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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 129

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Mobile again - info about IP editors

If I read an article to look for information (as a reader rather than an editor), I usually click on "history" to see whether it's been the subject of controversy, vandalism, etc (and I advise others to do so too, when discussing the reliability of Wikipedia). If I read an article on mobile (Android, beta), I see "Last edited x days ago by Editor", and I know that if I click on the first half of that line, even though it isn't bolded, I get to see the history. If I click on a diff, I get to see the diff and, below it, a link to the editor who made it. If I follow that link and they're a named editor, I get to see a rather strange profile page (is it really appropriate to show the latest file they uploaded, however many years ago? Or to identify the editor who last thanked them - thanking is usually confidential, surely?). I can get to see their contributions list, by clicking on the number of edits where it's stated: "Joined over x years ago with y edits and z uploads". I can also get to their talk page, to make a comment.

But if it's an IP editor I don't get any of that. I get the message "Redirecting to editor", followed by a flash of "This page doesn't exist, why not be bold and create it?", and am then set up in edit mode to create a user page for the IP editor. Not a good idea, surely. In fact, I think it's a bug. Or three bugs:

(a) It's not appropriate to encourage mobile editors to create user pages for IP editors
(b) It should be possible for mobile readers to get to see the user contributions for an IP editor (OK this is probably more for mobile editors: I want to see whether the bit of vandalism I've just found on my watchlist is part of a spree of related rubbish, but even for an IP address the contributions list can give an indication of the seriousness of the editor). The only way to do this at present is to get back to the article, go into desktop mode (which involves stretching each page manually to make it a just-legible font size on my not-very-smartphone), click "history", get the editor, get the contributions list ... only to find it was their one and only edit, usually.
(c) It should be possible for mobile readers to get to see, and edit, the User Talk page of IP editors. I've just checked, and the above result, that clicking the red IP address link leads to an offer to create a user page for them, applies whether or not that IP address has a User Talk page.

A possible solution to all 3 problems would be if clicking on an IP editor led to a "profile" page saying something like "The editor using this IP address has not registered a Wikipedia username. There may be more than one person editing from this IP address. The most recent edits from this IP address are shown _here_. See/Start the _User Talk Page_ for this IP address." (As appropriate) PamD 20:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Most of this is for Maryana, but I can tell you that Thanks is only semi-confidential at best. You can see in the public logs who is thanking whom. You can't see which diff the person was thanked for. However, for people involved in disputes, you can often guess very easily. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:55, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
But User:Maryana_(WMF) describes her involvement in Mobile as being in the past and says that she's now working on Flow. @Maryana (WMF): are you still involved in Mobile? The comment about Thanks was just in passing (just one of the weirdnesses of the Mobile interface, that something normally not displayed is here displayed prominently, however long ago the thanking may have taken place): my main concerns are the bullet points shown above. PamD 10:46, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
They rearranged the product managers: Danny Horn now has Flow, Maryana has Mobile web and Deskana has Mobile apps. (And now that I've got them sorted out, they'll probably rearrange everyone again.  ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T70775
  • PamD, that behavior (IP link in diff taking you to the userpage) is indeed a bug; thanks for reporting it! The link should go to IP contribs. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:55, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Improve restore functionality

When restoring a deleted article, one enters a reason and clicks on the "restore" button". I assume that button activates some script. Is that scrip user accessible or only to the development team?

My motivation is that when restoring a CSD or Prod, one then has to edit the restored article and remove the CSD or prod template. There may be times this needs to be done manually, but it would be nice to have another option. One button could still say "restore" and the next one "Restore and remove CSD/PROD notice".

I was contemplating whether one could build a script to do the restore and remove the notice semi-automatically, but it occurs to me that the capability ought to be done in the restore step.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:31, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

The button triggers an HTML request. I guess someone could build a javascript that would cleanup a page after such an action, by overriding this HTML request and doing the same actions using the API, then following a successful undelete, do some edit actions to remove the templates. Not impossible. Then again, there might be exceptions to this, so it would probably have to ASK with a dialog if the templates should be removed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:10, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
So what should I do next, given that I cannot write javascript. Should I search fro someone who can, or should I file this as a feature request via Bugzilla?--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:08, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
This is clearly a javascript issue, not a MediaWiki software issue, so you should take a javascript approach. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:52, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

DISPLAYTITLE warning

Apparently multiple uses of the DISPLAYTITLE magic word on one article produce a warning at the bottom of the page: Warning: Display title "Bambi Kino" overrides earlier display title "<i>Bambi Kino</i>". here, for example. While that can be resolved by setting the album infobox not to italicize the title, I wonder whether this warning isn't too false positive-prone to be useful. Thoughts? Huon (talk) 17:29, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

This is new from mw:MediaWiki 1.24/wmf14#Core changes:
It works poorly at the English Wikipedia where DISPLAYTITLE is often used by infoboxes and changed later. Without a tracking category it seems hard to find the occurrences and set the infobox parameters to not use DISPLAYTITLE. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:52, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
Please note the new parameters: {{DISPLAYTITLE:...|noerror}} suppresses the warning and {{DISPLAYTITLE:...|noreplace}} does not replace the DISPLAYTITLE. noerror could be added to the infobox template, couldn't it? Raymond (talk) 07:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I don't think that adjusting the infobox template would do much good, as it's likely the infobox that's being overridden. It's the second call that needs "noerror" added.
The error message can be adjusted using MediaWiki:duplicate-displaytitle. The best course of action would be to add a tracking category to that message, much like we already do with MediaWiki:duplicate-defaultsort. If the problem is widespread enough, the message could (temporarily!) add the tracking category with no visible error message until people have a chance to clean things up. Anomie⚔ 23:46, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I decided to just be bold and add the tracking category. It should populate as pages are edited or otherwise purged. This isn't to say we shouldn't do the "tracking category with no message" idea if further discussion decides that's a good idea, but we certainly want a tracking category so we may as well not wait on that part. Anomie⚔ 23:52, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
Seems to be working, that's how I found this. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:11, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

{{nobr}} doesn't generates &nbsp;

Hello. I have noticed that the {{nobr}} template uses the HTML <span> tag rather than converting spaces to not breaking spaces in the HTML rendering. Previously I assumed both methods to keep text together to be equivalent, but now I'm afraid that they will have different behaviors. For example, I think that it may be possible (I'm not an expert in HTML) that a browser may copy text produced by the template as containing ASCII spaces, while text using &nbsp; will be copied as such (U+00A0). I think that just with the issue of Unicode superscripts and the usage of <sup>, Wikipedia should settle on a single style and standardize it in its manual of style. I suggest modifying the {{nobr}} template so that it replaces spaces with U+00A0. I don't know which one to use when writing and editing articles, please provide me with feedback on this choice (Accounting for the current situation) as well (I tend to use {{val}} for quantities, since it's the most specific template). QrTTf7fH (talk) 17:37, 27 July 2014 (UTC).

The <span>...</span> element does nothing, other than define the scope of its attributes. It is the class="nowrap" attribute, as used in {{nobr}}, that does the work; this class is associated with the rule 
.nowrap,
.nowraplinks a,
.nowraplinks .selflink,
sup.reference a {
  white-space: nowrap;
}
This uses the white-space property, which has been a perfectly acceptable way of controlling word wrapping since CSS 1.0 - over seventeen years ago. It's in CSS 2 (three years old) and will (virtually) certainly be retained in CSS 3 when that finally reaches the W3C Recommendation stage. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:59, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the information, but it doesn't answers my query. — Preceding unsigned comment added by QrTTf7fH (talk • contribs) 14:13, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
Non-breaking spaces are presentational; they are not supposed to be part of the content. Most browsers substitute them for normal spaces anyway when copied. If you still encounter them, it is because of some old template, but CSS is the preferred method to create non-breaking text. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 14:20, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Code issue?

I have found something strange on a page named Kiler (company). External links and References sections are "mixing" one into another. Is something wrong with the template coding? --BiH (talk) 08:06, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

A <ref> tag was left unclosed:
==History==

From 1984 onwards members of the Kiler family opened a number of supermarkets in the Istanbul area, which in 1994 were incorporated as Kiler Supermarket Gıda Sanayi ve Tic. A.Ş. By 2004 the group had 33 stores in the Istanbul area and went to acquire chains of supermarkets in other parts of Turkey. By 2010 Kiler had 172 stores in 26 cities. Stores range from 600 to 2,500m2 but the Kiler concept is based on supermarkets with an average size of 900m2. <ref name="About Kiler">{{cite web|url=http://www.kilerkurumsal.com/content/about.aspx|title=Company Profile |publisher=kilerkurumsal.com|accessdate=2014-07-28}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* {{Official website|http://www.kiler.com.tr}}

{{Istanbul Stock Exchange companies}}
Note the lack of a </ref> at the end of the {{cite web}} template. 23W 08:35, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
T17712 --  Gadget850 talk 15:07, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-31

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 (1.24wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 29, and to all Wikipedias on July 31 (calendar).
  • You can now download the latest version of the anti-vandalism tool Huggle.

VisualEditor news

  • You can now create, edit, and view HTML comments in VisualEditor. [1] [2]
  • The cancel button in VisualEditor toolbar has been removed. You can still use the Read tab and the Back button in your browser to cancel your edit. [3]
  • If you try to use a template which has no suggested or required parameters in TemplateData, you will now be asked to add the parameters. [4] [5]
  • You will no longer be able to edit a page if you can't create it, for example on pages protected against recreation. [6] [7]

Future software changes

  • You will soon be able to filter Meta-Wiki's user rights log by wiki and user. [8] [9]
  • Wikidata will soon be able to store data about article status, for example "good article" or "featured article". If your wiki has highlighted content, please make sure it is on Wikidata's list. [10]
  • It will soon be possible to directly create empty pages, for example in the user namespace. [11] [12]

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

08:09, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Secure Connection Failed

For the past couple of days, I have experienced errors in Firefox when trying to view various Wikipedia pages.


Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to en.wikipedia.org. SSL received a record with an incorrect Message Authentication Code. (Error code: ssl_error_bad_mac_read)

  • The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
  • Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem. Alternatively, use the command found in the help menu to report this broken site.

Has anyone else had this problem?- MrX 17:28, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/982298 or https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/991444 ? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:06, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Thank you.- MrX 14:05, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Cross wiki notifications in one list

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T3066
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T67661

I have a proposal of cross wiki notifications in one list. That means that no matter in which wiki you work in the moment, there is only one notification list. If you work in q:en: and get a post in s:de:, you will be alerted within the same second and will have a chance to respond immediately. --Janezdrilc (talk) 11:22, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

There are bugs about this already. --Glaisher (talk) 11:35, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Unexpected behavior by Notifications

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52829

I am reporting what appears to be a bug in Notifications, and my workaround to suppress messages such as

Since these unwanted messages were not the usual Thank or Mention notifications, I altered my Preferences, Notifications, uncheck all but Thank or Mention or User rights, Save.

I kept the check marks for New message indicator and Talk page message.

Since this change, there have been no notifications of Query from [No Page], etc., which started appearing 4 or 5 days ago. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:38, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

This is a known bug – it happens when the page which the notification was about gets deleted. See T52829. Matma Rex talk 18:37, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
Happy to report that my Notifications workaround is letting in the Thank or Mention notifications. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 07:24, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

"What links here" seems to be having some issues... maybe?

Hello everyone! Here's something that either seems to be an issue with the "what links here" feature, or I'm horribly missing something. In a few words, when I try to see what links to the kernfs disambiguation page, I get over 50 pages; however, when checked by hand (at least for 10+ I've checked) those pages have no links to the kernfs page, while they include the {{Linux kernel}} template. This template used to have a link to kernfs, but it has been replaced with a link to kernfs (Linux).

Any clues? Am I wrong somewhere? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 21:13, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

For about a year now, there has been a problem with the job queue whereby a change to the linking within a template such as {{Linux kernel}}, the what links here has often failed to update (there are other demonstrable problems too). There was definitely a change to the job queue software about that time, connected with Visual Editor, but various explanations have been put forward, ranging from "there is no problem, it's supposed to work like that" to "yes it is a problem, but we don't really know how to fix it". --Redrose64 (talk) 22:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation! As far as I can see, unfortunately there's little to be done there. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 22:20, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
Sometimes, if you leave it a few days, it sorts itself. Or it might take weeks. If you get fed up waiting - or it's clear after a month or three that nothing is happening - the only fix is to WP:NULLEDIT every page that is in "what links here" that shouldn't be. That won't fix pages that should be in "what links here", but aren't. In a recent post on this page, the forcerecursivelinkupdate API call was suggested, but I've never succeeded in getting that to work. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:59, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
Hm, that's pretty much crazy, if you ask me. How can it be that WikiMedia developers can't fix this issue, what's even more surprising knowing that it's an old and well known bug? Even more, I'm receiving "Kernfs (Linux) was linked from XYZ" notifications for articles that have {{Linux kernel}} template included, and by no means links to kernfs (Linux) were added to those articles in referenced edits – that seems to be inline with your description of updates to internal caches upon editing pages. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 00:25, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
From what I've been told, the HHVM project which is being worked on, which should improve performance of MediaWiki across the board, will also increase the rate at which jobs in the job queue are processed. As part of the phasing in of HHVM, part of the job queue is currently running on HHVM, but unfortunately that part doesn't increase the rate. The plan is that the rest of the queue will get migrated over, but only when it's ready. However, bear in mind that I am only relaying what I have been told as I am only tangentially involved in this project. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:00, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
So that isn't a bug, but an issue associated with too much data? — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:06, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
@Dsimic: In fact, I don't know how it's classified. I was just commenting on the fact that there is engineering work being done that'll speed the queue up. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:30, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
That sounds good to me, the issue/bug/whatever is being worked on. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:34, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
Just as a note, "what links here" looks good now for kernfs, seems that some internal caches got refreshed over these few days. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:14, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T3392

It would be even better to be able to see what pages link to something other than only in a navbox. --NE2 01:18, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Totally agreed. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 01:23, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
We've been asking for that since at least 2005. From what I've read in previous discussions, the most we can hope for is to have an outside tool (running at tools.wmflabs.org) working from a copy of the database. It wouldn't be real-time, but it would be adequate for most purposes. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:24, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
Yeah - this one is "it would be good but it's not possible to do it without rebuilding everything", simply due to the way the page-links are recorded in the database. Sadly rebuilding everything is not a practical solution :-) Andrew Gray (talk) 23:05, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
That's just one of the things that look simple from the outside, but the story is completely different on the inside. BTDT, numerous times. :) — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:32, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

"Your edit was saved"

I get this message even when I have not saved a page, for instance after having looked at the history of an article, when I press the back button.

However, when I look at the history again, nothing has been saved.

HandsomeFella (talk) 12:07, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Always in that situation? Where is "the back button"? Which browser and operating system is this? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:07, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Browser: IE 11, operating system: Windows 7. The "back" button is the top left button.
When I posted this, it seemed to occur every time I did it, but now it seems to have gone away.
HandsomeFella (talk) 14:50, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
HandsomeFella, does this happen if you take these steps in order?
  1. Make a change and save it
  2. Go immediately to the history page
  3. Go back (to the page that you just saved)
Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
That sequence appears similar to what I did, but now that I tried, the problem was gone.
HandsomeFella (talk) 17:59, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
HandsomeFella Are you using VisualEditor when you do this, or wikitext? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:20, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I just edit straight-up. HandsomeFella (talk) 06:10, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

[[w:File:Example.jpg]]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T70802

It seems that the code [[w:File:Example.jpg]] makes the image display at its full resolution. See for example Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 June 29#Resizing images already used on Wikipedia, which contains images File:YGW Cover 1.jpg and File:ID eNTITYvol1cover.jpg. Looking at the linked discussion, it would seem that MediaWiki presumably used to link to the file instead of displaying it when using an interwiki prefix to enwiki. Has MediaWiki been changed? In any case, it is possible that lots of images currently are displayed unintentionally on various talk pages across the project. This makes it harder to read the talk pages, and in some cases, it makes the talk pages violate WP:NFCC#9.

What should be done with these files? Per WP:NFCC#9, it is at least necessary to do something with the non-free files. If a colon is added (that is, [[:w:File:Example.jpg]]), then the images will again become linked. Maybe a bot could change all pages with inappropriate links? Or should MediaWiki be changed?

Note that there are two namespace names ("File" and "Image") and at least two interwiki prefixes pointing at this project ("w" and "en"). You get the same behaviour regardless of which interwiki prefix and regardless of which namespace name you use. Also note that images display if you bundle multiple interwiki prefixes in a row, e.g. [[w:w:en:File:Example.jpg]], as long as all prefixes point at this project. Images do not display if routed via another project (e.g. m:w:File:Example.jpg).

This problem probably also causes disruption on other projects as well. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:35, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Thats does seem like a bug. It also implies one can transclude an image from another project, but that is not the case; that (correctly) produces a link. But local file links are interpreted as being transclusions instead of links. The obvious workaround is to remove the prefix, as it is redundant anyway. In the mean time, I have reposted the bug here. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 13:54, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Either add a colon at the start ([[:w:File:Example.jpg]] → w:File:Example.jpg) or remove the "w" ([[:File:Example.jpg]] → File:Example.jpg) - it's the same issue as Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 128#w:(lang) links. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:32, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
The issue is a regression; it didn't use to act like this. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 16:00, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Stefan2: This one is my fault. It would only be affecting English-speaking wikis, as well as Meta, Commons (new "c:" prefix only) and a few other minor wikis. I will work to get it fixed ASAP. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:42, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Moving categories

When did it become possible to move categories to another title? I remember this was not technically possible until recently. What was the precise date when this function was enabled? --Theurgist (talk) 12:14, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

May 22? Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive262#Category pages will be movable soon. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:22, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Note that the articles belonging to the category will not appear on the new name; instead, they will be presented at the old name (which will not be a redirect), until moved manually (or with a bot). This really is a very limited functionality. Matma Rex talk 14:02, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia talk:Moving a page#Category moves. For now, the WP:CFR and WP:CFDS processes should still be used, although Cydebot (talk · contribs) is still using the old cut&paste method for renaming a cat. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:13, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Difference between Gadget-charinsert and Extension charinsert

I'm a little confused as to why WP uses a gadget named charinsert and an extension named charinsert. All the other WMF projects don't include a charinsert gadget. I can see that MediaWiki:Edittools gets used when JS is unavailable and that MediaWiki:Edittools.js gets called when JS is enabled. That script loads MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js but that was already loaded by a hidden gadget. So I have two questions. What does the charinsert gadget do for WP (how is it different from the extension) and why did Gadget-charinsert-core.js have to be loaded by Edittools.js and the hidden gadget? Thanks, -24Talk 17:39, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Edokter, one for you I think. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:14, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Passing to Helder.wiki, he came up with this structure. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 20:30, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Having had a look, I remember that MediaWiki:Edittools.js is only there to facilitate other projects that import this file (the code used to be there before being moved to the default gadget); it is not loaded automatically. The gadget now governs whether Charinsert-core is loaded, but only when the proper user preference is set. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 20:36, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Yep! "MediaWiki:Edittools.js" is working just as a "redirect". It is not used by English Wikipedia.
I suggested at MediaWiki talk:Edittools/Archive 9#MediaWiki:Edittools.js that we should add a mw.log call to it, so that users who are importing the code from the old title receive a notice in the console. It seems we never did that though.I added the warning.
For more details on the implementation of the gadget, see MediaWiki talk:Edittools/Archive 9#Why is this loaded for readers? Helder 21:57, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Murderous server lag

Does anyone have any idea what is causing the lag? The changes can only be seen after around ten minutes. Dustin (talk) 04:28, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Lag is back to normal now. The high lag was caused by a script that is being used to populate some newly added database fields (T62618), which because of a bug, was running too fast for the watchlist/contributions DB server (db1055) to keep up. That script has been stopped on enwiki until it can be fixed. (see #wikimedia-operations IRC log) PleaseStand (talk) 06:45, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

What about mobile users??

I'm not a registered user. I frequently use my mobile (android) to access Wikipedia but I'm facing trouble. I can't edit pages from the mobile version Wikipedia. Even this edit was made by toggling to desktop version from mobile. This is a serious problem for me, why can't I edit pages from the mobile version?? I can't register an account due to privacy reasons. I want to edit pages by mobile without getting registered. Is it possible?? Since the slogan of Wikipedia says "anyone can edit" - why can't I edit?? There are some countries were desktop, laptop etc is not available widely; they use there phone. I think it is acting as a barrier between people like me and editing a page. I hope someone can help me. :) 101.221.128.88 (talk) 13:55, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

You will get better privacy editing with an account than without. Johnbod (talk) 13:57, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
I guess, I haven't asked a question about privacy. I want to know why I can't edit through mobile version. 101.221.128.88 (talk) 14:01, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
Are you getting a specific error, or is the edit function just not available? Which mobile platform are you using? — xaosflux Talk 15:02, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
You cannot edit via mobile as a non-registered user because it is not enabled. Bug 53076 implies that some work is ongoing. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
User:Maryana (WMF) is the product manager for mobile editing and could tell you the current status, but I believe that the overall plan is that logged-out editing will be permitted eventually. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
To clarify, Maryana is the product manager for mobile web, whereas I am the product manager for mobile apps. And, also to clarify, you can edit anonymously on the mobile apps. :-) --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:09, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply Whatamidoing (WMF), AKlapper (WMF) & Xaosflux. I hope to see this function quickly. Btw I've found another problem. I can't see the "go" button and the drop down menus in this special page when I was browsing through my andriod phone. Both, the go button and those two drop down menu were vanished when I saw it through my phone. Can someone fix it?? Thanks -- 101.221.130.34 (talk) 19:30, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
  • You can not edit using the mobile version if you use certain browsers (such as Opera Mini). I hope that this will be fixed. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:30, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
No it won't. See wp:open proxies. --117.201.38.153 (talk) 03:30, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Opera Mini is not blocked under WP:Open proxies (because it uses the X-Forwarded-For header), and editing is possible using the immobile edition of Wikipedia. The problem is something else. --Stefan2 (talk) 12:18, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Reference list tweak request

A recent software change added a reference list to the bottom of talk pages even if a {{reflist}} tag wasn't present. Can a small horizontal line appear before the list? It can be distracting when the last post on a page bleeds into the list. --NeilN talk to me 14:13, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

This is related to #Automatically generated reference lists- tracking and several recent threads in the archives. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:35, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
I'll ask, possibly naively, is there ever a case where you want to add references to a talk page and you want them at the bottom of the page, as opposed to the bottom of the section? I'm thinking that the references are always intended to apply to a particular section, and it would be better if they appeared at the bottom of the section. Wouldn't it be relatively simple to tweak the algorithm as follows:
If page contains ref tags with no reference list markup AND the page is a talk page, add {{Reflist-talk}} to the section containing the ref tags.
In the rare case where someone can dream up why they should be at the bottom, then the editor wanting that can add the {{reflist}} themselves.--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:56, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
See HELP:ARGL. --  Gadget850 talk 19:44, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
... or Help:AGRL -- John of Reading (talk) 19:58, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
<D'oh!> --  Gadget850 talk 20:00, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
So is that a no? :-) --NeilN talk to me 17:34, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
It uses a bare <references /> element, not the {{reflist}} template (you can tell because an examination of the page's HTML shows that it's not wrapped in <div class="reflist" style="list-style-type: decimal;">...</div>), and that is the Cite.php extension so it's part of the MediaWiki software and largely out of our control. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:28, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
If people want this, then I (or anyone else) can file a request on Bugzilla for it. It's probably something that would affect all wikis (not just Wikipedias, and not just the English one), so it's probably wise to think it through carefully before requesting it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I think it would be worth having. I accept that it is not a minor deal, so worth thinking about what could go wrong. My main reason for thinking that there is little downside is that if you really wanted the refs at the bottom of a talk page (which is difficult to imagine) you can always force it to do so adding {{reflist}} at the bottom, so to envision a problem we need to dream up a situation where someone wants the refs to appear at the bottom, but does not want a proper References section at the bottom. I can't think why that would be, but perhaps someone else can imagine such a situation.
Another argument in support of implementing it; One might argue that there were a flurry of instances right after implementation, as all refs on talk pages ever added started appearing on the bottom, and most will now be cleared up, which is correct, but the problem is not resolved. As we continue to add new editors, someone, somewhere is going to use the talk page to discuss an edit, and may copy paste some part of the article, including a ref, to the talk page, and initially that ref will locate at the bottom of the added section, where it seems to belong. But then someone will add a new section, and the refs will float down, causing confusion. Or it could happen directly. Someone adds a comment to a thread up on the page, and doesn't notice that the ref is sitting down there at the bottom. Those involved in the discussion at the bottom might not realize why the ref is there. If we have the rule that refs on a talk page, without an associated ref template, are displayed in the section containing the ref, they will appear almost certainly where they are intended to appear, and in the rare case they belong elsewhere, it is easy to fix.--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:02, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Before the deployment of 1.24wmf12, we had an error message that the reference list was missing. We used namespace detection to not show the error on user and talk pages. We were able to clean up missing reference lists fairly quickly. I'm starting to think that way the AGRL was implemented is more painful than useful. --  Gadget850 talk 12:21, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree. Before the deployment, as editor making an error (ref without the needed code) generated an ugly red error message. Post-deployment the ugly red error message is gone, which sounds like a positive, but at the cost of introduction a "fix" which is almost certainly not what the editor wanted. What makes it worse is that now there is no error message to give a hint at the problem so the page is malformed, and it isn't obvious why.
I've never filed a bugzilla, guess it is time to bite the bullet.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:31, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
How would you like it to handle ===Subsections===? Imagine that it's an RFC or a proposal for a major re-write to a large section of an article. Do you want separate refs for each subsection, or all together?
(Bugzilla requests aren't hard, but they do require publishing your e-mail address to the world.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:41, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Extra buttons in toolbar

How to add some extra buttons in toolbar? I copied some stuff from one javascript page, but this isn't working: 

jQuery.getScript('//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Krinkle/Scripts/InsertWikiEditorButton.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript', function () {
 
        // Reflist
        krInsertWikiEditorButton({
                "id": "mw-customeditbutton-myspecialbutton",
                "icon": "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Button_ref_inscription.png",
                "label": "Reflist",
                "insertBefore": "==References==\n{{reflist}}\n\n",
        });
 
});

I'm using the old toolbar, if it matters. And by the way, how to enable the old CodeEditor? something like $wgCodeEditorEnableCore = true; (this line doesn't work)? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:43, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

That script is very old itself, and is for the WikiEditor, not for the old toolbar.
The documentation for adding buttons is here. We have an example MediaWiki:Common.js/edit.js
The CodeEditor only works if you have the Enhanced toolbar/WikiEditor option enabled, since it strongly depends on it. I'm working on decoupling that, but I haven't had any time in weeks to work on it. bugzilla:45850 is about this. Hopefully after wikimania i should have it fixed, but not 100% sure. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:56, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
Ok, I suppose I copied too much/less. And can the sampleText be removed if there isn't anything between open and close tags?
function addExtraButtons () {
	mw.toolbar.addButtons(
	{
		'imageId': 'button-references',
		'imageFile': '//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Button_ref_inscription.png',
		'speedTip': 'References',
		'tagOpen': '==References==\n',
		'tagClose': '{{reflist}}\n\n',
		'sampleText': 'nothing'
	}
);
}

--Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:10, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

@Edgars2007: I changed your JS by adding the loader code which was missing. I also removed the sampleText in the same edit, so it should be working the way you want now. Could you check? Helder 22:09, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
@Helder.wiki: Yes, it works. Big, big thanks! :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:50, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

"Word wrapping" very long words

Is there a template (or some other automated method) that will break a long word into pieces that do not exceed a specified maximum length? Ideally it would break up the word by inserting hyphens or spaces at regular intervals. I'm asking because I sometimes need to display a long word in an infobox without making the infobox abnormally wide. Any ideas or tips would be appreciated. Lambtron (talk) 15:53, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

You can use a soft hyphen with {{shy}}. /~huesatlum/ 16:16, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Unfortunately that would require manual insertion of soft hyphens, which I could just as easily do by inserting hard hyphens. What I really need is an automatic way to insert hyphens in a fashion similar to this: {{Hyphenate|20|Averyveryverylongword}}. Lambtron (talk) 16:25, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm. I suppose the <wbr /> element is no use then (see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 117#nowrap vs please-wrap-here option?). --Redrose64 (talk) 16:35, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Another possible solution would be to somehow prohibit automatic infobox widening so that the infobox itself would force the word to wrap. Is there a way to do that? Lambtron (talk) 16:45, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Which infobox; or, better still, which page is the problem manifest on? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:16, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

It's not an immediate problem but rather one that comes up from time to time. I'd like to find a solution for the next time it comes up. In case the issue isn't clear, here's a simple example that shows what can happen when a long word or url appears in an infobox:

http://www.example.com/Averyveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryveryverylongurl.htm

BTW, the same problem shows up in userboxes and possibly in other visual containers as well. In the case of urls, the ideal solution would be to have the container force visual wrapping so that a url copy-paste would not include any bogus hyphens. Lambtron (talk) 17:38, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I may have found a solution: encapsulate the word in a div styled with word-wrap:break-word. More exploration is needed, but here's an example:
Lambtron (talk) 18:18, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Many infoboxes wrap a URL in {{URL}}, others expect you to provide that template yourself. Either way, I think that the place to address this is in the {{URL}} template. Which is now Lua-ised at Module:URL; but discussions are still held at Template talk:URL. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:38, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Note that {{URL}} has as specific purpose, which is the emission of metadata, not formatting. (Why does it need to be in Lua, BTW?) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:23, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there a fix for the expired Toolserver user wiki_researcher?

I posted the following to User:Smith609's talk page: "When I click on Edit history stats, or page watchers under the Statistics toolbox in the right margin, I get the following - 403: User account expired The page you requested is hosted by the Toolserver user wiki_researcher, whose account has expired. Toolserver user accounts are automatically expired if the user is inactive for over six months. To prevent stale pages remaining accessible, we automatically block requests to expired content. See: [13] ???" Martin replied..."Well, the toolserver itself is expired, now. Do you have an updated link, or any suggestions of how to find one?" Does anyone know if there's a fix? Atsme☯Consult 18:32, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Everything on Toolserver, that was worth moving is now at Labs, not sure if the item you are looking for is active or maintained. (oh some links in the sidebar are broken) "Edit history stats" and "Page watchers" can be retrieved by the "page information" link in the above "tool box" section. Cheers, Mlpearc (open channel) 18:49, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
That is simply not true by a very, very long shot. And for the 90% most hit tools it raises the question, "Why does the foundation refuses to move them into production". Anyway, the place to post to is mw:Tool Labs/Collection of issues after Toolserver shutdown, better act quick because WM-DE is outright deleting ~8 TB of Toolserver data in a month. — Dispenser 19:32, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
Moreover it seems that the labs is exclusive, it shuts out anyone who doesn't comply with "Open" sourcing their tools. It is a sad affair. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:36, 31 July 2014 (UTC).
That is out of years of experience with abandoned projects that was upsetting to users. So that's why people decided they wanted to prevent similar problems in toolslabs. And of course it is just as exclusive as requiring editors to share their contributions (even for commercial purposes), which we think is totally normal in our movement. This is just for toollabs btw. Labs itself does not have such a restriction and can be granted and used on a case by case basis for exceptions. There even might be some exceptions on toollabs for research purposes I suspect, but defaults match that what we do throughout all our knowledge sharing indeed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:53, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
IIRC wikidashboard was GPL'd, so there's no open sourcing issues with it. The reason Toolserver wasn't saved was because it was too much work for foundation staff whose always squeezed on time. WM-DE saw Toolserver as a white elephant and wants to get quickly get ride of it.

That's just organizational politics, it doesn't explain why we need to break up tools (mine are cross integrated), the web server sucks, refusal to implement a namespace table, why database names are inconsistent, the second rate security practices, popular unix commands are missing, cron is forbidden, or the oh so fucking wonderful privacy policy.

