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Hi all, I've recently added an article on coal merchant, a term which didn't have an article before. Over 300 articles have the term in it, but don't have a link-is there any quick tool which would turn those terms into links or should I just treat it as an excuse to juice my edit count? Blythwood (talk) 00:54, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
I have created a few dozen. This seems like a manual task. Not every instance of someone being a coal merchant appears to merit linking, at least to my eye. BD2412T03:02, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Deleted article shows up in Help out section of Community portal
Currently, over at the Community portal in the Fix wikilinks subsection of the Help out section, there's a red link to an article that was deleted two days ago (The Most Racist Soccer League in the World). Obviously it's pointless to ask anyone to fix wikilinks in a deleted article. Why is it showing up in the list at all? Is there a cache somewhere which needs purging? 199.208.172.35 (talk) 18:19, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
This evening I noticed that pages that I went to edit started including an edit notice icon upon hitting the Edit link. It happens in the desktop site, the mobile (iOS) app, and in various browsers. I thought maybe it was something misbehaving in various JS scripts I used, but after disabling them and clearing my local caches, I’m still seeing odd behaviors. There aren’t any incidents posted on the wikimediastatus.net site, but there is a noticeable uptick in error counts for what that’s worth. I’ve gone down several other rabbit holes trying to figure out what might have been causing this on my end but I haven’t a clue now.
Any ideas here — is it just me or is something else up on WP?
I am seeing the same thing, on every page I have tried, in both VisualEditor and the 2017 wikitext editor (the "New Wikitext Mode" beta feature), but not in the classic wikitext editor. I am also seeing the same thing on testwiki:. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:07, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
Ahh didn’t test that! Good to know. I suppose I ought to submit a bug report… thanks for confirming that I’m not going insane! Pedantical (talk) 00:33, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
I've been seeing it on both the Chrome application and iOS app I've been using Wikipedia with. Replying here so as to keep track of this thread until the error is resolved. Carlinal (talk) 20:50, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
Long user name
A new account has been blocked because its 79-character username is an advertising slogan, and its spammy contributions reverted. Is there, or should there be, a limit on user name length? I see that we have hundreds of 85-character usernames (mostly with zero edits), and none with 86 or longer, which probably answers my first question. Certes (talk) 11:37, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
Consider a user signature, of the default uncustomised form. For example, your own sig as used above, which is 50 characters long, in which your user name appears three times at six characters each, so what we might call the signature's "overhead" is 50 - 3*6 = 32 characters. That is a fixed amount independent of the length of the user name. We don't permit sigs longer than 255 characters (WP:SIGLEN) and (255 - 32) / 3 = 74.333, so the longest practical username will be 74 characters long. I don't think the software is aware of that limit, so doesn't enforce it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:57, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
I would support reducing the limit, except that usernames that are not in English appear to take up considerably more characters than their apparent length or English translation. For example, all of the following are considered 85 characters long:
ठाकुर अमरेन्द्र प्रताप सिंह गौर
कुंवर अभिनेंद्र प्रताप सिंह चिब
मानस मंदाकिनी रागिनी सरस्वती जी
This also appears to occur outside Hindi; both శ్రీమాన్ కొండపాక రంగాచార్యులు, a Telugu name, and خپل کور فاونڈیشن (یتیم بچوں کی کفالت کا ادارہ)), an Arabic name, are 83 characters long.
Some of these names may be inappropriate - the Arabic one appears to relate to a business - but I don't think we can guess that based on their length. However, it may be worth shortening it to the 74 character length imposed by WP:SIGLEN, given that is a technical restriction? BilledMammal (talk) 13:09, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
(edit conflict) SIGLEN is specified in terms of characters which are not the same as bytes except for the 128 characters in the Unicode "Basic Latin" block (U+0000 through U+007F inclusive). The three examples in your list are all 85 bytes (assuming UTF-8 encoding), but considerably fewer characters - most of these characters are three bytes per character. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:23, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
It is technically infeasible to lower the signature character length in MediaWiki, doing so would fracture SUL. We (read: I) had last raised it during SUL finalization, because we were forcing usernames to be longer. Legoktm (talk) 16:08, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
@PrimeHunterSomebody with an 85-byte username can still make a customized signature if they want but they would have to only use their name once or twice. - It is trivially easy to workaround this limit, you can put your custom signature on a page in your userspace then set your custom signature to substitute this. If you set your custom signature to {{subst::Main Page}} this would be counted as a 20 character signature. see User:The Earwig/Signature for an example of this in use. 163.1.15.238 (talk) 14:21, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
SIGLEN also applies to sigs generated by template substitution. Whilst User:The Earwig/Signature is 934 bytes in total, it WP:SUBSTs cleanly to something a lot shorter - there are several variants coded inside, but the longest possible is
It's technically possible to work around the limit but disallowed by the English Wikipedia. There may be other wikis without such a policy, and there may be users who are not discovered here if they only break the limit a little or make few signed posts. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:55, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
So, I've attempted to edit Bachelor of Science multiple times now, and each time I've tried, I've run across the standard Wikimedia error page stating a technical error stating the site may be down. However, since I'm able to make this edit, that's obviously not the case. In addition, I was able to make an edit on a different page in the article space, CSD, with no issues, so it doesn't seem to be a namespace issue. Is anyone able to replicate this issue? And if so, anyone know what's going on? Steel1943 (talk) 21:36, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
@Steel1943: Are you on a shoddy connection? I sometimes get the "standard Wikimedia error page" (503 error) when I'm on a cellular connection with bad reception. I don't know if there's anything that can be done except make the error message more meaningful. @TheresNoTime: Don't know if it's related to this, but attempting to save User:Suffusion of Yellow/sandbox7 (500kb of random text) with tc qdisc add dev wlan0 root netem loss 40% gave me:
Request from x.x.x.x via cp4039 cp4039, Varnish XID 388742975
Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Wed, 31 May 2023 23:07:56 GMT
Looks like you're both right for different kinds of "right". You're correct about the HTML being invalid according to the spec, and about which element is specifically targeted by the link (i.e. the span, not the h3). But the other party does not seem to care about any of that, which is why they keep rejecting your arguments. All they seem to care about is whether browsers will scroll to the intended location in the document when presented with that specific (invalid) HTML, and they're right that they will. OTOH, the spec does specifically say that the first element with the ID in tree order is the one browsers are supposed to go to, so you were wrong about there being undocumented behavior being relied on there. And their talk about "duplicated IDs to the same span element" is nonsense. Anomie⚔11:46, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Somebody please step in, it's descended to personal attacks. Also, somebody here is misunderstanding the phrase "the id attribute value must be unique amongst all the IDs in the element’s tree". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:34, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
@Redrose64 @Timeshifter That discussion is now several pages long, and I'm having a hard time figuring out what it's actually about. Can you state your question in one paragraph? (Possibly agree together on what the question is first?) I'd be happy to provide advice then. Matma Rextalk13:04, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
Matma Rex. The last third of the thread is easier to follow. I can summarize it in this saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The thread title is "When anchor name duplicates heading name". I say it does no damage. Only 2 people so far seem to get what I am saying: Johnuniq and Stepho-wrs. I suggest reading their comments first. Others make claims of possible apocalyptic damage if a certain rule is broken. But no one has yet shown that it does. And I question whether the spirit of the rule has been broken, since the anchor spans are all within one set of heading tags in the page source: H2, H3, or whatever they happen to be. The rule actually needs to be rewritten at the highest level. In the meantime it should be ignored. And it will be because editors will see no damage. And using the same name for both anchor name and heading name has an advantage. I explained that advantage several times. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:08, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, every one who has weighed in has understood both positions, and so it's not necessary for you to repeat your views. For this particular portion of the spec, respecting its literal word is required for compliance. The priority of compliance to this particular aspect is what's in question. I do think that it's not an approach that scales up well—it would be onerous to include anchors for all headings to try to future proof them. Thus I don't feel it should be recommended as a general practice. isaacl (talk) 18:33, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
The arguments you have made are in support of the practice in general, rather than discussing why it's suitable for the specific circumstances surrounding a specific edit. (For your scenario on Template:Flagg/doc, you might consider labeled section transclusion using the <section /> tag to label the desired section for transclusion.) isaacl (talk) 18:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: The question is whether to use code like == Heading <span id="Heading"></span> == to make section links continue to work if the section is later renamed without updating links to it. Reason against: It generates duplicate id's and the HTML specification says id's must be unique. Reason for: It works and doesn't appear to have negative consequences in practice. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:45, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
it introduced invalid HTML in the form of a duplicate ID
it's redundant because the exact same anchor is already present, being generated by the MediaWiki software
it complicates the heading markup unnecessarily
whilst it is true that section headings occasionally get changed, thus breaking inward links, there are millions of headings on Wikipedia. I see no reason to pre-emptively add anchors just in case. The time to add the anchor is when a section heading is altered, at which point an anchor should be set up for the previous heading name.
Redrose64 asked for the same thing just above. I'll move this to a subsection of that section; feel free to see my reply there. Anomie⚔01:22, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
It's a political question, not technical. It could be argued that if a duplicate anchor in the wikitext leads to invalid html, MediaWiki should be fixed so it does not generate invalid output. Browsers are never going to explode if a duplicate id occurs and there is currently no reasonable way to ensure such duplication never occurs. Johnuniq (talk) 02:09, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
Johnuniq. It looks like the guidelines go back and forth on this. See WP:Target:
When a section title is known to be the target of incoming links, the Wikipedia Manual of Style suggests creating a redundant anchor with the same name as the section title, so that such links will continue to work even if someone renames the section without creating an anchor with the old name. Technically, the redundant section and anchor names result in invalid HTML.[1] However, when a document contains multiple tags with the same id value, browsers are required to return the first one, so in practice, this is not a problem.[2]
References
^"The id attribute". HTML - Living Standard — Last Updated 2 June 2022. WHATWG. Retrieved June 3, 2022.
^"getElementById". DOM - Living Standard — Last Updated 12 May 2022. WHATWG. Retrieved June 3, 2022.
They had it right the first time. See: User:Timeshifter/Sandbox197. Search and highlight all instances of id=
I followed the incorrect rule about not creating an anchor to a current heading. First before the anchor was added I changed the heading a few times. No duplicate IDs showed up.
Then I created an anchor to an old heading. Then I changed the heading again. A duplicate ID showed up when I changed back to an old heading. This happens from time to time. So fighting duplicate IDs in between header tags is a lost cause. Mediawiki creates them.
And as I have said several times using the current heading as an anchor is more future proofed. An anchor link still works even if some errant editor removes the anchor span code. At least until the heading is changed. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:29, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
It's hard to follow what you are trying to say at User:Timeshifter/Sandbox197. If you are claiming that MediaWiki makes duplicate id's on its own without one of the id's being added by the wikitext then just save a page with it and link it. We know how to view the HTML of a page. If you are merely saying that there will be duplicate id's when a saved revision has an id added by wikitext which matches a section heading in that revision then of course, we know that. If you are then saying that the fact this may happen on some pages is a reason for allowing it then it's an argument which makes no sense. Nobody expects all our 58 million page to be free of duplicate id's or other errors. The question is whether we should allow to add them deliberately. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:32, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
I am saying duplicate IDs in headings are an inevitability, and cause no problems. And we shouldn't be discouraging people from using anchors with the same name as a current heading. Because there is an advantage to it. But I realize now that there are other projects on Wikipedia and elsewhere that are more important, and I should have bailed out of this discussion early on when I saw that logic did not apparently matter, and ridiculous rules mattered more.
Hey everyone. The A/B test I announced almost a month ago and then two weeks ago will finally be launched later today, Wednesday May 31. You may see it working on Hebrew Wikipedia if you're bucketed to the tested half of the logged-in users.
A brief reminder what this is about:
We're testing the new look (it's called Zebra) of the Vector 2022 skin in response to the volunteers' comments.
Compare the versions without the tested look and with the tested look. If you're not sure what's changing, pay attention to the background colors and borders around the content area and the side menus. Pin the left sidebar as a side menu.
More visual separation between regions of the interface may help draw more focus/attention to the content, make it easier to stay focused on the content while reading, and reduce screen glare and thus eye strain.
This is only a two-week test. After that, we'll roll back to the previous (all-white) look. Decision whether Zebra would stay will be made in July.
How to keep the new look? The URL parameter forcing it is ?VectorZebraDesign=1. While it's technically possible to use this to, say, create a browser plugin allowing us to only use Zebra or preventing us from seeing Zebra, we discourage from using it and getting used to it because this code will be temporary, just like the test itself.
I'll be immensely grateful for your collaboration, especially for explaining other Wikipedians why this change is happening and why there will be a change again in two weeks. I understand it may be confusing (like any change) and also worrying a bit (because lots of people may want to keep the change). Also, thanks for the feedback which led us to creating Zebra in the first place.
Similarly, the left-hand navbar has random blue text prefixed with "Toggle" appearing on the 'opened' sections when I click on it. Bit annoying. Can report this has happened on desktop view on Safari MacOS and also iPad OS. Hullian111 (talk) 06:19, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
If you look at that image above and right and do not see a general gray background against which the main "content" has a white background ("white panels"), then you need to calibrate your monitor's contrast. Izno (talk) 21:13, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
I can see it in the image provided, but I don't see it in the A/B example test pages given above when I try to look at them. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 21:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
You should also be able to see it in the with the tested look link. If you can see it in the image, that rules out hardware I think. How old is your browser? Izno (talk) 21:33, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
Most recently updated Chrome browser. Could be one of my Chrome extensions or a .css conflict, but I'm not particularly concerned about that if that's the case. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 22:26, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
Loved the new design. Is there any possibilities in the pipeline, regardless of A/B test result, for permanent opt in like through Preferences > Skin Preferences (like the existing "Enable responsive mode" and "Enable limited width mode" toggle) in which whoever interested can opt in? —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)13:14, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Hello @Paper9oll and @QuickQuokka (answering the question asked below). Paper9oll, I'm very glad to learn that you like the new design. QuickQuokka, thank you, your kind words made me blush!
Currently, there's no way of opting out or "hard opting in". Zebra's code is written in a way assuming that it will either be dropped altogether or (more likely) become the default and only look. We don't have plans for making these versions (all-white and Zebra) parallel to choose between. Currently, the only way to see a more white look is to change the user CSS.
That said, I'd like to encourage everyone interested to subscribe to our newsletter which makes it easier to follow our updates. As I previously wrote, we most likely will be working on dark mode and other customizations like font size. Our plan isn't final yet, but among the options, besides dark mode, there might be sepia and/or an all-white version. This is not a promise, though!
The new design incorrect generates an underline on the main page (where the article title would be) despite there being no title. This line is correctly excluded in the previous version. Anarchyte (talk) 13:26, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
What puzzles me is this. If the changes were intended to improve visual separation of different blocks in the page by means of borders around certain blocks, and the darkening of backgrounds outside those blocks (both of which I am in favour of), how has it affected several other areas? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:03, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
It appears to be because Zebra uses selectors with higher specificity to override the default CSS, and some other CSS is also overridden by Zebra like collateral damage. Nardog (talk) 16:12, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
I saw that recently, there has been a new experiment to once again change up the skin from Vector 2022 to something new called Zebra. This kind of messes up dropdown menus among other things. I have two questions:
Where should I report this bug properly? I know phabricator exists, but I have never used it before and have no idea how it works at all. Already reported it on the village pump to the wonderful Mr. Szymon Grabarczuk of the Wikimedia Foundation.
How do I opt out of future A/B testing (if possible)?
The app you linked is not connected with Wikipedia. If that app does not work for you, please contact its supplier rather than us. If you are unable to use Wikipedia (for example, read or edit this page) on your mobile, please provide further details of how you tried to access it, what you expected to happen and what actually happened. Certes (talk) 11:20, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
I was bold and removed the link; the app it links to has nothing to do with Wikipedia and this being this user's first and only edit, makes me feel like this is some kind of SEO or spam situation. --Golbez (talk) 16:15, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Can I get a list of cite web templates that probably have excessive numbers of authors in the fields?
I keep coming across instances of {{cite web}} templates with multiple author names crammed into the "first=" or "first1=" parameter (for example, this template for which I have just fixed spacing). I believe this is caused by errant scraping by citation generators. Whatever the cause, I would like to fix these to the extent possible. The tell for them is usually a comma between names, so I would like a list of all pages that contain a {{cite web}} template with a "first=" or "first1=" parameter, where that parameter contains a comma. If someone can give me the list, I'll take it from there. Cheers! BD2412T23:23, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
Edited those two CNN sources as "cite news". For the longer author list, I edited the names in Vancouver format, and used "display-authors" to limit the display. Hope that is useful. Zefr (talk) 23:42, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
"200 pages in this category, out of approximately 37,116 total", sounds about right. I'll get on it. Cheers! BD2412T23:52, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
Do note that category is just this case with |last= and |author=, rather than |first= as you requested. But have fun! Izno (talk) 23:53, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
30k issues in the last name is an issue too. :) As I said, Help talk:CS1 if you think it would be beneficial to catch some of this in the first name field also. Izno (talk) 00:30, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
Also guaranteed to time out, got 2500+ hits for a single comma in |firstn=. Adding a maint cat for this might be a good idea. I'll do it tomorrow.
Excellent, thanks. I'll keep an eye out for it. I suspect that there may be some patterns with specific regularly cited journalist teams that can be addressed quickly. BD2412T00:43, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
A note: I poked through a few of the search results, and found a common pattern that is apparently caused by a bug in the beta Visual Editor's automatic citation template insertion tool. See this discussion for an initial report. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:23, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
Probably not a bug directly in Citoid but a failure in the Zotero translator to deal with wherever the byline is that it's pulling. You can file a task in the Citoid project for each problematic domain. IznoPublic (talk) 02:25, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
I see it happen when using Re/Fill all the time, particularly when pulling citations for CNN articles. BD2412T19:14, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Is it possible for MediaWiki to automatically create anchors to previous heading names?
Is this technically possible? Either in the header wikitext, or better yet, only at the page source level within the header tags.
Only for section names that change. This would make section linking permanent. It would greatly expand the utility of Wikipedia. For all sections in articles, talk pages, etc..
This would not produce duplicate IDs except in the rare case that a section name goes back to a previous section name. See example in User:Timeshifter/Sandbox197.
Maybe Mediawiki could automatically remove that duplicate ID: <span class="anchor" id="Current heading"></span> - in the wikitext. <span class="anchor" id="Current_heading"></span> - in the page source.
If it is automatic, then people would quickly notice span links in all section headings that change. The span links would be within the equal signs of the wikitext heading. But after the current heading, so that it is least interfering, and most intuitive. All changes in the heading would have anchors, so no links to sections would ever break.
It could be done only at a deeper level, at the page source level, so that editors never see anchor span tags in the header wikitext again.
Note: To be clear, I have given up on adding individual anchors manually to the current heading name. See #Template:Anchor discussion, and the discussion above it.
This is about an automatic process where editors wouldn't have to do anything. And in the best scenario they would see nothing added in the header wikitext. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:27, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
What defines a "previous" name ? There is no such thing in wikitext, it is just == something == surrounded by other random characters. Think of it this way. What if I take the entire text on this page, and then use it to replace whatever was your user talk page... Now what are the 'previous' anchors in this new revision. I honestly wouldn't know. And neither would a computer. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:46, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Mediawiki changes the heading in the page source when a heading is changed:
<span class="mw-headline" id="Current heading">
Could Mediawiki be made to notice that change in the current heading?
Also how does subscribing to individual sections of talk pages work? I looked in the page source of a talk page and could not find the word "subscribe" except when subscribing to the whole page.
Does subscribing to individual talk sections work after the section heading is changed?
If so, how is it done? Could that be used to add anchors to the previous heading?
Apparently, subscribing continues to work after a section name change:
Discussion notifications are implemented by the software storing subscriptions to the first comment, which has a unique ID assigned to it that includes the timestamp. This allows notifications to be performed even if the thread (including the first comment) is moved to another page. As I understand it, the headings are not used in the notification mechanism. isaacl (talk) 20:45, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I think this is the unique ID for this thread starting at "h"?:
commentname=h-Timeshifter-20230601192700
That is part of the unsubscribe link. The number is the date and UTC time of the first comment by me in this thread.
Maybe the unique ID could be used as the unique heading anchor for incoming links to this section:
A more elegant solution (without adding anything to the header wikitext) would be a "Copy link" button that produces this wikitext link:
[[Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#h-Timeshifter-20230601192700|Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Is it possible for MediaWiki to automatically create anchors to previous heading names?]]
The anchor ID would be at the page source level, between the header tags.
I noticed that I am still subscribed to a VPT thread recently moved to the archives. So a unique anchor would work when sections are moved to archives.
I don't see any subscribe links on sections in articles. Only on talk pages.
Comments are identified by signatures. The notification mechanism does not operate on articles. The underlying challenge is if someone is restructuring an article, the section may no longer be an appropriate target for incoming links. If a new feature were to be introduced, personally I would prefer it to be a more general one of helping to find incoming links to a given URL fragment. This would allow editors to re-evaluate the links and determine the best target for them. isaacl (talk) 01:02, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Personally, I would prefer a feature that makes it easier for me to find links pointing to a specific location on a page (that is, using the #fragment_identifier at the end of the URL). Thus if I wanted to restructure a page that affected any internal targets within it, I would be able to find any links pointing to those targets and evaluate what would be the best way to deal with them. (That being said, I'm not sure if the opportunity cost of implementing this feature is worthwhile.) isaacl (talk) 03:46, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
OK, I was not understanding "URL fragment" from your previous comment. #fragment_identifier is clear to me now. It encompasses old and new versions of a heading. It would be nice if there were a "WhatLinksHere" that worked for section headings. That showed where links to that heading were found. All versions of those links.
I am wanting a no-effort method based on Mediawiki automatically creating anchors anytime a section heading in an article is changed. It already automatically changes the span in the page source:
<span class="mw-headline" id="Current heading">
Maybe instead of deleting the old version it could convert it to
<span class="anchor" id="Old heading"></span>
That would mean from now on all links to article headings would be permanent. With no work required on the part of editors at all. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:34, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
Has something changed in the last couple of days with the watchlists? In the past the list would tell me how many changes on a heavily edited page (AN & ANI are where i have noticed it) since i last visited it, if the last visit was the same day. At least twice in the past, perhaps, three days it is telling lies, in that i haven't visited a page but it shows a small number ~ lesser than the total changes in the day ~ since i last visited. It doesn't matter ~ i know where i've visited and the detail is just an added benefit, not an essential part of the watchlist ~ but i am curious about why the behaviour has changed. In case i'm not explaining clearly, i'm adding screenshot from a little while ago; i haven't visited either AN or ANI today, but both show a number of changes since i did? Happy days, ~ LindsayHello11:06, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Addendum: I just revisted my watchlist and the numbers have changed, even though i've still not visited AN or ANI today. Strange. Happy days, ~ LindsayHello11:07, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
LindsayH is noting that the figures seem too high; if they had marked all pages visited, that would zero the figures, not increase them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:54, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
It's a good idea, though i don't think i've ever actually clicked that button. I didn't, though; as the screenshot shows, not all pages have some changes since last visit, which they would if i had clicked it ~ Free grace theology, for example, shows 4 changes, but none since last visit. Happy days, ~ LindsayHello11:58, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Here's an idea. Are the "changes since last visit" figures obtained directly from the live data tables, or from the Wiki Replicas? If the latter, we've had serious WP:REPLAG issues over the last week (see earlier in this page) and the Wiki Replicas may still be catching up, so data obtained from those can change without apparent explanation. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:01, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
MediaWiki features in production site don't use wiki replicas. They use the production replicas which don't lag by more than 5-10 seconds. If they do, mediawiki locks itself up in readonly mode and waits for the replicas to catch up. – SD0001 (talk) 07:28, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
XFDcloser removing RCAT templates when retargeting redirects
There is a bug with the XFDcloser gadget causing it to remove WP:RCAT templates and all other content in a redirect when closing an RfD discussion that results in a retarget. Here is a recent example. This creates problems for the few editors who watch redirects, as they must manually re-add the RCAT templates (and other content such as categories and hidden notes) if the closer neglects to do so, which is often the case. @Steel1943 and I have both raised this issue on the gadget's talk page, and I know others have noticed this bug as well, but it appears that the gadget's maintainer, Evad37, is no longer active on Wikipedia. I hope all is well with them, but I'm hoping someone else here will be able to address the bug and hopefully push out a fix. InfiniteNexus (talk) 22:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Every so often, Twinkle will not show up in the top bar, and CD will pop up a message saying that data could not be loaded. Does anyone know why this might happen? Here is a link to my browser console, for anyone interested.
NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts>00:12, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
Graphs error message, an idea to make it more useful
Would it be possible to modify the error message displayed in place of graphs at this time to give a link to the page where the data is? I'm guessing that:
Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues. The data for this graph may be available here
probably wouldn't work, but I'm not sure how far from working it is. (Likely, "very")
But something similar (in output) would be good if it is workable. I didn't see anything in the original discussion about this, but since graphs may be down for a while (I can't see any time-til-fixed estimates on Phab, except from very early on), it might do to try to mitigate the effect somewhat. Mako001 (C) (T) 🇺🇦 12:09, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
The message is MediaWiki:Graph-disabled but the graph data is only in the generated wikitext for the page. There is currently nothing suitable we could link. Something very unsuitable to link for COVID-19 pandemic in India: Search for <graph> here. That's the entire template-expanded wikitext for the article. The two <graph> mark the start of the data for the two missing graphs. Good luck getting something useful out of that. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:09, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
Darn it. It seems my suggestion would only have a chance of working for a (very) limited number of graphs. It was based on graphs showing items in categories over time. I guess this can be closed now. Mako001 (C) (T) 🇺🇦 02:16, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
New proposed policy on "User Scripts and Gadgets that load third-party scripts"
Traceback (most recent call last): File "/data/project/afdstats/public_html/afdstats.py", line 90, in main db = MySQLdb.connect(db='enwiki_p', host="enwiki.labsdb", read_default_file=os.path.expanduser("~/replica.my.cnf")) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 86, in Connect return Connection(*args, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 204, in __init__ super(Connection, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs2) OperationalError: (2013, "Lost connection to MySQL server at 'handshake: reading initial communication packet', system error: 11") None
I'm afraid I won't be able to provide much insight. We at the Site Reliability Engineering team try to provide timely updates about issues regarding Wiki Websites stability (like on the locations you mention)- however, cloud services such as those are handled by separate teams (Wikimedia Cloud Services and Data Engineering) and while we'd love if all WMF teams shared our procedures, not all do at the time (and it makes sense not to update the general wiki status page for the general public for those more "internal" services- even if internal doesn't mean less important!).
I'm sorry I cannot provide further details as it is outside of my knowledge area and access rights (it seems to be a cloud networking issue), but I can see on the ticket someone from those teams is already working on it, so I would hope the issue gets fixed soon. Please be nice to them, as resources for maintaining those internal services are much more limited than for general Wiki maintenance and many are maintained only thanks to the help of volunteer administrators.-- JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-23
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed. [4]
Problems
For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed. [5]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist. [6]
Planning for the last deployment of DiscussionTools
Please see Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project#Plan for the last deployment. I hear that the A/B test is in the data analysis phase, but I haven't heard what the results are (or even if anyone knows yet). If the results turn out to be what they hoped for (see mw:Talk pages project/Usability/Analysis), the Editing team will be talking about deployments during the summer. They will be wrapping up the Wikipedia:Talk pages project and moving on to their new project, mw:Edit check, whose first version will encourage editors to add inline citations. Please feel free to watch the new page and help them figure out how to make it hit the right balance between being useful and not getting in your way.
(edit conflict)@Bishonen: Ah, now I remember; the script I made does still work, it just doesn't do what I remembered. I've rewritten Þjarkur's script and blended it with mine at User:Writ_Keeper/Scripts/unmobilePlus.js. It should redirect you back to desktop whenever you get to a mobile link, but the mobile site will pop up for a second before it reloads to desktop, which I don't think is really avoidable. To minimize the impact of that, though, it will also do what my script originally did, which is go through and replace all links to mobile with direct links to desktop, so it should only be links you click on from outside Wikipedia that give you the mobile flash. That said, it does look like Þjarkur's original script still works for me (though it also gives the aforementioned mobile flash), and they work more or less the same way, so let me know if the new one works. Writ Keeper⚇♔16:14, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
On those links of yours, it's certainly working, and without the popping-up-for-a-second effect. I didn't understand the going-through-and-replacing-all-links thing, but then I probably don't need to. (Only links I click on from outside Wikipedia will give me the mobile flash? There is a world outside Wikipedia, with links in it? Mobile links?) Anyway, thank you very much. Bishonen | tålk16:32, 4 June 2023 (UTC).
@Writ Keeper Now User:Mdaniels5757/markAdmins.js, the script I use to make editors as Admins, CU, OS doesn't work so I've uninstalled yours. Any idea what caused the conflict? Doug Wellertalk07:33, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Hmm, no, I don't see any reason why they'd conflict, Doug Weller, and when I borrow your common.js, both scripts seem to work in parallel just fine, as far as I can tell. Do you have any particular page that you've noticed the MarkAdmins script breaks on? Writ Keeper⚇♔13:18, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Well, based on my reading, the markAdmins.js script doesn't run in WP space by default, so I don't think it *should* work on this page. Not sure what would be making it run in WP space, or why my script would affect that... Writ Keeper⚇♔14:04, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
All charts based on the graph extension have been disabled for over 40 days, impacting thousands of articles and millions of views. The latest official update on the situation was over a month ago. Can we have some news for people not directly involved in development work, but that invested a lot of work on writing and maintaining charts on Wikipedia? What is the current status? What is the timeline for re-enabling the extension? Thank you. Ita140188 (talk) 12:35, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
The status quo is that it is broken broken, and a direction for a fix (after the first attempt to fix it failed) is currently being sought but has not been chosen yet (and then a week of hackathon got in between). There is NO timeline. All of this is discussed in the tickets referenced. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:28, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
@Ita140188 To clarify further. My estimation, is that after this first attempt to fix it failed, we are now looking at months and months of (unplanned) work before any sort of solution is created. As to the inevitable questions of "why do other website in the world not have this problem". Because they aren't being researched by security specialists in the same way as we get researched, nor do they generally allow untrusted users to modify the content of other users. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:14, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
In any large wikipedia, the insertion of suspicious code into a graph would surely be detected by the local counter vandalism unit almost immediately? Looks like a risk worth taking for me. --45.156.242.189 (talk) 21:34, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
No it is not. That is like saying: surely because you can look at your bank account, there is no risk in someone else having your bank card and pincode. The problems we are talking about would basically give anyone full access to anyone else's user account. They are full and immediate compromises. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:16, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Regarding the lack of detail about what and where the holes are, I find that only to be expected. Here's the thing. If you've ever worked with IT security, you'll know that when a security issue occurs we reveal as little as possible about the problem. We need to somehow prevent people using the problem code, but we don't tell them any specifics. This is to try and prevent the security hole from being exploited until it's patched. So we say "there is a security issue with this facility, and until it is resolved the facility will not be available". Until a fix or replacement is available and is thoroughly tested, you need to live without it for a while longer. If you try and hurry us along, we may make mistakes, so we ignore the hurry-up calls and keep going at a pace that allows for all potential possibilities to be examined, leaving no stone unturned. Only when it's properly fixed up do we explain, and then only in the vaguest terms (just in case somebody is minded to try a similar exploit again) although we do record all the full details in a document hidden somewhere nobody would find it (in case it happens again and the previous fix needs to be examined thoroughly again).
Think of it like a building with a locked door, people with legitimate access are issued with a key to open the door. But somebody has found that they can open the door without the key using a bent paperclip and piece of chewing gum. So until a new and better lock is obtained and fitted, we block off the door entirely. What we do not do is say how the chewing gum was used.
So this is what it boils down to: the code that we were using has a hole and accordingly has been withdrawn from use, people are working on it, and until it's completely fixed to our satisfaction, that's all we're saying. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:33, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
The WMF actually deviates from that (otherwise excellent) analogy and often discloses the full details of security vulnerabilities once they are patched. And we do actually know the original security vulnerability that lead to Graph being disabled - it's disclosed at phab:T334895. That original vulnerability has been fixed, and some other (still undisclosed and unfixed) vulnerability in the same software is preventing the Graph extension from being redeployed now. * Pppery *it has begun...14:48, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
Well, there is always the option to move Vega graphs to EasyTimeline, sure, you would lose a lot of functionality, but at least it works. And no, I do not think that is a desperate move. Snævar (talk) 09:38, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
So, unofficial status: Originally Vega was disabled because of four known security vulnerabilities. Vega already had disclosed those at the time of the disabling, after all we where on Vega 2.5.2 and Vega has moved to Vega 5 at that point. Two of those vulnerabilities had proofs-of-concept and Vega is being run client-side, e.g. on your computer, so there was an active risk of hacking here. Then the Graph extension was updated to support Vega 5, solving the vulnerabilities in the process. It removed the protocols for getting data points externally, like from wikidata, the data namespace on commons, and so on. That is now done with calls to the API with user provided urls. That version did not support Wikidata, but most of the other external loading was there. They where planning a deployment of that, but decided to cancel it less than a week before the proposed date. This new version is active on beta english wikipedia.
Since then, a new vulnerability has popped up (we know, because there is an hidden bug) and Vega is not safe enough to be editable for every user on the wiki. We do know that editing Vega is going to be restricted (probably to admins) and that the code for Vega graphs on the wiki is going to shrink, whith the types of graphs being defined in one place, which Vega-Lite does do internally. The url external loading is planned to be removed and we will once again get an short field to fill for loading datapoints, this time in the graph tag. The belief from developers is that users are capable of identifying an vulnerability and not save it on the wiki, and that is the main mitigation moving forward.
So, some speculation. It has been confirmed that moving to Vega-Lite is not enough. Vega-Lite does have some interactivity and ability to change data points (in Vega's transform), but it has pre-defined types of graphs and how they are displayed. That is pretty much all there is to Vega-Lite. There is very little customizability compared to the full Vega. Even Vega 2.5.2 graphs, like we have on this wiki currently, are limited on Vega-Lite 5. If they limit Vega beyond Vega-Lite, considering Vega-Lite is not enough, then some of those features are going away. Snævar (talk) 09:12, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
A recent change at Module:Coordinates has broken the page preview feature. For example, hovering the mouse above United Arab Emirates should show an image and introductory text from that article (if scripting is enabled and if "Enable page previews" is selected in Preferences > Appearance). Currently, the text in the preview shows the output of {{coord}} only. By contrast, hovering over Tokyo shows the correct popup. The change will have to be reverted soon but I have left it while posting this so the problem can easily be seen. Documentation at mw:Special:MyLanguage/Extension:Popups includes "Any element marked with the noexcerpt class will be stripped from the summary." Presumably something like that needs to wrap the output from {{coord}}. If anyone has any info on popups or why Module:Coordinates is broken, please reply here or at Module talk:Coordinates#Protected edit request on 29 May 2023. Johnuniq (talk) 05:16, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
MOS:ORDER says geographical coordinates (i.e. {{coord}}) should be placed at the end of articles if they're not in the infobox, and if we look at articles following the MOS, like United States and Greenland, their page previews aren't affected, in contrast to Canada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines for example, which have {{coord}} immediately before the infobox. (For examples in context, see Template:Countries of North America.) (And just to be clear, articles that have {{coord}}in the infobox are also not affected, like Tokyo.)
So, this breakage is unexpected based solely on the MOS. In the long run, would it be better to go through all articles that have {{coord}} in the wrong place and fix them? although of course, for the short term, reverting the change "as a workaround" would be good. On the other hand, {{coord}} renders above the article content, so why does the MOS say to place it after?
This breakage was basically impossible to expect TBH, no-one working on coordinates is familiar-enough with the internals of the TextExtract system in MediaWiki to have made the connection a priori. Having a stronger MOS enforcement actually would have simply made the issue less visible, and then we'd have the issue on more pages.
I've laid out a way to fix this and mostly need any of the half dozen people sufficiently familiar with such things to look at the suggestion and agree that's the right solution. Izno (talk) 23:17, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Maybe it's just me, but every time I hover over an article with a coordinate in it, it only shows the coordinate in the preview. This really bugs me, so I was wondering if that's a global problem. If not, could I please know how to fix it? Cheers! // 🌶️Jalapeño🌶️ Don't click this link! 07:01, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Previews are broken on Chrome browser for locations.
When hovering with the mouse over previews, specifically locations and countries, all that is displayed in the description is the coordinates.
I was expecting to see a short description of the country in question.
I have encountered the issue when hovering over links on the United States page, particularly North America, Cuba, and Americas.
Screenshot attached: https://ibb.co/VpkbFL0 (sorry I cannot upload to wikimedia right now, the school wifi blocks it for some reason):
I am on a desktop version of Chrome, latest version. Zorblin (talk) 16:12, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Can a page views link be put in sidebar, or at page bottom as in German Wikipedia?
It seems that people really like looking at page views of articles, etc. once they find a link or banner for it. Usually buried away on a few talk pages, revision history, or some gadget setting.
They especially like seeing page views over time via a bar graph or line graph. Which pageviews.wmcloud.org provides. Are there other places to link to? --Timeshifter (talk) 01:08, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
I imagine that it would not be difficult to make a user script that would place a link in an editor's Actions menu. Putting such a link as a permanent sidebar item for all pages for all users seems like a big step; I have edited here for over ten years and can't recall ever looking at or caring about pageview statistics. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:35, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
I noticed you have created some articles. Aren't you curious? The page views timeline graph is available via a "pageviews" link found at the top of the revision history of an article. Many people never notice it since it is an obscure location. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:09, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
Not curious even an iota. Old person time: When I created my first web pages in 1994 and 1995, I was very curious about page views and saved all of the related stats in a spreadsheet that I probably still have around somewhere. The novelty wore off quickly. I would not change any of my behavior or beliefs in a positive way if I knew about the page stats; my editing is mostly intrinsically motivated. If you or anyone else feels or is motivated differently, that's wonderful, and someone probably has a script that will improve your life. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:12, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia has added a pageviews link to the top of the page history and bottom of "Page information" for users witht the default interface language "en". User:PrimeHunter/Pageviews.js adds it to all pages. On disambiguation pages it also adds a link to show page views for all pages linked on the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:24, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I have had that installed for a bit. Sometimes it times out, even though it has already shown the bar chart. Then the chart goes blank. Has there been any discussion about adding the link to all articles, whether logged in or not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timeshifter (talk • contribs) 11:16, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
It should be fine. The worst that could happen is it will exceed its quota on connections to the wiki replicas, but that's only used to show the "edits"/"editors" stats which are not essential for this tool, and there are graceful fallbacks for when those queries fail.
German Wikipedia has a link to it on all pages, curiously at w:de:MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright which in my opinion is not the ideal location. I'm not sure if there's an interface page for the "Toolbox" (known as "Page tools" in Vector 2022), but that would be the best placement I think. We could use JavaScript as with the user script, but it feels wrong to do that just to add a link site-wide. — MusikAnimaltalk22:21, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
"Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization."
There's a pageviews link for logged in users at the bottom of "Page info". It's under "External tools", but ideally there would be a link up in "Basic information", or - why not - a little embedded diagram for the last N days, linking to pageviews. Though that might be something for phab:. Ponor (talk) 10:48, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
I do not see a "page info" link, or "external tools", or "Basic information" anywhere on article pages. I am logged into a Win 10 Pro PC in Firefox using Timeless skin.
So far, the location I like best is at the bottom of the page as at German Wikipedia on all pages whether logged in or not. It doesn't use any of the prime real estate of the sidebar. Over time I think it would be seen by the most readers and editors compared to any other location other than the sidebar. Since it would be seen my more readers, I think I would help draw a few of them into editing. The other locations are seen mostly by editors. It would be very easy to add the link to MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright as at w:de:MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:35, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
@Timeshifter: In Timeless, the sidebar in the left margin has several headings - "Navigation", "Contribute", etc.; the fifth of these is "More", below which are "What links here" and some others, amongst which you should find "Page information". If you click that, the first box at the top contains the "Basic information" and "External tools" links. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 05:51, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Redrose64. Thanks. I have discovered in the Timeless skin that the MoreMenu gadget in the Appearance section of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets removes the "Page information" link and puts it in a sidebar dropdown menu called "Analysis". The name of the link has been changed though from "Page information" to "Basic statistics". --Timeshifter (talk) 08:37, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
How does rate limiting work?
Specifically for edit rate limiting, only 90 edits per minute are allowed (unless you're an admin, who have the noratelimits user right). Does this mean 60 seconds since you exceeded the rate limit, or is it on a per-minute basis, that is, if you exceed the rate limit at 13:45:34, you can edit again at 13:46:00? — Qwerfjkltalk10:45, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
As far as I know (but I haven't looked into it deeply), if it's 90 edits per minute, it is edits within the time from the moment you are attempting your edit minus 60 secs. That means that whatever you are doing, you need to reduce the RATE. You don't need to necessarily wait 60 seconds, you need to wait for as long as required to bring your rate within the limits again and if you don't wait long enough, you are simply prolonging the amount of time within which your action will fail. One note is that these are Mediawiki app rate limits, but there are also some rate limits on server requests in general and on frontend servers to other services (like the media servers) to prevent overall server overload (bandwidth, cpu, congestion etc). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:51, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Ethiopic tone marks display on some pages but not others
I'm using FF 110.0.1 (64-bit) on Mint 20.3. I know what the characters are supposed to look like from the Unicode doc and from my installed fonts, such as Abyssinica SIL. All of the characters look good on the table we use in the articles for the Unicode block, and all of them displayed as tofu when I tried using them in the tone letter article. But now that I'm back to respond, only the template itself displays properly, and in the article Ethiopic Supplement it's just tofu. Nothing's changed on my system in the meantime. — kwami (talk) 01:49, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Indicator overlaps with coordinates in Timeless skin
Hi. I just came by to check the T281974 problem and I was surprised to find out that the GA indicator overlaps with Route Map button on K-1_(Kansas_highway). What surprised me was that I'm using Timeless as skin, not Vector-2022. I'm not sure if there are previous tasks or discussions. --魔琴 (Zauber Violino) (talk) 11:52, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
It seems that the fix that was made for this on Vector-2022 was not applied to the other skins at that time. And since the route map element isn't that common it wasn't noticed before. I'll make an edit request later today. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:18, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Hi, I'm trying to install WP:AutoEd to User:Davey2010/vector.js without the Whitespace and unicodify modules and I'm not getting very far, I don't suppose there's anyone on here who could tell me what to do please?
@Qwerfjkl - When I installed these modules - The AutoEd disappeared from the left sidebar but was showing as a dropdown option at the top but everytime I was clicking it it opens the article to edit but then doesn't do anything,
@Certes Ctrl and F5 brings up a "project screen" option - I normally hold Ctrl and click the refresh button which as far as I know hard refreshes
Also everything on the left sidebar has now gone except citeoid - so refill, DMY/MDY, spork (think that changed everything to YYYY-MM-DD) are all now gone, Thanks –Davey2010Talk18:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
I messed the commons.js page up my apologies - all scripts are back but I still cannot get AutoEd to work, Thanks –Davey2010Talk19:15, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Resolved
Turns out the AutoEd code didn't belong in the vector.js page at all (all that gubbins was to make it a clickable button in the left sidebar)!, I ended up pasting Wikipedia:AutoEd/basic.js to User:Davey2010/AutoEd/basic.js and removed the unicodify and whitespace and then added a link to my common.js page[8] and Wallah!! - We have lift off!,
I dont understand what I done but I done something and it worked lol, Anyway thank you Qwerfjkl and Certes for your help it's greatly appreciated, also I found out FN + F5 hard refreshes the page too, Anyway thanks again, –Davey2010Talk19:16, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Question about multiple blocks
If an editor:
Is (partial) blocked from editing page P indefinitely
At a later point, the editor is blocked site-wide for a day
Will at the end of the day, the editor be able to edit page P, or will that pageblock still be in place? Pinging Bishonen who will be interested in the answer too. Abecedare (talk) 18:59, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Blocks can either be partial or site-wide, so the later block will entirely replace the earlier one, which will be removed and won't be automatically restored. There's probably a phab ticket somewhere for that. There is some trickery to get around this limitation with IP blocks; because you can do IP range things, and place separate blocks for separate ranges affecting the same IP. -- zzuuzz(talk)19:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer, zzuuzz. Will just need to remember to restore that partial block. Hoping that someday, blocks (and page-protections!) are implemented so that temporary escalation doesn't "reset" the earlier blocks. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 19:21, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
I just came here to write about the same matter. reFill currently has two maintainers, one being me and the other is TheresNoTime. I think TNT is taking a break at the moment. I could do with a hand with someone well versed with Toolforge and Python to help with what looks like a virtualenv issue, probably quick and easy for someone with the right experience to solve. Ideally, it would be great to find someone willing to stick around beyond the current issue and become another maintainer.
The stack includes Vue.js, webpack, Celery, Redis, Python, Flask and of course Kubernetes.
I'd recommend hopping on #wikimedia-tech on IRC if you need help with the quick and easy question. There should be someone on there to help. Izno (talk) 17:01, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
Incorrect display for ISO 639 language code in citation template
When entering the ISO 639 language code fkv (for Kven language) into citation templates, they display "in Kvensk" instead of the expected English-language text "in Kven". For reference, "Kvensk" is the Norwegian form of the word. This is also present in the Citation Style documentation. I'm not sure how to go about fixing this, as I have no idea where the templates and modules actually get this data from. I'd appreciate some help with this. ArcticSeeress (talk) 05:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Following the clear outcome of this Rfc, could someone implement the infobox with the outgoing and elected MPs? I can't edit the infobox and I don't know if I'am able to implement it, therefore I need someone to do it for me. Scia Della Cometa (talk) 11:36, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Zoom for desktop on mobile?
Not sure if this is my imagination, but the desktop view on my mobile (Chrome on Android) seems different from how it usually is. Like the page loads really zoomed out, with really small text, and when I then zoom in on my watchlist, the text is wider than it used to be. I can't remember exactly what it did before though... Has something changed with the skin in the last day or two, or am I just imagining it? — Amakuru (talk) 21:36, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Database of shortest Biographies
Hi - Yesterday at Database reports/Shortest biographies of living people I updated the bottom three biographies. Today they are all showing 814 length, same as yesterday. I did the "Purge cache" and same results. So now I updated those same 3 articles plus one more & will see if any change tomorrow. Is this an error for the Length column? Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 20:45, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
See the note at the top of the report. It was updated at 00:00, 8 June 2023 (UTC). Your edit to Paul Raoult occurred at 01:42, 8 June 2023 (UTC). If the database and the bot are working as expected, that article should be removed from the report when it refreshes today, in about 30 minutes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:28, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
but I can't figure out exactly what's going on. It looks like there's a missing }} or an extra {{ but that stuff hasn't changed in years and the page looked fine. Special:Diff/1159115006 caused it to go haywire, but I can't see what that changed which could have made a difference. -- RoySmith(talk)15:03, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
I reverted the edit while keeping what I think is a needed change to one of the parameter values. Graham87 may want to check my edits, given the recent archive page moves, and redo their own edits, which looked like a valid simplification if done in a syntactically correct way. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:45, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Oops, sorry about that ... I only checked if the archive box was working and didn't read any further down (in the wiki-markup) with my screen reader ... my bad! Graham8703:04, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Autosubscribed to a bunch of identical threads by mistake?
