

...

Results 1 – 20 of 11,140

Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 17:02, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Thnidu, one thing I have learned about searching the web is "don't overthink it". If you search for "mash" or "MASH", you will be taken to a disambiguation page that has the link you will be looking for (no matter what kind of mash, MASH, or M*A*S*H you seek). If you search for "mash tv series", you will be taken directly to the correct page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:29, 6 September 2019 (UTC):
@Jonesey95: I believe Thnidu is referring to our internal search engine's (CirrusSearch) limitations. Compare searches for M*A*S*H (TV series) and "M*A*S*H (TV series)". Nardog (talk) 17:34, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
@Thnidu: If I enter M*A*S*H or M*A*S*H (TV series) in the search box at top of all pages then I'm taken directly to the page with that title. It's also suggested as soon as I type M*. You only get search results if you use Special:Search or do something to avoid the default Go feature of the normal search box. I think it's acceptable that those search results assume that search syntax is not the literal page name. How many would even search on M*A*S*H instead of just MASH or mash? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:44, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter, Jonesey95, and Nardog: PrimeHunter, you have a good point, as emphasized by your last sentence. But I should have mentioned that I am using the mobile interface, on my smartphone. That can make a lot of difference; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#serious format issue on this page.

--Thnidu (talk) 18:54, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

It's roughly the same for me in mobile and in the regular interface. If I open en.WP in Safari for iPhone (in the mobile view) and search for "mash", the first search result is the disambiguation page. If I search for "mash tv series", the first search result is the page for the TV series. The plausibility of someone searching for "M*A*S*H" on a mobile keyboard, requiring an absurd number of keypresses on my iPhone, is something I am not going to lose sleep over. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:46, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
@Thnidu: You could also surround the search term in quotation marks i.e. "M*A*S*H", which will prevent the * from being treated as wildcards. the wub "?!" 23:17, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, Jonesey95 and the wub. It makes sense. --Thnidu (talk) 03:10, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Mobile editor

Has something changed of late, as to editing from mobile skin? Whenever I intend to edit from my mobile, a top-bar (which used to be not there) displays 'Loading Editor' for an extraordinarily long time .... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Winged Blades of Godric (talk • contribs) 04:59, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: Are you editing in the app, the mobile domain (en.m.wikipedia.org), or the desktop domain on mobile (en.wikipedia.org)? --Izno (talk) 04:43, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
@Winged Blades of Godric: This new style was deployed as part of the new project, mw:VisualEditor_on_mobile. It may take more time to load, depending on your internet connection. Masum Reza📞 05:15, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Although I don't see a change in the history of {{cite web}}, every article I checked that uses the template, is getting red CS1 errors. See for example, World War II#Citations, as well as the documentation in the Examples section of Template:Cite web itself. This applies to params |website= (now required, apparently), and |deadurl= (now deprecated, apparently). What's going on? Mathglot (talk) 19:36, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Being discussed at WP:AN. They are separate issues but performed in the same update of the CS1 template base. Discussion is now based how to resolve it, but its affecting the bulk of en.wiki. --Masem (t) 19:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
I just saw that "cite news" requires newspaper. I use TV stations, radio stations and magazines all the time, but this just looks sloppy until someone fixes it. Is this related?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:40, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
:(edit conflict)(edit conflict) Oh, must be this change to the module. Mathglot (talk) 19:42, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Here is a link to the AN discussion about this mess Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Is there a semi-automated tool that could fix these annoying "Cite Web" errors?. MarnetteD|Talk 19:43, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, which is part of this discussion at AN. Mathglot (talk) 19:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
This stinks. Possibly every one of the almost 500 articles I've ever created or contributed to in the last decade or so, now have these ugly red tags all over the References section. Probably the same thing with tens of thousands edits of mine. Not cool, and it makes Wikipedia unsightly. — Maile (talk) 20:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
It's a well known fact that Trappist the monk (talk · contribs) WP:OWNs the modules underlying the {{cite web}} etc. templates. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Proposing we close this discussion, and/or add a {{Discussion moved to}} template, targeting WP:AN. Mathglot (talk) 20:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Parameter name changes should be widely advertized for discussion before being implemented. People should stop complaining about the red links. Some time ago most of these warnings were turned off by default because it was precieved to be better for readers of Wikipedia. That is a HUGE mistake. All the warnings should be displayed. They are all errors to be fixed and errors to fix is how Wikipedia attracts new editors. Yes they are "ugly" and it is exactly that that annoys some people enough to figure out how to fix it. Turning them off simply sweeps dirt under the rug but worse it helps exacerabate our low editorship rate. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:25, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Help with WP tools

Hi all. Perhaps someone can help me out. 2-3 months ago, several of the tools I use in my gnomish activities stopped working. It has to do with signing in to WP on that tool, and the OATH script. I keep getting the message: "There was a script error --> --> A problem occurred in a Python script. /home/dispenser/public_html/cgi-bin/tracebacks/connect_OAuthException_120_SjBvb1.html contains the description of this error." Anyone know I can fix this? Thanks in advance. Onel5969 TT me 17:40, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@Onel5969: For the start, sharing a full link where to find/use "WP tools" would be welcome so someone else could try reproducing without having to guess. --Malyacko (talk) 18:42, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
My apologies, Malyacko. The two main areas I use are Reflinks and DabSolver. If you notice, there is a down arrow in the upper right corner, which says "sign in". When I click on the option to "Connect to Wikipedia", that's when I receive the error message. I hope that's enough detail.Onel5969 TT me 20:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Onel5969 Thanks! Confirming: "A problem occurred in a Python script. /home/dispenser/public_html/cgi-bin/tracebacks/connect_OAuthException_120_49JvV7.html contains the description of this error." I assume that Dispenser could look up the exact error and check the code. --Malyacko (talk) 13:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Hat note question

Is it allowable to use a hat note (see also, further, or other) in the lede of a political candidate's bio page to link to their separate 'political positions' page? Humanengr (talk) 19:16, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Humanengr is talking about this Special:Diff/914471844 I removed it because the template document says: "This template is used to create hatnotes to point to a small number of other related titlesat the top of article sections (excluding the lead). It also looks weird in a BLP article. From what I know, see also template shouldn't be used in the lead. I think "see also" section does the job.--SharabSalam (talk) 19:27, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Aah — was double-checking; I had missed the explicit instruction on Template:See also re "excluding the lead". (my bad) Are there any other allowable mechanisms to use near the top of an article to link to the 'political positions' page? Humanengr (talk) 19:35, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
Humanengr, I guess you can use the template Template:for but I feel it wouldn't look like a normal biography of living person article.--SharabSalam (talk) 19:41, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
Thx so much — agree it's awkward but {{For|details on Gabbard's political positions|Political positions of Tulsi Gabbard}} might resolve the Google issue. OK if I try that? Humanengr (talk) 19:44, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
​Yea sure!.--SharabSalam (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
I don't know which Google issue you refer to but we don't use hatnotes at the top to link to other articles about the subject of the article. Hatnotes are for other subjects which could be confused with the article subject, e.g. another person or thing with the same name. Besides, we have three other articles about her: Tulsi Gabbard 2020 presidential campaign, Political positions of Tulsi Gabbard, Electoral history of Tulsi Gabbard. They are all linked in the box "This article is part of a series about Tulsi Gabbard" below the infobox. It's not displayed in the mobile version but there is also an appropriate hatnote at Tulsi Gabbard#Political positions. "Political positions" is in the table of contents so it shouldn't be hard to find. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:07, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
Thx, I should have closed this. Humanengr (talk) 21:32, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Provelt?

Whenever I contribute in Wikipedia articles, an icon called "Provelt" appears at the bottom-right of the window. What is this? —Yours sincerely, Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 06:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@Soumya-8974: Do you have the ProveIt gadget checked at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? If so, that's probably it. --Yair rand (talk) 06:27, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, I have unmarked the gadget. —Yours sincerely, Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 06:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Can I not see notices for discussions in which I have already participated?

I received a notice on top of my watchlist for an ongoing RfA. The thing is, it turns out that I have already participated in this RfA. Can the notification system be set up so that it passes on notifying people who have already participated in the discussion, and do not need to be notified? I ask because I have no way of knowing that this isn't an entirely new RfA without visiting the page, which is not the best use of time. The same might apply for any kind of noticed discussion. bd2412 T 02:37, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't know of a proper solution, sorry. I don't know if you typically find your way to RfAs using that notice, but if you do then you could open the RfA in a new tab when you see it and dismiss the notice. It's just a workaround, but it might work for you. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 02:49, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. bd2412 T 04:07, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
The watchlist message can be discussed at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages but I doubt an automatic system can work efficiently. Naming the candidates was opposed at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 254#Usernames in watchlist notices and other discussions linked there. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:46, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia down

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T232224

For all those that are wondering, yes Wikimedia did go down and may still be down for some, Wikimedia Operations is aware and is working hard to fix that issue. There is a phabricator task, located here. Thank you!

(English Wikipedia Tech Ambassador) Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ Talk 20:32, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Slightly more info: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/wikipedia-down-after-malicious-attack-19686646 and https://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/1170133355901251585 Kaldari (talk) 04:08, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
The perps are broadcasting their activity on twitter [18] looks like they have now moved from targetting Wikipedia to attacking Twitch servers. --Salix alba (talk): 04:31, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Problems loading pages, logging-in?

Problems logging in, also often just reading or trying to edit - last eight hours - no notices on Wikipedia or Wikimedia... how does one report such problems, how are they notified to the community? And how is progress in fixing them? Thanks2A00:1370:8117:4B0D:C4ED:E9B:7451:EB70 (talk) 07:06, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

It's a known problem: See T232224 and above comments. Also people are working to get things right. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:42, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I this the goto place for information on downtime? What links are there to downtime information? Could/should there be a link or info on Downtime (disambiguation)? Just asking, had some trouble finding here. Anyway, thanks for the info. Rakeroot (talk) 22:26, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

IRC (specifically #wikimedia-tech) is generally the best place to get information on ongoing downtime. This page usually has reports too if it's reachable. After the event technical reports are posted at https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation, although it can take some time for the relevant information to be gathered. the wub "?!" 00:02, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Should Wikipedia use Cloudflare?

There are some concerns. [19] Benjamin (talk) 11:45, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist - highlight certain editors names

I mostly edit political and climate articles, both very contentious areas subject to DS. Sometimes upset editors tell me to stay off their user talk page. Is there a way to customize my watch list so their user names appear differently than those of other editors? I'm just looking for a way to help me remember so I can respect such wishes. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I bet a modification to the admin highlighter script could manage that for you.--Jorm (talk) 20:50, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
You don't need scripts, just one CSS rule will do it. Each row of a watchlist has the user name several times, so if you want to make edits by User:Example1 and User:Example2 to have a red background, you can highlight all of the links by using 
/* make it easier to skip past edits by Example1 and Example2 */
li.mw-changeslist-line a[href="/wiki/User:Example1"],
li.mw-changeslist-line a[href="/wiki/User_talk:Example1"],
li.mw-changeslist-line a[href="/wiki/Special:Contributions/Example1"],
li.mw-changeslist-line a[href="/wiki/User:Example2"],
li.mw-changeslist-line a[href="/wiki/User_talk:Example2"],
li.mw-changeslist-line a[href="/wiki/Special:Contributions/Example2"] {
  background: red;
}
This goes in Special:MyPage/common.css or Special:MyPage/skin.css, whichever one you normally use for custom CSS. You can replace the keyword red with any valid web colour. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:01, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

This will prevent you from editing their user/user_talk pages (if that's the real problem) whilst still seeing what goes on: 

var myEnemies = ["Cobaltcigs", "Tom", "Dick", "Harry"];
var iAmEditingUserspace = (wgAction == "edit") && [2,3].includes(wgNamespaceNumber);
var thisGuyHatesMe = myEnemies.includes(wgRelevantUserName);
if(iAmEditingUserspace && thisGuyHatesMe) $("#editform :input").prop('disabled', true);

Configure the first line as appropriate but please keep my name on it. ―cobaltcigs 21:19, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the tech answer and the laugh. If I use this, I think I'll tweak the variable names a bit to reflect the optimistic hope that despite todays bumps one day we might be friends. Still, that was funny. And thank you everyone else for the alternative answers to this problem, also!! NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:23, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Validating facts from emails

hi

I have forgotten the process for using emails to validate refs.

Can someone please remind me where to go to find the info to start the process of getting an email sent in to Wiki?

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 19:03, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Should this be @ help desk instead of here? Chaosdruid (talk) 19:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Possibly. For starters, I am unsure of what you're asking. Could you more clearly give us an example scenario? Killiondude (talk) 03:25, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
@Chaosdruid: Is it possible that you're thinking of OTRS? I'm not sure if they handle exactly the type of request you're talking about, but OTRS is the main place that emails to Wikipedia are handled. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:20, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
@This, that and the other: & @Killiondude: It was a process where something to be used in an article/as a ref had to be proven to be from the person in question, rather than Joe Bloggs with a made up email address ... In this case I need to get the names of band members out of an email from their management team, but need to be able to say "this is where it came from" Chaosdruid (talk) 17:34, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Emails are private communications, and so will not satisfy WP:V because other people can't check what the source is claimed to state. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
There is a process for verifying them, that is the whole point of my query. I used it years ago to get email validation on a source, and I believe it DID involve OTRS. Chaosdruid (talk) 17:00, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
No. OTRS can be used to verify the identity of someone. That might be used, for example, to demonstrate that the author of a blog was in fact a recognized expert on the subject, and that might make the blog a reliable source. There is no other kind of email verification of an assertion. What is certain is that an unpublished email is not a reliable source, and nothing can make it reliable. Johnuniq (talk) 00:32, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Which is exactly what I wanted, to prove that the source of the information is who they say they are ... thanks, well, not really, but at least you gave me the OTRS info which got me there in the end ... Chaosdruid (talk) 21:59, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Ein Karem

Please fix:

  • The broken syntax on "elevation" in the infobox
  • Reference 10

Thank you!

2607:FEA8:1DE0:7B4:7811:3461:7039:276 (talk) 21:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Fixed by other editors. – Ammarpad (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Estranged preloadtitle=

In en.Wikipedia, some links creating a new report via section=new don’t specify the heading in preloadtitle=, pushing it into the body-text form instead. It usually leads to empty edit summary, which is despicable. Moreover, a proposed fix in Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring/Example is ignored. Opinions? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:13, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

You're the only one who looked at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring/Example in the last 30 days, so your comment was not ignored, it was just not seen. There's little reason to watch that page. The code for that new section link comes from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring/Header, you can edit it yourself. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:03, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Did I ask how to do? Expectedly such questions form 90% of threads here, but pay please some attention to who posts stuff and how. As for “little reason to watch that page”, in the shoes of an en.Wikipedia technician I certainly would watch thousands such pages. Even having denied promotion to template editors I watch hundreds templates and similar things. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:38, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
If you were not asking how to do it, what are you asking? You already know the fix you want to apply, so you can either apply it and see if someone disagrees, or ask whoever will be affected. In the latter case, it likely means a post at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring - the people here might have no idea of the technical details (i.e. not be "en-wp technicians"), but they are the ones you need to convince (assuming you want to get a consensus in the first place, IMO you should go for the BOLD route). TigraanClick here to contact me 08:35, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Problem with Template:Graph:Population history

I think the specific template does not work right during the last weeks. Graphs do not show up and look like broken images. But when previewing in editing mode they do appear working actually. Examples can be found on the template itself or here. Any suggestions? --Αρκάς (talk) 20:21, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Αρκάς, changes are being made to the version in the German wikipedia and imported here. Pinging @Yurik, Yair rand, and IagoQnsi: who have been working on the graph template and Module:Graph, though the problem seems to have started before the most recent changes here. It is very strange that the graphs appear in preview just beautifully, but vanish when reading the articles. StarryGrandma (talk) 03:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. Then i guess we will have to wait for them.--Αρκάς (talk) 06:38, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
I ended up reverting all my changes right after I made them, so it wasn't something I did. When you are previewing the articles, the images are rendered on your machine with JavaScript, but when you save the article, the images are rendered by MediaWiki's servers. So the issue must be with the server-side renderer if it's only broken on the saved pages and not the previews. --IagoQnsi (talk) 22:49, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
IagoQnsi, Αρκάς recorded the problem at the template talk page Aug 8, before your changes. I was hoping one of you would know where we could go from here. Someone reported this at mw:Template talk:Graph:Population history two months ago on July 4 (where it is also not working) and got no response. Is there anything about this in Phabricator? StarryGrandma (talk) 23:27, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, actually it is definitely been going on for some months now. When i mentioned "weeks" i was not precise, but since we are trying to timestamp it...--Αρκάς (talk) 00:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
It is a known problem, T226250 at Phabricator, "Graph not displayed if linked to a wikidata query". The uses of the template you gave, both in the template documention and at the Bogotá article in question, are going to wikidata for their information. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:22, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Ok thanks. Also pinging @Geraki:, as i'm guessing he would be interested as well. --Αρκάς (talk) 00:25, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Any possibilities that this gets fixed? Thanks. --Αρκάς (talk) 12:11, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Template:Boxboxtop causing weird visual errors in Safari?

Hello all, I have been dealing with this visual error for a while now and find it quite annoying. Whenever I hover over the "show" boxes in my infobox on my userpage, it continually "drifts" downwards the more you hover over the "show" buttons. I have also experienced this problem on Chrome using my desktop, however, Chrome on my Mac appears to like it now. Does anyone have any ideas? (Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 60#Template:Boxboxtop not working correctly in Firefox or Chrome might be related?) --TheSandDoctor Talk 02:52, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

TheSandDoctor, iv seen this before. The caption of the table wrapping your user boxes gets pushed below the table for some reason. I suspect this is a CSS or html validity error or something, but I've never been able to figure out a cause completely. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:42, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the response, TheDJ. Huh. The issue appears to now just be on my mac, but I have removed the offending boxes and re-done my userpage over the past few days for a number of reasons (badly needed update, to get rid of that stupid visual error, etc). Hopefully the cause and fix is found eventually. Have you experienced it yourself or just heard others complaining of it ()? --TheSandDoctor Talk 15:20, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Zhaofeng Li/reFill

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical) § Zhaofeng Li/reFill
 – Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:21, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The Zhaofeng Li/reFill tool does not add Retrieved (date) data anymore. I can not get into contact with Zhaofeng Li as he seem to have left the project. But if someone could take a look at the tool I would appreciate it. [20] --BabbaQ (talk) 21:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

It seems he made it now you have to explicitly request for the date to be added (i.e disabaled by default). If you use the new (beta) interface directly, there's a "Preferences" link by your right. You've to enable it from there. If you use, the old interface (which redirects to the new in background) you'll notice that an option "Do not add access dates" is checked by default. You've to uncheck it. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:55, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
The problem with the old beta is that I do uncheck it but it still does not add the data I want. I will try the new one. --BabbaQ (talk) 08:47, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
One more thing, right now when I click on View History and then Fix dead links I get the old beta. Perhaps a change to the new and improved version would benefit the project. Thanks.BabbaQ (talk) 10:11, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
The tool that fixes dead links is a different tool. I don't know where its new version is, but you can suggest changing the link at MediaWiki talk:Histlegend. – Ammarpad (talk) 10:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, I have been through a cold and is a bit off. Thanks for your help anyway.BabbaQ (talk) 17:40, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Resolved

On the Usufruct article, the interlanguage link for Romanian links to ro:Drept de uz and, apparently, ought to link to ro:Drept de uzufruct; see talk:Usufruct#Incorrect link to Romanian Wikipedia article. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:50, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

You'll want to edit wikidata:Q160474 in the lower left area. ―cobaltcigs 20:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
There's a conflicting Wikidata item preventing it from being corrected. I requested its deletion and posted a note on the article talk page for the concerned editor. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 22:02, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Tool for locating pages that have been removed from categories.

I don’t know if this has been brought up as a topic previously, but if not, is there a tool that can locate/search for pages that have been removed from categories? If not, I feel like this kind of tool would be useful, as it’s very difficult to keep track of this type of thing.Dohvahkiin (talk) 18:21, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

It has serious limitations and you may want to use an alternative account with a tiny watchlist but see "Category membership" at Help:Watchlist#Limitations. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:58, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Cannot save edit on pages when using cellular network with mobile device

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T232491

For the past few days, probably since after the Wikipedia outage that happened a few days ago, I have not been able to save edits while on and using the cellular network on my mobile device. I am able to save edits when my mobile device is connect to WiFi, but not on cellular. I’ve tried...

  • ...On my iPhone...
    1. ...Multiple internet browsing apps (Safari, Chrome, and Firefox)
    2. ...tried editing from both "mobile" and "desktop" view
    3. ...tried clearing my browsers' cookies and history
    4. ...resetting the network settings on my mobile device
    5. ...resetting my entire phone and attempting to use the internet before restoring my phone
...And none of this worked.

What happens is when I click the "save" button after creating an edit, the next page doesn’t load, and I get an error that says the server is not responding. In the past 5–6 years I have been editing primarily from a cellular network, this has never happened, and it's a bit alarming. Either way, I hope there is a fix for this issue since I really enjoy volunteering on Wikipedia, but may now have long periods of not editing due to these issues (since I primarily edit using a cellular network connection.) Steel1943 (talk) 20:36, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

@Steel1943: T232491. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:48, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
@Ahecht: I’m unfortunately glad to see I’m not the only one experiencing this issue. I went ahead and added a {{Tracked}} to the top of this section since I didn't see this discussed anywhere else. Steel1943 (talk) 21:05, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
@Ahecht: @Steel1943: - Can you try again (possibly with a browser or phone restart if necessary). I've made some experimental changes on the Wikimedia side of things which may (hopefully) fix this for you. BBlack (WMF) (talk) 01:25, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
@BBlack (WMF): I made this edit on my cellular network (as well as this one), so that may have resolved it. Steel1943 (talk) 02:30, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
@BBlack (WMF): It's working for me too. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:39, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Edit-conflicting with self

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T28821
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T59264

Hello everyone, has anyone else had an issue where the "Publish changes" button saves your edit but then the editing interface says that there was an edit conflict? I have had it happen rather frequently as of late, yet when I check the page history my edit was saved correctly. It appears to quite literally be either an error in the interface or for some reason trying to publish the same edit twice (consecutively) and causing me to self-conflict. It doesn't happen every time, but does occur a lot. It is rather annoying.... --TheSandDoctor Talk 15:16, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

I have the exact same problem. See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 176#False edit conflict problem when saving. Thue (talk) 18:41, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
There are many bug reports for this issue, two of them are: phab:T28821 and phab:T59264. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:41, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, @Thue and Ammarpad:. I have subscribed and commented on both. I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this . --TheSandDoctor Talk 15:11, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

cannot save edits 404 error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T230272

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_pull?action=edit

On that page, attempting to save edits, I get "Something went wrong" "HTTP 404". I cleared all caches as documented in WP but did not help. BrucePL (talk) 19:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Ammarpad saved an edit after your post. I had no problems saving an edit now. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: thanks. I saved a few edits but it bombed again. Cannot switch to source editor and cannot save in VE. BrucePL (talk) 22:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
"Error loading data from server: apierror-visualeditor-docserver-http." BrucePL (talk) 22:19, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
I tried VisualEditor this time and it also worked fine for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
I don't know what to do. I can save eidts on other pages not this one. BrucePL (talk) 22:33, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
I openned the article in a new tab and editors worked. BrucePL (talk) 22:51, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

There's something going on. I saw something like this twice, a couple of days ago. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:45, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, getting this again. I edited Draft:Morse Robb using visual editor, and when I went to save it, got the 404 error. I'm now at a point where if I try to switch to source editing, I get, "Error loading data from server: apierror-visualeditor-docserver-http." If I select "Visual editing" from the drop-down menu (even though I'm already in visual), I get in the javascript console:

Extended content
load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116 Uncaught TypeError: Illegal invocation
    at add (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at Function.jQuery.param (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116)
    at Function.jQuery.param (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:150)
    at Function.ajax (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:123)
    at Function.jQuery.ajax (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:144)
    at Object.requestParsoidData (<anonymous>:461:31)
    at VeInitMwDesktopArticleTarget.ve.init.mw.ArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor (<anonymous>:787:643)
add @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
jQuery.param @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116
jQuery.param @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:150
ajax @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:123
jQuery.ajax @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:144
requestParsoidData @ VM206:461
ve.init.mw.ArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor @ VM218:787
ve.init.mw.DesktopArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor @ VM218:1238
ve.ui.MWEditModeVisualTool.switch @ VM218:798
mw.libs.ve.MWEditModeTool.onSelect @ VM218:320
OO.ui.ToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:11
OO.ui.PopupToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:20
OO.ui.ListToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:25
OO.ui.ToolGroup.onDocumentMouseKeyUp @ VM218:11
load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116 Uncaught TypeError: Illegal invocation
    at add (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at Function.jQuery.param (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116)
    at Function.jQuery.param (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:150)
    at Function.ajax (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:123)
    at Function.jQuery.ajax (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:144)
    at Object.requestParsoidData (<anonymous>:461:31)
    at VeInitMwDesktopArticleTarget.ve.init.mw.ArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor (<anonymous>:787:643)
add @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
jQuery.param @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116
jQuery.param @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:150
ajax @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:123
jQuery.ajax @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:144
requestParsoidData @ VM206:461
ve.init.mw.ArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor @ VM218:787
ve.init.mw.DesktopArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor @ VM218:1238
ve.ui.MWEditModeVisualTool.switch @ VM218:798
mw.libs.ve.MWEditModeTool.onSelect @ VM218:320
OO.ui.ToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:11
OO.ui.PopupToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:20
OO.ui.ListToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:25
dispatch @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:69
elemData.handle @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:65

I'm not sure, but I think a common theme is that the page I'm editing was recently moved. It certainly was in this case, and in one of the previous ones that I saw a few days ago. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:32, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

phab:T230272 possibly? There's some others in the backlog also. --Izno (talk) 17:54, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-37

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

Changes later this week

  • You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on 10 September at 05:00 (UTC). [21]
  • When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if you are a "privileged user" and your password is too short. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [22]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 September. It will be on all wikis from 12 September (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Advanced item Soon, the AbuseFilter will recognize new syntax errors. Specifically, it will recognize errors about empty operands. You can see a list of examples in phab:T156096. Any active filter with such an error will stop working; hence, please take a look at the list of affected filters, and fix the ones that you can fix. Note that there is also an ongoing RFC on meta-wiki about the creation of a new abusefilter-manager global group.

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

(manually posting due to problems with MassMessage this week.) 19:22, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Recent class=sortkey changes?