But hey it's open source, so we can put that into the Foundation's Google Docs presentation on their "successful migration". — Dispenser 13:45, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Styling of code element

When and why did we start styling the <code>...</code> element with a border? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:41, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

That would be Gerrit:148397 with the intention to make it look the same like <pre> blocks. --Patrick87 (talk) 19:22, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
I didn't like the change, the code seems too highlight, like bold text. I prefer some like this, used in python documentation. Danilo.mac (talk) 01:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
The border on the <code>...</code> element can be undesirable: see MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Double border and Template talk:Pre#Double border. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:19, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
It seems that Edokter fixed the templates, thanks! Matma Rex talk 11:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Which templates would those be? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:35, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
The {{pre}} that you linked? Matma Rex talk 13:22, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
I didn't like the change either -- I thought <code> formatting was just fine the way it was. Now many inline snippets of code have distracting borders around them. Lambtron (talk) 15:12, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
  • code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text still looks bad to me... If there where no left or right borders, I would be okay with it though (I'm guessing there are others that wouldn't be though).
code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text
code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text && code text
Nested doesn't look any better, which shouldn't happen; however, based on the fact there are multiple other discussions about it, it apparently does. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 15:21, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
HTML doesn't allow you to nest <pre> inside <code>, as the former is a block element and the latter is an inline element. When you look at the HTML source of parsed page, you'll notice that HTML Tidy "interweaved" them, nesting <code> inside <pre>, which obviously looks stupid. Why do you want to do that anyway? Matma Rex talk 18:07, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

An example of the annoying pseudo-nested border now seen throughout Intel HEX: :0300300002337A1E. Lambtron (talk) 15:37, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Why is that article using <code> tags? This doesn't appear to be computer code. Perhaps the tags should be removed, and the template should be changed to use a monospace font? Matma Rex talk 18:07, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
It actually is "computer code" (perhaps you meant it's not high-level language source code?). Computer codes such as this appear as inline snippets and larger blocks in many articles. I realize this may not be the correct place to ask, but if <code> is not the right way to format codes such as this, what is the proper way? Lambtron (talk) 18:46, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
It's a data sample, so how about <samp>...</samp>? :0300300002337A1E --Redrose64 (talk) 18:59, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip, Redrose, I'll look into that. BTW, this is not the only thing screwed up by this formatting change. For example, have a look at the example in MOS:CODE. Lambtron (talk) 19:07, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
As an aside, <samp>...</samp> should be mentioned in the MOS if it's the preferred way to style this sort of thing. Perhaps it's already there but I just didn't see it. Lambtron (talk) 19:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
@Lambtron: I updated that MOS page, it was incorrect (or at least misleading); <code><pre></pre></code> (or <code>(space-indented code block)</code>) was never correct, like I explained above, and should never be used. The <pre></pre> or space-indentation (this produces the same HTML) suffices entirely. Matma Rex talk 19:35, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
When I surround with pre tags I get this: 
{{Intel HEX|03|0030|00|02337A|1E}}
-- not quite what is needed. But with Redrose's suggested samp tags I get this: :0300300002337A1E. Which is correct? Lambtron (talk) 19:50, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Note that <tt>...</tt> is still available for styling text without the border. - Evad37 [talk] 03:38, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
    Use <kbd>...</kbd> instead, as <tt>...</tt> is deprecated. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 09:19, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
    Yeah... Please don't add more <tt>...</tt>s. Helder 11:12, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

I've been using <code>...</code> because it seemed correct according to MOS and it worked perfectly until the recent changes to it and the MOS, but now that's broken. I've received tips about using <pre>...</pre>, which doesn't work; <samp>...</samp>, which no one else seems to support; <tt>...</tt>, which is deprecated; and now <kbd>...</kbd>. Before I start replacing problematic <code>...</code> tags with something else, I must know that the replacement is (1) functional, (2) sanctioned for this purpose, and (3) will not change in the future like <code>...</code> did, thereby making my work pointless. Which one is correct, and shouldn't it be mentioned in MOS? Lambtron (talk) 15:52, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

It depends on what is being marked up with the tag. See the specs of each one of them: pre, code, kbd, samp and var. There is also a short table of conversions at de:Wikipedia:WikiProjekt HTML5 which I think would be useful on English Wikipedia as well. Helder 16:11, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
This needs to be explicitly covered in the MOS. The w3.org spec for <code>...</code> says that it "represents a fragment of computer code ... or any other string that a computer would recognize". That certainly seems applicable to Intel HEX and many other types of non-high/low-level-language computer codes. It's unreasonable for editors to have to search outside the MOS for this. Also, how do I know that whatever tag I choose as a replacement won't have its style changed in the future? Lambtron (talk) 16:41, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
You don't. But it is its semantic which matters the most. The style can always be overriden on a per wiki, per skin or per user basis through CSS. Helder 16:47, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Helder, can you translate that table to a page here on enwp in English? If so, that would be great. As best I can tell (I can't read the words but get the jist of most of it), it only needs a few tweaks to go live. That is exactly the kind of page I was talking about in the proposal to help editors know what they should be using instead of deprecated elements. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 16:54, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
    @Technical 13: Done. Please review and feel free to move to a more appropriate title. Helder 18:34, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation suggestion

I recently left a suggestion on DPL bot's talk page and Steel1943 recommended that I make it here as well. The sad demise of DAB Solver has created a search for alternate solutions, and I would like to propose one. It has come to my attention that, on Russian Wikipedia, if you create a link that leads to a disambiguation page it comes up highlighted in pink, so you know immediately. Would something like this be feasible for English Wikipedia? WQUlrich (talk) 23:11, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

@WQUlrich: Dab Solver still works well for one article at a time - the old links redirect to Dispenser's new home. WPCleaner is another option. GoingBatty (talk) 23:29, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
You won't know immediately, you will know on page preview (or after you save the page) if you notice the different color of one of the links. But even then that won't help you if you are linking to the wrong article which is not a disambiguation page (i.e. linking to Milky Way when you meant to link to Milky Way (chocolate bar)). So that's just half a solution. You don't have to use my Smart Linking script, the other way is to check your links with the Navigation Popups gadget, I just made it a little more convenient to use while editing. But there is really no other way as far as I know. --V111P (talk) 07:16, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
By the way you can just put this into your common.css to get the result you want: a.mw-redirect {color: green;} --V111P (talk) 07:37, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
@V111P: That's for redirs, not dab pages. What WQUlrich wants is something that will style a link like Lincoln differently. If you examine the source for that link, you'll find <a href="/wiki/Lincoln" title="Lincoln">Lincoln</a> which has no class= or id= that might be used to trigger a different style. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:17, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Redrose64. I got confused because on Russian Wikipedia they have a gadget that does that for you for the redirects. However I don't see any gadget for dabs, and the default color for links to dabs is the same as for other links (and they don't have any class or id). --V111P (talk) 17:44, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: OK, I was wrong. I was only looking at the links on page preview, where the links are the same color, but on saved pages the links to disambiguation pages are with a pink background (ru:2D - the link to 3D). I found the script that does it: ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-bkl-check.js. I can't immediately make it work here, but it can be done (and there is a better way to do it now that we have __DISAMBIG__ in the disambiguation templates). --V111P (talk) 19:57, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
@V111P: Although it is not set up as a gadget, User:Anomie/linkclassifier knows how to change the colour of links to dab pages. See that page for instructions. It works on saved pages and in previews. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:02, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Wow, thanks for the response. All a bit over my head, though... WQUlrich (talk) 22:08, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks from me too, John of Reading. --V111P (talk) 06:21, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Will we get the edit summaries seach tool back?

I get [14] when I click on the edit summaries link at the bottom of my contributions page. I really hope we get this back as for those of us who use edit summaries a lot it can be extremely useful if you are trying to find old contributions. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 12:52, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

@Dougweller: It works for me. What error message you saw? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 07:33, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
@Zhaofeng Li: Can't recall and as it works for me now... Thanks for letting me know. Dougweller (talk) 10:57, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Overtype mode

I was editing a page on Google Chrome using the Visual Editor and for some reason overtype mode turned on. I switched from Visual Editor to the regular editing mode, but that didn't fix it. Has this ever happened to anyone (Visual Editor bug, maybe?) and how do you turn off overtype mode? Altamel (talk) 22:40, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Did you hit the insert key? --NE2 22:42, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Maybe I did. I just tested it, and the strange thing is that triggers overtype in VE but not in regular editor. I'll just hit the insert key to turn overtype off if it happens again. Thanks, Altamel (talk) 22:46, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Hyperlink virus

Links are sometimes getting injected into the article Planarian by a hyperlink virus when using Google Chrome. Some of the phrases hacked by that virus are 'eat,' 'encyclopedia,' 'family,' 'food,' 'play,' and 'system.' I mentioned this in case there's a way for Wikipedia to evolve to block the action of that virus and any future hyperlink viruses. I don't mind them but I mentioned this in case some people mind and will never learn how use internet settings to block the action of that virus. Blackbombchu (talk) 04:35, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

@Blackbombchu: Diffs? --NeilN talk to me 05:03, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
The linked hyperlink virus is confused but I Googled the alleged "hyperlink viruses" BestSaveForYou and ArcadeYum. This is apparently about readers who have bad browser extensions which inject links not present on the visited website. I don't see what Wikipedia can do if the links are inserted by the user's own software after the page is sent to the user. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:42, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
I created the article hyperlink virus myself, but it doesn't look like it because I did so as Fierce Deity Mask. Speedy deletion Wiki doesn't have a rule about verifiability like Wikipedia does. I created an account on Chips Challenge Wiki as Blackbombchu but I never clicked 'Stay logged in' as Blackbombchu then gone to another wikia.com website while signed in after signing into Chips Challenge Wiki so I didn't realize Chips Challenge Wiki was part of a large group of websites. Later I tried to create an account on Speedy deletion Wiki as Blackbombchu but it said that username was already taken so I registered as Fierce Deity Mask. I didn't realize that the account it was taken by was my own account that I created on Chips Challenge Wiki because I didn't create it on Speedy Deletion Wiki. Blackbombchu (talk) 15:42, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Regardless, this has nothing to do with Wikipedia. --NeilN talk to me 16:04, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Despite the phrase you're using, these aren't viruses and there's nothing Wikipedia can do to "block" them - it's entirely happening on your own computer within your own webbrowser. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:38, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
It's actually the CAMMAC computer. I haven't used Google Chrome for a long time on my computer after I accidently downloaded the Java update virus which made Google Chrome work very badly so I didn't see whether Google Chrome had the problem of injecting hyperlinks on my computer. Speedy deletion Wiki can be edited by anyone so fell free to edit Hyperlink virus to correct the wrong information in it. Blackbombchu (talk) 23:13, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia does have one tool which can block these actions - the edit filter. The question is, is the disruption caused by this issue bad enough to justify that? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:03, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the edit filter would have any effect here - these aren't actually being added to the Wikipedia article by editing; they're being added to the browser at the time of display on the user's computer. Nothing we can do at this end. Andrew Gray (talk) 14:08, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Editor interaction analyzer

  • I have used a tool to find incidents of editing an article about the same time as another editor. It was at http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/editorinteract.html It did not work as of 1 Aug 2014. Wikipedia:Tools lists "Editor interaction analyzer," and clicking on it leads to toollabs:sigma/editorinteract.py which is out of service. Possibly this is due to some tool server update I seem to remember reading about months ago. I love "improvements" which take away important functionality, without any redirect or accessible explanation. Is there a replacement Editor Interaction Tool that actually works? If all the "tools" are at some other website now, could someone please update Wikipedia:Tools? Edison (talk) 15:36, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
"It did not work as of 1 Aug 2014" - it shouldn't have worked since 1 July 2014, which is when Toolserver went down, permanently. There's been plenty about it on this page, much of which may now be found in the page archives. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:54, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
The problem is that the version at WMF labs seems down as well, along with the rest of the scottytools. (toollabs:scottytools/index.html)AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:52, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Editor interaction tool went to Labs intersect-contribs — Maile (talk) 23:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
Also, the tool you linked above toollabs:sigma/editorinteract.py opens fine for me. — Maile (talk) 23:20, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
The toollabs:sigma/editorinteract.py replacement tool absolutely did not work, and only provided an error message at the time I said it did not work. So just call it "intermittently operating." The "Wikistalk" tool on that page is still a toolserver tool, and just generates a 404 error. If the wizards of Wiki software knew toolserver was shutdown July 1, since "there's been plenty about it on this page" as you state, why are there still links on the Tools page to Toolserver scripts? Thanks. Edison (talk) 12:34, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
Some tool providers knew full well that Toolserver was going down, and did nothing (wilfully or otherwise) about it; some tool providers are no longer with us. It is generally the responsibility of a tool's provider to ensure that the information about that tool at Wikipedia:Tools - which is a regular editable page - is up to date. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:58, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
The community should be able to remove any tools which have been inactive for a long time, after attempting to discuss it wit the tool's operator. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:01, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks

Reflinks seems to be working again. Was the decision to withdraw it reversed? --P123ct1 (talk) 08:22, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

"decision to withdraw it"? Never heard of any. I think it was just broken and now is fixed. Matma Rex talk 10:38, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
If you look in the VP archives, you will see a tremendous amount of discussion about its supposed withdrawal on 1 July this year. There was a big outcry against it. When I tried it then, it did not work, but now it is back to normal. --P123ct1 (talk) 18:50, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm aware of that, and like I said, there wasn't any decision made by any powers that be I'm aware of. The tool was just broken for some time due to unfinished Toolserver migration. Matma Rex talk 18:55, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
@P123ct1: It wasn't withdrawn. The author of the tool initially decided not to migrate it to the new WMF-hosted toolserver. After some pleas, he changed his mind. --NeilN talk to me 18:56, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
I see, that explains it. --P123ct1 (talk) 19:05, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
It appears it's on http://dispenser.homenet.org - not toollabs. GoingBatty (talk) 22:57, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Mismatch in log entry vs action completed

I had made a user flags change that failed, but the log entry shows that it was completed. I opened a bug 68133 a couple of weeks ago, but not sure if there is anything else that should be done? — xaosflux Talk 15:08, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD.js (2 cont.)

... does not seem to be working properly (it's been a while since I was going through the AFDs, back in March it was still fine). I found that a similar problem has been discussed back in 2012 already, then fixed. But there may be another reason now. Help kindly requested. --Tone 20:45, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Is it still not working for you? I just closed Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Dunmore_Candy_Kitchen successfully with it. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:41, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
What exactly is wrong with it? I've closed several in the past month, seemed to be working fine. Ansh666 08:43, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
Still not working. The first part (hide closed AFDs) works fine, but the closing component itself does not. The drop down menu where you choose the closing options does not show up. Could it be a side effect of mediawiki changes? Using Firefox, btw. Since this talk got archived in the meantime, pinging j⚛e decker and Ansh. Thanks. --Tone 16:33, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
It might be a race condition. For example, User talk:Timotheus Canens/displaymessage.js#Missing dependency or another one due to the fact that Mr.Z-man's closeAFD.js seems to assume the function displayMessage from User:Timotheus Canens/displaymessage.js will be available as soon as the line importScript('User:Timotheus Canens/displaymessage.js') is executed (which I don't think is the case, because it is asynchronous). And there is also the fact that it still uses the deprecated addOnloadHook instead of $. Helder 01:28, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
@Tone: Do you see anything in your Javascript console? T. Canens (talk) 01:49, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
@Tone: I can reproduce this from your vector.js. It appears that fixTab() is broken by...something, which I didn't investigate further. When I deleted that code and left only the two importScript lines, it works for me. T. Canens (talk) 02:03, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
@Timotheus Canens: Excellent, seems to be working now. I don't remember where the rest of the code came from. Thanks a lot! --Tone 07:16, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Text layout

How do I centralize headings or text in an infobox? i.e. not justified to L or R. I cannot find how to do it in MoS. --P123ct1 (talk) 17:23, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Generally, the rows of an infobox may be given in one of three ways.
  • The |headern= parameters produce a full-width row that is boldfaced and centred (semantically, it's a <th>...</th> element).
  • The |datan= parameters, when used alone, also produces a full-width row that is centred, but normal weight (semantically, it's a <td>...</td> element).
  • A |labeln=|datan= pair yields two columns, both left-aligned: the left-hand column is boldfaced (a <th>...</th>); the right-hand column is normal weight (a <td>...</td>).
In each case, n is a positive integer, and each row needs to have a unique value for n; for a label/data pair, n must match. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:39, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for that answer. --P123ct1 (talk) 12:55, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Strange table rendering in Vector in IE11

Can someone have a look at Arms industry using Vector and IE11 and see if they can work out what's happening to the tables. I'm assuming it's something to do with the width command. It needs to be seen in Vector, monobook and modern provide no issues to the rendering. Nthep (talk) 18:25, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

That page looks okay to me. Can you at least describe what are you seeing, and preferably also provide a screenshot? Matma Rex talk 18:39, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The caption and the table contents were coded as separate tables, the first of which was not properly closed (a closing |} was missing), actually putting the rest of the article into the table. Apparently, IE makes this table 25% of the screen due to the width="25%" applied to the caption cell while Firefox doesn't. I've fixed it by putting the caption inside the data table using the |+ syntax described at Help:Table. SiBr4 (talk) 18:47, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Overloaded servers?

Why are the servers overloaded? At AFD I get the error message: "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2014 August 3 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia < Wikipedia:Articles for deletion‎ | Log Sorry, the servers are overloaded at the moment. Too many users are trying to view this page. Please wait a while before you try to access this page again. Timeout waiting for the lock" Edison (talk) 18:29, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

WP:BUNDLE script/tool

Is there any script or tool available that makes doing WP:BUNDLE easier? A socking user has recently created a rather large walled garden of articles I would like to nominate for deletion/merge but twinkle would make all separate discussions, and doing the nominations by hand is a pain. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:32, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

You could start the first discussion using Twinkle, then add the subsequent articles to the nomination by hand. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:06, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Adding the AfD notice to the subsequent pages can be easily done using the prepend text function of AWB. You could apply for the tool yourself or ask someone else at WP:AWB/Tasks. SiBr4 (talk) 10:08, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-32

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 will be presented at the Wikimania 2014 conference in London! If you will be attending the conference, please join us in Auditorium 2 at 14:30 local time on Sunday, August 10.

Recent software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 31. Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, it will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar). [15]
  • You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files. [16] [17] [18]
  • You can now download an update to the archive of Wikimedia Commons files (uploaded up to December 31, 2013). If you have free space on your computer, please help preserve the files. [19]
  • New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file. [20] [21]

VisualEditor news

Future software changes

  • You will soon have a user option to watch pages where you revert edits. [33] [34]
  • All Toolserver data will be deleted in September. If you want to back up your data, contact Toolserver administrators before August 31. [35]
  • Pages in the Translations: namespace on wikis using the Translate extension will no longer be indexed by search engines. [36]

Problems

  • Wikivoyage wikis were broken for about 45 minutes on July 29 due to a configuration problem. [37]
  • Some users were not able to log in on test wikis and MediaWiki.org between July 31 and August 1. The problem is now fixed. [38]

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

07:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Lines on maps

Hello! Am aware of the Template:Location map+ where multiple locations can be highlighted on a map. But is there any template to draw a line between such locations? These could be useful for drawing maps of roads/rail routes etc. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 08:21, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

TemplateData

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T71149

There seems to be an automated system for adding template data. (Once again we have used CamelCase - so user unfriendly! Please stop doing that everyone! Especially as an adjunct to a supposedly user-friendly change!)

But the problem is it adds the template data in templatedata tags (run together words, but at least not camel case!) without making sure they are in the appropriate noinclude tags.

Possibly it is is only supposed to work on template documentation pages, but it pops up on template pages too.

Is this a bug?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:40, 31 July 2014 (UTC).

I think this was discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 128#MW extension "Manage template documentation" now affecting every template. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:13, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Include note about deletion reviews in the deletion log

So, the page Ovin was speedy deleted. Disagreeing with the decision, I restored the page. However, I didn't know there was a deletion review discussion happening at the time I re-created it. Would it be possible to create a note on the deletion log that the deletion of an article is currently under discussion? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:48, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Judging by the article history and the deletion log, you didn't restore the page but created a new one using the same name as the one that had been deleted. But the deletion log records only what is known at the time of the deletion; and since the DRV was filed on 26 July, the deletion on 23 July cannot have known of its existence, that being an event in the future. It is rare (if not unknown) for a DRV to be raised before the deletion takes place. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:29, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Actually, I re-created it on July 31, when the Deletion Review was in progress. But I had no idea it was happening. It's the re-creator that should receive a notice. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:24, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, you recreated it on 31 July - that date is shown in the page history that I linked, and I didn't claim otherwise. When you recreated the page, you will have seen the deletion log for the page. The deletion log includes restorations of deleted pages, and the entries in this log do sometimes contain links to a DRV page, often when a page is restored following a DRV, but these links are always manually added by the person restoring the page at the same time that the restoration is carried out. For example, see the deletion log for Fomato - which coincidentally links to the same DRV page that you mentioned. Occasionally a link to a DRV is included in the entry for a deletion: the sequence might be (i) page is deleted; (ii) page is restored; (iii) a DRV for that restoration is started; (iv) the DRV upholds the original deletion, so the page is deleted again and this time the link to the DRV is included in the log. But such links cannot be retrospectively added: log entries may be redacted in full, but cannot be modified. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:11, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that's as I understood it. I was wondering if a software change could allow editors to place a notice on a deleted page that would appear above the deletion log, as a solution to this issue. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:49, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically

As someone who has been doing this manually for years, I hereby dutifully beg of anyone who is technically proficient and knows how to create and run a bot that will:

  1. Automatically sort all Categories on each article and category page alphabetically;
  2. Create a uniform system for where to place categories on each article and category page that commence with numbers, such as years of birth/death, centuries, and any category that starts with a number/numeral.

Please see the centralized discussion at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 61#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 09:10, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Discussion re-opened at VPP

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 22:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Image compression issue on mobile version of Derek Jeter

I just noticed a strange crunk on Derek Jeter and can't find if this is a known issue. While viewing the mobile version of the page at en.m.wikipedia.org, I noticed that one (and only one) of the images is displayed vertically compressed to about half its height - it's this one: File:Derek Jeter 2004.jpg. The image isn't compressed on the desktop view, nor can I see any code that would cause it to be squished in mobile view. Given how high-traffic this article is I thought I'd bring it up here. I'm using Safari for iPad, if that helps. --NellieBly (talk) 16:16, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I see exactly the same problem with Firefox 31 (using the mobile view link at the bottom). I thought that perhaps you had an old image cached on your machine; but since I've not having visited that page before, and so I can't have the image cached myself, it's not that problem. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
That image is using the |upright| tag in the code - is this related to T65134? Andrew Gray (talk) 18:40, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
Image is taller than it is wide, so |upright is valid. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:50, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
The HTML for the page has a <img /> element, some of the attributes are: src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Derek_Jeter_2004.jpg/170px-Derek_Jeter_2004.jpg" class="thumbimage" data-file-width="623" data-file-height="935" height="255" width="170" I've omitted the alt= and srcset= attributes because I don't think that they affect it. In particular, the specified width and height seem to be correct for an upright thumb image. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:02, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
It's certainly a valid use of the tag, but it looks like upright has weird effects on mobile, at least for some images. The ratios given for file-size in the HTML source are the same ratio in both - but the file itself which is being loaded in is corrupt. Weird. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
I cleared the cache of the Commons File page and it seems to be better now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:17, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Fine for me too now. Thanks, everyone. --NellieBly (talk) 05:21, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

A company representative provided a logo File:HG logo-2012-spot Col-01.jpg

The image clearly has a white background.

Yet in the file history, as in the article Hydrogenics, the background is black.

What am I missing?

(My guess is that the background is not actually white, but transparent, but it should still not display as black, should it?)--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:05, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The image is a JPEG, so it can't have a transparent background. I bet the old version with the black background was still being used on the article due to a delay in the job queue. It looks fine now, and a purge or null edit should have fixed it. /~huesatlum/ 13:57, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I think you are right. I tried Purge, but didn't think to do a null edit.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:14, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
  Resolved
(ec)I didn't do anything, but it looks better now.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:59, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Protection templates converted to Lua

This is just to let people know that all the protection templates have now been converted to use Module:Protection banner. See this thread for the background behind the switch and for the list of templates affected. Also, please leave a note there if you notice anything strange with the converted templates. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 18:12, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Sortable table glitch

Hi, at List of longest cantilever bridge spans the table sorting does not work properly (e.g. click to sort on "Main span" column, then click again and nothing happens). This seems to be something to do with the row "many bridges with shorter span". What is the best way to fix this? Is there a way to fix it other than just removing that row from the table? 86.128.1.157 (talk) 00:19, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorting does not work if columns are merged. I fixed it by removing the last row. Ruslik_Zero 09:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Making the row as header cells (which in this case actually would make it a footer) or using the sort bottom class would have worked as well in this case. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:25, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Information Required - GEO IP LOOK UP SERVICE

Hi, We came across the following service http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/, and would like to know few things associated with this service:

1) How much traffic we can cope with this service. 2) How reliable is this service in terms of availability and results. 3) Is there any pricing associated with this service or is it free of cost.

Looking forward to a reply from your end. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nmalh7 (talk • contribs) 03:24, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

@Nmalh7: This is not a commercial service and has a reserved nature. Using it more than incidentally is not appreciated. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:18, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Canned edit summaries in Wikipedia app/mobile version

Where do I complain/offer feedback about the Wikipedia app/mobile version (not sure if those are the same thing, but I think they are). If that place is here, I'd like to suggest that the preloaded edit summaries be removed or de-emphasized. I'm talking about the screen that comes up on the app after you have made an edit, but before saving, that asks "How did you improve this article?", with four options: Fixed typo, Fixed grammar, Added links, and Other. Since this feature was added, the "Fixed typo" edit summary has predictably become very popular - it is the first and most prominent option, and it's not obvious that skipping the edit summary is possible - but almost never accurate. As a patroller, I would rather see no edit summary at all than a false one; false edit summaries, until recently, usually indicated to me that a user was purposefully trying to evade detection. --Bongwarrior (talk) 09:35, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Seems this is specific to the Mobile app. I filed a bug report on bugzilla:, the place where these things go. The suggestion is known as bugzilla:69168. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:29, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I've responded on the bug. TO keep the discussion in one place, please respond there. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:55, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you. --Bongwarrior (talk) 17:18, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Geonotice

When editing many pages (in Chrome + Windows 7), for instance List_of_longest_cantilever_bridge_spans, I see two errors in the console:

  1. JavaScript parse error: Parse error: Missing operand in file 'MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice.js' on line 11
  2. XMLHttpRequest cannot load https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'https://en.wikipedia.org' is therefore not allowed access.

Ruslik_Zero 10:37, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

First should be fixed. I cannot reproduce the second error, which is not Geonotice related. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 10:45, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sounds like they've actioned #Migrating Geonotice to a gadget above. Helder.wiki, Edokter: what say you? --Redrose64 (talk) 10:52, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Migrating Geonotice to a gadget

I would like to move MediaWiki:Geonotice.js to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice.js, so that

If you enable the option "<gadget-geonotice>" which I added to testwiki:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, you should see a test notice on testwiki:Special:Watchlist. On English Wikipedia, the gadget would be enabled by default, to keep the current behavior. Helder.wiki 00:18, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

It already is opt-out; I've explained at least three times how to do it. Most (if not all) should be in the archives of this page. 
li.geonotice { display: none; }
in Special:MyPage/common.css. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:26, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
That would still load the JavaScript (in a separate request) and keep the CSS mixed in the middle of the JavaScript code. Helder.wiki 00:29, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
Seems sane, though it might be confusing to some users why they would find that type of notification in their gadgets... Perhaps simply makt it a hidden always on gadget, and continue to have the opt out behavior as before (as described by Redrose). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:57, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I don't think it is confusing to have this script in the list where (most) other local scripts are.
And "hidden" default gadgets are not supported (mw:Gadgets 2.0 is not a reality yet, and we are using a hack to implement "hidden" gadgets). Even if it was supported, it would not allow users to opt-out from loading the script code, which is one of my objectives. Helder 12:32, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Making this a gadget seems reasonable (on the condition it's definitely opt-out; opt-in would be self-defeating). However, it might be a good opportunity to look at changing all watchlist messaging including non-geotargeted messages into a single opt-out gadget (as I believe Commons uses). Andrew Gray (talk) 11:47, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
One other question - would this materially affect how we add new geonotices? There's only two or three of us regularly maintaining them and I for one don't really understand the backend very well :-). Andrew Gray (talk) 11:59, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: Not really. The only change would be the title of the page used for that. And I think you could use the existing geonotice script/gadget for non-geotargeted messages as well: just set large coordinates (e.g. corners:[ [-1000,-1000], [1000, 1000] ], as I did on the testwiki) and it should be visible for all (most?) users. Helder 12:19, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
On reflection, I think keeping existing watchlist notices as they are is probably good (though styling them to be consistent with geonotices one way or another would help) - they're a pretty core tool for "active promotion of important issues" and we should probably ensure they remain visible even to people who've opted out of local notices. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:18, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
You are referring to the part which appears above the horizontal rule on the watchlist right? Helder 19:58, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
Yes indeed :-) Andrew Gray (talk) 20:28, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
Any more comments? Any problems found in the test version? Can this be implemented now? Helder 13:59, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
I see no problem. Need exact instructions though, unless it is a straight move (in which case, I just need to didable it in Common.js and make a gadget definition). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:42, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edokter: we can copy the the JS from test wiki (just updating the list of notices to match what is on English Wikipedia right now), move the CSS into a separate page, remove the loader code from MediaWiki:Common.js/watchlist.js, add a line to MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition and create the gadget's description. I have the (global) editinterface permission now, so I could recheck my edits on testwiki and replicate the relevant changes to enwiki. Helder 21:23, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Ah, you don't really need my help then :) The plan is sound. Create the gadget here and I will double-check the code before we activate it. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:53, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edokter: when moving the page we will need to activate the gadget and remove the old loader code at the same time, so in order to give you the chance to review the code, I updated the version on testwiki instead. On the other hand, creating MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice.css and MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice would not cause problems while the gadget is not created, so these are done. Helder 23:16, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
I copied the .js gadget from testwiki. Since the code is modified, a move would not work anyway. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:09, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I'll copy, then move. That will move all watchers. I'm going to make the switchover. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:36, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
  Done. Geonotice is now a (default enabled) gadget. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:56, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
The bulk is still loaded on every page load. How about moving the bulk to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-core.js? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 10:46, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edokter: that is a good idea. How about splitting it like this?
  1. Module "ext.gadget.geonotice"
  2. Module "ext.gadget.geonotice-core"
The separation between the list of notices and the code which uses it should help avoiding accidental changes in the core code, and allow people to watch for changes in the core script separately. It may also help in using the code on other wikis (which have their own list of notices, but could use a common "core" JS). Helder 13:35, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Lazy-loading the core part is easy, but can I lazy-load the list in the same way (by defining it as a gadget and call mw.loader.load)? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 14:56, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edokter: check the current version on the test wiki: testwiki:Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice. We can add more than one js page to each gadget, and they are merged together in a single module. Helder 01:43, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
That is what I needed to know. Thanks. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 07:46, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Also   Done. That should save some heap of code being loaded. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:41, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks tools for Sonia Sotomayor page

During the past week I have running reflinks tools on the Sonia Sotomayor page to bring things up to date. It seemed to work well for the first 170 references, but cite #180 and #185 do not seem to match up with the actual article citations. In reflinks tools cite#180 gives a redlink for a "Gingrich" citation, but the article citation number has nothing to do with Gingrich. Could someone look at this, since it has not worked for two days. This is the reflink invoked to produce the list of link checks checklinks report. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 00:14, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Reflinks is still not working after 2-3 more days, and I noticed there is another Reflinks village pump section above currently at #13 on this page. Could someone do a look and see at this. For example on Sonia Sotomayor footnote #263 does link successfully to Esquire magazine, but Reflinks gives a deadlink notice for it to somewhere at an Arizona news press. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 13:42, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@LawrencePrincipe: It appears you (and others) have done a lot of work on the Sonia Sotomayor article, so we can't reproduce the issue by running Reflinks on the current version. You may want to create a test page in your userspace that will generate the same issues you were seeing, and then provide a link on User talk:Dispenser/Reflinks. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 16:40, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@GoingBatty:, Hi Going Batty, yes, that's a good point. I will stop all editing for the next 24-48 hrs until someone can confirm the reflinks error. Cite Number 263 gives the following deadlink warning:
263 Sotomayor urges anxious grads to embrace future (info) [kold.com]
accessdate=May 19, 2010
date=May 8, 2010
publisher=KOLD-TV
410 Dead since 2011-01-17
However, when you go straight to footnote #263 in the article, the article footnote at 263 has nothing to do with the KOLD-TV deadlink notification from reflinks but uses Esquire magazine instead. I will postpone all update edits until someone confirms. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 18:21, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@LawrencePrincipe: Oh, you're using Checklinks, not Reflinks. I confirm that Checklinks is showing that #263 is kold.com, even though the article shows kold.com is #259. The proper place to report this issue is User talk:Dispenser/Checklinks so Dispenser can resolve the issue. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 03:23, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Tabs for article and talk page

Without logging on I look at any WP article and the first two tabs across the top read "Article" and "Talk".

Then I log on and the tabs change to "Page" and "Discussion". Why? This might confuse a new user.

Suggest changing the tabs to read "Article" and "Talk", to agree with the way articles and talk pages are referred to throughout the project.

Monobook skin, Firefox 31: Noyster (talk), 10:12, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

On Vector you should not have that problem, and that's what most 'new' people are on, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:21, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I cannot reproduce. Do you have any specific pages as examples? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 10:23, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
This looks like an issue where English Wikipedia's customised MediaWiki messages were only set for English (en) and not for any other language. (The messages are MediaWiki:Nstab-main and MediaWiki:Talk.) Noyster, what language have you set in your settings? If it is en-GB or en-CA then these edits should have fixed the problem, but if it is something else then it will still be as it was before. Quite a lot of messages have only been customised for English (en), not British English (en-GB) or Canadian English (en-CA), so a lot of users choose to set their language to en. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:56, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, it was en-GB. The change has already taken effect. Quick work!: Noyster (talk), 11:00, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences Spanish, French, Indonesian, British English and Arabic are the top five languages. --  Gadget850 talk 00:50, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Color of tab links

The following is copied from the Help desk:

The link in a tab button at the top of Wikipedia pages to a non-existing page (like say a non-existing talk page) displays bluish purple. It is hard to distinguish them from existing pages. Is there css code that will make them red like normal links to non-existing pages. —teb728 t c 00:57, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, they normally are red. No idea why you are seeing that colour. Try temporarily removing your existing css and see what you then get, though I can't see anything that should change the tab colours in your vector css. SpinningSpark 02:15, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I tried not-logged-in sessions on another browser and another PC; they looked the same.
I looked at the generated HTML: For a normal red link class="new" is applied to the anchor. For a tab button the anchor is inside span inside li; class="new" is applied to the li; the anchor has no class.
As a workaround I added li.new a {color:Black; background:#ffc0c0;} to my vector css. The background is pale red as intended, but the text is still purple. —teb728 t c 10:28, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, in fact, I can't even get it to change colour at all. I thought that this css
  #p-cactions a.new {
	color: #ba0000;
  }
   #p-cactions a.new:visited {
	color: #a55858;
  }
should do the job, but I can't get it to work, even though similar css succeeds in changing the colours of the non-redlinked tabs. Try asking at WP:VPT. SpinningSpark 10:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Spinningspark: The problem is that it's not the <a> tag that has the new class, but the <li> element around it. I think the CSS 
#p-cactions li.new a {color:#ba0000}
should work. I'm assuming you use Monobook, since in Vector #p-cactions appears to be a div containing the "more" dropdown menu only rather than all tab links.
Though for me non-existing top menu links are red as normal in all four major skins. SiBr4 (talk) 21:50, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@SiBr4: So why does li.new a {color:Black;} not change the color for me? I see purple no matter what color I specify. (I use Vector.) SpinningSpark is the helper at help desk; I'm the one with the problem. —teb728 t c 23:10, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
It's possible the CSS rule is getting overwritten by sitewide CSS rules applied to each individual tab link. Does it work if you add !important, as in li.new a {color:black !important;}? SiBr4 (talk) 23:17, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
That works. Thank you! —teb728 t c 00:12, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
This was originally posted here, but then moved to help desk for some strange reason. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:45, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
For whatever it is worth, I moved it the help desk because I thought that was a better for non-bug questions. I moved it back not only on Spinningspark's recommendation but also because I now suspect there is a bug in either the generated code and/or the css files. —teb728 t c 20:20, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I think that there's a problem with the site CSS for Vector skin: 
div.vectorTabs li.new a,
div.vectorTabs li.new a:visited {
    color: #A55858;
}
this sets the colour of redlinks in the tabs of Vector skin to #A55858   - whether visited or not. That dark red might seem purple. Contrast that with Monobook, which has 
#p-cactions .new a {
    color: #BA0000;
}
this sets the colour of redlinks in the tabs of Monobook skin to #BA0000   - a much brighter colour. To use this brighter colour in Vector, add 
div.vectorTabs li.new a,
div.vectorTabs li.new a:visited {
    color: #BA0000;
}
to Special:MyPage/vector.css --Redrose64 (talk) 23:31, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you! Shouldn't that value be used in the site CSS Vector file? Even #BA0000 seems a little dull to me. Ordinary red links look closer to #E00000. —teb728 t c 00:12, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@TEB728: I've checked how normal in-text redlinks (i.e. those not in the tabs etc.) are styled - for Vector the site CSS is 
a.new,
#p-personal a.new { 
    color: #BA0000;
}
a.new:visited,
#p-personal a.new:visited { 
    color: #A55858;
}
and for MonoBook the site CSS is 
a.new,
#p-personal a.new { 
    color: #CC2200;
}
a.new:visited,
#p-personal a.new:visited { 
    color: #A55858;
}
so in normal text, the visited redlinks are the same for both Vector and MonoBook, i.e. #A55858  , but the unvisited redlinks differ: in Vector they are #BA0000   and in MonoBook, they are #CC2200  . --Redrose64 (talk) 09:50, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Displaytitle template issue

There seems to be an issue with the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} template. When it's used in a article about an album, to override the normal italic formatting for the article title that's embedded in the {{Infobox album}} template, an unsightly red warning is displayed at the beginning of the article. An example is the current version of "Europe '72 (Live)", here. Without the Displaytitle override, the article title would be displayed as "Europe '72 (Live)", but the parenthetic text is part of the album title and so should also be italicized. This was working fine before -- and the italicization is still working -- but now there's a nasty message displayed, saying "Warning: Display title "<i>Europe '72 (Live)</i>" overrides earlier display title "<i>Europe '72</i> (Live)"." Anyone know how to get this fixed? — Mudwater (Talk) 19:53, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

@Mudwater: If you want to use {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} (which is a behaviour switch, not a template), you need to also use |Italic title=no as advised in the box near the top of the documentation for {{infobox album}}. It's the same problem as described at Template talk:Infobox film#Warning. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:51, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Very good, thanks for providing the answer. The "Italic title = no" didn't used to be necessary, something's changed, but that's okay, this works now. I appreciate the help. — Mudwater (Talk) 22:16, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mudwater: The "something" that changed is covered at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 128#Tech News: 2014-29 and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 129#DISPLAYTITLE warning. MediaWiki now complains if a page has more than one {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} even if one of them is part of a template's code, like {{infobox album}}, {{infobox book}} or {{infobox film}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:23, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Interesting. That explains it all right. Thanks. — Mudwater (Talk) 13:27, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
I thought that using |italic title=force with no extra {{DISPLAYTITLE}} would also work, but I was mistaken. GoingBatty (talk) 16:47, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Web Citation down?

