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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Desktop version on mobile being too wide occasionally

Example screenshot

At Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 198#Global projects being too wide since yesterday, I reported how on some projects are being so wide that text there is illegible, that hadn't yet affected enwiki. Today, it finally did. But it is very picky on when it works. Whenever, I click "open in a new tab" *any* (diff|hist) link found at Watchlist, the resultant page is too wide with a 70-30 probability, but that goes away on refreshing. On the other hand, if I click "open in a new tab" from normal content pages, width remains normal the same thing happens. This issue is a new one. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:55, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

What kind of mobile device is this ? Screen dimensions, browser ? Also is your zoom set to 100% ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:21, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Android 11 smartphone using MS Edge. All zoom/accessibility settings at system default. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 19:40, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
To be clear, the issues are happening globally on all projects. On Vector legacy, things are extremely stretched (see screenshot above) and minimised. On vector-2022, there are long empty spaces on either side of the screen and the actual content is minimised. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 11:05, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
Ayo, has this issue become WONTFIXed, or is there some phab out there? This thread is completely silent. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 22:32, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
On Safari on an iPad, every time a page loads it’s zoomed by approx 20% so too wide for the screen. Resetting the zoom to 100% (cmd-0) fixes it until you refresh or visit another page. I assume this is the same issue.—Northernhenge (talk) 20:50, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom and Northernhenge: are both of you seeing that your browser has a zoom level set? AFAIK, we can't force your browser to change a zoom level; have you tried resetting your browser to default settings and/or reinstalling your browser? Do you only have this problem with a specific browser? — xaosflux Talk 23:45, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I haven't used other browsers to confirm about the issue, but I've used the same browser over multiple mobile devices. In all of them, the settings are all the same that I had been using before Thursday, when no issues occurred. When this same issue happened last month Jdlrobson fixed them. No other website shows these issues either. It is a Wikipedia only Thursday problem. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 05:55, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
By "Wikipedia only", I wanted to mean "WMF only" because every WMF project is now affected by this issue. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 05:57, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom thanks for the note, to confirm is your browser at 0% Zoom level when this is presenting? — xaosflux Talk 09:04, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: There are only two accessibility settings in this browser (Edge), both at system default. "Text scaling" at 100% & "Zoom on all websites — Enable to allow zoom in, even on websites that prevent this gesture" set "off". —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 09:29, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Have you tested this in a privacy mode CX ? wondering if reproduces there as well. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:36, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I am able to reproduce this issue in InPrivate window. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 10:10, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Example with Vector 2022
Added a Vector 2022 example image also. About to be 2 weeks now. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 06:27, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
@Northernhenge Yes, this is expected to some degree. The viewport is being made 20% wider upon load (it isn't actually loaded zoomed in, but if you are unfamiliar with what happens, it might be perceived like that I guess). What CX Zoom is seeing however is not that. It's much more than 20% and also the font-size is incredibly tiny, indicating much more than 20%. Its really quite strange —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:36, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Many thanks @TheDJ – it turns out my browser was set to 115% zoom and setting it to 100% fixed the problem. I’ve had it set the same way for a very long time so I don’t know what changed to make the wikipedia page start displaying too wide for the screen, but I can see it all now.--Northernhenge (talk) 16:13, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Radio button goes to the side of the map instead of label

I was reading 2022 Saskatchewan stabbings and noticed that the first radio button for the multi-level map switcher is on the left of the map, instead of label 1. fireattack (talk) 03:19, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I added |float=center to the template that generates the map and it looks like that fixed the issue. – BrandonXLF (talk) 04:59, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you!--fireattack (talk) 13:28, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Unify RFC links?

When reading the MIME article I noticed there are two methods to link to RFC pages used there:

one is used in inline ref-s and it uses plain external links (see section MIME#References or a specific example in MIME#signed):

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1847#section-2.1 RFC 1847, Section 2.1]

the other one is used in the RFC list at the end of the article (MIME#RFC documentation) and it is based on the {{IETF RFC}} template:

{{IETF RFC|1847|link=no}}, ''Security Multiparts for MIME: Multipart/Signed and Multipart/Encrypted''

They seem both valid and working correctly, but they produce links to different domains: tools.ietf.org and datatracker.ietf.org, respectively. This results in a quite strange effect that, once you visit an external page with a specific RFC, one link becomes re-colored as 'visited' and the other one does not.

Should the links be unified to point at the same domain? --CiaPan (talk) 13:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Range of Hebrew letters?

I can regex a range of Greek Letters without a problem. for example insource:/\('''[Α-Ω]+'''/ however, I am unable to figure out how to do the equivalent for Hebrew. None of the possibilities seem to work, replacing the A with an א and Z with ת nor doing it the other way around (so that the window thinks it is a single string reading RTL, nor even flipping the [ and ] seem to work, could someone please help me figure out the way to do a search for a parentheses, three quotes and a string of Hebrew letters?Naraht (talk) 20:49, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

@Naraht The obvious way has worked for me: insource:/\('''[א-ת]+'''/ [1]. You have to be careful while typing, since the mixed directionality of the text causes the characters to display in different visual order than the logical order (and may also display in different order in different text editors, and may also cause parentheses and brackets to flip around). You can see it if you paste it into an editable text field, place the cursor at the beginning, then hold Shift and press right arrow key to select the text letter by letter. You also have to be careful not to copy-paste invisible directionality marks, which can mess up regex ranges like this. They will be highlighted in red if you enable syntax highlighting in the wikitext editor, or you can notice them using the Shift-arrows method and noticing when an arrow press doesn't seem to advance forward. The characters are, in order:
[ א - ת ]
Matma Rex talk 22:16, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
You can also encode the Hebrew characters using their Unicode values (from the chart at Hebrew (Unicode block)) to avoid directionality issues: insource:/\('''[\u05D0-\u05EA]+'''/ [2] Matma Rex talk 22:25, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Matma Rex Thank you for this. I'm not sure what was being picked up.Naraht (talk) 15:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Changing language name

Hello. I would like to change the language name in {{Expand Slovene}} to read 'Slovene' instead of 'Slovenian'. That is to ensure consistency with the preferred language name as per Slovene language. Where can this be edited? --TadejM my talk 21:48, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

{{Expand Slovene}} calls {{expand language}} which uses {{#language:sl|en}} to get the language name associated with sl → Slovenian. To change that, you have to change the WikiMedia source.
Alternately, you can change {{expand language}} to use something like:
{{lang|fn=name_from_tag|{{{langcode|}}}}}
so, when {{{langcode|}}} holds sl the template returns:
{{lang|fn=name_from_tag|sl}} → Slovene
You should be mindful, however, because changing MediaWiki or {{expand language}} to support a change for one language tag may cause unexpected problems with categories for other unrelated language tags. You break it, you fix it.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:13, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. --TadejM my talk 22:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

As Trappist mentions, {{#language:{{{langcode|}}}|en}} in Template:Expand language appears to be the relevant line. To change that would require changing either that line, or changing wherever mw:Extension:CLDR gets its data from. At first glance, might not be worth it, as this might create a maintainability headache for someone in the future. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:26, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the comment. I am not going to modify {{expand language}}. It will be best to change the language name in the MediaWiki source. I will think about this. MediaWiki uses ISO language names[3] and ISO 639 cites Slovenian as the standard language name.[4] --TadejM my talk 22:28, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

lang message showing up in search output

I did a search on Omega -insource:/Infobox fraternity/ fraternity and first search hit is Alpha Omega (fraternity) which is fine, but the text below showing the search hit is odd. It is

Alpha Omega (ΑΩ, sometimes AOcode: eng promoted to code: en ), is a professional Jewish dental fraternity. It was founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 1907

It looks like some error or warning text on the use of {{lang|eng|AO}} is showing up in the search result.Naraht (talk) 16:58, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

That happens because the {{lang}} promotes ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 language tags (eng in this case) to the ISO 639-1 equivalent (en). The template does this because language markup in html documents requires ISO 639-1 for languages for which ISO 639-1 has been defined. Want to make the green text go away, change eng to en:
{{lang|eng|AO}} → AO
{{lang|en|AO}} → AO
Or, because this is the English Wikipedia, it is not necessary, and may not be desirable, to markup English-language text as English, so
Alpha Omega ({{lang|grc|ΑΩ}}, sometimes AO), ...
Alpha Omega (ΑΩ, sometimes AO), ...
And, I gotta ask, is ΑΩ really Ancient Greek (grc)? Isn't it just Greek (el)?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:15, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Special:ExpandTemplates shows that {{lang|eng|AO}} produces:
<span title="English-language text"><span lang="en">AO</span></span><span class="lang-comment" style="font-style: normal; display: none; color: #33aa33; margin-left: 0.3em;">code: eng promoted to code: en </span>
It renders as: AO
A browser should omit displaying code: eng promoted to code: en because it's in style=...display: none. My Firefox omits it as expected in the article. Should it be considered a bug that the search snippet displays it? display: none is in the html in the article but not in the snippet. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:24, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
While there is an HTML class or two that can be added to remove certain content from search results, removing it from warnings is generally undesirable (search being another way to find such warnings). I am not sure if this is a warning/notification that would be valuable to remove from search. Izno (talk) 18:33, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
I figured it could be fixed by going from eng to en, but figured that the message *still* shouldn't show up in the search output. That's the issue I wanted to bring to WP:VPT
As for the use of lang on it in general, giving the fact that immediately before it is an Alpha and an Omega, the second should be make clear that it is a latin/english A and a latin/english O rather than an Alpha and an Omicron. And the decision by the Fraternity and Sorority Wikiproject is to use grc rather than el is from the fact that Fraternities and Sororities *mostly* use classic greek, for example, most have the first vowel in Theta rhyming with Stay, modern greek it would be closer to the vowel in see.Naraht (talk) 18:48, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
The class that can be added is navigation-not-searchable; it's why you can't see hatnotes in search without using insource:. Again, I remain neutral on the question of whether it makes sense to add it here, especially since the content in question is added from the template, not from in the source, so the work around becomes useless and you have vanished all the text in these warnings from search. Possibly making them impossible to find (I do not know if 'promotions' get a tracking category or not). Izno (talk) 19:32, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Category:Lang and lang-xx code promoted to ISO 639-1
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:54, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Vector 2022 unusable on iOS 12

Hi all, I tried changing my skin to Vector 2022 some weeks ago to see if I could live with it. (No I can't, not without the viewport being set to make it responsive, but that's another issue.) I've discovered a weird issue on iOS 12 that I can't replicate on iOS 15. (iPad Air original vs. Air 2.)

Tap targets for the tabs (Edit | Talk ... View History ...) are misaligned with the visual areas. I have to be fully zoomed out and tap around the vicinity three to five times to activate a tab. Or sometimes I just can't. Problem persists in safemode and when logged out.

Has as anyone observed this on other platforms? On a brief look, a very old iPad with iOS 9 appears to display the same symptoms. Is it something to do with the wonky ES6 detection?

. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 20:43, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

@Pelagic: At #Desktop version on mobile being too wide occasionally section above, there are two (unrelated) issues reported, one by me and another by Northernhenge. Does one of them explain the issues you are facing? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 06:03, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm sorry. Neither of them probably explain what issue you are facing. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 06:15, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
What version of Safari are you using? If it's an old version it likely doesn't support
CSS grid which might explain what you are seeing.
The skin is not responsive currently so I think you are seeing a degraded version of the skin that can only be solved by updating your software/operating system. Jdlrobson (talk) 20:53, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Table weirdness

This post is about the first table at Evil Dead#Main cast and characters. I was reading the article and noticed that the column giving the year of release is displaying incorrectly, with the year displaying one box left of where it should. So I went into visual editor to fix it, and within visual editor, it displays correctly. Any ideas on what is happening here?

I am using MacOS 11.6.5 and Chrome 105.0.5195.52.

Thanks, Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:43, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I looked at it with two browsers on a similar Mac OS and didn't see any problems. A screenshot may help. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:58, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Imgur screenshot. Can you give me a hint as to what is displaying incorrectly? At first glance this looks OK to me. Chrome, Windows 10. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:01, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
A table in Evil Dead as viewed while reading article
A table in Evil Dead as viewed in Visual Editor
Screenshots added. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:12, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
I am unable to reproduce in Chrome Windows 10 Vector 2022. Does someone want to try Chrome MacOS Vector 2022, which appears to be the combination in the screenshots? –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:48, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
In the screen shot, the year column is shifted one space to the left, as if the upper-left cell had a colspan of 3 instead of 4. I looked at it in Chrome 104.0.5112.101 on Mac OS with Vector 2022, and I don't see the problem. Maybe a new Chrome bug? That's a weird one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:54, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
I had suspicions that this could be caused by a gadget or browser extension tweaking table headers, checked a few places, and found that the issue is caused by the StickyTableHeaders gadget (Make headers of tables display as long as the table is in view, i.e. "sticky" (requires Chrome v91+, Firefox v59+, or Safari)).
It adds <thead> tags around table rows that only contain header cells, and it does so with no regard to cells spanning multiple rows. It's not the only piece of software with this bug – if the table was made sortable using the built-in mechanism (class="sortable"), it would also suffer from the same problem.
This can be fixed by editing the article to mark the cells with years in that table as header cells. This will cause them to be pulled into the sticky header too, and avoid the issue. Matma Rex talk 07:06, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
I have attempted to work around the problem using Matma Rex's suggestion. Oiyarbepsy, is it better? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:24, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
That does fix the problem. That said, there is still the bug that what people see when viewing the page and when using visual editor is not the same. Also, there are probably other pages with this same problem, and I have no idea how to find them. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:30, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
It only happens when a registered user enables Make headers of tables display as long as the table is in view, i.e. "sticky" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. That means it's not a MediaWiki bug but an issue with a local script at the English Wikipedia. The gadget is in the section "Testing and development" so it's hinted that issues may occur. There is some old discussion of this header rowspan issue at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:40, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

How to search just the technical village pump archives?

I vaguely remember this being an option before at the top of the technical village pump. Can it be returned? Then I can choose whether to search all the village pump archives or just the technical archives.

I tried searching for something today, and tired of wading thru all the non-technical archive results.

Can someone give me the URL I need to do this? At least I can bookmark it. --Timeshifter (talk) 08:15, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Something like this CirrusSearch should work: intitle:"Village pump (technical)/Archive" test. As for adding it back to the header, I think that's a good idea if someone wants to take the time to code it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:21, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
It shouldn't make much difference for "Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive", but in general there's a more specific way that'll get less false positives - prefix:. Can also be put separately in the query string, like so. —Cryptic 08:55, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Novem Linguae and Cryptic - So to summarize:

Good:

Better:

From Template:Village pump page header is this:

Change prefix and searchbuttonlabel to get this

That can be added to the top of this page to get this:

--Timeshifter (talk) 14:02, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Looks good to me. I went ahead and implemented this at Template:Village pump page header. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:01, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Novem Linguae - Thanks! Good job: prefix=Wikipedia:{{BASEPAGENAME}}
See diff. And this diff too. Last one allows searching of current page too, I believe, and not just archives. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:57, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Converted Template:Village pump page header search boxes to this:

Saw this method here:

Allows search to be used in narrower devices without wrapping search button below search box. Substituted 🔍 magnifying glass emoji (per Andrybak) for checkmark. See Special:diff/1109069396. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:03, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Something wonky on a draft page

~ Today, on trying to edit Draft:Sant Baba Dalel Singh Ji (Maharaji) I get an alert saying my internet connection is out (see screenshot).

The script tag looked different when I opened browser tools the following script was inserted, markedly different from what I get on other pages. Disabling the script I was able to edit the page as usual. Am I paranoid or is this malicious code injection? 

(RLQ=window.RLQ||[]).push(function(){mw.config.set({"wgPageParseReport":{"limitreport":{"cputime":"0.155","walltime":"0.182","ppvisitednodes":

{"value":2382,"limit":1000000},"postexpandincludesize":{"value":8776,"limit":2097152},"templateargumentsize":{"value":646,"limit":2097152},"expansiondepth":

{"value":9,"limit":100},"expensivefunctioncount":{"value":0,"limit":500},"unstrip-depth":{"value":0,"limit":20},"unstrip-size":

{"value":2423,"limit":5000000},"entityaccesscount":{"value":0,"limit":400},"timingprofile":["100.00%  145.066      1 -total"," 86.79%  125.897      2 

Template:Infobox_person"," 64.98%   94.271      2 Template:Infobox"," 13.07%   18.962     10 Template:Br_separated_entries"," 13.05%   18.931      1 Template:Reflist"," 
 5.38%    7.805     29 Template:Main_other","  4.60%    6.671      2 Template:Unbulleted_list","  1.42%    2.067      2 Template:Template_other","  1.15%    1.674      2 

Template:Wikidata_image"]},"scribunto":{"limitreport-timeusage":{"value":"0.051","limit":"10.000"},"limitreport-memusage":

{"value":1967820,"limit":52428800}},"cachereport":

{"origin":"mw1316","timestamp":"20220907102935","ttl":1814400,"transientcontent":false}}});mw.config.set({"wgBackendResponseTime":159,"wgHostname":"mw1353"});});

}}

Kleuske (talk) 10:57, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Looks legit to me. I searched our source code repositories for code from both your screenshot and your copy paste and I found the code in there. Screenshot. Copy paste. If you're wondering what happened, I think that error message in your screenshot is likely a good clue :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:09, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, for the proper format, but I don't get it. I'm no expert on how things work under the hood and the clues are pretty opaque to me. Somehow, however, I get this message when I'm logged in (with obvious presence of a working internet connection), but when I try the same not logged in, or edit another page, it works as it should. Explain it like I'm five. Kleuske (talk) 11:40, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
The problem has disappeared, but I'm not very satisfied. Kleuske (talk) 12:44, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
It looks as if you could not get a connection to the server for a period of time. Perhaps the name server would not give you the IP address, or the connection took too long and it gave up. This could be due to a physical failure, or messages being routed the wrong way so that they cannot be delivered. Or perhaps the server was down - but then many will notice. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:51, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
%yo: Something is broken. It got turned off. It went the wrong way and got lost. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:54, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
My connection was the first thing I checked. But loosing an internet connection only when accessing a single wikipedia page and no other, and only when trying to edit, whilst still being able to file this report is definitely wonky in my book. Kleuske (talk) 07:01, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Category problem?

On the Elizabeth II article, at the bottom of the page in the box for all the categories, does anyone else see red-linked "Current events from 8 September 2022" leading the rest of cats? It's not clear why its there, but I take it that it shouldn't be there? - wolf 13:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Fixed. |date= in {{Current}} is meant to receive a month, not a specific date. Nardog (talk) 14:01, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

My edit disappeared?

Mere minutes ago I edited the article Elizabeth II changing the title of her successor in the infobox from Charles, King of the United Kingdom to Charles III, with the edit summary "apparently Charles III is the official regnal name of her successor now" and saved the edit. The title in the infobox did indeed change, but my edit isn't shown either in the article history or in my contribution list. Is it possible that someone else edited the article at the exact same time making the same change so my edit just got ignored, or something? JIP | Talk 19:01, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

If someone else did do an identical edit and save before you did, you would indeed get no indication of a problem with your edit, and you would not show up in the article's history. Animal lover |666| 19:27, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
The same change was made in this edit: [5]. Matma Rex talk 20:42, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Article History not up-to-date when logged out

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317064

Greetings, so I just noted something weird on the article 2022 Saskatchewan stabbings: When I am logged out, it only shows me the article history up until the edit by Love of Covey on 03:20 (so this diff is the last), while the article itself shows everything as expected, including the content from e.g. my edits that happened later. I at first thought the page had some sort of WP:PCPP, but that doesn't seem to be the case. And when I'm logged in, it shows me the whole history. Is such behaviour to be expect for some reason, or is it a technical hiccup? –LordPickleII (talk) 11:47, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Same for me, but when logged out I see another revision to be the most recent one Special:Diff/(Redacted) on 4 Sept, 23:35 UTC. Although the mobile version of page history is perfectly up to date, even when logged out. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 12:48, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
I think that article should've been semi-protected by now due to vandalism and edit warring. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 12:51, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
I saw the same behaviour, but the history updated on my end when I null-edited the page. No idea what that's about. Rummskartoffel 16:08, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Someone else reported this elsewhere as well, I filed a bug as phab:T317064 with a possible cause. Legoktm (talk) 21:31, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
@Legoktm: Thank you! –LordPickleII (talk) 10:19, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
History links from my watchlist (right-click, Open Link in New Private Window) seem to be current. They have an additional curid parameter, for example, [6] versus [7]. Flatscan (talk) 04:46, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
@Flatscan: watchlist links include a &curid= parameter to make sure the link takes you to the right page even if it's been renamed in the meantime. And the inclusion of that &curid= parameter means that caching of the history page is bypassed, so it'll always be up to date. Legoktm (talk) 14:43, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
This should be fixed now. Because the fix is not retroactive, some history pages may still be stale for anons until the associated article is edited or the cached page is purged. ATDT (talk) 15:57, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

WHOIS not working

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but the WHOIS at Toolforge doesn't seem to have been working for several days. ♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:28, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Any link, steps to reproduce, or error message? –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:00, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
If you go an IP edit in the edit history and click on WHOIS, it times out and nothing happens.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 09:12, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Courtesy links: IP contribs. Toolforge WHOIS tool.. Error message is "504 Gateway Time-out". Pinging maintainer ST47. Hasn't edited in a month though. Let me try a user talk message as well so they get an email. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:58, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Based on the note at wikitech:Nova Resource:Tools.whois-referral/SAL, seems like this has been acting up lately - you might be able to ask someone else to restart the service in the absence of the maintainer. — xaosflux Talk 10:21, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
@Ianmacm You can try the original tool in the meantime. The fork I believe is maintained by @ST47 — MusikAnimal talk 16:28, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Replication seems to have stopped on enwiki_p database

Replication seems to have stopped on enwiki_p database. Is anyone aware of why that might be? 

 
MariaDB [enwiki_p]> SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - UNIX_TIMESTAMP(MAX(rc_timestamp)) FROM recentchanges;
+------------------------------------------------------+

| UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - UNIX_TIMESTAMP(MAX(rc_timestamp)) |
+------------------------------------------------------+
|                                         41324.000000 |
+------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.112 sec)

William Avery (talk) 19:45, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

@William Avery: possibly something to do with the ongoing maintenance — https://replag.toolforge.org shows s1 and s4 are primarily affected, which matches those being worked on — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 19:53, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. William Avery (talk) 20:46, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Vector 2022 Rollout

Folks,

I got the new Vector 2022 desktop rollout earlier today. I vaguely recollect some earlier discussions on this topic. Is there a place where I can provide feedback? Or is it too late? Unfortunately, there are quite a few issues that I see that might indicate that this is not fully ready for primetime. But, would like to connect with someone to provide my observations. Any pointers? Thanks. Ktin (talk) 23:27, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

There is a huge thread at VPR, right next door. That thread has links to centralized locations for giving feedback. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:42, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Weird and unhelpful autocompleted search results

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317381

As of around an hour I have had difficulty using Wikipedia because of how unhelpful autocompleted search results are now, for example typing "e" brings up "economy of the United Arab Emirates" as the first result, and I have to type out the full names of articles for them to appear now, for example writing just "uyghu" doesn't show any articles starting with the word or related to Uyghurs. Is anyone else experiencing these issues? CordiBordi (talk) 01:00, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

I just wanted to add that this doesn't seem to be an isolated incident because I have been having this problem now for the past couple of hours.  Bait30  Talk 2 me pls? 01:17, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Might be related to the elasticsearch upgrade mentioned above. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:20, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Ping @RKemper (WMF) in case this is of interest to them. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:26, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Having the same issue as well. Was searching for 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment earlier, and the fact that it didn't show up in the search bar until I had every letter typed had me almost bailing on searching because I figured there wasn't an article on it. Did the WMF break something again? Hog Farm Talk 01:54, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Just wanted to stop by and say I'm seeing the same. Autocomplete not completing article names well. 69.203.136.65 (talk) 02:03, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
WP:ITSTHURSDAY :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:03, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
I have noticed this too. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 02:23, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Me too. Experienced same issue when I typed "west ed" on WP search bar on Chrome for iOS; I'm expecting West Edmonton Mall article to appear on top of search bar autofill suggestion, but other articles appear on result instead. Reminds me of a previous issue I posted here a year ago (i.e. COVID-19 and COVID-related articles not appearing on top of search bar suggestion when I typed "cov", with Coventry Cathedral and not-so-read articles showing up instead).-TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 03:51, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

A bandaid fix is in place for now, which should restore search suggestions mostly. (logged out users might see issues for up to 3 hours) To give a bit of background, the search team has been working on upgrading the backend elasticsearch servers to a new major version, which has been a 3-week long endeavor (tbh it's been prepping for months, it just started being rolled out then), culminating in today's deploy that cropped up some changes/failures. Legoktm (talk) 05:26, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

A draft incident report is being worked on for those interested: Incidents/2022-09-09_Elastic_Autocomplete_Missing. Legoktm (talk) 01:10, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

x-tools not showing contributions

If this isn't the correct place please point me to the right 1.
I just looked at my xtools page and It's not showing today's contributions. See here: https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org/Dutchy45
But as you can see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Dutchy45 I have been active today. Anybody know the reason xtools isn't showing? Dutchy45 (talk) 20:05, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

See #Replication seems to have stopped on enwiki_p database * Pppery * it has begun... 20:13, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
To elaborate on the above, Toolforge/wmflabs tools such as XTools use a special copy of the SQL database called the "replica database". Usually this is an exact copy of the main database, but sometimes (such as today) these temporarily get out of sync, with the replica database lagging minutes/hours/days behind the main database. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:25, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you @Novem Linguae, @Pppery Dutchy45 (talk) 21:18, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Maybe this explains why AnomieBOT III didn't post an update on schedule at 19:37 UTC today. Maybe other bots will be affected as well. Liz Read! Talk! 21:39, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
@Dutchy45: When I open xtools, there is a big banner at the top that says: Caution: Replication lag is high, changes newer than 13 hours may not be shown. At the bottom of the xtools page is a "Report an issue" button that will take you to the right place to report issue with xtool as well (as that banner is showing, I wouldn't bother opening an xtools report right now though). — xaosflux Talk 21:59, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Hello, Xaosflux,
Would this replag be affecting other operations on en-wiki besides xtools? Liz Read! Talk! 22:02, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
@Liz it shouldn't impact anything on en-wiki, but it will likely affect things off-wiki. For example, Special:NewPagesfeed should be fine, but quarry would be delayed. Real-time bots like antivandalism bots would likely be fine, but a batched report creation bot that does its work off-wiki and just posts a result on-wiki may be. — xaosflux Talk 22:38, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, it's the bot reports I work with either have outdated information (from this morning) or there are no updates at all. Luckily, there is always other work to be done on Wikipedia, no matter whether the bot reports are accurate or not so there is plenty to keep me busy. I just hope the replag gets caught up overnight. Liz Read! Talk! 01:20, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

DiscussionTools at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-31/News and notes

When trying to reply to a comment under the signpost page (where talk page is transcluded), the reply tool errors and says Could not find the comment you're replying to on the page. It might have been deleted or moved to another page. Please reload the page and try again. When going to the talk page and then clicking reply, it works. Is this a known limitation of DiscussionTools or something that should be improved? Thanks. 0xDeadbeef 16:03, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

You can file a bug report on Phab if you want and tag it DiscussionTools. This might be a wontfix though since this page is wrapped in a bunch of custom HTML, which is probably what is confusing the tool, so any fix would be very specific to just the Signpost pages. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:30, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
And also that it is an entire page transclusion; on the source page (Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-08-31/News_and_notes) the DT's work fine. — xaosflux Talk 18:51, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
This is a known issue: T259824: DiscussionTools's reply tool doesn't work when the comments are transcluded from another page using a template (not directly). I don't think we'll be able to work on this in the foreseeable future. (I'm one of the DiscussionTools developers.)
You could work around this by changing the wikitext on Signpost article pages to transclude the talk page directly, instead of using {{Wikipedia:Signpost/Template:Signpost-article-comments-end}}. You'd still have to structure it carefully to avoid running into T287040 as well. If there was interest, I could figure out how to do it and make an edit request with a proposal. Matma Rex talk 21:21, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Those templates are also used by all the archives, so you need to wrap that in a date based conditional or something or you would break those archives. There's probably also some preload template or something used to generate signpost pages that would have to be adapted. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:07, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317135

Something strange is going on for me here. The mentioned usernames get overlined instead of underlined when hovered. Screenshot for example. First time ever I encounter something like this. Anyone has any idea what's going on? - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:57, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: Odd. What skin are you using? Does this still happen when you're logged out? Sam Walton (talk) 15:02, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Samwalton9, tried it in incognito (logged out) and the same behavior continued. I'm using the Vector legacy one. — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:07, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: Which browser and version? Sam Walton (talk) 15:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Hmm, logged out? Is this happening on every page, or only a specific page? — xaosflux Talk 15:12, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Xaosflux, @Samwalton9, Google Chrome, Ver. 105.0.5195.54 (just updated). Can't tell with certainty if it is also happening in other places as well. I vaguely remember that it was happening in some other places too before reporting but without me blindly hovering everywhere I can't say for sure. — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:18, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Is it happening on non-wikipedia pages, like search engine results? Is it happening on general wikilinks, or only usernames? — xaosflux Talk 15:19, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Can you try to start chrome with --disable-extensions and see if it changes? — xaosflux Talk 15:21, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Xaosflux, disabled all extensions, still happens. On that section there, which is all that I've tried currently, it happens only with "usernames". But strangely enough it doesn't happen on signatures. It only happens with mentioned usernames, if that makes sense. — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:29, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi is this only happening when you are using that personal userscript? — xaosflux Talk 15:10, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Xaosflux, I initially reported this as a problem to the userscript's developer but it turns out it wasn't caused by it. I disabled that userscript and even tried it in safe mode but the behavior is still unchanged. — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:19, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux I can confirm that this is happening to me as well, as a logged out IP editor. At this mfd discussion hovering over the "G5" link causes the underline to appear over the link. Using chrome version 105.0.5195.53 on windows 10, no browser extensions in use. 163.1.15.238 (talk) 17:07, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
163.1.15.238, for me as well in there. Not only for the G5 link but for the Draft:Adam Harry one too.— Klein Muçi (talk) 17:12, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Do all the other links on the page work normally? — xaosflux Talk 17:13, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux I've double checked, the answer is no, the second link to the deleted draft (the one with all the stuff in brackets after it) also has the underline above it. 163.1.15.238 (talk) 17:15, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux It appears that the upside down underline happens when a link directly follows some element that creates a list (a bullet point or a colon)? I get the same upside down behaviour looking at the pings without the leading @ character in the discussion above. 163.1.15.238 (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux It also seems to be related to signatures somehow. If I go to the sandbox and preview
*[[test]]
The link displays properly, if I preview
*[[test]] ~~~~
The underline appears over the text. 163.1.15.238 (talk) 17:22, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
I was able to replicate this, but only in Chrome (and it was not present in Chrome v104.0.5112.102, but is in v105.0.5195.102). Seems to be related to certain elements; possibly only impacting the "first dd in a dl". — xaosflux Talk 17:40, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Is present on multiple skins here (vector-2022, vector, monobook at least) -- wonder if this is a Chrome bug. — xaosflux Talk 17:41, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
It may be an improvement for accessibility purposes; Firefox has changed the default behavior of a:focus relatively recently. [8] (large page) is the full series of changes in the two versions; hover shows up over 110 times with ctrl+F. I didn't see anything in the first couple dozen. In Firefox, I don't have the issue that the above users do. Izno (talk) 17:56, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Xaosflux, Klein Muçi, 163.1.15.238, can you open the browser console and enter mw.util.addCSS('span[data-mw-comment-start]{top:unset}') ? Does that change anything? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:01, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
I can reproduce this. It is caused by invisible markers added by DiscussionTools, and it seems to be a browser bug in the latest version of Chrome (I am using Chromium 105). DiscussionTools adds markers (<span data-mw-comment-start ...>) at the beginning of each comment, placed slightly higher than the comment text, so that following a link like this will jump slightly above the comment (and highlight it). We also use these links in notifications if you're subscribed to a topic. Apparently the underline is now placed as if the whole text was in line with that invisible marker, instead of where the text really appears. Matma Rex talk 20:26, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Matma Rex, so it's not really an overline, no? It's just an underline of an invisible element. — Klein Muçi (talk) 20:35, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes! Matma Rex talk 20:37, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
After taking a closer look, I think this is caused by the bug fix for https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1008951. The CSS spec requires that text decorations like the underline "must use a single thickness and position on each line for the decorations deriving from a single decorating box" [9] (see the picture in that link). The intent is for text like "1st" to have a single underline under the whole thing, rather than two small underlines under "1" and "st". But I think the Chrome team might have overdone it… it seems that Firefox is able to render a single underline under that text, but it doesn't have the bug you're reporting here. Matma Rex talk 20:49, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
I filed a bug: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1359501 Matma Rex talk 21:04, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Text overline?

