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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 126

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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User talk histmerge

Could some kind (and brave) admin histmerge User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive 8 to User talk:Rich Farmbrough, please? The contents of User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive 8 should be kept there, by cut and paste as needed. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:12, 24 April 2014 (UTC).

Due to the number of revisions, this would have to be handled by a steward. –xenotalk 00:47, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
No it wouldn't; I've just done it like so. Graham87 08:06, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Many many thanks! And yes Xeno, a lot of those old limits have gone. Turns out User:SmackBot could have been renamed, which would have been nice. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:28, 25 April 2014 (UTC).
The limit is still there, I just was going in the other direction and for some reason didn't think to do it the other way around. :) –xenotalk 02:59, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Lowercase Sigma Bot

Does this bot understand the old style date stamps? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:21, 24 April 2014 (UTC).

Assuming that you mean the timestamps in the style of this thread, then the MiszaBots could certainly handle it, but I don't know Python so I can't tell from Lowercase sigmabot III's source code how it would react to them. Σ, could you answer this question one way or another? Graham87 07:54, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
I guess I can find the answer empirically.   All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:30, 25 April 2014 (UTC).

How do I create a search box

How do I create a search box in my user space to search for articles within my user space? Valoem talk contrib 16:00, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

How about {{search box}}? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:15, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, how do I search for everything on Wiki including all user spaces and Wiki back pages? Valoem talk contrib 16:34, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
There is only one User space; but if you mean "all user pages", you would use {{search box|root=User:|noslash=yes}}. What do you mean by "Wiki back pages"? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:10, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
You might want to change your defaults in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-searchoptions. It's one of the first preference changes I make, whenever I restore-to-default, or create an account on a new wiki. –Quiddity (talk) 17:29, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Wow! Thanks I've been looking for that. Valoem talk contrib 17:38, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

API error

Hello. I probably could RTFM on my own given enough time, but I work 50 hours a week, so, to be blunt, I don't feel like it, and I would like my bot to stop failing.

It appears the Mediawiki API has undergone a change and no longer accepts certain parameters.

I am getting this error message on Commons: 

API Error...

Code: rcbadtimestamp_rcstart
Text: Invalid value '20140421185257|123445826' for timestamp parameter rcstart

Could someone please point me to documentation on this change so that I can fix it with as little time effort as possible? Thanks. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 00:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Nevermind, I figured it out. I was apparently taking advantage of a "bug" in the way that Mediawiki processes its queries. When the bug got fixed, my code broke. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 03:22, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Public log error?

Hey all - I was checking out my public logs, and noticed a series of odd logs, all from around January 29, 2014. Here are a few examples:

01:28, February 3, 2014 SuperHamster (talk | contribs) noaction
20:52, January 29, 2014 SuperHamster (talk | contribs) inappropriate
20:52, January 29, 2014 SuperHamster (talk | contribs) hide (Attack)
20:52, January 29, 2014 SuperHamster (talk | contribs) inappropriate
20:51, January 29, 2014 SuperHamster (talk | contribs) inappropriate

Any idea what these may be from? I was thinking it may be the result of the article I performed the action on being deleted, or from having the edits hidden, but I'm not sure. Thanks, ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 07:37, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

That looks like what's left of Article Feedback Tool logs. Novusuna talk 07:45, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Ah, that makes sense. Must be it. Thanks, ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 07:51, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Everything has gone italic

...since I restarted just now (the first time for a while). What's happened - it's horrible? This is not the new font introduced recently - all text displays as italic. Johnbod (talk) 13:12, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Ok, it's not WP, but my browser (Firefox). All the same, does anyone know how to stop it? It's not what my "options" have set up. Johnbod (talk) 13:22, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
@Johnbod: What is your default font? Is it only broken on WP? πr2 (t • c) 02:03, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
On the way to being sorted thanks - something had messed with my Windows fonts - this was helpful. Johnbod (talk) 02:46, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Minor edits

Is there any specific reason that this checkbox is disabled for IP editors? No opinion on whether it should be or not, I'm just curious because I'm so used to seeing it there. 206.117.89.4 (talk) 09:53, 24 April 2014 (UTC) (User:Ansh666)

Help:Minor edit says: "Users who are not logged in to Wikipedia are not permitted to mark changes as minor because of the potential for vandalism. The ability to mark changes as minor is one of many reasons to register." It has been there since the page creation in 2004. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:53, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Ah, then I'm just blind. Many thanks. 206.117.88.5 (talk) 16:37, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

The whole minor edit thing seems to me expendable. It's not clear to me that anybody uses or cares about this feature. And it's often subjective when to use it. It's never really helped me with monitoring my watchlist either... I still end up checking the edit to make sure it's kosher. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:55, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Minor edits were disabled for anonymous users in January 2003 after this discussion (which focused on bot edits and RecentChanges). I found this out by following the links from the first version of Wikipedia:Minor edit (note that the actual links are broken due to the subsequent re-organization of the mailing list archives). Graham87 09:50, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for finding that. I've added a footnote to Help:Minor edit. From that disussion the change was obviously made as the bot flag had yet to exist. I think we're actually long overdue a discussion of whether the feature should be re-enabled. Perhaps I should start an RfC on the topic? — Scott • talk 14:26, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

How do I display the basic Latin alphabet after messing with language settings?

On my browser, this: "èdè Yorùbá" is a long blank. I can't see text formatted for a lot of languages ever since I turned on automatic font downloading to display Burmese. I turned it off, and can no longer see Burmese, but the other languages haven't come back. Most of my work here is on languages. How do I get normal display back? I'm on MS7 and FF28. — kwami (talk) 17:04, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Try clearing your cookies and resetting your cache if all else fails. πr2 (t • c) 19:16, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, but no dice.
I even clicked 'random article' a few times until I got to Innsbruck Cathedral, a page I'm sure I've never been to before, and the word 'Boarisch' (Bavarian) in the iw links is another long blank. (I can see it now that I've pasted it here, since it's not formatted.) — kwami (talk) 21:15, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Maybe you should ask the folks at MediaWiki who control this gadget. Interestingly, the talk page there reveals that if you use the language selector the pages you visit are being logged on a WMF server that some 70 people can access. So much for anonymous surfing without editing. De728631 (talk) 21:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Not a lot of traffic there, but hopefully it won't take them long to respond. They say it's 'safe' to enable, and maybe it is, but it seems unlikely to be coincidence. — kwami (talk) 23:29, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
I noticed "headings still use custom serif fonts" in the comment below. Could that have anything to do with the fact that I can sometimes read the regular text but not the headings? — kwami (talk) 01:47, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

History of image undeletion

In the course of recently investigating ColonelHenry's sockpuppet activities, I took a look at a deleted file that he had uploaded way back in 2005. The file itself wasn't available, just the text revisions that had been associated with it. So, my question is, when did deleted files themselves start being kept by our system, or is it the case that they always were and at some point the deletion archive got cleared out? — Scott • talk 13:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Deleted files began to be stored on Wikipedia in June 2006. Graham87 07:45, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes, 16 June 2006 between the files deleted 03:35 and 03:37 at [1]. File:Masha Allen.jpg is stored and File:Image0608-2020(TV41).jpg is not. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:46, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Inconsistent byte counts

According to the history of Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 April 27 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), the oldest and the third-oldest revisions have different lengths, but they are identical (as they should be given the latter was a revert to the former). Is MediaWiki having difficulty counting bytes? --NYKevin 03:28, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

I've noticed this before, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 124#Discrepancy in page size calculation. AFAICT, the size difference calc on the watchlist is correct, but that on the history and contribs are wrong. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:28, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

WikiChecker Problem

I'm not sure if this problem can be dealt with, here, as the problem is off-site. However, I expect that somebody can bring it to the attention of the relevant person, who I've already attempted to contact via email. http://en.wikichecker.com/user/ seems to have the same problem it has had in the past. That is, it isn't able to perform an analysis of anything more than the most recent 500 edits, at the moment. The problem has been in existence for at least the last day or so. EP111 (talk) 10:10, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

A beta option without option to start a response

I have chosen beta option "Nearby Pages" (the coord drop thing). When I tried to respond, there was no button to "start new section on talk page" [2]. (Only half cynically: is that part of the beta too?) -DePiep (talk) 22:11, 23 April 2014 (UTC) To be clear: I am not asking what the new route is. I am asking: why is it not there? -DePiep (talk) 22:12, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

That is one of only two talk pages where Flow is enabled (the anticipated successor to Liquid Threads). — Edokter (talk) — 23:48, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Hi DePiep,
On that page, you should see a box that says "Start a new topic" in light gray (or New topic if you're not using English on that site). It appears after the small note that says "Note: this page is using Flow; to give feedback on Flow, please use the Flow talk page" and before the big headline "What can we do to make the next version even more awesome?" If you're not seeing it (whether that's because there's nothing there or because the light gray text is impossible to read), then please let User:Quiddity (WMF) know. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Now I see that box. It is very light indeed (in my current screen setting). Thanks. -DePiep (talk) 18:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
@DePiep: There's a bug filed about the text being unreadable, T61933. Matma Rex talk 18:25, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Bugzilla and mw are knowing. OK for me. Of course, my screen has a lighter setting in general general. But I have not met at any site missing a button/box I was looking for, this screen. If I can help with providing details or settings, please ask. -DePiep (talk) 21:27, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-18

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
  • You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [3]

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [4]
  • VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [5]
  • VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.

Future software changes

  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome. [6]
  • The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [7]
  • CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [8] [9]
  • You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome. [10]

Problems

  • For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [11] [12]
  • On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [13] [14]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Page stats

This may be related to multiple issues.

  • Slow loading, to not loading at all, on Wikimedia pages - includes English and other languages, Commons, etc. Been going on for days, and when it happens, I just don't bother with Wikipedia for a few hours. It hasn't happened on my end today (yet), but it might be part of a larger picture.
  • Stats noticeably down beginning April 18. Affects not only Henrik's stats, but also Live View Stats. I noticed it on a small page, so yesterday I accessed that page over 100 times to test it. Henrik's stats says it had 4 views only. More telling is the main page stats since April 18. Henrik's count on Main Page. If you go to Wiki View Stats at Labs and run the search, it also shows steep decline.

The issues might be related. Is anyone looking into this? — Maile (talk) 14:31, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

For investigating this, most browsers provide statistics (under "Developer Tools") which elements take how many milliseconds to load. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 06:33, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 125#(Why) is Wikipedia slow?, both of my posts. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:55, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
OK, you've both provided some insight to the loading time. However, a look at the Main Page article traffic statistics (stats) have had a significant drop since April 18 and have remained low. Main Page is the sample page for stats. Probably something wrong with the dump, or however it works these days. We have an overall article traffic statistics reporting problem on Wikipedia. — Maile (talk) 11:50, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Tabs overlapping with page title on file pages

 

I'm getting an error, apparently introduced by the addition of a "view on Wikimedia Commons" and the change of the "edit" tab to "edit local description". The edit tabs and other tabs are hanging over the file name, as seen in the screenshot. Without Twinkle it works, but for me (and possibly others) losing Twinkle is a no go. I'm using Windows 7, 1024*800, Google Chrome. Is it possible to change the interface so the tabs don't take up so much room and cover file names? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:47, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

The tabs are supposed to fold up in the down-arrow tab and not move down a line. They are awfully wide. You can try changing them to "Commons" and "Edit" with this in your common JavaScript:
importScript('User:PrimeHunter/Image tabs.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Image tabs.js]]
PrimeHunter (talk) 08:11, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
"Supposed to".... but they aren't. Worth filing a bug report? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:27, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Twinkle prevent collapsing tabs, so you may want to bring it up there. — Edokter (talk) — 09:50, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, this looks like a problem with Twinkle's interaction with the interface, not Media Viewer itself. I think if this can be fixed it's on the Twinkle end. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

When multiple P41 values exist, how to retrieve the correct one

When using {{#property:p41}} in a template or on a page, it returns the name of the flag image of a country/state/..., but in the case of country United States it returns:
Flag of the United States.svg, US flag 49 stars.svg, US flag 48 stars.svg
Three file names! In this case {{#ifexist:media:{{#property:p41}}|[[File:{{#property:p41}}{{!}}35px{{!}}]]}} has a false condition and does not show a flag image. A difference with other countries (and other geographicals) is the presence of a start date and an end date. So to solve my problem, I need to access the one with the highest start date or the one witout an end date in case of multiple values for P41. But I also need to get the ones that have no start/end date in case of a single value for p41. What can I do? --FredTC (talk) 14:55, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I tried to find an answer but couldn't. As you figured out, it's caused by the multiple values in the "flag image" field of wikidata:Q30. I see you were sent here from Wikipedia:Help desk. Sorry to keep sending you around but it's a Wikidata feature so people at wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat probably know more if you don't get an answer here. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:19, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I copied this text to Wikidata. --FredTC (talk) 12:11, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

How to simulate section headers in documentation?

In the template:Requested move documentation, I give some examples which create section titles. I want Requested move and Suggested move to look like real section headers, but to not be included in the table of contents for the documentation. How can I get the "look and feel" of <h2> tags, including the font-du-jour for section headers–whatever that is–and the underscore line below the section title that runs across the window–but not include them in the TOC? I'm aware that there is a template:TOC limit which allows editors to not show sections below a certain level, but in this case, I want to not show level 2 headers, while continuing to show all levels below level 2. – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:53, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Use {{fake heading}}. And I need to check the styling given the recent changes. --  Gadget850 talk 18:04, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! Yes, the styling needs updated. There must be someplace where the styling for headers is specified, and this text from the "fake" template needs to be updated to match that. Right now it's too obvious that it's fake.
<div style="color: black; background: none; margin: 0; overflow: hidden; padding-top: .5em; padding-bottom: .17em; {{#switch: {{{sub|}}}
  | 2 = font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: .6em; border-bottom: 1px solid #aaa; page-break-after: avoid;
  | 3 = font-size: 132%; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: .3em; page-break-after: avoid;
  | 4 = font-size: 116%; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: .3em; page-break-after: avoid;
  | 5 = font-size: 105%; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: .3em; page-break-after: avoid;
  | 6 = font-size: 100%; font-weight: bold; page-break-after: avoid;
There is too much whitespace in level 2 headings between the text and the thin line below the text. Can we just transclude the specs from the "real" headings? Where are the real header specs? Wbm1058 (talk) 21:09, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
@Wbm1058 and Gadget850: I used Firebug to update the {{fake heading}} CSS, so hopefully it should be usable now. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:04, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks- got involved in an RLI. --  Gadget850 talk 13:26, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

HTML <tag>s and section anchors

Using potentially-valid markup in section titles causes the direct links shown on history and diff pages to fail, since they filter out the markup during processing... The TOC links still work, probably because they're handled differently. Specific example would be this section, which generates an anchor name of "HTML_.3Ctag.3Es_and_section_anchors" (and the text within the TOC is correctly displayed as "HTML <tag>s and section anchors"), but the links from history and/or diff pages related to this section will be to "HTML_s_and_section_anchors", with a text of "HTML s and section anchors". I tried to search at bugzilla, but will not report myself since i'm not very confident in my ability to spot if this issues is already known there, within the tens of potential results my search returned. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 11:03, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

This sounds like T4831, an old one. Matma Rex talk 11:29, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I think T7019 (Fix fragment identifiers in links to sections) might be a better fit, but OTOH newer bugs like T17668 (RESOLVED DUPLICATE - Section links in watchlists dont work for headings with curly brackets) are marked as duplicates of T4831 (Links in autogenerated summary in page histories may point to wrong section or to nowhere), which you've nominated, and not of 5019... Guess i'll just add myself to both CC lists, and continue from these two. Thanks again. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 12:10, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Spammy default notification settings

 
Default settings

These settings seem rather spammy - they are from a new unused account. Can we/should we make them less spammy? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 08:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC).

Eh, I think they're fine as is. Some of the email notifications that aren't time sensitive may not be necessary (such as 'thanks'), but in the end, I think it's better for new users to be properly notified and then given the option to reduce their notifications, than to be under-notified and not be aware of our notification features. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 08:15, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
The one I really like is the edit revert.   There is are a particular user or two who used to delight in reverting me without informing me. But I still think its spammy. When I go to sign up for a website the two things that make me not want to are if I think I'll get email, and if they ask for a credit card. Certainly have notification AND email seems very odd. Should we facebook them too? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 08:49, 25 April 2014 (UTC).
It does sound spammy to me but are you sure new accounts get this? When I select "Restore all default settings (in all sections)" in preferences of an old account with email enabled, there are no ticks at email notifications. Does that mean it remembers what the default was when the account was created or the feature was introduced (the account is older than notifications) and doesn't go to the current default for new accounts? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes I created a new account specifically to address this, and to support a little humour on WP:BOTREQ. It appears that humour is not appreciated by the dispassionate, but with a little luck the screen-shot will at least serve its purpose. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:34, 28 April 2014 (UTC).
@Rich Farmbrough and PrimeHunter: I was investigating this a few days ago, and found bugzilla:47895 plus details at mw:Echo/Feature requirements#Defaults by User Group, which together should explain everything. (Surface-details: Yes, "new accounts" vs "existing accounts" get different defaults, but clicking "restore all prefs" will reset either to the "existing accounts" setting. It made sense at the time of Echo's launch, but I think it was intended to be re-examined once we'd had some months to get used to the feature as a whole.) I'll link that bug thread to here - Please discuss! –Quiddity (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. Before my first post I also autocreated the old account at a Wiki it hadn't visited before to see the defaults and I got no mail settings. bugzilla:47895 explains that is always the case. You only get mail settings at the wiki where the account was originally created. This is confusing and the mail settings still sound inappropriate regardless who they affect. "Talk page message" is the only setting where default mail seems OK to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:55, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Note: I believe the idea behind different defaults was: to avoid overwhelming us powerusers with too many notification emails, but at the same time to give maximum feedback and retention-y-ness [notaword] to new-editors. Any changes we make, ought to keep that balance in mind. –Quiddity (talk) 19:19, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Whitespace cleanup in PRE data?

Looking at the first "image" in the Fidonet article, I can't figure out why there is so much whitespace on the right. Can someone take a quick look? Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:51, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

<pre> stands for preformatted, which implies no subsequent modification.
P.S.: trailing whitespace is common in ASCII art.
— Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 20:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
There is no trailing whitespace in the source. The box would be more narrow if wasn't in the same div as the image below. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:51, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Actually, there is no trailing whitespace in the rendering either. There is weird selection issue though: if I select text from top to bottom, selection looks like the lines are complimented with whitespace, but reverse selection direction reveals that there is no trailing whitespace. FWIW here is what I get using curl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidonet | sed 's/$/$/' (sed command appends "$" to the end of every line):
$
                   __$
                  /  \$
                 /|oo \$
                (_|  /_)$
                 _`@/_ \    _$
                |     | \   \\$
                | (*) |  \   )) $
   ______       |__U__| /  \//$
  / FIDO \       _//|| _\   /$
 (________)     (_/(_|(____/$
(c) John Madil$
$
— Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 22:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Praise be to User:Edokter, Defeater of the Recalcitrant Box! Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:47, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I need "width=262" to see the tail properly. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 03:29, 29 April 2014 (UTC).

Interchanging rows and columns of MediaWiki tables

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23308920/template-to-transform-transpose-a-table-columns-rows

Does anyone know of a good Wikipedia template or module that could be used to transpose a MediaWiki-generated table? TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 11:08, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

This script can do transformations: http://jsfiddle.net/4BJKa/32/, this works alright but: (1) The table won't be sortable anymore, (2) some of the formatting, just style is lost. Jaeol (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 11:15, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

To determine the best solution for this really needs more context. For exmple Wikia has Java available, we have Lua, other sites might have only Javascript or template coding. More important are questions like: Is this a one off? Are the data entries fairly static? Who will be maintaining the table? Does the transpose veriosn need to stay in sync with the pre-transpose version? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 04:25, 29 April 2014 (UTC).

Finding dead links in a batch of articles

Dear technical experts: Some time ago the Canadian Encyclopedia reorganized its article URLs, leaving thousands of Wikipedia articles about Canadian topics with dead links. Later they created redirects for some of their old links, but there are still many that need repair. I have made a list of pages with these links here: User:Anne Delong/CE links needing update. An explanation of what caused the problem is here: Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board#Canadian Encyclopedia. I'd like to shorten my list by removing ones that are already working, and it would also be handy to separate out those that could be fixed automatically in case someone creates a bot, so that I can concentrate on fixing any remaining ones. Oh, and it would be nice to have a bot... Does anyone have any suggestions? I was thinking, perhaps, that there might be an existing tool that could be given a batch of article names and report any 404 errors. Then articles with no such errors could be removed from the list. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

After checking only one of the articles listed on User:Anne Delong/CE links needing update, the change appears to be to build the new URL from the link/citation title (in lowercase and substitute "-" for " "). It appears that this could be done with AWB and just regular expressions, at least for a significant percentage of the links. Given that there are only about 2,900 pages in your list and that this is a one-off change it may be easier to make theses changes semi-automatically with AWB than to have a bot do it (which requires going through the bot approval process). You might have some success in getting these changes made if you make a request at WP:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. Alternately, you could request access to AWB and use it yourself. On the other hand, given the high probability that your RfA will be approved, asking for AWB access at this point would be a bit redundant as you will automatically have access to AWB once you are an admin.
It would probably be a good idea to also perform a database scan to see if there are any additional pages which link there using the old URL syntax. — Makyen (talk) 10:21, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I will wait and investigate this more later. I made the original list by using an external links search HERE, copying the result into a word processor, and making creative use of search-and-replace. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:42, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

This is may be non-trivial, and hence may be worth a bot request. (Note bot requests are often answered by people doing a quick AWB job, or who already have a bot for a specific task.)

For example in Elk

already redirects to:

It would be possible to skip these, if desired.

OTOH Roch Castonguay has a link to Jean Marc Dalpé,

but neither

nor

work

One has to use

In other words, lower case, spaces to hyphens, remove diacritics.

All this can be done with AWB, but it is tricky, whereas with the right libraries it is a cinch in perl or python.

Also the bot should check that the targets are not 404s themselves.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 04:11, 29 April 2014 (UTC).

Font

A large majority of people above (78%, as I write) want the old fonts restored. Why has this not been done, and when is it going to be done? 86.179.2.148 (talk) 19:39, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

You should ask the responsible WMF employees. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:43, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
I am. I mean ... I am asking whoever's responsiblity it is. Is this not the correct place? If not, where should I raise it? 86.179.2.148 (talk) 19:56, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
It has been done, you're reading this in your system default sens-serif font (although the headings still use custom serif fonts). Text styling changes other than the font itself were also kept. The fact that no one noticed, even though this was mentioned in tech news when it was done, only highlights the incompetence of the voters here and the dubiousness of reasons most of them must have had for voting the way they did. Matma Rex talk 20:38, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
The most noticeable differences for me are that there is too much space between lines, and that the heading font looks to come from a completely different design scheme than the body font. As far as I can see, neither of those things has changed. 86.171.42.197 (talk) 12:00, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Best place is mw:Talk:Typography_refresh. For 78% I'd appreciate a reference, plus if we talk about 78% out of 100 people or out of 1 million people. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 06:41, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
78% is 143 of the 183 who posted above in the support or oppose section at #Font size and style. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:38, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
I counted up the responses to the blog post and got 50 against vs 3 for ration there. Also note that a lot (some?) of the votes at the Meta discussion were opposing the poll, but from people who did not like the typography refresh. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 03:45, 29 April 2014 (UTC).

inline progress-box template?

Is there any chance that a template similar to {{composition bar}} could exist, that would work inline? I know <div>s are block-level elements, but are div's the only way to code this functionality? (Hmm, now that i've asked this "out loud", i remember there was once a way to do something like this using images... Is it still around somewhere?) -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 05:20, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

It needs to be a <div>...</div> because you need to be able to force the width using the width: property, something that can't be done with a <span>...</span>. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:30, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Or use inline-block.
— Edokter (talk) — 16:51, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Edokter, that did the trick! :D Fwiw, the result is at ro:Format:Proporție2. (I think using images could've also worked, if only WikiMedia would allow changing their aspect-ratio...) -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 14:07, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Introducing Media Viewer

 
Media Viewer lets you browse larger images on Wikipedia.

Greetings! You're invited to try out Media Viewer, a new tool that aims to improve the viewing experience on Wikipedia and its sister sites.

This multimedia browser displays images in larger size and with less clutter, providing a more immersive user experience, as described here. It was developed in collaboration with many community members around the world -- including over 12,000 beta users here on English Wikipedia, who have been testing it since November 2013. The current plan is to release this tool gradually in coming weeks: it is already enabled by default on a dozen pilot sites, and will be deployed more widely throughout May, as described in this release plan.

Can you share your feedback about this tool, to help address any critical issues before its release on the English Wikipedia? To try it out, please log in and click on the small 'Beta' link next to 'Preferences' in your personal menu. Then check the box next to 'Media Viewer' in the Beta Features section of your user preferences — and click 'Save'. You can now click on any thumbnail image on this site to see it in larger size in the Media Viewer. For more info, check out these testing tips or this Help page.

Once you've tried the tool, please share your feedback in this discussion, to help improve this feature. You're also welcome to take this quick survey -- or join this in-depth discussion on MediaWiki.org, if you prefer. Thanks for sharing your insights! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Template:Cite EU law

I've been trying to get it to display the right URL using its parameters, but so far to no avail. I want it to point to http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2014.126.01.0055.01.ENG, but instead it points to http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ.L_.2014.126.01.0055.01.ENG. Am I doing something wrong, or does the template need to be updated? It Is Me Here t / c 10:57, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The base URL http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri= is set in {{EUR-Lex link}}. It has no talk page; and nor does {{Cite EU law}}. We could ask TimR (talk · contribs) who wrote both of these almost five years ago; but he doesn't edit very often. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:13, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
The old url [15] says: "EUR-Lex changed recently. The page you are looking for was moved or doesn't exist anymore." The current url rules are at [16]. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:EUR-Lex link only shows 7 articles so a complete test is practical. I will examine it. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:14, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
This is messier than expected. All their own examples at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/help/faq/linking.html are broken. Each one gives Page Not Found and a link saying "How to link to us", going back to the page you came from! All old uses of {{EUR-Lex link}} actually work, but if I change the url structure to make your case work then the old ones break, so the only advice I can give now is that if Template:Cite EU law doesn't work for your case then avoid using it. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:19, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
Thank-you very much for looking into this. Since you clearly understand the technical situation better than I do, could you possibly e-mail their webmaster and explain what is going on, so that maybe they'll fix things at their end? It Is Me Here t / c 13:29, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
The problem at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/help/faq/linking.html is apparently only that the page uses relative links incorrectly and inserts content/help/faq/ when a link is clicked. I will tell them. The displayed links work if the url is copy-pasted intead of clicked. But that still doesn't help us because there are at least two url schemes. Our old links start http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=. These links still work but I haven't found a replacement using the new url scheme which starts http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content, and varies after that. I have made an ugly fix where a url scheme or an actual url can be specified in {{Cite EU law}}. The default makes our old links work so those articles don't have to be edited. In [17] I have fixed your case with eurlexscheme=uriserv which is currently the only supported value and only works in some cases. If it fails then an actual url (to any website) can be given with a url parameter. I have updated [18] the documentation of {{Cite EU law}}. The old documentation has been completely false since most parameters were removed and a title parameter added the same day the template was created in 2009.[19] PrimeHunter (talk) 15:57, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Invitation for feedback regarding redirect exceptions

Please see: talk:Double redirects#Some double redirects are good

--Kevjonesin (talk) 14:31, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Portal:Free software

Can someone have a look at Portal:Free software and work out why it renders as it does with all the html showing. Thanks. Nthep (talk) 22:19, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I fixed it here. All the <'s and >'s were replaced with the literal symbols, so there weren't any actual html tags to parse. Chris857 (talk) 22:26, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Please comment on wrapping all non-contextual elements to <aside> tag

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T66477
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T65446

See my proposal first. I mean wrapping it to <aside> element, that's a new element in HTML5 and a recommendation. It is used to content no directly connected to text, like website navigation or message boxes. See its specification on https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/aside

I think we should done it because for example Google produces in its search results a print of Cleanup templates instead of article contents. These templates just don't belong to articles themselves. --Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 11:59, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

I have no problem with that, as long as the aside is used inside the table. The message boxes are still highly dependent on table layout rules, which IE6 and IE7 don't support. (and it doesn't degrade nicely without it). I suggest you test it out in the template's sandbox. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:17, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
I would to implement this but I can't, I'm newbie in Lua. Besides, I think we should start rewriting message boxes to don't use HTML tables, it causes many problems (a good article on it). Why should aside be used inside the message box? --Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 14:22, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
That article in principal is right, but due to the unfortunate fact that IE6 and IE7 are still used, in this specific case, it is totally pointless. Believe me, we already tried way back then to make it work without HTML tables, it's just not possible without seriously hampering readability of pages in IE6 and IE7. We tried both inline and block layouts, but the desired behavior of the messages is only possible with table-layout. And IE6 and IE7 simply have no way to apply table layout to elements that are not tables. I'd like nothing more then for it to be converted, but we simply need to hold out a bit longer for the full and wholly demise of IE6 and IE7. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:50, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
@TheDJ: But why should aside be used inside the message box? We should simply wrap this table in the <aside> tag. It should look like as follows:
<aside>
--Our fancy MessageBox here--
</aside>

--Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 07:57, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Email Fail

I recently had to totally reinstall on my computer. No big deal - an opportunity to strip out two years of redundant stuff - but when I went to sign back in to Wikipedia I had forgotten my password - easily done as I am permanently logged in. So I simply requested a reset and awaited the confirmation email - twice - didn't arrive. I know which email acc thats registered with wikipedia as I keep a wiki folder there. So I created a second wikipedia account - this one - (markdask1, my original being markdask) - and emailed myself at User:markdask. I'm getting a confirmatory copy at my designated gmail account as expected but nothing in my markdask email account. I believe the prob has arisen since I recently installed Thunderbird - which kinda fuked things a little, and then uninstalled it. Could someone go on User:markdask and email me please? Its like all email from that page is vanishing, and I cannot log in to address the issue!

Thanks Markdask1 (talk) 01:22, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Did you check your spam folder in the gmail web interface ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:21, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. My email foe markdask is msn.com and I've searched everywhere for recent wikipedia mail. I am using gmail for this, (markdask1) account and am receiving the standard copy emails there fine. Its just msn aint receiving wikipedia mail - V frustrating. Markdask1 (talk) 01:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Have a look higher up this page at the section called "Wikipedia email not working when I send but works when others send to me", there are other pages where email problems have been reported too. Not sure if anything is being done about it. - X201 (talk) 08:28, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

The Yahoo issue at #Wikipedia email not working when I send but works when others send to me shouldn't affect password resets. They have wiki wikimedia.org as sender address and not a stored user mail address. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:53, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Ty people but no dice. Can someone go on User:markdask and try emailing me from there please? Markdask1 (talk) 01:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
Sent a test email.—cyberpower ChatOnline 02:10, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Cyber - didn't arrive - something is diverting my wikimail - mmmmph :( Markdask1 (talk) 07:59, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Link to a section in a Wikipedia article

Why does this hash sign system no longer work?

"Linking to sections: A hash sign (#) followed by the appropriate heading will lead to a relevant part of a page. For example, Apostrophe#Use in non-English names links to a particular section of the article Apostrophe."

HowardMorland (talk) 18:37, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, it does seem to work now. HowardMorland (talk) 18:41, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
The only times I've known the section linking to fail are 1) the linked section doesn't actually exist in the target and 2) opening the #link in a new tab on some versions of Internet Explorer. Chris857 (talk) 18:42, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
I often experience that it's imnprecise, mainly if the page has collapsing or expanding parts before the anchor. It's your browser which calculates how far down to go. If the page changes size after this calculation then you can end up in the wrong place. Clicking in the browser address bar and pressing Enter may fix it. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:48, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
Section linking may also fail if the section headings in the article are not unique. For non-IE browsers, it will fail if the capitalisation of the link is different from that of the section heading. If the anchor is inside a collapsible section, and that section is also collapsed, the link may again fail. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:16, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
MediaWiki automatically adds numbers to identical section headings so the anchors become different (it's possible to fool this system with section headings "Foo", "Foo" and "Foo 2" where MediaWiki changes the second to "Foo 2" so it conflicts with the third). See for example User talk:PrimeHunter/Archive 1#Thanks 13. The TOC automatically links to the right number, but the little arrow in automatic section edit summaries does not add a number so the link in page histories, diffs and so on goes to the first section with that title. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:26, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
HowardMorland,
What web browser are you using? I've had a problem with this in Safari for a while, but only if the page name was a redirect. For example, w:de:Spezial:Einstellungen#mw-prefsection-betafeatures takes me to the Beta Features page, but w:de:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, which gets automagically translated, takes me to just w:de:Spezial:Einstellungen—the first section of Special:Preferences, instead of the Beta Features section. (All "Special" commands can be used in English at any WMF site, which is very handy if you need to check recent changes or find the logs for something.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Template:Dts error

I've found a sorting error in {{Dts}} and I'm not sure how to go about fixing or working around it. When inputting the following: {{Dts|format=dmy|2000|February|1}}, the date should sort as 02000-02-01-0000. However, it sorts as 02000-03-01-0000. To demonstrate, I've created a sortable table with a February day number that is greater than a March day number. The result is that February appears after March when the table is sorted.