Is anyone else having issues getting to webcitation.org? I have been trying for most of August 6, to archive some sites, and I have not been able to. It says the website is down. I also tried to access already archived links to no avail either. I know there was talk a while back that it was going to be shut down, due to lack of funding, so I hope this is not the case. If so, that is very disconcerting. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 03:52, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I'm seeing it down as well. I wouldn't worry yet, as this does happen from time to time, usually for maintenance. Interestingly, Archive.org is down for maintenance as well. — Huntster (t @ c) 03:56, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
It looks like it is failing on host resolution, could imply infrastructure issues. downforeveryone reports it's down for all. Last I checked the cite, the issue wasn't continuing the site but just not accepting any new cites if they didn't have the funding, so I doubt it's down and out for good. --MASEM (t) 04:00, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Deleted content visible for anyone to see

You can see log messages by searching for the log message type, e.g. Special:Log/massmessage or Special:Log/import. If you search for log entries by log action, these two log entries will show up. For example, if someone sends a mass message, the log entry will still show up at Special:Log/massmessage, even if it says "log action removed". It seems that deleted content accidentally is exposed to users this way. Is it really supposed to be like this?

I discovered this because I saw the log action quoted below when I was looking at "Special:Log/someaction" at metawiki. I won't tell which log action I was looking at to avoid revealing unnecessary private information.

  • 18:01, 10 June 2014 Barras (talk | contribs) (log action removed) (per enwp arb request)

Stefan2 (talk) 12:53, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

RSS feed for IP range?

Is there a way to get a merged feed for unregistered users over an IP range? Let's say you're @congressedits (which I'm not), and that Congress upgrades to a IPv6 system. Would the only way to search a standard subnet array be to search 2^64 (in other terms, 18446744073709551616) different usernames to cover the system? On a smaller scale, I've tried crawling a IPv6 '0/16' network, which takes more than five hours and a whole lot of resources on both of our ends.

It seems like there should be an easier way to do this, either to query for active usernames over an IP range or to combine RSS feeds over a range without accessing them individually. Is there? What am I missing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joecover (talk • contribs) 19:55, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

There's a gadget that queries the contributions for an IP range: it's title begins with "Allow /16, /24 and /27 – /32 CIDR ranges ...". Here's its JavaScript code. Graham87 07:19, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—July and August 2014

 

The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

 
Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.

  • Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
  • You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
  • All references and footnotes (<ref> tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu.
  • When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
  • All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
  • The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
  • The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.

Looking ahead

The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.

Feedback opportunities

The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30.

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).

If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

WMFLabs open data issue

MariaDB [enwiki_p]> SHOW DATABASES LIKE "p5%\_p";
+----------------------------+
| Database (p5%\_p)          |
+----------------------------+
| p50380g50592__interwikis_p |
| p50380g50921__ghel_p       |
| p50380g50921__wma_p        |
+----------------------------+
3 rows in set (0.05 sec)

Labs projects are far less open with data than their Toolserver counterparts. Is there anything (I've already contacted some authors) we can do? Maybe a less fucked up naming system? (http://tools.wmflabs.org/50592 is returning a blank page)? Should we forking non-open data projects before User:Silke WMDE deletes the Toolserver backups? — Dispenser 21:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Complex Template Syntax Question

I've recently become involved in editing Template:Iraqi insurgency detailed map. The opening syntax for the template is
{{#invoke:location map|top |Iraq |AlternativeMap=Iraq location map2.svg |float=left |width=1800|caption=y}}
My question is how to make it so the image, File:Iraq location map2.svg is rendered unclickable, so as to leave the icons representing various areas of Iraq as the only clickable pieces on the map? As it is now, the map is clickable, which, for those with Twinkle, ends up loading infoboxes over important information when the mouse hovers over it. Basically, it's a minor nuisance with (hopefully) an easy solution. Normally, I would have added a blank |alt= command to make an image non-clickable, but this doesn't seem to be working and I don't understand this advanced coding to know what {{#invoke:... means. Any help? -- Veggies (talk) 19:20, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The two <div> have nothing to do with it, so I've removed them above. The #invoke: tells us that Lua is going on, which is not normal template code, which makes it more difficult to trace through. The next two words are location map which tells me that the underlying code is in Module:Location map. This, apparently, recognises a |link= parameter, which we should be able to utilise in order to do what you want, but I can't make it de-link the image. Jackmcbarn (talk · contribs) may know how. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:51, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Making the image unclickable would be a violation of its license. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:53, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Could you say more, please? The image is CC-3.0. Does that mandate clickability back to the file page or just the author's name in the caption? -- Veggies (talk) 20:59, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
From a legal point of view, when we display a CC-BY-SA image, we need to do two things: first, provide attribution to the copyright holder, and second, make it clear that the image is under a CC-BY-SA licence. We normally do these two things via a link to the file description page, which is why Jackmcbarn says that making the image unclickable would be a violation of the licence. Technically we could make the image unclickable if we provided these two things another way, such as in an image caption, but on many pages that isn't desirable, and just linking to the file page is neater. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:00, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
In templates using <imagemap> syntax, the background image is unlinked and there is a   icon at the top right of the caption that links to the image file page. That could be made an option for Module:Location map too. If that's not possible a simple link like "(background file)" could also just be added to the caption. SiBr4 (talk) 09:30, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
@Veggies: I added the magnify icon to the module, and the new parameter maplink allows control over the link parameter of the image. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:27, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Yikes... clicking the icon makes Media Viewer go into a fit. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 17:22, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edokter: Fixed for now by disabling MediaViewer for fake thumbnails. I plan to write a proper fix for MediaViewer itself at some point. See bugzilla:69353. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:05, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Potentially unconstructive?

As a logged out ip, I was trying to make a very rapid fix to a typo/misspelling (replacing "the later" with "the latter") I happened to spot in Joseph Kosma#Biography. I have been unable to make this edit. Apparently, An automated filter has identified this edit as potentially unconstructive, and it has been disallowed. I have also been unable to to report the error, as requested, because the page I was directed to seems to be protected from ip contributions.

In this experience, a simple fix -- in the spirit of Wikipedia -- appears unwelcome.

(Note: Please do not tell me to get an account or log in; there are various reasons why individual users may actively prefer to contribute as an ip.)
86.157.144.73 (talk) 12:17, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

It's protected because it's not exactly the page at which you're supposed to make the report. Click the "Click here to report a false positive" link to go to the right page (it's a subpage), or if you view the source of the main page, you get a big warning that says that you need to go to the other page. Don't worry about doing it this time, since I've filed a report for you and noted that this is definitely a false positive; I can't comment on the technical side of things, since I don't understand them. Nyttend (talk) 13:28, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you very much for doing that Nyttend. I see the link to the subpage now, and I'll go through the hoops perhaps when I have time. From a broader perspective, I think it's worth bearing in mind that some new contributors may be encountering this stuff as their first editing experience :-/ 86.157.144.73 (talk) 14:21, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Cross-wiki notifications from 800+ wikis

After some work on this issue, I would like to announce the new XAgent of XTools gadget. Currently it is work in progress, but ready to use. If you stumble over a bug or if you have further suggestions, feel free to report.

Enjoy. --Hedonil (talk) 16:30, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Hedonil. This great gadget keeps getting better! --NeilN talk to me 18:17, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Broken page: "Option_symbol"

The URL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_symbol

displays only the following text... 

<link rel="stylesheet" href="//bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.gadget.DRN-wizard%2CReferenceTooltips%2Ccharinsert%2CrefToolbar%2Cteahouse%7Cext.rtlcite%2Cwikihiero%7Cext.uls.nojs%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.noscript%7Cmediawiki.legacy.commonPrint%2Cshared%7Cmediawiki.skinning.interface%7Cmediawiki.ui.button%7Cskins.vector.styles%7Cwikibase.client.init%2Cnolanglinks&only=styles&skin=vector&*

No Wikipedia page appears.

I tried to submit this via Bugzilla, but it hung while loading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.121.80.236 (talk) 22:18, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I purged the page, which should have fixed this. If it still is broken, then you should try to bypass your browser's cache. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:21, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
The block "<link rel=…" text in your comment is breaking the layout on my monitor and sticking out to the right. Could you enclose it in <pre style="overflow:auto"> </pre> tags? benzband (talk) 14:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Too many templates in an article

In an article the templates are too many, so the last of them are not appear. Ok, the easy solution is to remove some of them. Is there any other solution? Xaris333 (talk) 02:50, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

@Xaris333: Could you please let us know which article? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:24, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

It is at Greek wiki. el:Πορεία των κυπριακών ομάδων στα ευρωπαϊκά κύπελλα ποδοσφαίρου Xaris333 (talk) 04:08, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

It looks fine now. But if you come across this in the future, one of the things you can do is Subst: some of the simpler templates from before the parser error (everything at and after cannot be evaluated to subst in the template result) in order to reduce the expansion size of the page. VanIsaacWScont 04:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Its not fine. Look at the end. You can see Template:cite web and {{references}} (παραπομπές). Both are not working. Xaris333 (talk) 04:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Xaris333, there are not too many templates and that is not the issue. You can remove half the article and it still has problems. As this is on the Greek Wikipedia, this is probably best handled by a Greek speaking person. Calling Magioladitis. Bgwhite (talk) 07:01, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Ok, for future reference, this is what it looks like when you have too many templates on a page (scroll to the bottom). If you aren't getting red error messages saying the node count has been exceeded, your problem is something else. VanIsaacWScont 07:53, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Look at the page source code. It tells me:
<!-- 
NewPP limit report
Parsed by mw1057
CPU time usage: 40.799 seconds
Real time usage: 41.401 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 303126/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 150774/1500000
Post‐expand include size: 2048000/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 829659/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 17/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
-->
CPU time is very high, and post-expand include size maxed out. The latter probably is the reason for the problem. My guess would be that it's caused by too many "cite web" and "harvnb" templates. If those can be subst'ed, try that. Lupo 10:43, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Ahh, excellent. So it looks like it's not that there are too many templates (node count is 1/3 of max), but that the page content is just too large. Looks like the article just plain needs to be split up. VanIsaacWScont 05:50, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, $wgMaxArticleSize is set to 2000kB at WMF wikis: [39]. Lupo 10:38, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there a way to identify people using Wikipedia as hosting space for personal webpages?

Is there an easy way to generate a list of editors whose only edits are in their own userspace, so that it's easier to locate (manually) editors who are using Wikipedia (innocently mostly) as a webhost? Skittle (talk) 09:39, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I wonder if the number of false positives of editors working on their first sandbox drafts might not be the overwhelming majority - thus making it a rather inefficient abuse detection tool? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:29, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
I've wondered that too, but if there was a relatively easy way to do it I would probably still consider it worth investigating. I mean, ideally you'd also want to be able to filter by age of account and things like that, but that seems less likely to be achievable without extra effort. Skittle (talk) 11:22, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Interesting idea. I may prototype something like that and see what the results looks like. Chillum 20:54, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Bo-textonly template renders Tibetan text too large (except on MS Windows)

The sizing on the template Bo-textonly appears to have been adjusted to work with the Microsoft Himalaya font (default Tibetan font on MS Windows) which renders Tibetan text at a very small size. This template fixes that - but results in Tibetan text when displayed on other operating systems, or with other Tibetan fonts, being rendered too large and this can mess up line spacing. There is no "standard" size for Tibetan fonts - so one scaling size does not fit all - in fact some Tibetan fonts don't need any enlargement at all. Is there a way of fixing this so the re-sizing is based on the default Tibetan font being used on the client system?

Meanwhile I've put the scaling size on this template back to 130% where it was before Great Brightstar increased it. This is not ideal for all systems - Tibetan text will still be too big on many systems and maybe a little small on Windows - but it seems to be about the best compromise based on the different systems I've tried it on.

I haven't yet checked to see if this problem is found in other templates for Tibetan script.

Chris Fynn (talk) 06:08, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I have made a test in Chinese Wikipedia's Sandbox. My computer uses Windows 8.1, it have a built-in font named "Microsoft Himalaya". Some Latin alphabets as same as Times New Roman in this font. In my test I found this font can be alignment with Times New Roman if I resize to 150%. Here is my result.--Great Brightstar (talk) 09:29, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@Great Brightstar:That's exactly the problem. When you made the change to 150% you seem to have tested it only on your Windows system with the Microsoft Himalaya font which renders at a much smaller size than other Tibetan fonts. The default Tibetan fonts on Mac OSX (Kailash or Kokonor) don't need scaling - and if do you make them 150% then they are way to big. Similarly with DDC Uchen, Jomolhari Font on Linux or Windows. Not everyone uses Microsoft Windows - and even on Windows they may have installed a different Tibetan font. So you need to test these things on a variety of systems, with a variety of common fonts and in a variety of common browsers. Don't assume that what works on Windows with a particular font and a particular browser will work everywhere else. While the Microsoft Himalaya font needs 150% to look good, this is way too big on other systems and causes problems with line spacing - other fonts on other systems look good with no scaling at all (100%). So, unless we can somehow modify the template to make the scaling dependent on the system and font the client is using, then we need use a compromise scaling — say 130% or 125%. This will be a little small on Windows systems and a little big on Mac systems - but at least it is not too bad on either. Regards. Chris Fynn (talk) 10:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Oh~I haven't consider it when I made my test.--Great Brightstar (talk) 08:16, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Out-of-date revision warning

Is there a way to make the "You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page" warning more prominent, e.g. by making the text red instead of black? The black text never gets my attention. I use Monobook skin and IE11. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 10:37, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

The message concerned is MediaWiki:Editingold, which is already in a big pink #FFDBDB   box. Most Wikipedias have their own ways of showing the message: for example, Welsh; German; Spanish; French; or Dutch - but in all cases, it's either coloured text on light background, or black text on coloured background - or even black on light. Red text on pink would probably fail WCAG unless the contrast ratio is as high as it is in my signature - where the red #a80000   is quite dark and the pink #ffeeee   is quite weak. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:30, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
@DH85868993: Above, I was considering the general case for all readers. If you want it changed on a personal basis, you can do this with some CSS. The current settings are essentially: 
table#editingold {
  background-color: #FFDBDB;
  border-color: #BB7070;
  color: #000000;
}
Paste that into Special:MyPage/common.css, adjust the colours as you wish, and save. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies, @Redrose64:. However, I don't see a big pink box when I edit an old version - I see something like this:
Editing User:DH85868993/sandbox
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Revision as of 19:10, August 1, 2014 by DH85868993 (Talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Warning: You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page. If you save it, any changes made since this revision will be lost.
Edit window
 
The warning is in regular-sized (albeit bold) black text on a white background, "hidden" among the usual text above the edit box, which is why it doesn't grab my attention. So I gather I'm not seeing MediaWiki:Editingold for some reason? (BTW, I tried pasting that code into Special:MyPage/common.css (and clearing the cache) but it didn't seem to have any effect - but that's not surprising if I'm not seeing the Editingold message in the first place). I also tried changing to different skins, but again that didn't have any effect. DH85868993 (talk) 09:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm guessing that your language is not set to default English then, probably to en-GB or en-CA - in which case you will be seeing MediaWiki:Editingold/en-GB or MediaWiki:Editingold/en-CA instead. We normally advise people not to use those two language codes, primarily because the language code affects only the system messages, and normally only the messages for default English are kept up to date. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Yep, that's it - my language was set to en-GB; I changed it to default English and hey presto, I get a nice big pink box. Thanks for your help. DH85868993 (talk) 13:18, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
FYI: You can check if the contrast is acceptable using Template:Color contrast conformance. Helder 13:47, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Enabling a script across all languages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T59891

I posted this at WP:HELPDESK yesterday, but I didn't really get a response. I figured it may be a little too technical for that board, so I copied it here. If there is a better place to ask, please let me know.

Is there any way to enable a user script across all language wikipedias? Like common.js applies to all skins, but I want even more "common" than that... I can't find any mention of that, so I suspect it is not possible, but I just wanted to check in case I missed something. I have a script that will work on various different language wikipedias, but it has to be installed on each language first. On most non-en wikis I don't have autoconfirmed (or whatever the relevant group is) rights, so I can't create a js page for myself on those. That aside, it's a bit annoying to have to edit 50 different pages which are all connected to a global login anyway. Anyone know of something that could help?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Simple answer is no, not yet. However, if you want to use the same scripts over multiple wikis, you can do what I've done at User:Mdann52(alt)/common.js. However, you generally don't (AFAIK) have to be autoconfirmed to create pages (I made my js page on SEW before I was ac. --Mdann52talk to me! 06:11, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I do note that mw:Extension:GlobalCssJs is being worked on. But in the mean time, Mdann52's method is what you need. Anomie⚔ 08:50, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
The deployment of mw:Extension:GlobalCssJs to WMF wikis is tracked on bugzilla:57891. Helder 14:37, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-33

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

  • Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, there were no MediaWiki changes this week. The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar). [40]
  • Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one. [41]

VisualEditor news

  • Tablet users visiting the mobile version of non-Wikipedia wikis will be able to use VisualEditor starting on August 12. The feature will also be enabled on all Wikipedias on August 14. [42]

Future software changes

  • Internet Explorer 6 users will soon see a JavaScript-free version of Wikimedia wikis; JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work on that browser. If you use Internet Explorer 6, make sure to update to a newer browser! [43] [44] [45]
  • If you visit a special page that requires you to be logged-in, you will soon be automatically redirected to the log-in page instead of seeing a warning. [46] [47]
  • You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension. [48] [49]
  • An IRC meeting to discuss VisualEditor will take place on August 14 at 09:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [50]

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

07:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I miss the original "Go" and "Search" buttons

I am no longer able to alter the functions in Vector skin. I don't want to change skin, but I'm annoyed that, with automatic suggestions disabled, anything I search leads to search results instead of exact target. Is there a way to bring these buttons back to Vector skin? I don't like Help:Go either. --George Ho (talk) 09:52, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

A user script could be made by someone capable to write a few lines of JS. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:05, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

wikiviewstats vs. stats.grok.se/en time ranges (23:00 to 22:59 (UTC) rather than 00:00 to 23:59 (UTC))

Formerly wikiviewstats used a 23:00 to 22:59 (UTC) time range while stats.grok.se used the 00:00 to 23:59 (UTC) time range. You can tell this by observing that hourly totals are available between 35 and 50 minutes after the hour ends about 90% of the time. Thus, you can usually see the hourly totals for the final hour of the day (labelled 23:00) at between 23:35 and 23:50, meaning that they are for some time period ending before 23:35 and assuming they are from a time period that ends on the hour at best they are from the 22:00 to 22:59 (UTC). This means that the hour reported as the first hour of the day is really from 23:00 to 23:59 (UTC). Formerly, stats.grok.se included the 23:00 to 23:59 (UTC) time period in the proper calendar date totals. Now, if you monitor days in which the 23:00 to 23:59 (UTC) hour has a huge spike or dip in page views from the prior day, you can see that stats.grok.se is using the same incorrect time of day range as wikiviewstats. Note dates with these spike/dip events are common among DYK candidates. When did stats.grok.se join in the misreporting of daily totals?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:15, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I should have pinged Henrik here.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:11, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Note that I have revised WP:DYKSTATS and WP:TFASTATS to explain this oddity, but don't see where to make a similar comment at WP:TFLSTATS.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:21, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Script error

Has there been some change that affects infobox image display? I made a change to East Lindsey which was not infobox related, but after saving got a script error as follows.

Lua error: bad argument #1 to 'sub' (string expected, got nil).

Backtrace: 

    [C]: in function "v"
    mw.ustring.lua:61: in function "sub"
    Module:InfoboxImage:106: in function "IsPlaceholder"
    Module:InfoboxImage:134: in function "chunk"
    mw.lua:518: ?
    [C]: in function "getExpandedArgument"
    mw.lua:162: ?
    Module:Infobox:321: in function "preprocessArgs"
    Module:Infobox:374: in function "chunk"
    mw.lua:518: ?

Any clues? Keith D (talk) 20:49, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

@Keith D: I don't see an error now. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:04, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Reloaded the page but still getting the error. Keith D (talk) 21:08, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Try purging. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:00, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks - that seems to have fixed it. Keith D (talk) 22:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

GeoGroup template not working

The GeoGroup template appears to not be working today, or is it just me? Example 130.88.141.34 (talk) 08:05, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

The kmlexport tool on toolslab that this template depends on indeed seems to have an issue right now. I informed the operator of that specific tool by sending him an email. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for the help. 130.88.141.34 (talk) 09:16, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Displaying 'code' font text

I've been away on Wikibreak. I have noticed as I start to return that while I was gone there has been a change to the css that controls the display of <code>...</code>, which, as you can see is wrapped in pretty little boxes. I suppose that it looks ok for short little things; not so good when the wrapped text spans multiple lines or when the new css disrupts previous formatting. For example, Citation Style 1 error messages used to look something like this (font size is controlled by {{reflist}}):

|accessdate= requires |url=
(this error message uses <span style="font-family:monospace,Courier">...</span>)

But, the same error message now looks like this:

|accessdate= requires |url=

In Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration I can replace <code>...</code> with <tt>...</tt>:

|accessdate= requires |url=

But, while not supported by HTML5, <tt>...</tt> is still supported by some Wikipedia css somewhere. I can see where it is part of a <link rel="stylesheet" href="... very long link..." /> but I haven't been able to find the matching (human readable) css source file – anyone know where it is? Can I trust that <tt>...</tt> will continue to be supported? If this change to <code>...</code> was necessary (I don't think it is) then there needs to be a way to display code-like text without all the radiused borders.

In Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration, error messages are wrapped in <span class="error citation-comment>...</span>. Anyone know where that class is defined? Perhaps it can be modified to override the <code>...</code> styling.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:42, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: It's from skins/common/commonElements.css. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:53, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Don't use the deprecated tag <tt>. Use the appropriated replacement (check WP:HTML5). Helder 23:11, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. WP:HTML5 would seem to suggest that <kdb>...</kdb> is the proper replacement for <code>...</code> in these error messages. Yes? Wouldn't it also suggest that <code>...</code> is the wrong markup for commonly used templates such as {{tlx}}, {{para}}, etc.?
Anyone know where <span class="error citation-comment>...</span> used in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration is defined?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:45, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: .error is styled in skins/common/shared.css. I don't think .citation-comment is styled anywhere. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:46, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. What we have here is a Doh! slap my forehead moment. .citation-comment is defined at Help:CS1_errors and is used to either show or hide all CS1 error messages.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:57, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Please don't use <kbd>...</kbd> (n.b. not <kdb>...</kdb>) as a general replacement for either <code>...</code> or <tt>...</tt>, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 129#Styling of code element. In many cases, one of <pre>...</pre>, <samp>...</samp> or <var>...</var> may be the semantically better choice. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Hadn't intended to use <kbd>...</kbd> as a general replacement for <code>...</code>. But, in the specific cases I'm thinking of (CS1 error messages) <kbd>...</kbd> would wrap user input to the CS1 template. That's semantically correct, is it not?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:46, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
You should be able to use <code style="border: 0;">...</code> to override the site style while maintaining the semantics. I finally could not stand it and added it to my personal CSS. --  Gadget850 talk 01:01, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
True, but is that semantically correct? And that was Editor Redrose64's point.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Not quite. The thing is, the code element is somewhat general-purpose (it "represents a fragment of computer code"), so is semantically good, but unfortunately nowadays looks like this with the enforced extra padding, border and black text that some consider undesirable. To avoid these three new effects, but keep the monospace font, you have three choices: (i) use a non-obsolete element like samp, which "represents (sample) output from a program or computing system" (and looks like this) and kbd, which "represents user input" (and looks like this); (ii) style up a <span>, which won't indicate semantics; or (iii) use the obsolete tt element (which I do not wish to encourage, and not just because it also won't indicate semantics). Regarding choice (ii), any styling is possible, but it's probably best to use something approximating the old appearance for code. Until recently, the code element essentially had two style declarations, one of which was in a rule that was shared with some other elements like kbd, the other was in a rule specific to code: 
pre,
code,
tt,
kbd,
samp,
.mw-code {
  font-family: monospace,Courier;
}
code {
  background-color: #F9F9F9;
}
so we can style a span thus: <span style="font-family: monospace,Courier; background-color: #F9F9F9;">which looks like this</span> →which looks like this. However, this doesn't indicate semantics, so it's probably better to start off with <code> and work back towards the appearance that it formerly had. On or before 31 July, a few more declarations were added to that second rule, and it is now: 
code {
  color: #000;
  background-color: #F9F9F9;
  border: 1px solid #DDD;
  border-radius: 2px;
  padding: 1px 4px;
}
We can thus emulate the old appearance by nullifying the new properties: <code style="color:inherit; border:inherit; padding:inherit;">Example</code> →Example; so we can have
|accessdate= requires |url=
If you want that behaviour for all code elements, add 
code {
  color: inherit;
  border: inherit;
  padding: inherit;
}
to Special:MyPage/common.css --Redrose64 (talk) 14:52, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Ignoring the style aspects for the time being, doesn't the semantic attribute specified by W3C for <kbd>...</kbd> make <kbd>...</kbd> the correct HTML element for the CS1 parameters listed in the CS1 error messages emitted by Module:Citation/CS1? <samp>...</samp> seems inappropriate because CS1 doesn't output parameters and <code>...</code> is for code snippets which these error messages are not.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:57, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Well... Both "|accessdate=" and "|url=" are snippets of Wiki-text code. Helder 13:32, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Aye, they are; and therein lies the problem. We have text that is either generic code or user input. Since we lack clearly identifiable semantics, I'm beginning to think that we shouldn't bother with semantics at all and simply replace the <code>...</code> with <span style="font-family: monospace,Courier;">...</span> and call it good though part of me would rather use <kbd>...</kbd> because it's cleaner.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Language preferences

Hello. Is there a way to change my language preferences to one language for all wikipedia by once? I mean not to have to choose english on every wikipedia I visit... Xaris333 (talk) 00:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no. First we have to get through mw:SUL finalisation (early 2015?). After that, we might be able to get cross-wiki prefs, which everyone wants and needs. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:43, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Or wait for the deployment of GlobalCssJs extension to WMF wikis and then add a small snippet of code to your global.js page. Helder 13:38, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Edit filter issue

  Done Just copying Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Calling_edit-filter_managers across to here in case it attracts the attention of someone with edit-filter knowledge. Black Kite (talk) 12:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

See AN discussion, update applied. — xaosflux Talk 12:21, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Random article and browser history

I've noticed that articles I go to by clicking "Random Article" aren't recorded in my browser history (Safari). At least, not after the first one. Is that intentional? Howunusual (talk) 16:46, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

It is a peculiarity of Safari. It has always been that way. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech help required to improve categories

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#CatVisor and User:Paradoctor/CatVisor#Planned features if you are willing and able to assist this innovative WP project move along it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 23:31, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Search & Replace tool

I have always found the Search & Replace tool to the far right on the edit strip on the Edit Page awkward to use, in that the box (a) either sits over some of the text and I'm not sure if it is hiding some of the words highlighted for manual search & replace as the page scrolls down, or (b) if I move the box to left-hand column outside the edit area, the box disappears upwards as subsequent finds are highlighted as the page scrolls down - in other words, the box does not "hover". I have looked at it again today, and now, after the first highlight, it won't highlight the subsequent finds. Is the tool malfunctioning, or there something wrong at my end? The tool does not appear in the edit strip using IE11, but it does using Firefox with Vector skin. Can you help, please? --P123ct1 (talk) 13:56, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@P123ct1: when I search for "hi" in the code of this section, using Firefox 31 or Chrome 36, it highlights all occurrences. Helder 17:45, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I have Firefox 31. It is highlighting now, but the page won't move down automatically, and when I scroll it down manually, the search box disappears upwards. --P123ct1 (talk) 18:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
There are about 18 open tickets on this tool (most of any part of WikiEditor). But unfortunately not many people care to work on it. I have made a few patches on WikiEditor in the last few months (perhaps you have noticed a change or two), but have concerned myself with more widely used parts and a bit with performance. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:16, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I have Firefox 31.0, and have unchecked WikEd because some conflict in the edit window exists between the two. There is a serious lag in opening an editing screen while my browser freezes and says "not responding", during which I can neither shut down my browser nor cancel out the activity in process - same thing with "preview". Doing a "copy and paste" on the most minor things produces the same phenomenon, but can be in that limbo for several minutes. Whatever it is, I am concerned the combo of Fiirefox 31.0 and WikEd will accidentally shut down my computer. Consequently, I make do with the "Search and replace" icon on the right hand side that is not part of the WikEd enabled toolbar. — Maile (talk) 13:53, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Maile66: mw:Extension:WikiEditor provides the "Enhanced edit toolbar", and is not the same as the gadget WP:WikEd. Helder 14:46, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Helder.wiki, Right,I know. What you are calling the enhanced edit toolbar is what I use without enabling WikEd. However, when WikEd is enabled, there is a whole lot more on the toolbar, including an additional Search and Replace tool. I figure I can live without those WikEd additions as long as Firefox 31.0 conflicts. — Maile (talk) 15:00, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

from parameter not working in recent changes url

Why does 

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ARecentChanges&from=20140811000000

not give me the log of changes starting from yesterday? I'm sure this used to work. SpinningSpark 14:59, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

This query doesn't specify the "limit" parameter, which is only 50 by default, so you get the 50 most recent edits - the last minute or so. To see the "from" parameter working, try restricting the query to an obscure namespace. This query returns about 30 edits to the "Portal talk" namespace; it obeys the "from" parameter and doesn't go back any further than 11 August. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:09, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Not really a "from" parameter then.
Ok, let me try a different question. How do I view the logs for yesterday without setting limit= to an astronomical number (in any case, anything higher than 5000 is ignored so wouldn't get back "to" the date specified in any case). I seem to remember when I did this in the past edit ID numbers were required, but can't remember the format properly. SpinningSpark 15:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't recall "from"—I think it should be "offset". The following shows the history of this page starting with edits just before the beginning of 20 April 2014:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=history&offset=20140420
However, I suspect RecentChanges is different because there is unlikely to be a permanent history of RecentChanges—it probably only maintains a rolling list with new items added at one end and old items removed at the other. In other words, offset is not going to work and I don't think you can see RecentChanges at an older time except by clicking the buttons to show 500 changes in the last 30 days (or doing the same in the URL, up to limit 5000). There is no "older 50" in the GUI for RecentChanges, and there is no URL to achieve that (I think). Johnuniq (talk) 00:02, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I recall doing things like finding the first edit of a new year, which obviously requires going through the whole database, not just an individual page log. But perhaps I am misremembering how I did it. That particular task could be achieved by laboriously entering single page IDs in a [Binary search algorithm|binary search]]. SpinningSpark 11:22, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
The edits can be found by using the API (this query for the timestamp used above; it works for anything up to 30 days) but I can't see anything in Special:Recentchanges that would allow those parameters to be specified - is there anything (maybe a script) that would produce that result with links to the edits? Peter James (talk) 14:02, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
According to mw:Help:Recent changes there are no parameters that allow a jump-in point to be specified. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:36, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Why do years include commas?