Starting in the last couple of days, I've been seeing bits of text that are mysteriously overlined. I think they've all been <a> tags. If I look at the page in an incognito window (Chrome, Vector, Mac), the overline isn't there initially, but when I hover over the linked text, the overline appears. Any idea what's going on? It's the wrong phase of the week for WP:THURSDAY. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:51, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

@RoySmith: It's apparently a Chromium bug. See above. Issue is being tracked upstream, and internally at phab:T317135. — MusikAnimal talk 17:53, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Underlines become overlines?

Not sure what is going on here, but something changed with underlines for me recently. I use up to date Chrome on a Mac (Monterey) with the Monobook skin. When I hover over a link, usually the link becomes underlined, but sometimes the underline becomes an overline instead. This is consistent for each link. I have a CSS rule that adds underlines to interwikilinks, and they become overlines for some links. For example, the first of the two phab links in the section right above this one has an overline for me, while the second one is underlined as it should be. Does anyone have an idea what could be going on here? —Kusma (talk) 18:55, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Please see #Wikilink overlined (?!) above.  MANdARAX  XAЯAbИAM  19:29, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. Not sure how I managed to miss that... —Kusma (talk) 19:35, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Surely this must have been covered before, but I can't find it either in the VP archives or in phabricator. The "edit source" link doesn't always open the right section, especially if you've come back to the page after a pause and clicked the 'edit source' link without refreshing the page. The reason for this is obvious: the link is by section number only; when you click the link, it has no idea what section 6 was when you first loaded the page, it just loads whatever section 6 is *now*. I can think of some possible fixes, but not knowing mw internals, it's hard to know what kind of effort would be involved, so I'll just say that it's broken, and leave it at that. If there's a relevant phab (or a previous VPT discussion) I couldn't find, can someone please point me to it? If there's no phab ticket, I'm happy to create one (or be my guest: your knowledge of internals and phab projects, is doubtless better than mine, and would make a better ticket). Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:34, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

This is because names of sections are not tracked, and importantly, not unique on a page either. Well on talk pages they now actually ARE, for subscriptions etc., but on content pages they are not. @MatmaRex maybe we can fix those edit links at least on pages that DiscussionTools are active on now ? We already have the subscribe link after all. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:52, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
Fix ping. Matma Rex. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:37, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
DiscussionTools doesn't really help here, since its tracking of sections is not even based on wikitext markup (and it is also imperfect, in different ways: mw:Extension:DiscussionTools/How it works#Tracking topics). I would however suggest just using its [reply] links for editing on talk pages ;)
If you wanted to improve the section edit links, I think that identifying them by the heading text in addition to heading numbers would work (as proposed below and elsewhere in those tasks). It wouldn't solve the problem completely (I think it's impossible to solve while users are able to rename and move around sections in wikitext), but it would help. You'd probably also need to update the Minerva mobile skin, and the MobileFrontend and VisualEditor editors, to also support the new way, so this is a bit more work than it looks like. Matma Rex talk 18:37, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
phab:T17575 is "action=edit&section=NAME not NUMBER is smarter". It was closed as duplicate of a request with different focus, phab:T11239: "edit sections by name and allow creation of sections with previously nonexistent names". My suggestion would be to allow both section name and number in the url. If there is exactly one name match then ignore the number. Otherwise use the number but possibly add a warning on the edit page. Url's with only a number should still be allowed. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:34, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
That first one is exactly what I was hoping to find (it's also rather spookily similar to my description of it, right down to the example of "section 6"—which in my case stems from an actual page edit yesterday that provoked this), so thanks for linking the tickets. I see what you mean about the different focus of the newer one, which as I look at it, has tended to derail or defocus the main point of the original ticket. I'm not sure where to go next with this, but I think it should still live somewhere so that it may be acted upon, as I'm not sure the current structure will encourage that. In my book, this is in no way an enhancement request, it is a bug report, and should be labeled and treated as such. I just don't know what the best path might be to achieve that. Mathglot (talk) 04:24, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

ClueBot III archive issue, anyone help?

Resolved
 – cluebot works now after mass rename! Andre🚐 15:08, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi, I recently moved my manual talk page archives to ClueBot, and it seems to have properly indexed all of my old pages - see here, which follow the format User:Andrevan/Archive54. I've set this as the archiveprefix in my template, but for some reason, when the bot actually goes to archive the page, it makes a new page called User_talk:Andrevan/Archive1. Does anyone know how to fix this issue or can tell me a good way to mass rename the old pages so I won't have this problem. Andre🚐 22:31, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

@Andrevan: here's the problem: you follow the format User:Andrevan/Archive54
That should be User talk:Andrevan/Archive54. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
I posted a request on AWB/Tasks asking for someone to mass move them for me. I don't know if that a thing that can be done, I don't really want to manually move 54 pages. I agree that appears like it would solve the problem. It was suggested that I troubleshoot the ClueBot template first. Andre🚐 03:54, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Got help at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#Move my talk page archives to move to the subpage as BrownHairedGirl suggested, and if that fixes the issue, I left a note on User talk:ClueBot Commons to the effect that we should update the documentation to note that you can only have archiveprefix be a subpage of the page being archived. Andre🚐 18:37, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
archiveprefix is already documented at User:ClueBot III#Required parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:27, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, but it does not say that you cannot set the page name to another page other than the page that is being archived. I guess it does say that but I misunderstood it. Andre🚐 19:28, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
Mass rename  Done by CX Zoom, thank you! Andre🚐 19:36, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Toolserver not reachable

I am unable to get to the pageviews page - it times out, ping produces 

ping pageviews.wmcloud.org

Pinging pageviews.wmcloud.org [185.15.56.49] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 182.79.222.166: TTL expired in transit.
Reply from 182.79.179.153: TTL expired in transit.
Reply from 182.79.222.170: TTL expired in transit.
Reply from 182.79.179.153: TTL expired in transit.

Ping statistics for 185.15.56.49:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

I have tried changing my DNS (tried 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, 9.9.9.9 etc) but I can only access that page with a proxy-server. What could be the issue? Shyamal (talk) 15:06, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Hey @Shyamal, could you follow the instructions on https://wikitech-static.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reporting_a_connectivity_issue so that we can have a look? Thanks! Taavi (talk!) 15:36, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 Works for me. — xaosflux Talk 15:43, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @Taavi: - I added a report, hopefully with sufficient information/diagnostics. Shyamal (talk) 15:49, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Strange pop-up text

When I hover over a link to List of British heritage and private railways, instead of an image and a paragraph of text I see "wt2html: wikitextSize limit exceeded". Is this because there are two map templates above the first paragraph? How can it be fixed? -- Verbarson  talkedits 19:18, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

If you use Navigation popups, they work fine for me. Ruslik_Zero 20:44, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
No, just Page Preview. -- Verbarson  talkedits 20:49, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, it seems broken. Ruslik_Zero 20:59, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
The issue is with {{Map of miniature railways in the UK and Ireland}}, which has 1.6 megabytes of wikitext (!). I'm not sure how useful the map is, given that the railways aren't even visible until you zoom in a considerable distance, but the proper thing to do would probably be to move the map data to Wikimedia Commons and amend the template as described in mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer#Map data from Commons. Vahurzpu (talk) 21:37, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Is there a way to contact IPv6?

I noticed there was a way to block ranges but I'm just wondering if there would be a way to have a way of notifying an IPv6 in the same way? I no longer have this happen but for a while I noticed my IP was changing every day here if not more than once a day, based on what happened if I was using in private browsing and looking for contributions or looking at the talk page. If you get lucky the person ends up back on the same IPv6 IP and gets the notification that there are messages on the talk page. But we can't count on that.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:03, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee Both IPV4 and IPV6 ranges can be blocked. There is not a way to "contact" everyone that uses a range in either case. — xaosflux Talk 22:48, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
I figured if the software people could have done it, there would have been something by now. I had no idea it would be so frustrating until I was an IPv6 myself. No one seems to know why I am not any more ... oh, that's a question to ask when I pay my phone bill, and I forgot.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:50, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
One of the potential benefits about anonymizing IPs ("IP hiding") which is a project being worked on would be to be able to contact unregistered editors who move on a range. So, that's an incidental gain. Izno (talk) 23:44, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-37

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

Recent changes

  • The search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [10]

Changes later this week

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01:47, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Anchor years in CS1 citation module – what is it?

I’m trying to reimplement localization in the Citation/CS1/Date Validation module (on a wikipedia where the logic in check_date cannot be made to handle localized dates through the Configuration module) and trying to understand the purpose of anchor_year. Is there any documentation or examples that I can find to understand what it is exactly or what it does? Thanks in advance!—al12si (talk) 15:45, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Example:
{{cite book |last=Green |first=EB |title=Title |date=13 September 2022}}
Green, EB (13 September 2022). Title.
The rendered citation has <cite id="CITEREFGreen2022" class="citation book cs1"> where the id= attribute (the anchor id) is the concatenation of the static text CITEREF, the author's surname GREEN, and the anchor year 2022 from |date=. We can link to the example citation with wikilinks or templates:
[[#CITEREFGreen2022]] → #CITEREFGreen2022
{{harvnb|Green|2022}} → Green 2022
Best place to ask questions about cs1|2 is at Help talk:Citation Style 1.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:41, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you! I’m new to digging into CS1 internals (and new to Lua) and was not aware of where to find things. This is really helpful!—al12si (talk) 17:24, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

How to use AWB to add parameters in a template

The field "Registered electors" need to be added to Vav Assembly constituency#2017 Vidhan Sabha so that it looks similar to Abdasa_Assembly_constituency#2017_Vidhan_Sabha. I know how to do this manually. I would like to do this on AWB since there are hundreds of constituency pages that would require same manual edit to add the parameter.

Can someone guide me with the steps to do this? Venkat TL (talk) 15:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

@Venkat TL would you provide a single diff of doing the change manually as an example? — xaosflux Talk 17:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux here is an example edit Special:Diff/1110293677 of doing this on Vansda Assembly constituency. Need to insert a line in the middle of the template. Venkat TL (talk) 17:24, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@Venkat TL:Your diff adds a template call, not a parameter. It adds a pointless table row with no information unless a number is included at reg. electors. If you plan to manully add the number later then it's only a little harder to add the whole call at that time. Your diff adds the call right before {{Election box end}} but your example Abdasa Assembly constituency#2017 Vidhan Sabha has it before {{Election box hold with party link}}. You added it to the 2017 section but not the 2012 section and it's already in the 2022 section. Which sections do you want it in? You can make a much clearer request at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. If you have a data source for reg. electors then include it in the request. Somebody may make the edits including the number. There are ways to do that with AWB so you don't have to manually edit all the articles anyway. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:53, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter thanks for the reply. Yes, the intention is to add the registered Voter data into that table row eventually. The 2017 and 2022 tables can have the data from the Total voters table at List_of_constituencies_of_the_Gujarat_Legislative_Assembly#List_of_Assembly_Constituencies. The reg. electors row needs to be in the lower half of the table immediately after {{Election box turnout}} and before {{Election box hold with party link}}. It would be great if this can be done using the tool, would save a lot of time. Manually adding the row and data, would be the last option. Also ping @MPGuy2824 Venkat TL (talk) 18:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@Venkat TL: As I said, you can make a request at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. Having the data in a page with a link and therefore exact name of the article (except for a few redirects) is great. That can definitely be automated. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:09, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter I have requested it at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#Reg._electors_row_addition_in_constituency_articles. Venkat TL (talk) 18:23, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

WP:ENOM has been released for logged out users

Wikipedia:EditNoticesOnMobile has been release for the final wave, all editors. If there are any issues please report at Wikipedia_talk:EditNoticesOnMobile#Final_wave. If any urgent breaking thing has happened, any admin can revert the last update in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. — xaosflux Talk 19:02, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Map in infobox is miles out

The infobox map in Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts shews it as being in central London, but according to the rest of the infobox it's in Guildford. I can't see anything in the infobox to control the map. Does anyone know how to stop it being so wrong? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 19:26, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: Click "Wikidata item" under "Tools" in the left pane to see the source [12] of the coordinates. Google Street View shows a sign there saying "THE ITALIA CONTI ACADEMY OF THEATRE ARTS". The article mentions several associated locations including Italia Conti Associates Guildford. It appears from Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts#Woking, Surrey (New Building) that the main location is in Woking since August 2022. The offical website says 47 Church Street West, Woking at [13] and [14]. Maybe Wikidata should be updated but not to Guildford. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Help with Table

I am having a strange problem with one particular table while editing the article Dancing with the Stars (American season 15). It is Dancing with the Stars (American season 15)#Week 6: Country Week. For whatever reason, the bottom section of the table does not display when published, but looks correct when editing. Any assistance would be appreciated, as I have never encountered this problem before. Thank you! Bgsu98 (talk) 20:43, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what the problem is, but I think I found a halfassed solution; not sure it's still displaying properly along the bottom edge of the table. Bgsu98 (talk) 20:51, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
@Bgsu98: Sortable tables sometimes fail to render properly if the last row is unusual in some sense. I don't know the exact circumstances which can make it fail but a workaround is to add a non-displayed row at the end:
|- style="display:none;"
| colspan="5" | <!-- Non-displayed row to handle limitation ín sortable tables -->
A source comment may prevent users from deleting pointless looking code. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:24, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for the suggestion! 😃 Bgsu98 (talk) 22:52, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
If that works, then that sounds like someone miscounted rowspans/colspans somewhere higher up in the table. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:20, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
No, I have encountered it before. It can happen if the last row of a sortable table only has header cells declared in the row itself. Simpler example with rowspan="3" | B3 and rowspan="2" | C2:
A1 A2 A3
B1 B2 B3
C1 C2
D1
It works without sortable:
A1 A2 A3
B1 B2 B3
C1 C2
D1
It works with sortable if a non-displayed row is added at the end and that row has non-header cells:
A1 A2 A3
B1 B2 B3
C1 C2
D1
non-displayed row
PrimeHunter (talk) 13:34, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Ah yes, it also happens for incomplete rows yes. Basically, whenever u leave a gap, one way or another, the script has an incomplete amount of cells to work with and the behavior is then undefined. Complete ur table grids ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:31, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
But the grid is complete here. The rowspans in C2 and B3 cover the D row. It seems like a bug or limitation in sortable. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:28, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Maybe some kind of Phab ticket should be created here. Even the undefined behavior thing sounds like it could use a fix, i.e. detect invalid rowspan/colspan formatting and do nothing rather than undefined behavior. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:02, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Oh wait, now i get it.. I was thrown off course by the example, as i have sticky headers enabled, which has the same logic applied to all tables as tablesorter, so your 'good example' was also showing wrong for me :)
So to summarize, this situation exists if the the last row contains only header cells, because of previous rows having td cells with rowspans which end in the last row (or rows for potential multiline tfoot). I have a workaround for this, but it's so ugly (over 20 lines of code)... I really wish that it was easier to have a column count of a table. Especially before es6 it's just nuts. I'll work a bit on it the coming days. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Seems like this is the same problem that we discussed here a couple days ago: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 200#Table weirdness (except that with table footers rather than headers). Matma Rex talk 20:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Hitting the emailuser rate limit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317770

There is a ratelimit of 20 mails every 24 hours for mailing other users: mw:Manual:$wgRateLimits. This is a reasonably sensible limit for the "user" group. It's probably enough for 99% of users 99% of the time.
Except I just added a feature to my script that allows sending notifications to yourself by mail. While on-wiki notifications often make more sense, some people have a workflow that revolves around email.
But now I'm constantly hitting the rate limit as I'm currently involved in several discussions with a high back-and-forth rate that trigger a mail notification from my script and I wonder how to solve it. To throttle on the script's end seems complicated as I can't predict when the user will go offline. Raising the limit could be an obvious solution, either by raising the limit for mails to self (but MediaWiki doesn't discriminate between mails to others and mails to self) or by raising the general limit for, say, extendedconfirmed. Or maybe there's an obvious solution I'm just not seeing? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 04:25, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

You could collect people's emails and send them from toolforge or something, although that's less clean in a sense. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:34, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Can you provide more details on your script, and the steps in the scenario? I'm trying to understand if one or both users are using your script, how the email to you is triggered, and which user sends it. The conventional answer is to bundle notifications, but that does require a specific entity to do the bundling—typically a server, as suggested by Enterprisey. isaacl (talk) 05:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Enterprisey, the script works standalone and isn't meant to be limited to WMF wikis. And collecting personal information like that doesn't feel right either. Also, ToolForge rules disallow it: all network connections must originate from or terminate at Wikimedia Cloud Services. With this, the origin would be a userscript on some personal IP and the connection would terminate at some mailserver. It's also very complicated (or downright disallowed) by the rules regarding user information. "Hash, encrypt, or otherwise properly secure any Private Information you store" is a problem when you need to use said information and as you may "Not share any Private Information outside of your Cloud Services Project" I don't think you can share the mail address with the mail server.
Isaacl, it's Factotum and it allows you to subscribe to sections and get notifications when someone posts a new comment. For example, I got a notification about your post here as I'm subscribed to this section. Notifications do get bundled (if 50 new comments are found you get only 1 mail), but the script checks every N minutes+whenever you Special:Watchlist for new comments so you could still hit the limit without overly extreme behavior. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:15, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
The conventional approach used by other messaging platforms is to send out an email once per some period (typically daily, though it could be shorter). Time-based limits tend to work better with email-based workflows, which often involve setting aside scheduled time to manage email. isaacl (talk) 15:24, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
"Bundling" email notifications so at max N are sent in any given period could be an option (perhaps a setting that users can turn on if they know they'll be involved in fast-moving discussions). I do not think that raising the rate limit is in any way a good idea. firefly ( t · c ) 08:50, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have a seperate limit for emails that you send to yourself? This IMO has very little or no avenues for abuse as you couldn't spam someone else and the only thing that may be an issue is if the operation is expensive and it being called rapidly. This could be addressed by having a smaller timespan but a lower maximum, such as 10 emails to yourself every 60 minutes. That would help prevent rapid bursts that could cause server lag, but would make using this script possible. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 09:04, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
I think the solution here is fairly simple — don't do that (also, User:Alexis Jazz/Factotum#Feature comparison matrix, "Sigh, the free bug tracker that anybody nobody can edit." - you know you can just request a project be created for you... right?) — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 10:02, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
TheresNoTime, I'm in no way a semantics professor but isn't it a bit "strange" to state in the same sentence to not do something and also "criticize" someone for saying that they are not allowed to do something? :P I mean, I get that they are different subjects but to my eyes it seemed rather contradictory/funny. :P — Klein Muçi (talk) 10:11, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
TheresNoTime, you know you can just request a project be created for you... right? No doubt, but the Wikipedia slogan refers to the fact that anybody can edit it without asking for permission. You may get reverted, but you can edit. Even the creation of new articles is possible without permission, all you need for that is autoconfirmed which is granted automatically when you meet the requirements.
Not so on Phabricator. You can request the creation of a project, but you can't do it yourself. I can mail the Encyclopædia Britannica staff to request a correction, that doesn't make it an "encyclopedia anybody can edit".
The "don't do that" advice is universally true. Wikipedia not loading? So don't load Wikipedia. Editor broken? So stop editing articles. Computer broken? So don't use the computer. Stove not working? Don't fix the stove, get takeout.
Xaosflux, If you want emails for changes to pages on your watchlist, you can just enable "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" in Special:Preferences.
My script mails you links that scroll to the new comment and only mails for comments in subscribed sections so it's a bit different. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 13:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
The humorous tone in which my comment was written in did not land, apologies — applying the "anyone can edit" slogan to things which aren't Wikipedia is a bit of a stretch... though I would say that there's plenty here that can't be edited without asking for permission (the Main Page for example..)!
To atone for my poor attempt at humour earlier, I'd be more than happy to file a task and look into separating out the email rate limit for self — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 14:03, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
TheresNoTime, I'm in no way an ethics professor but I really liked the courtesy you expressed. :) Cheers! — Klein Muçi (talk) 14:23, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi forgot to say thanks for this, and it's good to hear — it's something I've been trying to improve... it's all too easy to be hot-headed when you're communicating over the medium of text. Never worth it though! — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 15:12, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
TheresNoTime, I'm sorry I was mistaken by your text above. Thank you for the kindness! — Klein Muçi (talk) 23:12, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
TheresNoTime,
The humorous tone in which my comment was written in did not land, apologies
I didn't realize you were jesting! Your comment makes much more sense reading it in that light. :-)
applying the "anyone can edit" slogan to things which aren't Wikipedia is a bit of a stretch...
Perhaps, but I think it goes against the spirit of Wikimedia in general.
though I would say that there's plenty here that can't be edited without asking for permission (the Main Page for example..)!
True, but that's generally for actions that are sensitive to abuse. Creating a project on Phabricator isn't a spam magnet. I wouldn't even mind some requirement, like needing to be registered for a month and having posted 10 comments or something, but it shouldn't require human approval. Especially now that the entire TechConductCommittee is stonewalling me..
I'd be more than happy to file a task and look into separating out the email rate limit for self
That would be super awesome! A shorter limit like 10/hour as Dreamy Jazz suggested would work much better. I mailed myself a bunch of times as part of testing and now I keep running into the limit partly because of tests I performed many hours ago that won't expire until tomorrow. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:31, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: I've logged T317770 — if/when the rate limits are split, a more permissive limit can be agreed upon for emailself — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 14:57, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
“isn't a spam magnet” you’d think…unfortunately phabricator (and before bugzilla) have been high rate spammed in all kinds of ways and when it happens it’s VERY disruptive. Because the platforms aren’t revision based, the vandalism is also harder to undo than on Mediawiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
TheDJ, I know everything everywhere gets spammed, but I'd be surprised if project creation specifically would be a spam magnet. I'd expect the majority of spambots on Phabricator to be generic, randomly filling out forms in hopes of spamming their fake Viagra. I suspect that requiring a confirmed mail address or having some number of edits with the associated Wikimedia unified account would cancel the vast majority of the spam.
Even if that wouldn't be enough, I'm in the "Trusted-Contributors" group but apparently that makes me no less of a spam risk. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:46, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
If you want emails for changes to pages on your watchlist, you can just enable Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed in Special:Preferences. — xaosflux Talk 13:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

"They" pronoun

I don't see a reason to entertain this. Izno (talk) 23:56, 14 September 2022 (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.

I don't think we need to use customized personal pronouns because they are not in the standard of scientific writing. Also, writing customized personal pronouns can be confusing. An example is Demi Lovato. She owns a band, how can we define the context of "They" for Demi and "They" for her band? We should use the nickname directly instead of using customized personal pronouns. -GogoLion (talk) 22:51, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

They is a commonly used gender neutral singular pronoun. Possible confusion about a band that can be mitigated with better writing is not a reason to not use someone's pronouns. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:54, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@GogoLion what is the "technical" question you are trying to ask about here? The text in articles is almost all free-form, not derived technically. — xaosflux Talk 22:57, 14 September 2022 (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.

Section history

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317856

I was wondering how crazy would the idea of having a section history feature be.

Such feature would only track the history of individual sections, be those in the main namespaces or in the talkspace (topic history) and ideally it could be accessible by the sections' headers, much like the whole page history is accessible by its header.

Considering that in WikiWorld sections are rather brittle and prone to change this idea can sound too unrealistic as I've put it above but maybe it would be more realistic if we just made it possible to filter the page history for individual sections and then work from there? (Section links are already a thing in page history.)

I've found myself many times in need of knowing how some certain sections have changed throughout time in a page. The way I currently achieve this is by checking different versions of the page and continuously scrolling down to the section I need to check, which is cumbersome to say the least. Klein Muçi (talk) 15:20, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Not exactly what you're looking for, but worth mentioning: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/who-wrote-that/ekkbnedhfelfaidbpaedaecjiokkionn?hl=en –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
  • I am not aware of anything that does it, but it certainly could be done by a gadget or user script. I do not volunteer, but it seems simple enough and useful enough that you could probably find a taker at WP:BOTREQ. One possible method would be:
  1. make one API call to query the revisions comments (doc here, it should look something like action=query&prop=revisions&titles=(Current page title here)&rvprop=comment{{|}}ids&rvlimit=max). (If max=500 revisions is not enough, multiple API calls might be needed.)
  2. filter only the revisions whose comment starts with /* (desired section title here) */
  3. return the ids of those and somehow display it to the user - for instance, a list of diffs targeted to the section name. (The super-fancy version would display a page-preview-style box on mouseover, but I have no idea how you would do that stuff.)
Alternatively, one could imagine that the user does not provide a list of section titles, but the script identifies all section titles and groups revisions by that (we need to query all revisions anyway), the user can then use a dropdown menu to pick the section they want.
That edit summary heuristic might not work. It picks up the diffs where an editor clicked on the section link and did not modify the edit summary prefix, so it has both false positives (typically, someone who creates a section would appear under the name of the section before or after it) and false negatives (if someone modifies the edit summary). It is probably enough for most use cases though.
TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 16:01, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Tigraan, Novem Linguae, thank you! Actually what I had in mind is exactly what user Tigraan described. Shouldn't a phab-ticket be better than US/R? I feel like this could be common enough to be a native feature request, no? Although WP:US/R would probably provide a faster solution. — Klein Muçi (talk) 21:49, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
I think this is niche enough that devs would not want to add it to core, so I recommend WP:US/R. I think the algorithm above is simple (easy-ish to code), but will miss a bunch of edits in each section, since any edit can touch any section. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:09, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Actually did both.
Currently tracked on Phabricator and on WP:US/R as: Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests#Section history
Hope it gets implemented somewhere. :) — Klein Muçi (talk) 09:59, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Source code for category pages

Does anyone know where I can find the source code for the code that generates the directory on category pages? I’m mulling trying to fix it for Chinese (for Chinese, using the first character as a head is unhelpful, is not traditional, and makes things difficult to find because things are essentially sorted in random order). Thanks!—al12si (talk) 00:09, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

@Al12si: MediaWiki is pretty complex. If you have to ask where code is and choose to ask here then I'm not sure you should be trying to submit MediaWiki patches. I suggest a feature request instead, or maybe phab:T170049 is what you want. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:28, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Ok, in that case I’ll grab a copy of the software, install it somewhere and find out myself where this is done and try to fix it. I’ve already got the logic figured out and am doing this on my own site. If I can fix it I’ll track down a way to submit a patch. Thanks.—al12si (talk) 02:46, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
PS: @PrimeHunter: I checked out phab:T170049; the proposal is counter-productive. Not only does it make things worse for me (and the Wikipedia I’m now active in), it actually makes things worse even for English speakers because if implemented, Japanese terms would be lumped with Chinese terms. The idea that Mandarin is a suitable “standard” pronunciation is a misguided idea and should be always treated as a red flag.—al12si (talk) 04:35, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@Al12si: There's also some guidance about the category collation setting in the manual namespace on MediaWiki. Graham87 03:17, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@Graham87: Thank you. I’ll suggest my active Wikipedia’s admins to try using uca-default (if that’s not the current setting) and see if it improves things. My suspicion is that categories still won’t be grouped correctly though; I know a certain very-well-known university press doesn’t understand how entries in an index are supposed to be grouped together; this seems to be very obscure knwoledge outside the CJK world.—al12si (talk) 04:47, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Al12si, when categorizing a page you should do so like [[Category:Cars|SORTKEY]]. See mw:Help:Categories. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 06:39, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: Thank you; I have forgotten about this. However, I don’t think this will work for article titles. The category pages currently group article titles according to the first character in the title; if the titles start with kanji this will result in a proliferation of headings (that are unhelpful and often not even sorted correctly). This is not how we do it and this is what I’m thinking of trying to fix.—al12si (talk) 07:12, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Looks like mediawiki/includes/CategoryViewer.php. Tip: To figure out what file is generating a piece of code, go find some unique string on the output page, then use your code editor (such as VS Code) to do an all files search. I searched for "Pages in category", then found out this is called "category_header", then found CategoryViewer.php. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:08, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
You can also use uselang=qqx to find the name of system messages, e.g. [15] to find "category_header". PrimeHunter (talk) 21:08, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: overflow

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T301505

^ This is what I just saw on a black screen on trying to open any Wikipedia links. What went wrong? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:44, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: See Phabricator. I got this as well. 0xDeadbeef 16:45, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 16:46, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Probably because it's WP:THURSDAY. I got the error for about 5 minutes. Jip Orlando (talk) 16:48, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
This wasn't caused by the train (timestamps don't match). There was an incident with Thanos at the same time as the outage (see #wikimedia-sre log starting 16:39:49), but it isn't really clear how that could have caused this. Zabe (talk) 22:12, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Google forms globally blocked?

Hello!

Links that have forms.gle in them are globally blocked from being posted anywhere as far as I understand. Can someone tell me where this block is coming from and possibly why? I checked the spam blacklist in Meta but I couldn't find anything relevant there. - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:08, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Please post an example. You can put a URL in nowiki or omit the leading http/https and the // following. Johnuniq (talk) 11:17, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
It's globally blacklisted. The log is at m:Spam_blacklist/Log/2019/08. Search for "\bforms\.gle\b". With most links of this type you can use the proper URL instead of the shortener, but I don't know for sure about this one. -- zzuuzz (talk) 11:19, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Google forms has a long URL. forms.gle is shortened. 0xDeadbeef 11:33, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Ah, I see. I wasn't fully aware I was dealing with a shortened URL. So in my homewiki one user was trying to post a Google Form in our VP for a wiki-edit-a-thon. But they notified me that they were being stopped from doing that. I thought I'd try it as admins are usually excluded from edit filters but I quickly noticed that the block was global and after failing at Meta, I came here. I hadn't noticed that the URL was shortened. If I had, I'd be almost sure it would have to do with that. I'll tell the said user to use the full URL. Thank you! — Klein Muçi (talk) 11:45, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Klein Muçi, if you give me an example of a shortened URL and the equivalent long URL I can probably add it to Factotum. (it already does this for youtu.be which is also blacklisted) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:56, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Alexis Jazz, in this case:
Short URL: https://forms.gle/t1M6XLkgiHTL4XQW6
Long URL: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdLK83vxevNXMPxfDKqZbDBb9VHBGGa6B-mwKIBcHalwSnNTw/closedform
I'll keep that in mind for other cases. Thanks for the initiative! :) — Klein Muçi (talk) 13:23, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Klein Muçi, unfortunately there's no way to convert that. I'll just automatically nowiki it so it doesn't trigger the spamblacklist anymore. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Alexis Jazz, yeah, I thought so. Are we sure that is a behavior a user expects? I mean, wouldn't it be strange for the user if they randomly got some URLs nowiki-ed, without any explanation? (As opposed to having an error message explaining that what you're trying to do is "illegal".) (Wouldn't it also be showing the way how to "circumvent" the limitation?) I believe an opt-in should be better than having it default behavior but you know it better. — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:16, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Klein Muçi, being told it's illegal without being told WHY and HOW to fix it is next to useless and the user will likely give up. (or figure out a similar workaround themselves) I've been puzzled by this before I knew. This way a WikiGnome or bot can fix it, or you can select+right click the link or copy-paste it to your address bar to visit it. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:29, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Alexis Jazz, I do agree on the missing WHY/HOW part but that's a problem that theoretically can be solved with the message. Having a link appear nowikied without knowing WHY can be confusing as well (that's why I thought about the opt-in part) but I'm supposing that can be solved with documentation so... — Klein Muçi (talk) 22:21, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

FYI: Javascript URIError

I get this error when I created and every time I've saved while editing wp:EWN#User:49.178.160.86 reported by User:Adakiko (Result: ) (likely heading change if resolved) This does not appear to result in anything obviously out of place or displaying after the save. All the links and diffs seem to work. Using Firefox 104.0.2 (64-bit) on Win10 pro64 OSbuild 19043.2006 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User%3A49.178.160.86_reported_by_User%3AAdakiko_%28Result%3A_%29 line 10 > injectedScript at line 236: URIError: malformed URI sequence

Not sure where line 10 is. This problem seems unrelated with these archived discussions:

Cheers Adakiko (talk) 22:34, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

@Adakiko in User:Adakiko/common.js you are importing a personal userscript, which is importing another one, which is importing another one. Try turning that off and see if your problem resolves first. — xaosflux Talk 13:02, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

What happens if a blocked IP tries to register for an account?