Date
1 January 2000
2 February 2000
1 March 2000
1 April 2000

Any ideas? – Zntrip 23:44, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I've followed it down one or two steps: down in Template:Dts/outdmy2, {{#time:m|January}}, {{#time:m|February}}, {{#time:m|March}} produces 01, 02, 03. I suspect that the "February" calculation is implicitly using the current day of the month, 30, and getting confused because February doesn't have 30 days. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
That does seem to be the issue. Today, {{#time:c|February}} produces 2014-03-02T00:00:00+00:00. I tried simply adding 1 before the month, but then I realised that wouldn't work if you input the month as a number (the result is an "invalid time" error). So I reverted myself. It might be easier to fix in Lua, though. There's a module at Module:Dts that needs review if anyone has the time. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 08:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52477
In Bugzilla this has been declared "Slightly strange, but not a bug". I've commented there. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:59, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
"not a bug" is correct. This is a deliberate feature of PHP's strtotime function. Unfilled fields of the date are assumed to be the same as for the current date, and days overflow to the next month. Today, "February" = 30 February 2014 = 2 March 2014. mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##time says: "The date/time object can be in any format accepted by PHP's strtotime() function. Both absolute (eg 20 December 2000) and relative (eg +20 hours) times are accepted." Other people may rely on #time accurately using strtotime. MediaWiki shouldn't mess with that by inventing new interpretations of some partial date formats. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:55, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I see in Bugzilla it was suggested that we use "February 1" instead. However, I haven't been able to find any month inputs for #time that allow us to specify the day, and that are allowed in both text format and number format. The closest I got was "1.February" and "1.2", but unfortunately the latter is interpreted as 01:02 am rather than 1 February. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:58, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
You can for example include an arbitrary year: {{#time:m|1-2-2000}} gives 02. {{#time:m|1-February-2000}} gives 02. PHP's strtotime is widely known and used. It allows a lot of of formats where you implicitly start out with today and specify what is different. For example, on any day in April, "- 2 months" and "February" are valid specifications and should give the same result: Today with month changed to February, and overflowing into the next month if needed. I'm sure lots of MediaWiki users know strtotime and assume we use it correctly. I haven't seen the MediaWiki code for #time but MediaWiki is written in PHP so I assume it simply calls strtotime at some point. Note that strtotime always gives a complete date and time, or actually a Unix timestamp (the number of seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00 UTC). It is "m" in {{#time:m|1-February-2000}} which asks which month that timestamp is in and ignores year, day, hour, minute, second. In some cases like this the result may look quirky, but a lot of other uses can break down if we start making changes to the PHP standard. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:38, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the 1-2-2000 tip. This edit seems to have fixed the problem. (I wasn't saying that we should deviate from the way PHP does things, by the way.) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:58, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
It might be better to use 13- (or any other integer above 12 and below 29) instead of 1- so that it's clear that it's a day not a month. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:03, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
It doesn't look like that's a real problem. I tried various different possible inputs to try and break it, but I either got d-m-y or an "invalid time" error. I couldn't make #time parse the input as m-d-y. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
The examples in this section have format=dmy and use {{Dts/outdmy2}}. Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Dts/ shows a lot of subtemplates and I guess others also need a fix, but I haven't examined which. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:09, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
I just realised that the module I was thinking about was at Module:Sandbox/Dts (written by Tsahee) and Module:Dts is a more recent effort by Jackmcbarn. So there has been a duplication of efforts. I haven't examined either of the modules in detail, though. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:18, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Bare transclusions of Template:Infobox

There is a list at User:Pigsonthewing/Direct calls to Infobox of 2398 articles which use {{Infobox}} directly. While that's not prohibited, of course, there's often a more suitable template to use, such as in this edit. Some are simply frames for images. Please feel free to strike through items in that list if you convert them (or if you check and nothing needs to be done; in which case, please leave a comment there also). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:55, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Translate wiki pages to another wiki

User:Gryllida/ExternalTranslate.js adds a translate tab to translate an article to another wiki. Please test and fix whatever you find useful to fix... Gryllida (talk) 05:50, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Where are the HTML paragraph tags coming from?

I'm contemplating changes to {{infobox ship career}}. Mostly the changes I wanted to make were cosmetic. But, I've noticed an oddity that I can't explain. It is very common for editors to list multiple items in a single field. For example, if a ship over its lifetime has had multiple names, those might be listed like this:

|Ship name=Ship name1<br />Ship name2<br />Ship name3<br />Ship name4<br />Ship name5<br />Ship name6

which produces this html:

<td>Ship name1<br /> Ship name2<br /> Ship name3<br /> Ship name4<br /> Ship name5<br /> Ship name6</td>

But, editors very often do this:

|Ship name=Ship name1<br />
Ship name2<br />
Ship name3<br />
Ship name4<br />
Ship name5<br />
Ship name6

which produces this html: <td>Name:</td> <td> <p>Ship name1<br /> Ship name2<br /> Ship name3<br /> Ship name4<br /> Ship name5<br /></p> Ship name6</td> </tr>

In the rendered display, the Name: text in the left column is at one level but the list of names in the right column is vertically offset slightly lower. There is also a gap between the next-to-last and last names. You can see this at Template:Infobox ship career/testcases#Live template. Special:ExpandTemplates shows that the <p>...</p> tags are not the result of the template but must come from some other source.

I can get around this by stripping newlines from parameter values by adding this to each parameter in the template with (the template sandbox uses this for |Ship name=):

{{#invoke:String|replace|{{{Ship name|}}}|[^%S ]||plain=false}}

Is there a better way? Is there a way to tell whatever process follows the template to leave the contents of the <td>...</td> alone? Is there css or other markup that can go in the <td>...</td> to accomplish the same thing?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:56, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

In my experience, when you get unexplained HTML then HTML Tidy is at work. Looks like you want to make this work either way editors add the list. The better way is to add |datastyle = class="hlist" and then use * list markup, but this means you have to change each article. --  Gadget850 talk 15:53, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
I just tried the affected marker markup in a MediaWiki message on the test wiki here (result). This suggests that it's a parser issue, and not an HTML Tidy issue, as HTML tidy isn't run on MediaWiki messages. (If someone could confirm my line of reasoning here, that would be great.) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 16:09, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
One of the things that strikes me as interesting is the position of the <p>...</p> tags. If there is a reason for them, why do they not enclose the entire content of the <td>...</td>?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:40, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
It is a parser issue; it counts linebreaks. Two linebreaks triggers a paragraph. Inserting <br /> makes it lose count somehow, which may result in a misplaced closing paragraph tag. — Edokter (talk) — 20:35, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
WP:SHIPS have determined that * list markup in ship infoboxes is not acceptable. This is why there are lots and lots of parameters that use the markup I describe above. Additionally, there are companion templates where similar markup is preferred. The problem doesn't occur with {{plainlist}} but editors aren't very inclined to use it and making it compulsory would not be accepted. Which leaves me to find an alternate solution.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:37, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Ehm on your TD element, add class="hlist" or class="plainlist" and start converting to proper lists. If there is no list in the content, the class won't do anything, but if there is, it just works. Also you would no longer have to advise people to use the plainlist template to do the same, it would be automatic if people use proper lists. These problems have been solved, better to use the solutions than to muddle along and create less accessible articles. If WP:SHIPS has actual problems with using hlist or plainlist styling, then they should bring those concerns here, so we can help them find better technical solutions. Messing with line breaks is just one of the reasons we have converted almost every instance of such type of lists into hlist andplainlists over the past 5 years. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:09, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for that, it was exactly what I was looking for. But, was it really necessary to chastise me for not knowing that this solution existed?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:09, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
This works great, but ... In normal * list markup, ** indents the list item. That doesn't seem to be the case for <td class="plainlist">...</td> ({{plainlist}} doesn't appear to support ** markup either). Is this intended? A bug? Is there a better way around it than to insert some number of &nbsp;s between the * and the list item text?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:07, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
You can also use {{unbulleted list}} if you're averse to inserting asterisks. As for the lack of indentation, I'm pretty sure that's intended (although I don't know who decided it). You can set a style of "margin-left: 1.6em;" if you want to fake the indentation. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:24, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Is this not a bug then? Certainly this defies user expectation given that we are trained by the everyday use of normal * list markup (H:LIST) to expect an indent when we use ** in a list. Who do I talk to to get this fixed?
For these ship infobox templates, I'd prefer to make life as simple as possible for editors. That means allowing * list markup, but hiding the bullet points. Editor TheDJ's excellent suggestion to use <td class="plainlist"> ... </td> accomplishes almost all of that goal. The only problem is that class="plainlist" prevents whatever it is that undoes the ** indented list. The output from the template is the same whether it uses <td class="plainlist"> ... </td> or not.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:54, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Normally, lists are indented and have a bullet marker. The plainlist markup removes both of these in CSS so the list is flush with its surrounding text. Nested lists were never intended or anticipated, but I think I can add one line to make that possible. — Edokter (talk) — 16:38, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Sandbox
History
 Spain
Name
  • Ship name 1
  • Ship name 2
    • Ship name 3
  • Ship name 4
  • Ship name 5
  • Ship name 6
That would be great! If, for whatever reason it's inappropriate to change the plainlist class, is it possible to create a 'local' version, perhaps plist class, that can be made part of the template? A handful of experiments that I did weren't very productive, but then I have next to no knowledge of css.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:09, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Wow! Look at that! Now, <td class="plainlist"> ... </td> is doing exactly what it should be doing. What's changed, and who do I thank?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:13, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

This has changed, and you need to thank Edokter. :) (Also, sorry for completely misinterpreting your comment yesterday and giving you a nonsense answer...) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:27, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Such a simple fix. Thank you.
@Edokter: Thank you for making that fix, you've just made my life measurably easier. I am grateful.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:54, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry

The fix had unintended side effects, so I had to undo it. I could reinstate it, but only under the condition that hlist should never be nested inside a plainlist. See MediaWiki talk:Common.css#plainlist + hlist indentation. — Edokter (talk) — 22:22, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Automatic wikiproject tagging of pages redirected after moves of articles already under scope of said Wikiproject

It'd be really handy if the redirects left behind pages that were moved were automatically tagged as redirects under the scope of the existing Wikiprojects the page is under. Would save a lot of time and is useful in keeping track of the articles (eg in project-wide watchlists). --LT910001 (talk) 03:24, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

It seems that what you are asking for is the WikiProject banner templates to be copied from the existing talk page to the newly-created talk page redirect, but with all the templates having |class=redir instead of whatever was set previously. There's nothing that we can do about this, because the page move process is part of the MediaWiki software. You would need to file a feature request at bugzilla:, but don't get your hopes up - it took them *years* to change the software so that the automatic addition of {{R from move}} was actioned. They are also likely to refuse on the grounds that MediaWiki changes affect all languages, plus Commons, Meta, Wiktionary, etc., and WikiProject templates are only found on a few Wikipedias: you might expect there to be several dozen equivalents to Template:WikiProject France - but there are only four, so the MediaWiki devs are not likely to consider this a priority. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:20, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
You should be able to get a WP:BOTREQ that will handle this. I asked for a one-off list a few years back (in the opposite direction, because WP:MED doesn't normally tag redirects), and the code is at the top of User:WhatamIdoing/Med_redirects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks WAID and Redrose for your responses. I think this would be very handy but I think it would be best if it was ongoing, it just makes moving pages that much more time-consuming. There seems to be an extensive process to get this going, and I think I will just return to my burrow and continue editing. --LT910001 (talk) 04:34, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

WP 1.0 web tool is down

Clicking on the normal link or any of its sub links gives a 404 error: http://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/ Brirush (talk) 17:19, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

@Brirush: Thanks! I've fixed this and the tool is now operational. Sorry for any inconvenience. Theopolisme (talk) 22:14, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
@Theopolisme:Great! Thanks for volunteering your time.Brirush (talk) 16:03, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
@Brirush and Theopolisme: The 404 error is back. – Editør (talk) 09:48, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Error Rendering Book

I was trying to render a book from a article, and it failed at about 38%. The page it hung on rendering was List of jōyō Kanji, which has a large table in it. It was able to save any format besides PDF, so I think it may be a bug of soem sort or a pagees limitation.


Here is the list of pages I was turning into a book:

Japanese writing system

Dakuten

Katakana

Kana

Kanji

List of jōyō kanji

Hiragana

Hentaigana

Help:IPA for Japanese

Romanization of Japanese


I was making a collection of articles on the Japanese Language. Downloading the EPUB version and converted it to PDF with Calibre. Just letting you know for future reference incase anyone else experiences this. I will check on this post every so often to see if there are any replies.

69.131.180.86 (talk) 17:58, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Confirming this. Steps to reproduce:
  1. Go to List of jōyō kanji and click the "Create a book" link under the print/export menu.
  2. Click "Start book creator". This takes you back to List of jōyō kanji.
  3. Click "Add this page to your book".
  4. Click "Show book (1 page)".
  5. Set the format as "e-book (PDF)", and click Download.
For me, it rendered 85% of the page and then stopped. Rendering that 85% took a long time, though, perhaps about a minute. Refreshing the page after that didn't change the 85% figure. The table on List of jōyō kanji is just over 2000 entries, so it's not surprising that it takes a long time to render. It sounds like something is timing out, but I'm not sure exactly what. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:03, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Might be yet another bug in the Collection extension (and there is work going on to rewrite it). A bug report could be filed. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 16:32, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

The little toolbar having a problem...

 
Screenshot of the cite button in the classic edit toolbar.
See also: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 124 § Strangeness in the Add citation thingy

...specifically, the handy one at the top of the edit window. And more specifically, the "Cite" button, instead of being on the far right, is now in the dead center of the bar (between the 'horizontal line' and 'redirect' buttons), which means when it's pressed the bar becomes disjointed with the select-a-citation-template bar splitting it. - The Bushranger One ping only 21:02, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

@The Bushranger: I assume you are talking about MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js, which is loaded if you disable the WikiEditor toolbar. Its icon is displayed in the end (after the "<ref/ref>" button) after I clear the cache in my browser. Have you tried that? Helder.wiki 21:13, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
@Helder.wiki: My browser (Firefox 22) automatically dumps the cache every time I close it. And I just now tried a hard refresh (bypassing the cache) on this very edit window. {{cite}} is still dead center in the toolbar between "horizontal line" and "redirect". - The Bushranger One ping only 23:32, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
I uploaded an screenshot from my test using Firefox 29. The button   (in the middle) is opening just fine. However, notice the position of buttons from different scripts in the toolbar depends on the order those scripts are loaded. So, if the RefToolbar gadget is loaded before MediaWiki:Common.js/edit.js, it is normal that its button will be displayed before the buttons such as  . On the other hand, the position of the buttons Web, News, etc... is defined by MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js (which I didn't touch during the migration of the script to a gadget). This edit by TheDJ should make it better positioned, since the old "toolbar.appendChild(citemain)" meant the script was assuming its main button to be always in the end of the toolbar (which is not always the case). Helder.wiki 13:05, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, it's working just fine for me, it's just ugly now what with it opening its buttons in the middle of the bar (Which, oddly perhaps, it didn't put the "ref" button after them even when it was located on the right, just before that button.) - The Bushranger One ping only 23:54, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
And now the buttons are properly placed when I click on "cite". Thanks for the fix. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:46, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Why was the cite button moved?

 

I am using the MonoBook skin and in the last couple days, the handy {{cite}} button above the edit box has been moved from being the last one on the right (after the <ref></ref> button) to being in the middle, between the ---- and the #Redirect buttons. As a side effect, when cite button is pressed, the functions appear between two rows of buttons! What gives?-- Brainy J ~✿~ (talk) 16:23, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Pinging Helder.wiki. — Edokter (talk) — 16:39, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Better now ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:01, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
In my tests it is working just fine (see the screenshot). Helder.wiki 13:05, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Back button not working properly

When ever I go from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Registry Dr. to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Internet then click back there's no problem but when ever I go from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Registry Dr. to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Internet then click another article in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Internet, clicking back the first time does nothing and clicking back a second time takes me back 2 pages to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Registry Dr. Blackbombchu (talk) 02:38, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

It works for me. The back button is a browser feature. What is your browser? And please give an example article. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:44, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
It's internet explorer 11. It wasn't just one article but I noticed the problem on all the articles in the articles in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Internet that I clicked. The problem was not with the article itself but with which page I got to it from. A little while after I wrote about that technical issue, I noticed that it wasn't always happening anymore. Blackbombchu (talk) 17:08, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

"Your preferences have been saved." green box

It hurts my eyes and makes me nauseous just looking at it. Can the green color be toned down a bit?—cyberpower ChatOnline 17:49, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually it's the border causing the issue. Can the border color be toned down instead? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberpower678 (talk • contribs) 17:51, 1 May 2014 (UTC)‎ 
.successbox {
    color: #009000;
    border-color: #B7FDB5;
    background-color: #E1FDDF;
}
These are the default settings. Paste that into Special:MyPage/common.css, alter the colour values e.g. to border-color: #c7ecc6; and save. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:04, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Awesome. Perfect. Thanks.—cyberpower ChatOnline 18:18, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

"Edit links" doesn't appear anymore (with Monobook)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T66741

Hi. The "Edit links" feature on the side navigation doesn't appear anymore when I choose the Monobook theme. If I set the theme to Vector, it works perfectly but I prefer Monobook. The bug appears on every version of Wikipedia. --Deansfa (talk) 21:08, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

It's working for me. On which pages is it failing for you? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:32, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
It's still appearing for me as well. Do you have any gadgets or scripts enabled that might be interfering with it? Novusuna talk 22:28, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your answers. On every page that doesn't have any interwiki link. For example: Pineau de Re. If you don't see any error, I will deactivate gadgets and customed scripts in my preferences. --Deansfa (talk) 22:40, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm. In Vector skin, there is an "Add links" link; in Monobook, there isn't. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:59, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
I can see the relevant parts in the HTML source, but not in the DOM. I guess some script removes it when it shouldn't. — Edokter (talk) — 00:14, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
I can confirm that as well, the edit links button still appears when there are interwiki links, but the add links button has disappeared in monobook. Novusuna talk 23:06, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks very much for the feedback. So it means it's not only me. I will temporary move to Vector, hoping it will be fixed (I do mostly interwiki edits). I am sure it worked well several hours ago. --Deansfa (talk) 23:27, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
And apparently, it is on every other projects Example on Wikisource. Is there a website/url where we can contacts the developers? --Deansfa (talk) 05:08, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Bugs can be reported at bugzilla:. #Tech News: 2014-18 says: "The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar)." https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Server_admin_log says for May 1: "18:42 logmsgbot: reedy rebuilt wikiversions.cdb and synchronized wikiversions files: Wikipedias to 1.24wmf2". Considering the timing, I guess this is the cause. testwiki: is already on 1.24wmf3 and I see "Add links" there: https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page100?useskin=monobook. Is that how it usually looks in MonoBook? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:05, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
About your last question: Yes! --Deansfa (talk) 21:27, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I spotted this last night when I created new articles that I know exist on the German and Dutch Wikis. Existing articles with iwiki links are fine, it's just when they don't have any link. Using Firefox too. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 09:48, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Not an issue with Modern or Cologne Blue so appears to limited to Monobook only. Nthep (talk) 10:00, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
I have submitted it at bugzilla:64741. In IE9 I'm missing "Add links" in all skins. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:35, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
I've found that if an article has a Wikidata entry for English Wikipedia alone, the "Edit links" link does not appear; but if the article also has a local ILL, the "Edit links" link does appear. For example, The End of Time (book): without local ILL; with local ILL; Wikidata entry. Monobook, Firefox 28 --Redrose64 (talk) 14:49, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Compact language links Beta feature

Please check if any of you have the "Compact language links" under the beta features enabled. A recent patch in Universal Language Selector may be responsible for this behaviour. — Edokter (talk) — 11:02, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't have "Compact language links". It makes no difference to enable it. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:36, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Me neither. --Deansfa (talk) 16:42, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Any update on when this might be fixed? Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 18:18, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Any update on when this might be fixed? Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 10:42, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Parser query

{{Infobox militant organization
| ideology = [[foo],]
}}

{{Infobox militant organization | ideology = [[foo],] }}

In the above example, the arguably broken wiki-link seems to suppress template closure.

Another legitimate link doesn't fix it 

{{Infobox militant organization
| ideology = [[foo],] [[bar]]
}}

{{Infobox militant organization | ideology = [[foo],] bar }}

Nor does closing "]]" outside the template. 

{{Infobox militant organization
| ideology = [[foo],]
}}]]

{{Infobox militant organization | ideology = [[foo],] }}]]

although closing the "}}" after the "]]"works 

{{Infobox militant organization
| ideology = [[foo],]
}}]]}}
Village pump (technical)/Archive 126
Ideology[[foo],] }}]]

It seems to me that the parser gives up trying to match "[[" at the end of a line, and should therefore be happy with the "}} on the following line - and indeed not match another "]]" if it finds it.

Does this behaviour ascend to the heights of a bug? And if so is it already 'zillared?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:14, 2 May 2014 (UTC).

I'm inclined to think it does, because 1. the text is not malformed, we are supposed to be able to have unmatched delimiters. 2. it is not expected behaviour - it is fragile rather than robust - that we expect of wiki-mark-up. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:23, 2 May 2014 (UTC).
I disagree; this is a standard case of unmatched template- and/or link markers. It behaves correctly in that it does not attempt to parse it as a template to begin with, because it detects this mismatch and resets all the counters, so the rest of the page may render correctly. There is only so much the parser can do to salvage invalid wiki markup. — Edokter (talk) — 11:30, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Trace route?

On the contribution page for longer IPs (like 2601:9:1B00:629:20D:93FF:FE7D:F8C8), there is a link to "Traceroute" but it leads not to a geolocation but to a website that requires individuals to sign up to use. Is there a more accessible alternative site to find out the general geolocation of an IP editor as exists for ordinary IPs? Liz Read! Talk! 14:27, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 125#Wrong geonotice. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:50, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the link, Redrose64. I was sure I was not the only user having problems. It's so easy to find a geolocation for short IPs, it's frustrating not to have that information available for the new IPs. Liz Read! Talk! 14:56, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't think that answers the question completely. The question is about sp-contributions-footer-anon linking to a service which one must register for, not Wikimedia's own geoiplookup. (I might be wrong.) A more useful link would be something like this. πr2 (t • c) 18:33, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Question about use of open WiFi

Dear technical experts: I am away from home at a conference. I have access to the Internet through my 3G/4G cell phone network, but with limited data. There is also an open WiFi access point here. I have been warned that if I use open WiFi to log in to Wikipedia, others could see my login and password and my account could be hacked, so I have been avoiding that. I have asked Wikipedia to keep me logged in for 30 days. My question is, if I am already logged in, using a private network, and then switch to the public network, is my login data still at risk? —Anne Delong (talk) 18:54, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion, if you have your own computer and you have been using https on both networks you should be OK. EdJohnston (talk) 19:42, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
As long as you only communicate with Wikipedia using HTTPS there should be no risk. I recommend using HTTPS Everywhere if possible. And if you're concerned about a possible compromise of your account, it never hurts to change your password. For generating and managing secure passwords you might want to consider using a password manager. --108.38.196.65 (talk) 22:36, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
A lot of users have an alt account that they use to log in on public wifi. It's especially important for admins to be secure. -- Diannaa (talk) 22:52, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. It turned out that I was too busy at the conference to do much editing; I will be sure to investigate all of the suggestions before next time. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:45, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

A non-admin closure could be good

{{resolved}} (question answered, but topic lives) - struck by OP editor: DePiep (talk) 00:35, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Please see this TfD:Rellink. It can be closed by now. It is a simple TfD, but it has an interesting MediaWiki:Common.css edge. I'd like to see how an editor who knows about classes would close it. That would be (could be) a non-admin closure for quality. -DePiep (talk) 21:17, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

(m) A nice sideline question: how are classes added & changed & deleted? Is there a "Class for Discussion" route at mw? So far, I mostly see EDokter arguing & handling all very good, but still. -DePiep (talk) 21:47, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Is done. -DePiep (talk) 02:43, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
It's just handled by talking about it at MediaWiki talk:Common.css, as far as I'm aware. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 16:38, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
BTW. classes are not ONLY used for styling. They are also used for semantics. So the fact that a dablink class is use explicitly tells you that the links inside it are disambiguation links. rellink means that the links are related. I'm not sure how many 3rd party software might be relying on such a thing, but such a dependency is possible.. Same with seealso (boilerplate is an old styling class btw, i don't think it is in use anymore). You always have to keep such things in mind. It does not seem that this has been terribly considered in the TfD however. TfD residents ought to know such things. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:06, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
Unfortunately, we have Wikipedia: pages with titles and content referring to "CSS classes". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:58, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
re TheDJ: TfD residents ought to know such things and all you say. That means we cannot move here at enwiki sovereign, and even all of WP cannot change because of "outside usage". Are we tied that seriously? Cannot even all:wikipedia decide on a class? -DePiep (talk) 00:19, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
You can, you just need to be aware that you are required to wield that power (for instance, i'm positive that dictionary.app of apple used to filter on that class. They no longer do, but it happens). Also remember that for a bot, it might be handy to be able to distinguish between dablinks and rellinks, to make sure that the all entries on a disambiguation page link back to it in the right way. These things share a style now, but what if we no longer want them to share the same style in the future ? These are considerations that are important. You can only act sovereign if you know your kingdom. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:28, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Has duration of inactivity before automatic log-off changed?

I've been noticing on a pretty regular basis in the last few weeks that I'm getting logged out if I've not made an edit within the past couple of hours, even if I am continuing to use the search function or go to other pages without editing or committing a logged action. I've noticed this on several different browsers and several different computers on different ISPs, so I don't think this is in any way related. Case in point: logged out after 3 hours of not *editing* (between 23:26 on May 3 and 02:53 May 4), despite having looked at different pages several times during that 3 hour period. What's changed? Risker (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I haven't heard of any such change, but there have been a lot of complaints about getting logged off in the last few weeks. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:16, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
I've asked anomie on IRC if we have some kind of FAQ so users know how to basically investigate this, but we haven't. Most of the time it's cookie-related (which I must admit is an extremely vague answer). :( --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

User contributions link not working?

View and restore deleted pages shows a number of edits by User:Jbenson90, but when I click on the contribs link, I get No changes were found matching these criteria. Ticking the Deleted only checkbox doesn't alter that. What am I doing wrong? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:45, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I never use "Deleted only". Instead I use "deleted user contributions", one of the small links above the "Search for contributions" box at the top. Using that I see 14 edits, which matches those listed at Special:Undelete/Internetization. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:53, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
Me too. "Deleted only" appears to be for revision deleted edits and not edits to deleted pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:58, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
Ah, that worked. Thanks! -- RoySmith (talk) 18:44, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit conflicts not reported

I've come across two recent instances of the system failing to give its usual warning that there was an edit conflict, and allowing one editor to overwrite another editor's changes. Here is a discussion about one with a link to the diff at 13:55 on 2 May, when three edits by me were reverted by Skookum1. Here 2 is another at 21:12 on 3 May, in which I unknowingly reinstated the word "to" on line 32 which had just been removed by Wiltingdaffodils. – Fayenatic London 20:03, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

This happened to me a couple of days ago. Let me know if a link to the diffs would help. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:15, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
I hope this problem will go away once bugzilla:56849 is fixed. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Portal namespace

What would I have to do to get a portal namespace at scowiki? --AmaryllisGardener talk 21:07, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Request it to be added in the configuration on Bugzilla. — Edokter (talk) — 21:32, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
See also meta:Requesting wiki configuration changes which asks that you link to a local wiki discussion showing consensus. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:31, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I've opened an RfC about it. If there is consensus to create a portal namespace, I'll request it be done at Bugzilla. --AmaryllisGardener talk 23:52, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Moved text, didn't move edit history.

I moved some text from User:Gobonobo/sandbox7 into an existing article (Betty Bone Schiess), but of course now the article itself doesn't contain the full edit history. Can this be fixed? --Slashme (talk) 21:08, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

The edit histories overlap slightly, so it's best to leave them as they are. If there was no overlap they could have been history merged, but this is not advisable if there are parallel editing histories, as it results in very confusing diffs. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:36, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I'll be more careful next time. --Slashme (talk) 06:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Ref Toolbar Question

At some point, Ryan Vesey assisted me in changing my version of the ref toolbar, such that when I clicked the accessdate icon to autofill today's date, it would come up in mdy format, as I almost exclusively edit American articles. This worked fine, until today, when it went back to dmy format. Could someone help me rectify this issue? Thank you! Go Phightins! 21:44, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Quick addendum: here is the initial thread. Go Phightins! 21:47, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Never mind; the next time it worked. Perhaps the java script just didn't load.. Go Phightins! 22:05, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorting localization

Hi! Is it possible tomake a local sorting in other Wikipedia? The thing is, that Latvian alphabet has some diacritic signs (like ģ, ā and other), so in categories they are after the whole Latin alphabet (for example, see this category's entry "Ģeotermālā enerģija" which should be placed in section of "G"). I know, that this could be resolved with DEFAULTSORT, but it would be nice to resolve without using it, but make some changes in some javascript file (like this for table sorting (line, which starts with such code mw.config.set( 'tableSorterCollation')). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 06:42, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

@Edgars2007: Yes, see mw:Manual:$wgCategoryCollation. You can file a request to change this setting for Latvian Wikipedia (or Latvian wikis in general, whichever is more appropriate) at Bugzilla, you can use other bugs asking for this (for other wikis) as "templates" (e.g. T47776, a full list is available as blockers to T47443). (See also meta:Requesting wiki configuration changes for general help.) Matma Rex talk 07:41, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for response! --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:48, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-19

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf3) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and all Wikipedias on May 8 (calendar).
  • The Compact Personal Bar was added as a beta feature to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added as a beta feature to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and to all Wikipedias on May 8. To test it, you can enable it now in your preferences on MediaWiki.org. [20]
  • It is now easier to disable the CodeEditor tool. [21]

VisualEditor news

  • External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. [22]
  • The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete. [23]
  • You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones. [24]
  • There is a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name for file names. [25][26]
  • Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users. [27] [28]
  • You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language. [29] [30]

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Japanese (ja), Portuguese (pt), Spanish (es), Swedish (sv) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 8. Feedback is welcome. [31]
  • You can help translate about 100 new language names that have been added to our data source. They are used, for example, as hover text for interwiki links. Send an e-mail to Nemo if you want to help.
  • If you click on a redirect page in your watchlist, you will soon access the redirect itself. [32] [33]

Problems

  • For about 40 minutes around 00:20 UTC on April 29, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

What code makes text in Editing Window Monospace?