A couple of days ago, @MJL notified a bunch of users (I guess everybody who had commented on WP:ARC?) about the creation of the Scottywong case. See these contribs. I've since been getting notifications when various of those threads have been replied to, and looking around, it appears I'm subscribed to all of the threads. I certainly didn't do that myself, so I'm guessing there's some bug in the thread subscription code which erroneously thought these were all the same thread. These all look like they were copy-pasted in quick succession, so my hunch is the subscription code hashes the content and these all hashed the same?
This is a bug that apparently results from inadequate design of this topic subscription feature. Something needs a tweak. See this thread, in which I made the easy prediction that You will not be the only person to experience this undesirable behavior. This bug was filed at T334906 in April 2023. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:33, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Same poster + same timestamp = same topic as far DisucssionTools is concerned. DT doesn't care that they're on different pages. – SD0001 (talk) 17:17, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
As was mentioned in the discussion linked to earlier, the page isn't used as part of the subscription in order to accommodate threads being moved to different pages. However it seems there isn't sufficient specificity in how the initial comment is identified to handle messages posted en masse. isaacl (talk) 05:31, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Watchlist and Diffs - Tags in some kind of Indian script
I've noticed in my watchlist edits marked with "Tags: ਮੋਬਾਈਲੀ ਸੋਧ ਮੋਬਾਈਲੀ ਵੈੱਬ ਸੋਧ" and various other "Tags:some kind of Indian script" messages. It can also be seen on diffs, eg, here. Is the Latin alphabet to be deprecated on EnWiki? Will the Foundation pay for me to have lessons in the new language? Or (as I rather suspect) has someone fucked up somewhere? Ta, DuncanHill (talk) 22:32, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Appears to have been fixed already. Don't know how long it will take the change to reach enwiki. Probably better to set your interface language to en instead of en-gb anyway; you're missing out the community-customized messages, some of which might be important. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:54, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I know already that more effort is put into breaking en-gb that to fixing it. But good to know it's been, or being, fixed. DuncanHill (talk) 22:58, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Why do we allow people who change en-gb to Punjabi to edit? Is it Foundation policy to permit that sort of vandalism? Would changing American English to Azerbaijani be allowed? Would we discourage American English if it regularly faced that kind of vandalism? DuncanHill (talk) 23:10, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Even if this sort of screwup never happened, it would still be a good idea to use en. We, the enwiki community, have customi[sz]ed probably hundreds of messages, and when you set your language to anything other than default, be it en-gb, French, or Hindi, you only see the MediaWiki default. In short, if you're capable of comprehending the language of a wiki, don't override the langauge setting. Now, if you're reverting cross-wiki spammer, and trying to remember which button is "undo" and which button is "thank", then sure, it's fair tradeoff. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:20, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
No, the language of this wiki is en - English unspecified. en-us would be American English. Izno (talk) 23:30, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
It's usually or always an accident when somebody changes en-gb messages to another language. They probably thought they were editing Punjabi messages. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:03, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Genuinely, as this seems to happen a lot, how? Is the original text they're editing from not in English? I would check but for some reason Translatewiki isn't in the unified login? CMD (talk) 01:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
It's a UX issue in Translatewiki. When someone signs up an account there and specifies en-gb as their default language, the translation interfaces by default open up with target language as en-gb. So often people forget to set the target language to Punjabi or whatever, and start translating - unaware the translations are actually being saved as en-gb. Normally, the presence of existing translations in a different language would indicate the wrong language is selected - but en-gb and en-ca don't usually have any existing translations. – SD0001 (talk) 07:41, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
It's the third time in three years MediaWiki:Tag-mobile edit/en-gb gets the wrong language at Translatewiki.[10] I don't know whether the others were imported to MediaWiki. Maybe they should have an abuse filter trying to detect translations in the wrong script. All the languages using the Latin script would be harder to differentiate. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:38, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Would changing American English to Azerbaijani be allowed? Would we discourage American English if it regularly faced that kind of vandalism? Language en goes through code review and requires developer approval. All other languages go through translatewiki.net, which being a wiki is easier to edit and can have the same problems as a normal wiki (CIR, vandalism, etc). –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:59, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
I think I have now fixed all the problem messages on en.wikipedia by editing them locally, since if my understanding is correct they would otherwise remain incorrect until Thursday (or an emergency deploy, but it's the weekend so that isn't too likely). I'll delete the local edits once the next deploy is done.
phab:T286901 is the task about trying to better prevent these mistakes in future. And I second the recommendations not to use en-gb, since it can cause other problems with not seeing local messages. the wub"?!"13:34, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
If translations get deployed with obvious major problems like "wrong language", the review process seems to be not good enough to justify locking wrong translations for a week. —Kusma (talk) 16:19, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Then the deployment to client wikis should be faster so errors can be corrected immediately. Kind of like in a wiki. —Kusma (talk) 16:58, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
Does score tag support define-music-function?
I pasted below Lilypond code in score raw="1" tag, but it doesn't seem to render properly..
Hello! I had a few false alarms earlier, but I've finally run into an issue that I can't seem to get around (and that actually explained some of my earlier issues).
I'm using WP:AutoEd. I've properly followed the instruction on how to install modules, and I even created a module of my own! (First time coder, so it's not great, but I'm proud of it.)
The problem is, when I click the "auto ed" button on page, there's about a 60% chance that it doesn't work (not my specific module, but AutoEd generally). I've looked at the browser console, and the error that comes up each time is consistent: it'll say something like: Can't find variable autoEdUnicodify or Can't find variable autoEDurlStatusFixer (on Safari; on Firefox, the text is: autoEdUnicodify is not defined.)
All of these errors stem from the same page: User:Jerome Frank Disciple/monobook.js. The problem is that they're not variables at all. They're functions, which I use importScript to import onto that page. And if this were happening every time, I'd assume that I made a mistake in setting up AutoEd there. But it doesn't happen every time—about 40% of the time, everything works! Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?--Jerome Frank Disciple18:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Ooh, it does seem to be particularly easy on a few pages and very hard on others, which I think supports that theory (assuming I understand that theory ...). I have no idea how I'd begin to address that, so for now I'll just settle on having to refresh pages (sometimes quite a few time). I appreciate the input; thank you so much, --Jerome Frank Disciple18:33, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
The cause is that AutoEd doesn't wait for your modules to load before it tries to use them. When you click on "auto ed", autoEdFunctions() is called and in turn tries to call the module functions, but those might not exist yet. I think properly fixing that would require changes to AutoEd itself.
As for "variables" vs "functions", Safari calls them that because in JavaScript, they're the same thing: defining a function like functionmyFunction(){} really just makes a variable named myFunction and puts a value of type function in it. Rummskartoffel13:11, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
If I (or somebody else tries to edit my talk page, I get an error message "Parameter names cannot be empty. To document unnamed parameters use their internal numbers "1", "2", and so on.". I tried removing the last topic, I can not save it either. Could someone please have a look, I have no idea what this could be. Thanks. Ymblanter (talk) 11:41, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article. [13]
The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [14]
The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages. [15]
Problems
For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended __TOC__ (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed. [16]
Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing. [17]
Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace #wpReason with #wpReason > input. See an example fix. [18]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [19]
Future changes
From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.
Hello. I was about to do some of my usual gnomish cleanup of lint errors in the links within links section from the maintenance department of the special pages when I happened to notice that maybe there must have recently been a big change to the media software or something because it now seems that a great many links within links suddenly render just fine in the article and will display as two different links even though the wiki code shows them as being a link within a link. The problem with this is that since the code flags an error, but the display renders it to be working, we are getting way too many false positives on how many actual lint errors there really are in the maintenance reports from special pages. Here are some examples of what I ran into:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=L. Forbes Winslow&diff=prev&oldid=1159553284
In your first diff, the one that you marked as "link works" is an error that should be fixed. I don't see anything different from how these nested and malformed links have displayed for years. The best place to discuss Linter errors is at WT:Linter. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:58, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
If you go to the external links section you will find that the links actually function as two different links. This did not used to happen. If a link was inside a link, then only the "outside" link would function properly, and the link "inside" would not be able to be seen or function. Perhaps what could be causing this to happen is one of the scripts I am using? I have one script that distinguishes between different kinds of links by highlighting them in different colors. Perhaps what is making the links be able to work for me is that the script is dividing them into different colors and enabling them to be seen as different links? Huggums537 (talk) 05:06, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
What about the other examples? Are they still displaying, and functioning for you as a single link as they have for years also? Because they are rendering as two different links side by side for me, but they used to show as only the outside one as in the very last example I gave where they for sure are an error. Huggums537 (talk) 05:13, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
Your first example says
[http://www.henryirving.co.uk/correspondence.php?search=ewart Letter of Forbes Winslow to actor [[Henry Irving]] (1879)]
The link text for the external link is only "Letter of Forbes Winslow to actor", Henry Irving is a working wikilink, and "(1879)" is unlinked. I think the code is wrong and should be fixed even if MediaWiki produces two working links. archive.org shows it has given the same result for years, e.g. 30 April 2020. I don't know whether it's new that it's flagged as a lint error. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:09, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that is exactly what I'm getting produced, but I never used to get it producing two working links before. It used to be that if you put a link inside of another link, then the inside link would not be visible or working. That was the whole reason I thought links within links were considered errors because it was useless putting them inside of each other if they couldn't be parsed one apart from the other, but it appears now they can for some reason or another... Huggums537 (talk) 10:28, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
Also, it isn't new for this type of code to flag as an error. What's new is the links to somehow now be working independently of each other... Huggums537 (talk) 10:32, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
Maybe it is possible the links always worked before, and I just never noticed because they were all the same color, and right next to each other, but now that I have the color-coded script for links it is much easier to tell the difference. Looks like I might have to go back to square one on my link within link bustin' routine... Huggums537 (talk) 10:43, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
I'm going to agree with both of you that the links being right next to each other still needs to be fixed no matter if I thought the links were working links or not, it is still a problem... Huggums537 (talk) 10:53, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
The very fact that I might have thought they were not working links when they probably were the whole time is evidence enough it is a problem. I think we can consider this case closed... Huggums537 (talk) 10:57, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
Actually, the case is still open because I looked at this problem in an incognito browser and the links work just fine as two distinctly different links, and I'm certain this did not used to be the case. Perhaps the default skin has recently changed? I'm looking at this external links section in an incognito browser, and the two links are fairly easily identifiable as different working links so I don't know why the system is still flagging this code as lint errors when the links are working working normally now. I could be wrong, but I was certain only one of those links were able to work before, and they displayed as a single link only, not two different links. Either something has changed or I'm goin' batty. Huggums537 (talk) 20:09, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
The current HTML spec says that an a element's descendants cannot include an a element; this was more clearly expressed in HTML 4.01 as nested links are illegal but the principle is the same. Nevertheless, it seems that many modern browsers can handle the situation, and indeed the MediaWiki software makes use of that when you click either the "Your alerts" or "Your notices" icon/counters. Doing this opens something that has all the appearance of a drop-down list, but it isn't a list at all - it's a sequence of <a>...</a> elements, within each of which is quite a lot of nested HTML. Consider a typical "Your mention of Example was sent." item:
This involves no fewer than five<a>...</a> elements - one on the outside, three more further in, and one inside the second one of those three, that is, there is a doubly-nested <a>...</a> element, this one being the link to the section where you mentioned User:Example. It works just fine in current Firefox, as it did going back at least sixty versions. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:33, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
Uh, triply nested? You just blew my mind! Lol. This is way deeper than the introduction to HTML I took years ago, but I get the gist of what you are showing about [a] triple nested element within the five address elements. Huggums537 (talk) 20:58, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
My bad, corrected. To make it clearer, I've made this edited version:
<ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?markasread=283224926&markasreadwiki=enwiki#Problem_with_links_within_links_lint_errors"><imgsrc="/w/extensions/Echo/modules/icons/mention-success-constructive.svg"><atitle="Mark as unread">Mark as unread</a>
Your mention of <strong>Example</strong> was sent.
<ahref="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Problem_with_links_within_links_lint_errors"title="Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)"><a>Village pump (t...</a></a><atitle="More options"></a>
3m
</a>
Basically, I've removed all div, label and span tags, both opening and closing; also most attributes. Then I've added some newlines to what's left, and indented it so that the nesting is clearer. You can see three levels of <a>...</a> here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:10, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
The result does not depend on browser or skin. MediaWiki generates valid HTML with two non-overlappping links and has done so for years. The generated HTML for [http://www.henryirving.co.uk/correspondence.php?search=ewart Letter of Forbes Winslow to actor [[Henry Irving]] (1879)]:
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.henryirving.co.uk/correspondence.php?search=ewart">Letter of Forbes Winslow to actor </a><a href="/wiki/Henry_Irving" title="Henry Irving">Henry Irving</a> (1879)
HTML in the archive.org snapshot from 30 April 2020:
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200430213935/http://www.henryirving.co.uk/correspondence.php?search=ewart">Letter of Forbes Winslow to actor </a><a href="/web/20200430213935/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Irving" title="Henry Irving">Henry Irving</a> (1879)
archive.org changes links to be internal within the site but apart from that, the HTML is exactly the same. Nothing has changed for at least three years. The fact that MediaWiki is currently coded to automatically clean up some things and generate valid HTML for certain forms of bad wikitext does not mean we should just allow those forms of bad wikitext forever. The wikitext is ambiguous and a literal interpretation would produce invalid HTML. MediaWiki may change the processing in the future. The author probably intended "(1879)" to be part of the external link text and may not have thought about what would happen with wikilink syntax within external link syntax. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:02, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
I agree it should be fixed, and I think I fixed it already, but I'm not convinced about the archive.org evidence because it doesn't always render a page exactly the same as it was before. I found this out when I used the service to backup some youtube channels I created before they got banned. Huggums537 (talk) 21:22, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
The fundamental problem is that there is a link inside of a link, which is not valid syntax. In the Henry Irving example above, the wikitext is asking the string "Henry Irving" to be linked to both the URL and to the Wikipedia article, which is clearly impossible. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:28, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
Except, that it clearly is possible as demonstrated by Redrose64 above, and by the fact that the links now work for some odd reason...Huggums537 (talk) 21:32, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Nevermind. Misunderstanding. 21:45, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
... I think this conversation is done. You can choose to work on the linter category or not as you might wish, but I think there are sufficiently many others above, and the devs on top of that, who think this is a case of bad syntax and should be fixed. (I agree with them.) Izno (talk) 21:47, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
I am sure that links within links have behaved this way at least since the parser changes in 2017 (mw:Parsing/Replacing Tidy). It's possible that they behaved differently before that, but I have no way to check and it doesn't seem like anyone documented it at the time.
Regarding @Redrose64's example with the notification markup: the reason why that works, and the wikitext doesn't, is because nested links are only forbidden when parsing HTML, but not when building a HTML page in JavaScript. It is a subtle and confusing distinction. There's a bug report at phab:T58418 that complains about our reliance on it (which is actually my fault, back when I was younger ;) ). Matma Rextalk00:06, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Okie doke. I'll just chock it up to a case of mistaken identity, and work with what I've got. Thanks for the responses. Huggums537 (talk) 00:12, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Vertical scrollable table with sticky headers
Hi,
On Dutch Wikibooks a template is present to create a table in such a way the header remains visible while scrolling through the data lines. As on the English Wikipedia also some rather long tables exist I searched for a template able to do the same. Either I am a bad scout or the template does not exist. So I translated the dutch template into English: template:Scrolling table Y, and on Ionic radius it does its job well, with one remark: somewhere out of the blue the text "{{ safesubst:p{{ safesubst:#ifyes:
|1|2}}|{{{3}}}|}}" appears. Is someone able to pinpoint its source, for me it is just magic. T.vanschaik (talk) 20:03, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
@T.vanschaik, this template will not work in all skins (top: Nem is effectively a skin-specific value), which is sufficient cause for me to suggest the template should be deleted. A change like this should also be made globally (probably in the context of the wikitable class) if it is indeed desirable. That's phab:T42763.
There is a gadget you can turn on locally if you would prefer to browse with sticky table headings, available in the experimental section of your gadget preferences. Izno (talk) 20:57, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
You are using a kind of slang I am not familiar with. "skin-specific" ? On the other hand I understand the solution I used might not work in some situations. I will study that sticky style and as fat as I can see, it does not differ that much from the code code I used. What is the benefit of puting it in a css>T.vanschaik (talk) 06:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
I, as far as I am aware, implented the suggested changes, but sill I am blessed with those out of the blue texts mentioned in the very first section {{ safesubst:p{{ safesubst:#ifyes:|1|2}}|{{{3}}}|}}. So to me the changes might solve a general Wikipedia rule, it does not solve this problem. I checked with copy of this old version of [radius]. T.vanschaik (talk) 07:30, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't see sticky headers in that old version of the page. I tried Vector 2022 and Vector 2010.
No. We know the limitations, we know what we have to do to fix it. The issue is that lots of templates on wikipedia have multi row headers and that sort of requires the use of JS or PHP to make sure we have thead elements (which is what the en.wp sticky headers do). But adding JS to rework all wiki tables on the website is a performance issue, so really that should be brought parser side, which means post processing the html, which requires parsoid etc. And then there is the issue of supporting the various skins with their own sticky headers and how that works different from tables which are inside a scrollable etc etc etc.
Thanks for the explanation. Having recently played around with the various Wikipedia skins on both my desktop PCs and cell phone, I realize what a pain it is to make stuff work on all the skins. A good reason in my opinion to limit the number of skins to 2 or 3. And the plethora of skins and forks on Fandom/Wikia drove many of us to also work on other wikis using standard Mediawiki and the standard Mediawiki skins. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:39, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Talk page archives missing from box listing them on talk page
There's an effort at https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/74353 to build an SQL query to find main-space articles that need a talk page so they can be classified into wikiprojects, etc. The bulk of that query is a list of main-space things that DON'T need talk pages (primarily disambiguation pages and set indexes of various types). There are almost certainly many more to find. I would like formalise this into a pair of hidden maintenance categories, one for disambiguation pages and one for set indexes. This would make this kind of query (and the automated generation of worklists of talk pages to create / maintain) significantly easier. Does that sound insane? [If you think this work is useless, take a look at the # of BLPs returned by that query that aren't tagged as BLPs] Stuartyeates (talk) 10:06, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
Hi. I have two changes pending for in Navigation Popups, I would be grateful if someone could apply them. Changes are relatively simple, but add that extra bit of UX to the Popups. Both changes are already tested on another Wikipedia (I'm an admin on plwiki), so there is no risk here really. Due to some l10n we cannot completely synchronize our versions of Popups, but I added a link to a diff to easily apply changes.
What is happening is that the bottommost list of links (under the Appendices heading) is not editable. When I click on it, instead of placing my cursor inside the list, I get a “Template content” pop-up instead. If I click the Edit button, I see a (probably malformed) template editor with one field: wikitext. Inside this text field is the content that I am trying to edit. However, this text box contains no scroll bar, is only one line of text high, and is not resizable, making it almost impossible for me to edit its contents. Furthermore, I prefer not to edit wikitext whenever possible (although I am certainly capable of it). I was told that this may be a “complex transclusion” error in one of the templates being used in this page. (The templates used do not exist on enwiki.)
I am wondering if anyone here might be able to tell me what to change in the wikitext to fix this problem, or, if it really is a bug in Visual Editor, give me instructions on how to report it. Thanks! SupremeUmanu (talk) 15:09, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
It's caused by wikibooks:Template:Shelves and also happens on other pages using it, e.g. wikibooks:Latin. The template outputs categories but no text visible at the location of the template. VisualEditor apparently likes to have a way to click and edit it so it's grouped with the preceding wikitext in some circumstances. I don't know a good solution. A poor solution may be to add something else with visible (in VisualEditor) output before it, e.g. a source comment like <!-- end -->. Then the treatment in VisualEdior can change in different ways. I don't know the circumstances determining exactly what happens and the template has thousands of uses so it would be much better if it could be handled in the template code. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:05, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
The latest run of Special:WantedCategories contains a glut of template-generated redlinked "YYYY in youth football" categories for every single year between 1948 and 2025, all autogenerated entirely by the use of a {{YYYY in youth association football category header}} template (which is really just a redirect to {{YYYY in sport category header}}) on each year's "YYYY in youth association football" categories. This seems to stem from recent edits within the past week to the generic template, because nearly all of the "youth association football" categories have existed for years without doing this before — but I can't figure out what to change in the template to make the redlinks go away, I can't just waltz through all the categories wrapping the templates in {{suppress categories}} because that would also break the legitimate categories, and I can't justify creating any of them as it really doesn't seem like we would need a new "youth football" tree to exist as a separate entity from the already-existing "youth association football" tree.
@Bearcat: I believe that I've resolved the error by wrapping wrapping with {{#ifexist: <category name>}}. Seems to look good for the few cats I checked. If this pops up for any other cats related to this template give me a ping and I'll be happy to fix. –Aidan721 (talk) 17:51, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Any way to get rid of the "Reload" button in preview window?
In Vector 2022 the "Reload" button covers up some of the text when I am scrolling down the preview. It is very annoying. Especially in that it serves no purpose. The preview automatically reloads as I type in the edit window next to the preview window.
There is very limited space in that preview window, and so scrolling is often necessary, especially when commenting on talk pages. And then the Reload button limits that space even further.
Is there anything on Phabricator about this? Is there an option in the works to remove it? Why not just remove it altogether so that IP editors also won't have to endure that useless button being in their way?
@Timeshifter:Realtime Preview is also available in other skins. It's toggled on a "Preview" button at the top right of the edit box. There is a delay before the automatic reload. I don't know how long it can be. There may also be users with unstable connections, and users who don't even realize it's automatic and wonder how they can update the preview. I don't think it should be removed for everybody but you hide the reload button with this in your CSS
Thanks PrimeHunter. Can you provide some custom CSS to put the reload button just above the preview window?
I noticed that I have to enable the editing toolbar in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing in order to have the side-by-side editing/preview windows. If I don't enable it, then I don't have any editing tools at all in source mode on Vector 2022.
That means IP readers (most readers on Wikipedia) no longer have true access to wikitext editing. I thought that a promise was made to never force the visual editor on IP readers and editors. This effectively does that. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:14, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
I wish there was a way to reset the defaults in just one preferences tab. Currently there is just this buried in the User Profile tab: "Reset settings: Restore all default preferences (in all sections)".
And I would still like some custom CSS to put the reload button just above the preview window. I would use it, and maybe MediaWiki would use it as the default.
The default 2010 toolbar is not a gadget. We have a gadget "Enable the legacy (2006) editing toolbar" to display a different toolbar. I'm poor at positioning and the reload button disappears when I try to move it outside the preview area. This makes the bottom half visible and clickable at the top, and less intrusive for me:
A half visible button is not an acceptable default but maybe you prefer it here if you already know what it does and rarely use it. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:47, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Not really, no. Not the way it was built and the way it really has to work to support stone-age skins like monobook ;). Personally I actually like it like that. I tested an early prototype of the preview and might have suggested the reload to be more visible. Though I'm neither confirming nor demining it is working like that because of me ;). Nux (talk) 23:37, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Nux. I just want it to work for me in Vector 2022 with the default editing toolbar. On my Windows 10 Pro desktop PC in Firefox I see plenty of blank space at the bottom right of the editing toolbar. It is just above the Preview window. It would be a perfect spot for the Reload button. The same big Reload button that comes with Realtime Preview. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:47, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Short description text enlarged?