Resolved

Were there any recent changes in class="sortkey" area? Template:Track_gauge#List_of_defined_track_gauges now shows (in 1st row for example):

00003 mm0.118 in

Expected, as it was until ~some weeks ago:

0.118 in

What shows extra is the sortkey, with source code being (unchanged): 

<span class="sortkey">00003 mm</span>0.118 in

Any ideas? -DePiep (talk) 12:45, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Has to do with this in {{Convert}}? @TheDJ and Johnuniq:. -DePiep (talk) 12:49, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Nothing to do with convert. If you edit Template:Track gauge/doc/input options, you will see that there are no convert transclsions, but does have something to do with an edit to common.css. You'll need to update Module:Track gauge/autodocument to use the data-sort-value method for sorting. -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:54, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
OK. I only mentioend {{Convert}} becasue the class change was announced there. -DePiep (talk) 13:00, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
  • So instead of
<span class="sortkey">00003 mm</span>0.118 in
write
<span data-sort-value="00003 mm">0.118 in

Solved. -DePiep (talk) 14:23, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

DePiep, actually, I'd say: <span data-sort-value="00003">0.118 in</span>. You 'mask' the content of the cell, with the numerical value 00003. And of course this assumes that you use the same sort of numerical values in all the other rows. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:42, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
I get it, thanx. However, I don't have time to refine & test that in the detail template. -DePiep (talk) 20:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank button changing into rollback

I have noticed that on Win10 using Chrome that upon loading a page history that the page is reformatted after a couple of seconds, I guess because of CSS or script mods. When this happens the rollback button moved exactly to where the thanks button was. Not, in itself a big problem but, embarrassingly, if I click thanks before this change occurs (from ~0.5 to ~3 seconds) the interface reads it as a rollback. Anyone have any ideas? I use the script that should hide rollback on my watchlist - sometimes it does some times not - but it is useful from page history. As an aside, is there a way to add a thanks button to the watchlist? Jbh Talk 14:37, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Seconded (Win7/Opera). I have probably inadvertently rolled back around half a dozen times, followed by an undo, and a red-faced summary, "self-revert; fat-finger error". Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 02:50, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't get the page reformatting issue. Perhaps related to a gadget or .js script? Sam Walton (talk) 15:26, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
@Jbhunley: It's probably due to my inline diff script; the view history button loads a little bit after the page does. I have a CSS hack that will reserve the space normally taken up by the button on page load--this prevents the script from significantly shifting any UI elements (at the cost of an ugly blotch of whitespace for a split second before the script loads in). If you'd like to try it out, you can add the following lines to your common.css page:
.mw-changeslist-edit .mw-changeslist-separator {padding-right:84px;}
.mw-changeslist-edit .mw-changeslist-separator~.mw-changeslist-separator {padding-right:0px;}
#pagehistory .mw-changeslist-separator {padding-right:84px;}
#pagehistory .mw-changeslist-separator~.mw-changeslist-separator {padding-right:0px;}
...which should fix the problem for both the watchlist and history pages. If you need more or less space (it could vary, depending on fonts and the like), you can adjust the 84px up or down. Let me know if this helps with the problem! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:11, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. That works. I upped it to 120px which does not seem to cause issues on lower res displays. The button still jumps but it is to 'undo' on the laptop. I can catch the error before it commits the undo. Jbh Talk 19:03, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Help with LUA and shoving a string into a template

In Module:JCW, I have in this version, the following, 

function p.pattern (frame)
	local n = mArguments.getArgs(frame, {parentOnly = true})
	local length = TableTools.length(n)
	local text = string.format ('*%s', n[1] or '')
	n[1] = nil --make next loop only target arguments >=2
	for i, j in ipairs(TableTools.compressSparseArray(n)) do
		text = text..string.format("\n** {{replace|%s|.*|<code>.*</code>}}", j)
	end
	return text

The line text = text..string.format("\n** %s", j) is apparently shorthand for 'dumbass that can't code LUA', because if if you have a string like '*Bibcode*', you don't get, as I'd expect

    • .*Bibcode.*

but rather an un-parsed

    • {{replace|.*Bibcode.*|.*|.*}}

If someone could de-dumbassify my code, that would be peachy. The goal is if the substring '.*' is present in a string like '.*Bibcode.*', I want those to become wrapped in code tags, like so <code>.*</code>Bibcode<code>.*</code>.

@Galobtter: maybe? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:59, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I think you need to escape the special characters (. and *) in your search. See this tutorial and this manual. I think you need something like %.%* to find '.*'. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:18, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
I'll double check, but it would be a bit weird since {{replace|.*Bibcode.*|.*|<code>.*</code>}} works fine. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:47, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Nope, throws off a bunch of errors if I do that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:51, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
@Headbomb: Templates won't be expanded from lua output. To use a template, you'd need to use frame:expandTemplate. However, in this case, there's no reason to use lua to call {{replace}}, since that template is just going to call back to a lua module anyway. Just do:
 text = text .. "\n** " .. mw.ustring.gsub(j, "%.%*", "<code>.*</code>")
mw.ustring.gsub is just the unicode-compatible version of string.gsub. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Yeah that works. Thanks. Still got other issues, but less pressing ones. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:13, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Plain string.gsub works fine in Ahecht's code because there is no search for Unicode characters: it's just searching for dot and asterisk. Johnuniq (talk) 23:44, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
True, but I always prefer to use the unicode-compatible versions as a matter of habit since it makes re-using the code later easier. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:04, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Unicode is definitely better than non-unicode. A lot more scalable. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:12, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Resolved

How do I display an external link that contains "[" and "]"? Here is an example: The first result of this Google Scholar search takes you to a bioone.org page. But its url has "[" and "]" in it. I tried to paste that link into this Resource Request, but the "[" and "]" garble the result. Is there an escape character that can be used to "hide" the "[" and "]"? Thanks. —Bruce1eetalk 13:23, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

See Help:URL#Fixing links with unsupported characters: [23]. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Thank you – that's what I needed. —Bruce1eetalk 13:34, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Easy way to find mismatched assessments?

So I found Pullman Square entirely by accident when trying to find GA-class WP:MALLS articles. But for some reason, it was only assessed as a C-class Shopping Malls article despite being GA-class in every other Wikiproject. Is there an easy way to find articles that have contradictory assessments of this sort? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 21:54, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

It should be possible with WP:PETSCAN, you need the intersection of Category:Good articles with subcategories of Category:C-Class articles etc.; you need to enable both mainspace and Talk: space. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:35, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
I also got a list using the page_assessments database: quarry:query/38930. There are a lot of false positives though, for instance if the article belongs to inactive WikiProjects. I don't think I can check for those. Same query but for FA: quarry:query/38931. I think category intersections such as with Petscan is going to work better. — MusikAnimal talk 22:42, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Unable to edit my common.js

When I edit my common.js and save it by clicking the "Publish changes" button, there is no edit saved. I don't get the timed "Your edit was saved" popup afterwards either. It doesn't matter whether I'm trying to insert new code (e.g. to load another script) or add or edit an existing comment – none of them get saved. The history of the page shows the last edit was in May and my contribs don't show the edit either. I am able to edit User:AlanM1/sandbox as well as WP:Teahouse. Any ideas? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 09:50, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Disregard. Enabling WikEd and then disabling it again solved the problem for some reason. I'll note for the record that the syntax-checking and coloring wasn't working either (and is now). —[AlanM1(talk)]— 10:00, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Something about this particular username (maybe the asterisk at the beginning?) seems to be breaking a couple of the links at {{Sp-contributions-footer}}, but I'm afraid I don't know much about the features being used, so I'm not sure where the problem is exactly. Just thought it would be worth bringing up here. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 03:01, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Template:Sp-contributions-footer should be fixed a little. I did these changes on fiwiki and extra characters in username are now rendering correctly. Stryn (talk) 08:58, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Oh, actually not, now it's not working usernames where is a space like "Given name". Stryn (talk) 09:00, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
I fixed it, hopefully without causing any other issues. urlencode takes a formatting option, and using WIKI leaves leading * and : unadulterated (as if it were wikitext) and thus unacceptable for a url; changing to QUERY seems to take care of the issues. Interestingly, a leading # doesn't cause the same issue, not sure if that's intentional or not. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:52, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
That also broke on usernames with spaces so I reverted it. I think it would work to wrap urlencode in {{encodefirst}}: {{encodefirst|{{urlencode:{{{1|Example}}}|WIKI}}}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:51, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Urgh, thanks. I tested spaces, but... Anyway, seems DJ and xf took care of it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:57, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

503 errors on Wikimedia / Wikipedia pages

Resolved
 – Resolved per below. --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:23, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

In case this is affecting anybody else: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T232698. The problem is under investigation. ↠Pine (✉) 05:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Update: the problem is believed to be related to network maintenance, and has been resolved. --↠Pine (✉) 06:10, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Change mobile skin

The skin preference doesn't affect mobile sites (*.m.wiki*edia.org). I can not change mobile skin no matter how hard I try. So we were chatting on #wikimedia-tech about this. Isarra told me there was a phab task about this problem, and Jon Robson commented there that there is a mobile skin preference but it is hidden. I asked Isarra and other people on #wikimedia-tech, but they didn't seem to know too. Some of them tried to enable it via api, but that ended in failure. Anyway, he told me to find some gadget maker nerds and ask them as "they might know". So I am asking here. How to change skins on mobile? Masum Reza📞 05:39, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Template reformatting

Resolved

How can I reformat {{Anthony}} so that it is a tad wider and so that multiple links may appear on a line?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:26, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

TonyTheTiger Increase width and remove bullets. --Trialpears (talk) 05:09, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
@TonyTheTiger: Alternatively, increase the width and alter |contentclass=plainlist to |contentclass=hlist. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:36, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Redrose64 thank you. Also, thanks to Trialpears, but the other solution seemed easier to me.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:18, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Resolved

--qedk (t 桜 c) 10:29, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Recently, whenever I try to follow a link to a .pdf, such as for instance this, I only get a blank page, while other people seem able to access it without trouble. Admittedly, I am in the EU, and so I get shut off from various US media because GDPR, but the .pdf thing seems different. There's no message at all, just a blank page. Bishonen | talk 09:24, 15 September 2019 (UTC).

@Bishonen: What is your operating system and browser version? Does it happen for all links to .pdfs (for posterity, the .pdf on the link shows up fine on my Catalina 10.15 machine's Safari 13, Firefox 69, Chrome 76) or only some? --qedk (t 桜 c) 09:30, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
OS X El Capitan and Firefox Quantum extended support release, 60.9.0, and it applies to all .pdf's. And, aha, I just tried that .pdf in Safari and it works there. So I can manage. I'd like for the links to work in Firefox, since it's my usual browser, but I can manage. Thank you for your helpful questions, qedk! They made me realise I should try a different browser. Bishonen | talk 09:42, 15 September 2019 (UTC).
Works in Edge on Win10 in the EU too. DuncanHill (talk) 09:44, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
If you go to Options -> Applications on Firefox, what is PDF set to? Nardog (talk) 09:52, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
@Bishonen: you are not alone. DuncanHill (talk) 09:53, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
To spell that out: Click the triple horizontal bar "hamburger" menu button at top right, then click Options. Scroll down to "Applications / Choose how Firefox handles the files you download...". Near the bottom of the list you should see "Portable Document Format (PDF)". If it is set to "Save File", each time you click a pdf, it is downloading that pdf to your downloads directory. You probably have a hundred duplicate pdfs there! The location of the downloads directory can be seen in "Save files to" just above Applications. Johnuniq (talk) 10:01, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I probably have, I never look in dusty corners like my downloads directory (which I never knowingly direct any downloads to). I've now set the .pdf option to "Use Preview (default)", and it works. Thank you all! Bishonen | talk 10:15, 15 September 2019 (UTC).
Glad to know you found the culprit. --qedk (t 桜 c) 10:29, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Slow emails from Special:EmailUser?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T232928

Anyone else noticing that Wikipedia emails seem to take a while to arrive lately (e.g. notice of one in the interface long before it shows in your inbox), or is that just me & my provider having issues? Received one that took around 20 minutes (from what I recall) to arrive in my inbox earlier this week (just had time/remembered to ask now). --TheSandDoctor Talk 20:44, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Someone sent me one today, and I received it promptly after the notification. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:24, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Huh. Thanks, JJMC89....it might be just me then....I wouldn't put it past that provider (used to be good, but down hill in recent years), but oh well. Thanks again! --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:22, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
@JJMC89: I accidentally stumbled across another user affected by this. Ticket filed (phab:T232928). --TheSandDoctor Talk 04:37, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist not showing edits

I'm in Australia (GMT +10) and edited Wikipedia up until about 05:00 today. When I went to edit at about 14:35 today I updated my watchlist but it only shows edits from 07:53. I've changed nothing so I don't understand why it's only showing some edits from today. My prefs are set for 500 edits and the last 5 days but I'm showing nowhere near that. Is this an issue affecting anyone else? --AussieLegend (✉) 06:36, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Google auto-translate stupidity :-)

What part of "fr" did you not understand?

This is kind of amusing. In the process of reviewing Draft:Manoir du Clap, I did a google search for "manoir du clap" and was surprised to discover we already had such an article on enwiki, at least according to Google. Problem is, I couldn't find it. My first guess was maybe this draft was once in mainspace and got draftified, but no evidence of that either. Lots of head scratching ensued. Turns out, the article really is on frwiki (and indeed, if you click on the link, it takes you to frwiki), and Chrome's auto-translation not only translated the text, but "helpfully" translated the hostname too. Mentioning it here in case anybody else has been tripped up by this silliness. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:00, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

This may be related to Project Toledo, even though the project's page does not mention translation back to English. But it's quite similar. – Ammarpad (talk) 16:58, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

No change in size

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T232941

In the mobile version, the diffs always says "No change in size" even if there is change in size. See for example [24].--SharabSalam (talk) 19:52, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

This is phab:T232941. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:30, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

The new update

I don't know if this is an appropriate place to put my feedback but I have to say that I am not impressed by the very new update to the mobile version, I hope Wikimedia doesn't go forward with this, for example what's the point of having the number of contributions bigger in diffs? I think it should actually be removed from diffs because there is prejudice against those who have few edits in Wikipedia community and therefore they usually get reverted often. Instead Wikimedia made the contribution number bigger! Also my phone screen is small and the numbers make the interface looks weird like the word "edits" disappear when the user has so many rights. Also what's the point of using these icons? to differentiate between anonymous and logged-in users? They are pointless. Anyone can differentiate between the IPs and the logged-in users. I feel like the new update didn't offer any improvement. If this update was the old version and the old version was the update I would actually count the old version as an improvement.-SharabSalam (talk) 00:12, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

It was a regression. It will be resolved together with the task mentioned above. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:02, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser fails to connect

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T233070

AWB (version 5.10.1.0, running on Windows 7 64-bit) is failing to connect, reporting:

Error connecting to wiki

An error occured while connecting to the server or loading project information from it. Please make sure that your internet connection works and such combination of project/language exist.

Enter the URL in the format "en.wikipedia.org/w/" (including path where index.php and api.php reside).

Error description: StartIndex cannot be less than zero.

Parameter name: startIndex

and then:

User check problem

Check page failed to load.

Check your Internet is working and that the Wiki is online.

So far as I can tell, my configuration files have not changed since I last successfully used AWB two days ago. Obviously my internet connection is currently working, and Wikipedia appears to be functioning for normal editing.

Is there a problem with the server? Mitch Ames (talk) 11:41, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

@Mitch Ames: seems to be related to phab:T233070. — xaosflux Talk 12:48, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
OK. Thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:06, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Pageviews tool not working on at least one article

[25]. "Error querying Pageviews API - Not found." Help? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:08, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

America (Maurizio Cattelan) was moved to the current title today. The tool doesn't use live data. The former name America (toilet) has data [26]. I suppose the tool could check whether the requested page exists currently and give another message but it still wouldn't have page view data. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:31, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Aligning numbers in a table

demo
85.468
132.91
223

I have numbers in various 'sizes' in a table (see demo right). I want to have them aligned as decimal number, i.e., all decimal signs (=periods) below each other. What are today's best practices available? Any smart template I have not found yet? -DePiep (talk) 14:42, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Maybe Help:Table#Decimal point alignment is still true. Thincat (talk) 15:32, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
thx. Should have found that before. -DePiep (talk) 15:41, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Determining what type of search result is returned by Wikipedia

Good afternoon Wikipedians!

I have a rather fundamental question.

When you send a search to Wikipedia using the:

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=George Washington

URL, it seems like this function returns 3 different manifestations of Wikipedia search:

1) An actual article 2) A disambiguation page 3) A list of articles, like a Google search

3 examples would be:

If you search for “George Washington”:

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=George Washington

Would return the George Washington Wikipedia article.

If you search for “tom jones”:

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=tom jones

This search returns the disambiguation page for “tom jones”

If you search for “akbur”

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=akbur

This returns a listing of articles, much like a Google search does.

My question is, when the pages are returned. How do I determine what type of page was returned, just by analyzing the HTML that is present? What keywords or phrases can my program look for in the HTML to definitively determine that I have come upon a Wikipedia article, disambiguation page or a search listing?

This is made more difficult by the seeming inconsistency of the search results. For instance, when searching and a disambiguation page is returned, some of these pages contain the phrase “may refer to:” and some may contain the phrase “may also refer to:”. And some of these key phases may, seemingly have 1, 2 or even 3 spaces, between these words, in these key phrases, which makes using key phrases, to figure out the type of page returned, that much more difficult.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!

Jroehl (talk) 18:16, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

What's the application for this? It seems like there will be some simpler solution here. --Trialpears (talk) 18:32, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
This is being used for selecting a Wikipedia article on my website. Jroehl (talk) 18:44, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
There is a mw:API which is designed for programs. The normal interface is for humans. By default, the search function goes directly to a page if there is an exact match to the search phrase. The page may be an article, disambiguation page or redirect. If there is no exact match then you get search results. Add &fulltext=1 to the url if you always want search results. The API can be asked directly whether a page exists and what type of page it is. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=pageprops&ppprop=disambiguation&titles=Tom%20Jones%7CGeorge%20Washington%7CAkbur shows that Tom Jones is a disambiguation page, George Washington is not, and Akbur doesn't exist. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:58, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Well, this was very helpful PrimeHunter! Thank you! Jroehl (talk) 19:03, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
@Jroehl: One thing that I notice is that you have spaces in your URLs. These are never valid (see Query string#URL encoding) - you either need to encode them, or use a recognised placeholder character: the plus sign is universal, and Wikipedia also recognises an underscore:
Try these instead. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:51, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Thankyou very much Redrose64. It is always important to remember this! Jroehl (talk) 15:59, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Technical help needed on Slovak Wikipedia

Hi, I am sorry to bother you here on English Wikipedia but we do not have technical users on our one, so after wrongly using Phabricator for the first time, I hope this could be a place where I will find somebody that will be able to help.

What I need to help with: Our Community portal looks good when accessing it on desktop. This, however, does not apply for the mobile view. So I basically need help with making the page responsive so that it displays correctly on all kinds of displays.

Here is the detailed request (on Phabricator): phabricator:T231949

It was recommended to me to get inspired by this responsive template, so I hope that can help.

If you want to help, feel free to contact me on wiki (here, Meta, Slovak one, ...) or via e-mail and we can discuss further. If there is going to be a need to create a css or js file, I can request interface admin's rights and put it there, meanwhile, it can be tested on Testwiki.

Thanks a lot for reading this!

--Luky001 (talk) 16:02, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Template:Orphan

Looking at the source, I think this is meant to be an ambox, but it does not actually render for some reason. I found this issue when I proceeded to add the tag to Patchwork religion, currently linked only from this page and a 2010 RfD, to find that it had already been tagged in 2015. However, someone else may have noted that this tag is invisible. I cannot try to fix it myself because the page is template-protected. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:40, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Please, read the documentation of {{orphan}}. Ruslik_Zero 04:35, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

mw.user.options

Is the mw.user.options object in the JavaScript interface a reliable area to store data through scripts (for later access from the scripts)? If so, I am guessing that it can be for setting up scripts for creating private to-do lists and custom watchlists, etc. SD0001 (talk) 06:43, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

You should store it in the actual user preferences (e.g. Just modifying the object client side won't actually store it). But yes, they are saved similarly to normal preferences like the one's in Special:Preferences and are an alternative to using localStorage to save stuff, and unlike localStorage will follow the person around if they log in on a different computer. See also mw:API:Options Bawolff (talk) 05:23, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Template expansion depth

There has been a change to how the maximum template expansion depth is handled. The maximum is still 40 but the change has increased the expansion depth calculated for the page so that some deeply nested templates are now broken. This happens with a number of cladograms constructed using the {{clade}}, as can be seen in Afrophidia. Pages generating the error can be found at Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded. Strangely, some of the cladogram still look OK on the saved page but fail in edit preview. I think this is due to caching, but cannot explain why these pages look OK but already appear in the error tracking category.

The following code used to be able to expand 40 nested templates, but now fails at 21. 

* Nest 21 templates: {{1x|1 {{1x|2 {{1x|3 {{1x|4 {{1x|5 {{1x|6 {{1x|7 {{1x|8 {{1x|9 {{1x
|10 {{1x|11 {{1x|12 {{1x|13 {{1x|14 {{1x|15 {{1x|16 {{1x|17 {{1x|18 {{1x|19 {{1x|20 {{1x |'''21'''}}
}}}} }}}} }}}} }}}} }}}}  }}}} }}}} }}}} }}}} }}}}
  • Nest 21 templates: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21


You can see similar examples at Checking the current expansion limit and [27] :mw:Help:Expansion_depth#Nesting depth on the page itself. These still appear to allow transclusion to a depth of 40, but if you test in edit preview they fail at 21. Again, I think that this is because cached pages are being displayed.   Jts1882 | talk  16:13, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Likelihood of User:Evad37/XFDcloser.js becoming a gadget?

Per Wikipedia:Gadget, I'm attempting to start a discussion here about the likelihood of User:Evad37/XFDcloser (commonly referred to as "XFDcloser") being eligible to be promoted to "Gadget" status. For those who do not know what this script is used for, it is used to automatically close a majority of types of WP:XFD discussions. There are quite a few editors who use this script, including myself. However, if it can be, I think it is time for this script to become a gadget (provided that it meets all criteria in Wikipedia:Gadget#General criteria for gadgets.) The main reason I'm proposing this script become a gadget is not only because of several editors using it, but also since its creator/maintainer, Evad37, hasn't edited in almost a month and a half, and if it were promoted to a gadget, other editors could respond to update requests to the script. So ... does this look like a good candidate for "Gadget"-ification? Steel1943 (talk) 16:58, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

It can be hard to tell on these, but WLE results show <100 people are actually using this (and I haven't attempted to determine how many are active). If gadget-izing, the users would need to actually make a change to use the new gadget. The old script could possibly be changed with a "Deprecated" alert or something. I'd like to see if Evad37 has any comment on this first though; has anyone tried emailing him? — xaosflux Talk 17:21, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
I would be against gadgetizing this. This is a niche tool, not something that RandomJoe123 needs access to. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:34, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
Actually, this reduces the number of people who can change the script: we go from all interface admins + Evad himself to just all interface admins. (It may increase the number of people willing to implement an edit request, but that is not a question of can but willing to.) --Izno (talk) 17:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
...Ah yes, I forgot about the recent addition of the interface administrator user right ... an admin exclusive. I'm tempted to say "Never mind about this whole thing" now. Steel1943 (talk) 17:48, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
@Izno: so yes, technically it reduces it by exactly 1 person. However: Evan could request access as he is an admin, as far as processing edit requests go: interface admins are much more likely to implement an edit request made for a gadget then to some personal user script. If the maintainer is inactive, another option for you @Steel1943: would be to fork the script, and make it Steel1943's XFD closer script. — xaosflux Talk 18:08, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
xaosflux, where do you get the <100 figure from? There are ~349 people who have this script installed directly from source and another ~639 who are importing User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD.js which redirects to this one. SD0001 (talk) 05:23, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
@SD0001: WLE (Special:WhatLinksHere) which I noted wasn't very reliable for this. — xaosflux Talk 11:22, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Odd lag on Downton Abbey (film)

My recent addition of a Popular culture section to the article appears to be alternately installed, and the uninstalled in the article. It seems to sometimes appear there, and then not to appear a few minutes later when someone else edits another part of the article. I do not know if when you link to the film if you will see the Popular culture section or not. It does appear as having been made in my edit history [28], but it does not appear in the article consistently after the edit is made and confirmed. It just seems to disappear 5 minutes later and then reappear again later without anyone editing it. Any thoughts? CodexJustin (talk) 17:59, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

I see it now and in all revisions since you added it. Maybe you need to bypass your cache. "This page was last edited on" at the bottom shows which revision you are viewing. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:36, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Edits on enwiki mirrored on dewiki?

I discovered today that I've got a bunch of edits on dewiki. To the best of my knowledge, I've made exactly one edit there. The rest seem to be some random assortment of edits I've made on en that were mirrored to de. What's the deal here? Is there some bot or something that's doing this? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:39, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

They'll all be on articles imported into dewiki from here. The import keeps the edit history from enwiki for attribution purposes and boosts your edit count on dewiki. Nthep (talk) 14:54, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Note: imported edits don't actually impact your "edit count" - but they will appear in your "contributions". — xaosflux Talk 15:07, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
It depends where you get the edit count. Special:CentralAuth/RoySmith says edit count 1 at de.wikipedia.org. https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/de.wikipedia.org/RoySmith says 44 under general statistics but 1 for de.wikipedia.org under "Global edit counts". Imported edits are not counted in preferences or when rights like autoconfirmed are assigned. See Help:Import for the import feature in general. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:31, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
So that ec tool isn't really a count of "edits" :) (Think it is just screen scraping contributions) — xaosflux Talk 16:28, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
dewiki have been importing our edits for years - de:Special:Preferences shows that I have made only 13 edits there; most (if not all) of those were in the days before Wikidata, when interlanguage links were handled on each wiki. However, de:Special:Contributions/Redrose64 shows 809 edits credited to me. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:57, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Which part of global did I not understand?

So, it turns out, there's more to this story. The only reason I noticed my de edits was that I was looking for a recent edit that I thought I had made on https://www.mediawiki.org, but couldn't find it. Then I realized it might not have been on that wiki, so I checked global. Turns out, when Global user contributions says, Show user contributions from all Wikimedia wikis, they mean that for very small values of all. Specifically, it doesn't include wikitech.wikimedia.org. But, I guess all really means, all external-facing, or something like that. Anyway, I eventually found what I was looking for in my browser history, and learned something about inter-wiki imports, so a positive experience. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:43, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

The "all" must certainly means SUL wikis, wikis that you log in with one account. Certain wikis, including wikitech.wikimedia.org are not in SUL set up and require separate account for you to log in (though you can use what you have on SUL, if it's not taken). Be aware that wikitech:User:RoySmith is a separate and distinct account from User:RoySmith and you can have different password on each. – Ammarpad (talk) 16:58, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It's a pretty large value of 'all' actually, just not 100%! It should be all publicly facing projects that use SUL. — xaosflux Talk 16:59, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Wikitech is not replicated to toolforge. Wikitech has a really weird setup that's isolated from a lot of the rest of the sites. The idea being that wikitech contains instructions on what to do if the sites go down, and if all the sites go down, you probably don't want the site that has all the how to fix things instructions also going down (Just in case though, there is also a totally offsite static backup of wikitech as well). GUC may also exclude public non-SUL wikis as well, I'm not sure, but even if it didn't it wouldn't include wikitech as the info is just not on toolforge. Bawolff (talk) 20:05, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello colleagues. When a citation looks like this:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj bk bl bm bn bo bp bq br bs bt bu bv bw bx by bz ca cb cc cd ce cf cg ch ci cj ck cl cm cn co cp cq cr cs ct cu cv cw cx cy cz da db dc Howard, Greg (2014-02-06). "The Big Book Of Black Quarterbacks". Deadspin. Archived from the original on 2019-03-04. Retrieved 2019-03-10.