I was wondering how the following happens - when I edit the source of any article, text in the editing window is displayed in a Monospaced font. I want to implement a similar behavior on hiwikipedia. Right now in hiwiki, text in the editing window is displayed in regular varied width font, which makes reading and editing a pain. Could someone here help me locate the page and the code which make this possible on enwiki? Is it Mediawiki:Common.js, Mediawiki:Common.css ?Shubhamkanodia (talk) 11:17, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

@Shubhamkanodia: It's this way by default. If it's different on hi.wikipedia, then that's most likely a local override there (or a problem with fonts themselves). Matma Rex talk 11:27, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
In fact I see the edit box there in a monospace font: [34], however the Hindi text is not monospace (the characters don't like up with Latin text when I try selecting it with mouse). Is it even possible to have monospace fonts for complicated scripts like this? I recall someone reporting problems with this, I can't remember the script involved, though. Matma Rex talk 11:31, 5 May 2014 (UTC)


@Matma Rex: Changing an option in the Editing Tab of My preferences fixed it. Thanks anyway! 11:45, 5 May 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shubhamkanodia (talk • contribs)
The script is Devanagri and yeah, it would be a nightmare to design a fixed width font for it, but I'm still guessing its possible, though none exist . Atleast the latin script is mono-spaced now! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shubhamkanodia (talk • contribs) 11:47, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Cologne Blue

Hi. On Cologne Blue I already have it programmed to add the categories at the bottom rather than top. Can somebody show me the coding to also add the interwiki link titles at the bottom too? Although in looking I think it also shows at the bottom too, so I need a way to suppress it appearing at the top. It's just for popular articles with dozens of interwiki links it bloats out the top. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: Yes, Cologne Blue has two sets of interlanguage links; those at the top may be hidden easily, by adding 
div#langlinks { display: none; }
to Special:MyPage/cologneblue.css but those at the bottom are more difficult. Shout if you want those hidden too. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:33, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: I've tried it at User:Dr. Blofeld/cologneblue.css but it isn't working. Can you spot why?♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:32, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
You'd put some javascript in that page as well. Browsers don't like it if they're expecting CSS and are given Javascript. I've hidden it. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:38, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
and vice versa --Redrose64 (talk) 18:42, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Ah ha, nice one. Now works! Thanks! How about hiding the "Privacy policy | About Wikipedia | Disclaimers | Contact Wikipedia | Developers | Mobile view" line too and moving the grey line underneath the header of the articles underlining it? Feel free to edit it yourself again. Also it would be better to have the coordinates of things displaying on the top right rather than top left which overlaps with the side bar.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:31, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
If you want to hide all six from "Privacy policy" to "Mobile view" inclusive, use 
div#langlinks, div#titlelinks { display: none; }
instead of the previous code. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:52, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
The grey line isn't a grey line at all - it's a zero-height box with a grey border. When there is a Sitenotice or a CentralNotice, the box expands to accommodate the notice. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:58, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
@Dr. Blofeld: I've put code into User:Dr. Blofeld/cologneblue.css to hide "Privacy policy" etc., also to move the coordinates to extreme top right. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:22, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Book Creator

I created a book in Book Creator, but it will not download as a pdf and I suspect that it is too large. I want to split it into 3 smaller books, but I can't see how to create a second book without losing my original. How can I do that? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KeithWParry (talk • contribs) 17:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Try making the book in your userspace and name it something like "[book name] Sectioned". You can leave the original just fine and copypaste the different parts into the different book divisions. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 13:33, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your help KeithWParry (talk) 17:21, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

No problem! In the future, WikiProject Wikipedia-Books might have better answers for you; they're the specialists on that topic. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 17:39, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Beachin'

Can anyone tell me why the "2014" in the "This single" field isn't showing up? I've tried everything I can. 2014 is very clearly put in the "this single" field, but no matter what I do, the "2014" part refuses to show up. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 22:45, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

It's because it gets value from PAGENAME (there are some changes in infobox, see Template talk:Infobox single#Data granularity redux). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 22:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
@Edgars2007: In English, please? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 21:57, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Maybe in Latvian :) it's my native language ? Ok, let's try. At the moment of your first question (first post) there wasn't "This single" field in infobox itself (that "field" was filled with single's name; you could write anything what you want (|This single = hfhfhfhfh), it would show you only "Beachin'"), which now is fixed in infobox. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:11, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Template wikitext from visual editor

While looking for broken options in all {{convert}}s, I found that a dozen of the 1.7 million converts have wikitext like the following:

  • {{Convert|5|cm|4 = 0|abbr = on|sp = us}} → 5 cm (2 in)
  • {{Convert|15-20|cm|4 = 0|abbr = on}} → 15–20 cm (6–8 in)

The "standard" way of entering the above is:

  • {{convert|5|cm|0|abbr=on|sp=us}} → 5 cm (2 in)
  • {{Convert|15-20|cm|0|abbr=on}} → 15–20 cm (6–8 in)

or perhaps:

  • {{convert|5|cm|abbr=on|sp=us|0}} → 5 cm (2 in)
  • {{Convert|15-20|cm|abbr=on|0}} → 15–20 cm (6–8 in)

The edits introducing these that I've checked have "(Tag: VisualEditor)" so presumably we can look forward to the imposition of this style in all templates. I'm overly sensitive about source style and am posting this for a minor vent, but it may be of interest to others. The 4 = 0 is setting the numbered parameter 4 to the string 0, and the template will receive the parameter with leading and trailing whitespace removed. Possibly the 4 is a slightly broken attempt by VE to count where it was up to (it's not 4 in the "standard" examples above). Convert accepts some very weird syntax and I suspect that the missing parameter 3 could cause it confusion in some cases, and the stripped whitespace could conceivably matter. Does anyone feel like checking this out with some VE testing? Does the current version do the above? Is it really missing parameter 3? Johnuniq (talk) 01:57, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

You should check the TemplateData table in the template's documentation first, because that is ususally the source of these errors. VE uses these to create and edit templates. — Edokter (talk) — 10:25, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor is doing as it's supposed to by saying 4 = 0. Template:Convert#TemplateData says parameter 3 is the unit being converted to, and parameter 4 is the precision. If the user gave no parameter 3 then the '4' in 4 = 0 is needed to assign parameter 4 and not parameter 3 (it could also have said {{Convert|5|cm||0|abbr = on|sp = us}} to show there is no parameter 3). The "standard" {{convert|5|cm|0|abbr=on|sp=us}} corresponds to 3 = 0 and no parameter 4. The template is apparently designed so the unit being converted to is optional and a default unit is chosen if none is specified, for example inches for cm. If a number is given as parameter 3 then the template assumes it's a precision (which should normally have been parameter 4) and not the unit being converted to. I don't know whether VisualEditor can be programmed to understand such features and move parameter 4 down to parameter 3 if it's a number and no parameter 3 was given. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:47, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I see what you mean. Unfortunately convert can be a lot more complex than the template data envisages:
  • {{convert|1|x|2|x|4|ft|m|3}} → 1 by 2 by 4 feet (0.305 m × 0.610 m × 1.219 m)
  • {{convert|1|yd|2|ft|6|in|m|adj=mid|-wide|3}} → 1-yard-2-foot-6-inch-wide (1.676 m)
Perhaps convert can be stripped back to a sane syntax one day. And we'll have to learn to love VE's idiosyncratic spacing style? Johnuniq (talk) 12:38, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Is this a case of the template being overloaded, like {{coord}} is?
The ideal spacing appears to be an unresolved debate: if you add no spaces, then the wikitext won't wrap; if you add some, then whatever you choose is obviously wrong (unless what you choose is what I would have chosen  ). If everyone could agree on a standard for spacing that applied to all templates, then I'd be happy to propose to the devs that they follow it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
I do have a system, but it's variable. If the template produces a box-type structure, like an infobox, I use one parameter per line, and line up the equals:
{{template
|name1       = value1
|name2       = value2
|longername3 = value3
}}
If the template produces inline output, like a citation template, I put the whole template on one line. For each named parameter, there are four permissible places to put a space - either side of the pipe, and either side of the equals. Of these four, I only put spaces before each pipe:
{{template |name1=value1 |name2=value2 |longername3=value3 }}
This permits word wrapping, but when wrapping occurs, the name and value stay together. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:59, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
That's one of my preferred systems for horizontal ones. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing: If custom is a guide, there are 1,773,352 converts in articles in the 20140502 dump (not counting indirect usage such as when an infobox calls convert). Of those:

  • 979,330 have an option of the form "x=y" (no space).
  • 1,112 have "x = y" (space on each side).
  • 352 have either "x= " or " =y" (space on one side only).

Custom clearly favors no space. Johnuniq (talk) 02:34, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Custom would be a more useful guide if it involved all templates, not just this one. The devs are not going to be impressed with a request that they use different spacing schemes for different templates. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

No captcha for nih.gov?

There's currently an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Captcha-addurl-whitelist#PubMed etc. suggesting that we whitelist nih.gov so that it doesn't require a captcha by anonymous users to insert into pages. The request sounds reasonable to me, but I thought I'd bring it here for second opinions in case there's a drawback I haven't thought about. Is there any reason we shouldn't do this? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:57, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Why is it even on the blacklist in the first place? DGG ( talk ) 21:07, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Short answer: It isn't. Less short answer: There is no blacklist for this, any URL that doesn't match an entry on the whitelist triggers a CAPTCHA when inserted into an article by an anonymous user. (Unless, of course, I'm completely mistaken about how this works.) Since I can't imagine a spambot inserting nih.gov links, I see no reason not to add it. Novusuna talk 21:15, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) All external links are on the blacklist by default. This isn't the same thing as the spam blacklist - anonymous users are still able to add blacklisted sites, they just have to enter a CAPTCHA before they can save their edits. This helps prevent spambots from adding links automatically. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 21:19, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
thanks for the enlightenment; Now that I know, I think the general rule a very good idea, and this a good exception . DGG ( talk ) 23:38, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
I've enacted the request, as there weren't any objections within 24 hours. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:47, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Is there a template for user rights?

I'm wondering if there is a template that actually transcludes user rights, similar to {{Userrights}} but that doesn't require clicking a link, such that if I typed {{User permissions|Testuser}} I'd get something like Testuser (rollbacker, reviewer). Does such a template exist, or if not, could one be easily written?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

There isn't, and MediaWiki doesn't currently support making one. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:39, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
User:Splarka/sysopdectector.js (note the funny spelling) if you add it to your personal javascript file, will display permissions of a user in large print when you view their user page. EdJohnston (talk) 01:11, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I have another js which does that as well. I'm just wondering whether it's possible to do so in a template, so that if we had a list of wikipedia users we could automatically display their permissions. It was suggested about this is impossible.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:51, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

What sorcery is this? Mischeviously broken file red links.

  revived from archives

Someone's been messing with the code again; links such as File:New Jersey Dry Town Listing.pdf do not currently lead to a page where I can click to see the deletion history. This breaks things and needs to be fixed. --Elvey (talk) 00:30, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that is how it has been for quite some time now and that is why I threw together User:Technical 13/Scripts/fileRedlinks.js which you can use by adding:
importScript( 'User:Technical 13/Scripts/fileRedlinks.js' );// [[User:Technical 13/Scripts/fileRedlinks]] makes image redlinks work like page redlinks.
to your common.js. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 00:46, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, workaround and dupe fix. Any idea where the code sorcery that is responsible for this can be found? --Elvey (talk)
I think you're mistaken; things have gotten worse or are more complicated; see here - While File:New Jersey Dry Town Listing.pdf takes me to Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard, File:CBB-layout-problem.gif does take me to to a page where I can see the deletion history. WHY!?! Why is this deletion history being hidden from editors? --Elvey (talk) 01:03, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
This search indicates that this is a recurring problem that needs to be fixed! But it didn't help me find the code that is responsible for this. Please help me. I'd like to get a better handle on the thinking behind it before filing a bug over it.--Elvey (talk) 02:51, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
It's possible to bypass this bug: To view the deletion history of File:New Jersey Dry Town Listing.pdf, instead of clicking on the red link, paste the file name into the search box. Then, click on the red link (where it says "You may create the page "File:New Jersey Dry Town Listing.pdf", but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.") This works even if I am logged out. -- Diannaa (talk) 03:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Per mw:Manual:$wgUploadMissingFileUrl, if http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php under 'wgUploadMissingFileUrl' added 'enwiki' => '//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload' then I think File:New Jersey Dry Town Listing.pdf would go to [35] instead of [36]. So the upload wizard would be replaced by the default upload form, and the latter displays the deletion log (and actually places the file name in the upload form). PrimeHunter (talk) 03:32, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
I use the script described at User:Equazcion/SkipFileWizard (without the "Option"). This means that if I click either of the file redlinks File:New Jersey Dry Town Listing.pdf or File:CBB-layout-problem.gif, they both behave the same: I get a page headed "Creating File:whatever", with two pink boxes: one beginning "Wikipedia does not have a File page with this exact title", the other beginning "A page with this title has previously been deleted", and the deletion log is in that second pink box. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:49, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Redrose64  Thanks but Technical 13 already provided a workaround, and that's NOT what's needed. This search indicates that this is a recurring problem that needs to be fixed! Thanks, PrimeHunter ! Wow, that file gets edited a lot. I have to look up Bug 42263 but have to run right now. --Elvey (talk) 03:30, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
  • T44263, which was reported by Scott, is titled "Update $wgUploadNavigationUrl on en.wikipedia" and claims to have already been resolved as fixed. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 20:23, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
We are discussing red file links which are controlled by mw:Manual:$wgUploadMissingFileUrl. mw:Manual:$wgUploadNavigationUrl controls where "Upload file" in the sidebar goes. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:25, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
It seems that T8909 was recreated when Special:Upload replaced Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard. I'm considering whether it's appropriate to simply reopen 6909, and I welcome guidance / suggestions someone taking other action. I guess the fix to that by @Raymond:, and/or Raymond himself could be of help here.--Elvey (talk) 02:10, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping :-) But sadly I cannot help to fix this bug in the UploadWizard. I like the UploadWizard but it is widly written in JavaScript which I do not like. Raymond (talk) 11:51, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
(Yeah, T44263 is tangential; I followed blame tools onto a wrong path to figuring this out.) --Elvey (talk) 23:52, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
What the …? This is no longer true! Yesterday, I wrote that "While File:New Jersey Dry Town Listing.pdf takes me to Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard, File:CBB-layout-problem.gif does take me to to a page where I can see the deletion history." but today, that's not true. Both take me to the upload wizard. WTF? (In the interim, I enabled and reverted the workaround; I suppose it's possible caching or memory problems are to blame.)--Elvey (talk) 23:52, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
Both have taken me to the upload wizard the whole time. Did you earlier click a link at Wikipedia talk:File Upload Wizard/Archive 3#Reader feedback: why is this a crummy upload ... with a colon in front like File:CBB-layout-problem.gif? That behaves differently. If the file exists then it goes to the file page instead of displaying the file, for example File:Example.jpg. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:11, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I have noticed that the : in front produces the behavior more like what I think people want - like the fix to T8909 provided for a time. Not as I recall, but as I said, I suppose it's possible caching or memory problems are to blame. But perhaps the best solution is to revert the default to Special:Upload from Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard, as you suggested. There's a so much content that is policy compliant but can't be uploaded properly with the wizard. It's more hindrance than help in my experience. Wonder if there were any metrics compiled pre vs post rollout to evidence a net positive impact of the change.--Elvey (talk) 02:27, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: So someone needs to submit a patch to take advantage of this ehancement which allows us to set the default to Special:Upload for redlinks, instead of inheriting the default from $wgUploadNavigationUrl, as you suggested, for review? I guess that's the next step. I see the discussions here and here indicate consensus that Special:Upload is where red links should go. I'm willing to figure out how to do it. --Elvey (talk) 19:04, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
@Odder: Can you do this? It looks like you do about 1/2 the editing of InitialiseSettings.php. You still alive? Looks like you are, on commons. The admin edit request is to make the precise edit PrimeHunter indicated, to take advantage of this ehancement which allows us to set the default to Special:Upload for redlinks, as it's clear we have consensus (support and no opposition). If not, I suppose I could post to WP:AN, but does this really need attention from more than one admin and a reviewer? It's not controversial. (And {{editrequest}} would complain that I'm not using it on a talk page.) (Also still pursuing the DIY path-trying to do this myself with Gerrit.) --Elvey (talk) 18:10, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
@Elvey: Do you mean the edit described by PrimeHunter at 03:32, 7 March 2014? If so, {{editrequest}} won't help because it's not an admin-editable page. At least, I'm an admin and I see no edit links on the page. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:09, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes. Which is why I pinged odder. He's a full sysop/superuser/what have you ... and as I said, he does about 1/2 the editing of InitialiseSettings.php. Although he seems to have retired from this wiki, he can probably still do the edit, as it's not an on-wiki edit.--Elvey (talk) 02:56, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Good news. I submitted a patch and the edit (yes, the one described by PrimeHunter at 03:32, 7 March 2014 your time, AKA 7:32 pm, 6 March 2014 (UTC−8)) was rolled out half an hour ago. So, FIXED! Y'all can remove any code you implemented to work around the bug, e.g. blank User:Technical 13/Scripts/fileRedlinks.js, Technical 13. Kudos all 'round. (PS smart, helpful sig, T13! I just copied it.) --{{U|Elvey}} (t • e • c) 15:56, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I thought it worth more widely sharing the comment of the reviewer who approved the change, so here it is. (modified: fixed implied wikilinks)-{{U|Elvey}} (t • e • c) 19:02, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm inclined to think that Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard should be updated if not just replaced with mw:Extension:UploadWizard (which hopefully doesn't have the problems), rather than dumping people back on Special:Upload with the problems that Wikipedia:Upload was created to fix in the first place.

But let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good here, and the on-wiki discussion seems to have a minimum of consensus. This can always be undone once the fancier things are fixed.

--Anomie

IMO, the Einstein Principle is essential to a good uploader tool, and is a principle that the wizard writers seem to have failed to honor, IMO. Solution: If the wizards didn't over-promise, I'd be happier with them, but they do. If they started off by saying something like, "uploading files properly is sometimes very complicated (which could link to a page listing those reasons - from copyright to file size). This wizard is designed to be easy to use, especially for new users in the most common cases, but the simplification required to make it means that it cannot handle many of the complicated cases; for those, you should use a different upload tool." That sentence could use some refinement, but expression of the core sentiment is critical. Otherwise, they're more harmful than helpful. Not to mention:

Copied from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload_Wizard_feedback#Wizard_stoped:

The Upload Wizard is pretty much in a perpetual state of brokenness. Have you tried Commons:Upload? It tends to be much more reliable. —LX 19:13, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

--{{U|Elvey}} (t • e • c) 19:02, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

"AFCH error" box

Per WP:MULTI: Avoid posting the same thread in multiple forums This has been posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#.22AFCH_error.22_box as well, where this discussion should be continued. (t) Josve05a (c) 09:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Why am I getting a box with this text:

AFCH error: user not listed
AFCH could not be loaded because "Beyond My Ken" is not listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants. You can request access to the AfC helper script there.

whenever I open anyone's user page? It's pretty annoying. BMK (talk) 22:29, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

You have the AfC gadget enabled in your preferences, but you're not listed as an AfC reviewer on Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants. If you are interested in reviewing AfC submissions, add your name to Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants. If you're not, disable the AfC gadget. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:36, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
I did not enable an "AfC" gadget, so it was added as "opt out"? I vehemently protest about this. I will turn the gadget off, but editors should not have to opt out. And why does the message come up when I'm simply looking at a user page - that's not an AfC-related activity. This whole thing seems like an enormous fuck up and needs to be totally re-thought. Where is the discussion that authorized it? BMK (talk) 22:48, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
The gadget is, and has always been, opt-in. If it was enabled, it's because you enabled it at one point. Looking at user pages is AfC-related, because some users create AfC submissions in their userspace. It was authorized at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC for AfC reviewer permission implementation. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:52, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Could someone perhaps add a hint in the box to those of us who tried AfC at one point and were burned about how to get rid of the pop-up? It took me quite a while to find this discussion and to remember that in a moment of unbecoming zeal I did change my preferences, and the change was in the gadgets section. (AfC is a seriously hot potato!) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
You folks instituted a change in functionality on the basis of an RfC which recieved the opinons of 14 editors! Do you really think that's a valid cross-section of the community? And then the implementation is botched, and you're still trying to sell it as a feature, and not what it is, a bug. This whole thing should be undone and receive a real RfC before it is re-implemented, and the implementation should be reconsidered. BMK (talk) 23:04, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
The default status of gadgets can be seen and changed at MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. There is no "default" in the line for afchelper so it isn't enabled by default. If it has ever been default then it should show in the page history, but I don't think it has. It would certainly be inappropriate if it was. Users sometimes say a non-default gadget is enabled in their account without any action on their part. It's hard to tell whether this is correct or they accidentally enabled it, but I think the common assumption is the latter. If it actually did enable without user action then the problem would be in MediaWiki or the Wikimedia servers and not in the implementation of this particular gadget at the English Wikipedia. Anyway, you can disable it now so your problem is solved and I don't see reason to go on about it unless other users also claim it has enabled automatically. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:20, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
I am almost certainly wrong about the default. I do recall doing a few AfC's at one point, so I most probably turned on the gadget myself. Nevertheless a change in system functionality has been (badly) implemented on the basis of 14 people's opinion. That's a very bad idea, and no one at AfC seems to want to own up to having pulled a boner. They have. BMK (talk) 23:25, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Implementation details of gadgets rarely get large discussions and this gadget is not default and has few users. The message you quoted is from MediaWiki:Gadget-afchelper.js/core.js. You could suggest it adds something like: 'This message can be avoided by disabling "Yet Another AFC Helper Script" under "Editing" in your gadget preferences.' That should help users like you who are annoyed by the message and don't know how to get rid of it. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

You all might be interested to learn that AFC are intending to remove your name from the list if you don't do a review in two months. So even if you put your name on the whitelist to suppress the error messages, you will get them back again in two months unless you uninstall the gadget. Seems to me that AFC are overstepping their scope with this. SpinningSpark 00:02, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Well that wins for bad ideas. I review AfC's as I have the time, and have reviewed quite a few. However, it wouldn't at all surprise me if there was a two month period at some point in the future when I don't have time to review an AfC. If I come back from whatever forced that break and realize I have to jump through a hoop to be able to use AFCH again, I'm just as likely to give up on helping a mostly broken process as I am likely to restore my name and start doing AFC reviews again. The idea that AFCH - a script that, mind you, could be implemented in userspace without *that* much difficulty without checking the white list and with no special permissions - is so sensitive that it needs a removal of permissions only one third of the time we give inactive sysops is pretty odd. Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:46, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

What we have here, is a failure of one editor to read a message and to either add themselves to a list for AFC participants or to remove the AFCH (or previously Yet Annother AFC submission handler) preference/gadget from their javascript. That does not excuse rudeness (Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#.22AFCH_error.22_box, User_talk:Hasteur/Archive_9#Please...., User_talk:Hasteur/Archive_9#Too_bad...). If only there were some way the editor could go back to assuming good faith and following the advice they give on their own talkpage (which option will best serve the building of an encyclopedia) rather than making it a "AFC is full of bad people" battleground. Hasteur (talk) 00:13, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

No, what we have here is arrogance on the part of Hasteur and AfC. Why in hell should I be required to add myself to a list in order not to receive an error message. The message did not say that it was generated because I had an obscure gadget turned on. It did not say that I could stop receiving the message by turning off the gadget. No, you just assumed that your project was so damned important that everyone should jump through your hoops to accommodate you. You're pretty darn high-falutin' with a overdeveloped sense of AfC's importance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beyond My Ken (talk • contribs) 00:46, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
  • That was the discussion I was pointed to when I asked for the consensus discussion which authorized that change. If there were others, that's good, that's better, but it doesn't change the piss-poor attitude of Hasteur and the problems in the implementation. BMK (talk) 00:46, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I won't debate you that his methods and attitude are poor at best on most things of this nature, but he was still not wrong (albeit unnecessarily defensive) about this implementation. I will say, that complaining about Hasteur doesn't improve the wiki all that much, and the topic should just be dropped (at least in this venue, if you choose to take it to another venue where it is appropriate to complain about other editor behavior, that is your prerogative). — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 00:51, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Yes, and complaining about Hasteur doesn't change his behavior, either, so it's hardly worthwhile continuing. BMK (talk) 06:08, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:MULTI: Avoid posting the same thread in multiple forums This has been posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#.22AFCH_error.22_box as well, where this discussion should be continued. (t) Josve05a (c) 09:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Supercount down?

It's back up again! Woo yay! —Tom Morris (talk) 11:24, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

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

Supercount is curently displaying a four o four. -- Fauzan✆ talk ✉ email 07:06, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

This is indeed quite irritating. Anyone know who we need to nudge to get it back up again? —Tom Morris (talk) 08:27, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
That would be User:Cyberpower678. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:11, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bracketbot and Referencebot are welcoming vandals

I'm not sure whether this is appropriate for a bugzilla report, hence this entry here, but wikipedia's behaviour is not ideal. In this edit, a vandal removed a random chunk of code, without citations, so perhaps Cluebot wouldn't notice such a thing. In any case, Bracketbot's response to this on the IP's talk page is a bit absurd. Similarly, Referencebot has welcomed a vandal with open arms in response to a seriously scrambled edit that involved, inter alia, deleting all the references from the page. Could these bots be asked to run a bit less enthusiastically? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:01, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I think such things are usually raised at the bot's/bot's owner's TP? It Is Me Here t / c 09:42, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

A kind of inverse watchlist viewing/editing ..?

Is it possible to view/edit your watchlist sorted according to how long pages on it have remained unchanged..? If so, how/where would be much appreciated, with apologies in advance if I've missed something obvious. Sardanaphalus (talk) 22:17, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I think this option is not available, but someone could try to develop a script using the API. Helder.wiki 22:33, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks for this idea. Anyone with the know-how willing to give this a try, please..? Sardanaphalus (talk) 09:31, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Autoarchiving again

Resolved. Lowercase sigmabot just archived the page. VanIsaacWScont

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

Have implemented autoarchiving on Talk:Anatomy but even after many days, it's still not working. Would a more experienced user be able to have a look? --LT910001 (talk) 03:14, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

  Done I tried it out with a manual archiving tool, which makes an archive based on the Misza bot configuration and it archived to mainspace instead of talk. I fixed the configuration, and the manual archiver worked right, so let's see if that works for the bots in the next day. If it still doesn't work, post here or on my talk page and I'll take another look. VanIsaacWScont 04:44, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Tables and other multimedia objects

Tables cannot be put under other multimedia objects. See here for an example. Esszet (talk) 10:42, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't think a table is considered a multimedia object. class="wikitable floatright" will place it below the image in your example. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:19, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Ah. Thank you. Esszet (talk) 13:51, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, align only says something about position. Multimedia objects also automatically "clear" (so go on the next line from a previous right floating element), but tables do not. So you either need to manually (style="clear:right") or you use the floatright class, which aligns and clears at the same time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:51, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Section links not working properly

Normally when I click on a link to a particular section of a page, I'm brought to that section. However, for the past few days I've noticed that while I am brought to the section while the page is loading, once loading is complete it jumps back up to the top of the page. How can I fix this? Nikkimaria (talk) 12:09, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Do you use WP:WikEd? I've been havng the same problem and it only went away when I disabled WikEd (logged as an issue at User talk:Cacycle/wikEd), having tried every other gadget and script I'd got installed. Nthep (talk) 12:47, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
I've noticed that problem. I did have WikEd, but disabled it. Still happens.S Philbrick(Talk) 15:57, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
I've just blanked my common.js, common.css and gone through each entry there and all the gadgets in preferences that I have enabled and the problem for me seems to be when both WikEd and HotCat are enabled. Disable one or the other and I have no problem. Nthep (talk) 16:06, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Oops, I was mistaken. I thought I recently disabled WikEd, but it was the enhanced tool bar I disabled. I just disabled WikEd, and that "solved" the problem.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:26, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Can anybody get HotCat to work? I do nopt see the jumping problems, but I also do not see anything HotCat related on my edit pages (independent of wikEd enabled or not). Cacycle (talk) 18:56, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
HotCat works but when both it and WikED are enabled this bouncing behaviour is seen, diable either and problem goes away. Looking at c:MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js HotCat was upgraded to v2.28 last weekend which was when I first saw the problem, whether this has anything to do with it I don't know. Nthep (talk) 09:00, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
No, HotCat's upgrade to 2.28 cannot possibly have anything to do with this. (Famous last words... :-) That upgrade just affected the behavior of the category editor, which opens after a user clicked the (±) or (+) link, and only if the user uses an IME (Input method editor). Other behavior of HotCat has not changed. However, I see quite a lot of recent changes in wikEd.
Anyway, if you want anybody to be able to try to reproduce the problem, we need more information: which browser are you using? Firefox/Safari/Chrome/Opera/IE? On which OS? Which versions (of both)? Does the problem appear on all pages? Or only on some? Can you give us a section link that does consistently lead to the problem you mention? Are there any JavaScript-related error messages in your browser's error log/console? If so, what do they say? Lupo 20:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Firefox 29.0.1, Windows 8.1 (by had same issue on Firefox 17/Windows XP, IE11/Windows8.1), Modern skin (but also seen the same problem using Vector and Monobook). The issue occurs whenever I click on any section link on any page e.g. from watchlist or article history and I can't see any js related errors in Firefox's console. Nthep (talk) 21:05, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
It's line 3648 in wikEd, which does window.scroll(0, wikEd.GetOffsetTop(wikEd.inputWrapper) - 2);. That's inside wikEd.TurnOn(), and it makes the page jump to the top. Lupo 21:19, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Hm. WikEd looks for an edit form (elements #editform, wpTextarea1 etc) in the DOM, and if it finds one, assumes it's on an edit page. HotCat does add a similar hidden form to make its edits (but the form id is #hotcatCommitForm, not #editform like for normal edit pages). So, when both are active, depending on the order the scripts run, it may or may not work: if wikEd runs first, the HotCat form isn't there yet, and everything is fine. If HotCat runs first, wikEd is misled, and then the "jump to top" problem occurs. Now, that's an area of HotCat that hasn't changed in a long time, and although I'm not sure, I don't think wikEd has changed in that area either. Why didn't that problem surface earlier? Cacycle, any suggestions for avoiding this conflict? Lupo 21:47, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for these details. I will check into it. Cacycle (talk) 21:52, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
BTW: if there is an element with id "hotcatCommitForm" in the DOM, you can be sure not to be on an edit page, as HotCat is never active on edit pages. Lupo 22:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
I have fixed the problem in the current version 0.9.126b, please update with Shift-Reload. Thanks to Lupo! Cacycle (talk) 22:57, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
OK, not yet fixed but still working on it... Cacycle (talk) 23:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Finally it works... (wikEd version 0.9.126c). Cacycle (talk) 23:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you both for investigating and resolving this. Nthep (talk) 10:29, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

How to search through User history?

I want to search through user edit history for specific articles, every time I use the Tag filter in contributions no results appear even when I know the user edited the article. Valoem talk contrib 15:06, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

The tag filter looks for articles that match certain defined criteria, like a section being blanked. If you want to see all the edits made by one specific user to one specific article, you can either go to their contribs and search for the article, or go to the article history and search for the username. In both cases, leave the tag filter window empty. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:32, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
So I have to manually search through all contribs? Valoem talk contrib 17:12, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Or the articles' history. There are other things you can do. Most useful is try and narrow it down by date to shorten either sort of list. Sometimes 'what links here' helps if it e.g. finds a related formal discussion, such as an RM or AfD, or an archive such as for a notice board, all of which will have dates on. Or the articles' talk pages which again have dated contributions.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 17:30, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
@Valoem: You could use commons:MediaWiki:Gadget-rightsfilter.js in the user contributions page. Helder.wiki 19:35, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, how do I do this? Valoem talk contrib 20:02, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
@JohnBlackburne: You just need to add

mw.loader.load( '//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-rightsfilter.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&smaxage=21600&maxage=86400' );

to your common.js (and clear you cache). Helder.wiki 20:39, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Added and clear cache now what? Valoem talk contrib 21:10, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
@Valoem: check the link I posted above. There will be a new field where you can type something, and the script will restrict the list to (or highlight) those items which match what you choose. Helder.wiki 22:08, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
...and on other special pages where there are lists, check the action menu in the top of the page to find a "Filter" link which shows this field. Helder.wiki 22:10, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
@Valoem: You might also find the user contribution search tool useful. Graham87 08:45, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
@Graham87: The tool doesn't seem to load for me. Valoem talk contrib 13:25, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
It's working for me at the moment, but the WMF Labs server is flaky. Graham87 14:35, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Reduced pull quote problem

The template {{Reduced pull quote}} is supposed to display curly quotes, then the selected text rendered in Times New Roman with size 3.3 em. It clearly is not—the quotes are there, but it looks like the standard font. (I asked this question on the template talk page, but that page doesn't get much traffic so asking here.)S Philbrick(Talk) 15:46, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

attempt to move a move-protected page by non-admin results in wrong error message

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T42145

About a year and a half ago, I reported a bug in which MediaWiki displays the wrong message error when a non-admin tries to move a move-protected page (T42145); the message would say the page can only be edited by admins even when it's merely protected from moves. A developer reported that the bug has been fixed, but when I try to rename a move-protected page with my non-admin test account, it still says the page can only be edited by administrators.

Does one of the system messages need to be updated, or is this some sort of regression? --Ixfd64 (talk) 17:34, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I've reopened the bug, and I have a patch now. The problem is that we customize the message that they changed, and we can't currently tell whether it's being called for an edit or move. My patch will allow it to distinguish these cases. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:25, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Error message I don't understand

Hello,

Lately when I click on some links I get the error message: "AFCH error: user not listed AFCH could not be loaded because "Parabolooidal" is not listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants. You can request access to the AfC helper script there."

I'm not trying to create an article or anything when I get this message. I don't know what a "AfC helper script" is. I am just following a wikilink which I works anyway for me but with this message. What is the message telling me to do? Thanks, Parabolooidal (talk) 17:38, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

See the similar question above at Wikipedia:VPT#.22AFCH_error.22_box, it might also be the problem you are having. RudolfRed (talk) 18:07, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for that link - I never would have figured it out. Hope removing the AfC from Gadgets will do away with it. (Thing is, I haven't changed my Preferences in a while, but this error message just started in the last few days, so it seems like something has changed!) Parabolooidal (talk) 18:53, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Cologne blue taskbar

Hi, Is it possible to have a hide/show option for the side item bar so that you can click "hide" while reading to the full page screen and then click show when you want to navigate? Where it says "Find" would probably be a good place for a hide/show option of the whole side bar. It's an option which I'm surprised isn't available in preferences.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:24, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

On vector skin, I use commons:MediaWiki:IPadSidbarSlider.js. Helder.wiki 19:38, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Doesn't work on cologne blue!♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:30, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
It won't have worked, because it's Javascript (the .js on the end of the filename is the key here), and you put it into your .css file. Try putting it in User:Dr. Blofeld/cologneblue.js instead. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:22, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Doesn't work. An arrow does appear but it doesn't hide the bar.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:08, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Template expansion limits

I'm continuing to prep the Paul Erdős Bibliography article, and have just come across Wikipedia:Template limits. I was planning on using ~1600 cite journal templates and a couple hundred math templates. Writing an article of this size requires creating a BibTeX database, writing code to convert those entries into wiki markup, and then uploading the result. I'd really rather not have to write the conversion script twice (once using cite, then a second time without any templates because I ran into the limit).