I just noticed that the short description text on the top of all of the articles it is used on is larger than it used to be. It used to be about half the size of the normal text within the articles, but now it's the same size as the text within the articles. Is this intentional? Steel1943 (talk) 13:06, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
@Steel1943WP:ITSTHURSDAY probably, but as this seems to be solely about a local gadget, the gadget maintainers would need to deal with it. If you are seeing any fall out for this that would impact everyone (not just registered editors opted in to a script or gadget), please share additional details. — xaosfluxTalk14:09, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
@Carnby that file does not appear to have ever been uploaded here, not sure what you want us to "recover"? Are you trying to find an external host for that file? This link acknowledges the information, but reports that it is generally unpublished online. You could try asking over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request, perhaps someone there has a logon for that system or access to a print version. — xaosfluxTalk13:10, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
I can edit normally from my PC. When I try to edit from my phone logged into my account and connected to the same network, it says my IP address is blocked. I can't even edit my own talk page. The range block is 2605:ef80::/42. Schierbecker (talk) 03:55, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
The Graphs haven't been working for quite some time due to "Technical issues", any news from the Phabricator, or any explanations? Crainsaw (talk) 20:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
The language selector in the top right corner of the Vector 2022 skin no longer works without JavaScript (since yesterday). 93.72.49.123 (talk) 02:21, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
No need to upgrade browsers or system. This is just due to changes on Wikipedia side. Language selector dropdown worked fine in browsers with JS turned off. Till now. (Opera GX, the latest version) 95.24.199.109 (talk) 04:48, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
The first one should be at "TimedText:Don't Dream It's Over.ogg.en.srt", but it has no timecodes, so those need to be added for it to work. The second one is in the same way in the wrong place (missing ".en.srt"), but here there is allready a TimedText there, but at least the wrong titled one has timecodes. The third one has the exact same issue as the second one. I would advise doing deletions of some of those, depending on their content. Snævar (talk) 10:23, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Anyone else unable to use the desktop website's search function while logged out on mobile?
For me, pressing the search magnifying glass does absolutely nothing.
There should be search button to the right of the input. Is that showing for you? The magnifying glass is only meant to be decorative. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:30, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
After some testing I found a page where the button was not showing - this suggests a caching bug and I was able to fix it by purging the page. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:33, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't know what the default skin is called, but when I open it in incognito mode on my browser I can see the magnifying glass, but no option to purge that I can see on the page (even in any drop down menus), and the spyglass does nothing. Huggums537 (talk) 11:07, 16 June 2023 (UTC)Updated on 11:10, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Can you share the URL to this page? Note the purge will need to also be performed incognito and usually I find I have to refresh the page after Jdlrobson (talk) 14:50, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Purge and refresh tests completed on the main page, and incognito as mentioned earlier. It also occurs with the Epic browser on Android, but I don't seem to have the problem using a Firefox based browser over the Tor network on Android so I'm going to assume it will probably work with the In private mode on FireFox, but have not tested it. Huggums537 (talk) 15:18, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
It's like it's centering around the Atlantic ocean west of Africa instead of centering in on the coordinates of The Drag, itself.
I tried adding |coord=30.285833,-97.741667 and |latitude=30.285833|longitude=-97.741667 without success. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5304794 looks good.
The map module is not retrieving the data because of the Wikipedia prefix. Just use |from=The Drag (Austin, Texas).map. Although not needed, the position parameters are |frame-latitude=30.285833 and |frame-longitude=97.741667. — Jts1882 | talk14:46, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
(And apparently when it can't retrieve the data, it defaults to 0, 0, which is in the Atlantic ocean west of Africa.) Izno (talk) 16:02, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Hi all, apologies if this is in the wrong place, but I see others have asked about tables here, so.
Is it possible to make a table looking like this? The idea being that, where cols A + B stay the same, it is unnecessary to repeat their contents x-amount of times subsequently. Any hints as to its coding would be much appreciated by an editor without a coded bone in his body :) SN5412912:13, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Cool beans, Certes, that would probably do it! I admit I think it would look aesthetically more pleasing without the excess order, but maybe that's WP:COSMETIC or with WP:ACCESS issues; not sure. What do you think? SN5412912:36, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Blast! And I've just realised I need two rows at the top-my drawing just shows the contents, but of course their needs to be the column headers above, as well. Sorry Certes for my hijacking of WP:VOL ;) SN5412912:53, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Confession time, Jts1882, that's what I want what I really really want! :) Thanks everso much! And thanks to you, also, Certes, for getting the ball rolling in the first place! Barnstars all round! SN5412913:11, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129:(I don't want to cause trouble, although that might be a useful side-effect.) I realize you've asked a technical question in a tech forum, but I'm wondering what you would need such a bizarre shape for a "table" for. Can I assume it's purely layout? Otherwise, what do the bottom two rows signify? For that matter, what is the correlation for the top row ("A"–"E")? If this is a data table, the data cells should relate to each other in some way. And if it's just layout, it should use
@JohnFromPinckney: If you're not wanting to cause trouble... then I'd hate to see you when you do!! ;) Thanks for this, though. Would you mind if, instead of me trying to explain to you the why's and wherefores (on account of me not knowing the language to use, I hasten to add, not because you wouldn't understand me!). If you look at the page what started this, it's how I envisaged listing separate but linked, lists and trying to avoid unnecessary duplication. If you look at the "Published episcopal registers" bit, it might be clearer than my waffling. SN5412918:13, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Thinking about it, the empty boxes serve the same purpose visually as, say, |author-mask= at template {{Cite book}}, where Replaces the name of the (first) author with em dashes or text to avoid repetition after first use. (See this edit for the use of author mask.) SN5412918:23, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
As stated by Gonnym, the leftmost columns should use the rowspan attribute to indicate that its cells apply to multiple rows (where appropriate). This will allow assistive technology such as screen readers to understand the table structure and describe it appropriately. isaacl (talk) 18:44, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your answer, Serial Number 54129. I agree with the others; you need to use (at least) rowspan. I have, in fact, taken the liberty of editing the first table, with a view toward demonstrating what could be done to improve accessibility and understandability. But now I come to the next question (and this, too, is not really technical; it has to do, again, with logical presentation of the data): why do you have multiple tables? If each "big row" is one (arch)diocese, then the left column is the caption for the table. But (almost certainly) what you intended is, presumably, all that info should be in one big table, with each row comprising one or more title/editor/notes rows. Yes? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)20:11, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure that's absolutely correct, JohnFromPinckney, and one big table would be better than several discrete ones. But as I said, I don't really get how this is done; if someone could WP:SOFIXIT I'd appreciate it. I write Obscure Articles. Release the Coders! SN5412920:57, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
I got an error while looking at a revision from 2004. The following is the text from the error.
[fef392ca-11f6-493d-8f76-374af4edf7be] 2023-06-15 08:47:28: Fatal exception of type "MediaWiki\Revision\RevisionAccessException"
I don't know what this means. Does someone know? 🌶️Jalapeño🌶️ Don't click this link! 08:49, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
@Jalapeño Hi, as Izno mentioned, it was due to a bug in the script that changes encoding of old revision to utf-8 (instead of legacy Windows-1252). We recovered it from a backup and it should be fixed now. Sorry for any inconvenience. ASarabadani (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-25
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug. [22][23]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing \ or pressing ctrl + shift + p. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor. [24][25]
Since about three weeks ago, 50% of logged-in users have been seeing a tested version of the Vector 2022 skin, Zebra #9. It has more gray backgrounds and clearly separated regions of the interface. At the same time, the Web team at the Foundation was measuring some of the high-level metrics for the tested group of users. Namely: page views, Vector 2022 opt-out rates, edit rate, Table of Contents usage, scrolling, and page tools usage.
Tomorrow, this test will be disabled. Everyone will see the white version of Vector 2022 again. Next, we will analyze the data. If there's no statistically significant decrease, the tested version will become the default. That decision will be made in about three weeks, though.
I know many of you have got accustomed to the new look, and I'd like to apologize for the inconvenience of seeing a change again. This isn't something we could avoid this time. Thank you for your understanding.
Thank you to all who have been reporting bugs and helping others solve problems with Zebra #9!
Folks - in the new vector 2022 skin, the default behavior of the navigation bar (table of contents) is collapsed. Is there a single link we can click to expand the entire table of contents? Specifically, I am asking about this page WP:ITNC. You will see that we have to click on each of the dates to open the section underneath that date. cc @Masem:Ktin (talk) 03:27, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
See my comment at the end of this:
phab:T302426. Titled: [ToC] test "show all sub-sections" button.
Maybe you can comment there too. They might listen to an admin, as opposed to us mere mortals. :)
What we really should be able to have is the old "TOC|level=3" functionality that would automatically expand the TOC to the given level on the page rendering. Masem (t) 18:34, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
See T317818 (open since Sep 2022) and T333017 (since Mar 2023). In the meantime, you're on your own to fix this gap via customizing your common.css file. See this code for something that you can copy. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:59, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
@Hári Zalán You're seriously using Lynx for your daily editing? Didn't know that was possible 🙂. What skin are you using? I would guess (educated guess) monobook would be the only one that might work. Nux (talk) 08:41, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
@Nux: I was not using it earlier, but it is useful for some purposes (for example, when I cannot use the graphical interface due to technical issues, or when my connection is limited), and I tried to edit with it. I tried it with Vector 2010 and Monobook. Zalán Hári (talk) 09:31, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
@Hári Zalán without more details this sounds like a TLS error, ensure that you have SSL/TLS enabled in your Lynx build and that your encryption library is current. — xaosfluxTalk09:53, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Lynx is a Grade X browser and isn't tested for; this is likely a TLS issue but will need troubleshooting, the Lynx mailing list may be a good next step. — xaosfluxTalk10:50, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
When I first started using EN:WP, the "focus" was always on the "Search" text box. That is, I could just start typing, and characters would appear in the "Search" box, and I could then type the "Enter" key (where carriage return would be on a traditional typewriter) and go to the page whose name I had typed (or enough to be recognized by the AJAX scripting).
At some point, WP switched to a new format, and the focus is somewhere else. I had to mouse to the Search box to get to the page I want.
I discovered by experimentation that if I switched to the old page format, (with the Search box on the left side), the focus would be in the Search box. But only when I'm on the home page "Welcome to Wikipedia". On any other page, the focus is somewhere inconvenient. So every time I want to go to a page whose name I know, I first type control-L (going to the browswer's location bar), then type "en" and Enter. That takes me to the home page and I can then start typing the name of the page I want.
But of course this only works if I am logged in. On any machine other than my usual desktop, I have to mouse to the Search box.
Was this a policy decision of some sort? Or just an accident resulting from other changes to the WP page format? If it's an accident, is there any hope of changing it back? I'd formally submit a proposal but, while I am fairly good at editing Wiki pages, my skills are not up to threading the proposal process. Bgoldnyxnet (talk) 23:45, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Help:Table, like some other long help pages and articles on Wikipedia, has a very long table of contents. But it is mostly closed. An "expand all" button is needed.
On Vector 2022 it is very difficult to find anything anymore. And I am very familiar with that help page. The difficulty is that the upper level sections are all closed. So I end up opening section after section trying to find the subsections that I know exist on that help page.
Imagine the difficulty of the average reader trying to find the info they desire on that page, or articles with a long table of contents. Many are not going to go through all that work. They want to quickly scan the full table of contents as I do.
I can expand all top sections manually one by one. But when I open the page later they are all closed again. Or if I open another instance of the page in a different tab in the same window they are all closed again. So cookies are not remembering my choices. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:30, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't think that page is a proper reflection of the average navigation needs. There will always be exceptions where some things won't work perfectly. I personally think it's better to split that page into multiple easier to consume pages of documentation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Help:Table could be split up, but I've never felt the need personally until the problem with the table of contents.
There are many long articles. Pick many of the presidential pages, and compare them in Vector 2022 and Vector 2010. I like Vector 2022, but the TOC problem bugs me so much I have moved back to Vector 2010. See: Barack Obama. Donald Trump. John Kennedy. Joe Biden.
I'm not sure how much attention you can expect when adding a comment to a closed ticket. I have no idea if phab's notification system generates notifications for a ticket with status "closed, declined", or whether any notified people will react. Don't get your hopes up. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)21:22, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
I think notifications continue. Not sure. Because anyone, including me, can change the status (via "edit task") from declined, to open, to resolved, to stalled, etc.. So people would want to be sure that was justified. Otherwise threads could be closed incorrectly. I am claiming that the thread was prematurely closed and declined. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:22, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
The TOC in Vector 2022 still has a bunch of undesirable features that make it take up more space while being less useful than it should be. I have settled on putting customizations in my common.css file while waiting for feature requests to be acted upon. My current code for expanding the TOC on all pages looks like this:
/* Auto-expand sections, and hide the H2-arrows */.vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled.client-js.vector-toc.vector-toc-level-1.vector-toc-list-item{display:block;}.vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled.vector-toc-toggle{visibility:hidden;}.vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled.vector-toc{padding-left:5px!important;}
It is probably not as elegant as it could be, but it works for me (for now, until the Zebra classes are changed again). – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:23, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
PrimeHunter, TheDJ, and all. Is Vector 2022 what non-logged-in IP readers get? If so, it is a step backwards. Because Wikipedia is about quick access to info, and ease of use. That is gone now for long articles. Few readers read long articles. Not in the age of TL;DR. They scan them for the info of interest. Expanded TOCs make that much easier. IP readers can not go back to Vector 2010.
The TOC overlay is the best feature of Vector 2023. Especially the fact that the link for it follows one down the page. It is crippled though by the lack of a "show subsections" or "expand all" button.
In phab:T302426 a test showed that "All 5 participants responded that they liked the hide/show all button". So why was it abandoned?
In phab:T273473 ("EPIC. Improve the table of contents") there is a long, wide task graph. Is it possible to collapse the right sidebar in Phabricator? So I can see everything without having to use the horizontal scrollbar. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:14, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
@Timeshifter, have you read the conclusions, which I will copy here?
The hide/show all button does not seem necessary for being able to find a given sub-section
The hide/show all button is not discoverable, or clear, in its current form
People use the hide/show all button once they know about it, though it doesn't necessarily help them navigate more quickly
With that in mind, it seems reasonable that it wasn't added. Of course, this was a small-scale test, on only 5 people. — Qwerfjkltalk12:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Qwerfjkl. Those tests were weird at phab:T302426. Of course one can find a given sub-section if one has the patience to open section after section until one finds the given sub-section.
The hide/show all button was not discoverable because a symbol was used for it instead of text: "Expand all". See the video there.
The participants in Test 2 were made aware of the "show/hide all sub-sections" button up-front (i.e. before the "tasks" began).
Your conclusion was not what the Test 2 results were:
During the section & sub-section navigation tasks the participants used a mix of the hide/show all button, and the individual section toggle buttons, to discover the requested sub-sections
All 5 participants responded that they liked the hide/show all button
The developers saw what they wanted to see, and ignored what mattered most: what average readers want: "All 5 participants responded that they liked the hide/show all button".
I have noticed that many developers think like this. They don't get enough feedback from average readers because few average readers go to Wikimedia Phabricator or to the relevant wikis like Meta-Wiki and MediaWiki.org. Especially mediawiki.org since it uses another talk page system that many dislike, and average Wikipedia readers are unfamiliar with.
If developers want more feedback they need to come to English Wikipedia with its many millions of readers and editors. Many people watchlist English Wikipedia. Far more than Meta-Wiki and MediaWiki.org --Timeshifter (talk) 16:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
@Timeshifter, I believe the problem was rather how to indicate that such a button would expand all the sections, without taking up space (as you suggest, text is probably a good option). That said, those weren't my conclusions, because I just copied them from the phabricator task. I have no particular opinion on this. I have no idea how the developers picked people to test (apparently with https://www.usertesting.com). — Qwerfjkltalk16:41, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Qwerfjkl. OK. I see that you copied from the "Conclusion" section which is actually the opposite of what the "Findings" section said that I quoted.
It just goes to show that many developers see what they want to see, and if necessary just make stuff up (whether consciously or unconsciously).
That's a form of confirmation bias. Excerpt: "Biased search for information, biased interpretation of this information, and biased memory recall, have been invoked to explain four specific effects: ..." --Timeshifter (talk) 16:55, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Nux. Can you create some custom CSS/JS to put a "Show all" button at the top of the table of contents on Vector 2022? I am on a Windows 10 Pro PC using Firefox if that matters.
I want the "Show all" button to be a text button, not a symbol button. It should be next to the "move to sidebar" button. Maybe you can use some of the code used in phab:T302426. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:59, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
@Timeshifter that would probably be best to do as a gadget and I don't have Admin rights on enwiki (I'm from plwiki). Also I would probably need to search what components are used here to make a fully functioning gadget. Below would kind of work if someone want to look at this, but it doesn't change all of internal state of components (and you have to click twice to then collapse expanded items).
You cannot use this directly. That was just a code that opens ToC when everything is loaded. Just a starting point for someone that would want to develop a full gadget. Nux (talk) 02:36, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
@Timeshifter I took a pop at this, try adding importScript('User:The wub/tocExpandAll.js'); to User:Timeshifter/vector.js. When I have a bit more time I might see about turning it into a proper gadget.
Relatedly does anyone know how to require a CSS file to load before running javascript, to avoid a flash of unstyled content? mw.loader.using only works for modules, not CSS pages onwiki. the wub"?!"15:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
User pages are not supported by ResourceLoader fundamentally, so there is not a way. Gadgets can have their CSS top-loaded, and this is the only current way to support that. (There is some movement on user-level gadgets which may go not a lot of where.) Izno (talk) 16:10, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
@The wub You can use `@import` it seems to be a bit faster example import. You can also try to use maxage to make the request faster, though I have mixed results with that (Meta seems to sometimes send cookies with such requests) maxage example. Nux (talk) 18:25, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
The code is relatively simple, and can be seen at User:The wub/tocExpandAll.js and User:The wub/tocExpandAll.css. I will look at turning it into a gadget to fix the flash of unstyled content issue mentioned above (you may notice that the button appears briefly in a different style at first). Also want to polish it a bit so the button doesn't appear when there are no sections to expand, or starts off as "collapse all" when they are already expanded.
Once it's a gadget it might be worth discussing making it a default for everyone. Adding this functionality to the Vector 2022 code itself would be great, but more complicated and I'm not familiar with that codebase. the wub"?!"22:57, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Looks like you have since taken care of this: "Also want to polish it a bit so the button doesn't appear when there are no sections to expand".
I noticed that some pages start off with a pre-expanded TOC. Is there some calculation or way that your JS/CSS reads the TOC as the page loads to determine a cutoff point of total sections and subsections? Any TOC with more than that number starts off collapsed? Does that slow page loading? If so, it might be good to start all pages with a collapsed TOC. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:02, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I don't know if it is documented anywhere, but T300973, implemented in October 2022, changed the default expansion of the Vector 2022 TOC so that subsections are expanded when there are 19 or fewer sections on a page. I don't know if anything has changed since then. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:31, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
Yes the pre-expansion is part of the Vector skin itself. I've now updated my user script to take account of that, and also to not load on pages with no subsections e.g. Ludwig Keke. the wub"?!"10:07, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I see that a page with a pre-expanded TOC says "collapse all" to begin with:
As already widely expressed by voters in the WP:V22RFC2, the classic fully expanded ToC should be restored under the article's lede. The new sidebar ToC is one of the worst features of Vector 2022.--Æo (talk) 13:19, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
I see a variety of opinions there. I would like choices:
Move to sidebar
Hide (return to floating TOC).
Move to article (Legacy Vector).
I think there is too much space between the lines of the TOC. It makes scanning take longer because it requires more scrolling. The "expand all" button makes scanning and scrolling much faster. No intermediate step of opening sections one by one.
Short TOCs in the sidebar on large screens are very convenient when there are no wide tables in the article.
Long, wide TOCs with lots of laddering in the sidebar are better in the floating TOC or in the article lede.
In the process of pointing out a wording issue with WP:VNTIA, I noticed that the archives on User talk:WeatherWriter are listed in the order "3, 1, 2, 4, 5" even though I spot nothing in the User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis code which would seem to cause this or suggest the user set it this way (hence I assume it's a general problem and am posting here); changing the format= and numberstart= parameters and previewing the page shows no difference, and it doesn't seem to be a caching issue as it persisted even after I null-edited and real-edited the page (though here's an archived copy if it does change). What's going awry? -sche (talk) 21:34, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
No matter what settings I use (usually 1000 items/3 days), my watchlist does not show any items older than 7:30 UTC today. Is it just me or is it Thursday? —Kusma (talk) 12:21, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
Do you have very busy page(s) on your watchlist which have had 1000 updates in total since 7:30? What does the counter near the top say? (for me, it's "Below are the last 797 changes in the last 72 hours"). Certes (talk) 12:48, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
The "Default summary" gadget (first gadget under the "editing" section of the "gadgets" tab in user preferences) has a few bugs or inconvenient features that are directly related to one another. Most annoyingly, when you select the wrong default summary and select the right one after, both summaries appear in the summary box in concatenation. And if you then clear the text box and re-select the right default summary, it doesn't appear in the box, because the gadget considers it to be already selected. These two problems could be solved in a few ways. For example, the gadget could remember what was already present in the text box before the default summary got appended. Or it could check whether the text ends in a default summary (and delete it) before appending a new one. I've also proposed a quality of life improvement of the gadget in the proposals tab. 110521sgl (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
Age in biographies
When I read a biography "N. born in 1917, ... was appointed professor in 1957", I do the math in my head: aha, that person was age 40 then (or was turning 40 in that year). But a computer could do this for me. Is there, or could someone implement, a gadget or similar functionality that can recognize that an article is a biography and add to each mention of a year within the person's life span: "1957 (age 40)"? -- LA2 (talk) 20:15, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
no comment on the practicalities but you've pointed out the main problem - without specific dates you don't know if N is 39 or 40 at the date of appointment. Personally I do not want to be reading "1957 (age 39 or 40)" throughout articles. Nthep (talk) 20:38, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
@LA2: Without commenting on the merits of adding it to an article, you can use the template {{age}} for this, {{age|1917|1957}} produces "39-40". You might want to check WP:MOS if this is something that is normally done or not. RudolfRed (talk) 00:50, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Hello, I have noticed since last night that I no longer have a preview showing my edit in progress that reloads once I stop typing. I had not changed any of my preferences once the change was made. Has it been removed entirely? Is there a bug? I am not the most technical person so I would like to know if there is a way to re-enable it, as it really comes in handy when editing BSicon templates or even regular pages.
I know that I am able to view a static preview before publishing an edit, but when tweaking a template and, for example, searching for a typo that breaks the template, this workaround is time consuming and a bit frustrating. If it has been removed in an update, so be it. I'll deal with it. But I would like to know for sure what is going on, because I have not found any information about an update since February. Thanks. Hotdog with ketchup (talk) 18:40, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
Never mind. I logged in to my account on Firefox and the button disappeared. In that case, unless resetting my settings resolves the issue, I will continue my edits while signed out. Hotdog with ketchup (talk) 16:43, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Fail with status: 498 No Reason Phrase
I'm receiving message "Fail with status: 498 No Reason Phrase" if I want to search url address in Wayback Machine, so I can't access archived versions. Eurohunter (talk) 16:11, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
@Starlighsky: What message? Please always be specific when you report an issue. GloryRoad66 edited your talk page 22 times today.[29] Was it messages saying GloryRoad66 has edited the page? If so, were the messages about different edits as they should be, or do you really mean you got 16 messages about the same edit? The messages should have a link to the edit the message is about. If it's different edits then it's working as intended and not a bug. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:38, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
It strikes me a bug. As understood it, it was 14 emails to me of the same message. Another reason I think it was a bug was because they emails were at night here in the US, which is when bugs tend to occur, unfortunately. Starlighsky (talk) 23:07, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
@Starlighsky: If you claim there is a bug then BE SPECIFIC about the alleged bug. Was there a "View changes" link in the mails? If so, did the links go to the same change? If so, post the link and say when you got the first and last mail with that same link. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
i received the 1st message at 1:44 AM and the last message at 2AM.