Is there a better way? This is as a result of the source being used a lot in the article, and especially because it is used to source some, but not all, rows in a large table. Can those little letter backlinks (what are they called?) be suppressed, hidden, grouped, or something? It seems to me that it not only looks bad, but is entirely useless to a reader. Is there a doc that covers this? Thanks in advance! – Levivich 17:04, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

@Levivich: If you want to hide them for yourself, it's easy - the CSS rule is 
span.mw-cite-backlink {
  display: none;
}
and that goes in either Special:MyPage/common.css or Special:MyPage/skin.css, whichever you normally use. It hides both the subscripted letters and the up-arrows that occur when the ref is used just once. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:42, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip! That would hide all cite backlinks for myself; I was wondering if there was a way to hide them (or something) just for that one cite, for readers. – Levivich 02:26, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
@Levivich: An article may have multiple reflists, with |group=groupname used to control which refs are grouped in which list. See WP:REFGROUP for details. Consider putting each table ref in a group using <ref group=table>Content</ref>, and putting {{reflist|group=table}} in a footer of the table. That may be enough to make the main reflist manageable. If the resulting table reflist still offends you, you don't have to use <ref></ref> markup in the table, you can roll your own link from each row to the source in the footer, with no backlink. --Worldbruce (talk) 01:35, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
Worldbruce, brilliant! Thank you!! – Levivich 02:08, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Time zone preference

Our preferences pages have a timezone setting, is it used anywhere? —Pelagic (talk) 07:41, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

@Pelagic: Yes, in software-generated lists such as page histories and user contributions. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:47, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
And almost everywhere else except wikitext, e.g. in diff times and "This page was last edited" at the bottom of pages. You can use it more by enabling "Change UTC-based times and dates, such as those used in signatures, to be relative to local time" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:12, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
Oh, facepalm, I really wasn't thinking straight. Thanks, John. Those pages would have access that doesn't depend on parser functions or screen scraping. And thanks for the tip about the gadget, PrimeHunter. —Pelagic (talk) 10:47, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

WikiHiero

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but WikiHiero doesn't seem to work in the mobile version. This is a problem at decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs#Champollion's breakthroughs, where tables of WikiHiero glyphs display neatly on desktop (or at least on mine) but aren't visible at all on mobile. There are possible substitutes—images or the Unicode Egyptian hieroglyphs block—but both would be awkward to implement in the table, and the hieroglyphs block doesn't seem to be widely supported yet. Should I make a bug request? Does anyone have other suggestions? A. Parrot (talk) 23:46, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Pretty sure this has come up before but I can't find it in the archives, either as "hieroglyph" or "heiroglyph". BTW, that Search all village pumps & archives button at top of this page doesn't do what it claims - it looks in mainspace, and nowhere else. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
The search button works for me by using prefix= in the url. Did you actually get mainspace results or do you just think it searches mainspace because the url ends with ns0=1 and the interface says "Search in: (Article)". If I search hieroglyph then I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=hieroglyph&prefix=Wikipedia%3AVillage+pump&fulltext=Search+all+village+pumps+%26+archives&fulltext=Search&ns0=1. prefix=Wikipedia%3AVillage+pump means I only get results with that prefix, and the top of the page says: Only searching in pages whose title starts with "Wikipedia:Village pump". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:02, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist shows category membership changes

I missed any notice of the fact that my watchlist now (in the last few hours) shows every addition to a category that I'm watching, and every removal. This is not a complaint but it's strange that, unlike edits to watched articles (which show only the most recent edit), it appears that every category membership change is listed. Here is a rough representation of what appears in my current watchlist for one category.

22 September 2019
Category:Age error; 06:53 CASSIOPEIA List of current UFC fighters added to category, this page is included within other pages
Category:Age error; 04:58 2607:fea8:4c60:957:bc51:95d0:f84e:6988 Luther Reigns added to category, this page is included within other pages
Category:Age error; 02:15 Yankees10 Walker Buehler removed from category, this page is included within other pages

Johnuniq (talk) 07:13, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

A couple of slightly interesting updates. First, a bad edit at 12:22, 21 September 2019 added Niranjana Anoop to the category, but that did not appear in my watchlist (so the watchlist change was after that time). Second, I reverted the IP edit to Luther Reigns shown above. Now my watchlist shows my removal of that article from the category, but not the IP's addition. In other words, the watchlist logic is consistent—it is showing only the most recent membership change to each article added or removed. To spell it out, I'm not watching any of the articles mentioned. Johnuniq (talk) 07:23, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
This has long been an option which is disabled by default. The top of the watchlist includes "page categorization" after "Hide:", and Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist has "Hide categorization of pages". The page history of a category does not show added or removed pages so it makes sense that the watchlist feature shows all. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:30, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
It's still disabled by default so I guess you accidentally changed it. If "Use non-JavaScript interface" is disabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist then it's under "Filter changes" on the watchlist. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:42, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
I plead guilty to clumsy and it's quite possible that I accidentally changed something. However I definitely have not changed my preferences for a long time and it shows "Hide categorization of pages" enabled with a tick. OTOH the watchlist "Hide...[ ] page categorization" is not ticked. I'll experiment later and decide what I want. Thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 11:10, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
  • @PrimeHunter: I am afraid what the OP describes is not how unchecking that option "Hide categorization of pages" works.
Here's a typical watchlist entry with the option unchecked:

( diff | hist ) m Amir al-Mu'minin‎; 22:01 -52‎ ‎Mohanad Kh (talk | contribs‎) (-Category:Politics of Morocco; -Category:Jihad using HotCat un-related) [ rollback ]

As you can see, it's quite different from what Johnuniq gives above; as there's emphasis on the placement of the category page now. (Unless maybe he's using a skin/script that reorders the element?)

Category:Age error; 02:15 Yankees10 Walker Buehler removed from category, this page is included within other pages

I watched the category pages but could not reproduce the issue. @Johnuniq: Could you please upload a screenshot of the watchlist entries?. I think that'd be more clear than any explanation. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:21, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
I'll have look at a longer watchlist later but at the moment there are no category entries in my watchlist and I have not changed anything. I know there have been some changes to the category membership because I reverted a couple of bad edits that put articles in the category in the last couple of hours, but there was no record of that in my watchlist. Johnuniq (talk) 05:36, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
Correction: I did enable "Hide...page categorization" on my watchlist after PrimeHunter's advice above. However, I just disabled it and displayed the most recent 1000 items on my watchlist. The text "Category:Age errors" does not appear in the result. I'm watching a couple of other categories and their membership changes also do not appear. I still have the default "Hide categorization of pages" in my preferences and I definitely have not changed anything in preferences for a long time. I am using Monobook and have no scripts. My first example above (for List of current UFC fighters) is very close to what appeared in my watchlist. I got that text by copying everything the browser displayed into an editor, then deleting all lines that did not contain "Category:Age", then manually recreating some of the links shown in the watchlist. I deleted the (talk contribs ...) user links that the watchlist shows. Johnuniq (talk) 10:11, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
@Ammarpad: Your displayed watchlist entry is the normal entry you get by watching the article. If I also watch both category pages and uncheck "Hide categorization of pages" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist then I get three separate entries (links and formatting omitted):

14 September 2019

  • (diff | hist) m Amir al-Mu'minin‎; 22:01 -52‎ ‎Mohanad Kh (talk | contribs‎) (-Category:Politics of Morocco; -Category:Jihad using HotCat un-related) (Tag: PHP7)
  • (diff | hist) Category:Jihad‎; 22:01 ‎Mohanad Kh (talk | contribs‎)‎ (Amir al-Mu'minin removed from category, this page is included within other pages)
  • (diff | hist) Category:Politics of Morocco‎; 22:01 ‎Mohanad Kh (talk | contribs‎)‎ (Amir al-Mu'minin removed from category, this page is included within other pages)
@Johnuniq: If "Hide categorization of pages" is enabled at preferences then changing the option on the watchlist itself is only remembered during that watchlist session. Next time you click "Watclist", page categorization is hidden again. Are you unticking "Hide .. page categorization" on the watchlist page and then clicking the "Show" button (not the "Watchlist" link) right after? It works for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:58, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
I'm sorry about all the noise. It works exactly as you say. I must have accidentally clicked to remove the default tick in "Hide ... page categorization" thereby enabling page categorization in my watchlist. I had never seen that before and confusion followed. I confirm that after removing the tick again as an experiment, new changes to category membership appeared when I clicked Show. Thanks for your guidance. Johnuniq (talk) 11:05, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
Oh I see that. So this happens only when you're watching both the category page and the article concerned. Thanks. – Ammarpad (talk) 11:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
You don't have to watch the article but you do have to watch the category. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:19, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Structured Data - blogs posted in Wikimedia Space

There are two separate blog entries for Structured Data on Commons posted to Wikimedia Space that are of interest:

  • Working with Structured Data on Commons: A Status Report, by Lucas Werkmeister, discusses some ways that editors can work with structured data. Topics include tools that have been written or modified for structured data, in addition to future plans for tools and querying services.
  • Structured Data on Commons - A Blog Series, written by me, is a five-part posting that covers the basics of the software and features that were built to make structured data happen. The series is meant to be friendly to those who may have some knowledge of Commons, but may not know much about the structured data project.
I hope these are informative and useful, comments and questions are welcome. All the blogs offer a comment feature, and you can log in with your Wikimedia account using oAuth. I look forward to seeing some posts over there. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-39

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

Problems

  • Some edits that used the visual editor were not working. This has now been fixed. [29]
  • Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The developers are working on the problem. [30]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 September. It will be on all wikis from 26 September (calendar).
  • You will be able to read but not to edit an important number of mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes on 24 September at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [31]
  • You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on 26 September at 05:00 (UTC). [32]

Meetings

Future changes

  • Internet Explorer 6 and 7 might not be supported in the future. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They would not get security support. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them makes the wikis less secure for everyone else. [33]

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

13:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Problem with Navigation popups

There appears to be a problem with Navigation popups in showing previous versions of a page, in some cases showing vandalism. At 19:16, 20 September 2019‎ the Great Stink article was vandalised; it was reverted within a minute, but the pop up still shows the vandalised version. Any thoughts? – SchroCat (talk) 07:22, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Its Page Previews not nav popups. Should be fixable by making a null edit or dummy edit. I filed T233777. There are a lot of caches in Wikimedia, sometimes something gets stuck, it happens. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:17, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Woolworth Building

Something is breaking the formatting on Woolworth Building. For some reason there is nearly a full page of blank space after the sentence "The ornate lobby contains various sculptures, mosaics, and architectural touches." I've tried a couple things but nothing worked. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 06:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I think your dummy edit (a minute before posting the above) must have fixed it because I don't see a problem now. Johnuniq (talk) 07:27, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: I'm still seeing it even after a reload and cache purge. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 07:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
@TenPoundHammer: Please confirm we are talking about the second paragraph in the lead of Woolworth Building which has URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolworth_Building. What I mean is, you are not using the mobile website? I checked that there is nothing other than normal text following "and architectural touches." You pressed Ctrl+F5 or some other equivalent for the reload (not just F5)? Johnuniq (talk) 07:47, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
@Johuniuq: Even after a ctrl-F5, it still looks like this. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
re-ping @Johnuniq: since I misspelled the first time. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
So it's not after a sentence but after "The" at the end of a line. Your screenshot is in MonoBook. The default skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering is Vector. I see no problem in any tests, and I tried MonoBook with zoom and window width adjusted to get the same line breaks as you. What is your browser? Does it happen in Vector or safemode or when you log out? Does the broken sentence continue with "structure" later? Exactly where relative to the infobox? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
It doesn't happen in Vector or Safemode. The "structure" sentence continues after the very bottom of the infobox. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:52, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
What happens if you click the "is in MonoBook" link in PrimeHunter's comment? In theory, ?useskin=monobook should be the same as having monobook in preferences, but the different URL might get a different response from your browser? Johnuniq (talk) 05:13, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
I was able to reproduce this in Monobook, but only if the width of the page is exactly 1349 pixels (screenshot). rchard2scout (talk) 10:35, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I appear to be having this same issue at #Darryl Jones below. Home Lander (talk) 00:46, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Darryl Jones

There is a large blank area in the middle of Darryl Jones. I've tried to resolve it in preview; removing the image from the infobox removes some of the blank lines, but not all of them. Can someone figure out what is causing this? Thanks. Home Lander (talk) 21:38, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

I didn't see any abnormal blank area in the "middle" of the article. Did you mean after the external link section? – Ammarpad (talk) 22:03, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
Ammarpad, weird, I just tested the page and the blank area disappears if I shrink my brower's text size magnification. Must be a text wrapping issue. FWIW, I'm on Windows 10 64 bit, Chrome 77.0.3865.90, Vector skin. I'll see if I can get a screenshot uploaded here. Home Lander (talk) 22:14, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
See File:Darryl jones blank.jpg. If I shrink the text size to 90% the page appears normal. Home Lander (talk) 22:18, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
Well, that shouldn't happen —you needn't to change the text default size for that large gap to disappear. If I shrink my text size to 90%, 80%..., it looks OK on Chrome 76.0.3809.13/MacOS. (Text gets a bit smaller accordingly, no any abnormal gap). So this may be an issue with Chrome 77. A similar problem (which I did reproduce) was reported in phab:T232066, whence a link to this Chromium bug report was given. In that task, the problem was supposedly fixed in Chrome 77.0.3865.70. So now I am not sure whether it's the same problem that returns or it's entirely different. – Ammarpad (talk) 22:55, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

See #Woolworth Building above. Not resolved. Johnuniq (talk) 23:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Johnuniq, yep, that looks to be the same problem. Ammarpad, poor choice of words on my part above, I meant to say adjusting my browser's magnification corrects the problem - everything shrinks - text, images, etc. Home Lander (talk) 00:38, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
Should have mentioned that Woolworth Building does display correctly for me, which is quite odd IMO. Home Lander (talk) 00:43, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
I can reproduce this one as well, with a page width of exactly 1583 pixels, and at a width of 1555 pixels. Worth noting that this one happens in Vector, while Woolworth Building happens in Monobook. Tested on both Chrome 76.0.3809.100 on Ubuntu 19.04 and Chrome 77.0.3865.90 on Windows 10. I also tested on Edge 41.16299.1004.0, but the problem does not occur there. rchard2scout (talk) 10:24, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

VE and Edit conflicts

I have two column edit-conflict enabled as a Beta feature and it seems that VE is unable to process any edit-conflicts. I was frequently conflicting with an IP over Rupi Kaur and every single time (thrice), the publish button returned a 404 error. I needed to relaunch the edit-page and re-write it, pending which it was possible to publish. ∯WBGconverse 15:28, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

This seems to be (or related to) #cannot save edits 404 error. There are bug reports for it, such as phab:T230272. – Ammarpad (talk) 15:38, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
​And phab:T233320 as the parent task. {{ping|waddie96}} {talk} 15:17, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Hide the column on the right-hand side

I'm using the timeless wikipedia skin, and is there a way to remove the right-hand column, either in the settings or with JS? If it does involve JS, could you show me the code which does it? Thanks! Aven 12:50, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

To completely remove it, add #mw-related-navigation { display: none; } to your Special:MyPage/timeless.css page. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 14:55, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
There was a preference for this recently added. Maybe only on beta.wp right now? Isarra? --Izno (talk) 16:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
Ah, sorry, that change got reverted and the feature is no longer available. Apparently ResourceLoader doesn't really support anything involving preferences due to... well, a lack of actually handling modules in any sane way, frankly. Every module gets added to a giant list and is sent out every visit in the js regardless of whether or not it's apt to be remotely relevant, and that's kind of not good and apparently results in something like 4TB of pointless data transfer on wikimedia sites per month. Naturally we (basically everyone, really) were only told about this after this particular feature went out (among, like, several hundred other things also using modules for everything from dependency management to separation of code), and, naturally, there really isn't anything we can use to do this properly and not add to the problem. So, uh... I'm not really sure what to say. Or do. (There is apparently a proposal to remove/separate out skin-specific modules, which might help resolve this, at least, but I'm not actually sure if it will as it's not really clear what's being proposed in practice. And frankly I'm really tired of trying to figure it out, as those involved are possibly even worse at effective communication than I am and it took several months to get to the bottom of what the objections were at all.)
Anyway, if you want to do it locally you should be able to use css to just override the flex-positioning of the right sidebar, and maybe making the middle column wider? Might be enough with just that. Not sure, and at the moment I sadly don't really have time to try to figure it out myself. (Might be worth adding a gadget if you do figure out a way, though.) -— Isarra ༆ 19:58, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
Isarra Thanks, glad I wasn't crazy. Could you maybe provide the CSS in question for Aven13? We might also consider starting a Help:Timeless or WP:Skin/Timeless for the more-common questions that pop up that maybe can't be fixed on the developer side right now (like this one). --Izno (talk) 20:06, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
Or possibly Wikipedia:Customisation/Timeless. --Izno (talk) 20:07, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
@Izno: At the moment, I'm just too busy, sorry. If it comes to it, can you remind me in a month or so? (Or file a task for it on the workboard so it's tracked, even if it is about an onwiki thing?) -— Isarra ༆ 22:42, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
I'll, er, Phab-bug you. :) --Izno (talk) 00:01, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Viewcount tool down

I've noticed the toollabs viewcount tool we use for DYK is down. When you click on the link, it buffers for a few seconds then shows you no results and no name in the search bar as usual. You also cannot manually enter the name as the system doesn't appear to recognise you have typed in the box. Could this be looked at please? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:03, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Reported at m:Talk:Pageviews Analysis where a few other people seem to be having the same problem. the wub "?!" 09:54, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
This should be resolved. Apologies for the disruption! — MusikAnimal talk 17:44, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
@The C of E: Could you point to me where that link lives? I assume it is a template. There are a few problems: for one it doesn't specify the project (en.wikipedia.org). It just happens to go to the right place because that's incidentally the default. Also it appears it's putting in the date range incorrectly, with the end date 10 days in the future. That's not really a problem, but you will unnecessarily see warnings in the tool. — MusikAnimal talk 18:03, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
It's {{DYK talk}} on Talk:Glory to Hong Kong. It requests an interval from 10 days before to 10 days after an article appeared in DYK, so page views before and after can be compared. If you click within the first 10 days then you get a future end date. The template could be coded to check for this and change the link, but if the talk page isn't rendered again for a long time then you can miss page view data that actually exists by the time the link is clicked. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:57, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: and @MusikAnimal:, I've had to remove the resolved tag because when I click the link here and at the talk page, it's still doing the same thing so the problem hasn't been fixed yet. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 19:19, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
@The C of E: You might need to clear your browser cache. Could you try that? Eventually it will clear itself. This issue (not serving the latest code) has been there all along, and I'm working on a solution to that.
@PrimeHunter: Good points. Let's just leave the date parameters as-is. I did add the project to the URL, though. Thanks, — MusikAnimal talk 19:40, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
Based on https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/url_structure/ the link could add mutevalidations=true the first 10 days to avoid a warning. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:20, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
Ha! A feature I forgot about :) I think we can mute validations all the time, in this case, rather than deal with extra templating logic. Any other warnings or critical errors will still be shown, say if a nonexistent article was requested, or that pageviews aren't yet available for new pages, etc. — MusikAnimal talk 20:40, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
@The C of E: I believe I've finally got this fixed, and you don't need to clear your cache either. Please confirm :)
If anyone cares, the issue was that there was a bug in the code where it shows warnings, in this case for an end date that's in the future. This is why it didn't affect but so many people; there aren't many links to specific date ranges as is the case with {{DYK talk}}, rather usually they link to the latest data, such as with MediaWiki:Histlegend. It only took me ~3 hours to figure this out! Polish Wikpedia was using parser functions to set the date range in their Histlegend that sometimes went into the future, and that's why they had the same issue. — MusikAnimal talk 04:51, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
Seems fine now. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 15:16, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

A few issues with Template:Graph:Chart

I've discovered a few issues with Template:Graph:Chart. I made my first comment at the talk page a few days ago but it hasn't received any replies, so I'm hoping a message here will spark some interest. The sections are Template_talk:Graph:Chart#Problem_with_<nowiki>_and_this_template and Template_talk:Graph:Chart#showSymbols_doesn't_respect_opacity_values. 202.159.169.45 (talk) 23:52, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

And still nothing! Is there anywhere else I can go to see if someone will take an interest? 202.159.169.45 (talk) 03:41, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
And still nothing!! Good to see the Wikipedia "community" doing its usual bang-up job. 202.159.169.45 (talk) 03:34, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
@Resident Mario, Yurik, MSG17, Mps, and Tom.Reding: Pings to the modules contributors. --Trialpears (talk) 06:16, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
Recently there has been a number of reported issues with the graphs - please report on phabricator to let the devs know when you discover a new one. Thanks! --Yurik (talk) 15:48, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist oddity

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T73600

Makes sense that I’d see notices posted on watched editor’s talk pages, but why see that another editor “has opted-out of message delivery”? Hyperbolick (talk) 14:23, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

It's a warning, to indicate that the relevant subscription list (which is meta:The Wikipedia Library/Newsletter/Recipients) has that person (Winged Blades of Godric) listed as a subscriber, and either should be removed from the subscription list, or should opt back in to mass messages (by reverting this edit). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Hyperbolick: it is a known quirk (phab:T73600) that noone has spent programing time on to review. — xaosflux Talk 14:35, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Feels like not my business to see somebody else’s opt-outs or preferences. Or others mine. Hyperbolick (talk) 14:37, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
@Hyperbolick: these are publicly logged, so it's not a privacy leak. From your screenshot it looks like you are purposefully showing "bot" edits on your W/L, you can toggle that off and remove a lot of "junk". — xaosflux Talk 14:40, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
@Hyperbolick: Feels like not my business to see somebody else’s opt-outs or preferences. You're watching their talkpage, that is why you're notified of actions that happen on it. So you really have business with the page —and any other page you watch. – Ammarpad (talk) 14:50, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Also note, unlike most Special:Preferences, this preference is actually a category someone puts themselves in to on their page - so it is also not something private. — xaosflux Talk 15:15, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Scrolling arrows

Is there a way to disable the scrolling arrow buttons in the bottom right? Appear to be added to WP:ITNC recently and displayed by default. Brandmeistertalk 10:42, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

They were added by Nixinova yesterday. You can hide them for yourself (on all pages) by adding the following css to your common.css:
.skip-to-top-button .skip-to-bottom-button {
	display: none !important;
}
rchard2scout (talk) 10:59, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
That won't work, there are no elements matching that selector. Also, you shouldn't need the !important annotation. This should work: 
#skip-to-top-button,
#skip-to-bottom-button {
  display: none;
}
If this rule isn't taking, the thing to do is not to throw !important annotations at it, but check the selectors and, if necessary, increase their specificity: 
div#skip-to-top-button,
div#skip-to-bottom-button {
  display: none;
}
It's rare that the !important annotation is necessary - usually, it's a cop-out. The thing is, once it has been used, it becomes much harder to override. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:48, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
It works without div or !important. I have added it to the documentation.[34] PrimeHunter (talk) 14:12, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Works, thanks. Brandmeistertalk 20:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Very confusing self-referential contextualization in Template:Update

In Template talk:Update § "This template"? I wrote

The text displayed at the top of this template's page says (boldface added):
This template needs to be updated. Please update this template to reflect recent events or newly available information. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page.
Is this template supposed to be used only to update templates??? Or if it really is a comment/warning about {{Update}}, where's the sample text (template output) that's usually at the top of a template page?

Having read the documentation more carefully since writing that, I see that the message says "template" there because it's being included in a template. In an article or section it would say "article" or "section" instead:

The template detects which namespace it is used in and changes accordingly: ...

I've been editing Wikipedia for 14 years and I have never encounteredv this kind of confusion before, where the example text of a template displayed at the top of its page appears to say (falsely) that the template is to be used only in templates. That part of the documentation needs a warning, an assurance that the template is not just for use in templates, but happens to say "template" there because it's being used in a template-doc page. And that explanation should include a link to § Example; I didn't twig to the explanation till I got to that section. Adding such a warning adjacent to the example text of a template doc would probably be very non-standard, but this is a non-standard situation. Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 02:12, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

@Thnidu: I am afraid to say there's no any confusion there, that's how all templates that detect namespace works unless they are deliberately modified to display something different in the template namespace. The template uses {{SUBJECTSPACE}} magic word that returns the name of the namespace where the template is. So if the template is in template namespace, then definitely the name to return is "Template."
The documentation is clear too. Nowhere it says the template is for "use only in templates." In fact it explicitly says the opposite: This template can be used to mark articles or sections with old or out-of-date information. Actually, you're only confused because you're releasing this for the first time. – Ammarpad (talk) 03:51, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
It for example happens for any template displaying "project page" on Wikipedia:Template messages/Deletion. noinclude and includeonly can be used to control what is displayed on the template page itself versus transclusions (a documentation part with example displays would count as transclusions with this method). {{Update}} could for example say | demospace = {{{demospace|<noinclude>main</noinclude>}}} to display "article" on the template page. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:15, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I already have code on my vector.css page that recolors redirects green, which I find very helpful. I was wondering if I could do something similar for wikilinks that go directly to a page without using a redirect; I find the dark blue and black difficult to distinguish between when text is not in bold and my screen is not at full brightness, and I would really rather keep my screen at the minimum brightness setting. IF possible, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's not, I would also like to know how to turn the background black and the regular text white; that would obviate any need to recolor direct wikilinks. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 19:24, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Something like a:not(.mw-redirect) { style: here; } should work. The second request is possible but much more difficult to do given the number of stylings to be made if you want the colors consistent; someone has a user script for it hanging around but I don't have that to hand. --Izno (talk) 19:51, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
I can't figure out how to insert that code without generating an error. Anything else I try seems to have no effect. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 21:26, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
What exactly did you put? It seems you've not saved whatever it was. Anyway, to change the links to green (for instance), you need to save a:not(.mw-redirect) { color: green; } in your vector.css. I don't know why Izno decided to give you extra work. And for your second question, you can use this script being developed by WMF. – Ammarpad (talk) 22:09, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
I used the Preview function because the notice on the .css page says, "The code will be executed when previewing this page." I tried monkeying around with a few things, hitting Preview, and using a random article to see if it affected the wikilinks at all. No matter what HTML color code I used, nothing happened, and yes, I did purge my cache with each refresh of the article I tested it on. Otherwise, I kept getting errors with the red X and yellow !, so I didn't even bother previewing things when I saw those in the edit window. I didn't want to save the page for fear I'd totally screw something up. I should point out I'm pretty useless with code; I have tried learning it before but always hit a roadblock that prevented me from studying any further. So really what I'm asking here is for someone else to do the work for me, hee hee Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 22:17, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
I don't think previewing the change can make it come into effect on other pages when you haven't saved it. --qedk (t 桜 c) 22:25, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Right. The code is only executed in the preview itself. My skin is Vector and if I preview Special:MyPage/vector.css with a:not(.mw-redirect) { color: green; } then many links in the preview become green. Some things cannot be tested this way because they don't appear on the css or js page you are editing. Browsers usually have a feature to view a page with added css or js you can enter somewhere in the browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:12, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Okay, I installed the script you suggested, but I can't find the switch to turn it on. Would it be located somewhere in the "Vector (default | Preview | Custom CSS | Custom JavaScript)" bunch? Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 22:26, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Wait, nevermind, I found it. It's up at the top of the screen. Thanks for all the help everyone, I'll be glad to help test this script! 22:30, 28 September 2019 (UTC) Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 22:31, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I emended the help page so that the link your common.js takes you to the actual page where the script should be installed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:38, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Anchor template within section title

When Template:Anchor is placed after the section title, the browser may scroll the page, so that the section title is just out of view. When the anchor is placed before the section title, then the anchor belongs to the preceding section, and it is not visible in a section edit. So the proper place for an anchor is the section title. However, then the template code will appear in the edit summary of a section edit. It is therefore suggested to use direct HTML (by substituting the template). In the German Wikipedia, a solution to this issue was implemented in August 2012, and it is strongly recommended to use the anchor in a section title (de:Hilfe:Überschrift#anchor). So, please, implement the German solution.--77.6.73.196 (talk) 13:28, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

The German solution requires active javascript to work. MOS:SECTIONSTYLE recommends substituting the template or using <span> directly as you mention, but there are a lot of unsubstituted template invocations. Perhaps a bot could be tasked to tidy these up? --Mirokado (talk) 13:46, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
What happens if there isn't JavaScript active? --Trialpears (talk) 13:57, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
The template code remains in the edit summary for edits by users without JavaScript. Compare https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boson&action=edit&section=1 and https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boson&action=edit&section=1&safemode=1, where safemode=1 doesn't load local JavaScript for the wiki. Their code to remove the code from the edit summary is in de:MediaWiki:Common.js. Any added JavaScript slows down the site and increases the risk of errors so I'm not sure it's worth it. If I zoom out enough to have the edit summary in view from the beginning then I can see the code being removed after page load. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:29, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
The documentation for {{anchor}} already mentions this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:54, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
I oppose non-opt-in JavaScript for this. I would support a bot to subst {{anchor}}s in section headings (if run continuously, such a bot would greatly reduce the need for any JS even at user level). The description of the subst technique is currently buried at Template:Anchor#Limitations (bullet 4), and I would also support the addition of a strong recommendation to that doc's lead. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:33, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
Based on a search [35] there are currently around 7000 pages with {{anchor}} in a section heading. That sounds suited for a bot. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:57, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Suppress rendering of Template:Wikipedia books

SUPPRESS RENDERING AND REMOVE LINK
There is consensus to suppress the rendering capability of Template:Wikipedia books and to remove the Book Creator from the sidebar.