Can someone give me a ballpark idea how many cites can be included in an article before I can expect to start hitting the expansion limits? I expect the answer will be "It depends", but I'm looking for a rough guide here. If 500-citation articles regularly run into problems, then I'll plan on hand-coding my own cites.

Thanks much,

Lesser Cartographies (talk) 05:05, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Someone else may have a more technical answer, but you might consider breaking the article into multiple articles, with one article covering each decade (or some other reasonable range). Then create a master article, as was done with List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people. I don't know if this is a standard way of addressing potentially-long articles, but it appears to work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:32, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
  • At Wikipedia talk:Template limits, someone reported problems at 267 {{cite web}} transclusions (in 2006), so 1600 {{cite journal}} calls are probably going to be problematic. I'm wondering if it might not be a good idea to resurrect the old non-lua version of {{cite journal}}, so you can subst in your 1600 different citations in batches to a #switch, which would give you an expansion depth of only 3200 at 2 per switch condition. VanIsaacWScont 06:40, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Numbers for citation templates from 2006 have no relevance. Many of the main citation templates – including {{cite journal}}, {{cite book}}, {{cite web}}, etc. – were re-written in Lua instead of wiki-template code. Lua is much more efficient. I don't have numbers for you, but it would be easy to find out by experiment. Just grab a version of a filled in template that approximates how you are going to use it and put 1600 copies on a page in your sandbox. See what happens.
I would second the opinion that it sounds like your page inherently needs to be broken into multiple pages. Without consideration of the number of citation templates which you plan to use, almost anything that has 1600 entries should be broken into multiple pages. Think about how hard it will be for users to read the page with 1600 bibliographic entries. Normal default usage in Wikipedia is to present a couple of hundred entries per page for most system lists. This could be considered an appropriate ballpark. How you organize breaking the page into subpages depends on what exactly you are listing. As a bibliography, breaking into groups of first letters sounds normal. — Makyen (talk) 07:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
I just tested 2000 long-ish instances of {{cite journal}} in my sandbox, and I got to 1007 before I went over the post-expand include size limit. That number will increase for shorter citations, but probably not enough to fit 1600 normal-sized citations in. There's not much you can do about that apart from substitute them, or better, expand them with Special:ExpandTemplates. (Alternatively, as was suggested above, separate pages would also work.) As most of the cite templates are already Lua-ified, we can't reduce the post-expand include size by tweaking things inside the templates. And VanIsaac's #switch won't work, as that is a fix for the wrong template limit (the expansion depth). The problem here is the sheer amount of text, which using #switch will not affect. So, in short, if you're expecting more than 1000 cites, and you don't want to split the page, substitution is probably the way to go. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I misunderstood what he was doing exactly - I though he was writing a series of articles that would need to select from Erdos' bibliography, not a single article archive - but I still think resurrecting the old non-lua citation template so he can subst in the citation formatting in pieces is probably a workable idea to limit template expansion issues. VanIsaacWScont 00:58, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't know if any of these are such a good idea. Given this sample, here's what I get:
Original
{{cite book |last=Richardson |first=Tim H. |title=Sweets: A History of Candy |publisher=Bloomsbury USA |year=2002 |isbn=1-58234-229-6 |pages=53–54}}
Subst
{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=book }}
Special:ExpandTemplates
<span class="citation book">Richardson, Tim H. (2002). ''Sweets: A History of Candy''. Bloomsbury USA. pp. 53–54. [[International Standard Book Number|ISBN]] [[Special:BookSources/1-58234-229-6|1-58234-229-6]].</span><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3ASpecial%3AExpandTemplates&rft.aufirst=Tim+H.&rft.aulast=Richardson&rft.au=Richardson%2C+Tim+H.&rft.btitle=Sweets%3A+A+History+of+Candy&rft.date=2002&rft.genre=book&rft.isbn=1-58234-229-6&rft.pages=53-54&rft.pub=Bloomsbury+USA&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook" class="Z3988"><span style="display:none;"> </span></span>
So regular subst'ing is useless (that produces an error message about an empty citation), and ExpandTemplates is filled with span tags. Why not just plain manual formatting? This is a one-time task that won't require much maintenance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:49, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Hmm, that is food for thought. You're right that expanding the templates as-is doesn't make very clean wikitext. However, if we can convince the module not to output all of those span tags, then we might well be able to fit 1600 references in an article without going over the template limits. All characters in the code output count towards the post-expand include size, after all. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:35, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I would seriously question the readability of an article with 1600 references.. And thus the article's existence. I haven't read this, but if you need 1600 references for an article, then that just feels wrong to me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:55, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

It's really more a "List of publications by" than "article about". A list of 1600 items is very long, but not necessarily completely out of the question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you all for the in-depth responses. Let me give a few more details. The main bibliography I'm working from is here. Most of these entries are categorized using one or more Mathematics Subject Classification numbers. The article will have a tabular topic index with columns representing decades, rows representing the MCS categories, and the table itself containing a list of <ref> tags that point to the bibliography entries.
I've given a fair amount of thought to how this collection could be carved into multiple articles, and at this point I haven't found a good solution. The <ref> tags in the topical index will have both "group" and "name" attributes, and I'm assuming there's no way to point those to a different page. (If there was the problem is solved: the topical index forms one page, and each decade's worth of citations would get a separate page for the actual bibliographical entries.)
I've also thought of creating several articles divided by either year or collection of topics. The former means that if you want easy access to all of Erdos's work on set theory, you need to visit several articles. The latter means that it's difficult to make serendipitous connections: what else was Erdos working on when he published his seminal work on random graphs?
I agree that a 1600-entry bibliography is unreadable. Part of my motivation for doing this work was my frustration dealing with Grossman's dead-tree attempt (and let me emphasize that Grossman did a terrific job given the limitation of the media he had to work with). 1600 ref tags spread over a table should be far more useful and usable interface to the bibliography proper.
I started this project thinking that it was the most difficult (but feasible) article I could come up with, and while it's far more difficult that I originally imagined, I've yet to prove it isn't feasible. Generating raw HTML sounds like a good fallback position, and perhaps writing a set of specialized "skinny" templates is worth investigating as well. Anyway, this is a hell of a lot more fun than chasing sock puppets.....
Lesser Cartographies (talk) 17:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor citation tool going live

I've just enabled the citation tool in VisualEditor, which adds a prominent menu in the toolbar listing the most common citation templates to insert as new citations. You can also use this tool to edit most existing references that use these templates, bypassing the need to edit a template inside a reference. Feedback welcome!

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Strange offsets

 

Hello all, I've got another issue that may or may not be with the computer I'm currently using: Syntax Highlighting's all discombobulated, like orange highlighting four letters that are unrelated to the four tildes when I sign (simple example shown in the screenshot); and sometimes the search results show up in the center of the dashboard as opposed to under the search bar. I remember something here a while ago about the latter, but can't remember what was said there, and it only happens sometimes. Any ideas about why? (I'm using Vector without disabling the new font, and the problem doesn't appear to be connected with any user scripts I've got in my vector.js or common.js pages) Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 14:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm assuming you are using the Gadget of: mw:User:Remember_the_dot/Syntax_highlighter. I recently made some changes to the styling and setup of WikiEditor, so it could be that this is affecting this Gadget in an unforeseen way. Perhaps User:Remember_the_dot can help both of use out with this :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:31, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Yep, that's the one! If RtD doesn't respond for a while, I'll leave a message on his MediaWiki page. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 21:09, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
What web browser are you using, and what version? The syntax highlighter requires a fully up-to-date web browser. —Remember the dot (talk) 03:03, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't realize Firefox released a new update. Seems be fixed now, thanks! Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 16:00, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
[addendum] Still seems to be sometimes offsetting search results (screenshot available per request). Any ideas? Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 19:47, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Adding local description to files

What is this new feature of "adding local desciption" to files? It creates dummy files on local wikis as the users do not understand that they are not editing Wikimedia Commons but a local wiki. Why are the local descriptions even necessary? Is this a bug or flawed design? --Pxos (talk) 18:02, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

This must be some kind of error: [37]. You could add local descriptions technically but it is not allowed and there is a big warning. Well there is no warning on the Finnish Wikipedia and people have started to edit the local file pages. Please relay my rant to the people who can do something about this. --Pxos (talk) 18:07, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not an error; adding a local description for a Commons file is allowed, but there's generally no reason to do that except in some cases (such as locally featured images). SiBr4 (talk) 18:21, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
And people will add the local descriptions to files because they cannot understand the difference between Commons and local repositories. They just think that they are editing the description of the file. It wasn't a problem before the tabs were introduced. Now it is. When the file is renamed in Commons, the local description becomes orphaned and the data is lost. --Pxos (talk) 18:29, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
It was always possible to create a local description, and I think there used to be a tab just saying "Edit". The new tab name is more descriptive, and a new tab "View on Wikimedia Commons" was added. The tabs are wide. You can make them more narrow and just say "Commons" and "Edit" with this in your CSS:

importScript('User:PrimeHunter/Image tabs.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Image tabs.js]]

PrimeHunter (talk) 18:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
I want the tabs to be "Edit on Commons" for everyone as default. The tab "add local description" should be hidden somewhere like the "move" tab is or the "delete" tab for administrators. --Pxos (talk) 18:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Before the "View on WM Commons" and "Add"/"Edit local description" tabs there would be normal "Read"/"Edit"/"History" tabs if the local page existed and a "Create" tab if it didn't exist, if I remember correctly. I don't see how what you describe only became a problem when the tabs were changed; someone who wants to add/edit a description and doesn't know what Commons is would click "Create"/"Edit" before and will click "Add local description"/"Edit local description" now. The automatic box "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons..." and the edit notice you described are also still there. SiBr4 (talk) 18:47, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
The "create" tab conveys to the reader a meaning that by pressing it, one is going to create a file. There is no incentive to press "create" when people see that the file already exists. Now the text "add local description" might be understood as "edit the text that is visible on the page". There is a case of Finnish Wikipedia where a person uploaded the file on Commons with all the correct license information but then came back to add to what he had written. Guess where he wrote the new text? When done, the file page displays both the text from Commons and from the local page. Perhaps we should also construct an automatic box that says "you have indeed pressed the wrong tab, now go away." What's the point in that? --Pxos (talk) 19:11, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
You can't create a file on MediaWiki, only upload one. To me it doesn't seem logical if you need to click "add a description" in order to edit one that's already there. Even if one does wrongly click the "add local description" tab, there's the edit notice that says descriptions should be added at Commons and creating a local page is rarely necessary. An "Edit on Commons" button and/or moving the local description buttons to the drop-down menu seems like a good idea, nevertheless. SiBr4 (talk) 19:39, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
People create files by uploading them. There are thousands of people who blatantly defy logic in their everyday lives. Any logical system that is designed to be used by people will fail sooner or later. It seems perfectly logical to click various buttons to achive some goals on Wikipedia. When a tab or button gives you a page to edit, the page will be edited – and when the result seems convincing, there is no problem. Only the few logical people understand where the bits and pieces of the description really is. The rest could not care less. --Pxos (talk) 20:00, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
The tab "add a local description" gets you to a page that says "please do not add a local description" on the English Wikipedia. On the Finnish Wikipedia there is no warning at all. The tabs read now "VIEW on something"; "EDIT something"; "ADD something". Normal people just do not understand what is "local" and what is "Commons". --Pxos (talk) 20:17, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Exactly the same can be argued for the old system as well, so again, why is it a problem that only started with the tabs change? Also, do you think the edit notice isn't clear or do you think people will ignore it? You mentioned an example at the Finnish Wikipedia, though the "this file is on Commons" note appears to be a normal line of text on fiwiki, which is more easily skipped than the red error-like box on this wiki. SiBr4 (talk) 20:27, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Well to be frank, the problems only start when I notice them, of course. Hah haa! I don't think that anyone paid attention to this problem before me. I tried to explain above that the phrases "create" and "add a local description" seem different to the reader although they lead you to the same page as before. This is a problem that clearly does not affect the English wikipedia, but I am such a poor bastard that I don't know where to discuss this properly. If I can be wrong in some other venue, please direct me there. --Pxos (talk) 20:37, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

If you want to request a change to the interface of the Finnish WP, then you obviously need to do that there, though for general discussion or technical help it's reasonable to ask the EnWP village pump rather than the Finnish one since you'll get more attention here. The "View on Commons" link was added exactly for preventing people locally editing a file page that's actually at Commons (the patch is here, by the way).
I've found the translatewiki page using Google (I didn't know about that site)". I think the "e.g. Wikimedia Commons" in the description of the message is incorrect, as the message should show if the local page doesn't exist yet (since if it does exist, it should display "edit local description source"). Refers to removed comment. SiBr4 (talk) 21:09, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the link to the Gerrit patch! It seems I have thought the solution was the problem, now I understand that the end users are the problem. I am certain that the new tab "add local description" will prevent people from adding local descriptions to the files. --Pxos (talk) 21:32, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Numbers rendering below text on article titles in Vector skin

I noticed that the number renders below the line of text on this article's title when using the Vector skin. Is this a know bug? If not, will someone tech-wise report it, please? Thank you.—John Cline (talk) 22:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

  • It is not a bug, it's just the font. Having numbers span from baseline to cap height, called lining figures, is a feature of modern typography, while text figures have been the most common form of numbers for centuries. VanIsaacWScont 00:28, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
ABC1234567890DEF
It's a feature of the Georgia font used for the headings, see sample above. Matma Rex talk 22:58, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Moreover, it's an effect of the recent decision to use a different font from the body text (which is the vanilla font-family: sans-serif;) for the headings in Vector skin. In Vector, headings now use the cascade font-family: "Linux Libertine",Georgia,Times,serif; one or more of which has text figures. @John Cline: If you want the headings to be sans-serif like the main text, I can knock up some simple CSS to do that. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:38, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Redrose64, that is a kind offer and I know your skills are in great demand; always. I am more interested in experiencing Wikipedia just as our newest users do, so as not to loose touch with the perils they will surmount. The titles rendition just seemed odd to me upon first seeing it, though I now understand it is not a bug after all. Nevertheless, I am now ready when a new user asks at the teahouse about this occurrence, to give a good answer. I do thank everyone who replied here; helping me to this end. Cheers.—John Cline (talk) 11:03, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Question regarding a template

Hello guys, I'd like to ask you something about a template I used. As you can see here Olympiacos B.C.#Seasons the template works fine, but ideally I would like the cursor to start from the bottom of the box (from the newest season, up to the older ones) when somebody visits the page. Is there any way I can achieve that? Thank you in advance, Gtrbolivar (talk) 23:33, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, probably; but I don't think that you should be doing that, see MOS:SCROLL. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:40, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks anyway. Gtrbolivar (talk) 12:15, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Stats

According http://stats.grok.se/en/201405/Ukraine article "Ukraine has been viewed 153902 times in 2014.05. This article ranked 29 in traffic on en.wikipedia.org." Is there any place where i can view full ranks, recently (or live) updated. If possible for top ~1000 pages. Also, if is possible, not only for enwiki: i.e. i want see most viewed articles on rowiki, ruwiki and ukwiki. (general/all-time and recently stats). Thank you in advance. 188.213.216.18 (talk) 13:50, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Statistics#Page views. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:39, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Transclusion of subpages with parameters broken from yesterday?

I implemented transclusion of a review list on the main page of WP:Peer review some time ago. I use the parameter 'mode' to set whether reviews should be transcluded in full or not.

I use this transclusion: {{Wikipedia:Peer review/List of active reviews|mode=transclude}}

From yesterday, this stopped transcluding anything at all, and now just sits as a link. Why is there a problem? {{Wikipedia:Peer review/List of active reviews}} transcludes fine, but with a parameter, nothing transcludes at all. This includes the headings on the subpage, which should transclude regardless of the parameter.

I've re-implemented the old system in the meantime.

Hoping for some clear answers to this bedevilling problem, --LT910001 (talk) 23:42, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

The page exceeds the template limits. Matma Rex talk 23:54, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Ah. Any way to get around this using the transclusion above? --LT910001 (talk) 04:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Sidebar menus

I want to reorganise my sidebar menus. I know how to add new links to a portlet and how to create new portlets on my .js page. What I don't know how to do is move a built-in item from one portlet to another. Is this possible? SpinningSpark 10:50, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

It is possible, but only using JavaScript/jQuery. There is no pre-defined function for that (that I know of), so you will need to write such a function yourself. — Edokter (talk) — 10:55, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
I realise it is going to need javascript, but I don't really have the capability, that's why I am asking here. As I say, I know how to insert items into portlets, as I have been doing at User:Spinningspark/monobook.js, but I don't know how to remove an item I haven't inserted myself. Any hints appreciated. SpinningSpark 11:11, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't know how to move it but if you know an addPortletLink to add it where you want it then you can do that and remove it in the other place. Look for its id in the html source, for example id="t-whatlinkshere" for "What links here". Then add this to your CSS:
#t-whatlinkshere {display: none;}
PrimeHunter (talk) 12:43, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Stupidly, I already had examples of that css code in my skin but thought that it would suppress both the old and the new link. The key thing I was missing is that I could give the new link a different id. Thanks for your help. SpinningSpark 15:30, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
@Edokter, Spinningspark, and PrimeHunter: I've got a function that does this in my nothingthree.js collection that moves portlets. Using the collection's currently a little awkward (you import the script, and it imports Special:MyPage/nothingthree-config.js where you can activate individual functions), but here's an example from the script I use to selectively move the "delete" tab out of the menu: nothingthree.tabMove.core({"id": "ca-delete", "followingElement": "ca-history", "targetParent": "p-views"}); … {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 22:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Searching for non-alphanumeric character returns an error.

I wanted to search for instances of U+20A4 LIRA SIGN ("₤") The obvious search gives an error. Searching for e.g. "₤5" searches for "5", ignoring the currency symbol.

On further testing, the situation seems to be: any combination of non-alphanumeric characters gives an error; if any alphanumeric characters are added then these are searched for, the non-alphas being ignored entirely. alphanumerics from other alphabets seem to be treated similarly to Latin alphanumerics.

Is this a configuration issue with this wiki, or a MediaWiki bug? And are there any workrounds to allow searching for arbitrary non-alpha characters? Pseudomonas(talk) 21:12, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

@Pseudomonas: It's a known bug in the current search system. Try enabling the "New search" beta feature (Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures), it at least doesn't throw errors at you, although I have been unable to get it to actually search for the sign – it supports some advanced options, maybe you can find something working in the documentation at mw:Help:CirrusSearch? (cc: Manybubbles / NEverett (WMF) who works on this) Matma Rex talk 23:07, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Known bug in lsearchd/MWSearch. I've given up trying to find a solution to it and instead we're devoting full efforts to getting Elasticsearch/Cirrus live everywhere for everyone. ^demon[omg plz] 16:21, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

AWB password

Dear editors: I am ready to try out the AutoWikiBrowser. I have downloaded and installed it. I have managed to coax it into loading a list of pages. At this point I need to log in. The instructions say that I should see the "standard Wikipedia login", but the login dialogue box does not look like the one that I usually use to log into Wikipedia. Maybe this is because I'm not an IE user. Just to be sure: am I right in assuming that the login and password required are those that I use when logging into the English Wikipedia, and that this is a secure connection? —Anne Delong (talk) 04:31, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Yes, the login is for AWB, so it looks nothing like a regular wikipedia login screen, and your AWB login is completely independent of your wikipedia login status. The AWB login is a popup window called "Profiles" with heading of ID, Username, Password saved?, Default settings, and Notes; Login, Add, Edit, and Delete buttons; a Quick login frame with Username and Password fields, Save this account and Save password checkboxes, and a Login button; and lastly a Close button. If that's what you are seeing, just enter your wikipedia username and password and you can login. If you save your account, then it will become a profile that you can click on the next time you try to login. VanIsaacWScont 06:38, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
  • And yes, this is a secure connection (Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User manual#Login). Be cautious about asking AWB to remember the password, though, as someone who gains access to your machine would then be able to make AWB edits using your account. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:46, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks,Van and John of Reading. I was seeing the right login box; I am just cautious. No, I never ask for my password to be saved; it's only in my head, which rapidly running out of storage space. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:37, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-20

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf4) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 8. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and all Wikipedias on May 15 (calendar).

VisualEditor news

  • A new citation system in VisualEditor was enabled on the English Wikipedia. It will soon be enabled on more wikis. [38]
  • Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly. [39]

Future software changes

  • It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently. [40] [41]
  • You will soon be able to clear your watchlist with one click or through the API. [42] [43] [44] [45]
  • You will soon be able to link to Flow posts and workflows with Special:Flow. [46] [47]
  • The jQuery JavaScript library will soon be updated. Please check that your gadgets and scripts will still work. [48]
  • The Vector skin will work faster, as the sidebar will no longer collapse partly after being loaded. [49] [50] [51]
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on Wikimedia Commons on May 15. Feedback is welcome.
  • An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on May 14 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [52]
  • Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead. [53]

Problems

  • There were problems with generating file thumbnails for all wikis between May 3 and May 6 due to a configuration error. [54] [55]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

06:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Sort-table sorting numbers "alphabetically"

  Resolved

The table at Casualties_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Foreign_civilians_killed seems to be sorting the second, numerical column "alphabetically" (e.g. 11 ... 19 ... 2 ...). Could anyone help? Thanks! It Is Me Here t / c 17:17, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

@It Is Me Here: Yes[56]. The table sorter does try to detect table columns containing only numeric values, but this fails in some cases (the problem here are the references, a value like "74[110]" is nor recognizable as a number). Matma Rex talk 17:39, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
  Thank you! It Is Me Here t / c 19:28, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

login problems: new public computer at public library

Our public computers at our local library often have givrn me trouble. We now have HP Compaq Pro 6300. The "START" page says the OS is Windows 7 (ver. unknown), and Windows Help says the browser is Internet Explorer 9 (ver. unknown). When I attempt to Log in, I repeatedly find myself back on an edit page with an error message: "You are not logged in!" I am sending this message from my cellphone, but losing battery fast: please, if gou can help, leave me a message in my User_Talk page: user:Ragityman. I will attempt to check it from this library computer. Rags (talk) 20:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Insert citation button in editor

Could we clean up our act here please. My watchlist is cluttered with Monkbot edits viz 

(diff | hist) . . mb Mellor Mill‎; 14:04 . . (-2)‎ . . ‎Monkbot (talk | contribs)‎ (→‎References: Task 3: Fix CS1 deprecated coauthor parameter errors)

When I use the Insert citation button in editorm and choose cite book, I am offered a template with these fields: 

 URL:   Title:  
 Last name:   First name:  
 Coauthors:   Publication date:  
 Work:   Publisher:  
 Pages:   Language:  
 Access date:   Location:  
 Reference name:

Then there is the cite/citation problem where the first requires you to then manually add |ref=harv, but the second doesn't. This is needed with our common notes/bibliography reference rendering that is familiar to anyone involved with WP:GLAM . It becomes increasing desperate when you are joint training new users. I will use one workaround and my colleague will use another which doesn't do much to inspire confidence.

Could someone

  1. Check and rewrite the Insert citation templates so they are compliant
  2. change date to year which is another problem
  3. change the cite templates so they default to ref=harv

Please. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 10:07, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Issues with ref tool bar are probably best taken up at Wikipedia:RefToolbar. Issues with citation templates are probably best taken up at Help talk:Citation Style 1.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:14, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Authority control

Wikipedia talk:Authority control seems to be under-watched; leastways there are a number of technical matters raised there which are unaddressed or unresolved. Please drop by. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:09, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Template settings

I would like to have {{Blacklisted-links}} auto expanded for me and have that setting persist, right now I have to click it every time I want to review an article. Werieth (talk) 12:49, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer launches next week on the English Wikipedia

 
Media Viewer lets you see images in larger size
 
The majority of users find Media Viewer useful.

Greetings! As discussed in earlier posts, Media Viewer is scheduled to launch on the English Wikipedia next week, to provide a better viewing experience for our users.

Media Viewer has been tested extensively on many large wikis around the world, and the feedback collected from thousands of users suggests that this tool is generally useful to them, as outlined in these survey results. More importantly, the rate of favorable feedback keeps increasing across all languages over time: for example, the French approval rate started out at about 64% a few weeks ago, and is now up to 70%, which is very encouraging.

Here on the English Wikipedia, over 13,874 beta users have been testing it, since the tool was first deployed as a beta feature in November 2013. Thanks to all their helpful feedback, Media Viewer has been greatly improved in recent months, and we are now getting ready to roll it out on all wikis worldwide.

Media Viewer will be enabled by default on the English Wikipedia on Thursday, May 22 at about 20:00 UTC. We will deploy this tool very carefully and keep a close eye on this release, to make sure it all goes smoothly. The tool will then be released to all wikis the following week, as described in this release plan.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about Media Viewer, which you can test here in beta -- or learn more about on this Help page (which includes tips for bypassing this tool, or turning it off in your preferences). You are invited to share your feedback in this discussion, to help improve this feature. You're also welcome to take this quick survey -- or join this in-depth discussion on MediaWiki.org, as you prefer.

Many thanks to all the community members who helped make Media Viewer possible! This tool was created with active community participation from its early planning phase -- all the way to its final release. This has been an exceptionally productive partnership, which we hope to build on for future projects. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 01:15, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

BTW, our community has a huge blob of work to do here, to make sure that all license files get the proper amount of metadata to make it possible for our license templates to be machine readable. Commons has done this years ago, but our licenses are in TERRIBLE shape. For instance all PD templates are separate templates (whoever thought it was a good idea to delete PD-layout........). We need to consolidate them by layout and by restrictions and this is mostly going to be a manual process.. . —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:55, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing this out, TheDJ. You are absolutely right that more community work will be needed to help make our metadata machine-readable -- and we aim to start a Structured Data initiative later this year to address this issue on Commons, in collaboration with Wikidata and community members. The Media Viewer project is a useful prelude towards that goal, because it nudges us to place our attributions and license metdata in standard templates that are supported by this tool. We also hope to soon provide a way to disable MediaViewer for certain images , to help editors filter images that don't belong in Media Viewer - which is another community task that seems worthwhile. More info to come on both fronts :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
If we've already got something like User:Rezonansowy/SimpleLightbox.js, will Media Viewer trump that? Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 12:01, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
If you go into "Beta" and check the beta experiment, you can judge for yourself. :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
I left a comment as you suggested. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 13:06, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. I left something on MediaWiki a while ago, but nobody responded, didn't think about putting it here, too. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 15:51, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Ancheta Wis, for posting your helpful comments on this enwiki talk page :), much appreciated! Supernerd11 and others, we welcome your comments on that page -- or on our discussion on MediaWiki.org, as you prefer. We read all posts, even if we don't respond right away -- and rare very grateful for your feedback! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Cannot log into account - get message about a redirect loop

Who I am doesn't matter, but here's what matters: I am currently unable to either:

  1. Do any edits while I was logged in before this error occurred
  2. Access the login page to log into my account

I'm not sure what happened, but I was in the process of doing edits on my logged account, then I started receiving "Your browser cannot complete the task due to too many site redirects" error message. What is going on? (I already tried clearing my browser cache and cookies, and even tried another browser, but came across the same result: "too many site redirects.") 108.65.245.234 (talk) 03:03, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

This was a momentary yet widespread issue with the site; it should be fixed now, so go ahead and try again. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 03:05, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, looks like it has been resolved now. 108.65.245.234 (talk) 03:07, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Wdsearch.js edit request

Could someone who can code in JavaScript take a quick look at the edit request at MediaWiki talk:Wdsearch.js#encodeURIComponent? I'm not sure about all the different methods of escaping strings in JS (and of their implications for security), so I'm not confident to make the edit myself. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:24, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: Looks good to me. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:51, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I've made the edit. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:14, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

New search

Dear technical experts: I have for some time been trying to create a search box that would be helpful to people reviewing at Afc, but was hindered by the fact that the search engine didn't check text in transcluded templates. Now it seems that there is a new search engine which does. I have "New Search" selected in my preferences. I created this search box which checks only in "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/":


By typing "football review waiting" into the search box I thought that I would see only see submissions with the requested prefix, the word "football" and the words "review waiting" which appear in the submission template. Instead I am getting mainly redirects to mainspace which months ago had this text, but in which currently neither the redirect not the mainspace page have the words "review waiting". What is going wrong? —Anne Delong (talk) 09:46, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

You found a bug. The search results page shows timestamps for the searched revision. In all cases I examined, this was the last edit before the page was moved and became a redirect. The search index for the old title apparently isn't updated when a page is moved, at least not for the examined cases. For example, this search currently says with UTC:
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Summer Cup (Scottish football)
Review waiting. This may take 2–3 weeks. The Articles for creation process is highly backlogged. Please
4 KB (587 words) - 19:45, 19 January 2014
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Summer Cup (Scottish football) was moved to Summer Cup (Scottish football) 19:46, 19 January 2014‎. The last revision before that in the page history of Summer Cup (Scottish football) is [57] 19:45, 19 January 2014‎. It would have produced the "Review waiting" text when it was at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Summer Cup (Scottish football) before the move. In other cases the time difference was more than 1 minute but it was always the last revision before the move. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:21, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Ah, that probably explains why this search turns up lots of albums which don't mention the word "sophomore" at all. However, it doesn't explain the presence of Breakaway (Kelly Clarkson album) in the search results - it was only moved once, in March 2009, at which time the word "sophomore" wasn't in the article.
Is there a bugzilla? --Redrose64 (talk) 10:46, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, this is a disappointment. I thought that when the new search came out I would finally be able to distinguish between pages submitted for review and those not currently submitted. —Anne Delong (talk) 10:54, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Do you have "New search" enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures? I only get Breakaway (Kelly Clarkson album) in the search results when New search is disabled. It's unrelated to the old move. Maybe there is a page somewhere with a piped link saying "sophomore album" in the link text. That can affect search results for the link target. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:05, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
All of my beta features are disabled, because of Visual Editor, Typographic refresh and other "enhancements". Bad reputation → refusal to use. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:28, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Whoops, there is very much a bug here, PrimeHunter spotted it. We're not updating the old page after a successful move. Will get working on a patch for this today. ^demon[omg plz] 14:54, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks very much. A fix would make the above template much more useful. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:15, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Patch is written, pending a test and review. Will be live no later than Thursday's deployment. ^demon[omg plz] 16:06, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Next question: Will the fix affect already-created redirects, or only newly created ones? If the former, is there a way to fix the pre-existing ones? A null-edit each, perhaps? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:41, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
  • A null edit will fix any one-off instances you come across, yes. We're planning an in-place reindex of most of the wikis in the near future anyway to pick up the new GeoData features so we'll fix it en masse then anyway. ^demon[omg plz] 17:08, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I look forward to this feature. While primarily intended for the good people working at AfC, OTRS agents will find it useful. It is quite common for someone to report some issue with an article but it turns out they are talking about an AfC submission and don't know to provide the link. This search box is likely to help.S Philbrick(Talk) 19:43, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I'll have to make another for the Draft: space, but it really only takes a minute or two to set up the template for the search box using the "search prefixes" template. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:31, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Is there any ETA on a refresh that will update the timestamp for redirects? Right now the new search is not useful for articles that have been moved, because the search picks up text that was in the article before it was moved, perhaps months ago, rather than the current text. For the search I was doing above, that means that there are many more incorrect hits than correct ones. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:42, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Weird, I thought I had narrowed this down locally and fixed it. I'll have to have another look at it again Monday or Tuesday. ^demon[omg plz] 05:56, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
^demon, you may very well have fixed it. I was referring to the "in place re-index' that you mention earlier in this thread. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:22, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
I just kicked it off a minute or two ago, making good time (avg. about 2500 pages/s). I'll update this thread when it's completed. ^demon[omg plz] 16:47, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Hmm, it's complete but I'm still seeing the incorrect results. We've also got another fix in the pipeline with gerrit:132973 that should help as well. Will have to keep poking this until it's right. ^demon[omg plz] 19:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
^demon, I used this today and it appears to work fine. Will it work for everyone, or do they have to have the new search selected in preferences? —Anne Delong (talk) 04:20, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Good, glad it seems to be working better! Right now it's still a beta feature so people will have to opt-in, but we're working on trying to get this live to everyone as the default. ^demon[omg plz] 00:08, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Inline audio

{{Audio-nohelp}} allows text to be linked inline to an audio file. Unfortunately, clicking the link opens the file player in the full window. Is there a template that will just play the sound without leaving the article page, or at worst, in a pop-up window? There is particularly a problem in the tables at Morse code#Letters, numbers, punctuation. It is quite inconvenient to have to keep backing out of the file player while trying to read through the tables and listen at the same time. SpinningSpark 10:26, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I saw that, and Template:Audio does pretty much the same thing. Something along the lines of Template:Listen might be better as it would allow you to stay on the same page. For example:
 
Accordion chords
Chords being played on an accordion
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Runs just fine on this same page. It's a bit more coding tho! KoshVorlon   Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 16:48, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Did you look at the tables I linked? Multiple instances of a sound player graphic are not really going to work. SpinningSpark 16:51, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
I saw it. Check the Template:Listen page as they have a plain example too:
Accordion chords
KoshVorlon   Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 16:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Spinningspark I just cobled this together in my sandbox, how about something like this. (Plain box with a play button, it plays on the page itself, and it still fits within the tabled setup on Morse Code page:
Character Code Sound File
A, a
· –
[[:File:A morse code.ogg|]]
B, b
– · · ·
[[:File:B morse code.ogg|]]
KoshVorlon   Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 17:57, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
That's a lot better in my opinion, but it it's going to make the table a lot wider. I was hoping to preserve just the linking of the audio from the code. SpinningSpark 18:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I have not read a thing here, it's like the blink tag of the 90s all over again. If people keep doing this to their signature, i'm submitting a patch to disable self styled signatures.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:32, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

WP:SIGAPP says: "Your signature must not blink, scroll, or otherwise cause inconvenience to or annoy other editors." I'm definitely annoyed too. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Are we talking about KoshVorlon's signature above? If so, please list me among the annoyed. Johnuniq (talk) 03:40, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
TheDJ PrimeHunter Johnuniq Why are you disrupting a discussion about improving a template with ad-homs ? Please strike your comments here, and if you feel strongly, post about my signature on ANI.
Otherwise, I'd welcome your assistance as well, I'm pretty sure TheDJ is a lot more knowledgeable on templates that I am KoshVorlon   Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 11:29, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Spinningspark Got it, you no graphics, just view the table the way it currently exists, click on the morse code and hear the sound. Got it, I'll see what I can do ! KoshVorlon   Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 11:29, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Spinningspark I checked further and it looks like Wikipdedia is using the html5 video player for both the audio and video playback. The plain example ( the one I showed above ) is the smallest that window can get. Attemping to use a bare link instead, just gets us back to the same problem we started with.
It looks like the solution I showed above would be the only other solution without having to go back and forth. However, If User:TheDJ has an idea, he's welcomed to contribute (my understanding is he's pretty smart when it comes to templates ). KoshVorlon   Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 13:52, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
That's a shame. Something like the little listen icon used on Google translate would have been ideal. SpinningSpark 14:19, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Will any of this be affected by the changes to the image box styling? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Not that I'm aware of. KoshVorlon   Angeli i demoni kruzhili nado mnoj 18:21, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Stop Crawling on pages with frequent editing

I'd like to propose a way to prevent Google / Yahoo / Bing from crawling pages which are undergoing a lot of revisions. Google uses Wikipedia as an "authoratative source" when performing web searches on subjects which have articles about them, however there are many cases where edit warring / vandalism can cause the information to be incorrect, thus causing searchers who arrive at the Wikipedia page due to the indexing to believe that the information on the page is credible.