It appears that it was set at specific intervals x of x < 1 minute.
@Starlighsky: I asked for a "View changes" link, not "View message", and you still haven't said whether it was the same link in each message. GloryRoad66 edited your talk page 15 times from 05:40 to 06:00 UTC.[30] That's 1:40 AM to 2 AM Eastern time so I assume all the messages were about different edits with different links, and there is no bug. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:25, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
Ok, thank you for the explanation. I was trying to help and keep us safe. I had thought it was a bug. I learn something new every time I go to the Village Pump. Starlighsky (talk) 01:05, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
I agree with you that it will probably not happen again.
There are bugs where a button appears to be not working, and people press the button repeatedly, and the button was actually working the whole time...which was not the case here. Starlighsky (talk) 12:01, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia login with FIDO passkeys fails in Debian Bookworm
@Tgeorgescu this does not appear to be something specific to the English Wikipedia. WebAuthn is experimental. Please see everything at mw:Extension:WebAuthn. You can ask more at mw:Extension talk:WebAuthn. You may also open a bug about that here. The most common WebAuthn authentication issue is that your logon session may need to be established on the project that you registered it with. — xaosfluxTalk11:47, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I mean: in arch Linux it worked, in Windows it works, but not in Debian Bookworm.
So: there is something missing in my Debian installation, and I have no idea what.
Oh, no: failed on Windows, too:
This security key doesn't look familiar. Please try a different one.
I use toollabs:wcam-bot to calculate WP:IMAGERES on non-free files here on enwiki however the page has suddenly gone Chinese for some reason. I still remember the buttons fortunately however if someone could change it back to English it be good. Jonteemil (talk) 23:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
@Jonteemil that tool is not part of the English Wikipedia. You can try asking over at w:zh:User talk:Wcam - who may or may not be the maintainer. No maintainance documentation is listed on the tool or in the tool directories. — xaosfluxTalk00:03, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
Moscow Karl Marx monument coordinates
I'm trying to fix the map appearance in the infobox in the article Karl Marx monument, Moscow. Currently, the map shows a location near a place called Vlasyevo, quite far from the center of Moscow, where the monument is actually located.
The corresponding article in the Russian Wikipedia shows the correct location. It pulls the coordinates from Wikidata. The numbers in Wikidata and in the English Wikipedia article look the same to me, but I almost never deal with coordinates and maps, so it's quite possible that I'm misunderstanding something.
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 Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing / to all prop=extlinks responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the externallinks database table. [31]
Problems
Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours. [32][33]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the .mbox-text CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki. [34][35]
Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the |targets= parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the |skins= parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution. [36]
All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary. [37]
Can anyone help me with the 'New Articles' section on the Algerian portal using the AlexNewArtBot? I tried to use it, but it didn't work as I saw on this page: User:AlexNewArtBot/AlgeriaSearchResult. I would be grateful if someone could help me with this. Thank you!
AlexNewArtBot no longer runs but InceptionBot has taken over its duties. You could ask there. It may simply be that the bot hasn't run that task since you updated the request page (though it is active now with other work). Certes (talk) 22:12, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
Transclusions of non-existent module
I've just noticed that Module:JSONutil seems to have hundreds of pages transuding it [40] despite it not existing. I think the culprit is Module:Format TemplateData, but my LUA skills are not up to the job of debugging what it's trying to do, could someone check that I've found the right module and try to fix it?
Is there any way to either prevent unblock requests from being made via the reply function, or to alter the reply function so that unblock requests are not indented and don't have a signature placed outside the request? It's just kinda annoying to fix that constantly. :) 331dot (talk) 08:38, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
@331dot: seems to be mostly bad logic in the reply tool, phab:T310215 is open on this. We certainly wouldn't want the former fix, the later fix is basically don't autosign when the user already signed. — xaosfluxTalk13:34, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
T310215 is not the same as this as it's about replying to{{unblock}}. The reply tool already suppresses the signature at the end if the comment contains ~~~~. The solution should be to suppress it even if it's inside a template. Nardog (talk) 11:29, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
If you really hate the users submitting unblock requests, and want to require them to figure out wikitext editing before they may be unblocked, then you can mark up the instructions on submitting unblock requests with <div class="mw-notalk">…</div> as described in mw:Help:DiscussionTools/Magic words and markup, so that they don't get a "Reply" button. This will also disable other features, like topic subscriptions (which is good I guess, because the messed up signatures also mess up the subscribed comment notifications).
Alternatively, you could change the templates so that they follow normal talk page conventions and put the signature at the end. Matma Rextalk22:40, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
@Ladsgroup, you may file a {{edit protected}} request on MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist with the preferred contents in a pair of sandboxes. I would add a link to Special:ComparePages for the removals from the spam-blacklist. I expect there to be at least one concern since there is a script that maintains the former and will need to be modified to prefer the latter for the simple cases. Izno (talk) 19:23, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
It looks like many admins are using scripts to help maintain these right now, expect this may cause some issues in that workflow. I did init the new page and add a header for now. — xaosfluxTalk11:54, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
@Xaosflux It doesn't have a whitelist and the current one doesn't work with it so it makes things complicated a bit. I'm planning to add a whitelist soon so those ones can be moved later. Ladsgroupoverleg21:37, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
Not done@Ladsgroup: where are these hits being logged? I added a test link to the new form, the ticket notes suggest it is being handled by AbuseFilter, however when I made an attempt to violate the rule and was stopped, I did not generate an abuselog hit, or a spamblacklist log hit. Also what message is being used to generate The text you wanted to publish was blocked by our filter. The following domain is blocked from being added:?. We have localized that to be much more informative on the prior message. Is there documentation of how multi-block collisions are handled (between GSBL, LSBL, and this new list)? I think this is premature as-is, so certainly would be a "controversial change" until additional development and documentation is ready. — xaosfluxTalk14:46, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Although CX Zoom's test edit here was blocked, it nevertheless caused the "bad" domain name to be displayed in my watchlist: Blocked domains hit log 14:52 CX Zoom (talk, contribs) caused a blocked domain hit on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) by attempting to add testinvalid.invalid. That could get annoying! The existing edit filter log entries do not show up in the watchlist. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:52, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
The spam blacklist log is limited to just logged-in users, which prevents it from ending up in RecentChanges and therefore watchlists. Presumably this log should have the same restriction added to it @Ladsgroup. Legoktm (talk) 16:37, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
On my phone (just browsing in Chrome, not through the app), I get a notification that I have a new talk page message: clicking on it, I get a different (desktop-like) look of my talk page, with a left-se menu and even a right-sde margin, leaving very little space in the middle for the actual text. Every other page has the normal mobile layout, and when I access my talk through the top-right menu it gets the normal, full-width look, so I have no idea why accessing it in this (standard) way gives this strange result. I normally don't post the many mobile issues here, but this is a new one... Fram (talk) 07:07, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Screencap of Recent Changes screen showing missing portion of filter.
I do recent changes patrol and I typically set filters such as "likely have problems" and "likely bad faith", but sometimes one or both of these sections are missing entirely. It's apparently a known bug. I was directed to this phab ticket, but it doesn't seem to be quite what I'm describing, though it may be related. The experience I'm having requires no actions other than going to RC and clicking the button to show filters. Usually everything is there, but quite frequently one or both will be gone. Effective RC patrolling relies heavily on screening out the edits that seem to be reasonable to leave us with more manageable lists to work through. Can something be done? Matt Deres (talk) 21:44, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Murphy's law says it'll be a week until it happens to me again, but the third and fourth screenshot on the Phab link show what it looks like. This one in particular shows it clearly. The Contribution Quality and User Intent predictions are the topmost areas of the filter and they're both missing entirely - the topmost section is now regarding registered users. The next time it occurs to me, I'll do a screencap just to be sure, though. Over the past few months, I've only had them both gone on one occasion; it's much more frequently that one or the other is missing. I don't use the other filters as much, but I don't think I've seen other sections missing from the list. Matt Deres (talk) 22:03, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
I had the same issue a few months ago and reported it here on the mediawiki. I didn't follow up though as it appeared later again. Tzusheng (talk) 01:44, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Sometimes it disappears, and sometimes it remains there, and remains selected, but has no effect - it's incredibly inconsistent as to when that happens. Sometimes days will go by without it happening, and some days it happens constantly, essentially suspending the ability to do RCP effectively, as refreshing the page or unselecting and reselecting the filter only works sometimes. Other times it may happen once or twice a day. I would think it's client-side, but it occurs both on my work computer and on my home computer - observed on Google Chrome for Windows as well as Firefox. PriusGod (talk) 18:18, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Hey,
I don't know if this is intentional or not, but every time I reply, regardless if I clicked on the main reply or not, it will always act like I replied to the last reply. This is making me go nuts. Why does this happen? And how can I fix it?🌶️Jalapeño🌶️ Don't click this link! 06:45, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure, but every time I go on a move discussion, AfD discussion, or anything, every time I press reply to the main topic, it automatically adds a : at the beginning of my reply. 🌶️Jalapeño🌶️ Don't click this link! 13:58, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
That's expected. By DiscussionTools' definition, a reply is a comment with one more indent level than the comment being replied to, so if you reply to the first comment in a topic with no indentation, your comment will be appended at the end (or before the second non-indented comment if any) prefixed with :. DiscussionTools is built with threaded discussions in mind and is not well suited for RM, XfD, RfC, etc. where people !vote rather than directly address the OP. Nardog (talk) 14:10, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
I would respectfully disagree with the editors above. You have correctly identified an issue that needs to be fixed (indeed, for about ten months it was listed as one of the issues blocking the reply tool from being enabled on this wiki). Specifically, the reply tool doesn't support all the ways someone would want to reply to a discussion. This has been a bug for a while. It hasn't been fixed yet because it's tough to write code that knows when to use an asterisk and when to use a colon. This issue is tracked at T263902, where you can see progress towards fixing it. There hasn't been any progress for a while, probably because there are more high-priority issues, but you can still add your thoughts there if you want (just be mindful of mw:Bug management/Phabricator etiquette). Thanks for reporting the issue; it's always good to be aware of the issues people are currently having. Enterprisey (talk!) 01:45, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Well, I don't disagree that it would be nice to be able to !vote with DiscussionTools, but Jalapeño's assessment that it "act[s] like I replied to the last reply" is simply inaccurate. It does what it says on the tin, it's just that it's not particularly useful in certain types of discussions. Nardog (talk) 02:06, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
Hmm. @Enterprisey It may just be a habit for me to manually add a * at the beginning, but I think it was because one time it didn't put a * for me. I'll try forgetting it, and seeign if that fixes it. 🌶️Jalapeño🌶️ Don't click this link! 07:13, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
You have correctly identified an issue...
+1 to what @Enterprisey mentioned above, @Jalapeño: the Reply Tool does not currently support commenting in voting-style discussions...I'm glad you acted on the instinct to raise this.
Can you please review the steps below and tell me what – if anything – I've missed/misunderstood about what you're expecting/needing the Reply Tool to do that it currently does not? I ask this wanting ot make sure I link this discussion to the appropriate places in mw:Phabricator.
That shouldn't be the expected behavior. There are certainly situations where it makes sense to reply (with :) in a !voting-style discussion, including to the OP. (It would be quite confusing if only the first reply button added a bullet at the end of the topic.) What we need instead in XfD, RfC, RM, etc. is a separate button at the bottom that opens a reply box specifically for adding a !vote. Template:Discussiontools-anchor exists as a hack but it obviously doesn't support bullets. (If it was to be implemented, how to realize paragraph breaks could be a challenge, as {{pb}} only works if set up on the wiki.) Nardog (talk) 19:42, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
If I recall correctly, earlier pre-release iterations of the reply tool attempted to use the same list style as the preceding comment (* or :), but due to difficulties in getting the logic correct, this was changed. I appreciate it's a hard problem; if a better "follow the leader" algorithm could be devised, though, perhaps that would help. isaacl (talk) 21:27, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
I need a script which, on enabling, shows the sortkey of various pages in a category inside a bracket next to it. For example:
Foobar event (France)
Let's say, Foobar event is a page inside a category, its sortkey being "France". In the category, it appears under the "F" column, but I want to differentiate it from other listed pages with "F" sortkey, for example, "Finland" without having to open and read the article. Is there a way? Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})19:09, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
@CX Zoom: It's 5000 for me, maybe because I'm an admin. I have added instructions on how to continue.[44] It would be better if somebody (not me) wrote a script which actually uses the API instead of just linking to it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:30, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
@CX Zoom @PrimeHunter I've created a script that should do what you want.
Issues with cells splitting when sorting a table with rowspan
Example of the cell splitting/rating duplication issue
WP:WEATHER is in the process of discussing a new table format for our tornado tables (see the test run here: List of tornadoes in the tornado outbreak of May 4–6, 2007) and we reached one that is appealing mobile and tablet users but we're having one formatting issue when it comes to storability. The table utilizes the following formatting:
! scope="row" rowspan="2" style="background-color:#{{#invoke:Storm categories|color|cat1}}; border-bottom: 1px solid black"| EF1
|SW of [[Arnett, Oklahoma|Arnett]]
|[[Ellis County, Oklahoma|Ellis]]
|[[Oklahoma|OK]]
|{{Coord|36.0891|-99.8206|name=Arnett (May 4, EF1)}}
|{{Sort|001|May 4}}
|23:21–23:45
|{{convert|4|mi|km|abbr=on|sortable=on}}
|{{convert|50|yd|m|abbr=on|sortable=on}}
|- class="expand-child"
| colspan="8" style=" border-bottom: 1px solid black;|A barn, an outhouse, and farm equipment were destroyed west of Arnett; the adjacent home had its windows blown out. Many trees and power lines were downed along the tornado's path.<ref>{{cite report|agency=National Weather Service Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma|publisher=National Centers for Environmental Information|year=2007|accessdate=April 11, 2022|title=[Oklahoma Event Report: EF1 Tornado]|url=https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/stormevents/eventdetails.jsp?id=35235}}</ref>
|-
With this format we run into an issue of the EF# column splitting into two rows for a single event when sorting functions are used, visually doubling the number of EF#s listed. We know the root of the problem is with rowspan="2" as Argenti Aertheri got the summary row to sort with the rest of the event using |- class="expand-child". Is there a way to force the EF# cell to stay combined? Or is this just something not feasible with Wikipedia's coding? Help:Sortable tables implies that's just how it will be—after sorting, the rowspanning cells are cut into rows and their content is repeated—but I want to be extra sure. Thanks in advance. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 03:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
The technical behavior you are experiencing is intentional and correct, as it's the best way we've found to allow rowspans on a sortable table; the results were, um, "surprising" when sorting was attempted before the code split merged rows.
The real problem is that you are trying to use two rows for one event. And, BTW, it's hard to understand that table; why is the defining element for each row the EF rating? Wouldn't the Location, or County, or maybe even the Coord. column be a better choice to "name" the event? "EF0" is obviously not unique (and of course, neither are county nor state), so it seems one of the worst choices for the row heading. Also, why are the Location and County columns not sortable? As somebody with relatives in Iowa, say, the very first thing I'm interested in is the location. "It hit Smithton? Wow, that's right near Jonesville! I hope Uncle Bart wasn't hurt." Maybe if you rethink what data you are trying to show, in decreasing order of importance, you can avoid the technical obstacles above (and only struggle with trying to get long notes neatly displayed with their respective event). — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)18:46, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
The EF rating isn’t a unique defining element, but is the most significant element of the report and what most readers (off-wiki knowledge) notice and look for first in the charts. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page)18:50, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Well, okay, if you say so (I have no off-wiki knowledge :-p). In that case, what do you think about this code for the tables in the Confirmed tornadoes section? It moves the notes up into a Notes column so each event is a self-contained row. Further, it omits a lot of unnecessary code (e.g., align="center"| EF1 becomes simply | EF1 ). Additionally, I have bolded the totals row in the upper statistics table. If that's something you and your fellow experts could live with, it could be moved into the List page easily. (It is based on this diff; any changes to the List that come after that won't necessarily be reflected in my sandbox.) — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)20:10, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
subst #if: not working with is redirect template
{{is redirect}} should return "yes" when the given page is a redirect, blank otherwise. It works on normal transclusion. It works correctly on direct substitution (example #1, #2). It works correctly when {{is redirect}} is put inside #if: parser function (example #3, #4). But, when you try to subst this parser funstion onto a page, it behaves weirdly and always return the output for true (example #5, #6).
I can't think of a situation where it makes sense to subst both #if and the conditional. If you're substing the former, there's no need to subst the latter. Nardog (talk) 20:59, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Actually, that's not how substing works - if you subst the #if but not the conditional the #if will see the conditional unevaluated and thus always return true. * Pppery *it has begun...21:00, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACENUMBER}}|3|{{#ifeq:{{ROOTPAGENAME}}|{{ROOTPAGENAME:}}[[Category:Pages which use a template in place of a magic word|S{{PAGENAME}}]]|[[Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}}}
After the fix, the correct markup has appeared:
{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACENUMBER}}|3|{{#ifeq:{{ROOTPAGENAME}}|<username at the time of subst>|[[Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}}}
The erroneous space was inserted in 17 Sept 2015. Every subst since then is expected to have the error. This edit was actually meant to revert an earlier error on 21 Jan 2014 which substed all values, so any transclusions during that period might be permanently locked in the username category, because at the time of subst the #ifeq: was held true. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})17:46, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACENUMBER}}|3|{{#ifeq:{{ROOTPAGENAME}}|<username at the time of subst>|[[Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}}}
Should be:
{{{{{|safesubst:}}}#ifeq:{{{{{|safesubst:}}}NAMESPACENUMBER}}|3|{{{{{|safesubst:}}}#ifeq:{{{{{|safesubst:}}}ROOTPAGENAME}}|<username at the time of subst>|[[Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues|{{{{{|safesubst:}}}PAGENAME}}]]}}}}
No. It was done on 21 Jan 2014 as I mention above, but that is an error. Because {{{{{|safesubst:}}}#ifeq:{{{{{|safesubst:}}}ROOTPAGENAME}}|{{{{{|safesubst:}}}ROOTPAGENAME}}|category}} will always return true, and subst the category permanently. But, we want it to check whether or not the current page name is equal to the page name at the time of subst; if true, means name hasn't been changed, thus populate the category; if false, means name has been changed, do not populate the category. For the real-time checking, a non-substed ROOTPAGENAME is needed. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})18:54, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
The block and lock notification in user contributions (sp-contributions-blocked-notice) has changed from red to yellow
If a user was site-blocked or if their account was locked, the notice was that orange/red color. It was only yellow for partial-blocks. It looks like this has changed just now, and it's now just yellow. Why?!! Can we please talk about changing this back? :-) ~Oshwah~(talk)(contribs)19:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Red for a full block, and yellow for partial ones, does seem to be more informative than making both appear in the same color. Looking at red-yellow-green traffic light colors, I'd also argue that red and yellow are quite intuitive choices. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:17, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
This custom CSS works for me on Monobook to change just the block box back to something approximating the prior styling. I've not tested it on other skins other than the bestmy favourite, so YMMV. The usual disclaimers of provided as-is, don't come to me for support, etc apply here Alternatively, changing the top line to .mw-special-Contributions .mw-message-box.cdx-message--warning.mw-warning-with-logexcerpt { border: 1px solid #bb7070; background-color: #ffdbdb; padding: 0.25cm 0.9em; } will probably make it apply to every warning box on the Contributions page (including global lock notices), but this is one I've not played with in detail so don't know if there are side-effects.From the looks of the comments on phab:T326587#8977895, it's being looked into anyway at a software level, so keeping this override longer-term may be unnecessary. stwalkerster (talk) 21:09, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
Please report issues you have with the site calmly in the future. This is something trivial to fix, but it's not the first time we have had issues with this area. En.wp has custom CSS that for the second time in a year or two the devs have not considered or decided is unimportant. I'll fix the CSS in a minute. Izno (talk) 05:29, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
PageDescriptions won't show descs of quality articles
I've noticed that the PageDescriptions gadget shows the description of articles if they're B-class or less, but won't show them if they're GA or FA. Is this an isolated issue or are others experiencing this? Wretchskull (talk) 18:03, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Any idea what the second gadget is? Maybe one of the two gadgets just needs an `innerHTML=` replaced with `.append()` or something like that. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:13, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I encountered the issue first with audio, such as with audio files for anthems in country and some subnational division article infoboxes. I press the play button, then loading bar appears but audio file doesn't play.-TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 06:22, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
What is your operating system, its version, your browser, and its version? It would be useful to know what the hardware is too. Is this the mobile website or one of the apps, and provide the applicable version of the app if it's one of those. Izno (talk) 07:09, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Hi, I noticed today that, when trying to delete just a single revision of a file, it results in the deletion of the file entirely. Sometimes, I have to delete old revisions of freely licensed file in accordance with WP:CSD#F2 as some revisions are irreparably damaged. I am unable to export the file to Commons without doing so. It first occurred with File:Random order ternary mechanism.svg (see deletion log) and File:Boredoms-vcn-track4.svg. When I got to File:Boredoms-vcn-disc2-track2.svg, which has two broken revisions, the entire file was deleted despite my attempt to delete the revision situated in the middle. This is not a normal occurrence and figured this has to be a bug. Is this a known issue? ✗plicit02:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Were you trying to revision delete? You can always try searching https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ for bugs. I did a quick search for "revision delete file" and didn't see anything obvious. Do you have a reliable steps to reproduce yet? If so, can always file a bug on Phabricator. Worst case, someone notices it's a duplicate bug and merges it into the correct bug for you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: I was able to find another file with a broken revision: File:Yukon Legislature after 1996 election.PNG. Can another admin give it a go? Clicking "delete" on the first revision should result in only that revision being deleted. The notice even reads, "You are deleting the version of Yukon Legislature after 1996 election.PNG as of 05:40, October 15, 2005." But if the bug persist until now, the entire file will get deleted. ✗plicit07:25, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
@Explicit. Do all the pages you've encountered this bug on have a broken thumbnail like this on one of the revisions? In other words, how do you know which files will have this bug? I will try to gather enough info to file a good bug report. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:35, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! I wasn't sure how far-reaching the bug went, I don't delete revisions very often unless it stops me from transferring files to Commons. I'm not sure what causes corrupt revisions to begin with, but I don't think I've seen them affect files uploaded after 2007. ✗plicit13:11, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
The latest run of Special:WantedCategories has naturally produced the inevitable handful of template-generated redlinked category problems that are beyond my capacity to fix:
Category:Articles with Swiss Standard German-language sources (de) was being autogenerated by the use of {{in lang}} on Swiss Super League (the language code causing it is clearly "de-ch"). But when I create the category, I get an error message on it, saying that "Category:Articles with Swiss Standard German-language sources (de) is not the category being populated by the {{In lang}} template. The correct category is located at: Category:Articles with German-language sources (de)." Except the category very obviously is being generated by the in lang template, because it wouldn't be on the page at all if it weren't — but since I'm not familiar with the in lang template coding or how it determines what categories to populate with what language codes, I have no idea how to fix this. Could somebody with more familiarity with that template either "authorize" the Swiss Standard German category or get the article moved back to the general German category if a standalone "Swiss Standard German" category isn't desired?
Category:User kio and Category:User kio-3 are being autogenerated by the use of {{Babel}} on a userpage. But since I also don't normally work with user language categories, I have no idea how to either create or kibosh those categories, and I can't just wrap the whole thing in {{suppress categories}} since that would also bork the bluelinks. So, again, could somebody with more experience working with that template resolve these two?