Supporters of the proposal note that the Book Creator's PDF renderer has not been functional for an extended period of time, and that a non-working feature should be assigned a reduced level of prominence on Wikipedia to provide a better user experience for readers.

As the Book Creator does not generate downloadable copies of Wikipedia books, its primary working feature directs users to order a printed copy of a Wikipedia book from PediaPress, a third-party company.

A minority of editors asserted that the proposal would have a negative impact on the viability of PediaPress's business model. However, most editors in the discussion prioritized the user experience of Wikipedia readers over the business prospects of PediaPress. — Newslinger talk 11:04, 30 December 2019 (UTC)​

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

As many are aware Wikipedia books has not worked in a few years and there's no light down the tunnel of any fixes coming...Reading/Web/PDF Functionality (no update on WikiBooks in a year). I am proposing suppressing the rendering capability of Template:Wikipedia books ( related =Template:Book bar & Template:Books-inline) and removal of the Book Creator in the sidebar. This is for our readers so they don't keep going to books that don't work and haven't worked in a few years..plus these types of lists exist in outlines already. I'm thinking suppression of the template(s) is better than outright deletion in case the WMF finally does come up with something...then poof...they can all appear when transclusion is implemented again. Currently PDF rendering per page has been implemented so the link seen at Wikipedia:Books about an external program is no longer needed as our in-house PDF system is running.--Moxy 🍁 22:57, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (Wikipedia books)

Note: Votes below have been cast since the initial close was reverted — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:52, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

This discussion has been notified at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:32, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

  • Strong oppose: As per Steelpillow. The original proposal and essentially all the supports (so far as I can see) are based on a misunderstanding of the status of the book creator. I had been following the very long and ongoing discussion about the work related to the PediaPress and the mediawiki2latex solutions, because having a properly functioning pdf book creator is a valuable part of wikipedia so far as I'm concerned. It is clear that people here who want to kill this function don't understand what they are killing off. Gpc62 (talk) 19:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
    @Gpc62: Would you consider mediawiki2latex to be a properly functioning/usable tool? --Yair rand (talk) 04:24, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose I think that PDF creation of books is important and should be kept. I see that not everyone is happy with my mediawiki2latex solution. Possibly users should raise their voice asking wmf to allocate funds for the development of a better in-house solution, but this should be done in an other discussion. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 08:29, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose The loss of the rendering system for books certainly made Wikipedia less useful from my point of view. Even without it the Book Creator interface is something I find useful. It allows the rapid and interactive collection of topical pages into useful order/format. Doing that by hand is a pain. Killing the function has a very small marginal benefit to the people who do not use it and a high cost to those of us who do. Jbh Talk 18:55, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per Dirk below: since I got quite some anarchistic thoughts, I kind of enjoy business models explode in huge fireballs. People make money off these books, but they do not serve our readers well. Time to explode in huge fireballs, or at least hide the template. – Levivich 04:36, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
    In what way does the PediaPress print-on-demand-service (the only pay-for bit) not serve our readers well? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:03, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per above. Old/buggy, and no longer being developed. Leaving this out in the open begets opportunities for an exceptionally poor reader/user experience -FASTILY 00:53, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
    @Fastily: Factually you are wholly incorrect. The PediaPress PoD service is not buggy, the MediaWiki2 LaTeX softcopy service is not old but new and under continued bug-squishing. Have you not read the discussion below? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
    Right, and that's your opinion. Obviously I disagree, hence my support !vote. -FASTILY 01:13, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
    No, it is not my opinion, it is factual. You have no evidence to support your opinion that the PediaPress service is buggy. You have no evidence to suggest that MediaWiki2LaTeX is either old or moribund, in fact it has been usefully updated during the discussion, which you would know if you had followed it, and you can ask the lead developer when he wrote it if you like, he is participating here. There is far too much opinion and not enough fact in this thread, please do not make it worse. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:02, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been notified at mw:Extension talk:Collection. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:49, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

  • Support removal of the sidebar link It is embarrassing that a link from the main page (which is viewed about 6 billion times a year), and from every other page, leads directly to a page that has, right at the top, "Book Creator is undergoing changes. Due to severe issues with our existing system, . . . " No opinion on changes to the template. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:14, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
    It would make more sense to update the misleading message per the discussion below. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:16, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
    That message also seems misleading when the "Learn more" link is clicked and sends readers to this page. The latest update, 15 July 2019, indicates that a PDF renderer is in place and in "maintenance mode" while feedback is encouraged. So that misleading message noted by editor UnitedStatesian needs to be updated at the very least. P. I. Ellsworth, ed. put'r there 14:40, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
    It is in the Special namespace, so I assume it needs the software maintenance community to update it. I guess we also need to wait for the outcome of this RfC before we can define the changes needed. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:58, 22 September 2019 (UTC)
    It's not clear what part of the special page you're saying is misleading ("can export the book in different formats (for example PDF or ODF"?), however it can probably be changed by editing pages in the MediaWiki namespace without any involvement of the software maintenance community. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:57, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
    To editor Pppery: it's the message in the warning box at the top of the page, which reads, Due to severe issues with our existing system, the Book Creator will no longer support saving a book as a PDF for a short period of time. We are working hard to replace our system and re-enable PDFs within the Book Creator. Put that together with the info found on the "Learn more" page, plus the next notice about single-page downloading, and it all adds up to a distinct possibility that somebody forgot to update those warnings. P. I. Ellsworth, ed. put'r there 06:52, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
    To editor Pppery: Yes, the message that "You can export the book in different formats (for example PDF or ODF)" is outdated. The suggestion in the warning box that "we are working hard", when the "Learn more" links to a page saying that it has since been shrugged off to PediaPress in the hope that something will happen, also needs updating. It also needs making clearer that the Book Creator can be used to prepare books for rendering and/or post-processing by services such as MediaWiki2LaTex. But I cannot find any page on MediaWiki with this content (e.g. including the phrase "With the book creator") as you suggest might be there - am I missing something? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:59, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
    (replying to both comments) You are missing something -- the text of the "due to severe issues" box is MediaWiki:Coll-warning-disable-pdf-text, and the "You can export" message is MediaWiki:Coll-book creator intro. If you think either of those boxes should have different content, you could submit an edit request at the talk page for each message. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:12, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
    Thank you. Quite why this search does not find it, despite my copy-pasting the search phrase from the page you gave, is beyond me. Also, you don't happen to know where the "Learn more" text and link is maintained? The reading/web team have passed maintenance of the Collection Extension on to a maintenance team (whose identity I have managed to misplace), so the Learn More link should probably be updated accordingly. However, as I said, I will wait for this RfC to run its course before I ask for any changes. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:33, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
    The text "Learn more" is MediaWiki:coll-warning-learn-more. The page on MediaWiki.org that it links to is hardcoded and cannot be changed easily (although that page is on a wiki, so the contents of that page could be edited). If you are intending to ask something about the social aspect of who maintains the extension rather than the technical aspect of how it works, then that's beyond me. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:53, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
    Thank you again. The extension hardcodes a fair number of special pages. Looks like the place to engage will have to be the Collection project on phabricator. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:24, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment. I thought it useful to post the following message I received here: "...the Collection extension ... is a valuable tool for the wiki that I'm running (http://wikimedi.ca). Once we have the resources, we'll try and figure out a solution to get it back up and running. We're anxiously waiting for a new version of the Collection extension and we will happily devote some ressources maintaining and improving it ." Wikimedica is a medical wiki where French-speakers are building a resource of medical knowledge. This helps us to understand the implications of what our software can mean to others, even if they do not come to our village pump. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:17, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Discussion after reverted closure

Reverted close: WP:SNOW close with consensus for proposal. I am fully aware that RfC's usually should run for 30 days and willing to re-open if there are any concerns. (non-admin closure) --Trialpears (talk) 23:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)}}

I have reverted my close due to concerns raised on my talk page about insufficient notifications to the book making community and insufficient discussion about working external tools. I have posted notifications to WT:BOOKS and Help talk:Books. --Trialpears (talk) 20:24, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Note: the following two-part post was made before the initial close was reverted — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:52, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

YIKES! STOP EVERYBODY! The Book Creator tool remains an essential feature in order to create and edit Wikipedia books for external services such as PediaPress print-on-demand and the MediaWiki2LaTex independent PDF rendering service. It is only our in-house rendering that has gone (and may yet come back, as PediaPress have undertaken to provide a replacement). Please roll back all these stakes through its heart! — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:08, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Specifically, the OP's rationale that "Currently PDF rendering per page has been implemented so the link seen at Wikipedia:Books about an external program is no longer needed as our in-house PDF system is running," is wholly wrong-headed. Yes we have a new article renderer, but it is a totally unrelated function from book rendering. That needs entirely different software in two parts - the book creator/designer which lists articles for inclusion and the book renderer which pulls all the articles together. We have only lost the book rendering, the old book creator/editor is still functional and still in use. The linked external book rendering service is still also operational. It has absolutely not been withdrawn or overtaken by the new article renderer. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:16, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Removed {{warning}} from your comment. Hope that's okay. --Yair rand (talk) 03:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Yep, it's done its job. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:03, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Close reverted I have reverted my close due to concerns raised on my talk page about insufficient notifications to the book making community and insufficient discussion about working external tools. I have posted notifications to WT:BOOKS and Help talk:Books. --Trialpears (talk) 20:24, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
    Good call ....best wait till the concerns raised on your talk are brought here for discussion.--Moxy 🍁 23:59, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
    What else needs to be brought here besides what I already said just above? The Book Creator is still in use. End of. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 02:39, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
    So leave the link in the side bar and leave all the books so we can lead our readers to a third party? Is the main purpose going to be fixed? --Moxy 🍁 18:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
    Depends what you regard as the "main purpose". The PediaPress PoD pay-for service has always been an integral part of Wikipedia Book delivery. The WMF have accepted an offer from PediaPress to write a new Mediawiki PDF book renderer for us too and they have made an alpha build available at https://pediapress.com/collector , however there is no timeframe for completion/rollout. You can find out a little more at mw:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality and the associated talk page and archives. As far as I know their software is not tracked on phabricator. Meanwhile Dirk Hünniger has made his own MediaWiki2LaTeX open-source PDF book renderer pull service available to fill the gap. In that sense the "main purpose" of having both PDF and PoD WikiBooks available is currently fulfilled. As long as the Book Creator (aka the Collection Extension) delivers its part of that functionality, as required by the WMF, it will stay in the MediaWiki build and we need to support it with UI widgets to the best of our ability. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
    Pppery, should the change to Module:Subject bar be reverted in light of the change to this RFC outcome? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:19, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
    I personally consider the reversion of the closure to itself be improper, so I won't revert the change to Module:Subject bar myself, but another template editor could of course do so. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:23, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
    It was perfectly proper. The closer did not wait the required 30 days, noting in their closing statement that if anybody objected the discussion could be reopened. I objected both here and on their talk page so they reopened. Nothing whatsoever improper about that. What was improper was the OP's failure to place any notification on the affected template's talk page or the Book project's talk page, until after the closure. Paine Ellsworth and I were actually discussing and updating the template while this discussion was going on, but without ever being informed of its existence. That is a gross breach of procedure on the part of the OP. I don't know anything about Module:Subject bar but any change to it has arisen as a result of this failure to consult properly. I would be most grateful if somebody could see their way to reverting it. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
    Yes, thought it best to remove the commenting, at least until we sort all this out. P. I. Ellsworth, ed. put'r there 15:09, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm confused. Is there a working system for converting books to PDF or not, on-wiki or off-? It looks like MediaWiki2LaTeX is for converting individual pages, just like the built-in converter? --Yair rand (talk) 03:05, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
    Yes, it is working. To convert a book, you give its page location to MediaWiki2LaTex. The service then pulls all the articles linked in its contents and builds the entire book. Or, you can give it a single article and it will render that alone. I see that various options for conversion mode and output format have been added since I last used it. So it provides either book or single-page conversion, depending on what you give it. Either way, you need only give it a single page location, tell it what you want and it figures out the rest, that may be what is puzzling you. (By contrast, if you use the built-in converter on a Book page, it will just convert the page to PDF, which is seldom very helpful) — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi,

I am the maintainer of mediawiki2latex. Maybe it is a bit off topic, but I got two views on this point. Firstly mediawiki2latex currently provides a way to get PDFs from books hosted on Wikipedia and keeping this possibility might be an advantage for some users of the content, particularly those with small financial resources, which is a good thing as such. The resources on the web interface to mediawiki2atex (which is hosted by wmf) are quite limited so that book may a most contain a few dozens of articles. mediawiki2latex is also provided as a binary package for Debian Linux without any limits on the number of articles per books.

Removing the books from Wikipedia would not cause any financial consequences to me since I am only doing this as an unpayed hobby project in me spare time. Still pediapress financially relies on the book feature on wikipedia. So closing the book feature might cause pediapress to stop all business activities in this field, which causes me to have a monopoly, which is the greatest thing you can get in capitalism. So the choice is yours. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 14:37, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Do you have any stats in how often it's used? We know that people don't order Wiki books as most are 9,000 pages plus and thus simply not feasible. The question real is do we keep books to simply link them to a third party site?--Moxy 🍁 03:36, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
The web interface is roughly used once an hour, so about 20 times a day. It cannot be used much more since there is a time limit of one hour and at most one process may run at a time due to the limited resources. The statistics of the Debian package are given here . Still it is quite hard to infer anything from the Debian statistics since only very few Debian users take part in the statistics survey at all. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
You need to understand that this is a dynamic situation. When the original in-house service became progressively more and more unmaintainable - both hardware and software stacks - the quality of output got left behind as the rest of MediaWiki and user templates got more sophisticated. Usage consequently also fell away until that low usage began to be used as a "reason" why fixing the system was an equally low priority. Here we see the same fallacy again. MediaWiki2LaTeX is under active development. Compared to its launch state its hardware and software have both improved substantially, allowing the maximum book size to be increased. This is still only a small, low-resource system by Wikipedia standards but usage has picked up accordingly, as Dirk says it is near maximum for the WMF hosted instance, and this upward trend will continue. The priority for this facility is not reflected in where it is now but where usage will/would be when further developed and deployed. "Do we keep books so we can link to 3rd party sites?" is the wrong question, not the real one as you suggest. The real question is, "Do we want Wikipedia Books in any form?" Once we answer that, we can make decisions about in-house vs. third-party. As already pointed out, the involvement of PediaPress in the Wikipedia Books project and its UI upload link to PediaPress goes back a decade or more to day one. The Books project has always linked to a third party because this is inherent in the pay-for model of print-on-demand and the WMF does not do pay-for services. Any decision to pull the plug on the PediaPress upload would have to be agreed in consultation with the highest levels within the WMF; our local village pump is quite the wrong venue to bandy about such far-reaching consequences. I would suggest that, since PediaPress have volunteered out of the goodness of their hearts to try and develop a replacement in-house renderer for us, then stuffing them where it hurts would not be either wise or ethical. We have two competing pdf renderers and a third, commercial PoD service here, all supported in different ways by the WMF due to the current dynamics of the situation - and you suggest we kill the whole deal. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:38, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
I raised some issues with the lead developer of MediaWiki2LaTeX through their official Requests page. I found these with my usual test case Book:Wings of Hamburg. He did a quick update to one of the config files for template processing. Compared to the quality when this discussion was opened, the book is no longer bloated by over-expanded infoboxes and navboxes, but comes in at almost half the previous file size and page count and is far more readable. Some other issues I realised will take longer to fix, but this does underline the dynamics of the situation and the active and ongoing support.— Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:13, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I think it's high time we invited the WMF over to participate in this discussion. I am not sure of the best way to do that, but I have tried what I can. If anybody knows the correct place to post an advisory over there, please do so. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:13, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, the majority seems to have a clear opinion. Many contributors have brought forward their arguments, currently there seem to be no new arguments. I am really looking forward to a decision being taken. In my impish mind I will be really pleased to see these fireworks go off. Especially when imagining that these relaxed well paid, socially secured people, well assured that there is never any problem, will suddenly have to work quite a lot. My systems will keep running. But possibly I should better change my telephone number. Good Luck Dirk Hünniger (talk) 14:36, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I do not understand this comment. I feel like I'm missing some context? --Yair rand (talk) 04:26, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Well, Pediapress earns money from selling the printed copies of wikipedia books. If we remove the template their sales will drop by (lets guess) 80%. Futhermore pediapress pays parts of money the earn from selling each book directly to wmf. So also wmf will have a considerable decrease in income. So in this case there will be a meeting between wmf and pediapress very soon, and this will be quite a stormy affair. But since I got quite some anarchistic thoughts, I kind of enjoy business models explode in huge fireballs. But yeah, I thinks it is better for the users to keep these option available for the users, so I voted for keeping the template. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 08:31, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Got an email from the boss...found stats Book Tool sales data.--Moxy 🍁 21:15, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
So, €341,776 in revenue over 40 months. Even if we assumed that the books cost nothing to produce (unlikely), and that 100% of income is donated, that would be about €100,000 per year, compared to the WMF's $100,000,000+ in donations per year. I don't think it can be considered "a considerable decrease in income". --Yair rand (talk) 04:26, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Contrary to your "half-empty" pessimism, I see these stats as "Wow! Real $$$!" It does seem grossly unfair that the Book project generates five-figure sales year on year and receives zero inward investment in return. If say half the WMF income from books was reinvested in the Books project, even €2,000 a year would be a hugely significant increase in the project's resources. It would allow the project to improve quality, boost uptake, increase income and make everybody's life better in a nice, socialistic upward spiral. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:50, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Those stats are unfortunately a bit out of date. – Levivich 04:31, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Since the usability of mediawiki2latex is discussed. I provide to examples of the output of the large document server http://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org/

I choose these two examples since I think to remeber to have seen them in this discussion. So everyone can now look at them and find his / her own opinion. Everyone is also wellcome to add examples and of you to send me bug reports on what he / she wants changed.Dirk Hünniger (talk) 12:34, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

So we get an error because they are to big.......how small do they have to be?--Moxy 🍁 10:59, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
There are two servers:
I used the big one in both cases. But I think the normal one should do a well for the Wings of Hamburg Book, but not for Canada Book. Furthermore the server only processes one document at a time, and an error message will be displayed if an other user request a conversion while a conversion is already running ("Not enough resources availiable to process your request!"). The software can basically run requests in parallel, but the maximum number of parallel requests was set to one in order to account for the limited hardware resources. The limits on the hardware resources, were set by wmf, and you should contact them directly if you feel they need to be increased. But if you want to find out if mediawiki2latex serves your needs I strongly recommend to install the Debian package and test with that since there are no limit in the package at all. The main limiting resources is random access memory. You need roughly 5 MByte per page. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 11:23, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Moxy, thank you for highlighting what is essentially an issue with the user documentation. I have now updated the user manual accordingly. Note also that the maximum size of around 800 pages on the large-book server is larger (ISTR about 200 pages more) than the old OCG could manage. Since the template config has been tweaked this has reduced the time my own test books run for, meaning that if a document is accepted for processing then even more pages can likely be processed before timeout. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:25, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
This is disappointing as alot of our books are way over 800 pages...shit been fighting to keep a books smaller for years as seen here just to find out the smaller version is still to big...dame.--Moxy 🍁 20:45, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi,

As one of the founders and current CEO of PediaPress, I'd like to express my point of view. The book creator / collection extension was created more than 10 years ago and is still in active use today. Check the original press release from 2007. PediaPress donates 10% of its gross revenue from Wikipedia books to the WMF every year (more than €70,000 total over the last ten years). After a couple of failed attempts to create print products from Wikipedia, the partnership with PediaPress was established to allow for a consistently available, self-service, and good quality print export of Wiki content. The relevance of this use case has declined over the years but it is still relevant for a small group of avid users (I can share full revenue data if desired). The collection extension has been vital in enabling this feature. Without an easy to use interface, most Wikipedia users will never be able to explore this. Even though I had only limited time to work on the new book renderer in the past few months, I/PediaPress is committed to delivering high quality PDF and print export for Wikipedia and other wikis in the future. We agreed to release the new HTML renderer as open source and to sponsor the PDF book rendering going forward. I would hope that this feature would not be shut down and I am very open for talking about how to make book export better and more relevant. Ckepper (talk) 13:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

So it seems more logical to link PediaPress over our books that dont work...or do we need the book pages for Pedia press to work? --Moxy 🍁 20:15, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
We need the collection extension along with its Book Creator GUI to provide the upload function to the PediaPress service. Technically a book page can be built in user space and designed manually, but the Book namespace and Book Creator make life a lot easier. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:00, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
@Ckepper:Thank you for your perspective! It's very encouraging that there's signficantly better support for books than there appeared to be at first. Looking at some of the previews I have a few potential improvements, first there were quite a lot of weird tags such as <indicator> around padlocks, <templatestyles /> and </ref> tags. These obviously shouldn't be there. I also was wondering if the preview was actually loading or just broken when trying to open it. An explicit "Your preview is currently being typeset" message would avoid this problem. For more general improvements I feel like some templates simply shouldn't appear in printed versions, such as sound samples and protection levels. They're simply not relevant. I could try looking into the template aspects of implementing such a feature if that would be desirable. --Trialpears (talk) 21:04, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

While it's possible to download or reading a book it's not very convenient. Rendering a book with MediaWiki2LaTex often takes many hours and some setup if someone else is using the online resources and the pediapress preview doesn't show the entire book. Would it be possible to upload a pre-rendered book from MediaWiki2LaTex on the book pages ready to be downloaded or read. If that was the case this would be even better than when there was an inhouse pdf renderer. --Trialpears (talk) 21:23, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not store rendered books. Each time one is requested the collection extension compiles a new edition from the current state of its content articles. This ensures that the book always aligns with the current encyclopedia content, which is what readers would expect. Also, storing every edition of every compiled book, the inbuilt journaling/rollback storage functionality of the mediawiki software, could also create a space/speed problem. PediaPress used to make their print pdf available for free download but have stopped doing that, I guess too many folks were using them as an ebook repository or something. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:00, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Most readers would also expect to be able to read the book without having to wait for several hours. I think it's definitley worth the quite minor drawbacks in favor of a massive advantage in terms of usability. --Trialpears (talk) 07:17, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, this is possible. I did some experiments on that to estimate the costs:
In short it will only cover featured book and take one year to calculate, as well a $2000 server costs. So if someone want to pay for that we can do it. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 06:43, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Yikes, that's a lot more than I expected. What if Mediawiki2Latex uploaded all books it's requested to render using the Wikimedia resources as well as providing them to the person requesting it? Then the books with the highest demand would be uploaded without using additional ccomputational resources. --Trialpears (talk) 07:17, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
I can call a shell script with the name of the book as well as the pdf file, each time the server generates a book in the book namespace. All remaining work would be up to you. Convincing the community that such a bot is Ok to run. Convincing that there needs to be a template linking to it. Writing the lua of that template. And finally writing the upload bot. So if you want to do that work, you are welcome to do so. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 07:53, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Found problem

Hello- at the top of the Raid on Taipei article, there are two semicolons ("; ;") that are generated as part of Template:cjkv. I don't know how to fix this, but I think someone should fix this at some point. Thanks for any help. Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:24, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I added |t=臺北大空襲 to the {{cjkv}} template. This removed the extra semi-colon in the article. It's not clear to me what the intent is when a parameter is missing. In this example, in the absence of |t= or |c= the template seems to assume that the Japanese is the same as tradition chinese and changes the text accordingly (but leaves the extra semi-colon). I assume this is correct as that was what was in the article. Ideally the template could be modified to avoid adding the extra semi-colon without the duplication, but that template code is convoluted.   Jts1882 | talk  06:34, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
@Jts1882: You changed this 
{{cjkv|j=臺北大空襲|r=Taihoku Daikūshū|t=臺北大空襲|p=Táiběi Dà Kōngxí}}
to this 
{{cjkv|j=臺北大空襲|r=Taihoku Daikūshū|t=臺北大空襲|p=Táiběi Dà Kōngxí}}
and so the |t=臺北大空襲 parameter now occurs twice. Also, the extra semicolon is still there. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:33, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Oops. I made two changes. I first added |c=臺北大空襲 which removed the semi-colon.
Then I noticed that it said "chinese" instead of "traditional chinese" and replaced the |c= with |t=, which restored "traditional chinese", but didn't notice the semi-colon came back.
Looks like someone will have to delve into that template code if the problem is to be fixed.   Jts1882 | talk  08:47, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
The spurious semicolon is the eighth &#x3b;&#x20; pair. This is produced by the last of three complex tests thus: 
{{ #ifexpr: {{ #if: {{{p|}}} | 1 | 0 }} or {{ #if: {{{tp|}}} | 1 | 0 }} or {{ #if: {{{cy|}}} | 1 | 0 }} or {{ #if: {{{w|}}} | 1 | 0 }} or {{ #if: {{{r|}}} | 1 | 0 }} or {{ #if: {{{k|}}} | 1 | 0 }} or {{ #if: {{{rr|}}} | 1 | 0 }} or {{ #if: {{{v|}}} | 1 | 0 }} or {{ #if: {{{l|}}} | 1 | 0 }} | &#x3b;&#x20; }}
--Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:19, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Tens of thousands of new articles in Category:Pages with script errors

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T234368

It appears that tens of thousands of articles have appeared in Category:Pages with script errors recently. It may be conincidence, but many of them appear to call the newly created Module:String/i18n. Do any Module-savvy / i18n-savvy technical folks care to take a look? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:20, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Jonesey95, That module has pruposefully been kept empty and should be salted and deleted as quickly as possible. This is causing a lot of damage. --Trialpears (talk) 19:25, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
It's now deleted. -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:40, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
Previously, at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_166#Module:Infobox/i18n

[pings omitted] Wouldn't it be easier to just revert the edit by Ans, instead of protecting lots of /i18n subpages which will never be needed? I find it unlikely that some random module is going to have an /i18n subpage which needs to supersede the i18n table of Module:Wikidata (which is apparently what the change is supposed to allow for). Jc86035 (talk) 21:38, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

This is still a good idea. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:30, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
(the actual edit that would need to be reverted is Special:Diff/804685646, not Special:Diff/804076706 as the quoted comment claims, but the point still stands). * Pppery * it has begun... 20:32, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
I thought that we'd sorted this. Informing participants from last time: Emir of Wikipedia, Home Lander, Johnuniq, Nthep, RexxS, Thayts and Xaosflux. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:27, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
Would support that, doesn't seem to be used outside of Module:Adjacent stations/i18n which could be handled separatley (found by looking at all modules with i18n in their names). --Trialpears (talk) 21:28, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
Module:Adjacent stations/i18n is entirely unrelated to this system. * Pppery * it has begun... 21:42, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
I noticed this too and thought it was related to Module:Wikidata, but apparently not. Out of curiosity: what were the contents of Module:String/i18n? Module:I18n checks if the i18n submodule table is not empty by using next(res) and then references res.i18n. So if the table has at least one key, but no key named i18n, then an error will be thrown. Instead, Module:I18n should check if that key exists. Thayts ••• 07:26, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Module:String/i18n was a dummy module with correct syntax that returned a string instead of a table of i18n text. Errors would have occurred when the calling module tried to index the expected table. I am currently trying to work out why Module:String/i18n is "used" at Hideaki Yamada. It is the {{cite Sports-Reference...}} reference that causes three i18n items to appear in the "Pages transcluded" list. Johnuniq (talk) 08:17, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

At Hideaki Yamada, replacing all content with {{cite sports-reference|url=https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/ya/hideaki-yamada-1.html}} and previewing shows the three i18n modules being called (Module:I18n + Module:String/i18n + Module:Wikidata/i18n). Repeating that after adding |check-wikidata=no shows that no i18n modules are called (wikitext {{cite sports-reference|url=https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/ya/hideaki-yamada-1.html|check-wikidata=no}}). {{cite sports-reference}} calls various string templates such as {{str find}} and somehow one of them must lead to Module:String/i18n being tested for existence. If anyone has some time to pursue this, please let us know how Module:String/i18n ends up being called. Johnuniq (talk) 11:02, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Simplifying the contents of that article to {{#invoke:String|match|{{#invoke:Wikidata|getPropertyIDs|P31|FETCH_WIKIDATA}},|Q5,|1|1|true|}} (code taken from {{cite sports-reference}}) results in a call to Module:String/i18n. There is probably a more concise case that would call it, but the only templates or modules trancluded by that code are Module:I18n, Module:No globals, Module:String, Module:String/i18n, and Module:Wikidata. Poking through Module:Wikidata, I see this code that might be relevant:
--require("Module:i18n").loadI18n("Module:Wikidata/i18n", i18n)
-- got idea from [[:w:Module:Wd]]
local module_title; if ... == nil then
	module_title = mw.getCurrentFrame():getTitle()
else
	module_title = ...
end
require('Module:i18n').loadI18n(module_title..'/i18n', i18n)
I got lucky with my initial guess at the start of this section. I do not expect to strike gold twice. Lua wizards are welcome to dig more. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I believe I understand how Module:String/i18n is being called, although the explanation depends on several obscure features and what may be a bug in how Lua is implemented. First of all, to answer some of the comments above, this is related to Module:Wikidata, specifically the block of code Jonesey95 quoted above.