When I look at the revision history for an article, the year includes a comma, such as "2,014." In the history of this very page it says "Wikipedia:Village pump (technical): Revision history View logs for this page Browse history From year (and earlier): 2,014" Is there any country on earth where years are stated thus? This just looks peculiar. How hard would it be to format the display so years are displayed as they are everywhere else? Edison (talk) 00:28, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Because the specific version of the specific browser that you're using, which you did not provide here forcing everyone to guess, has a bug that makes it format numeric input fields with commas in some languages. See T71059 (marked as INVALID) for details. Matma Rex talk 00:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Your snottyness in the comment "forcing everyone to guess" is uncalled for, but thanks for linking to the bug report. . It would have been more appropriate to just ask what browser produced the anomaly, or to mention that you use a certain browser and don't see the problem. It is not obvious to the average user that it is a browser issue rather than an issue of how Wikipedia is coded to display. The commas in the year show up in Safari Version 5.0.6 (5533.22.3). on a MacBook Pro.I checked on my PC and the year displays without a comma in Internet Explorer and in Firefox. Edison (talk) 18:56, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
@Matma Rex. The user asked a perfectly normal question. You could have conveyed the same information in your response without being snarky. Such a display of unprompted rudeness indicates a real lack of judgment. I hope you were just having a bad day. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:02, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Wow, nice hostility guys. If I knew that these ten words are going to cause so much hate, I wouldn't have replied. I'll bear your comments in mind in the future. Matma Rex talk 02:24, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
;YOU were the first person to be snotty/snarky/demeaning. You received appropriate criticism, not "hate.' Please avoid anything but a helpful and informative answer. Edison (talk) 23:30, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Percent encoding problems leading to bad title error

Hello! There seems to be a problem with following wikilinks with certain punctuation (such as the ? character) when on the mobile site. For example, when I try to follow R U Mine? from both my Kindle Fire and my phone, it takes me to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_U_Mine%253F instead of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_U_Mine%3F and I get a 'bad title' error. It seems to be a problem with percent encoding... %25 is the percent code for %, so by sending me to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_U_Mine%253F the site seems to be trying to double percent-encode or something. Any help would be appreciated! Cheers, cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 17:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's odd. U+253F is a box drawing element, so it's not that. It definitely seems to be applying percent encoding one step too far, ie ? -> %3F -> %253F. VanIsaacWScont 21:38, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Just realized this should probably have been a bug report and not a post here. Here's the link to the newly-submitted bugzilla report, if anyone's interested. cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 18:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

How are people warned they are editing a biography?

For several weeks I tried to figure out how someone gets the warning about WP:BLP to appear when editing a biographical article. It finally appeared today but I don't know how since I didn't see anything in the history that would change that. Specifically, Disappearance of Erica Parsons.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:30, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

This edit placed the article in Category:Living people. According to the documentation at Template:BLP editintro, some behind-the-scenes JavaScript looks for that category and modifies the "Edit" links so that this template is shown. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:55, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. I knew someone had redone the categories, but it didn't happen then.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:03, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
If anyone's curious about the technicals, this specific feature is governed by MediaWiki:Common.js. Search for "Magic editintros". There's one for BLPs and one for disambiguation pages. All other edit intros are explained at Wikipedia:Editnotice. —Designate (talk) 23:42, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
That's pretty spiffy. --j⚛e deckertalk 00:51, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Dablinks: link to redirect

Following is the output from http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dablinks.py?page=Female_genital_mutilation

No disambiguation links on Female genital mutilation.
Female genital mutilation links to 1 redirect which point back.

I can't see anything in the article which links to FGM. I copied the article and intended to omit parts of the copy to locate the problem, but the copy does not show any problems. Following is the output from http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dablinks.py?page=User:Johnuniq/sandbox4

No disambiguation links on User:Johnuniq/sandbox4.

Comparison of the two pages: [51]. I don't think dablinks caches results. Any ideas on the discrepancy? Johnuniq (talk) 10:11, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: I can reproduce the issue. I suggest you post on User talk:Dispenser/Dablinks to see if Dispenser can help you. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 13:55, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: It shows up as both a link and a transclusion in Special:WhatLinksHere/FGM, so it's in the MediaWiki link tables and is nothing to do with reflinks. The Female genital mutilation page has {{redirect|FGM}}, and that template was recently Lua-ised, so the answer probably lies buried within Module:Redirect hatnote and therefore Mr. Stradivarius (talk · contribs) is the best person to answer this. From what I can observe, the module contains code to determine if the redir (in this case FGM) exists or not, and if it doesn't, categorises the main page in Category:Missing redirects; I hope that this doesn't work like {{exists}} (see my comments at Template talk:Exists#Efficiency) - but otherwise, why is a transclusion necessary? I also suspect that this code creates an invisible link back to the redirect. I can't be 100% sure, because I can't test it: in the old days, I would change {{redirect|FGM}} to {{subst:redirect|FGM}} and go for Show changes, and see what Wikicode was being pulled in. This does not work for modules. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:10, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, that's it. Skimming Module:Redirect hatnote suggests it executes mw.title.new('FGM') for which the doc says "This function is expensive ... The title referenced will be counted as linked from the current page." It uses that function to test if the target of the redirect exists (if not, it outputs Category:Missing redirects). I guess any page in the main namespace which uses {{redirect}} will be counted in "what links here" for the target. Bit unfortunate. Groan. I see you already said all that. Johnuniq (talk) 10:28, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes this is because of Module:Redirect hatnote. Specifically, it is because of the Lua equivalent of {{#ifexist:{{{1}}}||{{main other|[[Category:Missing redirects]]}}}} in the old Template:Redirect. The link table entry is caused by using mw.title.new to create a Lua title object for the first parameter passed to the template, which is a necessary step for checking page existence in Lua. The issue isn't specific to Lua though: according to the docs for #ifexist, "If a page checks a target using #ifexist:, then that page will appear in the Special:WhatLinksHere list for the target page". So the previous template should have also caused the same link table entry as well. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:22, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: It's listed as a link, yes, I understand that; but why does it also show as a transclusion? --Redrose64 (talk) 12:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: That's because of the code for the new tracking category, Category:Invalid redirects (see this thread for its rationale). If the first positional parameter is an existing page title, Module:Redirect hatnote uses Module:Redirect to check if the page is a redirect, and to check if the redirect target is the current page. To do this it grabs the entire unparsed page contents with title:getContent, which counts as a transclusion. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:53, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Sounds expensive. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:56, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Usually it means one extra expensive parser function call. If the redirect target is not the current page (i.e. the cases where Category:Invalid redirects is populated), it's two more. Those are from creating the Scribunto title objects for the pages involved. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 01:41, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Notify another JavaScript file that my script has finished running?

I've got a script, let's call it Script A. When Script A finishes running its relatively lengthy function (takes about 500 ms on large pages like WP:ANI), I want it to notify Script B (in another file) that it is done running.

What's the best way to do this?

If this were a normal JS environment that I had full control over, then I might use something like jQuery promises, but I don't know if that's an option here? Gary (talk · scripts) 06:39, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Are both running at the same time, or does one trigger the other? Chillum 06:42, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Script A is run on Wikipedia through my monobook.js, and Script B is actually run through Greasemonkey, which is an addon for Firefox. But it has access to variables from Wikipedia scripts; the only problem is that I can't fine-tune which script runs first, so the script that runs first is different each time at the moment. Gary (talk · scripts) 18:16, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
You con use jQuery promises, the entire library is always loaded already. Matma Rex talk 11:42, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, but see above. Script B is run through Greasemonkey at the moment. But if necessary, I may be forced to move the GM scripts back to Wikipedia then. Gary (talk · scripts) 18:16, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
@Gary: There are a variety of ways that you could do this. You effectively want asynchronous message passing using a shared memory location. The shared memory space is the DOM. One example would be to have Script A place an empty <span>...</span> with a specific ID in the DOM as its last action. When Script B runs, it checks for the existence of the <span>...</span> with that ID. If it exists, then do your Script B processing. If it does not exist, then set a timed callback and retest for the span. You probably also should count the number of times/accumulated time waiting and issue an error if the span is not found within some period. — Makyen (talk) 15:42, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
That's exactly the solution I was thinking of using. I'm thinking creating a node at the end of the page, before the </body>, like <div id="script-a-done"></div> (with a more descriptive name), then in Script B, checking for its existence every 250 ms or so. And loop that for about ten times (so 2.5 seconds total), before giving up. Seems reasonable to me. Normally it would only run once. Gary (talk · scripts) 16:16, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@Gary: Script B has access to variables from Wikipedia scripts, so you shouldn't need to use the DOM, just set a global variable when A is ready and check for that from B with if (window.myVar) --V111P (talk) 05:21, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Yeah I also realized that, so I can just loop the script, similar to my method of using the DOM for this. Gary (talk · scripts) 17:01, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Using an actual variable which is shared between the two contexts for the flag is certainly preferred. Given that this appears to be for your own use, you do not need to make sure that it works across multiple browsers (your use of Greasemonkey implies this). The generic solution is using the DOM which should be shared across almost any JS context (as potential DOM manipulation is usually a goal for JS environments). Using the contents of the title of an empty <span>...</span> with a specific id is similar to the method used by COinS. Without testing, I would not want to guarantee that both scripts share the same live copy of any particular variables other than the DOM. While I have not actually done any work with Greasemonkey, my understanding was that such scripts were specifically placed in a separate sandbox for security reasons. — Makyen (talk) 17:59, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Greasemonkey no longer has a sandbox unless it is explicitly indicated. However, the problem is that Greasemonkey scripts sometimes run before Wikipedia scripts, and sometimes run after, because they are essentially running in parallel (from my understanding). So that's why the setTimeout loop is necessary, which I will cancel after 10 or so failed attempts at finding the necessary empty DOM element or variable. Gary (talk · scripts) 20:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Maybe you can use mw.hook for this? Helder 13:40, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks I'll check that out. Gary (talk · scripts) 17:01, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
@Helder.wiki: Do you know if there is a list of hooks that are available to use? Gary (talk · scripts) 05:03, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
@Gary: I don't know, but this search on GitHub should give you an idea of what exists on core. There are others defined on extensions, and you can also define your own hooks (see e.g. commons:MediaWiki:Gadget-libAPI.js). Helder 15:55, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Arranging tables into two columns

Recently, there was a discussion about how best to arrange some tables into two columns on the Help:IPA pages. Originally, they were using a <table> element to achieve the layout, but recently switched to <div>s and inline CSS.

Unfortunately, with the current markup (examples: here, here, here, here, and here), the layout breaks when viewed from a mobile device (according to the Chrome DevTools).

Here are some options I thought of:

1. Changing the tables into a single column layout.

  • Pro: Usable for all devices.
  • Con: Desktop users (the majority) can't see the tables in compact view.

2. Using flexbox in the CSS. There's an example here where flexbox converts to single column when the screen is smaller.

  • Pro: Usable for almost all devices; desktop users get a better experience; gracefully degrades into single column when the browser doesn't support flexbox.
  • Con: A lot of vendor prefixes to keep track of in the inline CSS.

3. Ask a developer to add a class with Media Queries to the Wikipedia CSS code.

  • Pro: Easier for editors to use; usable for all devices; desktop users get a better experience.
  • Con: Such a specific problem isn't worth modifying the Wikipedia code base! (Plus it would take a while to convince everybody)

There might be probably is a better way that I'm not thinking of. Does anyone have any thoughts?

- Quidmore (talk) 01:03, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Quidmore: I don't like 1 just because it looks so bad on desktops. Regarding 2 and 3, we can edit MediaWiki:Common.css to add a new class ourselves (and accomplish either of those more easily), without bothering any developers. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Have you considered {{div col}}/{{div col end}}? You can see them in action at Wikipedia:Meetup/UK#London. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:09, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
As long as columns play nice with tables. Make sure to use the .nocolbreak class in the tables. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 17:37, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Very good catch! I didn't realize there was a way to keep the tables from breaking. That was the reason I didn't include CSS multi column layout (which is what the {{div col}} template appears to use) in my original list.
I like the idea of using this template, but is there a way to make one column wider than the other? On several of my original examples, the table on the left is wider than the table on the right. I'm not sure how important it is, though. Quidmore (talk) 20:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
To be fair; I just created that class because it could be usefull. Just experiment with it in the sandbox. Some older browsers may not support the nocolbreak CSS, but those borwser tend not to support columns in the first place.
Multi column layout always produce equal widht columns. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:50, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Okay, I'm trying to use it in my sandbox, but I'm running into a problem. The table (with the .nocolbreak class) is breaking. Using DevTools, I find that the .nocolbreak needs to be placed in the <tbody> element instead of on the table itself (and a quick look at Help:Table does not reveal any easy way to add it to that element either). Am I doing something wrong? I'm using Chrome 36, if that helps. Quidmore (talk) 04:36, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
You're doing everything right. Chrome seems to have a bug; when I disable and re-enable the -webkit-column-break-inside: avoid; property in Chrome's web inspector, it kicks everything into place. the CSS also works in Opera, and Firefox seems to not break tables regardless. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:31, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I suspected it was a bug. It seemed that whenever I triggered a layout recalculation (by resizing the screen, etc.), it would fix the problem. My earlier comment about the class needing to be applied to the <tbody> is probably incorrect. I now believe the change just triggered a layout recalculation that fixed it.
It appears too unpredictably to figure out a solution. If it's a bug, it will probably go away soon. Quidmore (talk) 23:00, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Hopefully. You may want to check Chrome's Bugzilla. Chrome's handling of multi-column layout has always been slightly problematic. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 11:40, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

New section invading refs (request for assistance)

I've been trying [52][53] to insert a new Research directions section at the conclusion of the Esophageal cancer article, immediately above the list of References. For some reason, the new section seems to encroach on the Reference section [54]. Not sure why...
Any help would be much appreciated. 86.157.144.73 (talk) 12:57, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  fixed The last ref was <ref name=Lagergren-2013> but should have been <ref name=Lagergren-2013 /> - note the slash. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:03, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Ah, silly me... I'm always overlooking that sort of thing. Thank you very much Redrose64 for fixing the train so quickly! 86.157.144.73 (talk) 13:09, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
We used to get an error but the automatic reference list causes it to no longer show. --  Gadget850 talk 13:32, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Twinkle tools missing

On most pages, when I load the page, the WP:Twinkle tools appear at the top of the page along with the normal Wikipedia tools ("Edit", "History", "Watch", etc). But on some pages (see Ahospitiality Club), the tools are missing. Any ideas? WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 14:38, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Template Visibility Issue

Has Wikipedia changed something about how templates appear? The boxes surrounding them have vanished for me... This has resulted in serious page clutter. Templates on top, on the side and on the bottom of pages are affected equally. Has anyone else seen this problem? I can try for a screenshot if necessary. Paris1127 (talk) 22:57, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Infobox screenshot
Bottom screenshot
Paris1127 (talk) 23:06, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Those pages look fine to me. Try a different web browser, clear your cache, purge or null edit the page, or even restart your computer. If it's still happening for you on one web browser, you might have to ask at the Help Desk. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:27, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
This is what they should look like (from a different browser):
Infobox screenshot
Bottom screenshot
I think Chrome is having issues with Wikipedia... Paris1127 (talk) 23:54, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
It looks like a cache problem. Click here to refresh that page. If that doesn't work, clear Chrome's cache (Tools > Clear browsing data...); it has been known to choke when its cache has filled up. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 09:43, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Clearing Chrome's cache did it. Thank you so much! Paris1127 (talk) 13:44, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

"Undo" not working properly?

I just did this manual undo because this undo "could not be undone due to conflicting intermediate edits; if you wish to undo the change, it must be done manually." However, I looked at the history, and while Help:Undo#Undo says it "will fail if undoing the edit would conflict with later edits." it seems to me (ISTM) that this edit would not have done so. (I'm not surprised by undo failing in such cases.) If I'm not mistaken, this diff shows that there were no differences between the line as it existed right after the edit I wanted to undo and the line as it existed right before undo failed and I had to do it manually. Has undo always been this weak? ISTM that where there are no differences between a line as it existed right after the edit one wants to undo and the line as it existed right before an undo attempt, the undo should not fail. Yet that was the case, and it did fail. Therefore, undo seems to be broken. --{{U|Elvey}} (t•c) 16:11, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Am I missing something?--{{U|Elvey}} (t•c) 03:50, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Redirects to subsections

I've noticed that redirects to subsections have been not quite hitting their targets for some time. A particulary bad example is WP:NGRIDIRON which finds the badminton section instead of American football. Any ideas? It seems to be limited to Firefox, I tried two other browsers there was no problem. The results weren't the same in Vector and Monobook, they went to different wrong sections. SpinningSpark 09:50, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed this in Firefox too. WP:NCRIC doesn't quite get there, but does in IE. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 11:26, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
It does if you hit F6-enter to "reload" the page (which doesn't actually reload anything except position). Perhaps it has something to do with Firefox positioning you before something loads. --NE2 11:34, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I think this has come up on this page before. IIRC, Firefox positions the screen while collapsible elements set to "collapsed" (in this case, the FAQ at the top of the page) are still expanded, so when they are automatically collapsed content below them is pushed upwards. SiBr4 (talk) 12:04, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 121#Faulty redirect mentions the same issue. SiBr4 (talk) 12:13, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 126#Redirect not working right --Redrose64 (talk) 14:21, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Note the difference between

The former works but the latter does not. Also, the direct url or wikilink

also works. So apparently there is only a problem when the anchor link is within a redirect. SpinningSpark 15:00, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Obvious solution: don't hide FAQs inside a collapsebox. --NE2 15:08, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

That's a solution? SpinningSpark 15:10, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
That's one solution. We can also automatically hide content and unhide it with Javascript, but that's a bit unkind for people without Javascript and for screenreader users. A third solution is to petition Firefox, but i'm guessing they will redirect u to solution 1 and 2. The fourth solution requires a bit more complicated javascript, that sends an event when it is done collapsing, and we hook other javascript in there to reposition the page after the content is collapsed. But that would be a rather big change... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:15, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I didn't hide anything, I was just trying to read the page. I don't think going round uncollapsing everything is going to fly, this is not the only page affected. As for petitioning Firefox, I already have. What I'd like to understand is what it is about our redirects that are causing Firefox a problem. As I said above, if the anchor is directly in the url it seems to work fine. SpinningSpark 19:23, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
It is certainly something to do with Firefox; in the change from FF 28 to FF 29 redirected links to sections started behaving differently, as noted at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 126#Redirect not working right (which I linked earlier). --Redrose64 (talk) 20:01, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Much to my surprise, it looks like Mozilla might actually do something about this. SpinningSpark 00:37, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

8TeamBracket-with third-fifth-seventh

Hello, I'm looking for a Template:8TeamBracket-with third-fifth-seventh. It's something like this ...

Quarterfinals Semifinals Finals
         
1  
8  
 
 
4  
5  
 
 
2  
7  
 
 
3  
6  

... but I need two more columns on the left side for defeated quarterfinalists (consolation bracket): "5th – 8th place playoffs" and on the far left "5th place final / 7th place match". This template would be very useful in basketball championship articles. Who can help me? Maiō T. (talk) 15:11, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Is Template:8TeamBracket-WTTC what you're looking for? I believe it was written for table tennis, rather than basketball, but it looks like it's what you're describing. (If there's a similar, basketball-specific variation of this template, my apologies; this was just the closest 8-team bracket I could remember existing) AddWittyNameHere (talk) 20:21, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Usually, those kinds of brackets are formatted symmetrically, with the losers' bracket tapering left from the opening round in the middle, and the double-losers' consolation tucked under the losers' bracket final, like the 3rd place consolation is under the finals in the above table. VanIsaacWScont 22:23, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I've just created this new Template:8TeamBracket-with third-fifth-seventh but I need your help with the completion. I think it would look good. Please add the Final, third & seventh playoffs. Thanks, Maiō T. (talk) 00:23, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Why do RFCs produce external links?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T28207

I was looking at an article which had the External links header set and was surprised to find the many external links in the article were produced automatically by the system. If I put RFC 2722 in an article, it produces a link without any markup and even if it's totally spurious (e.g. RFC 147238) I still get one. I can only suppress it (RFC 2722) with difficulty. Is this just a techie use that shouldn't be in the production MediaWiki? Chris55 (talk) 09:53, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

WP:RFCAUTO --NE2 10:07, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Hmm, thanks, that might be appropriate for ISBNs and PMIDs which have a purely referential function, but RFCs are often referred to in discussions, as on the page cited above. Also the ISBN marker generates an internal not an external link; and the use of rfc=, isbn=, pmid= in the citation templates produces both an internal (explanatory) and an external link which is better than the blunderbuss approach of WP:RFCAUTO. And why hasn't this been extended to DOI which seems very similar? Seems to me this mechanism should be reviewed. Chris55 (talk) 10:42, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
This behavior dates back to 2001 or so when people weren't really thinking about consequences the features they were introducing would have more than ten years later :) There is actually a bug calling for a review of this, T28207, but it has been filed over three years ago and hasn't seen much action either. Matma Rex talk 00:07, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
See Help:Magic links. ISBN links to Special:BookSources which is an internal link. RFC and PMID are external links. --  Gadget850 talk 01:26, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
This was also questioned on Portuguese Wikipedia some time ago. Helder 17:35, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Having read all that, it's amazing it's still in core. But less amazing that nobody's thought to update it to include DOI. It would need some determination to remove this 'feature' altogether, though it clearly should be templated. But I have to agree with the 'goofy' comment. Chris55 (talk) 20:52, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Edit MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account-invalid, MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account

In Special:UserLogin, messages will be shown as raw text. Since these two pages contain wiki markup, they need to be fixed. Here is an example of current text: 

Login error 						
<<table id="mw-protectedpagetext" class="plainlinks fmbox fmbox-warning" role="presentation"><tr><td class="mbox-text">
The user name "Dtac - Building Knowledge to Thai Society" <a href="/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Titleblacklist"
title="MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist">has been blacklisted</a> from creation. The Wikipedia
<a href="//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/" class="extiw" title="mw:">software</a> does not allow names that are greater than or
equal to 40 characters in length, has the same character repeat more than 10 times in a row, or use certain invalid
characters. Please select another username that complies with these restrictions, or if you need assistance, you may file
a request at <a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Request_an_account" title="Wikipedia:Request an account">
Wikipedia:Request an account</a>.</td></tr></table>>

See also bugzilla:43358 --Nullzero (talk) 18:38, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@Nullzero: Are you asking to convert the wikitext of those two pages to raw HTML? That bug has been fixed a long time ago and those two messages render fine for me at Special:Login/signup. --Glaisher (talk) 12:40, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

<span> tag as template parameter

I'm trying to create my first second userbox template, and I need it to support an HTML <span> tag as parameter 1. I can't get it to do the substitution, possibly because the tag is being resolved too early in the process and the result is not a valid template parameter.

The template is here and the transclusion is here. Correct answerer will have my eternal gratitude.   Mandruss |talk  10:01, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that an "=" sign is used in the signature. Try either replacing it with {{=}} or &#61;, or using a named parameter (|1=~~~). SiBr4 (talk) 11:10, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Got it using a named parameter (but went with a parameter name that's a little user-friendlier than "1"). ¡Gracias!   Mandruss |talk  11:29, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 2) Using the {{=}} template or &#61; Unicode escape inside HTML tags doesn't appear to work at all. SiBr4 (talk) 11:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Merging two interwikilinks? (request for assistance)

I wanted rapidly to link Rotator cuff tear to it:Tendinite della cuffia dei rotatori. While this sort of task used to be quite straightforward, following the introduction of Wikidata it's frankly gone beyond my paygrade. After messing around for some time, I got told (I think) to merge Q7370333 with Q3983414, but no obvious indication on how to do that. 86.157.144.73 (talk) 11:32, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I've merged them now. IMO, managing interwiki links are easier with Wikidata than the old method. You can use d:Special:mergeitems. See d:WD:MERGE for help on merging two items. --Glaisher (talk) 12:01, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for doing that Glaisher, and also for pointing to the link (though as a logged-out ip I don't get to see it). Nowadays, I frequently find difficulty doing this sort of task, especially when there's not a simple one-to-one correspondence between articles in different languages. 86.157.144.73 (talk) 12:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
You can't use d:Special:Mergeitems? It's available to IPs as well. I just checked that myself. --Glaisher (talk) 12:13, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Oops, sorry, my misreading - my attention was focused elsewhere. 86.157.144.73 (talk) 12:50, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Glaisher, the link for help is d:Help:Merge not d:WD:MERGE :) And thanks also from me for the link to d:Special:mergeitems – I always have problems with that. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:20, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edgars2007: Apparently namespace aliases don't work cross-wiki with interwiki links and URLs https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/WD:MERGE. If you typed WD:MERGE at the Wikidata search bar, it would redirect to that page. --Glaisher (talk) 12:24, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
The search bar finds the alternative capitalization d:WD:Merge, while links need correct case in the title (except for the first letter (unless the wiki is set to case-sensitive titles, like Wiktionary's mainspace)). Thus, d:WD:Merge links to d:Help:Merge as expected. Anomie⚔ 14:07, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Indeed. Thanks, --Glaisher (talk) 15:48, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Gmail labelling Wikipedia email suspicious

Eg leaving the message "This message may not have been sent by: name removed @gmail.com Learn more Report phishing". User:Ponyo also noticed this in an email I sent him from Wikipedia. Dougweller (talk) 15:26, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

It technically is a suspicious email because it was not sent by name removed @gmail.com - Wikimedia is spoofing the sender. My belief is it should come from a Wikimedia email address and use reply-to or cc: to provide the Wikipedia-user's email address to the recipient. –xenotalk 15:58, 15 August 2014 (UTC) p -> m
(edit conflict) This is not uncommon, I get it too as a gmail user. The sender is on a Wiki server (e.g. wiki-mail-eqiad.wikimedia.org) but the mail is sent "From" a gmail address. Gmail is only suspicious because it's not from one of their servers. One solution is for the system to set the "Reply-to" field to the sender's address, but not necessarily the From field. Chris55 (talk) 16:14, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
There might be less problems once bugzilla:64795 and its related tickets gets fixed. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks all. I mentioned it because this seems to be a new development. It's never happened to me before this month, and it's surprised at least one other editor who gets a lot of Wikipedia mail. Dougweller (talk) 11:01, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Gmail and Yahoo have increasingly become stringent on how email accounts are used, so it will take a bit for the rest of the world to catch up. Wikipedia is not the only website running into these kinds of errors. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:16, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Help with highlightText, again

I've reported this at T69784. Per Wnt: "I see ... some version (I don't know if it's the most recent for sure) of the highlightText at [55] with the infamous split-on-space at line 12." That's exactly it ... I'm hoping that all I need is a function (residing in or outside of Mediawiki) identical to highlightText, with (I'm guessing) the space in pat.split(" ") in line 12 replaced by a tab character. (Or, getting rid of the parsing entirely so I can pass an array of strings would be fine.) Any help? - Dank (push to talk) 03:53, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Bug in 'Sandbox' link colouring

Hi all. The 'Sandbox' link in the top-right corner has a bug in that it always appears in the blue 'link exists' colour, even if the sandbox doesn't exist. This goes against the user interface standard of links to pages that don't exist appearing in red (as the user page / talk page links in the same section do). Particularly given that this is a link that's useful for newbies, it is important that it should match the interface standard, and the link should be changed such that it appears in red if the sandbox doesn't yet exist.

I tried reporting this on bugzilla, as I thought it was a basic UI element, but it turns out that this link is added by javascript through MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js. As such, I guess there's two ways forward:

  1. Could someone that is more knowledgeable than me with javascript fix the problem here?
  2. Should we ask the WMF to implement the 'sandbox' link directly in MediaWiki rather than using a javascript hack to do it? That would also avoid the 'jumpiness' bug - when you load a page, the javascript runs slightly after the page is displayed, such that the user page / user talk page links jump to the left when the sandbox link appears.

The second option would need community consensus before being requested, I believe, so I'd like to ask if there is that consensus here?

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:43, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Also see this bug entry - the second option might happen anyway. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:46, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
To get the link to be colored according to the target page's existence, we'd need to fire off an API query to actually check for that. And we'd either need to cache the result locally or repeat that query on every pageview. All this effort seems to me excessive for adding a simple link to a sandbox page. Anomie⚔ 10:34, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Anomie. So option 2 is the best approach here, then? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:43, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

How to add image to infobox

Hi,

I've tried and tried to add an image to the infobox of Takht-i-Bahi, including copying the info box of Rohtas Fort and just changing the information to fit, but no dice. What is it that I'm not seeing? Thanks, Parabolooidal (talk) 20:09, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I have placed a placeholder image to the infobox, just replace the file name to the image you want. Mlpearc (open channel) 20:17, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
hummm, I did that and it didn't work exactly. I put File:Takht-i-Bahi3.jpg in File:Example.jpg and it turned out huge. If I take it out of the brackets [[ ]], like usually infoboxes do, it doesn't show up. Could you stick an image in there for me? Once one is in there, then I could switch if it doesn't look right. Thanks, Parabolooidal (talk) 20:42, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
I've added it with "220px" for the size. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:09, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks so much! I've learned something new. Best, Parabolooidal (talk) 21:36, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)—technical problem

I need to report what looks like a software problem on this page. It is being heavily edited given the current crisis, and today something has gone badly wrong with the Edit Page text and wikicode in section 9.5 "2014 events", in the entries after 8 August 2014. The entries appear normally in the regular text, but on the Edit Page they are all written backwards! I hope you can find someone to sort this out today, because at the present rate several entries a day are being made to this section and subsequent edits may compound the problem. --P123ct1 (talk) 14:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. There were some stray bi-directional override characters in the title field of one of the citation templates. I've removed them and copied the the title directly from the news site. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Mr. Stradivarius: Thanks very much! I don't know the first thing about software, but your reference to "bi-directional unicode" I think confirms what I suspected, that this glitch had something to do with all the Arabic script (which reads from right to left) that was in the wikitext around that point. --P123ct1 (talk) 17:12, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes and no: it wasn't the Arabic itself, but rather an invisible character that says "from this point, read the text from right to left". Just adding Arabic to a page won't have that effect on English text, although the Arabic itself will display from right to left. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:34, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Except that when deleting Arabic text (within a basic English text) there are switches back and forth in direction of movement, sometimes several, as you highlight the script to be deleted. --P123ct1 (talk) 01:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
@P123ct1: That's just because the text is Arabic. The original issue you brought here was different - it was an actual extra character. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 01:47, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
I see. Thanks! --P123ct1 (talk) 07:14, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-34

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 (1.24wmf17) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 21 (calendar).
  • There is a new protection level called superprotection. At the moment, only some Wikimedia Foundation employees have access to it. Administrators can't edit "superprotected" pages. [56] [57] [58]
  • You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page. [59] [60]
  • You can search for Wikimedia tools using a new list of tools. [61]
  • You can watch the first videos from Wikimania 2014. Some of them are about technical topics. More videos will come later.

Wikidata

  • After August 19, you can use Wikidata for inter language links on Wikinews. [62]
  • After August 19, you can use Wikidata for badges like "good" or "featured" articles. Next week, you will be able to show the badges in the article sidebar on Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote. [63]

Problems

  • There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed. [64] [65]

Tech news written by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Special Diff

I was wondering about this one: if I link with Special:Diff to some revision and the article/revision gets deleted, if there's a possibility, that one day this Special:Diff link can link to another article (in other words: are the revision numbers unique and don't get some other targets if page/revision is deleted). And (also in deleted pages/revisions) what about the thing, when I really don't know at least which page I'm viewing (example: Special:Diff/111111111111). If one would use the old system, then I would at least know which page the discussion is going around if the page is getting deleted (form the URL) but otherwise I don't know that. Some thoughts? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 05:13, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

The title is ignored—try these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Editnotice&diff=603606601&oldid=599788793
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Everyone_loves_apple_pie&diff=603606601&oldid=599788793
The numbers used will never change (and are not reused if the page is deleted); you can always pipe a link:
[[Special:Diff/603606601|Wikipedia:Editnotice edit 10 April 2014]] → Wikipedia:Editnotice edit 10 April 2014
Johnuniq (talk) 06:17, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
Ok, yes, but I think nobody would especially change the title for the url to mislead the other person (if we are talking about those links you gave) :) And actually I haven't seen so much normal describes for Special:Diff (usually it is like It was done with [[Special:Diff/603606601|this edit]]). And is it possible to know where the number goes (for the deleted pages), at least for admins? Then they could undelete page or tell to non-admins what was the changes. For the old system it is symple, for the Special:Diff - not (I would need to ask to undelete everything :D ). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 06:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
I've just tested this using my admin account, and it turns out to be a little complicated. If you use the standard diff URL with the title, then you get a message saying "View or restore n deleted edits?"; the text "n deleted edits" is linked to Special:Undelete for the page that the diff belonged to. (The message is made of MediaWiki:Thisisdeleted and MediaWiki:Restorelink.) There is also another message below it that says "One revision of this difference (nnnnnnnnn) was not found. This is usually caused by following an outdated diff link to a page that has been deleted. Details can be found in the deletion log." The text "deletion log" is linked to the page's deletion log, and the "nnnnnnnnn" text is unlinked. (The message itself is provided by MediaWiki:Difference-missing-revision.)

If you use [[Special:Diff/nnnnnnnnn]], then you only get MediaWiki:Difference-missing-revision, not MediaWiki:Thisisdeleted - the link to Special:Undelete for the deleted page disappears. Also, the deletion log link becomes the deletion log of the Main Page. However, the (nnnnnnnnn) in MediaWiki:Difference-missing-revision gets linked to the deleted text of the diff (also, confusingly enough, supplied by Special:Undelete, but with some different URL parameters). So it's still possible to tell which page the diff belonged to.

If you use the standard diff URL but fake the title parameter, you only get MediaWiki:Difference-missing-revision, not MediaWiki:Thisisdeleted. The deletion log is also for the fake title that we used. And the nnnnnnnnn text is not linked, so there's no way to tell what page the diff was from.