Looks like Trappist fixed the Swiss German problem by updating the language module to a proper de-ch code populating a de-ch category instead of a de one, so that's been fixed as well. Thanks to both of you. Bearcat (talk) 15:13, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Pop up on Android changes Settings
On 6/29/23 while logged in to Wikipedia on my phone (Android v.11) using the browser (not app), I began getting a pop up message that says,"en.m.wikipedia.org says Please reload your page to use hotcat. Cancel ... Ok". Regardless whether I tap Cancel, Ok, or the Back button to clear the pop up, my Settings are changed to activate Advanced Mode, which changes how my Watchlist is displayed. I de-activate Advanced Mode, but the pop up will soon reappear and my Settings will again be changed to Advanced Mode. I haven't been able to determine what particular sequence of my inputs (if any) are triggering the pop up. So far, I am unable to control this behavior. I posted this message at Teahouse; a responder suggested I inquire here. Any insight available? DonFB (talk) 10:52, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
"Built in" browser says "Powered by Chrome". Problem also happens when I explicitly have selected and use the installed Chrome browser, which is version 92.0.4515.131. DonFB (talk) 19:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
If you go to settings on your mobile phone (behind the hamburger icon in top left) does it show advanced mode as enabled or disabled? Jdlrobson (talk) 20:11, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I'll take your word for it; not able to understand all of the code. Problem also occurs on Firefox, v. 111.0 (Build #2015937963). "Advanced" activation happens even when I tap "Cancel" on the popup. Thanks for suggestion to disable Hotcat, though it's just a workaround. Popup should not be happening, imo. DonFB (talk) 20:40, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Oh... So you are actively disabling the advanced mode. This sounds counter-intuitive to me, because this gadget only works when you have categories enabled. So not sure why would you want to disable categories 🤔. You can only use hotcat when the advanced mode is on...
But if you want to keep your flow, you can use the code below. This will only load hotcat when you enable the advanced mode:
They said they didn't like the advanced mode's watchlist. HotCat didn't load on the mobile site, but now it does (see #Tech News: 2023-26 above). There's nothing "counter-intuitive" about wanting to use HotCat on desktop and not the advanced mode on mobile. Nardog (talk) 22:06, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for additional suggestions. Disabling Hotcat appears to have been effective in preventing the popup. I keep Advanced mode off, because it results in larger, less cluttered, more finger-friendly displayed text without features I don't use a lot on mobile. I remain mystified why this popup behavior would suddenly start happening after years of stability. DonFB (talk) 22:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Nardog's comment above seems to explain the popups. But the operation is problematic by repeatedly occurring and changing my preferred setting. Seems a user should be able to stop the reminders without disabling an item in Preferences. If that's the only way to stop the popup, users should be informed. DonFB (talk) 22:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I think the popup routine is outright malfunctioning. If I tap Cancel, it should not turn on Advanced, but that's what it was doing. DonFB (talk) 22:48, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
What Cancel does is stop the page from reloading. I agree it's not a good design, but it seems deliberate. Nardog (talk) 23:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, well, now that I have some understanding of what was happening, I can evaluate the routine as--awful. It will repeatedly change a preferred Setting, no matter what the user does. I'm aware of something called Phabricator. I don't know how to report an issue like this or if that's the place. I offer a suggestion for yourself or other tech-savvy users that this might be something to call attention to in whatever is the appropriate place. DonFB (talk) 23:33, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Nvm, turns out it was Jon (WMF) (Jdlrobson) who added the responsible piece of code. I agree with DonFB that this shouldn't be happening. The script should just exit early if the advanced mode is off. Nardog (talk) 23:41, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
I think the use of advanced mode is very limited. I know that people are often surprised that categories are disabled on mobile, and so far, I have never heard of anyone disabling advanced mode once they discover that it can be enabled (and they can see categories). The change to enable advanced mode in Hotcat was made in May. Hotcat is the most commonly used gadget on plwiki. It seems that only you, DonFB, are experiencing issues with it. Nux (talk) 23:45, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
To be clear I mean the usage described above seem very limited. Otherwise many of 49k users of Hotcat would have a similar problem (49k on enwiki). Nux (talk) 23:47, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Also note that the solution is already above. The gadget is loaded from Commons anyway so there is no additional performance penalty from loading the gadget from common.js. Unless there are more reports it would be bad to disable gadget that 49k people are using, possibly some of them using it on mobile. Nux (talk) 23:51, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
That choice should be left to the user. Forcing a preference is antithetical to the purpose of customizable gadgets. Nardog (talk) 23:52, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
And the user has chosen the option to use hotcat. You cannot use hotcat without categories. So hotcat assumes when you enable it you also want to enable categories. The logic is solid. Disabling categories because whatchlist looks not the way you like it is... not logical. You should fix the watchlist instead. Nux (talk) 23:56, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
(Reply to Nux message of 23:45) If I don't want Advanced turned on in my mobile, the system should not be repeatedly turning it on against my will, with no documentation how to stop it. I think this is a case that shows insufficient attention to thoughtful design. If you have any influence or technical ability to change the design to give a user ability to stop such intrusive program behavior, or to publicize the need to disable a Preference to stop it, I request doing so. DonFB (talk) 00:01, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm using it and glad to have it. But really, an unexplained forced change to a preferred setting does not seem like a feature of considerate software design. DonFB (talk) 00:10, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
This was added during the recent Wikimedia hackathon as a group of several editors (mostly from Hebrew Wikipedia) complained to me that HotCat was not working. For all of them they hadn't enabled the advanced mode and I suggested this as a possible solution.
It is quite unusual for someone to be using non-advanced mode and HotCat. So far most editors I know using HotCat either use advance mode on Minerva or Vector/Vector 2022/Monobook when using their mobile phones so it seemed logical to be at the time to automatically switch them into advanced mode.
That's obviously not the case given this example, but you can't have HotCat and not have advanced mode, so a choice needs to be made here one way or the other either:
1) Keep the existing behaviour and tell user's to disable the gadget
2) Replace the existing functionality with an explicit opt in button, rather than the existing refresh workflow to give feedback to people why it's not working when they expect it to be working E.g. A box / notification could appear saying "HotCat is currently disabled. Please click here to enable."
3) Update the gadget to have settings (not sure if this is possible) to allow you to enable/disable on a per skin basis. Jdlrobson (talk) 01:43, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
No doubt I must have enabled Hotcat on my desktop (a long time ago), but I only rarely used it, and never wanted to use it on mobile. I liked the simpler mobile interface with Advanced turned off, so it was extraordinarily annoying when the popups began, could not be stopped, and turned on Advanced every time. Maybe other users who experienced the popups simply allowed Advanced to remain active, but that was decidedly not my preference DonFB (talk) 02:01, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Unlike the experienced programmer who helped me on this page, it did not occur to me to turn off Hotcat to stop the popups, and I doubt if I ever would have thought of doing that. DonFB (talk) 02:32, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
If you can't see categories without the advanced mode, then why would anybody expect to be able to use HotCat without the advanced mode? How would they? The only reasonable thing to do when it's off AFAICS is to exit early. Nardog (talk) 04:43, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, I'd vote for Jdlrobson's number 2 option shown above, if that can be done. Make it a one-time notification that lets user tap response for 'yes' or 'no/no thanks/decline' and says go to settings if you decide later to turn on Hotcat. Or put a banner somewhere on the mobile interface informing user new Hotcat functionality is available in Settings. The least desirable method is the one that was actually used. DonFB (talk) 05:18, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
I can look into that if there's no objections. The proper fix is likely to pull the categories via API but that seems like too much of a refactor for me to be able to do that.
Nardog - its my experience that lots of editors who want to edit categories are not aware there is an advanced mode and that it contains categories so a hint seems helpful. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:17, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, a hint would've been ideal. A pre-emptive takeover of user settings was not a great choice. DonFB (talk) 22:28, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
I agree that Option 2 might be a good compromise. I think it would be beneficial to place a button/link to enable the advanced mode where you would typically find the categories. So maybe somewhere below the article body. It would probably be the easiest way to locate it. Nux (talk) 10:38, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Done - PROBLEM FIXED - Simply reverting latest edit fixed the problem - Thanks in any regards - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 12:59, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-27
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
From this week all gadgets automatically load on mobile and desktop sites. If you see any problems with gadgets on your wikis, please adjust the gadget options in your gadget definitions file. [48]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).
The latest run of Special:WantedCategories featured two redlinks for Category:Articles with American English-language sources (en-us) and Category:Articles with British English-language sources (en-gb), both of which were being newly generated by old, longstanding usages of {{in lang|en-US}} or {{in lang|en-GB}} tags in references or on external links. While we do have an established scheme of tracking categories for Category:Articles with non-English-language sources, we do not have any established scheme of tracking categories for "Articles with sources by particular English dialect", so I had to resolve the problem by removing the template usages rather than by creating the categories — but the fact that old usages of the template were generating new redlinked categories that never previously existed at all implies that they were caused by a change to a template or module within the past few days. It's presumably the same change that caused the Swiss German category that I posted about a couple of days ago, but since I still don't personally know what module that template's category-generating function is shunted off to, i wanted to ask if somebody can look into this to make sure "English dialect" categories get aborted at the source and don't come back in the future. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 13:21, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I'd have to have known what the modules in question were before I could identify who made the changes in order to approach them directly about it, now, wouldn't I? Bearcat (talk) 13:43, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
At WP:Sandbox, edit the page, blank out whatever's there and add the single line
{{in lang|en-gb}}
then preview the page (don't save it). Below the buttons like "Publish changes", "Show preview" etc, you should now see one or more rows of text, one of them will say "Templates used in this preview (help):"; if this is preceded by a right-pointing traingle, click that to uncollapse the list. You should now see this list:
Hi all, this has happened on other pages for me also, but this is today's example. If you got to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Multiplicity_(psychology) there is a section that has been hatted because Wiki is not a forum. On desktop, this expands fine. On mobile, the section does not expand (I'm on Chrome 114.0.5735.196, on Android 11. The [show] message is just in bold, with no sign it's a link, if that helps at all. Red Fiona (talk) 22:24, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Does any one think this was working before and stopped now? Minerva (default mobile skin) does not support collapsibility, and expressly disables the module that provides that. You can use other skins in mobile mode to get collapsing work there.
Optionally, you can manually force the collapsing in Minerva if you add this to dev console:
Do changes to module-only templates propagate without purging?
I've got a template. That template invokes a module. That module calls frame:extensionTag ('templatestyles' ... to use a CSS stylesheet.
If I leave the template untouched, but make a change to both the module and the CSS, will both changes propagate instantly? Or will talk pages need to purge first? If so, will both changes at least propagate simultaneously, or could we end up with some pages with only one change, and not the other change? DFlhb (talk) 16:44, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Template changes propagate eventually, but not instantly. Adding more layers of indirection via Lua and CSS does not change the propagation process. It's possible that some pages get updated in few seconds between the time you change the module and the time you change the CSS (and then get updated again for the CSS change), but otherwise the propagation should happen simultaneously. * Pppery *it has begun...16:47, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the lack of guaranteed simultaneity is indeed an issue, but it's rarely a particularly problematic one for most templates, since they aren't transcluded enough to where an update to a template/module and an update to one of its dependencies, like the TemplateStyles sheet, wouldn't happen in the same batch in a job (which I think is either 100 or 1000 page updates per job). The ones that are you should be careful of changes with, but they're fairly easy to know since they're transcluded a lot (e.g. I had the exact problem with Module:Navbar and its 5.4 million transclusions which got me chatter on both WP:VPT and on Template talk:Navbar). A comment on relevant talk pages and perhaps WP:VPT warning others that there will be some funkiness and that it's expected is usually sufficient. Izno (talk) 17:37, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
(The other alternative is to preserve CSS that works both for the new version and the old until ~2-4 weeks after you've made a change. This may be more or less possible depending on the change you're making.) Izno (talk) 17:39, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I'll do that, thanks. I'm referring to Module:WikiProject banner (5.1 mil transclusions, change discussed here). Do you think it would be excessive to also temporarily define the new CSS inside the module, as a redundancy? DFlhb (talk) 17:59, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't think it's excessive, but I wouldn't personally. A few days/weeks of potential "that looks weird" on talk pages is not a big deal. Izno (talk) 18:20, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Kudos to Enterprisey, the creator of Script Installer Gadget. It has made difficult tasks extremely easy. I had a small suggestion, whether to add the URL of the WP:USL after "You currently have the following scripts installed" in the panel. Then the install would probably be easier.
Mentioning its maintainer and developer @Enterprisey with respect. ~ 𝕂𝕒𝕡𝕦𝕕𝕒𝕟 ℙ𝕒ş𝕒(inbox - contribs)04:55, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the kind words. I've added a mention of USL in the location you've suggested. I haven't made it a link because I'm slightly too lazy to figure out how to properly do it, but I hope to get around to it in the future. (If anyone reading this wants to send in a patch, that would also work.) Enterprisey (talk!) 15:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Lessen line spacing in long or expanded table of contents
the wub has come up with another great improvement to the Vector 2022 and 2010 (2010 is already compact) table of contents (TOC). From his talk page:
/* Lessen line spacing in table of contents in Vector 2022. */.vector-toc.vector-toc-text,.vector-feature-zebra-design-enabled.vector-toc.vector-toc-text,.vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled.vector-toc.vector-toc-text{padding:1px0;}
You can start at 4px. I reduced it to 1px which I like a lot.
Or for long articles (many articles for country presidents, etc.) with expanded TOCs. There were 2 recent Village Pump discussions (now archived) about creating an "Expand all/Collapse all" button for the Vector 2022 table of contents. See: here and here. More info: User:Timeshifter/vector.js
I wish the floating TOC in Vector 2022 did not require scrolling the article up or down to get the popup TOC to fit in the screen, especially when it is expanded. It is a major flaw. I think if it were fixed many more people would like Vector 2022.
Can anyone provide some code to make the floating TOC act less like a dropdown menu, and more like an ad popup that fits the screen, and stays in place? Auto-margins or something?
More like sticky headers. Where the popup TOC is one big sticky header. A popup that doesn't disappear when you scroll the article, or within the popup TOC. The TOC should only disappear when I click somewhere outside the popup TOC.
Then I wouldn't have to worry about scrolling away from the TOC by accident. I could scroll down the page with the popup TOC open if needed. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:11, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
Jonesey95's Vector 2022 TOC
I've been using similar CSS since the debut of Vector 2022 to fix the excessive amounts of white space in and around the sidebar TOC, and to allow it to use all of my available vertical space. I don't understand the whole "popup" concept described above, but after hiding a bunch of stuff that I have never clicked on in ten years here, I have a working TOC in the left sidebar. Screen shot attached. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:30, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
Jonesey95. I had a similar problem on Shoutwiki for legacy Vector 2010. I was able to decrease the white space on the left and right side of the sidebar links. I added a bunch of links to the sidebar. They linked to another wiki.
I just checked the sidebar here and the decreased line spacing is in effect from the newly-added CSS. But there is too much white space on the left. What CSS are you using to lessen that left-side white space in the sidebar?
I see now that the popup TOC is only a problem at the very top of the page. It only becomes a floating sticky TOC when it is opened after scrolling down the page a little bit. Just enough for the line with TOC button to stick at the top of the page, and stay there as you scroll all the way down the page.
If the TOC is clicked before scrolling down a few inches, then it is flaky. It should be changed to become a sticky floating TOC no matter where it is clicked. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:22, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
My code is at User:Jonesey95/common.css. I make no guarantees that it works perfectly, but it gives me compact sidebars that work well enough for me, along with a permanent, ubiquitous sticky header that I got from Quiddity's CSS. It will no doubt need to be changed if/when the new zebra layout is rolled out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:51, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
I very much like the numbering on sections, like the original TOC. But I'm unable to understand what part of the code does this. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})07:42, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
For those who are interested see: User:Timeshifter/vector.css or User:Timeshifter/vector-2022.css - This way you can see ahead of time what you will be getting if you install the CSS code from "the wub". The vertical compactness of the CSS lines in vector.css is very similar to the vertical compactness of TOC lines after adding the CSS codes. This makes TOC scrolling much easier and faster in Vector 2022.
the wub came up with some CSS to lessen the space between TOC lines in legacy Vector 2010:
.tocli{margin-bottom:0;line-height:1.4;}
It works great. I got it down to line-height: 1.2;
/vector.css also works for Vector-2022? I thought /vector.css is only for Vector legacy, and /vector-2022.css for Vector-2022. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})07:39, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
It is working for me. Maybe /vector-2022.css allows for changing Vector 2022 without unintentionally messing with legacy Vector 2010. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:06, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Currently, it does so. It will not soon. If the changes you are making are 2022 specific, ensure they go in the 2022 subpage. Izno (talk) 18:19, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
the wub. I noticed some laddering in the expanded TOC here: Help:Table. The width of the TOC from where the text begins to the left side of the scrollbar is 20.2 cm on my 27 inch desktop PC.
The TOC width here at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) is 24 cm from where the text begins to the right side of the TOC box (has no scrollbar).
I have seen laddering on other pages too. Would it be possible to set the TOC without a specific width? I believe then the TOC would expand as far right as needed. And then it would wrap once it reaches the edge of the screen. This is how a table with a single column acts. It would only expand as needed. So the TOC would be narrow on pages with narrow TOCs.
@Timeshifter I don't understand what you mean by laddering. The width of the TOC looks fine to me on both pages. When it is the "unpinned" version i.e. not in the sidebar, its width does expand to match the content. the wub"?!"23:24, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
the wub. I guess I will have to stop using the word "laddering" because I don't see that word in Line wrap and word wrap.
In the expanded TOC in Help:Table these section headings wrap to 2 lines each:
mw-datatable – row highlighting via cursor hover. White background
tpl-blanktable – row highlighting via cursor hover. White background
The fact that Barack Obama was the first African American elected to the presidency should not be in the second sentence of the lead
There is no need for any width settings in the Vector 2022 TOC since it is no longer part of the article. If the TOC acts like a single-column table then it will expand and contract as needed to match the widest line in the TOC. When it bumps up against the right side of the screen the longest lines will wrap.
The Mediawiki developers may still have widths set for the TOC out of habit from legacy Vector 2010 when the TOC was within the article, and space was needed around it for images floating on the right, etc..
That is why I am looking for some CSS to negate the TOC widths.
The WP:PROSESIZE gadget has stopped working for me. When I click on the "Page Size" link in the left toolbar, the first paragraph of the page is highlighted in bright yellow, and that's it. It worked fine about a month ago, and I first noticed the problem on July 1st. I use the MonoBook skin and Firefox, if that's any help. Can this problem be fixed? Regards, Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]23:56, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Ok, that rules out ancient browser pretty firmly. What you're probably going to need to do to start is turn off your other gadgets and comment out your other scripts to ensure it's prose size that's acting up or if there is another script/gadget that is conflicting with it. If it's another script/gadget, you'll need to go 1 by 1 (or binary search) to see which.
If that's not the issue, then it's possible something in last Thursday's deploy made something funny, but I wouldn't know where to start since Monobook is basically unmaintained these days (nothing since June 5 that could have been an issue, which is too long ago). Which leaves something on the parser output side, and something in the skin infrastructure, as potentially the cause.
Hmm... I disabled all non-default gadgets except ProseSize, commented out all my common.js scripts and blanked by common.css and switched to Vector 2022. Same problem. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]12:17, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Just the first paragraph of the page is highlighted in a block bright yellow (#ffff00), and then nothing else happens. No size reading, nothing. As I said, it worked fine about a month ago. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]16:23, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Hah! I fixed the problem... MediaWiki:WikiEdit.js was interfering. I couldn't find it, because I had it in my global.js, which I never look at. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk]16:26, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
You should use DevTools to to debug your script. Also you seem to be throwing errors that you are not catching. You should always take care of errors you throw. At a very least do a console.warn/error and return safely from a function. Nux (talk) 09:33, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
What is wrong with the search bar on the main page in Vector 2022 skin?? Never works on my ipad, I have to click on an article just to get the search bar working! ♦ Dr. Blofeld07:54, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
@Dr. Blofeld: It works on my iPhone. In a narrow window you may have to first click a magnifying glass icon at the top to make the search bar appear. Does it work in safemode or if you log out? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:14, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Xaosflux made MediaWiki:Contenttranslation-summary which is displayed at top of Special:ContentTranslation. It currently says: "On the English Wikipedia machine translation is disabled for all users and this tool is limited to extended confirmed editors (see WP:CXT)." I do think it's a little confusing. It sounds like "this tool" refers to machine translation and then it becomes self-contradictory. Many users probably don't know that machine translation is just a part of the content translation tool. WP:CXT explains more but many users ignore links. I suggest: "On the English Wikipedia this tool is limited to extended confirmed editors and the machine translation part is disabled for all users (see WP:CXT)." PrimeHunter (talk) 11:46, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
I wonder if it would be possible to enable flipping/mirroring of images in standard image templates, which will help in various cases, when for example a (non-human) subject of an image should face the text (per the MOS). This is often an issue in animal articles, and particularly in the paleontology Wikiproject, where drawings of extinct animals are frequently used, but can be unwieldy if not facing the desired direction. One solution has been to upload flipped versions of images, but this is a huge, seemingly redundant task if this could simply be done with code by using an optional parameter in image templates. FunkMonk (talk) 15:44, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
You need to be very careful if doing this. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images#Editing images, Images should not be changed in ways that materially mislead the viewer. For example, images showing artworks, faces, identifiable places or buildings, or text should not be reversed (although those showing soap bubbles or bacteria might be). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:57, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Definitely follow Redrose64's guidance above. That said, here's a tool that can be used for good or evil:
<divstyle="transform: scaleX(-1);">[[File:Example.jpg|thumb|This is a caption]]</div>
Yes, the template page should state what it can and can't be used for. But this goes for flipped images in general whether they are uploaded as a new file or not. Having an automatic parameter would instead help us eliminate a lot of useless flipped versions of files; if it is determined that an image of, say, a person, should never have been flipped, all we have to do is remove the hypothetical flip parameter from the image template. But if it exists as a flipped file on Commons even after it has been removed from an article here, it's a much longer process, there will be a chance it will be added again later, that is has been added to a non-English Wikipedia in the meantime, and it may have to go through a drawn-out deletion request process. As for the example above, doesn't it also flip the caption? FunkMonk (talk) 17:01, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
And the text in the image. In general, don't do what you're suggesting, as I suspect it will also be a general performance degradation relative to uploading a flipped image. Izno (talk) 17:29, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, images with text or other cases where asymmetry is important should not use the parameter, just like we shouldn't upload flipped versions of such images, so it isn't really a novel issue. The difference is just that the parameter is much easier to just remove from an image template than getting rid of a wrongly flipped file. FunkMonk (talk) 17:42, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
I suspect it will also be a general performance degradation relative to uploading a flipped image. remains of interest. Izno (talk) 17:46, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
For the technique described (where the flipping is achieved using the CSS declaration transform: scaleX(-1)), the WMF servers simply serve the unflipped image and the flipping is done entirely client-side. Therefore any performance degradation will be at the client's end, and WP:DWAP doesn't come into it.
If the client (the user's browser) does not support CSS Transforms Module Level 1, it will fail gracefully, with the unflipped image being displayed. Most current browsers support that CSS module, but they don't have to, because it's not yet a full W3C Recommendation. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:33, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
1) It is additional CSS going down the pipe. That is the first point of minor performance degradation. 2) The second point is that it will take longer on the client side to digest and use that CSS. Transforms in particular cost more in computing than many of the other CSS properties. They are both minor but not non-existent.