In detail: arguments to Lua modules are evaluated lazily, meaning that in the simplified example {{#invoke:String|match|{{#invoke:Wikidata|getPropertyIDs|P31|FETCH_WIKIDATA}},|Q5,|1|1|true|}} , Module:Wikidata isn't actually called until Module:String attempts to access the value of its first argument. When that happens and Module:Wikidata runs and, since ... is not defined, calls mw.getCurrentFrame(). Due to what I think is a bug, that function returns the frame for the toplevel Module:String call, not the inner Module:Wikidata call, meaning that its getTitle method returns "Module:String", resulting in Module:i18n attempting to load Module:String/i18n.

The actual content of Module:String is mostly irrelevant here; all that matters is that it uses arguments; I could create a call of Module:BananasArgs/i18n via {{#invoke:BananasArgs|hello|{{#invoke:wikidata|pageId}}}} ( Hello, Q111847620!), as you can see via the pages transcluded on this page. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:10, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

@Pppery: You're right about how this came to be. But I don't think that mw.getCurrentFrame() is bugged; it's supposed to return the toplevel frame. I've copied all relevant modules into sandboxes and played around with them, and I've found that if you use the frame that is passed to the called function of Module:Wikidata instead (e.g. p.getPropertyIDs = function(frame), see [36]), then the correct module_title is retrieved. So this can be solved by changing Module:Wikidata to load i18n differently, in a similar way as Module:Wd.
Next to that, the check in Module:I18n with next(res) should be replaced with a check to see if res.i18n exists and if that is a table. Thayts ••• 20:36, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Or just revert the aformentioned edit by Ans; it's only purpose was to make Module:Wikidata insignificantly easier to move. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:51, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
I've modified Module:Wikidata so that it only attempts to load an internationalisation module on non-English Wikis. I think that should remove the problem here. I expect other language wikis that copy this module will create their own i18n module, so there won't be a problem with its absence. The issue with mw.getCurrentFrame() still needs fixing, of course. --RexxS (talk) 21:26, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
@RexxS: Thanks, but it will still be a potential problem on those other wikis. As far as I can see, the only work-around is to use the frame passed in the function call instead (or to revert Ans' edit). Thayts ••• 22:03, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
@Thayts: I thought the relevant code (lines 82–106) in this version worked fine in any wiki, but apparently it needed to be changed. Anyway, we can keep making work-arounds, but as long as mw.getCurrentFrame() fails to get the current frame (i.e. the frame invoked with the current code), we're permanently chasing our own tails. --RexxS (talk) 23:15, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that worked fine except if the module were to be named differently on another wiki. Anyway, there are several possible solutions currently at hand. Thayts ••• 06:50, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
@Pppery: Looks like you're right, when mw.getCurrentFrame() is called at the module level (not inside a function) in the inner #invoke it picks up the frame from the outer #invoke rather than getting its own frame created for the module-level processing. You should file a task in Phabricator about it. Anomie⚔ 20:52, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Reverting could of course also be done. Looking at the documentation of mw.getCurrentFrame(), it should return the frame object from the most recent #invoke. The laziness explains that mw.getCurrentFrame() is even able to get Module:String's frame object, but the most recent invoke is then indeed that of Module:Wikidata. Thayts ••• 21:17, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

WikiMiniAtlas not working on the Czech Wikipedia

Hello, sorry for asking here, but I got no response elsewhere. On cswiki WikiMiniAtlas gadget does not work anymore, could you help? We suspect this is due to changes in our Coord template. What should Coord template fulfill to make WikiMiniAltas work there again? Or do we have got some error in our gadget definition? (w:cs:MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition and w:cs:MediaWiki:Gadget-WikiMiniAtlas.js) --Dvorapa (talk) 10:25, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

What error do you get? Ruslik_Zero 20:59, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
@Ruslik0: I get no error (console log is empty), it just does not do anything. --Dvorapa (talk) 04:04, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Dvorapa, it has to do with your template. The WMA script looks for the selector: "#coordinates > span > a" to find the geo hack link and your templates no longer match that content. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:28, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Maybe this should be configurable? --Dvorapa (talk) 17:21, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Or more general (a[href^=//geohack] or something)? --Dvorapa (talk) 17:38, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I noticed a problem about two weeks ago and wrote the following to describe it. However, by the time I got around to posting it a day later, the problem had gone away. It has returned and FWIW here it is.

Previewing the following (extracted from {{Infobox road}} in Heartland Expressway) in a sandbox gives "The time allocated for running scripts has expired" with a result similar to "Lua time usage: 12.751/10.000 seconds" in the NewPP report in the page's HTML source. 

{{maplink|frame=yes|plain=yes|frame-align=center|frame-width=290|frame-height=290|type=line|raw={{Wikipedia:Map data/Wikipedia KML/Heartland Expressway}}}}

The same problem can be seen at Interstate 84 in Oregon and possible other articles. Any thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 07:53, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

The last change to Module:Mapframe added an additional condition. Ruslik_Zero 08:13, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
A few things. First, why is what looks to be a json page not being stored as one? Second, why is it being stored in Wikipedia space rather than Template space? --Izno (talk) 12:52, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Three tings. Firstly the Maplink module is in beta, and thus not coded to be efficent just yet. Secondly the json kml file is large (it is almost 85 kilobytes) and has coordinates where the difference between either the langitude or longitude is less than 0.01. Thirdly, to explain the intermittent issue, templates and modules that run close to the limit can go over it when the server is under higher load than normal.--Snaevar (talk) 14:13, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, but no reasonable Lua module should use 12 seconds. Johnuniq (talk) 07:59, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I played around with {{maplink|raw={{Wikipedia:Map data/Wikipedia KML/Heartland Expressway}}}} from Heartland Expressway. The NewPP report for the article shows Lua time usage: 12.047/10.000 seconds. The pages used are Template:Maplink + Module:Mapframe + Wikipedia:Map data/Wikipedia KML/Heartland Expressway. The module finishes with a call to display a large (87,101 bytes) <mapframe> file which apparently uses mw:Extension:Kartographer. Previewing an edit to the module which does everything except call Kartographer requires 0.34 seconds of Lua time. Conclusion: Kartographer is taking nearly 12 seconds and that fails because the time is counted against Lua which has a 10-second limit (more than enough for anything reasonable using pure Lua). I was thinking about investigating the module which has a dozen unintended globals and might need tweaking. However, the basic problem might be Kartographer, or the fact that Kartographer's time is debited to Lua. Johnuniq (talk) 07:59, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Johnuniq, I was able to get a couple others to work by using Module:Mapframe KML but now instead of issuing a script error, they simply fail to show the map like this one. so, perhaps not an improvement. note that User:Mr. Matté was able to fix a couple of them by simplifying the map files. there is some related discussion at WP U.S. Roads. Frietjes (talk) 18:45, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

sandbox issue

Hello, Really like the sandbox and use it a lot. I cleared out an article I had posted and started a new one. Started a fresh page and new infox box using a template cut and pasted directly from the help pages. When I previewed it, just a straight line of all the text I had entered displayed but no actual inbox. Tried with different templates, still no real infobox, just a line of of the text I had entered. Cleaned my caches, ran anti-malware. Then went through all the how to fix it steps listed in the infobox help article, it still would not display correctly. Then cleaned my computer caches, registries etc, even reloaded the browser. Then purged the sandbox as per help page. Put up a test template in, saved it, it still will not display, nada, not even the line of text entered in the test infobox, which it did before. The editing area is there but when I preview it there is nothing but a box to the right that says "my name/sandbox." I use the firefox browser. Help pages said ad blocker could be the cause. I use ublock origin and have it turned off on Wiki. Have never had a problem with the same setup before. Just reloaded both. Still have the issue with same configuration that I had no problem with until now.

Would appreciate some help with this. Have spent a lot of time on it and do not understand why it is not working. Thank you. Ogmany (talk) 13:10, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Ogmany: - I assume you're referring to User:Ogmany/sandbox? It looks like you've added an Infobox artist, but haven't filled it out with any data. Could you make and save the edit you previewed that was displaying your text in a straight line? It's hard to help further without knowing more about the edit you were trying to make. Sam Walton (talk) 13:13, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Hello Sam Walton,
Yes, User:Ogmany/sandbox. Since I purged the sandbox the infobox preview displaying the text (I entered in the infobox template) as only a straight line of text, each info box separated by |, don't show up anymore. It looked like "name entered | birth place entered | each section I entered | etc |" as I recall. I did add Infobox artist, and filled out a test name and website. The editing area is there, can see that, but when I preview it there is no preview box even, no text I had entered, nothing but a small box to the right with "ogmany/sandbox" in it. Would show you a photo but will have to do that later today. Ogmany (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Check your Preferences → Editing, under preview as there's an option to display the preview at the bottommost area. Also please upload screenshot. – Ammarpad (talk) 13:48, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
@Ogmany: In [37] you added the name and website inside <!-- -->. Those indicate source comments for editors viewing the source. Anything inside them are ignored when the page is rendered. See more at Help:Wikitext#Invisible text (comments). If a page displays your template code like it looks in the source then it's usually due to unclosed tags. Maybe a starting {{ is missing the ending }}, or a [[ is missing a ]] in one of the parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:56, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Sam Walton and PrimeHunter Very helpful. Adding the name inside the code was the problem. Small and obvious detail that I totally missed. Yikes! Appreciate the help and thank you.Ogmany (talk) 15:09, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

creating a rankings page from a website

Hello! I've been putting it off for quite a while, but I feel I need to find a way to do this soon. Here's what I'd like to do:

Currently, there are a few different ranking lists for pool players, such as the WPA and Eurotour rankings. There is a similar list for snooker players such as at Snooker world rankings 2019/2020.

What I'd like is to be able to have a way to update infoboxes (such as Template:Infobox pool player/rankings, similar to how Template:Infobox snooker player/rankings works. However, these are updated with a quick copy/paste for the snooker version, which doesn't seem possible with the above ranking lists. I'd also like to be able to update a potential article for each ranking list for the rankings after each event. The main issue (other than importing), seems to be the sheer amount of article names that are different from the name given. They tend to use lastname, firstname, rather than how our articles work.

I'd really like a reasonably quick and clean way to update the lists. Is there a way to go about doing this, or should I work around an existing solution? Please let me know if I need to provide more information. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 16:13, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

For reference, I've written Draft:Euro Tour rankings from excel2wiki to this version, and put together a script (with a lot of help) to fix the names. I'd really like to have some help in fixing the look of this table, and the infobox issues. Thank you in advance. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 18:58, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-40

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

Problems

  • Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed. [38]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item 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 2 October at 15:00 (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.

16:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Quick heads up: It appears that on WP:THURSDAY there might be some CSS that needs tweaking. People who understand CSS might be able to divine the situation by looking at this edit. You can test this at MediaWiki.org now, as it's already Thursday there. ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Special:Blocklist

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T56458

[40]

This link goes to Special:Blocklist with "Hide temporary blocks" and "Hide account blocks" ticked, while "Hide indefinite blocks", "Hide single IP blocks", and "Hide range blocks" are not ticked. Based on "hide account blocks", I would assume that the results would be restricted to individual IPs and IP rangeblocks. So why are some accounts showing up? User:Jstxanothrxstory, User:Clumsybrunnette05, and User:Sam sung are three of the accounts showing up here. Nyttend (talk) 03:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

It looks like they were all blocked between 17:23 and 20:26, on 11 July 2006, and they were all re-blocked by MZMcBride on 15 November 2008 with the message "per previous block; correcting database entry" ([41]). So there's probably something weird going on in the database there. MZMcBride, can you enlighten us? rchard2scout (talk) 11:27, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Hi! I don't remember these blocks. I imagine if you query the database directly and look at the output, there might be a hint as to why these accounts are showing up when "Hide account blocks" is enabled. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:01, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata-fueled graphs not visible?

When checking whether this recent change was an improvement or vandalism (it looks to be an improvement), I came across List of the busiest airports in France, which starts of with two graphs, which are Wikidata-fueled. Ignoring whether this is wanted or not for now, my problem is that they simply don't seem to work. Firefox 69.0.2 on Windows, all I get is a small placeholder image. Other articles like List of the busiest airports in Germany also use this kind of graph, but through a template: in this case I don't even get the placeholder image but solely an empty section.

Is this a problem on my side, or a general problem with these graphs? Fram (talk) 12:44, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

According to Phab:T226250 this has been broken for some time, so we probably want to replace those graphs for now. Sam Walton (talk) 12:47, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Perhaps best to remove these for now then, has been broken for more than three months now. I'll remove them from a few pages where I can easily find them, but these may well be used by other articles and templates as well of course. Fram (talk) 12:59, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Alarming "only a preview message"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T232414

I use the MonoBook skin. Yesterday, when editing, I started to see a large pink box with an orange border:

This is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved! → Go to editing area

I think the warning was there before, but it was not so jarring. Any ideas on how to tone it down? Aymatth2 (talk) 13:45, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

@Aymatth2: looks like that is getting its markups from the warningbox class, and from bolding at MediaWiki:Previewnote. That entire box is a div, class "previewnote" so you could just suppress it in your personal skin. Do you have a specific suggestion for what you think it should be changed to? — xaosflux Talk 14:00, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
It was changed to use standard warningbox class at phab:T232414. I also think the new style is too garish. – Ammarpad (talk) 14:14, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
Surely we should be encouraging the use of preview (to reduce typos, formatting errors, etc) rather than disconcerting those of us who do use it? DuncanHill (talk) 14:26, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: In my opinion "I think" it's too garish. I am not asking for it to be changed, but I'll change it for my account when I want. So I am not disconcerting anybody. Thanks. – Ammarpad (talk) 15:06, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting that you were disconcerting anyone. I was suggesting that the message is disconcerting and perhaps counterproductive. DuncanHill (talk) 15:11, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
Ping to User:Volker E. (WMF) - the WMF staffer that drove that change. Volker, any options to soften this that would fit in with the rest of the UX? — xaosflux Talk 14:28, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for pinging me, User talk:Xaosflux. That's correct, we've amended the message box to follow all standard warnings across pages and products. phab:T232414 was just the latest. This has been changed to provide users consistent system message appearances. While we do understand that this might be unusual for users knowing the before state, it's meant to make orientation for all users simpler. As I've seen there are already ways described below for dealing with the change for people who would like to have a toned-down warning instead. Volker E. (WMF) (talk) 05:10, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Yet another unwanted "improvement" that no one asked for, and yet again you suggest that it's all right and users should invent workarounds on their own. — Mike Novikoff 06:35, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
@Volker E. (WMF): - could you let us know the following: how many editors stated they wanted a more consistent style; why no warning, or at least an FYI, wasn't given here, if you think workarounds are beneficial, why not create a meta page explaining/summarising how? Nosebagbear (talk) 09:40, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
I've removed the bolding of the text, as it is now in a call out box. — xaosflux Talk 14:31, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
The message appears just under a large "Preview" header, so it is obvious that it is a preview. I would prefer to just drop the pink box and leave the message, unbolded:
Preview

This is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved! → Go to editing area

Aymatth2 (talk) 14:33, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
It is possible to remove that h2 label, but the hl will still be there (in MediaWiki:Preview). — xaosflux Talk 14:39, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, why does MediaWiki:Preview display a deletion log entry when there is a page that exists there, with the source being 'Preview'? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:16, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
It's a Mediawiki "message" so it's reflecting the default from the source. When you add content it overrides the source message. The content was deleted because it's the same as the source. – Ammarpad (talk) 15:28, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
You could add this to your CSS:
.previewnote .warningbox {border: none; background-color: white;}
That reminds me, I have been thinking about creating a page for tips on reverting unwanted interface changes. There could be general tips (like clear your cache, update your browser, try removing broken user scripts), and a list of specific instructions for specific changes, but also a list of some things which cannot be reverted. It might be called Wikipedia:Take me back. Good idea? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:43, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
Seems like a great idea to me User:PrimeHunter. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:40, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
I made a similar suggestion for someone who wanted to move the third column for Timeless down the way; making it a subpage of WP:Skin or WP:Customization would be great. --Izno (talk) 20:00, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
  • One of the very jarring thing about the warning is its non-standard size. It should be {{fmbox}} or {{ombox}} size. Something like
or
would be much better IMO. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:58, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
I added
.previewnote .warningbox {border: none; padding: 0; margin: 0; background-color: white;}
and that put it back the way it was, I think. Maybe it should be a preferences option. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:08, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
Agreed. I thought it was some bug from last night, but it's still there now. At least there's a workaround. Thanks again to all the tech coders out there! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 17:01, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

My personal choice here would be {display:none}, as usual.

Unfortunately, all these {display:none}'s don't bring back the lost performance, especially with this case that turned my 1Ghz CPU into a toaster. It's a real pity that MW becomes a bloatware, and worse yet, that the devs just won't listen. — Mike Novikoff 21:21, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Above discussed change does not negatively affect the performance at all. It has actually reduced CSS code sent to all users by using the standard warning box and not a specific override for solely the previewnote – regardless if the users are editing the page or not. Volker E. (WMF) (talk) 06:46, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
But my 1Ghz CPU is already a toaster when it comes to a page history or user contributions. You know, I have an indigestion every time I even hear of Phab since the last time I've cried in despair and had got nothing but a warning (isn't that an ad hominem?). Everything else just confirms the pattern. — Mike Novikoff 13:07, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Changes for 2020 (upcoming) Community Wishlist Survey

The Wikimedia Foundation recently announced two major changes to this year's Community Wishlist Survey. I haven't seen it spread widely on-wiki, so I'm posting it here. The Community Tech team will only work on the 5 most popular requests, not the top 10. They will also not consider any proposals from Wikipedia projects. The announcement was on wikitech-l and other mailing lists. You can find more information at meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2020 and discuss the changes at meta:Talk:Community Wishlist Survey 2020. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 02:30, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Cursor position wrong at Special:Search on Google Chrome

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T234170

Based on this post at wp:AN, the cursor position on Special:Search is weird. To reproduce, type some text in the box, then try to click in the box, and see the cursor is several characters to the right of where you clicked. I am using Chrome, Windows 10. User:Nixinova reported IE and Edge working as expected. Chris857 (talk) 04:48, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

There's phab:T234170, given in the AN thread. – Ammarpad (talk) 14:30, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Global watchlist - Update 1

Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script:

General announcements
  • Management has migrated to phabricator; to report a bug or request a feature, please create a new task with the script's tag
  • Message translation has been reduced; for common messages that are already translated in mediawiki core, the system translations are used, in order to reduce duplication of efforts
Recent additions
  • New pages are shown at the start of a site's feed
  • Log entries are shown at the end of a site's feed
  • Basic validation has been added to user settings, applied before saving
  • Site validation has also been added; a site (excluding unique projects like wikidata, meta, commons, etc.) is considered to be valid if it is the form of "language.project", where both the language code and project name are valid. It does not, however, check that the actual site is valid; only that it could be. In other words, even though sco.wiktionary refers to a site that doesn't exist, it is considered valid, because sco is a valid language code (sco.wikipedia is a working site) and wiktionary is a valid project.
Announcements
  • BREAKING CHANGE: Backwards compatibility supporting the use of sites as *.*.org (like 'en.wikipedia.org' or 'meta.wikimedia.org'), deprecated in version 1.7.5, will be removed soon; all sites should now be saved as *.* (like 'de.wikinews' or 'fr.wikisource')
  • BREAKING CHANGE: Storing user sites as window.GlobalWatchlistSites, deprecated in version version 1.11.11, will be removed soon; all settings should be stored in the window.GlobalWatchlistConfig object
  • Both of these breaking changes will be implemented alongside version 4.0; until then, any use of the config page (m:Special:BlankPage/GlobalWatchlistConfig) will result in saving settings in the newest format
Next release

Version 4.0 should be released in around a week. It will include the new features mentioned above, as well as removal of backwards compatibility for settings and sites.

I've sent this first message to users that participated in the discussion at m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Watchlists/Revive Crosswatch tool or otherwise shown interest in the script. To subscribe or unsubscribe from future updates, see the distribution list.

Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 16:03, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Global watchlist user script: About • Updates • Code

Deletion of file

I have uploaded a file, that is not fit for the intended use, and I want to delete it, but I don't know how. (Man, that was a long sentence – and please understand, that English isn't my first language.)

Anyways, I'd like to ask, if someone could help me deleting the file. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_for_the_2019_snooker_Champion_of_Champions.png

Cheers, Mrloop (talk) 17:40, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Mrloop, I have requested speedy deletion for you per criteria G7. --Trialpears (talk) 17:45, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks :-) Mrloop (talk) 17:54, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
☒N Deleted — xaosflux Talk 18:01, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks 👍 Mrloop (talk) 21:01, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Webcitation

Webcitation is one of the main recommended in the Help:Archiving a source for archiving links. But now a lot (all?) of pages with non-Latin text are shown with a Specials (Unicode block)#Replacement character. For example [42] . Is the site is finally dying аnd no longer reliable? Can someone contact them to fix it? --Sunpriat (talk) 00:43, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

As of July 14, 2019 this WebCite does not accept any new archive requests; historically archived pages can still be accessed but this service cannot be used to make any new archives. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:14, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

span data-segmentid="59" class="cx-segment"???

In Draft:Jaime Macías Alarcón, there's some very strange markup with every paragraph wrapped in <span data-segmentid="..." class="cx-segment">. My two guesses are some weird Visual Editor bug, or (more likely) somebody copy-pasted this from somewhere and the HTML markup came along for the ride. Earwig doesn't show any copyvio matches, and googling for bits of text from the draft draws a blank as well. Anybody seen this before? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:09, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

@RoySmith: got a feeling it is a remnant from a translation tool. — xaosflux Talk 23:01, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
And looks like that user has been doing various things related to translation. — xaosflux Talk 23:03, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
And have been trying over and over in different ways. — xaosflux Talk 23:05, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It was caused by mw:CX when attempting to restore translation. The problem was fixed sometimes ago (after that draft's creation date). – Ammarpad (talk) 23:13, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

OK, thanks everybody. I think I'm going to copy the source to my unix box and clean it up with some emacs magic. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:25, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Possibly related: T218420, T213258, T111000, T90202. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:26, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Page categorisation

Is there a problem with page categorisations as I have had no entries on my watchlist for the last couple of days yet there are new/removed entries in the category Category:CS1 errors: dates that should have appeared? Keith D (talk) 10:17, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

It works for me. Is "Hide categorization of pages" disabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist? Is Category:CS1 errors: dates on your watchlist? You have to watch the category page and not just the articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:17, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
No it is not disabled and the category is on the watchlist. It is also not hidden on the selection screen for the watchlist. It was OK until about Thursday when it stopped giving the category changes. Keith D (talk) 18:19, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "not disabled" but the option "Hide categorization of pages" should be disabled, i.e. have no check mark. It's enabled by default. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:40, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
There is no check mark in the box. Keith D (talk) 20:25, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Do you see categorizations at [43]? I see many when watching Category:CS1 errors: dates. Try to remove and readd the category to the watchlist. Do other categories like Category:Candidates for speedy deletion‎ fail to produce results? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:05, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
Yes I can see the categorisations using the link that you specified. It is all categorisations that I am missing from my normal watchlist entries such as Category:Start-Class Yorkshire articles‎. Keith D (talk) 18:31, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
Many thanks for the help I have just spotted what the problem is with the link you gave. I appear to have only got the (Main) namespace selected, for some reason, rather than All which it usually is. Back to normal now. Keith D (talk) 18:58, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Transclusion count

I'm sure it's been asked before, but I can't find it: is there an easier way to count the transclusions of a template than using the "what links here" page and counting how many pages? Circéus (talk) 02:05, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

There is a "Transclusion count" link in the "External tools" section of Special:WhatLinksHere when given a template as an argument. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:19, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
You can also add this script mw.loader.load('//www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Linkscount.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); which lets you count without leaving "what links here" page and is more flexible with namespaces, etc. SD0001 (talk) 05:14, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
You can also use Help:Searching#hastemplate: and see the reported number of search results. It can be combined with other search strings and search options, e.g. the namespace (only mainspace by default). PrimeHunter (talk) 08:47, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
Such searches are particularly useful because you can search for uses of the template with a particular parameter (e.g. here.   Jts1882 | talk  09:28, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
(You don't need to place the spaces internal to the metacharacters you have; this is also correct. --Izno (talk) 13:57, 6 October 2019 (UTC))
For templates with over 2,000 transclusions, there are weekly lists generated at Special:PrefixIndex/Module:Transclusion_count/data/. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:04, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
Related thread at Template talk:High-use#Switch to automated transclusion count. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Weird ref, citation, white space interaction bug

Without the line feed the citation is messed up.