Because MediaWiki can check that the title is fake, it must be able to tell what the correct title is. For that reason, it must also be possible to change the software so that the error message is displayed the same way for all three of these scenarios (and probably more scenarios that I haven't thought of as well). You'd have to ask one of the devs how exactly to do that, though. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 07:29, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Bugzilla? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:31, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: I stumbled across the amazing Special:Redirect and am wondering what it does with a deleted revision id. The docs on the special page show two examples:

Would someone please provide a pageid for a deleted page and a revid for a deleted revision so we can try it. What does it show for an admin? Johnuniq (talk) 10:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Deleted pages don't really have a page_id, but Special:Redirect/page/41104910 and Special:Redirect/revision/582012795 should correspond to a recent delete by User:AnomieBOT III of the former redirect Template:Misarchiving welcome here. For an admin, it shows error messages which are presumably the same as for a non-admin. Anomie⚔ 11:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, although it's disappointing that the magic of Special:Redirect does not extend to showing something useful, such as the "A page with this title has previously been deleted" log extract seen when visiting the title of a deleted page. Johnuniq (talk) 12:34, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Text link to image

Is there markup to create a text link to an image on Commons, where the text is some arbitrary word or phrase? In other words, the equivalent of a piped wikilink to a page, but for an image?   Mandruss |talk  11:10, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

[[c:File:Example.jpg|Click here]] gives Click here. If you want such a link to be created to a local file, you could use [[:File:Example.jpg]].--Glaisher (talk) 11:16, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Got it, thanks!   Mandruss |talk  11:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Stray brackets

Can anyone figure out why stray brackets are appearing at the top of Interstate_94_in_Michigan#Exit_list? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 17:08, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I found that {{ occurs in 219 places, and }} occurs in 220 places.
—Wavelength (talk) 17:30, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, captain obvious. I want to know why it's showing up. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 17:43, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Removed. Was added in this edit: line 623. --Glaisher (talk) 17:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Section edit links missing

Does anyone know why all the edit section links (except the first) disappeared after I made this edit on Module talk:Sidebar? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:48, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Your signature contains bare double closing braces, which will terminate any unclosed template earlier in the page. There are two instances of {{A, B}, {C, D}...} in Module talk:Sidebar#More sophisticated default width setting?. However, the section edit links are there now. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:51, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
So technically, it's not my fault :) I fixed those openings though. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:01, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Edokter Your signature still contains unmatched curly braces that may disrupt pages. Mind throwing some nowiki tags around them if you really want them? — xaosflux Talk 22:41, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Disregard, see you've thrown code tags in there. — xaosflux Talk 22:42, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
<code> doesn't disable wikicode like <pre> does. And while my sig doesn't contain opening braces, it should never be the cause of any disruption. But I'll see what I can do to prevent it. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:46, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
I use &#123;{, &#124;, and &#125;} instead of {{, |, or }} in my signature to prevent double braces occurring in it. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 06:42, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect category total

Category:All Wikipedia level-3 vital articles states that it contains 879 articles, but by navigating through the 5 pages in the category, I count 200 + 200 + 200 + 200 + 89 = 889 articles. Am I missing something incredibly obvious, or is there a bug in the page counting algorithm? Malerisch (talk) 03:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

It almost certainly means that the process that calculates the total number hasn't been chached in the time that ten article were added to the category. A lot of calculations on Wikipedia lag current statistics (e.g. ages in BLP infoboxes) by up to two months. Without knowing exactly how category populations are tabulated, I would suggest purging the cache on the category page and see if that doesn't work. VanIsaacWScont 04:40, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
I tried making a null edit, but that didn't fix the count. I also don't think it's a cache issue: I temporarily removed {{Vital article}} from Talk:History of East Asia, and the category now states that it contains 878 articles, which is still 10 off. I'm certain that my count is correct though (it's not hard to check either), so I'm not sure where the discrepancy comes from. Malerisch (talk) 05:54, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Hmm, if it's responding to removal of a member, that doesn't look like a cache issue. So I thought it might be a human counting issue: I went in and copied the whole category list to notepad++ and had it count the number of items, and there are definitely 10 more articles than the category page says there are. I will not make a similar assessment of the 8700+ level-4 vital articles category, but both levels 1 and 2 have correct counts. I honestly have absolutely no clue what the hell is going on here. VanIsaacWScont 06:43, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
I think this is the same problem as Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 128#Negative category membership counts. SiBr4 (talk) 08:19, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
It seems this is a very old bug. VanIsaacWScont 08:57, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Good to know that it's been documented, at least. Thanks for finding the bug report! For the record, I counted up the number of articles in Category:All Wikipedia level-4 vital articles using API:Categorymembers and got a total of 8,759 articles, which is 12 more than the category says it contains (8,747). Malerisch (talk) 14:47, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
FWIW, This problem happened to me as I was clearing out the error tracking category Category:Pages with archiveurl citation errors‎ a few months ago. There was a persistently high count displayed, about 100 articles higher than the actual number, for many months until I reduced the article count to under 200 (a single screen). Once I got the count under 200, the count was fixed and has remained so. I suspect that there is some sort of different math that happens when there is more than one screen's worth of articles in the category. It would be nice to have a way to purge the category count. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:42, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes. Looking through some of the bug reports, it looks like they changed the behavior several years ago to updated the count automatically with every edit when it was under 200, since the overhead was small enough that the table lookup wasn't much of a savings of just doing the count itself. But it still does a full count only occasionally for categories with over 200 population, and normally just gets the value from the table, while additions or removals of the category just increments or decrements the table value (which is where the errors get introduced). VanIsaacWScont 23:23, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Making a template

On my userpage I have a set of instructions that I drew up—see [66]—which I would like to turn into a template that I can use in text generally. How do I do this? --P123ct1 (talk) 10:15, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Put just the text you want on a separate page, for example User:P123ct1/My template. To use that page as a template, type in {{User:P123ct1/My template}} on any page. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:57, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
I did that, but when I typed it in, all that came up was "User:P123ct/My template", in faint red. Have I missed out some code somewhere? --P123ct1 (talk) 13:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
You've put it on User talk:P123ct1/My template rather than User:P123ct1/My template -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:46, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't know how I managed that! Works perfectly now. Thanks. If I wanted to make a second template, where else could I put the text? You can't use the user "my template" page again, can you? --P123ct1 (talk) 14:18, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
You can call the page whatever you want. Create at User:P123ct1/anything and use with {{User:P123ct1/anything}} -- WOSlinker (talk) 14:25, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Better to use descriptive names for each template you create, for example by moving the first template to User:P123ct1/Footnotes or something similar. SiBr4 (talk) 14:55, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
I've got the hang of it now. Thanks for everyone's help. --P123ct1 (talk) 15:22, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Unable to view a video on Mac!

I am using Safari 6.0.2. When i view a video it will say that i must install a new version of Java to do so. After i install it, when i view the video it will say that the site is not on the "whitelist" and the video cannot be viewed. When i found and edit the "whitelist" it will say that the video comes from bits.wikimedia.org and you need to whitelist this too. But, after i add bits.wikimedia.org to the whitelist, it will still say "bits.wikimedia.org is not on the 'whitelist'." After i exit the browser and open it again, when i view the same video it will say "You must install a new version of Java" again. I am using version 7 update 67 after my last update(It still says "version 7 update 67 is the most recent version of Java.") Please notify me on my talk page when you answer.S/s/a/z-1/2 (talk) 11:00, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

@Ssaz 12: I don't think that this is a VPT matter, have you tried WP:RD/C? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:47, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
This post is about viewing a video on Wikipedia.S/s/a/z-1/2 (talk) 12:00, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
This is probably about the Cortado applet which is the fallback for older systems. Does the "whitelist" refer to your browser settings as covered in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5678 ? Wondering if the error "You must install a new version of Java" is triggered by the Cortado applet or the Safari browser. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 12:09, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Video on Safari is a mess. Might be better to use Firefox or Chrome. It seems that applet is now starting again (I think for a while we skipped the plugin altogether and just made the user download the file in Safari). I'm hoping that is in preparation of signing it so that it becomes at least a bit usable again on Safari, but i'm not sure. Bawolff might know. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:36, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Our cortado applet is pretty broken currently. https://upload.wikimedia.org/crossdomain.xml is wrong, the applet isn't signed, etc. At this point I would recommend just downloading the video from the image description page, and viewing in an external program (like VLC). Or using chrome. Sorry for the suckiness :S. Bawolff (talk) 17:36, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there an anti-ITALICTITLE?

  Resolved

Congress on Research in Dance displays with an italic article title to me for some reason, whereas it shouldn't, according to MOS (it's the name of a group, not of a scholarly journal). Is there a way to stop articles from having italic titles? Thanks. It Is Me Here t / c 18:55, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Never mind, it turns out it was coming from {{Infobox journal}}. It Is Me Here t / c 18:59, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Make all redirects soft using JS

If I wanted to make all redirects soft (i.e. they don't redirect), how could I go about doing that with JavaScript? I'm looking to do this in order to repair or refine redirects en masse. Thanks. 23W 21:39, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

A link to a redirect has the class .mw-redirect. Look for links with that class and append ?redirect=no to the link. You may also want to look at User:Anomie/linkclassifier; it may already suit your needs. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:53, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edokter: I can't seem to get it to work. Am I supposed to do var redirect = document.getElementsByClassName("mw-redirect"); redirect.href += "?redirect=no"; or something entirely different? I've already customized my CSS to show redirects as green. 23W 22:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@23W: Probably the best way to do this is though JQuery. $("a.mw-redirect").attr("href", function(count, value){return value + "?redirect=no";}) should do it. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:05, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@Writ Keeper: This works perfectly. Thank you! 23W 23:12, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Coordinate map issues

Hey there - through OTRS, I've been talking to a user who has had issues with the coordinate map that appears in the infobox of city articles, specifically McClure, Illinois. The map and its red coordinate point appear fine in the article, but when the user goes to print it (through both the Windows 8 printing interface and Wikipedia's own page printing option), the coordinate is located up in the middle of the map. Tried searching for previous bugs, but I'm not too familiar. Any idea what could be going on? Known bug? Compatibility issue? Thanks! ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 23:06, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I can't reproduce this in Firefox or Chrome. Perhaps this is an Internet Explorer issue? Seeing as it's working for me, I also doubt it's an issue with Module:Location map, although Jackmcbarn may still be interested in this report. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:22, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@SuperHamster: Perhaps you could ask the user what browser they were using at the time? That would help us narrow things down. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:24, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@SuperHamster: This is probably not it, but I note that the template has more than one set of coords, one filled in, one blank. Any chance the print option is picking up the wrong set, and trying to locate at zeros, which might default to the middle?--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:31, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: @Sphilbrick: Thanks for commenting, guys. I asked the user what browser they're using, and if it's IE whether it's in desktop mode or metro mode (in case the user still happens to be using Windows 8 and not 8.1). ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 15:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: @Sphilbrick: User is using the desktop version of IE in Windows 8. I re-downloaded the browser myself (bleh) and tested it, and experienced the same issue the user was having when doing a print-preview. I uploaded a screenshot at File:Map printing glitch.png showing the glitch. The same thing appears to happen for East Cape Girardeau, Illinois and Tamms, Illinois, both of which displayed the dot much farther up than it should be. Park Forest, Illinois also showed a bit of variation by a few pixels, with the dot appearing lower than it should have. No idea what's going on beyond that; I'll try experimenting some more. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 18:00, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Surely it cannot be coincidence that all of those examples are using the template Geobox|Settlement. Can you look at one with a different template, to confirm or reject that it is a combination of that template and browser combination?--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:08, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick: Hah, just did that - Cleveland appears just fine. To summarize, looks like the issue is variation in the vertical placement of coordinates when using Geobox|Settlement. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 18:32, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: @SuperHamster: @Sphilbrick: The problem is that Template:Geobox doesn't use Module:Location map to draw its maps. It uses its own (buggy) code. Converting it to use Module:Location map will fix it. I'll try to do that myself at some point, but anyone else can feel free to try if they want it fixed sooner. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:37, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Hedonil's new search history tool

I have left a message on Hedonil's Talk page about his new search history tool, and from the date of his last message, it looks as if he may be away. So can anyone else help, please? This is the message I left:

"I am having trouble with your new gadget. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and quite often it comes up with a message saying "Internal error", "The URI you have requested, /xtools/blame/?project=en.wikipedia.org&article=Islamic+State+of+Iraq+and+the+Levant&text=agreed+to+supply+Kurdish+forces, appears to be non-functional at this time." What is happening? Hope you can fix it soon, as it is such a good tool and I rely on it!"

--P123ct1 (talk) 16:20, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Replied on talk page. In short: Preparations for an repository update, so that OpenSource isn't just claimed but proven. btw. X! Edit Counter is now fully restored and better than ever since 2008 (and it's hard to beat a legend). All other modules should also be alive and kicking again. Cheers --Hedonil (talk) 02:41, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Template:lang-de/sandbox

I need help on adding Austrian German parameters into Template:lang-de, so I don't need to use Template:lang-de-AT, which is (nearly) useless waste of space. Since "lang-de" is locked, I need some help here on inserting "Austrian German" language into the template's sandbox. As for consensus, well... I'll be notifying related WikiProjects. --George Ho (talk) 20:15, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

If by "locked" you mean protected, then yes, Template:Lang-de is protected, but its sandbox isn't. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:53, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Well, we have been using Wiki-jargon nowadays, and I really do mean main template page, not "sandbox". --George Ho (talk) 20:58, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
So what you want is some sort of parameter, perhaps |variant=at or some such like that? Are there other variants of German that you should roll into this same template? Right now the sandbox is the same as the live template so there is nothing for anyone to do until you make some sort of change to the sandbox version.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:16, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I don't know how to add it or change it. I'm not good right now at complex stuff. I'm waiting for somebody... A super-expert, maybe. --George Ho (talk) 23:07, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) In your opening post you say you want to do this so you don't need to use Template:lang-de-AT, which is (nearly) useless waste of space. Can you explain why {{lang-de-AT}} is (nearly) a waste of space? If there are legitimate reasons why {{lang-de-AT}} is (nearly) a waste of space, then certainly we should do something about it. There are those who might say that {{lang-de-AT}} is a fork of {{lang-de}} and on that basis alone would argue that there is sufficient reason to merge the two templates. For such simple templates, I don't see that there is much to be gained by merging them – {{lang-de}} has been stable since October 2012 and {{lang-de-AT}} has been stable since its creation in January 2013.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:41, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
This template requires a user to search for Austrian-related articles and research a difference between Standard German and Austrian German. Well... I haven't met one German language expert yet. I haven't studied German dialects at all, and I don't think you did either. Of course, that wouldn't be the (main) reason, is it? The template itself is a waste of space ever since creation. Also, there is no "lang-de-CH" currently, and, if created, which one is Swiss? --George Ho (talk) 00:03, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Isn't it the other way round? A user requires {{lang-de-AT}} for Austrian-related articles. The template makes no requirements on the user (except to type its name correctly etc). You're right, I'm no German scholar, though I fail to see how that is relevant to this discussion. Once again you've declared that {{lang-de-AT}} is a waste of space without giving us anything to support that assertion.
Perhaps, WP:TFD is the best solution to this problem.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:38, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I concur, but I've nominated "lang-en-XX" templates for deletion, and I don't want to nominate too many at this time. --George Ho (talk) 03:22, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Are there other "lang" templates that work like this? If not, it probably does not make sense to fork this template by adding parameters to it. It's better to have one template per language unless you're going to redo the whole set of similar templates wholesale.
In other news, "de-AT" does not appear to be a valid ISO 639 language code, and Austrian German does not appear to have its own ISO 639 code, at least from my searching on the LOC's web site. It is cited elsewhere as a valid ISO code, but not at what appears to be the canonical source. All codes appear to be two or three letters (e.g. "de" for German and "gsw" for Swiss German).
In other other news, this template appears to be used in exactly one article. If you wanted to make an end run around modifying the lang-de template, you could make it so that the lang-de-AT template is not used in any articles, then take it to TFD with some of the above information. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:21, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Not a fork as I understand Editor Goerge Ho's request; rather, it's adding functionality to {{lang-de}} so that {{lang-de-AT}} becomes excess to requirements.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:44, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
It still wouldn't be, though. There's nothing "excess" about having a simple template with no parameters do what Ho wants to do with more parameters in a complex template. For the end-user editor the only difference will be having to abandon {{lang-de-at}} for {{lang-de}}. Since the latter is longer, has more complicated syntax, and requires more server parsing, it is the one that's excess to requirements.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:02, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
The discussions at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 August 13#Template:Lang-en-GB (and the next few threads) may give some insight here. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:53, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Jonesey95, this isn't covered by the ISO 639 varients. 639 is only for saying what the two or three letter codes will be. This is actually covered by RFC 5646. This link from w3.org does the best explanation. Skip down to the "The region subtag" section, about 60% the way down the article. They give an example of how these codes are constructed and mention AT. German Wikipedia also uses these tags... they have six lang type templates for German. Vorlage:DeS (German), Vorlage:GswS-ch (German-Swiss), Vorlage:BarS (Bavarian) and three for old versions of German. No Austrian (that I could tell). Bgwhite (talk) 00:54, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I did it; I managed to add variety. However, it probably still needs a little work. I could add Standard German, Swiss German, and other examples of German varieties. --George Ho (talk) 19:27, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

  • There isn't anything "wrong" with {{lang-xx}} parameters supporting a |variety= parameter (other than "variety" is a Wikipedianism and not a linguistic term); I support the idea, if it's done very carefully, with a switch test. Even if it's done right, it's still not a rationale for deleting templates than anyone familiar with language codes will expect to exist. If we don't care about the parser overhead, the {{lang-xx-YY}} versions can be replaced with calls to {{lang-xx|variety=YY}}, but only after the {{lang-xx}} has been set up to support |variety= and is doing so correctly for any plausible variety. This is a self-correcting issue with separate templates for varieties, because they'll redlink if they don't exist; by contrast, using {{lang-en}} will produce a seamless template result but no useful metadata. The main reason we have these separate templates is to force the generation of valid metadata, because what comes out of the template has to be valid language code; we cannot trust editors to input whatever they think a code is or should be into such a template, because they will frequently guess wrong. Note also that {{lang-en}} is essentially a shell, a placeholder for technical reasons, so this proposition won't work at all for migrating {{lang-en-GB}}, etc., to {{lang-en}}; the latter does not use {{Language with name}}, so it does not generate any language metadata at all (on en.wiki). Those must therefore remain separate templates, or {{lang-en}} has to get very complicated, to use completely different code depending on whether it has a |variety= specified or not, which defeats the purpose of all this "let's simply thing" stuff. Which really hasn't been simplifying anything but causing mess and heat.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:02, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Without the array extension it would become a crazy mess that would have to iterate possibilities (of which there are many thousands possible). Every time one needed to be added it could break all the others if not done properly. Chances of that would become more likely to the more that was added. Separating them also has the benefit that if vandalism occurs it only affects 1 language instead of all of them. Also, the bigger 1 template got the longer it would take to execute because of all the conditionals vs simply executing a simple quick template for each case. Until array extension arrives (if ever) the current method is by far the best solution. JMJimmy (talk) 13:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
By "array extension" I guess you mean mw:Extension:Arrays? We have Scribunto now, so extensions for complicated parser functions aren't likely to be added. Anomie⚔ 14:58, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Remember it is good to be consistent with {{Lang|de-AT}} and the {{Icon}} family of templates. Creating a new sub-structure for variety, and another for script could get complicated. It also consumes far more resource than a simple solution. I notice a massive increase in template complexity over the last couple of years, notably in templates where it actually matters. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:18, 20 August 2014 (UTC).

See also

  FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussions elsewhere

George Ho has been raising related issues in a number of different forums. Participants here may wish to synch their input at these other related threads (most of which deal with {{lang-xx-YY}} templates in particular, while the one at WT:NOT is more general):

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:02, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikibreak broken

My attempt at an enforced wikibreak here is not working. Previewing changes logs me out, while actually saving has no effect beyond changing the text. And neither prevents me from logging back in. I'm using Safari 7.0, which is little funny about various issues. Hairhorn (talk) 17:58, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Going to give wastenotime a try. Hairhorn (talk) 16:17, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"Old templates"

Those naughty Wikipedians have created a bunch of templates that are not ready for Visual Editor! Maybe the Foundation should clear out some of the "old templates"...

See this brief conversation with Lila on Meta for some curious perspective.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:32, 20 August 2014 (UTC).

Protection level selection

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T71640
  Resolved

Does anybody know why the list of protection levels at the "protect" tab was altered? It used to be "Allow all users"; "Allow only autoconfirmed users"; "Allow only template editors and admins"; "Allow only administrators" - an ascending sequence. Now, "Allow only template editors and admins" appears first, with the others following in the traditional order. Quite apart from the fact that the sequence is illogical, it used to be possible to quickly check the prot level of a page by clicking the "change protection" tab and glancing at the lists - any list where the bar was not at the top meant that a protection was in force. Now, I have to stop and read what it says. It also means that if I want to lower the prot level from semi-prot to unprotected, it's all too easy to raise it to template-protected by accident. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Because the superprotection deployment was slightly botched (T71640). This has a patch pending: gerrit:154376 – reading the discussion on it, especially the opposing votes, provides valuable insight into the dealing of our community. Matma Rex talk 00:16, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Aha, so the bug actually came in with gerrit:153302. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:56, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Animated gifs and "thumb"

In some articles like Parallel curve an animated gif plays automatically even though it's in a "thumb" disposition, but in others like Osculating_circle#Lissajous_curve I had to remove "thumb" for it to play automatically. Can someone explain what the reason/rule is? JMP EAX (talk) 17:15, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Big GIF images (where width*height*number of frames > 6*10^7) won't be animated, small ones will be. It has nothing to do with thumb disposition. If a GIF image is too big to be animated, there should be a warning on its image page. Bawolff (talk) 17:38, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
That's not my experience. Using Google Chrome, this old version of the Osculating circle, which uses "thumb", is not animated. Simply removing "thumb" resulted in the animation being played in the article. JMP EAX (talk) 14:33, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Oh. If you don't use thumb, and don't specify a width (e.g just do [[File:Foo.gif]]), then MediaWiki won't try to shrink the file, and just use the original version, which is animated. This particular image is somewhat of a special case, it appears it was uploaded when the limit for animating the thumbs was much lower, so sizes that were first viewed before the limit was increased are still, but sizes that were first viewed after the limit was increased are animated. I purged the image, which should now make it animated in all sizes (May have to ctrl+r refresh the page to clear your browser cache). Bawolff (talk) 17:57, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Than explains it then. JMP EAX (talk) 18:28, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

"Unused" list defined reference error is unnecessary and obnoxious

Someone made a half-hearted attempt to split off part of Shooting of Michael Brown into 2014 Ferguson unrest and the "list-defined references" someone imposed are -- as always -- a pain in the ass. I have little sympathy for using them at all, let alone those who go in and make a page of edits like at Shooting of Michael Brown as they convert, laboriously, everything into their favorite arcane format... seemingly deleting references they don't like as they go along -- or is it just reorganization? can I even tell? But I don't want to argue all that right now. I just want to complain about the way that 2014 Ferguson unrest looked as of [67] with a page of bold red errors because someone committed the heinous crime of having some data in the article that isn't actually being displayed.

One recommended fix for which, according to the Help:Footnotes or Help:Cite errors/Cite error references missing key, is to comment out the unused references, which simply makes the unused information in the article text slightly longer. (Here is what someone actually did: [68])

I'm not saying it wouldn't be "kind of useful" to have a debug option where you can preview an article and see the unused refs highlighted this way, but as a matter of routine article development, as seen here in the field, it is just a needless obstacle. Wnt (talk) 18:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

It was a conscious design decision by the developer who implemented List-defined references. The reasoning was that you should not have references that were unused. If there is consensus, we do have the capability to suppress the error entirely. If you with to pursue this, start a RFC. --  Gadget850 talk 21:21, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
And List-defined references were a request on Bugzilla, as were the Automatically generated reference lists. When the developers operate without input, they give what is asked for, which is not necessarily what we really want. --  Gadget850 talk 22:30, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
"you should not have references that were unused" means "you should not have WP:General references". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
The fundamental problem is not the "list defining" feature, nor the feature to report unused references, but the used of the "named" refs (in the form of "<ref name= ...>"). Named refs supposedly solve the problem of how to reuse a reference, but tend to create problems where slave refs are dependent on master refs in other sections. It is the use of named refs that are obnoxious. And unnecessary. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Process ideas for software development


Hello,

I am notifying you that a brainstorming session has been started on Meta to help the Wikimedia Foundation increase and better affect community participation in software development across all wiki projects. Basically, how can you be more involved in helping to create features on Wikimedia projects? We are inviting all interested users to voice their ideas on how communities can be more involved and informed in the product development process at the Wikimedia Foundation.

I and the rest of my team welcome you to participate. We hope to see you on Meta.

Kind regards, -- Rdicerb (WMF) talk 22:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

Autoconfirmed flag: Change from "4 days after registration" to "4 days of activity"

After a recent report of vandalism by a sleeper account (Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Gnuuu_editor_behavior my question here is how easy could it be to change requirement for "4 days after registration" to "4 days of activity". I guess this was the intended requirement anyway. -- Magioladitis (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 09:43, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Probably not incredibly hard from a coding standpoint, but sleeper accounts still have to make 10 edits to become autoconfirmed, so ill-meaning users will just spread their qualifying edits over four days while well-meaning users may be confused or stymied. –xenotalk 09:49, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
The first question would be... what kind of activity and are we allowed to track it.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:53, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
@Xeno and TheDJ: By activity, I mean editing that expands in 4 different days. Of course there is always a way to abuse these things but at least it is a start for lazy vandals. It's only a minor improvement for starts. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:13, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
The question is whether the improvement in vandal-stopping would be worth the added complexity of having to scan the revisions table to determine "active" days. Anomie⚔ 11:19, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Anomie I don't know how complex is. That's why I posted it here. My guess is it should not be that complex but it's really a guess. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:26, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
Not really sure either, but one doesn't need to work on a definition of "active" I assume it is meant to be any edit. So one has to review the edits created to make sure that there are four different days. If they make 10 edits on day one, then no more, they never become autoconfirmed. 10 on day one, then try something on day five, they are not yet autoconfirmed. It is wortth asking how hard this is, it doesn't sounds like it should be hard, though admittedly a bit harder than just counting elapsed days and counts.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:56, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
if its not hard to code then its definitely worth doing, but i assume by activity you mean edits not logging in.Blethering Scot 21:51, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
The code is easy probably. It's the performance problem that would make it hard. Parsing the RC table to measure the activity on en.wp would probably 'not work'. So you would have to add a field to the database that you use to keep some sort of average and update that or something, instead of parsing the entire table on every edit. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:00, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Leaving aside the performance problems and the software complexity, I strongly disagree this is "definitely worth doing" - it has clear detrimental effects. "Four days and ten edits" is reasonably clear - you know that if you register on Monday lunchtime and make enough edits you'll be able to edit protected pages or move pages by Friday afternoon. But if it's "ten edits on each of four days"... well, whose days? I can imagine that trying to work out if you've made edits on four UTC calendar days is going to be a pretty convoluted task if you're in California or New Zealand. Meanwhile, it's an entirely passive right - you can't tell if you're autoconfirmed without trying to do something and seeing if it works - so no way to tell if you've passed the threshold yet.
Result: something that will specifically annoy and confuse new users... the people we're doing really bad at retaining already. Keep any editing triggers like this simple, please. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:31, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
No one has proposed "ten edits on each of four days". It would be better to state, "at least one edit on each of 4 different days, and at least 10 in total.--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:27, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Andrew Gray read the clarification given by S Philbrick. I propose that we change to "at least one edit on each of 4 different days, and at least 10 in total". -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:21, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Apologies - I understood the proposal but misphrased it when replying! The complexity of going to an edits-per-day system (regardless of the magnitudes) is something that I think will confuse and annoy new users, and is best avoided. If we wanted to just update the required number of days or edits, I'd still disagree but it would at least be easy to explain to the people affected... Andrew Gray (talk) 19:45, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I am no coding expert, but I would strongly support increasing the time served and the number of edits required before the autoconfirmed "flag" is awarded. I've seen a lot of vandalism on older, lesser patrolled articles, as well as a lot of hoaxes at AfD. Virtually all of the vandals and hoaxsters are newly created accounts that did not even both to create a rudimentary user page. So much so, in fact, that when I see edits by newly created "red link" users on certain articles, my suspicion is immediately drawn to them. Given the frequency of such occurrences on certain articles, I strongly suspect that many newly registered vandal accounts are repeat customers. Forty to 50 good edits (or at least non-vandalism edits) seems like a sensible minimum prerequisite for autoconfirmed status. Just my two cents worth. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

The software already has a built-in method that would allow us to change "4 days since registration" to "4 days since their first edit". Anything more complicated than that would need new code. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:43, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Actually, one of the easiest ways to detect a sock is the burst of 10 edits happening over the course of 3 minutes followed by a long gap (sometimes years, even). I'm not sure that complicating that telltale would be worth the marginal gains.—Kww(talk) 03:58, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Kww, have you encountered many "sleeper" socks? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:21, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Hundreds.—Kww(talk) 00:13, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
Kww, I have often wondered about such, as I have seen repeat "red link" users return to the same or similar articles, with similar agendas. Perhaps I'm not just paranoid after all. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:31, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
A recent example is this which shows a single edit in February 2007, then nothing for 7+1⁄2 years! Johnuniq (talk) 06:22, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
Wow. Some folks clearly have (a) a compulsion to vandalize, and (b) way too much time on their hands. Like I said above, I am immediately suspicious of any newly registered "red link" user who edits certain articles that are frequented by vandals. I wish there were an easy solution . . . . Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:25, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Images do not load

Hello! Since yesterday I'm unable to load any images from Wikipedia, their loading simply times out. Of course, I've tried different browsers and such standard "debugging" stuff, unfortunately with no results. Additionally, loading of JavaScript files seems to be much slower than usual, but that might be the result of troubles with loading images. Any help would be appreciated, and of course please let me know which further information is needed from my side. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 05:42, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

It sounds like a problem between you and Wikipedia. Have you tried with a different computer (or mobile device) on the same network ? Tried restarting your modem ? If that's the same, then the problem probably lies at your ISP or something. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
I've already tried a few things, including restarting my ADSL box, unfortunately to no avail. It could be something up to my ISP (and most probably it is), but the strange thing is that I see no such issues when accessing other web sites. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 09:16, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
That doesn't say much. The Internet is a web of webs, one part can break without affecting others. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:06, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm very well aware of that. :) Anyway, the images work now. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:39, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

MAC anons

So what's up with those MAC anon's I see every now and then (ex. 2602:306:CD54:C180:A849:3C3F:EDB9:5E6 (talk · contribs))? Is there some kind of IP-alt way to edit with a MAC instead of an IP address showing? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:10, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Those are actually IPv6 addresses. They're simply the next iteration of IP addresses that are slowly becoming the norm, with IPv4 being the one you and I are used to right now. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 07:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Also, MAC addresses are six bytes, such as 01:23:45:67:89:ab (and you don't need to have an Apple to have a MAC address); IPv6 are much longer, at 16 bytes. By comparison, the old IPv4 addresses are only 4 bytes. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:27, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Apostrophe in italic words?

I am told I need to put foreign language words in italics, and I should use two single quotes to do this. So how do I enter "Luftwaffe's" as in "the Luftwaffe's latest fighter design"? Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:58, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: the ''Luftwaffe'''s latest fighter design should do it. If that clashes with other apostrophes on the page you can use the <i>Luftwaffe</i>'s latest fighter design. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 16:06, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
The former does not work, it causes bolding across the entire section. Is <i> really the solution here? Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
@Maury Markowitz: The former doesn't work? Luftwaffe's latest fighter design. <-- That used the same markup, but it doesn't cause the whole section to be in bold. --Glaisher (talk) 16:34, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
I think he meant that it italicizes the apostrophe. That's why WP:MOS asks for {{'}} or {{'s}}, which is a pain to type, so yes, it would be great if someone could fix this. - Dank (push to talk) 16:36, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
the ''Luftwaffe''{{'}}s latest fighter design is the MOS-recommended way to do this, I believe. It results in: the Luftwaffe's latest fighter design. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:46, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Perfect, thanks! Perhaps I am confused, but I seem to recall the "natural" format used to work just fine, after an upgrade circa 2006? Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:57, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
@Maury Markowitz: I'm guessing other apostrophes on the same line interfered with the first syntax that I posted. Could you give a diff that shows the unwanted bolding that you mention? The other apostrophes can be added by templates, so they might not be immediately obvious. We will need an example to see exactly what is going on. Also, Dank, the apostrophe doesn't appear italicised to me when I type Luftwaffe's - are you sure that's what you're seeing? — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 00:01, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Compare that apostrophe with the ones produced by {{'}} above ... it slants, they don't. - Dank (push to talk) 00:11, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@Dank: Ah, you're right. In the HTML output, ''Luftwaffe'''s expands to <i>Luftwaffe'</i>s, and ''Luftwaffe''{{'}}s expands to <i>Luftwaffe</i><span style="padding-left:0.1em;">'</span>s. The apostrophe must appear straight to me because of my font. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:16, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: I think I may have cause some unnecessary confusion originally, because the non-working version of the string I originally posted had the non-italic "S" at the end. So it was double-quote at the front and triple at the back, which doesn't work. Dank's solution does work, but to be honest, I punted and just put the whole thing italics - after 20000 words I figured I could let that slide :-) Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:22, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: From your description of the whole paragraph becoming bold it still sounds like there is an unresolved template issue somewhere, though. Could you let us know where you noticed this? A diff would be most helpful, but just the article and paragraph would be a good start. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 22:59, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: Sure, it was in the AI Mk. IV radar article. Go back to any version just after the initial creation and you'll see some variation. Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:17, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
You can also use ''Luftwaffe''<nowiki />'s → 'Luftwaffe's; You could also insert an empty HTML comment or a zero-width space. Personally I prefer {{'}} because I believe we should avoid tag mark-up and HTML as much as possible, also it adds a tiny bit of leading (using style attributes, a hair space might be better).
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:13, 22 August 2014 (UTC).
Or if it really causes problems avoid the apostophe altogether and reword the sentence "the lastest fighter design of the Luftwaffe". That was the solution for problems with apostrophes taught to me in grammar lessons many years ago. Nthep (talk) 11:20, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
The problem with a hair space is that it will be included in a copy-paste, which can be annoying for the person copying-and-pasting. Anomie⚔ 11:22, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I just created "This article ranked 1609 in traffic on en.wikipedia.org. "

I just created Promod, an article on a notable but not very remarkable major fashion chain (1,000 stores, gross sales of 1 billion euros, blablabla). The article fills a major need though, considering that it is "ranked 1609 in traffic on en.wikipedia.org."[69]!