The proposed rule is:

Any page that has more than 3 edits in the period of 1 week should be "de-indexed" (have meta tags added which tell the indexing engine to ignore the page and / or the content)

BDBJack (talk) 01:38, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

That's a silly idea. If anything, actively edited pages should be indexed more often. You seem to actually want Wikipedia:Pending changes. Matma Rex talk 02:14, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: You're absolutely correct. Thank you for pointing out that the feature already exists. BDBJack (talk) 03:41, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure that will do everything that he wants at the moment. They had to turn off (or otherwise ignore) PC for indexing a while ago, and I don't recall hearing that it was ever turned back on again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:21, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
MWSearch has never supported FR/PC. Cirrus will at some point, I just haven't had the time to get it working right yet. ^demon[omg plz] 01:17, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
I have doubtless used the wrong word. What I recall hearing is that there is a special feed that sends articles off to search engines, and that once upon a time, it only sent "accepted" versions for PC-protected pages, but that this was stopped for reasons of performance(?), and now the search engines receive the current version, regardless of PC status. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Others have shown some concerns about the proposal, but I'd like to bring in something related, which is that this probably would be a good idea for articles with the {{in use}} and {{under construction}} templates. It's possible that there are several other maintenance tags that would be good candidates as well. VanIsaacWScont 05:15, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

seeing what an old revision of a page looked like at the time?

This is probably a silly question, but is there a way to see how exactly an old revision of a page looked like at the time?

Sure, I can click on any old version in the history of a page, but any templates transcluded onto the old revision would still be their latest versions. Is any tool that displays an old revision of a page exactly as it was, using the old revisions of the templates or any other transcluded page? --Ixfd64 (talk) 05:21, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

As of now, there is not. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:16, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
Also, I'd say not a silly question since this has probably been asked *many* *many* times...Naraht (talk) 15:23, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
You could try and see if the Wayback Machine or another archive site has a historical copy of the page, though there probably is no on-wiki way to do that. SiBr4 (talk) 16:15, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
I see. Thanks for the replies, though! --Ixfd64 (talk) 16:18, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
@Ixfd64: The Memento Project and their Google Chrome extension is supposed to enable doing what you desire. Its effectiveness will, of course, depend on what archives are available for the page in which you are interested. — Makyen (talk) 00:39, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Labs problems

Problems with labs continue, clicking a coordinates link occasionally throws an error like "Internal error The URI you have requested, ... appears to be non-functional at this time." Hopefully Magnus Manske and Kolossos know what needs fixing. With the demise of toolserver now scheduled for 30 June, we need a reliable alternative to labs. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:09, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Which tool is this about? How to reproduce? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
It's presumably about http://tools.wmflabs.org/#toollist-geohack. Many articles have a coordinates link in the infobox or top right, for example Paris which links to https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Paris&params=48.8567_N_2.3508_E_type:city_region:FR. It worked for me in a few tests. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes it's Geohack; are there any other tools reached via the coordinates link? It's hard to tell, because {{coord}} has been Lua-ised so that tracing the code through is much more difficult than it used to be. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Pending Changes

Is there anyway to suppress the orange "there are currently pending revisions to pages on your watchlist" bar? Calidum Talk To Me 01:39, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Add
#mw-fr-watchlist-pending-notice {display: none;}
to your common.css. /~huesatlum/ 01:43, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
That was fast. Thank you! Calidum Talk To Me 01:46, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

We get a lot of requests for this type of customization. Is there some page that documents how to figure out this sort of thing, in case people want to learn how to do it themselves? I know (but probably most people don't) how to find the name of the thing with the mw:qqx feature, but I don't know how to turn that into the kind of CSS code that HueSatLum posted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:53, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Items disappearing from watchlist

  Resolved

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

I've noticed recently that, after I have edited an article on my watchlist, it fails to list at all when I click on the watchlist. I have also never worked out how long it disappears for, but it eventually comes back. Re-enabling the watchlist star has no immediate effect. Can anyone explain why this is happening? -- Ohc ¡digame! 04:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Under your watchlist preferences, do you have "Hide my edits from the watchlist" checked? If you do, and don't have "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" checked, I would think that it would take another editor in order for a page to show up on your watchlist again, since the most recent edit would be yours. VanIsaacWScont 05:22, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
    • Thanks. I wasn't aware that I had selected that. -- Ohc ¡digame! 06:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
      • So, did that fix it for you? VanIsaacWScont 06:48, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
        • Yes it did. Sorry I forgot to say so explicitly. -- Ohc ¡digame! 07:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
          • Great. Glad we could get that solved for you. I'm gonna archive this guy. VanIsaacWScont 07:37, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Display problems

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T56091

Since yesterday, some old display problems have re-appeared. On the left-hand side of the page, the tabs "Interaction", "Tools", "Print/export", "Languages" and "Scripts" are no longer hide-able, and the search-bar at the top right doesn't pop straight down, but is aligned underneath "read", "edit" and "view history". When I had the first problem over 12 months ago, I was advised it was due to my then-outdated browser, and in addition to that, sortable wiki-tables weren't sortable. This time round, there isn't a problem with the wikitables sorting and I have the most recent Pale Moon web browser. Purging doesn't help, so what's causing this? Jared Preston (talk) 08:08, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't know about the search bar; is there enough space for all the tabs and the search bar? I see what you mean, but only happens here. This happened before so I suspect a regression. — Edokter (talk) — 12:31, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Concerning the navigation menu on the left; the javascript to collapse the various sections has been removed as the developers felt it slowed down page loading too much. It may return as a gadget in the near future. — Edokter (talk) — 09:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Is it on all pages the search suggestions don't drop straight down? I currently have that issue on this page in Firefox 29.0.1. It's apparently because long unwrapped lines at #What sorcery is this? Mischeviously broken file red links. and #Insert citation button in editor are causing a horizontal scroll bar in my browser. If I zoom out until the scroll bar disappears then the search suggestions drop straight down. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
You're right. It's only happening on pages where the horizontal scroll bar appears in-browser. That's not even so much of a problem, but I'm a bit hacked off at the devs removing the javascript causing the sections to be permanently open. Would be nice to have that responsibility for myself since I don't have any problems with page load times. Jared Preston (talk) 13:19, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Always open would be my first choice, so I'm actually happy about this, but since it's Javascript, I assume that you could add the code to your common.js file if you personally wanted it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit conflict

Something has been happening lately which never happened before. I make an edit (usually it's to an editor's talk page), click "Save", and then get "Edit conflict". I've had no trouble until recently dealing with the "Edit conflict" notice. I copy what I had typed from the bottom of the page, as instructed, and paste it to the top, but lately I've been getting the "Edit conflict" notice more often. I also noticed that in the instances where I just clicked "leave the page", and went to look, my edit, with my signature, is there. It was saved, even though it said "Edit conflict". And there was no other edit being made to that page at that moment. It's kind of annoying. What can I do to stop the "Edit conflict" notice from happening so often, and unnecessarily? CorinneSD (talk) 19:33, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

If this is just started in the last hour or so, it could relate to the post above this one (link). May not be though ... Chaosdruid (talk) 19:36, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
The problem with Edit Conflict started about two days ago. I've had other problems just today, though. CorinneSD (talk) 21:48, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Reflist should be shown when previewing a section edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T7984

This is an attempt to revive an older discussion, which was unsuccessful because of dive into implementation detail. The essence of proposal is following:

In section preview the editing interface should provide preview of references (as formatted with {{reflist}}).

Rationale: normally reference list is not available during section editing, which leads to two kinds of undesired edits:

  • an editor misformats citation template(s) or
  • an editor forgets to remove {{reflist}} which was added temporarily to be able to review references.

Even if editor manages to avoid both issues, verifying correctness of citation formatting takes longer then it could have taken, be references presented during preview.

I specifically ask to avoid discussing placement, scope and implementation details for the required change. This poll is held in order to determine consensus on the general idea, so that more in-depth discussion about the proper way to implement this proposal could be started. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 10:59, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Support

  1. As nom. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 10:59, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
  2. I can't believe that anybody would actually oppose this idea, which is one of the oldest problems on the entire site. — Scott • talk 11:36, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
  3. Very good idea. It Is Me Here t / c 13:22, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
  4. Very helpful when editing refs. KonveyorBelt 17:20, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
  5. If there's a script out there, I'd be happy to take that, but this seems like a solution that should always be implemented, or at the very least a Gadget. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 14:15, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
  6. I like this idea. HowardMorland (talk) 01:48, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Oppose

*It's not absolutely necessary. There has been a workaround for a decade or so: just tack in a temporary <references/> during your edits. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 13:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Abstain

  1. Due to the constrains of no discussion of implementation. --  Gadget850 talk 11:32, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
    Gadget850, I'm pretty sure you could have suggested my response. I reacted in opposition before reading what you said. Redrose64, I concur. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:24, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Procedural close as wrong venue. This is a WP:VPR matter. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:21, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
  • This is not something a vote can fix. This is a feature request on bugzilla. Patches are welcome. πr2 (t • c) 00:18, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
    Submitted a patch, eight years after the bug was filed. πr2 (t • c) 02:00, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
    Woo! Thanks πr2. –Quiddity (talk) 19:22, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Procedural close as wrong venue, echoing Redrose64 and PiRSquared17. This is not something an onwiki vote can fix. There has already been a patch submitted, I'm guessing that if anyone really wants this, they'll follow the Bugzilla link to the Gerrit patch and review the patch to help push it through. Short of that, nothing is going to happen here. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 04:07, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Gadget issues 16 May 2014

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T67424

Has the "Vector classic typography" gadget broken?

Has the "Vector classic typography" gadget broken? My display has gone back to the giant letters, despite having this box checked. I don't really want to keep having to manually change my text size in my browser, as bringing the Wikipedia default down to a reasonable size makes the text on every other site unreadably small, and it's a pain having to adjust it each time I go on and off Wikipedia. Mogism (talk) 18:07, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I suspect so ... it just messed up and went back to the massive text around/just after 18:05 UTC - I clicked a link within a page and the next one showed the large, I have not changed ANY preferences, or taken/added any scripts this week, so it is not something I have done. If it is an error, it will probably be fixed quickly. Chaosdruid (talk) 18:12, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
My sandbox link, time, and popups gadgets weren't working, but are all fixed now. Thanks, Matty.007 18:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
And all gone again. Matty.007 18:17, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm unable to use most of my gadgets, even Twinkle. No JS errors in the console that I can see. I tried logging in on other machines but still had the same issues. — MusikAnimal talk 18:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
I lost some gadgets but they are back. Dougweller (talk) 18:33, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Ditto - fonts are back to a readable size. (Does anyone actually like the giant text? Surely if they want big text on Wikipedia, they want it on all sites and will have their fonts set to huge in their browser.) Mogism (talk) 18:37, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

This is getting silly - normal, massive, normal, massive and all in two minutes! Every time it changes on a reload, I have to scroll down and up to get back to where I was - STOP IT! What the hell is going on, and why is no-one telling us what is going on? Chaosdruid (talk) 18:40, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I didn't see any text size issues, but my gadgets are coming and going rather rapidly. Matty.007 18:41, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I think it's pretty much confirmed this is an on-off issue. No discernible pattern, it seems. — MusikAnimal talk 18:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
The network log indicates I'm getting a 200 OK status for all the scripts, with the expected response. Again no errors printed in the console. I'm stumped. — MusikAnimal talk 18:48, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Just noticed that my watchlist gadget which bolds things isn't working either. Hope they get it fixed ASAP, makes things a little confusing... Thanks, Matty.007 18:51, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
If people are not using the Vector page, then maybe that is why it is not affecting their font sizes - can we all confirm which display page we use?
I use Vector and am getting all the faults, font size, double pop-ups on hover, TW issues, gadget failures. Chaosdruid (talk) 18:52, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
I use the default skin, I haven't changed it, no text size issues, but repeated gadget failures. Matty.007 18:53, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Vector, still getting all the problems on multiple browsers on multiple machines. Mogism (talk) 18:56, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I have confirmed via IRC that the WikiMedia tech team is aware of the issue and is working on it. — MusikAnimal talk 19:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

"Working on it" is a bit euphemistic, seeing that IRC conversation, as you only asked "Is the WikiMedia team aware of the gadget / scripting issues" and the answer was "Yes" because it was brought up on IRC a few minutes before. Currently it's not clear yet what exactly the issue is, but it is recommended to try WP:BYPASS first when running into these kind of problems. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Problem with black screen on Monobook skin

I use the black background/green text gadget on Monobook. It is not currently working (was earlier). Some pages do not do it at all, others do it partially, so that bits of the screen are green on black, others ore blue on white. Looks vile, and I do find it hard to use Wikipedia without it (makes my eyes hurt). IE11 on Win7. Haven't changed any setting recently. DuncanHill (talk) 19:00, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

See section above. Thanks, Matty.007 19:02, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Also, navigation pop-ups have started showing with a transparent background, making them unreadable. DuncanHill (talk) 19:02, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
    • I also got this, see section above on skins and gadgets. Thanks, Matty.007 19:03, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Monobook skin screwed

In the Monobook skin, below the edit box there should be some clickable links for special characters. These have gone completely, and the copypaste fallback doesn't appear in their place - which is what normally happens when javascript is slow or AWOL. Also non-working are gadgets like "Move section [edit] links to the right side of the screen", "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" and "Display diffs with the old yellow-and-green colors and design". Those are the ones that I've just noticed; there may be others. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:00, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

See two sections above. Thanks, Matty.007 19:01, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
@Matty.007: That section is about Vector. This is a Monobook problem. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:17, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Is it a different problem? I thought it was the same problem; gadgets and skins issues. Thanks, Matty.007 19:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Something is broken

For some reason, features/gadgets such as reference tooltips and syntax highlighter stopped working a few hours ago, meaning that there are no reference tooltips displayed, and no syntax highlighting of source code is performed. Of course, I have these two gadgets turned on in my account's preferences. I'm using Firefox 29.0.1 – any clues, please? Of course, I can provide more details if required. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 19:11, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

See three sections above. Thanks, Matty.007 19:11, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, but I see no related explanations? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 19:21, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
There aren't any explanations yet, but given that this is probably the same problem (skins and gadgets) I thought that one section was easier to manage than 4. Thanks, Matty.007 19:22, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Totally agreed, but it's strange that nobody is handling issues like this in a timely manner. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 19:26, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
They've been working on it since shortly after it appeared. I'm sure you didn't mean to sound like they should stop solving the problem just to reassure everyone that they're going to fix the problem. After it's fixed, they'll post an explanation (not necessarily here; it depends on where the main problem was).
If you want to hear the explanations for all service outages, then you can sign up for m:Tech/News. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, some kind of an announcement or feedback should be beneficial. I've been putting out numerous "fires" as part of my job, and I've always provided some kind of a feedback. Writing a few sentences isn't that hard while it means a lot to the users, and that's one part of the job – if you agree. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:21, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I also use Firefox 29.0.1 and have had popups go from huge/unreadable to normal off and on for a large portion of the afternoon now. I don't think that it 'just happens', so what's up? Is someone changing the script or something? Dave Dial (talk) 20:03, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Above listed two gadgets seem to be working for me now. Also, I've seen the "list changed articles in bold" gadget not to be working, though only once. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
... and now none of those three gadgets work. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Working gadgets

I use Vector (on Firefox right now), and my gadgets appear to be working (article assessment title, and Reference Tooltips). Chris857 (talk) 19:49, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Reference tooltips and syntax highlighter gadgets are also working again for me. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 19:53, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I just noticed that the digital clock gadget that displays at the top right corner of the screen, and that can be used to purge a page (enabled as a gadget under user preferences), does not display for me. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:08, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
As soon as I saved that edit, it reappeared. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Twinkle doesn't work

It stopped working an hour or two ago, then came back for a while, and has now gone AWOL again, at least on my machine (Monobook and Chrome). Am I the only one who has experienced this? Thomas.W talk 21:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

None of the gadgets seem to be working. The giant fonts are back, too. Mogism (talk) 21:11, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

ProveIt not working

I was trying to use ProveIt in an edit, as I almost always do, a few seconds ago, but the display at the bottom that allows you to do so wasn't there. It's still not there as I type this, either. Does anyone know if this has anything to do with the WikEd problem discussed elsewhere on this page? Because given that I haven't used WikEd in months I doubt that it does. IOW, does anyone know what the actual cause of this issue is? Jinkinson talk to me 21:01, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Assuming it's a gadget, there's a section called "Skin and gadget issues 16 May 2014" above. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

edit section links on Modern skin

Assuming it's all related the issue I'm seeing is intermittent loss of the edit section links being on the right hand side of the page rather than next to the title. Nthep (talk) 21:20, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

HotCat not working

HotCat doesn't work, at least not using vector on sv.wikipedia. (t) Josve05a (c) 21:21, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Modern skin

Visually, everything is all messed up. Back and forth. I've disabled gadgets trying to get this to stop. In particular, Navigation popups that populate as a transparency all over the page. Some article tabs are missing. The clock is missing, then it comes back, then it goes away. Section links come and go. It's really nuts at the moment. — Maile (talk) 21:24, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Continuing issues

Just noting that I've encountered probably half a dozen of the above-listed issues and continue to do so now. Starting this section because it's been several hours since the last report on this page. I will note that my difficulties have been pretty much consistent; i.e., I've not had an occasion where I did not have a problem since this was first reported. Monobook, IE9, Win7. Risker (talk) 23:22, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

To be honest, I would not expect any real details for another few hours. It is Friday, and late. Anyone working on it is better working on it rather than reporting back all the time.
It may take 24 hours to even track this down, let alone fix it, so please try and follow any advice on workarounds posted in the messages above.
It only started 6 hours ago so best to probably Keep Calm and Carry On (as best one can) or go to bed and worry about it tomorrow. Chaosdruid (talk) 23:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, about 90% of the time these things tend to be fixed within the hour, often by reverting recent changes, and it is not uncommon for there to be no closure to VPT threads even hours after a problem is resolved. It's just past 5 p.m. in San Francisco right now, so they had many hands on deck during their regular business hours to address this, and I have little doubt that there are many people toiling away even though their weekend has officially started. (For them - thank you.) Risker (talk) 00:22, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
When I had issues on my job, I wasn't looking what time or day it was. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:25, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't understand why you people believe you are more entitled to instant updates than any of the hundreds of other affected Wikimedia sites. Updates are available in the wikitech:Server Admin Log, on Bugzilla bugs (the one for this issue – not reported by anyone from here, of course, because you people are above that – is linked at the top of the thread) or live on IRC as they are being resolved (if there are ongoing issues someone will always respond to questions on #wikimedia-tech on Freenode). Posting here is not something anyone enjoys doing, given the responses "outsiders" are met with (my edits today to this thread aiming to clear the issue were partially reverted and no one bothered to even tell me about doing this). Matma Rex talk 01:27, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
How can you expect everyone to know exactly where to report observed issues? Any bug reports should be appreciated. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:33, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
@Dsimic: Oooooh, I dunno, that's a difficult question. Hmm, maybe, just maybe, they could all read the heading of this page which rather clearly says that "Bugs and feature requests should be made at Bugzilla (see how to report a bug)". Maybe this message should be red, bold and in a larger font? Matma Rex talk 01:38, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, Ok, but then what is this page for? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:46, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Dsimic, I think you might be a little less confrontational; the purpose of my original post was to point out to *Wikipedians* that this was an ongoing issue - the Wikimedia staff already knew that. I think all of us would rather that they focused their energy on solving the problem rather than worrying about posting here. Once the problem is resolved, anyone who is aware that it's resolved (whether by a temporary fix, as in this case, or a complete fix) can close the thread, and there are lots of people who aren't involved in doing the actual fixing who would be watching the IRC feed or the bugzilla and could do so. Matma Rex, I'm sorry to see you found some of your edits reverted; however, that may actually have to do with another thread on this page, aboute edit conflicts. I've seen several people report edit conflicts that remove the posts of others on at least half a dozen pages in the past week or so, although I'm guessing based on your response that nobody's filed a bugzilla. I'll try and round up a few examples of where this has been reported so that Engineering will have something to work with. Risker (talk) 03:09, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not a bad guy, but it makes me grumpy when someone tells me "stop helping" or "stop helping that way" without providing clear directions in the first place, while I'm genuinely only trying to help about an obvious issue. I understand you, and both "Wikipedians" and the Wikimedia staff need to respect each other's time and effort – if you agree. I'm here to help and I'm not asking for a medal or anything similar, but it can hurt when a volunteer effort such as mine isn't properly handled. We're all humans, with feelings and everything – and this isn't a paid job so we should have no feelings about it. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 03:48, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Reported as a bug?

Has anyone raised these at Bugzilla, or is the only report that made by the PT Wiki? Chaosdruid (talk) 00:48, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I have contacted one of the MediaWiki software engineers to see if there is any feedback available from that end. Chaosdruid (talk) 01:03, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

Krinkle and Matma Rex were able to determine that a specific server on our cluster, mw1151, was struggling to serve the code for certain user interface components. A closer inspection of the server revealed that it was having intermittent disk issues. I took the server offline for further troubleshooting. (We plan for this by always having some redundant capacity.) Once we have the full story of what happened to that server, a postmortem will be posted on Wikitech. Sorry for the inconvenience! --Ori.livneh (talk) 01:16, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Good job, thank you all very much! — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:37, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks guys - Very much appreciated :). →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 01:53, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for taking action on this and getting it fixed. — Maile (talk) 12:39, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, hope our comments at least helped you identify what is was not ( or was)? Chaosdruid (talk) 14:29, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Watchlist

Somebody refresh me, I've forgotten how to edit my raw watchlist. Basically I want to wipe off nearly 1200 articles and only select those which I have at FA and GA.♦ Dr. Blofeld 06:12, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

That's pretty easy. Just make a list of all your GAs and FAs, with each entry on a new line. You don't need any special formatting. Then go to your watchlist, click on "Edit raw watchlist", replace all of the text in the "Titles" box with your list, and click "Update watchlist". — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:29, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
That's what I mean though for some reason I can't see where it says "Edit raw watchlist"! Also for some reason it places new images I upload on my watchlist when I don't want to and I can't see where a box is ticked to control it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:00, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Under the heading of 'Watchlist', you get the following in small font: "For Matty.007 (View relevant changes | View and edit watchlist | Edit raw watchlist)". If you can't see it then Ctr-F (find), search 'raw' or somesuch and it should be found. Then edit and remove. Thanks, Matty.007 11:07, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) "Edit raw watchlist" is near the top of Special:Watchlist. You can also click it in my post. Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist has the option "Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:12, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I've just thrown out 1100 odd articles and users! I'm not sure though why when I upload new images it automatically goes on my watchlist. I don't think the box is ticked in preferences. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:46, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Redirect not working right

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T67468

The target of the redirect WP:NMOTORSPORT is, as it should be, Wikipedia:Notability (sports)#Motorsports; but clicking on it doesn't take you to the right place in the article. Any ideas? JohnCD (talk) 20:28, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

It works for me, using Firefox 28. Some browsers may get confused by the collapsed "FAQ" box at the top of the page. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:37, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
It still doesn't for me on FF29. What I don't understand is that clicking on Wikipedia:Notability (sports)#Motorsports does take me to the right place, but clicking WP:NMOTORSPORT, which has exactly that as its target, doesn't. If it is a browser problem, wouldn't they both be wrong? JohnCD (talk) 22:06, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Works for me in Safari, but not with FF 29. With FF it does jump to a spot in the page pretty quickly, perhaps before it's read and dealt with all the stylesheets and JS that affects the page - i.e. as John of Reading is suggesting. The delta between where it lands and where it should land is also about that size.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 22:19, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
It's a race condition, something encountered in asynchronous processing. You've got two (well, actually a lot more) largely-unrelated tasks being kicked off more or less at the same time: one to go to the position specified by the fragment #Motorsports, the other to collapse the FAQ box at the top. If the collapse finishes first, the position will be correct; if the collapse finishes second, the position will be off by the height reduction of the FAQ box. Which one finishes first varies not just between browsers, but between machines with the same browser - it can be affected by other things going on unrelated to browsing, like that big spreadsheet that you're printing off for Joe in Accounts. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:16, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
This might (or might not!) have something to do with HotCat or WikEd. See User talk:Cacycle/wikEd#wikEd bug report:clicking on section links. Thincat (talk) 22:15, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
The wikEd/HotCat problem being discussed below at #Section links not working properly has got nothing to do with FF 29 as that also occurs on FF 28. Also, JohnBlackburne's description above doesn't fit the symptoms of the wikEd/HotCat incompatibility: here, it appears the browser jumps to nearly the right place, whereas with the wikEd/HotCat problem, you first get to the right place and then suddenly land at the top of the page. The "nearly getting there" effect is most probably what Redrose64 explained above. The "jump to top" effect is a conflict between wikEd and HotCat. Lupo 22:32, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
I've just upgraded from FF 28 to 29.0.1 and I think that the behaviour has changed. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:47, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Concur. I've got FF28 on my desktop and FF29 on my laptop, and it works on the former but not the latter. Black Kite (talk) 10:59, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Question: shouldn't the collapsing JS take care of that? If window.scroll != 0 and the top position of the elements to be collapsed is < window.scroll, then the collapsing script should adjust window.scroll appropriately. Lupo 12:28, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
The thing is, how will it know whether the jump-to-anchor has already been acted upon or not? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:15, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
I would suppose (but didn't test it) that the "jump to anchor" has been done if window.scroll != 0. Lupo 09:09, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Privacy policy changing

I don't normally see this unless I am at a library where I am not signed in. But I'm seeing this a lot today and then it disappears quickly when I do.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

What's "this" and how to get "this" and "when you do", what do you do? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
I suspect that Vchimpanzee is talking about the banner announcing the change to the privacy policy.
.They always load, and then they hide if you have a cookie telling them to hide. If things are slow, you may see them briefly, in between the loading and hiding steps. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
That's it. And I did click when I wasn't signed in, so I know where it tells me to go. For those whose preferences are set like mine, they might actually be interested, so what do they do then if they never are signed out?— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
I've managed to find the MediaWiki pages relating to the notice here, but I'm still not sure where the code for the notice itself (the rectangle etc.) is. It Is Me Here t / c 14:27, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm certain that some javascript is involved. I believe that it looks for the <div id="siteNotice">...</div> element in the page, which is normally empty; it's normally unstyled and so invisible (Vector, Monobook) or styled with border only (Cologne Blue), and inserts the CentralNotice box inside that. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:56, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer: coming May 22

Greetings everyone, this is a friendly reminder from further up the page.

The release for Wikipedia:Media Viewer is moving along, and we've scheduled Media Viewer to be enabled for all here on the English Wikipedia this coming Thursday, May 22. Currently Media Viewer has over 14,000 registered users trying it our here on English in their Beta Features and I welcome you to try it out there before the broad release. After Media Viewer is switched on, there will be an option to disable it under the "Appearence" tab of your preferences if you do a lot of File: page work and do not find the viewer good for your work.

Please spread the word to any corner of this project you think might be interested about this change. I hope y'all like the improved file viewing experience. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

It's already a default setting on Commons, I disabled it there. When I click an image, what I'm after is the file description page - primarily the licensing and categories. For a SVG file, I'm probably after the direct link to the original. You don't get any of those those in Media Viewer. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:10, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for sharing your reasons, Redrose64. True, Media Viewer does not contain the extensive amount of other information you can find on a File page. Media Viewer's purpose is to provide a vastly better experience viewing the image and returning to text instead of being taken to the very, very cluttered File page. Once you've disabled Media Viewer you can still use it by clicking on "Expand view" right below the image. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:35, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Wow, would it not be better to just put "Click this image to see it full size" on the desc. page than all this effort? That's how I do it at present, one click goes to the desc. page, the next click takes me to a large image on its own. The Media Viewer just forces me to scroll down to see info, if I wanted it full size I would click on it. How much research was done on how many people clicked through twice to see it full size ( and so did not want to see the desc.) compared to those that did not? And what were the results of that investigation?
All this smacks of making things really complicated to do simple things, then forcing us all to use them as default when we didn't want them, and then creating a workaround/selecting a preference to avoid whatever it was that we didn't want. This is the fifth time I have had this happen in the last five years, but two of them are this year, and it is only a third of the way through!
It is starting to feel like we (the editors) have lost control and the WMF members are changing things on a whim because they feel it will be "better". Chaosdruid (talk) 00:06, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Overall site design is not something that should really be subject to mob rule. That is an excellent way to strangle development. Also, it is worth noting that the media viewer isn't really aimed at editors. It is obviously meant as an aid to readers, and one that I believe (and the stats argue) readers appreciate. Now, as an editor, I want to go straight to the description page. The reader doesn't work for me, and as such, I disabled it. Resolute 00:24, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that it's a reader tool, not an editing tool. Remember, Chaosdruid, we get a half a billion unique readers visiting our sites every month. I think there's room to improve site performance to help them, too :) Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:54, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
I should note that by "we" and "our" as I say it I mean everyone that participates here, not the WMF. I'm a Wikimedian too :) Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:57, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
That sort of supports what I am saying though, WMF decide it should be changed and the editors have no say. That sounds like the WMF owns it and we only get permission to edit it. Chaosdruid (talk) 01:00, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Well that's certainly not the kind of impression that I'm trying to give.
My point is that there are some things that we (everyone) can do to enhance the educational experience of Wikimedia projects. This includes when someone just wants to look at an image that is a thumbnail for a moment to get context, they shouldn't have to go to a clunky, ugly file page. Viewing an image associated with educational text has high learning value and we only increase it by not diverting attention by opening up a new page. Whether this tool is developed by the WMF or by volunteer manpower shouldn't be the point at all. The efforts to build any and everything here is collaborative, there are volunteers helping with Media Viewer both in code development and within communities for the release. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 04:13, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
How much research was done on how many people clicked through twice to see it full size ( and so did not want to see the desc.) compared to those that did not? - if you mean how many people clicked through the file page to see the full image, that was not measured (it would be hard and potentially invasive since it would require tracking users across wikis). We did measure how often people use various features of MediaViewer, though: there are about 5 million image views a day, and less than three thousand go to the image page from there. (The numbers are a bit off, since there is an extra shortcut to the file page for logged-in users, and that one is not measured - but logged-in views are a small minority, so that would probably not change the numbers by much.) So it seems that either the metadata MediaViewer provides is good enough for most people (which is not very likely), or they don't care that much about metadata in the first place. With such a huge discrepancy between the interests of readers and editors (very active editors, actually - in the surveys we did, less active editors were closer to readers than to active editors in their satisfaction level), editors getting a less decisive role in the design was maybe not such a bad thing.
Which is not to say editors should not play a major role in design - they did, actually. We tried to have an inclusive design process, with a long public beta period with public feedback, lots of mailing list conversations, IRC office hours, roundtables... and if you have advice on how to make it even more inclusive, it is always welcome. But readers are affected by a change (or the lack of change!) in the image viewing experience just as much as editors, and they are the ones these sites exists for, after all; it would not be fair to expect that design decisions favor editors over readers all the time.
--Tgr (WMF) (talk) 02:11, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Categorise a Cat

Adding a category to page Category:Examples makes it a subcategory in that parent. Is it possible to categorise a category page as a page, not as a subcategory? Or maybe add its talkpage (Category talk:Examples) through the subject page? (editing the subject page, and the talkpage would appear, which could be OK in situations). -DePiep (talk) 07:37, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

  • I'm wondering why you'd want a category to appear to be a member of another category but not therefore be a subcategory... am I missing something obvious? Sardanaphalus (talk) 09:23, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
No it's not that obvious, I'll describe more. I am working on a template that categorises pages into a maintenance category, say [[Category:MyMaintCat]]. That template should also work when put on pages in category namespace (that is, edited into a page [[Category:Holydays]]). But when the template categorises that one into [[Category:MyMaintCat]]), it appears as a subcategory (all standard behaviour so far).
What I would like to see is that the page [[Category:Holydays]] appears in the page list (expected somewhere near article [[Christmas]]). Listed nicely for maintenance.
Another solution could be to categorise [[Category talk:Holydays]] from that Category page, which will appear as a page anyway.
I know the classic solution to put the template+categorisation in its talkpage. -DePiep (talk) 14:34, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I see what you mean now but don't know enough of Wikipedia/MediaWiki/etc's innards to suggest something other than a "bypass" method such as the talkpage approach. Some cunning manipulation of magic words and ParserFunctions, however, may render the result without any need to edit (or to simulate editing) Category:/Category talk:/etc pages. If nothing else, though, you can refer a guru here for a description of the task. Sardanaphalus (talk) 20:02, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Sadly this very desirable behaviour is not available. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:02, 22 July 2014 (UTC).