[1]

[2]

AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:22, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan: Shouldn't it be:
[3]
I was under the impression we shouldn't be using wikimarkup inside CS1 parameters. --RexxS (talk) 23:56, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Something is going wrong. People expect to be able to have quote marks and apostrophes . AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:12, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
You have unbalanced markup. The parser doesn't know that you want an actual apostrophe. Use {{'}} for the apostrophe whenever you are writing the possessive of an italicized name, like this:[4] – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:53, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Jonesey is correct here. The other way to do it of course is to take the lone apostrophe and use the reference value for it instead. --Izno (talk) 02:05, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Alas, Editor Jonesey95 is not correct here. The template {{'}} renders as this: 
<span class="nowrap" style="padding-left:0.1em;">&#39;</span>
All of that styling is why that template is marked as not safe for COinS.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:11, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Rexx, generally. Some wikimarkup is supported in certain parameters. --Izno (talk) 02:06, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Still odd that a line feed mattered. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:20, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Just to prove that this isn't some artifact produced by Module:Citation/CS1, this <ref>''30 Rock'''s.</ref>[5] gives the same result. Here is the html from this page: 
<li id="cite_note-5"><span class="mw-cite-backlink">'<i><a href="#cite_ref-5">^</a><b></b></i></span><i><b> <span class="reference-text"></span></b></i><b>30 Rock</b>s.</li>
And using &#39; <ref>''30 Rock''&#39;s.</ref>[6] and its html: 
<li id="cite_note-6"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-6">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><i>30 Rock</i>&#39;s.</span></li>
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:11, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
The reason the newline matters is because the Cite extension displays the reference wikitext by substituting it into MediaWiki:Cite references link one. The resulting wikitext resembles '''foo''' ''bar'''s that happens to be interpreted in an unexpected manner. Including the newline puts a newline in that wikitext, and since apostrophe markup only works within a single line there's no ambiguity. Fixes might include replacing the ''' in MediaWiki:Cite references link one with <b>...</b> or <strong>...</strong> or formatting the citation with <i>...</i> to avoid the misinterpretation of apostrophe-wikitext. In the former case MediaWiki:Cite references link many format might also want a similar edit. Anomie⚔ 12:32, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
So, ref-tags don’t work perfectly, but how to fix them is the question with some suggesting adapting cite templates to work around the bug In most cases. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:17, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

References

  1. '^ "30 Rocks".
  2. ^ "30 Rock's".
  3. ^ "30 Rock's".
  4. ^ "30 Rock's".
  5. '^ 30 Rocks.
  6. ^ 30 Rock's.

Codebox

Please see the idea discussed at Template talk:CodeBox#External links. I *think* it's about code, and then giving an external link to show what it does, but I'm not entirely sure. This might be good, or there might be an even better way to accomplish the desired goal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:01, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I think the issue here is more about policy. Runnable code snippets are popular on many Q&A, how-to and programming sites; but Wikipedia is not a how-to website. Also when you combine that with the external link issues, for instance questions about the site itself (https://tio.run), and the fact that this will have to be embedded in the middle of articles; it will become clear this is something unlikely to be allowed on Wikipedia. But creating the template is one thing; starting to use on articles (with or without consensus) is another thing. Currently its only use on mainspace is on Lua (programming language) and it was added by the author. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:06, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
I've reverted my change, due to general consensus appearing to be against it, and potentially it being against some rule I haven't heard of/noticed yet (Would appreciate pointers to what I violated, I realise now that I violated WP:NOTHOWTO and WP:ELNO. MoonyTheDwarf (Braden N.) (talk) 12:47, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

VE cut & paste

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T234489

doesn't see to be working. Is this affecting anyone else? ——SerialNumber54129 11:57, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

It's a part of many issues: phab:T234489. – Ammarpad (talk) 12:15, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Ah, thanks very much Ammarpad, well that's too rich for me. Any idea, though, how long that kind of thing takes to sort out? (It's just that I've read the phab ticket but I'd have more luck with Cantonese!) Thanks again, ——SerialNumber54129 12:22, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129: The short version is it looks like a fix was uploaded yesterday by @DChan (WMF): that's currently awaiting review. Hopefully they can shine some light on how long these things usually take to go live. Sam Walton (talk) 12:30, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
The task was triaged with the highest priority tag, so one can assume it will not take long to get fixed, all other things being equal. – Ammarpad (talk) 12:38, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks very much Sam Walton and Ammarpad, for the update, and a big Thank You to all the technical folk on this board who enable content creation by doing what they do and also take the time to explain things to plebs like me! Cheers!  :) ——SerialNumber54129 12:44, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Is this the same issue that messes up the ref numbering in VE? When I test-edit articles in VE, almost all of them have the refs in the ref section with a higher number than in the article, making it hard to see which ref belongs with which number of course... Here the refs in the ref section are numbered 17 to 27, here 4 to 10, here 4 to 15, here 5 to 89; here the only reference is numbered "6"! Fram (talk) 12:45, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't believe so, that looks to be T95176. Sam Walton (talk) 12:50, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Ouch, that's a task from 2015... Fram (talk) 14:04, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Resolved

Tech News: 2019-41

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon. [45]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item 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 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
  • The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page would be https://www.wikidata.org/ instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
  • There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
  • Advanced item Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.

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

15:34, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Tacky color scheme for old revisions

Take a look at the top of any old revision - think this was a WP:THURSDAY interface improvement - anyone else think the pink in yellow is tacky looking though? — xaosflux Talk 23:46, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

phab:T232415. The yellow is due to (now) using .warningbox while the red is because we use {{fmbox}} at MediaWiki:Revision-info. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:09, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
We should remove the fmbox now. It would look better. – Ammarpad (talk) 00:15, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Done by JJMC89. Still doesn't look great. I feel that the background colour ought to be red to draw attention to the fact that this isn't the current version of the page. SD0001 (talk) 11:29, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
MediaWiki:Revision-info-current also need attention.--Lam-ang (talk) 15:09, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Did you mean Mediawiki:editingold? — xaosflux Talk 15:32, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
No. I took care of the one Lam-ang mentioned. Editingold doesn't currently cause me problems, but I'm using WTE2017. That said, it may in the future be one ofthe targets. --Izno (talk) 15:40, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
@Izno: this also gives pink-in-orange, however in visual editor the pink seems to be the only coloring (else it is just plain text on plain background) so it may be worth keeping - or perhaps changing to the same coloring as the orange.. — xaosflux Talk 15:44, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Probably just means that VE hasn't been updated. Let's go ahead and remove editingold also. --Izno (talk) 15:49, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't use VE but the pink isn't dark enough to get a person's attention.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:46, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Search function has a URL with "cirrus"

Is this explained anywhere? — Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:44, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: see more at mw:Help:CirrusSearch. — xaosflux Talk 15:58, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:02, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

{coord} location doesn't match Google Map location

This may be a known problem or a non-problem but, having noticed it, I thought I would mention it here.

Compare this Google Maps location with the 5°08′33″N 125°58′35″E / 5.1424303°N 125.9764215°E / 5.1424303; 125.9764215 location from {{coord}} and GeoHack->Google Maps. Maybe it's a rounding error or a cockpit problem on my part. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:23, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

@Wtmitchell: in your first example you seem to be using a "named location" on google.com ("Miangas") not only the geo-coordinates like this - does that give you the result you are looking for? — xaosflux Talk 14:58, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Specifying the named location appears to drop a pin on the named location while centering the map on the coordinates (at least approximately). For a more extreme example, try 125.1424303,125.9764215, which uses the named location of "Miangas" but coordinates much farther away. The coordinates of Miangas appear to be closer to 5°33′19″N 126°35′07″E / 5.5554°N 126.5854°E / 5.5554; 126.5854. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:05, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: it's not odd, it's expected: consider that a URL goes into the value of a href="..." attribute of an <a> tag, any unencoded quotes will terminate that value. Try percent-encoding it, like this, where %C2%B0→°, %27→' and %22→". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:43, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64: yea not really 'odd' but it is phab:T17661. — xaosflux Talk 20:55, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

User contributions changes

I see some recent changes to Special:Contributions which make it much less useful for me. The search form is now hidden under a "Search for contributions" toggle, which means an extra click for me to change search settings, but I can live with that. However, when I use a CIDR range (needs to be enabled in Preferences/Gadgets), which I do many times a day to find edits by related IPs after I encounter anon vandalism (e.g. I search for 1.2.0.0/16), the list of IP addresses with edits loads above the list of recent edits. The list of addresses is often very large, and takes many seconds to load, and during this time if I scroll down to the list of recent edits (limited only to the most 50 recent edits by default), the loading list above keeps jumping the screen so I can't do anything useful. Until a couple of days ago, the list of recent edits was above the list of IP addresses, so I could ignore the loading of the latter. Is there a way to toggle off the list of IP addresses? There is a "toggle all" option, but that's not what I want; it shows edits sorted by IP address, but I want edits for the range of IP addresses sorted by date, as already appears at the bottom of the window. Alternatively, can I force the list of IP addresses to be a fixed size, rather than expanding as new addresses are found.-gadfium 20:53, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

WP:ITSTHURSDAY and the latest round of OOUI "improvements"..... but the gadget stuff comes from MediaWiki:Gadget-contribsrange.js which hasn't really been maintained in a while. This should be able to get pushed down if someone wants to dig in to it. — xaosflux Talk 21:32, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Isn't the search by IP range gadget entirely obsolete now? * Pppery * it has begun... 21:45, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
@Pppery: the No per-IP sorting or date headings, or any bells and whistles. note on the top of that task description says it isn't really a full-replacement. — xaosflux Talk 22:23, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
But it does appear to offer what Gadfium was asking for, by simply not displaying any list of IP addresses. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:25, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, turning off the gadget gives me exactly what I want. Thanks Pppery.-gadfium 22:33, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
By the way, you can force the search interface to be shown by inserting this into Special:MyPage/common.css:
/* Quick hack to force the Search tab on [[Special:Contribs]] open. Credit: Volker E. (WMF) & Stwalkerster - [[m:Special:Permalink/19434096#Reverting the new "collapsed search interface" on Special:Contribs|Tech]] */ 
.mw-special-Contributions .oo-ui-fieldsetLayout-group.mw-collapsible-content { display: block !important; }
.mw-special-Contributions .oo-ui-fieldsetLayout-header { display: none !important; }
— regards, Revi 00:35, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, that works for me, avoiding that extra click.
I'm most impressed with the speed and quality of the technical help I've been given here!-gadfium 03:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
So we're currently looking into additional changes from the feedback given here. One is implementing a “pin” to let the form stay expanded phab:T234569 (edited link; making above CSS hack obsolete), the second is a technical error, that affected the user autocomplete phab:T234510. Volker E. (WMF) (talk) 04:24, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
@Volker E. (WMF): That first ticket is unrelated. Can you double check your links? --Izno (talk) 11:30, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
I think he meant phab:T234569. – Ammarpad (talk) 11:40, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Edited and fixed above, thanks @Izno: and @Ammarpad: Volker E. (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Page views data prior to February 2008

I am working on a research project related to the traffic of Wikipedia platform. Could you please help me to find the page views data of the early days of Wikipedia? Ideally, I would like to find 2001-February 2008. I understand that the metrics were different from the current metrics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vika-Wiki (talk • contribs) 03:59, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@Vika-Wiki: These dumps go back to December 2007, but there was not much pageview data before then. I believe there was page view data in the early days of Wikipedia but I have no idea how to get at it without maybe downloading old database dumps. Graham87 05:18, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Tags#Editor privacy

Unresolved
 – Phabricator ticket opened by xaosflux (thank you!). –xenotalk 15:58, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T235107

I'm concerned that some of the tags added to edits (presumably for debugging reasons) are violating the privacy of editors by disclosing the type or software characteristics of devices they are using to contribute. Please see Wikipedia talk:Tags#Editor privacy. –xenotalk 13:35, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm unhappy with this practice too. Thanks for raising this, xeno. ↠Pine (✉) 18:54, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

I am having problems with Enterprisey's reply link script. Please see Wikipedia:Help_desk#Reply_link_script and User talk:Þjarkur/sandbox for more info about the problem. I tried reaching to Enterprisey, but he didn't get back to me. It doesn't seem to work on some Wikipedia forums such as the WP:HD and WP:ANI and also my talk page. I get the error message "There was an error while replying! Please leave a note at the script's talk page with any errors in the browser console, if possible.". I tried replying at this page and I have no issues replying there. I am currently using a modified script at User:Þjarkur/reply-link.js Can you figure out what is going on there and how to fix these errors so that the script works on every Wikipedia page? Interstellarity (talk) 18:02, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) For an explanation, Interstellarity is having some problems with reply-link but only with replying to certain posts. I could identify one error where it was not possible to reply to me due to the Unicode character in my username which was giving a "Failed to find a matching comment in the Parsoid DOM". Interstellarity says they still get an error from reply-link, but only on some pages including WP:ANI. My guess is that Parsoid has changed the markup it returns a little bit. Interstellarity, can you verify that the error you get is the same Parsoid DOM error as before? – Thjarkur (talk) 18:01, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
​ I just got an edit conflict. I have provided more info. Do you any more info regarding this post? Interstellarity (talk) 18:06, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
​Yes, do you still get the same Parsoid DOM error or is there another console error message? – Thjarkur (talk) 18:08, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Þjarkur, I got it to work at WP:VPT and WP:HD, but not my user talk page. Yes, I do get the error message you are talking about. Interstellarity (talk) 18:11, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Any help would be appreciated. Interstellarity (talk) 19:58, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Most people are frequently experiencing errors with reply-link, not just you. Alas, for now the only option is to manually edit the page whenever it doesn't work. It's an extremely complicated script and would need quite a bit of coding and testing by Enterprisey (or someone else) to run reliably across all pages. SD0001 (talk) 06:25, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
For me, it seems to work at both [ANI and at HD. Any specific comments you tried replying to where it didn't work? SD0001 (talk) 06:59, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
SD0001, Replying in both of those places worked for me too. It doesn't seem to work when replying to someone on my talk page. Interstellarity (talk) 10:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
One thing that I've noticed is that the generated edit summary sometimes implies that a user is replying to themselves (example). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:29, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Redrose64, The edit summary isn't the problem. It is the functionality of the script that's the problem. Interstellarity (talk) 21:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Possible interaction of spam blacklist and citation archival-url

Moved from MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist § adult-mag.com

Note: see prior discussion for additional context, about an url recently added to the WP:BLACKLIST.

Note: a parallel discussion is taking place at Help talk:Citation Style 1 about aspects relating more to the citation template aspects of this. Mathglot (talk) 02:48, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

JzG, I'm going through them, fixing them up. The fixes to the ones in citations are going smoothly. However, I triggered the filter, attempting to change the External link in Juliet Escoria from its current value, to the following value:

  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20160501095135/http://adult-mag.com/interview-juliet-escoria-katherine-faw-morris/ Interview with Catherine Faw Morris at ''Adult Magazine'']

Maybe the filter could be adjusted to excuse examples where it's embedded in a web archive url? Or should I code this valid archive link differently, so it can be saved? Mathglot (talk) 03:16, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Hm, this time (at Azar Swan) I couldn't save the page after marking url-status usurped and adding this archive url:
  • |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160219163119/http://adult-mag.com/mornings-after-zohra-atash-azar-swan/
I ended up putting the archive-url in hidden text in order to be able to save it (rev 919328779), and it went through okay. The problem now, is that there is a live, blacklisted url in Citation 8 (this link is safe to click) in this article. This seems to be two problems, possibly interacting with each other:
  1. not sure how this got past the filter
  2. shouldn't |url-status=usurped have blocked display of this url, irrespective whether it is a spammy url or not?
Adding user Trappist the monk (talk · contribs) for comments on question 2 above. Mathglot (talk) 03:39, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Aha, they are interacting. The doc for url-status says: "url-status: this optional parameter is ignored if archive-url is not set." SInce I had to put it in hidden text to successfully save because of the edit filter, that disables the effect of url-status. Now what? How do I fix this? Mathglot (talk) 03:47, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
I can envisage several possible solutions:
  • Move the url value out of the archive-url field and directly into the url field, but that might require some explanation in hidden text or something to prevent well-meaning editors from attempting to move it back to the archive-url field.
  • Leave the value in the archive-url field, and use the required url field to point to something else; perhaps the entry in the WP:BLACKLIST that covers it, or the discussion on the talk page about it. This seems more like a work-around, though.
  • Allow usurped for citation parameter url-status to block display of the spammy url in the url field, even with no archive-url
  • Add a new value for url-status that would block display, even with no archive-url.
Thoughts? Whatever the solution turns out to be, we should document it somewhere for users bumping up against this. Mathglot (talk) 04:14, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussion moved here from prior location because it possibly affects more than one area.   Mathglot (talk) 04:24, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I've fixed it in this case by url-encoding the archive url: Diff/919328779/919369896. That's probably the correct option in most cases, but I do think that if url-status is usurped or unfit, the original url should be hidden, whether archive-url is set or not. rchard2scout (talk) 10:38, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
|url-status= and its predecessor |dead-url= both require |archive-url=. It is a misuse of a template to set one and not the other. --Izno (talk) 15:09, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Not quite true, I think. While Module:Citation/CS1 ignores |url-status= when |archive-url= is omitted or empty, that is not the same as a requirement; were it a requirement, then we'd have to invent a new error message for that case. As it is, a stand-alone |url-status= is just clutter which is a different kind of problem ...
I have been experimenting in Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox (not saved yet) looking at how to handle the various cases of a blacklisted url by percent-encoding the url in the archive-url as Editor Rchard2scout did with the example discussed here. I will discuss this at Help talk:Citation Style 1 when I have something to say.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:47, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
@Rchard2scout:, In a technical WP:TPO violation, I've reversed the order of the revisions in your diff above. Previously, it showed your revision, still the latest/current, on the left side of the diff, and the earlier revision on the right. I assume this was not your intention. If it was, feel free to revert, but in that case, please add an explanatory note to make this clear. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:29, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Trappist the monk: Archive URLs are not exempt for spam blacklists. In fact it's a requirement archive URLs have the full target URL so that the spam blacklist can pick them up. Circumventing this process is a no-no. We've had RfCs about this before. There is also a MediaWiki policy about not using url-shortening services which is essentially what this becomes when hiding the real URL from the filters, because url-shortening allows spammers and malicious actors to insert bad things into Wikipedia. I've seen this many times using WaybackMedic, people use archive URLs to add stuff they shouldn't be. -- GreenC 19:09, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't doubt you but, point me to an RFC that discusses this?
If archive-urls are required to hold the complete original url, shouldn't cs1|2 be checking that and be emitting an error message? Is this requirement publicly documented anywhere? Certainly, this requirement, if it is a requirement should be documented wherever |archive-url= is documented, shouldn't it?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:18, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia_talk:Using_archive.is#RfC:_Should_we_use_short_or_long_format_URLs? -- IAbot and WaybackMedic have been expanding to long form for years (where possible). IABot in particular is relentless and will get to all archive URLs eventually. CS1|2 could add a warning. Wayaback has no short-form option and WebCite is no longer taking new archives and all their URLs are long-form already (presumably). The providers with known short-form are webcite, archive.today, perma.cc, freezepage, National Archives UK. Data at WP:WEBARCHIVES. -- GreenC 19:40, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't read that RFC closure as a 'requirement' but the shortening point is taken, though I see this more as a possible masking than a shortening. I have rolled back the edit. Because there are bots that routinely lengthen short archive urls, and because editors at the RFC did not like the idea of an automated tool admonishing editors to use the long-form archive urls, I do not foresee adding that kind of error checking.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:40, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Can we back up and take a 40,000 foot view for a second, to get some perspective about the locus of the problem? I think this may help inform the discussion. I see what's going on here, as a conflict between two desirable features:

  • Support Verifiability, by exposing to readers the url of a source that supports an assertion in an article.
  • Prevent the user from being exposed to ill effects, by clicking on an url that may contain malware.

I think the statement of the issue we are facing here is, how do we do both of these at the same time, when an url used to support the article (and maybe still does, in an archived version) but has been usurped by malware? A couple of corollary questions to consider:

  1. Is it okay to reduce verifiaibility a little bit in this case, by suppressing display of the url (and archive url, if any) completely? I assume that the answer here is no, but perhaps not everyone agrees.
  2. Is it okay to display the spammy url, if it is not hyperlinked? I tend to think not, as it still seems to violate the spirit of the spam filter, even if it is unclickable.

Are there other functional aspects we haven't considered? Airing out what ought to happen, and getting agreement here first, will help keep the discussion about how to find a solution more on track. When discussing functionality, are there other stakeholders who ought to be looped in, here? Adding xaosflux. Mathglot (talk) 23:10, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

If all sites on the blacklist were indeed malware, there would be no issue; but most are merely spammy sites, while some have been blacklisted for other reasons. Link removal involves not just the loss of verifiability, but potentially the permanent loss of the information cited, contrary to our mission. What ought to happen is that each instance is checked, and either replaced or whitelisted. Doing so requires knowledge of the subject and the original link. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:29, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
@Hawkeye7:, That would seem to imply that we need to retain the information somewhere, of what kind of nasty the items on the blacklist actually are, so that they could possibly be handled differently. Is that what you meant? (At least, in an ideal world; whether it's practical/feasible/priority is a separate issue.) Mathglot (talk) 23:36, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that is what I mean. It should be recorded somewhere. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:26, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

A solution is remove the offending URL but retain a {{citation}}. Blacklists don't prevent citing only linking. However if something is blacklisted it would be advisable to find an alternative source. -- GreenC 00:33, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

If a citation provides other means to verify the material, the simplest approach is not to include the url. The problem appears when online verification is the only available option. Again, the simpler approach would be for the editor to find a non-blacklisted mirror. If there no such mirrors, and the editor believes that the material can not be verified otherwise, then the pre-infected archive copy could be used, after some procedure as below:

1. Filtering should alert the editor that the url is blacklisted
2. The citation editor could submit the "clean" archived url for whitelisting, to whoever maintains such lists
3. The option |url-status=whitelisted should be inserted in the template to inform other editors that the particular archived url has been vetted, even if the current version is unsuitable.

It is a cumbersome approach, but I believe it is viable. 72.43.99.138 (talk) 13:19, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Hmm.. but we would still be providing a link to a blacklisted website (even if via an archive version). Sites are blacklisted for many reasons, vetting a URL can be a matter of opinion if it is safe/appropriate/clean etc.. requiring community consensus which gets messy to maintain. If the only concern is V, perhaps there can be an admin-maintained list that is not visible to non-admins and if a user wants to verify a URL they can contact an admin who can discretely provide the URL for V purposes only. There would be note in the citation where to request the URL. It might require the requesting user have a working email contact so not posted in the clear. -- GreenC 14:48, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't think that such burden of verification should be placed on readers. A better option may be for the citing editor to re-archive the material @ Wikisource? An explanation of the material's origin, without any offensive links, could be included at Wikisource, not at the citation which would now be considered sanitized. 98.0.246.242 (talk) 17:06, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
The burden is always on the reader to verify. This burden is actually less then going to the library and checking out a book. Wikisource is for previously published public domain documents, like books and speeches. Also copyright restrictions. -- GreenC 17:16, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Just a heads-up that there is a parallel discussion taking place at Help talk:Citation Style 1 about aspects relating primarily to the citation template aspects of this, which may overlap in part some of the discussion above. Mathglot (talk) 02:52, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

—Through the Looking-Glass
There seems to be an issue that the values usurped and unfit for param |url-status are not well-defined; at least, not everyone appears to agree what they mean. As part of settling how to handle the part of the problem related to the spam blacklist as raised here, it seems to me that the definitions of usurped, unfit, and possibly other values need to be agreed upon as a prerequisite. If we're not all talking about the same thing, then discussions of edge cases like this one concerning the blacklist will get hopelessly tangled.
Probably the discussion of those definitions should be handled at the Help CS1 discussion; wider input and more eyeballs would be helpful there for this case, and even for the broader question of what those param values mean, exclusive of any blacklist complications. In particular: if you see a citation, including an url-status that says it is usurped, what do you think that means? What should the citation do with that? Please jump in at that discussion, if you feel you can help. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:55, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Remove the merge template

Please remove the Merger notice on {{Infobox Company}}. It is irritating to see it appearing on top of articles. If it cannot be removed, then please put a noinclude around it. Users need to read the caution notice before slapping notices on highly visible templates.

180.151.92.126 (talk) 10:07, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

This is not a technical issue, please follow up at Template talk:Infobox company. — xaosflux Talk 10:31, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
I really feel {{template for discussion}} should be wrapped in {{if preview}}. These notices are fairly confusing and sit prominently at the top of articles. – Thjarkur (talk) 10:45, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
TFD notices are generally reasonable. I've not really understood the complaints yet. --Izno (talk) 00:11, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Newly deprecated cite parameters used by reFill

A previous message was left at User talk:Zhaofeng Li/reFill, but Zhaofeng Li does not appear to have been active on WP since July.

So |deadurl= and |dead-url= have been deprecated in {{cite web}} and its variants, in favor of |url-status=. However, I notice reFill 2, and probably regular reFill, are still generating |dead-url=, which in turn now generates an error message and adds the page to the maintenance category Category:CS1_errors: deprecated parameters. The operators of InternetArchiveBot and GreenC bot have made the fix there, is there anyone who can update reFill accordingly?. The particulars of the cite template update that applies here are listed at the maintenance category page (and also at Template:Cite_web#What's_new), but note that the "yes" or "no" values also need to be changed to "live", "dead", "unfit", or "usurped", as necessary. Thanks.— TAnthonyTalk 19:56, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@TAnthony: This was reported at GitHub 3 days ago [46]. A look through User talk:Zhaofeng Li/reFill suggests bug reports to reFill have gone unresolved for at least the past 6 months, and many reports prior going back years unresolved. Zhaofeng Li reports they are "semi-retired" from Wikipedia as of July. It might be the tool lacks a maintainer and is running without an operator. If this is the case it might be reported to Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard and see what they say. It's a little different since it is a user-triggered tool with full oversight of edits by end user and might not be under the same rules as a bot, but IMO it should be. -- GreenC 21:16, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Hi GreenC. You are correct in your observations about refill. On the other hand it should be noted that the tool was updated to "refill 2" sometime earlier this year. Also two or three days ago it was down for several hours and since it came back it is running much slower than it was previously. This makes me think someone is tinkering with it somewhere but I have no idea how to find out who or where this is happening. Is there any chance that something being done at another wiki is affecting things here? If anyone else knows what is going on please add that info here to help us understand what is happening. MarnetteD|Talk 21:44, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
MarnetteD, I'm looking through the source files on Toolforge where it runs (both versions) and see timestamps to a few files from around February 2019, most much older. Not unusual for outages due to hosting problems on Toolforge. I found a source file where |deadurl= is mentioned, looks like an easy fix, but can't modify it due to file permissions. For the record it is Toolforge: /data/project/refill/versions/stable/src/Reflinks/CitationGenerators/CiteTemplateGenerator.php -- GreenC 23:46, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the info GreenC. February sounds right for the change to "2". MarnetteD|Talk 01:00, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Extreme difficulty loading pages

I'm using YouTube and Google no problems in Taipei, Taiwan. But when I try to load Wikimedia project pages, the page loads partially and then stops. If I refresh the page five to fifteen times, I can eventually make the full page load up. What is happening here? I can't get Phabricator to send a confirmation email to my email inbox, otherwise I wouldn't be asking here. Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:15, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

This problem has been going on since yesterday night (Oct 9 my time). Also, when I just made an edit, I got the message "Some parts of the edit form did not reach the servers; double-check that your edits are intact and try again." What is happening here? So bizarre! Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:31, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
The problem is ongoing. Again, I can use other websites normally, but Wikipedia pages require several refreshes. As I am writing this, the page is not fully displayed. Geographyinitiative (talk) 03:36, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure about having the same problem, but in my case it was browser dependent. IE had a problem and Chrome had not. FredTC (talk) 03:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
Good advice. I switched between browsers and the problem is basically gone (or at least greatly reduced). Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:00, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
I may have spoken too soon- the problem is still there in the second browser, but not as bad. What could explain this? ([47]). --Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:18, 10 October 2019 (UTC)])Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:14, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
Well, back at my laptop, I experience no more problems. So I think I had a different problem that occured at the same time your problems started. I guess at wikimedia they were experimenting with browser dependent code. --FredTC (talk) 07:26, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
I had problems with pages not rendering at all (think the message was something unexpected went wrong) on two different iPads (iOS 9 and 11) but not on iPhone with iOS 12. Also errors in the Wikipedia app. Wednesday night Australia-east time, so would have been about midday UTC 9 Oct. Pelagic (talk) 22:46, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
I want to report that I am no longer having any problems in any browser. The situation got better and better over the course of the day yesterday and now my loading times have returned to normal. Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:33, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Notices vs Alerts

Mondays amirite

Why do we have distinct Alerts and Notices menus on the top line? They're both just, "things that need your attention", with no logical distinction that I can see of which things go in which menu. I'd rather save the screen real-estate and have them in a single menu. Perhaps there's a way to configure that which I haven't found yet?