Now, I'm more than aware of the problems with page views, and the very improbable hits some pages get, but this one doesn't seem to match any of the usual patterns, and gets an extremely constant number of views per day (I guess the variation is caused by real people actually looking for this article). Any guesses on where the page views are coming from in this case? In any case, it vastly increases the total number of page views on articles I created :-) Fram (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

(What Links Here has too few links to be the cause?)
Maybe people who checked fr:Promod and replaced "fr" with "en" in the title? --Enric Naval (talk) 10:50, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
It does not look like the came from fr:Promod, that has only been looked at 1816 times in the last 90 days[70]. GB fan 11:02, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
The page has had (almost exactly) 5400 views per day every day since February 27, 2014. This is a sure indication that the views are coming from a bot, and I will guess it is looking for Call of Duty 4 Promod, whose new major version was released the same day as the views started (Feb 28). Or (very unlikely) just a lot of gamers wondering why their favorite mod isn't on Wikipedia. 2Flows (talk) 19:19, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

What's up with Firefox and security certificates?

A couple of hours ago I had no problem editing with Firefox, my preferred browser for that purpose. I got back on, opened it up and clicked the bookmark. Instead of the Main Page, I got a message telling me it had an untrusted security certificate. I jumped through all the hoops it held up to get there, only to get the lower-tech, early 2000s version of the Main Page that sometimes comes through when there are technical problems on our end (usually cleared up pretty quickly). I have not been able to get it back yet and this seems to be affecting all Foundation sites.

I suspect the problem is with Firefox (version 31.0, the newest), as the same problem has affected Twitter as well, and I highly doubt they let their certificates lapse. Anyone know anything about this? Daniel Case (talk) 16:09, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

  • I'm using 31.0 as well and have had no problems. Black Kite (talk) 17:04, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Do the certificates look legit? Max Semenik (talk) 17:18, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
If you go into more information/details in firefox about the certificate, what are the fingerprints? For reference, the sha1 fingerpint for wikipedia should be 87:A6:CC:C9:08:A0:0B:4F:B0:66:31:B2:4B:24:3F:39:82:FA:E0:30 . Bawolff (talk) 18:12, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
This is what it's telling me is there as the SHA1 fingerprint: 4E:E3:0C:BB:9D:21:E1:00:C1:06:1C:86:00:59:5A:0F:71:C1:52:81 Daniel Case (talk) 22:52, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Seeing they doesn't match, you may be a victim of the Man-in-the-middle attack where a peer tries to intercept your traffic. It happens commonly in workplaces. Try to use another connection or check your computer for viruses. Do not use the connection for online banking. See also: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=460374 Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 18:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Well that's interesting... Who's the certificate issued by, issued to, etc? Somebody is certainly spying on your connection, maybe looking at who the cert is issued by will give you a hint if its some web filter sort of thing, or if its actually somebody malicious. Bawolff (talk) 18:58, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
  • The "2001 version" is what happens when the CSS files don't load. Did you try it with other browsers? Other internet connections? It could be a restriction placed on your network. KonveyorBelt 18:27, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
It's fine with other browsers. I'm using Chrome to edit right now. And IE has checked out fine. But Firefox is still screwing me over. Daniel Case (talk) 19:21, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
From the menu bar, try Tools → Options → Advanced → Network. In that, go for: Cached Web Content → Clear Now (this may take several minutes) and then: Offline Web Content and User Data → Clear Now (this also may take several minutes). Then go back to the problem page and Ctrl+F5. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Did all that ... no change. Daniel Case (talk) 22:58, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I guess everyone lost interest in this one? I'm still having the issue. Daniel Case (talk) 16:24, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Not necessarily lost interest... I'm out of ideas, and I suspect other people may be too. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:14, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Its probably because firefox is detecting someone is intercepting the connection (aka MITM attack), and is refusing to load stylistic information as a security precaution. Bawolff (talk) 18:58, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Problem solved: That was it. I just purged a bunch of crapware my son had unknowingly installed in the last couple of days. It's back to normal. I am getting the right fingerprint. Never mind ... Thanks everyone. Daniel Case (talk) 04:24, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I use Firefox (version 31.0) and haven't had a bit of trouble with anything. In fact, some bothersome kinks in the prior version (after the massive redesign that made me unhappy) have been remedied. So I'm back to my old happiness level with it. Maybe something about your security settings? (Just a guess as I'm no Firefox guru.) Or uninstall and reinstall? Parabolooidal (talk) 18:28, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Google showing wrong title in search results

If I google "Leader of ISIS," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (expelled) is the third result. Similarly Saint Charles Preparatory School, Columbus is a result for "Saint Charles Preparatory School." The words "expelled" and "Columbus" do occur in each respective article. Maybe there isn't much we can do but let Google know. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 07:04, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Probably a Google indexing problem, which presumably will be fixed when Google next reindexes the pages. Not sure what caused it though as the titles displayed in the Google results appear never to have been the titles of Wikipedia articles.--ukexpat (talk) 19:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en says: Google's generation of page titles and descriptions (or "snippets") is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web. ... If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources. {{Al-Qaeda}} has an unpiped link saying "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (expelled)". {{Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus}} has a piped link saying "Saint Charles Preparatory School, Columbus". Navboxes are displayed on many pages which probably makes them more likely to influence Google. Wikipedia uses the page name in the html title tag but I guess Google can still consider other factors, although I'm a little surprised they also used an unpiped title. It the page name had been the full html title then maybe Google would be more likely to use it, but we say <title>Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</title>. Once Google decides not to include "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" on every page, they may be more likely to make other adaptations. I don't think we should change anything or contact Google. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:38, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Okie dokie. Thanks for the info. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 20:17, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Edit conflict?

The past day or so, I have received the "edit conflict message" almost every post I have written. When I then cancel editing and look at the page in question, it turns out that my edits have been saved. Is this a problem on my side, or does anyone else see it? YohanN7 (talk) 07:37, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

I have encountered that maybe half a dozen times, which was maybe 25% of my edits. HiLo48 (talk) 08:06, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
Specific examples (diffs of articles where this happened) plus browser information welcome. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:48, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
I have had the same problem, quite often. --P123ct1 (talk) 11:09, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I get it occasionally - when I think I've saved my edit, but nothing happens for a while, I some times try again, and I some times get this. I don't think I've gotten it under other circumstances. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:18, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I've mentioned this before. See [71]. Dougweller (talk) 12:46, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

iPhone app bugs

Where's the proper place to report bugs with the new iPhone app? For example, on Batman: Assault on Arkham,

  • the title of the article is not italicized
  • the {{track listing}} table has a few empty blank fields

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:20, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Hey GoingBatty. You can report bugs in the apps on Bugzilla in the Wikipedia App product. As to the specific issues you mentioned, the first issue you mentioned is documented in bugzilla:67492. The second is a general issue that we're having with tables that we've not found a good solution to yet. Many tables are defined in such a way that they only really display properly on desktop. Short of rewriting every table on every single Wikipedia to be more mobile friendly (which would take years), we're having to implement little hacks on a case-by-case basis to try to make tables display sensibly, so it's not surprising that you found a table that displays suboptimally. Thanks for reporting these issues. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:12, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Standalone version of meta:WikiMiniAtlas or alternative?

I'm not sure if this topic suits here. If not, feel free to move it.

To me, meta:WikiMiniAtlas is a great tool to check available Wikipedia articles based on map/location, especially when Google Maps removed Wikipedia layer since 2013. But as now, it's just a small tool and you need to open a random page (with location/GEOCODE) to active it which is somehow annoying. Is there any standalone version of this tool, or similar tool/website like it? Thanks. --fireattack (talk) 00:04, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Article traffic statistics incorrect

From Wikipedia article traffic statistics:

Air_France_Flight_447 has been viewed 33794 times in the last 30 days. This article ranked 48 in traffic on en.wikipedia.org.
France has been viewed 276676 times in the last 30 days. This article ranked 234 in traffic on en.wikipedia.org.

Something obviously wrong here. 86.130.67.100 (talk) 01:36, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

It is not wrong, because the statement "This article ranked X in traffic on en.wikipedia.org." covers views over a long period of time, as opposed to the current views shown, which cover the last 30 days. 2Flows (talk) 12:00, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
The wording is wrong then. With the current wording/presentation, it is obvious that one will assume the ranking is based on the data that has just been given. It should say something like "This article ranked 48 in traffic on en.wikipedia.org, based on [explain criteria]". 86.151.119.38 (talk) 13:14, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
The rank appears to be based on http://stats.grok.se/en/top which currently says "Most viewed articles in 201403". It's an external tool controlled by a user who can be contacted at User talk:Henrik, but he doesn't always reply. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:49, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Find & replace tool

@SiBr4:: Unfortunately, for some reason the find&replace tool you mentioned in "Footnote problem" above doesn't work on my laptop in either IE11 or Firefox and Windows 7. I have asked the VP HD about it, but the query was never resolved. I can't look it up in the archives as I cannot remember the name I gave the query. Basically, when doing a manual search&replace, the box sits in the middle over the text, so I cannot see if it is hiding a found word as the page scrolls down, and if I move the box to the side, the box disappears upwards as the page scrolls down on subsequent finds. Also, after the first find, it doesn't always highlight the subsequent words. Is the problem at my end? --P123ct1 (talk) 14:27, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

The archived thread is /Archive 129#Search & Replace tool. The tool works fine for me; it does hide highlighted words sometimes, but it stays in the same place unless I'm moving it myself (Win 7, FF 31.0). SiBr4 (talk) 14:39, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I see what I have been doing wrong now. It does work. --P123ct1 (talk) 18:03, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

plainrowheaders

I have a question: when the plainrowheaders class should be used for tables (with the scope="col" and scope="row")? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 18:59, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

It is just a layout preference. You can read more here Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Data tables tutorial#Layout of table headers. 2Flows (talk) 19:18, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:33, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Coordinates issue in infoboxes

I am in correspondence with a representative of Microsoft regarding information in Wikipedia:Database download. I am not familiar with those dumps, but assume someone in this forum is familiar with them.

Microsoft uses data from the database dumps in connections with Bing maps.

The challenge is that Wikipedia editors have created several versions of infobox templates, which handle coordinate data in different ways.

Some templates use the convention that longitude values west of Greenwich should be entered with a negative sign in front of the degrees. Other templates use the convention that such location should use a positive value for degrees, but include a parameter such as longEW which should be used with an entry of "E". (Mutatis mutandes for latitude)

I believe that this, so far, is not an issue. It is merely a need to establish two cases, with case one between a templates with a directional indicator set to either E or S or both, and case two, where degrees are entered with a negative sign.

However, we have some less well-designed templates.

For example, there is a template for South African towns {{infobox South African town}}

(The issue also applies to at least one template for Australia.)

The problem is that the template uses the directional parameter, but has hard-coded it within the template, on the not unreasonable assumption that all towns in South Africa should have latNS=S and longEW=E

Note that this does not cause a problem in the template or the article. The coordinates are rendered correctly.

However, what has been told to me is that when the data is dumped to the database dumps, it does not always include the directional parameter (when it is hard-coded). This means that someone using the data from the database will not come up with the right coordinates if they simply use the data.

One option is to identify all infobox templates and find out which ones have hard-coded directional values. With this information, a case 3 could be cleanly identified. I have no idea how many there are or how to find them.

The meta-question is who has the responsibility for "fixing" the issue. One argument is that there is not a problem in Wikipedia, and therefore there is no problem to fix.

Another argument is that the datadumps are a Wikipedia "product" and if they are not usable as is, we have some interest in addressing problems.

I see two paths for fixing the dumps:

  1. Identify a list of all templates with hard-coded directional parameters so that a third party user can made necessary adjustments
  2. Identify a coherent paradigm for template design, and ask someone to change templates not in conformance.

Option 1 is easier in the short term, I think, but I do not know how to do it. Option 2 is a better long-term solution, in my opinion, but maybe one that will be vetoed by the community.--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:52, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, one of our 'wonderful' hacks, that has served us well and others not so much :) Luckily, we have most of this data parsed into a separate database now, using the {{#coordinates}} function of the GeoData extension. I think that is a better way forward. I'm pinging some engineers that might be able to help, and otherwise I'll forward to wikitech-l mailing list. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:58, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, GeoData/Wikidata is the way to move forward in this situation. I don't think that we should care about uses of dumps for things other than loading them into MediaWiki. Instead, we should refer people to the proper ways to access our data. Max Semenik (talk) 00:20, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
In other words, can you forward it to msemenik wikimedia.org? Max Semenik (talk) 00:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
@MaxSem: I forwarded it. I'm not sure you will get the whole stream, but it is Ticket:2014080510001771 if you want all the back and forth.--S Philbrick(Talk) 01:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Yet another reason to replace overly-specific infoboxes with more generic examples; in this case {{Infobox settlement}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:31, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
It would be good sense to sign-check the data on import anyway. And certainly there are many other ways to get the coordinates to confirm. Wikipedia, especially a snapshot thereof is not a great source for coordinates where accuracy is important. For statistical work its pretty good though.   All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:39, 20 August 2014 (UTC).
I would agree with the others who have mentioned that Wikidata is probably the way to do this going forward. Zell Faze (talk) 23:42, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

My bad

Today I unintentionally damaged an article with this edit. I take responsibility for the error, for not reviewing my edit properly, yet I wonder if a technical bug exists as well. Currently I have been experiencing issues with my internet connection. In this example the page never fully loaded yet it allowed me to change and save the half loaded page as if I had removed the missing portions. It seems to me that the system shouldn't accept a request to save changes until the page, or section, has fully loaded. I will appreciate seeing any replies. Thank you.—John Cline (talk) 15:39, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

It shouldn't. Incoming, there will be a field missing then, causing an error. On save there should also be checks. Pondering. do you perhaps have wikEd or a live preview/edit script enabled ? —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 19:16, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
I have pop-ups enabled if that is a factor.—John Cline (talk) 09:20, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
John, do you remember whether you were editing a single section or the whole page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I was editing the whole page.—John Cline (talk) 13:48, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
There are two ways to send information about changes back to the server: one is to send just the lines that you've changed (and enough stuff around them to make it possible to resolve edit conflicts) and the other is to send the whole page back. In the second case, if your connection got cut halfway through, then perhaps (I think?) it might assume that you'd intentionally removed all the "missing" lines.
User:Jdforrester (WMF), do you think that's what's happening? If so, I'd like to talk to you about changing that process, so that even if you edit the whole page, only the lines that are being changed need to be sent back. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
That's probably pointless (at least in the context of this issue). Like TheDJ said, MediaWiki already sends some "markers" at the end of the article text, which make it impossible to save an edit if the text was "cut off" in transit. This must have been caused by some bizarre accidental click or a browser bug (or computer pixies). If it's not reproducible, I don't think anyone should spend too much time investigating it – the likelihood of figuring out the problem looks really, really low :) Matma Rex talk 18:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
But it might make saving the page faster, if the wikitext editor wasn't sending the entire text back when only a couple of lines were changed. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Wrong footer link

At the mobile website https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page there are links to the terms of use and to the privacy policy. The terms of use link goes to the mobile website whereas the privacy policy link goes to the desktop website. Shouldn't both point at the mobile website? --Stefan2 (talk) 22:20, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

And if you manually open mobile version of privacy policy, the "In other languages" template is quite ugly (compare with the terms of use one, which is good).--fireattack (talk) 00:08, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
You just answered Stefan2's question :) The privacy policy page has a lot of complex text & templates that weren't formatted with mobile in mind; it and several other pages like it on WMF wiki are currently set to display in desktop-only. We do hope to reformat those pages in a more mobile-friendly way at some point in the not-too-distant future, but until then the desktop view is actually a bit more readable. Cheers, Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Interestingly, if I visit foundationwiki using my phone instead of using my computer, immobile foundationwiki automatically redirects to mobile foundationwiki, so I end up on the mobile version anyway. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:06, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Contributions Ranking

Is any tool available on English wikipedia which is tell about specific user's rank by contributions? This tool only shows top 50 users by contributions.Prateek Malviya•✉•✎ 10:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

WP:TOP5000 and WP:TOP10000 are probably what you're looking for. 2Flows (talk) 11:58, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Is below 10000 rank list is not available? I have 1300 contribution.Prateek Malviya•✉•✎ 00:51, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Nope, there are no lists that go below the top 10,000. Graham87 01:48, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Ok! thanks for information.Prateek Malviya•✉•✎ 03:55, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Footnote problem

I am having great difficulty with a set of footnotes in Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. I have tried several times to repeat these footnotes in another section, but each time it fails, and I cannot see where the problem is. I have used the "ref name" method, which I have never had a problem with before.

The set of footnotes appears at the end of the sentence "... as a terrorist organization." in the first paragraph of the Lead. I need to repeat them at the end of the sentence ending "... have called IS a terrorist organization." in section 13, "Designation as a terrorist organization". I have added <ref name="Name"> to the first cite and <ref name="Name"/> to the second cite. This is the set as it appears in the Lead (several "/>" ref"s as those footnotes appear several times in the article (see "References"):-

<ref name="TranTop">...<ref name="ListerTop"/>...<ref name="McCoyTop"/>...<ref name=”CoughlinTop”>...<ref name=”IranTop”>.

Every time I save after inserting the set in section 13 in this way:

<ref name="TranTop"/><ref name="ListerTop"/><ref name="McCoyTop"/><ref name=”CoughlinTop”/><ref name=”IranTop”/>

a red "cite error" message appears, and I cannot see where I am going wrong. Can someone help, please? --P123ct1 (talk) 11:05, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

In the references you added to the last section, the reused "TranTop" reference should be <ref name="TranTrop"/>. An opening tag in XML (e.g. <ref name="foo">) needs to be closed by a corresponding closing tag (e.g. </ref>); an "empty" tag such as <ref name="foo" /> (note the slash) doesn't. SiBr4 (talk) 12:02, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
See WP:REFNAME for details on using a source more than once. --  Gadget850 talk 12:11, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I obviously overlooked that I had not put in the slash in the second "TranTop" reference. I checked and double-checked, but still managed to miss it! --P123ct1 (talk) 12:21, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I think it's because someone used unicode quotes to name the refs, and the parser includes them in the ref name (as normal quotes are optional). Now when I replaced the quotes with proper ones, I could save it without an error [72]. 2Flows (talk) 12:17, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I see what happened now, and what you mean by "unicode" and "normal". I had seen this problem in wikitext before, but didn't think to check it in this instance. Thanks very much for adjusting those footnotes. --P123ct1 (talk) 12:52, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I've previewed the page with the ” marks (the ones 2Flows calls "Unicode quotes") instead of the "proper" " quotes, and it does cause cite errors. The "Unicode" quotes are not included in the ref name, however; the "name" parameter is just omitted entirely and a "malformed or bad name" error is given. These errors should be fixed if all ” quotes are converted to "s. SiBr4 (talk) 12:57, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, SiBr4, I understand it all now. I have inserted that second set of footnotes successfully now. I struggled to understand why the wikitext looked exactly the same for both of them, but I see now the difference only show up in the diffs. Is there any way of doing a global conversion of the unicode ” marks to the " marks in the wikitext of this article? I have seen people do it piecemeal, but there must still be a lot of unicode versions still there. --P123ct1 (talk) 13:50, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
@P123ct1: At the far right of the "Advanced" toolbar above the edit window, there is a handy find&replace tool that will help replace all occurrences of the ” character in a single article. SiBr4 (talk) 13:58, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
@2Flows, P123ct1, and SiBr4: All quotemarks are Unicode; the "normal" double quote - that I've used in this sentence - is at Unicode code point U+0022. The usual terms are straight/curly, or typewriter/typographic, see MOS:QUOTEMARKS#Quotation characters. Curly quotes are U+201C (opening) and U+201D (closing). There's also a character which looks like there, but is different again: the double prime U+2033. Always use the straight (or typewriter) kind.
But there was another problem, unrelated to quotemarks, in this edit: the first ref, <ref name="TranTop"> was unclosed. The next two were fine; the last two had the wrong quotation character (U+201D instead of U+0022). --Redrose64 (talk) 14:24, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Yes, I commented on how I had forgotten to close the ref in "TranTop". I was puzzled when there were still problems after I did close it, but all has been resolved now. "Straight" and "curly" is much more easily understandable! Is it safe to do a global search&replace to replace all "curly"s with "straight"s in this article? Are there any pitfalls or unforeseen problems to watch out for? --P123ct1 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 14:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
@P123ct1: Yes, a replacement of curly quotes with straight ones would be completely safe. Graham87 01:44, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@Graham87:: I will have to find out the combination of keys for a curly quote mark as it is not on my keyboard. Can I use that with the search&replace tool on the "Advanced" edit strip on the edit page, or will it only work with normal keyboard letters? Do you know what combination of keys Windows 7 gives a curly quote mark? I am having difficulty finding out. --P123ct1 (talk) 07:59, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@P123ct1: To type curly quotes, hold the alt key and type 0147 on the num pad (for “) and 0148 (for ”) 2Flows (talk) 08:09, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
It doesn't work on my keyboard, but thanks. I'll ask at the Computing Reference desk. --P123ct1 (talk) 08:30, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@P123ct1: Easier is to just select one from the page (or from this thread) and copy-paste it into the search&replace box. SiBr4 (talk) 10:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@SiBr4: Why on earth didn't I think of that? My brain isn't working! --P123ct1 (talk) 11:01, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikiblame search history tool

Lately this tool sometimes does not work. Sometimes when the search seems to have ended, there is no result; the search has not completed, as there is no "found at" message. Sometimes it says "not found" at the end of a search, but I have put the search to start from the current date and go back, and even on maximum "500", which is way earlier than the date I know the words searched were inserted, it says "not found". I have been using the binary method. Is the tool faulty? --P123ct1 (talk) 11:44, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Where to find that tool so I could try to reproduce? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
If you go to the "View history" pages of an article, it says "Revision history search" at the top. Click on that and it brings you to the Wikiblame tool. --P123ct1 (talk) 18:08, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Have you had success with it in the past? I've never been able to get useful information out of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, but it is a bit hard to understand how it works. I don't understand the lines in blue at the bottom, which say "Search", for example - does that mean I must search? etc. Really it only works half of the time. Hedonil has come up with a brilliant new "Search history" tool, much better, though it hasn't been working lately, but should be up and running again soon. [73]. The link for this gadget is =. --P123ct1 (talk) 01:30, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Is "Email this user" on the blink?

Is there a known current problem with the server handling email to users? Someone who tried to send mail to me got their message bounced back even though my registered email address is correct and working correctly. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:41, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

  • I am the user who attempted to send an email message to Roger. I received a bounce-back error message from the Wikimedia email server, which I would be happy to forward to someone if it would help. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:43, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
@Dodger67 and Dirtlawyer1: If the sender's email address is one from Yahoo, these have been bouncing for some weeks now. I believe that in the last few days, a similar problem has affected mails where the sender's email address is one from gmail. See e.g. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 127#email, Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 129#Gmail labelling Wikipedia email suspicious --Redrose64 (talk) 09:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, mine is a Yahoo address. And, I had problems sending email through the Wikimedia system a couple of weeks ago, too. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 10:01, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm a Gmail user, I do remember getting one Wikimedia mail that was tagged as possible spam, but since I "untagged" it as "not spam" others have arrived without problem - except for Dirtlawyer's one. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:41, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
With regard to Yahoo there is bugzilla:56414 but I am also aware of DMARC policy issues with Microsoft mail services (Hotmail etc). bugzilla:46640 and bugzilla:56413 need to get fixed (and are being worked on) to solve the underlying problem. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:42, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

CSD log

Dear editors: Because there are so many things to know about Wikipedia, and some of the instruction pages are so long and complicated, it's easy to miss things. I had no idea of the existence of the Twinkle CSD log until after I became and admin and started seeing other editor's logs listed in the "What links here" of pages I was planning to delete. Do I need one? Is there a tool that creates a retroactive CSD log? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:00, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

You don't need to have one, and there isn't a tool to create one retroactively. You can enable your CSD log in your Twinkle settings for pages you tag in the future, but the only way to have it cover pages that you have already tagged is to add them manually. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:10, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Mr. Stradivarius. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

"bgcolor" issue

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T68413

A few months ago, I put a question before the VPT asking why the Wiki markup bgcolor="#XXXXXX" was no longer working on mobile devices. An explanation was given and an alternative markup, style=background-color:"#XXXXXX" was given. I have since applied this to some articles, but recent discussions with other users have revealed the scope of the problem.

I tend to limit my editing to a select subset of pages, namely those related to Formula 1. This bgcolor issue affects sixty season articles, over a thousand driver articles, fifty or more team articles, and dozens of car articles. And that's just Formula 1 - apply it to every form of motorsport and related article, and the tally quickly runs into the tens of thousands. I cannot even begin to fathom where else this markup might be used regularly, much less the volume of affected articles.

This is an issue that only affects mobile users; PC browsers, as far as I am aware, are fine. But we at the Formula 1 WikiProject tend to try and edit in such a way that we accommodate both regular and mobile users (if these needs conflict, regular users get priority). As such, I'm here to lobby for recognition that this is (potentially) a Wiki-wide problem, and to try and come up with some solutions from the community, most likely in the form of a bot. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 05:07, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

This is a long standing issue, but it is discussed at a software level. One potential solution is that "bgcolor", while obsolete in HTML, will remain valid in wikitext and would automatically be converted to CSS, so that it works on all platforms. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 07:52, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
See also the past RfC at VPR, and this archived VPT thread. Also, the CSS markup above should be style="background-color:#XXXXXX". SiBr4 (talk) 11:11, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
I didn't notice the mentioned VPT thread was also opened by you. Nevertheless, it's good to have a link to it here. SiBr4 (talk) 11:30, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edokter: @SiBr4: Do you think there's likely to be any site-wide solution/action on this within, say, the next couple of months? (Given the fact that it's a "long standing issue" and the bugzilla bug hasn't been updated since mid-June, my guess is no). Because if not, the Formula One WikiProject might consider implementing a local solution, e.g. getting a bot to go through and update the markup for all the articles within the project's scope. DH85868993 (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-35

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

VisualEditor news

  • There was a error when you put your cursor directly after a reference list. It is now fixed. [74]
  • You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages. [75]
  • If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor. [76] [77] [78]

Future software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf18) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 28 (calendar).
  • After August 26, you will have a central JavaScript and CSS page. They will be on Meta-Wiki and will work on all wikis. Read more on the help page. [79]

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

09:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

I think something may have gone wrong with the "View History" pages on this article. I made a revert at 16.07 c.4.09 UTC today which showed up in the text and is listed on the "View History" page. Since then I have been reverted, but there is absolutely no record of this on the "View history" page. What can have happened? --P123ct1 (talk) 17:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

My revert disappeared at 17.09 UTC on an edit by TimIsTimIs which was not a revert. He joined Wikipedia on 23rd August and I wonder if he mistakenly did his edit on an earlier version of the page and saved that version. --P123ct1 (talk) 18:29, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Other people's edits have been lost as well. --P123ct1 (talk) 18:48, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@P123ct1: What happened is that TimIsTimisTimIsTim (talk · contribs) went to the last version that they had personally saved, the one of 21:45, 24 August 2014, and edited that. Upon saving their change, it effectively wiped out all intervening changes. See this diff. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:59, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Thanks. This is what I suspected. So a simple revert of his edit at 17.09 UTC today ought to solve the problem. --P123ct1 (talk) 20:17, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
That's the starting point. But bear in mind that such an action will nullify all edits made subsequently to the one that you intend to revert, so those will need to be re-examined to see if thy should be re-done. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Environmental categories

See also User talk:Alan Liefting#Environmental categories (version of 09:35, 24 August 2014).

Can someone please make (1) Category:Environmental organizations by year of establishment and (2) Category:Environmental organizations by year of disestablishment, with templates similar to those used for Category:Environment by year and Category:Protected areas by year of establishment? (I made the first one, but not with a template.)
—Wavelength (talk) 19:49, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

ia.wikipedia.org

Can someone help with this request. I am unable to identify where the problem is after a cursory look. (See, for instance, w:ia:America_del_Sud—the show button does not work). Ruslik_Zero 19:44, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

MfD

Dear editors: I have recently become aware of an interesting statistical tool, AfD Stats. Is there a similar tool available for WP:MfD? —Anne Delong (talk) 11:42, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

What on Earth?

I found one of my tabs was on the following url (without the ellipsis of course)

http://lookup-api.apple.com.edgesuite.net/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:...

This looks potentially nasty, as it appears to funnel everything through that host - including passwords, tokens, cookies etc.

Edge suite is a content platform from Akamai Technologies.

Any more info? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:15, 24 August 2014 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: Do you remember what page were you browsing before you found yourself at that URL? My guess is that it's a link from an outside website, but it's hard to know without more details. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:16, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
I was cleaning up browser tabs, some of which have been open since March 2013, so the chance of me remembering is slight. Thanks for the suggestion, though! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:42, 25 August 2014 (UTC).
My first guess would be Apple's Dictionary app, but it really is a guess —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 08:57, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
I managed to edit the sandbox via the proxy (Check out the IP address - It's not using X-Forward-For apparently). The proxy forbids all enwiki URLs besides en.wikipedia.org/wiki/* so I had to tweak the form submit URL to save the edit. Editing is difficult for average users but still possible. Should we block the IP range per WP:NOP? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 02:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Global settings

As there will be global js/css pages, I was wondering if magic things can be done to:

  • disable VisualEditor
  • set Monobook as skin
  • set the old toolbar

Yes, I am old fashioned guy with old computer :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 22:19, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Probably, but likely not very soon. The task is tracked as T16950. Some work has actually been done on this (see mw:Extension:GlobalPreferences and latest comments on the bug), but it's far from finished. Matma Rex talk 22:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Hmm, Tech news are lying? ;D --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 22:30, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edgars2007: Personal global CSS/JS and personal global preferences are totally different; it's generally not a good idea to make preference settings at page-load time with user-JS (though theoretically it's possible), which is what each of the bullet points you asked about are, and which Matma Rex was talking about. Personal global CSS/JS will indeed be live cluster-wide as of tomorrow. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Could this possibly be screwing up my edit window? Several Twinkle tabs either don't load or don't work, the edit window doesn't load as it normally does (but if I use "preview", it seems to work better)? I'm basically js/css illiterate, mostly having copied stuff from other users... --Randykitty (talk) 11:30, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
@Randykitty: Yes, possible because your global.js loads adapted Twinkle scripts. You could disable your global.js for enwiki by wrapping the code of your global.js with 
if ( mw.config.get('wgDBname') !== "enwiki" ){<--code here-->}
. Or if you want to disable it on multiple wikis, you can wrap it with the code which I use at m:User:Glaisher/global.js third line. --Glaisher (talk) 11:41, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, looks like this works! --Randykitty (talk) 12:38, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia email Gmail note

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T58414
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T66795
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T66818

I have got a Wikipedia email just now. The content is a usless canvassing, but, the thing I want to bring into attention, Gmail is showing a note "This message may not have been sent by: khabboos@gmail.com Learn more Report phishing". Screenshot Tito☸Dutta 16:36, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I've received similar messages, including one attached to the copy of an email I sent to another Wikipedian through "Email this user". This might have something to do with either the amount of mail being sent to gmail through a specific WMF server, or an out-of-date security certificate. There have been periodic problems with other email services (Yahoo in particular) rejecting emails from WMF servers because of "spam complaints", resulting in broad swaths of the community not receiving any emails from WMF servers. As I recall, there was some intervention from Operations in the past with Yahoo, and it may be necessary for Gmail as well. Risker (talk) 16:41, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
No, it's just because the email wasn't, in fact, sent by khabboos@gmail.com: it was sent by Wikipedia itself, and the server is spoofing the From: field just to make it look like it's coming from khabboos. Gmail picks up on the spoofing and adds that note to warn you that it was spoofed--in the context of Wikipedia mails, it's nothing to worry about, but in others, it could be important to know. This is a known issue with the way that "Email this user" works; in fact, I think there was another VPT thread about it not too long ago. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:54, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Interesting. I've never had that spoofing flag until the last few days, although I've seen it on plenty of other gmails. Risker (talk) 17:13, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I think it's because Gmail is only just starting to crack down on such things. I don't think they've really cared before. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:20, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
DMARC... Related: bugzilla:64795, bugzilla:56414, bugzilla:64818. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Also #Is "Email this user" on the blink? above, and threads linked from that. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:08, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
An alternative way to solve this problem: Use a fake address on WMF's domains as the from field (e.g. Example_User@users.en.wikipedia.org), and set the sender's email as the reply-to field. This way, spam filters won't complain about email spoofing, and recipients can easily reply to the mails. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 01:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Government parameter in Template:Infobox country and Template:Infobox former country

Further information: Template talk:Infobox country § Edit request 27 August 2014

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Trust Is All You Need (talk • contribs) 20:02, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Special Diff

@Edgars2007, Johnuniq, Mr. Stradivarius, and Anomie: bug 23489 seems to be related to WP:Village pump (technical)/Archive 129#Special Diff. Helder 12:43, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Setting up email alerts for changes on watchlist

I'm talking to a new editor who's using an iPad. Can someone please lay out how to set up email alerts using an iPad, please? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:39, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Presuming the new editor is using Safari, they are likely taken to the Wikipedia mobile site - en.m.wikipedia.org. At the bottom of the page, they can click on the Desktop link to get to en.wikipedia.org. Then they can log in, click Preferences at the top right, and click on the Notifications tab.
I don't think they can do this if they're using the Wikipedia app. GoingBatty (talk) 00:07, 28 August 2014 (UTC).
Thank you, GoingBatty. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

"Page" tab

How do I get rid of the "page" tab which had appeared in Monobook? BMK (talk) 00:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like you enabled "Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar" in the Gadgets section of your Preferences. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 10:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
No, I didn't, and if I do enable it, I get a second, identical "pages" tab. There's got to be some way to turn this thing off. BMK (talk) 13:50, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
It is because of this line in your monobook.css:
importScriptURI('http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&title=User:Haza-w/cactions.js');
-- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:07, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you very much, I appreciate the fix. I'm not sure how that got into my .js file - I don't recall having added it, but that doesn't mean that I didn't. It's just odd that the "page" tab wasn't there 13 days ago when I went on vacation, and was there when I came back. Best, BMK (talk) 23:29, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
No, I added it back in 2011. All I can think is that the script has changed in the meantime. I wonder what I added it for? BMK (talk) 23:33, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
@Beyond My Ken: Another possibility is that from this edit of of 01:58, 30 March 2012, your .js file contained some invalid code - the <!-- --> markers being the first such, but there was also some exposed plain text added later. It's possible that until all the invalid code was finally eliminated with this edit, the valid code was being ignored. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:53, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks. BMK (talk) 01:28, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Font

Has the font recently changed, like, within the last couple of hours? It appears smaller to me, and I haven't changed any settings on either Wikipedia or Chrome. Melonkelon (talk) 02:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Not in Firefox or Chrome, for me.
Perhaps an inadvertent [ctrl] [ - ] or [ctrl] [ + ] in Chrome? --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 02:28, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Nope, I've checked that and cleared my cache. Editing font also appears different to me, despite it being the same as it was previously. I'm not sure what's happened. Melonkelon (talk) 02:35, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
It seems like it might have been my browser's font changing on me, and not anything to with Wikipedia. Oops. Thanks, Melonkelon (talk) 02:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
The font changed for me too. In Firefox, it looks the same as always, but it Chrome, it looks like a completely different font style. Does anyone know how to fix this? Canuck89 (what's up?) 08:03, August 28, 2014 (UTC)
Wow, really? I'm not sure what happened or why, but definitely want old font settings back. Melonkelon (talk) 08:35, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Nothing changed here. Ctrl-0 to reset your font size. If you use Chrome, clear its cache (Menu > Tools > Clear browsing data...). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 09:25, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Or, for Chrome, Ctl-Shft-Del (all at once). Dougweller (talk) 14:09, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Dougweller. Well, apparently the latest version of Chrome (37.0.2062.94 m) added improved font rendering. Now, I don't know if this is what changed my font but it looks likely. I disabled it by putting chrome://flags/ in my address bar and disabling DirectWrite. I didn't restart Chrome last night and didn't really notice any difference but after I turned on my computer this morning, it looks like all my fonts are back to normal. I don't know if disabling DirectWrite did it, but I'm glad my font is back, haha. Thanks, Melonkelon (talk) 21:59, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Search fails when searching for the word half

When searching for the word half the following error message is returned: 'An error has occurred while searching: The search backend returned an error:'. I can't determine which search engine enwiki is using so that a bug report can be filed. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I tried with both the old search and the beta of the new search and the search seemed to work without trouble. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:32, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
@Jason Quinn: Can you provide links to the two searches. The link that I supplied still fails. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:54, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
@Bamyers99: I used your link under each search engine. In both cases, the final url is exactly the same as the link you posted. I also tried searching for "half" directly in the search box with each engine and each time I am correctly redirect to the article for "One half". If I am not understanding what you would like me to do, please detail the steps you would like me to try and I can try again. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:03, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
@Jason Quinn: It appears to be a problem when searching non-article name spaces with the old engine. I have my default search configured to search multiple name spaces. Here is an example just to document it. I tried other name spaces with the beta search and it worked fine. --Bamyers99 (talk) 17:50, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
@Bamyers99: I see the error now with your link. It only occurs with the old search engine. The beta search engine worked fine. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:19, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't have a problem while searching for the word "half". However, I just tested a few odd searches now and when searching for "", " ", +, #, % etc. I get a An error has occurred while searching: The search backend returned an error: as well. In any case this should not be a desired behavior, and a more user friendly message could be output. 2Flows (talk) 17:37, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Just to clarify, this is with the old engine, with the new (beta) search, everything works fine. 2Flows (talk) 18:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Dispenser's tools are down again

You may have already noticed that User:Dispenser's tools (e.g. Reflinks, Dab solver) are down again - see User:Dispenser/Toolserver migration and User talk:Coren. I've temporarily commented out the links from {{Cleanup-bare URLs}} and {{Dablinks}} to Dispenser's tools, and will be happy to reinstate them once this issue is resolved. GoingBatty (talk) 00:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

wikitech:User talk:Dispenser is probably relevent to this. Essentially, his Tool labs account was shut down, as his tools are not open sorce, which is a requirement to be able to use Toollabs. --Mdann52talk to me! 13:07, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
If this tool thing is shut down, we won't be able to do redirect check or follow the dablinks that were left to us by DPL bot. We should receive notification once Dispenser's tools are fixed. --Rtkat3 (talk) 21:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm pissed and no longer care. The time, the money, and the effort to work with these people who sit in their palace. They been on my throat for two months with the privacy policy (which they don't follow *cough*). They make grandiose statements like "audited for compliance" which they don't have the time for, otherwise there wouldn't have been a password hash leak. Labs still isn't on par with the Toolserver.