Is MediaWiki broken?

Or is it just parsoid? Or only one user script? See User talk:Technical 13#Responding to protected edit requests. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:12, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki core isn't broken. Parsoid has a few minor bugs, which all of its consumers (VisualEditor, Flow, the user script in question, etc.) will appear to have as well. You can see whether a change is being introduced by Parsoid or its consumer by looking at its _rtselser output for a version of a page that one of its consumers broke. For example, to confirm that the unintended changes at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Bot&diff=608957227&oldid=607060964 were caused by Parsoid, the page http://parsoid-prod.wmflabs.org/_rtselser/enwiki/Template_talk:Bot?oldid=607060964 (specifically, the red and green highlighted parts at the bottom) demonstrates that Parsoid does indeed show a "dirty diff" for that page, which matches the unintended changes made by the script. The Parsoid team is already aware of this particular bug, but any new ones found in this manner should be reported to them via bugzilla:. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:44, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks error

When I try to do WP:Reflinks on Lido (EP), I get the following error at [58]:

I had to delete the error, as it was screwing up the format of this page, but I will include the text below (which is now in the page history).

/home/dispenser/public_html/cgi-bin/tracebacks/tmpiuEfa_.html contains the description of this error." --Jax 0677 (talk) 21:14, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

nvm, just fixed itself --Jax 0677 (talk) 21:25, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
@Jax 0677: Nope. I notified Dispenser on ##dispenser connect about it. Apparently he forgot about external references when he update[d] noreferences.py from pywikibot, they changed things. (t) Josve05a (c) 21:29, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
@Jax 0677: Your edit screwed up the rest of the page because it contained an unclosed HTML comment, in the following partial line: 
new_text = u'{{Infobox album <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_...ry:Pop rock EPs]]\n\n\n{{2010s-pop-rock-album-stub}}',
It's the <!-- for which there was no balancing --> You could have avoided such problems by enclosing the whole of your error text in <source lang=text>...</source> --Redrose64 (talk) 22:16, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Help with changes to educational assignment template

This is not a proposal to change anything yet -- I know that would be done elsewhere with Template:edit template-protected. Right now I just need help getting something right before I bother doing so.

As discussed in this discussion, now archived, at the Education noticeboard, I wanted to fix and modify Template:Educational assignment to better tell current from past assignments and to categorize based on when/if the assignment ended. I have a version mostly working in my userspace at User:Rhododendrites/sandbox/eduassign. Everything seemed to be going well until until I tried to reincorporate the parameter that links to a course page. It's functional, but inserting line breaks for reasons I can't figure out. User talk:Rhododendrites/sandbox/eduassign1 is an example use of the template for a current course with link to the course page. User talk:Rhododendrites/sandbox/eduassign2 is an example use of the template for a course in the past that doesn't try to use the link parameter.

As an additional question, am I threatening to break anything by defaulting undefined month to 12 and undefined day to 31 when one or both are missing but a year is specified? (The idea is to err on the side of overshooting assignment time rather than the template thinking it ended before it actually did).

Help would be appreciated. Thanks! --— Rhododendrites talk |  21:17, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Yeah, it looks like you just have a lot of extraneous newlines after your conditional ending brackets. One way to eliminate the newlines while retaining redability is to comment between conditionals brackets, so:
}}<!--
-->{{#if:...
Give it a try and see if that doesn't give you better results. VanIsaacWScont 21:29, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Ha! Looks to have done the trick. Guess I was assuming it worked by article wikimarkup rules (i.e. single line break=no line break). Thanks. --— Rhododendrites talk |  21:59, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
It does work by the same rules, but it's sneaky when you have conditionals stacked on top of each other, so the following code:

}} <- first newline
{{#if:...
}} <- second newline
{{#if:
ends up giving you a line break whenever that middle conditional is found false, since the parser puts those two newlines together. VanIsaacWScont 22:44, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
One trick that I use exploits the fact that leading and trailing whitespace is stripped by parser functions. Whitespace includes newlines; so if my initial thoughts were along these lines: 
{{#if: (condition1) | (outcome1) }}
{{#if: (condition2) | (outcome2) }}
{{#if: (condition3) | (outcome3) }}
I would move the newline from outside to inside, thus: 
{{#if: (condition1) | (outcome1)
}}{{#if: (condition2) | (outcome2)
}}{{#if: (condition3) | (outcome3)
}}
it's treated as a single line, no matter how many of those parser functions come back empty. This eliminates the need for those apparently-empty HTML comments. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:55, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Sounds like a good general tip. Thanks all for the help and clarification. --— Rhododendrites talk |  04:02, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Category:Redirects from shortcuts subcategory that doesn't belong, but can't remove

In Category:Redirects from shortcuts, there's the subcategory Criticism of intellectual property‎ that should not be there. However I can't seem to figure out how to remove it. I suspect it's some deep transclusion somewhere but cant seem to find it, I'm stumped. Can someone figure it out? -- œ™ 21:24, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Disregard, looks like it's gone now, and within seconds of me posting here. :) Was that one of you guys? -- œ™ 21:34, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Too many red links

I would like to fix dozens of red links, e.g. in this article: 2015 UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship First qualifying round#First qualifying round
by creating a redirect page for each of the "red" national under-19 teams, to the national "A"-team article. Or do you have any other idea how to fix that "red sea"?
Maiō T. (talk) 21:32, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Please don't make redirects unless the under-19 teams are covered in the A-team articles. Red links tell editors that there is content that needs to be added, while a redirect just sends people somewhere that doesn't have the content they are looking for. If a particular team does not meet notability guidelines, then the link should be eliminated from the article, not redirected. VanIsaacWScont 21:41, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

No thumbnails being generated for image

I uploaded File:NRHP Illustrated Counties (Animated).gif and File:NRHP Articled Counties (Animated).gif last night, and for some reason I keep getting errors when trying to generate thumbnails (see, e.g. here). I uploaded two other files at the same time, same format, and that seem to work fine. Any clue what's going on?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:07, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

With 8 and 7 MB for animated GIFs, my guess is they are too large. — Edokter (talk) — 23:19, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
See commons:Commons:Maximum file size#Maximum size for thumbnails. The two files are 1250 × 627 pixels × 43 frames = 33 MP. This is above the problematic 23 MP. The other files have fewer frames and are below 23 MP. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:28, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing me to that page. I've shrunk the file dimensions by 75% and did a little GIF optimization to shrink the file size a little. Now the thumbnails are working.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Plugging commons:User:Dispenser/GIF check. I need to update it, but it lists problems such as bad frame timing, non-thumbnailability, run-once animation (for fade-in effect, go figure) and animations that run over 5 minutes (an issue without rewind). — Dispenser 05:07, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Fully protected project page

The project page Wikipedia:Copyrights is fully protected but it's still possible to edit it by changing the url at the top of the browser in the same way as clicking the Edit link would normally do on articles that have that link. Blackbombchu (talk) 02:14, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Do you mean like this? That seems to be the same as clicking "view source", and would not allow an edit to be saved. Johnuniq (talk) 02:26, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
No, I meant this page. Last time I went to it, the text above the edit box didn't appear. Blackbombchu (talk) 03:06, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
It won't let you save the edit.--v/r - TP 03:14, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Using Skype on 3G

Dear technical experts: This is only sort of a Wikipedia question, but I figure that someone here will know the answer. I am part of a committee at Meta that has decided to have an online meeting using Skype. The meeting will last about one hour, and it is an audio + chat meeting - no video. Unfortunately, at the time chosen for the meeting, I will be many miles from my DSL connection, attending a bluegrass event. I do have access to a 3G connection with a 1GB per month contract. I could take time out to attend the meeting by using headphones and responding through chat only to avoid flooding the meeting with the sound of fiddles and banjos. My question is: How much of my monthly allotment will this take up? If it's too much I won't be able to do it. I am assuming that the 3G connection has the speed to support this as long as it's being hosted by someone else. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:40, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

As long as it's just chat and not video, you shouldn't have to have any problems with your data plans. I'd gauge a five minute chat conversation at only a couple MB at most. Unless you plan on blasting fiddles and banjos for 20+ hours, but I doubt anyone in the conversation would want that. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 04:05, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Hamster. No, the longest jam session I've been in was twelve hours, and then everybody else wanted to quit... —Anne Delong (talk) 18:01, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-21

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

Tech News updates

  • Tech News is one year old this week; thank you for being with us!

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf5) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 15. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 20, and all Wikipedias on May 22 (calendar).
  • The jQuery JavaScript library was updated on May 16. Please check that your gadgets and scripts still work. [59] [60] [61]
  • MediaViewer was enabled for all users on the Kannada (kn) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 13. It will be enabled on the German (de), English (en), Italian (it) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias and on all Wikisource wikis on May 22. Feedback is welcome. [62] [63]
  • VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences. [64] [65]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for April 2014.

VisualEditor news

  • VisualEditor's buttons and icons can now be accessed using keyboard keys. [66] [67]
  • VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like {{cite_web}} and not just {{Cite web}}. [68] [69]
  • VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it. [70] [71]
  • VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit. [72]
  • The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. [73] [74]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For several hours on May 16, there were problems with loading gadgets on some wikis due to a server problem. [77]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

One-click prepopulating the EditPage user interface to expedite semi-automatic standardized talk page discussions

I know of some cases where clicking a link on a wiki-page prepopulates a form by using the mw:API. For example, Template:RMassist prepopulates the Special:MovePage form at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests, where it is used. For example,

  • ([{{fullurl:Special:MovePage|wpOldTitle={{Urlencode: Usambara Eagle-Owl }}&wpNewTitle={{Urlencode: Usambara eagle-owl }}&wpReason={{Urlencode:Requested at [[WP:RM]] as uncontroversial ([[Special:Permalink/{{REVISIONID}}|permalink]])}}&wpMovetalk=1}} move]) gives:
  • (move).

In the above example it's prepopulated the To new title: and Reason: fields in that form. I've also had some success playing with similar prepopulating the Special:Block form, and here was a short-lived use of this technique to prepopulate the standard EditPage user interface. mw:API:Edit documents the parameters available for editing pages with with action=edit. I have gotten some of these parameters to work. action=edit opens up the desired page's edit interface &summary= prepopulates the edit summary. &section=new opens up a new section for editing, but without the desired edit summary field. I suppose this is standard behavior for section edits, but it would be nice to be able to make a section edit with a customized edit summary. &sectiontitle= does not prepopulate the Subject/headline field, which I could live with if I could just put the section title at the top of the text box, but &text= doesn't prepopulate the text box of the new section either. Is there a way to make these parameters work this way? Do I need an edit token to use those parameters? If so, how do I do that? Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 17:22, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't know about specifying an edit summary for new sections, but preloading text in the editing box can be done by putting the desired text in a page and using the parameter &preload=Page name. This is used for the link in Template:Category interwiki, for example. SiBr4 (talk) 18:21, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! I might be able to work with that. Where is parameter &preload=Page name documented? I don't see it at mw:API:Edit. I wonder if there are any other parameters not documented there that might be helpful. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:48, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Aha, found it! mw:Manual:Creating pages with preloaded text. – Wbm1058 (talk) 18:53, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: mw:index.php#Edit and submit documents them all. mw:API:Edit refers to the edit API used by bots (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php) while the page I linked refers to the normal editing form humans use. Matma Rex talk 18:55, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The standard edit summary for new sections created by using the "new section" tab is based on the user-entered section name. So if the user enters a section heading like this:
Requested move on 19 May 2014
the saved edit summary will be:
(→Requested move on 19 May 2014: new section)
that is, it is exactly as if they had entered:
/* Requested move on 19 May 2014 */ new section
into an edit summary input box. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:55, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, guys! Now I'm well on my way to producing some magic.   Had I known where to find this stuff earlier, I would have done my enhancements months ago. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:08, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Undesireable Change in the Page Template

Sometime in the past 24 hours, it appears that the HTML template for Wiki pages changed. It used to be that if you had just arrived at a page and hit the tab key, the focus would move to the "Search" text control. Now it jumps around among various links; I don't know if Search is even in the tab order; if it is, it's more than 10 tabs from the start. I actually preferred the old layout (with the Search control on the left, similar to "Modern") but switched to the new layout ("Vector") because of the convenience of using the tab key that way. (As a sometime webpage designer/maintainer, my personal opinion is that the primary type-in area should have the focus as soon as the page is loaded.) If I can't have that, I guess I'll switch to "Modern," but I would really like to see this restored. Bgoldnyxnet (talk) 20:38, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is your problem, but if you want to be focused on the search bar whenever the page loads, add
$('#searchInput').focus();
to your common.js. /~huesatlum/ 21:48, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
If it helps, there's also a shortcut that moves the cursor directly to the search box from anywhere on the page. For me (Firefox on Windows) it's Alt+Shift+F; the Alt+Shift part may be different for other browsers/systems (see WP:KS#Modifier keys). SiBr4 (talk) 11:39, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, that works. It's kind of an awkward gesture, but it still beats using the mouse. Of course, this still means there's no good reason for me to sitck with "Vector". Bgoldnyxnet (talk) 03:41, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Purge-page tab (asterisk)

When enabled, the purge-page tab (added beside e.g. the "watch" tab) is identified only by an asterisk (" * "). Could this be replaced with something a little more substantial/meaningful, please, such as "P" (or even "purge")..? Sardanaphalus (talk) 09:08, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm all for it. However, the "*" is only shown in Monobook, and some users may be a little attached to it. — Edokter (talk) — 10:28, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, it's compact; and when you've got the extra tabs associated with the admin bit, and those produced by some other gadgets, space becomes a premium. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:50, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
  • If it were "P" rather than "purge", I doubt it would eat more than its fair share of the tab row (and barely more than the current asterisk?). Sardanaphalus (talk) 19:31, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Another option for a purge link is listed under Preferences -> Gadgets -> Appearance. It is labeled "Add a clock in the personal toolbar that displays the current time in UTC (which also provides a link to purge the current page)." I find it useful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:54, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks for this suggestion, which I'm now trying. Is there a way to customize the clock's output (e.g. no seconds)..? (Apologies if I've missed links to a config/preferences/etc page.) Sardanaphalus (talk) 19:31, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
$( document ).ready( function() {
    $( 'a', '#ca-purge' ).text( 'Purge tab text' );
});
If you add that you your /common.js you can rename the tab to whatever you want. Werieth (talk) 20:18, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
  • That's great – especially after replacing the 'Purge tab text' with 'P' – thank you! I'm going to add it (as a collapsed item) to Wikipedia:Purge. Sardanaphalus (talk) 09:47, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Soft-blocking private addresses

There was recently a thread on AN about a bot editing logged out. I raised the question of whether there was any legitimate reason to allow anonymous editing from private IP addresses but it garnered no response. This seemed like a better forum to get wider feedback on this question with a view to soft-blocking all private IP address ranges, and perhaps also external toolservers. This technical measure would prevent (many) bots from editing logged out, hopefully alerting the operator to the problem sooner, and avoiding any drama. Thanks, Bovlb (talk) 21:22, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

See User_talk:Anomie/Archives/2013#10.111.0.0.2F16. Legoktm (talk) 23:23, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Fair enough. I wasn't expecting that to be an issue. Thanks for the link. Bovlb (talk) 16:02, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

"What links here" to group links from templates as it does with redirects

It would be very useful if the "what links here" page could be modified so that links from templates are separately categorised. At the moment, links from a navbox or sidebar are displayed as if the link is in-text. That means that altering links requires manually opening stacks of articles to find which ones link in-text and may need to be altered. In contrast, a template only needs to be altered once. For example, here: Special:WhatLinksHere/Development_of_the_urinary_system. --LT910001 (talk) 23:40, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Support
It would be nice but as I wrote at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 122#WhatLinksHere overwhelmed by links in navigation templates: "It's a frequently requested feature but the developers will not implement it. See for example bugzilla:1392 and bugzilla:3241." PrimeHunter (talk) 23:57, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
This isn't technically feasible. To understand why, look at the following cases, and try to decide whether or not to include the link to "target" under the template:
  • Template:X1 contains [[{{{1}}}]]. A page contains {{X1|target}}.
  • Template:X1 contains target. A page contains [[{{X1}}]].
  • Template:X1 contains {{{1}}}. A page contains {{X1|[[target]]}}.
  • Template:X1 contains [[tar and Template:X2 contains get]]. A page contains {{X1}}{{X2}}.
  • Template:X1 contains <includeonly>[[target]]</includeonly>. A page contains {{X1}}.
  • Template:X1 contains <noinclude>[[target]]</noinclude>. A page contains {{X1}}.
  • Template:X1 contains {{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Foo|[[target]]}}</noinclude>. A page named Foo contains {{X1}}.
  • Template:X1 contains {{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Foo|[[target]]}}</noinclude>. A page named Bar contains {{X1}}.
As you'll see, you won't be able to come up with a consistent way of deciding which way to count them, so there's no chance that software could correctly figure it out. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:48, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Fine, but is there an alternate way to get this information when we really need it? It needn't be instantaneous or up-to-the-second accurate, but this would be hugely helpful for some work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:08, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry, but I don't understand to what end or benefit this is. Even if every instance out of 250K instances is the result of a single template, then you either still have to wait for months for the job queue to run through and process that template change or null edit every page to confirm that was the case. So, the two options here is to either filter WHL to just the template namespace, fix those instances only, with for the job queue to process and update all of the cascading pages and see what is left, or go through every page and fix the ones that need fixing directly and null editing the rest (I prefer the first option and letting the job queue do it's job). — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 02:16, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
As a user and editor, I'd be happy if any links from the template namespace were secluded, because it makes editing a real pain. My main point is that it is very work intensive and grouping these links would be welcome. --LT910001 (talk) 02:41, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Here's the main use: You have an article, and you need to know how it's being used. Maybe you're about to turn into in a dab page (and want to clean up the mess that you're about to create), or merge and redirect it, or change the subject in a reasonable but possibly significant way (so some of those links need to be sent to a different article), or maybe you're just trying to WP:Build the web to it better. The article happens, unfortunately, to be listed in a navbox that is transcluded into five hundred pages.
You don't care which pages have a link only in the navbox. You just want to find the real links (if any).
How do you do that? Specifically, how do you do that without opening all 500+ pages and manually searching the wikitext to see whether there is a (possibly piped) link to that page in the article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:01, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 122#WhatLinksHere overwhelmed by links in navigation templates particularly my comments about Chapel-en-le-Frith. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:09, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Also, I'm sorry but I don't understand this example. --LT910001 (talk) 02:41, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Attempting to update all links is only one possible use for the feature. There is no perfect solution which will always give everyone what they want, but there rarely is about anything. A useful feature shouldn't be dismissed just because it isn't perfect. In bugzilla:3241 I wrote:
"At Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 69#What links here and navboxes I suggested a relatively simple sounding version: An option to hide pages that would not have linked if no transclusions had been performed on them. This seems good enough for most purposes to me, and a big improvement over the current options."
An implementation could simply scan the page source without performing any transclusions at all, and count which pages are still being linked. All other links in the rendered page would be considered template-generated. It would be nice to also catch some of Jackmcbarn's examples (especially "A page contains {{X1|[[target]]}}"), but none of them should be showstoppers. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:52, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

End-of-table rowspan incorrect render

Work_(Iggy_Azalea_song)#Release_history has a small table and as you can see, the last release entry should span two rows like the ones above. I double-checked the code and it's good, but the only way to get those two cells behave as they should is insert another row with text content below it. What do? --Pitke (talk) 13:45, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

  Fixed ! is the markup for the header cells; using it in other rows appears to cause problems. --  Gadget850 talk 14:08, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Insert Citation Toolbar has gone

I use the basic version of Wikipedia when editing, I don't use any add-ons or features. When I click edit, the tool bar at the top has the heading options "Advanced", "Special characters" and "Help"; until recently it had "Cite" too (with the sub-options web, book, journal, news ect) but that seems to have disappeared recently. I'm using the latest version of Firefox and I thought it might be something to with that such as compatibility, however it has disappeared on Google Chrome too and on my work's PC which uses Internet Explorer. I'm now having to manually write or copy + paste blank citations and it is rather annoying. It was much simpler before. Can someone please help? Or tell me of any easier less tedious ways to do references please? Regards IJA (talk) 16:37, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Is the problem persisting? I believe that it's added late in the page-loading process, so that suggests that it might disappear during peak activity (Twinkle disappears sometimes then, too). The Cite menu is present for me at the moment, but it took an extra second or so to appear. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
I've not seen it in about three weeks and I've waiting for over a minute and it still hasn't loaded :( IJA (talk) 10:47, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Do you have JavaScript enabled? If so, then you'll probably want to contact the developers for Wikipedia:RefToolbar directly. I think you could just leave a note on the talk page there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I've contacted them now. Regards IJA (talk) 17:20, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Animation speed

See commons:Commons:Village pump#Animation speed

Cross posting as we've had complaints in the past about "60 fps" GIFs being slow. I made a DB report to find those images. Fixed in Firefox 0.8 (2004), Chrome/Safari (2010), and Internet Explorer 10 (2012). Might still be a problem on mobile. — Dispenser 17:58, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Stopping animations

Is there a way to stop animations like File:Gabapentin3Dan.gif so they just appear as a static image? I know there is "Disable animations in the interface." is Preferences -> Gadgets but that doesn't work for animated gifs like the once linked to. This is an accessibility issue for some people. Nthep (talk) 18:33, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Firefox Bug 825486 - Escape no longer stops animated GIFs suggests BetterStop add-on and SuperStop. — Dispenser 19:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia editing bug

Once when I made an edit to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 106#Pending changes, ever time I typed a character in the middle of the text during that one time of editing, it overwrote the next character instead of pushing all the characters after it forwards. It never happened any other time I edited Wikipedia that I remember. Blackbombchu (talk) 16:28, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Have you checked the "insert" key on your keyboard hasn't been toggled? 80.43.188.197 (talk) 16:31, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't know what you mean by 'toggled' but there's no problem anymore. The problem I had during that one edit already got fixed all by itself the next time I was making an edit to the same 'Pending changes' section and I don't have that problem now either. My real purpose in reporting that problem was in case it was a problem with the way Wikipedia was made and a high level administrator could fix that problem for everybody and not just me. Blackbombchu (talk) 16:41, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
80's point is that it was likely not a bug: this is how typing is supposed to work when the "Insert" key is pressed. (The idea is that, when you press "insert", the text processor switches from "insert" mode to "overwrite" mode, where you're replacing text with other text, rather than simply inserting it; the mode saves you a step and deletes the characters ahead of the cursor as you type. See also Insert key.) So, this doesn't actually sound like a bug with Wikipedia, or even a bug at all. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:44, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Template:Pie chart and the mobile version

Template:Pie chart seems to be broken on the mobile version of wikipedia, but not on the desktop version on the same phone and the same browser, see http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andhra_Pradesh#Demographics for an example. Is there something wrong with the css for the mobile version that prevents the template from rendering properly? Pie charts are pretty important for demographic articles, and the template is a common way of making them. 109.76.215.183 (talk) 09:39, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I think that there's a problem with the pie chart data. Four percentage values are given (83.88 8.63 3.23 1.01) but five sectors are drawn. The values add up to 96.75 - I think that the white sector represents the 3.25% shortfall. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Redrose64 (talk • contribs) 10:47, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
That's normal. The real reason is that mobile was missing one line of CSS. Should be fixed now. — Edokter (talk) — 11:01, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Great, it's working fine now. Thanks. 109.76.215.183 (talk) 11:18, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

AfC Invite Template Questions

A few questions:

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JustBerry#AfC_Invite_Template_Test_-_Check_for_Autosign_Bot - here, the entire template page shows up. Is there a way to only get the top part of that template page to only get the template?
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JustBerry/AfCInvite - here, the Add To Participants button doesn't work. Is there any way to get the button to add a new section with a section header with their username and the text body preloaded as "Questions/Suggestions:" (somewhat similar to WP:GOCE)
  3. Same page - Do you know of a way to have the template placer's signature at the end of the template?

Thank you. Please ping me/leave me a talkback on my page in case I don't see your reply. --JustBerry (talk) 16:21, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

@JustBerry::
  1. Text that should only be visible on the page itself and not on pages that transclude it should be enclosed inside <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags; see WP:NOINCLUDE.
  2. The InputBox extension apparently creates a button to edit the page specified. If the input box says "~~~", then the button will link to the edit page of the bad title "~~~". To solve this I think you'll have to avoid the extension and "manually" create a button or link (the entire input box is not necessary in this case).
  3. You could try and use code like ~~<noinclude/>~~. I'm not entirely sure this works when transcluded as well as when substituted; I actually think it doesn't work when transcluded, but haven't tried. SiBr4 (talk) 17:05, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
@JustBerry: None of the suggestions have worked, unfortunately. Does anyone have any additional suggestions/solutions to the problems listed above? --JustBerry (talk) 18:55, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
  1. Or the lazy version: User:JustBerry/AfCInvite2 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martijn Hoekstra (talk • contribs) 19:14, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
{{Welcome-autosign}} appears to be auto-signing, so perhaps that system could be copied. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
  • In {{Welcome-autosign}} the ~~<noinclude/>~~ trick works because the template is substituted. I don't think it's a good idea to substitute User:JustBerry/AfCInvite when used, since it's a message box rather than plain text and substituting will result in some unnecessary complex code put directly on user talk pages.
  • The noinclude tags seem to have been correctly added to the page and should work that way.
  • As for the second point, some simple text like "Follow this link and click "save" without changing anything" should work if you create a preload page containing the text "*~~<noinclude/>~". It's best to separate the template itself from the list of participants so a user's username isn't appended outside the </noinclude> and transcluded when the template is used. SiBr4 (talk) 19:54, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Or you could replace the <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags with <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> around the part you do want transcluded, so there's no conflict with the appended usernames. SiBr4 (talk) 19:56, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Okay, I have quite a bit of TemplateFu available, what exactly is left needing to be done as this thread is fairly disorganized and I am having difficulty seeing what is done and what's left. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 22:29, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
  • @JustBerry: SiBr4 (talk) 19:32, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Languages messed up

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T34483

Hovering over the links to other languages at Danish West Indies produces a tooltip with the name of the other language's article, a dash, and the English name of the other language. For example, hovering over Українська produces a tooltip of <Данська Вест-Індія – Ukrainian> However, be-x-old is broken. Hovering over Беларуская (тарашкевіца) produces a tooltip of <Дацкая Вэст-Індыя – Беларуская (тарашкевіца)> Note that the language is in its own name, not in English, in the tooltip. 129.79.34.79 (talk) 20:43, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that be-x-old is not a standard language code, and thus is not in CLDR. Wikipedia gets translated language names from the CLDR extension for MediaWiki. Since the CLDR extension already has "be-tarask" (which is also not in CLDR), I think it makes sense to add "be-x-old", which is basically an outdated version of be-tarask. Since it was not in CLDR, MediaWiki defaulted to getting the autonym from Names.php. I have submitted a change to Wikimedia's code reviewer system which adds be-x-old to the CLDR extension (but not CLDR itself), which should fix this particular issue. I would not be surprised if this change were to be rejected. However, there are other nonstandard codes this won't be fixed. For example, Wikimedia uses 'nrm' for Norman instead of Narom, and 'als' for Alemannic instead of Tosk Albanian. πr2 (t • c) 03:55, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer update: June 3

Greetings all,

I posted a reminder last week about Media Viewer's scheduled deployment here on the English Wikipedia tomorrow, Thursday, May 22. After a meeting today the Multimedia team and I agreed to space out the English full release just a little further so that we can be sure we can assist with the deployment and feedback as best possible.