I presume if it's a static IP that they won't be able to register. But what happens if it's dynamie? Doug Weller talk 15:24, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

@Doug Weller seems a little bit WP:BEANSy. It sort of depends in what order things occur, and how cookies are handled by the client. If an IP is blocked, then the next time someone visits us they have a new IP - we usually won't know they are the same person and the block won't apply. There are all sorts of other situations that could overlap: if user accounts are involved, if someone visits while they are blocked, and with range blocks. — xaosflux Talk 17:23, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux more or less what I assumed. I wonder how often it happens that an editor escapes an IP block. Doug Weller talk 17:33, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Not really BEANSy, though, because this grew out of a RW situation with a temp-blocked, non-vandal IP user, to whom I recommended registering for an account (diff ). But then on second thought, I reverted myself (diff ), considering the possible socky look of following that advice. The underlying question in this story, is: "Should one avoid recommending registration to a temp blocked, good-faith user?" No guideline says not to, and neither does {{Register}}. Fuller backstory details here. Mathglot (talk) 00:42, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: When I shut my Wifi off or get away from the Wifi's signal, my cell phone has a dynamic IP that's currently under a rangeblock. If I try to register an account, I receive "Account creation error" followed by standard templates that the IP address or range is currently blocked; and shows who issued the block and the reason (currently there are global and local blocks on the range I'm assigned at the moment). Home Lander (talk) 13:51, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

TOC problems

Resolved
 – This bug was resolved upstream. — xaosflux Talk 13:56, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Was: Discussion page TOCs might be disappearing soon

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317857
Resolved

Just a heads up. This issue recently affected Wiktionary, and is also affecting other Wikimedia sites upgraded to 1.40.0-wmf.1, e.g. d:Wikidata:Project chat (before vs after), s:Wikisource:Scriptorium (before vs after). It's apparent that the WMF does not consider this a blocker to upgrading. OTOH, maybe they'll fix it first and EnWP will be spared. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 16:42, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Dillo

Hi, Browser notes states "Linux ... Dillo, ... Cookies are tricky, so logging in is tricky".

Indicates that login with Dillo should be possible. (Interesting style of documentation.)

The cookiesrc file here has this line.
wikipedia.org  ACCEPT

Yet login fails with notice "There seems to be a problem with your login session ...". If someone who's succeeded to configure cookies can explain, that will be very helpful. Thx.

Background
For several years I've used Firefox in Debian. Recently, probably since an upgrade, Firefox crashes frequently reporting "channel error". A documented bug.

This afternoon information for two uploaded images was almost complete when Firefox vanished from the screen. Troubleshooting Firefox will be a goose chase which may never succeed. At this rate the project may never be completed. If Dillo can work, good. It's fast. It isn't bogged with JavaScript.

Thx, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 00:21, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Update
In ~/.dillo/cookiesrc revised
wikipedia.org  ACCEPT
to
.org  ACCEPT
Now I can log in.  =8~)  Regards ... PeterEasthope (talk) 14:25, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

@PeterEasthope you may also need wikimedia.org for certain functions (if you don't want to do the entire TLD). — xaosflux Talk 14:37, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Noted. ".org" may suffice and can investigate the more specific domains. Appropriate documentation for Dillo still advisable. Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 22:26, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi all, Volker E. here, I'm Design Lead at the Wikimedia Foundation Product Design team and would like to provide an update to the external link icon discussion earlier on WP:VPR.

When rolled out initially, we didn't catch pixel issues on lo-dpi screens. Additionally, the old icon version featured long-standing usability issue: it was not sizing up when users increase text zoom (a common accessibility feature in use) in their browser preferences. We've seen your request on VPR and have recognized the problem statement. We then fixed the technical issues being behind vast majority of replies. And we've taken inputs by volunteers to improve the icon for better recognizability from the original proposal. For the subsequent changes on the icon itself and for future icon rollouts, we've set out a longer testing window with more explicit testing strategy.

Our goal has been to provide a unified icon collection with quality characteristics for several years now. Among the characteristics are

  • Simplifying by reducing to the essential form – the lesser the details on such small icon size, the better they are recognized by the users.
  • Making the icons as universally recognizable as possible - Users switching from mobile to desktop should be shown the same icons for the same thing. The mobile frontend (Minerva Neue skin) has been featuring the proposed new icon for over a year already.

Other high visibility icons, such as 'search', 'user avatar', 'watchlist', 'edit' (pencil) or the 'language' icon were changed in the past accordingly. Thanks for your attention. Do you perhaps have any questions? – Volker E. (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes. To what do you ascribe the current situation? Do you feel that WMF has sufficient staff to qa software before release? Was this some kind of unforeseeable glitch? Seems to me like a pre-release targeting only a small percentage of users, or perhaps a Beta with opt-in (possibly pre-opted in by selected tester-users: count me in, if you like) might catch things like this before general release. Might as well take advantage of all the willing, unpaid talent around here. Mathglot (talk) 00:51, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Ascribing the situation to a combination of shortcomings to be honest. Situative we've been doing last minute changes to the icon before the new MediaWiki release and therefore and because of not having access to a lo DPI environment at that point in time, the icon didn't meet the quality criteria on these environments.
With this in mind and our normal process, we should provide enough time to test on beta wiki and also for Quality Assurance testers and volunteers to provide us early enough with needed feedback. Thanks for offering your help, checking your user workflows from time to time on Beta could help us, specifically with big software releases. – Volker E. (WMF) (talk) 03:15, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Internet connection fails when clicking preview

Since this edit (12:09, 12 September 2022‎) it frequently happens that Firefox displays that the Internet connection is lost when I click on preview and I have to press the back button a few times until it works again.

However, my Internet connection did not fail and all other websites are working fine. It's a problem because it can happen that I lose all the changes I've made – in the example linked above nearly everything was still in the textbox that I entered before this happened, but now it happened again and I lost all the many changes I've made.

Is this happening to other people too and what could the cause for that be? For the reason just explained, this can be very problematic, I was just done with some copyediting changes and now I have to do them all again.

I don't think this ever happened before and now it does so frequently. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:39, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

It happens for me, and I use Safari. Imzadi 1979 → 01:57, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
I've been having this problem sporadically for two to three weeks now. It is terribly annoying. I've been wondering if was just me. If I get it again, I will copy and paste the error message; it's something about the certificate not being valid, but that could just be the browser trying to figure out some unusual situation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:13, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
I just got the error when trying to save an edit:
Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to en.wikipedia.org.

    The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
    Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.
I am using the latest version of Firefox on Mac OS, with Vector legacy as my editor. This can happen when I click Preview or Publish. It does not happen every time. If I click the "Try Again" button in the browser window (a Firefox button), it usually works. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Redirect content

Is there a proper way to add content, or search words, to a redirect to draw better hits to it in a search? The intent is to add language that searchers might use so the redirect helps get them to the right place. For example, I added content to the redirect P.M.G.O. Form 1 to add additional possible search content to it. Is this a good way to handle this? Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@FieldMarine: Non-redirect text of redirect pages cannot be searched or influence search results as far as I know. mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Full text search says: "all the words in the non-redirect pages are stored in the search database". You have to make more redirects or add content to the target. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

XTools

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T318036

I have made too many edits for XTools to show anymore - when this happened previously somebody at WMF Labs tweaked something. Can the same happen again please? GiantSnowman 19:22, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Hey GiantSnowman. I filed a phab ticket for you. This is probably the quickest way to get the attention of a tool's developers. There's a spot on phab to add tags such as "xtools" and that will email everyone that has listed themselves as a watcher of that tag, and usually a tool's developers do this. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for that, appreciate it! GiantSnowman 21:16, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

No more mathematical proofs in the body/text of of articles

Iluvlawyering You may have a better discussion about that topic on WP:VPPOL or WT:MATHS. This space for issues (or requests) that deal with how the software works, which your comment is not. Izno (talk) 03:28, 18 September 2022 (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.

If an idea can't be conveyed in words it's not worth conveying in an encyclopedia. State the proposition and link to the proof, explain whatever insight or innovation the proposition represents, and be done with it. The target audience is enlightened and the more technically inclined click away to their heart's content. It's that simple. The alternative is the status quo, which is a bunch of useless (to 99.99% of visitors) symbols dominating entries on increasingly valuable ideas/concepts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iluvlawyering (talk • contribs) 03:23, 18 September 2022 (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.

Permanently subscribed

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T318028
Resolved
 – Resolved on source wiki. — xaosflux Talk 14:09, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Hello! So over on Meta I have this issue where I"m currently subscribed to Meta:Steward requests/global because I replied to a report of a user saying that i agree that they should be locked. However since i don't want to continue receiving notifications whenever someone reports a user there, I try to click "Unsubscribe" but it says that it fails to unsubscribe. So now I'm stuck subscribed to that. Anyone know of a fix? (if this isn't the right place to ask this please direct me where to go I don't want to constantly see notifications for that). ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:16, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf go to meta:Special:TopicSubscriptions and you should be able to delete it. — xaosflux Talk 13:46, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! That worked! ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:04, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
The problem was also reported as T318028. Matma Rex talk 16:54, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Missing text in page preview

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T263932

The page preview for Remember (Walking in the Sand) has missing text. In the first sentence, the "(Walking in the Sand)" does not appear, making the sentence appear illogical. Note that it does appear properly in WP:POPUPS, which I have enabled on my account; I noticed the bug while I was browsing logged out. Home Lander (talk) 14:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Is this a bug? It seems to be intended that text enclosed in parentheses doesn't display in preview mode; it's certainly been that way as long as I've been browsing as an IP. In this particular case it causes a problem, but usually it just eliminates unnecessary detail from the quick preview (like the birth/death dates at Alexander Gardner or the pronunciation details from Himalayas). 199.208.172.35 (talk) 14:49, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
@Home Lander: seems like this is related to the undesirable handling of parentheses described in phab:T263932, you can update that to include more use-cases such as titles that have literal parentheses in them. — xaosflux Talk 15:10, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
First time I've heard of this - so I tried logging out, going to Remember (Walking in the Sand), clicking the "Edit" tab and then the Show preview button. I see text in parentheses, no problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:32, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64 that's not the "preview" they are talking about. Log out (or just open a private browsing tab) to this page, and mouse-over the page link; look at the pop-up preview. — xaosflux Talk 11:41, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Would that be Navigation popups: article previews and editing functions pop up when hovering over links? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:14, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64 that one is mw:Extension:Popups. — xaosflux Talk 18:30, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Timed watchlist entries

Resolved

- FlightTime (open channel) 18:38, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T259863

I'm wondering if I add a page to my watchlist and set it to auto-expire in one month, then I copy/paste from Special:EditWatchlist/raw to my secondary account, does the time factor move with the entry or are the timed entries now semi-permanent and now need to be removed manually? - FlightTime (open channel) 15:18, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

@FlightTime: raw doesn't yet support expiration management, see phab:T259863 for the feature request. So if you just bring those over like you described they will be of the non-expiring variety. — xaosflux Talk 15:23, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thank you. I kinda figured that. (pardon me for starting a sentence with "And") And thank you for what you do, it's a real comfort to see your username all over - FlightTime (open channel) 15:37, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Feedback requested concerning invisibility of Tmbox on mobile view

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257394

Of seven types of message box, all are visible both from desktop or mobile view, except for {{tmbox}}, which is invisible on mobile. Your feedback would be appreciated at Template talk:Mbox#Tmboxes not visible on mobile (all other mboxes are). Mathglot (talk) 06:46, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

xaoxflux responded (thanks!) at the link. Mathglot (talk) 08:46, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Note: I've created {{Tmboxw}} as a temporary workaround for this problem until T257394 is resolved. Please add bugs, concerns, or other comments at Template talk:Tmboxw. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:38, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

failed login attempts

This, like all on-wiki reports of failed login attempts, serves no purpose other than rewarding trolls for a low-effort, high-payoff tactic. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she|they|xe) 10:38, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Hello. I saw a notification that (around two hours ago) "There have been multiple failed attempts to login to your account from a new device." Just wondering if it was only me, or were there attempts on some other accounts as well? —usernamekiran (talk) 20:25, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

a few seconds ago, received two more similar notifications. First it was one notification saying 6 failed attempts. Now there are two notifications a minute apart both saying "multiple failed attempts". So in total there are three notifications now. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:56, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Ignore them if your account has a strong password. Likely a troll. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v a little blue Bori 22:09, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
yup. But just a minute ago, I got one more notification saying "12 attempts". I have strong password, so nothing to worry. —usernamekiran (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Resolved
 – Browser extension was interfering with editing. — xaosflux Talk 13:48, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I've noticed in recent edits double square bracket notation has suddenly been changed to single square brackets, plus the suffix "-en" in the link text. For example [ [ foo | bar ] ] (without the spaces) changes to [foo|bar-en]. I type the double square brackets and when I click preview, it changes to this weird new markup. The contents of nowiki tags, transclusions of the {{brackets}} template, square brackets entered as HTML entities, and even old versions of pages (!) are not immune. This is very surprising and undesirable behaviour. What is going on? Hairy Dude (talk) 11:14, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

  • This change is not merely cosmetic. The weird markup doesn't work, so it is breaking many links on the page when I preview the page before publishing (i.e. every time, since I have the "show preview on first edit" preference enabled). It also makes pages flatly incorrect, for example Help:Link. Hairy Dude (talk) 12:24, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
    • Okay, this is really weird. I'm seeing this behaviour on my desktop computer (Firefox 104.0.2 on Windows 10) but not my phone (Firefox 104.2.0 on Android 13, similarly yesterday's nightly build). Hairy Dude (talk) 12:42, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
      • Tests:
        Test: bar (reply tool)
        Test 2: bar (wikieditor)
        Test 3: bar (visual editor)
@Hairy Dude: I haven't been able to reproduce this yet, can you please give exact step-by-step directions to do this (perhaps do it in a clean user sandbox as well). Please note which editor you are using as well. — xaosflux Talk 12:52, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
I don't think this is the issue, but you have User:Dr pda/prosesize.js imported in to your monobook.js file, which says not to load it, directing someone that wants to use it to use the Gadget version instead. — xaosflux Talk 12:55, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
I've turned some Firefox extensions off and on and it seems like it's caused by Consent-O-Matic. :( Hairy Dude (talk) 13:43, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for the udpate, looks like we can say this isn't us. — xaosflux Talk 13:48, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
I saw another report at Wikipedia:Help desk#single-bracket wikilinks with '-en' suffix that can't be edited? I have added Consent-O-Matic to Wikipedia:Browser notes#Unwanted effects.[16] PrimeHunter (talk) 13:17, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Hairy Dude reported it to the extension at https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic/issues/95. They have released a fixed version v.1.0.10. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:23, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Page views for non-existent pages

Is there any way to get page view statistics for redlinks? For context; Tai chee was recently created as a redirect to Tai Chi. I came across it tagged as WP:R3 (a recently created redirect from an implausible typo or misnomer). The same user also created several variations such as Tai Chee and Taichee. Before deciding whether or not to delete these, I am wondering how implausible that is. I can see people typing tai chee into the search field because they don't know how to spell Tai Chi. So I am wondering if there is any way of seeing how many page views the (until today) nonexistent Tai chee were getting over the past few months? The normal page view statistics in the left side bar give no information prior to page creation. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:25, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

It still shows up in Page Information. Red link example (as linked from Wikipedia:Redlink) currently shows 1, for example. You can go back up to 60 days with the API, which shows a second hit for Red link example but still none for Tai chee. It's unclear whether Tai chee really had no hits in the last two months, or if redlink views become inaccessible after a page is created at that title. —Cryptic 17:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Pageviews Analysis and similar tools should show data for any title you give it, whether the page exists or not. It's a little confusing because with the way the Pageviews API works, a 404 (not found) is the same as zero pageviews, so keep that in mind. This example shows all-time data (since July 2015) for the three redirects you mention, and we see the "Not found" errors the Pageviews API gave us, which suggests no one has viewed these titles before. If you check back tomorrow there should be a number of pageviews, since they were all created today.
One important thing to note, however, is that for a pageview to be registered, someone must browse to an appropriate URL such as /wiki/Tai_chee or /w/index.php?title=Tai_chee. Typically this won't happen via search. When you do a search for a title that doesn't exist, you end up at Special:Search (example). Someone would then need to click on the red link (as if to create the article) in order for a pageview to be registered. What this means is the fact that were no pageviews shouldn't necessarily negate the plausible need for a redirect. — MusikAnimal talk 17:21, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Eh, actually it looks like Pageviews Analysis does NOT let you enter in titles for nonexistent pages -- something I can fix, but regardless the second part about the likelihood of red links even getting pageviews still stands. The three pages you mention exist now, so this link is in fact hitting the pageviews API and not getting any data -- meaning zero pageviews. — MusikAnimal talk 17:27, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:27, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-38

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

  • Two database fields in the templatelinks table are now being dropped: tl_namespace and tl_title. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field called tl_target_id. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [17][18]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
  • In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [19][20]

Future changes

  • In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:13, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

DiscussionTools Beta Feature update

Almost like this, but with no arrows by the new Reply link

The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools is supposed to get some updates this month. You can see "everything" at these links:

The bit that will actually reach the Beta Feature is what the team calls "topic containers". It's just the stuff around the ==Section heading==, not the stuff at the top of the page or the stuff in Vector 2022's new Table of Contents. You'll need to login if you want to see the new subscribe button.

I post this here so you'll know what's going on if someone asks you what caused the talk pages to look different. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Whatamidoing, put this in Tech News. @Klein Muçi already asked me about this redesign on 19 August, thinking my script was responsible for it. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 04:33, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
This has been in Tech/News off and on for about two months already. This particular set of changes is already in the Beta Feature everywhere except enwiki, dewiki, and jawiki at this point. There are two more sets of changes coming up for desktop users.
(I'm in a scheduling meeting right now. It sounds like this change won't happen here until Wednesday, 21 September at the earliest, and the next set has just been delayed until mid-October except for arwiki, huwiki and cswiki.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Whatamidoing, this is only tangentially related to the subject but I had a question that has been bothering me for a while now: Why do we have an inverted kebab menu on the notifications only for it to show the unsubscribe button? I have the impression these kinds of menus are saved for multi-entries dropdowns. There's plenty of room there, why not just have the unsubscribe button directly there instead of hiding it inserted in a cupboard? — Klein Muçi (talk) 09:34, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
If memory serves, when they made that decision, they were considering the possibility of a second item for the menu (a link to Echo/Notification preferences, maybe?). It hasn't been added, but they didn't go back to change it afterwards. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
Whatamidoing, I see... I wish that one of the two options you mention was provided already. Maybe when this update goes live. Taking the unsubscribe button out of the cupboard under the stairs looks straightforward and easy enough, even if that's only a temporary solution. — Klein Muçi (talk) 10:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Sad that this is going to be out without making the headings more accessible, see the task on Phabricator. @Whatamidoing, can you confirm to me that projects that have enabled this by default would not receive this feature in its current state without their explicit approval? stjn 09:31, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Stjn, good to hear I'm not alone on this.. "Putting discussion activity inside the header, yet displaying it below it. Great job. Thanks DT."
Needless to say, my script inserts discussion activity after the header. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:12, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
I've pinged the PM about that Phab task. I'm not sure that I understand the problem, but it sounded like something might need to be fixed on the mobile site before they could fix this.
(There are zero wikis that have enabled this by default.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Sorry, I wasn’t really clear, I was asking about wikis where DiscussionTools itself is enabled by default. stjn 23:02, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
DiscussionTools itself is not enabled by default at any wiki. You will find it in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at all wikis.
Certain sub-features of DiscussionTools (e.g., the very popular Reply tool) are enabled by default at all wikis. The "whole package" is not enabled by default anywhere. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for offline ping @Whatamidoing (WMF).
...without making the headings more accessible, see the task on Phabricator.
hi @Stjn 👋🏼 I appreciate you raising this issue (T314714) here.
You doing so was the reminder I needed to prioritize better understanding the effort and complexity involved with addressing T13555, which seems to be the underlying issue which causes phab:T314714.
You can expect a ping from me here, or on T314714, in the next couple of weeks with what I was able to figure out.
In the meantime, I've asked a clarifying question about the impact of T314714 on the ticket.
Of course, please let me know if any of the above brings new thoughts/questions to mind. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:31, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Check for uses of a template with several specified parameter values

I want to know if there are any uses of Template:Infobox language with the following details:

  • Each of the creator and settings is either absent or blank
  • The signers parameter has a non-blank value
  • The familycolor is one of conlang, artificial, constructed or constructed language.

Animal lover |666| 17:24, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

You should add a language to the template that adds the template to a category depending on whether these conditions are met or not. Ruslik_Zero 19:21, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
A tracking category needs a good reason. The search hastemplate:"Infobox language" insource:/signers *=/ only gives two results so you can just examine them manually. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:36, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. The answer to my original question is no, as I originally suspected. This is relevant because I'm trying to convert the template to Lua, and I saw what I thought was an optimization for wikicode which would have made the Lua more complicated if the answer to my question was yes; in short, a result from a boolean test done at one part of a template can't be used in an other part and the test must ne redone, while Lua functions don't have that issue. Animal lover |666| 08:04, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Some templates call a core subtemplate with the result of oprations which would have to be redone otherwise. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:06, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
You might also find this external tool for template parameters useful. Dexxor (talk) 06:56, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Wrong edit conflict after double clicking

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T318146

Hi, after editing of a talk page (e.g., the talk page at Talk:Affine_space#Definitely_not_right) and when we want to publish these edits, we should click the blue button "Publish changes". But if we double click that button instead of a single click, the edits will publish but we redirect to page Edit conflict: Talk:Affine space.

This scenario is not correct, i.e., double clicking should not cause any "edit conflict". So please correct that bug. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 04:25, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the idea. Feature request created: phab:T318146 –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:35, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

SWViewer mysteriously not functioning

Resolved
 – External tool is working again. — xaosflux Talk 15:42, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Hello! This probably isn't the right place to report this but SWViewer has suddenly stopped showing any edits in the queue. I've tried clearing my cache but that hasn't helped. It says I'm connected to the recent stream on the bottom, and I highly doubt all edits across all Wikis have just suddenly stopped. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:43, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf the "right place" is meta:Talk:SWViewer. — xaosflux Talk 21:03, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Alright. I figured that'd be the right place but I wasn't sure. Regardless it appears that the issue has been resolved now. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 21:07, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Watchlist feature

Is there a script that will show on the watchlist page the number of edits in the prior 24hrs (relative when the last diff was made)? That way I don't have to check the history, leaving the watchlist page, when there was only a single edit. I check diffs with an in-line diff script, thus staying on the watchlist page, but you can only check the last diff and it's unknown if there were any more recently prior to it. Vandals knows this so they make 1 edit with the vandal and the 2nd edit is a normal minor change, hiding the tracks of the first edit unless someone opens the history tab. -- GreenC 21:44, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

@GreenC, have you tried the "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" option in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist? Fair warning: I personally hate it. But perhaps even fairer: Lots of other editors prefer it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. Ah yeah that's not good. Too much clicking and noise. All I really need is a simple low-noise indicator there were other edits made recently. I was thinking a number showing the count of diffs in past 24hrs, but it could be anything. -- GreenC 01:08, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
How about also enabling "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" (Preferences -> Recent changes)? Nardog (talk) 01:11, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
WP:POPUPS let you see the most recent few entries in the history without navigating away from a watchlist. DMacks (talk) 21:19, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Unable to edit old revisions on mobile

Using the regular editor on old versions of pages only brings up the "view source" version of the page, even if the page is not protected (e.g. [21]). I can get around this if I switch to the Visual Editor or the non-mobile site. This is happening both logged in and logged out on Chrome and Microsoft Edge on Android and Windows 11. Schierbecker (talk) 03:37, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Feeling really stupid

Clicked on a damned banner by mistake, it messed up the appearance of pages here, trying but failing to restore the previous appearance. Can some kind soul tell me what this skin is called? I was using it until about ten minutes ago, but I'm not seeing how to return to it in my preferences. As I said, feeling really stupid. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:55, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: That looks like "Vector legacy (2010)", under Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. DanCherek (talk) 20:57, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, DanCherek, that's what I thought it was too, but when I reset to that a load of stuff is in a serif font, while until fifteen minutes ago it was sans. Is there some other button I have to click to restore my settings, do you know? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:02, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
@Justlettersandnumbers: Is that load of stuff within editing areas? If so, the relevant place is Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing, section Editor. AddWittyNameHere 21:22, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, AddWittyNameHere, but no, it isn't that, the edit window is about the only thing that's OK. Page titles and section headers are in serif font where they were sans before, the size relationship between the page title and menu items (top bar, side bar etc) is absurdly exaggerated (looks like about 4:1). That damned banner should read "click here and screw up your interface for good". I'm not too pleased, WMF. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:50, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
@Justlettersandnumbers: Try going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and selecting "Vector classic typography (use only sans-serif in Vector skin)". This is related to the update described at mw:Typography refresh. DanCherek (talk) 22:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
Also try to bypass your cache. Use Ctrl+F5 in most Windows browsers, not just F5 or the reload icon. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:41, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
DanCherek, you've cracked it! – thank you so much! I knew there must be another box to check somewhere, but no idea where. Yes, PrimeHunter, that too, thank you – I have that clock that also acts a purge button, that usually seems to do the trick. This is resolved, many thanks. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:01, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Is there a banner that can change preferences with one click? Without wishing to spill any beans, perhaps something should be done about that. Certes (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, some time in the last two years there was one reported on this page (it'll be in the archives) that, if clicked, did cause some changes to prefs, not all of which were easily reversible. WAID may recall it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:15, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Well, I wasn't going to comment on that, but yes, if a banner offers to show you what something will look like, you'd expect to be taken to a mock-up of it, not to have it instantly imposed on you with no clearly-identified pathway back to what you had before. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Commons category

The {{commons category}} boxes have become full width for some reason. There appears to be no recent change to the template. Anyone know what has changed? Keith D (talk) 19:07, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Always always always link to an example. When I look at Achilles#External links, the box looks fine to me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:13, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
I was looking at Snaith originally, but appeared to be a general problem on others I checked out. It appears to have been fixed now. Keith D (talk) 20:20, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
So there's two possibilities:
  1. Your viewport resolution was < 720px.
  2. I have no idea how, but in the event that the CSS doesn't load correctly for whatever reason. Since TemplateStyles are inlined to the page, this shouldn't happen; there are no additional network requests to perform to get styles for such content, which is the dominant way this issue occurs.
At a higher level, good practice for "block" properties in CSS (float, margin, etc.) is that they be specified only above a certain resolution, allowing smaller resolutions to use the default CSS provided in a browser. This is because in the early days of media queries, web authors needed to deal with browsers that both did and did not support media queries. The ones that didn't would not render the CSS inside the media query. I think part of the reason that practice still exists is because for many kinds of content, mobile resolutions also want "full-width" content (or at least to have the choice to lay stuff out by default). I rewrote Module:Side box to use divs and such media queries a couple months ago, and the default display of a div is 100% width, so that's why in either of the two cases above, you might get 100% width. (An aside: 720px is a lot for a Thing that we perceive to be small on the desktop, but designing just for the default desktop skin (Vector), you need to take into account the 100-200px the sidebar consumes. That leaves 300-400px of words at that width. The solution to this problem at the end of the day is CSS container queries, but rolling those out will still be quite some time for us; Chrome and Safari just merged support for them, and TemplateStyles development lags a couple years behind even if we wanted to use these queries [since not everyone will be using a browser that supports them].) Izno (talk) 22:44, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Just for information I use Firefox with Monobook skin. Keith D (talk) 23:12, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

RfC on the adoption of the Vector 2022 skin as the new default on desktop

Hi everyone! The WMF Web team has been working on the Vector 2022 skin for three years.  Currently, the skin is the default on more than 30 projects of various sizes, accounting for a bit more than 1 billion pageviews per month.  

The goal of the new skin is to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. The project consists of a series of feature changes which, according to our testing, make it easier to read, navigate within the page, search, switch between languages, use page and user tools, and more.

Since July 2022, we have been discussing the process for potential deployment of the Vector 2022 skin as the new default skin for English Wikipedia. In that discussion, the community decided on the changes necessary before deployment, which the Web team is addressing and recommended an RfC as the next step.  

This RfC is available here and is now open for comments.  We would like to express our gratitude to everyone who helped in the process of drafting and giving feedback.  Thank you! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Underline becomes overline

I have noticed that the underline text appears to be overlined when the wikilink is at the beginning of a section. This just started happening about a week ago. Any ideas for what's causing it? jps (talk) 16:44, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

From WP:FTN
See this discussion from three weeks ago. I'm not very good at understanding patch schedules, but from reading T317135, it appears that this bug may be fixed in the next version of MediaWiki (tech news link above), coming in the next 24 hours. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:53, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! I should have WP:RTFA. jps (talk) 17:06, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
I think that is a workaround, the bug seems to be from the browser. — xaosflux Talk 19:01, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Cheers from german wikipedia. I am wondering if you have any means to prevent external links with a pipe as the delimiter between the link and the link-text.

Just two examples: In Plutarch I find [https://books.google.com/books?id=aJQ9dvgh6BwC&dq=Plutarch+middle+platonist&source=gbs_navlinks_s|The Middle Platonists: 80 BC to AD 220] (Middle Platonists: 80 BC to AD 220), the pipe should be a space, otherwise "|The" gets part of the link. This example does not cause an error/nonfunctional link. However, in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp I see [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liberating-Belsen-Concentration-Major-General-Nicholas/dp/1511541709|Liberating Belsen Concentration Camp - A Personal Account] (Belsen Concentration Camp - A Personal Account) and here the link does not work.

Any ideas to prevent such errors? Change the wiki-syntax to allow pipe or space as delimiter for external links? Write some filter which warns the user? Any other idea?