The irony? It was a Freeware component in a warez finder. — Dispenser 03:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The future of skins

If not already, please participate in this RfC. Thanks! --Gryllida (talk) 13:08, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Did you mean to link to mw:Requests for comment/Redo skin framework instead? MER-C 03:47, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

New superprotect protection level, coming to your wiki soon

It appears as though the Wikimedia Foundation is planning to add a new protection level to the configuration of Wikimedia wikis so as to prevent every single user—including local administrators—from editing certain wiki pages.

My understanding of the change is that, once deployed to Wikimedia servers, it will require a new superprotect user right to be able to edit pages protected at the superprotect level. The user right is not assigned to any user group yet, but there is little doubt that it might be assigned to some group in the future.

The description of the patchset is as follows: 

Add a new protection level called "superprotect"

Assigned to nobody by default. Requested by Erik Möller for the purposes
of protecting pages such that sysop permissions are not sufficient to
edit them.
Change-Id: Idfa211257dbacc7623d42393257de1525ff01e9e

Comments, including those from @Eloquence, are welcome and, indeed, encouraged. odder (talk) 13:28, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Additional details here.--Eloquence* 13:30, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
How nice, another way to force things on the community when we don't want them. Intentionally designed to be used to fight off a recalcitrant community! Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Media Viewer RfC/Proposed decision has a header saying that the proposed decision is due tomorrow; let us hope for a decision enforcing the distance between the community and WMF members who put themselves above it. Nyttend (talk) 13:36, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
When the community manipulates the software in an irresponsible method, then it is logical that at some point those responsible for it's health will intervene. That was actually known and explained many times before, but not required before to exercise. BTW. No one is happy with this.... certainly not the devs. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:09, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
When the community manipulates the software in an irresponsible method - The only body who should decide what is "responsible" and "irresponsible" in this respect is the community itself.--cyclopiaspeak! 14:52, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
While I'm not completely happy with this, I support the concept behind it, especially as some sort of code review will be introduced. Yes, we have some admins experienced with js here, but I feel allowing all of them, including those who no nothing about js (or CSS) to edit site-wide .js and .CSS pages is just asking for trouble. Far far better to leave it to the devs, who (apparently) know what they're doing to deal with the technical side, and for us to worry about content. Of course, of this was introduced under different circumstances (ie. after vandalism of common.js) no one would bat an eyelid. --Mdann52talk to me! 14:25, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
It should be noted that as far as I know, there is no immediate reason to use this protection level on English Wikipedia right now.... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:31, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@TheDJ: What happens when the devs manipulate the software in an irresponsible method? Mdann52 expresses an opinion not shared by many of us. --NeilN talk to me 14:43, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
What happens? Appeal to the WMF to reverse, per WP:CONEXCEPT. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:15, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
"Irresponsible" admin changes can be reversed in minutes. Irresponsible dev changes (done for the "good of the community") can take weeks to reverse and sometimes only by an admin forcing their hand. --NeilN talk to me 15:38, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Well, work on a privately owned domain has its little ups and downs, no doubt -- no use pretending one is not on a privately owned domain. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:02, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
The site belongs to the WMF - legally speaking, they can run it any way they want to. (See also Wikipedia:Free speech.) You can always create a fork if you want (but you would need a big server farm to do that properly). Personally, I'd like to hear more about the kind of situations that the WMF would use this protection level in. The thing that springs to mind immediately is the JavaScript code that blocked VisualEditor, but I'm wondering if the WMF would use this protection level in other situations as well. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:34, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
In that case, the ED should cut the crap about "working for the users". --NeilN talk to me 15:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@NeilN: I'm guessing that ED stands for Executive Director? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:53, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: Yes. I'll have to look for a transcript if you want but in her early days Tretikov emphasized the WMF should be working for the users. --NeilN talk to me 16:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) :I can sort of see why this might be justified, per Mdann52, but the timing is awful. Have some egos been bruised? TheDJ, what was "actually known and explained many times before"? The specific superprotect proposal? Where? When? And if it was "not required before to exercise" and apparently "there is no immediate reason to use this protection level on English Wikipedia" then surely it is still not required, so what has changed? Unless your point is that something has happened on a non-English WP. - Sitush (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

@Sitush:, it has: de:MediaWiki:Common.js, in the grips of a wheel war over Media Viewer was just super-protected. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:01, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Writ, I can understand most of the code but I'm not a German reader - far too structured a language for someone used to dealing with Indian English ;) Has de-WP had a similar clash over scripts with the WMF over MediaViewer as was happening here? Does this mean that the WMF have managed yet again to upset members in two of its largest projects with the same "improvement"? - Sitush (talk) 16:57, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm no better at German than you are; I only know of this because it was mentioned in the comments for this feature at gerrit. It would certainly seem so, though. It's the same code change to disable the Media Viewer that Peteforsyth tried here. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
A dewp sysop, per the results of the RfC added the code to disable MediaViewer to Common.js and it was reverted and led to a wheel-war and Common.js is now super-protected there. --Glaisher (talk) 17:08, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, both. It strikes me that the WMF developers need to explain better and probably listen more. It won't be much good having snazzy bells and whistles if you've got no core users. Equally, there are probably some people among the users who need to listen a bit more. - Sitush (talk) 17:12, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Since apparently the WMF has decided we shouldn't talk about this at WP:AN, I'll duplicate my comment here: So much for trying to build trust between the devs and the community. Monty845 15:51, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    • I'm just trying to keep the discussion centralised. I'm just as happy to have the discussion happen on WP:AN as here, but it was started here first and it's good to have all the comments collected in one place. :-) --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:01, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I can't say this surprises me; when the community goes so far as to implement flawed code that breaks things on the site just to spite the WMF's deployment of a feature, it's understandable that the WMF would implement something that keeps people from doing that again. Can this be misused by the WMF? Yep, and I'd like to see actual policy made by the WMF to govern when its employees can use it. But given past history of the communities' responses to software rollouts, is it unreasonable for this feature to exist and be occasionally used? Nope. Though I must say that I suspect 90% of these clashes could be prevented much more easily by a small set of certain people both community-side and WMF-side being topic-banned from software rollout discussions. But I suppose that would be too confrontational when we can just mess back and forth with software instead. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:06, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with the feature in itself, it could be legitimately used to enforce an OFFICE action on an article that needs to be locked down as a stub until legal issues are resolved.

However if it is used to prevent consensus from being enforced I will likely find a project that is serious about the concept of consensus based editing. I don't want to see the community coming to an agreement that a page should change only to find that someone with "superrights" has prevented it by fiat. Chillum 17:15, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think this is about articles. It's about forcing software. - Sitush (talk) 17:19, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I was stretching the imagination as to how this could be used other than to override consensus. If the foundation continues the pattern of overriding consensus by technical fiat I will volunteer elsewhere. You cannot have 99.999% of the value of your project come from volunteers and then decide that their view can be disregarded with the flip of a switch. Not if they want me to stay. Chillum 17:31, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Yep. I wonder if some people at de-WP might decide to take some co-ordinated time off. I think I would if it happened here. - Sitush (talk) 17:35, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Historically when one party does all the work and the other has all the power "co-ordinated time off" has been very effective. Damn, it sure is sunny out there... Chillum 17:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I suppose I am in the minority here of agreeing with most of the WMF's recent implementations. Sure, they had bugs, but so do many off-the-shelf products produced for far higher budgets. Sure, I didn't like VE or MW when they were first released, but just like changes to other sites, I've grown to see how they can be beneficial to both readers, which is a far far bigger pool old people than editors will ever be. Yes, it causes us some inconvenience (shock - 1 extra click to get onto file pages), but we need to put this into context. Using js hacks to suppress stuff appearing helps nobody; However, without greater reader participation in RfC's, we should be careful what we do moving forward. MW had an opt-out button; don't like it? That's what the button was there for. However, I do feel the foundation needs to listen to editors more, and maybe roll out software changes more gradually, taking editor and reader feedback into account. --Mdann52talk to me! 17:28, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
It took me ages before I realised that there was an opt-out button. That is part of the problem and it is one that is likely to get worse as more and more bells and whistles are added. - Sitush (talk) 17:31, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@Sitush: I agree with the point about too many new features being added on. However, in terms of design, Wikipedia is years behind most other websites. However, the main issue of hacky js being used remains; taking the de example, specify meaning people had to do another js hack to turn it back on, and preventing logged-out users using it even if they wanted too. --Mdann52talk to me! 17:56, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I'd argue that this should be delegated much the same as the edit-filter, requiring a special group, but available for assignment-there are some interface pages that most admins want nothing to do with, but could otherwise be very disruptive to edit without really knowing what you are doing. — xaosflux Talk 17:29, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
If the community could decide who had access to this tool then that would make sense. I would be consensus driven. If it is something for the foundation only then it is a problem. Chillum 17:32, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
That depends on what community you are thinking about. The WMF has multilingual participation that has mechanisms for user persuasion of the Foundation (even actual votes in some areas), but also a structure for organizational decision making -- an analogy, locally, is Arbcom whose decisions are also not subject to consensus, per CONEXCEPT. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • The fact that this new protection level is coming at the behest of Engineering chief Erik Möller rather than the legal department indicates to me that this user right is going to be used as a mechanism to shove VE and Flow down our throats, not as a content-locking device. Carrite (talk) 17:54, 10 August 2014 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 17:56, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Well, judging by recent events on de-WP (machine translation on Writ's page), the "group" who have been assigned the superprotect status there may consist of one person. - Sitush (talk) 18:32, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Not a group of one, sorry. JEissfeldt also superprotected it earlier. - Sitush (talk) 18:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Will the superprotect right protect de.wiki from vandalism when all their administrators withdraw their services in protest? –xenotalk 18:36, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Obviously not. But I'm sure the WMF have thought that through carefully. They always do. If I shake my head any harder it's likely to fall off. Wow. Begoon talk 18:41, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

arbitrary break

  • (edit conflict) I support the addition of this new protection level to be used for BLACKLOCK enforcement as it will prevent administrators from doing things they shouldn't, especially those due to some kind of edit conflict that gets overlooked or some other accidental reasoning (surely none of them would do these things intentionally no, I'm not being sarcastic). As far as them adding such a thing to force software changes on the community, they quite simply wouldn't use it for this purpose (because they should know it would never work unless they are going to lock down nearly the whole wiki to enforce it). If we play out an instance like JavaScript code that blocked VisualEditor, which I would like to point out the the code added by our administrator was flawed and poorly executed, and once reverted by the devs it ended there and there was no edit warring, so there was no need for this protection to be applied (if it had existed). For the sake of argument though, lets say they locked MW:Common.js for this, they would also have to lock all four MW:Skin.js, MW:Gadgets-definition, and every script that is imported on each of those pages. They are just not going to go through all of that trouble. Can we please assume some good faith on the part of the developers here? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 18:44, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
er, yeah... You may not have read the discussion, "adding such a thing to force software changes on the community" is the only reason it's been used so far, at de.wp, and Erik clearly explains that is its purpose in the mailing list discussion he links. Do try and keep up, there's a good chap. Nobody has said it's foolproof, in fact, on the mailing list the very flaws you mention are pointed out. It's a poor implementation - no surprises there. Its purpose, however, is in no doubt I can see. Begoon talk 18:50, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Begoon - do try and behave in a friendly, collegial manner. Nick (talk) 19:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Of course, Nick. Perhaps I am too harsh sometimes in defending myself and others from accusations of assuming bad faith that could have been avoided by a little research. I'll bear your advice in mind. Thanks. Begoon talk 19:07, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • or perhaps I just read it differently than you. or perhaps you missed the point of my post. All that I was saying is that this new level has the potential to be used for a good purpose (when used to enforce blacklock legal issues) and has no effect when trying to be used for the wrong purpose (like trying to force something on the community) because there are just way too many ways to circumvent it (per Edokter and the admin on de that deleted and restored the page (without protection, which I'm sure WMF staff will fix)). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 19:27, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, probably I missed your point. It's pretty hard to assume it was introduced for the good reasons you speculate, though, when it was immediately used for what you rightly say it isn't any good for, especially given Erik's clear statement of intent. Hey ho. No good will come of this - of that I remain sure. Begoon talk 19:37, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@Technical 13: "deleted and restored the page"... FYI, now they can't: gerrit:153345 Circumventing those protections in "illegal" ways is shortsighted. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 00:31, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Well, like I said, I expected it was something that would quickly get patched... — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Technical 13, please don't repeat the misstatements that were made: the JS change that disabled Visual Editor did exactly what it was intended to do. That Erik and James later made a series of false statements in an effort to pretend that there was a problem with the change doesn't mean that you should repeat the false statements. The patch prevented anyone from turning on Visual Editor prior to making at least one edit with conventional Wikitext. Given that anyone using Visual Editor needed to be intimately familiar with Wikitext in order to recognize and correct the file corruptions it made, that was a quite reasonable restriction.—Kww(talk) 19:27, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm going to emphasize the disclaimer here: what I write here are entirely my personal views and in no way represent anything at all official. Yes, the whole idea of staff-only superprotection sucks, and I'd really rather have seen more moderate elements on dewiki emergency-desysop the admin there who was wheel-warring to add a JS hack that appears to have gone well beyond what I've heard (mainly via Google Translate) is the actual vote result at that project. Instead any moderate elements seem to have been mostly silent while reactionaries pat each other on the back. But "oh noes! teh WMF is stealing our autonomiez!" won't do any good, because they're not. The purpose of the WMF isn't to simply be a hosting provider for Wikipedia or to serve the will of the editors. It's to collect, develop, and disseminate educational content effectively and globally, in particular by providing infrastructure and organizational framework for us to create that content. Maybe we disagree with some of the infrastructure (VE, MediaViewer, Flow, etc) they're providing, but it's not our right to overrule them any more than it's their right to interfere in the content of articles. But we can work with them and try to reach a consensus on what the best course might be. In truth, we're not even two separate groups, both because many of "us" are also "them" and because "us" is far from being only one group.
    I doubt this superprotection is really a step on the way to code review for site JS and gadgets, although the need for it may spur that project. Instead, I see it as a reaction to certain admins actively breaking things in the name of "consensus" among a relative handful of radical editors who can't handle unchecking a checkbox in their preferences over the silent consensus of thousands of users who enabled the beta feature and who responded to the surveys. And I'm sure this breaking of things does nothing to "force" the WMF to listen; despite claims to the contrary, I greatly doubt (no, I have no personal knowledge of this either way) that the VE-disable hack really forced the WMF to back down. Rather I believe than the actual errors that were being introduced into pages (which is something tangible, not just WP:IDONTLIKEIT and typical-mind-fallacy-based arguments) and a realization that they weren't going to be able to be fixed quickly did it and the public outcry served to bring attention to those real issues. Code review for site JS has been discussed, along with discussions of a central repository for gadgets, templates, modules, and the like (Commons-like, but not Commons), but it'll almost certainly be run mainly by volunteers rather than staff paid for that purpose.
    So what does this new ability for superprotection actually mean for us? If we can manage to work with the WMF instead of letting demagogues speak and act for us, probably absolutely nothing. Sure, some of us may not like some of the new features being rolled out—I myself will likely never use VE (I like wikitext) and I'm skeptical of Flow, but I see how both of these could be good for newbies and I know (and this is from personal knowledge) they're being developed in good faith. But we'll get nowhere by trying to assert rights that we never in fact or in theory actually ever had. We need to try to compromise, to show the WMF when they sometimes go wrong instead of constantly crowing it without evidence, and to admit that sometimes we may be wrong as well. Anomie⚔ 19:19, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
With VE the WMF/dev clearly overreach themselves. The software was not ready for beta, they should have waited a year, VE is now much closer to the state where it could be made a default. Unfortunately the handling of relations mean VE uptake is less than 1% of all edits[80] the banner appeal does not seem to have made a dint in this, and there is a good chance VE will be effectively dead on en.wikipedia for many years to come. I've no doubt the devs would have used super-protection to force VE on the community. Rather than these technical measures the WMF need to work with the community, move at the speed of the community, have senior people spend much more time on the various wiki guiding products through each wiki's processes. The reason wikipedia took off was Jimbo took the time to discus things at length with the community, this is a lesson the WMF has forgotten. Any other path will alienate the community, encourage more people to leave and actually be counter productive to its stated aims of boosting the number of editors.--Salix alba (talk): 20:25, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
If this protection level is for interface pages, maybe editinterface could be used instead, separating it from sysop and making it available to fewer users. The new protection level could then be used for something between semi and full protection, where it is more needed, making it possible to give users ability to edit protected articles such as New York Institute of Technology that are in need of improvement without also giving unnecessary access to deleted revisions and editing of protected templates and scripts. There's one thing that isn't clear from the links I've seen: "superprotect" is added as a permission, and as a protection level, but where is it specified which permissions are needed to protect at each level ("superprotect", "sysop", "autoconfirmed" or others)? Peter James (talk) 23:44, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
First off, i have no particular opinion pro or con the MediaViewer. I don't much use it, though it now becomes clear why my browser started acting up last May.
However, I think the introduction of new privileges is the worst possible solution to any given problem, especially if its use flies in the face of the opinions of the wikipedia communities. It's use over a bug-ridden piece of new software isn't just the worst possible solution, it's positively disingenious, since it adds futher strain to the relation between communities and the ones who claim to serve us, especially given the way WMF saw fit to handle the situation on de.wiki. (and yes, I do read German and do not rely on google's garbled version).
This is the second time WMF screwed up. It's vocal opposition to the European "Right to be forgotten" policy here and here is not just a hyperbole and, frankly, silly, it usurps the political views of contributors and speaks on behalf of the communities without consulting them.
It is WMF's job to facilitate the encyclopedia and other projects, it is not it's job to ram it's decisions down the throat of various communities, unless there are sound legal reasons to do so (i.e. a court order or clear violations of laws). ANY other reason is unacceptable. Kleuske (talk) 13:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
"It's the WMF's job . . ." That's an opinion, and it may or may not be valid, but anyone must realize upon reflection, the foundation will have its own opinions about doing its job. It is "its job", after all. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:56, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
They are very much entitled to that, no argument there, as I am entitled to voice another opinion. I do object to the "L'Etat? C'est moi!"-attitude. displayed in this use of technical measures to enforce a change concerning a, shall we say, not generally well-receiv'd piece of software. This does not engender a great amount of confidence in WMFs social skills. Skills i would deem fundamental, given its mission statement. Kleuske (talk) 16:13, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm assuming that the German RfC did have consensus to reject MediaViewer in some way. The much-vaunted but useless civility policy, anyone? What can be more incivil than over-riding consensus? It isn't always about naughty words. - Sitush (talk) 17:18, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
The figure being widely 'cited' is that there was a 75% majority in support of disabling Media Viewer as the default for logged-in users. Reventtalk 22:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
For the curious... de:Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Medienbetrachter, results: pro:190 (72.5%), con: 72 (27.5%). Kleuske (talk) 11:00, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
@Peter James: "superprotect" wouldn't make sense as a level between autoconfirmed and full protection, because that wouldn't really merit the "super-" prefix. But there's nothing stopping the creation of such a level with a more appropriate name besides the need for community consensus, exactly as was done to create template protection. And for what it's worth, it's already possible (and easy from a technical standpoint) to create a group that could edit fully-protected pages (but not cascade-protected pages) without them having all the rest of the admin toolkit, but that sort of idea has already been discussed and rejected several times.
As for permission to protect at a level, the 'protect' right gives the ability to apply and remove protection at any level you can edit through (e.g. it would be impossible to give a user the ability to both apply/remove semi-protection and to edit fully-protected pages without also giving them the ability to apply/remove full protection). Anomie⚔ 13:33, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Some party hack decreed that the people
    had lost the government's confidence
    and could only regain it with redoubled effort.
    If that is the case, would it not be simpler,
    If the government simply dissolved the people
    And elected another? --John (talk) 18:28, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I considered the previous controversy over Eric's actions overblown. But this really does seem to be a God complex in operation. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:22, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

Just out of curiosity, which wrong version of the German Wikipedia was super-protected? —Neotarf (talk) 00:06, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

The WMF's. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:15, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Moller has been blocked on de.wiki btw, so that is a good start. Tarc (talk) 00:25, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
This is probably a better link for it.—Neotarf (talk) 00:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Wanna bet the WMF coders will pronto add a hack so one can edit while blocked if one has superprotect rights? Probably the next thing is going to be superblock rights that can't be undone by admins, so the WMF can have something to get rid of admins they don't like. JMP EAX (talk) 08:15, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I am really curious why the WMF is putting so much effort into making volunteers (especially admins) feel they are not welcome unless they agree with the party line. It seems Erik deliberately decided to use this opportunity to show who is in charge (he is too smart to do something like this accidentally).
  • Anyway, enough of my surprise and sadness. How to go forward from here isn't easy. It is clear that we need better communications channels between developers and community, but maybe we also need a less change-adverse decision process allowing the community to agree on implementing new features. Using RfCs after flawed software has been deployed and without an easy way to just revert the change (the well-proven wiki way to radical change: BOLD-REVERT-DISCUSS) isn't a very good model to build mutual trust, as has been demonstrated in the last couple of failed software roll-outs. In any case, "the community" is difficult to talk to, and perhaps we should move towards something like representative democracy so that these issues could be calmly and rationally discussed (ArbCom, our only elected group, specifically wasn't elected to decide the future of Wikipedia, but just to serve as its court). Not clear if something like this can help to restore trust between WMF and community, but the current build-up of distrust should not continue much longer. —Kusma (t·c) 12:21, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Your second paragraph is right on. If communication is the issue, our focus needs to be on better ways for the community to communicate. (Your first paragraph seems overblown, there is in fact very little admins are resisted in doing from that quarter, and it seems some admins get overly offended, when someone says, 'ah, no' to them in very limited areas). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
After all the other Erik/Eloquence "miscommunication" about MediaViewer, he says about superprotect "If such a conflict arises, we're prepared to revoke permissions if required." Clearly, the WMF doesn't feel it needs to listen to editors anymore. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:32, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Well, that would be a matter of clearer communication; as for "listen", that just simply does not always lead to "agree". Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:38, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Nobody seems to have mentioned the RfC on Superprotect rights at Meta yet, so I will. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
  • If the WMF want to be wikigods, let them write the content and clean up the vandalism too.--Cube lurker (talk) 16:35, 12 August 2014 (UTC)


Eloquence has actually responded to inquiries about this on his page here be aware it's all in German. I was able to translate some of it via bing, but it would be better if a native German speaker took a look . Kosh Vorlon    18:10, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

  • Absolutely shocking behavior by the WMF and this is likely to be the final nail in the coffin of me actively editing or being an admin here. I had already wound down due to previous things they've done but I see no way back now. I'm actually not against the idea of superprotect however the way it has been introduced, with no discussion and virtually no notice, is shocking and shows a complete disrespect for editors and admin. Without software and support people this site would collapse. Without volunteer admins and editors likewise. The sooner the WMF realise this and stop letting the first group so seriously annoy the second the better. I had actually started a draft RfC in my user space for withdrawing labour over the VE issue and now from what I read above it appears de.wiki are considering something similar. It does now seem only a matter of time before something like that happens on one of the big sites and then maybe the WMF will finally properly appreciate us. They certainly aren't going to be happy - I can't imagine the press will be good for them. Dpmuk (talk) 23:19, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
RE Kosh Vorlorn - A few days ago, on the German Wikipedia some admin tried to execute the result of an RfC which ended 190 to 72 for making it opt-in instead of opt-out (similar to what happened here on en.wiki), but there was already some sort of protection in place. So the admin hacked it and disabled it completely. This led to a wheel war with WMF employees and then the Superprotect right was created and used on the MediaViewer. The right's description says that only WMF employees can get it, nobody else is eligible. In the above linked discussion, Eloquence uses again the "silent-majority-fallacy": 260 voters can not represent 250 million readers/month. The other participants in the discussion say that Eloquence is arrogant, and uses empty politician's talk; and that the WMF developpers are unwilling to hear the community, and incapable to develop any new feature without flaws, and can not implement anything without drama. Kraxler (talk) 16:25, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Erik Möller/Eloquence is still blocked, block is for 1 month beginning on August 11. The other WMF admin involved in the wheel war, Jan Eissfeldt has been recalled, and under the rules of de.wiki must start an RfA within 30 days, or gets desysopped by default. Kraxler (talk) 16:42, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

For the curious, here's the latest developments on this issue, off-en.wikipedia:

  • As of 17:05, 19 August 2014 (UTC), an RfC about superprotection has received over 700 votes on the matter. These votes break down as follows:

With regard to 4 statements (translation possibly poor, please fix) [Note: translation is ok. Kraxler]:

  • The WMF is petitioned to remove superprotection from all pages on the German language Wikipedia, immediately.
Yes: 590, No 92, abstention 24.
  • The WMF is prompted to remove the superprotection right from the Staff group, immediately.
Yes: 457, No 73, abstention 31.
  • The WMF is prompted to reverse the software change(s) which introduced the superprotection right in short term (e.g. with the next software update).
Yes: 338, No 99, abstention 81.
  • The WMF is prompted to assign new group rights, that may applied to block elected rights-holders (i.e. administrators, bureaucrats, check users, Oversighters, stewards), only to user groups whose members were also elected by the local (or, where appropriate, international) community.
Yes: 327, No 73, abstention 79.
(Comment if you could get 700 people to express an opinion on an RfC at the English Wikipedia, it would be a record. And the German Wikipedia is smaller than the English. The Foundation would ignore this RfC only at their peril.)
  • The RfC about superprotection at Meta continues, although the discussion there has been slowing down.
  • A parallel discussion on Lila's user page on Meta. It appears to be a rather productive one, with Lila asking for suggestions in specific areas to prevent a clash like this between the communities & WMF in the future. -- llywrch (talk) 18:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
  • A "caricature". . .

File:Superprotect_caricature_image.jpg Tito☸Dutta 06:51, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  • Ugh, that's just FUD. And huge and ugly, so I've linkified it for you. If you want caricatures, File:WMF building wiki wall in August 2014 caricature.jpg shows some creativity and depicts a valid viewpoint (even though I personally disagree with that viewpoint) instead of ridiculous fear-mongering. Anomie⚔ 13:20, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
    Do you like this version more? — Keφr 08:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
    Not particularly. Anomie⚔ 10:22, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Proposal No. 1 on the German WP has already over 650 yes votes. There is now an open letter at Meta which can be signed by those who agree with it. Kraxler (talk) 17:19, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
  • This will be the equivalent of an Office action, I'd assume. 75.151.153.97 (talk) 16:07, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
  • IMO, including common JS and CSS as editor configurable features was a mistake in the first place, so I'm inclined to support measures that correct it. Protonk (talk) 14:52, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Superprotect update

Erik & Lila have posted a statement concerning Superprotect on the German Wikipedia here. An English translation can be found here. The TL;DR version is that after hearing from the communities, they rolled it back. -- llywrch (talk) 20:22, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Some more about freedom

Related discussion, related discussion 2, related discussion 3, and a related RfC section. --Gryllida (talk) 05:57, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Two consecutive days of partial pageview data

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T72118
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T72136

Based on the raw data at the Wikimedia data dumps, it seems that in the August 27 15-16:00 and 19-20:00 hours the pageview totals at pagecounts-20140827-160001.gz and pagecounts-20140827-200000.gz are only a fraction of the actual page views. On August 28, we had a second consecutive day of partially missing data: pagecounts-20140828-170000.gz - pagecounts-20140828-200000.gz are entirely missing and pagecounts-20140828-210000.gz seems to be about 2/3rds of the normal size.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:59, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, sadly enough there was a series of events around the pageview files :-(
The corresponding bugs in the WMF bugtracker are T72118, and T72136. The issues have been announced on the analytics mailinglist (here, and here), and on the webstatscollector's issues page on Wikitech. 194.118.200.38 (talk) 09:03, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Are the Wikimedia projects affected by the over one billion stolen passwords?

Are the Wikimedia projects affected by the over one billion stolen passwords reported by The New York Times on 5 August 2014 in the article "Russian Hackers Amass Over a Billion Internet Passwords"? --Bensin (talk) 15:09, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

I've seen nothing in staff e-mail about this, so I assume that the answer is "no". If I'm wrong, then I expect it to be announced promptly. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): Thank you for answering. Considering the vast amount of passwords, can the WMF make a statement whether Wikimedia projects are affected or not? (As opposed to "passive" silence.) --Bensin (talk) 10:05, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure that I'd have heard about it, and to my knowledge we have no such password breach. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:34, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I believe that Philippe's "fairly sure" is pronounced "if a password breach is discovered, and no one promptly informed the Legal and Community Advocacy team, then heads will roll".  
(LCA has to deal with legal compliance about data and privacy protection.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm skeptical the breach even took place or was anywhere close to the reported scale. See schneier on the subject or here for another pretty convincing skeptical take. Protonk (talk) 15:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks all for answering! --Bensin (talk) 21:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Script errors

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T72177

The article Karnataka is littered with script errors stating "The time allocated for running scripts has expired." This is a featured article, and has only recently begun transcluding {{error}}s. Has a recent module change caused this? Help with debugging from Lua experts would be appreciated. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 12:56, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I see: Help:Lua debugging #Occasional timeout errors. It appears that Lua may be "tired". Wbm1058 (talk) 13:01, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
A dummy edit to force the replacement of the page with a clean Lua run did not solve the issue. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:16, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Module:Citation/CS1 doesn't like the question mark that is part of the url like this one http://books.google.com/books?id=jPR2OlbTbdkC&pg=PA757#v=onepage&q=&f=false when it's used as part of |page=. Working on a solution.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:45, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I've reverted the module to the March 30 version in the meantime; the script errors in Karnataka are now gone. If anyone notices them on other pages then purging the page should fix it. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:53, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Current version of the module with the function get_coins_pages () disabled while I noodle out what's wrong.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:06, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: If you want to preview how Karnataka looks with the module sandbox, you might find User:Jackmcbarn/advancedtemplatesandbox.js useful. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:09, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I believe that the problem is fixed. The function get_coins_pages() strips urls from the |page= parameters so that these urls don't corrupt the COinS metadata. get_coins_pages() uses string.match to create a pattern that it then feeds to string.gsub which replaces the pattern in the |pages= value with a null string. The problem is that the pattern used by string.gsub isn't a literal string so the Lua magic pattern characters are treated as magic characters. I've added pattern = pattern:gsub("([%^%$%(%)%%%.%[%]%*%+%-%?])", "%%%1"); which escapes the magic characters.