Besides those two points, I think this adds additional complexity for something that any image creator can take care of trivially, without degradation in performance. Izno (talk) 22:13, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
What level of "performance degradation" are we talking about here, and do we have any reason to even suspect it poses significant (or any at all) challenges to most modern computers? And flipping with code is already being done in many articles that have cladograms with illustrations, so again, I see no realistic downside to making this less unwieldy to do. We're literally just talking about making it possible without also flipping the captions, flipping with code is already possible and being done all over the place. FunkMonk (talk) 17:07, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
I think the rules are made for editors, and not vice versa. If there are layout reasons why the image can't be placed on the other side of the page, then personally I would prefer to just live with the subject looking outwards. (I appreciate if the image is of a drawing where there was no particular reason or asymmetry for the subject to look a given way, flipping it wouldn't matter, but without knowing the background of the drawing, it would be hard to know this.) isaacl (talk) 21:03, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
In the case where a representation has been created by the uploader and they know the image can be safely flipped, I think it would be better for them to upload both versions with appropriate indications in the file name, which would signal their intent. isaacl (talk) 21:10, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
But in this case, many editors do prefer what the guideline recommends, which is that subjects face towards the text. It simply looks better. And we're talking about thousands of images from various sources, not just some by the editors themselves here and there. A method of flipping a the image itself which doesn't also flip the entire caption and frame would be enough. FunkMonk (talk) 00:08, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
I feel fidelity to the original image is a greater concern. Images can be placed on the left side, too. isaacl (talk) 00:50, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps, but that's irrelevant to the guideline and the fact that many editors do want to make images face the text, and it also does not address the fact that flipped versions of images are already being uploaded en masse, which is an even more severe infringement on their fidelity. We simply don't need flipped versions if it can be done automatically instead. FunkMonk (talk) 03:15, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, my comments on flipped images are regarding uploaded flipped images, as well as any instances using a client transformation. Putting images on the appropriate side so the subject will face the text does address the style issue. isaacl (talk) 03:27, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Where did "Forgot your password?" go?
I remember that it used to be possible to select "Forgot your password?" on the Log in page, and give the username/email address to receive a temporary password over the email. See the log in page of Beta Wikipedia where it is still present. But on the real Wikipedia, its gone. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})17:31, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I was wrong in my assessment of the situation. Actually, that link was gone for me on enwiki. So, I check where that leads leads to on Beta, and then I manually opened Special:PasswordReset on enwiki, and got the error "Your IP address is blocked from editing. To prevent abuse, it is not allowed to use password recovery from this IP address." because apparently I'm in this range. I was then able to recover my account via a password reset at metawiki. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})17:38, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Doesn't seem like a MediaWiki bug. Commons works fine for me. One or some of the gadgets might be trying to add tabs in way not working with Vector 2022. Did you try to switch to Vector? What gadgets are you using that add this things as semi-tabs? Nux (talk) 11:01, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
@Nux: Using the old Vector skin seems to fix it, but I'd honestly rather not use it.
@Qwerfjkl: Now thinking about this, you're absolutely right. I see that all the wikis where this happens are group 1 wikis (which I mostly use), so it makes sense. Hope they resolve this. --QuickQuokka[talk • contribs]17:04, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
This has been fixed for meta:MoreMenu on all wikis. It will be fixed in Twinkle before the breaking changes arrive here on enwiki tomorrow. For interface admins on other wikis, you can either go by phab:T319358#8989477 or wait for it to be fixed upstream (assuming they're using the new version of Twinkle and that Twinkle devs are actually maintaining that. I'm not even sure…). — MusikAnimaltalk16:59, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for working on a Twinkle patch, @Novem Linguae
@Kusma's suggestion of using the Monobook skin may solve the dropdown issue ... but for me, after a few weeks of adjusting to the Vector 2022 skin, switching back again would be a pain. So I'll keep on swearing at the fallen-down dropdown until the goddess of code smiles on Novem's labours. BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 10:54, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with the change a few months ago where edits to pages by clicking on the "+" link put the user in a radically different environment from the regular edit. Now users have two editing interfaces, the regular edit interface and the new "+" interface. When a user clicks on "+", they should have the same environment as if they clicked on "edit". Can we go back to the status quo ante, please? As an example of the madness of this new interface, I always sign my comments starting with an em dash. In this new environment, instead of the Insert menu, I have to click on the Omega icon to get the special characters to appear. Users should not have to contend with idiosyncrasies such as this. By the way, for both environments, I use the source editor and avoid the visual editor. —Anomalocaris (talk) 09:13, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Tamzin: Thanks! But why anyone thinks that users should have to contend with a special interface for new topics, different from the regular edit, is beyond me. This is a total violation of sound interface design. —Anomalocaris (talk) 16:58, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
There are many ways to edit Wikipedia. Do not think that because you learned one way that everyone should learn the same way or in fact that everyone does. Izno (talk) 17:52, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Regarding example 1, the intended interaction for most editors in the future is to use the "Reply" button, not the "edit" button, to reply to comments. Which provides the same interface as the + button now does. If you don't have those links, that's because you've already customized your interface via either CSS or the options I think available in preferences to remove them. Regarding item 2, WAID already provided the suggested remedy: turn it off in your preferences.
{{pp}} should only display a padlock by default, not banner
I have read that template's talk page, there's little discussion about this (to look it up just simply Ctrl+F "default"). What do you all think about this? Hddty (talk) 04:28, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Wikiproject Film script error (with Supported by Japanese task force??)
Resolved
Hello,
This message "Category:Script error: The function "quality" does not exist.-Class Japanese cinema articles" appears on various TP of articles in the Project Fillm that are of interest for the Jp task force. Can anyone help with that?
Examples: TF page itself, or here or here. Thank you. -MY, OH MY! (mushy yank)12:39, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Is there any way of identifying the most recent links to a specific page?
Is there any function that would allow me to check Special:WhatLinksHere and get result sorted by when the links were added to the target pages? The purpose would be, for example, to find the most recent instances of when a particular guideline is invoked in a discussion through linking.
Related changes, aka Special:RecentChangesLinked, shows changes to pages which link here. (Select "Show changes to pages linked to the given page instead".) However, the addition of new links may be drowned by other changes to pages that already linked here. Also, as the name implies, changes are only shown if they are recent (3 days by default, 30 selectable), not if they are older but still the latest. I hope that helps, but I suspect it doesn't. Otherwise you'll probably need a bot, because the list of which pages already linked here yesterday (and should thus be excluded from the report) isn't maintained. Certes (talk) 09:56, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
One option is run WhatLinksHere or equivalent locally at your chosen time interval, saving the results to compare with the next run. If you don't fancy writing a simple program for that, a browser add-in such as Distill might help. However, it's still not going to spot a second link to the same target, for example if someone starts an ANI section citing WP:NOTHERE when it is already linked in an ongoing ANI thread. Alternatively, we could hope that this wishlist item is better supported next year, which would satisfy the request easily. Certes (talk) 14:40, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
When I insert {{dyknstr}} in the visual editor, there are no fields selected by default. You always want at least "article" and one of "prep" or "queue. What do I need to do to make those get inserted by default? RoySmith(talk)15:25, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Since my post last May, which fizzled out with nothing fixed, looks like the issue with galleries on mobile continues to persist. See for example the gallery at Southeast Asia#Demographics. Issue encountered on Chrome for iOS. Do this also affect other browsers? Android? TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 07:38, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
There was a Phabricator ticket that has been opened for that issue, but nothing have came out of it. Maybe someone should reopen it or file a new one. TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 05:43, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Please do not open a new task or file a new one. And "bumping" tasks is somewhere in the realm of "don't do that". Izno (talk) 17:40, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Well ok. The thing with the current ticket regarding packed gallery is that there was no progress since it was first posted. The previous thread was already archived. TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 09:22, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure you're right. {{User19}} has doc=yes while the very similar {{User17}} has doc=no. I previewed an edit of {{User19}} after changing it to use doc=no and the result was that the category no longer applied. {{User17}} has some "NODOC" code which looks pretty useless to me. I'll leave saving the edit for the moment to give others who might understand the situation to have a look. Johnuniq (talk) 01:43, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
While wondering why templates like {{User11}} work but {{User19}} has this include-size-exceeded problem, I discovered that Template:User19/doc exists and is transcluded. It probably contains something that leads to the recursion. I intend to delete the /doc page because I think better documentation is generated automatically if /doc does not exist. If that would be a bad idea, please speak up. Johnuniq (talk) 06:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Sometimes WP:PetScan adds ®exp_filter into text fields after you hit the "Do it!" button. Those "®exp_filter"'s break the search. User:Certesexplained the issue:
PetScan accepts a URL parameter called regexp_filter. "Link to a pre-filled form..." inserts ®exp_filter=value into the URL it generates. (value is usually blank.) This works perfectly when the link is clicked. However, such links are often pasted into wikitext or HTML. Some browsers interpret the string "®" as an HTML entity for the registered trademark symbol, even when not followed by a semicolon, so &foo=bar®exp_filter= becomes &foo=bar®exp_filter=, appending the unwanted text to the preceding parameter and usually causing it to make an unwanted appearance in one of the input boxes.
And they added:
Could we change the parameter name to something that doesn't begin with reg? Of course, regexp_filter= should also be accepted for backwards compatibility, but if a replacement parameter name not beginning with reg can be offered in "Link to a pre-filled form" then the problem should be solved.
Other discussions about this longstanding annoying bug:
This page is very active, so maybe someone here knows how to fix this? I believe this is a bigger issue than it looks, because many people who use PetScan don't notice ®exp_filter in text fields that break their PetScan searches, so people just assume that the search simply just didn't find anything. So, next time when your PetScan search doesn't give any results, check the text fields if there's a ®exp_filter. 2001:14BA:9C35:6600:193F:16A0:BF8A:43A1 (talk) 19:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Math markup doesn't work
While reading, I came across some math markup that doesn't display properly. Here's the markup at WP:MATH: <math>E=mc^2</math>, , but it displays as E=mc^{2}, with the broken image icon above it. I am using Google Chrome 103 on El Capitan. – dudhhrtalkcontribs (he/they) 05:58, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes. Math markup displays properly on my iPad (iOS 12, Safari whatever version), and on my MacBook Pro (High Sierra) and Windows 10 PC; both of those use the latest release of Firefox. – dudhhrtalkcontribs (he/they) 07:22, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Seems like what you see is an alt of the SVG image. You might want to clear cache in that Chrome. Or just use Firefox :) Nux (talk) 13:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
I think it might be a certificate issue: Wikipedia, Commons, and upload.wikimedia.org gave warnings for invalid certificates, but I'm not sure what domain the math markup images use. Probably just an issue that comes with using an old OS version, iOS 9 has the same problem. – dudhhrtalkcontribs (he/they) 21:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
The image is here [49] if that shows a warning then that is the problem. Apple is using vendor locking on iPhones so I don't think you can work this out without changing your phone (installing Firefox probably won't make a difference). Nux (talk) 21:26, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
The problem is more important on my El Capitan iMac (it's from 2007!) than my iOS 9 iPad (I have a newer iPad), but yes tha was the issue. I told the browser to ignore the invalid certificate and it displays now. – dudhhrtalkcontribs (he/they) 22:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
The image on this page was inserted strangely; the problem is that the caption is, as usual, in the centre, while the image is on the left (opening the page from a mobile phone). JackkBrown (talk) 21:52, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, removing
<divclass="floatnone">
from the expanded output of {{CSS image crop}} appears to allow the image to stay in the center on mobile. That's as far as I got, though, and I could be going down the wrong path. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:12, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
This is affected by changes in the default CSS and structure changes in images. In any case probably using built in classes for this template is not a good idea. Instead of floatnone etc the template should use its own classes and a templatestyles CSS. At this point in time it would probably be best and easiest to do the layout with display:flex. Nux (talk) 00:05, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Jonesey95:@Nux: I directly removed the image (by the way, I found that the image was cropped; there are other people in the original image); I edited quickly, I hope I didn't damage the infobox. JackkBrown (talk) 00:35, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
When I open the page, I find an error message saying that "Lua error in Module:User_scripts_table at line 22: attempt to index local 'jsContent' (a nil value)." It looks like a big red link, and when I click on it, it shows:
Lua error in Module:User_scripts_table at line 22: attempt to index local 'jsContent' (a nil value).
Expanding and hiding of dropdown menus cause no change in their indicator symbol
Hi, at the top menu of Wikipedia there exists dropdown menus named "tools" and "languages" and "TW". These menus are by default at the state of "hidden" and have the symbol "˅". But after clicking on these words, the dropdown menus's state changes to "expanded". The problem is that their indicator symbol should change to "˄", but this scenario is not applied, and the symbol does not change and remains "˅". This changing of symbol to "˄" is necessary to indicate dropdown menu's state is "expanded" and a click on it causes a "hide" action. This scenario is nearly always applied in MS Windows's dropdown menus. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:31, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
From a UI standpoint, yeah obviously this should've been the case, but I've never faced a functional problem due to it, so it might not be that much of a priority than some other very pressing issues. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})15:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm not sure why our UI should follow Windows UI design standards ? There is no need to change the icon to indicate state change. The dropping down of the menu is already indicating the state change. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:34, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@TheDJ The purpose of changing of such symbols is not for "showing the menu's state", instead it is for indicating the correct "action" of this symbol. The symbol "˅" indicates "expand the menu" and the symbol "˄" indicates "hide the menu". Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 09:54, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Thank you both for your assistance. It's very much appreciated, and I made a note of this tool and your code, although I admit it's above my pay grade, but thank you for showing it so clearly. I'm still baffled by the subtle ways Wikipedia's category system works. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:06, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
I know that I have seen this question before, but it will be tricky to search for a discussion about it. Do we, or should we, have an "R from" template for this sort of redirect? It could go on Mr and Ph. D and many more. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
I remember a discussion about issues with trailing parenthesis causing issues in some locations; I can't remember where it was, but the result was against the creation of redirects. BilledMammal (talk) 14:26, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Correct. Another character that would be a problem in this case, is the space character. This is because URLs require percent encoding to have all the information. But because encoding is hard to read, browsers started hiding the encoding (Mediawiki realized the same early on actually and replaced spaces with underscores to improve readability). Especially when you copy paste an unencoded url into other applications that then do URL detection, this becomes problematic. There is not enough information being preserved, so you have to guess and guessing inherently allows for guessing wrong when it comes to edge cases. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Looking at both the classic parser and parsoid, MediaWiki's own logic drops any of ,;.:!? from the end of a URL, and also ) if the URL doesn't contain an (. Other services may, of course, behave differently. If we go with MediaWiki's list, it appears there are currently 125010 mainspace redirects (list) that would need to be created, 23668 of which (list) would point directly to articles and 101342 would bypass a double redirect. Whether any other namespaces should be processed is a good question. And while WP:MASSCREATION applies more to actual articles than redirects, as a BAGger I'd still want to see a WP:VPR discussion showing consensus for the creation of these redirects.P.S. If we want to go ahead with this, it might be worth asking me to adapt AnomieBOT's EnDashRedirectCreator code that already handles various issues like double redirects, conflicts in possible targets, automatic G8 tagging if the target is deleted, and so on. Anomie⚔13:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Discussion (Redirects for article titles ending in periods)
Oppose the cons of cluttering search results outweigh the pros of this one. Instead I would suggest a software edit to make trailing punctuation act like a space unless there is already a redirect at that location. (t · c) buidhe14:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
If I understand what you're trying to suggest here correctly, I think you have the problem backwards and what you suggest would not address the problem presented here. But T28556 covers both the problem here (auto-linking software omitting trailing punctuation) and the problem your suggestion would address (auto-linking software picking up unintended trailing punctuation); it doesn't seem like anyone has been interested in trying to implement it in over a decade. T40265 is similar, specifically about parens not being included. Anomie⚔14:37, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Comment. For periods only this would result in the creation of 19,053 redirects; which redirects would be created can be seen here. For all the special characters listed above this would result in the creation of 824,459 redirects; which redirects would be created can be seen here. BilledMammal (talk) 14:26, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
There are some 240 nonredirect mainspace pages ending in periods where the same title without trailing periods exists and isn't a redir to the first title. (Probably more, if you consider redirects ending in periods.) While some of them look like errors - for example, Bobby Bonds Jr. and Bobby Bonds Jr - most seem to make more sense, like Ten. and Ten. They're going to be a lot harder to justify when there's nineteen thousand new redirects, and all of them point to the titles with periods. —Cryptic14:45, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
That's kind of nifty. Would be niftier if it didn't reuse the #newarticletext id from the patronizing "Hey, use the article wizard!" box that I've been hiding for forever. —Cryptic17:02, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
That works in a browser, but the Wikipedia app still shows a 404 error for that example. Even in a browser, it's an extra click for the user, and the link could easily be missed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits13:03, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
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 Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata. [51]
The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).
The default protocol of Special:LinkSearch and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https. [52]
Special:LinkSearch and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago. [53]
Future changes
There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20. [54]
There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.
How do I request deletion of a recently created template?
HI, I ran into this new template Template:Stop AAPI Hate. I believe this has been created in error. The topic should be Stop Asian Hate not Stop AAPI Hate (which is a non-profit mostly gathering data) and I am not sure the subject needs a template. And I find it alarming that the "Groups associated with opposition" is there at all. When I try to google or search for "Wikipedia delete template" I get sent to pages about templates for deleting everything but templates. I'm sure the problem is between the chair and the keyboard, so I am coming here for some assistance. Could someone point me in the right direction? Thanks! WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 23:09, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Thank you!! :) All of the Community Tech team should get credit here, but also to @Czar and all of the voters and participants in the 2021 wishlist proposal, and finally and perhaps most importantly @TheDJ who wrote the original user script that inspired the proposal and project as whole! :) All of you should feel entitled to advertise this barnstar in your userspace if you wish. I will refrain as this was in a work capacity for me. Warm regards to all, — MusikAnimaltalk17:01, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: I'm giving you full permission to give yourself that barnstar (alongside whichever boss made you work on this). Because in the past, even if stuff ended on the wishlist, they were often not worked on. Or they rolled out half assedly.
This thing just seems to work and not interfere with anything else. Which is... unusual for a tool was rolled out en masse, which changes the editing experience so radically. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}21:47, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Headbomb: I'm so glad to hear this! Thanks for using it, and thanks for your nice words. :-) The thing I was most worried about was changing the default height-resizer, because that appears all the time even without the preview pane being open. All seems okay though. :-) SamWilson01:35, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Today’s Featured Picture July 12, 2023
CONGRATULATIONS for the first time a video picture works. Without the reader doing anything! YEA! You solved that past problem! Thank you! Wis2fan (talk) 04:12, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
File:Dassault_Mirage_III-5_Risszeichnung.png is included at the top of the Project ROSE article. But in my browser it is refusing to display; this code [[File:Mirage III-5 Risszeichnung.png|thumb|300px|right|Three-view of the [[Mirage III]]E]] displays only the frame and the caption. If I click in the empty space, the image opens in my browser just fine. And a plain link to the image file without any piping also displays OK, see below; this image just seems to break the piping, or something like that. I have never met this phenomenon before. If you can all see it on the right as well then the problem is obviously mine, but can you? If not, any ideas? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
This should be listed somewhere as a perennial topic. The image needs to be purged somewhere. I tried purging its page here and on Commons, and it still shows as broken for me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:33, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
libpng error: IDAT: invalid distance too far back
Error in pixReadStreamPng: internal png error
Error in pixReadStream: png: no pix returned
Error in pixRead: pix not read
Error in writeImageFileInfo: failure to read full image of Dassault_Mirage_III-5_Risszeichnung.png
Yay! Thank you! I guess the question for our developers now is, if most rendering engines can deal with this technical lapse, should our image scaling engine be equally robust? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
Mobile lead image placement
Hello, I've noticed on mobile articles that the image (or infobox) placed before the first paragraph of a page in the code always appears after the first paragraph instead (though as far as I can tell only on main article namespaces). What exactly causes this? I was wondering if it was possible to replicate on other wikis. Thanks, Ringtail Raider (talk) 23:31, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Please link to an example article, as recommended by the edit notice that appears when you post on this page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:39, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Extensions are a typical way to extend MediaWiki. No apologies necessary. The relevant code is in MoveLeadParagraphTransform::identifyInfoboxElement(). It looks for elements with class thumb, infobox, and <figure> elements.
Looking at it has given me some thoughts about an unrelated system that has a change hanging out that someone wanted my feedback for, so, thanks for that. :^) Izno (talk) 03:22, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
The mobile website version always pulls the first text paragraph up. This is for readability and is done automatically by a post processing step in the renderer. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:19, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I've noticed that mobile often puts the first paragraph at the top, before infobox. But not always. One of the examples is United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which follows MOS:ORDER. Another example is Akkadian Empire. I think {{coord}} does this, which might be interpreted as the first paragraph (invisible), after which comes the infobox, and actual lead paragraph below it. To keep the uniformity, something should be done about it. (I vaguely remember finding an article without {{coord}} also having this weird behaviour, but I don't remember what it was.) —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})14:25, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Having {{coord}} in the lead area (outside of the infobox) violates MOS:ORDER. If you move {{coord}} to its proper place at the end of the article and the mobile display is still undesirable, we might be able to figure out what causes the differences and submit a feature request. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:37, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm dumb, thanks! Coord should come at last, but I've found coords before infobox to be a very widespread practice. Is it possible to run a query or something? —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})14:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
The MobileFrontend code is imperfect, and wherever possible editors are encouraged to make this in the arrangement in the article itself (mw:Recommendations_for_mobile_friendly_articles_on_Wikimedia_wikis) rather than rely on this behaviour that only works most of the time.
MobileFrontend is more or less a stop gap solution because most articles were written before mobile was a thing, or by people on desktop computers not considering how it might look on a mobile device. Jdlrobson (talk) 20:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
When I am replying and add new text, it appears at the front of a sentence
I'm using the Chrome browser, if it matters. So, if I type in reply “I think that is a great idea” and then later add “However,” it will appear as “HoweverIthink that is a great idea”. Any idea why this happens and how to fix it?
I asked at the regular Wikipedia Help Desk and they said members in this community had experienced this, but I could not find threads on this, if anyone has any pointers to solutions or workarounds for this.
It might be related to a gadget or browser extension you've installed. Also, are you using visual or source mode? Nardog (talk) 02:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I got it happen in both visual and source mode again, but it is inconsistent in making its appearance. Now I can't get it happen here! It's like taking your car into the mechanic for a rattle and then when you want to show it to them, of course it doesn't happen! Veritas Aeterna (talk) 23:10, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
RTL scripts sometimes left-shifting lines displayed in editing environment (browser dependent)
Using source editor on mobile web interface, Firefox version 114.1.1 on Android 11.
I've noticed that some instances of Arabic-script text are causing characters not to appear in the editing interface, although they are present in the source. At Lebanon#Environment, we have the following two sources at the end of the section:
بيروت, واس- (15 October 2019). "الأمطار تشارك في إطفاء حرائق لبنان" [Rain participates in extinguishing the fires of Lebanon]. Al Yaum (in Arabic). Retrieved 2023-03-14.