BTW: I used the search string insource:/\[http[^ <\]]*\|/ to find those examples. --Wurgl (talk) 08:59, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

? A space is already a delimiter. I suppose one can write a pipe-replacement script in situations like your example above (likely an expensive string-search-replace operation), but there may also be situations where a pipe may be intended to be visible, which complicates things. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 12:34, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
I strongly do not recommend a script doing automagic replacements. There are (a few) cases where the pipe is part of the url. In addition some of the urls may be dead and cannot be found in the internet archive without the pipe-part.
A script which lists such urls for manual fix would be okay. --Wurgl (talk) 12:55, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
We shouldn't prevent such links because they are sometimes correct, e.g. page views, where I really meant to display two graphs called page views, not a single graph for Cat called Dog page views. A search for this type of link might form the input to a useful run with AWB or similar. Certes (talk) 12:49, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
As I know, a filter can simple show some warning. This might help preventing some or a lot of such wrong links. --Wurgl (talk) 12:55, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Requiring the pipe to be followed by a word would cut down the false positives. As a sample, the 457,000 pages beginning with A have 131 cases. Certes (talk) 13:41, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia:CHECKWIKI/WPC 543 dump may be helpful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:42, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
If I remember correctly the pywikibot script replace.py has an automatic fix for this, under fixes.py? . — Qwerfjkltalk 21:30, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Page unexpectedly seen on my watchlist

Lately, I've seen a lot of pages on my watchlist which I cannot explain being there. Most (maybe all) of these are user talk pages for anonymous users. AFAICS, I don't have a user preference>watchlist set which might cause this. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:28, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I see that you're mainly using Huggle to post messages to IP talk pages. I'm not familiar with Huggle itself, but it probably has some setting somewhere about automatically watching a page if you edit it. Do you have that enabled? --rchard2scout (talk) 08:57, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
That may be it. I've had huggle related problems in the past and huggle options are more difficult for me to figure out that WP user preferences. I've got options I think might be related to this there turned off, but Huggle may be adding all the pages related to users I've looked at there to my watchlist. I dunno. Thanks. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:32, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Template:2022–23 National League 2 East

Unable to edit the league table for 2022–23 National League 2 East. When I attempt an edit, the league table for 2022–23 National League 2 North is in the template. Would appreciate some help as I am unable to work out where I have gone wrong. Jowaninpensans (talk) 20:57, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

@Jowaninpensans: I have fixed the page name in the watch/edit/discuss links made by the template.[22] I clicked the "Edit" tab to edit the template when the links didn't work. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:12, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
This is something that should be picked up by Wikipedia:Database reports/Invalid Navbar links, but it's not - I think because it uses manually-constructed links for edit etc., rather than a {{navbar}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:43, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, Wikipedia:Database reports/Invalid Navbar links is only for templates which use certain other templates to make the links. Template:2022–23 National League 2 East should be converted to use {{navbar}} or something similar but it follows a convention in Category:England rugby union standings templates (and apparently also some other countries). They should all be converted but at the same time for consistency. It's also problematic that they have a watch link instead of view when most readers are IP's with no watchlist. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:53, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
 Done. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:42, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Issue

If I try to create a section on a talk page on mobile with a link (this was the link I was trying to use), it won’t save. Any help? 47.21.202.18 (talk) 20:02, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

47.21.202.18, Special:Captcha? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:26, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Why didn't this ping work?

In Special:Diff/1111826142, I should have gotten pinged, but I never received any notification. Why not? -- RoySmith (talk) 23:16, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

No signature.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:19, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
See more at WP:MENTION. No signature is the most common cause. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

How to install CSS like we install JS?

I know how to install JS in my global.js. I wonder how to install a CSS created by someone else at my global.css. Can someone help? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:10, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Assuming I understand the question correctly, if you don't want to just copy and paste it, you can use @import url("") CSS feature. So like:
@import url("https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:SMcCandlish/codefont.css&action=raw&bcache=1&maxage=86400&ctype=text/css");
from the instructions in m:User:SMcCandlish/codefont.css. (And MDN documentation). Skynxnex (talk) 18:37, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. This is what I was looking for. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 07:04, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Keep in mind that CSS loaded like this makes loading of every other CSS line slower, so a better idea might be to import CSS as JS like this:
mw.loader.load( 'https://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Участник:Stjn/linter.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css', 'text/css' );
stjn 10:27, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Ah cool. I hadn't realized that loader could load CSS as well. Skynxnex (talk) 12:33, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Note loading CSS in a Javascript file will add to its processing time, and since I believe the Javascript executes after the page is visible, its appearance may then be altered after the load is complete. This might be an acceptable tradeoff depending on your specific circumstances, so you can try it out and see what works best for you. isaacl (talk) 07:03, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
The bcache=1 and maxage=86400 params in the URL do nothing. Index.php calls are never cached for logged-in users. – SD0001 (talk) 06:01, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you everyone. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 07:59, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Transcoding system unable to convert newer audiovisual uploads?

I uploaded newer audio clips, but somehow there are error statuses, regardless of any original format. I tried purging and resetting without avail. George Ho (talk) 01:22, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

It's been broken for over 2 weeks. Please see phab:T317069. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:47, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Search totals capped at 10,000

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317374

For over a year, I have used insource regex searching intensively. One of its most valuable features was that it gave a total number of matches.

My search for untagged, unbracketed bare URLs is insource:/\<ref( [^\>]*)?\>https?:\/\/[^ \<\>\{\}]+ *\<\/ref/i. Until this evening, it was reporting a total of ~44K hits. Now it always reports 10,000.

This is a real loss of utility. It deprives me of my main tool for monitoring progress in between the twice-monthly database downloads.

Why has this happened? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:10, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

We are in the process of upgrading from Elasticsearch 6.8.23 to Elasticsearch 7.10.2. This behavior changed in ES7; now queries are early-stopped at a count of 10,000 to save CPU time.
Previously, while the number of actual documents returned would never be more than 10,000, it would still return the full count (the ~44k hits you were seeing).
It sounds like there's a setting we can flip to switch the count behavior back to how it was previously.
We'll have a phabricator task up for this in a bit so I'll circle back to edit this response with a link to that ticket in a little bit.
Thanks for reporting the behavior change, it's very helpful for us to get a feel for users' workflows. RKemper (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
And that ticket is T317374. :) Legoktm (talk) 22:42, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, @Legoktm & @RKemper (WMF).
The full count is really useful for many tasks. I use it many times a day for that search, but also as many times again for various other regex searches. It's great to be able to ask "how big is this issue" and get a prompt answer. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:09, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
I know we're not supposed to say "Me too" on Phab, so here it is in the right place: "Me too!" This feature is invaluable. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:28, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
@Jonesey95. Might want to click "Award Token" on Phab and give it a thumbs up. That's an un-spammy way to support a ticket. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:59, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, this is a feature I was using. I just found out that it was capped today so like @Jonesey95 and @BrownHairedGirl have said it would be helpful for the total count to show, even if it doesn't reutrn more than 10,000 results (like it did in the past). Rlink2 (talk) 13:28, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Circling back here: we've merged a patch that should restore the previous count behavior. This patch won't go live until the next backport deploy or deployment train. Our current goal is to get it out during the Monday Sep 12 US backport window, so if you all haven't heard anything by Tuesday US time, feel free to ping me/us again here or on IRC (#wikimedia-search) for an update. RKemper (WMF) (talk) 18:57, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Many thanks, @RKemper (WMF), both for your prompt action on this and for your courtesy throughout. I look fwd to the fix. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:11, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Update: We've rolled out the new setting. I tried @BrownHairedGirl's query and can confirm I see the full 44k+ hits listed. RKemper (WMF) (talk) 07:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the rollout, @RKemper (WMF).
The full count is indeed being listed, @RKemper (WMF). Thanks for you work on this.
However this has confirmed another problem which I had glimpsed in the past week: that the new search is much more susceptible to timeouts.
Before the switch to Elasticsearch 7, my bare URLs search timed out only very occasionally, and only at periods of peak load, i.e. 2100–0600
However, now my bare URLs search times out on nearly every attempt. Even at 1000 UTC, I still had to try three times to get a full set, without timeout.
The behaviour within AWB is even more annoying. Since May 2022, I have at least once every day (and more often 2-3 times) used exactly that same search within AWB, to generate lists to feed to @Citation bot. It always produced 1,000 hits the maximum permitted by AWB; never any less, in hundreds of uses. But since the arrival of Elasticsearch 7, about half of those with-AWB searches return less than 1,000 hits; only morning-time UTC and early afternoon is safe. I presume that is because the search has timed out.
Note that my current bare URLs search was adopted only when the number of unbracketed, untagged bare URLs dipped below about 110,000. Before that, it timed out, so I used a crude, less complete search which excludes named refs: insource:/\<ref\>https?:\/\/[^ \<\>\{\}+\s*\<\/ref/i]
So Elasticsearch 7 is causing my current search to timeout at less than half the hit count which caused the Elasticsearch 6 to timeout.
What exactly are the upsides of Elasticsearch 7? I see only significantly degraded performance, with no benefits. Have I missed something? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:01, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Using Elasticsearch 6 blocks the use of PHP 8 (see the task chain), which constitutes a security concern as PHP 7 goes out of support soon. Elasticsearch 6 is also not supported by today's and/or tomorrow's OS vendors, which constitutes its own separate security concern. Nearly all version bumps where the feature set is not advertised widely are due to security at the end of the day. Izno (talk) 15:22, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, @Izno. I accept that security concerns will be a driving factor.
But the result of this security fix is a significant fall in performance. It would be helpful to know what processes are underway to identify and implement measures to offset the performance hit, so that users do not lose functionality. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:48, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
@RKemper (WMF): any chance of an comment on whether there is a process to offset the performance hit?
Some of my other work is badly hit by this. For example, I am cleaning up the remaining bare URLs on some top-level domains. I have already done .pk, .si, .ua, .int and .ie. Now I am back to working on .fr, but since the upgrade to Elasticsearch 7 my search insource:/\<ref( [^\>]*)?\>https?:\/\/[^\/ \<\>\{\}]+?\.fr\/[^ \<\>\{\}]+ *\<\/ref/i times out more often than not. Before the upgrade, it never timed out. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:41, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Part of the upgrade requires switching traffic to a single cluster while we upgrade the other. At the moment, the search traffic is going to our secondary datacenter (codfw). This leads to higher load on the cluster and higher latency due to traffic between datacenters. I'm not confident that this is the only reason, there might well be use cases where Elasticsearch 7 has lower performances than Elasticsearch 6. But it make sense to wait until the migration is fully completed before investigating this further. You can check the progress on this Phab task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T308676.
GLederrey (WMF) (talk) GLederrey (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for that clarification, @GLederrey (WMF). That reduced capacity during switchover makes sense, and I am sure that it is at least part of the reason for the performance hit.
Thanks for the Phab link, but I don't have the headspace to learn all the complexities of managing a huge server system. I think its much better for me to leave that in the capable hands of those professionals like yourself and @RKemper (WMF) who specialise in such things.
May I assume from your reply that when the upgrade is complete someone (or some team) within WMF tech will remain "seized of the matter" (as diplomats say) and follow through on performance tests, and plan any necessary remedies? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:12, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Our metrics show that there is no significant performance degradation. That being said, our metrics are global and we don't track the performance of individual queries. If you see specific queries that are now performing worse than expected, please let us now! Ideally by opening a Phabricator ticket and tagging it with "Discovery-Search". GLederrey (WMF) (talk) 08:33, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
@GLederrey (WMF): I have already given you two specific examples, above. Both extensively tested, both with very serious performance degradation. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:19, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Elasticsearch 7 features

After RKemper (WMF)'s helpful comments about the upgrade from Elasticsearch 6.8.23 to Elasticsearch 7.10.2, I did a quick google for docs on changes in functionality. However, all I found was a cluster of pages on the Elasticsearch website which extolled the software's virtues for sysops, such as more compact logfiles. Nothing about users.

Is there any documentation of any changes for users of the search?

For example, I would love the search to support Perl-style shorthand character classes such as \s, \S, \d, and \b. (I have a crush on \b). That would eliminate some tedious conversion and debugging when I take a regex from a Perl script or a C# AWB custom module to use in an insource search (or vice versa), as I often do for sanity checks.

Does the upgrade bring any such changes to the construction and/or reliability of regex searches? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:39, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

The regex support is actually provided by Lucene, which does not provide full regex support. Elasticsearch documents their regex support for v7 on this documentation page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:21, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, @TheDJ. That link is very helpful ... unlike the half-arsed version of regex which it implements. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:33, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

SelectRange doesn't scroll textarea

See test script. (run it) This utilizes the selectRange() method from OO.ui.MultilineTextInputWidget which would "Focus the input and select a specified range within the text".
In Blink-based browsers (like Chrome) the textarea doesn't scroll at all. Ideally the selection would be centered. Is that even possible? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:26, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I believe this is textarea ridiculousness. From memory, you need to set the cursor insertion point, then focus (which will then also scroll), and then select a range. It will scroll to the cursor insertion point, but not to a selection. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:05, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, this seems to have worked. For anyone else who might be interested, I used:
FTT.UITextInput.$input[0].blur();
FTT.UITextInput.$input[0].selectionEnd = RefStart; //move cursor to selection start
FTT.UITextInput.focus(); //scroll
FTT.UITextInput.$input[0].blur(); //blur so we can focus again
FTT.UITextInput.$input[0].selectionEnd = RefEnd; //move cursor to selection end
FTT.UITextInput.focus(); //scroll
FTT.UITextInput.selectRange(RefStart,RefEnd); //select
Edit: changed code to use $input which is easier to read, thx Nardog!— Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 13:47, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
A jQuery object for the textarea element already exists as property $input. Nardog (talk) 13:52, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Help me with this stupid formatting problem

I've reformatted the "Support" section of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deployment of Vector (2022) to use automatic numbering (Special:Diff/1111910639)) but the complex formatting of the "Oppose" section has exceeded my ability. Could somebody who really understands how *, : and # really work in wiki-formatting please bail me out? Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:45, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * it has begun... 16:59, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
@RoySmith: It's really quite easy. Consider a talk page discussion with various indent levels, and you want to reply to one of the posts: so you open up a fresh line, and copy all of the symbols (asterisk, colon or hash) from the line above, and add one more to their right. If you apply this principle to the RfC in question, it'll all fall into place. WP:COLAS has more, although it doesn't mention hashes, the principle is identical. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:40, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
RoySmith, see also a demonstration at Help:Talk pages/Example. —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:17, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

User talk page appearance

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T315625

Probably an obvious question here but the appearance of User talk pages has radically changed even though I'm in the old Vector skin. Individual talk page comments are now enormous in size and have irrelevant notes like how many people are participating in a discussion (which is almost always 1 with a template talk page notice) and how many comments to a comment there have been (also, almost always 1). Lots of extra lines and whitespace and a larger than normal comment header.

I didn't change my Preferences and no one else has mentioned it here today so is this something that just rolled out? How can I get the normal look back? When I preview other skins, they just show me different versions of the Main Page, not a User Talk page. Oh, and I'm using a laptop, I'm not on mobile. Thanks for any information you can provide Liz Read! Talk! 21:27, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I just noticed the same thing using the desktop site on mobile, and I'm also not too fond of it. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Just FYI, you can turn this off in your preferences — it's an option titled "Show discussion activity" in the "Editing" tab — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 21:41, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
For me it was turning off Discussion tools in the beta features tab. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:48, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
That'll do it too :) but "Show discussion activity" will turn off the new design without turning off the rest of the features — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 21:50, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
That's option doesn't exist for me, is it part of the new skin? I still have all the reply functions etc with the beta feature off. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:53, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Huh, you're quite right! My bad — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 21:56, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
@ActivelyDisinterested, if you have the Beta Feature on, then you will have an option for "Show discussion activity" at the very end of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. If you have the Beta Featured disabled, then that option should disappear. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
I checked and you quote correct, however both seem to result in the same functionality. Maybe because I'm using the 2010 skin. I'm going to leave the beta off, so as to avoid a repeat situation with something else. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:27, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
I wonder if the [subscribe] button is visible to you on all talk page sections? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:09, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
@ActivelyDisinterested: forgot ping. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:10, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Yep, the subscribe button is still visable without the beta section being active. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:17, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
To add, I'm also still getting notifications from subscribed talk page sections. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:17, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
@ActivelyDisinterested, that's expected, because all that's "in" the Beta Feature at this moment, at this wiki, is the discussion activity stuff. The prior work has graduated "out" of the Beta Feature, and the future work isn't on the servers yet.
I'm going to make two recommendations, explain why, and then you can make your own choice.
First: It takes a week or two to get used to visual changes. The first day is always the worst/weirdest. I recommend trying to live with it for a while, and then making your decision. (I make the same recommendation all visual changes, e.g., Vector 2022. Try it out for a week or two, not just an hour or two.)
Second: If you decide to turn it off, then in this specific case I recommend that all experienced/long-time editors turn the Beta Feature back on, and then turn the discussion activity item off in the proper/permanent preferences at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. I recommend this because if you turn on the Beta Feature and turn off the real pref, you're done forever with this set of changes. OTOH, if you turn off the Beta Feature, but leave the real pref "on" (and, at the moment, invisible), then whenever it is deployed by default/graduates from the Beta Feature, it'll get flipped back on for you later (due to prefs database limitations). So if you decide this set of changes is not for you, that's perfectly fine, and the most stable way to get rid of it is to disable the regular pref item, rather than the Beta Feature. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm using the desktop version on mobile, the additional white spaces and other deadspace is far problematic at this point. Maybe I'll take another look once improvements have been made to how things are formatted. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:07, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Which skin are you using? You should be able to find the name at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering-skin if you're using the desktop site. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Seven posts above, 2010. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:32, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Previous feedback has been provided at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Usability which describes the changes. Izno (talk) 21:48, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
@Liz, I'd particularly like to know more about the "enormous in size" problem. It shouldn't change the size of anything (except to the extent that adding more information means that the new information takes up some space). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
The size of the section title is now three times as high based on looking inspect element on Firefox, which is explained by the extra information, but there is also now double the padding/margin underneath the horizontal line from my testing. Also the font of the section title is now bolded which may make it feel bigger too. Personally I like the new design, but it does add more whitespace which may be the intended effect. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 23:02, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
@Dreamy Jazz, which skin are you using? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF), I'm using Vector 2022. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 18:25, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
And compared it to using incognito mode (which was therefore comparing to Vector 2010). Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 18:26, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Screenshot comparison
Here's a screenshot comparing the same talk page in three different versions:
  • Vector 2010 with the new information about the discussion activity,
  • Vector 2022 with the new information about the discussion activity, and
  • Vector 2010 again, but without the new information about the discussion activity (i.e., what it looked like last week, and what it looks like if you uncheck the pref now).
The font sizes all look the same to me. Obviously, though, if you're going to add a line saying how many people were in the conversation, etc., then that will take up some room. Is that approximately what you're seeing? Or are you seeing radically different font heights? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:40, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
I hate the big increase in vertical whitespace. It forces me to do extra scrolling, and it offers no benefit in terms of distinguishing the elements. This is a usability fail.
It may not be critical for users of huge desktop screens, but on a laptop vertical space is in short supply. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:22, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
I've removed the details, but would also back a whitespace reversion - it doesn't seem to be notable adding to section header readability Nosebagbear (talk) 23:23, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
(tldr) Is there a way to op out? - FlightTime (open channel) 01:10, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Special:Preferences → "Editing" → "Show discussion activity" (uncheck) — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 01:21, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
@TheresNoTime: Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by FlightTime (talk • contribs) 01:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
That's an important point worth repeating, which applies to other proposed changes too. Many (perhaps most) "desktop" readers use a laptop display about 8" high, and would rather see more information on each screenful than extra white spacing. Certes (talk) 10:55, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl / @Dreamy Jazz we've tightened up the spacing around the headings slightly, and that'll be coming out next week. If you want a preview, it should be visible on the beta cluster now. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 15:39, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
There seems to be more padding between the bottom of a section and the start of the heading on the beta cluster than there does on enwiki currently? Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 18:33, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
That got adjusted too, yeah. It's more-compact inside a given section, but I think it's approximately a wash across the entire page. You can see the design decisions around it on T314449 if you're curious. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
I don't want to turn this off just yet, but it looks terrible because the headers on talk pages now no longer respect my font choices and use a different font family from the body. Could the headers be made to use the same font as the body? Or is there a CSS hack to fix this? —Kusma (talk) 08:52, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
You can override the font using the following selector:
.ext-discussiontools-visualenhancements-enabled .ext-discussiontools-init-section
In your specific case, change
body { ...
to
body, .ext-discussiontools-visualenhancements-enabled .ext-discussiontools-init-section { ... ESanders (WMF) (talk) 11:45, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you! Just one thing (the most visible one) was missing: the header font is .mw-headline and also needs to be added to the CSS rule. —Kusma (talk) 20:08, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm curious to know what is good (enough) about this feature for it to be turned on by default; the extra talk clutter and space is annoying (now gone, but how many editors are going to need to figure out how to turn it off now?). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:08, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia I don't think this is on "by default", but it has been turned on for people that have opted-in to the beta feature. — xaosflux Talk 13:43, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
That's correct: It is only visible to editors who have gone to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and clicked the button to enable "Discussion Tools". If you don't have the Beta Feature, you won't see it. If you don't like it, then you can turn it off (very last item on the page) permanently. The prefs have been designed so that it should avoid any "Ooops, it automatically re-enabled during the next update" problems.
Discussion Tools has multiple components:
  • Reply tool
  • New Topic tool
  • Subscribe button
  • Discussion activity and appearance (three parts)
  • Mobile site (multiple parts, basically tweaks on the previous four)
At the English Wikipedia (but not quite all of the wikis), the first three are deployed by default to all editors, including logged-out/IPs.
At the English Wikipedia (but not quite all of the wikis), the first part of the fourth item is available only to people who have enabled the Beta Features. The other parts are much smaller (mostly a line at the top of the page, a change from [reply] to Reply, and comment count in the TOC iff you are using Vector 2022) and will happen later this year. If you want to see what that looks like in various skins, click on the PatchDemo links at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#DiscussionTools Beta Feature update (top of this page).
Either one or two parts of the mobile category are available at about 8 wikis (including the French Wikipedia). None of that is available here, no matter what you try to enable. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Well, fiddlesticks ... that means someone somewhere advised me to turn on Beta, and I did it, but I have no idea what I've done :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:16, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
I'd had it on, too - I suspect that I must have thought it provided a useful feature at some point, but have now clicked it off as I think it adds clutter and needless whitespace. Does the fact that it's a beta feature mean that there's consideration of ever moving it beyond beta and making it a permanent feature? Hog Farm Talk 21:22, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes of course… —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:36, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Fwiw - I just checked. Do not and never have had beta features enabled. Nonetheless I had to turn off the "new" features that were apparently checked by default. This is for Vector 2010. With Safari there aren't white space and font issues, but there is considerable page clutter. Victoria (tk) 21:41, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
These changes, not the [reply] button.
@Victoriaearle, the new changes are in the Beta Feature. Click on the picture and see the things that the arrows are pointing at. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:24, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone know why the link in this summary points to the nonexistent section "‎Depricate the signers parameter" despite the subject Depricate the <code>signers</code> parameter?, omitting the question mark? Nardog (talk) 03:49, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

That was posted using Discussion Tool's ==New Topic== tool, but I wasn't able to replicate it. (I had wondered whether it just dropped the ?) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
One issue that could have caused this is T315730 (where the summary is generated incorrectly after restoring from autosave sometimes), but it's impossible to know for sure. The user might also have changed the summary themself and forgot the question mark (perhaps if they weren't sure that the <code> tags would be stripped). Matma Rex talk 20:49, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Bullets markup on mobile site are unintuitive

What it looks like
What the code actually is

On Wikipedia's mobile site, two consecutive lines with bullets look more spaced apart than two bullets with a line gap in between them, which is very unintuitive. As in the picture, bullets 2 & 3 are more spaced apart than bullets 1 & 2, despite the fact that bullets 2 & 3 are in consecutive lines, while there is an extra line between bullets 1 & 2. See example at Talk:Nijeder Mawte Nijeder Gaan. This is a very old issue, which I finally decided to report because it is breaking my brain. How can it be fixed? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:40, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I found the code defining it this way here: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/skins/MinervaNeue/+/6401472afb31690041d1a547fb8f7bc0fcd624eb/resources/skins.minerva.base.styles/content/lists.less#29
Some more digging revealed that it was originally added in 2015 in commit https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend/+/199765 to fix https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T93784, which complained about poor readability of long lists, like references – it was difficult to distinguish where each item began and started, because the list items commonly take multiple lines, and at that time the list item "marker" wasn't visually indented like it is now (see screenshots in that task).
The markers were changed to be indented since then – it changed in 2019 in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T150377 (see screenshots there for comparison), following a discussion that pointed out the exact same readability problems, and I actually worked on it myself (I honestly completely forgot). Looks like we didn't realize at the time that the weird margin was an attempt to fix the same thing.
So to summarize, there was a reason for it once, but it no longer makes much sense. I think people would be open to changing this if you filed a task describing the problem and/or submitted a patch. Matma Rex talk 21:10, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: Thank you for the detailed description. I've opened a task at phab:T318485. You may want to have a look at it. Also, I would've submitted a patch if I knew how to, but I don't know a thing about coding. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 21:38, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
CX Zoom, until a patch arrives you can add .content ul{padding-top:0.3em}.content li,.content li:last-child{margin-bottom:0.1em} to Special:MyPage/minerva.css. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:48, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

CIDR range tool doesn't appear to work with deleted contribs

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T183457

I can't find a previous mention of this. So, I was trying to find deleted contribs for an IP range. If I look at a single IP I can see their deleted contribs, no problem. However, if I extend that to a range, no deleted contributions appear at all, even if some exist. I have tried this on different ranges of random IPs and it seems to be standard.

Compare (Admin only, obviously):

Black Kite (talk) 06:12, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

phab:T183457. Izno (talk) 08:29, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
Mmm, that seems to have disappeared into a black hole, doesn't it? I'm surprised it wasn't actioned as part of phab:T163562. Black Kite (talk) 08:44, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, MusikAnimal linked that in their comment as a "welp, we forgot a thing". Izno (talk) 09:13, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
In the ideal world, after the solution of something in the phab:T20493 direction, we wouldn't need two separate contribs pages. I think the reason it is like it is today is because one is looking at the revision table and one is looking at the revision archive table (it was an ancient decision that is effectively technical debt these days to have two tables). Izno (talk) 09:20, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm not massively technical, but does that mean that active revisions are in one table, and deleted ones in another (as opposed to them all being in one table with a field denoting whether they are deleted or not)? If so, seems ... somewhat inefficient. Black Kite (talk) 16:13, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
Exactly so. I don't know about the implications on efficiency. Some possible reasons on why it was originally done that way, all of which are speculation (I assume I'd have to go hunt down the answer on mediawiki-l): 1) it was done because deletion before user admins could delete things was 'delete the revisions from the database entirely' (I don't understand why this would be a motivation), or 2) they didn't want to take the efficiency hit to find all revisions when we know the vast majority of people looking at a contribs page can see only the undeleted revisions (this doesn't seem unreasonable), or 3) they wanted to ensure deleted revisions were never visible to someone without the appropriate permissions, including in database dumps, or 4) something else. (3) doesn't seem like an issue these days given how revision deletion is implemented.
Hence, one of the later comments in the Phab discussion proposes an archived_page table (this is apparently a question of backwards compatibility) and then moving all revisions back into the revision table with a marker of deletion, similar to how revision deletion is done today. (I assume there would be some redesign of Special:MergeHistory such that moving revisions between pages would become trivial, as history moves are a rather significant use case for deleted revisions.) Izno (talk) 17:06, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Xaosflux It would be a really useful thing to have in the situation that I found myself (in this case, an IP range that was stealing sandboxes from regular users and creating them as their own articles, which then got deleted as they were unfinished). Black Kite (talk) 16:11, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

What percent of edits are reverted?

Do we have any statistics on what fraction of mainspace edits are reverted? To be somewhat more concrete, I'm looking at a user with a bit under 500 edits, of which about 10% have been reverted. I'm trying to figure out of that's a lot or not. I can see from Special:Tags that mw-reverted has been applied about 10 million times, but don't know the total number of edits that have been made since we started tagging, nor how it breaks down by namespace. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:01, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Beware that some very old edits have recently been reverted and tagged. Certes (talk) 16:18, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
I got some quick numbers. Considering edits this year, by registered users, only in mainspace, 66% users had less than 5% revert rate, 73% had less than 15%, 78% had less than 25%... MarioGom (talk) 17:47, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Moving editnotices alongside the subject page

Hi everyone, yesterday I did a page move of 1948 Palestine war per a RM on its talk page. I realised that the page has an active editnotice, which also required moving. I then realised that, I and many other page movers moved pages without moving the corresponding editnotice earlier also. I wonder what can be done about it to ensure that editnotices are correctly moved. Maybe some js/CSS code that creates a check box for editnotice shown to all page movers/template editors/admins. Or maybe just improve the post-move cleanup interface message. Thoughts? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 07:19, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't know how technically feasible this is but it would be very desirable. Edit notices are bound to a page as strongly as its Talk: page, which usually moves with the article automatically. Perhaps it should be a Phab request to put another tickbox on the move screen, though I don't see why anyone would untick it. (Added later: by "bound", I meant logically associated rather than technically attached.) Certes (talk) 07:42, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Such a box would be unchecked for history merges/splits done using page moves, etc. If such a thing were to be implemented, it'd probably be best to couple the talk page move with that of the edit notice, because it'd be very rare indeed to move the article and talk page but not the edit notice. Graham87 08:01, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
@Certes edit notices are not "bound to a page" as strongly as its talk page (from a technical level). In the example above, 1948_Palestine_war is indeed strongly bound to Talk:1948_Palestine_war; however the software defined edit notice for that page is actually Mediawiki:editnotice-0-1948_Palestine_war. Now, we've used a bit of template magic to make the edit notices a little easier to manage here on the English Wikipedia, and we store the content of that edit notice in Template:Editnotices/Page/1948 Palestine war. So phab request isn't going to be the fix here.
@CX Zoom the "Move succeeded" results page from a move already has a check for this, and even pre-populates the move form for you with a click. Example output line is: This page has an editnotice at Template:Editnotices/Page/OLDTITLE. Please move it to Template:Editnotices/Page/NEWTITLE. (with the "move" being a link to do that). This is included with all of the other directions about cleaning up after a move. — xaosflux Talk 09:47, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Tools like rmCloser/MassMove/PageSwap, etc. don't show you the cleanup instructions at all. In fact I don't remember seeing it in the first place because I had to use PageSwap. Also, despite the instructions at the normal page move interface, I will still appreciate if moving editnotices could be done automatically like talk pages using a sitewide check box, because from a page mover's perspective they both belong to the same level. This is because the vast majority of pages needing moves don't have editnotices at all. People read instructions once or twice then start skipping them over. When you actually move a page with editnotice, you don't even realise that it has an editnotice because you skipped the instructions. A visual element like checkbox will avoid this. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 12:14, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom if you are using scripts to do your moves, you are not going to see the interface pages as you mentioned - so expanding such scripts is one place where improvements could be had (follow up at script-related pages such as User talk:Andy M. Wang and User talk:Ahecht). As I noted above, we don't put editnotices in the expected place (from a software perspective) here on enwiki - so a UI box in the software isn't going to work. One thing that could possibly help, for people not using scripts, would be to have Special:MovePage display any relevant edit notices - that would be a good tip that something may be needed. — xaosflux Talk 13:28, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
That makes sense, because page moves are also subject to the same sanctions that normal editing is subject to. And most, if not all, editnotices are just about the various sanctions. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:22, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T318572
@CX Zoom: I opened a feature request, phab:T318572, to display EN's to the move interface. This won't solve directly for cases where you are moving without using the move interface (such as via scripts). — xaosflux Talk 14:49, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ProcBot 4 is approved to do exactly this. – SD0001 (talk) 13:22, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for this information. If a bot is already doing this thing (which I wasn't aware of), then we could just leave it like we leave double redirects nowadays. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:24, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Deleting citations to unreliable or copyvio sources

Some web sites and books, which fail WP:RS and related policies, are regularly cited in certain classes of article. For example some unreliable sources on aircraft are currently cited anything from a hundred to a thousand times or more. This is nigh-on hopeless to manually fix, but I guess not disruptive enough to warrant such banhammers as WP:DEPRECATE, WP:BLACKLIST or WP:EDITFILTER. Is there a suitable tool to (help) automate deletion of ref containers citing a given web domain? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:32, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

WP:AWB could do that, but really you should be replacing the reference by what it was a copyvio of, or a more reliable one, rather than just deleting the reference - pretty much a manual process. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:14, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, but I use Linux and have never got Wine to play nicely, so AWB is out. The trouble with leaving up say a thousand cites to a source is that other editors then assume it is reliable and post more of them, faster than you can revisit them. Few of these cites actually lead to an identifiable RS in the source page or book, that is one of the main reasons these sources are unreliable in the first place. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 23:46, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
Well you may still be able to use the javascript version: User:Joeytje50/JWB. Perhaps you would use the regex editor: //tools-static.wmflabs.org/meta/scripts/pathoschild.templatescript.js : You could use this to comment out the reference, or put on unreliable source template, or other copy-paste operations. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:47, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks again for the update. It's certainly a useful UI, but does not appear to save me any of the core identify-the-whole-string-to-replace coding. I am not particularly fluent in such things, so I'll have think about it a bit. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:07, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
@Steelpillow, you might be able to get someone to tag all the sources, since tagging can be done more mechanically than replacing bad refs with good ones. I'd suggest {{copyvio link}} or {{unreliable source?}}. That should discourage people from copying them, plus make it easier for you to find them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-39

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

Recent changes

  • Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the rel attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
  • Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [23]
  • Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [24] [25]
  • In the Module namespace, pages ending with .json will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [26]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:27, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Multiple IPs for same user on same browser at same time

I tried to do some logged out testing, only to realize that I'm caught in the range block for Special:Contribs/2409:4061::/34. Same thing on test & test2 Wikipedia. So, I resorted to https://meta.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org where my IP address is a completely different 47.11.xx.xxx I'm using the same device, same browser. I tried moving around quite a bit and realized that on all Wikimedia wikis (Special:SiteMatrix), I have the 2409 IP. Whereas on all wmflabs wikis (SiteMatrix), I have the 47 IP. How can this be possible simultaneously? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:20, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps that betalabs doesn't support IPV6, hard to tell from here since they don't normally allow anon edits. Many people ave both an IPv4 and IPv6 address, but if the remote end doesn't support IPv6 along the entire route, proxies may get invoked by your ISP as well. — xaosflux Talk 20:29, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Indeed, Wikimedia Cloud Services (including Beta Cluster, Toolforge, etc.) doesn't support IPv6 yet, so users will be forced over to IPv4. Legoktm (talk) 05:17, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Bots editing Village Pump Archives

I was trying to sort by last edit date and I came across this Multiple bots seem to be updating archives. Archives are supposed to stay unchanged etc, but I think based on the history, they seem to fix one issue and leave.