Other minor point: is it just me, or does the Notices icon look more like a USB-B connector than a mailbox? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:33, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

What goes where is explained at Help:Notifications#Triggering_events. Basically, talk page messages, emails, mentions, and rights changes are alerts while thanks, reviews, and cross-wiki are notices. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:34, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
I personally see a distinction. Alerts are for communication, or things that directly affect your work (such as when your edit was reverted, user rights changes, etc.). Notices are editors thanking you, adding links to pages you created -- things that are interesting but don't necessarily need any follow-up. I'm not aware of a way to configure what types of notifications go where, but you can disable some of them at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. — MusikAnimal talk 17:11, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
I've had a user script on the back burner for ages that combines the two. It's a bit tricky. (To everyone) feel free to poke me in a month or so if you really want this, since I'm a bit busy at the moment. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:23, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
does the Notices icon look more like a USB-B connector than a mailbox? lol, was that ever intended to look like a mailbox? SD0001 (talk) 18:19, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
It's an inbox, like people (used to?) have on their desks. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:39, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Um, yeah, I wrote mailbox but meant inbox. In any case, I still think it looks like a USB-B connector. It's amazing how we're using representations of physical objects that haven't existing in decades to represent things in user interfaces. An icon of a floppy disk for save? When's the last time anybody saw a real floppy disk? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:56, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Today, in my desk drawer. Anyway, it's not a USB connector, it's a TV set. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:12, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
RoySmith, Off-topic for sure, but hilariously this weekend a family member needed to get photos off of a CD. It took 3 calls to find someone with an optical drive. Growing up we used audio tape cassettes in the C64 for data storage. I feel old now. SQLQuery me! 23:17, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Yup. I had a TRS-80, with audio tape storage. And, I do still have a CD drive. I use it every once in a while to rip tracks off some old CDs to load up into iTunes. The kids at the gym are listening to who-knows-what, but I'm rocking to The Dead and CCR. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:47, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
It's also worth noting that the mobile site (and Minerva skin in general) has them merged into one bell icon. Pelagic (talk) 02:08, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Read only maintenance window planned for ENWP at 14th Nov 05:00 AM UTC

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T234801

See https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2019-October/092653.html. ↠Pine (✉) 22:43, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

@Pine: see also MediaWiki_talk:Sitenotice#Banner_for_read-only_-_Thu_14th_November_from_05:00_to_05:30_AM_UTC where we declined a "banner" - as far as a WLN, short read only periods happen periodically and we don't normally post them. In this case, phab:T234801 also says that while it could be 30 mins, they are only expecting "1-2 minutes" of interruption. — xaosflux Talk 23:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: let's have the discussion about notifications at the Watchlist-messages talk page so that we don't have the same discussion in two places. Thanks, ↠Pine (✉) 06:47, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

User:Jackmcbarn/advancedtemplatesandbox.js

User:Jackmcbarn/advancedtemplatesandbox.js is a useful userscript used to extend Extension:TemplateSandbox to all spaces. However, it does not look like it is still maintained and Jackmcbarn appears to be inactive. For one, I had trouble using the userscript installer on it. I did get it to work finally. My question: is there an alternative? Is anyone willing to copy it and maintain it? I don't have the technical skills. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 01:11, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Coffeeandcrumbs, are there any specific issues with the script that need fixing? Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:34, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
It's only some 20 lines of javascript (though exceptionally useful!), and doesn't need any maintenance in particular. I do have a copy of it at User:SD0001/sandbox4.js that adds an extra feature - on sandboxes, the page name is pre-filled with the template name ("/sandbox" of the current page name being stripped). SD0001 (talk) 06:38, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
@SD0001: That is exactly the feature I was going to request. Installed. Thank you! You should add it to WP:USLIST. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 08:22, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Announcement: script-installer now an actual gadget

The User:Enterprisey/script-installer provides one-click installation and management of user scripts without editing common.js. I just moved it out of the "testing and development" gadget section, so it's ready for broader use. You can find it at the bottom of the "Editing" section at Preferences → Gadgets. This is exciting because common.js (and telling non-technical people to write javascript) can now be completely avoided. (I've had it as a gadget since March, but only in the testing and development section, and completely unannounced - 482 people managed to find and install it anyway.) Enterprisey (talk!) 00:29, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

@Enterprisey: at the very least this should have a link to a more thorough description of what this gadget does. If the main page is User:Enterprisey/script-installer - this should probably be moved to a Wikipedia: page, as "gadgets" are community maintained. — xaosflux Talk 01:21, 11 October 2019 (UTC)`
Good idea. I added a link. I was going to move the documentation page to WP:Script Installer, but right now it looks like that name is occupied by the documentation for Gary's "Script Installer" script, which I actually didn't know about until just now. We could convert that page to a disambiguation (mine, Equazcion's, Gary's, and other installer scripts that might be out there), I guess? Enterprisey (talk!) 01:55, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: Wikipedia:Script-installer maybe? And then just put a {{for}} or something on them? — xaosflux Talk 03:03, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: I don't think there's any need to move the documentation to the project space. What needs changing is the "Skin support" and "browser support" fields in the infobox. Pretty sure the script works properly on chrome and other browsers. As for skins, there are a few issues: (i) in the modern skin, background color is same as the text color - making the "Install | Manage user scripts" buttons invisible, (ii) in timeless, the cursor doesn't become a pointer when hovering over the buttons, (iii) in cologneblue, the buttons don't work at all. SD0001 (talk) 06:46, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Should all be fixed now. Thanks for the bug reports! Enterprisey (talk!) 00:05, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
Also, regarding the duplicate version at User:Enterprisey/script-installer.js, would it be a bad idea to replace its contents with something along the lines of
mw.loader.using( [ 'user.options', 'mediawiki.api' ] ).then( {
    if ( !mw.user.options.get( 'gadget-script-installer' ) ) {
        new mw.Api().saveOption( 'gadget-script-installer', '1' );
    }
} );
migrating all current script users to the gadget version? I think this is desirable because gadgets are cached and minimised and hence load faster. SD0001 (talk) 07:11, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

The website disappears for seconds then appears whenever I enter a page or refresh a page

So when I refresh or enter any Wikipedia page. The page appears then suddenly everything disappear for few seconds and then it appears. Anyone having the same issue? I am using mobile version.--SharabSalam (talk) 19:48, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

This is actually very annoying in large articles or pages like this.--SharabSalam (talk) 19:50, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
what mobile device and browser? My iPhone safari seems slightly problematic with newest OS. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:44, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
It happens in my laptop as well, when I switch to mobile version. I am using google chrome in both my mobile and my laptop.--SharabSalam (talk) 03:30, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Is this § Mobile glitch on page load?  Nixinova  T  C  00:47, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
Nixinova, yes.--SharabSalam (talk) 21:03, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Mobile glitch on page load

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T235092

When a page fully loads on the mobile Wikipedia, the top bar temporarily (~<1sec) becomes the height of the screen and the Wikipedia logo goes down to the bottom of the screen (see image).  Nixinova  T  C  00:43, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

See phab:T235092. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:01, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to set up a gallery where the gallery itself shows fifteen images randomly drawn from a pool of perhaps fifty or sixty images, and each time the page is refreshed or purged, the gallery resets with a new set of fifteen images from that pool. Is that possible? bd2412 T 02:30, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

@BD2412: Yes, an expansion to Module:Carousel (which returns a single image from a pool) should be able to meet your needs if you're happy to purge the page to get the new gallery. Unfortunately, Scribunto-based solutions don't refresh on a reload because of caching. You may be able to do better using client-side JavaScript, but it's doubtful whether you'll get agreement to implement JavaScript that purges a page without having to click okay on a popup. This is to prevent vandals loading the servers by repeatedly requesting a page reload at high speeds. --RexxS (talk) 03:18, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Interesting - thanks. bd2412 T 03:25, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Image creates strange blank space

Could you have a look at Lou Andreas-Salomé#Death? The image on the right creates a strange blank space. Thank you very much, --Epìdosis 12:05, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I have shifted the image to the spot before the maintenance tag, this looks better. SD0001 (talk) 12:47, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

It's 2019, why is unicode still so hard?

In Milutin Babović-Telegraph, the references are rendering as blobs of hex escape junk. If I copy-paste reference #3 into my sandbox, it renders properly in cyrillic characters. What's the issue here? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:34, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Ugh, I think I copies the wrong example. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:47, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
@RoySmith: are you referring to the bare url references? They are displaying exactly they way they were input, as bare urls. If you want to show a title, use a citation template and the title parameter. — xaosflux Talk 16:58, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
@RoySmith: see https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-1.2.1 and percent-encoding. TL;DR: URLs are written in US-ASCII by design. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:31, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

This is a comedy of errors. First, I was trying to use reFill to expand those bare references, and it wasn't doing anything with them. But, now I just tried that again, and it successfully converted the references. And, in the process of debugging why reFill wasn't doing anything, I managed to accidentally copy the wrong reference into my sandbox for testing, and failed to notice that. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:27, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-42

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else. [49]
  • In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.

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

23:32, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

How to find HTML markup

The dBase article has a hat stating there is HTML markup that should be removed. It's a long article, is there an easy way to find it all? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:55, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

I think this edit took care of them. DMacks (talk) 14:07, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Edit watchlist page groups

The Edit watchlist used to be organized in groups with their own titles in MonoBook. Now they are all in one group. I noticed 'Hide categorization of pages' in preferences, but unchecking that did nothing. I would like them to be separate again. Smarkflea (talk) 15:59, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

This is phab:T235137. --Izno (talk) 16:07, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Where is the article I created?

This is the problem edit. It is a copy and paste merge. I thought in order to make the move happen, the title of my article would change in order to preserve the history. I probably wrote the entire article so if that's the case it's not a real problem.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:29, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Several moves have caused some confusing logs. The page you merged content from currently has its page history at McNeely–Strachan House. You were the only contributor. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:36, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't think about that.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:49, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
I just thought of something. It's too late to do anything now, but what I had expected that a move would take place that would change the name of the article in my edit summary in the above edit. No, wait, that only happens in my contributions, where it says what article I edited.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:35, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Here is my solution. That should clear things up for anyone who is confused.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:40, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Who do we approach to delete search suggestions in Special:Log?

Hi all,

Recently, I wanted to see the Special Log of a fellow administrator (I'm deliberately not naming them). And when I clicked on their name in the "Performer" field, the search suggestions that sprung up were abusive. How does one get that removed? Thanks, Lourdes 10:59, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Either the abusively named accounts need to be renamed, or there is some form of suppression that can be placed on them. I think the latter is preferred. –xenotalk 11:45, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
I guess such accounts are reported to the stewards (privately) for global lock and suppression. This will remove them from the logs. SD0001 (talk) 12:03, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
I once submitted an oversight request (Ticket#2019042710003636) about this. The response was The content in question is under discussion by the Oversight team, and we will get back to you with our decision after we agree upon the appropriate course of action under the oversight policy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Oversight>. I'm not sure we can do anything about that, but something should certainly be done about it -- RoySmith (talk) 12:21, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Since all user accounts are now global, I don't think enwiki oversighters can do anything about this. But I'm guessing that stewards can rename the account, and then suppress the log action of the rename. So that the abusive name is completely gone from public records. SD0001 (talk) 13:15, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
I actually think they have a button that will do it all without the renaming. @Ajraddatz and MBisanz: jog my memory? –xenotalk 13:32, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Yes, stewards can suppress the account globally. It will remove all instances of the username, except where it has been manually written by someone else or auto-populated by rollback or undo actions. It will hide the abusive names from search results as well. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 14:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Likewise, local oversighters can take care of it here, but if we think it warrants suppression we'll just contact the stewards anyway to take care of things globally, so, you know, two birds one stone and all that. I believe renamers would specifically not rename such an account, as oversight/steward tools are built for the purpose and would be desired regardless, so creating a bunch of log entries across several wikis would be counterproductive. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:31, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
This is not an isolated phenomenon. Typing in the name of any number of regular names who have been around a while, it often pulls up such abusively named accounts. It's been that way for years on the ones I know about, and nothing has been done. Who knows how many there are out there like that. Maybe oversighters should have a system to get rid of these, without having to be notified one by one. — Maile (talk) 01:43, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Well, a lot has/is being done. There have been about 30 global suppressions of such names within the last week. But we do not have the capacity to go and find all of them ourselves, so we rely on reports for anything that is missed. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 22:53, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Article seems corrupted

I don't know whether someone might be able to take a look at Talk:Marathon_world_record_progression#Sections_are_displaying_in_the_wrong_order? The article seems somehow corrupted, but I don't know whether the issue will get any attention there. 2A00:23C5:4B91:AB00:6CCD:D471:9CF7:2B7F (talk) 22:14, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

If tables are displayed later then it's usually because the table end |} is missing. I have added it.[50] PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter:. Thank you, that's fixed it! 2A00:23C5:4B91:AB00:FCD5:6B0E:A54A:8E8E (talk) 23:07, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

New gadget proposal for undoing edit from mobile diffs

It has been proposed that a new gadget be installed that allows editors to revert edits from mobile diffs (Special:MobileDiff). See the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Gadget#proposal_for_undo_gadget. Thanks, SD0001 (talk) 08:15, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Page file size graph

Is there a tool that graphs the change to a page's file size over time? ―Mandruss ☎ 21:35, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Rough draft user script here: User:Cobaltcigs/HistoryGraph.js
  • Example output: screenshot
  • Activate by calling AddGraphLink(); function after pageload.
  • Adds a link called "Show graph" (see cursor arrow location) to action=history pages.
  • Depicts (in a popup div) whatever series of revisions is currently visible on said history page.
  • Has, therefore, a hard maximum of 5000.
  • Requires a browser capable of rendering an <svg> element defined within the html document. I don't have a list of these, but I'm guessing that means not Internet Explorer.
―cobaltcigs 10:12, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
@Cobaltcigs: Thanks for the effort! I don't know how to get more than 500 on a history page. Even if I did, 5,000 wouldn't be enough for my immediate need, which is to show fluctuation over a period of several years at a high-activity article. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:13, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
@Mandruss: There is also a chart showing yearly granularity at https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo. E.g. see the orange line at [51]. — MusikAnimal talk 17:26, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: Thanks. That looks like what is available via the "Page statistics" link on the history page. I need at least month granularity. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:41, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
@Mandruss: A history page typically shows 50 revisions, but can show anything from 1 to 5,000 revisions (if they exist). The links for 20, 50, 100, 250, 500 are merely samples of what's possible - to show any other amount, click any of those links (20 is best because the subsequent fetch and display is quickest), then go to your browser's address bar where you should find that the right-hand end of the displayed URL now looks something like this: &offset=&limit=20&action=history. Alter the value following limit= to any positive integer between 1 and 5000 inclusive and then press ↵ Enter. When doing this, make sure that you don't remove any ampersands by mistake; and don't use a comma in values 1000 up. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:58, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll try to remember that. It may come in handy, but as I said above it's no help in this case. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:00, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
@Cobaltcigs: Upon reflection, I guess I could make do with multiple 5000-revision graphs. The real problem is that (I'm guessing here) your X axis is scaled to revisions instead of time; i.e., the X-distance between consecutive revisions is the same whether they are a minute or a day apart. I'd need that fixed at a minimum, and it would then be extremely useful to have single-letter month labels on the X axis (JFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASOND...), with the year shown vertically below the J for each January (or horizontally below each JFMA). If any of this is more than you feel like taking on, I completely understand. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:52, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

So I'm re-learning how to use the API, which would allow getting the entire history through several incremental requests (to wit, 500 per). Above assumption is correct and the timestamps are not currently even looked at. Parsing these and converting to a floating point number is trivial. The hard part is deciding how to handle the inherent problem of scaling by time, which is that the ratio of revisions to amount of time represented by a pixel of screen width (let's call that, roughly, "edits per day") will vary drastically from one page to the next, or even between different eras of the same page. Depending on density, the graph's general appearance could vary from sand dunes, to a liar's polygraph, to calligraphy. So some sampling/averaging strategy might be needed to reduce noise (i.e. avoid trying to show several size values at the same x position). An onscreen interface to tweak the settings of same might also be helpful. ―cobaltcigs 13:11, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@Cobaltcigs: My strategy, were I working on the platform where I have competence, would be to plot the file sizes at 12:01 am on the first day of each month (UTC). You'll rarely have a revision at that time, but that file size will be shown in the last revision before that time. In other words you're not plotting all revisions, but only one per month – so density is not a factor. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:44, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
Assuming the risk that any given page had blanking or crapflooding vandalism at the end of one month (that went unreverted until the beginning of the next month) is low enough to be acceptable, then yes, that would be easier. ―cobaltcigs 07:23, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
That would be ok with me. So you think you can do this? Any time frame? ―Mandruss ☎ 14:08, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Alternatively, you could plot the average size for each month. You decide which is better, I'm ambivalent. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:08, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Update:

  • Screenshot
  • Singly grabs last revision before YYYY-MM-01T00:00:00Z of every month, from the API.
  • No longer connected to the history tab, is now a separate tab with its own "fake" action.
  • Takes about 10 seconds per year on my system.
  • Expands off the right side of the screen when graphing older pages.
  • Has month/year labels, positioning of which is a bit dodgy. Added longer vertical line to January for clarity.

―cobaltcigs 10:27, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

@Cobaltcigs: That looks pretty good. How about some extra guidance on installation and, if not self-explanatory, usage. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:37, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
So you should be able to importScript('User:Cobaltcigs/HistoryGraph.js');, then see a "graph" tab, right after the history tab of any page that has an edit history (i.e. neither a "Special:" page nor a red link). See red arrow in same-as-above screenshot (which uses "monobook" skin).
Note: Based on suspicion that you may instead be using the "vector" skin, I tested it there too. To my surprise it seems to function the same, except the "graph" link becomes hidden in a drop-down menu under a tab titled "More" rather than appearing as a separate tab. I have no idea why that is, or how to correct it. (I also noticed the "move" link is hidden in the same place, which seems like it would suck—glad I don't use vector.) All other skins remain untested at this time.
In any case after you find this link and click on it, navigating to a url with the fake &action=graph, the content area should begin populating with a list of timestamps to show API loading progress. This may take a few minutes on very old pages. After loading these, the fully rendered graph should appear in the same place. You may then have to scroll to the right to see the whole thing.
Note: I'm not aware of any way to activate rsvg on the server side to produce a PNG thumbnail from an arbitrary string of SVG/XML text (or from anything not uploaded in the File: namespace). Also (at least in my browser) right-clicking on the graph (an embedded SVG element) does not offer a "Save as..." option to download the SVG. So if that's what you actually want to do, it may require adding a "download" button using one of these techniques (which doesn't seem very difficult).
―cobaltcigs 07:46, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
@Cobaltcigs: Presently in vector, the menu does appear after the History button if you've a wide-enough monitor, but it looks oddly disfigured. You should use the code mw.util.addPortletLink('p-cactions', `/w/index.php?title=${wgPageName}&action=graph`, 'Graph', 'ca-graph') to place the menu button. Apart from being a one-liner rather than 10 lines, this will also correctly place the menu across all skins (which is inside the "more" dropdown for vector - i think that's ok as vector users are used to seeing custom script buttons in the more dropdown).
Also it looks like the script sending the api calls only after the previous one's response has been received, rather than send them parallely, making it quite slow for articles with long histories (eg. try it on the article History). SD0001 (talk) 08:32, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for the feedback. I'll go ahead and use the addPortletLink function which I was unaware of.
As for the API requests, I did it that way to ensure they're all received and pushed into the array in a predictable order. If they're all sent at the same time, I'd probably have to switch to some key-value mapping like sz[`${yyyy}-${mm}`] = parseInt(ms[1]); (which I know how to do), then convert this object into an array of sizes sorted by said YYYY-MM keys (which I also how to do), but only do this after determining that the last response is complete (which I really don't know how to do in a parallel-thread situation).
Also the number of months to go back is not known in advance. It only quits after finding a beginning-of-month timestamp with zero preceding edits. I suppose I could try looking forward from an impossibly early (pre-Wikipedia) timestamp to determine first edit date, then simultaneously fetch 1 edit backward from the first of every month between that date and the present. Seems like that approach would reveal an expected key/value count (of the object above) to determine completion of the last request. But from what code in what thread? Should it just keep checking back at an arbitrary setInterval()?
―cobaltcigs 09:08, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
@Cobaltcigs: Ok, it's working. Yes, I'm Vector skin. AFAIK that's still the default skin so it's going to be the most commonly used by far. I'm happy with Vector.
I do need a way to capture the graph so I can share it in a discussion. For my immediate purpose I can just take a screenshot of the right end of the graph, showing May 2014 through present. Whether that will be adequate for future needs by me and others, I don't know. I don't care to attempt one of those techniques that don't seem very difficult (to you).
That means the Y axis is not on screen, so it would be great to have it repeated on the right side. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:30, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

I've added the download button. SVG file should appear in your browser's download folder with a title like HistoryGraph-${wgPageName}.svg. Converting to other formats is left as an exercise. GIMP is recommendable. ―cobaltcigs 10:14, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Why don't I see any section edit links at Template:Talk archive navigation/doc? As a control case, page Template:Talk header/doc appears with section edit links as expected. Possibly relevant:

Looking at the page source for section Usage in each case, I see this: 

<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="Usage">Usage</span></h3>

and 

<h2><span class="mw-headline" id="Usage">Usage</span><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Template:Talk_header/doc&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Usage">edit</a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></h2>

respectively. Is this because someone went straight to H3, skipping level 2 headers in the doc? Why should that suppress edit links, even if it is an unrecommended habit per MOS:SECTIONS? Mathglot (talk) 22:38, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Template:Talk archive navigation/doc transcludes {{Talk archive navigation}} in the "Optional parameters" section. That template adds a __NOEDITSECTION__, presumably to discourage inexperienced editors from replying to archived messages. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:44, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
To amplify: heading levels (n.b. not header levels) have nothing to do with it. In the rare cases that a page has no section edit links and nothing is using or transcluding __NOEDITSECTION__, it usually comes down to bad Wikimarkup - such as a pair of opening braces that are not followed by a valid template name, and are also not balanced until much later in the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:24, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, @Suffusion of Yellow and Redrose64: In that case, shouldn't the __NOEDITSECTION__ be enclosed inside <includeonly>...</includeonly>? Mathglot (talk) 23:58, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
That wouldn't matter. The template is transcluded in the documentation so it would still run code in <includeonly>...</includeonly>. There are other ways to avoid activating __NOEDITSECTION__ but it's hardly worth it for a single doc page. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:06, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
K, thanks. This page just stuck out, because I hadn't seen that behavior before. Am willing to let it drop here. Thanks again, for all the responses! Mathglot (talk) 00:14, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Final thought: kind of unrelated—I think—but since we're all here: shouldn't all those H3 headings at Template:Talk archive navigation/doc be H2's instead? Mathglot (talk) 20:48, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Some of them, yes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:49, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm also missing section edit links on Portal talk:Australia; there may be a transcluded __NOEDITSECTION__ but it's not obvious. Certes (talk) 10:58, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
I found the right place with Special:ExpandTemplates and removed __NOEDITSECTION__ from the output with {{replace}}.[52] PrimeHunter (talk) 11:25, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Wiki-Map

I have been using Wiki-Map to locate articles to add to categories but after I click "Show Map" and it starts showing the places I get "This page didn't load Google Maps correctly. See the JavaScript console for technical details.". This appeared to be something that started happening in 2016 when Google reduced its free maps or something but with Wiki-Map this didn't happen until a few weeks ago (although I've only been using it a few months). Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:30, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Crouch, Swale, That site isn't hosted on Wikimedia servers, so you'll have to contact them directly using the link at the bottom of the page. There are almost certainly other tools that serve a similar function, such as toolforge:wikishootme. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 13:04, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll use that then especially given that is looks like it has more features. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:09, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

How does Module:Labelled list hatnote convert number sign hash marks to section symbols?

{{see also}} is mostly the Lua code at Module:Labelled list hatnote. Where and how does it change wikilinks to specific sections like Article#Section into Article § Section? EllenCT (talk) 00:46, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

The magic happens in Module:Hatnote, specifically in the "Format link" section. See also {{Format link}} if you're just looking for a way to make that link formatting yourself. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:59, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Ewwww. More importantly, why does it do this and how do you make it not? ―cobaltcigs 16:42, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

You shouldn't. Why it does it is because # isn't understood as an indicator of a section IRL. §, the section sign, is. We even have a template for that. Nardog (talk) 16:52, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
The scope of such understanding is, roughly, lawbooks vs. the entire internet. But I'd be okay with this, given a software change that makes '§' (a) an illegal title character, and (b) interchangeable with '#'—in exactly the same way all space characters exist as aesthetically favorable alternatives to '_' in links. This way linking to [[List of Foo§Bar]] would produce <a href="/wiki/List_of_Foo#Bar" title="List of Foo">List of Foo§Bar</a> and pasting a title with '§' into the address bar would behave exactly like that title existed as a section redirect. Then we'd all be happy. But pretending on such a broad scale that this equivalence exists when it doesn't is a WP:PLA violation. ―cobaltcigs 15:02, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #2 – Mobile editing and talk pages – October 2019

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

Inside this newsletter, the Editing team talks about their work on the mobile visual editor, on the new talk pages project, and at Wikimania 2019.

Help

What talk page interactions do you remember? Is it a story about how someone helped you to learn something new? Is it a story about how someone helped you get involved in a group? Something else? Whatever your story is, we want to hear it!

Please tell us a story about how you used a talk page. Please share a link to a memorable discussion, or describe it on the talk page for this project. The team would value your examples. These examples will help everyone develop a shared understanding of what this project should support and encourage.