As a result, we will be moving Media Viewer out of Beta Features and enabled for everyone on Tuesday, June 3. If you haven't tried out Media Viewer yet, I encourage you to do so by turning it on in your Beta Features. You can find out more on Media Viewer's page. Please leave us feedback on either that talk page or on the MediaWiki wiki. Thanks! Keegan (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Article move gone awry

A move of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has gone awry as the [edit history has disappeared. If anyone can fix it that would be much appreciated. MarnetteD | Talk 01:43, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I only just noticed that the talk page for the article did not get moved either. It is possible that the move should be reverted until a full discussion about it occurs. Thanks again for any help that can be provided. MarnetteD | Talk 01:46, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
It looks like a cut and paste was performed by an IP. I think that I have reverted things back where they belong but if other editors would double check things and fix anything that I botched that would be great. MarnetteD | Talk 02:07, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm fixing it. We can't have the IP attributed as the author of anything in that page history. This'll take a couple of minutes. Thanks! Keegan (talk) 02:34, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
@MarnetteD:: I'm working on merging the page histories, leaving only the original redirect at The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. However, the target page that I have to delete, move, merge, and restore has over 5,000 revisions so I need a steward to help complete this. Software limitations keep local admins from working directly with pages of this size. I'm seeking one out. Keegan (talk) 02:55, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
@Keegan::Thanks for the updates and you efforts. I may be confused but I don't think there is any need to perform a move or a merge now. If you are going to restore "The" to the title then there should be a discussion at the talk page first. If you are going to leave the title as is (without the "The") I thought my rvt [78] of the IP took care of that. I may be adding to the confusion with this post and if so many apologies. Thanks again for your looking into this. MarnetteD | Talk 04:16, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
@MarnetteD:: I'm not restoring the "The" to the title :)
It's getting fixed on the Steward end and I'll clean it up from our end, and thank you for bring it up. When it's done you'll just the original redirect in the "The" article's page history. Normally fixing copy/paste merges are easy if you know what you're doing, but we have filters in place that require very large pages to have a steward make the move. It's for a good reason, though; big histories funk up the cogs in the machine. For example, back in 2007 I crashed the wiki for a couple of minutes performing a similar history merge on Mars. Oops.
Copy/paste moves have to be merged and fixed, it's quite imperative. While everything you submit under CC-BY-SA is free to reuse, for whatever, you still own your copyright. Copy/paste has to be put back where it belongs in a page history for proper attribution.
Long story short: you did the proper thing in reporting it, and thank you. Keegan (talk) 04:52, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
  Done Keegan (talk) 05:13, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
@Keegan::Thanks for taking the time to explain things it is much appreciated. Thanks also for the Mars story. I glad it wasn't Life on Mars that you were dealing with. The time travel alone was as confusing as it could be - if you didn't see the series then that joke is now the flattest of pancakes. Cheers. 05:32, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Even better is that you got my reference, although it was to the minor league US version of the show. Happy editing to you, do let me know if you ever have any other complicated page moves/splices that you see. It's my specialty that I don't get to use a lot these days :) Keegan (talk) 06:34, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Paperwork for the archive. Keegan (talk) 08:05, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Moving category pages

There's already a massive discussion about this at WP:AN#Category pages will be movable soon. In the interest of not splitting it, it's best to not continue it here. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:47, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

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

...becomes possible within a day or two. Every user will be allowed to move category pages leaving behind redirects that contain the pages, which will not be moved alongside the category page. If the pages are not moved by hand, they will remain as categorized under a redirect and the new category page will be empty. I have discovered that when autoconfirmed users move pages, they do not bother to correct the links but leave it to bots or the redirecting page. Now that every Jill and Jack will be allowed to move category pages, there will be some interesting categories in the future. Be warned. --Pxos (talk) 02:36, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

  • So, what you are saying is that since they will often not move the pages by hand, then the new location of the category will be a resulting empty category and since those should all be deleted per policy it will end up with us having a lot few actual categories. Is what it is I suppose. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 02:42, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article became unwatched all by itself

I was simultaneously editing Surreal number and Talk:Surreal number in 2 different tabs and I clicked 'Watch this page' in Talk:Surreal number then I clicked 'Show preview' in Surreal number and the page didn't become updated to have the box saying 'Watch this page' ticked then after I made the edits on both of those pages, I noticed that neither of them were watched probably because watching an article normally automatically makes its talk page watched and vice versa. Blackbombchu (talk) 15:52, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

There's no bug there. The "Watch this page" box while editing isn't supposed to keep itself updated with the watch status from elsewhere. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:44, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Sidebar section collapsibility not working

Has there been a recent change that has caused the sidebar to no longer be collapsible by section? Being unable to collapse sections I don't use is quite a hassle. I've checked this on two of my accounts and logged out entirely and it's not working at all in FF 29. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 22:56, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

It was recently removed due to slowing page load times. See bugzilla:39035 and m:Tech/News/2014/20. It may become a gadget in the future. /~huesatlum/ 23:12, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 126#Tech News: 2014-20 → MediaWiki 1.24wmf4 → bugzilla:39035 → gerrit:131259 ("Remove collapsibleNav: performance cost too high"). --Redrose64 (talk) 23:15, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks. Discouraging to hear, I'm seeing no improvement in page load times. If anything, it's now taking longer to get to pages I want especially from my mobile device where I noe have to scroll down three pages of useless links to get to the page toolbar. I suppose if the developers want to sell us a crap story about how they think it was affecting load times without showing a reasonable improvement then there's nothing we can do about it. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 01:34, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
  • A work around for those interested is to add the following code to your common.css or your skin specific .css page:
li#n-contents, li#n-featuredcontent, li#n-sitesupport, li#n-shoplink, div#p-interaction, div#p-coll-print_export, div#p-lang {
    display: none !important;
}
You may wish to add or remove other sections as well, but this is what is working for me. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 13:25, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
FWIW, we created in hewiki a gadget to emulate the collapsing functionality. personally, i think it's worth adding to preferences => gadgets on enwiki (and any other wiki). the gadget has no language dependent part, so i believe it can be used here as-is. it includes small css and slightly larger js. it can be found here: he:Mediawiki:Gadget-foldPortalMenus.js, and he:Mediawiki:Gadget-foldPortalMenus.css. if we choose to use it, scripts and gadgets that add new "portals" to the left menu should trigger an event (once the portal is in place) to let the gadget know a new portal was added to solve race conditions. this is done like so: 
$( document ).trigger( 'new-div-portal', portalId );
the gadget replaces the old triangles with more commonly used "+" and "-" symbols to mark collapsed and uncollapsed portals (not because i think it's better" - it was just easier, and the triangles were often wrong in RTL wikis). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:03, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Centering inside wikitables

I'm having some trouble trying to center a horizontal list inside a wikitable. In the following code, the list centers: 

<div class="hlist center">
* Foo
* Bar
</div>
  • Foo
  • Bar

However, if you put that inside a wikitable, it is aligned left: 

{| class="wikitable" style="width: 200px;"
|
<div class="hlist center">
* Foo
* Bar
</div>
|}
  • Foo
  • Bar

It is center-aligned if I remove the "wikitable" class from the table, so it must be something to do with that. But I can't coax it to center with the class still present, despite valiant attempts. The reason I ask is because I'm trying to center-align the bottom line at User:Mr. Stradivarius/UBX/RfX report, but it appears left-aligned when I put that userbox inside the table on my user page. Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:42, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

It's due to the CSS rule 
.wikitable td ul,
.wikitable td ol,
.wikitable td dl {
    text-align: left;
}
whereby any list enclosed by a data cell in a wikitable (at any depth) gets left-aligned. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:48, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
Does that mean that attempting to override the rule by including a style attribute in the div tag won't work? And is there any other way of working around the problem? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:55, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
I could make hlist to ignore the wikitable rule and always make the list inherit its parent text-align. I can't think of any situation where this would break, but I could be wrong. — Edokter (talk) — 11:55, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
That sounds good to me. If it turns out not to be possible, though, I can always find another way of formatting it. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:59, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and used {{int:dot-separator}} to separate the links, rather than using a list. That will do for my purposes, so the fix won't be necessary unless other people need to use non-left-aligned lists inside wikitables. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:33, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Ruh-roh

Hey I got a Wikipedia talk page in my results from DuckDuckGo. The string was "Love Affair", Leslie Kenton (formatted just so) and the link was to Talk:Stan Kenton and it was the 25th result on the page and it repeated. I thought this was not supposed to be able to happen, wondering if this is a one-time glitch or what. Herostratus (talk) 00:22, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't know where you got that idea from, but it seems that talk pages are regularly indexed in search results. The exceptions are pages specifically mentioned in robots.txt and pages with __NOINDEX__ (or a template that adds that). Talkpages of BLPs have templates which prevent them from being indexed, but, since Stan Kenton is not alive, this does not apply here. πr2 (t • c) 02:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Also, pages in the user talk namespace aren't indexed due to bug 13890. Talk pages are ranked nowhere near as high in Google's index as they were in the past. Graham87 07:24, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Oh OK. Did not know none-BLP talk pages were not exempted from indexing. I guess I assumed that of course they are because makes no sense to allow talk pages to be indexed. Right? There's hella lot of unreferenced and scurrilous gossip that goes on on talk pages even if they're not BLPs, along with complete nonsense. It seems it would be trivial to NOINDEX all talk pages on creation. Not doing so implies that that someone has decided that our talk pages would be fine fare for people looking for information on the internet. This strikes me as -- not to put too fine a point on it -- crazy. Herostratus (talk) 21:35, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Recent changes to Anoneditwarning

The usual edit notification when editing anonymously (MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning) was recently changed to feature a very large stop hand, from its previous and more subtle state. Given that the primary use of the stop hand is in user warnings and block notices, this feels like a dramatic way to WP:BITE anonymous editors. As best I can tell, there has been no discussion of this change (here or at MediaWiki talk:Anoneditwarning, which directed me here), and I imagine it will interfere with the current anonymous editor recruiting experiment. Personally, I would like to be able to continue contributing anonymously without the user interface shouting at me every time. 130.216.218.47 (talk) 04:24, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I imagine @Risker: might like a notification of this discussion. —  dainomite   04:37, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Dainomite. There were several reasons behind this change. The first is that the previous version was so subtle that lots of first-time editors were missing it; then they'd come and ask for oversight of their IPs because it wasn't obvious to them that their IP would be publicly displayed; I'll point out that WP:BITE is actually focused on new editors, not experienced ones who may choose intentionally to edit knowing that their IP address will be visible, and indeed the first intention is to not bite those brand-new first-time editors. Wikipedia is one of the very few websites that will publicly display user IP addresses, and I know some of the editor recruiting experiments include consideration of obscuring the IP information from the view of the general public, at least in part because it's rather shocking to the uninitiated. Secondly, should a first-time editor who didn't realise her IP address would be put into the history want to take steps to remove it, they'll start by "undo", which only compounds the problem (now it's shown three times, twice as the editor "name" and also in the automatic "undo edit" summary), or if they're unusually savvy, they'll seek out oversighters. Although many oversighters have quietly taken care of those edits for many years under IAR, technically it's not grounds for suppression, and a more rules-bound oversighter might very well revert, as in fact happened today. Thus we bit a potential new editor twice - first by not making it really obvious to him that his IP address would show up in the history, and then by insisting that it remain there "because that is the rule". Finally, that notice is intended to be a warning, and warnings should not be "subtle", they should be obvious. While I am very open to a change in the image to something else that is big and eye-catching (I used the stop sign because it's red and I knew where to find it), it does need to be obvious. We want new editors, and starting off by failing to give them good warning that what is normally non-public information will be published if they edit without an account, and then compounding that by refusing to provide them with a way of addressing this unintentional revelation, is hardly the way to make them excited about participating. Risker (talk) 05:04, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
  • As another point to 130.216.218.47, attracting, supporting and improving the experience of new editors is something that all of us should be doing; it's not the exclusive remit of the WMF product group. While I'm happy to have them trying things out, and doing experiments, I'm really not going to get worked up about making a change to a poorly designed warning message 90% of the way through an experiment. (Seriously? We wouldn't fix things when we see a problem because someone's doing data collection?) The current experiment looks to be primarily focused on the pre-edit condition, i.e. before the "Edit" button is clicked, in any case. Risker (talk) 05:18, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
  • We ought to cease all discussion of IP editing as "anonymous editing" and make it clear in as many ways as reasonable that editing with an account, disclosing no personal information, is by far the most anonymous way to edit. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:38, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I fully agree Cullen328. This is part of why we're running the experiment we're trying out this week. By the way, I agree with Risker that "it's not the exclusive remit of the WMF product group.". What we're saying is that A) the design should be balanced, so that it's not overly annoying B) we need to test one thing at a time. It takes just a couple weeks to finish an A/B test here and analyze it, and we shouldn't make new big changes while we're testing other changes to the experience. If we do that, it makes it impossible to tell what caused any effects in registrations or edits by IPs. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:16, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
  • A follow-up note: Ianmacm suggested using a different graphic (red triangle with exclamation point) that is an improvement over the more imperative stop-hand, and I've applied it. It was good of the OP to highlight his/her initial concerns, and on reflection I appreciate that using a graphic that's also on high-level, about-to-be-blocked user warnings was suboptimal. Risker (talk) 06:49, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
I had not realized that so many users were upset to see their IP addresses displayed; my feeling has always been that it may disclose some information about my affiliation and broad geographic location (which if anything is better for openness), but getting my actual name and contact details would require legal action. I suppose that a first-time editor is unlikely to be aware of that, or may strongly wish not to disclose their employer or affiliation. Certainly those of us who persist in editing without accounts cannot keep at it without having thick skin, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of annoyance for us if it makes life better for new editors and reduces the amount of oversighting required.
In any event, what had struck me the most was the use of the stop hand. If I hadn't been doing this for many years, that message would certainly make me think twice about editing! Something akin to the red warning triangle (as is now in use) seems more appropriate to me, as it's not visually telling the prospective editor to stop what they're doing. 130.216.218.47 (talk) 06:57, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I've blocked it - too much like a banner ad - along with the nag popup.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.96.125.138 (talk) 07:23, 23 May 2014 (UTC)‎

Alt Shift V not working

Alt+⇧ Shift+V to compare selected version is not working, you may check here or anywhere. It is specially needed when you are checking 250 or 500 revisions of an article and you don't have the button Compare selected revisions in screen. Tito☸Dutta 10:54, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Works on my end (XP/Chrome 35). What is your browser? Have you added any scripts or gadgets lately that my have hijacked that shortcut? — Edokter (talk) — 11:27, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Firefox lates, Win 7, I'll check from Safe mode. Tito☸Dutta 11:39, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
It's captured by Visual Editor. So it depends on if you have that beta enabled or not. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:19, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

'Show' not showing (or 'hide' is hiding)

On some talk pages with open unblock requests, I'm getting the expanded request with no 'hide' option. This is happening at User talk:Sherry Nugyal but not at User talk:Posh Ape. At Posh Ape's page, I can expand and contract, and if I close in expanded form and then reopen, the 'show' is there in the contracted template. This makes me think it's not a cached version - and Sherry Nugyal's page opened expanded without the option when I opened it first anyway. I've changed no settings, and am using Monobook on XPPro through Firefox 20.0.1. Peridon (talk) 14:36, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

{{Unblock}} and {{Unblock on hold}} has had their collapsible option removed and made the admin part only visible to admins, but I see that was not such a good move. — Edokter (talk) — 14:58, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, Posh Ape's is older. Out of curiosity, why was the collapsibility removed? The result is annoying - to me, at least... Peridon (talk) 15:08, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Edokter. That looks better. Peridon (talk) 15:14, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm making a list

I'd like to have a list of MediaWiki features and extensions that were created by volunteer developers. I know it's not going to be a short list, but I'd like it to be somewhat more specific and user-facing than "practically everything". I thought it would be good to link to it off of mw:How to become a MediaWiki hacker, to give people an idea of how important volunteer devs are to the movement and the scale of things they usually work on.

However, I don't think I could name even 10% of the things that belong in this list, and it's possible that someone else has already written it. Does anyone have any advice for me, or suggestions of things to include in the list? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki itself was created by volunteer developers from scratch ;) I'm pretty sure you could start with basically everything that the software included, say, pre-2010 – there's a nice list of features added in each subsequent version at MediaWiki version history (funny thing there's an article about this here). Matma Rex talk 23:33, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Proposing Template:Convert-range

Hello.

Wouldn't it be smart with a variant of {{convert}} called {{convert-range}} (or something similar)?

What I'm thinking of is a template where one can specify a range in one unit, and have the range converted into another unit.

Convert converts a single value, but Convert-range would work on ranges, in a way similar to Convert.

Like this:

  • code {{convert-range|10|13|mi|km}} would result in "10–13 miles (16–21 km)"

It's hard to write good wikicode using Convert when dealing with ranges.

I tried to find out if there was already such a template, but couldn't find anything.

HandsomeFella (talk) 23:46, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

There must be something wrong with my eyes; just found it at Convert. HandsomeFella (talk) 23:52, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
I haven't yet fixed the documentation but Help:Convert#Ranges is a good start. This should be at Template talk:Convert, but the regulars here may want to know that it is now possible to define a range like these:
  • {{convert|10-13|mi|km}} → 10–13 miles (16–21 km)
  • {{convert|10 to 13|mi|km}} → 10 to 13 miles (16 to 21 km)
  • {{convert|10x13x30|mm|in}} → 10 by 13 by 30 millimetres (0.39 in × 0.51 in × 1.18 in)
  • {{convert|10x13x30|mm|in|abbr=on}} → 10 mm × 13 mm × 30 mm (0.39 in × 0.51 in × 1.18 in)
Johnuniq (talk) 00:07, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Formatting lists built using asterisks / colons / hashes

I've forgotten how to amend the formatting of lists built using asterisks / colons / hashes at the starts of lines (e.g. change the default line-spacing) and haven't managed to locate any instructions – where should I be looking, please? Sardanaphalus (talk) 12:38, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Is Help:List any use? - X201 (talk) 13:13, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
  • In this case, I don't think so, though perhaps I've missed something. (I've realised that one solution is to try templates from Category:Wikipedia list formatting templates, but I thought it was possible to configure asterisk/colon/hash lists anyway.) Sorry not to respond sooner, Sardanaphalus (talk) 19:33, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You can surround the list in a div tag, like so:
<div style="xx: yy;">
* Foo
* Bar
</div>
Is that the sort of thing you mean? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:17, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Sorry not to respond sooner. Does the following work where you are? :
Code Output 
<div style="line-height:2.0em;">
* I don't think
* this list
* will look as if
* its lines are
* 2.0em apart...
</div>
  • I don't think
  • this list
  • will look as if
  • its lines are
  • 2.0em apart...
Sardanaphalus (talk) 19:33, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
It shouldn't come out as 2.0em because the <div>...</div> is outside the bulleted list, so any CSS styling applied to that bulleted list has priority over the elements that enclose it. The site CSS has 
ul {
    line-height: 1.5em;
    list-style-type: square;
}
which means that the line-height: 1.5em; will always override the line-height set on the enclosing div. The way to override it is to use ordinary HTML:
Code Output 
<ul style="line-height:2.0em;">
<li>This list
<li>should look as if
<li>its lines are
<li>2.0em apart.
</ul>
  • This list
  • should look as if
  • its lines are
  • 2.0em apart.
but then somebody will come along and "fix" it to wiki markup. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:38, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Counting the number of times a template has been substituted

Is there a way that this can be done? It would be useful in determining whether some templates are or are not used.--LT910001 (talk) 22:56, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

See Template:Z number doc. This will only work with future substitutions; there is unfortunately no way to get data about substitutions from before the z-template was added. jcgoble3 (talk) 00:22, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
There is another method; some templates intended for substitution such as {{subst:uw-vandalism1}}, when used correctly, leave a hidden comment like <!-- Template:uw-vandalism1 --> after the last visible text. If you have access to a database dump, you could scan for that. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:05, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-22

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 22. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 27, and all Wikipedias on May 29 (calendar).
  • MediaViewer will be enabled on all Wikisource wikis on May 29, and on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.

VisualEditor news

  • VisualEditor's welcome message and wikitext warning now say that you can switch to source mode editing and keep your edits without saving them. [79] [80] [81] [82]
  • A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the File: namespace was fixed last week. [83] [84]
  • VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled. [85] [86]
  • It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed. [87]
  • VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names. [88]

Future software changes

  • Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade. [89]
  • It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool. [90] [91]
  • Links to TIFF, DjVu or PDF files created with the syntax [[File:Name.ext|thumb|page 15 is my favourite]] will now show an image caption if there is any text after page number; previously they caused the given page to appear. [92] [93] [94]
  • You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki. [95] [96]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit window annoyance

Lately, when I edit a page, the top line of text in the edit window is obscured. This seems to go away if I refresh once or twice, but it is very annoying, particularly when I am trying to edit that line. bd2412 T 16:33, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

 
Screenshot of the problem I have been having when attempting to edit with Wikipedia.

Above is a screenshot of what I have been seeing (and continue to see) when I first open a window to edit. The first line is completely obscured, and the second line is partially obscured. The issue first cropped up about a week ago. Can someone help fix this? bd2412 T 18:00, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

What happens if you click on 'Advanced' twice? — Edokter (talk) — 18:50, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
That seems to have fixed it, thanks. bd2412 T 19:08, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
No guarantees. What probably happened is that a cookie (which remebers which toolbar is opened last) went stale. — Edokter (talk) — 19:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
@BD2412: if you run into this again, please let me know. I've been making some changes in this area, so it might be that I missed a cornercase or something. It can also have been something to do with caching. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:45, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Talk page history problem (Byzantine Empire)

The Byzantine Empire article talk page shows all history in the various archives, but the View history link does not show edits prior to the first archival in 2008. It looks like someone mistakenly deleted all of the history elements when archiving the talk page on June 15, 2008 (THIS edit). There is a redirect to the archive, located HERE, but there is no capacity to view history in archives. Or, rather, the history only shows the history of the archival. Does anyone know how to remedy this situation? I assume it is possible to recover the history from the underlying database (at least it seems to appear to be there and in exported XML).

This query is also posted on the article talk page, but it seems more appropriate here.Wikipositivist (talk) 03:58, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

The history is at Talk:Byzantine Empire/Archive 7, as shown by these logs. Graham87 06:43, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the info Graham87. It helps with that particular page, but I'm a bit confused regarding the archival process. Do you (or does anyone reading) know why some archives take the history with them whereas most do not? For example, talk archive 6 and talk archive 8 of Byzantine Empire do not have any edit history other than those edits associated with the archival, but archive 7 has the full history, which is now unavailable on the root page View history tab. Most articles seem to have more or less complete edit history on the main talk page, with only the text moved to the archive.
For example, the Israel article has (predictably) sparked a lot of talk, with 30+ archives, but the main talk page View history tab goes back to 2001. ((Granted, there are some issues with that talk history since the first edit shows a link to "Previous revision" but that link goes to an edit from 2010, nine years later. The fact that the talk page for that article predates the "first" article edit is also confusing.)) The Christianity article also seems to have all talk history on the main talk page View history tab although it has 57 archives. Is there some way on the root talk page to tell which pages have had history exported?
I ask because the talk history is of interest to me, and I would like to be able to find it predictably/reliably. I suspect some of these issues are a result of some ad hoc decisions waywayback, but I'm hoping someone has a handle on the archival process for talk pages (and can explain it to me, despite my limited expertise). I hope my questions make sense, and I would be happy to try to clarify if helpful. (I have not posted this on the article talk page since it no longer concerns only that page.)Wikipositivist (talk) 22:33, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
At one time, it was normal practice to move the talk page to a subpage (which then became the archive), and then to convert the freshly-created redirect into a non-redirected empty page (which then became the "proper" talk page). A page move takes the history with it. There are several problems with that technique, the main one being that it's inselective - you need to archive every single thread, including very recent ones and those with ongoing discussion. The normal technique now - which is used by ClueBot III (talk · contribs) and Lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs) - is to cut-and-paste individual threads. See Help:Archiving a talk page for preferred methods, and Help:Archiving a talk page/Other procedures for older methods. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:11, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Contributors to a Wikipedia page

For years, the history of a Wikipedia page has provided a link called "Contributors", leading to a contribution record sorted by editor.

  • Editor 1: so many edits, date and time of first edit, date and time of last edit
  • Editor 2: so many edits, date and time of first edit, date and time of last edit
  • Editor 3: so many edits, date and time of first edit, date and time of last edit
  • Editor 4: so many edits, date and time of first edit, date and time of last edit

Now it leads to a message saying that the program is not being serviced. Will it be revived or replaced?
—Wavelength (talk) 18:53, 24 May 2014 (UTC) and 18:55, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I dont know anything about that specific tool, but if you look for a link called Revision history statistics at the start of that same row, at the very bottom you should have similar information. Werieth (talk) 19:36, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you.—Wavelength (talk) 23:22, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
The tool Wavelength is referring to is Contributors, and maintained by Daniel Kinzler. This has not worked for some time and affects all articles: Article/History/External tool: Contributors. A message has been left on Kinzler's Wikimedia account. However, things being the way they are, who knows who is still associated with anything anymore. Can someone please get the Contributors tool fixed, or replaced. — Maile (talk) 19:47, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Fixing or replacing this tool should probably be a priority, since without it we may be in violation of our own license agreement, which requires us to display the name of all authors/contributors to an article. The revision history statistics tools is not a replacement if it only lists the top 50 contributors. Rusty Cashman (talk) 00:40, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not a licensing issue, since the page history itself still contains a record of exactly who added what. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:46, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
As long as someone is looking at it, that is all we can ask. Rusty Cashman (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps someone is working on this. The latest message this tool shows is: "Tool Migration in Progres The WikiSense tools could not be migrated seamlessly from the Toolserver environment to ToolLabs. I'm working on fixing the most important tools, but this may take a few days or even weeks. Sorry for the inconveniance." — Maile (talk) 12:36, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Watchlist heading

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T67819

You know. It's getting to be a bother to have to scroll down before I can see more than snip of my watchlist. Is it really necessary to have it take up a half of your screen when it first loads. There's so much redundant whitespace that could be put to good use to make it feel less cluttered. The legend within the blue borders is longer than the content within it. Any chance of compressing that a bit?—cyberpower ChatOnline 02:22, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 121#Watchlist key for various methods of hiding all or part of the Legend box. Personally I went the whole bit and more; I have 
span#mw-wlheader-showupdated,
form#mw-watchlist-resetbutton,
div.mw-changeslist-legend {
  display: none;
}
in Special:MyPage/common.css. The first selector (span#mw-wlheader-showupdated) targets the text "Pages that have been changed since you last visited them are shown in bold with a green marker."; the second (form#mw-watchlist-resetbutton) targets the button Mark all pages as visited; the third (div.mw-changeslist-legend) goes for the whole "Legend" box. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:17, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
CSS definitely cleaned up the watchlist a lot. Thanks.—cyberpower ChatOnline 17:06, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

The legend was taking up a bit more space than normal due to a temporary local change that is trying to compensate for a few line-height problems in the core of the software. I've added another override to reset this element to it's defaults. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:26, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Password Reset

I think this function has a problem in security.

Some email servers are not as safe as Wikimedia projects. If my email address were controlled by someone (e.g. a cracker or my email service provider), who reset my password via Special:PasswordReset,

  • Could I log in with the old password?
    • If not, could I request a Checkuser to get my account back?

--183.207.224.49 (talk) 12:03, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Script problems in Chrome

Hello. I have a JavaScript which is executed for many users on Commons. When I signed into my mother's computer today, it did not load, and I got this error in the console:

Refused to execute script from 'https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Magog_the_Ogre/cleanup_scratch.js&action=raw' because its MIME type ('text/x-wiki') is not executable, and strict MIME type checking is enabled.

What am I doing wrong? Magog the Ogre (t • c) 19:11, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Magog, you need to add &ctype=text/javascript to the call for the script. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 19:22, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
@Technical 13: Thank you. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 19:53, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

wikEd update

I have just updated wikEd to version 0.9.127. It's a major update that brings user-friendly table editing when using ref/template folding (push the   button). I have tested the new version thoroughly, but if somebody has problems, please put a note on the wikEd discussion page. Also, wikEd is currently affected by a major Firefox bug that leads to pasting and undo/redo problems. Cacycle (talk) 23:42, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-contribsrange.js#year_contributions

Could someone with understanding of the .js code please have a look at MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-contribsrange.js#year_contributions. There is an annoying issue there with the display of edits. (it has been marked as answered, but that is because the editors monitoring the edit-protected categories prefer not to see requests that they can't do anything about). --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:25, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

@Beetstra: I've prepared a fix and submitted an edit request. Jackmcbarn (talk) 04:01, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Now done. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 05:12, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Cheers for all! Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:38, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Contributions page

The contributions page can only show up to 500 entries at once. How can I locate my entries which predate those 500? -- P123ct1 (talk) 11:01, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

For example by clicking "older 500" or selecting a time. You can actually get up to 5000 at once by manually modyfying the url. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:25, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. (Had always thought the last two lines of the "Search for contributions" box were somehow related.) -- P123ct1 (talk) 12:31, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit filter

not sure where to report this, but this edit did not add an image, but it did add a link to the article about the File (tool). Frietjes (talk) 15:12, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

That would be Wikipedia:Edit filter/False positives/Reports‎. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:14, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Various notices

Hey guys, I'm wondering where the code that allows us to hide various notices such as geonotices and watchlist notices it located. I'd like to look over the code and possibly make a modification proposal. Basically, I would like to change the current hide link to a dismiss link and add a new hide/show link so that I can collapse the ones I've read and be able to uncollapse them later if I want to read them again and still be able to just dismiss others I don't care about. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:45, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Sitenotice hiding is controlled by mw:Extension:DismissableSiteNotice. Geonotices are controlled by MediaWiki:Geonotice.js. Watchlist notice hiding is in MediaWiki:Common.js/watchlist.js. Hope this helps, Theopolisme (talk) 17:57, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Talk page reflist template

I used the template for a talk page {{reflist-talk}}

Here

and here

The references are not the same, as is obvious if you edit, but both appear to be the Cooper Ref. I thought maybe it would go away, or need a purge, but if you see the same thing, something isn't right. Anyone know why?--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:31, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I've added "close=1" to both calls to {{reflist-talk}}, as mentioned in the template documentation. This gets round some too-clever optimisation in the software that builds the HTML pages. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:41, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for being too polite to tell me to RTFM :) And thanks for fixing. --S Philbrick(Talk) 21:08, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit count

I'm having more than the usual trouble with this today. I'm used to it occasionally not working, but it's hanging up my browser every time I try it. It gets to "transferring data" in the status bar and then Firefox stops responding. FWIW, I use almost the latest version (I've avoided 29) of Firefox under Windows 7.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:18, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Is there some lag in the tools server? I'm having problems on http://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/ch/bonus_list.php. GoingBatty (talk) 21:03, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
@Bbb23: I can get to my contributions now using the latest version of Firefox (although it takes about 30 seconds to load). Is it working for you now? GoingBatty (talk) 23:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Hi, GoingBatty, just tried an edit count on a user with about 16K edits, and it worked fine (quickly). I wonder what the problem was or whether it's just an ongoing intermittent problem with the page.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:04, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Are we talking about the User Analysis Tool?—cyberpower ChatOnline 00:13, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
I am. To be clear, I click on contributions of a user and then at the bottom click on edit count (there are other ways for me to do the same thing but they may be something I customized a long time ago).--Bbb23 (talk) 00:20, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
i've been getting it too. The JS seems to be freezing, but I haven't modified it since I first deployed the tool, but I've only noticed it for random IPs.—cyberpower ChatOnline 00:28, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
What used to happen is the tool would hang with a "waiting" in FF's status bar, but FF wouldn't fail completely. Not quite sure why it appears to get further today but then collapses. FF has a history in the last several releases of "not responding" problems, but there still has to be some connection with the tool.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:32, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
The problem is I can't diagnose it because the analysis console won't load when the tool hangs like that. So I'm in the dark on this one.—cyberpower ChatOnline 00:36, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Heh, honest, but not very comforting. I'm the one who's supposed to be in the dark.  --Bbb23 (talk) 01:16, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Unlike other tool and bot maintainers, who have too much pride :D, I deliver the truth even if it makes me look bad. :p—cyberpower ChatOnline 01:29, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
@Bbb23: Ok. After looking around for countless hours, I have found the problem. Apparently, the bug affected new users that have only edited for a month, and IPs that have only edited for a month, e.g. any user that only had 1 bar, and 1 month, on the monthly charts. It was causing the JS graphing library to loop infinitely, not only causing the browser to freeze, but really drain the PC's memory in the process. It wasn't an issue until the optin was removed since all IPs weren't opted in at that time, and neither were new users. I have patched it and it should work smoothly now. Try looking up that user you were trying to look earlier, the one that froze, and see if it works.

TL;DR:   Fixed—cyberpower ChatOnline 22:26, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Upgrade to FireFox 29. It's very stable compared to how crappy 28 was running on mine.—cyberpower ChatOnline 22:33, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't remember which user I was querying. I use the tool frequently. However, if it happens again, you'll be the first to know. :-) I haven't upgraded to v29 because it has a new interface, and I don't feel like trying it and customizing it to my needs, at least not right now. Thanks for your hard work.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:42, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

"Save" button

For the past few days I have been having a problem with the "Save" button, in both IE11 and Firefox. If I press "Save", it seems to take, but then the edit page comes up again; a proper "Save" only happens on the second attempt. Why is this? This does not happen every time I try to save a page, which is even odder. Has anybody else been experiencing this problem? -- P123ct1 (talk) 11:22, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I have been using edit summaries, but see the option you mention is checked. I was making a lot of changes back and forth in Preferences some days ago and must have checked it accidentally sometimes. Thanks! -- P123ct1 (talk) 17:07, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Ahh good, I'm guessing that resolved the issue then. There were a couple other things that can do it as well, but that was the first one that came to mind and a simple fix. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:30, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's fine now. -- P123ct1 (talk) 08:33, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Bot to co-tag two categories with a WP

Bot request has been languishing for over a month. Would be very grateful for some attention. Request is here: Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Resurrecting_bot_request_-_bot_to_tag_Category:Physiology_articles --LT910001 (talk) 02:35, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Prompt to create an account whenever I make an edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T67566
  Resolved

I'm sure there's probably a better place for me to report this but I can't think of where. If anyone knows of someone/somewhere better to take it to, please let me know. On to the problem, I'm an IP editor (i.e. I don't have an account) and for the last day every time I make an edit I get prompt coming up telling me I should create an account. I don't have a problem with this in principal, but the problem is it happens every single time I make an edit even if the edits are less than a minute apart and I'm on the same IP, computer, browser, etc. Surely once I hit the 'X' once it's clear I don't want to make an account and it shouldn't prompt again for at least a day? And unfortunately I can't just ignore it because it doesn't disappear in time (like the "your edit was saved" thing) and the prompt is rather large, covering both the search bar and the edit button. 101.176.89.125 (talk) 11:00, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Could this be a cookies problem? - X201 (talk) 11:18, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't think it is (at least on my end). I have cookies enabled and works on Wikipedia (e.g. once I click on banner for the new privacy policy to disappear, it stays disappeared). 101.176.89.125 (talk) 12:43, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, I do know (though I can't remember now where I saw it) that there is a new prompt to create accounts being trialed. So, there may well be issues with it. Chris857 (talk) 15:16, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
If this is indeed merely a technical issue, then fair enough. Otherwise, it's a really annoying nag. 86.181.67.132 (talk) 15:55, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Chris, it is a very new addition so I can understand there being teething issues. But even if it's just a technical issue, it's one the should be resolved ASAP. Does anyone know which WMF person would be the best to ping about this? I took a look at a page listing them all to see which one I should notify but they seem to multiplying at a prodigious rate and it wasn't clear (to me, at least) who is in charge of what. 101.176.89.125 (talk) 16:44, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

  • I understand that it may be annoying, the way to permanently fix it and make that prompt go away is to simply... Well... Create an account or request an account. — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 16:50, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
    • Sorry to be blunt, but do I sound like I don't know how to create an account and need those links pointed out to me? And more importantly, there are plenty of IPs who choose not to create an account for a multitude of fair reasons so you can guarantee it's not just the two people posting here that this has irritated. While I'm thinking about it, I also can't see any purpose for the prompt occurring when I make an edit in the Wikipedia namespace (or any namespace but the article namespace really). I'm perfectly happy to wait a while for this to be fixed, I can understand it not being of the highest priority, but honestly if the only long-term solution ends up being "you must create an account" I probably just won't bother editing anymore. 101.176.89.125 (talk) 17:14, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
      • There is a huge difference between "Inviting anonymous editors to join the Wikipedia community" (as linked below by John of Reading) and nagging them into it. The suggestion that IP editors should just "permanently fix" the annoyance by creating account is, imo, indefensible. Use of annoyance tactics like that would seem to me to conflict heavily with the right to edit Wikipedia in gf as an IP, as recently also enshrined in the new Privacy Policy. 86.181.67.132 (talk) 17:38, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Found it - the announcement is here so the person to ping is Steven (WMF) (talk · contribs). -- John of Reading (talk) 17:00, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, John. Appreciate both links. As I understand it, you linking him here will give him a notification but I've dropped him a talk page note as well just in case. 101.176.89.125 (talk) 17:27, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Hey everyone, thanks for pinging me and for your patience. I just re-tested these calls to register, and I do get the same effect where it appears repeatedly. This is an error for sure, and I've filed a bug for our development team to fix. In the meantime, you can fix this issue by clearing your cookies, which will reset the experiment for you. (You may get a new version of the experiment.) Overall this will only last a week or so, while we test it out. Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:44, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I find it peculiar that registration is not required to edit primarily because Jimbo doesn't want long-term editors to gain too much control, so instead of requiring anons to register, it was decided to worry the crap out of them with this popup. 75.177.156.78 (talk) 00:00, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
"primarily because Jimbo doesn't want long-term editors to gain too much control" Registration is not required to edit because we don't want to create excessive barriers to contribution for those who want to edit casually, and because anonymous editing is clearly a gateway to editing further for many Wikipedians. Community politics doesn't enter in to the decision, and as one member of the Board, Jimmy has pretty much zero involvement in design decisions made at the Wikimedia Foundation. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:14, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I've heard the same old stale party line many, many times. But the truth is, if you follow what goes at Wikipedia and WMF using sources that are not a part of Wikipedia or WMF, a very different story emerges, i.e., you are wrong. The fact that you feel compelled to defend the status quo speaks volumes. I don't listen to salesman to tell me which products are the best, and I don't listen to Wikipedia or WMF operatives to learn about what goes on here. 75.177.156.78 (talk) 00:04, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
  Like --84.44.195.210 (talk) 13:57, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Stephen. Good to know it's just a bug (one to fix asap, imo). 86.181.67.132 (talk) 06:17, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

+1. Thanks for the quick response on this Steven, much appreciated. 101.176.89.125 (talk) 08:15, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

It went away completely for a bit, but now is back. Might be straying from bug to feature. I've just blocked the popup.