Also a lot of it seems to do sigs having font's and colours, maybe the archive bots could strip those?

Or much bigger idea have the colours and fonts as the page is displayed, from the current sig, like the strikethrough for blocked users? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:00, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

@Wakelamp this is expected behavior. History stays the same forever, "archives" are just copy-paste to make it easy for readers to reference things - these updates are for the benefit of the readers. In many cases, they are restoring the content to look how it originally was intended - as the parser changed breaking certain old markups. — xaosflux Talk 12:39, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
I guess few users sort archives by last edit date so I wouldn't interfere with relevant bot edits to try to preserve an old date. You aren't supposed to make new posts to archives but fixing lint errors and formatting issues is perfectly fine whether bots or users do it. By the way, I have a script User:PrimeHunter/Search sort.js which can sort by all ten options at mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Explicit sort orders, not just the three at Special:Search. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:49, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank-you all. The special search looks great. Two last questions
"they seem to fix one issue and leave." Why do bots do this?
and, is there a tool for extracting topic name links from. I am categorising connected proposals, and seeing which were successful. I am rubbish at creating them, and I think some proposals, that are not marked as perennial, may be worth doing, Wiktionary has a log i think that works that way, and also shows the number of editors involved. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 06:19, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
@Wakelamp, Why do bots do this? This has been discussed a lot at WP:BOTN. You might want to try the archives there. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:40, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
It's better to sort by creation date instead. That way the recently created archives always show up towards the top. – SD0001 (talk) 05:58, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Strange transclusions

Hello! So on the article List of The Simpsons episodes (season 21–present) all other seasons have the pages transcluded and it only shows the table. However strangely seasons 33 and 34 (which i've commented out for now while I try and figure this out) show the entire article and not just the table, despite the formatting of the transclusion link being the exact same as the previous seasons. Anyone know why this is happening? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:22, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf series 33 is lacking some <onlyinclude> tags to delineate the parts that get transcluded. Have a look at the series 32 article to see where they should go. Nthep (talk) 19:30, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Ah that would explain it. I was rather confused since I Didn't actually know how it worked. Thanks! ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:32, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
They took me years to get my head round and I still have to think hard about them now. Nthep (talk) 19:34, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Looks like it was just some vandalism that removed them and ended up breaking it. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:35, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
The IP made much more of a mess on 33 than on 34. THey've been given a final warning for it (the edit history on 33 is a little messy since i accidentally restored the wrong version when fixing it) ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:50, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Re: the last bit, you need {{User screw}} on your user page. :-) Nthep (talk) 20:02, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
I have fixed countless such removals of <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>. An episode list often adds a DISPLAYTITLE with italics for the title of the show. Part of the episode list is often transcluded in another article about the show. Without onlyinclude the whole page including DISPLAYTITLE is transcluded. This adds the page to Category:Pages with disallowed DISPLAYTITLE modifications which I monitor for articles. I sometimes add a source comment like [27] to explain that onlyinclude is needed. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:58, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Template:Cleanup

How to use "reason 2"? Eurohunter (talk) 18:36, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter There is no "reason 2", the 2nd unnamed parameter will be interpreted as "reason", or you can explicitly use the "reason" named parameter. — xaosflux Talk 18:44, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Second unnamed parameter doesn't works in this way (no effect). Eurohunter (talk) 18:46, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Hmm ok maybe not, looks like maybe that used to work but doesn't now - perhaps should be removed from the doc. — xaosflux Talk 18:55, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
There is no mention of |2= in the template's documentation. I have removed all references to parameter |2= from the template's code, since it apparently has not worked for many years and is not present in any transclusions, as far as I can tell. I do not edit the Visual Editor's Template Data code, which is stored on the documentation page; someone else is welcome to remove references to |2= from that unprotected code. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:16, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
2 (second unnamed parameter) has been disallowed as alternative to reason, maybe unintentionally, since [28] by MSGJ in 2012. I guess any old uses of 2 were replaced years ago because it didn't work. There is no need to make it work now. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:37, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 there was in Special:Diff/1112735638 (it's gone now). — xaosflux Talk 20:39, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for that cleanup. FWIW, I stand by what I wrote above. Mixing programming code and actual template documentation has always been a bad idea. I don't know why it has taken 10+ years to separate them properly. (*gets down from high horse, which shows few signs of life*) – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:13, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Limitations (I'm being polite) of mobile Visual Editor?

Gosh—has anyone else been using the mobile browser-based implementation of WP's Visual Editor? Compared to the desktop version, which is generally flawless, the mobile version is so full of bugs, I continually worry about seriously damaging articles due to errors it generates that I may overlook before saving them.
You may tap the screen, and the cursor appears on a different line entirely. You select a word and backspace to delete it, and a different word is deleted instead—or parts of two different words. Sometimes, when you resume editing an article and try to scroll down to the place where you left off, the editor keeps snapping back up to the top of the content, like you've let go of a roller shade too quickly. (At least it spares us the "flap flap" noise.)
I'm always entering source-code mode to repair VE-caused errors, going back and forth to be sure what I'm seeing in the VE reflects reality. Many times I've had to open an article's existing version in a new tab to copy and restore source code where the VE inexplicably deleted it.
Why not stick with the source editor, you may ask, or the desktop version of the VE? Despite my cavalier comments, I'm a busy guy, and my WP-editing opportunities are fleeting enough that I usually have time for them only on my close-at-hand phone (running Android 10 in Firefox—guess I should mention that). And while the ability to edit source code is undeniably valuable, I find it tremendously easier to focus on content without the ubiquitous, overwhelmingly competitive plethora o' extra-textual tags.
Anyway, sorry if I seem to be kvetching. I've actually coped with the mobile VE's quirkiness for years now without saying anything. (For one thing, I didn't know where to say it.)
And one more somewhat-related thing: Why does the mobile VE allow us only to post on Talk pages, not edit or preview them? As you can imagine, this can be a very frustrating one-two punch of embarrassing inaccuracy. Dunno about you—but when addressing my fellow WP obsessives editors, I feel compelled to be at my most anal vigilant, writing-wise.
(Ironically, I see that, unlike regular article pages, this meta-page does have a Preview button. 🤷‍♂️ )
Thanks—I'll hang up now and take my answer off the air. – AndyFielding (talk) 09:33, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@AndyFielding It has limitations for sure. Some are imposed on us by the mobile environments (phone makers really want us to build apps that they have full control over rather than websites…), some are our own fault (I'm one of the developers).
Regarding the text input problems, may I hazard a guess that you're using the Gboard keyboard? There was a long-standing compatibility issue, where due to the way that the keyboard sends text, the editor would sometimes "lose track" of what is being typed, ultimately causing the text being shown on the screen to not match what the editor really contained. This can then lead to further issues like text being deleted (or typed) in the wrong place. Good news is that it seems we've finally fixed this (with a contribution from a developer at Fandom (Wikia)) – you can find the details at T312558, and test the new version now at https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/. There may be similar problems with other keyboards too, but this is a very popular one.
Regarding mobile talk pages, the interface there is unrelated to visual editor, only enabled on some pages (that's why you see a different behavior on this page than normal talk pages), and we're currently in the process of replacing it with a new one, based on the desktop reply tool. You can read the status updates on this work at mw:Talk pages project/Mobile. It will have a preview :)
I don't have an immediate response to the other issues, but if you can reproduce them consistently, it would be very helpful for debugging if you could record your screen while demonstrating the problem and shared the video somewhere. Matma Rex talk 21:48, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
MR: Thanks for your thoughtful and informative reply. Yes, I've been using Gboard, but have alternatives at my disposal. I'll try them, as well as your beta. (Hmm, no Preview button here again, I see… Maybe it's in effect only on certain days of the week. 😄) – AndyFielding (talk) 00:51, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Replag currently at 5 hours; reports may be delayed or appear to be out of date

Resolved

Just an FYI that replication lag is currently at 5 hours. This sort of lag leads to database reports that do not run or that, when they update, contain information that is out of date. When the numbers in the linked page go back to zero, reports that are run afterwards should update correctly. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:50, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

For the record this was marked as resolved at 14:30 (UTC) on the day this was posted. Graham87 03:49, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Template substitution brings a visually different result from expected

I was creating Template:Undated/sandbox to do some experiments. I test them at User:CX Zoom/TestPage34. For all examples, the normal transclusion works fine just as anyone would expect it to. But for whatever reason, the substitution is unexpectedly different for example 2. Why did this happen? (I can think of a workaround using nested #if & #ifeq so that the template could work but maybe I hit a bug or something?) —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 10:49, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: Some templates don't work with subst. {{str rightc}} tries to but fails. {{str rightc|abcdefg|5}} produces cdefg which currently says cdefg as it should. {{subst:str rightc|abcdefg|5}} currently produces blank so it matches the blank switch case | = | in Template:Undated/sandbox. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:47, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
I added a safesubst to {{str rightc}} [29] and everything appears to work now. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:56, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much. Your edit fixed the issue. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 05:45, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Global userpages not showing up in autocomplete search results?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T108534

Has anyone else noticed this? I'm not sure if this is a new bug or if I just haven't spotted it in the past. If an editor has a global user page it doesn't appear in the autocomplete results drop down - their subpages appear fine, but not the main userpage. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 21:03, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Please always post an example. A global user page is only visible if the user has a local account but no local user page. I gave up finding an example. Assuming you are right, I don't think it's a bug. A global userpage may be in another language, especially at non-English wikis, and the user may have no local edits. If they create a local user page then it shows up. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:24, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter Try searching for "User:Mike Peel". All his user space subpages show up in the autocomplete drop down menu, but not his main userpage, because it's global. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 21:31, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. It may look missing here when he has many subpages and 74,000 edits but imagine you are at mzn:, a small wiki with few active users and another script. Type User:Mike in the search box and there are two users. Do they want autocompletion to be "polluted" with numerous global user pages in a foreign script for users who have no local edits and probably don't know the language? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:47, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Based on blue links at mzn:Special:ListUsers/Mike the "pollution" in this case would only be four global user pages but none of them have local edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:51, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
The behaviour here seems to be inconsistent. The user page doesn't appear in the drop down autocomplete results, but if you actually do the search for "User:Mike Peel" the first thing it gives you is an autocomplete like notice that this page exists on wikipedia. When you actually look at the list of search results though the page doesn't appear again.
If you're asking for my opinion, I do think that it would be better for global user pages to appear in autocomplete and search results - it just seems weird and unhelpful to have user pages that are intentionally difficult to access, and it can make searching for people a pain. As long as usual search result ranking is applied (i.e. pages with few incoming links appear at the bottom) the addition of global users shouldn't be too disruptive, accounts that don't edit on a certain project will be at the bottom of the results. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 22:17, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Global user pages have never appeared in local search results nor autocomplete. T108534 tracks this. Legoktm (talk) 00:38, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Preference "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" doesn't seem to work

I've always had "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" enabled, but suddenly (probably because it's WP:THURSDAY?), changes are grouped anyway. I've tried disabling and re-enabling the preference, but I see no difference in my watchlist one way or the other. I'm using Chrome 105.0.5195.127 on Windows 10. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:22, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Check if all transclusions of a specific template are done via an other specific template

I would like to check if all transclusions of several templates (such as Template:Ethnologue25) are done via Template:Infobox language/ref, and if this template (except on the template's own documentation) is only called via Template:Infobox language. Note that I'm talking about the actual specific transclusions, not just appearance on the same page. Is there any way to do this? Animal lover |666| 07:59, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

@Animal lover 666: hastemplate:"Ethnologue25" -hastemplate:"Infobox language/ref" finds four articles which transclude {{Ethnologue25}} without transcluding {{Infobox language/ref}}. The search is based on the whole page so there may be other pages which transclude both in different places without one of them calling the other. I don't think there is a general way to search for that. For specific cases there may be ways by searching the source for how the templates are used. For example, hastemplate:"Ethnologue25" insource:Ethnologue25 finds three articles which call {{Ethnologue25}} in their own source. There could be other cases where {{Ethnologue25}} is called via a template but not via {{Infobox language/ref}}. But insource:Ethnologue25 in template space only finds {{Infobox language/ref}} and a non-transclusion link in {{Ethnolink/doc}}. hastemplate:"Ethnologue25" only finds 23 articles in total so they could also be examined manually with some work. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:29, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Extracting WikiProjects on a talk page using template/module

I was wondering if there is a way to extract out the names of the WikiProjects used on a given talk page, for example Talk: United States, such that when the particular template/module is used, it will create an array United States; Countries; North America; United States Government. It would be very helpful if there is a way to do just that. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 22:17, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Why? Izno (talk) 22:44, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
Given the huge backlog of COI edit requests, I figured out that topic-wise categorisation (inbuilt from {{edit request}}) might be more helpful than a list all category. It helps in finding the requests that you might be more interested in reviewing because you primarily work in that area, potentially reducing the backlog. If template/module cannot do it, alternatively, I may have to file a bot request. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 07:11, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Would a PetScan to intersect Category:Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests and Category:WikiProject United States articles work for your use case? —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:05, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
@Andrybak: Looks like it could work but I'm having troubles with it. Anything I search shows 0 results even though it should not. Maybe I'm putting in the wrong input. Can you please give an example input? Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 12:27, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Here you go. Most likely you weren't setting the namespace in the Page Properties tab; by default, it'll only show pages in the main namespace, and you want Talk: instead for both of those categories. —Cryptic 13:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 13:21, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
@Hellknowz, is this something you could add to Wikipedia:Article alerts? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: In theory. The problem is that the bot can only do 1 workflow per page. The first page I clicked for an example had like 5 of them. I see many have multiple. The bot won't recognize that a page has 2+ different requests - it will list only one of them, pick one of the dates/authors and won't close or update it until all requests are done. Basically, as long as the page is in the COI request category. So it will basically show incorrect values for those cases (although it will still report them). There's no easy way for me to work around this (other than to hide the values, but then that will make the entries undated). Also, a bigger question is the scope of bot reports. Are COI requests more important than the thousands of regular ones? In theory, the bot can just have an edit request section for each project, including COI reports, which would be ideal. But that still leaves the problem of multiple requests. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 17:20, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
For myself, I'd rather see all the pages with an open edit request, not just the COI ones. One per page is probably enough, because (a) if you're on the page anyway, you can see what other requests are there and (b) even if you don't, if you close that one, then tomorrow the bot will presumably notice and report the next one on the page.
If it could be coded in five minutes or less, I'd also rather not see extremely recent edit requests (say, less than 12–24 hours old), because that would give the regular patrollers a chance to remove empty/accidental edit requests. This should improve the signal-to-noise ratio for Article Alerts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:39, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
"if you close that one, then tomorrow the bot will presumably notice and report the next one on the page." That's the problem - the bot won't notice that anything has changed because the page will still be in the same category. It will continue reporting the first request until every request is closed. It will continue reporting the date, the author and the section link of the old request. Even after all are closed, it will still only list the page as if it had one request during that time and was closed when the last request was closed. If a new request is added soon, the bot will think the old request was reopened.
"If it could be coded in five minutes or less, I'd also rather not see extremely recent edit requests" Unfortunately, this would take way longer to implement than that. Without going into technicals, everything assumes that "active means active" and I cannot filter entries like that without breaking things. And yeah, knowing how many empty and useless edit request I've seen that need no action expect be closed, I can see how early reports like this would be a problem. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 10:06, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Avoiding the new ones has some obvious benefits to "me" (=whoever is reading the AAlerts page) and some not-so-obvious costs, like an inaccurate perception of reality. This is why I suggest that "my" convenience be factored in if the cost to you for doing so were very small.
As for the other problem, it sounds like it's a bug that can be addressed in documentation. Instead of "Edit requests", it should say "Edit requests – due to technical limitations, only one is shown per page. If the linked section is closed, check for other open requests on the page". You could alternatively address it by linking only to the whole page, with no section/date information. Then it would always be correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Block

For the last two-three days, I have been blocked and then unblocked. I have done nothing wrong. Any help and suggestions would be appreciated. This has happen several times in the past. Thank You-RFD (talk) 20:59, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

What is the message that appears when this happens?(you may leave off any IP that appears) It's not your account(which has never been blocked). 331dot (talk) 21:11, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
There's actually no need to answer that. RFD: I'm going to grant you block exemption, as I did before, which should allow you to edit whenever. This time it'll be good for the next two years. -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:26, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
Thank You-RFD (talk) 21:27, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Template:Television network original programming category puts cats inside themselves

Gonnym (talk · contribs) isn't around much these days, so I'm asking here. Under certain circumstances, {{Television network original programming category}} puts categories inside themselves unless it's configured properly; twice in the past Gonnym has fixed up such problems as requested at User talk:Gonnym/Archive 3#Template:Television network original programming category, User talk:Gonnym/Archive 4#Television network original programming category and User talk:Gonnym/Archive 4#Zee Marathi Original Programming, but didn't explain what actualy needed doing (there is an expln of sorts on the last one, but it's not at all clear). Now Category:Fox Kids is suffering the same problem: it's inside itself (reported at Wikipedia:Database reports/Self-categorized categories). Does anybody know what needs doing to the template in order fix the cat? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:34, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I have added |no_cat=1.[30] PrimeHunter (talk) 20:45, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
I have also made a more general solution which automatically omits adding a category to itself.[31] PrimeHunter (talk) 21:05, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
In general, if you want to prevent a template from categorizing pages, try |no_cat=1 before asking for help. This frequently will solve the problem. Animal lover |666| 08:04, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
The param is mentioned in the templatedata, but is otherwise undocumented. The impression that I got was that it concerned parent cats, which I wanted left alone. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:29, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
It does concern a parent cat. Adding the cat itself (usually unintentionally) is a special case of a parent cat. no_cat is a non-standard parameter name only used in this template. nocat is the common name recommended at Wikipedia:Category suppression. Category suppression usually suppresses all parent categories but in {{Television network original programming category}} it only suppresses one of two. That is confusing when it's undocumented. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:14, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
I have changed the non-standard no_cat to nocat in the template [32] and the six calls which used it. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:26, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Chinese Wikipedia

I cannot log on to Chinese Wikipedia, help please? Taiwanrailtransportfan (talk) 23:50, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

What goes wrong? Can you view pages at zh:? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:04, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Yes, but not logged in. The problem is if I want to edit with my account there - it's not possible now, since I can't log in. Taiwanrailtransportfan (talk) 00:06, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
But what happens when you try to log in? "I cannot" and "it's not possible" are very vague. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:15, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
The action gets cancelled, according to Chinese Wikipedia, as a "precaution against session hijacking." Taiwanrailtransportfan (talk) 00:20, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
Try reloading a zh: page with Ctrl+F5. Try logging out here first. If it doesn't work, try another browser or device if possible. If that works but you want to use your current device and browser, try deleting cookies for wikipedia.org and wikimedia.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:37, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm browsing in guest mode, so I don't think I have cookies in the first place. Is there a possible way to log in? Is my username an issue? Taiwanrailtransportfan (talk) 22:15, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
@Taiwanrailtransportfan you are not able to create an account at zhwiki because of your username. I can't give you any more details then that. Perhaps there is a part of your username that may be problematic on zhwiki. You can request a username change at Special:GlobalRenameRequest. I don't know of ways for you to contact the zhwiki admins by email, but that could also be an option. — xaosflux Talk 22:23, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Are you sure of that? It would be an odd error message for that. I can create (didn't save it) the user page zh:User:Taiwanrailtransportfan but not the article zh:Taiwanrailtransportfan. zh:MediaWiki:Titleblacklist says (?!User:|User talk:).*(Taiwan).* <autoconfirmed> This disallows the page name Taiwanrailtransportfan but only outside userspace. zh:Special:Listusers/Taiwan shows many usernames with "Taiwan", also from 2022. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:22, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter yes I am, the condition that would have precluded this has been around for about 5 months. — xaosflux Talk 23:32, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
As far as the error message goes, perhaps there is some translation messed up somewhere, it appears that it should have a fairly generic denial message. — xaosflux Talk 23:36, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks for the explanation. The 2022 usernames are from January to April. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:39, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

editing glitch which moves cursor, disallows my use of capital letters

"II())NWhen I am editing in Wikipedia sometimes, nowadays, it seems I am allowed to use capital letters some of the time, as here where I have used "When" and "I". But some of the time, even within the same edit where I have successfully used some capital letters, I am disallowed: when I type a capital letter the cursor is moved to the beginning of the of the posting. I think this may occur only when I open a new discussion section on a Talk page, as here, by selecting the "+" option, which brings me into some kind of source mode with "Source" highlighted (rather than showing "Visual" highlighted). But it is different than regular source mode in that a--my posting will end by selecting "Add topic" and b--a continuously updated preview shows below. As opposed to if I am adding (in source mode) to an already-started discussion, where I can see a preview only by requesting it, and my posting will end by selecting "Publish changes". Sometimes the only way I can proceed is to use lower-case letters only. so i would be coming across more informally than i intend. I'm not sure, but the glitch may kick off only when I go back within the text I have already written, say I went back to change "nowadays" to "Nowadays". Then the cursor would move to the beginning and put "N" there, so this section would start "NWhen", while the word would have been changed to "owadays". Apparently also typing a parenthesis will do the same, because in this edit i tried that. the gibberish word which now starts this discussion is the result of cursor moving there. in this edit it has become impossible to type a capital letter or a quote mark or a parenthesis.

What gives? Is there something in my account which needs to be changed? --Doncram (talk) 18:27, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

@Doncram: Are you using a mobile device? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:12, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
CX Zoom, I am not on a mobile phone. I'm on an Acer "Spin 3" laptop, apparently running Windows 11 ("Windows Update" says that Windows 11, Version 22H2 is coming soon). --Doncram (talk) 20:51, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
@Doncram, you're using the New Topic tool in mw:Help:DiscussionTools. I think you're the second or third person to report this problem this year.
The first question is whether you have the GoogleTrans gadget enabled. If so, disabling that should solve the problem.[33]
If not, the second question is whether any part of this description sounds familiar. If so, I'm not sure how to fix it, but I have experienced it myself (usually in Firefox/Mac). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Yes there have been some mildly irritating mini-popups opening up, which I suppose were Google translation gadget offers to translate a given word like "owadays" (after the "n" was deleted by me from "nowadays", then I hit shift-n to try to enter "N") to some other language... I think it was sometimes offering to translate to Vietnamese!!! I simply did not understood what that was, and the mini-popups might have closed on their own and gone away. I suppose I did not describe them above because I didn't have the vocabulary to do so. I see now at my User preferences that indeed my user preferences show the feature is turned on ( "GoogleTrans: open a translation popup for the selected text or the word under the cursor when pushing the shift button". ) I did not knowingly turn that on. The mini-popup seems like a weird little thing, which would just translate a single word, from English to some other language? Yes, I was pushing the shift button to try to type (N) or quote mark (") or parenthesis "(" or ")".
Recently, however, I was interested to try to translate some full articles from Norwegian and French wikipedias, and I think i looked up Wikipedia:Translation first and then followed link to Wikipedia:Content translation tool, where per instructions I clicked the "blue button" labelled "Go to Special:ContentTranslation" and selected "Try it now!". I did succeed in translating and "publishing" one or two articles. I suppose that the blue button thing changed my User preference on that GoogleTrans gadget? At user preferences, I have just now turned it off, and I assume that will fix my problem raised here.
I am actually confused now about how I did successfully launch and use a big translation tool which set up side-by-side blocks of text from the source article, for me to translate from Norwegian or French into English ... maybe I was able to start up an article's translation when I was at the article in the Norwegian or French language Wikipedia? But anyhow I did not understand I was also enabling this small one-word-at-a-time thing. And now it is turned off and I dunno if i can find my way back to the one or two article translations I had left in progress. Maybe I will have to change the user preference back, in order to see/find my translations in progress? But that is a different problem than I posed here. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) and all others here. --Doncram (talk) 02:40, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Page moves without moving archives

In the past 3-4 months, I encountered 2 instances of page moves without moving talk page archives. And had to do that myself. In the older case, it took less than a day to find it out, in the latter case, it took over a month, and lowercase sigmabot had already created brand new archives at new title. I wonder how prevalent it is and what can be done to prevent it. Note that move subpages option is available only to page movers and administrators because of its disruption potential. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:18, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Previously the archiving would have stopped after the move because the archive parameter no longer pointed to a subpage per User:MiszaBot/config#Parameters explained. If movers forget to move old archives then they usually also forget to update archive. Since July Aidan9382-Bot by Aidan9382 has automatically updated the parameter [34] without checking for old archives. The archive issue is mentioned in Category:Pages where archive parameter is not a subpage where the bot finds the pages but it wasn't brought up in Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Aidan9382-Bot 2. Maybe the bot should check for archives under the old archive value and do something else like flag it for editor attention. It probably shouldn't move archives automatically. A counter (the current archive number) above 1 is also a strong hint that there may be archives somewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:38, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thanks for the notice, I'd be glad to make this a feature of the bot. Question is, how do you suggest implementing this? Currently, my bot has a safety feature where if it 1) Can't find existing archives (Specifically archives 1 and archives counter) and 2) Notices the page already has some other subpage, it'll refuse to fix it and leaves a notice for another person (usually me) to clear it up manually. This was so it would never try to do anything as wild as this spectacular fail. Perhaps removing the second check and just having the first one would create a check like you suggested. Would that work for you? Aidan9382 (talk) 04:46, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thanks. I was wondering if it would help if a bot could compile a list of talk page subpages whose parent page is a redirect. But that has it's own limitations, it would leave out pages like this one (3rd example) which was a wrongly created talk page because one of the mover moved the article without talk page, and thus the actual talk page became orphaned. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:15, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@Aidan9382: It sounds like you check more than I thought. Does "Can't find existing archives" and "page already has some other subpage" refer to the wrong archive value or the current page name? Why did the bot make the edit I linked [35] when there was an archive at Talk:List of rivers by length/Archive 1? CX Zoom moved the archive later and posted here. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:41, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Let me elaborate - the bot checks the current location of the page for any existing archive subpage, not any previous name of the page due to reasons. My proposed idea is that I could have it so the bot wouldn't fix an archive if it found no existing subpages, which would imply they either havent moved over yet or dont exist, which would fix your issue here and allow a human to check it instead. Sorry if my explenation was a little poor. Aidan9382 (talk) 14:12, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@Aidan9382: If you don't want to check for archives at the wrong archive and are willing to examine the extra cases manually then that sounds OK. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:28, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Dont worry, I used to do it manually before hand - its the whole reason I made the bot after a while. Anyways, the change is now  Done, so I'll see how this goes over the next few days. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Aidan9382 (talk) 14:34, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
@Aidan9382: Thanks. And thanks for working on Category:Pages where archive parameter is not a subpage. I made the category and automatic population [36] but only fixed a few pages. There were originally more than 2700. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:15, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Dumber search?

When I search for the word "alarmism" [37], I get hits for "alarm", which is not what I want. I know what I want and I try to tell the search algorithm what I want, but it thinks it is smarter than me and knows better. If I try to exclude "alarm", I get no hits, probably because that also excludes "alarmism".

Is there a way to stop the search algorithm from dunning-krugering like that? --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:57, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

You can try something like Special:Search/Alarmism insource:/alarmism/. Add i to the end if you also want to include Alarmism, etc. Certes (talk) 16:08, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
@Hob Gadling: It's better to use quotation marks like you did in the post but not the search. insource:/.../ is called a regex search. It's expensive and may not have time to search all pages. It helps if you combine it with a normal search like alarmism insource:/alarmism/ but for this purpose, you can just use "alarmism". See more at Help:Searching. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:12, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Ah! Thank you both! I did not think of Help:Searching or of quotation marks. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:22, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
This may be a goofy question, but: Why does WP return results that don't include the searched-for term (especially if the term is in quotes—which, on most search engines, indicates it's mandatory)? If that happened to me, I'd assume no pages existed with the searched-for term, but the search feature was trying to be helpful. – AndyFielding (talk) 01:03, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
@AndyFielding: Help:Searching#Stem matching says: "Search results will include the roots of words included in the search string, and their various tenses (plural, past-tense, etc.). If stem matching is not wanted, use double quotes around the word or phrase you want to match verbatim." Do you have an example where a search term in quotes returns results without the term? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:15, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

It's interesting to me that insource has been shown in examples, but what it does has not actually been mentioned, and it's pretty critical to know whether or not it's appropriate. IMO, the first thing you should consider is whether you want to search the page source or the rendered text. The default is the rendered text. Use insource: only if you want to search the page source. Also, it seems that Wikipedia search treats the content as a series of words, and delimiters (the characters that separate words) are not considered, e.g. unless you're using a regex search, search terms "foo/bar" and "foo+bar" will return identical results. Keep in mind also that Wikipedia search isn't google search, it's not going to guess at what you might really have wanted. Fabrickator (talk) 01:50, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

AndyFieldingCertes only suggested alarmism insource:/alarmism/ as a way to get an exact match (quotes is a better way here). A regex search insource:/.../ cannot be used on the rendered result. By the way, insource:/alarmism/ doesn't find Alarmism while "alarmism" does find it. Add i like insource:/alarmism/i for a case insensitive regex search. It goes from 97 to 134 results. "alarmism" gives 129 results. The five "missing" pages can be seen with alarmism insource:/alarmism/i -"alarmism". Three only has "alarmism" in the source and two say "Alarmism's" which is treated as one word and not found by "alarmism". PrimeHunter (talk) 02:25, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Quoted text probably gives what you need here and is much more efficient than my original suggestion of insource:. There is more help at mw:Help:CirrusSearch, and an explanation of the very limited and non-standard regular expression syntax here. Certes (talk) 08:36, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for your thoughtful explanations. I may have misinterpreted the OP's post, thinking his quotation marks were literal. (Discussing search strings, perhaps italics would've been a better idea—or putting the search terms on their own indented lines?) – AndyFielding (talk) 12:35, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

HotDefaultSort setting

I've noticed that User:BrandonXLF/HotDefaultSort sets {{DEFAULTSORT}} in a manner that omits the word "list" when this may be desirable in some categories. E.g. at List of existing technologies predicted in science fiction the defaultsort is set at "Existing technologies predicted in science fiction", even though sorting as "list" is desirable in non-list categories to show that a given page is a list rather than article. Because of that I personally favor manual setting of sortkeys depending on category. Should HotDefaultSort be amended in that regard? Brandmeistertalk 16:05, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Brandmeister, you should discuss this with @BrandonXLF at User talk:BrandonXLF. There is no technical problem here, so this isn't the right place. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:14, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Actually, this was done manually, nothing to do with HotDefaultSort. You can instead discuss this with the editor that added the DEFAULTSORT. (Sorry for the ping, BrandonXLF.) — Qwerfjkltalk 17:22, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Yep, that was me. I was sorting through stub articles and probably made some edits that don't coordinate with the organization of some categories. Please do re-edit to reflect that organization; my only request is that the lists don't get tagged as stubs. Also, thanks for the idea that lists are not articles, which hadn't occurred to me. Her Pegship (?) 18:34, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Technically, lists are articles. All pages in mainspace are articles apart from dabs, redirects, the Main Page and any other exceptions I forgot. Certes (talk) 18:38, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Ok, I've adjusted sortkeys. The edit summary said "using Hot Default Sort", so I thought it was done automatically and was agreed before. Brandmeistertalk 19:29, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
@Brandmeister, typically, fully automatic editing is done by bots. HotDefaultSort is a semi-automatic tool for modifying DEFAULTSORTs. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:53, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Amazon Kindle Compatibility

Amazon Kindle: a good device for reading. The Wkipedia: a lot of articles.