In the source editor, at my device's resolution and text size, the first source's |date= parameter 15 October 2019 displays as 5 October 2019, and the second source's 15 October 2019 displays as 15 October 019. In each case, the hidden digit would appear at the beginning of a new line. As I type this now in ReplyTool's interface, I notice that the same lines (containing the |title= parameter) are missing the left margin space rather than any characters present in the wikisource. In both examples and in both editing interfaces, only one character (or margin space) is not displayed, despite multiple instances of Arabic script across multiple lines. Folly Mox (talk) 15:24, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Here the line containing the |title= parameter is not displaying the line-initial opening curly bracket of the {{cite web}} template call.Again here in ReplyTool, the left margin space of the line is not displayed. I typed the bulleted list * before pasting in the examples, and in the second example the left margin space before the asterisk (on the same line as the problem glyphs) was hidden after the paste-in. The left few pixels of the asterisk on that line and of the d of "access-date" in the first example visibly overlay the blue bounding box of the editing interface. Folly Mox (talk) 15:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Could not duplicate in Chrome 102.0.5005.78. Duplicated in Firefox in the desktop view editing interface under Vector 2022. Folly Mox (talk) 16:26, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I can reproduce in Firefox 115.0.2 on Windows 10, mobile version, source editor. If a line starts with left-to-right text but ends with right-to-left text like Arabic then the first character on the line can be pushed outside the left margin and become partially or fully hidden. During a change of the window width, I can sometimes see the character gradually disappear while it moves into the margin. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Double click to edit should be instead 3 or 4 clicks
I have enabled double click to edit, in the preferences to edit of my account. The problem is that when I am trying to select a word by double clicking on it, I get instead the edit window. I think a simple fix of this unintended and annoying overlap is to click 3 or 4 times instead of just 2 in order to summon the edit page. Regards,--Thinker78(talk)22:17, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Triple click usually selects a whole sentence or paragraph in browsers, or the whole pagename in the case of page headings. Quadruple click sounds awful and unergonomic when you can just click "edit". Many pointing devices have a double click button but not more. Let's stick to double click. Anyway, the feature is at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and not Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets so it's part of MediaWiki itself and not something implemented here at the English Wikipedia. A change could be suggested at Phabricator but it strongly sounds like a decline to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:19, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
The images in the two galleries of Jasper Francis Cropsey are not displaying, and I could only get the infobox image to display by putting in a fully formatted "File" statement, i.e. the "image=" is not working, although the "caption =" is. The rest of the images in the article display just fine.
Is something going on with gallery and infobox images?
Just checked some other articles, and infobox, gallery, and multiple images are not displaying. Has anyone files a bug report on this yet? Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:34, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
"Works for me". Browser and operating system versions would be good to know, and you may need to run through the list of gadgets/scripts to see if any of them are causing you grief.
Firefox 115.0.2 under Windows 10 Home 19045.3208. Have not changed any settings or added or subtracted any gadgets recently, so something on Wikipedia's end seems to have changed and is interacting with something in my set up. I note that small images (such as the icons on Arbitration Case pages) aren't displaying for me either.
#bodyContent div span img { display: none; } looks suspect. You can try removing that first. MediaWiki has indeed changed its output (intentionally) for images that would cause this particular line to remove just about every inline image (basically every image outside a thumb) as well as gallery images. Remove this line and your imagery should be restored. If you have particular kinds of images you're trying to target (I'd guess you're trying to remove {{flagicon}}s?), I can assist with adding classes to relevant templates, which I find to be good practice anyway. Izno (talk) 18:33, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
@Izno: Yeah, that was it, all seem to be working now - and to pat myself on the back, it's what I suspected might be the problem after I posted the CSS/JS files and had to run off to the hospital. Thanks. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:04, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Watched article not showing up on my watchlist
I just moved William Brockman Bankhead House from my user space to Main Space. And I have it bookmarked. I can see it on my contributions list. But it won't show up on my watchlist. It is not browser specific. Purging does not seem to help. Feedback? — Maile (talk) 00:43, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I see the problem, maybe. But don't know how to correct it. It looks like this article was created by me on July 11. At that time, I still had a version in my user space. I don't remember having it in two places, as I intended to work on it in my user space and then move it - which I did. Anyway, that's the problem - two copies of this out there. Can anyone correct this for me, please? — Maile (talk) 01:02, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
What is AMC mode? Is that the advanced mode? And why does HotCat require AMC mode? This hasn't been the case for a long time (at least for me). I hope I can find some answers. Thank you. HueMan1 (talk) 05:55, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Is there a way to get rid of this message without disabling HotCat? I only use HotCat on my computer, but I also make edits on mobile every once in a while, so it would be a bummer if I had to change the settings whenever I switched from PC to mobile and vice versa. Besides that, I'm not really a great fan of AMC mode, so I'm out of ideas. HueMan1 (talk) 11:22, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
At (for example) Carnatic Wars the lead section is not visible on page load on mobile; you need to scroll down below the infobox to see it. The mobile frontend should rearrange it above the infobox, but does not. If you remove the |campaignbox= parameter and instead transclude the campaignboxes directly onto the page, preview shows the lead section is rearranged as expected. This is especially vexing as the campaignboxes themselves are hidden on mobile, yet using the parameter does affect how the page is displayed.
Issue with coordinate templates and article previews
Hi, I have noticed that articles with coordinate templates at the top of the page are not displaying desktop mouse-hover previews correctly. MOS:ORDER suggests moving coordinate templates above DEFAULTSORT into the footer or as an infobox parameter. Here are some articles that are experiencing the problem: Shubenacadie Canal, Halifax Harbour and Cape May Canal. I am having these issues using Google Chrome and Safari browsers. 108.18.207.147 (talk) 20:08, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I do not see the same problem that the IP is describing, so it may be something in their set-up that needs to be corrected. The editor was doing mass edits, moving the coords from the top of pages to the bottom without having sought a consensus to do so, so I advised them to stop.In the larger picture, items on the editing page should generally be located (approximately) where they appear on the rendered page, so it makes little sense to put coordinates at the bottom of the page when they appear at the very top of the article (or in the infobox). MOS:ORDER -- which is, of course, a guideline and not policy -- should probably be changed. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:45, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Incidentally, the same issue regarding MOS:ORDER came up with respect to "Featured list", "Featured article" and "Good article". MOS:ORDER used to call for these to appear at the bottom of the editing page, and after I pointed out that this made no sense in respect to their position at the top of the rendered page, the recommended order was changed. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:51, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
The issue is legitimate and is the same issue described in this recent archive. Summary: A change was made to the coordinates module that page previews does not expect so it gets some empty content instead of a valid paragraph.
This table layout is unusual for a navbox, most of which use a horizontal list of officeholders, and {{Navbox}} is set up for that usage. My (ab)use of {{Navbox}} mostly works well enough, but some edge cases have been problematic.
The most intractable issue relates to constituencies with 9 seats, such as the former Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)#TDs (DCiN). In a 9-seater such as DCiN, that table is very wide. In the article Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)#TDs, the table adjusts itelf by wrapping names as needed, and thereby fits happily even on a relatively narrow screen.
However, when enclosed in {{Navbox}}, the names no longer wrap: see {{Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs}}. Even on my full-HD laptop, the uncollapsed navbox spills out the right of the article body area when viewed with the default WP:Vector 2022 skin, unless I set the zoom level unpleasantly low.
That's despite me setting the table with the CSS style white-space:normal !important. I have checked the source of the rendered HTML, and the white-space:normal !important is definitely there as intended. But it's not working, presumably overridden by some part of {{Navbox}}'s flurry of CSS classes.
However, despite my efforts, {{Dublin City North (Dáil constituency)/TDs/sandbox2}} is frustratingly just short of emulating the look-and feel of {{Navbox}}: the title bar is slightly wrong. When listed with other navboxes at the bottom of an article, that inconsistency is jarring: see e.g this test at Oscar Traynor.
I would like to inquire if there is a way to determine the total number of articles in a specific category, such as Category:Algeria. I am interested in knowing the overall count of articles. Riad Salih (talk) 13:58, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
So it is not possible to count all the articles related to Algeria. However, in the French Wikipedia for example, there is a method to estimate the number of articles, which is based on the presence of "the portal bar: Algeria" in the articles, since the portal is mandatory. Riad Salih (talk) 17:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I asked WP:AWB on its Make list tab. I selected Category (recursive) in the Source dropdown and then wrote Algeria in the Category text box and clicked Make list. After several hours, the list completed with 1,250,738 articles in the list. Filtering to remove duplicates returns a list of 534,430 articles.
@Trappist the monk Thank you for your effort, but logically it seems impossible for Algeria to have 534,430 articles related to it. This is because there are only around 14,000 articles in French Wikipedia and almost 10,000 in the Arabic version. Therefore, I suggest that we develop a new system to count articles related to a specific portal. This will make it easier to determine the number of articles related to a particular topic. Riad Salih (talk) 14:36, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Reflist not wrapping around Multiple images template or vice versa
For some reasons that I already debugged on but can't figured out, the reflist would overlay (not wrap around) the {{Multiple images}} near the end of the body when they are aligned right at Alstom Movia R151. I'm on Vector (2022) with full-width mode toggled, this doesn't happens for normal-width mode, and also doesn't happens when not using {{Multiple images}} such as with the older revision of the same article. I also tested using another browser without logging in (had to since my account has userscripts and css customization), but still same results. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)14:32, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
This is a sometimes-reality of floating content extending into columned lists (as are used by reflist and {{div col}}). I would suggest either lengthening the article, or if that is not possible, using a different kind of layout for the images such as a real gallery. (I might question the use of an image for which the caption is literally "Ditto", which is slang at best.) Izno (talk) 16:14, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Ah I see, I realigned the images back to left, and cutted it down, while removing the "Ditto", not sure why it's there. Thanks for the insights on how the templates work. —Paper9oll(🔔 • 📝)17:16, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Hi guys,
I'm coming from french wikipedia. I wonder how many categories do you have in your version of Wikipedia? Do you have any link like Petscan? (that I'm not able to make work actually..) Laszlo (talk) 11:39, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for that link. So do you have kind of 2,276,686 categories for 6,684,639 articles (meaning 1 category per 3 articles). Has there been any discussion about the usefulness of categories on English Wikipedia? Laszlo (talk) 06:44, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
@Laszlo This is more a question for WikiResearch or WMF Search Team. In addition to veteran desktop editors finding articles, many bots and search results are informed by article categories (along with local wiki links) to find what related/other relevant articles may be interesting for users. Some stuff could be better maintained by Wikidata but making categories multi lingual in a consistent way also brings d:Bonnie and Clyde problem ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 07:17, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (calendar).
MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Wikipedia doesn't have to create en-ca and en-gb subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides. [58]
The action=growthsetmentorstatus API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the action=growthmanagementorlist API now. [59]
Moving the sandbox page of an inactive user to his Wikipedia article.
Hello. As the title suggests, I want to know if there is a procedure, maybe via a request to have a very detailed and sourced sandbox page of a now inactive user moved to the corresponding Wikipedia article, while having it assigned as his contribution.
There is a possibility to do a history merge. However for Cao Cao, it appears to be a fork from about 2013 and developed separately from the article until 2018. The article has continued to have changes in that time and until now. So rather than history merge, which would make a history mess, it should have detailed checking to see what is an improvement and then selectively merge those sections by copy and paste. Attribution must be given. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
For the Cao Cao and Conquest of Wu by Jin's articles, from what I have read you could copy/paste the sandbox page to the Wikipedia article and the text everywhere would be greatly improved.Lds was a very active member of the concerned era community, his work was always solid and reliable. In these cases, the result would be better sourced and more detailed paragraphs. The Zhuge Liang's article is the one where I agree, some changes that should be kept have been made, such as the 4 subsections: Holding power as a regent, Economic reforms, Legal and moral reforms and Education and talents enrollment policy. After the operation has been completed. I would readd these previous information into the Appraisal and legacy section of the article. In any case, I could do the same for other information if I find them worth keeping thereafter. I will complete the request for history merge and redirect to our conversation for details. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheWayWeAllGo (talk • contribs) 11:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
There are more details in phab:T342121. Apparently they had switched some stuff around in one of the datacenters, and one of the datacenters came back with 1 of its 5 fibers not passing enough light and causing high packet loss. This fibre channel has been disabled. and everything should be normal again. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
vim extension
Couldn't find any vim extension/tool for editing Wikipedia (in browser). Is there any? Is it possible to make one on user level? YRhyre (talk) 18:00, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
How to manage table width without manual line breaks
I just reverted a change made to today's TFA, because it led to the table taking the full width of the screen. The editor who made the change said in their edit summary that the line breaks looked weird in mobile. Is there a way to make text in a cell like this flow so as not to force a wider table? That way presumably it would look good both in desktop and mobile. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:09, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
The table has a couple of accessibility issues (MOS:DONTHIDE and MOS:COLOR). I would remove the floating and smaller font size and put it in prose, possibly moving the note out of the table to normal prose. Nardog (talk) 23:29, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
MOS:COLOUR is addressed, I think, because all the information conveyed by colour is also conveyed in the text. MOS:COLOUR only requires "that colour is not the only method used". For DONTHIDE, I think the table is big enough that it interferes with readability, but I don't feel that strongly about it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:05, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Talk header too wide on Firefox
I'm using Waterfox on Linux, which should be about the same. {{Talk header}} displays way too wide, as shown in the screenshot to the right of the template's talk page. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:21, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, it's a combination of two factors: 1) that search box is too wide, and 2) we haven't transitioned message boxes to divs (yet). Izno (talk) 20:30, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Is there a way to fix it for now? Did anything change to trigger this? I know how it should look like, so either it's that I only recently started using this laptop, or something changed. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:34, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Nothing has changed recently, no. And no, there isn't really a way to fix it unless you shrink the size of the search bar. Izno (talk) 20:42, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
The template appears to set the width of the search box to "auto", which I think means that a width is not set. I do not see clear documentation about the default width at mw:Extension:InputBox when |type=fulltext, both of which the Search box template uses. If I'm reading the code and documentation correctly, that is. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:11, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Looks fine to me at Template talk:Talk header, which seems to be where you took your screenshot, on Firefox 115.0.2 on Linux (Debian). Tried with several different window sizes, mostly on Monobook but I also took a quick look using Vector and Vector 2022. Anomie⚔23:09, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
Weird. Yes that's where it was taken. Did you have full width enabled on Vector 2022? 'cuz the wide thing certainly won't show if every other banner was stretched to the same size. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:14, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't know what you mean by that. But I see your screenshot is 640 pixels wide, and I tried window widths both larger and smaller than that. Have you tried looking at the page with safemode enabled in case one of your scripts or gadgets is increasing the width of the search box? Anomie⚔12:10, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
"I'm using Waterfox on Linux, which should be about the same." That's a pretty big assumption.. Which version are you using ? G4, G5 ? The most likely candidates as always are either gadget/userscript modification, or a browser extension. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:52, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
User:Thinker78, not a quick way, but if you highlight the first cell of a row and tap the little triangle icon that shows up to the left of the table, you'll get row options like "move above" and "move below", which swap the highlighted row with the one immediately preceding or following it. Repeated sufficient times in the correct order, this will yield a table sorted how you want it. Folly Mox (talk) 05:04, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
No, this is not possible. Folly Mox's suggestion actually sorts the table in the wikitext according to the order of interest, which I do not think you want either. Izno (talk) 23:56, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Don't think that would be possible to implement. Once you would sort elements in VE, it would stay that way. VE is a WYSIWYG so when you see order there would be order on save... Unless maybe 🤔 done with grid, but that would be terrible to implement in a way that is usable. Nux (talk) 07:05, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
Which image is displayed in Mobile View?
Where the infobox has a collage of images, which one is chosen for display above the article to a reader on a mobile? There has been discussion of infobox image collages recently at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_geography#Ceremonial_county_infobox_images, and I will paste here now a question I have just raised there, on the grounds that someone here may know the answer, which I think is highly relevant to our discussion there.
Question Does anyone know how Mobile View selects the image to show as a full-width banner above the article, far more prominently than the infobox collage which is only seen if you opt to expand the infobox? For Lancashire it shows Clitheroe from row 2; for Cumbria, Derwentwater from the top; for Bedfordshire, Bedford, the 2nd image on top row; Surrey, Guildford from top;Leicestershire, National Forest from 2nd row. This seems random but there must be a rule somewhere which the display follows. That single displayed image is what creates an impression for a reader in mobile view, as an increasing number of readers will be. If we can understand which image becomes the banner, then we can choose it appropriately.
Any ideas? (I'm using Mobile View on an Android phone, Samsung A12, if that makes any difference - but typing now on a laptop, as editing that WP Talk page from my phone is infuriatingly impossible, as I keep forgetting: so I had to copy my carefully-composed reply into my sandbox, move from phone to laptop, and paste it back in. And they say that editors on mobiles are not considered to be some second class type of editor?) PamD22:54, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
should footnotes whose corresponding page(s) on another platform that were archived be changed?
while reading a page on Marie curie I wanted more information, so I opened footnote 48 and 49. the page that is opened from the main link gives a 404 article not found error, separate from the other link is the archived version. Should the links be changed so that they always open the archived page?
You can change the status of the link in the {{cite web}} citation by changing |url-status=live to |url-status=dead, which will then link the title to the archived version. I have made the changes with this edit. Is this what you wanted? — Jts1882 | talk17:13, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
In this particular case, AIP reorganized their history pages, breaking the URLs in the process. I've fixed them all in the Marie Curie article, but there may be others. Hqb (talk) 17:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Don't you love it when large sites change their pathing and don't implement a translate table :-) There are in excess of 400 entries that use AIP links with this specific pathing. It looks like each will need to be visited manually. Neils51 (talk) 09:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
Issue with PDF downloads
When I download an article as a pdf, sometimes an error page will appear when I hit download. A short time after that, it sometimes will go to another error message. This first started happening yesterday. It does not always happen and and I don't see any pattern for what causes the first or second error messages. My wifi connection is stable. I am using windows 10 pro, my browser is chrome version 114.0.5735.199 (Official Build) (64-bit). The first error message is:
This site can’t be reached The webpage at https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/pdf/Comanche–Mexico_Wars might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
ERR_INVALID_RESPONSE
The second error message is a black background with: {“type”:”https://mediawiki.org/wiki/HyperSwitch/errors/unkown_error”,”method”:”get”,”detail”:”upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. Reset reason: connection termination”, “uri”:”/en.wikipedia.org/v1/page/pdf/Comanche%280%93Mexico_Wars”}
I did my best to transcribe it, but because I couldn't upload the screenshot, I had to do this by hand, so the spaces were based on distances between letters and symbols, and the last part of the uri was hard to make out, so it may be slightly off. Khainelives (talk) 22:45, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
I saw an old discussion about wikipedia article to pdf and it said that it is using an in-browser tool, and that it is a HACK, thus it really does not work. .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 23:01, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
When viewing deleted pages in the main namespace, the "This page does not exist" notice with related logs is offset down, leaving an empty space at the top and causing the text to slightly get clipped by the below notice of Wikipedia not having an article with that name. This only seems to happens in the main namespace: this notice appears as normal in Draft, Category, and Wikipedia namespaces. It's only broken in the two Vector skins, working in Timeless or Monobook. Tested it on both Chrome and Firefox, the same on both.
I was asking because I do not in fact have a mental list of article titles that have been deleted in the past to draw examples from. I realise some people do, but most people will not. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:07, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh, in regards to safemode, I've tried disabling gadgets and it seems that the shortdesc helper causes this, rather than it being a Wikipedia-wide problem. Sorry, was foolish to not consider that. Seems like that's an already-reported issue. Randi🦋TalkContribs15:18, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
Good evening, I would like to point out that in most mobile browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc) the autoupdate/refresh option is active by default, which periodically deletes content written while editing a Wikipedia article. A function has tò be introduced that retrieves written content that has not yet been published, as it is already present for new topics opened on WP discussion pages 151.36.171.64 (talk) 18:09, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't know anything about the feasibility of this, but this would be very useful for myself as well. I've had it refresh on me even after having the page minimized for a minute or two and its very frustrating. :3 F4U (they/it) 19:25, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
You may both be interested in the upcoming edit-recovery feature that the Community Tech team (of which I'm a member) is working on at the moment. It should mean that any in-progress edit is saved between browser refreshes or even if you close the window and come back later. If you've got any ideas for how it should work, I'm all ears! :-) SamWilson09:30, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that's right, that's what I meant. The browser, while keeping a wikipedia page open to edit it, every many minutes reloads the entire page, losing what has been written. This happens on all Android mobiles.Thanks. 79.30.232.128 (talk) 19:28, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Just to correct terminology here. This is not a autorefresh. What people are describing is their computers or phones running out of memory, and the operating system closing down the browser (tabs) while the user goes off to do something else. When the user returns, the device reopens all the pages the user had open, but anything not saved within a page may be lost in that case. It also helps if ppl close some tabs/pages every once in while ;) A small reminder that problems like this are often in part caused by manufacturers cutting costs in areas where ppl have trouble identifying the result of that. Like, you can see the camera is making bad photos, but not having enough memory is much less noticeable to ppl so that’s where they cut cost. PS Sam, team should test what such refresh mean for session storage. Is it icicled ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:40, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I'm not sure what icicled means, but it sounds like it means 'persistent between browser restarts', and yep: we're going to use IndexedDB, which is long-lived (which means we're having to build in explicit clearing of it). This is a really good use case, that I'll make sure is highlighted in the project. SamWilson12:40, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Script that copies wikitext link for a comment or heading to clipboard
After reading this comment from KevinL, as I have no plans to use the Convenient Discussions script, I wrote my own user script that makes it easier to copy a wikitext link for a specific comment or heading to the clipboard. It uses the ID used by the mw:Talk pages project/Notifications feature, so the comment will be highlighted. For headings, it also allows you to use the usual ID used by the table of contents. If there is anyone who is interested in helping to test it, particularly if they have multiple gadgets or user scripts enabled that add items to any menu (portlet) on the page, I would appreciate it! For more details on the script, see User:isaacl/script/copy-comment-link-to-clipboard. isaacl (talk) 21:26, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Is there a way to style a row border for just one row in a table?
I don't see any different border-line on any part of isaaci's result. But I agree that using border-styling of the cells themselves is probably semantically better than inserting blank/filled spans of other cells. I find Izno's example to be visually overwhelming. I first see the lines, then the sets of table-rows, and the headers seem visually "separated" from all but the first set of table-rows. Might be better to make the intra-year separators less prominent (dashed?) rather than the inter-year separators more prominent. For those playing along at home, see Help:Table#Individual cell borders for border-formatting tricks and traps. DMacks (talk) 21:54, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Maybe a thicker border will show up? Here's an example with a 0.25em border width:
Honestly, the color probably just needs to be softened to some reasonable grey between Vector 22's border color and black; 2px otherwise seems reasonable. Alternatively, you can probably set the border-top-width to 2px and use the default color. Izno (talk) 23:27, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
The one difference I suggest is not hardcoding the border colour, so it will inherit it from the style for the table. In theory this could work better with different skins (and maybe a future dark mode), though this will depend on how the skin is coded. isaacl (talk) 21:55, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
I dropped the colour from the first one and changed it to a dashed line as Dmacks suggested. I'll think about which looks better. I also tried 1px dashed, thinking that if I'm trying dashed lines maybe the visual difference would be enough without the 2px, but that doesn't seem to have shown up. Any idea why? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:28, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
The table is using the "collapsing border model", where neighbouring borders are collapsed together. Thus when a border is defined by multiple neighbouring elements, such as a table cell and table row, the model has to resolve the conflict between them (see the border conflict resolution section in the CSS specification for more details). When the row border is set to 1px, it has the same width as the cell border, and the solid style of the cell border wins out over dashed style of the row border. isaacl (talk) 22:58, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I looked at that one first, followed the link at the bottom to the current draft, found the corresponding section, and saw that it had the same content, so I just linked to the draft. The point wasn't really the details, but that Mike's change didn't appear due to how it interacted with the cell borders. isaacl (talk) 02:11, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
--QuickQuokka [talk • contribs] 20:46, 31 May 2023 (UTC).
Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [3]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
Resolved
Already done, the phabricator ticket has been closed as solved. Alexcalamaro (talk) 04:40, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace 
Fixed Special:Diff/1160001554 in Template:Monthly archive list. —andrybak (talk) 21:00, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Done DMacks (talk) 08:24, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Not done @Ladsgroup: where are these hits being logged? I added a test link to the new form, the ticket notes suggest it is being handled by AbuseFilter, however when I made an attempt to violate the rule and was stopped, I did not generate an abuselog hit, or a spamblacklist log hit. Also what message is being used to generate 
Mathglot (talk) 05:53, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
![[24]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Visual_editor_toolbar_search_feature.png){kind=link}