This fix has been made to the sandbox code but not to the live code. The fix will be applied to the live code at the next update whenever that occurs.

The offending CS1 citation now works properly:

Jain, Dhanesh; Cardona, George (2003). Jain, Dhanesh; Cardona, George (eds.). The Indo-Aryan languages. Routledge language family series. Vol. 2. Routledge. p. 757. ISBN 0-7007-1130-9.

It's good that this citation showed up the problem because it shouldn't have. The book doesn't have preview at Google books so the url as part of |page= is unnecessary and misleading.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:31, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Ttm for the link. This was the problem I had with the Ultra article before I identified the editor problem (see here). Google books access is not static, access rights vary from country to country and also from time to time -- which is why it is better to use the Internet Archive site for those books that are in the public domain and have a copy on their site. -- PBS (talk) 11:42, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: @Trappist the monk: @Mr. Stradivarius: @PBS: These errors were due to bugzilla:70177 (which a workaround is now in place for), rather than to any code on-wiki. If anyone changed anything here to try to fix it, the changes should be undone. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:25, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
@Jackmcbarn: I just tried prieviewing Karnataka with the offending version of Module:Citation/CS1, and the time-out script errors were still there. So whatever workaround was put in place hasn't fixed whatever the problem was. Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox is working fine, so the bug that Trappist fixed seems like the most obvious cause. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:40, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: That particular one does indeed appear to be a separate thing. I was referring to the 1200+ timeout errors that were just recently fixed. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:51, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Cite templates

I sometimes clean up footnotes and notice that some have "author" instead of "last name/first name". Are those formed using an old template? If so, could it be removed, please, so that references always come out with author surname first, comma, first name last? It seems some editors have that old template as default.. Perhaps it is not as simple as that. --P123ct1 (talk) 08:35, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

No, it's not as simple as that. If we were to remove the parameter, we would need to convert all the existing transclusions to use the |first= and |last= parameters, and that can't be done reliably by a bot. It's hard for a computer to work out whether the author is "Last, First" or "First Last" (especially if someone has forgotten to include the comma). There are also a lot of names that could be ambiguous. For example, it's easy for a human to look at "Ludwig van Beethoven" and see that it should be "Beethoven, Ludwig van" rather than "van Beethoven, Ludgwig", but that task is not easy for a computer. So if we did want to remove the |author= parameter we would have to do it by hand. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 10:01, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@P123ct1: It's not an old template but a permitted parameter alias. Sometimes, as with names like Ban Ki-moon, the family name comes first, and the given name last. These should always be given as |author=Ban Ki-moon because |first=Ban |last=Ki-moon puts the family name into the given name parameter (and vice versa), whereas |last=Ban |first=Ki-moon would add an undesirable comma. Then there are also cases where a split would always be incorrect, such as corporate authors. There has been plenty on this on other discussion pages e.g. Template talk:Citation/Archive 6#Lastname, Firstname. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Hadn't thought about the Ban Ki-moon problem and foreign names where surnames come first. I wonder how those whose cite templates have last name/first name cope with that. I hope they see sense and put it all in one or the other. --P123ct1 (talk) 10:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC).
'author' is an alias for 'last' so there really is not an issue. --  Gadget850 talk 12:32, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Here's a link to the template documentation for cite book about this parameter. If you are interesting in cleaning up author names in footnotes. One error that lands pages in Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters is deprecated use of "coauthors". Many thousands of pages need fixing here. The names in "coauthors" should instead use the last/first system. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:43, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
That doesn't make sense to me, since Ban Ki-moon coud also be a coauthor of a work. --Matthiasb (talk) 11:58, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
@Matthiasb: In such cases, you would put |first1=John|last1=Doe|author2=Ban Ki-moon --Redrose64 (talk) 17:47, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
  • There's no need to use last name/first name when citations are offered chronologically in a Notes section, rather than in an alphabetical References section. So I hope that author=John Smith isn't going to be removed as an option. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:17, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
SV I didn't realise that you used citation templates! The whole issue of removing or adding parameters to CS1 needs addressing (see my comments here), along with the whole process of testing and implementation of changes (see this example of what can go wrong with the current process). -- PBS (talk) 18:50, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
What makes me anger: 2007 or so Cite web/book/news/… was compatible to those templates in the German Wikipedia, so we only had to copy the source into our articles and it worked, even if the citations are formatted differently in the German WP. But then the cite series was combined with the citation series and things got worse. Lua made it worse even more. The same templates get less and less compatible between the different language versions. And puts water on the mill of those who want to delete those templates in DE anyway since they are "english". That is not nice. --Matthiasb (talk) 20:42, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
That is a social issue, that I think is not something we can do much about. I see a rather vehement aversion to some of the structure and policies of enwiki in several other language wiki's, but since that feeling isn't really mutual, there is little motivation to fix that from the enwiki side I presume. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 21:49, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Pending changes oddity

I set up James Foley with pending changes but nothing is shown in the log. Additionally if you look at the page history at 01:44 25 August 2014 and down that User:Worldedixor made a series of edits that were automatically accepted as they should have been. Then scroll back up to 16:59 26 August and Worldedixor's edit was not accepted and had to be approved. But Worldedixor is autoconfirmed. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 20:51, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you CBWeather. I would really like to know what happened. Thank you all. Worldedixor (talk) 21:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
The page was subsequently moved - a page move does not move the log entries, so they're still on the old page name, here they are. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:32, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Doesn't explain why Worldedixor's edit wasn't accepted. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 03:12, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
The non-accepted edit by Worldedixor was a revert of this edit by Jclinger7 (talk · contribs), who was not autoconfirmed at the time. In between there was this edit by the same user, and since that intervening edit was not automatically accepted, the whole series of three were also not automatically accepted. The two edits by Jclinger7 were their seventh and eighth; they've made four since, and so are now autoconfirmed. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:09, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
The 12th edit of Jclinger7 was also not automatically accepted - have the requirements for autoconfirmed status changed or is another explanation more likely (maybe the database had not been updated)? Peter James (talk) 08:59, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
One possibility is that they edit through the Tor network (see WP:AUTOCONFIRM). I don't know for sure; but I believe that a checkuser could find that out (I'm not a checkuser). --Redrose64 (talk) 15:30, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
There's nothing in the log to say that the user was ever granted IP block exemption, which I think would be required for that. Peter James (talk) 23:41, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Notifications

Part of the above. Worldedixor left me a message on my talk page but I didn't get the notification. The only way I knew about it was when I got the email. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 20:51, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

That would be this post. Are your settings at Preferences → Notifications set appropriately? That is, do you have either: (a) a tick in the "Email" column for the "Talk page message" row, or (b) a tick against "Show talk page message indicator in my toolbar"? If so, WT:NOTIFICATIONS is where problems like this are usually posted. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:32, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Another possibility: is there a chance that you were viewing your talk page at the time that the new message was posted to it? I know that the simple act of visiting your own talk page will cancel the "you have new messages" orange bar, and I think that it will also mark any "... left a message on your talk page in ..." notifications as actioned. Not certain on that though. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:54, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
All the proper boxes were checked. As to having the talk page open at the time I can't be sure. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 03:12, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Vcard, vevent etc.

Can somebody explain or point to some page, what are the differences between vcard, vevent and other classes (for infoboxes) and when each of them should be used? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 18:10, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

These classes generally correspond to microformats. For instance, vcard class corresponds to hCard microformat and vevent class to hCalendar. Ruslik_Zero 18:39, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
So these classes have semantic meaning, and are not used to apply styling information. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 20:27, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
Not by us, but it's possible for a user to have local style sheet, which highlights, say, microformat-classed dates of birth, or nicknames. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:32, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
@Edgars2007: Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:32, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Expanding the stats.grok graph

Is it possible to get stats.grok to display several years of a page's view history on one graph? The last 90 days is the most it offers on the stats.grok page. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:41, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Suppress MediaWiki:Newarticletext

Can I stick something in my .css to suppress this? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:53, 31 August 2014 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: The following should do it:
#newarticletext { display: none; }
Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:10, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
Many thanks! I do worry about all this style sheet overhead. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:12, 1 September 2014 (UTC).

Watchlisting pages in a category

Is there a way to watchlist all pages in a category without going to them individually? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:13, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

You can list the pages in your userspace (for example, at User:Callanecc/Watchlist), and then check recent changes to the listed pages.
—Wavelength (talk) 02:31, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
For that matter, it seems that Special:RecentChangesLinked will do the right thing when given a category. Anomie⚔ 02:46, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
As a one-time addition to your watchlist (or a process manually repeated at intervals), you could go to Special:EditWatchlist/raw and paste in the list of pages from the category. Or if you're familiar with the API, it should be easy to do with action=watch and generator=categorymembers. But if you're wanting to automatically add and remove pages as they're added to and removed from the category, there's no good way at this time; the Special:RecentChangesLinked trick is your best bet there. Anomie⚔ 02:46, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

WikiWand, images and blockquotes

 
From Night (book)#Sighet ghettos. The question is what I need to do to get it to look more like the same section in WikiWand?

Using {{quotation}}, the blockquotes end up in the right place, but the template doesn't seem to have many features. One quote is behind an image, and I can't find a way to remove the border or change size or colour.

File:Night with quote box.jpg
{{Quote box}} has more features, but the images push the text out of the way, and the blockquotes end up paragraphs lower than intended.
 
Same section on WikiWand

I've been looking at some of our articles through WikiWand, and they really do look better, especially with the larger images and the pale-grey blockquotes.

I'm currently trying to edit Night (book) to look more like its WikiWand version. One of the issues I'm struggling with is how to create coloured blockquotes around images using {{quote}} or {{quote box}}. Sometimes they work, and sometimes the quote goes spinning off into weird places, several paragraphs below where I intended it, even splitting paragraphs in two.

Does anyone know how to exercise more control over blockquote placement around images so that we can have different colours, widths and fonts? SlimVirgin (talk) 16:05, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I installed it because I trust your name, and was disappointed to see that the articles are not current. Thank you for the tip.
But if I use the menu in the header, I can edit via the familiar way, and I was able to see some current changes.
Wow. power projection looks fantastic. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 16:51, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi Ancheta, it looks great, doesn't it? (The articles I've looked at have been current, btw). Take a look at List of colors and Ezra Pound. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
By "coloured blockquotes" do you mean something like {{Centered pull quote}}? --  Gadget850 talk 17:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
{{Quotation}} probably does what you want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Gadget, thanks but that produces something different. WAID, {{Quotation}} has the same conflict with images as {{Quote box}} (the former sometimes ends up behind the image, while the latter pushes it out of the way). There is something odd about the way images are displayed on WP and it has caused problems for years. The question is how can we produce blockquotes (and other design features) the way WikiWand does, without these image clashes.

WAID, do you know who is in charge of design for the Foundation? Perhaps we could ping that person for advice. Pinging Missvain, as I know she has talked about design a lot. I'd love to know who we need to ask and what we need to ask for. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:34, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I think User talk:Jaredzimmerman (WMF) would be the relevant director. User:Jorm is working on Winter, so he's probably the best designer to talk to. There's some work in train (October?) to change the design of all image boxes, but I don't remember who is working on that. Fabrice is probably the PM for it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
{{Stack}} may be useful here. --  Gadget850 talk 19:35, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
And if it is, we could add the functionality into {{quotation}}. --  Gadget850 talk 19:54, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Would you be willing to do that, Gadget? (I ask that not knowing how much work it is.) We need to be able to remove the border or change the thickness, change colour, change width – everything that {{quote box}} does. Or else fix quote box so that it doesn't move images. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:00, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Please don't use {{Stack}}. It's an ugly workaround and needs to be avoided whenever possible. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 21:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
@SlimVirgin: you may find some designers on mail:design. Helder 20:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Many thanks, Helder! SlimVirgin (talk) 20:55, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Gadget850, as you seem to know what you're doing, could I ask you to help with something?

I am thinking of asking the Foundation formally somewhere (perhaps on Bugzilla, if that's the right place) to create tools for us so that we can create articles that look more like WikiWand.

I first want to make sure that we can't already do it with the tools we have. I've spent hours struggling with Night (book) (particularly Night (book)#Sighet ghettos) to juggle the blockquotes and the images, but I can't get them to sit right. Here is one example of what happens. If you look at the block quote beginning "The barbed wire which fenced us in ..." that is supposed to come after "the windows on the non-ghetto side had to be boarded up." But instead it jumps several paragraphs, and positions itself in the middle of another quote.

Would you mind briefly trying to position the block quotes (with a grey background and no border) in that section with the images, just in case I'm missing something? If you can't manage it, can you tell me what we need to ask the Foundation to create for us, so that this kind of thing can be done relatively easily? SlimVirgin (talk) 20:52, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

BTW. if anyone is bored... There should be some serious weeding/deletion/replacement done in Category:Quotation_templates. About half the templates are duplicates or easily replaceable variants. Really just too many cruft there, what are you supposed to use as a user ? —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 21:05, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Anything that is <blockquote> based should now no longer overlap with images on the mobile site (we might propagate that change into the entire site, it seems like a sane idea, but let's test it on mobile first). Anything that is table based (like cquote variants), should probably be avoided. Also I see you experimented with a few quotes that were left floating, which is probably not what you wanted. You wanted left aligned, that is different than left floating (unfortunately many template params are incorrectly named on this front, so it can be hard to tell without pulling out a web inspector or reading the template code). —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 21:26, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

 
Same section on WikiWand
Hi Derek-Jan, my problem (which I share with a lot of editors) is that I can't describe what I want, and I don't understand the language (floating, aligned, blockquote, cquote, table-based). I can only point to the outcome I'd like to achieve, which is the WikiWand look (right), so that I can place blockquotes in text boxes, with borders and no borders, different colours, different widths, where I want to place them, including next to images.
It has been a problem for years on WP that we can't do this. I've often seen editors struggling to try to produce something decent looking. We'd love to be able to write for a professional-looking publication. The typography refresh was great, as are the hovercards and the way thumbnails are shown now without the borders. And I love the look of the mobile site. Allowing us to move images and block quotes around more easily would be wonderful too.
I've written on the gender gap task force page that I see this as an editor-retention – and specifically a gender gap – issue, because I think the fiddly nature of trying to change the look of anything on a WP page is discouraging (for anyone, but I'd say especially for women). So the question is whether the Foundation might be willing to devote some resources to this. Who do we ask, and where, and what should we ask for? Pinging Erik in the hope he can advise. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:30, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Jumping in to second what SV has said above. I would think that it shouldn't be difficult for block quotes to have background shading and it shouldn't be difficult to have markup to specify whether a blockbox should be left/right aligned. The default for a <blockquote></blockquote> is center aligned, without background shading, and it never center aligns well if an image is in the vicinity (in other words only indents once, when a second indent is required if butting up against an image). If that helps, in terms of SV is trying to say. Victoria (tk) 00:17, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
SlimVirgin, please have a look at this Old revision of my sandbox and see if that will do approximately what you want. It'd just be a matter of copying and pasting the ugly div line before every block quote, and typing the closing div tag at the end. It's not perfect: I don't know how to make the blocks automatically full-width when nothing is on the right hand side, or to make them narrower when there is no text filling the full width (instead, they're all set to the width that seems to work if there's a regular-width image on the right-hand side; you can manually change that by adjusting the "20em" in the right margin code). However, I think it might be a little closer than what you've got, and perhaps someone else will be able to improve on it.
If you want more 'air' around the quotations (to have them indented more, either left or right), then that would be easy to add. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:58, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm not SV, but decided to reply here anyway. For those of us who work here as volunteers writing content, and particularly for those of us who write about literature, blockquotes are almost impossible to avoid, yet most of us know that they're ugly and hard to format. I'd think it wouldn't be difficult to create a blockquote template with an option to align left, right or center, that would highlight the quote with background shading, that gives and option to change the color, and an option to change the width accordingly - necessary when in the vicinity of an image. We have a gazillion templates that do all kinds of things in article space and in talk space - right down to wikibreak and barnstar templates - yet something that's really a necessity in many many articles is lacking. It is discouraging to see that Wikiwand formats these so nicely but it's so hard for us to do here with the existing UI. Victoria (tk) 19:15, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, thank you so much for this – your sandbox looks exactly like the thing I was trying to achieve. I'll take some time today to try to apply it to the whole article.
As Victoria says, for people writing content it's really hard to find the technical help if we don't know how to write code ourselves, or know how to choose between the various templates. It seems – for the most part (with apologies to the exceptions) – that WP volunteers with technical skills have not focused on design, and editors who care about the look of pages may not have the technical background. The question is how we can encourage the Foundation to bridge the gap so that all editors have access to tools to make pages look good. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:55, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, I've finished adding your boxes to Night (book), and they look really good. Thanks again for creating them! One thing I would like to be able to do is move some of them to the centre, but I don't know what to write (e.g. with "He's just trying to make us pity him .."

I wonder if the Foundation would pay someone to teach editors how to write the kind of code we need to understand these things. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:11, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Break

The main problem with the approach taken by WhatamIdoing at 05:58, 27 August 2014 is that the chosen dimensions might not suit everybody's setup. The blockquote is constrained to avoid the images by setting its right margin to 20em; but are the images necessarily 20em (or just under) wide? If they're |thumb images, they might be anything from 120px to 300px wide (depending on the setting at Preferences → Appearance), plus the frame that goes with a |thumb image. The relationship between dimensions measured in em and those measured in px is inexact, and depends on several factors ranging from the hardware characteristics to the installed fonts. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:52, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Also, it uses divs, which is not a good idea.. If i have some time this weekend, I might want to take a stab to cleanup some of this mess in the quote templates area. Really, it can all be fixed easily, it's just that people have made a bit of a mess of everything. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 10:28, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
I agree with TheDJ. I have done some work in the past, but the quote templates are inconsistently implemented. We might need some CSS changes to make this work properly. --  Gadget850 talk 11:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

How about this: 

{{Block quote/sandbox|Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. All that glisters is not gold.|x|x|William Shakespeare|''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'', Act II, sc. vii|bgcolor=#EEEEEE}}

—TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 12:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it's quite good. Test here. I'd like to test throughout an entire article but won't get to that for a few days. Thanks for doing this. Victoria (tk) 00:31, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Bland. I hear the mobile style version is coming soon anyway: no background and big quotes (a bit like {{cquote}}) and in serif. Until then:
{{Block quote/sandbox|Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. All that glisters is not gold.|x|x|William Shakespeare|''[[The Merchant of Venice]]'', Act II, sc. vii|bgcolor=#F2F2F2|style=border-left:3px solid #ccc;margin:1em 1.6em; padding:0 0.8em;}}
...inspired by {{talkquote}}. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 12:42, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
File:Night quote box overlap.jpg
Box overlapping an image
Edokter, thanks for creating that. I really like the left-hand border. I tried it out on this section of Night, and it worked with two of the images, but it overlapped with a third. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:56, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
SlimVirgin, I don't see the overlap (which should not happen due to this change in Common.css). Oh wait, I do see it in both Firefox and Opera (<15). It seems the overflow rule is not quite effective for floating elements following the blockquote. Some strategically placed {{-}}s is the only solution I can see for this. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:01, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi Edokter, I've uploaded a screenshot in case others can't see the overlap. Your boxes did work with two of the images though. I wonder why it's positioned differently around that particular image. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:44, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Depends on where the image is located with regards to the blockquote. Images pushed below the blockquote (even if they appear before the blockquote in the document flow) seem to be problematic. However, it is a rare occurence, and a {{clear}} or {{-}} will fix it. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 23:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
I've just added (using preview, didn't save) a {{clear}} under the blockquote that overlapped the image. It didn't remove the overlap, but it did add lots of white space below the next paragraph. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:27, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Try above the blockquote. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 23:31, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, this particular issue is a known side-effect with stacking floating elements of unequal width (and works as it is supposed to according to the specifications, tough newer versions of Chrome seem to have deviated from the standards for sake of better rendering). The only ways to fix this are by using either equal width floating elements, or wrapping the floating elements in an additional 'parent' floating element (like what {{Stack}} does, or by making sure that the 'wider' floating elements is defined at a location that logically is 'after' the block quote. None of them are really nice, but these are sort of the limits of what you can achieve with HTML. You'll note that WikiWand will also run into this problem. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 16:39, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
The thing I'm struggling with conceptually is why text and <blockquote> adjust themselves around images, but these other ways of producing quote boxes don't. Could someone explain that to me in words of one syllable? SlimVirgin (talk) 23:31, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I added the style to avoid collisions with thumbnails into the en.wp core styling. I want to move some defaults structure into a 'quote/core" template and then have the various quotation templates with styling reuse that one. Then try to get rid of a lot of the other stuff. Also it would really help if I can have some use case descriptions. So independent of what are the current options, i'd like to know what you are looking for in terms of styling, positioning, content options etc. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 12:37, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

That looks much easier to use. Does "avoid collisions with thumbnails" mean that the text will now all be in the correct order? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:19, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
TheDJ, we're looking for quote boxes we can use alongside images, where (ideally) we can control the width, colour, borders, margin width, font and font size, line breaks (for poetry), and above all where there won't be clashes with images – i.e. quote boxes we can position above, below and next to images, without the box overlapping the images, or appearing paragraphs below the position we tried to add it to. And a page with examples, where it's all explained (to get this look, do this), so that editors with no technical knowledge that use them easily. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:02, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

The road to block quote cleanup

I have started an overview page on this really annoying area and it is here: User:TheDJ/quotation_cleanup. This is gonna take quite a while, those experienced with template cleanup/subsitution/replacement that are willing to help, please do help :) —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 20:20, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

TheDJ, thank you for doing this. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:24, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-36

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

  • You can now test a new Beta Feature to see links to other wikis in the sidebar. The links come from Wikidata. [81] [82]
  • You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the linksto: keyword in your search. [83] [84]
  • A redirect to a section now changes the URL in the address bar of your browser. If "Dog" redirects to "Animals#Dog", you now see "Animals#Dog" instead of "Dog#Dog". [85] [86]
  • If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages". [87]

VisualEditor news

  • You can no longer delete required fields in templates. [88]
  • We fixed many Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 11, you will get VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next. [89] [90] [91]
  • VisualEditor now looks better in Monobook. [92]
  • We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X). [93]
  • You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category. [94]

Future software changes

  • The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf19) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 2, and on all Wikipedias on September 4 (calendar).
  • There is a proposal to build a database on Commons for file data. It will make it easier to see the author, license and topics. You can give feedback on this idea. You can also come to the IRC chat on September 3 at 18:00 (UTC) in #wikimedia-office at freenode. [95]
  • You can give feedback on Media Viewer until September 7. You can say what needs to be improved and ask other people to give feedback too. [96]
  • You can test a new version of the tool to show math. It uses MathML. Report bugs in bugzilla.
  • You will no longer be able to upload images from the mobile site. [97]

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

07:49, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Citations with title parameter in rtl language, beginning with numbers: Display issue and workaround

Citations with a title parameter in a right-to-left language such as Hebrew, that begin (on the right) with a number (which itself is left-to-right) have trouble displaying the foreign and English-translated titles correctly. In this example, the Hebrew number 12 is intentionally translated as 13 to make the errors clearer. In the markup, the Hebrew title begins (on the right) with the number 12, but it incorrectly displays in the editing screen, and here shown literally with <nowiki>, with the number on the left. (This problem is not confined to citations, but exists throughout Wikipedia, and is beyond the scope of this issue.) {{cite web}} is used here, but the same problem appears with other cite templates including {{cite news}}.

The two citation bugs are:

  • Without the English title protected by <span dir="ltr">, the English number moves into the Hebrew title.
  • Without the Hebrew title protected by <span lang="he" dir="rtl">, the Hebrew title displays with the number on the left instead of the right.
Markup text Displays as
{{cite web |author=Tova Green |date=6 May 2010 |title=12 ימים|language=he |trans-title=13 days |publisher=Maybe So |url=http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html |accessdate=15 May 2010}} Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010.
{{cite web |author=Tova Green |date=6 May 2010 |title=<span lang="he" dir="rtl">12 ימים</span> |language=he |trans-title=13 days |publisher=Maybe So |url=http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html |accessdate=15 May 2010}} Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010.
{{cite web |author=Tova Green |date=6 May 2010 |title=12 ימים |language=he |trans-title=<span dir="ltr">13 days</span> |publisher=Maybe So |url=http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html |accessdate=15 May 2010}} Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010.
{{cite web |author=Tova Green |date=6 May 2010 |title=<span lang="he" dir="rtl">12 ימים</span> |language=he |trans-title=<span dir=ltr>13 days</span> |publisher=Maybe So |url=http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html |accessdate=15 May 2010}} Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010.

—Anomalocaris (talk) 01:42, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Is the fourth example the one that is displayed correctly? It looks like adding a span dir="ltr" declaration automatically for |title= parameters when ltr languages are declared in |language= might do the trick. I have paged the folks who know the details of the Lua code that underlies most of the cite/citation templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:38, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Jonesey95: Yes, the fourth example is the one that is displayed correctly. As I say, the workaround involves mucking with both the |title= and the |trans_title= parameter. Whatever the difficulties in handling rtl languages in the title parameter (or anywhere else), the |trans_title= parameter shouldn't need additional script for ordinary English to display correctly. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm not thinking that this is a CS1 problem. I think I can duplicate the problem outside of a CS1 template by simply copying the Hebrew characters from one of these citations and pasting them into this edit window:
ימים
If I then put the cursor at the right end of the Hebrew string and type any letter on my keyboard ('a' in this case)
ימיםa
then the character is placed to the right of the Hebrew string. This is how it should work, correct? If I repeat the above experiment but instead type a number ('9'), the number is placed at the left of the Hebrew string:
ימים9
From this I think that I can conclude that the problem lies elsewhere than in CS1.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:01, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Trappist the monk: You are right that the behavior in my second bullet point is not confined to |title= parameters of {{cite}} templates. It's a problem throughout Wikipedia, and it's actually the behavior you would expect. If you have Hebrew embedded in an English stream, and the Hebrew begins with a number, the displaying software has no way of knowing that the number is part of the Hebrew (and therefore has to be on the right of it) unless some additional markup brackets the number together with the Hebrew. So my second bullet is not really a bug. One could argue with the |language= parameter set to a rtl language the |title= parameter should be assumed to be rtl. Unfortunately Wikipedians do not strictly follow this rule. There are many instances where the |title= parameter is the English-translated title even when the |language= parameter is set to an rtl language such as Hebrew. So I would advise against any special treatment for the |title= parameter to fix the second bullet "bug". But the first bullet really is a bug. Plain English shouldn't need additional markup to display correctly.—Anomalocaris (talk) 06:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Module:Citation/CS1 simply concatenates |title=, |trans-title=, and appropriate punctuation into an internal variable Title. This variable is used either as-is, or as the display text for |url= when the code renders the citation:
[http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html "12 ימים" [13 days]]
If an editor wraps the content of |title= in <bdi>...</bdi>, the concatenated result is correct.
[http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html "<bdi lang="he" dir="rtl">12 ימים</bdi>" [13 days]]
It occurs to me that the module could automatically wrap every |title= with <bdi>...</bdi> tags regardless of language. This problem isn't limited to digit-initial |trans-title=. This:
{{cite book |title=ימים |volume=2}}
produces this:
ימים. Vol. 2.
with <bdi>...</bdi> we get
ימים. Vol. 2.
I'll experiment with having the module wrap |title= values after I make a currently pending update to the live module code. I will post my results at Help talk:Citation Style 1.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:04, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
I think <bdi> should fix it; see Help:HTML in wikitext#bdi. Have to check browser support though.
Markup Renders as 
{{cite web |author=Tova Green |date=6 May 2010 |title=12 ימים|language=he |trans-title=13 days |publisher=Maybe So |url=http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html |accessdate=15 May 2010}}

Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010. 

{{cite web |author=Tova Green |date=6 May 2010 |title=<bdi lang="he" dir="rtl">12 ימים</bdi> |language=he |trans-title=13 days |publisher=Maybe So |url=http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html |accessdate=15 May 2010}}

Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010. 

{{cite web |author=Tova Green |date=6 May 2010 |title=12 ימים |language=he |trans-title=<bdi dir="ltr">13 days</bdi> |publisher=Maybe So |url=http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html |accessdate=15 May 2010}}

Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010. 

{{cite web |author=Tova Green |date=6 May 2010 |title=<bdi lang="he" dir="rtl">12 ימים</bdi> |language=he |trans-title=<bdi dir=ltr>13 days</bdi> |publisher=Maybe So |url=http://MaybeSo.com/12days.html |accessdate=15 May 2010}}

Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010.

--  Gadget850 talk 01:00, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Gadget850: Yes, it appears that <bdi> works better than <span>. If the rtl |title= parameter is tagged with bdi, the English |trans_title= parameter displays correctly without additional markup. But still, protecting the rtl |title= parameter with <span> should also work, and the second bullet is still a bug in my opinion. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Either of these solutions will bugger up the COinS metadata. Here's the COinS title when it's wrapped with <bdi>...</bdi>:
&rft.btitle=%3Cbdi+lang%3D%22he%22+dir%3D%22rtl%22%3E12+%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D%3C%2Fbdi%3E
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:04, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
I knew that would happen, but it does show a route to the solution. I logged a feature request some time ago for better language support, including RTL support. <bdi> was whitelisted since that request. We should not need to do anything to 'trans_title' as it should be English. --  Gadget850 talk 12:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Just notice the the last example uses dir=ltr missing the quotes so it doesn't do anything.
The issue occurs because 'title' and 'trans_title' are combined to create the link. Looking at this, I can't see a downside of wrapping the title in <bidi> in the template to isolate the directionality of 'title' from 'trans_title'. If we add that, then we should go on and add the language code as well, which has been on the suggestion list for a while. --  Gadget850 talk 12:23, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia cannot assume that the |title= parameter is entered in the language declared in the |language= parameter. Wikipedia editors sometimes translate the title to English when using the |language= parameter. I do this myself sometimes, especially if the title is just a name or otherwise the same in English and Hebrew, such as "Halleluyah". So I would advise against adding language codes around the |title= parameter, and <bdi>...</bdi> codes should not specify the direction. —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:59, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Then we can't fix the issue with italicized Asian characters in a title. --  Gadget850 talk 10:29, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
There has been no discussion under this heading of italicized Asian characters in a title. This is a discussion of rtl languages mixing with various symbols such as numbers and whether those symbols appear to the left or right of rtl language characters. —Anomalocaris (talk) 04:24, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
unicode-bidi: isolate;, people:
Tova Green (6 May 2010). "12 ימים" [13 days] (in Hebrew). Maybe So. Retrieved 15 May 2010.
Unicode 7.0 gives us also U+2068 and U+2069. — Keφr 21:23, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Adding <span style="unicode-bidi: -moz-isolate; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; unicode-bidi: -ms-isolate; unicode-bidi: isolate;">...</span> corrupts the COinS metadata. Certainly, something like this could be added to the rendered version of the citation (output of Module:Citation/CS1) but editors should not add it to |title= or |trans-title=.
And doesn't <span style="unicode-bidi: -moz-isolate; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; unicode-bidi: -ms-isolate; unicode-bidi: isolate;">...</span> do the same thing that <bdi>...</bdi> is supposed to do?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:24, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I read that as <bdo>. But indeed it does. And there is no difference compatibility-wise either, according to MDN. I learned something new. — Keφr 12:39, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Redirects to sections

  Resolved

T72176

Can't seem to get these to work today. Try for example 1 (numeral) and Anchor Books. Click on them and they take you to the TOP of their articles rather than to their sections. Go to the redirects and click on their targets, and you will be taken to the correct sections. Hmm? – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 22:19, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I just checked this in Firefox and it works okay. So why has it suddenly stopped working in IE10? – Paine  22:30, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm, seems like the opposite of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 129#Redirects to subsections. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:32, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Haven't found a bug report like this, yet. Guess I'll check some more and perhaps open a report after lunch. Thank you very much, Redrose64, for your response! – Paine  00:30, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I've just come across Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 47#Why did this happen? Following a redirected link would previously leave the browser's URL bar showing the redirect - for example, clicking WP:VPT would leave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VPT in the address bar, but now it is fully expanded, presumably server-side, to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) Perhaps there was a MediaWiki change which has an effect on section redirects? --Redrose64 (talk) 08:17, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Matma Rex changed the way we handle these redirects (all client side though). It seems however that IE10 is not updating the position in the page based on the hash that is pushed using history.replaceState.. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 11:31, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you very much, TheDJ! – Paine  14:21, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yes, a software change; that's what I thought, too. Those poor devs have such a backlog! It's no wonder that they don't always thoroughly test their updates. It's always a balance between the tremendous workload and time. I just hope it can be fixed, which will keep me from having to check each expected section redirect to see if it is targeted correctly, to see if an anchor must be applied, and so on. Thank you, Redrose64, for your help and diligence! – Paine  14:21, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
For checking, you can (for now?) use the "show redirects only" link in whatlinkshere: [98] (an example with invalid links: [99]) --NE2 01:12, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the report, I filed T72176 and will look into it today. Matma Rex talk 14:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC) By the way, this change was supposed to be announced in latest Tech News (issue 35) (I added it to the issue: [100]), but it has been removed from some reason. I was under the impression that everyone knows that this happened :/ Matma Rex talk 14:15, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you so much, Matma Rex! – Paine  15:10, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
There's a patch with a workaround pending review now: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/157165/. I'll try to get it deployed soon, but it might be difficult to get it done on Friday :). If you're bored, you might try the three test cases linked in the description and verify that they behave like I described. Matma Rex talk 16:18, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
And now you can test the accepted patch on http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/. Matma Rex talk 16:57, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Should be fixed here, too! Sorry about the bug. Matma Rex talk 18:34, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
It is! and thank you so much for what you did! – Paine  19:11, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
For the record, the change ended up being announced in Tech News 36 instead. Matma Rex talk 11:58, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Deleting Election Box Metadata

I've been here for 9 years and STILL find this confusing, so please advise! The article Patriotic Socialist Party was deleted, but the related Election Box Metadata was not; how do we get rid of this and this ? Thanks. doktorb wordsdeeds 10:07, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

WP:CSD#G8 seems appropriate. G6 could probably work too. Anomie⚔ 11:33, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
Cheers User:Anomie, thanks for helping! doktorb wordsdeeds 13:07, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
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