I know the browser is experimental, but I think Wikipedia should become more bare bones, so the kindle could run it better.

Best Regards Anon — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.91.165.192 (talk) 18:59, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, ok, I guess. 50.74.165.98 (talk) 19:32, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Which Kindle model are you referring too? Kindle Fire models have the Silk Browser, and my Kindle Fire has the Wikipedia App installed. Both work well for reading Wikipedia. I agree that the browser on the original Kindle was very clunky. Wikipedia currently supports both desktop and mobile versions. - Donald Albury 21:44, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Watchlist glitch

The page Patty Loveless is on my watchlist. But for some reason, the watchlist is only showing edits made by me and not by others (for instance, it's not showing the edit by GünniX on October 1). Anyone know what's going on? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:04, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

The other recent edits (and some of yours) are marked minor. If "Hide minor edits from the watchlist" is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist then disable it. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:42, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Template:Code and Too many expensive function calls

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T316858

Comparison of programming languages (basic instructions) is in Category:Pages with script errors. Searching the article shows that "Lua error: too many expensive function calls" occurs twice. However, that is misleading because preview reports "Expensive parser function count 683/500" so there is a big problem. It turns out that {{code}} is used 671 times and each call uses one expensive function due to use of syntaxhighlight (and there are 8 direct calls to syntaxhighlight). Assuming that the article is kept at its current size, are there any suggestions for a simple replacement for {{code}}? An example with a simple argument is:

  • {{code|long int}} → long int

That could be replaced with

  • <code><nowiki>long int</nowiki></code> → long int

The nowiki is not needed in this case but my guess is that lots of the more complex examples would need it and making a manual choice 671 times would not be desirable. Is there anything better? Johnuniq (talk) 04:54, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Can we teach {{code}} to not invoke <syntaxhighlight> if lang=text (probably this should be done on the MediaWiki side too)? Also the last few comments on T316858 are relevant here. Legoktm (talk) 05:12, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
@Legoktm, I've hastily done this with {{Code/sandbox}}— Qwerfjkltalk 10:16, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Expensive parser functions

C Sharp syntax has had this problem since yesterday. It has not been edited in months so something else must have changed. It uses {{C sharp}} a lot, but that hasn't changed either. MB 16:30, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

This is phab:T316858/#Template:Code and Too many expensive function calls; <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> is now expensive. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:33, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

And now Comparison of programming languages (basic instructions). Johnuniq (talk) 05:47, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Automatic xmbox template dependent on namespace

Hi, is there a xmbox template that changes the mbox type depending on the namespace, for example, ambox for article, cmbox for categories and so on automatically, with the same text, image and other parameters. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 11:43, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: That's {{mbox}}, I think. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:14, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, I think this one is it. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 12:30, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Coolest Tool Award 2022: Call for nominations

The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award welcomes your nominations! What is your favorite Wikimedia related software tool? Please submit your favorite tools by October 12, 2022! The awarded projects will be announced and showcased in a virtual ceremony in December.


MediaWiki message delivery 18:30, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Protected edit request

See MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist-forbidden-edit#Protected edit request on 2 October 2022 Railtransportfan (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-40

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

Recent changes

  • Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [38] [39]
  • The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
  • Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [40] [41]
  • The scribunto-console API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5]
  • The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:21, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Hiding certain images

Hi. I need help hiding certain images. Tried using "importScript", "mw.loader.load", and "iusc" and even tried a :. It still says error on bottom in edit box. I'm trying to create Special:MyPage/common.js Cwater1 (talk) 21:53, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

For context, see this discussion at the Teahouse. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 22:33, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
That is the discussion I started. Cwater1 (talk) 00:27, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
I just noticed that I didn't link it to the teahouse. Sorry. Cwater1 (talk) 00:43, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Planck mythology

Various claims relating to effects at the Planck scale have been included in WP over the last years, often vociferously defended, but never reliably sourced. This mythology seems to have permeated to where it is mentioned in print outside WP, and that WP editors seem to accept it as a given. An example that I came across recently where apparently reasonable editors simply fail to understand this effect because it is:

In neither case could the restored source be checked: the link is dead and neither the ISBN nor the author/title combination appears to exist. The statement "it is thought that the short wavelength limit is in the vicinity of the Planck length" is given undue prominence, given that it can be, at best, described as pseudoscientific speculation (that may even have gained visibility through WP). How should we deal with this kind of self-perpetuating topic that draws its strength from WP folklore? —Quondum 11:57, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@Quondum: This is for technical problems related to mediawiki and using wikipedia in general. You might want to move this to WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. 0xDeadbeef 12:05, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. Moved to Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Planck_mythology. —Quondum 12:14, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Is Special:EditWatchlist Broken

Is Special:EditWatchlist broken for everyone or just me? When I load the page I get: 

Internal error
Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Assert\ParameterAssertionException"

and trying to load using a different skin doesn't seem to work either. Chris 12:57, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Works for me (legacy Vector, Firefox, Ubuntu). Certes (talk) 13:02, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, must just be me then. I cleared my watchlist, and that seems to have fixed it. --Chris 13:50, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Authority control

Hello, where do we report links in the {{Authority control}} that do not work? I checked out a few in Category:Articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers and get "404: Document not found" messages. Example article A5 road (Great Britain). Why are we adding links that do not work to this template? Keith D (talk) 11:27, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Not a new problem, sadly: Template talk:Authority control/Archive 11#Thousands of WorldCat links don't work. Fram (talk) 11:36, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
There seems to have been some discussion in 2018 to suppress these links if the article subject isn't a person. But I don't see that it was ever implemented. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:17, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
It also fails for people, as per Dan Erickson. Keith D (talk) 20:59, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi all,

I am trying to fix a CS1 maint. notice: (I realise that this will generate a script warning for some people when editing, apologies)

{{cite book|author= {{Interlanguage link multi|Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum|de}} |title=History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders |year= 1996|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-15510-4 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=9Za4jdBEVB4C&pg=PA392}}

My equally unsatisfactory attempt is this:

{{cite book|last=Dohrn-van Rossum |first=Gerhard |author-link=:de:Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum |title=History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders |year= 1996 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-15510-4 |page=392 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=9Za4jdBEVB4C&pg=PA392 }}

I hunted through the documentation without luck, so: Is it possible for {{cite book}} to generate either the de:Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum of a standard inter-language link, or the (de) suffix of an {{ill}}? Otherwise the link is somewhat misleading. Or maybe I should just leave it alone... Cheers, MinorProphet (talk) 12:21, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I imagine that this would be a an incorrect use of |first=, however:
{{cite book|last=Dohrn-van Rossum |first=Gerhard [de] |author-link=:de:Gerhard :Dohrn-van Rossum |title=History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders |year= 1996 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-15510-4 |page=392 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=9Za4jdBEVB4C&pg=PA392 }}
See this recent discussion. Improvements have been made in the sandbox version of the modules. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:26, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Many thanks for the link - gratifying to know that it's being worked on right now. MinorProphet (talk) 13:50, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

PageImage is not updated

Hi, after reverting an edit on the Template:Math topics TOC, the image File:Nuvola_Math_and_Inf.svg has now the size 121px, but the PageImage at all transcluding the articles like Mathematics is not updated. By a rule of thumb, the first SVG image that is larger than 120px should automatically be set as the PageImage of that article. But this scenario after reverting this edit is not applied, and the PageImage of the article Mathematics is not updated to File:Nuvola_Math_and_Inf.svg. Why this happens? and how I can set it again as PageImage? Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:48, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Each affected page probably needs a WP:NULLEDIT. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:42, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 No, null edits or non-null edits are not the solution of this problem. The same problem exists for example in Farsi Wikipedia and in the article سعدی i.e., after reverting similar edit, still PageImage is not updated (see here). Here, after a couple of days, and applying some non-null edits to the article, still the PageImage is not updated (unlike PageImage at English Wikipedia) Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 16:54, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 @Izno Null edit solves that for the article of Mathematics , but not for the article سعدی, a few minutes ago I applied both some null and non-null editions to that article and PageImage does not change. The same problem certainly exists for other articles.
Anyway, it should be updated without requiring any null edit, i.e., this update should be done automatically without requiring null edit. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 17:17, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 As another example, a null edit does not change the PageImage of article Cluster analysis, although PageImage of the article Data mining that in the same way transcludes this image and has the same image_size as the former, is this image File:Kernel Machine.svg. This way, this law is violated:

PageImage = Lead's first image of size greater than 120px

Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 17:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Displaying 0–0 as 0 %, instead of —

Hello, I was wondering, whether it's possible to modify the code of the following template so it displays the following win-loss percentage as 0%, instead of a dash –? Best, Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:01, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Why would you want to? --Trovatore (talk) 00:16, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Qwerty284651: That's bad math. See division by zero. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:17, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@Trovatore and Jonesey95: I know it's bad math, but this format is primarily used for games/set win % in ATP Finals tournament as it's common practice in those situations. Would be nice to have it display the 0%, instead of -, regardless of it being bad math or not. Can you give me a few coding pointers, or what? Qwerty284651 (talk) 00:43, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
0-0 is already treated as a special case with explicit result &nbsp;–&nbsp; so all you would have to do is replace that with 0%. But the template is used in 2622 articles and 0% would probably look wrong or dumb in a lot of them. If it's only wanted in certain articles like ATP Finals then the code could make the result depend on whether at least one of certain strings appear in the page name. For example {{#ifexpr:{{#invoke:string|find|{{PAGENAME}}|ATP Finals}}+{{#invoke:string|find|{{PAGENAME}}|WTA Finals}}|0%|&nbsp;–&nbsp;}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:57, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Rather than hardcode page names into the template, I feel it is preferable to have a parameter to control the output. isaacl (talk) 02:09, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
That could enable any displayed value with {{{none|&nbsp;–&nbsp;}}}, e.g. called with none=0%, or an empty none= to display nothing. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:29, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
So just replace &nbsp;–&nbsp; with {{{none|&nbsp;–&nbsp;}}} and it should work or would I need to make any other changes/modifications? Qwerty284651 (talk) 03:02, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter, using none as a param for 0–0, when none=0%, {{#ifeq:{{{none|{{&nbsp;–&nbsp;}}}|no||0%}} isn't working. See here. What am I doing wrong? Qwerty284651 (talk) 04:23, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
That code is all wrong. Just make the replacement in your 03:02 post, nothing else. That should work if calls in relevant articles like ATP Finals add |none=0% to say they want that displayed instead of &nbsp;–&nbsp;. I haven't examined whether {{Tennis win percentage}} is called indirectly via other templates which need updating if 0% should be displayed. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:37, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter:, the code works, finally. I replaced it as you said and then added parameter none=0% to the second template to invoke it. Thank you very much. Qwerty284651 (talk) 12:24, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter param update. The added parameter was causing 0–0 to display as 0% even without the param being added via {{twlp}}, meaning all 20,000+ pages with the {{tennis win percentage}} transcluded were displaying it 0% instead of as –, so I resorted to other alternatives for this issue. Anyway, thanks for helping me, albeit unsuccessful on my end. Qwerty284651 (talk) 20:20, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: No, it wouldn't have displayed as 0% in any article which didn't use the none parameter either directly or via another template which uses it. Maybe you looked at an example which did use none, or one which had a non-zero loss number and has always correctly displayed 0% winning, or one which didn't even use the template in that place, or one which needed a purge to update the rendering after you reverted your wrong edit [42]. It's hard to tell when you fail to give an example. Always give an example when you report a problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:06, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Okay, I presume I wrote the param code incorrectly, for instance, I replaced &nbsp;–&nbsp; with your suggested {{{none|&nbsp;–&nbsp;}}} first the base template than updated the direct template and last the target page, which was working, BUT when I removed the "none" parameter it still displayed 0–0 as 0% meaning, it displayed it thusly across all 26k pages, it was transcluded to, so I had to revert.
Than I tried to be all fancy by renaming the param to "zero" and use an if expression, which I am still unfamiliar with, and updated the TWLP accordingly, but that too failed, so I made a fork of the original, the base template, by adding if to the first expression, which would always display 0%, irrespective of the won= and lost= values and relinked it to the follow-up twlp template, so it's used exclusively for the ATP/WTA aka the Tour Finals, 2021 onwards. Qwerty284651 (talk) 21:48, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: You haven't checked 26k pages so you don't know what they said. {{{none|&nbsp;–&nbsp;}}} is the correct code to produce the value of |none= if the parameter is set. Trust me, it's one the most elementary and used features of the template language, documented at Help:Template#Handling parameters. Without none it produces &nbsp;–&nbsp;. Where would it even get a string like "0%" from if none is not set? It wouldn't. It's unclear to me which place in which page you checked at which time but as mentioned, maybe you needed to purge the page after editing the template which did temporarily produce "0%" everywhere after your wrong edit [43]. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:32, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter Will give it a second go. Qwerty284651 (talk) 22:49, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Here is the thing, upon re-adding the value in this example, when none is set to yes, it displays in the atp finals page as yes in brackets, when it is set to 0%, it displays normally, but when I removed the param to see if it works without it, it actually displayed 0%. I am at a loss as to what I am doing wrong. It IS simple, yet I cannot seem to get it to work right. Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:34, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: You have made many edits and it's hard to tell which alledgedly wrong display you refer to at which time. Keep the template versions you think are wrong (we can live with a temporary problem if there actually is one), link the page where you think something displays wrong, say where in the page it is, quote what you see there and what you think it should say instead. That's how you make a proper example of a perceived problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:58, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter, okay, so I the param, added param none=yes in the main template, on atp finals page, 5th row from top starting with 6, last input at the end of the line, it says "0–0 (yes)", it should say "0–0 (0%)". Qwerty284651 (talk) 00:28, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: Thanks for the example. It happens because you wrote none=yes in {{Tennis win loss percentage}}. none is not a yes/no flag to enable/disable something. It is a literal value to display as written. If it said none=No matches played then it would display "No matches played". In the article you wrote {{twlp|W=0|L=0|dec=0|none=yes}} This none=yes is ignored because {{twlp}} has no input parameter called none. It only uses that parameter name when it calls {{Tennis win percentage}} with none=yes so you couldn't currently get the article to display 0% in a call of {{twlp}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter, okay then explain me this. Why when I set "none=0%" in {{twlp}}, it displays as "0%" in the article, but when I remove the parameter (see line 154 in diff) in wikicode {{twlp|W=0|L=0|dec=0}} it displays it correctly as 0% even without the missing "none parameter", and not -? Qwerty284651 (talk) 01:58, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: {{twlp}} still has no input parameter called none so it doesn't matter in any way whether a call of {{twlp}} sets none to something. You have changed {{twlp}} [44] to say none=0% so any call of {{twlp}} will currently say 0%. Do you want callers of {{twlp}} to be able to choose what to say, similar to callers of {{Tennis win percentage}} but maybe with 0% as default instead of &nbsp;–&nbsp;? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:26, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
You could do that by changing none=0% to none={{{none|0%}}} in {{twlp}}. That means: Use the callers value of |none= if it's set, otherwise use 0%. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:33, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter I wanted to have none= param display – by default, which it already did, having been named as the default value for the none param in {{twp1}} and when called with value none=yes to display 0%, which I, believe it or not, successfully coded with none={{#if:{{{none|}}}|0%|&nbsp;–&nbsp;}}. See here. Qwerty284651 (talk) 05:32, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: That works. It seems confusing that none is a value to display in {{Tennis win percentage}} and a flag to choose between two possible values in {{Tennis win loss percentage}} but if you like it then I think we have spent enough time on this. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:04, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter
I know we have drawn out this convo for far too long and thanks for the patience, but just one last thing.
Is it possible to combine the two by having none be a flag in {{Tennis win percentage}} that chooses between two possible values directly instead of it being just a value to display something or is that not feasible? Qwerty284651 (talk) 13:21, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: You already posted the needed code: {{#if:{{{none|}}}|0%|&nbsp;–&nbsp;}} instead of {{{none|&nbsp;–&nbsp;}}} in {{Tennis win percentage}}. If this is done then {{twlp}} must be changed to use the parameter in the new way. It can just pass on none with none={{{none|}}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:11, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: I did as you suggested. I guess both have the same desired effect. Thanks for helping me out. Till then. Cheers, Qwerty284651 (talk) 20:10, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
I'm sure that it can be made to work, but it is still invalid to write that Matteo Berrettini's Game W–L percentage (at ATP Finals) is "0%". I recommend against it. "N/A" or "–" would be more appropriate. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:49, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@Fyunck(click): What is your take on this? Is it common practice to write win % for 0–0 as - in tennis-related articles? Qwerty284651 (talk) 13:03, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Sort of beyond my knowledge on what is appropriate. All I could give is my own opinion. If I was doing it I would probably use N/A rather than 0% or an ndash. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:10, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Inline cleanup tags

How to add custom inline cleanup tag (nothing match)? Eurohunter (talk) 22:17, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I find that {{Clarify}} covers a lot of inline general cleanup needs. Always link to an example when you have a question at VPT. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:11, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

User JSON page protection notices

Why is it that nonexistent user JSON pages (like User:Example/foobar.json) have the protection notice This page is protected from creation, so only administrators can create it. (the standard full-salt message), while nonexistent user CSS and JS pages (like User:Example/foobar.js) have the notice Creation of this page is limited to interface administrators. (message specifically mentioning interface admins)? dudhhr talk contribs (he/they) 01:43, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Compare WP:IADMIN, which states [...]are users who can edit all JavaScript (JS), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) pages,. dudhhr talk contribs (he/they) 01:46, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
All admins can create user JSON pages, while only INTADMINs can create user JS/CSS (Look for (edituserjson) in Special:ListGroupRights). "Technically" intadmins can create jsons without also being admins, but we require all intadmins to also be admins - so we didn't bother making that message say "administrators or interface administrators". — xaosflux Talk 01:59, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. The wording on WP:INTADMIN implied to me that only intadmins can edit JSONs. dudhhr talk contribs (he/they) 02:06, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Template:Is redirect gives result for corresponding subject page

Hi all, {{is redirect}} when used for a talk page, returns whether or not the corresponding subject page is a redirect, which I believe is not an expected result. For example, {{is redirect|Talk:Autism}} → . At the moment, it returns "yes". Here, Talk:Autism isn't a redirect, but Autism is. It would be helpful, if it can be fixed. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 20:12, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

It calls Module:Pagetype. Module:Pagetype#Talk parameter says: "Normally, the module will treat talk pages as if they were in the corresponding subject namespace. However, if the talk parameter is set, the module will treat talk pages separately from subject pages." {{is redirect}} may have uses relying on the current behaviour so maybe it should just pass on and document an optional talk parameter but continue with the same subject page default as the module. Pinging DePiep who made the template. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:21, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter @CX Zoom There are hundreds of thousands of talk pages using templates that rely on this behaviour, e.g. Template:Automatic archive navigator uses this template to detect archive pages that have been left behind following a page move and Template:Old RfD uses this to check for non-redirects that have been tagged. 192.76.8.81 (talk) 21:47, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
I was the one who requested {{automatic archive navigator}} to use {{is redirect}}, see Template Talk:automatic archive navigator. But it is now populating the corresponding category in a manner I had not expected. I've been cleaning up that category manually, and all these redirect subject pages are causing unwanted pages to clog up the category. I wouldn't mind having a different module or template that does the job the way I wish it to, if the current code cannot be updated, but I don't know how to build one. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 05:43, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
I have no simple solution. When creating the template, I have not considered nor tested this behaviour (i.e., not thought of). Given the 142k tc's now for this template, as noted by IP, it seems not feasible to change this default behaviour, also because it follows the module.
I have added a warning note to the templates documentation. Could there be an adjustment for new usage? (A warning in Preview, or by subst: or by bot an explicit parameter added--like the dating of certain templates have?). DePiep (talk) 06:07, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Noting: 1. TPU says that the template is not used directly in mainspace (only by transclusion then).
2. Apart from RTFM usage, the situation is the same for invoking the module. no, the template does not process |talk=. -DePiep (talk) 06:13, 5 October 2022 (UTC) -DePiep (talk) 06:39, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
I've fixed this in the sandbox by adding a talk parameter:
  • {{is redirect/sandbox|Talk:Autism}} →
  • {{is redirect/sandbox|Talk:Autism|talk=yes}} →
— Qwerfjkltalk 06:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Improvement. Though current 'correct' implementations, ie already having |talk=yes, will change behaviour. NB I've applied {{yesno}} to prevent awkward |talk=no misexpectation. DePiep (talk) 06:43, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Qwerfjkl's & DePiep's sandbox version seems to resolve the issue. By adding the |talk= parameter, existing transclusions remain unaffected while improving the functionality of the template overall. {{yesno}} makes it more obvious to a new user coming across this template, who might not know what's going on internally. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 06:47, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Edit requested submitted. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:31, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Edit done (no by me). /documentation adjusted. DePiep (talk) 05:04, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Giving search engines better hints?

When I search DuckDuckGo for "la danse", the highlighted result is titled "La Danse", and links to La Danse (Bouguereau). In Google, the top Wikipedia hit is La Danse (Carpeaux). Neither of which give any indication that there's a La Danse DAB page, which lists Dance (Matisse) (what I was actually looking for) as the first suggestion.

I realize the search engines do their own thing, but I'm wondering if there's some better hinting we can do on our end that would have made this work better. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what can be done to help your specific situation, given that your search term didn't include "Matisse". Regarding the more general problem, it's not evident we should encourage search engines to prefer the disambiguation page over specific pages, as search engine algorithms can take into account other factors to determine what the user is most interested in seeing. (For what it's worth, for me the top Wikipedia hit is the disambiguation page.) isaacl (talk) 16:01, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Transclude tags are visible, somthing is missing

Please check Theog_Assembly_constituency#2003. Transclude tags are visitble, somthing is missing and I cannot figure out what. Please take a look and feel free to fix. Please ping when you reply. Venkat TL (talk) 17:29, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

@Venkat TL I think this and this fixed it. — xaosflux Talk 17:40, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. --Venkat TL (talk) 17:43, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Random tech question

Hello Vilage Pump Tech denizens,

I had a random question I'm hoping you can either give me a Yea or Nay on. I know there is a tool that compiles an editors' last 500 votes on AFDs and compares them to the actual closures of these deletion discussions. Is there any easy way to compile admin stats on how admins close AFDs, you know their stats on closing discussions as Delete, Keep or No consensus? I'm just curious at this point and maybe these kind of stats are not desirable. Also considering that there are probably only a dozen or so admins closing AFD discussions, it might be too small of a group of affected people to be worth setting up a tool for this. It could be a part of adminstats, I guess, and I suppose it could also be possible to extend it to RFD/CFD/TFD/MFD if anyone creating a tool is that ambitious.

What brought up this question in my mind is the coming evaluation of admin and editing activity in January 2023. I was thinking that if an admin tended to close discussions as No consensus, Redirect, Merge or Draftify, that act wouldn't show up as an admin activity in a log whereas an article Deletion would show up on an admin log of activity. I hope my request is straight-forward and not overly complicated. If this is information that no one has an interest in or there is no interest in developing this tool, I completely understand, I just thought I'd venture and put forward this query. Thanks! Liz Read! Talk! 00:38, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Is there any easy way to compile admin stats on how admins close AFDs, you know their stats on closing discussions as Delete, Keep or No consensus? "Does this exist today?", no, I don't think so. I think it could be done in a similar way to how things are counted today, but that's a volunteer thing to work on and set up. :)
I was thinking that if an admin tended to close discussions as No consensus, Redirect, Merge or Draftify, that act wouldn't show up as an admin activity I don't really understand this comment. The new inactivity rule starting in January 2023 is based solely on edits and all closures cause at least one or two edits....
From a more general "do we need something like that?", I think probably not. Checking to ensure admins are making good closes is the only useful direction I can see for that kind of tool, but bad closures have established processes for review already that do more or less a good job. Izno (talk) 03:13, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
@Liz, I think this is what you're looking for? Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:53, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

"Camp"-string being blocked

I've noticed on one of my webbrowsers that any page containing the string "camp" is being blocked from edit or purge actions. I can still read the base page, and use what-links-here, related-changes, on these pages. I suspect this might be caused by some blacklist, but individually disabling my extensions doesn't isolate the problem to any one of them. I suspect this occurs with any url with **wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=(title containing the string "camp" or similar)

Does anyone have a suggestion? If this is a common problem, it might need to be propogated up the chain to whomever maintains whatever block is causing this.

-- 65.92.247.226 (talk) 07:29, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Just editing this section results in a URL that gets blocked from being viewed. (the new URL generated after a save contains a section link with the string "camp" in it, which results in the problem occurring). The error reported is that the redirects are occurring incorrectly and will never complete.-- 65.92.247.226 (talk) 07:32, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Test edit to see if I get blocked URLs. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:33, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
If this is a common problem – nope, it seems to be local to your network. Talk to whoever administrates it. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:34, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
If it's only one browser then it must be something in the browser. Which browser? I assume it happens at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Camp&action=edit. Does it happen at https://example.org/w/index.php?title=Camp&action=edit? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:32, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
No, that loads. -- 65.92.247.226 (talk) 05:42, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Does it happen if you open your browser in safe-mode (no extensions)? — xaosflux Talk 13:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
It does not happen with a fresh profile. I already suspect it is a setting or an extension, but I couldn't isolate it by individually turning off the extensions. I had something similar happen before to several URLs containing the string "advert" or "ad", that was tracked down to a blacklist (thanks to Wiktionary tech people for tracking that down), but that also occured on the standard page, so isn't exactly the same problem. I can load the standard article page, but the purge and edit pages causes problems (either loading as the regular article page or not loading with the error message), as does coming out of a SAVE that contains this section header link in the URL. -- 65.92.247.226 (talk) 05:42, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Can someone fill me in on the reason for this "error" popping up? (Full text: The "reply" link cannot be used to reply to this comment. To reply, please use the full page editor by clicking "Edit"., most recently noticed when attempting a reply to this post). 199.208.172.35 (talk) 15:03, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

My first instinct would be that it is confused by the {{od}} outdent template in the message you're trying to reply to. You could look thru the links at Wikipedia:Talk pages project#Open bugs to see if this has been reported before. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:15, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
That was my thought, but a quick test at ANI showed that "reply" worked on other outdented posts; it only seems to error out on outdented posts by Cullen328. I'll check the links you mentioned. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 15:20, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Hmm. No explanation at those links, least not that I could find, though other folks may have had the same problem (1, 2). This section talks about the error message but none of the examples apply (I think) to this case.
On an unrelated note, I really don't like that talk page setup, what a pain to try to skim/search old posts... 199.208.172.35 (talk) 16:45, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
I was able to fix the behavior by moving {{od}} out of the block of text. I would guess that Parsoid isn't parsing the block of text with {{od}} inline the same as Parser.php. Izno (talk) 16:55, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
✅ - I'll file that knowledge away for future reference... well, the "move {{od}}" part, at least, the other stuff is way over my head. 😅 199.208.172.35 (talk) 14:55, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
For future reference, this is the edit that fixed it: [45]
This was actually a case of Accidental complex transclusion, as described on the page that you linked to. When parsing wikitext markup like {{od}}{{u|username}}blahblah, Parsoid wants to generate a HTML <p> tag after the outdent, before the mention. Since there is nothing between these two things, the generated <p> tag ends up being marked as generated by the {{u|…}} template. Now you have an unclosed tag generated by a template, the transclusion is extended until it is closed, and we accidentally created a complex transclusion. (And the reply tool refuses to reply when they are involved, on the assumption that something weird is going on on the page.)
You can see this easily by opening the page in visual editor, where the entire comment will be marked as "Template content". [46]
By adding the line break, you cause the <p> tag to be generated by the line break character, and avoid this problem.
We actually have a task for this on Phabricator: T313093 (there's also a more detailed explanation in it), and we actually could make the reply tool work in this case – it's just a matter of us not knowing what else could possibly be affected in a negative way. But since this issue keeps coming up (yours is the 3rd case since I started noting them down), perhaps it is worth trying. Matma Rex talk 19:50, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for the detailed explanation, your highness, @Matma Rex, sir (are you king of math? water buffalos? both? 😉)! Most semi-experienced users know what to do when that error pops up, but it did confuse a newcomer at the Teahouse - they actually assumed it was a deliberate breaking of the reply tool on Cullen328's part. I'm glad to hear the issue is at least known and being tracked, and now I can explain the problem when I come across it in the future. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 21:53, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
It was math, and it is an old nickname ;) Glad that helped. Matma Rex talk 11:04, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

PetScan or DB query for categories exclusively in Category:Hidden categories and Category:Tracking categories

I have stumbled upon a tracking category for a template, which was categorized into exactly two categories: Hidden categories and Tracking categories. Is it possible to do a WP:PETSCAN or a DB report for categories which are in these two categories and no other categories? That is, to generate a list of "uncategorized" maintenance tracking categories – in my case I've added the category to the tree of Category:Wikipedia template parameter issues. —⁠andrybak (talk) 00:15, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Here you go. —Cryptic 00:40, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
I cleaned up things only in Category:Hidden categories in December 2021. Admittedly that involved dumping a few in Category:Tracking categories when I couldn't come up with a better parent. Another set of categories that don't count is subcats of Category:CatAutoTOC tracking categories * Pppery * it has begun... 01:38, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
There's currently another 61 cats when that tree is permitted. —Cryptic 02:07, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
I'm slowly going through quarry:query/67919. Mostly categorizing them under tree of Category:Template parameter issues by topic. Six categories so far were (or are about to be) deleted per WP:G8 because templates that used the categories are either deleted or stopped using them. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:44, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Sticky header rows gadget breaks display of table

I've got the gadget enabled in settings labelled as "Make headers of tables display as long as the table is in view, i.e. "sticky"". I found out today that when this gadget is enabled, it breaks the display of the table at Template:Wikidata/doc#Configuration_flags. When the gadget is disabled, the table looks fine, but when it's enabled, it looks like this. The bottom row is displaying incorrectly for some reason when this gadget is enabled. Would it be possible to fix this somehow, perhaps with a bug fix to the gadget? Thanks. – numbermaniac 05:48, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

It's a known issue when the last row only has header cells declared in the row itself. Fixed by adding a non-displayed row.[47] PrimeHunter (talk) 11:01, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 200#Help with Table. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:06, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Interesting, good to know what the cause of it is. Thanks for fixing it! – numbermaniac 15:06, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Allowing anons to use gadgets

Anons are a large portion of Wikipedia visitors, but when it comes to gadgets they are shit out of luck if the desired gadget isn't loaded by default. They can load it by modifying the URL (like ?withgadget=dark-mode) but that's forgotten once you navigate to another page. They can use something like Greasemonkey, but it's not reasonable to expect users to do that.
I'm suggesting to consider setting something up that would give anons more options. Originally written for testing purposes, I realized something like User:Alexis Jazz/AnonLoader might actually be useful for non-testing purposes. You can demo it at https://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page where anons can enable/disable ConvenientDiscussions, Dark Mode and Factotum using sidebar links. Consider it a proof of concept. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:02, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks: that seems to have great potential, though it might be hard to advertise to those who need it most. I was about to write a simple Tampermonkey script to insert ?useskin= when I visit Wikipedia anonymously, but this tool could do that job too. Certes (talk) 13:05, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Certes, great idea! (but not quite as simple as I thought) I wrote SkinEnforcer (should work with *monkey too) and added it to AnonLoader on betacommons so it can be taken for a test drive. Two brand new scripts in a day, not bad. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll adopt that if (when?) the default skin changes. It looks a lot more professional than the simple and non-portable hack I had in mind. Certes (talk) 10:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Re: Pushpin map of the world's FAs (discussion from March)

Map
Map of Featured Articles with locations

Hello, a little update to everyone involved in the discussion "Pushpin map of the world's FAs" from March, @Sdkb, Jéské Couriano, Pppery, The wub, Donald Albury, NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh, TheDJ, Agathoclea, Whatamidoing (WMF)):

As of yesterday, it is possible to use geopoints from Wikidata in Kartographer maps, via QID or SPARQL query. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:09, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

How cool, thanks very much Johanna! And please pass on my thanks to those who worked on this improvement, I'm sure it will be useful for a lot of other applications. Only just saw this as I didn't get a notification about your message for some reason. I had a go at making a map for the featured articles, pinging Sdkb as the person who originally requested it. the wub "?!" 23:25, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Amazing; thanks so much! I'm going to go ahead and add it to WP:FA. A future improvement might be to color-code the icons by type. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:38, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies. I've passed the feedback on to our team. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:41, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
Can i just confirm whether this works for all planets/moons (eg the cyclonia (location of the Mask on Mars. Also I saw a problem (that I can't find now :-( ) a few months tago with an external website's map of Terran shipwrecks that used wikidata showed a location on a minor planetoid, as being a wreck 1000)") km off South Australia with no land near by Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 10:25, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

OAuth/pywikibot help

I'm having a problem trying to get OAuth working with pywikibot on ToolForge and was hoping someone here would be able to help. (I've posted on #pywikibot but that seems to be low traffic.) I've looked through the archives here and found this test file:

import pywikibot
site = pywikibot.Site() # or site = pywikibot.Site('en', 'wikipedia')
site.login() # Logs in
site.logged_in() # Test if logged in

which I've created in the bot user account. If I run "python3 test1.py" on this file I get "pywikibot.exceptions.NoUsernameError: Failed OAuth authentication for wikipedia:en: The authorization headers in your request are not valid: No approved grant was found for that authorization token."