Talk Pages

The Talk Pages Consultation was a global consultation to define better tools for wiki communication. From February through June 2019, more than 500 volunteers on 20 wikis, across 15 languages and multiple projects, came together with members of the Foundation to create a product direction for a set of discussion tools. The Phase 2 Report of the Talk Page Consultation was published in August. It summarizes the product direction the team has started to work on, which you can read more about here: Talk Page Project project page.

The team needs and wants your help at this early stage. They are starting to develop the first idea. Please add your name to the "Getting involved" section of the project page, if you would like to hear about opportunities to participate.

Mobile visual editor

The Editing team is trying to make it simpler to edit on mobile devices. The team is changing the visual editor on mobile. If you have something to say about editing on a mobile device, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

Edit Cards

What happens when you click on a link. The new Edit Card is bigger and has more options for editing links.

Toolbar

The editing toolbar is changing in the mobile visual editor. The old system had two different toolbars. Now, all the buttons are together. Tell the team what you think about the new toolbar.
  • In September, the Editing team updated the mobile visual editor's editing toolbar. Anyone could see these changes in the mobile visual editor.
    • One toolbar: All of the editing tools are located in one toolbar. Previously, the toolbar changed when you clicked on different things.
    • New navigation: The buttons for moving forward and backward in the edit flow have changed.
    • Seamless switching: an improved workflow for switching between the visual and wikitext modes.
  • Feedback: You can try the refreshed toolbar by opening the mobile VisualEditor on a smartphone. Please post your feedback on the Toolbar feedback talk page.

Wikimania

The Editing Team attended Wikimania 2019 in Sweden. They led a session on the mobile visual editor and a session on the new talk pages project. They tested two new features in the mobile visual editor with contributors. You can read more about what the team did and learned in the team's report on Wikimania 2019.

Looking ahead

  • Talk Pages Project: The team is thinking about the first set of proposed changes. The team will be working with a few communities to pilot those changes. The best way to stay informed is by adding your username to the list on the project page: Getting involved.
  • Testing the mobile visual editor as the default: The Editing team plans to post results before the end of the calendar year. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: VisualEditor as mobile default project page.
  • Measuring the impact of Edit Cards: The Editing team hopes to share results in November. This study asks whether the project helped editors add links and citations. The best way to stay informed is by adding the project page to your watchlist: Edit Cards project page.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Is there a way to force a purge of PAGESINCATEGORY ?

{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Articles with redirect hatnotes needing review|pages}} is showing a higher count (2) than the actual number of pages in the category. Is there a way to force a purge of this counter to get it synched with the actual count again? wbm1058 (talk) 18:56, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Pretty sure there are archived threads on this, also phab tickets. It's why the word "approximately" was added to the message "The following 200 pages are in this category, out of approximately 9,999 total". In short: it's a bug, they know, they've not fixed it yet. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:20, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Oh, I see: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 46 § Incorrect counts from PAGESINCATEGORY function. (September 2008) – wbm1058 (talk) 19:42, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
But T15683, {{PAGESINCATEGORY}} sometimes returns a negative number, was closed in May 2008 after r34870, "if the number of pages (or subcats or media files) is negative on initialization, we just do a recount."
More recently, T16237, PAGESINCATEGORY should differentiate between pages and subcategories, was closed in 2012 after this update.
Added PAGESINCATEGORY: magic word in April 2008.
My phabricator search isn't finding any open bug report for the issue reported on Village Pump in September 2008. Is it possible that a formal bug report was never submitted for this? wbm1058 (talk) 11:26, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: to your specific question, it looks like phab:T85696, for the general problem it appears to have all rolled up in to phab:T221795. — xaosflux Talk 11:43, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
So, having been annoyed by this for over a month, and losing my patience in waiting for a better fix, I tried deleting and restoring the category, and, voila, the count was refreshed to the correct number! wbm1058 (talk) 02:48, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Thumbnails in Category

Why does Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons reviewed by a human show image file thumbnails if I edit and preview it, but not if I just access it normally? -- Begoon 02:58, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

It contains {{file category}}, which contains (as a default setting) the __NOGALLERY__ directive, which is ignored on category preview, which has been known about since the feature was first added in 2006. ―cobaltcigs 03:11, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
cobaltcigs, thank you. I added a |showthumbs= to {{file category}} to allow overriding that default, and it works now. Cheers. -- Begoon 03:28, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

It looks like that template is supposed to infer whether to show/hide galleries based on the {{{free}}} parameter, so you'll want to be mindful of image copyright status when overriding. But in this particular case (where humans have deemed the files suitable to copy to commons), free=yes seems like a reasonable presumption. Simply using that would have the same effect. ―cobaltcigs 04:27, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

A fair point, but I think it should be ok here for the reasons you say. You can trust me to be over-elaborate when solving a problem, but I think I'll leave the parameter there anyway as doing no real harm. Thanks. -- Begoon 05:08, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Although, on second thoughts, I've rolled back the changes, because once I got to browsing that category there are quite a few "questionable" images in it, where I'm not convinced the "free" licensing is completely solid. The "human" reviews seem quite a bit less thorough than I would have hoped. I can always take advantage of the "preview" quirk and use it that way if I want to. -- Begoon 05:40, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Preserving my anonymity when not logged in

I have a question about how best to preserve my anonymity when not logged in. I have one solution in mind that would require IA help. But before I try WP:IANB, I thought I'd air the issue here first, to see if there may be a better/easier solution.

My goal is to avoid inavertently making changes when when not logged in, so I don't out my IP if I save something with a recognizable pattern. I imagine that one approach, is to somehow warn myself before hitting "Publish". I've taken a sort of mirror-image approach to this, via a change to my common.css, which turns my "Publish" button green when logged in, as suggested at the Help Desk in 2012. This doesn't warn me when I'm not logged in, but it (hopefully) will get me used to a green Publish button, so that when I'm not logged in and don't see it, my spidey sense will tingle. Only, I have a crappy spidey sense, so I don't think that will work. (At that same discussion, someone pointed to a "MediaWiki: Prevent anon editing script" that apparently works with Firefox—not my habitual browser—but in any case, that link is now dead.)

The idea I had for the solution, is to copy the code I have in my common.css, to [[User:<my-actual-ip-address>/common.css]], and change the color of the Publish button to red (and maybe also add a CSS ::before selector to generate added text "Are you sure?" right before the button as well). So, I was going to request an IA to add the common.css for me (after passing the IP via email, and checking with a CU, if necessary, to verify it's me). But that's rather costly in limited human resources, and it occurs to me that there might be an easier or better way. Is there? Mathglot (talk) 01:16, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Not an answer to your specific question, but you might be interested in m:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:21, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
Being able to run scripts for the next user of any IP address you use would be a disaster waiting to happen. For this reason you need to be logged in to run customisations in your userspace on Wikipedia. The solution would be to host the CSS in your browser - there are probably many extensions/plugins/browsers capable of doing that. I personally use the green button thing, as well as some other UI changes when I'm logged in, and I find it actually kinda works. -- zzuuzz (talk) 01:22, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
This. Assuming you usually use the same browser, you can do tons of stuff, the page source has information such as the logged in user information - if it is not there you could just remove the button with local javascript. — xaosflux Talk 01:36, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
Custom JS and CSS are loaded only for logged-in editors. Any code in the js/css subpage of an IP address won't work. The solution to your problem, as mentioned above, is to deploy custom JS/CSS through your browser. SD0001 (talk) 07:01, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
@Mathglot: Your mirror-image approach is the "right" way to do this. It's what I do and while it might take a little bit, once you adjust, seeing a different color will be quite jarring. There are other things you can tweak too, for an even greater difference, and that's not even counting using a different skin or noticing your gadgets aren't loading. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:56, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
The dead script link is mirrored at https://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/show/7209 with source code at https://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/review/7209. You can ask for help at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing if you name your browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

The only good thing about them changing the default skin from monobook to vector is that I immediately notice when I'm not logged in. ―cobaltcigs 06:56, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Template "Whos Who" not working

Template:Who's Who has stopped generating the correct links, at least when the type = was is selected, returning a 404 error. DuncanHill (talk) 20:25, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

I have fixed it by simply ignoring type = was.[53] I couldn't make any save of the template, not even a null edit, until I removed transclusion of the documentation. All attempts failed with "Syntax error in JSON (help)". I never learned TemplateData syntax so I'm not trying to fix Template:Who's Who/doc. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:22, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, the template hadn't been changed since it was working. DuncanHill (talk) 22:32, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
TemplateData needs to be in valid JSON format. When there are single braces { ... } these indicate an object, which is a comma-separated list of zero or more name:value pairs; there should not be a comma after the last pair. This edit by Snaevar (talk · contribs) fixed it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a wonderful trap awaiting template editors: "Syntax error in JSON" when trying to edit a template, and the JSON programming code is in the (unprotected) documentation. I dropped a note at a MediaWiki talk page, but it might be worth a phab bug report. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:02, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
Based on a search "Syntax error in JSON" intitle:doc we have at least 68 such traps lying around. I was unable to save a null edit on any of the tested corresponding templates, e.g. Template:Douban/doc. Maybe we should add a tracking category to MediaWiki:Templatedata-invalid-parse. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:57, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
AFAICT, the problem here is explained in T214984, which basically says that the old parser, HHVM, used to (mistakenly) allow saving of some buggy JSON, and the new parser, PHP7, does not. I think this means that if you try to edit a buggy page, the new parser will complain. The solution, I think, is to edit the /doc subtemplate, copy and paste the TemplateData code into JSONlint, fix it, and paste it back into the /doc subtemplate. Then you'll be able to edit the template. There may be a simpler way, and what I know about all of this couldn't fill a thimble, so feel free to correct/strikeout/trout anything I got wrong.
And yes, please add a tracking category that will appear in the list at Special:TrackingCategories. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:06, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Special:TrackingCategories lists tracking categories which are part of MediaWiki itself. A wiki cannot add new categories there. We can make subcategories like Category:Templates with TemplateData errors in Category:Wikipedia template cleanup or the large Category:Tracking categories. But it appears that HHVM use is ending and Rchard2scout has already fixed most doc pages in my search so maybe there will soon be no need for tracking this issue. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:38, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I saw this discussion, and thought I'd just clean it all up. Sometimes a bit of honest gnoming is the easiest solution. Most of them were commas after last items (which aren't allowed, which I think is a stupid requirement of the JSON standard), and some newlines which had to be converted to \n. PrimeHunter's search now turns up zero results, and I expect in the future it will be practically impossible to make new mistakes, given almost everyone is probably being moved over to the new editors/parsers. rchard2scout (talk) 10:07, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
I have linked Category:Tracking categories in MediaWiki:Trackingcategories-summary which is displayed at top of Special:TrackingCategories. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:49, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Problem using JSON with <mapframe>

There is a problem using json data with <mapframe>, which now generates the error "<mapframe>: Couldn't parse JSON: Control character error, possibly incorrectly encoded". It seems to be a change in how control characters are handled. I fixed the map at List of state highways in Kerala by replacing linefeeds with "\n" (this edit). This is unsatisfactory as it makes it very difficult to understand the query. Any ideas what changed and how to fix it or where to report it?   Jts1882 | talk  09:21, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@Jts1882: This is related to #Template "Whos Who" not working above. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:50, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
Ah, T214984 mentioned above explains the problem. This change to the JSON parsing affects a large number of pages using JSON data with maps. Is it possible that there could be a general fix through <mapframe> or will all the pages have to be fixed individually? I'm thinking it will have to be the latter.   Jts1882 | talk  13:17, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
It looks like there are roughly 86 of these in article and template space. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:23, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
Here's one way to fix the problem, but Jts1882 is correct that it makes the query a lot less easy to read. Is there a better way? Wikicode can use HTML comments to format long lines to make them more readable; I don't know if there is a way in JSON to achieve a similar effect. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:50, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
JSON doesn't have comments. 77 of those 86 may be sorted by fixing Template:Kerala State Highways Network. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:26, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
I've fixed that one with "\n" additions, but it doesn't clear 77 instances. A number of them use map data pages such as Wikipedia:Map data/Australian LGAs/Tasmania/Central Highlands and have additional linefeeds at the beginning and end, plus a comma at the end. I've fixed some of them.   Jts1882 | talk  17:07, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Side note: There's some explanation about JSON in templates at mw:Topic:V6u2mpy11qiu9705, if anyone wants background information. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Tools for removing non-section redirects in templates?

Is there a tool that would help with removing redirects in templates? For example Template:Aboriginal peoples of the Northern Territory still has over a dozen.Naraht (talk) 07:08, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

@Naraht: I added the following to my Special:MyPage/common.css, which makes it easier to identify redirects so that I can manually resolve them:
.mw-redirect {
	background: url(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Insert_redirect.png/12px-Insert_redirect.png) center right no-repeat;
	padding-right: 13px;
}
It will make redirect links look like this. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:46, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
I use similar CSS, .navbox .mw-redirect, .vertical-navbox .mw-redirect { font-style: italic; color: red; }, which makes redirects stand out as italic and red. --Izno (talk) 23:45, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
For this I've found using a background-color works better. Seems like italic red would be barely distinguishable from an actual red link (referring, perhaps, to a film title) which may appear elsewhere in the same navbox. Another option would be keeping the link text blue but adding a differently colored underline like .mw-redirect { border-bottom: 1px solid red; }. ―cobaltcigs 08:25, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

I think by "removing redirects" the OP probably means:

While editing the template, click some button to replace each redirect link with a link to its target (unless said target contains #, which would suggest the redirect may someday become a separate article)

You'd need javascript with some API calls to determine these things. The suggested CSS would only alert you, prior to editing, that redirects are present (which the OP already realizes). ―cobaltcigs 06:12, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

cobaltcigs, Izno that is a good restatement. I'd be just fine with an external tool as well, but AutoWikiBrowser doesn't appear to be that tool.Naraht (talk) 08:12, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Try this: User:Cobaltcigs/NavboxStuff.js

  • Activates automatically when you edit a template identified as a navbox (including from the "v·t·e" links). Let me know if that's too extreme and you need a separate button.
  • Disregards redirects that point to a section anchor, as specified.
  • Normalizes irregular spacing found in any #redirect [[ Like_this _ _ shit__]].
  • Fully replaces, rather than piping, any link that wasn't piped before. e.g. [[Jalapeno]] becomes [[Jalapeño]], never [[Jalapeño|Jalapeno]] (the latter pattern is a common problem).

Feedback is welcome. ―cobaltcigs 12:41, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

WMF sites down

Did anybody get a 503 backend Fetch error upon trying to access any Wikimedia site, in the past few minutes? ∯WBGconverse 17:32, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Winged Blades of Godric, it is likely. WMF Ops is aware and working on it. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:36, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
It's best to report these to Phabricator so they are aware of the incidents and how widely it affects (they have stats anyway). --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:56, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Public Oversight warning template

Current draft exists here and template should be called {{uw publicoversight}}. Please approve. Monniasza talk 16:42, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Do you accept my template?
Pings don't work unless signed, there is no template acceptance process (and by transitivity, Xaosflux cannot be related to one, they are an intadmin though). --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:44, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

404 at wmflabs edits by user

I'm getting 404 when clicking the Find edits by user link on the History page of articles. I.e., usersearch.py. Mathglot (talk) 10:57, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

@Σ: maintains that tool. Σ, is it coming back? If not we can just remove that from the history legend. — xaosflux Talk 11:36, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
You can use User:Ale jrb/Scripts/userhist.js for finding edits by user on a page. SD0001 (talk) 14:14, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
There is also XTools Top Edits. I have changed the link in Histlegend to point there, until Sigma's tool is restored. — MusikAnimal talk 15:32, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
Odd, because I'd restarted it just a few days ago. But I restarted it again and it is now up and running again. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:23, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, Mathglot, and MusikAnimal:→Σσς. (Sigma) 04:24, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks all! Mathglot (talk) 08:33, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
I was going to report the same problem. It is still not working with me.--SharabSalam (talk) 18:46, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Problems with site?

Is anyone else having issues with the site. Some of the wikipedia pages I search for lead to getting a "wikimedia is having a problem at the moment" page.

The problem tracker sites are giving slight bumps up in the last hour for problems with the site.

Anyone experiencing similar or has some knowledge? Nosebagbear (talk) 21:47, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Same thing is happening with Commons. Looks like a global problem. Masum Reza📞 21:51, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Expansion depth and template include size exceeded on multiple cite templates

It seems that Template:Cite web is expanding too much, so is hitting the mediawiki expansion limit and template include size limit. This (at least for me) is causing the documentation template not to render. Were there any changes to the module which caused this or was/is the global loading issue for sites to blame? Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:01, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Raising it here as it would and is causing confusion to new users. Purging does not seem to fix the issue either. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:04, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
Also, no changes have been made to Module:Citation/CS1 recently. A change might have been made in a template / module used by this module, but I haven't been able to see anything obvious. As far as I am aware, it is only affecting the template page and not the output in pages. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:12, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
Furthermore, the limits being exceeded are also on Cite journal, book, news, AV media, magazine, sign, press release, report, encyclopedia and others. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:16, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
Where? Because cs1|2 templates are at the end of the page they are often the symptom of just-too-many-templates on the page.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:52, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It was this edit by Trappist the monk (talk · contribs), which I have reverted. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:53, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
Redrose64, all good now then. Thanks for the help. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:57, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
Give me a page where this has happened. So far, none of the pages that I've checked in either of Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded and Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded use Module:Lang (and MediaWiki is rapidly clearing those categories).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:04, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
1440s, 2019 Belarusian Premier League, 2019 Moldovan "A" Division, Acephali, Bangkok, Capital ẞ, Edward V of England, Friday, several others. To find more, go to Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded, choose a page, and click the "Edit" tab. Then check the "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" list, and if Module:Lang is present, save without changing (i.e. perform a WP:NULLEDIT), then return to the cat and refresh the page. If the article disappears from the cat, then it was affected. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:15, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

"Editor Interaction Analyzer" is down

Resolved

Back up. --qedk (t 桜 c) 07:06, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Editor Interaction Analyzer🔖--Moxy 🍁 04:47, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

@Σ: Hopefully just needs a restart. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:54, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Conditional templates and file extensions

For a template that is transcluded in File: namespace pages, is there a way to apply conditional template code—e.g., placing the file in one category versus another—based on the file's extension (e.g., ".jpg" versus ".ogg")? Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 20:37, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Sure, {{PAGENAME}} gets the name including a file extension. {{lc:{{#invoke:String|match|{{PAGENAME}}|%.(%w*)$||||}}}} retrieves the file extension as lowercase (empty if none is found). Then you can e.g. use switch:
{{#switch:{{lc:{{#invoke:String|match|{{PAGENAME}}|%.(%w*)$||||}}}}
|jpg = ...
|png = ...
|gif = ...
|ogg = ...
}}
PrimeHunter (talk) 21:12, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
Thank you very much! -- Black Falcon (talk) 21:31, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Created {{file extension}} based on above. ―cobaltcigs 14:24, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Script installer

I added several scripts using the install feature, but it prompted me to okay the import each time. I then clicked the box to not show this again and now I can't install with one click. Any help is appreciated. Than you. Demetrius Tremens (talk) 15:45, 20 October 2019 (UTC) Nevermind. Seems to have fixed itself. Demetrius Tremens (talk) 15:55, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Why are unpatrolled Wikidata changes rendered immediately at Wikipedia?

There is currently a discussion going on at Wikidata that folks here may be interested in commenting on. In brief: a vandal's change to the "description" field at the Wikidata Gay (Q592) item showed up immediately as the "short description" at the top of Wikipedia's Gay article.

Although it affects Wikipedia, the locus of the problem appears to be Wikidata, so the discussion is being hosted there. Your feedback would be appreciated at WD:CHAT. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 01:15, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

It's for precisely this sort of problem that we've gone to the trouble of setting up WP:WikiProject Short descriptions and are working on supplying 2 million articles with local short descriptions. The locus of this particular problem is not at Wikidata. It's at Gay where someone on a mission decided to remove the local short description "Term for person with same-gender attraction" and left the article open to display vandalism from Wikidata, which inevitably happened soon after. --RexxS (talk) 02:56, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
RexxS, If that is truly the reason that the WikiProject was set up, then I have to say I am stunned. It sounds like you are saying, "Since Wikidata can't be trusted, we're creating millions of entries on Wikipedia in order to override it." Or am I misreading you? I had assumed that the reason for WP:WPSHORTDESC was to supply descriptions until Wikidata, which is a smaller group, could catch up. Was I wrong about that?
Secondly, I can assure you that the editor who removed the local short description at Gay is not "someone with a mission", and certainly did not remove the value in order to leave the article open to vandalism, but to allow it to default to a value judged better at the time. User:Crossroads is a respected editor who is HERE for no other reason than to improve the encyclopedia, as evidenced by his numerous improvements at articles and his cogent and informed reasoning at Talk pages.
As far as where the locus of the problem resides, if our trust level of Wikidata is such that we are overriding its data through great effort at Wikipedia, that means the problem resides with Wikidata, especially if it's true that fields are "inevitably" vandalized there. The fact that we are fixing the problem here, is equivalent to stopping the importation of faulty car parts from a bad supplier; we may have fixed it, but the problem is not on our side. If this is what's happening here, then one solution would be to shut down importation of Wikidata short description until it is judged to be reliable enough. Are we to the point where that is a discussion that needs to be aired? Mathglot (talk) 18:24, 13 October 2019 (UTC) updated to redact double quotes (even though the strike is too low); by Mathglot (talk) 20:37, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
The WikiProject was created after the close of Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_145#RfC:_Populating_article_descriptions_magic_word. There is already a consensus to eventually shut down the use of Wikidata for short descriptions, but the WMF won't allow it until there are enough local short descriptions. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:48, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
@Mathglot: No, what I'm saying is that "Since the description field on Wikidata has no means of being sourced, it is unverifiable and therefore directly contradicts WP:5P2: All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy, citing reliable, authoritative sources." Nobody here asked the WMF to force the contents of Wikidata description fields into English Wikipedia's articles, and despite a strong consensus against them, the WMF team refused to turn them off. The compromise that was hashed out was that we were given a new "magic word" that allowed us to use local descriptions instead of those drawn from Wikidata; and that the Wikidata feed would be turned off when 2,000,000 articles had local short descriptions. That's why we have the WikiProject. We are actually creating descriptions for articles that are locally editable, subject to our anti-vandalism patrols, and governed by the English Wikipedia's sourcing policies, in particular BLP. Those descriptions could be exported to Wikidata, of course, but I'm not sure of their value there, since each language has its own description and (unlike most other parts of Wikidata) they are not intrinsically useful to other projects.
As for Crossroads, an edit summary of Wikidata description is more accurate. "Gay" is used far more for men than for women; and homosexuality is most often referred to in RS as same-sex attraction and not same-gender attraction. While our article lead on Homosexuality allows for both, it puts "sex" first. certainly had the appearance to me of someone trying to make a point through original research - YMMV. The effect, of course, was the same whatever the intent: it opened up our article for vandalism from Wikidata and left it so that editors had no indication that they had to go to another project to fix it. If you think that my use of "inevitably" deserves scare quotes, then perhaps looking at the edit history of gay (Q592) might persuade you otherwise.
"if our trust level of Wikidata is such that we are overriding its data through great effort at Wikipedia, that means the problem resides with Wikidata" That's an incorrect inference. The problem resides with a WMF development team who unilaterally decided that it was okay to import unsourceable information into the English Wikipedia against the advice of enwiki editors. A better analogy for us fixing the problem locally would be the situation where we are importing faulty car parts from an otherwise good supplier; we say we don't want any more faulty ones; but the importer keeps sending them and we are forced to keep using them until we can make them ourselves locally. Whose side is the problem on now?
Look, I know I'm coming across as exasperated, but that's what I am. I've been wrestling with this problem since it was first proposed, and I've explained what will go wrong a hundred times, and I'm sick of saying "I told you so" after the event. For others who still aren't familiar with the issues, please read at least some of the discussions linked from Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions#History 2. Then if you want to criticise me for being annoyed, I'll be happier to accept it. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 20:21, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
No, I don't want to criticize you, on the contrary, I want to thank you for taking the time to give such an informative background, for something you've obviously had to say more than once before. I'm just sorry you're frustrated. (I know what that feels like, in a completely different corner of the encyclopedia; happy to discuss that over on my Talk page.) I also appreciate your extending the analogy in order to give me a better view of what's going on. I'm going to have a look at some links to try and get up to speed, and then try to help out on the project a bit, as I'm able, to try to get you to 2M. For what it's worth, my entry point to this whole issue was also from 5P2, when I realized what was going on at Gay and that we had no control over the reliability of such data; so you might say I got here by the side door. Thanks again for your feedback, and your work on the project. Mathglot (talk) 20:32, 13 October 2019 (UTC) P.S. Those were intended as real quotes, not scare quotes, sorry. Mathglot (talk) 20:37, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
I appreciate Mathglot's explanation of what I did. I'd also like to point out that the shortdesc I removed (undid, actually) had been up for less than 1 hour. It was not some long standing thing. And the meaning of that shortdesc was significantly different, as I explained. I don't think I'm expected to cite a bunch of sources in a shortdesc or edit summary. Rather, the shortdesc should be based on the sourced content in the article, which the one I removed certainly was not. -Crossroads- (talk) 21:00, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
One thing I think I've learned from this, is that in cases where the Wikidata description at a given point in time happens to be better than the content given in the {{short desc}} template on a Wikipedia article, rather than simply remove the template from the article and let the text from Wikidata be imported by default, instead, we should copy and paste the value from Wikidata into the template. That way, if the Wikidata item is vandalized later, we've already preserved the good value in the template, and the vandalized value won't be displayed. Adding Crossroads. Mathglot (talk) 22:02, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing. -Crossroads- (talk) 23:37, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
I know the whole short descriptions stuff has already been exhaustively discussed, but is there an equivalent to our ClueBot NG over at Wikidata? I feel like the Wikidata change that Mathglot showed would've been caught by it. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:11, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
Enterprisey: Wikidata uses ORES to flag edits. ORES did flag the change Mathglot found.(lookup) Whether they have an bot using that information, I do not know. In addition, their main extension, Wikibase, blocks edits on statements which are not used as the community intended. Wikidata has of course also common anti-vandalism extensions like AbuseFilter, etc.--Snaevar (talk) 00:56, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Actually, one other thought, RexxS, inspired by your comment,

I've been wrestling with this problem since it was first proposed, and I've explained what will go wrong a hundred times... please read at least some of the discussions linked from <link>...

A situation like this is tailor-made for exposition in an essay. Have you considered writing one? Make a distillation of all your best arguments from your hundred explanations, and lay it all out in one place. Those past discussions about the topic that aren't already wikilinked in the essay body, you can throw into the See also section. Then, when the 101st person (me?) comments or asks about it, point them at the essay. Sounds like you'd have plenty of company to help write it. Willing to start one? Sure seems like there's a need, and that others would find it useful to enlist in their discussions, as well. Mathglot (talk) 21:54, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Pinging DannyH (WMF), as the one took the lead on the Foundation side when there was there was a clear consensus to roll back deployment of this (mis)feature. Danny, please turn off the Wikidata descriptions already. Alsee (talk) 17:00, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Marking minor edits in mobile

I have recently been editing a lot from mobile, and the main thing I'm missing is the ability to mark edits as minor. Would it be possible to add that feature? Sdkb (talk) 22:02, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

phab:T123694. --Izno (talk) 22:10, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the link! Sdkb (talk) 23:27, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_176&oldid=1169880245"