  • It's still there for me too. An update on the current situation would be appreciated. 86.181.67.132 (talk) 11:08, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
  • FWIW, I've provided my thoughts on the Sign Up nagging here. --84.44.195.210 (talk) 13:53, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • This experiment is turned off now, while we conduct analysis. If you continue to see this interface or have problems, try clearing your browser data (cookies, cache). Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:02, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014

Hello everybody. This is a one-time posting to this page to remind people to the availability of this opt-in newsletter. If you do not already receive it (about one per month) on your talk page and would like to, please add your page link to the subscribers' list at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:53, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Newsletter
 

Did you know?

 

The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates. If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.

Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu.

Read the user guide for more information.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.

The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.

Eventually, the VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for these citations. When this long-awaited feature is created, you could add an ISBN, URL, DOI or other identifier to the citation tool, and VisualEditor would automatically fill in as much information for that source as possible. The concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted.

  • There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction. This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Language" tool in the "Insert" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this: <span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
  • The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "Insert" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
  • The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field. Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
  • TemplateData has been expanded: You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones. "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work. There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names. The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
  • Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
  • Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency. The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie. As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
  • Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
  • In the "Images and media" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
  • There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData. You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box. If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
  • There have been multiple small changes to the appearance: External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links. The styling of the "Style text" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin. VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images. Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
  • The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
  • At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.

Looking ahead: The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard. The "Keyboard shortcuts" link will be moved out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter (or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project). Thank you!

Actually, I think this newsletter should be posted here every time. This is exactly the right place to keep people on enwiki updated about MediaWiki software improvements, after all. I'll go and add this page to the list of subscribers. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 08:58, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

**Search and Replace button not working

The Search and Replace button at the end of the edit ribbon on the edit pages does not work. I have IE11 and Vector skin. As I have started to do a lot of copy-editing, this button is essential. How can I remedy this? - P123cat1 (talk) 15:31, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Working fine in Firefox latest Tito☸Dutta 16:28, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm not seeing one in Monobook (Firefox) - but I don't remember seeing one before anyway so I'm not sure where it isn't (if you see what I mean). Peridon (talk) 16:43, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Just looked in Vector (ughhh) and can't see it there. There's a Cite button that's not in Monobook, but it's not in there. Peridon (talk) 16:46, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
There should be an "advanced" tab which contains the search-and-replace button at the right of the screen. Monobook apparently also has it. For me too it works in Firefox but not in IE. SiBr4 (talk) 16:53, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Advanced is my default setting - there's nothing visible in Monobook. I've found it now in Vector. Peridon (talk) 17:01, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
I should have it in Monobook, but can't get it either in MonoBook or Vector. The requirements for it to be available, IIRC, are that you need to be logged in; at Preferences → Editing, enable both "Enable the editing toolbar" and "⧼wikieditor-toolbar-dialogs-preference⧽". If this is done, the   button should be visible when editing - it was close to the upper right corner of the edit window, but is not showing for me. Firefox 29.0.1, Windows XP. Since it comes in through Javascript, I suspect a slow bits server since some pages are taking a longer time to load than usual. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
@Peridon: does it work for you in Vector? - P123cat1 (talk) 18:19, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
It works in Vector - so long as I'm NOT logged in. Of course, I can't check Monobook when logged out... I've never wanted to search and change here, and didn't even know there was a thingy for it. Peridon (talk) 19:31, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
I've just been into prefs. Enhanced was ticked, but wizards weren't. They are now, but no icon at the right has appeared. Now works in Vector whether logged in or out. But not in Monobook. Peridon (talk) 19:40, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
Just checked actually logging out rather than using Firefox private window. Still made no difference. Logged in again, and there is the little beggar in Monobook. Peridon (talk) 19:46, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
I have the wizard and Enhanced ticked, Vector and IE11, but when logged in can't do a thing with the S&R button that shows up. Not the first time I have found IE11 incompatible with Wiki functions (Reflinks is another). - P123cat1 (talk) 22:47, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
several comments:
  1. search and replace is neutralized in IE for ~a year now, even though the button was still visible for some or all of this time (don't have access to IE, so i'm not sure if it's visible now). when the button was/is visible, it just does nothing in IE.
  2. @Peridon: you *can* test monobook when logged out: just add "?useskin=monobook" to the end of the address line. if there's already a question mark in the address line (true when editing), replace the "?" with "&".
  3. it seems that the search and replace is broken, at least in chrome: what i mean is, it works erroneously. superficial tests show that "replace all" works fine, but "replace" can do wrong things, depending whether there is any selected text in the article, and maybe also depending on caret location. similar issues with IE are what made the developers neutralize this button in IE. this tool's code is pretty ugly (sorry if anyone is offended), and i'm sure is someone will create a nice search/replace module the developers will be happy to adopt it.
peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 21:08, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
When editing, you must also have Advanced selected on the toolbar. -- Gadget850 talk 11:44, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
@קיפודנחש (aka kipod) Thanks for the info re IE and search & replace, and just FYI, in IE11 the button tho' it doesn't work is always visible when Advanced is selected. I prefer to work with IE11, but annoyingly the button works perfectly with Firefox. --P123cat1 (talk) 17:08, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
@P123cat1: i wouldn't say it works perfectly with ff. see Bugzilla:65732 and try the replication steps with ff. for me, the problem exists in ff too. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:35, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Oh dear. I was thinking of using ff for the search & replaces I need to do! Making changes without a S&R facility can be horrendous. --P123cat1 (talk) 01:28, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
There are about 15 known issues with WikiEditor's Search and Replace. Any help in fixing, submitted and cross browser testing them, would be appreciated. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:32, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Try the gadget "wikEd" under Firefox or Chrome for a powerful search and replace (including regular expressions, find as you type, and case sensitivity). Cacycle (talk) 23:58, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
@ Cacycle: Isn't that the S&R button on the Advanced ribbon on the edit page? Or is "wikEd" some other tool? If it is, how do I locate in FF? -- P123ct1 (talk) 10:56, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
P123ct1: Please see User:Cacycle/wikEd. Cacycle (talk) 11:13, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Rangeblock calculator

The rangeblock calculator on Toolserver ([97]) has been down for a while. I don't suppose anybody has the wherewithal to get it back working or knock together a replacement? It really is useful... HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I found a short time ago this site where is a good IP range calculator. Though it's not on Toolserver/Labs. --Stryn (talk) 17:33, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Masses of self-edit-conflicts

Self edit conflicts, where the only difference is the ~~s and the expanded sig (for example), are a familiar if infrequent sight. However I have seen about 10 in the last few days. Is this just bad luck or is something slightly broken? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:21, 26 May 2014 (UTC).

Block for account creation

Hi

I know that when several accounts are created during a training meeting (with the IP address), account creation is blocked after a certain number of accounts. I am looking for information (I could not find the info on help pages yet)

  1. How many accounts may be created prior to account creation blocking ?
  2. Is there a way to prevent the blocking prior to the event (when IP info is known) ? If so, how ?
  3. If account creation is blocked during the meeting, is there a way to ask for an unblock (where) ?

Thanks :)

Anthere (talk) 15:33, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

To prevent the blocking, create a ticket in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org against product "Wikimedia" and 1) list the wiki name(s) (domain name(s), database name(s), whatever), 2) When the event starts, including timezone. 3) When the event ends, including timezone. 4) What the limit needs to be raised to (e.g. 75 accounts). 5) The IP(s). 6) A link to the details for the event. If you think such a request has gone unnoticed and the event is about to start, go to the IRC channel #wikimedia-tech on Freenode IRC and ask for help. (See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC for general info on using IRC.) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the very complete and clear info. Cheers. Anthere (talk) 16:15, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
  • An alternative is for an established user to request the account creator userright for the duration of the event and create all the accounts needed... Another alternative is to have everyone go through the request an account tool and in the comment mention that they are part of the event/edit-a-thon/training. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:08, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Selective extract of edit history

How may I make a link to an extract of my edit history; say edits between 17:17 and 17:28 today (or at least all edits, from 17:28 and earlier)? I'm sure I've seen this done; but can't recall where. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:22, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Click "older" to get a url with something like offset=20140527233648. That's UTC time with YYYYMMDDhhmm you can manually edit. Click "20" or another number to get a url with something like limit=20. That's the number of edits to display. You can count how many you want and manually change the number in the url. I don't know a way to say "edits from time A to time B". PrimeHunter (talk) 18:35, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Very helpful. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:28, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Like this. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:35, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Useful. Thanks. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:28, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Have you read Wikipedia:Complete diff and link guide or mw:Manual:Parameters to index.php#History? &from=timestamp&until=timestamp seems to be valid for logs. Otherwise, You'll have to do as Primehunter suggests (User:Technical 13/Scripts/Gadget-listStyles makes it much easier to see how many edits to set the limit to). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 18:48, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
I hadn't been able to find them; thank you for the pointers. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:28, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
There are also the
  • {{contribs}} Current specified user's contributions
  • {{contribs2}} User's contributions from time X and n-1 newer edits.
  • {{contribs3}} User's contributions from time X and n-1 older edits.
templates which are for this purpose. — Makyen (talk) 00:11, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

How to stop automatic "typo corrections" of a word that is not a typo?

Well, at least I've discovered that the edit summary "clean up, typo(s) fixed: Eg → E.g. (2) using AWB" is used by several people. No point telling them they are wrong.

In the article Norwegian language, the perfectly good word eg is found twice. It constantly gets "corrected" as above, by various editors. Is there some way to mark this word in the article so that it won't be "corrected"? (Could it somehow be changed to an image, for example?)

I'll watch this page for a while. Thanks, Hordaland (talk) 18:39, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Use {{not a typo}}, as in {{not a typo|eg}} → eg --Redrose64 (talk) 18:59, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Or even better: Use {{not a typo|e|g}} → eg
to obfuscate the text, so that bots won't find it so easily. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:51, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) eg? Interesting. That should probably be reported to WT:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos as 
    <Typo word="e.g." find="\b([Ee])(?:g\.?|\.\s*g)([\s,:;-]|'')(?!White|veit|River)" replace="$1.g.$2"/>
    should probably be commented out for now? @GoingBatty, PBS, and Ohconfucius: is there anyway to set a comment or something on that page so it doesn't change that word? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 19:05, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Another good fix for these fragments in the Norwegian language article would be to surround them in {{lang}} templates. Then browsers, screen-readers and so on would also know that the phrases are in Norwegian. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:22, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
The {{lang}} for non-English text is good, but the {{not a typo}} template shouldn't be necessary for errors such as this, where the "typos" are foreign words (or where they are names). It's likely that editors are not looking carefully enough at what they are changing (or do not understand the changes they are making) and are not using AWB appropriately as described at WP:AWB/T#Usage. Peter James (talk) 21:13, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Or they are not aware that "eg" is a Norwegian word. I certainly wasn't aware of it until this conversation and could've made the same mistake. — dainomite 22:25, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
You should expect any letter combination to be a valid word in some other languages! You should not mess with text (such as book titles) in languages you do not understand as you will probably just cause errors. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:09, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all the interest and the comments! Someone (likely a user of AWB to whom I've complained?) has today added the {{not a typo|eg-bit to the article; that's what is there now.

Guess it's fixed now. Redrose64 suggests above {{tlx|not a typo|eg... and I don't know if there is a difference, but it probably doesn't matter now. (One does learn something new every day, here.) Thanks again, Hordaland (talk) 22:10, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

@Hordaland: I think that you're a little confused... the edit which fixed it used exactly the same syntax that I suggested, save for two differences of capitalisation. In the markup of my suggestion, I used the {{tlx}} template, not as something that should be put into the article, but in order to demonstrate the code in an easily-readable form. It's one of several "template-linking templates" used on discussion pages like this when it's desirable to show examples of markup. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:35, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Confused, who me? Thanks, now I've already learned something new today (29 May here...), too.  :) --Hordaland (talk) 23:50, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Undesirable automatic resizing of table column widths

I'm using a table with a collapsible table/hidden section within it. The problem is, when that hidden table is shown/hidden, it's causing the width of the right-most column to change; this resizes other columns and causes occasional unwanted wrapping of text elsewhere in the table.

 
I could try to find workarounds and build them into the table; but it'd obviously be easier & more efficient coding if it actually turns out to be a wikitable bug and can be fixed on that end.
An example of a template demonstrating the problem is:

2011 Ontario general election: Ottawa Centre
Party Candidate Votes % ±% Expenditures
Liberal Yasir Naqvi 23,646 46.81 +11.90 $ 102,168.00
New Democratic Anil Naidoo 14,715 29.13 −1.77 83,779.02
Progressive Conservative Rob Dekker 9,257 18.33 −1.59 27,933.58
Green Kevin O'Donnell 2,184 4.32 −8.03 5,902.64
Independent Kristina Chapman 309 0.61   3,418.00
Libertarian Michal Zeithammel 240 0.48   0.00
Communist Stuart Ryan 160 0.32 −0.07 394.11
Total valid votes / expense limit 50,511 100.00 −3.41 $ 112,575.19
Total rejected, unmarked and declined ballots 290 0.57 −0.13
Turnout 50,801 53.74 −4.51
Eligible voters 94,533   +4.57
Liberal hold Swing +6.34
Source(s)
"Summary of Valid Votes Cast for Each Candidate – October 6, 2011 General Election" (PDF). Elections Ontario. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
"Statistical Summary – General Elections 2011" (  Excel Spreadsheet). Elections Ontario. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
"2011 Candidate Campaign Returns (CR-1)". Retrieved May 28, 2014.

Click the [show] link for the Source(s) and note how the Expenditures column resizes, which causes text in the Party column to wrap and increases the overall height of the upper section of the table (which should remain constant). Additional examples (using this same template set) can be found in {{Canadian election result/testcases}}.

That brings up additional wikitable problems, which became apparent through the same template series; that issue has to do with borders of cells. Example:

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5
A B C D E
F G H I
J K L M N
O P Q R
S
T U V W
X Y Z AA AB
Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5
A B C D E
F G H I
J K L M N
O P Q R
S
T U V W
X Y Z AA AB

Depending on the which way the wind's blowing (or some other equally unrelated mystery factor), cell "K" (in the above examples) may or may not have a bottom border. On other occasions (in more complex adaptive template based examples), cells such as "N", "U", "V", & "W" (where there's an empty ‘nothing’ above) may not have top borders. Just to make it really interesting, the missing bottom borders ("K" or the row above "Total valid votes/Expense Limit" in the transcluded Ottawa Centre template above) will occasionally appear later (after scrolling or typing in the code window, etc) and sometimes it won't (which makes me think that that one might be a browser issue rather than just a wikitable issue). The missing top borders ("N", "U", "V", & "W" and the like) seem, if missing, to remain missing (they do appear properly in the example tables above, so that problem isn't demonstrated here, but appears in some of these testcases); so that's likely an unrelated issue. A work-around for the missing top borders exists; setting the style="border-bottom:none;" on the upper row and style="border-top:1px solid darkgray;" on the lower row forces the table to properly draw the border all the way across; but the intermittent bottom border issue is another story. My browser is IE 10.0.9200 (Update: 10.0.16) on Windows 8.0 (Outdated, I know); but I believe these issues even appeared when I was using Firefox not too long ago. Is everybody on every browser even seeing the same issue(s)? Thanks — Who R you? Talk 19:11, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not a good idea to design a table to have an ideal layout by specifying any of the column widths - quite simply, you do not know how wide the screen is (other than your own). Regarding the missing borders: the lack of cells above N, U, V, W etc. is certainly a factor, and the cell should be present even if it will always be empty. Another factor is variation between browsers: what looks good in (for example) Opera might look dreadful in (say) Internet Explorer. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:28, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
The table given as an example works for me, in both Safari and Firefox. Whether it is a problem may depend on something like the exact size of your default font. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:12, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Redirects missing the target

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T67468

I just noticed at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch that, if one uses the shortcuts to sections of the page, lower down on the page, to go to a particular section, what comes into view is actually lower down on the page than the intended target. I'm using Firefox 29.0.1. For one example, WP:SAY takes me to about the middle of the section below the intended section, where WP:EUPHEMISM is supposed to go. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:47, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 126#Redirect not working right. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:02, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't see that because it was archived. If I understand correctly, it's largely a bug with Firefox 29, more than a bug in Wikimedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:14, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia home page gives 404 error

Expected result: Going to http:/en.wikipedia.org/ should display the home page. Actual result: Attempting to go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page or http://en.wikipedia.org/ causes my browser to display a 404 error. Browser: Internet Explorer 11 Desktop on Windows 8.1 (Windows Server 2012 R2)

Gparyani (talk) 20:34, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm getting this too, latest Google Chrome on Windows 7. BZTMPS ★ · (talk? contribs?) 20:36, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Same here!, Chrome + Windows 7. →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 20:45, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
  • At this time, all pages in the "Special:" namespace that I try to view end up directing me to a "404 Not Found" error page. Anyone else experiencing this issue, and/or has there been an estimated time of restoral established? Steel1943 (talk) 20:35, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
I can't access my watchlist at all, getting "404 Not Found", half of the wikipedia articles are giving the same result, including access "Forbidden".--Jockzain (talk) 20:45, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

We're aware of this issue and working towards solving it. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:52, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-May/076736.html for how this problem happened. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 07:33, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

403 Forbidden

I'm getting 403 Forbidden errors about 1/3 page hits on Wikipedia right now. Any news?--v/r - TP 20:41, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Me, to. Either it's telling me the page is not found, or I'm forbidden access on the server, or when he does access a page it seems like HTML in giant size splashed all over the page. — Maile (talk) 20:43, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
That's because the CSS style sheets have bonked out. KonveyorBelt 20:44, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict × 2) I am as well; it's most likely related to the 404 error issue posted in the section above. Steel1943 (talk) 20:45, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Ditto. though it's somewhat intermittent. Sometimes giving me an unformatted version of a page. contributions though (mine and others) are solid 404s, but I can view watchlist and page histories so far. - jc37 20:47, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Anyone up for the stocks? --Lixxx235 (talk) 20:46, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
@jc37 I had the same problem with the lack of formatting, starting a few hours beforehand. Dustin (talk) 21:08, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 4) (ffs) Same here. I don't understand how it could be the CSS sheets though. Mynameisnotdave (talk/contribs) 20:47, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Have you seen the article about a Flash of unstyled content? I think this is a similar effect: when things are screwed up, you get unstyled content. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
It wasn't just unformatted content, it was an actual 403 error. But it looks like Dan the Man is on it so...--v/r - TP 21:39, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
I was replying to comments from jc37 and Dustin about unstyled content. I was getting both for a while: normal pages, 403 and 404 errors, and unstyled pages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

We're aware of this issue and working towards solving it. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:52, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-May/076736.html for how this problem happened. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 07:35, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Pending changes configuration

I installed mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs on my wiki. Edits by IPs will go live immediately, instead of being held until a reviewer approves it. Since this wiki uses the same extension to implement pending changes, what configurations do I need to set to prevent unreviewed edits from going live? I have all the default configurations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acqirst (talk • contribs) 04:46, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

@Acqirst: you can look this up on CommonSettings.php of WMF. It specifies:
// Per-wiki config for Flagged Revisions
if ( $wmgUseFlaggedRevs ) {
	include( "$wmfConfigDir/flaggedrevs.php" );
}
#Adding Flaggedrevs rights so that they are available for globalgroups/staff rights - JRA 2013-07-22
$wgAvailableRights[] = 'stablesettings';
$wgAvailableRights[] = 'review';
$wgAvailableRights[] = 'unreviewedpages';
$wgAvailableRights[] = 'movestable';
$wgAvailableRights[] = 'validate';
And then look at flaggedrevs.php to find the settings for enwiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:34, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I found what I needed! Very happy!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.94.244.34 (talk) 16:27, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Template coding

colspan="2" style="text-align:center; background-color:
  1. ed8; color:#000;" | Award

I once noticed that we have some template which name I (of cource) don't remember; it is used in templates for formatting the number sign (#), so that such errors don't show up.--Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 15:54, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Are you looking for Template:Pound? -- John of Reading (talk) 16:05, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
You don't need a template; see Help:Template#Problems and workarounds and use &#35; instead of # alone. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:06, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Strike that - it won't work inside style="..." --Redrose64 (talk) 16:08, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: I don't remember, maybe yes, maybe not :) but to my mind it isn't what I was looking for (code wasn't so simple) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:13, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, but what could you suggest if there is something like this: background-color:{{{color|#ed8}}}. And in |color= user can write both hex color code (#112233) and color name (black). Then the pound template wont help. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:13, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

In your example above you can use an empty nowiki tag. Here's the code you need:
{| class="infobox vcard" style="width:{{{box_width|24em}}}; font-size:88%; text-align:left;"
|-
! colspan="2" style="text-align:center; background-color:{{#if:{{{deathdate|}}}|silver|<nowiki/>#ed8}}; color:#000;" {{!}} Award
|}
Award
Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:04, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks! --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:31, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

504 gateway timeout

I've been trying to update a template {{2014–15 Football League One table}} but every time I submit my changes I get the error "504 Gateway Time-out". What is confusing me is that I can change the supporting page template:2014–15 Football League One table/p quite happily. anyone know what is going on? => Spudgfsh (Text Me!) 09:30, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Don't worry, I've fixed it now. => Spudgfsh (Text Me!) 09:46, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

User compare is broken

On all SPI pages, the link which goes to Betacommand's user compare tool brings up a 404. Is the tool not working? KonveyorBelt 17:56, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

From Betacommand on IRC: "I fixed it, and it was caused by a change in the API that I didnt notice" -Newyorkadam (talk) 18:36, 31 May 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam

RfC: remove the attention flag from WikiProject banners

See the discussion here. RockMagnetist (talk) 03:47, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Forward/backward links in Special:ListFiles

The table is in chronological order, and sortable forward/backward by that column but no other. The links to jump between pages are named "First page", "Previous page", "Next page", and "Last page". Those terms are confusing because depending on sorting direction, "next" and "previous" could be parallel to the direction of time or opposite. For example, the default order appears to be newest first, then progressing back into history, but it's the "next" button that takes you to the next screen that is the previous timeframe. It would be clearer if they were called "older" (and "oldest") and "newer" (and "newest"), just like the analogous links are named in Special:Contributions.

Also, even on one of the extreme pages (first or last), all 4 links are still active, suggesting that there is something before the first page (or after the last). Again as with contributions-history and similar pageable lists, links that suggest additional content vs returning to the same page should be disabled. DMacks (talk) 02:13, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Those terms are the idea, but isn't "next page" the next older not newer, given default sorting is newest-to-oldest? DMacks (talk) 22:31, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-23

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

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 29. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 3, and to all Wikipedias on June 5 (calendar).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on all Wikipedias with less than 100,000 pages on May 30. [98]

VisualEditor news

  • Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target. [99]
  • The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor. [100] [101]
  • VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons. [102]
  • There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters: date for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format. [103]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For about 20 minutes on May 29, all wikis were broken due to a configuration error. [110]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:08, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Finding earliest version of a Wiki article

I know clicking a date in an article's "Revision history" pages will show the version on that date, but I cannot see how to locate the earliest version of an article. This because at the top of the first page in "Revision history":

  • I can't see how to fill in the box to find the earliest date.
  • Clicking on external tool "Revision history search" below the box leads to a WikiBlame page, but I don't know how to fill it in correctly. (I tried putting in an early date, pressed "Start", but nothing happened.)
  • I looked at Help:Page history and Help:Edit summary, but still couldn't understand how to find an article's earliest version.

Some help, please. --P123ct1 (talk) 12:46, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

There is a link called oldest: example after clicking Werieth (talk) 12:52, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
(ec) ...at the bottom of the page, not the top. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I couldn't find that answer in the Help pages. --P123ct1 (talk) 16:58, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Installing scripts

Any one know how to install scripts at Welish Wikipedia? I have asked a local admin there but I haven't got any proper answer. I mean I haven't understand what he said. So, can anyone help me? Jim Carter (talk) 19:13, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

  • Jim, what do you mean by "installing"? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 19:19, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Technical 13 Just like we install scripts by importing the script to our common page on English Wikipedia. But how to do it on Welish Wikipedia? I mean is the process to install scripts at other Wiki's are same. Jim Carter (talk) 19:31, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
  • So, Jim, you want to use enwp scripts on cywp? In that case, if you are using:
importScript( 'User:This_script.js');
Then you would use instead:
mw.loader.load( 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:This_script.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );
If you need further help, let me know. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 19:38, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

I need help with coding a template...

I have recently created User:Josve05a/template-sanbox. RIght now I have to type {{User:Josve05a/template-sanbox|1=yes}} to show Reason 1 and {{User:Josve05a/template-sanbox|2=yes}} for Reason 2.

I just want to write {{User:Josve05a/template-sanbox|1}} (meaning it is |1=1) For Reason 1 and {{User:Josve05a/template-sanbox|2}} (meaning it is |1=2) for Reason 2.

Is it possible to do this? (t) Josve05a (c) 19:26, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pretty easy. Instead of #if: conditions, you want to use a #switch:. So something like {{#switch: {{{1|}}} | 1 = reason #1. | 2 = reason #2. }} will check the first parameter, {{{1|}}}, and send "reason #1." if that parameter is equal to "1", and "reason #2." if that parameter is set to "2". VanIsaacWScont 19:31, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Sure, not defining 1= or 2= implies the first parameter is 1=. Therefor, you just need to adjust your code so that if 1=1 use reason 1 and if 1=2 use reason 2. Might look something like {{#switch:{{{1|0}}}|1=Reason 1|2=Reason 2|#default=}} — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 19:34, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
    • Thanks! I rellly have no idea how wiki-template-code works, so THANK YOU! (t) Josve05a (c) 19:40, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

History merge and undelete

Dear technical experts: I am learning to perform history merges, and I want to make sure that I have a clear understanding of the process. I have two questions:

  • Some articles have in their history revisions that are deleted even though the article itself is not deleted. For example, Madison Eagles has 250 deleted edits because it was deleted many times. Other articles may have had selective revision deletions. If in the process of a history merge, or as a result of an undelete request, a deleted article with this mixed history is to be undeleted, how can you tell which of the revisions to restore, and which should remain deleted? Or do you have to make a note of this ahead of time?
  • Am I right in assuming that when an article is deleted, then selectively restored, and later moved leaving a redirect, only the restored edits are moved to the new title, leaving the deleted edits in the history of the old page which is now a redirect? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:39, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
  • If it has mixed history, you need to make a note ahead of time. It's not as bad as it seems, though, since unless weird stuff already happened with the page, all of the "real" deleted revisions will be older than the temporarily deleted ones. Worst case, you may find yourself comparing timestamps on log entries.
  • Yes. Deleted edits don't move. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:51, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks, Jackmcbarn. Okay, checking the deletion log times makes sense. However, sometimes an article is deleted and restored, and other times an article is deleted and then newly created. If an article is to be restored, for example as a result of a G13 refund request, it would seem that I should look down the list past any previous delete/restore pairs until I come to a page creation, and stop there even if there are more deletions and restorations further back. Is there no way in this case to detect selective revision deletions, since the article will have already been deleted before I see it? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:27, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
There's no way to know exactly which revisions used to be deleted. If you get a messy case like this, you can make it simpler by moving the pages elsewhere (to get a clean area to put the deleted revisions), performing the history merge, then moving the result back where it belongs. See [111] for an example of when this was done. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:45, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
  • I tried this on one of my own user pages. First I copied User:Anne Delong/Burleigh Falls to User:Anne Delong/Burleigh Falls (2), and then added late edits to the first while improving the second. I followed the standard instructions, but although the article looked good on the surface, this left the late edits jumbled into the history as expected. Then I did another copy-paste to User:Anne Delong/Burleigh Falls (3), added AfC comments to the old page and editing the new one as well. This time I used the alternate instructions, moving the new page over the old, then undeleting everything except the AfC comments and the junk from the first failed merge. Then I moved the page back. I think it's right this time. Can someone check my work and see if I have forgotten anything? —Anne Delong (talk) 10:59, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
    • From my perspective, that looks good. I can't be sure, though, since I can't see what revisions are deleted. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:05, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Okay, next question (sorry). I didn't see anything in the instructions about accompanying talk pages. I'm presuming that if I just move an article page, merge it with a draft, and move it right back, the talk page will just stay there and nothing will need to be done. But, now that the AfC submissions are being moved to Draft space, in the future there could be two talk pages involved. It doesn't seem right to leave old discussions on the talk page of a redirect, where they would never be seen. Should these just be cut and and pasted to the talk page of the mainspace article? Couldn't that cause broken links? I know that this isn't so much a technical question, but it kind of goes with the rest.... —Anne Delong (talk) 16:15, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
    • If they're worth keeping at all, then yes, just copy and paste them. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:33, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
      • Since the talk page entries are supposed to be signed this sounds good, but to retain attribution it is better to histmerge the talk page too. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC).

Nuking many redirects

After closing Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Sonic the Hedgehog comic book characters, the closing script tells me that "Number of redirects exceeds limit of 50". Is there a way to delete them all at once?  Sandstein  19:14, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

@Sandstein: Add closeAFD_redirectlimit = 500; to User:Sandstein/vector.js. That will override the script's limit. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:27, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks!  Sandstein  21:29, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
You closed with "Can be redirected at editorial discretion". Of course deleting all its own redirects makes this much harder. A redirect would have probably been a better close here. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:03, 3 June 2014 (UTC).

Pageview data collection down

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T67978

The pageview data is not dumping to the normal repository. It stopped over 24 hours ago.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:33, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Issue has been fixed: T67978. Also stats.grok.se and Wiki ViewStats went back to normal. --Hedonil (talk) 21:04, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Navigating mobile interface

I'm using Firefox on Android Galaxy S3 to access the mobile website. Is there any way to get to a talk page other than by manually editing the URL? Is there any way at all to do a wiki search? Please {{ping}} me. --Thnidu (talk) 05:20, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

@Thnidu: If you go into the Mobile website and into it's settings and then enable the Beta mode, you will get a new 'button' (with speech bubbles) that will take you to the Talk page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:36, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Ping @Maryana (WMF): see above Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:02, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
@TheDJ: Thanks! Thnidu (talk) 18:05, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
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