I set up user_config.py using the values I got from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:OAuthConsumerRegistration/propose to fill in the authenticate strings per https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot/OAuth. The registration page gave me three values, rather than the four listed on the OAuth page:

authenticate['en.wikipedia.org'] = ('consumer_token', 'consumer_secret', 'access_token', 'access_secret')

so I have no value for the 'access_secret' field, and I can't see anything in the documentation about what to put there. I'm guessing that's the problem but I can't be sure. Any pointers to where I can find documentation on this would be much appreciated. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:21, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Update: now resolved (I think) via help received on IRC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:07, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Follow up question for anyone who understands how to run a Python tool on ToolForge. I have started the webservice with " webservice --backend=kubernetes python3.9 start", and have a .py file that uses OAuth that will run interactively in the shell. If I name that file app.py and move it to ~/www/python/src/ I thought it would respond to https://ganfilter.toolforge.org, but it doesn't. What do I need to do to have code respond to that URL? Thanks for any help. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Your app.py just prints a string – that would not make it respond to the web endpoint. You have to create an app object using some web framework like django or flask and assign that to a top-level variable named app in app.py. The quick start code from flask docs should work when placed in app.py. – SD0001 (talk) 10:16, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks -- I tried that and per the uwsgi.log it seems "from flask import flask" is failing (from flask import Flask / ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'flask'. Per this page I think that means the venv I built is not working. I just went back into the venv with the command given at that link and did "pip install flask"; it says "Requirement already satisfied" so it appears the install worked. I restarted the webservice and I still get a 503 error, and the uwsgi.log shows the import is still failing. Can you suggest anything else I might be doing wrong? I did also notice when trying to import some of the other modules I want to use that some were not found; e.g. "pip install re" fails. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
All commands for installing packages inside the venv should be done within a webservice shell (first command from that link). If you did any pip installs from outside, I suggest deleting the venv and starting afresh.
re is a standard python module, it need not and cannot be installed. – SD0001 (talk) 12:02, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
I did everything inside the webservice shell. The only difference between the commands given at that link and what I typed is that I used 3.9 rather than 3.7, and I did “pip install flask” rather than using a requirements.txt file. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:18, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
I deleted the venv and redid the steps from scratch, as you suggested, and this time it worked. Thanks for the help! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Working outside tools

Greetings. How we check for redirects these days? ౪ Santa ౪99° 19:35, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Santasa99, if you want to check redirects to a given page, you can do so from the associated WhatLinksHere page, i.e. Special:WhatLinksHere/Page. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:57, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanx Q, yes, that should help. I am going to try it right away. ౪ Santa ౪99° 20:09, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

RFC: Column name/position/content for binary computing units

See Template talk:Quantities of bits#RFC: Column name/position/content for binary computing units for full RFC

There is an RFC to answer questions about the {{Quantities of bits}} and related templates. Please see the questions there and answer as you see fit. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:24, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-41

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

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
  • On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [48][49]

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

14:06, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Forcing a cessation

Currently, whenever I refresh a page on Wikipedia or restore a previously viewed page using the back arrow, a banner drops down saying "View simplified page?" It only occupies about 10% of the page but the problem is that the 10% it occupies is enough to completely obscure my entire page header as well as all of the page links and notification links therein contained. And the banner remains in place for nearly 10 seconds which seems like an eternity with desired functionality unavailable while it is displayed. If anyone knows how I can force a cessation of this banner's display, please advise me of how. I am hopeful and eager to see a reply. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 06:47, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

In furtherance of my desire to force this banner not to display, I reviewed my preference options, selected the "banners" tab and deselected all of the banner options which had all been selected. The "simplified view" banner is still appearing. I presume that others, if not all editors, encounter this banner. Am I correct in that regard? If so, does anyone else find its manner of display annoying? Best regards. --John Cline (talk) 09:18, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@John Cline The 'view simplified page' popup is a feature of your web browser, not Wikipedia, so turning off Wikipedia banners will have no effect. What browser are you using? There are instructions online for disabling this feature on Chrome; I'm not sure if it's something other browsers have too. Sam Walton (talk) 10:26, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for this reply. I use Firefox and will pursue disabling it from there. Got to go for now. Thanks again.--John Cline (talk) 10:52, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Is the problem specific to Wikipedia? If not, perhaps you have Firefox's reader view enabled. Certes (talk) 11:06, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Firefox reader view doesn't behave this way. The description appears to be a Chrome 'feature'. Neils51 (talk) 11:57, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
@John Cline: When you write I use Firefox, do you mean that the problem appears when using Firefox, or that the problem appears when you use some other browser (which?) and you have worked around the problem by browsing in Firefox instead? Certes (talk) 15:29, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
I say that I use Firefox because I designated Firefox as my default browser in my device settings and therefore believe that Firefox is the browser I use. I may in fact be wrong in my belief as much is assumed and little is actually known. Additionally, I've come to realize that technology has a way of imposing its own agenda with users of limited technical prowess; like me. Best regards.--John Cline (talk) 23:40, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
If you manually start a browser by clicking its icon then whichever browser you start will run. If you click a link in a non-browser program then your default browser may start. What does this say: https://www.whatismybrowser.com/. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:52, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Your provided link says my browser looks like Chrome on Linux and then says my browser announced itself as Chrome 94 for Android 11. As such, Chrome usurped control of my settings for I never changed the Firefox designation, nor would I ever have; I dislike using Chrome. Best regards. --John Cline (talk) 13:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
It sounds as if you've been lured into accepting the default option for one of those confusing "refrain from opting out from refusing to change your browser?" pop-ups. Just change your default browser back to Firefox and everything should be how you like it again. You can do that in Firefox by visiting about:preferences, or in your operating system (the exact method depends which OS you use). Of course, this will apply to all websites: I don't think we need to change anything within Wikipedia. Certes (talk) 15:23, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
If you start the browser by clicking a browser icon then compare File:Google Chrome icon (February 2022).svg and File:Firefox logo, 2019.svg. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:01, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Ironically, my Firefox settings show my designation of Firefox as my default browser and my phone's settings also show Firefox as my default browser, yet Chrome continues to prevail as the browser in actual use. Perhaps my manner of launching Wikipedia is ultimately at fault. The procedure I use follows: 1.) I click the Google search bar. 2.) I choose Wikipedia from the list of frequently searched terms 3.) I choose Wikipedia from the search results given 4.) I refine the subsequent result by choosing English Wikipedia and end up at Wikipedia's main page. If pages chosen from Google search results default to using the Chrome browser, I am my own worst enemy. And ask how I can launch Wikipedia by better means. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 03:54, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Yes, the problem is with step 1: Don't use Google's search bar on your phone from the phone's 'desktop'. Either acquire a custom search bar or launch Firefox directly. Izno (talk) 04:03, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Indeed, this has identified my error and resolved the issue prompting this posting.Thank you all. --John Cline (talk) 17:54, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Gitlab

WMF has "migrated" my bots to https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/toolforge-repos/milhistbot. [50] So now they cannot be updated any more. Anyone have any ideas as to how to work around this problem? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:36, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

As the mailing list thread says, login to wikimedia gitlab with your wikimedia account, and accept the email invitation to get push access to your repo. – SD0001 (talk) 09:16, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
@Hawkeye7, did you get that sorted out? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I got it sorted out in the end. I was not aware of the Wikimedia account that was used. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:24, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Publishers Weekly error

When automatic citations are created for articles from Publishers Weekly [51]https://www.publishersweekly.com/, the url shows up with a dropped letter "l" in the word publishers. I had noticed this because the link is dead on arrival in articles I worked on. There is currently an effort to correct the nearly 150 citations with this "typo." However, it is not a typo of the part of the editor, but something in the automatic coding. Any help in fixing this weird glitch would be appreciated by those of us who work on articles about authors and books. Rublamb (talk) 18:48, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Please always post an example when you report a problem. There are no live examples because they have all been fixed but I chased down an example fix. The source is https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780312898281 but its own html is missing 'l' in: <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.pubishersweekly.com/9780312898281">. The tag is supposed to give a canonical url the site wants people to use when they link a page with multiple url's so the citation tools are technically doing the right thing. We could work around it by making an exception for this site but I think we should simply try to tell them they screwed up and see if they fix it. I have mostly bad experiences (being ignored) about telling sites about their errors. Anybody good at it? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:34, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
I could bring a few examples too (of being ignored) when I brought up similar errors to various sites in the past. Imo, the main problem seems to be that the people who administer the site content and who may be contacted, are not the ones maintaining its code. So several different parts must move together. Even assuming one could discover the domain's technical contact (now de facto widely considered privileged information when not the ISP), it is highly unlikely he/she would jump to contact the site's developers for something so minor. The branding people at PW may be more interested, but this may be technical gobbledygook for them, especially since it is unlikely their target demo will ever notice this. 204.19.162.34 (talk) 20:23, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
I hope the webmaster (or whatever they're called this decade) would be very interested. I may be well out of date here but the canonical URL was important for SEO: content found on duplicated across many domains would be penalised except when at its canonical URL. There's a typosquatter on the misspelled domain, who must be taking some traffic away from the real site. Certes (talk) 10:36, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the tips. I should probably start by making it clear it's serious in non-technical terms and ask to forward it to somebody who can act on it. I looked at https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/corp/contactus.html and mailed the below to DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL OPERATIONS Michael Morris. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:17, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Title: publishersweekly.com has many url's to a malicious site instead of your own 

Please forward this post to those responsible for generating your website code.

Many of your pages have a wrong url to a probably malicious site instead of your own site. Visitors may blame you for anything they experience there, and your website may be punished in search engines.

For example, the HTML code for https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780312898281 contains this with an 'l' missing in "pubishers":

<meta property="og:url" content="https://www.pubishersweekly.com/9780312898281">

The code indicates your preferred url for the page is https://www.pubishersweekly.com/9780312898281
But pubishersweekly.com is probably controlled by a malicious typo squatter. I get security warnings and don't want to enter the site. Some tools use your wrong code when making links to the site. I'm an administrator at the English Wikipedia. We recently discovered more than 100 broken links where our citation tools had used your false url's. We fixed the existing links but new broken links will keep being made by us and others until you fix your HTML.

Move table to right

I can't seem to find an instruction on how to move a table to the right side of the page, with text on the left. Any help you can give me at User:Magnolia677/sandbox would be appreciated. Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 08:14, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: This is happening because your code currently says style=""float:right" (with one extra quotation mark). Change that to style="float:right" and it'll fix it. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 08:22, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
You had an extra double quote after |style=: Special:Diff/1115201393. —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:24, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
@Andrybak: Thanks for that. But when I added more text, the table floats right and below the text. Is there a way to make the text wrap to the left and beside the table? Thanks again. Magnolia677 (talk) 08:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
All good. Thanks for your help. Magnolia677 (talk) 09:36, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
@Magnolia677: We provide the floatright class for this, you would use it as {| class="wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed floatright" and you then don't need a style= attribute. This class provides some extra styling, primarily setting the left and bottom margins of the floated box to 0.5em - compare Special:PermaLink/937219298#Operation (no margins) with Special:PermaLink/955699497#Operation (margins set by the class). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:26, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 14:41, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Section edit save returning view to top of page

On saving a source edit for a section, I am getting returned to the top of the page instead of the top of the edited section. Windows 11, latest Firefox, default skin. Is this happening to anyone else? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 00:26, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

It is also happening when logged out on Chrome.· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 00:33, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

It does not seem to be happening on talk pages. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 01:05, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

It may be restricted to one section of one article. I will check later. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 02:36, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Well that was weird. I tried all sorts of things and nothing worked until I cut the entire contents of the subsection with ctrl-X and saved. I got returnrd to the now empty section. Then I pasted back exactly what I had just cut with ctrl-V, and it seems to now be working normally. I have no idea. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 04:49, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Please always include an example when you report an issue. This was about Diving safety#Occupational safety and health in professional diving. The line with the section heading ended with a tab at the time. A test shows that this omits the automatic addition of a section link to the url after saving a section edit. The edit summary still gets the section link but not the browser. When you blanked the section the tab was removed and you didn't restore it afterwards. You probably didn't delete the tab yourself but trailing whitespace at the end of the whole edit is automatically removed when you save. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:56, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
This can happen if the section heading contains characters that need encoding when made into URL fragments; this is one reason that we discourage the use of templates in headings. Basically, if the encoding fails, your browser cannot jump to the section anchor, so goes to page top - this being the normal behaviour of all browsers if a fragment doesn't match any id= attribute within the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:16, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
This was a different case where the tab was after == ... == . No #... is generated at all in the url. I tested it at User:PrimeHunter/sandbox#2016–17. It can be tested with a null edit which just gives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrimeHunter/sandbox. User:PrimeHunter/sandbox#2015–16 has no tab and gives the expected https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrimeHunter/sandbox#2015%E2%80%9316. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:20, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Hide an image

I want to try to hide images that are offensive. I seen the Help:Options to hide an image. I tried the code for hiding the bad images. Cwater1 (talk) 03:39, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

@Cwater1: First, define "offensive". But see also Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 41#Personal censoring as an option for an account. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:41, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Images that are disturbing or inappropriate. I seen the Help:Options to hide an image. -Cwater1 (talk) 23:45, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

"Not in Wikidata"

Resolved

Also related to Special:WantedCategories, there was a redlink sitting there called Category:Not in Wikidata with seven articles in it -- but they all feature that category as an artificial transclusion from a template rather than as a direct category declaration. It seems incredibly likely to just be redundant to something else, considering the sheer number of maintenance categories in Category:Wikipedia categories tracking data not in Wikidata that are already much, much more specific about what particular piece of data is "not in Wikidata", but I've been unable to figure out what template it comes from -- and per its history, it appears to have also been created and then deleted once before, meaning that whatever's going on this isn't the first time it's happened.

So can somebody determine what template is causing the seven articles in Category:Not in Wikidata to display that category, so that they can be revised to move them to a more specific sibling category? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 23:12, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

My guess is Module:WikidataCheck, which says return "[[Category:" .. catbase .. " not in Wikidata]]". Something may be calling it without the |category= parameter. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:39, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, called from {{F-Droid}}. (To track this down, blank a bit of the article, preview, and repeat until the category goes away.) —Cryptic 23:41, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
You can also use Special:ExpandTemplates to see where the category code is. In this case the fourth external link in Avare says: [https://f-droid.org/packages/com.ds.avare/ ''Avare''] Android package at the [[F-Droid]] repository[[Category: not in Wikidata]]. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:46, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Okay, thanks for that. In light of that explanation, then, I'm going to suggest that the "Not in Wikidata" category should be kept as an error-catcher, since this sort of thing might well happen again in the future, instead of just being deleted as soon as this is resolved. Bearcat (talk) 23:50, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
I have fixed the template and created the necessary category. A null edit should put all of those articles in the correct category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:53, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Gadget (definition) (talk) namespaces

I observed that the first character of page titles in Gadget (definition) (talk) namespaces is case-sensitive, which doesn't seem to be the case for most Wikipedia pages. See Gadget:Example and Gadget:example. Why is this? Railtransportfan (talk) 22:55, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

The recent software change at phab:T300000. Izno (talk) 23:16, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
@Railtransportfan: Don't worry about these four namespaces. We don't use them for their intended purpose (and we never have), and AFAIK we won't use them in the future either. Gadget contains only a redirect (left behind when a page was moved to a non-colliding name in mainspace just before the namespaces were set up); Gadget talk contains a proper talk page - for that redirect; Gadget definition and Gadget definition talk are completely empty. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:37, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
If we don't use them, why are the pages in those subject namespaces superprotected, even from administrators? Deletion seems to be the action that should be taken, superprotecting pages that aren't and won't ever be used seems to only create problems. Railtransportfan (talk) 00:13, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Are they causing any harm to the project? Are they creating any difficulties for you? I would say no, and probably no: in which case (as I said earlier), don't worry about them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 05:41, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Main page image display issue

One of the images on the current main page does not display in some browsers. The issue is described at Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors#Today's FA. Schwede66 00:59, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Here's a permalink to the discussion. Graham87 09:13, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Can a blocked editor edit through protection of their own talk page?

A blocked editor can (unless specifically set otherwise) edit their own talk page when blocked. Can they still do that if it is a protected at a level that they would be able to edit through if they weren't blocked? i.e. an autoconfirmed user who is not blocked can edit their talk page if it is semi-protected, can they do that if they are blocked? What about extended-confirmed editors and ECP protected pages and admins and fully protected pages?

The circumstances in which it would be desirable to do any of this are obvious extremely limited, but not non-existent - e.g. if it is desirable to let a blocked editor communicate on their talk page but other editors comments and/or responses on the page are not helping to the situation. Thryduulf (talk) 15:22, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

@Thryduulf yes. A blocked autoconfirmed user can still edit their own talk page, even if it is SPP; a blocked admin can still edit their own talk page, even if it is FP. — xaosflux Talk 15:29, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 15:31, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@Thryduulf note, blocking will never make you be able to edit more (e.g. a blocked autoconfirmed editor can not edit their talk page if it is full protected). — xaosflux Talk 15:32, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

lynx 2.9.0dev.6-3~deb11u1 version diff pages show white text only

i have applied code given at Wikipedia:Browser notes on lynx. i am using debian bullseye on userland app. i am using xterm. i did not installed another terminal. how it looks (jpg image). diff pages show white text only..... i mean links & others are colour. article text is white colour only. is this normal? <_>— jindam, vani (talk o e-mail o contrib o actions) 15:03, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

That is normal behavior. I am using lynx 2.8.9 on macOS 11.7 and the rendering is identical judging from the image you provided. 65.88.88.92 (talk) 19:53, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
To add, the diff window will show plaintext by default irrespective of the browser. Is there another page section that does not render properly? 65.88.88.92 (talk) 20:04, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
ok, lynx does not show text with

background colours, it plainly shows [INS: :INS] for insert instead of colour. just to be sure for anyone who has stumbeld: diff with colours on browser (.jpg) & diff without colours on lynx (.jpg). so, my assumption is incorrect. <_>— jindam, vani (talk • e-mail • contrib • actions) 01:44, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

You may want to experiment with your lynx.lss file, although the "syntax highlighting" section seems limited: lynx.lss 50.75.226.250 (talk) 16:33, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Gmail hack today?

Sorry for asking here, but Gmail online help isn't out here. For the last hour, I've been unable to sign into my Gmail for "We’re sorry, but your account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes. You can view the Google Workspace Status Dashboard for the current status of the service. Technical error: Numeric Code: 4" The URL it shows is "https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/"

I've tried emailing myself from my Yahoo email, but still can't get into GMail. I see nothing in the news. Has there been a wide Gmail hack today? — Maile (talk) 19:36, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

This seems like it would be a better question for WP:RD/C. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:39, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. — Maile (talk) 19:41, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

BernsteinBot disabled

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see User talk:MZMcBride#BernsteinBot disabled. This will impact a lot of processes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:35, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Legoktm I wonder what are the chances of SDZeroBot 10 being approved by the toolforge admins? It could be used to easily replace a number of BernsteinBot reports. – SD0001 (talk) 19:38, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
@SD0001: I genuinely don't know. I'm still a bit iffy on the concept, maybe there's some middle ground where it only works on semi-protected pages or something? Starting a Phab task would be the right way to get an "official" decision. Legoktm (talk) 15:08, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
In the "replacement" realm, User:Community Tech bot may be a good candidate, it already does other database reports. — xaosflux Talk 15:15, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Looks like User:HaleBot (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HaleBot) is going to do this. — xaosflux Talk 15:19, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Some reports are already being run. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:08, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Opened phab:T320657. Hope I added the right tags. – SD0001 (talk) 16:15, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Images with search results

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T306883
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T320337

Some time this afternoon (UTC), search started to display thumbnail images alongside search results. See e.g. insource:/\<ref( [^\>]*)?\>https?:\/\/[^ \<\>\{\}]+ *\<\/ref/i

I guess some people will like that, but for my purposes the images are just distracting clutter. Is there any setting in Preferences for those of us who don't want the images to turn them off? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:59, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

The way some of the images are displayed is odd as well, for example the way MTN 8 shows up on the search result it centers the infobox image and cuts off the sides of the image, so that around half of each logo is displayed which isn't useful (I searched "Top 8" to see that listed). If the image pulled isn't a square it zooms into the center and cuts off the sides which isn't always helpful. I'm sure this might be useful to most people, but I would also like to know how to turn this off if possible. - Aoidh (talk) 18:10, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Seems to be related to phab:T306883 - seems there is a class, so a gadget could perhaps hide these. — xaosflux Talk 18:20, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Should just be able to set the class "searchResultImage-thumbnail" to display:none in CSS to not show any of the thumbnails in the searches. Terasail[✉️] 18:53, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, that works a treat! I also see the advantages, especially for readers rather than editors, but I often copy search results into JWB or elsewhere for further processing, and that's much easier without the images. Certes (talk) 21:47, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Editors making this change may also wish to include Izno's CSS to restore full width, described below. Combined diff. Certes (talk) 12:34, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
The best solution would be a tick-box in the Advanced search interface (with a remembered state). That should also allow a matching option in the search URLs so that canned searches can suppress the thumbnails — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:52, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks to @Xaosflux for the CSS snippet, which has hidden the images for me.
I'd still prefer a checkbox setting somewhere to disable them server-side. I don't like having to accumulate CSS kludges.
And I'm not thrilled to find that developer time has been going into another annoying feature, while there is no fix for slowdown of search caused by Elasticsearch 7, leading to my work being disrupted by search timeouts.
I agree with @Nobbo69's comment below: Keep Wikipedia no frills slim & trim. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:35, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Search results use only about 40% of the screen width

Is it just me, or does each of these new search results take up even more vertical space than the old ones? In my browser (Firefox for Mac, running legacy Vector), the results use less than half of the vertical space available, and with the images stuffed into that already limited width=(about)40% column, each search result is taller. I see only four results per screen scroll instead of the already-lame five, when there is enough room to show eight or ten if the window width was used properly. I can post screen shots if I am the only one.

Is there a way to regain this horizontal space? If I wanted to lose horizontal whitespace deliberately, I would have switched to the New New Vector. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:08, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I have some CSS to make search results max width; see User:Izno/common.css#L-44. I think this max width case should be removed in New Vector (and more generally obviously; I'm sure there's something somewhere that says it's a good idea to limit these results...). Izno (talk) 22:27, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. I love small improvements like this that should just be part of the skin. There is a faction at WMF that dearly loves its whitespace, even though optimal line lengths for scanning prose is not something that is relevant on search result pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:06, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
The casual user is still scanning on a search results page, so for that set there is still merit I think. Power users of course are mostly using search results to identify gnoming targets and mostly only need the displayed results to ensure they don't waste time on false positives. Izno (talk) 16:22, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
I love this. It literally did not occur to me that someone would use Wikipedia's iffy built-in search to find an article rather than going to a real search engine and typing "wiki name of topic", which always works. My Wikipedia usage is so far outside the standard deviation that I can't even see that I'm on a curve. It's just a horizontal line in both directions, real close to the ground. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:17, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
:) Izno (talk) 17:55, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
You're kidding, right? I get so irritated by search engine results that do not contain the only word that I want to see. I'm not talking about shirt without stripes problems (how is that still a red link?!). I'm talking about wanting all the web pages that contain "these five exact quoted words", and, if none exist, then just telling me that, instead of making up garbage results about "four" "vaguely" "related" "terms". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Izno. That's a handy wee improvement. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:40, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
As a note, the selectors change periodically for whatever reason (I think that's the third or fourth version for me). Hopefully with mw- class names they'll finally be stable enough. Izno (talk) 16:20, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Sincere apologies from the engineers about this; to make it so narrow wasn't intentional. This is interestingly the default width that MediaWiki uses for search results width and the change resulted in falling back to this. We'll get this fixed ASAP. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:54, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

New Searches Now Appear with Unwanted Images...

Hello! The Search Results page now seems to be adding images to the left of the suggested page titles and blurbs. Is it possible to stop this in my Global Preferences? It doesn't help (I come from the Reading the Words rather than Looking at the Pictures school of brain capabilities) and it is slowing things down loading in the images and probably making my browser use even more bloated than the blue-whale-of-blubber (a possible rebranding concept for Firefox...) it already is when I open 500 to quickly (now slowly) scan through things. I have loads of stuff open on a geriatric laptop, and I am keen to Help the Aged. PS: KEEP WIKIPEDIA NO FRILLS SLIM & TRIM! Not everyone has amazing computers and nippy bandwith (or much patience for things we don't need or want)... Thx! - I see the bloke above is having a similar grumble, and Terasail has suggest a CSS edit. Sadly, I am a Jack of Some Trades, Rubbish at Everything Else and Terasail's assumption seems to be that we have any idea how to actually do that, which I for one don't :(::::: Nobbo69 (talk) 21:13, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@Nobbo69: you can put the following code snippet in to to: Meta:Special:MyPage/global.css 
/*Remove search thumbnails*/
.searchResultImage-thumbnail {display:none}
Open that page, create it/edit it, and put those 2 lines in there. — xaosflux Talk 21:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
It's telling me I don't have permission.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:53, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee that should land you at meta:User:Vchimpanzee/global.css, make sure you are logged in. If it is still failing and you want that added there, let me know and I'll force it for you. — xaosflux Talk 22:08, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't know I could sign in.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:09, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think display:none still loads entire content except that it is not displayed. If so, the user's "slowing things down" issue would remain unresolved? —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 22:22, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom it mostly "depends" on your browser settings; but that's all that we can do with a script hack - if you want these to not be generated at all (perhaps with an option) you will need to file a feature request. — xaosflux Talk 22:46, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
It should still slow things down "less", even if your computer fetches the image, with display:none it won't have to build out a section in the DOM for it, or actually render the file (on most browsers). — xaosflux Talk 22:48, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
FYI (everyone) this issue is apparently being rolled out across all of Wikidom, from Commons to Wikidata, and I've raised the issue on both projects. Glad to see it finally ticked off enough people here. Did it really get pushed into implementation by a single request to Phabricator without any broader discussion or feedback? I'm surprised (or maybe I shouldn't be?) that such a major visual change was forced upon everyone with no announcement, no feedback. I thought Wikipedia was open and transparent? Aside from the reduced screen space, a major annoyance is that it is now much easier to mistakenly click on the thumbnail than the intended article link (or Wikidata item, on that platform), which brings the user to the image first, requiring an additional couple clicks to get to the intended target. It also drastically worsens the efficiency of browsing simple searrh results on Commons, as every thumbnail is now a cropped square, regardless of original image aspect, which means that a lot of visual content is obscured, making many images appear poorly composed (or even lacking the sought after elements) until one clicks on the file. --Animalparty! (talk) 01:30, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
I encourage you to leave a comment about the clickability issue on a related task I filed today at phab:T320299.
Aoidh above discusses the question of cropping above. I think that would be feedback to leave on the task-proper which is phab:T306883.
Regarding whether it was a single request, mobile has displayed results similar to this in its dropdowns since a while and I know that at least Vector 2022 does the same (which will sooner or later be the default skin). I see this as making Special:Search reasonably consistent with those search bars. This factor also likely motivated the WMF to perform this work; the task of interest was made more as a work task than as a feature request. (Review WP:CONEXCEPT.)
I am however surprised this feature got turned on without a mention in the Tech News. Izno (talk) 01:59, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
One day I'd like to get a heads up about a major change in the tech report. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:49, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Not quite what you wanted, but I've had success with a similar fait accompli at m:Talk:Tech/News: the incompatible surprise release I reported was publicised in their next issue. Certes (talk) 21:00, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Yes, usually they will run things a week late if a note gets dropped on the task of interest. Legoktm sniped me to adding that as a comment on this task. Izno (talk) 22:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
I ultimately left my own comment about clickability on that task. Izno (talk) 02:20, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
@Izno: Thanks for that. I've never been able to log into Phabricator (OAuth/MediaWiki doesn't seem to recognize my info or email, although I can use pretty much any other project or tool). There are currently at least two related discussions on Wikidata and Commons that would be useful to bring to the attention of Phabricator folk. --Animalparty! (talk) 02:39, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
There had been a discussion on it at WP:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 191#Consultation on Search improvements. Adding images to search results was the first proposal and it was probably the single most opposed proposal but they went through. I assume they'll follow suit and the remaining proposals will also be enacted soon. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 05:58, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
This is a particular problem in that now non-free images are being displayed in search results too, which is against NFCC#9. I realize the pages are being generated automatically, similar to NFC maintenance categories, but that's still a problem, since it is possible to identify non-free files and thus not include them, and they serve no purpose on search results. --Masem (t) 01:32, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Can you provide a representative search where that is an issue? Izno (talk) 01:48, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
First search on "Kiriko" (as searching) or "Kirikko", both have first results that are NFCC images. Masem (t) 02:28, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
The other thing to consider here is that this is consistent behavior with mobile and Vector22 implementations of the search bar, the former of which I believe has had prior discussion on WT:NFCC. Izno (talk) 02:45, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Or, search for "Spider-Man", where nearly every thumbnail of the first 20 is non-free. WP:NFEXMP however seems to argue preview popups are exempt from WP:NFCC policy. --Animalparty! (talk) 02:49, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Kusma mentioned what looks to be a pretty relevant task in Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 65#Jimbo on NFC philosophy (phab:T124225). However, NFEXMP is indeed relevant here and the relevant commentary looks like it was added by none other than Masem here. :) Izno (talk) 02:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Some followup chatter in WT:Non-free content/Archive 67#WP:NFEXMP and article preview popups. Izno (talk) 03:01, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
Non-free images appearing as part of alternate presentations of the article like an article preview is arguably compliant and covered by the non-free use rationale for the article. The appearance of these images in search results is akin to a list and WP:NFLISTS is applicable. In other words, these non-free image should not be appearing on search results as they have no non-free use rationale for that, nor do they meet WP:NFCC#8. Whpq (talk) 12:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Searching for "Queen album" is particularly egregious. Our hand curated Queen discography does not use any non-free images, and these search results do. That's just not right. If non-free images in search were okay, our WP:NFLISTS arguments to keep them out of curated lists would no longer make any sense. —Kusma (talk) 07:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux The one place I might want this feature is Commons. Is there a way to make this css say don't display unless I'm on Commons? Nthep (talk) 11:48, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
@Nthep: I don't think that the css supports the IF wrapper, but you could do this, on commons:Special:MyPage/common.css, put this snippet: 
/*Renable search thumbnails blocked in my global.css*/
.searchResultImage-thumbnail {display:unset !important}
— xaosflux Talk 15:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
thanks. Nthep (talk) 16:15, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
@Nthep and Xaosflux: Luckily, another way is possible using a namespace specific attribute being provided:
.mw-search-result:not(.mw-search-result-ns-6) .searchResultImage-thumbnail { display: none; }
This hides thumbnails except for file searches (namespace 6 is for files) and works also outside of Commons. — Speravir – 16:49, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello @xaosflux - thx! I have a vector.css I use to make my default background colour softer, but I do not have a global.css and when I landed on that page and refreshed, it too said I do not have permission. I read Wikipedia in dozens of languages, so going global in this instance is very useful for me - can you please insert your techno-crowbar and use The Force? @CX Zoom 's point is also very interesting as it is definitely taking longer to load the search results with only 20 per page, let alone 500. If there is somewhere better in Wikipedia for me to go and stamp my feet, pout and rant, please point the way. Victor Meldrew, watch and learn! :D

RANT START. I have had this moan before when the French Wikipedia went all frilly-featury and became too complicated for me to edit the simple bits of detail that make Wikipedia special, NOT the unnecessary background frills! The moan seemed to work or was just well timed as they took off loads of tinselly guff - for now! I worry it is part of a gradual process of slowly denying creative access to the vast majority of people that have made Wikipedia so amazing in the first place. There are probably hundreds of thousands of would-be editors and contributors being put off by all the unnecssary scripting requirements - just adding proper references and verifications is awkward enough - and Wikipedia should be making things EASIER, not harder. Big Thanks from a MousyHairedBoy to @BrownHairedGirl for agreeing with me! Wikipedia is ripe for appropriation by the wrong sort of global that has done nothing to create it. RANT OVER. :) Nobbo69 (talk) 09:49, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

@Nobbo69: try reloading the page, if you are blocking cookies you may need to click logon - it is the same username and password you use here. — xaosflux Talk 15:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

images when searching

Hi, how do you I get rid of this new thing where every time I do a search each article has an image next to it? There are several reasons why it's problematic, and I would have prefered for this not to have been automatically added to my interface. Thank you! Dr. Vogel (talk) 00:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@DrVogel: see above. — xaosflux Talk 00:09, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. I added that line and the annoying images are gone. Much appreciated.
But from my console, I can see that my browser is still downloading them from the server etc. Is there a way to opt out of interface "improvements" forced on my account? Thank you! Dr. Vogel (talk) 00:40, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
@DrVogel you could file a feature request on phabricator to make that an option for search results. We can't change that locally. If you open one, please let us know the tracking number here as other may want to follow it. — xaosflux Talk 01:54, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
  • Just another unwanted and unnecessary "feature" foisted on us without consultation. Stop fixing what ain't broke. There are enough problem with Search, not having images was not one of the,, geez. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:15, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
Unfortunately I missed the consultation request for this 'feature'. It now means that copy and pasting search results into Excel is rather problematic. A switch in Preferences should have been a part of the implementation, it shouldn't have to be requested. Many thanks for the CSS workaround. Neils51 (talk) 09:39, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Special:Search changed?

Seems like Special:Search recently had a bit of an overhaul in how the results are presented, including showing an image from the respective articles. However, I both do not like this and did not know this was ever going to happen. Anyways, I figured VPTECH may be the place to bring up this concern for the following inquiry: Is there any way to revert back to the way Special:Search was before with either a setting or some sort of ".js coding magic"? Steel1943 (talk) 01:50, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Steel1943 there is a CSS hack above you can use. — xaosflux Talk 02:03, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Request to disable images

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T320337

Based on feedback from many above, I've opened phab:T320337 to have a way to disable this built in. Any support or feedback to that request is welcome on phabricator. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 02:02, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

See also mw:Bug management/Phabricator etiquette and remember that voting-type behaviors (including what we might call "consensus building" at this wiki) are not wanted in Phab tickets. The information that belongs there is the information needed by a coder to do the work, and not, e.g., comments asking someone to do the work. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

CSS hacks

Below are the CSS hacks mentioned above. — xaosflux Talk 12:57, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Global

To hide these on all projects: you could put the following code snippet in to to: Meta:Special:MyPage/global.css. If you don't go to metawiki often you may have to click logon first (if prompted, it is your same username and password) 

/*Remove search thumbnails*/
.searchResultImage-thumbnail {display:none}
Only hide here on the English Wikipedia

Same code as above, but put in Special:MyPage/common.css

Global except certain projects

If you hide globally, but want to unhide on only one project: Go to that project, and on that project go to your Special:MyPage/common.css and put in: 

/*Renable search thumbnails blocked in my global.css*/
.searchResultImage-thumbnail {display:unset !important}

Add. by Speravir:
So, let me add the alternative to the rules above here, as well:

Hide thumbnails except for file searches
/* Remove search thumbnails except for file searches */
.mw-search-result:not(.mw-search-result-ns-6) .searchResultImage-thumbnail { display: none; }

— Speravir – 19:48, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

How to get the WMF to reverse this?

It was opposed when proposed, it is unwanted now, and it shows non-free files in a place where this is not allowed (the same stunt they pulled with "related articles" and so on in the past, glad to see they learning nothing from their previous errors). Is there a way to get the WMF to quickly reverse this, and then to only implement this after it has gotten consensus? Fram (talk) 16:16, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

  • I agree this should be reverted immediately. Changing the way we use non-free images is a massive change that can't be decided without a big sitewide RfC. Other changes break lots of workflows for too little demonstrated gain, and should at least be optional. —Kusma (talk) 16:32, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
  • As far as I remember this was always the case on mobile. At least for years if my memory serves me right. A bit strange to see the issues have only been noticed now, now that it's on desktop. Anyway, the rule around non-free is for legal reasons, right? It shouldn't be a problem with the WMF is okay with it, they probably would have consulted with the legal team about it (or they should if they haven't). Consensus doesn't matter if it's a legal issue, and if it's not a legal issue, then the consensus would merely deal with aesthetic preferences, not any legal restrictions around non-free images. TryKid [dubious – discuss] 17:04, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
    No, the rule around non-free is not for legal reasons, it is because we aspire to be a free encyclopaedia, where all content except for rare exceptions is under a free licence. —Kusma (talk) 17:21, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
    Search results aren't "content" though. Using non-free content willy-nilly in articles might trouble reusers, but displaying them internally, in the "related pages" or search results, does that make reuse of Wikipedia articles any more difficult or different copyright/free-use wise? TryKid [dubious – discuss] 17:37, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
    I don't know, but reusers aren't the only reason why Wikipedia uses little non-free content. I would happily vote for a free (WP:VEGAN) Wikipedia if given the chance. —Kusma (talk) 18:50, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
I don't know what was WP:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 191#Consultation on Search improvements for, if they had to push through anyway. As I said above, image in search was the single most opposed *improvement*. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:11, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi everyone, I'm the Community Relations Specialist for the Structured Data Across Wikimedia project, which also is responsible for the deployment of this new feature of article thumbnails. I'm deeply sorry for the lack of proper announcement about the deployment of this feature, and the least I can promise is that this will not happen again for next deployments.

Also, I'm collecting your feedback about bugs and problems you're having with this feature, and I already shared them with the development team. Here are some of the answers that they gave to me:

  • About how thumbnails are displayed: thumbnails are made to fill the required square, so any overflow is not visible. Unfortunately, this is not fixable at code level (there would be multiple cases to support and this would impact negatively on code), but if you want this could be fixed with a wiki-specific CSS override, in order to restore the traditional way of rendering the full image within the available bounding box.
  • About non-free images: since such images are sourced from the project and already used in other similar places as well (go bar autocomplete), it was (uncorrectly) assumed they were ok to use. We stand corrected, and will correct the code to list free images only.
  • About turning off the feature: we defined the feature to be turned off with a CSS hack, but I know that a Phabricator ticket (phab:T320337) has been opened to make this a preference. We are taking into consideration this, and I will let you know as soon as possible if there are news on this.

Again, I'm deeply sorry about this whole disruption, and will see that in the future this won't happen again. Meanwhile, feel free to ping me and let me know any problem you're noticing. --Sannita (WMF) (talk) 08:29, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Sannita (WMF): Have you fixed the bug that causes the images to link to the File: page instead of the article page? I reported it on one of the phab tickets. I have turned off images, so I can't check it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:00, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 We're working on all the bugs you reported, but it takes time to fix all of them. I'll keep you posted about it. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:25, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
With as much respect as possible: It is simply not true that WMF staff are working on all the bugs I have reported (T174303 is old enough to go to kindergarten). WMF staff appear to be focusing on new features, many of them unwanted by the community and which cause new bugs and problems of their own. It is very frustrating, and it is a significant cause of burnout and resentment among veteran technical editors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:41, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
I can promise that THIS team is taking the feedback here seriously. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
@Sannita (WMF), Seddon (WMF), and Jonesey95: - "...taking the feedback here seriously" is a standard WMF reply when answering community queries, especially when it concerns urgent attention to critical software issues. It is an established fact that 'taking the issues seriously' does not mean 'We have designated the task to xxx developer team and they are working on the code now.' Sometimes the community is obliged to bring the issues to the attention of the Director of Product herself, or even the CEO, plus 80 personal but public requests to each of the most senior managers in Product before an appropriate department is even tasked with 'looking in to it'. The most common excuse is lack of funds (diffs available), but which is proven to be clearly untrue. A classic example as we speak is the case of NPP, the essential process for ensuring the appropriateness and quality of newly submitted articles. After years of begging, the NPP community has launched an ultimate desperate appeal to the WMF getting on for a month ago and the only official response from the WMF received just a few days ago is 'We will work to find a convenient time in the coming weeks where we can all meet to discuss'. Hmm... 'the coming weeks?' Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:50, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
Kudpung, I appreciate the many frustrations but I've also been around long enough to know not to say things on the village pump that I don't mean. There are tasks and patches that engineers have either merged, are working on or will be gotten to over the next couple of weeks, as well as tasks that will need input from design or others. I can't promise perfection but the team reviewed a bunch of feedback and its being worked on. I can't offer much more than that. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 02:26, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Peer Review not properly closed

Wikipedia:Peer review/François St-Laurent/archive1 was closed back in January 2021, however it still is showing up on Article Alerts as active. Any idea how to fix this? Kaiser matias (talk) 23:14, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

It was still showing up in Category:Requests for peer review because its talk page used {{peer review}} instead of {{old peer review}} (also see the closure instructions). I've fixed this case as well as all those listed at User:SDZeroBot/Peer reviews ... there were older ones listed there, as can be seen by sorting the date column. Graham87 10:07, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@Graham87: Great thanks for fixing that, and for the information on what caused it. Kaiser matias (talk) 04:53, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

There is a tool https://tools.wmflabs.org/joanjoc/sugart.php , helping to find articles in some wikipedia not having interwiki link to another language section. This tool doesn't works for several years. 2 years ago I wrote a replacement tool, https://mbh.toolforge.org/pages-wo-iwiki.cgi , and today we in ruwiki decided to replace all links to broken tool to new one, for example. May I do this bot run in enwiki? MBH (talk) 16:18, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

@MBH, I suggest you ask at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard / Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), and then get approval at WP:Bots/Requests for approval. — Qwerfjkltalk 06:16, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Quick question about category redirects

As an editor who from time to time works with Special:WantedCategories to clean up redlinked categories, I've noticed in the past several weeks that a redlinked category for "Indian philoshopers", obviously a simple spelling error for Category:Indian philosophers, has repeatedly reoccurred -- I would clean it out by correcting the category to the correct spelling, only to then have it come back with whole new entries again the next time I looked at the redlinked category list. I was able to establish that it gets repeatedly added by IP numbers -- it's obviously the same editor given their persistent inability to spell "philosopher" correctly, but it isn't always the same IP, and some of the IP numbers have been editblocked for block evasion.

So in the hopes of not having to deal with it showing up on the Wanted Categories list anymore, I created Category:Indian philoshopers as a category redirect to the correctly spelled category last week, so that the bot that cleans out non-empty category redirects would fix the IP's typos automatically -- only to find just now that several articles had been readded to it since then, but the bot never actually touched any of them at all. (I've cleaned them out again, but was hoping to not have to deal with that anymore.) RussBot appears to still be active, so I wanted to ask: am I missing some other code that needs to be added to flag it for RussBot's attention? Bearcat (talk) 20:24, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Bearcat, if the IP editors are from some particular range of IP addresses, then the range could be blocked to prevent this disruption. Could you please give examples of these edits? Then a report to WP:AIV could be made. —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:20, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chandranath_Basu&diff=1115059143&oldid=1114758093
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Haridas_Chaudhuri&diff=1115080896&oldid=1090707243
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Surendranath_Dasgupta&diff=1112459255&oldid=1073894440
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dwarkanath_Ganguly&diff=1114397151&oldid=1114396972
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keshub_Chandra_Sen&diff=1113576928&oldid=1106746456
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Protap_Chunder_Mozoomdar&diff=1114816320&oldid=1114387102
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Satish_Chandra_Mukherjee&diff=1114790998&oldid=1102678232
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhudev_Mukhopadhyay&diff=1112293367&oldid=1073060232
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Debendranath_Tagore&diff=1113579580&oldid=1107888380
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Satish_Chandra_Vidyabhusan&diff=1112421750&oldid=1027214317
One thing I also find odd, but hadn't noticed until collecting these diffs, is that they specifically only spell the word "philosophers" wrong in conjunction with "Indian". If they add Category:Bengali philosophers alongside it, they don't spell that wrong; if they add Category:19th-century Indian philosophers or Category:20th-century Indian philosophers alongside it (which they really shouldn't be), they don't spell those wrong — and yet "Indian philoshopers" happens over and over again. Bearcat (talk) 03:39, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
Looking at the /33 range's talk page contributions, I can't say that it is a constructive range. 49 of 50 most recent talk edits were reverted either by me or someone else. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 06:34, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
If blocks are not an option, this is something that an edit filter might be able to help with. Thryduulf (talk) 12:34, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
Just one small observation: this is hardly a "quick question." Uporządnicki (talk) 13:19, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
Well, to be fair, it seemed like one when I first asked it, because it seemed to be a simpler "yes or no?" question than it's actually turned into... Bearcat (talk) 14:48, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

RussBot has a seven day delay before it will clear out new redirects. This is to allow time to catch errors and vandalism before the contents are all moved over. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:42, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Template-transcluded categorization

Earlier this year, WP:FILM decided to deprecate its former practice of deeming base national film categories to be all-inclusive ones that had to directly include all films from that country even if they were already extensively subcategorized for genre or other characteristics, because that was resulting in the base national film categories being far too large with some categories populated into the tens of thousands -- so in recent months, there's been a cleanup project underway to diffuse the categories by removing them from films that were already subcategorized and then subcategorizing the remaining stragglers that weren't already subcategorized.

However, in the process of trying to work on cleaning up Category:Japanese films, I've found that a considerable number of films there don't actually have that category directly declared on them at all, and instead have it artificially transcluded by one of their templates. The likeliest candidate seems to be {{Infobox animanga/Video}}, because that's the most directly film-oriented of the Infobox animanga templates that have been common to all the affected films I've seen so far -- but the complex template coding is far, far beyond my ken, so I can't edit it myself, but I can't diffuse the Japanese films category if I can't get it off the films that are transcluded into it via the template.

So could somebody edit that template to ensure that it doesn't add Category:Japanese films to those films anymore? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

It does appear to assign that category in one #if statement. This conversation should probably move to Template talk:Infobox animanga. This may be a violation of WP:TEMPLATECAT, but it's good to check locally to see if there is a good reason to flout the guideline. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:14, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
(There aren't.)
@Bearcat, first you need to verify that there is a manual placement of the category for each automatic placement by the infobox. Then removal should be more or less easy. I would recommend following up at the talk page indeed. All of the categories should go, but that's going to take some time I think. Izno (talk) 16:39, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
@Bearcat: {{Infobox animanga/Video}} tries to add a year category based on |released=. It only adds Category:Japanese films if |type=live film and |released= is set but is not a valid date. Then it also adds Category:Anime and manga articles with malformed first and last infobox parameters. released must be a raw date with no reference and not made by a template with additional output like {{Start date}}. I'm not saying this is appropriate but just describing it. [[Category:Japanese films]] could simply be removed from the template code if the category is never wanted but it might (I haven't checked) leave some articles without any category for Japanese films. Category:Anime and manga articles with malformed first and last infobox parameters can be added in other ways. This shows cases where it was probably added by {{Infobox animanga/Video}}: insource:/released *=/ hastemplate:"Infobox animanga/Video" incategory:"Japanese films" incategory:"Anime and manga articles with malformed first and last infobox parameters". In most cases it's because released uses {{Start date}}. I'm not judging whether {{Start date}} should actually be removed or the category should be avoided in another way. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:42, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
There seem to be 174 of these (that aren't also manually added to the category). I spot-checked several and most of them don't seem to be in any other categories for Japanese films. @Bearcat: Could you please go through those and add appropriate categories before I remove categorization from the template? I agree a broader project should be to remove all categorization, but that shouldn't hold up the specific request here. * Pppery * it has begun... 04:47, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Okay, I've copied the output of that search to User:Bearcat/Random (a sandbox page I keep precisely for when I need a temporary place to store temporary output like this) so that I can convert it into a batchable file to hammer through in AWB. I'll update here when I've finished the batch run, most likely sometime later today. But that said, the other thing I'm finding on my own spot check is that not all of them are necessarily even really films at all, but were getting forced into that category by the template even though they're actually television series or video games — which is, of course, another reason why the template shouldn't be automatically applying that category at all. Bearcat (talk) 11:55, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Pppery, I've got them all sorted now. There were, of course, a few films that were already suitably subcategorized (though indeed that was a minority, and most weren't), as well as a few things that don't really need a films category at all because they were about the manga while its film adaptation already had its own separate article to categorize as a film (though, again, a lot of others did turn out to need film categories after all, as the film adaptation was just covered as one or two sentences in the manga article rather than its own separate film article), but one way or the other all of them have now been reviewed and sorted out accordingly. Bearcat (talk) 14:51, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
And I've removed population of that category from {{Infobox animanga/Video}}. For the record, the other categories that template can produce depending on its parameters are:
  1. Category:Upcoming anime television series
  2. Category:YYYY anime television series debuts
  3. Category:Anime series
  4. Category:Anime television films
  5. Category:Upcoming television films
  6. Category:YYYY anime films
  7. Category:Upcoming films
  8. Category:YYYY anime OVAs
  9. Category:Anime OVAs
  10. Category:Japanese television dramas based on manga
  11. Category:Japanese television specials
  12. Category:Japanese television films
  13. Category:Upcoming television films
  14. Category:YYYY films
  15. Category:Upcoming films
  16. Category:Television commercials
  17. Category:Music videos
* Pppery * it has begun... 14:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Image at Commons

Why I can't upload newer version of this map? I am getting a message "The file extension ".svg" does not match the detected MIME image / png type." Eurohunter (talk) 14:04, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Why I can't upload newer version of this map? I use upload newer version of this file and I am getting a message "The file extension ".svg" does not match the detected MIME image / png type.". There is information "Acceptable file formats: tiff, tif, png, gif, jpg, jpeg, webp, xcf, mid, ogg, ogv, svg, djvu, stl, oga, flac, opus, wav, webm, mp3, midi, mpg, mpeg." so what is this? Eurohunter (talk) 14:04, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

The most likely answer is that the image you are trying to upload is a PNG image. Check your image editing software to ensure that the updated image is being saved as an SVG image. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:06, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: It changed format. Btw. do you know how to edit blue countires so there is no left blue border around when I change it to grey? I tried in GIMP but it paints whole continent instead of just Pakistan. Eurohunter (talk) 14:15, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
@Eurohunter GIMP is a raster graphics editor, while SVG is a vector graphics format. You'd want to use something like Inkscape instead for editing SVGs. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:46, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
@Ahecht: I just realised the downloaded file wasn't actually in svg format. Inkscape worked. Thanks. Eurohunter (talk) 19:57, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Yes, a common error when amending commons-hosted SVG images is to download the PNG preview instead of the original file. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:53, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

How to place Wikipedia category articles on a map

I saw this Teahouse question in the archives. It was never answered and even though it is two years old, it appears to be something that someone should know how to do.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:10, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Most people would use a query on Wikidata these days for that (d:WD:RAQ). See also #Re: Pushpin map of the world's FAs (discussion from March) which is probably related. Izno (talk) 16:18, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll let the person know in case it might still be useful.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:52, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

No boundary available for Livingston, Louisiana

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T321236

The Wikidata item for the town of Livingston, Louisiana, is missing the boundary of this town, despite being clearly visible in OpenStreetMap as a gray outline. When fixed, this outline should become red, and only the area outside of the town should be shaded. Map –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 04:33, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

In the meantime, the infobox on the town's article has been changed from "shape-inverse" (which shades the area outside the demarcated region) to "shape" (which shades the area inside the demarcated region). More details at Template:Maplink. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 22:02, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
As the shape is also not filled when shown as a a normal shape... this looks like there is a gap in the shape somewhere. If you look at https://maps.wikimedia.org/geoshape?getgeojson=1&ids=Q2177827 (the data request), I'm actually seeing the same shape delivered twice I think ?? That's kinda strange, not sure what is causing that. Can you please file a phabricator ticket ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:44, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
@LaundryPizza03, TheDJ It looks like the normal approach here is for OSM to contain the Wikidata ID, not the other way around - WD itself does not normally have the boundaries.
In this case, OSM has two seperate things both tagged with the same Wikidata ID (relation, way). I am not sure exactly what the correct model from the OSM side is here, but if we jump east along the highway to Albany, the relation has the Wikidata ID but the way does not, and testing {{maplink}} on that item seems to show up with the correct box. So I'm guessing that may be the ultimate source of the problem, and removing one of the IDs should solve it? Andrew Gray (talk) 12:01, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: What are the Wikidata IDs of these labels? The one associated with the English article is Q2177827. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 00:14, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@LaundryPizza03 Both Livingston OSM items are tagged with Q2177827 (so the Livingston WD item). For Albany - which works correctly - the OSM relation is tagged with Q2216044, which is the WD item linked to Albany, Louisiana. (Sorry - I'm a little unclear what you mean by labels? I hope this is the information you're after) Andrew Gray (talk) 14:37, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: You said that there is a duplicate border? Just delete one, and see what happens. What's the difference between "Relation" and "Way" in OSM? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 14:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@LaundryPizza03 I was holding off until I'd had a chance to get everything straight in my head (it's been a long time since I did much OSM work), but have edited now to remove the WD tag from the way. Template:Mapbox suggests there is some caching ("wait 1 or 2 days") so it might not display correctly until the weekend, bunt fingers crossed this will have solved it.
Ways vs relations - openstreetmap:Elements may explain it a bit better than I can, although it's a bit technically phrased. As I understand it, the relation links the boundary line (a way) to the central point (a node).
It's a very simple boundary with a 1:1 relationship here, bu for a more complex example that helps demonstrate the difference more clearly, the boundary for Denham Springs has multiple ways making up the boundary, some part of a more complicated set of relations. For example this way is simultaneously part of the relations for Livingston Parish and Denham Springs on one side of the river, for Baton Rouge Parish and Central on the other side of the river, and of the relation that represents the river itself, made up of a lot of little way segments. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:31, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
It's fixed now. I just have to purge the article now. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 20:46, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: It is now fixed on this page, but not in the article. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 20:47, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: Ignore the previous ping, I fixed it by changing the Wikidata ID to something else, and then changing it back. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:43, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Module transcluding categories

{{#invoke:Get short description|main}} seems to be adding the categories of the page it's checking (I don't really know Lua, so the module's not particularly well written. See Template:Get short description for an example.
Also, I don't think the template is using the module correctly - I've had to manually add the parameters. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:21, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Watchlist and marking unviewed edits

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T320865

I've noticed recently that if there are several unviewed edits on a page in my watchlist, then viewing the diff of one edit results in all of them being marked as viewed. I'm sure that it used to be the case that viewing the oldest unviewed edit resulted in only that one being marked as viewed (viewing one in the middle of the timeline is a different story). This change is a problem for me because I have my watchlist set to only display unviewed edits. Is this a bug or has the change been made deliberately for some reason? SpinningSpark 11:39, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Looks like someone broke it. Even if someone did it intentionally, the problem could still be filed as a bug. Anomie⚔ 12:58, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
I filed T320865 about it. Anomie⚔ 13:52, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
It's possible that someone has attempted to fix phab:T98941, though there's no recent progress marked there. Certes (talk) 13:22, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
If so, that has done exactly the opposite of what the bug report was asking for. Anomie, thanks for filing the bug, I'll subscribe to both of those phab tickets. SpinningSpark 15:50, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Archiving spam

I'm recording a problem I noticed today. I don't know if it is widespread and I can't think of a fix, but perhaps others can at least bear it in mind. A spam-only account changed (diff) an external link flagged with {{dead link}}. Subsequently InternetArchiveBot replaced the dead link with an archive.org mirror of the spam (diff). The spammer did the same thing to a dead link reference (diff) but this time it was GreenC bot that added a spam mirror (diff). My concern is that the bot edits could make the spam permanent since editors might be reluctant to fiddle with such official looking templates. Has there been a discussion about this? Pinging bot operators: Cyberpower678 + Harej + GreenC. Johnuniq (talk) 00:25, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Preview the section of an article if that is linked to

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156041

Hi all, I was wondering if it was technically possible to pop up/preview the section of an article if that is linked to, instead of previewing the lede of the article which may sometimes not make any sense at all. See Talk:Mercury (planet)#Link to synodic period. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 06:35, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom, Navpopup does this. — Qwerfjkltalk 07:01, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
The OP has a single edit on Wikipedia, to write the linked talk page section. Presumably a casual reader who might not know about Navpopup. At least, its existence indicates that it would be technically feasible to integrate it into MediaWiki so that we can provide better experience for all the incoming readers. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 07:14, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
Er, you are the OP, and you have considerably more than one edit. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:01, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
The OP of the post on the Mercury talk page does indeed have exactly one edit. Graham87 08:04, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, ^^ This is whom I was referring to in case I wasn't clear. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 15:32, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
phabricator:T156041 is tracking this for the default Page Previews feature. However it sounds like it would need a new API, which is non-trivial. the wub "?!" 11:10, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 15:37, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Can't cut and paste or copy and paste anymore

Recently, I lost the ability to archive my old messages and add templates to the backs of articles. When I scan messages and templates and what not, to move and remove them, once I get to the blank pages I want to add them to, the icon that usually contains the "paste" command isn't there anymore. And from what I've read, this isn't just a problem on Wikipedia. Reddit users have also been having this problem. -------User:DanTD (talk) 14:48, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

"the icon that usually contains the "paste" command". What kind of app are you using to browse Wikipedia ? Because generally copy paste is operating system or application level logic and not website logic. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:19, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I just use the standard Microsoft Edge browser. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:15, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@DanTD: You said "once I get to the blank pages". If the problem is to create talk pages then try to disable "Enable quick topic adding" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:02, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: I just tried that, and it didn't work. It even made posting this reply more difficult. I wanted to copy the "ping" template and rewrite it, but when it came time to paste, it wouldn't let me. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:22, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@DanTD: Ctrl+v should paste in Microsoft Edge. Does that work? PrimeHunter (talk) 18:24, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: - No. Nothing has changed. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 20:50, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Also: Ctrl+X = Cut; Ctrl+C = Copy. You can also right-click the selected text and get a menu that includes options for Cut, Copy, Paste. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:53, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
No, it doesn't. I get the same menu on the right-click as I get on the left-click. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 22:07, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
You get a menu on a left-click? You've got one weird setup. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
Dan, have you considered using one of the Wikipedia:One click archiving tools, and then using Wikipedia:Moving a page to rename it to the scheme you have in your archives? It's kind of a sledgehammer for a simple cut and paste job, but it would bypass any bugs in your web browser. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Newcomer tags?

What generates the "Newcomer task" tags such as seen in Special:Diff/1116046606? There's been a discussion on IRC about this and the best we can come up with is "This seems like something people who work SPI should understand, but we don't". There's a lot of stuff on meta about growth features, but I haven't found anything that actually explains how this works. There was some speculation that it only works on newly created accounts, but I wasn't able to reproduce that. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:42, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Growth Team features#Newcomer tasks; the basic concept is that newly-created accounts (or people who enable it manually in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal-homepage) have access to a UI for giving them suggestions of what to edit at Special:Homepage, and if they follow through on one of these suggestions the edit ets recorded as a "Newcomer task". * Pppery * it has begun... 14:54, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
@Pppery - interesting! I just tried that (see this edit) and no tag was seemingly applied - does it only happen for (e.g.) non-AC/XC accounts? firefly ( t · c ) 15:46, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
Definitely not that, as I was able to make a newcomer task edit myself a while back (see Special:Diff/1085315505). No idea why it isn't working for us now. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:47, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
Ah, now I see. I was able to do Special:Diff/1116245554 and it tagged up properly. I do wonder about the U/I, though. To find it, you have to navigate to your user page. I got there because I noticed that my link for my userpage in the header was blue instead of red, which didn't make sense to me so I went there to see who had created a user page for me and thus found the newcomer U/I. Had I not understood the significance of it not being red, I don't know if I would have ever gone there. But whatever, at least now I understand how it works, so thanks for that. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:02, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
This is configurable in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal-homepage Turn on the feature, and then you'll get an option to separate your user page from the Growth tools. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-42

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

  • The recently implemented feature of article thumbnails in Special:Search will be limited to Wikipedia projects only. Further details are in T320510. [52]
  • A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
  • Lua module authors can use mw.loadJsonData() to load data from JSON pages. [53]
  • Lua module authors can enable require( "strict" ) to add errors for some possible code problems. This replaces "Module:No globals" on most wikis. [54]

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:44, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Contents page

I would like to change the color of the Explore Wikipedia's contents title to white and change the blue background surrounding it to gray. I tried editing the CSS to do that, but I had no luck. I was hoping that someone can help me code it so I can do that. Interstellarity (talk) 15:04, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Contents. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:19, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
@Interstellarity: If you only want that the title & it's background color be changed, then go to Wikipedia:Contents/styles.css, and change the background color at line 99 to the hex code for grey, then come back to top, add a new line somewhere between lines 2 & 9, with this code: color: #ffffff for white. You'll find the desired result. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:32, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
That will change it for everyone. Does Interstallarity want to change it for everyone? Izno (talk) 18:17, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
Interstellarity edited the css earlier today, so I suspect that it what they want to achieve. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 18:54, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you all for your help. Interstellarity (talk) 11:44, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

This will change your skin and reload the page. Are you sure?

I am curious, but not if the new skin is a permanent change. Is it safe to try out and will it simply revert the settings if I just login again?

I assume WP:Skin is the topic, true? --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 19:42, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

@Ancheta Wis, the setting is not permanent, but will not revert if you login again. If you change to the new skin, there should be a link on the left navbar to switch back to the old look. If it isn't there, you change the skin back in Special:Preferences. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:47, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, I'm glad you knew. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 19:48, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
There's currently an RfC here regarding that skin, so if you want you can give your thoughts on it. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:19, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
The setting can be changed anytime.Cwater1 (talk) 00:33, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
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